The conversion of existing diesel engines to natural-gas (NG) spark-ignition (SI) operation would reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports and curtail greenhouse gas emissions. As the literature shows that the combustion process in such converted engines is different compared to that in conventional SI engines, understanding the effects of the diesel geometry and fuel effects on the in-cylinder flame propagation is important for optimizing engine operation. This paper describes the experimental setup that allowed the visualization of combustion phenomena inside a single-cylinder diesel engine converted to single-fuel NG spark-ignition operation through the addition of a spark plug and a low-pressure gas injector. The synchronization between the piston position and image acquisition was done using over-the-counter electronic components. While the setup could not visualize flame propagation inside the squish region, the combustion images, together with the pressure-based analysis, help understand the characteristics of lean NG flame propagation inside a diesel geometry, which is an important for designing a highly-efficient combustion process.


AIMS
The patho-physiology of apical ballooning syndrome (ABS) has not been clearly defined. The aim of this study was to determine whether patients with a history of ABS are more likely to develop left ventricular (LV) mid-cavity or outflow tract obstruction, or have a greater regional LV contractile response to an adrenergic stimulus compared with normal controls.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Twenty patients who had recovered from ABS and 15 age-and sex-matched controls had dobutamine stress echocardiography with incremental doses up to 20 µg/kg/min. On average ABS subjects had slightly greater basal LV interventricular septal (1.1 ± 0.24 cm vs. 0.93 ± 0.12, P = 0.03) and posterior wall (1.04 ± 0.16 vs. 0.91 ± 0.11 cm, P = 0.02) diameters compared with controls but LV end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes and LV ejection fraction were similar both at rest and after dobutamine. Regional and global LV contractility, measured with the strain rate and tissue velocity imaging were also similar during the dobutamine infusion up to 10 µg/kg/min in ABS and controls. Mid-LV or LV outflow tract obstruction was not present at rest in any subjects, but was common during peak dobutamine infusion both in the ABS (45%) and controls (53%, P = 0.62).

CONCLUSIONS
Dynamic LV obstruction with dobutamine is common in those with and without prior ABS. However, this study did not identify a greater individual predisposition to LV obstruction, or a different regional or global LV contractile response to dobutamine in patients with a history of ABS compared with control subjects.


The origin of the Finnish enclitic particle -kaan (englanti) 3/1996 (100) Alpo Risnen (University of Joensuu) THE ORIGIN OF THE FINNISH ENCLITIC PARTICLE -kAAn The Finnish enclitic particle -kin (e.g. poikakin 'a/the boy too, even a/the boy') has a variant form, -kaan/-kn, which is used in negative clauses (e.g. poikakaan '(not) even a/the boy'). In the majority of the other Baltic-Finnic languages, the particle -kin is used in both positive and negative clauses. A negative variant occurs only in Izhorian (-kaa/-k) and in White Sea Karelian (metathesized as -kana/-kn); in the rest of Karelian -kin is usually used in both contexts. Geographical considerations would thus suggest that -kAAn has developed during the separate development of Finnish. The received view assumes that -kAAn was originally a compound suffix: the kA is the same suffix that occurs in the interrogative pronouns kuka 'who?' and mik 'which (one)?' and the final part developed from the enclitic particle -hAn (a marker of given or assumed information). The particle -kAAn is assumed to have developed from -kAhan/ -gAhAn, the weak consonant occurring after a vowel in an unstressed syllable, according to suffixival consonant gradation (a feature of Late Proto-Finnic) (Hakulinen 1979: 237; Mkel 1993: 10). This article puts forward an explanation that differs in part from the received one. This explanation rests, firstly, on the observation that northern Finnish dialects did not originally contain an intervocalic h, in spite of the fact that it generally occurs in these dialects (Mantila 1992: 64-67). Secondly, it is argued that the -kAAn particle in the eastern Finnish dialects originally contained an intervocalic h. The long vowel AA which resulted from the loss of the voiced fricatives "g" and "d" in non-initial syllables has not been preserved in the Savo dialects: e.g. *antaga- > central Savo antoo = standard Finnish antakaa 'give (2. pl. imp. )', *kertada > kertoo = standard kertaa 'time (partitive sing.)'. However, AA has been preserved in the -kAAn particle: ei kuk(k)aa 'no-one', ei miesk 'not even a man' (cf. Savo lampaat lampahat 'sheep'). A variant "weak grade" of the particle, -An (the Savo variant is generally derived from *-Ak), is also frequently used in the Savo dialects: e.g. ei siin = standard ei siinkn 'not even there', ei tullunnaa = standard ei tullutkaan 'didnt come after all'. This "weak grade", however, is completely independent of the syllable count in a word, which is a clear indication that it is not the result of phonologically conditioned consonant gradation. On the basis of data from dialects and old literary Finnish, it is argued that the -kAAn particle developed from the interrogative pronoun in the old western dialects (i.e. the Hme and the southwest dialects). Interrogative pronouns underwent suffixival consonant gradation, clear evidence of which is to be found only in the Savo dialects: kuka: kettee ( *ketg), mik: missee ( *missg). The function of the suffix in the weak grade became blurred with the loss of the fricative "g": the long vowel in the forms ket, mit, miss etc. was gradually understood as a means of emphasising the negation. As in other Baltic-Finnic languages, the -kin particle was originally also used in negative clauses in Finnish (this still happens to some extent in the eastern dialects), and thus a final n was attached to the long vowel AA. The long vowel formed from the weak grade spread by analogy to interrogatives in the strong grade: kukaan, mikn, which, from a historical viewpoint, are pleonastic (*ku-ka-ga-, *mi-k-g-). Interrogatives with -kAAn also form exceptions in contemporary Finnish dialects and standard Finnish: they are unique in that they have a weak grade (ketn, mitn, missn etc.) in all Finnish dialects. Interrogative -kAAn spread and became a general enclitic particle, which could be attached to any nominal form or verb. The weak grade of the enclitic generally occurs only in the Savo dialects. As evidenced by the quality of the vowel, the long vowel in the -kAAn particle is clearly a late development in the eastern dialects. Thus, we can assume that it was borrowed from the western dialects into the eastern dialects, apparently sometime between 1000 and 1500 A.D. As there was no long AA in non-initial syllables at this stage in the development of the eastern dialects, AA was replaced by the sequence AhA. This process also accounts for the intervocalic h in the enclitic particle kAAn; and on this basis, it can be concluded that -kAAn never contained the particle -hAn. Particularly conclusive as evidence are the following instances from the northernmost Savo dialects, the Kainuu dialects: ei kertovaa ( *kertoa *kertaa *kertada + hak) = standard ei kertaakaan 'not even once' and ei vhej ( *vhehk) = standard ei vhkn 'not even a bit', where the long AA created with the loss of the fricative was diphthongised prior to the attachment of the enclitic particle. These particular forms are now conceived of as idioms.


The Hartree-Fock formulae are evaluated for a model consisting of an uncompensated electron gas in an infinite V-shaped potential well. This contains a diverging electrostatic term. The elimination of this term is discussed on physical grounds, as is the relevance of such an extreme model. Similarities with and differences from the case of an infinite square well are discussed. The exchange energy is found to be always unimportant.


There are many studies that have examined the extent to which Direct Instruction (DI) curricula promote student achievement. Meta analyses of these works have found strong evidence that the programs are highly effective. For instance, in their meta-analysis of 29 comprehensive school reform models, Borman and associates found that the most evidence was available for the Direct Instruction model with "49 studies with 182 outcomes" compared to a median of four studies and 23 outcomes (Borman, et al., 2003, p. 141). DI was found to produce the strongest effects of all models examined and was one of three models that met their criteria of "strongest evidence of effectiveness," which involved replication of the outcomes "in a number of contexts, ...statistically significant and positive achievement effects in studies using comparison groups or third-party comparison designs and...accumulated evidence from at least 5 third-party comparison studies" (p. 161). Other meta-analyses echo these results. For instance, Adams and Engelmann's (1995) of 37 studies found that 87% of the 173 comparisons examined favored Direct Instruction and that the average effect size across all studies was .75. White's (1988) meta-analysis of studies of Direct Instruction with special education students looked at 25 studies and found an average effect size across all comparisons of .84. Coughlin's (2011) meta-analysis was limited to 25 randomized control trials, with 95 separate comparisons, and found an average effect size of .66. Hattie (2009) summarized the results of four meta-analyses that included DI, incorporating 304 studies, 597 effects and over 42,000 students. He found that the average effect size associated with DI was .59 and noted that the positive results were "similar for regular (d [the effect size] =.99) and special education and lower ability students (d=0.86), ... [and] similar for the more low-level word-attack (d=.64) and also for high-level comprehension (d=.54)" (pp. 206-207). Direct Instruction was the only curricular approach with such strong support.


