The parasitic infections associated with febrile conditions were studied in 4800 patients attending routine medical examination in different health institutions in Owerri, Nigeria between 2001 and 2004 (3 years). Stool smears, urine deposits and blood smears were used to detect gastrointestinal, urinary tract and blood parasites respectively. Gastrointestinal parasites such as Ascaris lumbricoides, Hookworm, Trichuris trichuria, Entamoeba histolytica, Taenia spp, Giardia intestinalis, Enterobius vermicularis and Balantidium coli were found in 1065(22.18%) of the study population. Urinary tract parasites, which included Trichomonas. vaginalis and Schistosoma haematobium , were found in 330(6.87%) of the study population and hemoparasites ( P. falciparum and Onchocerca spp .) in 1260(26.25%). Mixed infections of gastrointestinal and hemoparasites, gastrointestinal and urinary tract parasites, hemoparasites and urinary tract parasites were recorded in 390(8.12%), 15(0.31%) and 165(3.43%) of the study population respectively. More male patients had their febrile conditions associated with gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) parasites than female for hookworm 255(5.31%), T. trichuria 240(5.00%), Giardia intestinalis 60(1.25%) and B. coli 105(2.18%), while female patients had more febrile condition associated with urinary tract parasites than males for T. virginals 345(7.18%). 21 years and above had the highest infection rate of 238(75.56%) for hemoparasites and lowest for GIT parasites 75(24.00%). 360(28.23%) and 240(18.82%) were infected with GIT and hemoparasites respectively in 6 – 12 years febrile patients tested. Infant (0 - 5yrs) had the lowest infection rates. There is need for proper diagnoses of the causes febrile conditions for early and proper treatment in the study area. International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences Vol. 2(1) 2006: 34-39


Crystalline fluorapatite-coated hydroxyapatite (FA-HA) is studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XD), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), and EDX analysis mapping (EDXM). Fluoridated HA (fluorapatite) was prepared by reacting resorbable synthetic HA (OsteoGen, Impladent, Ltd, Holliswood, NY) with 4.3% sodium fluoride (NaF) for 2 minutes. After washing and drying, the resultant powder was subjected to physical property analysis using the methods listed above. SEM showed little evidence of surface change. Changes, if any, consisted of a slightly more distinct crystalline clarity on the surface of the FA sample. XD patterns showed significant random noise dispersion of the untreated HA sample compared with the lack of noise patterns in the treated FA sample. Characteristic monetite peaks were noted in analysis of the nontreated HA control sample, whereas there was no evidence of monetite in XD analysis of the treated FA material. It was determined that the fluoridation reaction, as described, served as a purification procedure of the initial HA reagent to eliminate a more soluble monetite contaminant. Also, the reaction of fluoride ion with surface HA (whether it be from or a combination of dissolution-reapposition or isomorphic substitution) produces a more purified, crystalline FA sample that was characterized by a more characteristic and sharp XD pattern. EDX analysis of the FA sample revealed a fluoride peak at 0.70 KeV that was not seen in the nonfluoridated control. EDX mapping showed an evenly distributed needle-like crystalline-shaped particulate pattern over the entire surface of the FA sample, which was lacking in the HA control. From a variety of analytic methods (as described), it was concluded that reaction of synthetic resorbable HA with 4.3% NaF solution at neutral pH produces FA-coated HA.


The MS Amsterdam, UvA, I E 31 contains an anonymous mystical sermon on the verse 'Nupcie facte sunt in Chana Ghalilee' (Jo. 2,1). It is copied immediately after the complete text of Ruusbroec's treatise Een spieghel der eeuwigher salicheit and breaks off at the bottom of the last page of the MS. In addition, the last surviving pages of the text are severely damaged. Still, the text is worth publishing on account of its daring mystical content and its polemic hue. The introduction to the edition points to Ruusbroec's influence on the author and indicates some similarities with the treatise Vanden XII dogheden. The text's most striking stylistic devices are mentioned and illustrated. Some characteristics of the language allow us to situate the text in eastern Brabant.


Purpose
Patenting behaviour in the tourism sector has received little academic attention due to a wider belief that innovation in tourism commonly involves improving the services in ways that are hardly patentable. This paper aims to address this oversight by focusing on patent analysis as means to evaluate the innovation trends in tourism.

Design/methodology/approach
Building on an analysis of historical series of patents worldwide from 1996 to 2016, this paper explores the trends in the tourism sector by focusing on audio-visual technologies. The study used an evaluation of the 8,785 emerging patents, in terms of co-occurrences, applying hierarchical cluster analysis, factor analysis and multidimensional scaling.

Findings
The findings suggest that there is a gradually increasing interest in innovation in tourism, which is growing faster than most of the other sectors explored here such as transportation and pharmaceuticals. The outputs also reveal the inventive effort of tourism industry in new technologies for developing utility models for tourists.

Originality/value
The study contributes to tourism theory and practice by offering an overview of current/future applications of new technologies in tourism along with future trends, and mapping the main areas that these technologies might affect.


We analyze the quality of monitoring (QoM) of stochastic events by a periodic sensor which monitors a point of interest (PoI) for q time every p time. We show how the amount of information captured at a PoI is affected by the proportion q/p, the time interval p over which the proportion is achieved, the event type, and the stochastic event arrival dynamics and staying times. The periodic PoI sensor schedule happens in two broad contexts. In the case of static sensors, a sensor monitoring a PoI may be periodically turned off to conserve energy, thereby extending the lifetime of the monitoring until the sensor can be recharged or replaced. In the case of mobile sensors, a sensor may move between the PoIs in a repeating visit schedule. In this case, the PoIs may vary in importance, and the scheduling objective is to distribute the sensor's coverage time in proportion to the importance levels of the PoIs. Based on our QoM analysis, we optimize a class of periodic mobile coverage schedules that can achieve such proportional sharing while maximizing the QoM of the total system.


ABSTRACT The YC16CS (genotype 2.1) strain of classical swine fever virus, isolated from infected pigs in Yeoncheon province, Republic of Korea, near the demilitarized zone, has a high identity with the PC11WB strain of the virus. This is significant in that it is the first case of transmission from wild boars to breed pigs revealed by an epidemiological investigation.


Some forms of paraphrenia involve hallucinations of a mystical nature, whereby an inner voice would issue irresistible commands, which the patient would invariably execute. In certain given situations, such commands may be linked to real criminal acts including murder of specifically depicted individuals. Literature of Behavioral Sciences registers a number of such cases, which are all interesting to study from a scientific viewpoint.


Author(s): Klann, Jane Elizabeth | Advisor(s): Chang, John T | Abstract: Maintenance of the regulatory T (Treg) cell pool is essential for peripheral tolerance and prevention of autoimmunity. Integrins, heterodimeric transmembrane proteins consisting of and subunits that mediate cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions, play an important role in facilitating Treg cell contact-mediated suppression. Here we show that integrin activation plays an essential, previously unappreciated role in maintaining the identity and function of the Treg cell pool. Talin, a cytoskeletal protein essential in mediating integrin activation, has been previously shown to be involved in the regulation of T cell proliferation and function. T cell-specific deletion of talin in Tln1fl/flCd4Cre mice resulted in spontaneous lymphocyte activation, primarily due to numerical and functional deficiencies of Treg cells in the periphery. Peripheral talin-deficient Treg cells were unable to maintain high expression of IL-2Rα, resulting in impaired IL-2 signaling and ultimately leading to increased apoptosis through downregulation of pro-survival proteins Bcl-2 and Mcl-1. Treg cell-specific loss of talin, or expression of talin(L325R), a mutant that selectively abrogates integrin activation, resulted in dysregulation of Treg cell identity and lethal systemic autoimmunity. This dysfunction could be attributed, in part, to a failure of Treg cells to maintain high expression of important Treg cell suppressive molecules and global dysregulation of the Treg cell transcriptome. Activation of 41 or L2 integrins led to increased expression of IL-2R and boosted the size of the Treg cell population, respectively, suggesting that modulating integrin activation on Treg cells may be a useful therapeutic strategy for autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. Taken together, these results reveal a critical role for integrin-mediated signals in controlling peripheral tolerance by virtue of maintaining Treg cell identity and function.


In this paper, we describe an interface agent, two different route planning agents and a pilot study which examined whether these agents could support a team planning task. The MokSAF interface agent links an Artificial Intelligence (AI) route-planning agent to a Geographic Information System (GIS). The user specifies a start and an end point and the route-planning agent finds a minimum cost path between the points. The user is allowed to define additional "intangible" constraints (not due to terrain characteristics) corresponding to geographic regions, which can be used to steer the agent's behavior in a desired direction. A second agent (the naive route planning agent, or Naive RPA) has access to the same knowledge of the terrain and cost functions available to the Autonomous RPA, but uses this knowledge to critique paths specified by the user. We hypothesize that as the complexity of intangible aspects of a planning problem increase, the Naive RPA will improve in relative performance. The reported study found advantages across the board for the Autonomous RPA in a team-planning task.


This paper is devoted to analysis of frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar system for safety driving application, namely, blind spot detection (BSD) system. We introduce FMCW radar with 24 ㎓ operating frequency as the best solution for BSD system. This paper has two main goals. The first goal is to define why the 24 ㎓ FMCW radar system is the most suitable for the BSD. The second goal is to draw up the FMCW radar system signal detection and processing algorithm design steps for BSD system.


