Abstract: Implementation is a primary step in disseminating innovation because, without successful implementation, even the most effective program cannot show results. Many barriers were reported in the implementation evaluation of Alcochoix+, a Quebec program for managing alcohol consumption intended for non-dependent excessive drinkers. In addition to barriers already identified in the literature, such as lack of advertising, staff turnover, and financial resource problems, the results of this study point out a more specific barrier: a lack of understanding of the program's underlying approach. Moreover, the relative importance attributed to the barriers seems to change over time. These results illustrate the importance of conducting implementation studies for new programs.


Erythrocyte sodium content, sodium pump activity (ouabain sensitive efflux rate, efflux rate constant, ouabain binding sites and Na+, K+-ATPase activity), sodium-lithium countertransport and sodium-potassium cotransport activities were measured in 10 European males, 11 non Chinese Asian males and 12 Chinese males. There were no differences between the 3 groups in any of the measurements of active transport. The sodium-lithium countertransport was higher and sodium-potassium cotransport (measured as lithium-potassium cotransport) was lower in Chinese compared to either the Europeans or non Chinese Asians. There were no differences in counter and cotransport activities between the Europeans and non Chinese Asians. Multiple regression analysis showed that the co and countertransport pathways contribute little to the maintenance of erythrocyte sodium content in healthy subjects.


Olfaction is an important sensory modality for behavior since odors inform animals of the presence of food, potential mates, and predators. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a favorable model organism for the investigation of the biophysical mechanisms that contribute to olfaction because its olfactory system is anatomically similar to but simpler than that of vertebrates. In the Drosophila olfactory system, sensory transduction takes place in olfactory receptor neurons housed in the antennae and maxillary palps on the front of the head. The first stage of olfactory processing resides in the antennal lobe, where the structural unit is the glomerulus. There are at least three classes of neurons in the antennal lobe excitatory projection neurons, excitatory local neurons, and inhibitory local neurons. The arborizations of the local neurons are confined to the antennal lobe, and output from the antennal lobe is carried by projection neurons to higher regions of the brain. Different views exist of how circuits of the Drosophila antennal lobe translate input from the olfactory receptor neurons into projection neuron output. We construct a conductance based neuronal network model of the Drosophila antennal lobe with the aim of understanding possible mechanisms within the antennal lobe that account for the variety of projection neuron activity observed in experimental data. We explore possible outputs obtained from olfactory receptor neuron input that mimic experimental recordings under different connectivity paradigms. First, we develop realistic minimal cell models for the excitatory local neurons, inhibitory local neurons, and projections neurons based on experimental data for Drosophila channel kinetics, and explore the firing characteristics and mathematical structure of these models. We then investigate possible interglomerular and intraglomerular connectivity patterns in the Drosophila antennal lobe, where olfactory receptor neuron input to the antennal lobe is modeled with Poisson spike trains, and synaptic connections within the antennal lobe are mediated by chemical synapses and gap junctions as described in the Drosophila antennal lobe literature. Our simulation results show that inhibitory local neurons spread inhibition among all glomeruli, where projection neuron responses are decreased relatively uniformly for connections of synaptic strengths that are homogeneous. Also, in the case of homogeneous excitatory synaptic connections, the excitatory local neuron network facilitates odor detection in the presence of weak stimuli. Excitatory local neurons can spread excitation from projection neurons that receive more input from olfactory receptor neurons to projection


In prior studies from multiple groups, outcomes following experimental peripheral arterial disease (PAD) differed considerably across inbred mouse strains. Similarly, in humans with PAD, disease outcomes differ, even when there are similarities in risk factors, disease anatomy, arteriosclerotic burden, and hemodynamic measures. Previously, we identified a locus on mouse chromosome 7, limb salvage-associated quantitative trait locus 1 (LSq-1), which was sufficient to modify outcomes following experimental PAD. We compared expression of genes within LSq-1 in Balb/c mice, which normally show poor outcomes following experimental PAD, with that in C57Bl/6 mice, which normally show favorable outcomes, and found that a disintegrin and metalloproteinase gene 12 (ADAM12) had the most differential expression. Augmentation of ADAM12 expression in vivo improved outcomes following experimental PAD in Balb/c mice, whereas knockdown of ADAM12 made outcomes worse in C57Bl/6 mice. In vitro, ADAM12 expression modulates endothelial cell proliferation, survival, and angiogenesis in ischemia, and this appeared to be dependent on tyrosine kinase with Ig-like and EGF-like domain 2 (Tie2) activation. ADAM12 is sufficient to modify PAD severity in mice, and this likely occurs through regulation of Tie2.


The Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system plays a key role in shaping building performances. Effective and efficient HVAC operations not only achieve energy savings but also create a more comfortable indoor environment for occupants. Moreover, compared to theprivate office environment, the open-plan office environment has become a trend in most office buildings since it not only creates opportunities for employees to communicate with one another and improves productivity but also reduces construction cost. However, the open-plan officebuilding layout is also faced with problems such as interruptions from other people and unsatisfactory shared indoor temperature and humidity levels. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop a new paradigm for the HVAC system framework so that everyone can work undertheir preferred thermal environment while also achieving improved energy performance. But how can we achieve personal thermal comfort and energy efficiency without being intrusive? This dissertation proposes a new integrative task-ambient cooling control featuring personal comfort models with non-intrusive sensing techniques for open-plan office spaces. The research mainly consists of four parts:• Development of a personalized cooling control to create a comfortable local thermal environment automatically with non-intrusive sensing techniques and machine learningalgorithms. The sensing system consists of an indoor air temperature sensor, relative humidity sensor DHT22, and an infrared temperature sensor AMG8833.• Quantification of the energy savings of the proposed task-ambient cooling system by cooling set-point optimization of the ambient conditioning system and the automatic operations of the task conditioning systems with personal thermal comfort models.• Development of a data-driven approach with CFD simulator to analyze the benefits of energy savings in a typical office space while maintaining acceptable thermal comfort with theproposed task-ambient cooling system.• Development of an energy co-simulation with the proposed task-ambient cooling system to analyze the benefits of energy savings in a typical shared office space while maintaining acceptable thermal comfort with comfort database I & II.As a result, in terms of energy savings, five 3-hour sessions in the field study have shown that the proposed system can achieve 9.6% in HVAC energy savings on average compared withbaseline system. Moreover, the energy co-simulation study has shown the energy performances with the proposed task-ambient cooling system could be optimized to save HVAC electric demand power by 5.3% on average compared with baseline system. Additionally, in terms of thermal comfort, the performances in the field study have shown the recall scores of the thermal sensation model and the thermal satisfaction model with data from all female subjects are 84.7% and 76.5%, respectively. Meanwhile, the recall scores of the thermal sensation and the thermal satisfaction model with data from all male subjects are 87% and 82.5%, respectively. Furthermore, an automated feedback collection mechanism was implemented toupdate personal comfort models by collecting override actions by occupants (collecting the information of thermal environment conditions when occupants manually change on/off overriding the programmed automation system). As a result, participants were more satisfied with updated personal comfort models. Overall, the proposed task-ambient cooling system featuring personal thermal comfort and non-intrusive sensing techniques not only optimizes energy performance, but also provides a morecomfortable thermal environment in open plan office spaces.


A maculation could be a flat, distinct, stained space of skin but one cm wide. It doesn t involve any modification within the thickness or texture of the skin. Areas of discoloration that square measure larger than or up to one cm square measure said as patches. Certain conditions like skin disorder square measure characterized by white or lighter macules or patches on the skin. Macules square measure flat lesions that square measure but one cm in size. They re known by merely gazing them and touching them. If the lesion such as a dark spot on the skin isn t raised and it s but one cm in size, it s by definition a maculation.


The biocontrol agent Candida sake was cultured on either an unmodified molasses-based medium (water activity, a(w) 0.996) or on water stressed media produced by the addition of glycerol, glucose, NaCl, sorbitol, or proline to 0.98, and 0.96 a(w) for 24, 48, and 72 h, to study their impact on subsequent cell viability, and on concentrations of endogenous sugars (trehalose and glucose) and polyols (glycerol, erythritol, arabitol, and mannitol). The viability of cells of different ages cultured on these media was evaluated on NYDA medium with freely available water (a(w) 0.995), and on medium modified with polyethylene glycol to a(w) 0.95. Regardless of solute used, viable counts of cells grown on molasses-based medium (a(w) 0.98) were equal to or higher than those obtained from the medium with water freely available. The amino acid proline stimulated growth at 10% concentration. In contrast, water stress induced by addition of NaCl, glucose, or sorbitol at a(w) 0.96 caused a significant reduction in viable counts. Older cultures were more resistant to water stress. Glycerol and arabitol were the main solutes accumulated by C. sake cells in response to lowered a(w). Intracellular concentration of these polyols depended more on the solute used to adjust the a(w) than on the a(w) itself. Candida sake was more resistant to water stress with higher intracellular concentration of glycerol and erythritol.


A new study in mice demonstrates that activating the RIG-I and STING signaling pathways, normally associated with antiviral immunity, can help protect the intestinal epithelium from damage caused by chemotherapy and radiation following stem cell transplantation. The findings may help in developing strategies to prevent graft-versus-host disease in patients with leukemia and other blood disorders.


The chronotropic and inotropic effects of guanosine-5'-monophosphate (5'-GMP) and inosine were investigated in isolated frog hearts. 5'-GMP induced biphasic chronotropic and inotropic responses: positive those were inhibited with propranolol, the negative inotropic response could not be inhibited with atropine. Inosine was able to enhance the positive inotropic response to 5'-GMP.


