Canine mastitis is an infrequent condition that occurs most commonly in the postpartum period due to ascending bacterial infection. This report aims to describe clinical, pathological and bacteriological aspects of mastitis caused by Staphylococcus hyicus accompanied by disseminated superficial lymphadenitis in a dog. In the postpartum period the animal showed clinical signs of prostration, dyspneia, and unresponsivess to environment. At physical examination, hypothermia, dehydration and subcutaneous edema of the limbs were detected. Gross and histologic features were consistent with marked purulent and necro-hemorrhagic mastitis accompanied by lymphangitis, lymphadenitis and thromboembolic pneumonia. Isolation and biochemical identification confirmed the infection by Staphylococcus hyicus. This study shows that one must be attentive not only of the risk of uterine infection postpartum, but also of the possibility of mammary gland infection.


The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of long-term static bending on the encapsulation properties of a commercial barrier thin film for flexible optoelectronic devices. Encapsulation properties of the barrier film are evaluated under long-term static bending at various radii of curvature. Experimental results reveal that no significantly detrimental effect on the water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) at 40 °C and 90% RH is found for compressive bending up to 1000 h and for tensile bending up to 100 h with a radius of curvature of 5 mm or larger. However, WVTR of the barrier thin film is significantly increased and cracks are found in the barrier film when subjected to tensile bending of a radius of 10 mm or 5 mm for 1000 h. The expected WVTR of the given barrier thin film is numerically computed using a three-dimensional (3D) finite element model. Numerical results indicate that, with the presence of cracks in the barrier thin film, the WVTR increases for an apparent increase in moisture entrances. The WVTR calculated by the 3D cracking model concurs with the experimental results.


Open-domain social dialogue is one of the long-standing goals of Artificial Intelligence. This year, the Amazon Alexa Prize challenge was announced for the first time, where real customers get to rate systems developed by leading universities worldwide. The aim of the challenge is to converse "coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes". We describe our Alexa Prize system (called 'Alana') consisting of an ensemble of bots, combining rule-based and machine learning systems, and using a contextual ranking mechanism to choose a system response. The ranker was trained on real user feedback received during the competition, where we address the problem of how to train on the noisy and sparse feedback obtained during the competition.


Leaded gasoline was officially removed from the Canadian market in December 1990. The removal of a major lead source and the subsequent decline in children's blood lead levels marked an important transition point and sparked the emergence of new discourse on lead in Canada. Today, childhood lead poisoning is viewed as a problem of the past or a problem of the United States. Sparse Canadian surveillance data supported this view. Moreover, tensions among federal agencies evolved into a power struggle, with Health Canada ultimately becoming the dominant authority, thereby relegating important research initiatives to obscurity and also shaping a vastly weaker regulatory response to lead than occurred in the United States.


Four patients suffering from Meniere's disease were labyrinthectomized. Maculae utriculi were removed and studied by electron microscopy. The neuro-epithelia from all four patients appeared fairly normal, considering the age of the patients. However, two types of degenerative change, which could be related to the inner ear disorder, could be distinguished. One was vacuolation of the sensory cell cytoplasm, followed by pycnosis of the nucleus and cell death. The other was cystic degeneration. This started with localized separations between the sensory cell and the nerve chalice. These separations developed into a single cystic cavity. A few large intra-epithelial cysts were found, probably representing the final stage of the cystic degenerative process.


An analysis has been conducted of the flow characteristics and pumping performance of a thermopneumatic micropump with electrically conducting fluid. In the present study, considered is a thermopneumatic micropump for electrically conducting fluids with electromagnetic resistance alternately exerted at the inlet and outlet by alternately applied magnetic fields. A model of Prescribed Deformation is used for the motion of the membrane. Here, the pumping performance of the micropump and flow characteristics of the electrically conducting fluid are investigated in the range of Hartmann number less than 30. The current numerical study shows that the net flow rate through the micropump is almost proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field.


BACKGROUND
Recently there have been concerns raised about anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) associated with breast implants.

OBJECTIVES
The main aim of this article was to review and analyze the published literature specifically for hematopoietic malignancies associated with breast implants and postulate a hypothesis for their etiology and pathogenesis.

METHODS
The PubMed database was searched using key words "lymphoma" and "breast implants" for published papers and abstracts on implant-associated hematopoietic malignancies.

RESULTS
The authors found 83 published cases reported of lymphomas associated with breast implants in the medical literature. The reported cases involved various subtypes of lymphomas and the majority were ALCL, of which 66 were confirmed as ALK negative; however there was no association with any particular type of implant. The more aggressive cases and reported low death rate appeared to be related to the presence of breast masses at the time of presentation rather than effusion. The remaining reports were occasional case reports of T-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, marginal zone B-cell lymphoma, primary effusion lymphoma and lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma.

CONCLUSIONS
Considering the many thousands of women that have breast implants every year; the compiled data show that there is a very small risk of developing lymphoma. Increased awareness of association between implants and ALCL is needed globally and prospective patients considering breast implants should be fully informed of the risk. As the behavior of ALCL in these cases was indolent as compared with other primary breast lymphomas, it could suggest an abnormal reactive process.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
3


Email phishing is a cyber-attack, bringing substantial financial damage to corporate and commercial organizations. A phishing email is a special type of spamming, used to trick the user to disclose personal information to access his digital assets. Phishing attack is generally triggered by emailing links to spoofed websites that collect sensitive information. The APWG survey suggests that the existing countermeasures remain ineffective and insufficient for detecting phishing attacks. Hence there is a need for an efficient mechanism to detect phishing emails to provide better security against such attacks to the common user. The existing open-source data sets are limited in diversity, hence they do not capture the real picture of the attack. Hence there is a need for real-time input data set to design accurate email anti-phishing solutions. In the current work, it has been created a real-time in-house corpus of phishing and legitimate emails and proposed efficient techniques to detect phishing emails using a word embedding and machine learning algorithms. The proposed system uses only four email header-based heuristics for the classification of emails. The proposed word embedding cum machine learning framework comprises six word embedding techniques with five machine learning classifiers to evaluate the best performing combination. Among all six combinations, Random Forest consistently performed the best with FastText (CBOW) by achieving an accuracy of 99.50% with a false positive rate of 0.053%, TF-IDF achieved an accuracy of 99.39% with a false positive rate of 0.4% and Count Vectorizer achieved an accuracy of 99.18% with a false positive rate of 0.98% respectively for three datasets used.


In this article, I focus on the ways in which a particular group of people – astrophysicists in Belgrade, Serbia, alongside whom I conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork in 2008 and 2009 – responded to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I argue that the conditions and effects of neoliberalising processes occurring in economic centres of the global world system affected scientists in Serbia before neoliberal modes of governmentality surfaced in this state. I pay particular attention to a trope I often came across, namely the reference to a supranational 'scientific community'. I consider how this term was mobilised with reference to the context of scientific and economic isolation during a portion of the 1990s, when a trade embargo and sanctions preventing formal international collaborations shaped scientists' everyday experiences. Yet, I argue, isolation also reflected the uneven distribution of opportunities for scientific endeavours emerging out of global neoliberalisation processes and resistance to them. Opportunities reached scientists in various parts of the former Yugoslavia at different speeds, a situation that was experienced as a hindrance for many scientists committed to living and working in the region. It is against this historical backdrop of isolation that I suggest scientists began to invoke their belonging to a supranational 'scientific community'.


Although ethylene oxide is a reliable sterilizer, the process may be limited by diffusion. Thus, situations may exist where microorganisms are protected from the sterilizing gas. It is possible that the exterior of a substance may be sterilized, whereas the interior is not. We investigated three general types of materials in which this limitation of diffusion could occur: the bore of glass and plastic tubing, the center of cotton balls, and plastic adhesive film/paper backing interface. These materials were contaminated as close to their geometric center as possible with Bacillus subtilis var. niger spores occluded in crystals of sodium chloride. After exposure of the contaminated materials (except aluminum foil) to ethylene oxide, thioglycolate broth (a standard sterility-test medium) indicated sterility, whereas Trypticase Soy Broth indicated nonsterility. It is likewise possible that aerobic microorganisms, surviving in or on material after exposure to dry heat or steam sterilization processes, would not be recovered by thioglycollate broth. Entrapped aerobic organisms will probably not grow out in the low oxygen tension zone of an anaerobic medium such as thioglycollate broth. It is recommended than an aerobic medium such as Trypticase Soy Broth be used concurrently with thioglycolate broth for sterility testing.


A formalism for describing an all-sky map of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background is presented. The polarization pattern on the sky can be decomposed into two geometrically distinct components. One of these components is not coupled to density inhomogeneities. A nonzero amplitude for this component of polarization can only be caused by tensor or vector metric perturbations. This allows unambiguous identification of long-wavelength gravity waves or large-scale vortical flows at the time of last scattering.


