Prosociality (caring for one another) has been identified as a correlate of pro-environmental behavior. While our study affirmed the role of the Catholic Church in teaching prosociality, it did not reveal any direct link between Catholic identity and pro-environmental behavior. By incorporating
 environmental education into its teaching, the Catholic Church might promote environmentalism and inspire followers to take a leap towards their "ecological conversion".Catholic religious groups have historically been underrepresented in environ mental movements. On the other
 hand, researchers have sought for decades to understand the factors that determine pro-environmental behavior. In this paper, data were obtained from two studies capturing different sample populations in Chile. The objective of the first study was to explore the interconnection of the Catholic
 religious identity, prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors. The objective of the second study was to explore the interconnection of the Catholic religious identity, pro-environmental behavior and connectedness to nature. Participants were students at a Catholic university and members of
 the general public. The findings demonstrate that Catholic identity positively correlated with prosocial behavior, which in turn positively correlated with pro-environmental behavior. However, we found no direct link between Catholic identity and pro-environmental behavior. Likewise, self-reporting
 Catholic individuals scored significantly lower on the scale of connectedness to nature, in comparison with nonreligious persons. Finally, the surveys revealed that connectedness to nature positively correlated with pro-environmental behavior.


The Los Alamos Aurora laser system, which is a prototype for developing high power short wavelength drivers for inertial confinement fusion (IGF), has passed through the final phases of construction and system integration. This system has been designed using the concepts ot optical angular multiplexing and serial amplification by electron- beam-pumped KrF laser amplifiers to deliver multikilojoule 248-nm 5-ns duration laser pulses to ICF targets. Figure 1 shows the Aurora system layout.


The COVID-19 outbreak has raised numerous challenges for mental health service system in China. The pandemic has many affects on clinical, research and teaching, due to the strict quarantine in china. Fight the COVID-19 became the most important thing in work. We outlined major mental health needs during COVID-19 outbreak from the exiting studies and challenges for mental health professionals, and how to manage these challenges in China. To reduce the risk of negative psychological outcomes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Health Authority of China and different national academic societies have integrated mental health crisis interventions into the general deployment of disease prevention and treatment. The NHCC developed a mental health triage strategy to provide four levels of psychological crisis interventions. More than 20 specific guidelines and expert consensus for mental health services for the COVID-19 outbreak were disseminated by the end of February 2020 to provide timely guidance for frontline health care professionals. External mental health expert teams in other provinces were also established to provide emergency mental health services in Hubei province, China. In addition, widespread adoption of online public education, psychological counseling, and hotline services have been set up for those in need. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has been under control in China, we should take a proactive lead to share its protocol of emergency mental health services with other countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Also international cooperation is urgely needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Large-scale epidemiological surveys should be conducted to examine the prevalence of mental health problems associated with the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the development of appropriate mental health services in future. Disclosure No significant relationships.


A NEW legal basis for the system of collective farming was provided by the revised model charter or constitution of the "artel" promulgated in I935.29 The concessions to the principle of individualism represented by such features as the system of payment according to results and the "acre and a cow" type of subsidiary farming by the members of the kolkhoz, described in the preceding article, were confirmed. The new charter specified definitely and not merely in general terms, as did its predecessor, the size of the plots and the number of animals that collective farmers could have in their individual possession in different regions. The plots were to vary from o.6 to I.2 and in some regions to 21 acres. Thus these rights of the collective farmers were placed on a more secure footing and their individual land holdings equalized. The democratic, self-governing character of collective farming was also reaffirmed. Theoretically a kolkhoz was always supposed to manage its own affairs through the general assembly of its members (or delegates, when the membership was too large) and elective officers responsible to the assembly. In practice, however, the elective principle and the accountability of the officers to the membership became largely a fiction. The managers and other


To lower the incidence of human food-borne disease, experts and stakeholders have urged the development of a science- and risk-based management system in which food-borne hazards are analyzed and prioritized. A literature review shows that most approaches to risk prioritization developed to date are based on measures of health outcomes and do not systematically account for other factors that may be important to decision making. The Multi-Factorial Risk Prioritization Framework developed here considers four factors that may be important to risk managers: public health, consumer risk perceptions and acceptance, market-level impacts, and social sensitivity. The framework is based on the systematic organization and analysis of data on these multiple factors. The basic building block of the information structure is a three-dimensional cube based on pathogen-food-factor relationships. Each cell of the cube has an information card associated with it and data from the cube can be aggregated along different dimensions. The framework is operationalized in three stages, with each stage adding another dimension to decision-making capacity. The first stage is the information cards themselves that provide systematic information that is not pre-processed or aggregated across factors. The second stage maps the information on the various information cards into cobweb diagrams that create a graphical profile of, for example, a food-pathogen combination with respect to each of the four risk prioritization factors. The third stage is formal multi-criteria decision analysis in which decision makers place explicit values on different criteria in order to develop risk priorities. The process outlined above produces a 'List A' of priority food-pathogen combinations according to some aggregate of the four risk prioritization factors. This list is further vetted to produce 'List B', which brings in feasibility analysis by ranking those combinations where practical actions that have a significant impact are feasible. Food-pathogen combinations where not enough is known to identify any or few feasible interventions are included in 'List C'. 'List C' highlights areas with significant uncertainty where further research may be needed to enhance the precision of the risk prioritization process. The separation of feasibility and uncertainty issues through the use of 'Lists A, B, and C' allows risk managers to focus separately on distinct dimensions of the overall prioritization. The Multi-Factorial Risk Prioritization Framework provides a flexible instrument that compares and contrasts risks along four dimensions. Use of the framework is an iterative process. It can be used to establish priorities across pathogens for a particular food, across foods for a particular pathogen and/or across specific food-pathogen combinations. This report provides a comprehensive conceptual paper that forms the basis for a wider process of consultation and for case studies applying the framework.


Institutional Shareholder Services scores corporate governance practices on a percentile basis from zero to 100, the first score measuring the company against others of comparable size and the second measuring it against industry peers. Components of the rating scores fall under seven core topics: 1) board structure and composition, 2) charter and bylaw provisions, 3) laws of the state of incorporation, 4) executive and director compensation, 5) qualitative factors, including financial performance, 6) director and officer stock ownership, and 7) director education.


The intentions of 614 adolescents to have sex were examined in conjunction with their participation in risky behaviors (hard drugs, violence and suicide, alcohol and marijuana use) and protective factors (community connected and against teen sex, educational aspirations, emotional support from family, friends and girlfriend/boyfriend or sexual partner). Key findings from bivariate and linear regression analyses revealed that alcohol and marijuana use were correlated with intention to have sex among adolescents, as was emotional support from a boyfriend/girlfriend or sexual partner. This study offers insights regarding intentions to have sex among adolescents, pointing particularly to the issue of emotional support in a dating relationship as a motivation for having sex. Findings from this study can be used to develop health education and promotion programs focusing on delaying sexual intercourse.


A mission close to the sun is only pcrssiblc if new spacecraft tcchnolofiies can be developed and incorporated into a stateof-the-art spacecraft concept. The perihelion goal of 4 solar radii requires a shielded spacecraft that can tolerate the 3000 suns solar flux while maintaining the electronics components at room temperature. in additicrll, the shield surface shoLIlct sublimate at a rate of less than 3 mg/s at perihelion. Many shield c(mfiguration designs have been studied and the most promising is a parabolic shape that functions as both a shield and a large high gain antenna. 3'hcI shielci material chosen for this design is a carbon-carbon material with highly emissivc surface properties. A mission requirement for a high telecommunications power sterns from the expected interference when attempting to transmit data through the solar corona. It is expected that the large carbon-carbon shield /anterma will have a large power gain even at high temperatures and will return adequate telenietry at the X-band radio frequency chosen for the Solar Probe mission. Othcr key technology needs include a non-nuclear power subsystem that can function in the extreme environments of the mission from Earth to Jupiter and ,pmward to a 4 solar radii perihelion.


David Caplan was not content to sit on his laurels after his book on psycholinguistics but produced another volume on language with emphasis on aphasic disturbances, this time with an intent to introduce the subject to a more general audience. The book manages to be a fairly sophisticated and critical account of recent advances as well as providing definitions and introductory explanations to those outside the field. The emphasis is on linguistic structure and processing. It deals with the central issue of auditory word recognition, semantics, production of words, and reading and writing. It then proceedes to complex morphology and syntax with both sentence comprehension and sentence production. It also has an excellent chapter on discourse and touches on issues relating to the diagnosis and treatment of language disorders. It is in this last chapter that Caplan criticizes existing aphasia batteries and describes his own test of psycholinguistic assessment of


For land-mobile digital radio links over time-variant frequency-selective multipath channels, power and bandwidth efficient signaling and time diversity, as provided by interleaved trellis-coded modulation, are of great importance in a fading environment. A novel digital radio transceiver concept is presented that encompasses interleaved trellis coded modulation with large time diversity factor, a combined equalization/decoding scheme, and a quasi-optimal receiver sync strategy based on purely feedforward channel estimation. The resulting fully coherent and robust receiver is of remarkably low computational complexity. The average BER performance of such a transceiver operating over flat and selective 2-ray Rayleigh as well as typical land-mobile GSM channels is assessed via simulation. The results reveal the receiver's robustness and good BER performance and also shed light on the effects of insufficient interleaving at low vehicle speeds.<<ETX>>


Abstract This article addresses the emergent phenomenon of carto-vandalism, the intentional defacement of collaborative cartographic digital artefacts in the context of volunteered geographic information. Through a qualitative analysis of reported incidents in WikiMapia and OpenStreetMap, a typology of this kind of vandalism is outlined, including play, ideological, fantasy, artistic and industrial carto-vandalism, as well as carto-spam. Two families of counter-strategies deployed in amateur mapping communities are discussed. First, the contributors organize forms of policing, based on volunteered community involvement, patrolling the maps and reporting incidents. Second, the detection of carto-vandalism can be supported by automated tools, based either on explicit rules or on machine learning.