Although health information is important to the prevention of much illness, the health information needs of Puerto Rican women remain unaddressed, according to the results of this phenomenological study. Through audiotaped interviews, 21women evaluated various sources of health information. Analysis of the data revealed which health information sources they considered trustworthy and nontrustworthy. Health care providers were found to be one of the least helpful sources, as personal interactions were often hurried and inattentive to women's needs. Yet, the women were able to present a vivid portrait of a culturally sensitive community environment conducive to the presentation of health information. Implications include the importance of including cultural values in any health information setting, as well as the importance of building cultural bridges between health educators and Puerto Rican women. More research is needed to examine community efforts to enhance health information sources for this population of women.


[1] The present study examines the potential of using the near-surface chlorophyll a concentration ([Chla]surf), as it can be derived from ocean color observation, to infer the column-integrated phytoplankton biomass, its vertical distribution, and ultimately the community composition. Within this context, a large High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) pigment database was analyzed. It includes 2419 vertical pigment profiles, sampled in case 1 waters with various trophic states (0.03–6 mg Chla m � 3 ). The relationships between [Chla]surf and the chlorophyll a vertical distribution, as previously derived by Morel and Berthon (1989), are fully confirmed. This agreement makes it possible to go further and to examine if similar relationships between [Chla]surf and the phytoplankton assemblage composition along the vertical can be derived. Thanks to the detailed pigment composition, and use of specific pigment biomarkers, the contribution to the local chlorophyll a concentration of three phytoplankton groups can be assessed. With some cautions, these groups coincide with three size classes, i.e., microplankton, nanoplankton and picoplankton. Corroborating previous regional findings (e.g., large species dominate in eutrophic environments, whereas tiny phytoplankton prevail in oligotrophic zones), the present results lead to an empirical parameterization applicable to most oceanic waters. The predictive skill of this parameterization is satisfactorily tested on a separate data set. With such a tool, the vertical chlorophyll a profiles of each group can be inferred solely from the knowledge of [Chla]surf. By combining this tool with satellite ocean color data, it becomes possible to quantify on a global scale the phytoplankton biomass associated with each of the three algal assemblages.


We investigate, in this paper, the performance of service disciplines in the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) system. The GPRS system is a new additional GSM service, which provide packet switched data services over the GSM network and a packet access to data networks. Using either the best effort service or guaranteed performance service, the service discipline affects considerably the MAC layer performance. The World Wide Web (WWW) service is expected to be one of the important traffic applications that will employ the GPRS network. To provide the best possible performance for best-effort WWW traffic in packet switching wireless networks, several service disciplines are proposed. We describe their mechanisms, similarities and differences. These policies performance is studied in terms of throughput, delay and loss rate by simulating the WWW traffic application in the uplink direction in the GPRS system.


Background: The incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 remains uncertain, which has important implications for estimating transmission potential, forecasting epidemic trends, and decision-making in prevention and control. Purpose: To estimate the central tendency and dispersion for incubation period of COVID-19 and, in turn, assess the effect of a certain length of quarantine for close contacts in active monitoring. Data Sources: PubMed, Embase, medRxiv, bioRxiv, and arXiv, searched up to April 26, 2020 Study Selection: COVID-19 studies that described either individual-level incubation period data or summarized statistics for central tendency and dispersion measures of incubation period were recruited. Data Extraction: From each recruited study, either individual-level incubation period data or summarized statistics for central tendency and dispersion measures were extracted, as well as population characteristics including sample size, average age, and male proportion. Data Synthesis: Fifty-six studies encompassing 4 095 cases were included in this meta-analysis. The estimated median incubation period for general transmissions was 5.8 days [95% confidence interval (95%CI), 5.3 to 6.2 d]. Median and dispersion were higher for SARS-CoV-2 incubation compared to other viral respiratory infections. Furthermore, about 20 in 10 000 contacts in active monitoring would develop symptoms after 14 days, or below 1 in 10 000 for young-age infections or asymptomatic transmissions. Limitation: Small sample sizes for subgroups; some data were possibly used repeatedly in different studies; limited studies for outside mainland China; non-negligible intra-study heterogeneity. Conclusion: The long, dispersive incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 contributes to the global spread of COVID-19. Yet, a 14-day quarantine period is sufficient to trace and identify symptomatic infections, which while could be justified according to a better understanding of the crucial parameters.


According to a characteristic analysis of traffic accidents of industrial vehicles (RTSA 2007), the occurrence rate and lethality per 10,000 vehicles is 6.7 times higher and 5.3 times higher than that of non-industrial vehicles respectively. For the recent 10 years, in contrast to the 1.5% decrease of the annual rate of entire traffic accidents, the accident rate of industrial vehicles have been increasing 2.0% on the annual average. For the recent 10 years, the accidents of a freight truck and bus have been steadily falling off. But, in the case of a taxi, it has constantly been rising 5.6%. In these situations, the countermeasures to decrease the accident rate are suggested by grasping the inclination of taxi drivers through Q analysis which is character and psychology analysis method.


A 23-year-old woman had oligomenorrhea, underdevelopment of the breasts, moderate hirsutism and increased serum testosterone values associated with a benign noncystic granulosa cell tumour of the left ovary. She was frail, irritable and apathetic. Since the age of 7 she had had periodic abdominal pain with nausea, vomiting and dizziness; irritability and occipital headache appeared when she was older. Her symptoms resolved and the masculinization did not progress after the tumour was removed. Only six similar well documented cases have been reported.


This paper presents a comparison of the bulk structure, cleavage energies, and local densities of states of solid NaAlH4 calculated using several different density functional theory methodologies. Good agreement is obtained for the bulk crystal structure. Larger differences become apparent for the calculated surface energies and local densities of states. The (001) NaAlH4 surface is clearly identified as the most stable surface, followed by the (112) and (101) surfaces, with the (100) surface being the least stable. We present an analysis of the local density of states of atoms in the exposed NaAlH4 surface.


Today, automation of various work using robots is progressing in the industrial field . For robotized automation, we must teach motion to industrial robots. However, small and medium-sized enterprises which make various products in relatively small scale cannot introduce such robots because teaching takes long time. In this research, in order to solve this problem, we have proposed and developed a new motion teaching method which can be done easily and fast. Motion teaching takes long time because of robot installation error and absolute position error. Therefore, robot motion teacher needs long time to do remote teaching. Thus, we propose a new motion teaching method that can ignore influence of these errors. By marking work places and capturing work targets using RGB-D camera attached to robot's end-effector, we generate motion paths in the robot coordinate system and robot can ignore influence of those errors. In order to verify the feasibility of the proposed method, we constructed a recognition algorithm for work subjects, work places and working environments using RGB-D camera. After that, the time required for motion teaching was compared between the proposed method and remote teaching through actual machine experiments. From the results, we suggest that proposed motion teaching method can perform in about half the time of remote teaching.


The fractal distribution is the best statistical model for the size-frequency distributions that result from some lithic reduction processes. Fractals are a large class of complex, self-similar sets that can be described using power-law relations. Fractal statistical distributions are characterized by an exponent, D, called the fractal dimension. I show how to determine whether the size-frequency distribution of a sample of debitage is fractal by plotting the power-law relation on a log-log graph. I also show how to estimate the fractal dimension for any particular distribution. Using debitage size data from experimental replications of lithic tools, I demonstrate a fundamental relationship between the fractal dimension and stage of reduction. I also present archaeological case studies that illustrate the simplicity and utility of the method.


Offloading computation from a CPU to a hardware accelerator is becoming a more common solution for improving performance because traditional gains enabled by Moore's law and Dennard scaling have slowed. GPUs are often used as hardware accelerators, but field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are gaining traction. FPGAs are beneficial because they allow hardware specific to a particular application to be created. However, they are notoriously difficult to program. To this end, two of the main FPGA manufacturers, Intel and Xilinx, have created tools and frameworks that enable the use of higher level languages to design FPGA hardware. Although Xilinx kernels can be designed by using C/C++, both Intel and Xilinx support the use of OpenCL C to architect FPGA hardware. However, not much is known about the portability and performance between these two device families other than the fact that it is theoretically possible to synthesize a kernel meant for Intel to Xilinx and vice versa. In this work, we evaluate the portability and performance of Intel and Xilinx kernels. We use OpenCL C implementations of a subset of the Rodinia benchmarking suite that were designed for an Intel FPGA and make the necessary modifications to create synthesizable OpenCL C kernels for a Xilinx FPGA. We find that the difficulty of porting certain kernel optimizations varies, depending on the construct. Once the minimum amount of modifications is made to create synthesizable hardware for the Xilinx platform, more nontrivial work is needed to improve performance. However, we find that constructs that are known to be performant for an FPGA should improve performance regardless of the platform; the difficulty comes in deciding how to invoke certain kernel optimizations while also abiding by the constraints enforced by a given platform's hardware compiler.


It has been realized for some time that simple electron-transfer processes play an important part in the mechanism of many oxidation-reduction reactions in solution. An attempt has been made to give a quantum-mechanical interpretation of these processes on the basis of the earlier theories of electron transfer in the gaseous state (Landau 1932; Bates & Massey 1943). The present treatment for solutions takes into account the role of the solvent, with particular reference to the operation of the Franck—Condon principle and it also leads to some definite picture of the transition state for the electron transfer process. A number of examples are discussed, including electron transfer between like ions of different valency and also reactions involving complex ions, e.g. metal porphyrins, the reactions of which are of importance in certain biochemical processes. It appears that the application of certain theoretical principles leads to a satisfactory understanding of electron-transfer processes in solution from a qualitative and, in some cases, also from a semi-quantitative point of view.