Elastic tissue, when viewed in the electron microscope, consists of an amorphous component that is immunoreactive with anti-tropoelastin (TE) antibodies and microfibrils, that react with monospecific antibodies against a 31 kDa microfibrillar glycoprotein constituent, called MAGP. A detailed study of the tissue distribution of microfibrils and of the two elastic tissue antibodies has been carried out, using single and double-labeled immunogold techniques in high resolution electron microscopy. Microfibrils similar in appearance to those associated with elastic tissue and immunoreactive with the anti-MAGP antibody, have been demonstrated in many tissues in the absence of amorphous elastic tissue. In the majority of these tissues, specific anti-TE antibody localization was demonstrated in the immediate vicinity of the microfibrils, or alternatively, the microfibrils were shown to be in direct continuity with microfibrils of similar morphology, which were associated with material immunoreactive with anti-TE antibody. The diameter of these microfibrils varied between 8 nm and 16 nm. They were unbranched structures of indefinite length, with a tubular profile on cross section and periodic staining in longitudinal section. In some tissues, notably in the ciliary zonule and in the mesangial region of the renal glomerulus, microfibrils of similar morphology were demonstrated which were immunoreactive with anti-MAGP antibody, but which were unrelated to amorphous elastic tissue and with which anti-TE antibody localization could not be demonstrated. The evidence available supports the conclusion that all these microfibrils are members of a single class of structures, which are widely distributed in the tissues and which are secreted by a range of cell types. Attention is directed to the close relationship between these microfibrils and the basement membrane of the glomerulus, of uterine smooth muscle, of the basal cells of the epidermis and of the reticulum cells of the spleen.


Children's pragmatic competence in deriving conversational implicatures (and scalar implicatures in particular) offers an intriguing standpoint to explore how developmental, methodological, and purely theoretical perspectives interact and feed each other. In this paper, we focus mainly on developmental and methodological issues, showing that children from age 6 on are adult-like in deriving the scalar implicature related to the scalar quantifier some (i.e. they interpret some as some but not all), while children at age 4 and 5 only sometimes reject underinformative-some in a classical Truth Value Judgment Task (Experiment 1). They do so despite their excellent performance in pragmatic tasks that evaluate their competence with the rules of talk exchange, such as the Conversational Violations Test (Experiment 4) and the Felicity Judgment Task (Experiment 5). To give children a better chance to reject underinformative-some when all is at stake, we manipulated the experimental design and materials in three different ways: 1) in Experiment 2, we tested the partitive alcuni dei (some of) instead of the bare quantifier qualche (some); 2) in Experiment 3, we attempted to prime the scale  by asking children to judge a correct statement with all before the critical underinformative statement with some; 3) in Experiment 6, we aimed at making children more aware of the ambiguity of some, between its basic meaning (at least some, possibly all) and its strengthened meaning (some but not all). A surprising improvement is recorded in the last experiment, in which the rejection of underinformative-some by 5-year-old children rose to 72.5% (it was 42% in Experiment 1). We suggest that the children's low performance with scalar inference might be linked to the interplay of different factors as in the development of other general cognitive abilities, such as the ability to change one's strategy (Shallice, 1982) or to shift one's perspective (Gopnik & Rosati, 2001), the maturation of the lexicon (Barner & Bachrach, 2010), and especially their great sensitivity to the task, methodology and materials used to test their pragmatic abilities.


A new method of automatic multiband SAR image registration based on Affine Scale Invariant and sparse-based despeckling is proposed. It first employs the sparse representation-based despeckling method to erase affection of speckle noise on image registration. Second, Normalized gradient feature space is designed to cope with affection of different grey value brought multiband SAR. Affine scale invariant transformation (Affine SIFT) is adopted to extract invariant feature and match them; RANSAC model is adopted to exclude the mismatched points. The image transformation model and parameter estimation using the rule of least root mean square error (RMSE) are discussed. The method is accurate, robust, and fast and has been tested on a lot of images. Experimental results using real multiband SAR images demonstrate the proposed method can achieve impressive results1.


The atomic scale oxidation of the alpha-SiC(0001)-(3 x 3) surface is investigated by atom-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy, core level synchrotron radiation based photoemission spectroscopy, and infrared absorption spectroscopy. The results reveal that the initial oxidation takes place through the relaxation of lower layers, away from the surface dangling bond, in sharp contrast to silicon oxidation.


Two PIEZO mechanosensitive cation channels, PIEZO1 and PIEZO2, have been identified in mammals, where they are involved in numerous sensory processes. While structurally similar, PIEZO channels are expressed in distinct tissues and exhibit unique properties. How different PIEZOs transduce force, how their transduction mechanism varies, and how their unique properties match the functional needs of the tissues they are expressed in remain all-important unanswered questions. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has a single PIEZO ortholog (pezo-1) predicted to have twelve isoforms. These isoforms share many transmembrane domains but differ in those that distinguish PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 in mammals. We used transcriptional and translational reporters to show that putative promoter sequences immediately upstream of the start codon of long pezo-1 isoforms predominantly drive GFP expression in mesodermally derived tissues (such as muscle and glands). In contrast, sequences upstream of shorter pezo-1 isoforms resulted in GFP expression primarily in neurons. Putative promoters upstream of different isoforms drove GFP expression in different cells of the same organs of the digestive system. The observed unique pattern of complementary expression suggests that different isoforms could possess distinct functions within these organs. We used mutant analysis to show that pharyngeal muscles and glands require long pezo-1 isoforms to respond appropriately to the presence of food. The number of pezo-1 isoforms in C. elegans, their putative differential pattern of expression, and roles in experimentally tractable processes make this an attractive system to investigate the molecular basis for functional differences between members of the PIEZO family of mechanoreceptors.


Images are an important data source in modern science and engineering. A continued challenge is to perform measurements on and extract useful information from the image data, i.e., to perform image analysis. Additionally, the image analysis results need to be visualized for best comprehension and to enable correct assessments. In this thesis, research is presented about digital image analysis and three-dimensional (3-D) visualization techniques for use with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image data and in particular electron tomography, which provides 3-D reconstructions of the nano-structures.

The electron tomograms are difficult to interpret because of, e.g., low signal-to-noise ratio, artefacts that stem from sample preparation and insufficient reconstruction information. Analysis is often performed by visual inspection or by registration, i.e., fitting, of molecular models to the image data. Setting up a visualization can however be tedious, and there may be large intra- and inter-user variation in how visualization parameters are set. Therefore, one topic studied in this thesis concerns automatic setup of the transfer function used in direct volume rendering of these tomograms. Results indicate that histogram and gradient based measures are useful in producing automatic and coherent visualizations.

Furthermore, research has been conducted concerning registration of templates built using molecular models. Explorative visualization techniques are presented that can provide means of visualizing and navigating model parameter spaces. This gives a new type of visualization feedback to the biologist interpretating the TEM data. The introduced probabilistic template has an improved coverage of the molecular flexibility, by incorporating several conformations into a static model. Evaluation by cross-validation shows that the probabilistic template gives a higher correlation response than using a Protein Databank (PDB) devised model. The software ProViz (for Protein Visualization) is also introduced, where selected developed techniques have been incorporated and are demonstrated in practice.


During September-November, 1985, four employees of a factory were seen at the occupational clinic complaining of cough, shortness of breath, and wheezing. All four worked in the same area of the factory where an adhesive containing toluene diisocyanate (TDI) was applied to velcro-like tape during manufacturing. To confirm the diagnosis of TDI-induced asthma and determine the prevalence among workers, 38 workers were interviewed and examined (84%) in the factory. Air samples were also taken from several areas in the factory to determine the TDI concentration. For analysis, the factory was divided into three areas based on the concentration of TDI: low (0.012 +/- 0.002 ppm), medium (0.021 +/- 0.006 ppm), and high (0.047 +/- 0.054 ppm). The distribution of workers with symptoms of asthmatic bronchitis was highly associated with TDI concentration (p less than 0.001). After stopping work for a period of 10 days, workers in areas with a high concentration of TDI showed marked improvement in pulmonary function tests (PFTs). After isolation of the exposure site, improvement of the ventilation system, and substitution of the TDI with less volatile diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), air concentration of isocyanates was usually below 0.007 ppm. Three of the four clinically overt asthma cases went back to work without any difficulty. The PFTs of affected workers showed a significant improvement 5 months later. We conclude that TDI was responsible for the occupational asthma among velcro-like tape manufacturers and that the TDI-induced impairment of pulmonary functions was at least partially reversible.