Let $F$ be a number field or a $p$-adic field. The author introduces in Chapter 2 of this work two reductive rank one $F$-groups, $\mathbf{H_1}$, $\mathbf{H_2}$, which are twisted endoscopic groups of $\textup{GSp}(2)$ with respect to a fixed quadratic character $\varepsilon$ of the idele class group of $F$ if $F$ is global, $F^\times$ if $F$ is local. When $F$ is global, Langlands functoriality predicts that there exists a canonical lifting of the automorphic representations of $\mathbf{H_1}$, $\mathbf{H_2}$ to those of $\textup{GSp}(2)$. In Chapter 4, the author establishes this lifting in terms of the Satake parameters which parameterize the automorphic representations. By means of this lifting he provides a classification of the discrete spectrum automorphic representations of $\textup{GSp}(2)$ which are invariant under tensor product with $\varepsilon$. Table of Contents: Introduction; $\varepsilon$-endoscopy for $\textup{GSp}(2)$; The trace formula; Global lifting; The local picture; Appendix A. Summary of global lifting; Appendix B. Fundamental lemma; Bibliography; List of symbols; Index. (MEMO/204/957)


Entrepreneurship in Indonesia is still relatively low and lagging behind other ASEAN countries because the number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia has only reached 3.47% of the total population. College students have become one of the vital sources of supply for entrepreneurs in Indonesia. Therefore, to increase the number of entrepreneurs, the Indonesian government encourages higher education to produce graduates looking for work and creating jobs. Even though the government and universities have tried to increase the number of entrepreneurial students, the number of students who choose entrepreneurship as a professional career choice is still low. This research was conducted to see how students' entrepreneurial intention (EI) in Indonesia as a forecaster of entrepreneurial behaviour. The research analyses the effect of proactive personality traits and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as an integrated model, with the TPB dimension as a mediator. The research was conducted by using judgmental sampling of 387 students in Indonesia. Data collection was carried out using an e-survey, and data were analyzed using structural equation modelling with Partial Least Square (PLS). Research result shows that proactive personality and TPB are predictors of students' entrepreneurial intentions. This study also shows that TPB mediates the relationship between proactive personality towards Student' entrepreneurial intention. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the EI study of students in Indonesia. Scientifically, this research is also expected to enrich the EI literature by integrating proactive personality as an antecedent of TPB and EI.


In this paper, we establish the $L^p$ estimates for the maximal functions associated with the multilinear pseudo-differential operators. Our main result is Theorem 1.2. There are several major different ingredients and extra difficulties in our proof from those in Grafakos, Honzik and Seeger [ 15 ] and Honzik [ 22 ] for maximal functions generated by multipliers. First, in order to eliminate the variable $x$ in the symbols, we adapt a non-smooth modification of the smooth localization method developed by Muscalu in [ 26 , 30 ]. Then, by applying the inhomogeneous Littlewood-Paley dyadic decomposition and a discretization procedure, we can reduce the proof of Theorem 1.2 into proving the localized estimates for localized maximal functions generated by discrete paraproducts. The non-smooth cut-off functions in the localization procedure will be essential in establishing localized estimates. Finally, by proving a key localized square function estimate (Lemma 4.3) and applying the good-$\lambda$ inequality, we can derive the desired localized estimates.


The arthrology of the muscle-bone apparatus of the occipito-cervical system in the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos L.) was analysed by dissection and from histological microsections of an in toto embedded occipito-atlanto-axial apparatus. The description is primarily concerned with ligaments, membranes and fibrocartilages which were so far incompletely analysed. Several newly described elements such as the ligamentum atlantooccipitale laterale and the ligamentum ventromediale atlantoaxiale were added, as well as additional aspects such as the accurately described attachments, course and shape of most of the studied elements.


INTRODUCTION : Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a collection of disease symptoms that attack human body after HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) damage the immune system.  HIV-AIDS is a disease that cannot be cured now, but there are therapies to help improve the quality of life for people with HIV, and also to increase the antibodies for people with HIV and the therapy is called ARV. The main goal of ARV treatment is to reduce the number of HIV viruses to delay and stop the growth of the virus.
METHOD : Determine the latest intervention regarding evidence based on HIV-AIDS and ARV pharmacological therapy. After determining the topic, the next step is to search for literatures that will be reviewed, the literatures are in the form of scientific journals obtained from databases such as: Science Direct, ProQuest, and Google Scholar with keyword: "ARV for HIV/AIDS" for international journals and for the national journals using Google search engine from 2014-2019.
RESULT : Based on journals as a literature, the conclusion is that ARV therapy can improve the quality of life for people with HIV-AIDS, the characteristic of the therapy is to form the antibodies and produce proinflamation agents to reduce the growth of the viruses, beside that the therapy is also effective  if it given directly to HIV-AIDS patients who early diagnosed as a HIV-AIDS patient, and also the ARV therapy can improve the quality life of children and reduce the risk of HIV-AIDS in children who have mothers with HIV-AIDS.
CONCLUSION : ARV therapy can improve the quality of life and prevent the transmission from mothers with HIV to their children.


This paper is concerned with the problem of robust stabilization for uncertain impulsive bilinear time-delay systems with saturating actuators by using the Lyapunov function and Razumikhin-type techniques. Two classes of impulsive systems are considered: the systems with unstable (unstabilizale) discrete-time dynamics and ones with stable (stabilizable) discrete-time dynamics. Sufficient conditions for robust stabilization are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.


Introduction: Multiple sclerosis is the most common progressive neurologic disorder among young adults. This disease leads to lesions regarded to as demylinating plaques which are scattered in the white matter of CNS hence create various neurological problems. Materials and Methods: This was a single-blinded prospective quasi-experimental study with the aim of evaluating the effects of neuromuscular exercise on balance, gait and depression level of patients with MS. It was carried out in Isfahan during the year 2008. 24 patients with M.S (mean age: 33.33yr; mean height: 169.66 cm; mean weight: 66.87 kg, mean duration of disease: 6.64 years) underwent 10 sessions of neuromuscular exercise on an every-two-day basis. Data was obtained before initiating treatment program, after termination of the treatment and at 2 months follow up. Berg Balance scale, Dynamic Gait Index and Beck Depression Questionnaire were respectively used for evaluating balance, gait, and depression. To compare patients' condition at these stages, obtained data were analyzed through Paired t-test using SPSS software. Results: Pre- and Post treatment evaluation of balance, gait and depression showed significant differences (p=0.00). Also, there was a meaningful difference between pre-treatment and follow up ratings with regard to balance (p=0.00) and gait (p=0.03). Moreover, comparison of balance (p=0.00) and gait measurements (P=0.01) at pre-treatment and at two months follow up revealed a significant difference. But there was no meaningful difference in depression status either comparing post-treatment and two-month follow up ratings (p=0.14) or pre-treatment and two-month follow up evaluations (p=0.06). Conclusion: The study results show that continuous neuromuscular exercise may result in improved balance and Gait and in reduced depression in patients with MS. With regard to the course of disorder, initial condition may return if the exercises are discontiued. Key words: Multiple sclerosis, Balance, Gait, depression, Neuromuscular exercise


In the present article, we report adsorption energies, structures, and vibrational frequencies of CO on Fe(100) for several adsorption states and at three surface coverages. We have performed a full analysis of the vibrational frequencies of CO, thus determining what structures are stable adsorption states and characterizing the transition-state structure for CO dissociation. We have calculated the activation energy of dissociation of CO at 0.25 ML (ML = monolayers) as well as at 0.5 ML; we have studied the dissociation at 0.5 ML to quantify the destabilization effect on the CO(alpha3) molecules when a neighboring CO molecule dissociates. In addition, it is shown that the number and nature of likely adsorption states is coverage dependent. Evidence is presented that shows that the CO molecule adsorbs on Fe(100) at fourfold hollow sites with the molecular axis tilted away from the surface normal by 51.0 degrees. The asorprton energy of the CO molecule is -2.54 eV and the C-O stretching frequency is 1156 cm(-1). This adsorption state corresponds to the alpha3 molecular desorption state reported in temperature programmed desorption (TPD) experiments. However, the activation energy of dissociation of CO(alpha3) molecules at 0.25 ML is only 1.11 eV (approximately 25.60 kcal mol(-1)) and the gain in energy is -1.17 eV; thus, the dissociation of CO is largely favored at low coverages. The activation energy of dissociation of CO at 0.5 ML is 1.18 eV (approximately 27.21 kcal mol(-1)), very similar to that calculated at 0.25 ML. However, the dissociation reaction at 0.5 ML is slightly endothermic, with a total change in energy of 0.10 eV Consequently, molecular adsorption is stabilized with respect to CO dissociation when the CO coverage is increased from 0.25 to 0.5 ML.


This work was carried through in the city of Araucaria, located in the region metropolitan of Curitiba, PR. The objectives were present calculations and analysis of the costs of implantation in peach orchards, and also, to construct and to offer an spreadsheet detailed with coefficients technician and values, that allow to the most different substitutions of the values and pointers, thus making possible to personalize each in case that, to be used as a tool for the management of agricultural establishments. The implantation and formation costs of 1,0 ha of the culture, contemplating until the first year of plantation, had reached R$ 8849,00 where the most significant components in the composition of the costs were, the cost of seedlings and services, representing 87.67% of the total. Individually, the number of plants for hectare has great importance in the composition of the costs for hectare and in this in case that it represented, 56.50% of the total.


This article focuses on the method of objection from hash background. Doppler radar is a kind of moving object detection radar by means of the Doppler domino effect. Among all kinds of the interferes,the wind and the movement of leaves and branches are the serious interferes.Which,in some cases,will make the radar find nothing.People have made many kinds of methods to overcome the effect of those interferes,but few can match the request of radar object auto_recognition.On the other hand,the range of the frequency and the time can be hardly known when thoses occure.In order to match the request of data for the program of object recognition, the authors put forward a method of adaptive filter designing by means of wavelet packet analysis. Firstly, it transform the data by means of FFT, from the graph of the frequency.It can be found that the peak of those interferes is higher than the peak of the object when those interferes occur. Secondly, by means of non_linear adding power of the frequency, it can elevate the peak of the object, which is useful for the computer to calculate the real frequency of the object. Thirdly, by means of adaptive wavelet packet analysis, it can find the frequency range of those interfere automatically. When it re_conducts the signal, it can get rid of those interferes.


James Lovelock has been one of the most influential and controversial environmentalists of the modern era, and his lastest book, The Revenge of Gaia, is perhaps his most controversial. Lovelock foreshadows a bleak future of drastic temperature increases, due to global warming, with the prospect that only a remnant of humanity might survive in Antarctica. The work also entails an interesting commentary on environmental philosophy and politics. Lovelock (like Lord Taverne)is scathing about the shortcomings of eco-fundamentalism, notably evident with the Greens, and argues that instead what we need is a pragmatic environmentalism to deal with our global challenges.