A polymeric compound containing more than one calixarene molecule was synthesized by reacting the oligomer (2) with 25,26,27-tribenzoyloxy-28-hydroxy calix[4]arene. After basic hydrolysis of 3a, the polymeric calixarene (3b) was utilized for selective extraction of some metal cations from aqueous phase to organic phase. It was found that the compound (3b) was selective toward Fe3+ from an aqueous solution containing Cu2+, Ni2+, Co2+ and Fe3+ cations. The mechanism of the extraction process was discussed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


Apple seeds, a common byproduct of apple processing, have been examined for their overall proximate composition, fatty acid and amino acid composition of the lipid and protein components, respectively, as well as their key mineral constituents. Proximate analysis indicated that apple seeds are rich in oil content and protein ranging from 27.5 to 28% and 33.8 to 34.5% respectively, comparing favorably with oilseeds. GC analysis indicated high levels of linoleic acid (~49%) with the other dominant fatty acids being oleic, palmitic and stearic acids, ranging from ~39, 7 and 2% respectively. Amino acid analysis indicates that there are substantial amounts of sulfur containing amino acids in the apple seed. The apple seeds also contain significant amounts of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron, in the order of 720, 650, 510, 210 and 110 mg/100g, respectively. Based on the proximate composition of the apple seeds, if adequate amounts are available as a process byproduct, apple seeds could have value-added potential as a source of edible oil, with the oil cake potentially serving as an animal feed supplement.


We propose a novel, energy-aware, routing protocol for quality-of-service (QoS) support in an infrastructure-less ad-hoc network. Our stability-based, QoS-capable ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (SQ-AODV) protocol is an enhancement of the well-known ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) protocol. Our protocol utilizes a cross-layer approach, in which information about residual node energy is used for route selection and maintenance, and for quickly adapting to network conditions. The uniqueness of our scheme is that it uses only local information, requires no additional communication or co-operation between nodes, possesses a make-before-break capability that minimizes packet drops, and is compatible with the basic AODV data formats and operation, making it easy to adopt. We demonstrate, through extensive simulations in NS-2, that the increased route stability afforded by SQ-AODV leads to substantially better QoS performance. Our results show that under a variety of applicable network loads and network settings, our protocol achieves packet delivery ratio, on average, 10-15% higher than those of AODV and MDR (min. drain rate) routing, and node expiration times 10-50% better than either AODV or MDR, with packet delay and control overhead comparable to that of AODV.


Several currently planned space missions consist of a set of satellites flying in a formation. This enables a much higher functionality of the mission compared to missions consisting of only a single satellite. On the other hand, this introduces several new problems, especially in the handling of the formation. Besides their geometric structure, the formation of satellites also has a communication network among the satellites which is the basis for the cooperative behavior, in order to accomplish the overall aim of the mission. The sensors present in each of the satellite enable sensing and communication between the satellites and form a wireless network. This gives rise to a mobile sensor network in space and hence many challenges with it. The topology of this communication in the mobile sensor network can be a bottleneck in the operation of the formation because the transmission of information and the efficient coordination of the formation relies on this topology. This is particularly the case for a large number of satellites in the network. In this paper we study the relative stability of communicating sensor topologies as a key characteristic of the formation of satellites and their behavior as a wireless sensor network in space.


Most existing Grid technology has been foremost designed with performance and scalability in mind. When using Grid infrastructure for medical applications, privacy and security considerations become paramount. This leads to a re-thinking of implementation and deployment aspects of common components of the current Grid architecture. This paper describes the impact of privacy and security considerations on the Grid infrastructure design, and enumerates trust aspects which must underpin the design of Grid technology to support medical applications. We propose a novel security framework for securely handling privacy sensitive information on the Grid.


The development of the structural chemistry of oxalates and vanadyl complexes is reviewed. The structure of diammonlum vanadyl oxalate dihydrate has been determined by x-ray analysis, using photographic and counter methods of data collection. The counter method gave an R factor of 0.039 and produced atomic coordinates with a satisfactory degree of accuracy. Contrary to predictions based on spectroscopic evidence, the vanadium atom is six coordinate, the anion [V0 (C(_2)O(_4))(_2)H(_2)0](^2-) containing a distorted octahedral arrangement of oxygens about the metal atom. The two chelated oxalate groups have a cis arrangement with respect to one another and a water molecule occupies an apical position trans to the vanadyl group. A comparison of vanadium to oxygen bond lengths with corresponding vanadium to ligand distances in other octahedralvanadyl complexes, shows that there is a general agreement. The bond lengths in the oxalate groups also agree with those in similar structures. The effect of the V = 0 group on C - 0 bond lengths in the trans chelated oxalate group has been observed and this accords with results reported by other workers. The water molecules and ammonium ions generate a network of hydrogen bonds in which all the oxygen atoms are involved.


Abstract Objectives: The study aims to investigate occupational exposure to carbon fibers impregnated with epoxy resins (carbon fiber reinforced [CFR]) in workers at an airplane fuselage section construction plant, by environmental and biological monitoring. Materials and methods: Determination of airborne CFR was done by environmental sampling with active samplers, 11 of which were stationary and 19 personal samplings. The subsequent analyses were performed in the scanning electron microscope fitted with an X-ray microanalysis system (SEM-EDXA). Biological monitoring was carried out by determining CFR in exhaled breath condensate (EBC) collected from 19 male workers who wore personal environmental samplers (exposed workers) and from 10 male workers at the same factory who had no occupational exposure to CFR (internal controls). CFR analysis was done by SEM, applying the method used for determining asbestos fibers in aqueous samples. Results: The airborne CFR concentrations were found to be significantly higher (p = 0.03) at personal samplings (median value 7.01 ff/L, range 1.24–11.16 ff/L) than stationary samplings (median value 1.93 ff/L, range 0.55–10.09 ff/L). The aerodynamic diameters calculated starting from the length and geometric diameter of the sampled CFRs were always higher than 20 µm. CFR was not found in any of the EBC samples collected from the exposed workers and controls. Conclusions: Despite the evidence of occupational exposure to low concentrations of CFR, the absence of such fibers in the EBC in the exposed workers confirms their non-respirability, as expected based on their aerodynamic diameter.


We present RoomSense, a new method for indoor positioning using smartphones on two resolution levels: rooms and within-rooms positions. Our technique is based on active sound fingerprinting and needs no infrastructure. Rooms and within-rooms positions are characterized by impulse response measurements. Using acoustic features of the impulse response and pattern classification, an estimation of the position is performed. An evaluation study was conducted to analyse the localization performance of RoomSense. Impulse responses of 67 within-rooms positions from 20 rooms were recorded with the hardware of a smartphone. In total 5360 impulse response measurements were collected. Our evaluation study showed that RoomSense achieves a room-level accuracy of > 98% and a within-rooms positions accuracy of > 96%. Additionally, the implementation of RoomSense as an Android App is presented in detail. The RoomSense App enables to identify an indoor location within one second.


A major source of epilepsy is Neurocysticercosis (NCC), caused by Taenia solium infection. Solitary cysticercus granuloma (SCG), a sub-group of NCC induced epilepsy, is the most common form of NCC in India. Current diagnostic criteria for SCG epilepsy require brain imaging which may not be available in communities where the disease is endemic. Identification of serum changes and potential biomolecules that could distinguish SCG epilepsy from idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IE), without the initial need for imaging, could assist in disease identification, understanding, and treatment. The objective here was to investigate, using mass spectrometry (MS), sera biomolecule differences between patients with SCG epilepsy or IE to help distinguish these disorders based on physiological differences, to understand underlying phenotypes and mechanisms, and to lay ground work for future therapeutic and biomarker analyses. Sera were obtained from patients with SCG or IE (N = 29 each group). Serum mass peak profiling was performed with electrospray ionization (ESI) MS, and mass peak area means in the two groups were compared using leave one [serum sample] out cross validation (LOOCV). Serum LOOCV analysis identified significant differences between SCG and IE patient groups (p = 10−20), which became non-significant (p = 0.074) when the samples were randomly allocated to the groups and reanalyzed. Tandem MS/MS peptide analysis of serum mass peaks from SCG or IE patients was performed to help identify potential peptide/protein biochemical and phenotypic changes involving these two forms of epilepsy. Bioinformatic analysis of these peptide/protein changes suggested neurological, inflammatory, seizure, blood brain barrier, cognition, ion channel, cell death, and behavior related biochemical systems were being altered in these disease states. This study provides groundwork for aiding in distinguishing SCG and IE patients in minimally invasive, lower-cost manners, for improving understanding of underlying epilepsy mechanisms, and for further identifying discriminatory biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.


Best known for his post-war work in theatre, radio, folk music and song writing, Ewan MacColl was born in 1915; the 1930s was a key decade in terms of his political and cultural development. It was in the 1930s that he cut his teeth as a Young Communist League activist, as an actor, and as a writer for both radio and theatre. His lifelong passion for rambling also took root in that decade.In the 1930s rambling was a mass sport of working class youth and the organized left played a decisive role in campaigning against the draconian laws which restricted public access to the British countryside. The flashpoint in the campaign was the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout of April 1932. This article sketches in the institutions that coordinated that struggle, and picks out the part played by MacColl. It also foregrounds the degree to which music and singing were integral to the day's rambling culture and explores how this politicised social setting provided an audience for the young MacColl's singing and an impetus for his songwriting. It concludes by looking at three songs—some of the earliest MacColl compositions to have survived–that he wrote for and about rambling.


Data-over-cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) MAC protocol is the de facto standard for hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network, and has also given leverage to IEEE 802.16 MAC protocol. The primary medium access control (MAC) function is contention resolution algorithm (CRA), called frame-based truncated binary exponential back-off (F-TBEB), for bandwidth requests from cable modems. The DOCSIS MAC is on the upgrade by introducing channel bonding concept in that the multiple channels can be combined together to get greater aggregate bandwidth. This paper provides a simple analytical model to compute the F-TBEB delay and throughput in single DOCSIS channel. Furthermore, we give two solutions to the problem of CRA on multiple channels and use the analytical model to determine which solution is superior.