Summary: Among a large number of strains of aerobic sporing bacilli only Bacillus cereus, B. mycoides and, to a lesser extent, B. anthracis were able to produce turbidity and formation of a curd in saline extract of egg-yolk. None of the other species tested, namely, B. alvei, B. alcalophilus, B. brevis, B. carotarum, B. circulans, B. coagulans, B. fusiformis, B. licheniformis, B. macerans, B. megatherium, B. pumilus, B. polymyxa, B. orpheus, B. repens and B. subtilis caused any opalescence in the yolk medium. The yolk reaction was due to the action of phospholipinase produced by the organisms. As in the case of Cl. welchii α-toxin, the yolk curd-forming activity of B. cereus and B. mycoides also was associated with haemolytic activity. The substances responsible for these activities appear to be similar, and may be identical. The yolk reaction has proved useful for the rapid identification of B. cereus, as it is more specific than any of the other distinguishing tests hitherto employed. The three positive organisms, B. cereus, B. mycoides and B. anthracis, have been considered by previous workers on the grounds of morphology and antigenic structure to be closely related.


Research on shared medical decision-making suggested that both the potency of a treatment and the probability of it being successful influence individual treatment preferences. Patients also need to consider the negative attributes of treatments, such as the occurrence of adverse effects or a slow start to the therapeutic effects. It remains unclear how these attributes influence individual treatment preferences. We investigated how the analgesic effect, the adverse effect, and the time-course effect influenced the preference of analgesic treatments. Forty-five healthy volunteers participated in three hypothetical analgesic decision-making tasks. They were instructed to imagine that they were experiencing pain and choose between two hypothetical analgesic treatments: the more potent radical treatment and the less potent conservative treatment. The potency of a treatment was countered by the following attributes: the probability of working successfully, the probability of inducing an adverse effect, and the time required for the treatment to reach its maximal effect. We found that (a) when the overall probability that a treatment would induce an adverse effect decreased, the participants changed their preference from a conservative treatment to a radical treatment; (b) when the time-course for a treatment to reach its maximal effect was shortened, the participants changed their preference from a conservative treatment to a radical treatment, and (c) individual differences in prior clinical pain and the degree of imagined pain relief were associated with preferences. The findings showed that the adverse effects and the time course of treatments guide the analgesic treatment preferences, highlighting the importance of sharing information about negative attributes of treatments in pain management. The findings imply that patients may over-emphasize the occurrence of adverse effect or a slow time-course of treatment effect. In terms of shared medical decision-making, clinicians should clarify these negative attributes related to treatment to patients.


This paper presents the Spread and Iterative Search (S&IS) motion estimation algorithm, which uses a random spread evaluation together with a central iterative evaluation to avoid local minima falls and to increase the image quality for high definition videos. Considering Full HD videos, S&IS reached an average PSNR gain of 1.41dB when compared to Diamond Search (DS), with an increase of about four times in the number of evaluated blocks. When compared to Full Search (FS), the S&IS achieved an average PSNR loss of 1.56 dB, evaluating 73 times less blocks than FS. An efficient architecture for the S&IS algorithm is also presented in this paper. The architecture was designed targeting in real time processing (30 frames per seconds) for QFHD videos (3840×2160 pixels). The architecture was described in VHDL and synthesized for and Altera Stratix 4 FPGA and for ST90nm standard cells technology. Booth syntheses show that the architecture is able to process QFHD frames in real time. The standard cells version is able to reach also a good trade-off among area, memory and power consumption, processing QFHD videos with 62.2 mW.


The use of heparin has a potential risk of developing heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, which, although infrequent, is of great importance due to high morbidity and mortality that requires rapid diagnosis and timely treatment. A clinical case of a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy, with extracorporeal support is described, which is anticoagulated with heparin by protocol, presenting an adverse effect little reported in the literature such as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia requiring Fondaparinux with failure to start bivalirudin.


Extended reality is one of the leading cutting-edge technologies, which has not yet fully set foot into the field of ophthalmology. The use of extended reality technology especially in ophthalmic education and counseling will revolutionize the face of teaching and counseling on a whole new level. We have used this novel technology and have created a holographic museum of various anatomical structures such as the eyeball, cerebral venous system, cerebral arterial system, cranial nerves, and various parts of the brain in fine detail. These four-dimensional (4D) ophthalmic holograms created by us (patent pending) are cost-effectively constructed with TrueColor confocal images to serve as a new-age immersive 4D pedagogical and counseling tool for gameful learning and counseling, respectively. According to our knowledge, this concept has not been reported in the literature before.


The strong coupling between electronic transport in a single-level quantum dot and a capacitively coupled nano-mechanical oscillator may lead to a transition towards a mechanically-bistable and blocked-current state. Its observation is at reach in carbon-nanotube state-of-art experiments. In a recent publication [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 206802 (2015)] we have shown that this transition is characterized by pronounced signatures on the oscillator mechanical properties: the susceptibility, the displacement fluctuation spectrum and the ring-down time. These properties are extracted from transport measurements, however the relation between the mechanical quantities and the electronic signal is not always straightforward. Moreover the dependence of the same quantities on temperature, bias or gate voltage, and external dissipation has not been studied. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap and provide a detailed description of the transition. Specifically we find: (i) The relation between the current-noise and the displacement spectrum. (ii) The peculiar behavior of the gate-voltage dependence of these spectra at the transition. (iii) The robustness of the transition towards the effect of external fluctuations and dissipation.


Postoperative nerve palsy associated with revision total hip arthroplasty is a serious neurologic complication, occurring in up to 50% of cases. While a variety of intraoperative monitoring techniques have been used to reduce the prevalence of this complication, they are not sensitive or accurate enough to prevent surgical damage to the sciatic nerve. A new, modified intraoperative montage utilizing spontaneously elicited electromyography (sEMG) and near-nerve action potentials (NAPs) was evaluated in a retrospective review of thirty-five consecutive revision total hip arthroplasties.

SEMGs were recorded from sterile needle electrodes placed in the tibialis anterior, extensor hallucis longus, and gastrocnemius muscles of the involved extremity. NAPs were obtained from needle electrodes placed near the peroneal nerve (knee) and tibial nerve (ankle). Audible recordings were monitored, and the surgeon was informed of the location and stimulus of physiologically important occurrences.

Four incidents of sEMG firing and one episode of NAP occurred during surgical exposure. The surgical approach was redirected, and all firings subsided spontaneously. Seven episodes of sEMG firing occurred during retraction. Two resolved spontaneously, and five resolved with repositioning of the retractor. Two episodes of sEMG firing occurred during lengthening; both resolved with reduced lengthening. Five episodes of sEMG firing occurred during wound closure. All five resolved with loosening of tissue tension.

Fourteen instances of potentially irreversible nerve damage were recorded during this study. With appropriate warning from this nerve-monitoring protocol, action was taken such that no neurologic deficit occurred in any of the thirty-five patients who were monitored. The next twenty-eight sequential patients were reviewed prospectively to increase the sample size and to evaluate the learning curve.

The number of orthopaedic surgical procedures in which the sciatic nerve is manipulated is increasing rapidly. The nerve is at risk not only during revision total hip replacement but also during many operations done …


The assessment of iron accumulation in the body is important for the diagnosis of iron overload syndrome or planning and monitoring of the chelation therapy. Excessive iron accumulation in the organs leads to their toxic damage and dysfunction. Until recently iron estimation was performed either directly by liver iron concentration and/or indirectly by measuring of serum ferritin level. However, noninvasive iron assessment by Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is more accurate method unlike liver biopsy or serum ferritin level test. In this article, we demonstrate the outlines of non-invasive diagnostics of iron accumulation by MRI and its specifications.


Youth aging out of foster care are assumed to embody a disempowered group, for whom civic engagement opportunities are rare. Utilizing a targeted initiative, this study explores individual- and community-level outcomes derived from foster youth civic engagement. Data were collected via: (a) interview and survey research with foster youth advisory board leaders; (b) interview and survey research with civic youth workers; and, (c) non-participant observation of five foster youth advisory board meetings. Directed content analysis revealed three emergent themes, which transcended the data inductively (Opportunity through Access; Positive Conceptions of New Jersey's Department of Children and Families; and, Participatory Competence). These themes support and extend our current understanding of empowering outcomes for this population. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.


This paper reports that single-phase γ-Y2Si2O7 is prepared via a sufficient blending and cold-pressed sintering technique from Y2O3 powder and SiO2 nanopowder. It studies the dielectric properties of γ-Y2Si2O7 as a function of the temperature and frequency. The γ-Y2Si2O7 exhibits low dielectric loss and non-Debye relaxation behaviour from 25 to 1400 °C in the range of 7.3–18 GHz. The mechanism for polarization relaxation of the as-prepared γ-Y2Si2O7 differing from that of SiO2 is explained. Such particular dielectric properties could potentially make specific attraction for extensive practical applications.


Background: Development of the visual system begins prenatally and continues after birth. However, owing to how personal and subjective a person's sight is, children may not realize they have a vision problem. Visual impairment in early childhood can significantly impair development of visual, motor, and cognitive function and lead to adverse psychosocial consequences. This research aimed to study the epidemiological patterns of ocular morbidity in children aged less than five years old.Methods: The study is a retrospective patient record study carried out in three tertiary eye care hospitals in Khartoum State- Sudan. All children records for the year 2019 were reviewed, and the total number included was 10886 patients' files. The records were reviewed estimate the number of under five years of age children and the patterns of ocular morbidity. The data were summarized and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. The proportions were estimated, patterns of ocular morbidity were identified according to age groups and gender.Results: The proportion of under five years children was 5% of the total population and 45% of the total children below 16 years. The predominant age group affected with ocular morbidity is (3–5 years old with 53%). Eye infections affected (19%), allergic eye diseases (16.8%), orbital diseases (12.4%), refractive errors (10.8%), squint (9.3%), corneal diseases (6.6%), cataract (6%), glaucoma (2.3%), neurogenic eye (2%) and tumors (0.23%).There are some variations in morbidity according to age groups among the under five years of age children.Conclusions: The proportion of under five years children is high. The predominant ocular morbidity affecting children below five years of age is eye infections, followed by allergic eye diseases and refractive errors while other serious and blinding eye diseases mounted a considerable percentage. Although of small percentage but worth mentioning that malignant eye tumors were one of the patterns of ocular morbidities affecting children of under five years of age. Patterns of ocular morbidity showed some gender variations.


