The main purpose of this research note is to show that the triality theory can always be used to identify both global minimizer and the biggest local maximizer in global optimization. An open problem left on the double-min duality is solved for a nonconvex optimization problem with double-well potential in $\mathbb{R}^n $, which leads to a complete set of analytical solutions. Also a convergency theorem is proved for linear perturbation canonical dual method, which can be used for solving global optimization problems with multiple solutions. The methods and results presented in this note pave the way towards the proof of the triality theory in general cases.


Introduction In an era in which patients are becoming more and more demanding and in which there are many ways to satisfy their needs, modern implantology must consider the correct management of soft tissues during treatment planning, aiming for both functional and aesthetic rehabilitation while creating a prosthetic construction that is in harmony not only with the natural dentition of the patient but also with their face. The patient who came to our notice had a rehabilitative prosthetic implant on the left central incisor area, which did not satisfy any functional or aesthetic parameter. Furthermore, he presented an altered passive eruption in the contralateral hemiarch. Materials and Methods The prosthetic crown was removed, the tissues were studied, and the team decided to proceed with customizing a provisional restoration that would cause the soft tissues to descend. A surgical periodontal procedure was then performed to solve the altered passive eruption condition that was also compromising the aesthetics. In conclusion, a permanent prosthetic crown was fixed into place. Discussion. Using a periodontal approach that was both surgical and prosthetic, the patient was rehabilitated correctly regaining both functions and aesthetics. It is of fundamental importance that each step in the procedure is carefully programmed; otherwise, the risk of making mistakes increases and solving the problems becomes less simple or less immediate. In order to do this, one must bear in mind that certain clinical cases can apparently concern just one tooth, yet the mouth must be considered as a whole, both functionally and aesthetically. To perform an optimal implantology, the clinician should be an expert in periodontology so that they can plan and, should it be necessary, perform all the therapeutical options (surgical and nonsurgical) that can lead to the best possible result. Conclusions The resolution of this complex clinical case has been documented in order to share useful advice for the resolution of analogous cases. We strongly advise that each proposed procedure be planned meticulously and that the periodontological aspect of the case never be separated from the prosthetic or the implantological aspects since the integration of the periodontal tissues is of vital importance for both the functional and the aesthetic results.


Power management of nanogrid cluster assisted by a novel peer-to-peer(P2P) electricity trading is presented. In our work, several nanogrids are integrated into a nanogrid cluster and unbalance of power consumption among clusters is mitigated by the proposed P2P trading method. For power management of individual clusters, multi-objective optimization simultaneously minimizing total power consumption, portion of grid power in total power consumption, and total delay incurred by scheduling is attempted. Types of loads involved in power management of nanogrid cluster are flexible loads allowing scheduling and non-flexible loads. Renewable power source photovoltaic(PV) system is adopted for each cluster as a secondary source. Temporal surplus of self-supply PV power of a cluster can be sold through P2P trading to other cluster(s) experiencing temporal shortage. The cluster in temporal shortage of electric power buys the surplus PV power and uses it to reduce peak load and total delay. In P2P trading, a cooperative game model is used for buyers and sellers to maximize their welfare. To increase the efficiency of P2P trading measured by reduction of peak load and total delay, future trends of load demand and PV power production are taken into account for power management of each cluster unlike conventional P2P trading to resolve instantaneous unbalance between load demand and PV power production. To this end, a gated recurrent unit network is used to forecast future load demand and future PV power production. The effectiveness of the proposed P2P trading method for nanogrid cluster is verified by simulations. According to simulation results, proposed P2P trading causes peak load reduction in peak hours, reduction of grid power consumption, and total delay. INDEX TERMS optimal power management; nanogrid cluster; PV power; P2P trading; forecasted load demand


Background: Propofol is an intravenous anaesthetic drug that has been shown to reduce inflammatory pain. Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) type I is a pain condition characterized by autonomic, motor and sensory disturbance. The chronic post-ischaemic pain (CPIP) model is a well-established model to recapture CRPS-I syndromes pre-clinically by non-invasive ischaemic-reperfusion (IR) injury. In this study, we investigated the analgesic effects of propofol and underlying mechanisms in mitigating CRPS pain using the CPIP model. Methods: Sub-anaesthetic dose of propofol (25 mg/kg) was intravenously delivered to the CPIP model and sham control. Nociceptive behavioural changes were assayed by the von Frey test. Molecular assays were used to investigate expression changes of PTEN, PI3K, AKT and IL-6 underlying propofol-mediated analgesic effects. Pharmacological inhibition was applied for PTEN/PI3K/AKT pathway manipulation. Results: Both pre- and post-operative administration of propofol attenuated mechanical allodynia induced by CPIP. Propofol could modulate PTEN/PI3K/AKT signalling pathway by increasing active PTEN and reducing phosphorylated PI3K, phosphorylated AKT and IL-6 expression in the spinal dorsal horn, which promoted pain relief in the CPIP model. Inhibition of PTEN with bpV abolished the analgesic effects produced by propofol in CPIP mice. Conclusion: Sub-anaesthetic dose of propofol administration resulted in the activation of PTEN, inhibition of both PI3K/AKT signalling and IL-6 production in the spinal cord, which dramatically reduced CPIP-induced pain. Our findings lay the foundation in using propofol for the treatment of CRPS with great therapeutic implications.


This paper investigates the quasi-static compression properties of cardboard panels reinforced with braided glass fiber rods manufactured using a tubular braiding machine. Compression tests are performed on glass fiber rods without any cardboard material first, and the specific energy absorption of rods with and without a taper angle is compared. Braided rods with a taper show much better progressive crushing than those without and have a specific energy absorption that is approximately 1.5 times larger. The rods are then inserted in a single layer of cardboard 3 cm × 3 cm and cases involving one, four, and five rods are investigated. The cardboard is observed to constrain the rods from excessive splaying, causing greater levels of fiber fragmentation which consumes more energy compared with rods without cardboard. Compression testing is also performed on panels made from two layers of cardboard, reinforced with longer rods. The crushing results of single-layer panels show more progressive crushing than those of two-layer panels where the longer rods become inclined from the direction of applied load due to deformation of the surrounding cardboard resulting in reduced crushing performance.


As a result of its unique antimicrobial properties, nanosilver (nano-Ag) is being applied widely in consumer products and may pose a potential risk to human health via dermal or oral exposure. The present study investigated the contents of nano-Ag in 10 different typesofproducts inChinesemarkets.Thenoncarcinogenic health risk to adults of silver in antimicrobial products was assessed by dermal absorbed dose and oral ingestionmodels proposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Four products were identified as having notable levels of nano-Ag, ranging from 0.79 to 57.89mgL , and nano-Ag accounted for 8.8% to 99.1%of total silver in these products. In contrast, nano-Ag was not detected in other products, although these products' ingredients labels claimed they contained nano-Ag. The risk index of silver ranged from 3.6 10 4 to 6.8 10 1 for most consumer products, indicating that silver in these products did not pose a significant noncarcinogenic risk to humans. Among the consumer products containing nano-Ag, the risk index was 1.0 10 3 to 6.8 10 1 via dermal exposure, compared with 3.6 10 4 to 6.0 10 3 via oral exposure. One consumer product had a maximum risk index of 0.86, which indicated a potential noncarcinogenic risk.


: The present study explored the general patterns of Chinese university EFL students' attitudes towards English, interest in foreign languages, and their perceptions of social norms in foreign language learning, and the relationships among these measured variables and their performance in English. Analyses of 1697 questionnaires revealed the following findings: (1) more than half of the participants held moderately or strongly positive attitudes towards English, were moderately or even strongly interested in foreign languages, and moderately believed that the Chinese social norms supported foreign language learning, (2) male and female students significantly differed from each other in the three measured variables, and (3) the measured variables were significantly positively related to one another and the students' performance in English.


We present global potential energy surfaces for nine adiabatic electronic states of O3, namely, 1 1A', 2 1A', 1 1A″, 1 3A', 2 3A', 1 3A″, 1 5A', 2 5A', and 1 5A″. These are the states of O3 that are accessed in electronically adiabatic collisions of a ground-state triplet O2 molecule with a ground-state triplet O atom. The surfaces are based on XMS-CASPT2 electronic structure calculations with dynamically scaled external correlation. The active space has 12 active electrons distributed in the nine 2p orbitals. The adiabatic surfaces are fitted to analytic functions using a many-body expansion where the pairwise additive term is fitted to an accurate diatomic potential including a damped dispersion term, and the many-body part, without disconnected terms, is fitted with permutationally invariant polynomials in mixed exponential-Gaussians to the electronic structure data points. The selection and weighting of points for the fits are designed to produce surfaces suitable for describing energy transfer and dissociation in high-energy collisions.