This article explores the contested meanings of the 'Asian American' concept in the US today. Since its emergence in the late 1960s, 'Asian American' has been defined by pan-Asian groups and organizations in the US as a collectivity bound by shared racial interests. Contemporary conditions have sharpened and highlighted the inherent contradictions and ambiguities of this conception of 'Asian American' as a racial interest group. Especially important have been the shifts in the composition of the Asian American population that followed the immigration reforms of 1965. Contestations of 'Asian American' also reflect larger uncertainties about the meaning of race in the US today, in particular, the nature of racial boundaries and racial disadvantage.


Like all corvids, the Azure‐winged Magpie Cyanopica cyanus is sexually monomorphic in plumage, making it difficult to distinguish between males and females in the field. We examined sexual size dimorphism in a population of Iberian Azure‐winged Magpies C.c. cooki and used a discriminant function analysis based on five morphological characters to determine the sex of first‐year and adult individuals. Females were significantly smaller than males for all tested variables within each age class except for keel length of first‐year individuals. In both sexes, wing length of adults was greater than that of yearlings, but only males showed significant differences in tail length between age classes (longer in first‐year birds). Stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that tail length and head plus bill length were the most accurate variables in a discriminant function model, predicting the sex of yearlings with about 90% accuracy. Adding wing length to the model yielded the same level of accuracy for adults. We propose a simple system to sex Iberian Azure‐winged Magpies, using only two or three variables easily measured in the field, which provides classification with a high level of accuracy.


Flexible pipes are structures composed by many layers varying in composition and shapes, in which the structural behavior is defined by the role it must play. Flexible pipes construction is such that layers are unbounded, allowing relative movement between them and modifying its behavior.
 Many approaches are used to model such cables, both analytical and numerical, such as the macroelements model. This sort of model consists in finite elements where geometrical characteristics are taken into account by the formulation and is under development by the authors.
 Previous works have shown in detail the modeled cylindrical and helical elements, as well node-to-node connection elements (bounded, frictionless and frictional), which have allowed simplified flexible pipe with bonded elements simulations.
 This article will focus on modeling a simplified cable consisting in an external sheath, two armor layers and a polymeric core, since recent advances in the contact formulation opens the possibility to incorporate friction between the layers.
 Taking into consideration accuracy, computational time and memory usage, results from macroelements are compared to commercial finite element software.


Although organisations often implement team-based structures to improve performance, such restructuring does not automatically ameliorate poor performance. The study in this article explores the relationship between team members' negative mood and team processes (social cohesion, workload sharing, team conflict) to determine if negative mood has a detrimental effect on team performance via team processes. Two hundred and forty one participants completed surveys and were involved in an independently rated performance task that was completed over eight weeks. Negative mood was found to influence team processes and as a consequence, team performance. The results, however, were not uniformly negative. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the sensitivity of WOMAC and the two added dimensions Sport and Recreation Function and Knee Related Quality of Life in subjects with radiographic knee OA to that in controls. To study the influence of age on the reported outcomes.

DESIGN
Outcomes were compared between subjects having had meniscectomy 21 years ago and which at time of follow-up had definite radiographic OA (N=41, mean age 57), and age- and sex-matched controls without radiographic OA (N=50, mean age 53). For the purpose of studying the impact of age, the groups were divided in two age groups, younger and older than 50 years, respectively. Close to 50% of both groups reported current physical activity levels of at least recreational golf, dancing, hiking, etc. Symptoms and function were assessed by WOMAC Osteoarthritis Index and the added dimensions Sport and Recreational Function (Sport/Rec) and Knee Related Quality of Life (QOL). A percentage score was calculated, 0 indicating extreme knee problems and 100 indicating no knee problems.

RESULTS
The control group had mean scores of 88-98 for the different dimensions. The OA group scored significantly lower in all dimensions (P< 0.0001). The most discriminative dimensions in both age groups were Sport/Rec and QOL with mean scores of 52 and 59 (ranges 0-100).

CONCLUSION
The dimensions Sport and Recreation Function, and Knee Related QOL were highly sensitive and discriminant outcomes in both age groups and should be assessed in addition to WOMAC in subjects with post-traumatic osteoarthritis of the knee.


Pyritite and massive sphalerite-galena bodies are surrounded by two distinct concentric alteration zones within the metafelsites of the late Archean Blake River Group at the Dumagami Au-Ag-Cu deposit, southern Abitibi belt, northwestern Quebec. The inner alteration zone is characterized by andalusite-bearing rocks and is interpreted as a metamorphosed advanced argillic alteration zone; the outer zone is represented by white mica phyllonite and phyllonitic breccia and is interpreted as a metamorphosed sericitic alteration zone. Surrounding least altered rocks, represented by massive quartziferous augen rocks and ribboned micaceous augen schists, are composed of blue quartz and albite phenocrysts, quartz, biotite, ilmenite, and chlorite. The sericite zone is characterized by the metamorphic mineral assemblage quartz-sericite-rutile-pyrite + or - andesine and by the absence of albite phenocrysts, biotite, and ilmenite. The andalusite zone is characterized by the metamorphic mineral assemblage quartz-andalusite-sericite-rutile-pyrite + or - kyanite and by the absence of albite phenocrysts, andesine porphyro-blasts, biotite, and ilmenite.Petrographic and geochemical features of least altered, sericitic, and andalusite-bearing rocks indicate that felsic effusive rocks were the principal protolith. Strong leaching of alkali and alkaline earths (especially Mg) within the inner alteration zone has resulted in a notable absence of chlorite, a feature atypical of the alteration associated with Archean massive sulfide deposits. Chemical and mineralogical changes from least altered to altered rocks suggest that highly acidic hydrothermal fluids were responsible for the premetamorphic formation of alteration assemblages at the Dumagami deposit. However, gold transport in these fluids would be minimal, and gold emplacement is linked instead to a late, structural event.


Action video games (AVGs) have attracted increasing research attention as they offer a unique perspective into the relation between active learning and neural plasticity. However, little research has examined the relation between AVG experience and the plasticity of neural network mechanisms. It has been proposed that AVG experience is related to the integration between Salience Network (SN) and Central Executive Network (CEN), which are responsible for attention and working memory, respectively, two cognitive functions essential for AVG playing. This study initiated a systematic investigation of this proposition by analyzing AVG experts' and amateurs' resting-state brain functions through graph theoretical analyses and functional connectivity. Results reveal enhanced intra- and internetwork functional integrations in AVG experts compared to amateurs. The findings support the possible relation between AVG experience and the neural network plasticity.


A series of four experiments assessed the effects of instructions to lower heart rate on heart rate change and general arousal reduction. Various conditions of biofeedback, cognitive load, incentive, knowledge of results, and the experimenter-subject relationship were tested. Experiment 1 compared physiological responses to the delivery of direct organ feedback (i.e., heart rate) with responses to electromyographic biofeedback from the frontalis muscle area and with responses to a nonfeedback tracking task. The results suggest that neither heart rate nor muscle tension feedback is an especially powerful method for achieving sustained reductions in heart rate. Furthermore, although some specificity of physiologic pattern is apparent, biofeedback is no more effective in lowering general activation level than simple instructions to relax accompanied by a general knowledge of results. The second experiment was designed to assess the role of cognitive load in arousal reduction. Heart rate biofeedback was compared with a procedure involving minimal external information processing--the secular meditation exercise of Wallace and Benson. The results indicated a clear superiority for the meditation strategy in effecting reductions in cardiac rate and lowering activation. However, in a third experiment, meditation subjects lowered heart rate much less than observed in the previous study, and this time the reduction did not exceed that achieved by feedback subjects. Subsequent analysis suggested that the quality of the subject-experimenter relationship (active-supportive vs. formal-distant) was a significant variable in accounting for outcome differences. The above hypothesis was supported by a fourth experiment. Under conditions of high subject-experimenter involvement, the superior meditation performance of Experiment 2 was reproduced; under low-involvement conditions the Experiment 3 result of no difference between training groups was obtained. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of any method for achieving relaxation (or physiological control) rests on a complex interaction between informational and motivational imperatives of the stimulus context and definable aspects of the interpersonal exchange between subject and experimenter. This research raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the usual biofeedback paradigm as an aid to arousal reduction and the cost efficiency of its applications in the clinical situation. Furthermore, these results demonstrate the great power in relaxation experiments of psychosocial and other moderator variables, and signal the practical difficulty of their control when these variables appear to be as potent in changing physiology as the primary training methods.


The authors report about four cases of urinoma detected during the neonatal period in three boys and one girl with congenital uropathy. It appeared as an infravesical obstruction in three cases (2 posterior urethral valves, one anterior urethral diverticulum) and as an obstruction of the pyeloureteral junction in the last case. The examination was prompted by the detection of a mass in the side during the clinical examination. The diagnosis is based on ultrasound, which evidences the liquid and extrarenal character of the urinoma and often allows demonstrating the underlying uropathy. The kidney may be difficult to localize if the urinoma is very large. IVP or radionuclide scanning may contribute to the diagnosis as they allow assessing the functional value of the kidney. The urinoma protects the kidney from the consequences of uropathy by allowing a relative decompression of the pyelocaliceal structures.