In the rapidly developing area of user interface design (UID), the existing knowledge and understanding of UID serves as a basis for further research and study of factors affecting users as they interact with interfaces that utilize the technology of multimedia, virtual reality and intelligent agents. Navigation is one of the factors that is being investigated to help designers develop user interfaces that are effective and efficient for the users. This paper describes a web-based navigation tool developed to support research into factors that affect navigational decisions in a virtual reality environment. The tool, VR Navigation Research Tool (VRNRT), allows the design and exploration of three-dimensional worlds and provides for navigational tracking. When using VRNRT, the structure of the virtual worlds is confined to 3D mazes. VRNRT enables researchers to customize experiments that allow for testing a subject's navigational and spatial behavior.


Objectives: Normal lifespan can be achieved by avoiding complications in patients with spinal cord injuries (SCIs). We aimed to characterize our spinal cord injured patients and to obtain necessary information to prevent complications. Methods: This retrospective, cross-sectional study included 44 patients with subacute/chronic SCIs, who were included in an inpatient rehabilitation program from 2012 to 2017. The patients' epidemiological data, etiology, neurological examinations, complications, and accompaying conditions were analyzed. The neurological level, functional ambulatory scale (FAS), and American Spinal Cord Injury Association (ASIA) impairment scale were used for the classification of patients. Results: A total of 44 patients between 16 and 81 years of age (median: 35) were included in the study. Of these, 65.9% were male. The most common etiologies were falling down from a height (31.8%), spinal surgery (29.5%), and traffic accidents (15.9%) respectively. When we look the neurological status of these patients, FAS: 0 (38.6%) and ASIA: C (40.9%) were the most common cases seen in the population. Eighteen patients (40.9%) were wheelchair-bound. Urinary (34.1%), dermatologic (29.5%), and psychiatric (22.7%) complications were the most common in the patients. Patients with low FAS levels were young (in early period), and their spasticity, urinary incontinence, and urinary and dermatological pathologies were found to be high. The wheelchair-bound patients were mostly young, and they had significantly high urinary incontinence, urinary and dermatological pathologies. Conclusions. In our rehabilitation clinic, subacute/chronic SCI diagnosis is most commonly seen in young men, with thoracic vertebrae being the most common, followed by falling from a height. The most common complications were urinary and dermatological pathologies. The present study found higher rates of complications in patients with higher grades of injuries and in patients with lower functional levels.


Global Internet traffic will continue to grow at high speed in the forthcoming years. To meet this requirement and challenge, the capacity of optical core and regional networks has increased significantly over the past few years by leveraging the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology.

Telecommunications network providers have been steadily focusing on reducing their operational costs and increasing the transmission efficiency so as to deploy more costeffective and spectrally efficient agile optical networks. Failure survivability is one of network operators' major concerns considering that enormous losses could be caused by one small node or link failure in actual ultra high capacity optical networks.

The filterless network concept has been proposed as a simpler and more cost-effective method to deliver network agility compared to conventional wavelength selective switch (WSS) -based active photonic switching networks. This concept is based on the premise that the need for network agility and reconfigurability can be provided by using tunable transmitters and coherent receivers at the network edge terminals, as in radio networks.

A filterless network is devised by solving the fiber link interconnection problem, and then the resulting solutions are characterized by an intrinsic protection ratio. In this thesis, we propose a 1+1 dedicated optical-layer protection strategy for filterless networks in an effort to provide 100% protection for any connection within the topology. The wavelength consumption of protected filterless solutions is evaluated by solving the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem. The simulation results show that the survivable filterless network solutions can be more cost-effective than its active counterpart while keeping the number of used wavelengths at a comparable level.

Elastic (flex-grid) optical networking is a promising solution to improve spectral efficiency and flexibility since channel bandwidth can be assigned to a traffic demand dynamically, according to its capacity and distance requirements. In this thesis, we present the concept of elastic filterless optical networks, which combines the advantages of filterless network architectures and flex-grid networking. Besides, we propose not only an mathematical optimization method based on an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation but also more computationally efficient heuristic methods to solve the routing and spectrum assignment (RSA) problem in the elastic filterless optical networks. The performance in terms of spectrum utilization and cost for fixed- and flex-grid filterless solutions are compared and the benefits of periodical spectrum defragmentation are quantified through simulations as well.


Gold nanostructures have important applications in nanoelectronics, nano-optics, and in precision metrology due to their intriguing optoelectronic properties. These properties are governed by the bulk band structure but to some extent are tunable via geometrical resonances. Here we show that the band structure of gold itself exhibits significant size-dependent changes already for mesoscopic critical dimensions below 30 nm. To suppress the effects of geometrical resonances and grain boundaries, we prepared atomically flat ultrathin films of various thicknesses by utilizing large chemically grown single-crystalline gold platelets. We experimentally probe thickness-dependent changes of the band structure by means of two-photon photoluminescence and observe a surprising 100-fold increase of the nonlinear signal when the gold film thickness is reduced below 30 nm allowing us to optically resolve single-unit-cell steps. The effect is well explained by density functional calculations of the thickness-dependent 2D band structure of gold.


Ocimum sanctum Linn. (Tulsi), a sacred and traditional medicinal plant of India which belongs to the family Lamiaceae possesses innumerable health benefits and therefore regarded as the "Elixir of Life". The entire plant body including its leaves, stem, root, inflorescence and seed are proved to be significant medicinal value and hence it is one among the inevitable plant used in the preparation of various ayurvedic pharmacological products. The plant is a rich source of various components including eugenol, Vicenin2, linoleic acid, oleic acid, rosmarinic acid, Ocimarin, isorientin, orientin, isovitexin, aesculectin, aesculin, chlorgrnic acid, galuteolin, circineol, gallic acid, Citronellal, Camphene, Sabinene, Dimethyl benzene, Myrecene, Ethyl benzene, Limocene, Vitamin C, Calcium, Phosphorous and many more. The plant truly deserves the title 'Elixir of Life' due to its Ethanopharmacological properties such as Antidiabetic, Anticancerous, Analgesic, Antiinflammatory, Radiopreotective, Hepatoprotective, Antimicrobial, Immunomodulatory effect, cardioprotective, Anticoagulant, Antifertility, Antioxidant, Neuroprotective and the line-up found to be multitudinous. This review elucidates indepth literature survey particularly focussing the phytochemical constituents of Tulsi as well as extrapolating its Ethanopharmacological property. Research Article British Journal of Pharmaceutical Research, 3(2): 273-292, 2013 274


Purpose

The paper aims to investigate the employee–stakeholder engagement on business performance. A psychosocial approach was used to evaluate employees' perception and role engagement on organisational performance, cognisant of: strategy development; leadership; fiscal acuity; employees' skills, empowerment; supply chain relationships; external stakeholders and wider societal beneficiaries.

Design/methodology/approach

This research is context-bound to the Turkish construction industry. Findings generated from literature established a set of evidenced-based priorities for further investigation. A case study approach was conducted with three large architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organisations to define psychosocial diffusion indicators and priorities for future uptake.

Findings

Initial findings on psychosocial diffusion indicators and their impact on business performance are presented through a psychosocial diffusion model. Three interconnected facets are proffered for future uptake: capability (responsiveness), capability (flexibility) and capability (competence).

Research limitations/implications

Findings are exclusively bound to the sample frame in question. No attempt has been made to undertake detailed cross-analysis/correlation to support internal/external consistency, validity or reliability.

Practical implications

Organisations are able to reflect on their core business strategy to appreciate how psychosocial diffusion can be operationalised.

Social implications

This work impinges on social factors embedded within (and across) organisational boundaries, including the AEC supply chain. It also relates to employer/employee relationships, psychological functioning and employee well-being.

Originality/value

Originality rests with the identification of construction-related psychosocial indicators. It contributes to the wider body of knowledge on embedding psychosocial indicators into organisational systems and processes, adding further insight into systems thinking and business transformation.


Many learning algorithms rely on the curvature (in particular, strong convexity) of regularized objective functions to provide good theoretical performance guarantees. In practice, the choice of regularization penalty that gives the best testing set performance may result in objective functions with little or even no curvature. In these cases, algorithms designed specifically for regularized objectives often either fail completely or require some modification that involves a substantial compromise in performance.
 We present new online and batch algorithms for training a variety of supervised learning models (such as SVMs, logistic regression, structured prediction models, and CRFs) under conditions where the optimal choice of regularization parameter results in functions with low curvature. We employ a technique called proximal regularization, in which we solve the original learning problem via a sequence of modified optimization tasks whose objectives are chosen to have greater curvature than the original problem. Theoretically, our algorithms achieve low regret bounds in the online setting and fast convergence in the batch setting. Experimentally, our algorithms improve upon state-of-the-art techniques, including Pegasos and bundle methods, on medium and large-scale SVM and structured learning tasks.


It is often difficult to confirm a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis in the presence of hyperlipemic serum because the serum amylase and lipase and the urinary amylase are frequently normal. We were able to substantiate the diagnosis of pancreatitis in seven patients with hypertriglyceridemia (greater than 1200 mg/100 ml) by the use of the simple amylase/creatinine clearance ratio and by the serial dilution of hyperlipemic serum. The amylase/creatinine clearance ration in the hyperlipemic pancreatitis patients (10.0%) was significantly (P GREATER THAN 0.001) higher than in normal patients (3.1%) and essentially the same as in nonlipemic pancreatitis patients (9.2%). The calculated serum amylase activity after serial dilution of the serum showed up to a tenfold increase in hyperlipemic pancreatitis, with no significant increase in normal controls, hyperlipemic controls, and nonlipemic pancreatitis.