Reducing gas emissions and fighting climate change have become key issues of today's modern society. An energy efficiency strategy consists of developing policies and implementing measures and means to change the conditions of energy consumption in all economic and social activities by improving the efficiency of methods and consumer equipment. Energy efficiency improvement programs are important levers for reconciling growth, social development and respect to the environment. Through them, it is possible to commit sustainable development and to protect the global environment. Special interest is given to different configurations of hybrid refrigeration, which seems to be interesting when one has a heat source practically free. This process is more economical in terms of electricity consumption by ensuring an efficient production of cold. This work presents a comparison between the different configurations studied previously, those that work with organic couples and others that are powered with a photovoltaic unit. Analysis and evaluation of the performance of the heat pump is in question of its exergy efficiency, the destruction of total exergy as well as those relating to every element of the installation. Parameters evaluated are exergetic efficiency, coefficient of performance and the irreversibility relative to each configuration. Results show that the performance of the solar model is improved significantly while obviously using the organic mixture. Its energetic efficiency is 20% more important than that for the ammonia / water. Exergetic efficiency of the system is also improved by about 15%.


Dual high-frequency (HF) radar systems are often used to provide measurements of waves, winds, and currents. In this study, the accuracy of wave measurements using a single HF radar system (OS081H-A) was explored using datasets obtained during 5–27 January 2014 in the southwestern Taiwan Strait. We selected the study region as an area with >90% coverage (i.e., the range was <100 km). Qualitative and quantitative intercomparison of wave measurements (by the radar and five buoys) and wave model products [from the Simulating Wave Nearshore (SWAN) model] were conducted. Intercomparison of the modeled and in situ significant wave height Hs showed that the model-predicted Hs could be considered to be acceptable for use as "sea truth" to evaluate the radar-derived Hs, with mean bias from −0.45 to −0.16 m, mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.24–0.45 m, and root-mean-square error of 0.31–0.54 m. It was found that the MAE of radar-derived Hs was ≤ 1 m for 86% of the sector (except at the edge of sector) when the model-predicted Hs was ≥ 1.5 m. In particular, the MAE was less than 0.6 m for 63% of the sector, which was mainly distributed in the area with a bearing from −50° to +70° and a range of 20–70 km. The results are promising, but more work is needed. We employed a spatial distribution function for the MAE of the radar-derived Hs over the sample duration based on range, bearing, and mean radar-derived Hs.


Finding effective molecular design strategies to enable efficient charge generation and small energy loss is among the long-standing challenges in developing high performance non-fullerene organic solar cells (OSCs). Recently, we reported Y-series non-fullerene acceptors with an electron-deficient-core-based fused structure (typically Y6), opening a new door to achieve high external quantum efficiency (∼80%) while maintaining low energy loss (∼0.57 eV). On this basis, further reducing the energy losses and ultimately improving the performance of OSCs has become a research hotspot. In this paper, we design and synthesize a new member of the Y-series acceptor family, Y18, which adopts a fused benzotriazole segment with unique luminescence properties as its electron-deficient core. Compared to Y6, the benzotriazole-based acceptor Y18 exhibits extended optical absorption and higher voltage. Consequently, the device delivers a promising power conversion efficiency of 16.52% with a very low energy loss of 0.53 eV. Further device optimization by exploiting a ternary blend strategy allowed us to achieve a high efficiency of 17.11% (certified as 16.76% by NREL). Y18 may become one of the most important candidate materials for its broader absorption spectra and higher voltage of Y18 (compared to Y6) in the OSCs field.


available for research in the United States was that "funding went down to a level where mediocrity is commoner." He was sure that Britain gets better value than the United States for the money it spends on research, but he also recognised the difficulties of selecting researchers and projects that would be productive and thought therefore that it was better to be able "to splash money around." Dr Reeders had other positive feelings for Britain, and particularly for the Nuffield department of medicine in which he worked. He thought that the overall standard of science was at least as high in his department in Oxford as in the department he might join in Yale, and he had "good collaborations" in Oxford and a loyalty to the department and Sir David. Furthermore, a move would mean lost time, and nobody wants to lose time when they are at the frontiers of research. In its way it's as competitive as international athletics.


Papillary renal cell carcinoma (PRCC) is the second most common cancer of the kidney and carries a poor prognosis for patients with non-localized disease. The central role of the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) receptor MET in PRCC has been explored, demonstrating that MET aberrations, either through mutation, copy number gain, or trisomy of chromosome 7 (the location of MET and HGF) occur in the majority of PRCC cases. We sought to evaluate AZD6094 (HMPL-504), a potent and selective small molecule MET kinase inhibitor, in this disease setting. However, the development of effective therapies targeting MET and other targets in PRCC has been hampered in part by a lack of available preclinical models to test novel targeted therapies. Here we describe for the first time the pharmacodynamic (PD) response and anti-tumor activity of the selective MET inhibitor AZD6094 in two preclinical patient derived xenograft (PDX) models of PRCC (RCC-43b and RCC-47). Both PDX models have increased MET copy number of 8 and 9 copies by FISH in RCC-43b, and RCC-47 respectively, and robust MET protein staining by IHC. AZD6094 treatment resulted in dose dependent anti-tumor responses reaching ∼85% tumor growth inhibition (TGI) when dosed at 2.5 mg/kg daily (qd), stasis when dosed 10 mg/kg qd, and ∼20% regression when dosed at 25 mg/kg qd in the RCC-43b model and ∼63% TGI, ∼89% TGI, ∼64% regression, and ∼96% regression in the RCC-47 model when dosed 0.5, 2.5, 10, and 25 mg/kg qd respectively. The standard of care for RCC, sunitinib, showed no activity in RCC-43b when dosed at 10 mg/kg qd (∼10% TGI, p>0.05 vs vehicle) and ∼60% TGI when dosed at 80 mg/kg qd. Pharmacodynamic analysis of RCC-47 tumors revealed that two hours after an acute dose of AZD6094 pMET levels were reduced >95% at all dose levels tested (0.5 - 25 mg/kg). Eight hours after dosing, pMET levels returned to ∼50% in the 0.5 and 2.5 mg/kg dose groups whereas pMET was still inhibited >90% in the 10 and 25 mg/kg dose groups indicating that the duration of target inhibition was dose related. AZD6094 inhibited multiple signaling nodes including MAPK, PI3K, and EGFR. Finally, at doses that induced tumor regression, AZD6094 resulted in a dose and time dependent induction of cleaved PARP, a marker of cell death. The finding that lower, sub-optimal doses of AZD6094 showed return of pMET 8 hours after a single administration, raised the question whether splitting the dose over a longer duration would increase anti-tumor activity. Indeed, twice a day dosing (bid, 8;16 hours) of AZD6094 at 1.25 mg/kg was more efficacious than daily administration of 2.5 mg/kg resulting in 8% regression compared to 89% TGI (p Citation Format: Alwin Schuller, Evan Barry, Rhys Jones, Melanie Frigault, Garry Beran, Ryan Henry, David Linsenmayer, Maureen Hattersley, Aaron Smith, Joanne Wilson, Ammar Adam, Michael Zinda, Corinne Reimer, Stephen Fawell, Edwin Clark, Celina D9Cruz. Pharmacodynamic response and anti-tumor activity of the MET inhibitor AZD6094 in papillary renal cell carcinoma patient derived xenograft models. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1477. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1477


Recently developed genomics-based tools are allowing repositioning of established drugs as cancer treatments. This approach has not been employed extensively to identify drugs that may target cancer stem cells (CSCs) of solid tumors. CD44+/CD24- cancer cells are the first described CSCs for breast cancer, which are enriched in mesenchymal stem-like (MSL) and mesenchymal-like (ML) subtypes of triple negative (TNBCs) and in anti-estrogen resistant breast cancers. We subjected gene expression array datasets containing list of genes differentially expressed in CD44+/CD24- CSCs compared to non-CSCs as well as in cells enriched for other markers of CSCs including CD271 and GD3S (six datasets in total) to connectivity map (CMAP) to identify drugs that may reverse gene expression patterns unique to CSCs. All trans retinoic acid (ATRA) was negatively connected with gene expression in CD44+/CD24-, CD271+, and GD3S+ CSCs as well as in ML and MSL subtypes of TNBCs. Independently, ATRA was found to modulate the expression of several genes in the recently described CSC-enriched Yes-Associated Protein (YAP) signature. ATRA-inducible genes of the YAP signature were associated with good prognosis, whereas ATRA-repressible genes were associated with poor prognosis, depending on the subtype of breast cancer. ATRA reduced mammosphere forming ability of breast cancer cells including acquired anti-estrogen resistant cells, which correlated with ATRA-mediated reduction of the critical stemness-associated gene SOX2 and induction of SOX21, which functions as a differentiation factor depending on the cell type. CD44+/CD24- breast cancer cell line with K-ras mutation was resistant to ATRA, which was reversed by MAP kinase inhibitors. From these results, we propose ATRA as a potential therapy for specific subtypes of breast cancers enriched for CSCs. A biomarker-driven patient selection may help to identify patients who may benefit from ATRA therapy. Citation Format: Poornima Bhat-Nakshatri, Chirayu Goswami, Sunil Badve, George W. Sledge, Harikrishna Nakshatri. Connectivity-map analyses identify FDA-approved drugs targeting breast cancer stem cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 230. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-230


Prefrontal cortical and medial temporal lobe connectivity is critical for higher cognitive functions that decline in older adults. Likewise, these cortical areas are among the first to show anatomical, functional, and biochemical alterations in advanced age. The prelimbic subregion of the prefrontal cortex and the perirhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe are densely reciprocally connected and well-characterized as undergoing age-related neurobiological changes that correlate with behavioral impairment. Despite this fact, it remains to be determined how changes within these brain regions manifest as alterations in their functional connectivity. In our previous work, we observed an increased probability of age-related dysfunction for perirhinal cortical neurons that projected to the prefrontal cortex in old rats compared to neurons that were not identified as projection neurons. The current study was designed to investigate the extent to which aged prelimbic cortical neurons also had altered patterns of Arc expression during behavior, and if this was more evident in those cells that had long-range projections to the perirhinal cortex. The expression patterns of the immediate-early gene Arc were quantified in behaviorally characterized rats that also received the retrograde tracer cholera toxin B (CTB) in the perirhinal cortex to identify projection neurons to this region. As in our previous work, the current study found that CTB+ cells were more active than those that did not have the tracer. Moreover, there were age-related reductions in prelimbic cortical neuron Arc expression that correlated with a reduced ability of aged rats to multitask. Unlike the perirhinal cortex, however, the age-related reduction in Arc expression was equally likely in CTB+ and CTB− negative cells. Thus, the selective vulnerability of neurons with long-range projections to dysfunction in old age may be a unique feature of the perirhinal cortex. Together, these observations identify a mechanism involving prelimbic-perirhinal cortical circuit disruption in cognitive aging.