A free-form (FF) surface design method is proposed for a general axial-symmetrical collimator system consisting of a light source and a total internal reflection lens with two coupled FF boundary surfaces. The profiles of the boundary surfaces are designed using a FF surface construction method such that each incident ray is directed (refracted and reflected) in such a way as to form a specified image pattern on the target plane. The light ray paths within the system are analyzed using an exact analytical model and a skew-ray tracing approach. In addition, the validity of the proposed FF design method is demonstrated by means of ZEMAX simulations. It is shown that the illumination distribution formed on the target plane is in good agreement with that specified by the user. The proposed surface construction method is mathematically straightforward and easily implemented in computer code. As such, it provides a useful tool for the design and analysis of general axial-symmetrical optical systems.


Leading companies of the industry sector demonstrate their competencies through performance. The biggest challenge of the nonleading companies is to understand the difference in the actions of the leading companies in order to maintain this position, that is, mimic them or develop new capabilities. This paper aimed at identifying which are the factors that make the companies reach and maintain competitive advantage in the biodiesel industry. For this, we applied an exploratory qualitative methodology in which five different data collection tools were used. We identified five factors related to the creation of competitive advantage in the biodiesel sector. These factors are: supply chain management focused on the anticipated or postponed purchase and on the diversification of raw-material; supply chain management focused on the reduction in the costs of inputs; cost and industrial yields management; ICMS tax pickups; and proximity of customers and differentiated logistics structures. After identifying the factors, six companies, recognized in the market by their industrial capacity usage and market share, were chosen. In all these companies, there was at least one of the factors that generates competitive advantage. This paper has academic and practical implications since it clearly delimitates the factors that are capable of leading companies toward a leadership position.


The synthetic methodologies, physico-chemical peculiarities, properties, and structure of metal chelate dendrimers and star and hyperbranched polymers are considered. These compounds are subdivided into molecular, intracomplex, and macrocyclic types which in turn are classified depending on the nature of the donor atoms (N,N-, N,O-, N,S-, O,O-, O,S-, S,S-, P,P-chelates, etc.). Special attention is paid to the features of the preparation of metal chelate star polymers by "arm-first", "core-first" and click-to-chelate approaches. The main data on the synthesis, spatial structure and properties of the metal chelate hyperbranched polymers are summarized. The basic concepts and synthetic strategies leading to the different types of supramolecular metal chelate dendrimers are analyzed. The problems and future prospects of metal chelate dendrimers and star and hyperbranched polymers are outlined. The bibliography includes papers published after 2010.


ABSTRACT Famous personalities have been used to endorse products for many years. When considering the choice of using a famous spokesperson, a marketing manager must understand the advantages and disadvantages of using celebrity endorsers. A good celebrity-product association can capture a viewer's attention, increase the public's awareness of the product, and cause consumers to purchase the product endorsed. However, a bad celebrity-product association can be very costly and risky depending on the potentially volatile image, nature, and credibility of the spokesperson used. Marketing research has found several models for evaluating celebrities as potential endorsers. FREDD, developed by Young and Rubicam Agency, is a helpful tool for assessing the best characteristics of a celebrity as a potential product endorser. Cases are presented to develop the FREDD assessment. INTRODUCTION Businesses have long sought to distract and attract the attention of potential customers that live in a world of ever-increasing commercial bombardment. Everyday Americans are exposed to thousands of voices and images in magazines, newspapers, and on billboards, websites, radio and television. Ads of all varieties pop up everywhere on streets, in stores and restaurants, and on public transportation. Each of these ads attempts to steal at least a fraction of an unsuspecting person's time to inform him or her of the amazing and different attributes of the product at hand. Because of the constant media saturation that most people experience daily, they eventually become numb to standard advertising. The challenge of the advertiser is to find a hook that will hold the subject's attention and keep them from changing the channel or turning the page. One well-used approach at differentiating advertisements is the use of celebrity endorsements. Celebrities are seen as dynamic individuals with likeable and attractive qualities. The words and sometimes just the image of a popular person will cause many people to stop and pay attention. For years, professional athletes, famous actors, and musicians have been the traditional favorites to feature in advertisements. As the ad market continues to grow and competition becomes fiercer, marketers have turned to new categories of celebrity spokespersons. Notable ex-politicians, successful mutual fund managers, and high-profile CEO's are now used with frequency to sell a variety of products. Celebrity endorsers also need not be human. A champion racehorse sells pet food in Great Britain. Cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstone sell network television and breakfast cereals in America. Puppets such as Big Bird sell children's vitamins (Miciak & Shanklin, 1994). New categories for celebrity endorsers are opening every day as the reach of the media moves closer to home. Some advertisers even create their own celebrity to sell their product. Subway Sandwiches made a celebrity out of one of their loyal customers. Their spokesman, Jared whose only claim to fame is consuming mass quantities of Subway sandwiches, has been featured in magazines and on various television shows. Dell Computer has created a fictionalized slacker character to represent their products. After a series of successful television spots, the actor who plays 'Steven' has become a celebrity himself appearing on news and other programs. Using celebrity fame, bought or contrived, has certain advantages and risks. A celebrity-product association can capture a viewer's attention, increase the public's awareness of the product, and cause consumers to purchase the product endorsed. In contrast, celebrity-products associations can be very costly and risky based on the potentially volatile image, nature, and credibility of the spokesperson used. Beginning with a review of the literature, we explore the history and the pros and cons of using a celebrity to endorse a manufacturer's product or service. …


Background: Airway inflammation is an important feature in asthma, and measurement of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) is used as a marker of eosinophil airway inflammation. For clinical use there is a lack of reference values for healthy adults.

Methods: FENO have been measured in a population based study (the Intergene-Adonix study), using a chemiluminescence analyser (NIOX™) according to ATS/ERS guidelines, in 6800 subjects. Of those 1,131 healthy subjects were non-atopic, never smokers and did not report asthma or asthma medication and were selected for calculation of reference values. The subjects exhaled against a resistance resulting in an oral pressure of 5 cm H2O at a flow rate of 50 mL/s. Blood samples were analysed for specific IgE using PhadiatopO.

Results: FENO (ppb) according to age class and gender are presented in the table below, median values and 95th percentiles are given.

View this table:

FENO (ppb) in females and males in relation to age

Conclusions: The interindividual variation of FENO is large in a healhty population. FENO is higher in men than women and increase with age. Whether the 95th percentile of if normal is an optimal cut off point in management of asthma has to be examined in a clinical material.


Abstract

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal blooms (CHABs) cause devastating impacts to fisheries, tourism, public health and ecosystem around the world, and have increased in frequency. Cyanobacterial blooms occur in fresh water and marine environments, producing a variety of toxins, and poisoning risks to humans and animals. Chemicals can be used to kill cyanobacteria. Unfortunately, many of these chemicals are toxic to other forms of life, including fish and organisms they eat. The use of chemicals in natural lakes could create more problems than they solve, is not permitted. Cyanophage is a double-stranded DNA virus that infects cyanobacteria and is detected in both freshwater and marine environments as a biological solution developed Cyanophages can use for long term treatment options.

Key words:   Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal blooms, Cyanophage, DNA Viruses


Equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are performed to calculate the diffusion coefficient and electric conductivity of ions in a 0.1 M concentration solution confined in neutral cylindrical pores. The applied model is a solvent primitive model (SPM) in which both ions and solvent molecules are soft core spheres and the polar nature of the solvent is represented implicitly as a background with a given dielectric constant. The simulations are carried out in an isokinetic ensemble, and the system, responsing to an applied electric field, is maintained at constant temperature by a Gaussian thermostat. From equilibrium molecular dynamics, diffusion coefficients of ions and solvent decrease with decreasing pore radius or increasing packing fraction of solvent particles. The conductivity determined by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics shows a similar trend, but the pore-size dependence of conductivity does not have a local maximum as was found in the restricted primitive model in which solvent spheres are absent. Using the Nernst-Einstein relation, the ionic conductivity is also calculated from the equilibrium diffusion coefficient and compared with the conductivity obtained from nonequilibrium simulations. The comparison shows that the Nernst-Einsten relation is not valid only at low solvent packing and in very small pores.


In this paper, we propose vehicle detection and classification in a real road environment using a modified and improved AlexNet. Among the various challenges faced, the problem of poor robustness in extracting vehicle candidate regions through a single feature is solved using the YOLO deep learning series algorithm used to propose potential regions and to further improve the speed of detection. For this, the lightweight network Yolov2-tiny is chosen as the location network. In the training process, anchor box clustering is performed based on the ground truth of the training set, which improves its performance on the specific dataset. The low classification accuracy problem after template-based feature extraction is solved using the optimal feature description extracted through convolution neural network learning. Moreover, based on AlexNet, through adjusting parameters, an improved algorithm was proposed whose model size is smaller and classification speed is faster than the original AlexNet. Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP) is added to the vehicle classification network which solves the problem of low accuracy due to image distortion caused by image resizing. By combining CNN with SVM and normalizing features in SVM, the generalization ability of the model was improved. Experiments show that our method has a better performance in vehicle detection and type classification.


This Thesis is devoted to the analysis of entanglement in relevant physical systems. Entanglement is the conducting theme of this research, though I do not dedicate to a single topic, but consider a wide scope of physical situations. I have followed mainly three lines of research for this Thesis, with a series of different works each, which are, Entanglement and Relativistic Quantum Theory, Continuous-variable entanglement, and Multipartite entanglement.