Designing a good lighting environment is becoming more complex. Until now, lighting designers, architects, engineers, and lighting manufacturers, pretty much anyone involved in lighting design, have concentrated on creating a lighting environment for the visual functions that are completely integrated with architecture and fulfill the latest trends of sustainability and energy efficiency. However, more recent research suggests that the lighting environment should also support human health and wellbeing. [1] The purpose of this paper is to try and shed light in a very detailed manner in all different aspects of lighting that influence the health and wellbeing of the user. Although this is not a medical or scientific paper it tries to take a more holistic approach of what we are calling "Human Centric Lighting". Human Centric Lighting is the concept describing the connection between lighting, health and wellbeing. Lighting that focuses on people should balance visual, emotional, and biological benefits of lighting and promote good vision while satisfying the emotional and biological needs of the users. The latest development and work done in the field in the last 15 years found that lighting, especially Human Centric Lighting, also stimulates nonvisual effects on human psychology and physiology. Lighting Design for Health, Wellbeing and Quality of Light 2 Lighting Design and Health Circadian Rhythms In humans, the daily pattern of consolidated sleep and awake state is influenced by the timing of exposure to light and darkness. "The daily light-dark cycle governs rhythmic changes in the behavior and/or physiology of most species. Studies have found that these changes are governed by a biological clock, which in humans is located in two brain areas called the suprachiasmatic nuclei. The circadian cycles established by this clock occur throughout nature and have a period of approximately 24 hours. In addition, these circadian cycles can be synchronized to external time signals but also can persist in the absence of such signals. Studies have found that the internal clock consists of an array of genes and the protein products they encode, which regulate various physiological processes throughout the body. Disruptions of the biological rhythms can impair the health and well-being of the organism". [2] Exposure to the 24-hour solar cycle normally ensures that circadian rhythms of performance and alertness peak during daytime and that a consolidated sleep is achieved at night time. In insomnia or sleep disorders in general that bring fatigue and lack of alertness or performance, artificial light can be used (with the appropriate time exposure) to realign circadian rhythms back to the desired sleep and wake times of the patient. To put it in simpler terms: daily color and brightness variations in the environment are directly connected to the body's daily rhythmic changes. [3] Lighting and Circadian Rhythms There are certain lighting aspects or qualities that affect the circadian rhythms of humans. These in brief are quantity, spectral power distribution of the light source, timing and time of exposure, spatial distribution, and light short term history. One has to understand that the human circadian system reacts differently than the human visual system. When we are referring to quantity of lighting levels we are solely talking about the visual system needs. In order to activate the circadian system, greater amount of "polychromatic" white light is required. The circadian system is more sensitive to short wavelength blue light while the visual system is most sensitive to the middle portion of the visible spectrum. The most important aspect is that although our visual system is not significantly dependent on the timing of light exposure, therefore responding well to light stimulus at any time of day and night, the circadian system can respond with a phase advance or delay, interfering with the synchronization of our biological clock and a normal day / night cycle. Lighting Design for Health, Wellbeing and Quality of Light 3 Also, the visual system reacts in less than a second while the circadian system is affected by light after an exposure of several minutes. Circadian rhythm, contrary to the visual system, does not respond to spatial patterns. Finally, the higher the exposure to light during the day the lower the sensitivity of the human circadian system at night. For more information, refer to the historical background on circadian rhythms in Annex 1. Disturbance of the Biological Clock Light is typically installed for the purpose of illuminating space to allow wellbeing, comfort, entertainment, or work. Similarly shutters and windows are often used to prevent exposure to daylight and facilitate prolonged sleep. Bright light enables better vision and affects mood. Additionally, the color temperature is typically adapted to the specific environment, which is an important feature of architectural lighting design. As we now know, spectral content is directly connected to circadian stimulus coefficient and influences circadian rhythms rather than certain lamp technology. As it was described before, the biological clock is more sensitive to the blue part of the spectrum and the more the color temperature increases the greater the proportion of blue in the light spectrum. When lighting designers or engineers implement a design, the user is exposed to light which affects the circadian rhythm with immediate and medium-term psychological effects. Immediate disturbances of the circadian rhythm can be caused by artificial light and medium term disturbances can be caused by sleep deprivation due to exposure to certain types of lighting. Only recently have the effects on psychological conditions and wake/sleep cycles been studied systematically. In general, illuminance levels of light intensity remain well below the peak intensity of the sun on a clear day. In this context, these effects are not a feature of a lamp technology, but of lighting and lighting design in general. Despite the beneficial effects of light, there is mounting evidence that suggests that illtimed exposure to artificial light, possibly through circadian rhythm disruption, may also cause sleep disorders and worsen even more serious conditions. These effects are directly or indirectly due to light itself, without any specific connection to a certain lighting technology, i.e. LEDs. Specifically, under certain conditions blue light may be more effective in influencing human biological systems than other visible wavelengths. Thus, monochromatic blue light or light artificially enriched in blue is particularly effective in melatonin phase shift and suppression. Lighting Design for Health, Wellbeing and Quality of Light 4 LEDs and Flicker – Temporal Light Artifacts (TLAs) The hot topic as LEDs are becoming more and more the main lighting technology in use is flickering. In an LED system, it is the electronic driver which dictates the flickering. At the moment, there is no available norm defining flicker. This results in many bulbs in the market presenting extreme flickering with only a few providing acceptable performance. As most of the time flickering is not visible to the naked eye, short term effects cannot be measured however it contributes to the surrounding environmental stress. The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) Technical Note "Visual Aspects of Time-Modulated Lighting Systems – Definitions and Measurement Models" (006:2016) gives different definitions for the perceptual effects that modulated light can produce. The unwanted changes in the perception of the environment due to light modulation are called "temporal artifacts." It can change the visual environment compared to natural light and previous generations of light sources. In CIE's technical note 006:2016, "flicker" is used for direct perception of the modulation. The technical note underlines the need to understand the perception of temporal artifacts by stating that limiting the temporal modulation of a light source has a direct impact on its cost, features, or lifetime. However, the definition of acceptable limits for specific applications in terms of the amount of modulation is really interesting. This is not part of the scope of work of the technical note; however, acceptability thresholds are a topic that the technical committee could work on In the initial (2010) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) PAR17891 standard, risks of seizures due to flicker at frequencies within the 3-70Hz range were presented as well as biological effects on humans due to invisible flicker at frequencies below 165Hz. However, the IEEE 1789-2015 standard "Recommended Practices for Modulating Current in High-Brightness LEDs for Mitigating Health Risks to Viewers"[4] is setting a few ground rules to be followed by suppliers. In its latest report, IEEE puts forwards extremely high frequency limits, which are even higher than the ones which were considered previously. The US National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) Working Group on Temporal Light Artifacts (TLAs) suggests however, and rightly so, that the IEEE 1789-2015 proposed limits are extremely strict for many applications, adding unnecessary costs to the electronics of LEDs. On the other hand, NEMA also proposes further assessment of TLAs with new metrics and associated measurement methods for flicker and lighting. 1 PAR stands for Project Authorization Request. It is the means by which standards projects are started within the IEEE Standards Committee. PARs define the scope, purpose, and contact points for the new project. Lighting Design for Health, Wellbeing and Quality of Light 5 Photo Biological Safety – The So Called "Blue Light Hazard" The interaction of blue light with molecules constituting the retina or accumulating in the retina with age or in pathological conditions can induce damage to RPE 2 cells, photorec


Real-time control of multikilowatt CO2 laser surface treatments increases reproducibility, simplifies application to workpieces of complex geometry, and provides a means to deal with varying process parameters. In order to perform a control analysis the system must be put in block diagram form. The system plant is defined as the workpiece, whose surface is illuminated by a laser beam. The system state is defined as the temperature cycling of every point within the workpiece volume. This temperature history determines the final metallurgical results. The actual output (observed) variables are temperatures in the laser reference frame. Inputs to the system include laser power, laser intensity profile, scanning velocity, and geometric or optical perturbations. Among the many control methods available, a classical control strategy was chosen for its effectiveness. The experimental application of real-time control to laser self-quenching is detailed.


This thesis is concerned with laser based techniques for the measurement of fluid dynamical properties and their application to combusting flowfields or flowfields related to combustion. As an introduction, the theory of turbulent flows and combustion is shortly presented. An overview of laser based measuring techniques is given. Next, seven papers are included. The main topic of papers 1 and 2 is the measurements of swirling pipe flows with sudden axi-symmetric expansions. These flowfields are related to the flowfields of gas turbine combustors. Measurements and computations using commercial software are compared. Papers 3 and 7 deal with an laser Doppler anemometry based method for the measurement of the turbulent dissipation rate and its application to an axi-symmetric free jet, respectively. The measurements rely on two-point measurements with high spatial resolution. Also three-component one-point measurements are used to obtain the triple velocity correlations. Together these measurements are sufficient to present the energy balance, if pressure effects are neglected. Papers 4, 5 and 6 are concerned with the turbulent flame speed under premixed conditions. Papers 4 and 5 present flame speed measurements from a stationary burner using methane and Danish natural gas. Particle image velocimetry and one- and two-point Laser Doppler anemometry is used to measure flame speed and turbulent quantities, including integral length scales. Paper 7 presents measurements of flame speed and turbulence parameters in an spark ignition engine. Here heat release analyses from pressure measurements are combined with one- and two-point laser Doppler anemometry to analyze influence of turbulence on flame propagation. (Less)


Blood specimens were sent from New Guinea to the Serological Population Genetics Laboratory, London, and tested for blood groups, serum groups and red-cell isoenzymes. The tests carried out are listed but the results are described separately in this volume (by Booth). The general distribution of blood groups and other factors in the region as a whole, is described. They can mostly be explained by assuming the very early settlement of human populations in Australia and New Guinea, followed by the more recent migration of peoples from southeast Asia into most of the islands, but only to the coastal areas of New Guinea and hardly at all to Australia.


The Mano River basin area has become a conflict zone, in which state failure and violence in Liberia has spread to Sierra Leone and the forest region of Guinea. This article traces the origins of the conflicts to governance failures in all three states, and analyses their incorporation into a single conflict system, orchestrated especially through the entrepreneurial abilities and ambitions of Charles Taylor. Peace settlements negotiated to end the violence in Liberia and Sierra Leone failed, both because of the misconceived power-sharing formula that they embodied, and because they failed to take account of the complex linkages between conflicts across the basin area. The way forward lies in a multilevel basin-wide approach, which seeks to move beyond the failed formula of attempting to reconstitute state power, in favour of constructing institutions of accountable democratic governance at multiple levels from the local level to the regional level and beyond.


In these days, automotive companies are trying to develop new manufacturing technologies and paradigms for rapid product development and production. The press die development process account for 40% of entire vehicle development process, and tryout process usually takes 3 to 4 months, and it is the biggest time portion out of dies manufacturing. Therefore, the effective tryout management system is essential to reduce time and cost of automotive press die production. This paper suggests improved process and practical application of tryout management using ubiquitous technology, and shows the results such as shorten time, improved quality and supporting of lifecycle engineering of press die.