This study changes the way in which research has so far been conducted on assessing the extent to which the UTAUT model predicts the use of e-government. It also contributes to the theoretical framework by adding up a trust component to forecast behavioural intention. This study adds other factors to the theoretical model such as frequency of use, sector of occupation, education and urbanisation. Instead of merely summing up Likert-type items, this research identifies those individual factors behind all UTAUT components and Trust dimension that predict the use of the Mauritian government website both in the short and long run under the non-parametric approach. Mann-Whitney U tests, Kruskal-Wallis H tests, Bonferroni correction and Jonckheere-Terpstra testsare used throughout the analysis. Data were randomly collected through questionnaires across 221 citizens who use the government website in Mauritius. Factors such as adequate knowledge, self-confidence, convenience of use, support at work, influential people, opinions of valued people, recommendations by important people to use the e-portal, improved job performance, ability to complete task online, having useful and required information online, ease of finding information, trust in government departments and website, online security and non-disclosure of personal details to third party affect a citizen's intention to continue to use e-government portal in the future. In addition to these factors, having a computer or laptop, and cheap internet subscription affect short term behavioural intention but not long term behavioural intention. The reverse applies for updated information, easy to understand and use, maintain confidentiality, the enactment of laws against cybercrimes and seen as competent by colleagues. Results are significant at 0.1%, 1% and 5% level. Frequency of use and sector of occupation play key roles in influencing a citizen's desire to use government websites across all UTAUT and Trust components. Urbanisation however does not affect e-government use at all. This study enables policymakers and government website administrators to tackle those aspects that may favourably mould citizens' perceptions towards the government website. It will thus enhance e-government practice in Mauritius.


Designing robust EOR surfactant formulations implies performing a number of experiments related to the impact of variable parameters such as injection brine composition and reservoir temperature from near wellbore to in-depth zones. Performance evaluation assays are commonly employed in parametric studies, ahead of the time-consuming coreflood tests. Phase diagram in tubes and spinning drop tests are commonly used, but they do not easily allow deriving representative values of the o/w IFT and can lead to contradictory outcomes.
 In this work, we addressed the crucial question of the methods implemented to estimate the IFT in bulk tests and we investigated a model case where the robustness of a surfactant formulation was assessed versus temperature. In the first part, we compared, at optimal salinity, the IFT as classically evaluated by the Huh relationship in tubes to the IFT as determined in a spinning drop tensiometer between, respectively, the microemulsion and the water and oil phases in equilibrated and non-equilibrated situations. In the second part, we evaluated the robustness of a surfactant formulation in terms of IFT versus temperature variation by phase diagrams and spinning drop methods and performed simplified oil recovery coreflood tests, using the CAL-X high throughput device.
 Results showed that IFT discrepancies up to one order of magnitude exist between the Huh estimation and the spinning drop results as well as between the different strategies for determining the spinning drop IFT. Such discrepancies can be interpreted from a scientific point of view, but they highlight the need to discriminate between the IFT determination methods in view of representativeness regarding the actual oil recovery mechanisms in the reservoir. The tests campaign for the temperature robustness, performed in the 40-90°C temperature range, showed, again, discrepancies between the two bulk methods. Namely, Winsor III situation was observed from 60°C to 90°C in the phase diagrams with an optimum at 70°C whereas ultra-low IFT was observed only at 60°C in the spinning drop tests. The coreflood tests revealed that very good oil recoveries were achieved from 40°C to 90°C, with evidence of formation of oil banks leading to final oil saturation as low as 5% only from 60°C to 90°C.
 These outcomes suggest that, for cases where the various phases are clearly distinguishable in tubes, phase diagrams should be selected as preferred bulk assays. However, these tests provide only coarse estimates of the IFT, which makes performance prediction based on capillary desaturation curves challenging. For this reason, high throughput coreflood tests could also be included in surfactant formulation design workflows to better forecast for the formulation performances.


This chapter picks up the evolution of public health in the United Kingdom in the period immediately following the First World War. The scene for initial optimism and ambition was set by the goals for reconstruction after the Great War which drove the move for 'Homes Fit for Heroes'. The demand for resources distracted from the progress that was being made in bringing public health and health care together. Progress was made in organizational development, the appointment of the first Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health, and the construction of pioneering health centres. The stock market crash and the recession that followed halted progress until the threats of fascism galvanized action in the public sector. The chapter also covers the evolution of public health from the sanitary movement of the 1840s, through the focus on hygiene at the end of the nineteenth century, to the therapeutic era, which began in the 1930s. The origins of the New Public Health, with the central role of the World Health Organization and the convergent thinking from North America and Europe, is described. The tension between hospital-dominated medicine and the preventive orientation of public health is explored. The emergence of a consensus for transformational change to health systems rooted in public health is chronicled. At the heart is a need to reconcile primary care and public health in the face of new challenges. The shift to multidisciplinary working is underlined.


The 1990s have seen major changes in the health care delivery system. One of the more useful ones has been the CareMap™, an interdisciplinary tool for managing, evaluating and improving patient care. The article discusses the use of a diabetic ketoacidosis CareMap™in the medical intensive care unit in a large community hospital. The impact of the CareMap™on cost containment and use of resources is also addressed. Although the CareMap™represents only one of the many changes that have evolved in the past several years, it is certain to have a critical effect on patient care quality because it combines a variety of disciplines and identifies problem issues that encourage a collaborative approach to patient care.


A total of 19 Finnish species of the subgenus Tipula (Pterelachisus) are presented. The highest species richnesses are observed in the southern, south eastern and eastern parts of the country and the lowest number of species are found in south western, western and northernmost Finland. This pattern is probably caused by the climate and the eastern Palaearctic origin of several species, but also by differences in forestry history between eastern and western Finland. 16 % of the species are red-listed (NT-VU); these species are confined to primeval heath forests or herb-rich forests and have small distribution areas. 42 % of the species are generally poorly known (NE-DD) and 42 % are rather wide-spread and common (LC). Furthermore, 26 % of the species are National Responsibility Species of Finland; these are boreal species, being absent or rare in Central Europe. The distribution of species in Finland and their area of occupancy is positively correlated. There is also a positive relation between the global range of any species and the extent of its regional occurrence in Finland.


Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) have become important in many application fields including last-mile deliveries, surveillance and monitoring, and wireless networks. This paper aims to design UAVs that simultaneously perform multiple tasks. We aim to design UAV trajectories that minimize package delivery time, and at the same time provide uniform coverage over a neighborhood area which is needed for applications such as network coverage or surveillance. First, we study multi task UAVs for a simplified scenario where the neighborhood area is a circular region with the post office located at its center and the houses are assumed to be uniformly distributed on the circle boundary. We propose a trajectory process such that if according to which the drones move, a uniform coverage can be achieved while the delivery efficiency (delivery time with respect to unconstrained case) tends to 1. Second, we consider a more practical scenario in which the delivery destinations are arbitrarily distributed in an arbitrarily-shaped region. We also do not assume any restrictions on the package arrivals. We show that simultaneous uniform coverage and efficient package delivery is possible for such realistic scenarios.


The goal of this paper is to develop a general method to establish conditional ergodicity of infinite-dimensional Markov chains. Given a Markov chain in a product space, we aim to understand the ergodic properties of its conditional distributions given one of the components. Such questions play a fundamental role in the ergodic theory of nonlinear filters. In the setting of Harris chains, conditional ergodicity has been established under general nondegeneracy assumptions. Unfortunately, Markov chains in infinite-dimensional state spaces are rarely amenable to the classical theory of Harris chains due to the singularity of their transition probabilities, while topological and functional methods that have been developed in the ergodic theory of infinite-dimensional Markov chains are not well suited to the investigation of conditional distributions. We must therefore develop new measure-theoretic tools in the ergodic theory of Markov chains that enable the investigation of conditional ergodicity for infinite dimensional or weak-* ergodic processes. To this end, we first develop local counterparts of zero-two laws that arise in the theory of Harris chains. These results give rise to ergodic theorems for Markov chains that admit asymptotic couplings or that are locally mixing in the sense of H. F\"{o}llmer, and to a non-Markovian ergodic theorem for stationary absolutely regular sequences. We proceed to show that local ergodicity is inherited by conditioning on a nondegenerate observation process. This is used to prove stability and unique ergodicity of the nonlinear filter. Finally, we show that our abstract results can be applied to infinite-dimensional Markov processes that arise in several settings, including dissipative stochastic partial differential equations, stochastic spin systems and stochastic differential delay equations.