Background 15-deoxy-Δ 12,14- Prostaglandin J2 (15dPGJ2) inhibits Nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) in human myocytes and amniocytes and delays inflammation induced preterm labour in the mouse. 15dPGJ2 is a ligand for the Chemoattractant Receptor Homologous to the T helper 2 cell (CRTH2), a G protein-coupled receptor, present on a subset of T helper 2 (Th2) cells, eosinophils and basophils. It is the second receptor for Prostaglandin D2, whose activation leads to chemotaxis and the production of Th2-type interleukins. The cellular distribution of CRTH2 in non-immune cells has not been extensively researched, and its identification at the protein level has been limited by the lack of specific antibodies. In this study we explored the possibility that CRTH2 plays a role in 15dPGJ2-mediated inhibition of NF-κB and would therefore represent a novel small molecule therapeutic target for the prevention of inflammation induced preterm labour. Methods The effect of a small molecule CRTH2 agonist on NF-κB activity in human cultured amniocytes and myocytes was assessed by detection of p65 and phospho-p65 by immunoblot. Endogenous CRTH2 expression in amniocytes, myocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was examined by PCR, western analysis and flow cytometry, with amniocytes and myocytes transfected with CRTH2 acting as a positive control in flow cytometry studies. Results The CRTH2 agonist had no effect on NF-κB activity in amniocytes and myocytes. Although CRTH2 mRNA was detected in amniocytes and myocytes, CRTH2 was not detectable at the protein level, as demonstrated by western analysis and flow cytometry. 15dPGJ2 inhibited phospho-65 in PBMC'S, however the CRTH2 antagonist was not able to attenuate this effect. In conclusion, CRTH2 is not expressed on human amniocytes or myocytes and plays no role in the mechanism of 15dPGJ2-mediated inhibition of NF-κB.


This study assessed the challenges facing civics teachers on teaching civics subject in secondary schools in Morogoro (Urban) District in Tanzania. Three research objectives were addressed namely: (1) Identify the challenges facing civics teachers on teaching civics subject in secondary schools (2) Find out the causes of civics teachers' teaching challenges in secondary schools; (3) Determine the contributions of civics teachers in overcoming the challenges of civics subject teaching in secondary schools. The study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect, analyse and report the findings. The study was conducted in Morogoro Municipality. Data were obtained through interviews, questionaire and focused group discussion, from eight selected public secondary schools. The sample involved a total of 88 respondents which included 64 students and 24 civics teachers. The respondents were obtained through purposive and random sampling. Qualitative data were analysed using stastistic methods like percentage and tables. Result from the study revealed that teachers facing many challenges on teaching the subject like lack of confident on using civics pedagogical knowledge and civics pedagogical innovations in the classroom. Findings revealed absent of study tour for civics subject in the secondary school; utilization of teacher centred method in civics classroom was among of causes of civics teachers' teaching challenges. The findings also revealed that, the contribution of civics methods on teachers' civics subject teaching included the increase and improve creativity of civics teaching. Finally, the study recommends that other studies should be conducted to explore the challenges facing students and teachers towards civics education in Tanzania private schools.


As an extension to the literature on the risk-taking channel of monetary policy, this paper studies the existence of a systemic risk-taking channel (SRTC) in the Eurozone, through an original macroeconomic perspective based on causality measures. Because the SRTC is effective after an "incubation period", we make a distinction between short and long-term causality, following the methodology proposed by Dufour and Taamouti (2010). We find that causality from monetary policy to systemic risk, while not significant in the very short term, robustly represents 75 to 100% of the total dependence between the two variables in the long run. Reverse causality is rejected: systemic risk did not influence the policy of the European Central Bank before the global financial crisis. However, central banks must be aware that a too loose monetary policy stance may be conducive to a build-up of systemic risk.


Muscle diseases can take different clinical aspects and some unusual symptoms are often underestimated. Weakness of proximal limb muscles is the most frequent but distal weakness can be observed. Sometimes oculomotor, bulbar, facial, respiratory, paraspinal muscles or myocardium involvement may be the expression of a muscle disease. Similarly it is important to recognize a muscle disease in occurrence of neonatal hypotonia, muscle hypertrophy, muscle stiffness, transitory paralytic episodes, fatigability, myalgia, rhabdomyolysis or isolated increased creatine-kinases level. Biological and electrophysiological examinations have essentially a role in pointing a muscle disease. Muscle biopsy keeps the key role in the diagnosis. Muscle imaging allows mapping of the lesions and new techniques of NMR spectroscopy constitute an in vivo approach of muscle metabolism.


We analysed the production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) by monocytes in 11 drug addicts with AIDS and opportunistic infections and in 13 controls. In three patients and six controls we isolated the PGE2 fraction from culture supernatants of purified monocytes (greater than 95%) incubated in medium containing (3H) arachidonic acid, using silicic acid columns. In two of three patients PGE2-fraction values (21.9 and 21.6 pmol/g protein) were significantly higher than controls (10 +/- 4). In eight AIDS patients and seven controls, PGE2 levels were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography and radioimmunoassay (HPLC and RIA). In three out of eight patients PGE2 levels were markedly higher (736, 419 and 208 pg/ml) than the mean + 2 s.d. values from controls (73 +/- 51). We tested the effect of PGE2 on the production of interleukin-2 by normal phytohemagglutinin-stimulated peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL). There was a significant suppression of interleukin-2 production by PGE2 released from AIDS monocytes. PGE2 may be one of the factors involved in the severe immune dysfunction associated with AIDS.


Objectives To investigate mortality in adults with intellectual disabilities: rates, causes, place, demographic and clinical predictors. Design Cohort study with record linkage to death data. Setting General community. Participants 961/1023 (94%) adults (16–83 years; mean=44.1 years; 54.6% male) with intellectual disabilities, clinically examined in 2001–2004; subsequently record-linked to their National Health Service number, allowing linkage to death certificate data, 2018. Outcome measures Standardised mortality ratios (SMRs), underlying and all contributing causes of death, avoidable deaths, place, and demographic and clinical predictors of death. Results 294/961 (30.6%) had died; 64/179 (35.8%) with Down syndrome, 230/783 (29.4%) without Down syndrome. SMR overall=2.24 (1.98, 2.49); Down syndrome adults=5.28 (3.98, 6.57), adults without Down syndrome=1.93 (1.68, 2.18); male=1.69 (1.42, 1.95), female=3.48 (2.90, 4.06). SMRs decreased as age increased. More severe intellectual disabilities increased SMR, but ability was not retained in the multivariable model. SMRs were higher for most International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision chapters. For adults without Down syndrome, aspiration/reflux/choking and respiratory infection were the the most common underlying causes of mortality; for Down syndrome adults 'Down syndrome', and dementia were most common. Amenable deaths (29.8%) were double that in the general population (14%); 60.3% died in hospital. Mortality risk related to percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy/tube fed, Down syndrome, diabetes, lower respiratory tract infection at cohort-entry, smoking, epilepsy, hearing impairment, increasing number of prescribed drugs, increasing age. Bowel incontinence reduced mortality risk. Conclusions Adults with intellectual disabilities with and without Down syndrome have different SMRs and causes of death which should be separately reported. Both die younger, from different causes than other people. Some mortality risks are similar to other people, with earlier mortality reflecting more multimorbidity; amenable deaths are also common. This should inform actions to reduce early mortality, for example, training to avoid aspiration/choking, pain identification to address problems before they are advanced, and reasonable adjustments to improve healthcare quality.


Abstract Transitive extensional well founded relations provide an intuitionistic notion of ordinals which admits transfinite induction. However these ordinals are not directed and their successor operation is poorly behaved, leading to problems of functoriality. We show how to make the successor monotone by introducing plumpness, which strengthens transitivity. This clarifies the traditional development of successors and unions, making it intuitionistic; even the (classical) proof of trichotomy is made simpler. The definition is, however, recursive, and, as their name suggests, the plump ordinals grow very rapidly. Directedness must be defined hereditarily. It is orthogonal to the other four conditions, and the lower powerdomain construction is shown to be the universal way of imposing it. We treat ordinals as order-types, and develop a corresponding set theory similar to Osius' transitive set objects. This presents Mostowski's theorem as a reflection of categories, and set-theoretic union is a corollary of the adjoint functor theorem. Mostowski's theorem and the rank for some of the notions of ordinal are formulated and proved without the axiom of replacement, but this seems to be unavoidable for the plump rank. The comparison between sets and toposes is developed as far as the identification of replacement with completeness, and there are some suggestions for further work in this area. Each notion of set or ordinal defines a free algebra for one of the theories discussed by Joyal and Moerdijk, namely joins of a family of arities together with an operation s satisfying conditions such as x ≤ sx, monotonicity or s(x ∨ y) ≤ sx ∨ sy. Finally we discuss the fixed point theorem for a monotone endofunction s of a poset with least element and directed joins. This may be proved under each of a variety of additional hypotheses. We explain why it is unlikely that any notion of ordinal obeying the induction scheme for arbitrary predicates will prove the pure result.


Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a process of evaluating the likely environmental impacts of a proposed project or development, taking into account inter-related socio-economic, cultural and human-health impacts, both beneficial and adverse. Although legislation and practice vary around the world, the fundamental components of an EIA would necessarily involve the Screening, Scoping, Assessment and evaluation of impacts and development of alternatives, Reporting, Review, Decision-making, and Monitoring, compliance, enforcement and environmental auditing. World have experienced untold environmental degradation and ecological deterioration in the past century, with little or no real solution to alleviate many of these concerns. Poorly planned human interference has been the major cause. Adequate information and appropriate technology are limiting factors for effective environmental management. Hence, efforts to improve, conserve and protect the environment will include not only the resolution of political policies but also the application of a state-of-the-art scientific approach to planning and implementation. The process of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was developed as an effective planning tool. The genuine conduct of this process will go a long way in reducing environmental deterioration. Because of the dynamic characteristics and multivariate nature of the environment, it has often been difficult to collate, analyze and interpret its data sets. This great complexity can be overcome, however, with the innovation and application of a system of computer tools such as the Geographic Information System (GIS) and related technology. Geographic Information System can be used and applied extensively for environmental impact assessment issues prevalent in many other developing nations. Some areas where GIS will be useful include: Storage, analysis and display of large data sets, Database creation, documentation and management; Environmental impact modeling, Environmental data and EIA analyses, Habitat Suitability Index. Habitat quality for wildlife population has a spatial component across large geographic areas, Aid in decision-making or policy formulation, Environmental Impact Auditing, Environmental Impact Mapping and Analysis, GIS can be used to map the sensitivity of the environment and its components to proposed projects. It also has the capabilities of carrying out various analyses on both locational and non-locational data. GIS analyses include statistical analysis, trend analysis, overlays, buffering, distance analysis, cost analysis and many more.