Biomedical engineering is a multidisciplinary field where engineers, scientists, physicians and other health workers are required to work together and to communicate effectively. This can be a difficult task, as concepts which are common knowledge in one discipline are often foreign to people working in another area. At Charles Darwin University a new biomedical engineering unit was introduced, which is both a core unit for biomedical science students and an elective for engineering students in their final year. The unit aims to offer a broad perspective on biomedical engineering. Teaching a diverse group provides opportunities as well as challenges. Students can learn from each other and gain experience working in multidisciplinary teams. The necessity to communicate between the two different groups encourages critical thinking and develops communication skills. There are, however, also a number of difficulties associated with the diverse background of the students. Since the knowledge base of the two groups of students does not overlap it is a major challenge to ensure that the content of the lectures is comprehensible and sufficiently interesting for all students. Choosing assessment methods in such a way that none of the two groups has an unfair advantage over the other group poses another problem. This paper describes the approaches taken to maximise the advantages associated with the diversity of student backgrounds and to overcome the problems mentioned above. Experiences during the first year the unit has run have been positive. Evaluations showed that students enjoyed the subject and felt that the cooperation with students from another discipline enriched their learning experience. The lectures were considered useful and interesting. Students considered the methods used for assessment fair and their results did not indicate that one group had an unfair advantage over the other group.


Using causal relations to guide decision making has become an essential analytical task across various domains, from marketing and medicine to education and social science. While powerful statistical models have been developed for inferring causal relations from data, domain practitioners still lack effective visual interface for interpreting the causal relations and applying them in their decision-making process. Through interview studies with domain experts, we characterize their current decision-making workflows, challenges, and needs. Through an iterative design process, we developed a visualization tool that allows analysts to explore, validate, and apply causal relations in real-world decision-making scenarios. The tool provides an uncertainty-aware causal graph visualization for presenting a large set of causal relations inferred from high-dimensional data. On top of the causal graph, it supports a set of intuitive user controls for performing what-if analyses and making action plans. We report on two case studies in marketing and student advising to demonstrate that users can effectively explore causal relations and design action plans for reaching their goals.


Abstract The drivers (and inhibitors) of political finance reform are complex and overlapping. The case of Australia is an intriguing one. By international standards, regulation of political finance at the national level in Australia is laissez-faire and inertial. Since 2010 however, half the states and territories have adopted holistic party finance systems designed to limit the influence of money in electoral politics. These reforms have included caps on expenditure and donations, generous public funding and tighter donation disclosure. This article explores both the emerging constitutional constraints on—and political drivers of—this flourishing of reform. Whilst there is evidence of party machines seeking security in enhanced public funding, there is limited evidence to support the cartel thesis. Overall these developments highlight the potential for experimentation and cross-fertilization in a federal system, suggesting that reform is episodic but infectious, rather than a manifestation of any inexor...


MOTIVATION
A variance stabilizing transformation for microarray data was recently introduced independently by several research groups. This transformation has sometimes been called the generalized logarithm or glog transformation. In this paper, we derive several alternative approximate variance stabilizing transformations that may be easier to use in some applications.

RESULTS
We demonstrate that the started-log and the log-linear-hybrid transformation families can produce approximate variance stabilizing transformations for microarray data that are nearly as good as the generalized logarithm (glog) transformation. These transformations may be more convenient in some applications.


Film cinematography has been developed and applied for more than a century to involve and engage the viewer in visual storytelling. Interactive storytelling games can benefit from these cinematic conventions to enhance visual experience. However, even conversation scenes in games are highly dynamic, and pre-authoring camera parameters using cinematography principles is often insufficient. This paper proposes an automatic Visual Director System focused on dynamic conversation scenes involving three characters and reports on work in progress on a prototype applied to the recreation of a movie scene. Based on principles of cinematography and the study of film scenes, cinematic conventions for triadic conversations are encoded modularly as an artificial intelligence game component that selects suitable shots for dynamic scenes.


Thermomechanical processing consisting of cold rolling (e=0.3-2.0) and post-deformation annealing (300-450oC, 1h) was applied to binary Ti-Ni alloys to produce nanocrystalline structures (NS) or polygonized dislocation substructures (PDS), or their mixture. The evolution of the material structure and properties was studied using TEM, X-ray, microhardness, calorimetry and tensile testing techniques. Recovery stress and strain of the 50.26at%Ni alloy and superelastic strain of the Ti-50.6at%Ni alloy were measured under static and fatigue conditions. It was found that higher true yield stress of NS alloys not only increases the recovery stress potential, but, since it is combined with a relatively low transformation yield stress; it increases the completely recoverable strain. NS alloys generate recovery stresses that are twice as high as those of PDS alloys (1200 MPa), completely recoverable strains that are 10% greater (up to 6% in tension), and they demonstrate a higher cyclic stability of functional properties. This improvement comes with the cost of a lower NS alloy fatigue damage tolerance, aggravated by the presence of microcracks caused by cold working. Binary Ti-Ni alloys, processed by annealing of an intermediately cold-worked (e=0.75…1) alloy and containing mixed nanocrystalline structure and polygonized dislocation substructure, allow a high fatigue life combined with relatively high and cyclically stable functional properties.


Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a debilitating systemic disease that may have oral complications. Patients may be prone to dental caries and often have difficulty speaking and swallowing. Therefore, it is important for dental professionals to be familiar with the diagnosis and management of SS. This review outlines the new SS diagnostic criteria and provides an overview of recent findings related to disease etiology. In addition, management of SS patients with xerostomia is discussed.


The ability to detect adverse drug events (ADEs) in electronic health records (EHRs) is useful in many medical applications, such as alerting systems that indicate when an ADE-specific diagnosis code should be assigned. Automating the detection of ADEs can be attempted by applying machine learning to existing, labeled EHR data. How to do this in an effective manner is, however, an open question. The issues addressed in this study concern the granularity of the classification task: (1) If we wish to predict the occurrence of any ADE, is it advantageous to conflate the various ADE class labels prior to learning, or should they be merged post prediction? (2) If we wish to predict a family of ADEs or even a specific ADE, can the predictive performance be enhanced by dividing the classification task into a cascading scheme: predicting first, on a coarse level, whether there is an ADE or not, and, in the former case, followed by a more specific prediction on which family the ADE belongs to, and then finally a prediction on the specific ADE within that particular family? In this study, we conduct a series of experiments using a real, clinical dataset comprising healthcare episodes that have been assigned one of eight ADE-related diagnosis codes and a set of randomly extracted episodes that have not been assigned any ADE code. It is shown that, when distinguishing between ADEs and non-ADEs, merging the various ADE labels prior to learning leads to significantly higher predictive performance in terms of accuracy and area under ROC curve. A cascade of random forests is moreover constructed to determine either the family of ADEs or the specific class label; here, the performance is indeed enhanced compared to directly employing a one-step prediction. This study concludes that, if predictive performance is of primary importance, the cascading scheme should be the recommended approach over employing a one-step prediction for detecting ADEs in EHRs.


Introduction: Transfusional iron (Fe) overload is a significant problem among patients with chronic, transfusion-dependent anemias. Iron overload is an important problem in pediatric sickle cell disease (SCD) patients on chronic transfusion regimens predominantly for primary and secondary prevention of stroke. Coexistent hereditary iron overload conditions contribute to the iron overload phenotype in SCD. For example, the Q248H mutation (rs11568350) in SLC40A1, which encodes ferroportin (FPN), is associated with a mild tendency to increase serum ferritin in the general population and with increased ferritin levels in SCD patients. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanisms underlying the progression to iron overload in SCD patients are poorly understood and more sensitive markers for outcome prediction that can be applied at early clinical stages are lacking. We hypothesize that genetic variation modifies the risk for iron overload in SCD patients and seek to validate previously identified mutation and identify novel genetic markers of iron overload among participants from TOPMed SCD cohorts by performing whole genome sequencing (WGS) association analyses.
 Methods: The WGS was performed by several national sequencing centers sponsored by NHLBI's TOPMed program at an average depth of 30× using DNA from SCD patient blood samples. Variant calling was performed jointly across TOPMed studies for all samples using the GotCloud pipeline by the TOPMed Informatics Research Center. The TOPMed data Coordinating Center performed quality control for sample identity. The data across the following studies were shared through the database of Genotype and Phenotype (dbGaP) exchange area: Howard PUSH SCD (N=370), OMG SCD (N=636), Walk PHaSST SCD (N=381) and REDS-III Brazil SCD (N=2620) with a total sample size of 4007. The study was approved by the appropriate institutional review boards (IRB) and informed consent was obtained from all participants. Genome Wide Association Analysis of iron overload was carried out using the University of Michigan ENCORE server. We performed single variant tests to test the association of log-transformed serum ferritin levels with single nucleotide variants (SNVs) while adjusting for sex, age, self-reported race, numbers of lifetime red blood transfusions and genetic substructure (PC's 1-10). We used a significance threshold of p<5×10-8 to report anassociation as genome-wide significant for common and rare genetic variants.
 Results: We first included PUSH SCD, OMG SCD and Walk PHaSST SCD cohorts with 840 serum ferritin samples in the WGS association analyses, which revealed at the genome-wide level a new rare variant rs137929759 (chr7:49538810 (GRCh38.p12), MAF=0.0043532, p=2.25×10−8). A few variants such as rs80097634 in gene AL163195.3 and RNASE11 (Chr14:20579417. MAF=0.050373, p=3.1×10-7) were close to the genome-wide significance level. We confirmed previously identified associations in SLC40A1 for ferritin (rs11568350, Chr2:189565370, MAF = 0.16853, p = 5.2×10−4). We also found several variants in AC105411.1, TJP1 and DCC that were close to genome-wide significance level. Further analysis will be carried out on the cloud-based platform provided by NHLBI BioData Catalyst using data from all the four cohorts to validate the previous analysis and expand to related phenotype such as transferrin, iron-overload status.
 Discussion: In this study we identified common and rare variants that associate with serum ferritin concentration. The results from this pilot study point to novel gene variants that might contribute to iron overload in SCD patients and serve as new biomarkers. Future analysis is needed to determine whether the identified variants can also help with therapeutics and outcome prediction for early stages of SCD-associated iron overload. Our findings will be useful for the future treatment of SCD patients and design of novel SCD therapeutics.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This work was supported by NIH Research Grants (1P50HL118006, and 1R01HL125005). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

 Gordeuk: Imara: Research Funding; Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; CSL Behring: Consultancy, Research Funding; Ironwood: Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy. Telen:CSL Behring: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Forma Therapeutics: Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Pfizer: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; GlycoMimetics Inc.: Consultancy.


Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC

Introduction: We have previously reported that Protein Kinase D1 (PKD1), a serine threonine kinase, is down regulated in advanced prostate cancer (PC) and known complex with cell adhesion protein β3-integrin to influence cell motility. Cell motility in facilitated by degradation of extracellular matrix, which is accomplished through secretion of proteins such as Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMPs), which are neutral proteinases that catalyze degradation of various transmembrane and extracellular matrix proteins including E-cadherin at cell surface. Here, we demonstrate the presence of PKD1-β3-integrin complex in PC cells that increases MMP-2 and −9 secretion and consequently enhances E-cadherin shedding.

Methods: Protein expression, phosphorylation and secretion studies using PC cell lines were done by western blot analysis or gelatin zymography. Cell proliferation was measured by MTS assay. In silico analysis was done to validate correlation between PKD1 and MMPs expression in human PC.

Results: To find out the complex formation among PKD1 and β3-integrin in PC cell, we immunoprecipitated the PKD1 protein and immunoblotted with β3-integrin antibody and observed that the PKD1 and β3-integrin proteins were in same protein complex. Then we found that overexpression of PKD1 also colocalized in PC3 cells and that was suppressed with RGD peptide, a specific β3-integrin inhibitor, treated same cells. Additionally, we found that PKD1 overexpressed cell increased in secretion of MMP-2 and −9 as well as activation of Erk and Akt those were suppressed in RGD peptide treated cells. In contrast, we observed that downregulation of PKD1 by shRNA could suppress the phosphorylation of Erk and Akt as well as MMP-2 and MMP-9 secretion in DU145 cells. Interestingly, PKD1 enhanced the expression of E-cadherin and secretion of extracellular part of E-cadherin (sE-cadherin) in conditioned media of DU145 cells, which was suppressed by treatment by MMP-2 and −9 inhibitors. In addition, suppression of cell proliferation by PKD1 was augmented by recombinant MMP-2 and −9 proteins and rescued by MMP-2 and MMP-9 inhibitor in DU145 cells, suggesting a surprising antiproliferative role for MMP-2 and −9 in PC cells. In silico analysis of publicly available DNA microarray data set derived from human PC confirmed that expression of PKD1 and MMP-2 correlated directly in metastatic PC compared to benign prostate tissue. Conclusions: Our study has identified a novel role of PKD1-β3-integrin complex for secretion of MMP-2 and −9 in prostate cancer, which is associated with E-cadherin shedding. Our data also suggested that the proteins complex limits PC cell proliferation by modulation MMP-2 and −9 secretion.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 997.


The main focus of this paper is to analyze the
robust stability property for a class of time-delay systems when
parametric polynomic uncertainty is considered. The analysis
is made by replacing the time-delay part with an auxiliary
equation and then using the sign definite decomposition to
deal with the polynomic parametric uncertainty. Also, it is
shown that it is possible to verify the robust stability property
by first obtaining the Hurwitz matrix from the characteristic
equation for this class of systems and then checking the leading
principal minors positivity using the sign definite decomposition.
Finally, an algorithm codified in MATLAB is used to evaluate and
graphically show the robust stability property. This is shown by
a series of points that were calculated using the sign definite
decomposition.


This thesis focuses on different aspects of the relationship between N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes of Ni and Pd and azolium salts, particularly imidazolium salts. Chapter one introduces the reader to the field of organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis. General aspects of the chemistry of NHCs are then discussed. Chapter two describes studies aimed at optimising the recently discovered direct intermolecular coupling (via C-H activation and formation of an NHC hydride Ni(II) intermediate) of azolium salts with olefins. An extensive experimental study (in conjunction with DFT calculations conducted by Kirsty J. Hawkes and Brian F. Yates at the University of Tasmania) of the Ni(0)-catalysed reaction of l-propyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide ( pmimJBr) with ethylene revealed that the mechanism of this reaction changes with the size of the ancillary ligand. This reaction was further developed into an intramolecular version, allowing for the synthesis of fused-ring imidazolium salts bearing a chiral carbon atom. Extension of this chemistry to Lewis acid activated neutral azoles is also described, as well as the development of a Pd-catalysed version of the intermolecular coupling. In chapter three, the synthesis, solid-state (X-Ray) and solution phase (gs-NOESY) characterisation of a new family of cationic mixed phosphine/NHC Pd(II) 7t-allyl complexes of general formula Pd(7i-allyl)(NHC)PR3 BF4 are described. This family of compounds was designed to generate monoligated Pd-PR3 fragments upon thermal, solvent or olefin-mediated activation. For example, complex Pd(n3-C3H5)(tmiy)PCy3 BF4 (lb) was expected to generate an efficient catalyst for the Pd-catalysed coupling of olefins with azolium salts described in chapter two. Chapter four describes the catalytic activity of lb and studies of its activation mechanism. The serendipitous discovery of the reaction of lb with phenyl iodide, yielding a 2-phenylimidazolium salt and Pd(n3-C3H5)(I)PCy3) is reported as well as subsequent studies aimed at elucidating the scope and mechanism of this reaction.


Objective: To determine the effect of long-term testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) on depression symptoms in hypogonadal men. Methods: Data were from TRiUS, a multicenter, 12-month observational registry (N = 849) of hypogonadal men prescribed 1% testosterone gel. Measures including total testosterone (TT) were assessed at baseline and months 3, 6, and 12. Depression symptoms were measured with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a validated self-report questionnaire. A PHQ-9 score decrease of ≥5 represents clinical improvement. Results PHQ-9 scores were available for 762/849 TRiUS participants at baseline. Overall, 92.4% (704/762) demonstrated some level of depressive symptoms, with 17.3% (132/762) having moderately severe (score 15–19) to severe (score 20–27) symptoms. Subcohorts with significantly (p ≤ 0.03) more moderately severe to severe symptoms were: <60 years old, TT levels <250 ng/dl (<8.68 nmol/l), HIV/AIDS-positive, or used antidepressants or opioids. TT levels and PHQ-9 scores improved significantly (p < 0.01) by 3 months of TRT. At 12 months PHQ-9 scores showed a clinically meaningful mean improvement of 5.62 points, patients with moderately severe to severe symptoms decreased from 17.3% to 2.1% (5/233), and subcohorts, including those defined by age (<60 years) and antidepressant use, had improved PHQ-9 scores ≥5. Conclusion: TRT may reduce depression symptoms in hypogonadal men, including middle-aged men and those using antidepressants.


In this study, we analyzed phosphorescence lifetime and its accuracy by growing frost for thermographic phosphor thermometry in a low-temperature environment. Mg4FGeO6:Mn particles were coated on an aluminum plate and excited with a UV-LED to obtain phosphorescence signals. The surface temperature was maintained at  −20, −15, −10 °C, and the phosphorescence signal was acquired as the frost grew for 3700 s. The lifetime was calculated and compared with the calibration curve under no-frost conditions. The error of the measured lifetime was within 0.7% of that in the no-frost conditions. A 2D surface temperature profile of the target plate was successfully obtained with the frost formation.


Military expenditures of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China are examined from two perspectives: (1) a modification of the traditional Richardson arms race formulation and (2) the notion that the military budget is used by decision makers, in part, to respond to the domestic political and economic environment. These competing formulations are juxtaposed in an empirical analysis of their relevance for understanding contemporary arms allocation decisions. The empirical evaluation of these processes is informed by a critical appraisal of alternative assessments of military allocations, as reflected in data provided by the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research International, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and William T. Lee, a noted defense analyst. The findings suggest that the arms race formulation is empirically deficient in accounting for the spending patterns of the United States, Soviet Union, and People's Republic of China in the period from 1949 to 1978. For both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the use of the military allocation process to influence domestic political and economic conditions receives considerable support. It is also clear from the analysis conducted that the choice of data, especially with regard to Soviet spending, plays a significant role in these findings.


This work investigates decision level fusion by extending the framework of subjective logic to account for hidden observations. Bayes' rule might suggest that decision level fusion is simply calculated as the normalized product of the class likelihoods of the various classifiers. However, this product rule suffers from a veto issue. The problem with the classical Bayes formulation is that it does not account for uncertainties inherent in the likelihoods exclaimed by the classifiers. This paper uses subjective logic as a rigorous framework to incorporate uncertainty. First, a class appearance model is introduced that roughly accounts for the disparity between training and testing conditions. Then, the subjective logic framework is expanded to account for the fact that class appearances are not directly observed. Rather, a classifier only returns the likelihood for the class appearance. Finally, the paper uses simulations to compare the new subjective logic framework to traditional classifier fusion methods in terms of classification performance and the ability to estimate the parameters of the class appearance model.