This article focuses on Fatima Mernissi's, and Amina Wadud's views of feminism from the Eastern perspective. These two well-known writers and thinkers believe that Muslim women suffer due to the patriarchal system and male leading figures misinterpreting the sacred texts in Muslim countries. Fatima Mernissi's and Amina Wadud's influence extend throughout the Middle East and into other Islamic countries. They are recognized as public figures in their countries and abroad, especially in France and America where they are still famous amongst feminist groups. Many publishing houses have translated their books and articles into a variety of languages, including English, Arabic, French, and Turkish. Their focus is on gender discrimination and women's issues. They always seek to supervise the publication of their books and articles on the public recognition of women in the USA, Middle Easte and Europe. These writers' works explore the relationship between sexual ideology, gender identity, sociopolitical organization, and the status of women in Islam; their special focus, however, is the Arabian and African societies and cultures.


The design of bandgap-engineered all-solid photonic bandgap fibers based on a broken-ring structure is investigated in detail. Both density of states maps and Bloch mode field distribu- tions are used to show how the bandgap structure can be engi- neered and a higher-order gap be greatly expanded by replacing the high-index germanium-doped rod in a repeating cell with a ring of several individual high-index rods. The strategy is that both the azimuthal and radial orders of the cladding LP modes can be controlled by the broken-ring parameters. In particular, the rod number determines the highest azimuthal order of the LP mode that is less affected by the broken-ring, and the bandgap width is largely affected by the rod size. The result of bandgap engineering is that the higher-order bandgap can be utilized to design all-solid photonic bandgap fibers with very broad transmission windows of 488 nm and 944 nm centered at 800 nm and 1550 nm, respectively, and with typical normal-zero-anomalous dispersion profiles.


Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, i.e., psilocybin treatment with psychological support, has demonstrated the efficacy of psilocybin to reduce depressive symptoms. However, in clinical trials, the structure of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is primarily based on preparation, navigation (support during dosing sessions), and integration. For psychotherapeutic guidance, the application of this structure is favored over the usage of theoretical models. The applied psychotherapeutic models may be of critical importance if the effects are augmented due to the psychologically insightful experiences during the navigation and integration sessions. One of the important next steps is to provide therapists with guidance on how to provide psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. We present an integrated protocol for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for depression based on the theoretical model and psychotherapeutic framework of Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). We hypothesize that CFT can provide the theoretical model and compassion practices that will reinforce the experiences during the navigation and follow-up therapy sessions. In this paper, we describe the rationale for selecting CFT, the compatibility of CFT and psilocybin-therapy, an overview of the psilocybin-assisted CFT protocol, the study protocol, and limitations to this approach.


In this autoethnographic poetry, I express my sense of Ulysses syndrome, reflecting upon the past 12 years since I left my motherland—China. In reading Ahmed's work, the human "I" is conceptualized as the "the stranger," reminiscent of the foreignness of the past, longing for an imagined life that he would live in. Yet, Kristeva's pathologizing label of abjection horrifies its own existence of the human "I," who cannot remember its youth and beauty, becoming an embodied Other. In his dreams, the abject "I" utters flights of poetry at the stranger by asking—how migration can be experienced as anything other than complication with all the mess, tension, and conflict it brings. In bringing the concept of abjection, it problematizes my understanding of be(com)ing the "figure of the stranger," transforming the humanness that the human "I" represents in its wake.


A Direct Adaptive Control Scheme to stabilize strict feedback plants with a time-varying structure is presented. Semi-global asymptotic stability is achieved with limited knowledge of the plant dynamics. Simulation of the scheme using a slender delta wing rock phenomenon model as practical example, confirming the results of the mathematical formulation of the control scheme. Various initial conditions are simulated showing the ability of the scheme to stabilize the plant over a wide range of operation.


Hospitals, as well as the amounts of bribe they pay. A survey of patients in these hospitals reveals that the majority of bribes paid during consultation is between 1,000 and 3,000 CFA Francs, interval which corresponds to the 25th and 75th percentile of the amounts of bribe paid respectively. Our estimates indicate that for the amounts of bribe paid falling within this interval, it appears that the rich, the women, the older and the more educated are more likely to corrupt practices. However, when such amounts are set outside of that interval, the amounts of bribe paid and the characteristics of corrupters are no more the same as before. This contradicts for instance to some extent some theoretical results that do not include the setting of the level of bribe. It finally emerges from our analysis that with regard to each of the characteristics highlighted, correspond specific amounts of bribe paid, which are related to the socio-professional and socio-demographic categories of patients. In particular, senior staffs and business men/contractors would be most likely to pay bribes, whatever the amount.


Abstract: We present a systematic study of several recently proposed methods of mean field inference for the Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) model. These methods provide approximations to the posterior distribution and are derived using the truncated stick-breaking representation and related approaches.We investigate their use in density estimation and cluster allocation and compare to Monte-Carlo results. Further, more specific topics include the general mathematical structure of the mean field approximation, the handling of the truncation level, the effect of including a prior on the concentration parameter α of the DPM model, the relationship between the proposed variants of the mean field approximation, and the connection to maximum a-posteriori estimation of the DPM model.


The increasingly volatile social, cultural, and political environment in the United States has made it difficult for U.S. institutions of higher learning to retain and integrate international students, especially those from East Asian countries. Drawing upon social identity theory and the acculturation process, this study explored how college sport contributes to international students' university identification using narrative interviews with East Asian international students who attended college football events at a U.S. university. Findings revealed that international students identified with their co-national peers for socialization purposes at football events and identified with the football spectator subgroup through the influence of domestic students, which contributed to university identity. Theoretically, our research highlighted the dynamics between sport identification, university identity, and acculturation by showing how college sport spectatorship can foster university identification but also create cultural distance within the university community. Findings also offer practical guidelines on how universities can use college sport to initiate organic social interactions between students from different cultures and empower international students to identify as essential members of universities.


Following some 30 years of radiocarbon research during which the mathematical principles of 14C-calibration have been on loan to Bayesian statistics, here they are returned to quantum physics. The return is based on recognition that 14C-calibration can be described as a Fourier transform. Following its introduction as such, there is need to reconceptualize the probabilistic 14C-analysis. The main change will be to replace the traditional (one-dimensional) concept of 14C-dating probability by a two-dimensional probability. This is entirely analogous to the definition of probability in quantum physics, where the squared amplitude of a wave function defined in Hilbert space provides a measurable probability of finding the corresponding particle at a certain point in time/space, the so-called Born rule. When adapted to the characteristics of 14C-calibration, as it turns out, the Fourier transform immediately accounts for practically all known so-called quantization properties of archaeological 14C-ages, such as clustering, age-shifting, and amplitude-distortion. This also applies to the frequently observed chronological lock-in properties of larger data sets, when analysed by Gaussian wiggle matching (on the 14C-scale) just as by Bayesian sequencing (on the calendar time-scale). Such domain-switching effects are typical for a Fourier transform. They can now be understood, and taken into account, by the application of concepts and interpretations that are central to quantum physics (e.g. wave diffraction, wave-particle duality, Heisenberg uncertainty, and the correspondence principle). What may sound complicated, at first glance, simplifies the construction of 14C-based chronologies. The new Fourier-based 14C-analysis supports chronological studies on previously unachievable geographic (continental) and temporal (Glacial-Holocene) scales; for example, by temporal sequencing of hundreds of archaeological sites, simultaneously, with minimal need for development of archaeological prior hypotheses, other than those based on the geo-archaeological law of stratigraphic superposition. As demonstrated in a variety of archaeological case studies, just one number, defined as a gauge-probability on a scale 0–100%, can be used to replace a stacked set of subjective Bayesian priors.


Acoustic segregation is a way to reduce competition and allows for species coexistence within anuran communities. Thus, separation in at least one acoustic niche dimension is expected, which also contributes to achieving effective communication among frogs. Here we studied an assemblage of five terrestrial egg-laying anuran species, all in the genus Eleutherodactylus, in a montane rainforest in eastern Cuba. Our aim was to determine if partitioning exists between these species in any dimension (time, signal frequency or space) of the acoustic niche. The studied assemblage had the following characteristics: (1) there was one diurnal species, two species with calling activity throughout the day and two species that call at night; (2) only two species overlapped in call frequencies and most had different calls, both in terms of dominant frequencies and in temporal characteristics; and (3) males of the species that overlapped in vocalizing time or signal frequency used different calling microhabitats or heights. This study provides evidence for the acoustic niche hypothesis in anurans, showing low probabilities of interference in sound communication among these frogs. The five species were separated in at least one of the three acoustic dimensions (calling time, frequency and site) as it occurs in mainland communities with more sympatric species of several genera. Conversely, species in single-genus communities studied in Puerto Rico overlapped completely in calling times. This seems to be due to the higher number of sympatric species at our site.