We show that some problems in cryptography can be solved without using one-way functions. The latter are usually regarded as a central concept of cryptography, but the very existence of one-way functions depends on difficult conjectures in complexity theory, most notably on the notorious "P 6= NP" conjecture. This is why cryptographic primitives that do not employ one-way functions are often called "unconditionally secure". In this paper, we suggest protocols for secure computation of the sum, product, and some other functions of two or more elements of an arbitrary constructible ring, without using any one-way functions. A new input that we offer here is that, in contrast with other proposals, we conceal "intermediate results" of a computation. For example, when we compute the sum of k numbers, only the final result is known to (one of) the parties; partial sums are not known to anybody. Other applications of our method include voting/rating over insecure channels and a rather elegant and efficient solution of the "two millionaires problem". While it is fairly obvious that a secure (bit) commitment between two parties is impossible without a one-way function, we show that it is possible if the number of parties is at least 3. Then we show how our unconditionally secure (bit) commitment scheme for 3 parties can be used to arrange an unconditionally secure (bit) commitment between just two parties if they use a "dummy" (e.g., a computer) as the third party. We explain how our concept of a "dummy" is different from a wellknown concept of a "trusted third party". Based on a similar idea, we also offer an unconditionally secure k-n oblivious transfer protocol between two parties who use a "dummy". We also suggest a protocol, without using a one-way function, for the so-called "mental poker", i.e., a fair card dealing (and playing) over distance. Computational cost of our protocols is negligible to the point that all of them can be easily executed without a computer. Finally, we propose a secret sharing scheme where an advantage over Shamir's and other known secret sharing schemes is that nobody, including the dealer, ends up knowing the shares (of the secret) owned by any particular player.


The Medicare AC0 program realized modest savings during its first year, but not everyone wants to stay, with nine out of 32 dropping out. Some fear the financial risks. "Everybody wants to fix the healthcare problems now, but if you push it too fast it blows up in your face," says Dr. David Spahlinger, of the University of Michigan Health System, which is switching its ACO to the Shared Savings Program from the Pioneer model.


The topography and crystallography of YBa2Cu3O7−d (YBCO) bicrystal films grown epitaxially on oriented SrTiO3 (STO) bicrystals have been characterized by scanning and transmission electron microscopies (SEM and TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The YBCO films were formed by laser ablation on melt-grown Σ13 STO bicrystals with a misorientation of 24° around the 〈001〉 tilt axis. In agreement with previous reports, TEM analysis revealed that the grain boundary in the film did not always follow the planar substrate grain boundary faithfully, but undulated about the average boundary plane. High resolution electron microscopy observations of the apparently complex undulating boundary structures could be explained as a result of an overlap between different orientation variants of the orthorhombic YBCO film. Cross correlation between SEM, AFM, and TEM imaging gave a clear evidence that an island growth mechanism is responsible for the observed grain boundary structure and morphology for which a schematic model is presented. It is seen that meandering of the YBCO grain boundary (GB) is necessarily coupled to a wide range of inclination of the GB plane in the z direction. The implications of this interfacial structure for the behavior of GB based Josephson junctions are discussed and compared to models proposed in the literature. It is also seen that inclination of the GB may be responsible for the poor correlation usually found in the literature between calculations and experimental curves of current density Jc versus the GB angle since the most elaborate models proposed up to now take into account only pure tilt GB plane facets, that is to say facets in the zone of the tilt axis. Moreover, such a GB structure may affect the interpretation of recent phase sensitive experiments done on bicrystal or tricrystal high Tc superconductors to determine the symmetry of the order parameter.


The development of the town of Cassano door, unknown time, first to build a chapel, a church filiare then, the town center, the building, intended for the cult of Mary, is described during the visit of Bishop Diocesan Pastoral Feliciano Ninguarda : "Item in the Middle huius pages, pro COMMODIT incolarum, east extructum sacellum, seu oratorium B. Dicatum Mariae Virginia, eastern parvum penes quo cum bell tower, ubi ab rates annis not fuit celebratum, quia non est to formam decretorum extructum [...]» [... down in Annex more information]


Acoustic microscopy utilizes high frequency ultrasound to generate microscopic images. The current study was designed to examine representative disorders of the skin by use of a reflective scanning acoustic microscope (R-SAM), and to determine whether the obtainable resolution was sufficient to render a microscopic diagnosis. An Olympus UH3 Scanning Acoustic Microscope was utilized with lenses producing burst wave frequencies at 600 and 800 MHz (600 and 800 million cylces/sec). Cutaneous tissue specimens representing 12 different neoplastic and inflammatory disorders were examined. Acoustic images of unstained sections were compared with conventional light microscopic study of sections stained with hematoxylin-eosin. In most neoplasms examined, it was possible to make a specific diagnosis primarily from low magnification pattern analysis. Although individual cells could be visualized, cytologic atypia was poorly defined. In the inflammatory disorders, a specific diagnosis was possible in all but bullous pemphigoid and lichen planus, because the composition of the inflammatory infiltrate was difficult to determine. The advantages of the R-SAM include the capability of producing an acoustic profile of the tissue and the future possibility of in situ diagnosis.


A density-functional model of atoms in strong magnetic fields is proposed along lines parallel to Hohenberg-Kohn-Sham density-functional theory. We derive a Thomas-Fermi-Weiz\"acker-like (TFW) functional by using the classical-path approximation to the relevant one-particle Green's function. We also address the correlation effect between the effective potential and the magnetic field. The TFW-like model provides a simple way of calculating ground-state energies and charge densities of atoms in magnetic fields, and can be systematically improved.


Antinuclear and antinuclear membrane autoantibodies are detected by indirect immunofluorescence in sera of 62 p. 100 of primary biliary cirrhosis patients; when anti-SS-A (Ro) and anti-SS-B (La) autoantibodies were included, 70 percent of patients had at least one type of antinuclear antibody. Of 89 patients with primary biliary cirrhosis, 30 had either Raynaud's phenomenon, Sjögren's syndrome or the CREST syndrome. Some antinuclear antibodies, anticentromere and speckled S1 type, seem to correlate with the associated connective tissue disease. Antibodies showing the S3 pattern (multiple nuclear dots) and antibodies to nuclear membrane may be present independently of an association with connective tissue disease. In the classical technical conditions used to detect anti-tissue and anti-mitochondrial autoantibodies on tissue sections, antinuclear antibodies like anti-centromere or S3 may not be detected and/or identified. Primary biliary cirrhosis patient sera for antinuclear antibodies determination must be screened by at least two assays: indirect immunofluorescence on a human cell line, like HEp-2, and immunodiffusion. The last assay must be performed even if antinuclear antibodies are undetected by immunofluorescence.


A numerical investigation of vortex-induced rotations (VIRs) of a rigid square cylinder, which is free to rotate in the azimuthal direction in a two-dimensional uniform cross-flow, is presented. Two-dimensional simulations are performed in a range of Reynolds numbers between 45 and 150 with a fixed mass and moment of inertia of the cylinder. The parametric investigation reveals six different dynamic responses of the square cylinder (expanding on those reported by Zaki et al. (J. Fluids Struct., vol. 8, 1994, pp. 555–582)) and their coupled vortex patterns at low Reynolds numbers. In each characteristic regime, moment generating mechanisms are elucidated with investigations of instantaneous flow fields and surface pressure distributions at chosen time instants in a period of rotation response. Our simulation results also elucidate that VIRs significantly influence the statistics of drag and lift force coefficients: (i) the onset of a rapid increases of the two coefficients at $Re=80$ and (ii) their step increases in the autorotation regime.


Six intracardiac myxomas and 2 thrombi were subjected to scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Surface morphology of myxomas was distinct from thrombi. The surface of myxoma was either smooth or thrown into projections which had a continuous endothelial lining. This was lacking in thrombi. Cut surface of myxoma revealed the presence of round to polyhedral cells having blunt villi and/or pit-like depressions on their surface in a stroma of fibres, granular material and blood vessels. Thrombi were composed of blood elements enmeshed within fibres. No cells of the type encountered in myxomas were present.


During the development of the nervous system, neurons must first migrate to their appropriate locations and then send out axons to make connections. Various environmental cues guide these migrating neurons and growing axons. After axons reach their target regions, neuronal contacts are created through the formation of synapses. Because excess axonal branches and synaptic contacts are often formed during early development, they are pruned or eliminated at later stages to create specific neuronal connections. Several groups of ligand-receptor pairs have been identified to regulate each of these cellular events. Evidence also indicates that these same molecules may be used in multiple developmental processes. Here, we discuss semaphorins and plexins, the largest family of axon guidance ligand-receptor pairs. Because the roles of semaphorins in neuronal migration and axonal repulsion have been extensively reviewed, we will focus on plexin receptors. We will discuss how semaphorin signals are specifically passed through these receptors into cells and how plexins mediate their newly identified roles in axon pruning and synaptic development.


Hilltops are considered, in hydrogeomorphology, to be preferential areas for groundwater recharge. However, the passage of meteoric water into underground media depends essentially on the surface environmental characteristics. Thus, the objective of this work is to classify the hilltops of Belo Horizonte-MG, considering their efficiency in groundwater recharge. It is introduced a methodological innovation that uses remote sensing secondary data on a statistical model of maximum likelihood named Grade of Membership (GoM). Ideal types of hilltops were created in a function of the limiting and/or facilitating factors of underground recharge. Following this, the hilltops are rated according to the model answers (grade of membership of each hilltop to the ideal profiles set out). The results reaffirm the problems in groundwater recharge in Belo Horizonte that are a result of human occupation and natural limitations. It is believed that GoM is a very useful method of spatial analysis in geography. In the future, validation efforts from field tests need to be conducted.