174 patients with chronic pancreatic diseases, 30 patients with pancreatic carcinoma and 144 with chronic relapsing pancreatitis, 50 of them with calcifications, were observed in the Department of Internal Medicine of the University of Marburg/FRG between 1972 and 1982. In order to differentiate between carcinoma and relapsing pancreatitis the data of these patients were analysed retrospectively with regard to patient history, actual complaints, findings of laboratory, sonography, ERCP and X-ray investigations. The following results were obtained: Of discriminating value are steatorrhoe, local palpatory pain, alcohol ingestion, a history of earlier attacks and relapsing pain situations; however, general abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and weight loss (if not exactly specified) are not. Within the laboratory findings bilirubin, GOT, alkaline phosphatase, gamma-GT, serum potassium, blood sugar and chymotrypsin content of the stool were significant while serum and urine amylase were similarly distributed within the groups of patients. Carcinoma and chronic relapsing pancreatitis can be identified by sonography in the majority of patients, but calcifications of the pancreas were rarely demonstrated during this observation period. The obstruction of the extrahepatic bile ducts--mostly due to a carcinoma of the pancreas head--was usually well documented by sonography. Intraabdominal air proofed to be the most disturbing factor. In carcinoma patients, the ERCP is important in demonstrating a complete obstruction of the pancreatic duct and stenosis and dilatation of the extrahepatic bile ducts. In patients with chronic relapsing pancreatitis the pancreatic duct alterations such as dilatations and partial stenosis are well documented by ERCP especially if calcifications occur. In patients without calcifications, dilatation of the branches of the main duct are less relevant in the diagnosis of pancreatic diseases. Radiological demonstration of calcification of the pancreatic area is important for the differential diagnosis. Longstanding characteristical complaints, symptoms and calcifications within the pancreatic area are the most relevant factors in discriminating carcinoma and chronic relapsing pancreatitis.


Human Resource Shared Service Centers are introduced by organizations with the aim to create value for employees and managers. Although several studies uncovered the value potential of HR shared services (e.g. possibilities for reducing costs, improving HR service quality and increasing the strategic contribution of the HRM function), little research has been done that explains how the value of HR shared services is created. Low levels of perceived value may have undesirable consequences such as employee dissatisfaction, reduced levels of employee commitment, and poor service quality for external clients. Therefore, the research presented in this thesis intends to explain the value of HR shared services for their end-users, that is, employees and line managers. Specifically, this thesis (1) explores the most essential characteristics of HR shared service centers, such as provided HR services, control mechanisms, and provider–client interactions, which are considered to provide necessary conditions for value creation, and (2) tests the mechanisms through which both HR shared service centers and their end-users contribute to the creation of HR shared service value.

This thesis claims that it is neither the provider nor the clients and end-users of HR shared services, but the interactions among them that explain the success of HR shared services. In particular, the quality of the (knowledge) resources brought to service delivery processes by both HR shared service centers and their end-users influence the perceived value of HR shared services for employees and line managers. This thesis will benefit practitioners and organizations that want to understand how the benefits of HR shared services can be realized. Academics and researchers will find a contribution towards understanding the how and why of the integrated character of HR shared service value creation.


Purpose

Bowring et al. describe ways of using the Behavior Problems Inventory – Short Form, illustrating how to use clinical norms to evaluate change. This commentary focuses on the importance of considering information gained directly from people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) during assessment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

A pilot project involved interviews with four children with IDD. A Talking Mats® (TM) framework was used to gather children's views regarding challenging behaviours (CBs) and variables relevant to a functional behavioural assessment, such as things they found to be reinforcing, things that set the occasion for CB and things that helped prevent this.

Findings

The children were able to provide information and insight into several areas that are influential in the maintenance of behaviour that challenges. Some of this information may not have been obtainable from other sources or informants using traditional assessment methods alone.

Originality/value

Gathering the views of people with IDD is important. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2009) states that people have the right to be heard. Many people with IDD have difficulties communicating. A TM framework is one method by which people may be able to express their views. Taking the views of the individual into account during the process of gathering information about behaviours that challenge should lead to greater understanding of the functions of any behaviours and therefore to more targeted, acceptable and effective forms of support.


Seamless integration of various, often heterogeneous linguistic resources (in terms of their output formats) and merging of the respective annotation layers are crucial tasks for linguistic research. After a decade of concentration on the development of formats in order to structure single annotations for specific linguistic issues, a variety of specifications to store multiple annotations over the same primary data has been developed in the last years. Among these approaches three main architectures can be identified: Prolog-based architectures, XML-related approaches and graph-based models that follow the XML syntax. However, these architectures are not free of disadvantages when used in real world applications. In the Sekimo project the XML-based Sekimo Generic Format (SGF) was developed for the purpose of storing multiple annotations on the same primary data and examine relationships between elements of different annotation layers without prepended conversion. SGF is based on the design principles of graph-based approaches but makes use of the XML-inherent tree structures whenever possible to reduce processing costs. Analysing data stored in SGF can be done via standard XML-related specifications such as XPath, XSLT or XQuery and is done in our project in the linguistic application domain of anaphora resolution.


Objectives: We present the classification of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) and morphometric analysis of the ascending aorta in patients with BAV. Methods: From 2003 to 2018, 102 patients underwent aortic valve replacement for BAV in our institution. Surgical treatment for aorta reconstruction was performed in 39 patients. All patients were evaluated by Sievers classification of the BAV and Fazel Cluster classification of the aortic form. Results: Sievers classification of the BAV showed 8 patients for type 0, 30 cases for type 1, and 1 case for type 2. Additionally, type 0 subtype included one patient of ap-type and seven patients of lat-type. In type 1, there are 18 patients as LR fusion type, 9 patients as RN fusion type, and 3 patients as LN fusion type. The mean diameter of the ascending aorta of 39 BAV patients who underwent aortic surgery was 47.8 ± 6.1 mm. Fazel Cluster classification showed eight patients in type 1, 28 patients in type 2 and 3, and three patients in type 4. Conclusion: The frequency of Sievers classification was the same as that reported previously. All BAV types may be associated with a risk of the enlargement of ascending and arch aorta.


: The contact force of the clearance joints in the mechanical system is strongly nonlinear, which is influenced by the amount of clearance, the material property of the parts and the contact state during movement. In some fields which need to control the dynamic response of mechanical system accurately, it is very important to predict the contact process of clearance joints and the time-frequency characteristics of contact force. In this paper, a dynamic modelling method combining neural network model and co-simulation technology is proposed, which can effectively model and simulate the mechanical system with clearance. The contact friction data set is generated based on the friction experiment of sliding bearing, and the contact collision force data set is generated based on the theoretical model of impact force. The nonlinear contact force neural network model of clearance joints is constructed by deep learning method, and transplanted to Simulink. According to the 3D model of transmission test bench, the dynamic simulation model of mechanical system is established by using ADAMS, and the fusion of neural network model and traditional dynamics model is finally realized based on Simulink/ADAMS co-simulation technology. The creativity of this method lies in the use of neural network model to describe the clearance joints and the use of ideal constraints to describe other kinematic pairs. The combination of force and constraint can not only improve the accuracy of solution, but also ensure the fast calculation speed, which provides a feasible idea for the application of deep learning method in the direction of nonlinear system dynamics modelling.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

Ciclopirox olamine (CPX), a synthetic antifungal agent clinically used to treat mycoses of the skin and nails, has been recently found to inhibit tumor growth in mouse model of leukemia and breast cancer MDA-MB231. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), an evolutionarily conserved serine/threonine kinase, is known as a negative regulator of autophagy. Herein, we found that CPX substantially increased GFP-LC3 dots and expression of LC3-II, a hallmark of autophagy, suggesting that CPX induced autophagy. Meanwhile, we discovered that CPX inhibited mTOR signaling in different cancer cell lines, as evidenced by reduced phosphorylation of the downstream targets of mTOR, p70 S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) and eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) binding protein 1 (4E-BP1). Recently, it has been demonstrated that autophagy can be induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS). Interestingly, we further found that CPX treatment dose-dependently induced ROS generation. Pretreatment with N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) suppressed CPX-induced ROS and the conversion of LC3I to LC3II, suggesting that CPX-induced autophagy is mediated by ROS generation. Moreover, the inhibition of phosphorylation of S6K1 and 4E-BP1 by CPX were partially rescued by NAC pretreatment as well. These data suggest that CPX-induced autophagy may be attributed to induction of ROS and subsequent inhibition of mTOR signaling.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5379. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-5379


Query completion is a feature employed by most modernsearch engines. These completions can be derived by different means. The most popular algorithm ranks completions by the frequency with which it appears in a database of old query logs. This project aims to investigate a new method for finding completions: namely through clustering search results and extracting terms from the clusters. To test the capabilities of this method, the project implemented the back-end to a search system, which includes the search result clustering algorithm Lingo. The system uses the output cluster labels as query completions. Two experiments were conducted, one for Informational queries and one for Navigational queries, each comparing the system to Apache Solr's Suggester component. For Informational queries, a new way of scoring query completions was invented. The experiments showed that clustering performedbetter than the Suggester component for Informational queries, the results were inconclusive for Navigational queries.