A recently developed method for analysing 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) efflux from platelets preloaded with a small amount of 14C-5-HT enables the assessment of the relative size of the granular and the cytoplasmatic pools of 5-HT within the platelets and of the rate of spontaneous efflux from these two compartments. This method, together with conventional assessment of the 5-HT uptake measures Km and Vmax, was applied in this study, comparing platelets from 14 patients with common migraine and 10 patients with classic migraine with platelets from 25 healthy controls. All patients were unmedicated and in an attack-free period. Neither the total patient group nor either of the two subgroups differed significantly from the control group on any measure of 5-HT uptake or efflux. However, two differences approached the conventional significance level: the relative size of the granular compartment (Compartment III) was larger for classic than for common migraine, and the efflux rate from Compartment III was shorter for classic migraine than for the healthy controls (P approximately 0.10 in both cases). Further studies are required to show whether these differences are real and, if so, whether they have any relevance for the pathogenesis of migraine attacks.


Success in the business world, involves taking some risks. The systems that change the world today are very risky, but the payback is worth that risk and more. One needs to know how to manage risk. This includes how to identify risk sources, quantify risk parameters, and develop plans to handle risk. Risks are inevitable in IT projects and systems. The high failure rate of modern large IT projects and systems, such as those involving ERP, CRM and SCM, is largely due to senior management and project management's failure to assess risks up front and to mitigate the causes of the greatest risks at the very start. An adequate analysis of potential risks can significantly increase the likelihood of success for a project and can justify money put aside for management reserves. Risk is the possibility of suffering loss. In IT, the loss may involve increased costs, longer completion times, reduced scope, reduced quality or reduced stakeholder satisfaction. Risk and opportunity are different sides of the same coin. Some IT projects advance the state of the art, and as such are more risky than those that do not. The opportunity for significant advancement cannot be done without significant risk. Risk is essential to progress, and failure is often a key part of learning. We must learn to balance the possible negative consequences of risk against the potential benefits of its associated opportunity. The aim of this dissertation is to study the area of risk management. In doing so, a model/tool will be developed and presented. The proposed model addresses the problems rise from managing Information Systems (IS). A Risk Tracking & Management tool will be developed, that will incorporate and materialize the model described helping to materialize various procedures of an organization and meet above goals. Challenges such as rapid alterations in system life cycle, is also addressed. The model will use inputs, processes and outputs that make risk management more efficiently applied and being a useful tool for senior management of an organization. Additionally the model will also base on installation off control measures, on a balance between the cost of controls and the need to reduce or eliminate possible threats.


The relevance of the issue examined is stipulated by the results of the conducted study of the term "tax administration" and analysis of the impact of changes in tax administration of value added tax (VAT). The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of changes in tax administration on VAT efficiency and collection rate. Within the context of digital economy, the state implements measures to digitize VAT tax control in order to reduce its own tax risks. The solution of this issue is the development of tax administration using digital technologies. A study has been conducted in order to assess impact of changes in the tax administration on VAT efficiency and collection rate.


Objective: The feasibility of applying DR card in the quality control of chest film of pneumoconiosis was discussed by using the image detail change of 1 degree star card. Methods: With different types of grid DR device for star card photography, to ensure that the grid bars are orthogonal to the direction of star card image quality is stable, conforms to the DR standard of pneumoconiosis image edge enhancement processing, analysis of the relationship between lung tissue image changes and changes with fuzzy star card. By 3 physicians blind reading way, compare the use of auxiliary judgment and direct x-ray star catu judgment in the accuracy evaluation of whether the use of edge enhancement function. Results: Fuzzy images of star card were consistent with lung tissues details as DR images were treated with edge enhancement. The fuzzy zore was closer to the start card center with more image edge enhancement and more image details sharpening. on the opposite, it was farther from the center with less with edge enhancement and less image sharpening. It's valuable for star card analysis to evaluate the accuracy of the application of image edge enhancement (P<0.001). Conclusion: To determine whether the use of X-ray star catu edge feasible enhancements can be used for health supervision and quality supervision and quality control of the institution itself of radiology.


Background and aims There is an increased trend in prevalence of pancreato-biliary disease in the elderly population. Consequently there is an increasing demand for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). The aims of this study were to compare ERCP outcomes in patients over 80 with those aged between 60 and 79 years and with the published literature. Methods and results Data were collected from a prospectively maintained database. All patients over the age of 60 years who underwent ERCP from May 2010 to May 2012 were identified. Two cohorts were formed, group A: 60–79 years (n = 66) and group B: > 80 years old (n = 49). Data on indications for ERCP, outcome, complications and repeat procedures were collected. One hundred and fifteen patients between the age of 60 and 92 years were identified. Group A had a total of 89 ERCPs and group B 69. Cannulation, overall procedure success, complication and mortality rates were comparable between both groups. Group B contained two cases of perforation with one associated mortality (1.4%) which did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions ERCP in octogenarians is safe and effective when compared to patients aged 60–79.


Sentence representation from vanilla BERT models does not work well on sentence similarity tasks. Sentence-BERT models specifically trained on STS or NLI datasets are shown to provide state-of-the-art performance. However, building these models for low-resource languages is not straightforward due to the lack of these specialized datasets. This work focuses on two low-resource Indian languages, Hindi and Marathi. We train sentence-BERT models for these languages using synthetic NLI and STS datasets prepared using machine translation. We show that the strategy of NLI pre-training followed by STSb fine-tuning is effective in generating high-performance sentence-similarity models for Hindi and Marathi. The vanilla BERT models trained using this simple strategy outperform the multilingual LaBSE trained using a complex training strategy. These models are evaluated on downstream text classification and similarity tasks. We evaluate these models on real text classification datasets to show embeddings obtained from synthetic data training are generalizable to real datasets as well and thus represent an effective training strategy for low-resource languages. We also provide a comparative analysis of sentence embeddings from fast text models, multilingual BERT models (mBERT, IndicBERT, xlm-RoBERTa, MuRIL), multilingual sentence embedding models (LASER, LaBSE), and monolingual BERT models based on L3Cube-MahaBERT and HindBERT. We release L3Cube-MahaSBERT and HindSBERT, the state-of-the-art sentence-BERT models for Marathi and Hindi respectively. Our work also serves as a guide to building low-resource sentence embedding models.


SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) variants that may evade antibody-mediated immunity are emerging. Evidence shows that vaccines with a stronger immune response are still effective against mutant strains. Here, we report a targeted type 1 conventional dendritic (cDC1) cell strategy for improved COVID-19 vaccine design. cDC1 cells specifically express X-C motif chemokine receptor 1 (Xcr1), the only receptor for chemokine Xcl1. We fused the S gene sequence with the Xcl1 gene to deliver the expressed S protein to cDC1 cells. Immunization with a plasmid encoding the S protein fused to Xcl1 showed stronger induction of antibody and antigen-specific T cell immune responses than immunization with the S plasmid alone in mice. The fusion gene-induced antibody also displayed more powerful SARS-CoV-2 wild-type virus and pseudovirus neutralizing activity. Xcl1 also increased long-lived antibody-secreting plasma cells in bone marrow. These preliminary results indicate that Xcl1 serves as a molecular adjuvant for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and that our Xcl1-S fusion DNA vaccine is a potential COVID-19 vaccine candidate for use in further translational studies.


1. This Framework has been developed by a multidisciplinary working group in the light
of evidence of improving outcomes for babies born before 27 completed weeks of
gestation, and evolving national and international changes in the approach to their
care. 2. Management of labour, birth and the immediate neonatal period should reflect
the wishes and values of the mother and her partner, informed and supported by
consultation and in partnership with obstetric and neonatal professionals. 3. Whenever possible, extreme preterm birth should be managed in a maternity facility
co-located with a designated neonatal intensive care unit. 4. Neonatal stabilisation may be considered for babies born from 22+0 weeks of
gestation following assessment of risk and multiprofessional discussion with parents.
It is not appropriate to attempt to resuscitate babies born before 22+0 weeks of
gestation.
5. Decision-making for babies born before 27 weeks of gestation should not be based
on gestational age alone, but on assessment of the baby's prognosis taking into
account multiple factors. Decisions should be made with input from obstetric and
neonatal teams in the relevant referral centre if transfer is being contemplated. 6. Risk assessment should be performed with the aim of stratifying the risk of a poor
outcome into three groups: extremely high risk, high risk and moderate risk. 7. For fetuses/babies at extremely high risk, palliative (comfort focused) care would be
the usual management. 8. For fetuses/babies at high risk of poor outcome, the decision to provide either active
(survival focused) management or palliative care should be based primarily on the
wishes of the parents. 9. For fetuses/babies at moderate risk, active management should be planned. 10. If life-sustaining treatment for the baby is anticipated, pregnancy and delivery
should be managed with the aim of optimising the baby's condition at birth and
subsequently. 11. Conversations with parents should be clearly documented and care taken to ensure
that the agreed management plan is communicated between professionals and staff
shifts. 12. Decisions and management should be regularly reviewed before and after birth in
conjunction with the parents; plans may be reconsidered if the risk for the fetus/baby
changes or if parental wishes change.