Background:Stillbirth rate is an important indicator of access to and quality of antenatal and delivery care. Data on birth outcomes are important for planning maternal and child health care services in developing countries. There is little or no literature on the stillbirth rate in north-eastern Nigeria. This may be the first study to serve as the baseline data in Maiduguri. Objective: This study aimed at determining the prevalence and identifying the risk factors contributing to foetal demise. Study design: A cross-sectional retrospective analysis of stillbirth among women delivering in UMTH over a-4 year period, from January 2001 to December 2004. Method: The Case records of 7996 women that delivered in UMTH over the study period were retrieved and the trend of the stillbirth experiences followed up retrospectively, and relevant information with special reference to socio-demographic characteristics, clinical risk factors for stillbirth and type of stillbirth obtained and analyzed. Results: There was a total of 179 stillbirths among the 7996 deliveries giving the institutional prevalence of 22/1000 deliveries. Macerated stillbirths with no obvious congenital malformation predominated (OR: 10.89; CI: 6.51-31.80), accounting for 52.5%, while fresh stillbirths (OR: 5.81; CI: 3.77– 11.87), accounted for 47.5%. Most of the risk factors (63.7%) for stillbirths were present ante partum such as multiparity (OR: 2.88; CI: 1.47-6.09), lack of antenatal care (OR: 1.91; CI: 0.92- 2.05), maternal literacy level (OR: 2.82; CI: 1.44-5.41), hypertension, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia disease complex (c2=15.12; P-value =0.006); while intra partum risk factors contributed 36.3% with SVD as a mode of delivery, the leading risk factor (c2= 23.79; & P-value 0.000). Conclusion: The prevalence of stillbirth is high and is predominantly associated with ante partum risk factors. In our setting, antenatal care should be considered as the cornerstone in the prevention of stillbirth. With adequate antenatal care and good understanding of the determinants of stillbirth, women with clinical risk factors to stillbirth could be identified and measures to avoid or substantially decrease the occurrence of stillbirth instituted. Key words: stillbirth, prevalence, aetiologic determinants


IHs were on the face/scalp (n = 18; 64%). Two (7%) IHs were segmental (lumbosacral). Mean age at review was 14 5 weeks (range 0–16 months). Fifty per cent of referrals were from primary care, with 43% receiving departmental advice regarding referral and treatment initiation. Fifty per cent of cases had implemented treatment prior to secondary care review. As per BSPD guidelines, 15 (54%) patients required treatment (vision compromise, n = 8; ulceration, n = 4; functional lip impairment, n = 1; nasal obstruction, n = 2). Appropriate pretreatment investigations (weight, blood pressure and heart rate) were documented in all cases. As recommended, 8/15 (53%) patients had treatment initiated in hospital (prematurity, n = 4; hypoglycaemia, n = 1; raised blood pressure, n = 1; departmental protocol prior to 2018, n = 2). Thirteen of 15 (87%) received correct dose escalation after 24 h. It was noted that the pharmacy-dispensed solution was 50 mg/5 mL opposed to the recommended 5 mg/5 mL. Mean treatment duration was 12 5 months with 40% receiving appropriate treatment beyond the proliferative stage. Thirteen of 15 (87%) had baseline photos. Ten of 15 (67%) were reviewed within 3 months. Our findings show that, in line with BSPD guidance, most patients were seen within an adequate timeframe for oral treatment, had appropriate indications for oral propranolol and pretreatment investigations, demonstrating consistency of care for IH. Importantly, there is a move towards community advice, facilitating appropriate referral and expediting treatment. Education in primary care and specialist advice and guidance may improve clinical outcomes, as well as avoid unnecessary anxiety for families that can be reassured of the benign nature of IH and spontaneous resolution. In turn, this has time and cost-saving implications for both sectors and will therefore be the focus of future work.


The main aim of this investigation was to model the volatility of Somali shilling against US dollar by using monthly data covering from 1950 to 2010. Further to that, this finding has adopted both symmetric and asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) family models in order to capture volatility clustering and leverage effect as the most stylized facts of exchange rate returns. Result from ARCH indicates presence of conditional heteroscedasticity in the residual series of exchange rate. Symmetric GARCH(1,1) model shows presence of volatility clustering and persistent coefficients of <1 indicating that volatility is an explosive process. Results from asymmetric TCHARCH(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1) indicates presence of leverage effect in the series of exchange rate meaning positive news have large effect on volatility than bad news of same magnitude. This study has an important implication to investors and risk managers. Nevertheless, this study suggests monetary authority to print new currency and de-dollarize the economy in order to be able influence exchange rate volatility. The outcome from this finding also suggests that GARCH family models sufficiently capture the volatility of Somali shilling against US dollar.


Digital subtraction mammography is used to detect gross radiographic changes in breast tissue, but small tumors are missed. The inability to ensure exact positioning of the breast in the mamography machine every time, due to its loose and non-rigid nature causes a large amount of misregistration noise in the difference image. Since the size of the noise is comparable to the size of the tumor being detected, tumors seldom get detected before they metastasize. We propose a new technique based on submamograms. Submamograms are projection images of slabs of the breast which are computed from standard mammograms taken from a few different angles. Subtraction images derived from corresponding submamograms show more clearly those features in the breast that have undergone a change in the interval between examinations.


Abstract— The growth in the need for customized services in hand held devices and sensor based applications are continuously motivating the wireless networks, wireless communications and wireless infrastructures. In the last decade the wireless communication has evolved around the MANETs and IoT devices. Nevertheless, the demands for wireless sensors have not decreased due to less costly and simple deployments measures. The wireless networks especially running on the tiny operating systems are designed and programmed to perform very specific tasks. Also, the processing capabilities of these devices are limited. Henceforth, it is difficult to incorporate additional services into the devices such as routing management, data processing or security. The routing management protocols or the data processing frameworks are often the essential part of the framework. Nevertheless, due to the bottleneck between performance and service availability, the service providers ignore the security issues. Considering the wide use of the wireless sensors ranging from healthcare to tactical usage, it is the demand of the modern research to re-address the security measures of the wireless sensor network. In the recent past, the researchers and practitioners have witnessed a number of attacks on WSN infrastructures and policies. The attacks were diversified in terms of distortions of the information, damage to the network or sometimes vulnerability to the user identifications. Hence, none of the single frameworks are capable of detect all types of attacks on WSN. It is been observed that during any attacks on the WSN, the parametric values related to power, energy and response time changes drastically. Henceforth, any measure of the changes and continuous monitoring may lead to finding a pattern in the data tenting to standard formulations. Thus this work proposes a novel framework to detect the behavioural malfunction of the wireless sensor networks based on the energy, power consumption and response time of the nodes. This is proposed to be the major outcome of this work. Yet another novel outcome of this work is to associate the detection model with the attack response knowledge base in order to generate timely recommendations to avoid the damages. The objective of this work is to create a responsive system for controlling the damages caused by any attack on wireless sensor network for making the world of wireless communication more trustable.


We present the results of new XMM-Newton observations of FRI and FRII radio galaxies that show the importance of jet/environment interactions for both radiosource structure and the properties of the surrounding gas. The FRI observations reveal that the distribution of hot gas determines the radio-lobe morphology, and provide evidence that the subsonic expansion of the lobes heats the surrounding gas. The FRII observations show that the sources are at equipartition and in pressure balance with their surroundings. Finally, we present an analysis of a sample of elliptical-dominated groups, showing that radio-source heating is common.


In designing flexible access networks, we propose an ATM-based network node named ATM flexible access node. ATMFAN has capabilities of effective transport of user traffic in subscriber feeder networks based on the virtual path connections. The main goal of ATMFAN is to provide node and network level flexibilities with access feeder networks, such as flexible network topology configuration and flexible interface package accommodation. We also describe a prototyping model of ATMFAN and show its feasibility on the ring-shaped feeder network by connecting ATMFANs.


We show that universal properties of a many-atom quantum system exist at a much higher density, or a much shorter length scale, than those implied by traditional theories for a dilute Bose gas. In particular, a universal equation of state at length scale β6 = (mC6/2)1/4 (corresponding to the van der Waals interaction) is defined and investigated by combining the concept of effective potential, the constrained variational method and the analytic solution for the van der Waals potential. In one application, we show that a many-atom Bose system with negative scattering length may form a metastable liquid Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) state with an equilibrium density that is controlled by a scaled scattering length.


This study examined the extent SMEs are funded by deposit money banks in Nigeria. This was done through extensive descriptive, graphical and empirical analysis of Bank credit to SMEs data. The study generated and analyzed Bank credit to SMEs gap. It further explored Nigeria's "financing gap" which measures the need of external funds for the corporate sector. Bank credit to SMEs was found to be decreasing over the period covered (i.e. 1992 – 2020). Bank Loans to SMEs as percent of Total Bank Loans reached a maximum of 47.7% in 2003 from where it had continued to decline to 0.56% in 2019 ended. Loans to Small Scale Enterprises as a percentage of Total Credit to the Private sector had been on the decline from a maximum of 27.04 % in 1992 to 0 0.54% in 2019. The analyzed SMEs Credit Gap shows that by 1992, SMEs Credit Gap was N113.664 million but by 2009, the SMEs Credit Gap has grown to N4261.46 billion and N7725.51 billion in 2016. The SMEs Credit Gap as at 2019 ended stood at N7565.51 billion. For the corporate sector, the financing gap is alarming as results reveal a financing gap of N3, 176,147,942,428.47 trillion in 2019. Thus, policies and actions aimed at reversing the downward trend in credit to SMEs as well as closing the financing gap should be intensified. Deposit money banks not just Microfinance banks should be encouraged to lend more to SMEs and remove all obstacles (hidden charges that increase the interest rate) while providing more technical assistance to SMEs.