Representative, actively collected surveillance data on asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in primary schoolchildren remain scarce. We evaluated the feasibility of a saliva mass screening concept and assessed infectious activity in primary schools. During a 10-week period from 3 March to 21 May 2021, schoolchildren and staff from 17 primary schools in Munich participated in the sentinel surveillance, cohort study. Participants were tested using the Salivette® system, testing was supervised by trained school staff, and samples were processed via reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). We included 4433 participants: 3752 children (median age, 8 [range, 6–13] years; 1926 girls [51%]) and 681 staff members (median age, 41 [range, 14–71] years; 592 women [87%]). In total, 23,905 samples were processed (4640 from staff), with participants representing 8.3% of all primary schoolchildren in Munich. Only eight cases were detected: Five out of 3752 participating children (0.13%) and three out of 681 staff members (0.44%). There were no secondary cases. In conclusion, supervised Salivette® self-sampling was feasible, reliable, and safe and thus constituted an ideal method for SARS-CoV-2 mass screenings in primary schoolchildren. Our findings suggest that infectious activity among asymptomatic primary schoolchildren and staff was low. Primary schools appear to continue to play a minor role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 despite high community incidence rates.


The effects of operating conditions on mechanical water entrainment into W/O emulsion drops in a (W/O)/W emulsion system were studied in a stirred tank in the absence of permeation due to osmotic pressure. The water entrainment was influenced by surfactant concentration, water volume fraction in W/O emulsion, inner water drop size, salt concentration in the external water phase, and agitation speed in the stirred tank. There was a satisfactory correlation between the extent of water entrainment and the weight of surfactant per unit interfacial area. These observations suggested that water entrainment proceeded as a result of additional emulsification at the drop surface. This idea was confirmed by examining the water entrainment in an oil-water dispersion system where water entrainment occurred by ernulsification. The effects of the operating conditions on water entrainment in the oil-water dispersion system were quite similar to those in the (W/O)/W emulsion system. In addition, the volume of water entrained per unit surface area of dispersed oil drops was in fair agreement with that in the (W/O)/W emulsion system. These results supported the proposed mechanism of water entrainment.


Study Design. Cross-sectional, community-based study. Objective. To investigate the relationships between obesity, disc height, and low back pain in the lumbosacral spine. Summary of Background Data. Although obesity is a recognized risk factor for low back pain, our understanding of the mechanisms for this is limited. The evidence for an association between obesity and spinal structural changes is also conflicting. Methods. Seventy-two participants from a community-based study of musculoskeletal health underwent magnetic resonance imaging from the T12 vertebral body to the sacrum. Disc height was measured from L1–L2 to L5–S1. Body mass index was measured and low back pain in the previous 2 weeks was assessed. Results. The mean and total lumbar disc heights were reduced in obese individuals compared with nonobese individuals (mean height (standard error):1.04 (0.03) cm vs. 1.14 (0.02) cm, P = 0.01; total height (standard error):4.16 (0.11) cm vs. 4.57 (0.10) cm, P = 0.01), after adjusting for age, sex, and height. Although obesity was associated with reduced disc heights at the L1–L2 and L3–L4 levels, there were no significant relationship at the lumbosacral junction (mean difference (95% confidence interval [CI]):0.10 (−0.14 to 0.16) cm, P = 0.89). Both mean and total lumbar disc heights were negatively associated with recent pain after adjusting for age, sex, and height (mean height: mean difference (95% CI):0.09 (0.02–0.17) cm, P = 0.02; total height: mean difference (95% CI): 0.37 (0.07–0.66) cm, P = 0.02). However, these relationships were no longer significant when we also adjusted for weight (mean height; mean difference (95% CI):0.07(−0.009 to 0.15) cm, P = 0.08; total height: mean difference (95% CI):0.28 (−0.04 to 0.60) cm, P = 0.08). There were no significant relationships between disc height and recent pain at the lumbosacral junction. Conclusion. Obesity was associated with reduced disc height in the lumbar spine, but not at the lumbosacral junction, suggesting these joints may have different risk factors. There was also evidence for an inter-relationship between obesity, lumbar disc height, and recent pain, suggesting that structural changes have a role in back pain and may in part explain the association between obesity and back pain. Level of Evidence: 3


In this study, X-ray microcomputed tomography (XCT) and nanoindentation techniques were used to evaluate the synergistic action between sulfate and chloride ingress under cyclic drying–immersion conditions on steel-reinforced mortars. Three salt solutions, namely 3% NaCl (Sc), 5% Na2SO4 (Ss), and 5% Na2SO4 + 3% NaCl (Scs), were used and 24 drying–immersion cycles were applied. The results showed that the chloride caused more severe corrosion on steel reinforcement than the sulfate while under the influence of Scs, and the presence of sulfate suppressed the steel corrosion caused by chloride. In terms the damage to the mortar cover, after 24 drying–immersion cycles, the sulfate caused the most severe damage (volume loss of approximately 7.1%) while the chloride resulted in the least damage (volume loss of approximately 2.6%). By comparing Ss and Scs, it was also found that chloride suppressed the sulfate attack by reducing the damage to the mortar cover (volume loss of approximately 6.3% for Scs). Moreover, the degradation of mortar specimens was found to be layer-dependent, as was the distribution of micro-mechanics. Regarding the micro-mechanics, the specimens of the three solutions performed differently in terms of the aforementioned properties, depending on which underlying mechanism was analyzed. This research could allow for a more accurate assessment of the factors influencing building structures in a typical aggressive marine environment.


The frontal - sinusoidal transmission with balls is a new type of mechanical transmission that allows trans-mission of motion between two coaxial shafts.In the first part of this paper the study of geome-try and kinematics of the elements of frontal - sinusoidal transmissions with balls is presented, determining in the way the transmission ratios. In the second part of the paper the virtual reality model and simulation made in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment is presented. A virtual environment simulator and the way it can be connected to other simulators (e.g. MATLAB/SIMULINK), is pre-sented.An advantage of this transmission, as compared to other mechanical transmissions, is given by the possibility to obtain more transmission ratios. In case when all disks of simple frontal-sinusoidal transmission are moving ele-ments one differential transmission is obtained.Another advantage is given by the possibility of obtaining simply complex transmissions by series and par-allel arrangement of frontal transmission units.


Presentation
This is a case of a 31 year old gentleman who suffered an attack of status cataplecticus following abrupt withdrawal of clomipramine.
Diagnosis
Clomipramine was temporarily discontinued in order to confirm a suspected diagnosis of narcolepsy using Multiple Sleep Latency Testing. This precipitated an episode of status cataplecticus which resolved with re-introduction of therapy. A diagnosis of narcolepsy was later confirmed with undetectable levels of hypocretin/orexin in the CSF.
Treatment
Re-introduction of clomipramine led to resolution of status cataplecticus. The patient now remains stable with regards to his cataplexy on clomipramine 30mg.
Discussion
There have been a total of 4 case reports of status cataplecticus following withdrawal of antidepressant therapy. In all cases, reintroduction of anti-cataplectic therapy led to resolution of attacks. The abrupt discontinuation of an SSRI is believed to precipitate cataplexy attacks due to reduction in noradrenergic tone.


Based on the Wireless Transmission Unit that is an application of a ARM7 processor called SEP3203. Analyze the frame of the hardware and the flow of software in the application. Account for the frame of BSP. Realize the startup code based on SEP3203. The startup code will be executed to prepare for main function. Analyze the difficulty in the startup code. The method to write the startup code is described specially.


OBJECTIVE
To observe The effect of electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation of "Zusanli" (ST 36) and "Taichong" (LR 3) on intestinal motor and neurotensin (NT) levels in the plasma, hypothalamus, and gastro-antrum tissues in functional dyspepsia (FD) rats so as to reveal its mechanisms underlying improvement of FD.

METHODS
Forty-eight SD rats were randomly divided into control, model and EA groups, with 16 rats in each group. The FD model was established by clamping the rats' tails and alternate day's feeding according to the related references. EA (2 Hz/100 Hz, 2 mA) was applied to unilateral ST 36 and LR 3 for 30 min, once daily for 14 days. Rats of the control group were only restricted. The gastric emptying rate and propulsive rate of the small intestine were detected. The content of NT in the plasma was assayed using ELISA, and the immunoactivity levels of NT in the hypothalamus, gastric antrum mucous membrane and ileum tissues were detected using immunohistochemistry.

RESULTS
Compared with the control group, the gastric emptying rate and propulsive rate of the small intestine were considerably lowered in the model group (P < 0.01), and the content and immunoactivity levels of NT in the plasma, hypothalamus, mucous membrane of the gastric antrum and ileum tissues were significantly increased (P < 0.05). After EA intervention, the decreased gastric emptying rate and intestinal propulsive rate, as well as the increased NT content and immunoactivity levels of plasma, hypothalamus, gastric antrum and ileum were reversed (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
EA intervention can obviously promote gastrointestinal motor in FD rats, which may be related to its function in down-regulating NT levels in the plasma, hypothalamus, gastric antrum and ileum. It suggests an involvement of NT in the brain-gut axis in EA-induced improvement of FD.


Charge state distribution of 0.8MeV/u uranium ions after transmission through a thin carbon foil has been studied. It is observed that the charge state distribution is equilibrated after the uranium ions have passed through a 15 μg/cm2 carbon foil. The equilibrated average charge state is 33.72 and the charge equilibration time of uranium ions in carbon foil is less than 5.4fs.