Heterogeneous and homogeneous processes in the formation of diamond at low pressures, where diamond is a metastable modification of carbon, are discussed. Data on the kinetics of the growth of diamond from hydrocarbons under conditions which give codeposition with graphite are reported, together with data on the influence of hydrogen on this process and on the resulting fractionation of the stable carbon isotopes. Chemical and plasma-chemical methods of preparing diamond and diamond-like layers are discussed, as well as methods based on the use of atomic and ionic beams. The most recent theoretical and experimental results on the homogeneous formation of diamond in the gas phase are presented. The bibliography includes 73 references.


Abstract Neonates who are admitted in NICU are exposed to tumultuous care environment originating from medical devices and procedures which may affect their physiological responses.This study aimed to identify the impact of Quran recitation therapy on physiological responses in neonates who were admitted in NICU. A systematic review was conducted by searching literatures of three databases including Science Direct, Scopus (2010-2018), and Google Scholar (2015-2018). The key words included "infants", "holy Qur'an recitation", and "Qur'an recitation" with inclusion criteria of literatures published in English language, Quasi-experimental study design, randomized controlled trials, neonates admitted in NICU as study sample, and impact of Quran recitation on physiological responses (oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, and pulse). The searching process resulted in 5 articles which met the inclusion criteria. The intervention of Quran recitation in those studies was performed once per day with duration of 10-25 minutes. The recited chapters included Al-Isra, Yusuf, Ar-Rahman, and Yasin. The intervention was provided through headphone with sound volume ranging from 45 to 65 dB. Four out of five studies reported significant difference. Qur'an recitation therapy had a significant effect on physiological responses in neonates admitted in NICU, including lower pulse and respiratory rate as well as higher oxygen saturation. The therapy may be provided as complementary and supportive intervention in order to improve stability of physiological responses in neonates admitted in NICU. Key words : Qur'an therapy; Physiological Responses; Neonates; NICU


Periodic and chaotic behavior of the van der Pol oscillator driven by a periodic impulsive force is investigated. Results show that there exists a critical strength of the external force, above and below which the return map exhibits topologically different properties. When the nonlinearity parameter k is less than kc ≃ 1.3 the structure of the parameter space is similar to that of a prototype model proposed previously. When k > kc, however, another critical strength appears. The return map is invertible for the external force weaker than the second critical strength, and otherwise noninvertible. The k → ∞ limiting case in which the dynamics can be reduced to an exact one-dimensional map, constitutes a singular case. The van der Pol oscillator displays in this special case quite different properties from the prototype model, because the unstable fixed point becomes a continuous curve in this limit.


Mechanical properties of the fibers extracted from the areca are determined and compared with the other known natural fiber coir. Further these Areca fibers were chemically treated and the effect of this treatment on fiber strength is studied. Areca fiber composite laminates were prepared with randomly distributed fibers in Maize stalk fine fiber and Phenol Formaldehyde. Composite laminates were prepared with different proportions of phenol formaldehyde and fibers. Tensile test, moisture absorption test, and biodegradable tests on these laminates were carried out. Properties of these areca‐reinforced phenol formaldehyde composite laminates were analyzed and reported.


Abstract Press-brake bending is used to shape flat and thick plates into a targeted circular configuration without excessive localized thinning or thickening. A brake bending press called 'a knife press bending apparatus' has been widely adopted to manufacture thick, large and long pipe from initially thick plate. Submerged Arc Welded (SAW) pipes are also produced by employing press-brake bending. These pipes are mainly used for oil, natural gas and water pipelines. The principal process variables for press-brake bending can be summarized as stroke of the press-brake knife, the distance between both roll in the lower die, and the feeding length of the plate. Many combinations of these process variables are available, thus various pipe diameters can be realized. In the current study, a series of repetitive numerical simulations by feeding a thick plate with initial thickness of 25.4mm were conducted with the consideration of elastic recovery. Furthermore, an index for SAW pipe production is proposed which can be widely used in industry.


The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of yam bean oleoresin on common bean seed quality and bean weevil control. The oleoresin extract was obtained by the HPLC technique, the presence of rotenone was detected(15 mg/l). Three concentrations of oleoresin extract were tested (Ci, g/ml): C1 (5x10-7, 5x10-6, …5x10-2); C2 (1x10-2, 2x10-2,…6x10-2); C3 (5x10-1, 6x10-1,…9x10-1) and one control treatment per concentration, applied to recipients of 300 ml with 50 g of common bean (varieties Flor de Mayo, Flor de Junio, Mayocoba) and 20 adults bean weevils inside. The bioassay only utilized common beans treated with the C2 concentration by 48 h to evaluate seed vigor and standard germination of common bean at three and seven days after planted, according to ISTA rules. The results demostrated the common bean normal seedlings and standard germination at five days were provocated by gradual C2 increased,particulary 3 x 10-2 to 6 x 10-2 dilutions at nine days after planted and its confirmed the common bean standard germination.


Oku adults have a straightforward rationalization for the existence of folktales: the frightening cautionary tales of the child-eating monster K∂ηgaaηgu serve to warn children not to go to the fields or to stray too far from the house without their parents. But this rationalization is belied by the fact that adults in this chiefdom of the Cameroon Grassfields do not tell folktales to children. Rather, folktales are most often told by children amongst each other, with no adult involvement, and they are consequently learned by younger children from older ones. This is an unusual situation in West Africa, where the norm is for adults to tell folktales to children. For all we know, adult-to-child storytelling may have been the normal practice in the Grassfields in the past, but if it ever was, this practice has now passed into desuetude, and today adults look with mild scorn on folktales (f∂ngaanen, ∂mgaanen pl.) and generally remain aloof during storytelling sessions. Storytelling in the Grassfields is therefore a child-structured form of play in Schwartzman's (1978) sense: it is an activity mediated by children without adult input. Prior to the introduction of schooling in the Grassfields, children used to be made to guard the crops against birds and monkeys, an activity that left them to their own devices in the fields for long periods of the day (Argenti 2001; see also Fortes 1938; Raum 1940). In some cases, children actually slept in small shelters that they built in the fields, and they would consequently stay away from their homes and adult supervision for days at a time. It was in this context, away from the censorious gaze of adults, that children's illicit masking activities developed (Argenti 2001). It may also be in this context that children were able to indulge in prolonged bouts of storytelling without fear of reproof by adults, in whose eyes children should be seen but not heard. Today, children no longer guard the fields, and they have therefore taken to telling their folktales at home.


Acetate, pyruvate, lactate and NEFA concentrations, as well as acid-base-parameters were followed during bleeding, stable hypotension and re-infusion in five dogs. Mean arterial blood pressures were kept at 30 mmHg during the shock phase. An increase in acetate concentrations (P less than 0.01) was found in arterial as well as in venous plasma samples. The maximal mean acetate concentration was 0.19 mmol/l (during reinfusion) as compared to 0.06 mmol/l prior to bleeding. There was no difference between arterial and inferior caval venous concentrations. A definite correlation (r = 0.81, P less than 0.02) was found between blood pyruvate and plasma acetate concentrations. There was no correlation between plasma glucose or NEFA and acetate concentrations or between blood excess lactate and plasma acetate. The plasma acetate accumulation was negligible compared to the concomitant lactate accumulation (1:60), and did not contribute to the metabolic acidosis of shock. The correlation between acetate and pyruvate concentrations may indicate that pyruvate is the main substrate of acetate production in hypovolemic shock.


Purpose: We report here on our experience with interrupted whole layer closure of abdominal wounds with using 1-0 polyester (Green Polyester ⓡ , Ailee, Busan, Korea) during emergency operations for peritonitis patients. Methods: We studied 163 patients who had emergency laparotomy performed at Soonchunhyang University Hospital, the Department of Surgery from March, 2005 to February, 2008. The abdominal wall was closed by layered suture in 126 patients (the LL group), and by interrupted whole layer suture in 37 patients (the WL group). Based on the medical records, we retrospectively analyzed and compared the clinical factors and wound-related complication between the two groups. Results: Although there were no differences in age, gender, the course of admission and the chief complaint between the two groups, the WL group had a significantly greater number of patients with a deteriorated mental state, a history of shock and abnormality that was seen on chest X-ray. The average operation time was 116 minutes for the WL group and 158 minutes for the LL group, and the most common cause of peritonitis was bowel perforation in both groups (WL group: 43%, LL group: 60%) and this was followed by bowel obstruction (WL group: 19%, LL group: 18%). There were no differences in the total incidence of complications and the mortality between the two groups, but the incidence of wound-related complication was higher in the LL group (WL group: 5%, LL group: 31%). The average follow-up period was 308 days in the WL group and 222 days in the LL group. There were 2 cases of delayed wound hernia in the WL group and 6 cases in the LL group. Conclusion: Interrupted whole layer closure during performance of emergency laparotomy for peritonitis patient is very effective for preventing postoperative wound-related complication and it is as effective as layered suture for preventing delayed ventral hernia in the long-term.