Background and Objective: Staphylococcus aureus is a common cause of food poisoning.   Various ready-to-eat (RTE) foods have become increasingly popular in Thailand. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution of enterotoxigenic S. aureus strains carring the newly important enterotoxin-encoding genes isolated from retail RTE foods in Khon Kaen municipality, Thailand. Methods: In this study, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers specific for the detection of newly staphylococcal enterotoxin ( se ); encoding genes including seg, seh, sei, sej and sel were used for the assay of 57 S. aureus isolates from 151 RTE food samples randomly collected from food vendors and food shops in Khon Kaen municipality that have been previously investigated for the five classical enterotoxin genes ( sea-sed and tsst-1 ). Results: The result showed that the new enterotoxins could be found in 29.8% (17 of 57 isolates). The sea coexisted with seg was the most frequently found (12.3%), following by seg + sei (8.8%) and sec + seg (1.7%). Four isolates (7.0%) had single seg and none of S. aureus isolates had seh, sej and sel. Conclusion: These findings indicated that some new enterotoxin genes such as seg , and sei were the most frequently found and frequently coexists with other classical enterotoxin genes.  Therefore, these new enterotoxins may play a role to cause food poisoning in RTE foods in Khon Kaen, Thailand.


In order to further improve the quality and safety evaluation standards of traditional Chinese medicine compound preparation,Xiaochaihu Tang compound preparations were selected to analyze the pollution level of heavy metals deeply,and the potential health risks were evaluated under taking such kind of compound preparations. In this study,the contents of copper( Cu),arsenic( As),cadmium( Cd),mercury( Hg),and lead( Pb) in different Xiaochaihu Tang compound preparations were determinated by the method of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry( ICP-MS). Moreover,combined with target hazard coefficient method and in vitro artificial system,the bioaccessibility and health risk level was investigated in three main consumption ways including powder,decoction and granule. The result was showed that,under the maximum residual limit set by International Standard Organization,only one batch of raw herb was eight times exceeded the Hg MRL,however,in water decoctions and granules,the heavy metal residue rate was reduced to 2. 02%( Hg in granules)-42. 85%( Cd in granules). So,the heavy metal pollutions and health risks can be reduced to safe region in spite of the serious pollution in raw herbs. Besides,the THQ and CR values of the three consumption methods were lower than the standard values of non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks of each heavy metal. It can be seen that even if the heavy metals in the raw herbs exceed the standard,the use of Xiaochaihu Tang decoction and granules can reduce the harm of heavy metals to the human body. Above all,the establishment of this health risk assessment model can be provided experimental basis and reference value for improving the safety evaluation standard of other heavy metals contained traditional Chinese medicine( TCM) compound preparations,and further improving the quality control methods of other different toxic compounds in clinical use.


In 1988,the World Health Organization and the World Bank began a joint initiative on the effects of development policies on health. This book is the fruit of the collaboration. It reviews the literature on the links between development policies and health in five sectors the macroeconomy, agriculture, industry, energy and housing. Most of the literature reviewed deals with developing countries. The book identifies a vast range of measures that would reduce the health risks of development policies these include the systematic application of existing guidelines on the design of irrigation systems; secure land tenure for housing; and the distribution of safe and efficient cooking stoves, together with education about their use. The book does not provide definitive statements about how policies in the various sectors influence health. The subject matter and geographical scope are too broad to a~low. t~is. Moreover, research on intersectoral lmks 1S intrinsically complex, both because of it~ ~ulti disciplinary nature and because of the difficulty of identifying cause--effect relationships. As the authors state, 'to gain epidemiologically elegant and complete data is an elusive goal'. Nevertheless, the book suggests many areas for fruitful research, ranging from the effectiveness of legislation on pesticide/agrochemical control, to how households respond to macro-economic policies such as devaluation, export promotion and the removal of subsidies. A recurrent theme is the vulnerability of the poorest. The belief is still widespread that if macroeconomic, industrial and agricultural policies promote economic growth, the benefits are bound to trickle down to the poor. Yet this is clearly not the case the poorest are often Book Reviews


Abstract:This article explores the little-studied 1957 Heimatfilm Das Schloss in Tirol (The Castle in Tyrol) and sheds light on the seemingly contradictory collaboration of the Austrian-Jewish exile Gina Kaus (1893–1985) on this Austrian-German production. The analysis of Das Schloss in Tirol and Kaus's autobiographical impressions of her drastically different and rapidly changing postwar Austrian Heimat in her book Von Wien nach Hollywood aid in illustrating her own as well as the Heimatfilm audiences' wish to reconcile nostalgic longings with the inexorable postwar modernization. The analysis aims to draw attention to Kaus's transnational and postwar film work, which has arguably been neglected by scholars, while also investigating this postwar Heimatfilm as a discursive means for renegotiating the rapid postwar modernization of Austria and Germany. Das Schloss in Tirol, as this article argues, assisted in the construction of a new idea of Heimat and a new postwar identity.


- The research is based on a comparative analysis of the results after treatment of patients with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) occurred in the lower extremities, patients were admitted to the hospital of the Tashkent Medical Academy and Akfa Medline hospital during the period 2016-2021. Patients were divided into 2 groups, which includes patients who treated with new treatment method and second group were control for comparison efficiency of the treatment. Conclusions were drawn about the shortcomings of the tactics of managing patients. During the treatment of patients of the main group, android programs were used to measure the area of trophic ulcers, an improved method of sanitation of trophic ulcers and a therapeutic algorithm for managing patients depending on the phase of the process, which led to an increase in the rate of ulcer granulation, and a reduction in the length of stay of patients in the hospital. Abstract- The research is based on a comparative analysis of the results after treatment of patients with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) occurred in the lower extremities, patients were admitted to the hospital of the Tashkent Medical Academy and Akfa Medline hospital during the period 2016-2021. Patients were divided into 2 groups, which includes patients who treated with new treatment method and second group were control for comparison efficiency of the treatment. Conclusions were drawn about the shortcomings of the tactics of managing patients. During the treatment of patients of the main group, android programs were used to measure the area of trophic ulcers, an improved method of sanitation of trophic ulcers and a therapeutic algorithm for managing patients depending on the phase of the process, which led to an increase in the rate of ulcer granulation, and a reduction in the length of stay of patients in the hospital.


The purpose of this study was to explore the history of the Florence Nightingale Medal and in particular its New Zealand recipients. New Zealand nurses have, over many years, contributed to international nursing by providing service during conflicts and disasters. Several have worked with the Red Cross and, of these nurses, twenty-two have been awarded its highest honour, the Florence Nightingale Medal. This thesis related the history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and its place in humanitarian and international nursing. It traces New Zealand nursing's involvement in this, and offers a history of the New Zealand recipients of the Florence Nightingale Medal, 1920-1999. The personal and professional stories of five New Zealand nurses who were awarded the medal between 1969 and 1999 were gathered through oral history interviews. Their stories are used to consider in more detail the motivations and experiences of nurses who work in these circumstances, and the way in which humanitarian nursing practice and Red Cross principles shaped and challenged their practice. The thesis therefore documents the work of five New Zealand nurses who have demonstrated exceptional courage, dedication, and commitment to humanitarian causes and international nursing practice. As an exploratory and descriptive study which has drawn on both historical and contemporary sources of information, it raises awareness about the Red Cross and its nurses, humanitarian nursing practice in particular, and international nursing in general.


The Nα-Fmoc-peptide isocyanates 3a−q, 4a−c, and 5a−c were prepared by the Curtius rearrangement of Nα-Fmoc-peptide acid azides in toluene under thermal, microwave, and ultrasonic conditions. All the Nα-Fmoc-oligo-peptide isocyanates made were isolated as stable crystalline solids with 71 to 94% yield and were fully characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, and mass spectroscopy. Their utility for the synthesis of oligo-α-peptidyl ureas 7a−f and 8a−c by the divergent coupling approach was demonstrated. The coupling of Nα-Fmoc-dipeptide isocyanates with amino acid ester or with N,O-bis(trimethylsilyl)amino acids resulted in Nα-Fmoc-tripeptidyl urea ester and acids containing one each of peptide bond and urea bond. The divergent approach is extended to the synthesis of tetrapeptidyl ureas by the 2 + 2 strategy using bis-TMS−peptide acid as an amino component. To incorporate urea bonds in adjacent positions, Nα-Fmoc-peptidyl urea isocyanates 9a−d were prepared and employed in the synthesis of three tetrapeptidyl urea...


The paper describes the main phonetic characteristics (acoustic, aerodynamic and articulatory) of Kinyarwanda prenasalized stops, focussing on voiceless consonants. We conclude from instrumental observations that the phonetic description of these sounds should be redefined. Consonants previously described as voiceless prenasalized stops in Rwanda are in fact whispery voiced nasal stops. Finally, the paper shows that the description of these sounds raises several important questions about nasal venting and the control of the velum closure.


OBJECTIVES
Bipolar disorder research has primarily focused on clinical outcomes but there is increasing understanding of the importance of personal recovery. This study aimed to explore the relationship between functioning in key social roles including parenting and intimate relationships with personal recovery.

METHOD
Participants with bipolar disorder (N = 393) were recruited to participate in an online survey. Participants provided clinical information and completed measures of personal recovery, parental and intimate relationship functioning.

RESULTS
Parental functioning and intimate relationship functioning were found to be significantly associated with recovery scores with higher scores being associated with greater recovery. Parental functioning was also found to have a predictive effect, with higher parental functioning predicting greater recovery scores.

CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that greater parental functioning may have an important role in the experience of personal recovery for people living with bipolar disorder. Future studies should further assess how supporting parenting may contribute recovery outcomes.


The importance of quality human resources in oil palm plantations in the field of harvesting to achieve high productivity, the success of harvesters is also very much determined by the pressure of the workload that is owned by workers, the workload depends on the job description compiled by the company. also the possibility of a workload that is too high. This study aims to analyze the working time of harvest employees and determine the productive, unproductive and personal time of harvest employees and analyze the number of harvest employees needed at PT. XYZ. This research was conducted at PT. XYZ Tanjung Batu Village, Derawan Island District, Berau Regency, East Kalimantan. This research was conducted using work sampling data collection method, namely observing the working time of harvest employees with 10 minutes intervals for 7 working hours by noting productive time, unproductive time and personal time. The results from the observations of researchers through the characteristics of harvest workers that affect the characteristics of age and height characteristics, it is proven that the age of 20 - 29 years is faster to reach the target or basis compared to the age of 30 - 49 years. And the characteristics of height have an effect on reaching the target, it is proven that height 170 - 179 cm reaches the target or base faster than 150 - 159 cm. And the observations of researchers from 16 respondents harvest productive working time an average of 73.52%, 17.20% unproductive time and 9.28% personal time. Calculation of the need for harvest workers in 1 division (763.33 ha) results in 33,644 rounded up to 34 harvest workers, the results needed in 1 division (763.33 ha) through the calculation of the time of completion of tasks (WPT).


Mostly for the purpose of applications for the energy and the environment and for the design of sources of neutrons or exotic nuclides, intense research has been dedicated to spallation, induced by protons or light projectiles at incident energies of around 1 GeV. In this energy range, while multifragmentation has still a minor share in the total reaction cross section, it was observed to have, together with fission, a prominent role in the production and the kinematics of intermediate-mass fragments, so as to condition the whole production of light and heavy nuclides. The experimental observables we dispose of attribute rather elusive properties to the intermediate-mass fragments and do not allow to classify them within one exclusive picture which is either multifragmentation or fission. Indeed, these two decay mechanisms, driven by different kinds of instabilities, exhibit behaviours which are closely comparable. High-resolution measurements of the reaction kinematics trace the way for probing finer features of the reaction kinematics.


The three moduli set \{2^{n} - 1, 2^{n},2^{n} + 1\} residue number system, or RNS, has recently been shown to possess several attractive properties. In particular, the problem of scaling is much simplified through the use of an autoscale algorithm. Using this approach, a class of RNS recursive digital filter structures is studied in the context of their precision. The filter forms differ from one another in the placement of the autoscale unit. The error introduced by the scaling algorithm, called the scaling error, is the counterpart of roundoff error in fixed-point arithmetic. Formulas for predicting the scaling error variance for the different filter architectures are developed and optimal values for the various parameters of the RNS filters are derived. A model for predicting the scaling error is also developed and is used to reconstruct an error free filter output. The tradeoffs between the various architectures are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.


St John's wort (SJW) was introduced into Australia during the 1880s for medicinal purposes, but was subsequently declared a noxious weed. There is now a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic properties of this herb. In particular, use of SJW as an antidepressant has increased in recent months owing to reports of its effectiveness and safety. Nevertheless, the controlled trials available have limitations. Increasing use of SJW in the community poses a variety of questions. For example, should medical practitioners become more knowledgeable about the effects and interactions of alternative remedies? What are the ethical and medical implications of "antidepressant" prescribing by non‐medical persons? Who is to fund further research and treatment studies? How can quality of SJW preparations be guaranteed?


There is a need to accurately simulate materials with complex electromagnetic properties when modelling Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), as many objects encountered with GPR contain water, e.g. soils, curing concrete, and water-filled pipes. One of widely-used open-source software that simulates electromagnetic wave propagation is gprMax. It uses Yee's algorithm to solve Maxwell's equations with the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. A significant drawback of the FDTD method is the limited ability to model materials with dispersive properties, currently narrowed to specific set of relaxation mechanisms, namely multi-Debye, Drude and Lorentz media. Consequently, modelling any arbitrary complex material should be done by approximating it as a combination of these functions. This paper describes work carried out as part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) programme 2021 to develop a new module within gprMax that can be used to simulate complex dispersive materials using multi-Debye expansions in an automatic manner. The module is capable of modelling Havriliak-Negami, Cole-Cole, Cole-Davidson, Jonscher, Complex-Refractive Index Models, and indeed any arbitrary dispersive material with real and imaginary permittivity specified by the user.


The energy extracted from a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel depends on solar insolation. For extraction of maximum energy from the sun, the plane of PV panel should always be normal to the incident solar rays. The seasonal movement of the earth affects the radiation intensity received on the PV panel. Sun trackers move the PV panel to follow the sun trajectories and keep the orientation of the solar panel at an optimal tilt angle. Energy efficiency of a solar PV panel can be substantially improved by using solar tracking systems. In this work, two axis solar tracking system has been designed and realized by using LDR sensors and DC motors with gear arrangements. The tracking (azimuth angle and altitude angle) has been implemented via microcontroller based control logic. Important points of this design are using minimum energy while tracking, stability of trajectory, maximum energy efficiency with gear arrangements and being cheaper than the other tracker systems.


Computer simulations at the atomic level have arrived at a stage where they provide realistic modeling of flexibility in proteins (and the mobility of their associated solvent) that is important in understanding the nature of molecular motions. This can now be extended to the molecular and atomic motions that are associated with protein mechanisms. Moreover, the derived data agree reasonably accurately with experimental measurements of several kinetic and thermodynamic parameters. FundaCell. Mol. Life Sci. 63 (2006) 207–219 1420-682X/06/020207-13 DOI 10.1007/s00018-005-5236-7 © Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 2006 mental insights emerge on the roles that this intrinsic flexibility plays in the thermodynamic characteristics of macromolecules in solution; these equip the investigator to probe the consequences of cognate interactions and ligand binding on entropy and enthalpy. Thus simulations can now provide a powerful tool for investigating protein mechanisms that complements the existing and the emerging experimental techniques.


The Republic of China that retreated to Taiwan in 1949 maintains its de facto, if not de jure, independence yet Beijing has consistently refused formally to abandon the idea of reunifying Taiwan with China. As well as growing military pressure, the PRC's irredentist policy is premised on encouraging cross-Strait economic integration. Responding to preferential measures, Taiwanese industrialists have invested massively in the PRC, often relocating their businesses there. Fragments of a nation torn apart by contradictory claims, these entrepreneurs are vectors of a new form of unification imposed by the Chinese Communist Party, promoted but postponed on the island by the Nationalist Party, and rejected by Taiwanese pro-independence parties. Within what can be described as an unfinished civil war, socio-economic dynamics remain embedded in conflicts over sovereignty. Transnational actors have freed themselves from security constraints, thereby benefiting economically from reforms in China and ultimately restructuring politics in Taiwan itself, and, in so doing, relations between Beijing and Taipei. A fictitious depoliticization has governed the opening of the Sino-Taiwanese border in order to postpone any resolution of the sovereignty issue. Mengin's startlingly original book highlights the competing, and fragmented, elements within one of the world's most intractable territorial disputes.


The present study was undertaken to assess the level of attitude regarding mental illness and find out the association of level of attitude with selected demographic variables among primary care givers of mentally ill people. The hypothesis of the study was that there will be a significant association of level of attitude with the selected demographic variables. Nonexperimental approach, descriptive design was used to conduct the study with 30 samples at the selected treasury hospitals at Madurai, India. Convenient sampling technique was used to select the samples. The data were collected by attitude assessment scale. Only 63.3% of the primary caregivers had negative attitude and 36.6% had positive attitude towards mental illness. There was no association of level of attitude with selected demographic variable except gender. Keywords: attitude, mental illness, care givers Cite this Article Srinivasan P, Baranya S, Sembian N. Attitude Regarding Mental Illness among Primary Caregivers of Mentally Ill People. Research and Reviews: Journal of Medicine. 2016; 6(2): 9–11p


Gene therapy approaches involving vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to promote therapeutic angiogenesis are under consideration for conditions ranging from ischemic heart disease to nonhealing skin ulcers. Here we make the surprising observation that the transgenic delivery of VEGF to the skin results in a profound inflammatory skin condition with many of the cellular and molecular features of psoriasis, including the characteristic vascular changes, epidermal alterations, and inflammatory infiltrates. Even longstanding psoriatic disease remains dependent on the transgenic VEGF in this model because it can be effectively reversed by the addition of VEGF Trap, a potent VEGF antagonist. Previous attempts to faithfully replicate the psoriatic phenotype through the transgenic delivery of epidermal keratinocyte growth factors or inflammatory mediators generated phenotypes with only partial resemblance to human psoriasis, leaving unanswered questions about the etiology of this disease. The ability of transgenic VEGF to induce a psoriasiform phenotype suggests a new etiology and treatment approach for this disease and further substantiates emerging concerns about possible proinflammatory adverse effects that might be associated with therapeutic attempts to deliver VEGF.