There is a need for direct imaging of effects on tumor vasculature in assessment of response to antiangiogenic drugs and vascular disrupting agents. Imaging tumor vasculature depends on differences in permeability of vasculature of tumor and normal tissue, which cause changes in penetration of contrast agents. Angiogenesis imaging may be defined in terms of measurement of tumor perfusion and direct imaging of the molecules involved in angiogenesis. In addition, assessment of tumor hypoxia will give an indication of tumor vasculature. The range of imaging techniques available for these processes includes positron emission tomography (PET), dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI), perfusion computed tomography (CT), and ultrasound (US).


Management of type 1 diabetes requires a continual balancing of insulin, fuel intake, and metabolic demand (e.g., exercise). This can only be accomplished with knowledge of where one's blood glucose is and where it is going and knowledge of how to manipulate insulin, fuel, and exercise to manage it. Blood Glucose Awareness Training (BGAT) is a psychoeducational intervention that in part addresses these needs. Fifteen research studies from the United States and Europe, involving single-site and multicenter projects, are reviewed. BGAT has been consistently demonstrated to improve the ability to detect and diminish both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia while reducing the sequelae of extreme blood glucose levels (e.g., episodes of severe hypoglycemia and driving mishaps). BGAT has recently been transformed for internet delivery, making it available both for clinicians to use with their patients and for individuals with type 1 diabetes to pursue as a self-directed tutorial.


In situ sea surface salinity (SSS) observations showed an increase >0.5 over the period 2002–2009 in the Gulf of Guinea, off the Niger Delta. Observed changes in the Niger River runoff were not consistent with this increase in SSS, but the increase was reproduced in a regional numerical simulation with climatological river runoff. The simulated mixed-layer salinity budget was used to identify the mechanisms responsible for the increase. When comparing the period 2002–2009 with the period 1993–2001, significant changes in the salt budget were identified. The increase in SSS in the more recent period appeared to be driven by changes in the atmospheric freshwater flux, mainly attributed to a regional decrease in precipitation. Horizontal advection partly compensated for the effect of freshwater flux through changes in zonal currents and zonal SSS gradients.


In many applications, there is a need to identify to which of a group of sets an element x belongs, if any. For example, in a router, this functionality can be used to determine the next hop of an incoming packet. This problem is generally known as set separation and has been widely studied. Most existing solutions make use of hash-based algorithms, particularly when a small percentage of false positives is allowed. A known approach is to use a collection of Bloom filters in parallel. Such schemes can require several memory accesses, a significant limitation for some implementations. We propose an approach using Block Bloom Filters, where each element is first hashed to a single memory block that stores a small Bloom filter that tracks the element and the set or sets the element belongs to. In a naive solution, when an element x in a set S is stored, it necessarily increases the false positive probability for finding that x is in another set T. In this paper, we introduce our One Memory Access Set Separation (OMASS) scheme to avoid this problem. OMASS is designed so that for a given element x, the corresponding Bloom filter bits for each set map to different positions in the memory word. This ensures that the false positive rates for the Bloom filters for element x under other sets are not affected. In addition, OMASS requires fewer hash functions compared to the naive solution.


This catalog contains entries on new developments and on items listed in BNL 51450, which have either been carried over unchanged or been updated. More than 70 entries were deleted because of either obsolescence, insufficient interest in terms of safeguards, or lack of documentable development activities in recent years. Some old listings as well as new material was consolidated into more generic entries. As in the earlier document, the emphasis is on devices and instruments that are either in field use at this time or under active development. A few items such as NDA reference materials, instrument vans and certain shipping containers are included because they are important adjuncts to optimum utilization of safeguards instrumentation. This catalog does not include devices for physical protection. As was the case with its predecessor, most of the material in this catalog originated in the US and Canada; a few contributions came from member states of the European Community.


In this paper a simulation model is presented for the Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of heat transport in dispersed gas-liquid two-phase flow using the Front Tracking (FT) approach. Our model extends the FT model developed by van Sint Annaland et al. (2006) to non-isothermal conditions. In FT an unstructured dynamic mesh is used to represent and track the interface explicitly by a number of interconnected marker points. The Lagrangian representation of the interface avoids the necessity to reconstruct the interface from the local distribution of the fractions of the phases and, moreover, allows a direct and accurate calculation of the surface tension force circumventing the (problematic) computation of the interface curvature. The extended model is applied to predict the heat exchange rate between the liquid and a hot wall kept at a fixed temperature. It is found that the wall-to-liquid heat transfer coefficient exhibits a maximum in the vicinity of the bubble that can be attributed to the locally decreased thickness of the thermal boundary layer.


We can use the quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary, well over a million, as a corpus for historical studies in English. The Second Edition of OED registers many linguistic terms as headwords, under which many quotations from the linguists and philologists of the 19th and 20th centuries appear. With the CD-ROM we can now use those quotations fully, together with the explanatory notes and definitions of the headwords, to illustrate development or change of what a particular linguistic term has meant. In this paper some suggestions will be made for utilizing those quotations in comparing well organized quotations columns with those hastily or carelessly finished.


French talk-in-interaction shows a recurrent patterning of utterances that can schematically be presented as [clause-NP-clause], as in elle i va s'effacer l'image i elle i va s'effacer ('it i is going to fade away the image ,i it i is going to fade away)', where i signals co-indexicality. In this pattern, the NP represents a pivot element which together with the preceding clause can be heard as forming a right dislocation ([clause-NP]), and together with the subsequent clause can be heard as forming a left dislocation ([NP-clause]). One interactionally consequential feature of the [clause-NP-clause] pattern is that it organizes specific types of units in specific ways during the temporal unfolding of talk: It allows speakers to proffer two subsequent predications about the same referent, typically within one TCU, whereby the temporally second predication may be either identical (mirror image-like pivot patterns) or different from the first. We demonstrate that speakers use the [clause-NP-clause] pivot pattern to accomplish a set of interactional jobs related to the management of repair, to stance taking, to the progressivity of talk, and to issues of recipiency. We also show that, recurrently, the pattern is configured on-line, following an emergent trajectory which is adapted to local interactional contingencies; this is what we refer to as pivotage ('pivoting'), i.e. the grammatical shaping of pivot patterns 'in the making'. Based on these findings, we argue that the [clause-NP-clause] pivot pattern testifies to the adaptive, emergent and thoroughly temporal nature of grammar.


The aim of the study was defining the antibiotic influence for endoscopic picture of the upper segment of gastrointestinal tract in Helicobacter pylori infection. We remained retrospectively analysis of 790 endoscopies. In 62 of the analysed patients we found Helicobacter pylori infection. We divided these children into two groups. The first group, contained 15 children, who received antibiotics for the previous year, for any reasons. The second, comparative group was made up of 47 children, who didn't receive antibiotics. We compared 18 characteristics of endoscopic picture in the oesophagus, stomach and duodenum mucosa. As a result of this study we conclude, that: 1) the most frequently the endoscopic changes were found in the stomach, as an erythema, an oedema and a nodularity of mucosa; 2) the inflammatory changes were in oesophagus and duodenum, as well; 3) we didn't observe the clear influence of antibiotics on the development of endoscopic changes in Helicobacter pylori infection; 4) in children, who didn't receive antibiotics, we observed polypus in the oesophagus, erosions in the stomach and ulcer in the duodenum. This may suggest the preventive role of antibiotics on intensity of gastrointestinal changes in Helicobacter pylori infected children.


The researchers conducted task-based usability testing of the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) with 20 students. While most participants felt positively about EDS, a few usability issues emerged. Confusion arose regarding source types and icons, facets/limiters, relevancy ranking, integrated search connectors, and more. Students encountered difficulty with spelling corrections and a failure to understand terminology, and they demonstrated an unwillingness to view additional pages of search results. Findings indicate the need for changes to the local implementation of EDS as well as to those features and structures under EBSCO's control.


Corrosion of steel reinforcing bar (rebar) reduces the strength capacity of concrete, and also causes the crack of concrete due the volume increase of the corrosion products. Detection of corrosion at its early stage is important for the safety evaluation and repairment of the concrete structures. An electromagnetic induction method was developed to evaluate the corrosion of steel rebar. By measuring the electromagnetic response of steel rebar, it was possible to judge the corrosion of steel rebar in concrete. A small compact system, suitable for field experiments was also developed.


Abstract This paper uses data from PISA 2006 on science, mathematics and reading to analyze immigrant school gaps – negative difference between immigrants' and natives' scores - and the structural features of educational systems in two adjacent countries, Italy and France, with similar migration inflows and with similar schooling institutions, based on tracking. Our results show that tracking and school specific programs matter; in both countries, the school system upholds a separation between students with different backgrounds and ethnicities. Residential segregation or discrimination seem also to be at work, especially in France. Given the existing school model, a teaching support in mathematics and science in France and in reading in Italy would help immigrant students to converge to natives' standards.


Real-time continuous monitoring of proteins in-vivo holds great potential for personalized medical applications. Unfortunately, a prominent knowledge gap exists in the fundamental biology regarding protein transfer and correlation between interstitial fluid and blood. Additionally, technological sensing will require affinity-based platforms that cannot be robustly protected in-vivo and will therefore be challenged in sensitivity, longevity, and fouling over multi-day to week timelines. Here we use electrochemical aptamer sensors as a model system to discuss further research necessary to achieve continuous protein sensing.


Extracellular amyloid-beta deposition and intraneuronal Tau-laden neurofibrillary tangles are prime features of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The pathology of AD is very complex and still not fully understood, since different neural cell types are involved in the disease. Although neuronal function is clearly deteriorated in AD patients, recently, an increasing number of evidences have pointed towards glial cell dysfunction as one of the main causative phenomena implicated in AD pathogenesis. The complex disease pathology together with the lack of reliable disease models have precluded the development of effective therapies able to counteract disease progression. The discovery and implementation of human pluripotent stem cell technology represents an important opportunity in this field, as this system allows the generation of patient-derived cells to be used for disease modeling and therapeutic target identification and as a platform to be employed in drug discovery programs. In this review, we discuss the current studies using human pluripotent stem cells focused on AD, providing convincing evidences that this system is an excellent opportunity to advance in the comprehension of AD pathology, which will be translated to the development of the still missing effective therapies.