Background/Aims: Neutrophils obtain immunosuppressive function during tumor development, yet the mechanisms are largely unknown. This study explored whether and how mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), the key component of tumor microenvironment, regulate the suppressive function of neutrophils. Methods: Immunosuppressive function of neutrophils was evaluated by T cell proliferation assay and 4T1 breast tumor model; molecular mechanisms were explored by transcriptional profiling, Real-time RT-PCR, arginase activity assay, and iNOS inhibition experiments. Results: After being cocultured with MSCs primed by TNF-α (TNF-MSCs), CD11b+Ly6G+ neutrophils isolated from bone marrow of normal mice or spleen of tumor-bearing mice obtained immunosuppressive function to inhibit T cell proliferation in vitro, and to enhance 4T1 tumor progression in vivo. Moreover, arginase activity and expression of iNOS, saa3, some cytokines and chemokines and their receptors, were upregulated in neutrophils after co-culture with TNF-MSCs. Inhibition of iNOS activity attenuated the suppressive effect of TNF-MSC pre-cocultured neutrophils on T cell proliferation. Conclusion: MSCs program neutrophils into an immunosuppressive and tumor-promoting phenotype.


We consider the transmission of a common message from a transmitter to two receivers over a broadcast channel, also called a multicast channel in this case. The two receivers are allowed to cooperate with each other in full-duplex over non-orthogonal cooperation links. We investigate the information-theoretic upper and lower bounds on the broadcast rate. In particular, we propose a two-round cooperation scheme in which the receivers interactively perform compress-forward (CF) and then decode-forward (DF) to improve the achievable rate. Numerical results compare the proposed scheme to existing schemes and the cutset upper bound in the Gaussian case. We show that the proposed scheme outperforms the non-interactive DF and CF schemes as well as the noisy network coding scheme. The gain over the DF scheme becomes larger when the main channel becomes symmetric, while the gain over the CF scheme becomes larger when the main channel becomes asymmetric.


In this series of papers we re-examine, using recently developed techniques, some chemical kinetic models that have appeared in the literature with a view to obtaining a complete description of all the qualitatively distinct behaviour that the system can exhibit. Each of the schemes is describable by two coupled ordinary differential equations and contain at most three independent parameters. We find that even with these relatively simple chemical schemes there are regions of parameter space in which the systems display behaviour not previously found. Quite often these regions are small and it seems unlikely that they would be found via classical methods. In part I of the series we consider one of the thermally coupled kinetic oscillator models studied by Sal'nikov. He showed that there is a region in parameter space in which the system would be in a state of undamped oscillations because the relevant phase portrait consists of an unstable steady state surrounded by a stable limit cycle. Our analysis has revealed two further regions in which the phase portraits contain, respectively, two limit cycles of opposite stability enclosing a stable steady state and three limit cycles of alternating stability surrounding an unstable steady state. This latter region is extremely small, so much so that it could be reasonably neglected in any predictions made from the model.


With the lack of dc-link capacitor in the direct matrix converter, the disturbance in the output will be immediately reflected in the input. The four-leg direct matrix converter can fed an unbalanced three-phase load. Feeding unbalanced loads leads to input current distortion. In this paper, a simple method known as model predictive control for regulating the current reference of four-leg direct matrix under unbalanced load is presented. It is implemented by selecting the optional switching state in the subsequent sampling period of the converter by evaluating the cost function. This proposed method can narrowly achieve the desired load current. Moreover, it gains the sinusoidal source current with degrading the load current slightly by adding the source current error to the cost function and selecting the appropriate weighting factor. The simulation results verify the correctness and the feasibility of the method.


Increased understanding of cancer genome is affecting every corner of cancer research. Although human tumor cell lines have been used as essential tools for decades, there are only a few cell line panels have been developed for drug screening. The most widely used NCI60 human tumor cell line panel was composed by selecting cell lines to represent nine subtypes of cancer. The rising of targeted therapeutics has led to new generation anticancer agents. However, it9s difficult to predict clinical response to these agents because of the genetic diversity and genomic heterogeneity in human cancers. Therefore, there is a gap between the new knowledge of cancer genome and the cell line based platforms for both basic and translational research. Here, we show that new generation tumor cell panels are filling the gap. The panels were generated by selecting authenticated cell lines derived from variant cancer types, and annotated with genetic alteration information generated by large scale sequencing projects such as the Catalog of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) and the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE). There are more than 25 tumor cell line panels, which include hundreds of cell lines, have been developed in this initiative. They cover 18 most common cancer types, such as lung, breast, colon, pancreatic cancer and so on. To capture the genetic diversity of cancer, each panel includes cell lines with varying gene mutation complexity. To further facilitate targeted drug discovery, the molecular signature tumor cell line panels focus on individual driver genes, critical protein kinases, transcription factors and cell signaling pathways. Those panels have been analyzed to verify gene mutation, gene expression, protein expression and bio-functions. Therefore, the new generation tumor cell panels provide powerful tools to accelerate the discoveries in basic cancer research, compound screening, biomarker selection, pathway analysis, and targeted therapeutic development. Citation Format: Chris White, Lysa-Anne Volpe, Luping Chen, Anupreet Bal, Michael Jackson, John Foulke, Fang Tian. Tumor cell panels: New tools in genomic era. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1571. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-1571


A new model for representing PD-induced relations that are derived from DAGrepresentable relations through marginalization over a subset of their variables is introduced. The new model requires polynomial space and a polynomial algorithm is given for testing whether a given triplet is represented in the model. In addition a polynomial algorithm is derived for testing whether a marginalized DAGrepresentable relation is DAG-representable.


Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL) is a major and critical mediator of atherosclerosis, and the underlying mechanism is thought to involve the ox-LDL-induced dysfunction of endothelial cells (ECs). MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which are a group of small non-coding RNA molecules that post-transcriptionally regulate the expression of target genes, have been associated with diverse cellular functions and the pathogenesis of various diseases, including atherosclerosis. miRNA-98 (miR-98) has been demonstrated to be involved in the regulation of cellular apoptosis; however, the role of miR-98 in ox-LDL-induced dysfunction of ECs and atherosclerosis has yet to be elucidated. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the role of miR-98 in ox-LDL-induced dysfunction of ECs and the underlying mechanism. It was demonstrated that miR-98 expression was markedly downregulated in ox-LDL-treated human umbilical vein ECs (HUVECs) and that miR-98 promoted the proliferation and alleviated apoptosis of HUVECs exposed to ox-LDL. In addition, the results demonstrated that lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor 1 (LOX-1) was a direct target of miR-98 in HUVECs, as indicated by a luciferase assay. The results of the present study suggested that miR-98 may inhibit the uptake of toxic ox-LDL, maintain HUVEC proliferation and protect HUVECs against apoptosis via the suppression of LOX-1.


OBJECTIVE
To develop an HPLC method for the simultaneous quantitation of five constituents in Scrophularia ningpoensis.

METHOD
Samples were analyzed on an Agilent SB-C18 column(4.6 mm x 250 mm, 5 microm) eluted with acetonitrile and water containing 0.03% phosphate acid as mobile phases in a linear gradient mode. The flow rate was kept at 1.0 mL x min(-1), and the column temperature was set to 30 degrees C. The DAD detector wavelengths were 210, 280, 330 nm.

RESULT
The linear ranges were 50-400 mg x L(-1) for harpagide, 1-40 mg x L(-1) for harpagoside, 1-20 mg x L(-1) for cinnamic acid, 0.5-4.5 mg x L(-1) for acteoside,1-60 mg x L(-1) for angoroside C, respectively. The average recoveries of the five constituents were 100.8% (RSD 0.62%), 101.7% (RSD 0.32%), 98.8% (RSD 0.48%), 99.9% (RSD 1.4%), 99.2% (RSD 1.1%), respectively.

CONCLUSION
Through the validation, the method was proved to be sensitive, accurate, repeatable, and can be used for quality control of the roots of S. ningpoensis.


The coir industry is one of the major agro-based industries contributing significantly to the national income. This work deals with the characteristics of the waste water discharged from the coir industry in three dif ferent regions of Kanyakumari Dist of Tamilnadu. The result s presented here are the physical, chemical and microbiological analysis of the waste water samples collected from the coir industry . The analysis indicates the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and nutrient such as nitrate, nitrite, ammonia and calcium were recorded high amount and a microbial populations including bacteria, fungi and algae in the waste water .


Abstract A prelicensure associate degree nursing program identified the need to formally validate clinical skills and decision-making within nursing students across the program and implemented a process using high-fidelity simulation. The simulated experiences provided an opportunity for both formative and summative evaluation while also affording an opportunity to level student performance across the program. Faculty reported improved consistency in their expectations of student performance within each nursing course, and students reported improved confidence in their clinical practice skills.


We report a facile one-pot chemical synthesis of colloidal FePt@Fe3O4 core–shell nanoparticles (NPs) with an average diameter of 8.7 ± 0.4 nm and determine their compositional morphology, microstructure, two-dimensional strain, and magnetic hysteresis. Using various state-of-the-art analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization techniques—including high resolution TEM imaging, TEM tomography, scanning TEM-high angle annular dark field imaging, and scanning TEM-energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy elemental mapping—we gain a comprehensive understanding of the chemical and physical properties of FePt@Fe3O4 NPs. Additional analysis using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, and superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry distinguishes the oxide phase and determines the magnetic properties. The geometric phase analysis method is effective in revealing interfacial strain at the core–shell interface. This is of fundamental interest for strain engineering of nanoparticles for desirable applications.