This study was carried out in Tissue culture laboratory, Department of Fruit Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana during 2011-13. The effect of various media {1/2 MS (M1), MS (M2) and WPM (M3)} and growth regulators (BAP, IBA and NAA) on establishment, proliferation and rooting was studied. Maximum establishment (63.60%) was obtained on M2 containing BAP (1.5 mgl-1) and IBA (0.25 mgl-1). Maximum proliferated cultures (95.30%) and shoots per explant were obtained using M3 medium fortified with BAP (3.0 mgl-1). However, shoots of maximum length (42.97 mm) were obtained in M3 medium containing BAP (0.0 mgl-1) i.e control. Rooting (%), roots per explant and root length was found to be influenced by type of medium and growth regulator fortification. Rooting (%) was maximum (13.34%) was observed in M1 medium supplemented with IBA (0.1 mgl-1). However, NAA (1.0 mgl-1) induced rooting of 29.61 per cent using M1 medium. Maximum roots per explant were obtained using M1 medium supplemented with IBA (1.0 mgl-1). NAA (1.0 mgl-1) induced highest roots per explant i.e 3.40 using M1 medium. However, M3 supplemented with IBA (0.1 mgl-1) resulted in maximum root length of 31.15 mm. NAA (0.1 mgl-1) resulted in maximum root length of 22.97 mm using M1 medium.


The main goal of the article is to comprehend the definitions of precarious work and degrading work conditions as a type of slave labor. We intend to ascertain the phenomenon of the "precarization" of work and of the subject of the worker, treated as disposable merchandise by the capital holders who, becoming consistently stronger, determines the localization of his factories according to the fragility of the State, of the Labor Law and of the social movements. He settles in regions where work is so precarious that at times it seems to confuse itself with the concept of degrading conditions for purposes of characterizing as slave labor. In this regard, the article intends to identify and conceptualize the phenomena of "precarization" and of slavery, differentiating them and delimitating them, demonstrating that the discourse of those who approximate them is part of a rhetoric built by the neoliberal capitalist ideology present in the current Toyotist production system.


The Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Innovative Ventricular Assist System (IVAS) uses a hydrodynamic journal bearing to support the rotating assembly of the blood pump. Bearing dimensions are chosen so that a stable film of lubricant develops and separates stationary and rotating pump surfaces during operation. This bearing type provides several advantages for a permanently implanted device, including essentially no wear for very long life and very high reliability, as well as a self pumping action that generates circumferential wash flow and thus lowers the risk of bearing associated deposition. However, these advantages are accompanied by design issues not encountered with typical journal bearings, such as low shear stress, bearing ends that are not at atmospheric pressure, and low radial bearing loads. To address these issues, several concepts for a hydrodynamic blood bearing were designed and analyzed using a special computer code to perform parametric studies. This design analysis code was developed to define optimum bearing performance under selected load and speed ranges and within practical tolerances. Results showed the range of dimensions and conditions over which an effective, reliable, blood lubricated journal bearing can be designed. Subsequent bench testing has validated the theoretical conclusions and shown this bearing type to be very robust in a blood pump application.


Cancer
It is well known that the loss of tumor suppressor genes leads to a limited subset of cancers in specific tissues. But why just those tissues? He et al. found a relatively simple explanation for how this tissue selectivity works for the tumor suppressor BAP1 using a mouse model of BAP1-induced cancer. In most cells, loss of BAP1 caused cell death or apoptosis. But in the tissues that formed tumors, differences in the regulation of genes with antiapoptotic effects allowed the cells to survive, even though BAP1 was lost. At least for this one tumor suppressor, its inactivation would normally cause a cell to die; however, this mechanism is absent in a subset of tissues, allowing the cells to proliferate and cause a tumor.

Science , this issue p. [283][1]

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aav4902


The viscous flow equations for the unsteady free convection of a fluid near a doubly infinite vertical plate whose temperature or heat flux is an arbitrary function of time are treated by means of Laplace transforms. Exact solutions are obtained for several typical examples with arbitrary Prandtl number. The results are then generalized to give integral expressions for the velocity and temperature fields due to any prescribed time variation in wall temperature or surface heat flux. (auth)


Controlling dissolved phosphorus (P) losses to surface waters is challenging as most conservation practices are only effective at preventing particulate P losses. As a result, P removal structures were developed to filter dissolved P from drainage water before reaching a water body. While many P removal structures with different P sorption materials (PSMs) have been constructed over the past two decades, there remains a need to evaluate their performances and compare on a normalized basis. The purpose of this review was to compile performance data of pilot and field-scale P removal structures and present techniques for normalization and comparison. Over 40 studies were normalized by expressing cumulative P removal as a function of cumulative P loading to the contained PSM. Results were further analyzed as a function of retention time (RT), inflow P concentration, and type of PSM. Structures treating wastewater were generally more efficient than non-point drainage water due to higher RT and inflow P concentrations. For Ca-rich PSMs, including slag, increased RT allowed for greater P removal. Among structures with low RT and inflow P concentrations common to non-point drainage, Fe-based materials had an overall higher cumulative removal efficiency compared to non-slag and slag materials.


A series of wind tunnel measurements and oil flow visualization was recently carried out at the Technical University of Denmark in order to investigate flow characteristics over a 14% thick NREL S826 airfoil at low Reynolds numbers. This paper aims at presenting numerical simulations of the same airfoil using unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach. Results of the simulations are demonstrated in terms of mean flow velocity, lift and drag, as well as pressure distribution, and validated against available experimental data. The simulations are carried out with a wide computational domain (with a span-to-chord ratio of 5) and it is illustrated that the URANS approach is capable of predicting 3D spanwise structures, known as stall cells.


Blood flow in the microcirculation is regulated by physiological oxygen (O2) gradients that are coupled to vasoconstriction or vasodilation, the domain of nitric oxide (NO) bioactivity. The mechanism by which the O2 content of blood elicits NO signaling to regulate blood flow, however, is a major unanswered question in vascular biology. While the hemoglobin in red blood cells (RBCs) would appear to be an ideal sensor, conventional wisdom about its chemistry with NO poses a problem for understanding how it could elicit vasodilation. Experiments from several laboratories have, nevertheless, very recently established that RBCs provide a novel NO vasodilator activity in which hemoglobin acts as an O2 sensor and O2-responsive NO signal transducer, thereby regulating both peripheral and pulmonary vascular tone. This article reviews these studies, together with biochemical studies, that illuminate the complexity and adaptive responsiveness of NO reactions with hemoglobin. Evidence for the pivotal role of S-nitroso (SNO) hemoglobin in mediating this response is discussed. Collectively, the reviewed work sets the stage for a new understanding of RBC-derived relaxing activity in auto-regulation of blood flow and O2 delivery and of RBC dysfunction in disorders characterized by tissue O2 deficits, such as sickle cell disease, sepsis, diabetes, and heart failure.


This paper considers application of Deep Belief Nets (DBNs) to natural language call routing. DBNs have been successfully applied to a number of tasks, including image, audio and speech classification, thanks to the recent discovery of an efficient learning technique. DBNs learn a multi-layer generative model from unlabeled data and the features discovered by this model are then used to initialize a feed-forward neural network which is fine-tuned with backpropagation. We compare a DBN-initialized neural network to three widely used text classification algorithms; Support Vector machines (SVM), Boosting and Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt). The DBN-based model gives a call-routing classification accuracy that is equal to the best of the other models even though it currently uses an impoverished representation of the input.


Introduction: HA and graphene have recently been added to gelatin as reinforcing phases (individually or together). These materials increase the mechanical and biological properties of gelatin and extend gelatin applications as tissue engineering scaffolds. Objective: In this study, the physical properties of these scaffolds were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy by detail. Material and Methods: A hydrogel 3D printing method and freeze- drying were used in this study. The analysis performed in the sample includes X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscope, and bending. Result: The findings of this study showed that the addition of graphene and HA to gelatin changed the rheology, reduced the size of pores, and increased the accuracy of the designed pores. The addition of HA and graphene also increased the bending strength and changed the shape of the resulting cracks. Conclusion: The findings of this study will be useful for the design of bone tissue engineering scaffolds.


Supplier management is an important link for efficient spare parts supply system. A supplier management and decision-making model is presented in this paper. First, characteristics of various types of spare parts are analyzed and are divided into four categories, and second supplier is classified according to spare parts it provides, at last some supplier management strategies suitable for the production of the actual situation are proposed for the single class suppliers and complex class suppliers.