STRIKE is a diagnostic calorimeter composed of 16 CFC tiles with unidirectional properties used to study the beams of particles generated in the SPIDER experiment. Two thermal cameras will be used to analyze the temperature of the tiles and reconstruct the bidimensional flux of energy striking the calorimeter. Most of the conventional methods used to evaluate the inverse heat flux are unbearably time consuming; since the objective is having a tool for heat flux evaluation for STRIKE real time operation, the need to have a ready-to-go instrument to understand the beam condition becomes stringent. For this reason a neural network was chosen to perform this analysis. During the thesis work an existing convolutional neural network was optimized to retrieve the parameters of the beam from the thermographic images. In particular, starting from a network able to determine the position and the radius of a singular circular shape on a noiseless background, the possibility to recognize the position of bidimensional gaussians was added, needed to determine the beams divergence. The ability to determine the shape,the amplitude and the angle of rotation of the beams was then developed. Lastly the network was optimized to work in a noisy environment and with a non-constant number of gaussians.


How might we move onward in art teacher education toward a more fluid sense of possibility in preparing teachers for careers in schools, community arts settings, and beyond—into livelihoods and vocations we have yet to imagine? This paper contemplates such a question by dwelling in the pages of a visual verbal journal kept by a pre-service artistteacher during an introductory art education methods course. The author, an art teacher educator, follows a curatorial impulse, thus creating a series of rhizomatic maps. Through this arts-based methodological approach, these maps generate an assemblage of true places, or lines of resonance and connection educators create between themselves and their anticipated vocation. These mappings seek to invite others to wonder how the journal keeper's insights and reflections might offer new directions and possibilities for art teacher preparation.


Elementary excitations of the S = 12 one-dimensional antiferromagnet KCuGaF 6 were investigated by inelastic neutron scattering in zero and finite magnetic fields perpendicular to the (1 , 1 , 0) plane combined with specific heat measurements. KCuGaF 6 exhibits no long-range magnetic ordering down to 50 mK despite the large exchange interaction J/k B = 103 K. At zero magnetic field, well-defined spinon excitations were observed. The energy of the des Cloizeaux and Pearson [J. des Cloizeaux and J. J. Pearson, Phys. Rev. 128 , 2131 (1962)] mode of the spinon excitations is somewhat larger than that calculated with the above exchange constant. This discrepancy is mostly ascribed to the effective XY anisotropy arising from the large Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya [T. Moriya, Phys. Rev. 120 , 91 (1960)] interaction with an alternating D vector. KCuGaF 6 in a magnetic field is represented by the quantum sine-Gordon model, for which low-energy elementary excitations are composed of solitons and antisolitons and their bound states called breathers. Unlike the theoretical prediction, it was found that the energy of a soliton is smaller than that of the first breather, although the energy of the first breather coincides with that observed in a previous electron spin resonance measurement.


Objective To analyze the relationship among parameters of healthy human eye anterior segment structure detected by anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), and to explore the effect of age on these parameters. Methods AS-OCT was performed in 211 healthy people (211 eyes) to measure the parameters of anterior segment structure, including anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior chamber horizontal diameter (ACHD), anatomy anterior chamber depth (AACD), lens thickness (LT), ciliary band length (CBL) , lens position (LP) and iris thickness (IT). These parameters were compared between men and women. Relationship among the parameters was analyzed, and effect of age on anterior segment structure biometric values was evaluated. Results The values of ACD, ACHD, AACD, CBL, IT and LP were significantly higher in male than those in female[ACD: (2.87±0.38) mm vs (2.66±0.40) mm; ACHD: (11.73±0.43) mm vs (11.53±0.36) mm;AACD: (3.09±0.19) mm vs (3.00±0.19) mm;CBL: (0.20± 0.09) mm vs (0.17±0.09) mm;iT: (0.36±0.08) mm vs (0.34±0.08) mm; LP: (5.11±0.26) mm vs (4.91± 0.28) ram; all P 0.05). ACHD was negatively correlated with age (r=-0.148, P=0.032). LT was positively correlated with age (r=0.646, P=0.000). LT was negatively correlated with ACD (r=-0.714, P=0.000). LT had no significant effect on LP using regression analysis. Conclusions The anterior segments biometric structure of female is narrower than that of male. With aging, the narrowing of ACD is resulted from LT increment. And LP of healthy eyes does not change with aging and LT increment.

Key words:
Tomography; optical coherence; Glaucoma; angle-closure; Anterior chamber; Lens thickness; Lens positions


The effect of 250 mg day-1 of the aldose reductase inhibitor, Sorbinil, upon peripheral nerve function was assessed in 23 adult diabetics with clinical neuropathy. Sorbinil was given for 4 weeks to 10 subjects, while 13 received placebo in this double-blind study. Open label treatment with Sorbinil was then continued for 52 weeks in 10 of the 23 subjects. Red cell sorbitol, hemoglobin A1c, vibratory sensation, median nerve sensory and motor conduction velocities were measured at 0, 4 and 52 weeks. There were no measurable changes in peripheral nerve function after 4 weeks of Sorbinil treatment. After 52 weeks significant improvement was found in the median nerve motor and sensory conduction velocities. This was associated with no change in blood glucose control but a reduction of erythrocyte sorbitol levels.


Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) is the simplest and the most widely used video quality evaluation methodology. However, traditional PSNR calculations do not take the packet loss into account. This shortcoming, which is amplified in wireless networks, contributes to the inaccuracy in evaluating video streaming quality in wireless communications. Such inaccuracy in PSNR calculations adversely affects the development of video communications in wireless networks. This paper proposes a novel video quality evaluation methodology. As it not only considers the PSNR of a video, but also with modifications to handle the packet loss issue, we name this evaluation method MPSNR. MPSNR rectifies the inaccuracies in traditional PSNR computation, and helps us to approximate subjective video quality, Mean Opinion Score (MOS), more accurately. Using PSNR values calculated from MPSNR and simple network measurements, we apply linear regression techniques to derive two specific objective video quality metrics, PSNR-based Objective MOS (POMOS) and Rates-based Objective MOS (ROMOS). Through extensive experiments and human subjective tests, we show that the two metrics demonstrate high correlation with MOS. POMOS takes the averaged PSNR value of a video calculated from MPSNR as the only input. Despite its simplicity, it has a Pearson correlation of 0.8664 with the MOS. By adding a few other simple network measurements, such as the proportion of distorted frames in a video, ROMOS achieves an even higher Pearson correlation (0.9350) with the MOS. Compared with the PSNR metric from the traditional PSNR calculations, our metrics evaluate video streaming quality in wireless networks with a much higher accuracy while retaining the simplicity of PSNR calculation.


Information Systems Analysis and Design presents essential knowledge about management information systems development, while providing a good balance between the core concepts and secondary concepts. It is intended for four-year university/college students who study information systems analysis and design. Students will learn the information systems development strategies, the systems acquisition approach to information systems development, and the process of information systems development. The book highlights the most important methods for information systems acquisition development, such as process modeling and systems acquisition design. To maintain a well-rounded approach to the topic, both fundamental knowledge about information systems development and hands-on material are presented. Succinct tutorials for professional systems development projects are also included.


In Tunisia, as in many countries, movements of economic restructuring and shifts in state policies have been manifested in major transformations in the organization of agricultural production and in patterns of rural livelihoods. Structural adjustement policies, adopted in 1986 have been expressed in cuts in farm subsidies, agricultural price liberalization, and the reorganization of the farm credit system. They have significantly altered the economic environment of farming activities. At the household level, processes of restructuring have been manifested in important shifts in farm production patterns, as well as in the work strategies of family members. Based on a survey of 60 farm households of the village of Bir Mcherga in a semi-arid region of northern Tunisia, this paper analyses the dynamics of farm restructuring from the perspective of the changing socio-economic strategies of family farm households. Exploring the diverse ways in which farm households members negotiate their changing access to economic resources, reorganize their farming activities and reallocate family labor, the paper also draws attention of the new patterns of social differentiation among family farms brought about by processes of liberalization and commoditization.


The recent therapeutic advances in the field of neurology highlight the importance of ongoing clinical trials. However, while clinical research in neurology has remained relatively stable over the past 10 years, there has been an interval decrease in neuroscience applicants for NIH funding, which has raised concerns about the pipeline and future of clinical research in neurology. Those interested in such a career can begin by identifying a preclinical neuroscience advance that has yet to be translated into clinical trial work or a clinical area of need based on conversations with patients and families. Once such an area of interest is identified, seeking mentors either at one's own local institution or through networking at conferences is important in developing the necessary skills pertaining to clinical trial conduct and design and in gaining access to the relevant professional networks. There is also a myriad of training opportunities, such as the NINDS Clinical Trials Methodology Course, Masters of Science in Clinical Research, and certificate programs that offer formal training. Additional considerations for advancing in this career include exploring the potential for secondary publications using data available from previous clinical trials or serving as a subinvestigator. Challenges in pursuing such a career include the relatively low rate of positive outcomes compared with other fields and consistent salary support throughout one's career. Overall, a career as a clinical trialist in neurology is rewarding because one is able to participate in advancing the field and offer potentially new treatments to their patients.


This paper formulates and solves a sequential detection problem that involves the mutual information (stochastic observability) of a Gaussian process observed in noise with missing measurements. The main result is that the optimal decision is characterized by a monotone policy on the partially ordered set of positive definite covariance matrices. This monotone structure implies that numerically efficient algorithms can be designed to estimate and implement monotone parametrized decision policies. The sequential detection problem is motivated by applications in radar scheduling where the aim is to maintain the mutual information of all targets within a specified bound. We illustrate the problem formulation and performance of monotone parametrized policies via numerical examples in fly-by and persistent-surveillance applications involving a ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar.