RACIALIZED MICROAGGRESSIONS, INTERNALIZED AND INTERSECTING OPPRESSIONS, AND IDENTITY NEGOTIATIONS AMONG STUDENT OF COLOR AT A PREDOMINATELY WHITE UNIVERSITY IN THE US SOUTHEAST Abigail Reiter, Ph.D George Mason University, 2016 Dissertation Director: Dae Young Kim Race, as Delgado and Stefancic (2001) stress, is a structuring agent that greatly affects the experiences and even the well-being of individuals in US society. While American education has been considered a driver for equality, racism and race-based inequities are significant components of this institution, creating qualitatively different daily and cumulative experiences and outcomes for students based on race. Not only is it important to uncover how race and racism are manifested in educational institutions, but it is also necessary to better understand the intersecting oppressions that work alongside race to create particular experiences for brown and black students. Using Critical Race Theory Methodology and relying on the counter-narratives of 31 students of color collected during 9 focus group meetings in the spring of 2014 at a predominately white university in the US Southeast, this study finds that these students are emotionally, academically, and socially affected by microaggressions, namely subtle and overlooked forms of racism and other intersecting oppressions in various campus settings. Sue et al (2007) defines microaggressions as "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group." Through such verbal and behavioral cues, brown and black students continually encounter white normativity and "otherness" throughout campus. Respondents also experience stereotype threat and reveal a social and cognitive burden of reconciling and juggling a complicated identity as students and persons of color, while also internalizing the oppressions they encounter daily. Findings indicate a need for effective training of professors in recognizing their cultural biases and stereotypes they are reinforced through their interactions and curriculum. Sincere and effective awareness efforts need to be implemented on campus for students and faculty, and should replace superficial attempts at diversity awareness that often reinforce racial and other inequities and differences.


Background DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), the most cytotoxic lesions induced by ionizing radiation (IR) and anticancer drugs such as topoisomerase II poisons (e.g., doxorubicin), are repaired by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) and homologous recombination (HR). DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK), which initiates NHEJ, is up-regulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (GEO profiles), possibly contributing to anticancer therapy resistance. To assess DNA-PK as a potential therapeutic target for chemo- and radio-sensitisation in HCC we determined the effect of the DNA-PK inhibitor, NU7441, on DSB repair and cytotoxicity in HCC cells. Methods DNA-PK protein levels and activation by IR (Western blot), DSB levels (y-H2AX foci), HR (RAD51 foci), cell growth (DAPI fluorescence) and cytotoxicity (colony formation) following exposure to IR or doxorubicin was determined in a panel of 6 hepatoma cell lines (HepG2, Hep3B, Huh7, SNU-182, SNU475 and PLC/PRF/5). Results DNA-PK protein concentration and activity did not vary significantly across the panel (±24% and ±37%, respectively) but there were cell-specific sensitivities to IR and doxorubicin (e.g. HepG2 2-fold more resistant than Hep3B). NU7441 significantly sensitised all cells to both doxorubicin (average PF50 4.3±3.0) and IR (average PF50 3.9±1.1) in growth inhibition assays and significantly reduced survival (4.8 to 3.3-fold) in colony forming assays. Following exposure to IR, NU7441 significantly delayed yH2AX focus clearance in all cell lines (e.g. only 13% cleared at 4 hr compared to 50% in control), but increased RAD51 focus formation (3-fold). Conclusion While chemo- and radio-sensitivity in HCC cells was not dependent on DNA-PK expression or activity, NU7441 causes greater than 2-fold chemo- and radiosensitisation in all cells. This was accompanied by a substantial reduction in the rapid phase of DNA repair (NHEJ-dependent) and a shift to a greater reliance on the slower HR repair. DNA-PK inhibitors may have potential as chemo- and radio-sensitisors in hepatoma patients. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3122. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-3122


Introduction: Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a reliable and an established and effective multi station test for the assessment of practical skills in an objective and a transparent manner. Though it is a widely accepted new method of clinical evaluation in MBBS, students' view on OSCE is an unhandled area. This study tries to explore students' opinion on OSCE and as well as it rate of acceptance in MBBS Students.
Materials and Method:A semi structured questionnaire was administered to final year MBBS part II students. The data was entered in MS Excel and analysed using SPSS version 16. Results are expressed as proportions.
Results:The mean age of students was 22.58±0.79 SD. 58.8% of the students felt OSCE is an easier method of examination comparing to the traditional clinical examination. They expressed it as an exam that assesses all the domains of learning, more knowledge assessed in short span of time, questions are framed to the point, and it evaluates all areas of the subject. 64.7% rated OSCE as an easy exam compared to the conventional examination. 52.9% of the students agreed that OSCE helps to identify their weak areas in clinical skills. 64.7% agreed that OSCE is a good method to identify their weak areas in practical skills. All students said that instructions given prior to the OSCE exam are very useful. It gives clarity and overall idea about the different stations.
Conclusion: Majority of students found OSCE as an easy exam. It helps to identify their weak areas in clinical and practical skills.

Keywords: OSCE, Clinical skill, Practicals


The influence of 16 substances-effectors on the extracellular mollicute fructosobisphosphatase (FBPhase) was studied for the first time. These effectors are used, as a rule, when studying properties of this enzyme biopreparations newly isolated from the cells of animals, plants and cells of microorganisms. It was established that optimum pH for FBPhase of mollicutes is whithin 7.3-7.5 and on the basis of this index it is attributed to the group of the "neutral" of these enzymes. Cations of K, Mn, Mg, NH4, Tl and phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) increase its activity. Cations of Li and adenosin 5'-monophosphate (AMP) proved to be the inhibitors of mollicute FBPhase activity. Chelators (EDTA, citrate, imidasol pyruvate, L-histidine) activated it inconsiderably (by 10-20%). Cations of Zn, in contrast to those of other tested metals, in low concentrations (0.1 - 0.2 microM) inhibited FBPhase activity, but when increasing their concentration (6 microM and above) activated the enzyme even better than it was observed for Mn and Mg cations, the necessary components of the reacting mixtures. Thus, when determining the components of the reacting mixtures with the purpose to study the properties of mollicute FBPhase and to regulate its activity in the in vitro systems under pH values optimal for the enzyme, the monovalent (NH4, K, Tl) and bivalent (Mg, Mn, Zn) cations may be introduced in their compositions as activators, AMP and Li cations should be used as inhibitors. Other substances which were studied when making their work proved to be inessential effectors is respect of mollicute FBPhase.


Inspired by nature's strategy for creating organic/inorganic hybrid composite materials, we developed a simple but powerful method to synthesize bone-like peptide/hydroxyapatite nanocomposites using a mussel-mimetic adhesive, polydopamine. We found that polydopamine was uniformly coated in a graphite-like layered structure on the surface of self-assembled diphenylalanine (Phe-Phe, FF) nanowires and enabled the epitaxial growth of c-axis-oriented hydroxyapatite nanocrystals along the nanowires, which is similar to mineralized collagen nanofibers of natural bone. The mineralized peptide nanowires were further organized in relation to each other and then readily hybridized with osteoblastic cells, resulting in the formation of multi-level hierarchical structures. They were found to be nontoxic and enabled efficient adhesion and proliferation of osteoblastic cells by guiding filopoidal extension.


The centroid formalism provides a phase space representation of quantum statistical mechanics based on the Feynman path integral. Real time quantum correlation functions can be exactly calculated using the centroid formalism, though this requires diagonalizing the system Hamiltonian which is intractable for large collections of molecules. A computational method for computing real time correlation functions called centroid molecular dynamics (CMD) has been formulated to circumvent this issue though the results are approximations. The centroid formalism had previously only been able to treat systems moving in Euclidean space. This is insufficient to capture rotational motion and intramolecular torsions, which may be viewed as motion in a constrained subspace of the Euclidean space. Herein we present a method for incorporating this type of motion into the centroid formalism and test the validity by examining the motion of a particle on a ring. Past work has also seen the centroid formalism extended to pairs of particles obeying Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics by way of a projection operator. In this work we examine the case where this projection operator projects onto an individual quantum state. This will allow the centroid formalism, and hence CMD, to be extended to microcanonical ensembles. Results are shown for the quantum harmonic oscillator, quartic well system and double well system.


Background In a simple isolated capitellar/trochlear fracture without extensive posterior comminution, arthroscopic reduction and internal fixation (ARIF) can provide an alternative option to open reduction internal fixation. The purpose of this retrospective case series was to report on the technique and outcomes of arthroscopic reduction and internal fixation of capitellar/trochlear fractures. Methods All patients that underwent ARIF at a single upper extremity referral centre in the last twenty years were reviewed. Patient demographics, preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative records were obtained through chart review and telephone followup. Results Ten cases of ARIF were identified over a twenty year period performed by two surgeons. The average age of patients was 37 years (17–63 years), with nine females and one male. With an average followup of eight years, nine of ten patients had a mean range of motion from 0 to 142 degrees. Their average MEPI and PREE score were 93 ± 7 and 8 ± 14, respectively. Four patients had focal cartilage collapse with three that required a reoperation. There were no infections, nonunions, or arthroscopy related complications. Conclusion ARIF offers an alternative to ORIF for capitellar/trochlear fractures producing good results while providing better visualization of the fracture reduction and minimizing soft tissue dissection.


INTRODUCTION
Usually, most commercial platforms that adapt to the stereotaxic apparatus in neonatal rats or small animals, to carry out surgery are very expensive. Moreover, the operator must have certain experience in its handling.

DEVELOPMENT
The present work presents two platforms, one of them made in acrylic and the other of expanded polystyrene. These adapt perfectly to conventional stereotaxic apparatus, while operator does not require a great entrainment to carry out the surgical procedure. Histological slides of the prefrontal cortex, ventral hippocampus and basolateral amygdala from adult rats (postnatal day 70), staining with cresyl violet are shown. The neonatal lesions were made at postnatal day 7 with ibotenic acid applied in the prefrontal cortex, ventral hippocampus or basolateral amygdala.