REPORT OF A CASE The patient, a 35-year-old bisexual man, was positive for the human immunodeficiency virus and was hospitalized with fever, weight loss, and severe abdominal pain. The patient had multiple hypopigmented and flesh-colored 1- to 3-mm papules, many with central umbilication, scattered on his face and neck. Cytologic examination of the material prepared from these lesions, by a variety of techniques described in detail below, suggested a presumptive diagnosis of cutaneous cryptococcosis. Subsequent histologic examination of a skin biopsy specimen showed a dermal mass of fungal organisms with abundant pale capsular material and little evidence of inflammatory reaction; the capsular material stained with mucicarmine (Figure, top). Fungal cultures of the skin biopsy specimen yieldedCryptococcus neoformans. Cryptococcal organisms were also identified in the blood, spinal fluid, and bone marrow specimens and in bronchial washings. Cerebrospinal fluid cryptococcal latex agglutination occurred at a dilution of 1:1024. Fluconazole was administered


Text-to-image models suffer from various safety issues that may limit their suitability for deployment. Previous methods have separately addressed individual issues of bias, copyright, and offensive content in text-to-image models. However, in the real world, all of these issues appear simultaneously in the same model. We present a method that tackles all issues with a single approach. Our method, Unified Concept Editing (UCE), edits the model without training using a closed-form solution, and scales seamlessly to concurrent edits on text-conditional diffusion models. We demonstrate scalable simultaneous debiasing, style erasure, and content moderation by editing text-to-image projections, and we present extensive experiments demonstrating improved efficacy and scalability over prior work. Our code is available at https://unified.baulab.info


We evaluated prognostic factors of locoregional breast cancer recurrence in 35 patients. The average age at the time of surgery was 58.4 years(range: 32-87 years). Of the 35 patients, 7, 17, and 11 had Stage I , II and III disease, respectively. Immunohistochemically, 25 tumors were ER+, and 10 were ER-, while 6 were HER2+, 27 were HER2-, and 2 had uncertain HER2 statuses. Their median disease-free interval(DFI), which is the intervalbetween initialsurgery and locoregional recurrence, was 29.4 months(range: 1-133 months). After locoregional relapse, 13 patients underwent surgical tumor removal, and 34 received systemic treatment. The median time-to-progression(TTP)after first-line therapy for recurrent breast cancer was 12.7 months(range: 1-185 months), and the median overall survival(OS)was 70.0 months(range: 3-313 months). Univariate analysis showed that disease stage at initial surgery, triple-negative disease, DFI, and TTP significantly affected OS, whereas ER and HER2 status, surgical margin at primary surgery, lymphovascular invasion, irradiation after initial surgery, and resection of the recurrent tumor were not significant factors. Patients with factors that predict worse prognosis after locoregional recurrence should be treated carefully.


Purpose:The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of an arch support taping on navicular drop height and plantar pressure in the subjects with excessive pronated foot for 6 weeks. Methods:The fifteen subjects with the pronated foot group and the fifteen subjects with the normal foot group volunteered for this study. Both groups were applied arch support taping at 3 times a week during 6 weeks. Subjects were assessed navicular drop test to evaluate pronation of subtalar joint and plantar pressure on treadmill for pressure measuring system during walking with a bare foot state at pre- taping, after 3 weeks, and after 6 weeks. A two-way repeated analysis of variance design was used to examine the difference of navicular drop height and plantar pressure in the pronation foot group and the normal foot group. Results:The pronated foot group had significantly decreased both the navicular drop height and the plantar pressure under the medial midfoot than the normal foot group after 6 weeks(p<.01). Conclusions:This study proposed that an arch support taping can be support to lift navicular bone as well as to transfer the foot pressure from medial midfoot to lateral midfoot in individuals with excessive pronated foot.


An analytical formulation of the nodal forces induced by a dislocation segment on a surface element is presented. The determination of such nodal forces is a critical step when associating dislocation dynamics simulations with continuum approaches to simulate the plastic behaviour of finite domains. The nodal force calculation starts from the infinite-domain stress field of a dislocation and involves a triple integration over the dislocation ensemble and over the surface element at the domain boundary. In the case of arbitrary oriented straight segments of dislocations and a linear rectangular surface element, the solution is derived by means of a sequence of integrations by parts that present specific recurrence relations. The use of the non-singular expression for the infinite-domain stress field ensures that the traction field is finite everywhere even at the dislocation core. A specific solution is provided for virtual semi-infinite segments that can be used to enforce global mechanical equilibrium in the infinite domain. The proposed model for nodal forces is fully analytical, exact and very efficient computationally. A discussion on how to adapt the proposed methodology to more complex shape functions and surface element geometry is presented at the end of the paper.


The Nieuwerkerk Formation is a major Lower Cretaceous synrift and postrift fluvial unit in the West Netherlands Basin (southwest Netherlands) that attains thicknesses in excess of 1 km in places. A strong tectonic overprint on its deposition and a large degree of facies heterogeneity have complicated correlation and greatly hampered understanding reservoir and seal distribution within the unit. The integrated application of fluvial sequence stratigraphic concepts with biostratigraphic dating and the correlation of cycles of changing accommodation to sediment supply ratio (A/S cycles) on three-dimensional (3-D) seismic, well-log, and core data have allowed a much improved understanding of reservoir facies distribution within the Nieuwerkerk Formation. A major intraformational unconformity divides the Nieuwerkerk Formation into two members. The lower of these, the Alblasserdam Member, is predominantly nonmarine and has a significant tectonic depositional overprint. Correlation within this member is dependent on the identification of base-level transit cycles probably induced by pulses of tectonism. The inclusion of 3-D seismic isopach data facilitates mapping thicknesses and reservoir properties of the Alblasserdam Member in areas with no well control. The upper member, the Rodenrijs Claystone Member, was deposited during the postrift stage and is predominantly a coastal-plain succession. Biostratigraphic correlation proved useful in subdividing this unit and correlating key seismostratigraphic markers. Use of biostratigraphic and cyclostratigraphic correlation techniques allowed chronostratigraphically consistent reservoir maps to be made of the constituent members of the Nieuwerkerk Formation. These maps exhibit localized nonmarine syndepositional basins (Alblasserdam Member sand depocenters), followed by gradual southward, landward stepping of facies tracts of the Rodenrijs Claystone Member above the intraformational unconformity. The Rodenrijs Claystone Member is capped by a marine transgression that terminated fluvial deposition in this part of the basin. Interestingly, no major lacustrine facies have been identified in the fluvial units in the West Netherlands Basin, rendering it somewhat anomalous among rift basins.


Previous studies on the effects of virtual and physical manipulatives have failed to consider the impact of prior knowledge on the efficacy of manipulatives. This study focuses on the learning of plane geometry in junior high schools, including the sum of interior angles in polygons, the sum of exterior angles in polygons, and the properties of parallel lines. This study adopted a quasi-experimental design of pre-test and post-tests with nonequivalent groups. The participants comprised four classes in the 8th grade. Students were randomly divided into two groups: the virtual manipulatives group and the physical manipulatives group. Two-way factorial analysis of covariance was adopted to compare the impact of manipulatives (virtual vs. physical) and prior knowledge (high vs. low) on learning outcomes and attitudes toward mathematics. Our results demonstrated that students with high prior knowledge using virtual manipulatives had better posttest performance than did the physical manipulatives group, and reported taking greater enjoyment in mathematics. These students also perceived the importance of mathematics more strongly than those with low prior knowledge. Students with high prior knowledge also presented stronger motivation to study mathematics and freedom from fear of the subject than those with low prior knowledge.


WE have become used to the steady annual increase in the mortality from cardio-vascular disease and from carcinoma of the lung, but every now and then most of us must wonder, how long can these rises continue. The latest figures indicate that in both these categories the rise is still continuing. However, the medical statistician, by the use of appropriate statistical techniques, can give us some insight into the future. and in the second instance this has been very ably demonstrated in a recent article by V. H. SpringetU This author has applied the technique or cohort (or generation) analysis to a study of the increase in mortality from carcinoma of the lung in England and Wales.


Field experiment was
conducted for one growing season (2012) in clay loam soil at the Experimental
Farm of Faculty of Agriculture, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
(SIUC), USA on soybean crop to study the effect of: 1) the closed drip irrigation
system: closed circuits with one and two a manifolds for lateral lines (CM1DIS;
CM2DIS) and traditional drip irrigation system (TDIS) as a control; and 2) lateral
lines length (LLL): LLL1, LLL2 and LLL3 (40, 60,80 m) on soybean growth, yield, oil, protein content
and water use efficiency. Plants were drip irrigated every 4 days. N, K2O
and P2O5 fertilizers were added via irrigation water.
Data obtained could be outlined as follows: 1) According to the mean values of
soybean crop growth (leaf area; plant height), yield (grain and straw), both oil and protein content and water use efficiency,
the treatment used could be ranked in the following ascending orders: TDIS × LLL on
the data obtained were significant at the 1 % level; And 4) the highest values
of the obtained data and the lowest ones were achieved
in the following interactions: CM2DIS × LLL1;
TDIS × LLL3, respectively.