Two portable molecular sensing systems based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) have been experimentally demonstrated using either a tip-coated multimode fiber (TCMMF) or a liquid core photonic crystal fiber (LCPCF) as the SERS probe. With Rhodamine 6G as a test molecule, the TCMMF-portable SERS system achieved 2-3 times better sensitivity than direct sampling (focusing the laser light directly into the sample without the fiber probe), and a highly sensitive LCPCF-portable SERS system reached a sensitivity up to 59 times that of direct sampling, comparable to the sensitivity enhancement achieved using fiber probes in the bulky Renishaw system. These fiber SERS probes integrated with a portable Raman spectrometer provide a promising scheme for a compact and flexible molecular sensing system with high sensitivity and portability.


Ores and aggregates are used in countless applications all around in the society. The frequent and escalating usage of these natural resources requires efforts aimed at not only making do with what is available, but also undertaking actions to improve the production yield and the processes involved. This strive to improve the performance and effi ciency of existing crushers and crushing processes has brought about research concerning optimisation of crushing plants as well as theoretical optimisation of crushing.

Previous work shows that different applications and different materials require different compressive crushing in order to accomplish a theoretically optimal size distribution. These optimisation results, obtained by genetic evolutionary algorithms and evaluated with so called fitness functions, convey the theoretically optimal number of compressions and their corresponding compression ratios. Presented in this paper are thus some laboratory crushing tests, which are conducted in order to validate a set of previously optimised crushing sequences. More specifi cally, interparticle crushing sequences are carried out in a Piston-die testing equipment, where samples are sieved between each compression. The subsequent analysis of these results shows good correlation with model predictions, which combined with a comparative study between presented optimisation results and measured data from a real crusher indicate a signifi cant potential for improvement.

However, before redesigning crushers according to what is theoretically optimal, the resulting impact as well as the effects on the outcome of a crushing plant must be examined. Crushing plant simulations using the software PlantDesigner® are consequently performed. Models of existing crushers are altered, resulting in changed particle size distributions from some of the crushers in
a crushing plant. Thence, it is concluded that signifi cant gains can be made in terms of capacity, process yield and energy consumption.


Purpose The pathogenesis of the lacrimal glands (LGs) is facilitated by inflammation mediated by the NACHT, LRR, and NLRP3 inflammasomes in dry eye disease. This research aimed to explore the protective effects of Aquaporin 5 (AQP5) on LGs by inhibiting reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the NLRP3 inflammasome. Methods AQP5 knockout (AQP5−/−) mice were used to evaluate pathological changes in LGs. ROS generation was detected with a dichlorodihydro–fluorescein diacetate assay. Lipid metabolism was assessed by Oil Red O staining. The reversal of the mitochondrial membrane potential was detected using a JC-1 fluorescent probe kit. The effect of AQP5 on NLRP3/caspase-1/Gasdermin-D (GSDMD)-mediated pyroptosis was examined using pharmacological treatment of N-acetyl L-cysteine or MCC950. Results AQP5 loss significantly increased ROS generation, lipid metabolism disorders, TUNEL-positive cells, and reversal of the mitochondrial membrane potential in the AQP5−/− LGs. NLRP3 upregulation, increased caspase-1 and GSDMD activity, and enhanced IL-1β release were detected in the AQP5−/− mouse LGs and primary LG epithelial cells. MCC950 significantly suppressed NLRP3 inflammasome-related pyroptosis induced by AQP5 deficiency in LGs and primary LG epithelial cells. Furthermore, we discovered that prestimulating the AQP5−/− primary LG epithelial cells with N-acetyl L-cysteine decreased NLRP3 expression, caspase-1 and GSDMD activity levels, and IL-1β release. Conclusions Our results revealed that AQP5 loss promoted NLRP3 inflammasome activation through ROS generation. Inhibiting the ROS or NLRP3 inflammasome significantly alleviated the damage and pyroptosis of AQP5-deficient LG epithelial cells, which could provide new insights into dry eye disease.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Callistephus chinensis flower (CCF) polyphones on symptoms of metabolic syndrome in a newly developed high-fat diet-induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) mouse model. C57BL/6J mice were fed a high fat diet (HFD; 50% energy as fat) with normal drinking fluid or HFD with CCF polyphones (50 mg L(-1) or 100 mg L(-1)) in drinking fluid for 12 weeks. As a comparison, mice fed a normal-fat (NFD; 10% energy as fat) and with normal drinking fluid were also included. The HFD group developed more severe symptoms of metabolic syndrome than the NFD group. CCF polyphones treatment significantly reduced fecal lipids compared to the HFD group, suggesting a strong indication of improved lipid metabolism. Liver damage and liver triglyceride levels were also decreased by CCF polyphones treatment. Moreover, both morphologic and histological detections indicated that CCF polyphones significantly reversed HFD-induced hepatic steatosis and liver injury. Furthermore, CCF polyphones significantly ameliorated both HFD-induced metabolic disorders, such as insulin resistance, and inflammatory cytokines, including interlukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Moreover, hepatic peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPARα) and the gene involved in PPARα, Peroxisomal acyl-CoA oxidase (ACOX), were markedly up-regulated at protein levels by CCF polyphones. Our results demonstrate that the HFD produces metabolic syndrome of NAFLD, and CCF polyphones treatment can alleviate these symptoms. The beneficial effects of CCF polyphones are associated with improved lipid metabolism and reduced levels of inflammatory cytokines.


Introduction: The inherited disorders of haemoglobin are the commonest single-gene disorders with an estimated carrier rate of 7% among the world population. They occur at particularly high frequencies in population of the tropical and subtropical belt. Objective: To find out the electrophoretic pattern of haemoglobin disorders and to evaluate and compare the diseases in study population. Methods: A total number of 1370 subjects of both sexes with age range from 6 months to 73 years were included in the study. The study was conducted in Haematology Department of Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Dhaka. It was carried out from January to December 2012. Patients were selected on the basis of morphological blood film examination and electrophoresis on cellulose acetate at PH 8.6. Results: Among the 1370 subjects, Beta thalassaemia trait was observed in 532(38.83%) cases, HbE trait in 313(22.85%), HbE-Beta thalassaemia in 282(20.58%), HbE disease in 146(10.66%) and Beta thalassaemia major in 97(7.08%) cases. Conclusion: The study reveals that, hereditary haemoglobin disorders are common in Bangladesh and are inherited as autosomal recessive Mendelian pattern affecting both male and female. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jafmc.v9i2.21827 Journal of Armed Forces Medical College Bangladesh Vol.9(2) 2013


Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most common infection after kidney transplantation. A previous analysis showed that late (>6 mo after transplantation) UTI is associated with earlier graft loss in adults. It was hypothesized that children who are younger than 18 yr would be at higher risk to develop UTI and develop graft loss after both early and late UTI. The US Renal Data System database was analyzed from 1996 to 2000 for Medicare claims (composite of inpatient and outpatient) for UTI up to 36 mo after transplantation. SPSS software and Cox regression models were used to determine association of UTI and age after adjustment for covariates. Early UTI was defined as occurring <6 mo after transplantation, and late UTI was defined as occurring > or =6 mo after transplantation. The risk for graft loss after early UTI was elevated in all children (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] 5.47; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.93 to 15.4; P < 0.001) but not after late UTI (AHR 2.09; 95% CI 0.56 to 7.80; P = 0.27). Risk for posttransplantation death was not increased significantly after either early UTI (AHR 1.23; 95% CI 0.37 to 4.08) or late UTI (relative risk 2.22; 95% CI 0.90 to 5.44). Boys aged 2 to 5 (versus age 13 to <18 years) were at significantly higher risk for UTI. In girls, only those in the youngest age category (0 to 1) had higher risk for UTI. Children are at greater risk for graft loss after early but not necessarily late UTI. UTI was not an independent predictor of death in this population.


Transferrin, an iron-binding beta-globulin protein that transports iron to mammalian cells, may contribute to innate immunity to fungal pathogens, primarily by limiting microbial access to iron. We investigated whether unsaturated (apo) canine and bovine transferrin had an inhibitory effect in vitro on Malassezia pachydermatis, an important opportunistic cutaneous yeast pathogen of dogs. M. pachydermatis strains were grown at 32 degrees C in 96-well culture plates using Sabouraud's liquid medium containing canine or bovine apo-transferrin at concentrations ranging from 10.6 to 0.7 mg/ml. Optical densities (OD492) in the treated and control wells were measured and then compared between treatments. Bovine and canine transferrin inhibited (P < 0.01) yeast growth at all concentrations tested after five and six days of incubation; inhibition by 5.3 mg/ml exceeded (P < 0.05) that of 0.7 mg/ml on day six. Unsaturated and saturated bovine transferrin had comparable inhibitory effects on the growth of four strains, indicating that the inhibitory effects of transferrin on M. pachydermatis are not dependent upon iron depletion. These studies suggest that transferrin may contribute to innate immunity to M. pachydermatis in dogs and cattle.


Attribute-driven privacy aims to conceal a single user's attribute, contrary to anonymisation that tries to hide the full identity of the user in some data. When the attribute to protect from malicious inferences is binary, perfect privacy requires the log-likelihood-ratio to be zero resulting in no strength-of-evidence. This work presents an approach based on normalizing flow that maps a feature vector into a latent space where the evidence, related to the binary attribute, and an independent residual are disentangled. It can be seen as a non-linear discriminant analysis where the mapping is invertible al-lowing generation by mapping the latent variable back to the original space. This framework allows to manipulate the log-likelihood-ratio of the data and therefore allows to set it to zero for privacy. We show the applicability of the approach on an attribute-driven privacy task where the sex information is removed from speaker embeddings. Results on VoxCeleb2 dataset show the efficiency of the method that outperforms in terms of privacy and utility our previous experiments based on adversarial disentanglement.