Background There is controversy surrounding the risk of ischemic stroke associated with the use of calcium supplements either in monotherapy or in combination with vitamin D. Methods and Results A nested case‐control study was performed with patients aged 40 to 89 years old, among whom a total of 2690 patients had a first episode of nonfatal ischemic stroke and for which 19 538 controls were randomly selected from the source population and frequency‐matched with cases for age, sex, and calendar year. Logistic regression provided the odds ratios while adjusting for confounding factors. A sensitivity analysis was performed by restricting to patients who were new users of calcium supplements as either monotherapy or with vitamin D. Calcium supplementation with vitamin D was not associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke (odds ratio 0.85; 95% confidence interval, 0.67–1.08) in the population as a whole or under any of the conditions examined (dose, duration, background cardiovascular risk, sex, or age). Calcium supplement monotherapy was not associated with an increased risk in the population as a whole (odds ratio 1.18; 95% confidence interval, 0.86–1.61), although a significant increased risk at high doses (≥1000 mg/day: odds ratio 2.09; 95% confidence interval, 1.25–3.49; <1000 mg: odds ratio 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.45–1.26) compared with nonuse was observed. The sensitivity analysis did not affect the inferences, with similar results observed among new users as to the overall study population. Conclusions This study suggests that calcium supplements given as monotherapy at high doses may increase the risk of ischemic stroke, whereas their combination with vitamin D seems to offset this hazard.


A fully integrated 1.5 GHz low noise amplifier suitable for ultra-low voltage applications is designed and simulated in a standard 0.18µm CMOS technology. Using the folded cascode topology and forward body biasing technique, the proposed LNA works at a very low supply voltage and low power consumption. The proposed LNA has a power gain (S21) of 22 dB with a noise figure of 1.9 dB, while consuming 2.5mW dc power with an ultra low supply voltage of 0.5 V.


Experimental works show that there are plenty of disclinated non-equilibrium grain boundaries (GBs) in polycrystalline materials obtained by the severe plastic deformation method. How these GBs affect the irradiation-induced defects is still an open question. In the present work, molecular dynamics simulation was used to investigate the interaction between disclinated non-equilibrium GBs and irradiation-induced interstitial/vacancy in tungsten. There exists a long-range stress field around the disclinated non-equilibrium GBs. Such a long-range stress field leads to strong interaction between interstitial/vacancy and the GB. The interaction energy calculations suggest that interstitial and vacancy can be attracted strongly by non-equilibrium GBs containing negative and positive disclinations, respectively. This unique interaction behavior is further confirmed by diffusion of interstitials/vacancies near these GBs. The present work clearly demonstrates that disclinated non-equilibrium GBs are stronger irradiation-induced defect sinks than their equilibrium counterparts. So increasing the proportion of disclinated non-equilibrium GBs may be an effective way to develop new-generation irradiation-resistant materials.


Human action recognition can be applied in a multitude of fully diversified domains such as active large-scale surveillance, threat detection, personal safety in hazardous environments, human assistance, health monitoring, and intelligent robotics. Owing to its high demands in real-world applications, it has drawn significant attention. In this research, we propose hybrid deep neural networks, i.e. Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) Networks, Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Networks (LRCN), for tackling video action classification. In particular, for the LRCN model, different CNN encoder architectures such as VGG16, ResNet50, DenseNet121 and MobileNet, as well as several Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) variant decoder architectures, such as LSTM, bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), are used for spatial-temporal feature extraction to test model performance. We adopt diverse experimental settings including using different numbers of frames per video and learning configurations to optimize performance. The empirical results indicate the superiority of MobileNet in combination with a BiLSTM network over other hybrid network settings for the action classification using the UCF50 dataset. Owing to the lightweight MobileNet encoder, this LRCN model also achieves a better trade-off between performance and training and inference computational costs, while outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods.


Abstract There is an ongoing controversial discussion as to whether n-alkane lipid biomarkers—and organic matter of loess in general—reflect a synsedimentary paleoenvironmental/climate signal or whether they are significantly affected by postdepositional "contamination," for example related to root and rhizomicrobial activity. In order to address this issue at our study site (the Middle to Late Weichselian loess-paleosol sequence Gleina in Saxony, Germany), we determined and compared radiocarbon ages of bulk n-alkanes and sedimentation ages, as assessed by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. The bulk n-alkanes of the four dated samples yielded calibrated 14C ages ranging from 24.1 to 49.7 cal ka BP (95.4% probability ranges). While the three uppermost n-alkane samples are well within the range or even slightly older than the OSL-inferred sedimentation ages, the lowermost n-alkane sample is slightly younger than the OSL ages. There is hence little or no evidence at our study site for n-alkanes in loess-paleosol sequences being significantly "contaminated" by deep subsoil rooting or microbial processes. We propose a 14C isotope mass balance calculation for estimating such contaminations quantitatively. Radiocarbon dating of bulk n-alkanes might have great potential for Quaternary research, and we encourage further comparative 14C and OSL studies.


Abandoned areas are one of the most fundamental consequences within conflict zones, where they may appear as buffer zone, militarized areas, and closed or restricted zones. In this regard there are two complimentary discussions: one advocates the impacts of conflicts among regional policies and related actions arisen according to the facts that can produce geopolitically conflict zones, and the other one advocates the nature and origins of geopolitical conflict zones that can negatively impact the regional policies. Taking both discussions together as two dimensions among land management issues in conflict areas, and also considering conflicts in regional policies and existence of geopolitically conflict zones, would express a negative impact on any planning proposals for real estate developments and regeneration possibilities. Therefore this study attempt an investigation on these two dimensions to demonstrate the complicated realities associated with geopolitically conflict zones. Case of Cyprus conflict taken as an evidence to this study, where the rare situation of four decade of ongoing conflict became part of norm of decision making processes regarding all possible real estate development and regenerations scenarios. The study takes documentary and empirical research methods as the main methodological approach for data collection and analysis, where it particularly uses qualitative analysis in order to gain insights into the unspoken issues of real estate development difficulties within an internationally ignored conflict zones such as North Cyprus.


Background: Artisanal Mining of Cassiterite at Bisichi (Kara II) and Kuru-Jentar is a very tedious activity that is carried out by artisanal miners. It involves the use of primitive tools like digger, spade, shovel and to mention a few. Most of the artisanal mining activity in the study area is done with no prior knowledge about the geochemical constituent of the mineral deposit in the area but in order to solve the above stated problem, a geochemical analysis was conducted on the obtained samples of cassiterite from the study area and a geologic map of the mining pit was digitized using Ilwis 3.1 academic and Surfer 12. Result: A random sampling method was used to obtain ten (10) samples of cassiterite from the various visited pit at the study area with each weighing 10g. A laboratory analysis was also conducted using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis which shows that samples from Pit 1 to Pit 5 in the mine site at Kuru-Jentar has 44.45% - 44.9% of Tin (Sn) and 7.86% - 9.00% of Iron (II) oxide (Fe2O3) while samples from Pit 5 to Pit 10 in the mine site at Bisichi (Kara II) has 28.2% - 32.2 % of Tin (Sn) and 15.57% - 16.67% of Iron II oxide (Fe2O3). Conclusively, an understanding of the geochemical constituent of a mineral deposit within a given study area would help increase the knowledge of miners and also attract interested investors.


A sensitive, selective and precise high performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of Epalrestat and Methylcobalamin both as a bulk drug and in formulation. The method employed Luna C18 column (250 x 4.6 mm id, 5 μm particle size) as the stationary phase while acetonitrile: 0.02 M KH2PO4 buffer (90:10 v/v, pH 6.5) was used as mobile phase. The Rt of Epalrestat and Methylcobalamin were observed to be 5.2 and 2.1 minutes, respectively. Analysis was carried out in absorbance mode at 254 nm. The linear regression analysis data for the calibration plots showed a good linear relationship for Epalrestat and Methylcobalamin over a concentration range of 1- 40 μg/ml and 0.2-10 μg/ml respectively with correlation co-efficient of 0.9995 for epalrestat and 0.9991 for methylcobalamin. The LOQ was found to be 0.2 μg/ml for epalrestat and 0.8 μg/ml for methylcobalamin. The method was validated as per ICH guideline and it was found to be accurate, precise and robust. Marketed formulation was analyzed successfully.


What is the effect of providing personally tailored budgetary information on public attitudes to tax and spending? We address this question with a survey experiment based on the annual tax summaries introduced by the UK tax authorities in 2014. By subtly manipulating the categories of state spending – in particular, the controversial category of 'welfare' – to invoke a sense of unfairness, we show how budget information in general and the United Kingdom's annual tax summaries in particular impact support for state spending. Though the stated aim of providing personalised tax receipts to income taxpayers is to enhance fiscal transparency, doing so may also damage support for state spending if the information provides a sense that existing redistribution is unfair. The article contributes to political science debates about public attitudes to tax and spending, the character and trade-offs of fiscal transparency, and the framing effects of welfare.


We have studied defect production during single atomic and molecular ion irradiation having an energy of 50 eV/amu in GaN by molecular dynamics simulations. Enhanced defect recombination is found in GaN, in accordance with experimental data. Instantaneous damage shows non-linearity with different molecular projectile and increasing molecular mass. Number of instantaneous defects produced by the PF4 molecule close to target surface is four times higher than that for PF2 molecule and three times higher than that calculated as a sum of the damage produced by one P and four F ion irradiation (P+4×F). We explain this non-linearity by energy spike due to molecular effects. On the contrary, final damage created by PF4 and PF2 shows a linear pattern when the sample cools down. Total numbers of defects produced by Ag and PF4 having similar atomic masses are comparable. However, defect-depth distributions produced by these species are quite different, also indicating molecular effect.