Social media sites including Facebook are increasingly accessed and integrated in the counselling and psychotherapy profession. As there is a universal escalation of mental and emotional health needs in today"s society especially among young adults, Facebook as a popular social networking site for Malaysian youths could be taken advantage to being a platform for expressive writing. However, there is a significant deficiency in the available body of knowledge regarding Facebook as a potential online intervention medium. This study aimed to examine the consensus level
of 22 experts in the field of counselling and psychology on the suitability of Facebook as a platform for writing therapy intervention in the Malaysian context using the Fuzzy Delphi Method. Findings identified contradictory views among the experts on the survey items, which indicated the inadequate understanding of the applicability of writing therapy via online-based mediums. As the Internet continues to proliferate throughout the world, the potential of Facebook as a medium for intervention should be further tapped into. This study would elicit increased awareness of the applicability of Facebook to help shape the future in the field of psychotherapy and counselling in Malaysia.


Abstract The current study compares the effects of two types of pronunciation instruction (segmental- and suprasegmental-based) on the development of second-year Chinese undergraduate students' English pronunciation as against a group with no specific pronunciation (NSP) instruction. The participants were 90 university-level students in the Chinese mainland, from three intact classes. One class was taught with a segmental focus (N = 30) and the second with a suprasegmental focus (N = 31), while the third received NSP instruction (N = 29). The results showed that after an 18-week period of instruction, both the segmental and suprasegmental groups made statistically significant progress in pronunciation, as measured by comprehensibility on a sentence-reading task; however, only the suprasegmental group made statistically significant progress in comprehensibility at the spontaneous level, and it was also the only group that maintained these spontaneous gains on the delayed posttest. The positive effects of explicit pronunciation instruction in general and of suprasegmental instruction in particular account for the findings.


Summary The present study was undertaken to determine the interaction of Glibenclamide, a sulphonylurea with unripe fruit juice of Momordica charantia, an herbal drug widely used as a antidiabetic agent. The pharmacodynamic interaction was evaluated in streptozotocin induced diabetic rats. Glibenclamide was given orally in two different doses of 0.25 mg\kg and 0.50mg\kg. M. charantia fruit juice was administered at a dose of 20ml\kg. The blood glucose estimation were carried out. Both glibenclamide and Momordica charantia fruit juice showed that hypoglycemic effect. The hypoglycemic effect observed with combination of glibenclamide and Momordica charantia fruit juice was significantly more than either of drug given alone. It was concluded that Momordica charantia fruit juice shows synergistic effect with glibenclamide. This could be important in reducing the dose of glibenclamide to achieve enhanced therapeutic effect with minimum adverse effect.


Land patterns are beautiful, fascinating, dynamic, and significant to so many life processes. Capacity to understand landscape patterns can arise from very different paradigms; i) through the fine arts, an ability to see patterns; ii) from language arts, the gift to read and describe the landscape; iii) from the geographic sciences, the ability to map, measure, and interpret patterns; and iv) from environmental design, the drive to integrate the above capacities. Under many circumstances, landscape studies or conservation could be enhanced using multiple approaches to capture the complex dynamics of people and land in a holistic framework. Long-held paradigms about how knowledge is acquired and applied in the ecological sciences may be trespassed. Linking bioregional patterns and qualitative narratives offers a creative solution. In this paper I discuss how bioregional patterns can be used to form narratives connecting sequences of a landscape story with environmental analysis. More specifically, I suggest a meshing of qualitative knowledge with geographic and ecological sciences to synthesize spatial narratives for conservation design. The spatial narrative is a conceptual framework to bring the qualitative experience of place together with the geoscience analysis of space.


"Nanoelectromechanical systems" (NEMS) are nanometer-sized mechanical structures coupled to electronic devices of comparable size. The coupling between mechanical and electronic degrees of freedom, combined with their mesoscopic size, provide these systems with some unique properties that make them interesting from both the fundamental and technological point of view. In this thesis, we present theoretical work about a specific kind of NEMS, that is a suspended doubly clamped carbon nanotube that is in tunneling contact with the supporting leads and the DC voltage-biased tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The analysis presented here indicates that, in the classical regime, under the conditions of weak dissipation or sufficiently strong electromechanical coupling, the equilibrium configuration of the suspended nanotube becomes unstable and the system evolves towards a state of self-sustained periodic oscillations that is reminescent of the single-electron "shuttle" regime in Coulomb blockade nanostructures. Furthermore, combining the conditions for the onset of the electromechanical instability with the local character of the charge injection provided by the STM, it seems possible to generate a selective excitation of the bending vibrational modes of the nanotube. Instead of pumping energy into the suspended nanotube, the electromechanical coupling can be also exploited to remove energy from it. Even though the tunneling electrons represent a strongly nonequilibrium environment interacting with the mechanical subsystem, the analysis presented in this thesis shows that the dynamics of the nanotube in the regime of weak coupling is formally equivalent to that one of a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to an equilibrium thermal bath characterized by an effective temperature that can be much lower than the environmental (i.e. thermodynamic) temperature. This nonequilibrium cooling effect studied here has an intrinsic quantum mechanical nature, since it is based on the (bias voltage controlled-) destructive interference between the probability amplitudes associated to those inelastic tunneling processes characterized by the emission of quantized vibrational excitations. When the transport of charge is thermally activated, this mechanism provides a simple procedure to drive the oscillating nanotube to nearly its quantum ground state. —————————————————————–


BACKGROUND
Transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a brief episode of dysfunction in a confined area of the brain. The risk of stroke following TIA is approximately 4% within the first 2 days and 9% within the first month. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment is critical to reduce mortality and risk of stroke in patients who have experienced a TIA.

OBJECTIVES
This systematic review aimed to investigate the impact of the urgent evaluation and initiation of treatment of patients with TIA on the risk of subsequent stroke and death.

DATA SOURCES
A literature search was performed for studies published from January 1, 2007, until December 21, 2012. The search was updated monthly to April 1, 2013.

RESULTS
All identified studies showed that urgent assessment and initiation of treatment of TIA is an effective strategy in reducing the incidence of stroke. Among these, a large observational study found a large effect in that the risk of stroke was reduced by 80%, and a Canadian study found that providing urgent care significantly reduced the rate of stroke in high-risk patients. Another Canadian study reported a significant reduction in the rate of death among patients referred to stroke prevention clinics, compared to patients not referred to such services. One study showed that patients discharged from an emergency department with standard care had significantly higher rates of stroke and subsequent TIA in the first month, compared to those who were hospitalized. However, another study showed that for patients at low to moderate risk, rate of stroke was similar between inpatients and those managed in a TIA clinic.

LIMITATIONS
Our analysis was restricted to the effect of the combined interventions. The magnitude of benefit of each individual component of the intervention cannot be determined through this review.

CONCLUSIONS
The results of this systematic review have important clinical and health system implications. Urgent management of TIA patients in specialized TIA clinics rather than regular practice results in a lower rate of stroke and disability.


In this work we explore the deposition of gold onto a silicoaluminophosphate, using a variety of known nanoparticle deposition techniques. By comparing the gold particles deposited on a traditional microporous aluminophosphate, with an analogous hierarchical species, containing both micropores and mesopores, we explore the influence of this dual porosity on nanoparticle deposition. We show that the presence of mesopores has limited influence on the nanoparticle properties, but allows the system to maintain porosity after nanoparticle deposition. This will aid diffusion of reagents through the system, allowing continued access to the active sites in hierarchical systems, which offers significant potential in catalytic oxidation/reduction reactions.


As global demand for natural rubber increases, a major challenge for cultivation of rubber plants is their inability to withstand unfavorable environmental conditions in the context of global climate change.  Drought remains one of the most biologically demanding and ecologically limiting factors among all environmental constraints. Drought stress can occur at any stage of the growing process, and cause complete loss of crops or serious damage to yield. Field experiments were conducted on the evaluation of different drought stress periods on natural rubber ( Hevea brasiliensis ) at the Research Farm of National Root Crops Research Institute, (NRCRI) Umudike, South Eastern Nigeria during the 2012 and 2013 cropping season to screen 10 genotypes of rubber seedlings collected from Rubber Research Institute of Nigeria for tolerant to drought conditions, to select tolerant genotypes for development of new clones of natural rubber and to study the relationships between drought tolerant genotypes. The experiments were laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) in the field using three replications. Thirty rubber seedlings per plot were transplanted from pre-nursery to the main nursery at the spacing of 100 x 30 cm on a well prepared bed. Results obtained in the field over the two years indicated that variations existed in the level of drought tolerance among the genotypes. For agronomic traits, all the traits showed significant differences (P<0.05) among the genotypes. Nig 804, RRIM 600 and GT1 recorded the fastest growth after exposure to 40 days of drought stress while Nig 800, PB5/51 and RRIM 628 recorded the least plant growth across the drought stress periods especially after 40 days of subjection to drought stress and the same trend was also observed in the number of leaves and plant girth recorded among the genotypes in both years. GT1, RRIM 600, PR107 and Nig 804 showed more tolerance to drought conditions from 0 to 40days than the other genotypes and PB5/51, RRIM 628 and Nig 800 were found to be more susceptible to drought when compared with the other genotypes in the field. Life saving irrigation may become an  essential farm practice for the survival of these genotypes in the nursery as well as in the field during the dry seasons or periods of drought. Key words : Hevea genotypes and drought stress periods