The interaction of the T-cell receptor complex with the ligands is associated with early molecular events involved in the process of signal transduction implicating phosphoinositide breakdown. In elderly people, abnormalities in membrane signal transduction pathways are the basis of the immune deficiency associated with aging. Peripheral blood lymphocytes from aging humans and young subjects were stimulated with anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody and the phosphoinositide fractions were analyzed in order to determine the fatty acid composition in resting and stimulated conditions. In aging humans, in resting conditions, the all three phosphoinositide fractions appeared more saturated than the corresponding fractions in young subjects. Following anti-CD3 stimulation a decrease in arachidonic acid relative molar content was detected in both young and old subjects, but the arachidonic acid content in resting conditions greatly differed between the two groups, suggesting a different modulation of the microenvironment of the T-cell receptor complex in elderly people, so determining alterations in the early activation steps of lymphocytes.


Background Amphotericin B (AMB) is a polyene antibiotic with broad spectrum antifungal activity, but its clinical toxicities and poor solubility limit the wide application of AMB in clinical practice. Recently, new drug-loaded nanoparticles (NPs) – diblock copolymer D-α-tocopheryl polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate-b-poly(ε-caprolactone-ran-glycolide) (PLGA-TPGS) – have received special attention for their reduced toxicity, and increased effectiveness of drug has also been reported. This study aimed to develop AMB-loaded PLGA-TPGS nanoparticles (AMB-NPs) and evaluate their antifungal effects in vitro and in vivo. Methods AMB-NPs were prepared with a modified nanoprecipitation method and then characterized in terms of physical characteristics, in vitro drug release, stability, drug-encapsulation efficiency, and toxicity. Finally, the antifungal activity of AMB-NPs was investigated in vitro and in vivo. Results AMB-NPs were stable and spherical, with an average size of around 110 nm; the entrapment efficacy was closed to 85%, and their release exhibited a typically biphasic pattern. The actual minimum inhibitory concentration of AMB-NPs against Candida albicans was significantly lower than that of free AMB, and AMB-NPs were less toxic on blood cells. In vivo experiments indicated that AMB-NPs achieved significantly better and prolonged antifungal effects when compared with free AMB. Conclusion The AMB-PLGA-TPGS NP system significantly improves the AMB bioavailability by improving its antifungal activities and reducing its toxicity, and thus, these NPs may become a good drug carrier for antifungal treatment.


Uterine myoelectrical activity was recorded in seven pregnant sheep covering the period between 13 and 75 days post-coitum. Activity in the myometrium was present at day 13 and took the form of intermittent spikes of low amplitude. Bursts of spikes of irregular duration became noticeable between days 25 and 40 but most were not coordinated throughout the myometrium. Coordinated bursts of myoelectrical activity, which could be recorded at several sites simultaneously, first appeared between 40 and 65 days. These bursts had similar characteristics to the myoelectrical activity associated with uterine contractions during the last third of gestation. The myoelectrical activity showed a progressive increase in amplitude during the first half of gestation. There was no relationship between plasma progesterone levels and the increase in amplitude or appearance of coordinated bursts of uterine activity.


This study has been performed in Sweden, where the preschool curriculum states that children's understanding of simple chemical processes is a goal to strive towards [13]. However, uncertainty within the current preschool practice exists and has been described by B. Sundberg et al. [20]. Motivated by the lack of scientific literature on what chemistry content is suitable for preschool children and how to introduce it, this study aims to tackle how abstract concepts like "atoms" and "molecules" can be introduced to preschool children. With this purpose, a play-based learning intervention was designed, following the cultural-historical model for preschool science education proposed by M. Fleer [7], and implemented in two Swedish preschools, dividing a total of 20 three-years-old children into four groups of five children each. Data were collected in the form of video-recordings of the sessions and analysed following the principles from the experimental-genetic method summarized by N. Veresov [23]. Results are presented in the form of vignettes that illustrate significant moments from the intervention, together with discussion of how the social situation of development, the zone of actual development and the mediating tools facilitate the children in starting to talk about atoms.


Summary Piemontite-bearing metachert horizons are recorded from regionally metamorphosed eugeosynclinal rocks at Haast River, in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Piemontite schist mineralogical assemblages produced by epidote-amphibole facies metamorphism are described petro-graphically, and are compared with lower grade occurrences in the Haast Schist Group. A chemical analysis yields a composition of (Ca1·75Mg0·02Mn0·25Na0·03K0·01) (Al2·23Fe0·53Mn0·24 Ti0·01)Si3·06O12(OH)0·9, which is compared graphically with other metamorphic, hydrothermal, and metasomatic piemontites. Single-crystal Weissenberg and powder camera X-ray data are given, and an attempt made to relate these X-ray parameters to chemical variation within the piemontite composition range.


The funding of cultural activities in the Province of Bolzano has long been related to the need for a new and broader concept of welfare, in order not to intend it as a mere health, social security, home, work and school policy. Such a need has been sensed for at least fifteen years, aiming at preventing crisis situations that might arise from neglected urban suburbs, the rising average age of the population, employment difficulties that the latest economic trends have ungenerously leaned against younger generations and women. The many interventions focused on urban peripheries, the theme of culture and health, the approval of new laws for youth employment in the cultural field, social housing policies related to culture. The high cultural participation in recent decades and the widespread presence of lifelong learning activities have had many well known positive impacts on the local economy. One striking example is the pharmaceutical expenditure in class A -SSN (National Sanitary Service): the Province of Bolzano for instance has the lowest expenditure per capita in antibiotics in Italy, and while the average Italian medical expenses add up to 134,4 euro, in our province they are limited to 97 euro each.


In-situ measurement of physical activity of human under free-living environment is important for assessing their exposure to the environment. Innovative sensing technology is needed to realize such measurement. This paper presents a wearable, multi-sensor integrated measurement system (IMS) for assessing physical activity. Detailed analysis and simulation were performed for the parametric design of the IMS hardware and embedded software. An adaptive-scheduling method was devised to improve the battery power efficiency, reducing the energy consumption by over 16 times as compared to the conventional technique, enabling continued system operation of up to 54 hours. Experiments on human subjects have shown that the multi-sensor IMS is more effective in recognizing activities of varying intensity than the traditional activity measurement devices that use accelerometers alone. Error analysis of the IMS accelerometer outputs is also presented.


Watershed algorithm is used widely in segmentation of droplet overlapped spots on water-sensitive test paper. However, the phenomenon of over-segmentation, however, is often caused by noise and subtle changes of gray levels in images. To further improve segmentation accuracy of watershed algorithm, this paper proposes a cyclic iterative watershed segmentation algorithm. Through statistical analysis and logistic regression, machine learning models were classified to extract overlapping droplets on test papers. Loop iterative processing of seed points segments overlapping droplets with appropriate thresholds. Compared with fixed threshold watershed segmentation, this method has higher precision and efficiency for spray droplet evaluation in pesticide application.


The ability to detect and characterize multiple secondary structures or polymorphs within peptide and protein aggregates is crucial to treatment and prevention of amyloidogenic diseases, production of novel biomaterials, and many other applications. Here we report a label-free method to distinguish multiple β-sheet configurations within a single peptide aggregate using two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy. By calculating the transition dipole strength (TDS) spectrum from the ratio of linear and two-dimensional signals, we can extract maximum TDS values which provide higher sensitivity to vibrational coupling, and thus specifics of protein structure, than vibrational frequency alone. TDS spectra of AcKFE8 aggregates reveal two distinct β-sheet structures within fibers that appear homogeneous by other techniques. Furthermore, TDS spectra taken during early stages of aggregation show additional peaks that may indicate the presence of more weakly coupled β-sheet structures. These results demonstrate a unique and powerful spectroscopic method capable of distinguishing multiple oligomeric and polymorphic motifs throughout the aggregation using only native vibrational modes.


Many forefront observatories are located in remote areas and are difficult to visit, and the global pandemic made visits even harder. Several virtual tours have been executed on YouTube or Facebook Live, however, it is difficult to feel a sense of immersion and these are far from the actual experience of visiting a site. To solve this problem, we pursued an astronomy outreach event on the virtual reality social platform VRChat. To provide an experience similar to visiting the site, we performed a virtual tour of the ALMA Observatory in VRChat guided by an ALMA staff member. 47 guests participated in the tour. The post-event survey showed that the overall lecture and guided tour were very positively accepted by the participants. Respondents answered that the communication in the VRChat was more intensive than in other online outreach events or on-site public talks. The ratio of respondents who answered that they were able to communicate well with the guide was higher for those who used head mounted displays than for those who participated in other ways. 40 answered that the tour increased their interest in astronomy, and this did not show a clear difference depending on how they participated. In the free descriptions in the responses, there were noticeable mentions of the physical sensations received from the realistic 3D space, which left a positive and strong impression on the participants. The responses show that VRChat has the potential to be a strong tool for astronomy communication in the pandemic and post-pandemic eras .