In the modern economic era, success business sector should give attention to how global policies, as well as regional policies, certainly affects the intensity and direction of business policies. Customer intention was to play the priority of the company to create and gain the market. Where the customer intention will be reflecting the customer's behaviour and view against the product or the business unit. This study was to determine the customer intention to quantify the feasibility of BUMD during the modern Economic Era. This study was limited to regency-owned BUMD and the BUMD was established more than 15 years. This study was conducted on customers from Bank BPR Sarimadu. The Slovin formula technique was chosen in this study where the number of samples in this study is as many as 100 people from 300 customers, with an error rate of 10%. the result was defined that the Customer Intention of BUMD is explained by Professionalism (X1), Marketing Quality (X2), and Service Quality (X3) variables by 69.5%, while 34.5% is explained by other variables not examined in this study. This study also mentions that its major contribution to customer intention was influenced by these factors. Based on this study, professionalism, marketing quality along with service quality is the main parameters for increasing the interest of the customer to become BUMD loyal members. Thus, professionalism becoming a top priority for enhancing the BUMD image or company image. By improving the quality of management, marketing quality, and service quality of the company, BUMD customers will feel more confident when using chosen of BUMDs products and services.

Keywords: BUMD; Customer Intention; Service Quality, Professionalism, Marketing Quality.


The Acousto Ultrasonics (AU) technique is a Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) technique, widely used for thin, plate-like composite structures. The application of this technique to thick structures, such as the spar cap of rotor blades of wind turbines is considered promising. A problem for the spar caps is fatigue damage. This paper therefore focusses on the fatigue damage detection in a thick composite beam. Two laboratory specimens with a thickness of 56 mm, width of 60 mm and length of 900 mm are equipped with piezo-electric transducers on the top and bottom surface. Short ultrasonic burst waves with varying actuation frequencies are sent by one transducer and measured with the other transducers. Preliminary tests are executed to assess the damage detection capability. The damage is initially simulated by drilling a hole at one location with a stepwise increasing depth of 10 to 56 mm. The number of actuator-sensor paths crossing the simulated damage increases for increasing hole depth. Various Damage Indicator (DI) algorithms and the Reconstruction Algorithm for Probabilistic Inspection of Damage (RAPID) are used for damage assessment and visualisation. A correlation between the DI values and the severity and location of the damage is found. This result is a positive indication for the applicability of AU for damage detection in thick composite structures. A second identical beam is currently placed in a three-point bending fatigue setup.


We collected fMRI data and confidence ratings as participants performed a recognition memory task that intermixed recently studied words and new (non-studied) words. We first replicated a typical finding from such studies; namely, increasing activity in medial temporal lobe structures with increasing confidence in the old/new decision. Because there are greater proportions of old items at higher confidence levels, such activity could be related to the confidence ratings or to whether items are old or new. When activity associated with old and new items was analyzed separately, we found that activity in the hippocampus bilaterally, as well as in anterior parahippocampal gyrus, was associated with the actual old/new status of the items rather than to which items participants believed to be old. Accordingly, activity in the medial temporal lobe can be modulated by the old/new status of stimuli and does not always track the behavioral response.


The studies on Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) have grown rapidly during the last decade. CE with its three main dimensions- Risk Taking, Proactiveness, and Innovativeness- according to the past literature contributes a lot to the qualitative and quantitative performance of the SMEs in developed nations. In this study, our aim is to explore the nature of the CE- performance relationships in an emerging market, Turkey. Data collected from manufacturing and exporting SMEs in OSTIM which is one of the greatest industrial regions of Turkey, have been examined via hierarchical regression analyzes. Findings are interpreted and suggestions for entrepreneurs, managers, and researchers are provided.


Aiming at aggregating numerous distributed resources to provide immense computing power, Grid computing has emerged as a promising paradigm to run complex composite applications such as workflows. However, the inherent uncertainties of grid systems as well as the structural complexity of workflow applications make it extremely challenging to schedule workflows in an efficient way, regardless of whether the objective is to minimize execution time or meet specific user and/or system Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. For both these cases, this thesis considers scheduling problems motivated by grid uncertainties and advances the state-of-the-art by developing new techniques to address these problems.First, based on existing scheduling heuristics, a Monte-Carlo approach is developed to minimize the average makespan (i.e., the overall execution time) in the presence of task estimates exhibiting limited uncertainty in the form of (controlled) random behaviour. Next, a scenario where performance prediction is difficult to obtain and resource availability may vary over time, is considered. A low-cost efficient just-in-time heuristic is proposed to cope with grid uncertainties.After addressing these performance-driven scheduling problems, a QoS-driven problem, which considers not only the aforementioned uncertainties but also the uncertainty caused by queue-based scheduling, is examined. In order to tackle all these uncertainties, an integrated scheduling model consisting of three supportive techniques is developed. Extensive evaluation using simulation shows that the proposed techniques can achieve substantial improvements towards the ultimate goal of providing a good solution for QoS-driven workflow scheduling on the Grid.


At The Royal Society Discussion Meeting, Origins of HIV and the AIDS epidemic, which this issue records, Edward Hooper added two new 'smoking guns' to the accusations published previously in The river. These were proposed as conclusive evidence for the hypothesis that simian immunodeficiency virus-contaminated CHAT polio vaccine caused the HIV-1 group M epidemic. We have investigated the facts in relation to these 'smoking guns'.


Conventional crossbreeding has permitted the development and release of modern upland lines in Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia. Since 1996, no new conventional "Japonica" Oryza sativa crosses were made. Though, as we have advanced segregating lines in the pipeline, we continue their evaluation and multiplication in Colombia for future shipping to LAC NARS. The CIAT rice project now concentrate on broadening the genetic base of upland rice. Interspecific crosses between Oryza sativa and the African cultivated Oryza Glaberrima as well as with wild relative species is one of the new breeding strategies used to achieve the objective.


Management systems are responsible for monitoring, interpreting, and controlling network operations. Management platform workstations query device data, or obtain event modifications through management protocols. The management platform supports tools to display the data graphically, interpret it, and control operations. It is argued that the main challenge of management standardization is to develop conventions to support integrated management of heterogeneous networks. Platform-centered management requires a few standards. First, access by platforms to multivendor devices must be unified through a standard management protocol. Second, the structure of the agent's management databases, manipulated by the protocol, must be standardized. Together, these standards permit a platform to access and manipulate managed information at multivendor device agents. The OSI and Internet management models developed to standardize both areas are discussed.<<ETX>>


China's engagement with Indonesia from 1955 to 1959 was neither ideologically oriented nor realpolitik, but somewhere in between. It happened not only because of the changing domestic political situations or completely subject to the shifting international environment, but was also closely associated with intrinsic social and historical issues that transcended geographical, ideological and ethnic boundaries within and across the two nation-states. To some extent, this effective engagement was not a result of Indonesia's leaning towards the left, but a reason for it—not in the sense of direct political intervention, but through the pursuit of common identity and interest, which significantly shaped the making of Indonesia's Guided Democracy.


Changes in both vegetation and population and distribution of Phytophthora cinnamomi were monitored periodically between 1970 and 2000 on defined, infested quadrats and on similar pathogen-free quadrats on 13 sites representing major types of open eucalypt forest, woodland and heathland. The susceptible eucalypts in the overstorey of infested sites showed severe dieback, loss of crown or deaths. All trees died on some sites, trees at other sites presented dead leaders with epicormic growth on lower branches. Dieback of the heathy understorey, followed by death, occurred in 50–75% of the species, including the dominant Xanthorrhoea australis, thereby changing the community structure and the species composition. Species richness in infested quadrats declined, and percentage cover and percentage contribution to the community by susceptible species were almost eliminated. The ground remained bare on steep slopes, but on other sites the susceptible flora was replaced by fieId-resistant species of sedges and rushes, and by partly resistant teatrees (Leptospermum spp.) that formed a dense cover. The pathogen was isolated from 100% of the root samples from infested quadrats from 1970 to 1984, but isolation frequency then gradually declined. In 2000, P. cinnamomi was rare on six sites and not isolated from four. Regeneration of 30–40 susceptible species, previously eliminated from the quadrats, was recorded from infested quadrats and two thirds of these were growing on more than one quadrat. Substantial regeneration of the previously dominant but highly susceptible X. australis occurred at four sites. Crown recovery of the trees was not observed. It is not yet clear whether the regeneration of the understorey is stable, or whether successive cycles of disease and recovery will occur.


In associative neural networks with nonmonotonic activation functions which store hierarchically correlated patterns, bifurcations of attractors take place depending on the parameter of nonmonotonicity. With hierarchically correlated storage patterns, attractors are the stored patterns when the nonmonotonicity is large, and new emergent patterns at around the centers of clusters when the nonmonotonicity is small. The phenomenon itself was shown by the authors (2005) by simulations and applied to memory systems for humanoid robots, which store feature vectors of motion patterns and maintain specific and emergent conceptual representations of motions of humanoid robots. In this paper, we theoretically describe the hierarchical bifurcations of attractors in nonmonotonic associative memory models and discuss the correspondences between the theory and simulation results


In order to document the localized prevalence of early atherosclerosis in the major coronary arteries, a study using 50 coronary arteriographies was made from Feb. 1984 to Sep. 1985 in Shinshu University Hospital. Early atherosclerotic stenosis had a spatial distribution with strong incidence on the LAD bifurcations which contained the first diagonal branch, RCA which contained RV branches and LCX which contained the OM branch. Upstream of the bifurcations, the stenotic changes were observed to be concentric with the vessel axes. Downstream of the flowdivider, the lesions were gathered proximally and quickly disappeared distally. Lesions tended to occur eccentrically at the lateral walls of the entrance of the smaller branch. The proximal portions of both the RCA and LCA were almost free of disease. We also tried to investigate the relationship between the bifurcation angle branching off the parent vessels and early sclerotic lesions. We found that the angle between the branches and the plane in contact with the surface of the heart is especially important.