CONCLUSIONS
The present data suggest that it is possible to carry out lesions or to apply drugs in neonatal rats, by using an acrylic or expanded polystyrene adaptor for the stereotaxic apparatus. These have the advantage of being economic and having a simple design. Also, the type of anesthesia used in neonatal lesion rats, is discussed.


Introduction Those who generate data – for example, official statistics agencies, survey organizations, and principal investigators, henceforth all called agencies – have a long history of providing access to their data to researchers, policy analysts, decision makers, and the general public. At the same time, these agencies are obligated ethically and often legally to protect the confidentiality of data subjects' identities and sensitive attributes. Simply stripping names, exact addresses, and other direct identifiers typically does not suffice to protect confidentiality. When the released data include variables that are readily available in external files, such as demographic characteristics or employment histories, ill-intentioned users – henceforth called intruders – may be able to link records in the released data to records in external files, thereby compromising the agency's promise of confidentiality to those who provided the data. In response to this threat, agencies have developed an impressive variety of strategies for reducing the risks of unintended disclosures, ranging from restricting data access to altering data before release. Strategies that fall into the latter category are known as statistical disclosure limitation (SDL) techniques. Most SDL techniques have been developed for data derived from probability surveys or censuses. Even in complete form, these data would not typically be thought of as big data, with respect to scale (numbers of cases and attributes), complexity of attribute types, or structure: most datasets are released, if not actually structured, as flat files.


The Eukaryotic Pathogen Genomics Database Resource (EuPathDB, http://eupathdb.org) is a collection of databases covering 170+ eukaryotic pathogens (protists & fungi), along with relevant free-living and non-pathogenic species, and select pathogen hosts. To facilitate the discovery of meaningful biological relationships, the databases couple preconfigured searches with visualization and analysis tools for comprehensive data mining via intuitive graphical interfaces and APIs. All data are analyzed with the same workflows, including creation of gene orthology profiles, so data are easily compared across data sets, data types and organisms. EuPathDB is updated with numerous new analysis tools, features, data sets and data types. New tools include GO, metabolic pathway and word enrichment analyses plus an online workspace for analysis of personal, non-public, large-scale data. Expanded data content is mostly genomic and functional genomic data while new data types include protein microarray, metabolic pathways, compounds, quantitative proteomics, copy number variation, and polysomal transcriptomics. New features include consistent categorization of searches, data sets and genome browser tracks; redesigned gene pages; effective integration of alternative transcripts; and a EuPathDB Galaxy instance for private analyses of a user's data. Forthcoming upgrades include user workspaces for private integration of data with existing EuPathDB data and improved integration and presentation of host–pathogen interactions.


The present study aims to assess the 5 day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) levels of several typical and atypical antipsychotic (AP) drugs to evaluate their degree of biodegradabilities. In recent times, the consumption of APs has seen a marked increase, and BOD5 can be a good parameter to evaluate the relative oxygen contents of these pharmaceuticals in polluted waters, effluents and wastewater. The Winkler method was implemented and after that, an automatized sequential injection analysis (SIA) method was used, aiming to overcome some drawbacks of the Winkler method. The degradation degree of these pharmaceuticals was determined from two perspectives: by using the theoretical oxygen demand (ThOD) value and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) value. From the results obtained with the second perspective, we could determine the degree of biodegradability of the AP drugs. The results of the Winkler method and the SIA system were quite similar. The SIA methodology is capable of operating as a screening method in any stage of a synthetic process in addition to being more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. Overall, these studies presented promising perspectives for improvement in the removal of pharmaceuticals from waste effluents by assessing BOD values.


In this article we present the design of an analog detector for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems, based on the well known belief propagation (BP) algorithm. BP has been shown to obtain excellent results when solving inference problems in sparsely connected factor graphs. Unfortunately, MIMO detection is an example of inference in a densely connected graph, so other techniques need to be applied. We show that BP in conjunction with simulated annealing can offer near optimal performance when there is enough diversity in the receiver. Interestingly, this algorithm can be easily mapped into analog circuitry, thus leading to potentially low-power area-efficient MIMO detectors. A small analog detector based on this work has been designed and laid out in a 0.25 mum BiCMOS process.


The Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) instrument on the Astro-H observatory is based on a 36 pixel x-ray calorimeter array cooled to 50 mK in a sophisticated spaceflight cryostat. The SXS is a true spatial-spectral instrument, where each spatially discrete pixel functions as a high-resolution spectrometer. Here we discuss the SXS detector subsystem that includes the detector array, the anticoincidence detector, the first stage amplifiers, the thermal and mechanical staging of the detector, and the cryogenic bias electronics. The design of the SXS detector subsystem has significant heritage from the Suzaku/XRS instrument but has some important modifications that increase performance margins and simplify the focal plane assembly. Notable improvements include x-ray absorbers with significantly lower heat capacity, improved load resistors, improved thermometry, and a decreased sensitivity to thermal radiation. These modifications have yielded an energy resolution of 3.5-4.0 eV FWHM at 6 keV for representative devices in the laboratory, giving considerable margin against the 7 eV instrument requirement. We expect similar performance in flight.


IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access system (BWA) is a promising emerging technology. In the IEEE 802.16 standard, multiple data transmission rates are defined by employing different modulation and channel coding schemes. How to select a proper mode affects the system performance significantly. In this paper, an efficient link rate adaptation algorithm, named QoS-aware link rate adaptation (Q-LRA), is proposed. Q-LRA takes both QoS demand and channel condition into consideration to determine the best mode. The QoS demand of a connection is represented as packet error rate (PER). Based on the specified PER, the BS calculates the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold of each mode. By comparing the measured SNR and all modes' SNR thresholds, the BS suggests the SS the best mode. The performance of Q-LRA is evaluated by simulations. The simulation results show that Q-LRA improves system throughput and guarantees each connection's QoS demand.


Vitaly Kurennoy - Candidate of Sciences in Philosophy, Professor, Head of the School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher Schoolof Economics.Address: Bld. 1, 21/4 Staraya Basmannaya Str., 105066 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: email@example.com article lays out systematically the principles of modern liberal philosophy of education by explicating the foundations of the Humboldtian (European) model of liberal education. Conceived over two centuries ago, those foundations have never been presented fully and coherently in Russian literature on pedagogy and philosophy of education. Ten principles of the model are identified in terms of modern liberal education theory: (1) lifelong learning, (2) academic freedom, (3) importance of practice and experience, (4) critical thinking and civil competency, (5) competency development instead of knowledge accumulation, (6) priority of general education over specialized education, (7) the concept of learning to learn, (8) self-directed learning effort, (9) political neutrality, and (10) interaction and Socratic dialogue. The second part of this article (release upcoming) sheds light on the key sources and socio-historical contexts that have shaped attitudes towards the liberal education theory since conception until the present day.


Construction professional services (CPS) rely heavily on the capabilities of their professional employees as their main resources in delivering their services. One of the main concerns in managing these workers is the development and maintenance of employee commitment towards achieving the organisational objectives. In achieving the desired commitment among employees, it is essential for organisations to carefully design and implement the right mix of human resource management (HRM) practices and strategies, and yet such strategies have received little attention within the construction management literature. Arguably, there is a possibility that small firm owner-managers have no coherent strategy for managing human resources aimed at developing employee commitment. Moreover, this research was conducted in a four-year period from the end of 2006 until 2010, during the time when the UK economy was hit by the global recession. Certainly, the external economic context provides more challenges for small CPS firms in managing the employment relationship. Accordingly, this research seeks to identify HRM practices that foster organisational commitment in small CPS firms. Two in-depth case studies were conducted, which included one small quantity surveying practice in the East Midlands, UK, and one small multi-disciplinary practice in the West Midlands, UK. The case studies involve in-depth interviews involving the employer and employees, participation observation and document analysis at the main office of both organisations. The findings highlight the importance of HRM in developing employee commitment. The five main HRM strategies to influence commitment are job design, performance and career management, training and development, reward management and employee involvement. All these HRM practices need to be effectively linked and managed appropriately to collectively foster the desired commitment, regardless of the economic climate. Finally, we conclude with limitations and implications of the findings that provide directions for future research.


Literature on domestic interior decoration first emerged as a popular genre in Britain during the 1870s and 1880s, as middle-class readers sought decorating advice from books, household manuals, women's magazines, and professional journals. This intriguing book examines that literature and shows how it was influenced by the widespread liberalism of the middle class. Judith Neiswander explains that during these years liberal values--individuality, cosmopolitanism, scientific rationalism, the progressive role of the elite, and the emancipation of women--informed advice about the desirable appearance of the home. In the period preceding the First World War, these values changed dramatically: advice on decoration became more nationalistic in tone and a new goal was set for the interior--"to raise the British child by the British hearth." Neiswander traces this evolving discourse within the context of current writing on interior decoration, writing that is much more detached from social and political issues of the day.