This study was conducted to determine the effects of diclofenac sodium in broiler chicks during the period from 20 th July /2012 to 1 st september/2012. The broiler chicks were divided into four groups A, B, C and control with ten day old bird in each. Group A was treated with @ 5mg/kg body weight, group B was treated with @ 10mg/kg body weight and Group C was treated with 20 mg/kg body weight given orally mixing with drinking water. Histopathological, hematological and biochemical tests were performed on 42 th days of age to evaluate diclofenac-induced changes between control and treated groups. Mortality rate and pathomorphological changes were observed in dead birds. The acute toxicity was assessed by observing the clinical signs and symptoms, mortality, alterations in blood biochemistry, and necropsy findings. The birds of Group A showed only mild symptoms of diarrhea and 30% mortality. In Group B, 60% and Group 70% of birds died in between 24 and 36 h post-treatment showing the symptoms of segregatory behavior, lethargy, terminal anorexia, and severe bloody diarrhea. Observation of hematological parameters like TEC, Hb, PCV and ESR on 42 th days of age showed significant (p<0.01) decrease in treatment group compare to control group. Observation of biochemical parameters (serum urea, serum creatinine) on 42 th days of age showed significantly increased (p<0.01) serum urea and serum creatinine indicating nephrotoxicity in broilers. At 12 and 24 h post-treatment this returned to the normal levels. The dead birds of the high-dose group also showed similar pattern of biochemical changes at 12 and 24 h post-treatment and revealed extensive visceral gout with characteristic histopathological lesions in liver, kidney, heart, spleen and intestine on post-mortem. The results indicate that diclofenac sodium has hepatotoxic, nephrotoxic, and visceral gout inducing potentials in broilers (cob-500), especially at higher dose. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjvm.v13i1.23710 Bangl. J. Vet. Med . (2015). 13 (1): 19-24


We investigated the mechanism by which 7-ketocholesterol damages vascular smooth muscle cells and the protective effect of the hydroxymethyl glutary CoA reductase inhibitor, pravastatin on it. When 7-ketocholesterol (50 micromol/L) was added to cultured human vascular smooth muscle cells, the extent of cell detachment increased and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling was positive. DNA extracted from the smooth muscle cells exposed to 7-ketocholesterol showed a ladder pattern on agarose electrophoresis. The fragmented DNA also increased in smooth muscle cells incubated with 7-ketocholesterol dose-dependently. In the presence of pravastatin, the cell detachment induced by 7-ketocholesterol was inhibited and the amount of fragmented DNA decreased significantly. These effects of pravastatin were inhibited by mevalonate. The results suggest that 7-ketocholesterol-induced apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells is inhibited by pravastatin, and mevalonate acts as a trigger of the apoptosis.


Motivation of the employees plays an essential role to help an organization achieve effectively the objectives in terms of productivity and commitment of its employees. Considering the importance of employees' motivation, we conducted a research in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan to find whether employees are really affected by the compensation. In other words, what factors can influence the motivation of employees within a company? The data for the study is randomly obtained from 350 employees of distinct private and public organizations through five-likert scale adopted questionnaire. To obtain consistent study results, the ordinary least square an econometric assessment method was used. The results show that rewards have positive and statistically significant impacts on the motivation of employees. Our findings also show that the impact on employee motivation is positive on financial and non-financial benefits. This means that organizations provide their employees with both financial and non-financial benefits, thus strengthening employee motivation. However, the findings also indicate that intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and job satisfaction have a considerable influence on employee motivation.  Therefore, we strongly recommend both private and public organizations to motivate their employees through compensations.


This paper proposes a speech segment selection method based on machine learning for concatenative speech synthesis systems. The proposed method has two novel features. One is its use of support vector machine (SVM) to estimate the subjective correctness of pitch accent with respect to each accent phrase of possible candidate speech segments. The other is its use of a determination function to identify the best segment based on SVM output. The determination function involves two assessments; one counts the number of each sign of SVM output and the other compares the distance values. The sign of SVM output is generally used to classify target objects, but the distance SVM output also represents important information. An experiment that assesses SVM performance for Japanese accent validity shows that its accuracy is 81%. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed segment selection method, preference tests are conducted. The test indicates that the proposed method can yield Japanese synthesized speech with more natural intonation than the conventional method that uses only target cost and concatenation cost.


REFERENCES 1. Fanburg-Smith JC, Fletcher CD, Mertens F. Haemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumor. In: Fletcher CD, Bridge JA, Hogendoorn PC, et al, eds. WHO Classification of Tumours of Soft Tissue and Bone. Lyon: IARC Press; 2013:210–211. 2. Marshall-Taylor C, Fanburg-Smith JC. Hemosiderotic fibrohistiocytic lipomatous lesion: ten cases of a previously undescribed fatty lesion of the foot/ankle. Mod Pathol. 2000;13:1192–1199. 3. Browne TJ, Fletcher CD. Haemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumour (so-called haemosiderotic fibrohistiocytic lipomatous tumour): analysis of 13 new cases in support of a distinct entity. Histopathology. 2006; 48:453–461. 4. Wettach GR, Boyd LJ, Lawce HJ, et al. Cytogenetic analysis of a hemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumor. Cancer Genet Cytogenet. 2008;182:140–143. 5. Hallor KH, Sciot R, Staaf J, et al. Two genetic pathways, t(1;10) and amplification of 3p11-12, in myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma, haemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumour, and morphologically similar lesions. J Pathol. 2009;217:716–727. 6. Lambert I, Debiec-Rychter M, Guelinckx P, et al. Acral myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma with unique clonal chromosomal changes. Virchows Arch. 2001; 438:509–512. 7. Meis-Kindblom JM, Kindblom LG. Acral myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma: a low-grade tumor of the hands and feet. Am J Surg Pathol. 1998;22:911–924. 8. Montgomery EA, Devaney KO, Giordano TJ, et al. Inflammatory myxohyaline tumor of distal extremities with virocyte or ReedSternberg-like cells: a distinctive lesion with features simulating inflammatory conditions, Hodgkin's disease, and various sarcomas. Mod Pathol. 1998;11:384–391. 9. Antonescu CR, Zhang L, Nielsen GP, et al. Consistent t(1;10) with rearrangements of TGFBR3 and MGEA5 in both myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma and hemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumor. Genes Chromosomes Cancer. 2011;50:757–764. 10. Elco CP, Marino-Enriquez A, Abraham JA, et al. Hybrid myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma/hemosiderotic fibrolipomatous tumor: report of a case providing further evidence for a pathogenetic link. Am J Surg Pathol. 2010;34:1723–1727.


Mobility models are the foundation of the simulation study of various protocols in Mobile Adhoc Networks. The comparative Performance of Dynamic Source Routing and Adhoc On-Demand Distance Vector routing protocols using the two Chain Mobility Models against Performance parameters like Throughput, Packet Delivery Fraction, End to End Delay is presented in this paper. The study is oriented towards deployment of sparse ad-hoc networks by suitably selecting the number of nodes. With the help of NS-2 simulator performance of Reactive Routing Protocols in Chain mobility models is analysed and hence comparative study is put farward. Keyword : Adhoc networks, Mobility Models, Mobility Models, Performance parameters, NS2


The molecular mechanism of the specific expression of glutathione S-transferase P-form (GST-P) in the rat hepatic preneoplastic foci and "GST-P-positive" single cells requires elucidation. Immunochemical and stereological analyses revealed that the enzyme level in preneoplastic foci was 150-250-fold (6.7 +/- 2.4 mg/g liver and 0.29 +/- 0.1 mM subunits) higher than in normal cells. GST-P content in the single cells was higher than in preneoplastic foci, as determined by densitometry. In addition, the single cells were larger in cell diameter and area, corresponding to 2-3-fold increase in cell volume, relative to normal cells, but showed a significant shrinkage of their nuclei. Prior to the induction of single cells in the liver by diethylnitrosamine (DEN), microsomes were severely damaged as reflected by the low yield (approximately 60% that of untreated controls) after 2 h of DEN injection. Considering that GST-P is mainly a binding protein for GSH conjugates of endogenous carcinogens, together with our findings of morphological expansion, low viability of single cells and microsomal damage, our results suggest anomalous elevation of the ligand counterparts to lethal levels in preneoplastic cells, especially in single cells. We propose that the epigenetic mechanism rather than the genetic mechanism could account for GST-P induction in hepatocytes.


Failure recovery in IP networks is critical to high quality service provisioning. One of the challenges is how to achieve fast recovery without introducing high complexity and resource usage. Today's main approaches are route recalculation and lower layer protection, where recalculation could take a long time to complete; while protection usually requires considerable bandwidth redundancy. IP fast rerouting achieves ultra fast failure recovery by calculating alternate paths in advance. When a failure is detected, the affected packets are immediately forwarded through alternate paths to shorten the service disruption. We present an algorithm called Efficient SCan for Alternate Paths (ESCAP) to achieve fast rerouting. The algorithm guarantees 100% recovery of single-link and single-node failures. In particular, it supports generic multi- path routing (where a router maintains multiple paths to a single destination) and does not require the paths to have equal cost. The implementation of ESCAP has low complexity and does not introduce explicit signaling between routers. Simulations show that our scheme yields comparable performance to shortest path route recalculation. This work illuminates the possibility of using pure IP layer solutions to enhance the Internet survivability.


The Arab's tribes were diverse and were scattered all over Arabia. They were alien to any system, were unfamiliar of any rules and regulations. When the prophet PBUH came to them, He gently handled them, made them lenient, gathered them at the one true platform and eventually he was succeeded in uplifting them into the bondage of brotherhood. He guided them towards the political structure so that they can live under its shadow and follow its rules and regulations. He trained amongst them Preachers, judges, leaders and politicians. He sent his messengers to all the rulers of the worlds. These messengers were able to shake the Persians and Roman thrones which were considered the greatest empires of that time. They all got united against this newly arising force which later brought the greatest revolution in the history of humankind.
The solutions presented by the Prophet PBUH while confronting the challenges in spreading his message,  enjoy the political wit, which is considered far better than the wit of political scholars and political tycoons. His ability of prior reading of the incidents, uncovers his huge potential in his prior dealing of the matters and suggesting its solutions and substitutes. His policies played a vital role in establishing the prior relations with Njashi, and later to facilitate the Muslims during their first immigration towards Abyssinia from the cruelty of the idolaters. Moreover, He chose the best time for the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and Conquest of Mecca. He chose among his companions the one who knew the International languages and sent them as his Ambassadors to the rulers and tribal chiefs along with his written or verbal messages. He addressed the each with the method appropriate to him and suited him the best.
He made best use of alliance, as he alienated the Arab tribes, from Jews and the others. In this way he was able to take a huge time to concentrate on those nations and was able to make a lot of allies.
In his internal policy matters, he always tried to solve his problems, developing the society and to sabotage the malicious intentions which were planned by hypocrites, who were considered as his most dangerous enemies.
His policy towards them was to admit apparently and leaving their unrevealed intentions to ALLAH. He treated them well, because he was anxious on preserving the freedom of all and the unity among his companions. When their malicious intentions started turning to become a threat to the security of Islam and started harming the interests of the society, He had not reply them strongly and dissuasively. He demolished the Mosque through which they were planning to harm the Muslim community. Moreover, he drew a line to their plans of aggression without harming anyone. He was very witty in his policies through which he was able to defeat them in the end. In this way he was able to change the course of the whole history on mankind. In this research we will try to deal with his moral wit which is considered the main characteristic of his policy.