Underwater cross pollination (hypohydrophily) represents a markedly divergent form of pollination in seed plants; reproductive structures are functionally wet during pollination. Callitriche (Callitrichaceae) is the only genus in which both aerial pollination systems and hypohydrophily are reported. This diversity in pollination types would not be predicted based on the general uniformity in floral structure in the genus. Logistic difficulties in conducting experimental pollination studies in C. hermaphroditica have plagued actual confirmation of hypohydrophily. Evidence from paternity exclusion analysis using random amplified polymorphic DNA markers is presented that confirms hypohydrophily in C. hermaphroditica.


A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Yauri LGA, Kebbi State in between April, 2015 and January, 2016 in order to ascertain the level of awareness of inhabitant's exposure to radioactivity from the mines. Yauri LGA was sampled based on its metropolitan and suburban parts that receives heavy mining activities by stratified random sampling by proportions. An interactive medium was created to sample the opinions of inhabitants around these mines through questionnaire. A total of 150 questionnaire were designed, 30 were accepted by the respondents and 22 were returned with response from the correspondents during the survey and interview to document and assessment awareness of the inhabitants. The study unveiled facts about the inhabitant's awareness towards the environmental and health effect of indiscriminate mining activities around living places. The results shows that over 70% of the inhabitants within the suburb and metropolis concurred to the potential health consequences in their dwellings as a result of exposure to radioactivity from the mines respectively. These results indicates that the environmental and health discomfort due to indiscriminate mining activities around living places will be more significant in the near future if no immediate efforts are put in place to mimic future malady. The second aspect of this study whose results will be published in the subsequent issue involved collection of soil, water and vegetation samples in order to further assess the level of radioactive elements viz: 226Ra, 232Th and 40K occurrence in the study locality.


Light scattering spectra on aqueous solutions of trehalose were recorded in a wide frequency range combining the use of a double monochromator and a multipass Fabry-Perot interferometer. Experimental results indicate the presence of a slow relaxation mode related to the solute dynamics, which is clearly separated from the solvent one. The spectral analysis reveals the existence of two separate solvent relaxation processes assigned to hydrating and bulk water molecules. The picosecond dynamics of water molecules directly interacting with the solute (proximal water) is consistently delayed with the corresponding relaxation time increase is about 5-6 times compared to the bulk. The slowing down induced by the sugar on the water dynamics mainly involves a restricted hydration layer constituted of 16-18 water molecules. These results improve our knowledge about the influence of carbohydrates on the fast rearrangement dynamics of water and may serve as a model to gain important insight on basic solvation properties of other biorelevant systems in aqueous media.


We examined 200 college students, at rest in a sitting position in an air-conditioned classroom, to investigate the differences in physiological and psychological responses between men and women in the thermoneutral zone of SET*. The percentage of women who reported suffering from the cold more often in an air-conditioned environment was higher than that of men. The number of clothing items and the clothing insulation value, estimated using International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9920 were higher for the women than for the men, based on the students' own everyday clothing choices as worn during the experiments. However, the percentage of body surface area covered by clothing worn by the women was significantly lower than that for the men. Although oral and skin temperature decreased in both men and women after 60 min of exposure to a temperature of 25 °C, the oral and skin temperatures of the women's forehead and palms were significantly lower than those in the men. Moreover, the decrease in the women's oral temperature was greater than that of the men. Women felt cooler and more uncomfortable than men did in the ASHRAE comfort zone, with SET* of 22.2–25.6 °C. Gender differences in physiological responses, and differences in the clothing typically worn by men and women, might affect psychological responses to the moderate thermal environment encountered in daily life.


Water policies play a critical role in good water governance and sustainable water development. The evaluation of water policies helps improve the quality of water policy systems and water governance. This study quantitatively evaluated water resource management policies through the policy modeling consistency (PMC) index model and a text-mining method based on national water resource management policy texts produced from 2011 to 2019. This study constructed an evaluation index system based on the water resource management policy's high-frequency words, including 9 first-level variables and 43 second-level variables; furthermore, it compared and analyzed key water resource policies based on the PMC index and PMC surface. The results showed that China's water resource management policies are generally applicable, but it needs to be improved. China's water resource management policies are reasonable in terms of policy nature, policy function, policy priority, and function level, and need to be further improved in terms of policy prescriptions, incentive constraints, policy fields, policy evaluations, and policy priorities. This study thus provided a scientific basis for the optimization of water resource management policies and water governance capacities in China.


Single-nanoantenna has intrigued vast interest due to its exceptional properties such as light harvesting and field enhancement, which provide the opportunities for strengthening light-matter interaction and efficient photon manipulation in nano-scale, as well as boosting nonlinear response. On the other hand, materials with structural or electronic phase transition have been employed to achieve large optical modulation contrast and order-unity switching, making them promising building blocks for high-performance optical circuits and devices with ultra-small footprint. In this context we demonstrate nano-scale all-optical modulation with single Au antennas fabricated on phase-transition material vanadium dioxide (VO2) substrate. VO2 films are deposited on boroaluminosilicate glass coated with a 30-nm layer of fluorine-doped tin oxide. The inclusion of this intermediate layer allows the production of VO2 films with low surface roughness and suitable thermochromic transition temperature. Then the nanoantennas are fabricated by e-beam lithography and subsequent 45-nm-thick gold deposition on the VO2 substrate. A 5-nm-thick Ti layer is used to improve the adhesion of the gold to the VO2. We use a pump-probe spectroscopy to characterize the modulation feature of the antenna/VO2. The pump beam at 1060 nm wavelength is used to introduce a local heating for VO2's phase transition and the probe beam from 1100 nm to 2000 nm wavelength is for readout of the modulated local transmission of antenna/VO2 hybrid owing to the dielectric environment change. A spatial modulation technique is also used to extract the differential transmission (ΔT/T) around the antennas. As a result, with pump pulse energy increasing to less than 1 nJ, the measured ΔT/T of single-antenna//VO2 hybrid exhibits substantial change that crossing the zero line and significant blue shift. As reported the ΔT/T obtained from spatial modulation spectroscopy is supposed to be proportional to the antenna's extinction cross section. However, with the obtained negative values which lead to unphysical extinction cross sections less than 0, we believe the VO2 substrate beneath the antennas is highly involved as its optical property has been modified considerately. In addition, we observe that the pump-modulated differential transmission of the antenna/VO2 hybrid evidently depends on the polarisation of the pump when it is below a certain level. In this regime, the parallel pumping excites the longitudinal resonant mode while the perpendicular one only induces non-resonant absorption of antenna's transverse mode. Going beyond this regime, the stronger pump transits the VO2 substrate from insulating phase into metallic phase completely, which dominates the dielectric environment change of the antenna, leading to nearly polarisation-independent modulation. The time for fully switch-on obtained from the pump-probe measurement is less than 50 ps. We also investigate the time response of the differential transmission dependent on the pulse repetition rate and substrate temperature, respectively. Less modulation depth with repetition rate over 2 MHz or base temperature higher than 40 °C suggest that the heat accumulation from adjacent pulses and thermal equilibrium time plays important roles in the achievable modulation speed. The single-antenna/VO2 structure may find applications in nano-scale optoelectronics for multiple functionalities including modulation, memory and so on.


An image data compression method based on the compression (DCT: Discrete Cosine Transformation) featuring an image restoration method is proposed. DCT image compression is widely used and has four major image defects. In order to reduce the noise and distiortions, the proposed method expresses a set of parameters for the assumed distortion model based on an image restoration method. The results from the experiment with Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data of Saga show a good image compression performance of compression factor and image quality. Namely, the proposed method achieved 25% of improvement of the compression factor compared to the existing method of Discrete Cosine Transformation with almost comparable image quality between both methods.


Purpose – Reports on quality of life (QOL) measures for forensic patients are severely limited. The present paper aims to consider how to assess chronic patient's well‐being and to identify and evaluate the content validity of measures used to assess health‐related QOL in psychosis.Design/methodology/approach – A review was undertaken to gather information on the different QOL measures from relevant databases, exploring their strengths and weaknesses.Findings – Results from the review indicate a broad range of assessment tools are used in practice, although very few have been used in forensic settings. A preference for subjective tools is emerging, in addition to patient rated scales as opposed to clinician rated scales.Originality/value – The application of QOL measures in the forensic population is of particular interest and a relatively new area of study, thus of value to practicing clinicians. It is hoped that the use of appropriate tools will enhance understanding of the treatment and service needs f...


: Although the etiologies of Hirschsprung's disease and infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis remain unclear, it is certain that in Hirschsprung's disease, there is an absence of myenteric ganglia. In pyloric stenosis, there is a decreased number of ganglia, but this may be secondary phenomenon. The occurrence of both Hirschsprung's disease and pyloric stenosis in any single patient is uncommon, disputing a common etiology on statistical grounds. The authors have recently seen two infants with both diseases, and have reviewed the histology and pathophysiology analyzing the possibility of a single cause.


Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by a gene deletion on chromosome 7q11.23. Patients with WBS usually show a group of features such as developmental delay, cardiovascular anomalies, mental retardation, and characteristic facial appearance. It occurs in 1:7,500 live births and affects males and females equally. Recent studies showed that lower urinary tract symptoms were also frequent in WBS patients. However, there is extremely rare study report non-monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis as the main manifestation of Williams syndrome in children. We reported a child with non-monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis and multiple bladder diverticula as the main implications of Williams syndrome. A 7.6-year-old girl was admitted to our hospital due to frequent micturition, urgency, and nocturnal enuresis for 4 years, and B ultrasound of urinary system revealed multiple bladder diverticula. The patient was found to have 7q11.23 deletion that involves the elastin gene for WBS. Multiple bladder diverticula in WBS patients can lead to many lower urinary tract symptoms. The treatment for the lower urinary tract symptoms in WBS patients with multiple bladder diverticula is lacking. Lower urinary tract symptoms should be considered as a significant indicator of the clinical diagnosis of WBS and have a significant negative impact on patient's quality of life.