The current challenge with which most shipyards are forced is to reduce the design time and the time-to-delivery because of explosive order of shipbuilding. Collaborative design and product data management have become important to reduce the lead time. Furthermore, enterprise information technologies such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain management), and APS (Advanced Planning System) requires the collaborative environment. Also, manufacturing environment has been considered as a topic of strategic interest to get shorter product lifecycles in shipyards. Most shipyards have chosen an environment of ETO (Engineering To Order) strategy which designs and produces new products in response to various requirements of customer, rules and regulations. In the ATO (Assemble To Order) environment, most component parts have been designed to be procured or produced on the order requirement. The basic distinction between the ETO and ATO is the timing of the design. Thus in the ATO environment, it is more flexible in reducing the lead time to meet the specified requirements of customers. However, the ETO strategy requires new ship design process and ship product structures that are linked with the implementation of PLM. And, the function and architecture of current PLM solution has been designed based upon ATO environment properly. This paper presents the PLM architecture which effectively reflects the characteristics of shipbuilding. 4-layer architecture model is suggested to implement the PLM system. Also, implemented functions of ship PLM is explained in order to make a practical guidance for ship PLM implementation.


This research is a fieldwork and has been done as follows. Torbatian dialect is a current language variation and its corpus has been collected by tape-recording and after transcribing,the materials have been analyzed on the basis of phonology.In collecting the data of the study, the direct method has been applied and the fieldworker,as the native speaker of dialect, has gone to informants and sometimes to local poets, and in a natural situation has recorded his desired sample of his dialect. In the relationship of dialectology to linguistic theory, generative dialectology for phonological processes has been applied.Themain difference from phonetic and phonological point of view is phonological in nature though minor phonetic differences also exist. The historical change of the final /a/ has not taken place in Torbatian dialect yet. The phonological differences between the two dialects are captured by at least some of the phonological rules which 23 of them presented in this paper.


In order to design retaining walls, first the initial dimensions of the wall should be estimated. In order to choose these dimensions, the designer should use reasonable proportions that were achieved by previous experiences of the designing different retaining walls. These dimensions are introduced based on a ratio of the height of walls. Current reseasrches showed that by changing the conditions such as properties of the backfill materials of the retaining wall, the local seismic conditions, the height of the wall and limitation in choosing the arbitrarily dimensions etc, these estimated dimensions would not be appropriate for an economical design. In this paper, by means of genetic and bees algorithms, economical dimensions of the wall for static, pseudostatic and pseudodynamic loading conditions will be calculated precisely in a such way that stability of the retaining wall against sliding, overturning and bearing capacity are provided. Also from structural consideration point of view, the designed walls could resist appropriately against the applied forces.


Background: Many factors can influence blood pressure, one of which is body position. The aim of present study was to establish a specific pattern of blood pressure (BP) changes in accordance with posture changes in healthy adults.
Objective: Aim of present study was to establish a specific pattern of blood pressure (BP) changes in accordance with posture changes in healthy adult male and females.
Methods: Blood pressure was recorded by aneroid sphygmomanometer in supine, sitting and standing posture on both arms. Mean ± standard deviation of the observation for all the parameters were calculated and comparison in supine, sitting and standing position was done by repeated measures Analysis was done by ANOVA test and tukey's post hoc test.
Results: Fifty healthy males and fifty healthy female took part in this study. BP varies according to body position. Both Systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure was significantly decreased (P<0.05) while changing posture from supine to standing. But blood pressure changes during change of posture from supine to sitting or from sitting to standing was not significant (P>0.05).
Conclusions: Change in body posture changes systolic blood pressure as well as diastolic blood pressure.
Bang Med J (Khulna) 2018; 51 : 16-20


Introduction Chemical nitrogen fixation reactions have large industrial importance. Fixed nitrogen is used in many different forms ranging from nitric acid to hydrogen cyanide and used as such for largescale industrial application (e.g. fertilizer, plastic manufacturing, etc.). The reactions to produce these products are highly endothermic and favored by high-temperature processing. The most simple and basic route of chemically fixing nitrogen is the direct reaction of nitrogen and oxygen. However, the major challenge to do so is to supply very high dissociation energy for nitrogen (7.4 eV). Use of COMSOL Multiphysics® The main objective of this project is to develop an energy efficient chemical nitrogen fixation process for nitric oxide synthesis by using catalyst in assistance with plasma, aiming to achieve a process on industrial scale. COMSOL Multiphysics® and Plasma Module will be used to simulate and to understand the plasma NO synthesis reaction and transport phenomena inside plasma reactor to obtain the temperature distribution, electron density and mean electron energy distribution. These results will be used to understand the optimal placement of the catalyst and to develop the holistic process design for plasma nitrogen fixation process [1,2]. Reference [1] Hessel, V., Cravotto, G., Fitzpatrick, P., Patil, B., Lang, J. & Bonrath, W. Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification, doi:10.1016/j.cep.2013.02.002 (2013). [2] Hessel, V., Anastasopoulou, A., Wang, Q., Kolb, G.A. & Lang, J. Catalysis Today, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cattod.2013.04.005, (2013). Figures used in the abstract Figure 1: Electron temperature distribution Figure 2: Mass fraction distribution


Ritual murders have recently been widespread among African societies in general. Reports of such murders . have become cause for concern. African countries that are implicated in ritual killing include but are not limited to: Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Cases have been reported of human body parts . . allegedly .removed from the corpses. The mortiferous character of ritual killing is not unique to African communities. During ancient biblical times, it was common that a son would be offered on the altar as a sacrifice to the gods. This article is multifaceted in its form. The study problematises phenomena of ritual murders by utilising narrative research in which human sacrifice, as depicted in the Old Testament, is the focus of attention. In addition, a comparative approach is employed to demonstrate that ritual murder is not unique to Africa. The article concludes by offering some recommendations towards oblite-rating ritual killing.


The scoring process is critical in the validation of tests that rely on constructed responses. Documenting that readers carry out the scoring in ways consistent with the construct and measurement goals is an important aspect of score validity. In this article, rater cognition is approached as a source of support for a validity argument for scores based on constructed responses, whether such scores are to be used on their own or as the basis for other scoring processes, for example, automated scoring.


Albumin-based nanoparticles are widely used to delivery anticancer drug because they promote the accumulation of drugs in tumor sites. Nanoparticles with surface immobilized albumin are widely described in literature, although mixed nanoparticles with systematically modified ratios between albumin and PEG-based material are less common. In this work, hybrid nanoparticles were prepared by coassembly of a PEG-based amphiphilic block copolymer together with a polymer-protein conjugate. Poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (POEGMEA-PCL) was prepared by a combination of ring-opening polymerization and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization, while the polymer-protein conjugate was obtained by reacting poly(ε-caprolactone) with bovine serum albumin (BSA-PCL). Co-assembly of both amphiphiles at different ratios, with and without curcumin as a drug, led to hybrid nanoparticles with various amount of albumin on the particle surface. The resulting hybrid nanoparticles were similar in size (100-120 nm), but increasing the amount of albumin on the surface led to a more-negative ζ potential. The cytotoxicity of the curcumin-loaded nanoparticles was examined on several cell lines. The curcumin-loaded nanoparticles with high amount of albumin led to high cytotoxicity against breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7), which coincided with high cellular uptake. However, the cytotoxicity of the curcumin-loaded nanoparticles against CHO cells and RAW264.7 cells was reduced, suggesting that albumin can facilitate selectivity toward cancer cells.


Our group in the Psychology Department at Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) developed a rat genetic model of extreme freezing in response to contextual cues in an experimental chamber previously associated with footshock. One of the lines, Carioca High Freezing (CHF), exhibits an enhanced conditioned freezing response, whereas the other line, Carioca Low Freezing (CLF), shows the opposite response. The present study investigated corticosterone concentration between these two lines of animals and a random (RND) line of rats both under basal conditions and test condition after an emotional challenge using a contextual fear conditioning protocol. Comparisons between basal and test plasma corticosterone concentrations suggested differential basal and fear-induced differences between the two lines. The differences between basal conditions is an important and relevant aspect to be considered in behavioral experiments using or assessing stress and could help to understand variability in naive populations.


In addition to being refractory to treatment, melanoma cancer stem cells (CSC) are known to suppress host anti-tumor immunity, the underlying mechanisms of which need further elucidation. In this study, we established a novel role for microRNA-92 (miR-92) and its associated gene networks in immunosuppression. CSCs were isolated from the B16-F10 murine melanoma cell line based on expression of the putative CSC marker CD133 (Prominin-1). CD133+ cells were functionally distinct from CD133- cells and showed increased proliferation in vitro and enhanced tumorigenesis in vivo. CD133+ CSCs also exhibited a greater capacity to recruit immunosuppressive cell types during tumor formation, including FoxP3+ Tregs, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and M2 macrophages. Using microarray technology, we identified several miRs that were significantly downregulated in CD133+ cells compared to CD133- cells, including miR-92. Decreased expression of miR-92 in CSCs led to higher expression of target molecules integrin αV and α5 subunits, which in turn enhanced TGF-β activation as evidenced by increased phosphorylation of SMAD2. CD133+ cells transfected with miR-92a mimic and injected in vivo showed significantly decreased tumor burden, which was associated with reduced immunosuppressive phenotype intratumorally. Using the TCGA database of melanoma patients, we also noted a positive correlation between integrin α5 and TGF-β1 expression levels and an inverse association between miR-92 expression and integrin alpha subunit expression. Collectively, the current study suggests that a miR-92-driven signaling axis involving integrin activation of TGF-β in CSCs promotes enhanced tumorigenesis through induction of intratumoral immunosuppression.


The temperature and oscillation frequency dependences of internal friction and shear modulus of superconducting YBa2Cu3O7- delta specimens are measured using a multifunction internal-friction torsion pendulum to study the degree of ordering and the migration of oxygen deficiency sites in the superconductor YBa2Cu3O7- delta . It is found that relaxation is most likely to occur in units where one oxygen site is surrounded by four barium ions rather than along the O-Cu-O chain. This indicates that an internal-friction study provides a powerful way of investigating the relaxation process of oxygen atoms as well as the degree of ordering of oxygen deficiencies in relation to superconductivity features.