Infective endocarditis (IE) is infection of the endocardial surface of the heart, often affects the cardiac valves, and can involve the septal defects or mural endocarditis. Although IE is rare, it is still an important disease because it is difficult to diagnose and treat it and it leads to high morbidity and mortality. Diabetes, advanced age, chronic renal failure requiring dialysis, and staphylococcus aureus endocarditis are important elements contributing to mortality. In this case, an acute cerebellar abscess and infarction were discussed in a 49-year-old man with chronic renal failure who underwent hemodialysis for 9 months and was diagnosed with IE induced by jugular vein catheter.


We consider extensions of Coalition Logic (CL) which can express statements about inter-related powers of coalitions to achieve their respective goals. In particular, we introduce and study two new extensions of CL. One of them is the "Socially Friendly Coalition Logic'' SFCL, which is also a multi-agent extension of the recently introduced "Instantial Neighborhood Logic'' INL. SFCL can express the claim that a coalition has a collective strategy to guarantee achieving its explicitly stated goal while acting in a 'socially friendly way', by enabling the remaining agents to achieve other (again, explicitly stated) goals of their choice. The other new extension is the "Group Protecting Coalition Logic'' GPCL which enables reasoning about entire coalitional goal assignments, in which every group of agents has its own specified goal. GPCL can express claims to the effect that there is an action profile of the grand coalition such that, by playing it, every sub-coalition of agents can guarantee satisfaction of its own private goal (and thus, protect its own interests) while acting towards achievement of the common goal of the grand coalition. For each of these logics, we discuss its expressiveness, introduce the respective notion of bisimulation and prove bisimulation invariance and Hennessy-Milner property. We then also present sound and complete axiomatic systems and prove decidability for both logics.


SUMMARY An aggressive operative strategy of multiple debridments for the treatment of pancreatic necrosis was used in the pancreatic unit of the Edgardo Rebagliati Martins Hospital at Lima Peru. Between October 1997 and January 2002, 60 consecutive patients with necrotizing pancreatitis were treated with operative management consisted of wide-ranging necrosectomy through all the affected area, combined with continuous widespread lavage and suction drainage.


A method has been developed for determination of arsenic in beer. Organic matter is destroyed by the dry-ashing technique, the ash is dissolved in HCl, and hydrides of arsenic are generated by addition of sodium borohydride prior to atomization in a flame-heated quartz cell and atomic absorption spectroscopy measurement. The analytical features of the method are detection limit 0.1 ng/g beer, precision 8%, and recovery 97 +/- 7%. The arsenic contents of different brands from Spain and other European countries were analyzed. In all samples, the arsenic levels found were well below maximum levels allowed in Spanish legislation (100 ng/g). The quantities of arsenic in Spanish beers do not differ from those found in foreign beers. No differences were found between bottled and canned beers, and no correlation exists between metal content and original specific gravity of the beers.


The article summarizes current trends in financial support for digital health in Ukraine, considering the requirements and recommendations of international institutions. The research goal is to identify problems and challenges in public funding in Ukraine and find effective ways to solve them based on world experience. The systematization of scientific sources and approaches to solving the problem of financing digital health projects has shown that most studies present the results on finding effective mechanisms for financing health care or technical aspects of digital health and its components. However, under the WHO report, the lack or insufficient level of sustainable funding is an insuperable obstacle for implementing digital health projects in most countries. Thus, the above confirmed the relevance of the investigated scientific problem. Methodical tools of this research were systematization, structural and comparative analyses, logical generalization. The practical implementation of the study was carried out using the tools of Excel 2016. In the study, the start point for gathering data was 2016, which is the beginning of the digital health transformation in Ukraine. For gaining the research goal, this study was conducted in the following logical sequence: analyzing the effectiveness and stability of budget funding for the electronic health record projects in Ukraine within the eHealth initiative; defining the current state of Telemedicine and Mobile Medicine financings; identifying the potential directions for solving the problem of lack of funding based on world experience; determining the innovative digital medicine projects implemented by startups; setting the relationship between the amount of venture financing, the maturity and number of employees of companies. Following the findings, the authors developed the recommendations to use AI, Big Data, blockchain technologies, the Internet of Things to establish cooperation between the private, public sectors, academia, and non-governmental organizations.


An expandable modular data storage array for storing and backing up data transmitted from a host computer including a plurality of data storage devices, a plurality of substantially identical, vertically stacked storage device housings adapted to slidably receive a data storage device, and mechanical connection elements for releasably connecting the top of one storage device housing to the bottom of a storage device housing stacked thereon. The array is connectable to a host computer and receives data and corresponding parity data therefrom. The parity data are indicative of data intended to be stored, from which parity data the intended data are reconstructable.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the study is to detect the expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA in the maxillary sutures of puberty rhesus during different periods of the loading of intermaxillary class III orthopedic force.

METHODS
The animal model was established with 6 puberty female rhesus, which were randomly divided into experimental group (wearing class III twin-block magnet appliance, each 2 rhesus for 3 and 6 month respectively) and control group (not wearing any appliance, each 1 rhesus for 3 and 6 month respectively). Tissue sections were obtained perpendicular to the sutures. In situ hybridization was used to the expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA, and the expression intensity was measured and statistics was performed by SPSS 11.0.

RESULTS
There were no statistic differences of cellular density between palatomaxillary suture in vertical group and pterygomaxillary suture in horizontal group, but statistic differences were found between other groups. The expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA was detected in the control group, but the expression intensity was obviously increased after the load of intermaxillary class III orthopedic force. Statistically significant differences were found among all groups except the six months experimental group and control group of temporozygomatic sutures and pterygomaxillary sutures. Experimental groups were more intensive than the control group and three months group was more intensive than the six months group.

CONCLUSION
The active tissue remodeling happened in the circummaxillary sutures by the effect of class III intermaxillary orthopedic force. Cell proliferation, extracellular matrix synthesis and bone formation were accelerated. During the different remodeling periods, the expression intensities were different, which may be related to the different force loading manners, the different reaction of sutures to the orthopedic force and the different biological function of TGF-beta1 in the different periods.


Flacourtiaceae plants are widely used as folk medicines in traditional medicine systems for its chemical diversity and pharmacological activities. In many different areas, Flacourtiaceae plants are used as traditional medicines for the treatment of ulcers, malaria, rheumatism. The Flacourtiaceae plants contain a very plentiful chemical composition, and phytochemical studies show that the Flacourtiaceae plants contained terpenoids, aromatic glycosides, flavnoids, phenylpropanoids, alkaloids, fatty hydrocarbon, and other compounds. In pharmacological studies, various extract and isolated individual compounds exhibited antitumor, anti-oxidation, and anti-inflammatory activities. In this review, the literature data on the chemical constituents and pharmacological investigations of the Flacourtiaceae plants are summarized, to provide information about a more comprehensive chemical composition and detailed pharmacological activities of Flacourtiaceae plants, with a view of further development of clinical medication. However, research on quantitative analysis, toxicity, and drug safety in vitro and in vivo is still insufficient, and further research is required.


This study aimed at investigating the SGLT2 expression in human cardiomyocytes. Human studies evaluating cardiomyocyte SGLT2s expression are limited. To better clarify this issue, SGLT2 protein expression was assessed in human hearts of diabetic and non-diabetic patients, and in AC16 human cardiomyocyte cell line. A prospective study with a follow-up of patients who underwent their first heart transplant (HTX) was performed. Explanted heart, basal (1 week after HTX), and final (48 weeks after HTX) endomyocardial biopsies (EMBs) from patients were evaluated for SGLT2 occurrence in cardiomyocyte with immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence and SGLT2 quantization with both real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analysis. The immunofluorescence co-localization of SGLT2 in cardiomyocyte evidenced that an increased expression in the explanted heart from diabetic patients compared to non-diabetic (p<0.001). In all final EMBs from diabetic patients, the expression of SGLT2 in cardiomyocyte was increased compared to non-diabetic (p<0.01). This evidence was confirmed by Western blot analysis of SGLT2 protein. In addition, PCR analysis revealed very low mRNA levels in basal EMBs from diabetic and non-diabetic patients (p=NS), whereas final EMBs from diabetic patients showed higher SGLT2 mRNA levels in diabetic compared to non-diabetic patients (p<0.05). Cultured human cardiomyocytes exposed to high-glucose showed increased expression of SGLT2 protein compared to cells exposed to normal glucose (p<0.05). The presence of SGLT2 in cardiomyocytes supports the hypothesis of SGLT2i-mediated impact on metabolic pathways within cardiomyocytes. Moreover, metabolic disorders linked to diabetes may lead promptly to upregulation of SGLT2 levels in human cardiomyocytes.