This paper presents a multi-phase approach for fast spotting of large vocabulary Chinese keywords from a spontaneous Mandarin speech utterance using prosodic knowledge. Without searching through the whole utterance using large number of keyword models, the multi-phase framework proposed including some special scoring schemes provides very good efficiency by considering the monosyllable-based structure of Mandarin Chinese. This approach is therefore very fast due to very good boundary estimations and the deletion of most impossible syllable and keyword candidates using context independent models, and is also very accurate due to the carefully designed scoring processes. A task with 2611 keywords was tested. An inclusion rate of 85.79% for the top 10 candidates is attained, at a speed requiring only 1.2 times that of the utterance length on a Sparc 20 workstation.


Feminist scholars have long argued that patriarchy affects the structure and organization of society as well as the lived experiences of men and women. Although often referenced in discussions of gender differences in crime and justice, few have articulated more specifically the link between patriarchy and gender differences in the experiences of men and women as victims, offenders, or workers. We take up the challenge to theorize patriarchy and examine the extent to which it operates as an organizing principle with regard to employment in the criminal justice system. We consider differences in the representation of men and women working in the legal profession, corrections, and law enforcement, as well as the culture and structure of these workplace environments in the United States. We argue that patriarchy is a useful midlevel theoretical concept that helps explain both quantitative and qualitative gender differences in criminal justice work. This study complements the "doing gender" approach by focusing on gender at the institutional level, and describing how the culture and structure of the criminal justice system shape and constrain the experiences of individuals occupying social roles within it.


Unit responses to sinus nerve stimulation were recorded in the medulla. A conditioning stimulus to the posterior hypothalamus produced inhibition of 65% of unit responses to sinus nerve stimulation as early as 7 ms and extending as long as 790 ms after conditioning; 50% recovered after 300 ms. Unit responses to hypothalamic stimulation alone were also recorded in the medulla, some in the same loci as other unit responses to sinus nerve stimulation. They could be activated by contralateral as well as ipsilateral hypothalmic stimulation and showed recurrent bursts of firing over a 1,000-ms poststimulus interval. Evoked potentials and unit responses were recorded in the posterior hypothalamus, some occurring within 10--20 ms poststimulation of the sinus nerve, indicating that baroreceptor information is ascending in a time sufficiently short to involve the hypothalamus in reflex regulation of blood pressure as well as more generalized homeostatic responses which include the cardiovascular system.


Query scheduling plays an important role when systems are faced with limited resources and high workloads. It becomes even more relevant for servers applying multiple query optimization techniques to batches of queries, in which portions of datasets as well as intermediate results are maintained in memory to speed up query evaluation. We present a dynamic query scheduling model based on a priority queue implementation using a directed graph and a strategy for ranking queries. We examine the relative performance of several ranking strategies on a shared-memory machine using two different versions of an application, called the Virtual Microscope, for browsing digitized microscopy images.


Transosseous osteosynthesis continues to occupy a leading position among the methods of treatment of damage to the tubular bones of the extremities. This article presents a survey of 47 patients: 22 men and 25 women aged 25 to 60 years with fractures in the middle third of the radial shaft with displacement of bone fragments. The peculiarity of the external fixation device we used is that all transosseous elements are represented by 1.5 mm pins, inserted through both cortical layers of each bone, at levels from I and VIII. The pins are inserted simultaneously through both bones, thus excluding the rotational function of the forearm. The essence of the study is a comparative analysis of the blood system parameters in patients with diaphyseal injuries of the radial bone, operated by the transosseous osteosynthesis method using the external fixation device of pin configuration. Any damage to the body, (a fracture or related surgery), is accompanied with various changes in the system of hemodynamics and metabolism. The laboratory blood tests performed in the group of patients with damage to the radial shaft treated with transosseous osteosynthesis by external fixation device of pin configuration, revealed certain regularities in changing of blood parameters: increased number of platelets, increased level of fibrinogen and level of soluble fibrin complexes, which promotes the activation of the internal mechanism of blood clotting.


The Laboratory Services Branch (Epi Lab) of the Epidemiology Division, Brooks AFB, Texas, is designated by regulation to serve as the Air Force's central reference laboratory, providing clinical laboratory testing support to all Air Force medical treatment facilities (MTFs). Epi Lab recognized that it was not offering the MTFs a service comparable to civilian reference laboratories and that, as a result, the Air Force medical system was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly for commercial laboratory support. An in-house laboratory upgrade program was proposed to and approved by the USAF Surgeon General, as a Congressional Efficiencies Add project, to launch a two-phase initiative consisting of a 1-year field trial of 30 MTFs, followed by expansion to another 60 MTFs. Major components of the program include overnight air courier service to deliver patient samples to Epi Lab, a mainframe computer laboratory information system and electronic reporting of results to the MTFs throughout the CONUS. Application of medical marketing concepts and the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy allowed Epi to provide dramatically enhanced reference service at a cost savings of about $1 million to the medical system. The Epi Lab upgrade program represents an innovative problem-solving approach, combining technical and managerial improvements, resulting in substantial patient care service and financial dividends. It serves as an example of successful application of TQM and marketing within the military medical system.


Virtual worlds are more and more populated with autonomous conversational agents embodying different roles like tutor, guide, or personal assistant. In order to create more engaging and natural interactions, these agents should be endowed with social capabilities such as expressing different social attitudes through their behaviors. In this paper, we present the architecture of a socio-conversational agent composed of communicative components to detect and respond verbally and non-verbally to the user's speech and to convey different social attitudes. This paper presents the main components of this architecture. These descrpitions are illustrated with scenarios of interaction.


Holographic records of diesel sprays are produced for a range of conditions, with the object of finding the variation of droplet size with time, injection pressure, and fuel properties. Analysis of the holograms is by means of measurement in the Fraunhofer plane using a droplet sizing instrument. This rapid readout procedure has enabled the investigation of a large number of conditions. Factors influencing the measurement are discussed, and size results are presented as a function of time for high- and low-load conditions, as well as a function of viscosity for a range of heavy fuel/diesel fuel mixtures.


Systems harvesting energy from a stochastic source have been widely studied in the literature. However, we are not aware of any work that deals with the time it takes for a battery to recharge up to a given level, when the energy source is discrete stochastic. This letter aims to examine the recharge time of a perfect battery. We examine the cases when the energy arrival is a Poisson process, and more generally, a renewal process. We obtain formulas for the distribution of the recharge time as well as the expected value of the recharge time. Using these, we find the switching time of the system, which is then applied to the design of a harvest-then-transmit protocol for green communications. Monte-Carlo simulations verify the obtained formulas.


Abstract Since there is a professionalization trend (Wilensky, 1964), professional associations are one of the few cases of associations which membership is not in decline, namely according to the World Values Survey data from 2000s. Most professions need to be organized as associations to be able to exert influence over the political power and this influence becomes more important when the State attributes autonomy to these associations in order to regulate the profession and defend the public interest. These professional groups thus acquire a privileged relation with the State (Halliday, 1987). In Portugal, these professional associations are named professional public associations (PPAs), also known as professional Orders. These PPAs are entities of the indirect and autonomous administration of the State (Moreira, 2003). The system of professional regulation in Portugal belongs to the most common pattern of the European Continent, in which the professional associations have the monopoly of professional regulation (Moran and Wood, 2003). The ambiguity of interests defended, private or public, is a characteristic of these associations (Candler, 2000; Moreira, 2003). Therefore, many times, when contributing towards the control of work, of the market, etc., these professional associations are responsible for the collision of public interest with professional interest. In this sense, in our country, some PPAs were involved in polemic situations when they obstructed the adhesion of professionals whose graduation course was not recognized by the PPA, but had been homologated by the Government (Lusa, 2005). We can say that behind a professional association there is always a candidate to a PPA (Moreira, 2003). In this sense, some Portuguese associations entitle themselves association pro-Order, like the Pro-Order Association of Psychologists (Associacao Pro-Ordem dos Psicologos) and the Teachers Pro-Order Trade Union (Associacao Sindical dos Professores Pro-ordem). Professional associations can, with effect, also be understood as a strategy of a group to strengthen its status (Selander in Burrage and Torstendahl, 1990). Recently we have observed a substantial increase in the number of professional groups that obtain the status of a PPA following an apparently discretionary criterion by the legislator (Rego in Freire, 2004). For instance some professional groups succeeded to obtain the public status, like economists, while


Background Age-related decreases in lean mass represent a serious health problem. We aimed to analyze the risks of rapid decreases in lean mass by age and sex in relatively young Korean adults during a 4-year follow-up study. Methods A total of 65,856 non-diabetic participants (59.5% men, mean age 39.1 years) in a health screening program were subjected to bioimpedance body composition analyses and metabolic parameter analyses at baseline and after 4 years. The participants were sub-divided according to age, and additionally to six groups by age and the degree of body weight change over the 4-year period. The actual changes in body weight, lean mass, and fat mass and the percent changes over the 4-year period were assessed. Results The percent change in lean mass decreased and the percent change of fat mass increased with increasing age in every age and sex group. However, the annual percent decrease in lean mass and percent increase in fat mass were significantly higher among women than among men (−0.26% vs. −0.15% and 0.34% vs. 0.42%, respectively; P<0.01). Participants who were older than 50 years and had a weight loss <−5% during the 4 years had significantly greater decreases in lean mass and smaller decreases in fat mass, compared to those who were younger than 50 years. An odds ratio analysis to determine the lowest quartile of the percent change in lean mass according to age group revealed that participants older than 60 years had a significantly increased risk of a rapid decrease in the lean mass percentage (2.081; 95% confidence interval, 1.678 to 2.581). Conclusion Even in this relatively young study population, the lean mass decreased significantly with age, and the risk of a rapid decrease in lean mass was higher among women than among men. Furthermore, the elderly exhibited a significantly more rapid decrease in lean mass, compared with younger participants.