Three hundred and fifty representatives of Palmatolepis glabra Ulrich & Bassler, collected from a single sample of the late Devonian Saverton shale of Illinois, are used to illustrate intraspecific variability in conodonts. The main types of variation are discussed, and the various morphologic features are evaluated for taxonomic use. The study indicates that a conservative philosophy of speciation and careful study of large numbers of individuals must be applied to conodont species if they are to attain widespread use by the general stratigrapher.


Antiphospholipid antibodies (APLA) may be detected in normal pregnancies and also may cause thrombosis, recurrent fetal loss, placental infarction and preeclampsia. In the present study the possible differences in APLA titer between healthy pregnant women and preeclampsia cases without history of thrombosis was examined. The APLA titer in 50 healthy pregnant women with 50 preeclampsia cases without the history of thrombosis and autoimmune disease was compared. Preeclampcia is defined as hypertension ≥140/90 mmHg after 20 weeks of gestation and proteinuria > 300mg/24h. IgG and IgM anticardiolipin antibodies were measured by immunoassay methods and Teclot kits for lupus-like anticoagulant antibodies were used. In normal pregnant women, 6% had lupus-like anticoagulant antibody, 12% had IgG anticardiolipin antibody, and 26% had IgM anticardiolipid antibodies. In preeclapsia, 8% lupus-like anticoagulant antibody, 4% had IgG anticardiolipin antibody, and 30% had IgM anticardiolipid antibodies. Despite the evidence of prothrombotic state during preeclampsia, it is unlikely that antiphospholipid antibodies represent as a risk factor for preeclampsia among women without the history of thrombosis or autoimmune diseases.


Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about 'the planet' as a whole. James Lovelock's concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock's Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence.


Intensive agricultural practices are recognized as significant sources of metal pollution in soils and pasture. This study investigated metal contamination in cattle offal from an agricultural area in Zambia, where inorganic fertilizers, agricultural lime, and pesticides are routinely applied. The highest median values (mg/kg, wet weight) of Cu (40.9), Zn (35.2), Cr (1.35) and Ni (0.594) were recorded in the liver, whereas the highest median values of Pb (0.061) and Cd (0.049) were found in kidneys. Maximum levels of Hg, As and Co were under 0.2 mg/kg in both organs. Pb and Cd did not exceed the benchmark values in cattle offal for human consumption and did not pose immediate health risks. Concentrations of Ni and Cr could present a public health concern. Monitoring of metal accumulations in offal of cattle, not only from well-known polluted environments but also agricultural areas, should be done regularly for the health of human consumers.


The authors describe the results of an experimental study of the physical mechanisms important for laser triggering of spark gaps in the longitudinal, striking-electrode geometry. The authors present clear, new evidence for the propagation of a streamer in under-volted gaps, and for the interaction of the triggering laser with the streamer head. They find that the propagation conditions of the initial streamer markedly affect the subsequent heating of the incipient channel to form the spark. A model of the laser-triggered breakdown process based on these results is presented and discussed.


Background An association between sleep duration and a wide spectrum of diseases has been reported, but little is known about its relationship with bone mineral density (BMD). Previously conducted studies in Korea and abroad have reported results that are controversial. The present study sought to assess whether sleep duration can be considered an independent risk factor of osteoporosis. Methods We included participants over the age of 60 years with data on self-reported habitual sleep duration and BMD measured with dual X-ray absorptiometry. Comprehensive data on the study sample was obtained from the Korea National Health and Nutritional Survey performed from 2008 to 2010. Sex-stratified multiple regression analyses were conducted with adjustments for possible confounding factors. Results There was a significant inverse dose-dependent association between sleep duration and BMD measured at total hip, femur neck, and lumbar spine for women and total hip and femur neck for men. Sex-stratified regression analyses adjusted for age and body mass index revealed that sleep duration had a negative correlation with BMD at total hip and femoral neck for both women (β = -0.0048; P = 0.0172 for total hip, β = -0.0037; P = 0.0303 for femur neck) and men (β = -0.0057; P = 0.0218 for total hip, β = -0.0057; P = 0.0143 for femur neck). For women, the significance remained after further adjustment of confounding variables. Conclusion Prolonged sleep duration appears to have a significant association with lower total hip and femur neck BMD in elderly women but not in elderly men.


Purpose: To investigate the dose–response relationship of green tea polyphenol in an animal model of lung cancer. Methods: The effects of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) on the inhibition of xenograft tumor growth, the accumulation of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), and apoptosis based on 3-(4,5- dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay were evaluated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines, namely, H1155, H661, and A427 (a human lung carcinoma-derived cell line). The dose-dependent effects of EGCG on H1155 xenograft tumor growth, as well as the levels of EGCG in plasma and tissue, were also determined in male nude mice. Results: EGCG inhibited the growth of NSCLC-derived cell lines (H1155) over a 45-day period. There was a significant reduction (57 %) in tumor weight in EGCG-fed (0.5 %) animals compared with the control group (p < 0.05). Linear regression analysis revealed a dose-dependent reduction in tumor size. MTT assay results revealed inhibition of H1155 cell growth (25 %, p < 0.05) after 24 h treatment with EGCG. The addition of superoxide dismutase (5 U/mL) and catalase (30 U/mL) reduced the inhibitory effect of EGCG. Mice administered 30 mg/kg EGCG via intraperitoneal injection exhibited the least amount of oxidative stress. Conclusion: The results demonstrate the concentration-dependent inhibitory effects of EGCG on lung cancer cells, including H1155 cells, both in vitro and in vivo . The induction of reactive oxygen species, oxidative DNA damage, and apoptosis were evident following EGCG treatment. Keywords: Green tea, Lung cancer, Catechins, Epigallocatechin-3-gallate, Oxidative stress, Oxidative DNA damage


Introduction:
 Idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD) is a heterogenous group of lymphoproliferative disorders believed to be driven by IL-6 with the cell(s) of origin not yet identified (Fajgenbaum et al. 2019). One clinical subtype with thrombocytopenia, anasarca, fever, renal dysfunction, and organomegaly (TAFRO) is especially aggressive. We encountered a case of TAFRO syndrome that prompted a systematic literature review focusing on the role of VEGF in the pathogenesis of TAFRO syndrome. Interim findings support a role of VEGF in the etiopathogenesis of TAFRO syndrome, with fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) as the pathological cell.
 Methodology:
 We started with a focused review (step 1, Table 1), followed by empirical review (step 2, Table 1) of published articles on TAFRO syndrome, using methods of qualitative review (Campbell et al. 2011, Levitt 2018) and discussed interim results from phase 1 review (Table 2). The process of reciprocally translating the findings from each study into those from all the other studies in the synthesis, if applied rigorously, provides a method for combining qualitative data in a structured manner.
 Interim Results:
 During phase 1 step 1, we reviewed 97 articles published between 2012 and 2020. Majority were case reports. The interim data comprised a total of 34 male and 32 female patients with age ranging from 3 to 85 (median age of 50.5). 26 patients were identified as severe disease and 25 were non-severe per iMCD diagnostic criteria. At the time of presentation, VEGF levels ranged from 44-7520 pg/ml (median 360), IL-6 ranged from 5-4800 pg/ml (median 39.3), and sIL-2Rα ranged from 448-8944 (median 1250). Histologically, hyaline vascular subtype was most common as seen in 24 lymph nodes compared to 4 plasmacytic and 14 mixed. Most common bone marrow cellularity was hypercellular in 19 cases, compared to 16 normocellular, and 4 hypocellular (Table 2).
 During phase 1 step 2, we explored the fundamental relationship between IL-6 and VEGF. In the lymph node, IL-6 is secreted from endothelial cells and FRCs. IL-6 is further augmented due to stimulation of bone marrow stromal cells by VEGF secreted from FRCs (Tanaka, Narazaki, and Kishimoto 2014). FRCs are the principal cells facilitating entry of dendritic cells and present a cognate antigen by mediating interaction between dendritic cells and T-cells (Fletcher, Acton, and Knoblich 2015, Brown and Turley 2015). Persistent antigenic stimulation leads to the release of VEGF by FRCs in the lymph node and its potentiation through release of IL-6 through VEGF-mediated stimulation of bone marrow stromal cells (Novotny et al. 2008). This reciprocal stimulation between lymph nodes and bone marrow mediate growth effects driven by VEGF, while autocrine-paracrine stimulation of VEGF and IL-6 within lymph nodes and bone marrow drives IL-6 induced flares.
 Discussion:
 IL-6 is considered a main driver of pathogenesis underlying TAFRO syndrome, but in the only randomized controlled trial of IL-6 blockade in iMCD, 66% patients did not respond to therapy. IL-6 blockade targets PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling, an underlying pathway for the pathogenesis of TAFRO syndrome. Our empirical review of literature into TAFRO syndrome reveals elevated VEGF and CD8+ T cells as the hallmarks of TAFRO flares. FRCs are the principal VEGF mRNA-expressing cells in lymph nodes and also contribute to IL-6 production. Bone marrow stromal cells are the principal cells that drive IL-6 release due to potent stimulation from VEGF. This intertwined loop of IL-6 and VEGF becomes a vicious cycle due to chronic antigenic persistence from infections to inflammations.
 The data from Phase 1 review provide evidence to explain the clinical and pathologic findings in TAFRO syndrome. Atretic germinal centers, characteristic of MCD, result from the mass recruitment of centroblasts and their differentiation into plasmablasts due to chronic VEGF stimulation. IL-6 promotes differentiation of plasmablasts into plasma cells as well as maintaining their survival. We hypothesize that hyperplastic germinal centers and plasmacytosis of plasmacytic lymph node reflect predominant pathologic features during early stages of pathogenesis, while regressed germinal centers and prominent FDCs due to hyalinization of the hypervascular lymph node represent advanced pathologic features. Our findings could potentially be translated into distinguishing clinical stages of MCD.

 No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.