I refer to a recent letter (Anaesthesia 1992; 47: 624) which appeared under the above title in the correspondence columns of your journal. There appears to be no doubt that the child was the victim of a cold, but on the basis of the information presented, there is equally no doubt that the child did not die because of it. The title is therefore very misleading. I note that 'monitoring was by continuous ECG trace and pulse oximetry' but no sphygmomanometer or chest stethoscope or capnograph. Nevertheless, the pulse oximeter would have alerted the vigilant anaesthetist to the hypoxaemia caused by laryngospasm in ample time to administer suxamethonium to abolish it. Cardiac and respiratory arrest d o not happen abruptly and, in a wellmonitored anaesthetised patient, are almost always preceded by evidence of impending disaster. There are other possibilities to be considered in this case. The 'cold' may have been a viral infection associated with myocarditis, but there is no mention of this having been excluded by histopathology following postmortem examination. The vaporizer may have been faulty resulting in halothane overdose. There may have been hypercarbia as so often occurs in the child spontaneously breathing halothane, the two making a possibly lethal combination. Then there is the oculocardiac reflex, though the arest would probably have occurred sooner if due to this. Your correspondents could not have been aware of a recent study which was published in the preceding issue of the journal [I]. The authors studied children (n = 130) about to unndergo anesthesia by laryngeal mask for myringotomy, dividing them into three groups (acute infection present, infection during the preceding 2 weeks, asymptomatic for more than 2 weeks). They found that the incidence of transient hypoxaemia during transfer and recovery was significantly greater in the first two groups, but that there were no differences in the complication scores in any of the three groups. The article discusses other studies and conflicting reports surrounding the matter. The final decision in these troublesome cases has to be based on many factors, such as the urgency of the operation, the site and magnitude of the surgical procedure, the anaesthetists' confidence in being able to deal with any immediate complications (undoubtedly laryngospasm is the commonest but not the most difficult to detect and manage), and the patient's ASA status. To this, some would add ancillary issues, such as distance travelled and financial considerations (these can be of some importance in the USA). Discussion and published reports cannot be meaningful without complete information. Nor can conclusions be arrived at in this manner. I therefore cannot agree with the author's statement that 'we hope that this report will alert colleagues to the potential dangers of anaesthetising very small children with URTI symptoms.' All that this report does is to remind us that it is unacceptable to draw unwarranted conclusions.


Background: Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a rare, life-threatening form of heart disease, frequently associated with gene alterations and, in some cases, presenting with advanced heart failure. Little is known about ventricular assist device (VAD) implantation in severe PPCM cases. We describe long-term follow-up of PPCM patients who were resistant to medical therapy and received mechanical circulatory support or heart transplant. Methods and results: A total of 13 patients were included with mean follow-up of eight years. Mean age of PPCM onset was 33.7 ± 7.7 years. All patients were initially treated with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and beta-blockers, and four received bromocriptine. Overall, five patients received VADs (three biventricular, two isolated left ventricular) at median 27 days (range: 3 to 150) following childbirth. Two patients developed drive line infection. Due to the short support time, none of those patients had a stroke or VAD thrombosis. In total, five patients underwent heart transplantation, of which four previously had implanted VADs. Median time to transplantation from PPCM onset was 140 days (range: 43 to 776), and time to transplantation from VAD implantation were 7, 40, 132, and 735 days, respectively. All patients survived until most recent follow up, with the exception of one patient who died following unrelated abdominal surgery two years after PPCM recovery. Conclusions: In patients with severe, life-threatening PPCM refractory to medical management, mechanical circulatory support with or without heart transplantation is a safe therapeutic option.


The heats of combustion of formaldehyde and glyoxal have been measured in the gaseous state at 25°C and 1 atm pressure using a flame calorimeter: ΔH°c(formaldehyde, g)=–570.77 ± 0.42 kJ mol–1, ΔH°(glyoxal, g)=–860.88 ± 0.75 kJ mol–1. The heats of formation have been related to the dissociation energies of the C—H bond in formaldehyde and the central C—C bond in glyoxal to give 2D(H—CHO)–D(OHC—CHO)= 441.2 ± 1.2 kJ.


Between September 1981 and August 1987, 242 cases of suspected ectopic pregnancy were admitted to Tikur Anbessa Teaching Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, of which 231 were confirmed at laparotomy. Over the same period of time 28,600 deliveries were conducted in the same hospital, giving a ratio of eight ectopic pregnancies to 1,000 deliveries. Review of the 176 cases records which could be retrieved revealed that 57.9% were in the age group of 20-29 years and 27% were nulliparous. The history revealed lower abdominal pain in 98.8%, amenorrhoea in 82.9% and vaginal bleeding in 73%. On clinical examination, 92% had lower abdominal tenderness, 80.6% cervical excitation tenderness, 26.7% a mass in the adnexa and 31.2% a haemoglobin level of 7 gm percent or less. In 51.7% of the cases the ectopic was on the right and in 44.4% on the left. In 37.5% of the cases more than 1,000 millilitres of blood was contained in the peritoneal cavity. Only two were cases of unruptured ectopic pregnancy. There were 5 (2.8%) cornual and 2 (1.1%) ovarian pregnancies. Culdocentesis was the most reliable diagnostic test. In the 176 cases, repeat ectopic occurred in 7.3%. In a situation like ours, where adequate diagnostic facilities are not available, ectopic pregnancy should always be suspected in women with lower abdominal pain and amenorrhoea, or lower abdominal pain and irregular vaginal bleeding.


In Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) the aim is to look for association between genetic markers and phenotype (disease). For each genetic marker we perform an hypothesis test. Since the number of markers is high (in the order of hundred thousands), we use multiple hypothesis tests. One popular strategy in multippel testing is to estimate an effective number of independent tests, and then use methods based on independent tests to control the total type I error. The focus of this thesis has been to study different methods for estimating the effective number of independent tests. The methods are applied to a large data set on bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in Norwegian individuals from the TOP study at the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital (OUS). A key feature of these methods is the correlation between the genetic markers. The methods considered in this thesis are based on either haplotype or genotype correlation and one focus of this thesis has been to study the difference between haplotype and genotype correlation.


Rosalie Kingwill, University of the Western Cape Renewed emphasis in policy discourses on systematic land titling to solve insecure tenure in South Africa is understandable. A staggering two thirds of the citizenry hold off-register land rights. Converting these rights to title deeds may seem selfevident, but our research reveals major stumbling blocks. The article suggests that for a system of land records to succeed, its design must take into account well understood and familiar local and customary processes for holding, using and transmitting land in urban and rural areas.


On November 21, 2004, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurred offshore, 10 km south of Les Saintes archipelago in Guadeloupe (French West Indies). There were more than 30000 aftershocks recorded in the following two years, most of them at shallow depth near the islands of the archipelago. The main shock and its main aftershock of February 14, 2005 (Mw = 5.8) ruptured a NE-dipping normal fault (Roseau fault), mapped and identified as active from high-resolution bathymetric data a few years before. This fault belongs to an arc-parallel en echelon fault system that follows the inner edge of the northern part of the Lesser Antilles arc, accommodating the sinistral component of oblique convergence between the North American and Caribbean plates. The distribution of aftershocks and damage (destruction and landslides) are consistent with the main fault plane location and attitude. The slip model of the main shock, obtained by inverting jointly global broadband and local strong motion records, is characterized by two main slip zones located 5 to 10 km to the SE and NW of the hypocenter. The main shock is shown to have increased the Coulomb stress at the tips of the ruptured plane by more than 4 bars where most of the aftershocks occurred, implying that failures on fault system were mainly promoted by static stress changes. The earthquake also had an effect on volcanic activity since the Boiling Lake in Dominica drained twice, probably as a result of the extensional strain induced by the earthquake and its main aftershock.


A prototype multi-gap resistive plate chamber (MRPC) with a 2×6 gap structure is developed for the upgrading of the endcap time-of-flight (ETOF) detector in the Beijing Spectrometer (BESIII). The prototype MRPC is tested in the E3 beam line of the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPC) with secondary charged particles (π and p, etc) of 600 MeV/c. The test results show that the time resolution of the MRPC can reach 50 ps and that the detection efficiency is greater than 98%.


We examine a sample of 125 equity mutual funds that closed to new investment between 1993 and 2004. We find that funds close following a period of superior performance and abnormal fund inflows. Fund managers raise their fees when they close to compensate managers for losses in income due to the restrictions in size imposed by the fund closure decision. Managers reopen when fund size declines. However, they do not earn superior returns after re-opening, suggesting that the fund closure decision does not provide information about superior fund managers.


Background The numerous adverse effects of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) on the non-smoking public have being evidenced through decades of research. This does not only affect adults but children. ETS effects on children have shown to be grave as it worsens asthma conditions, increases pneumonia cases and causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Methods Most residents in all 44 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Kano State of Northern Nigeria took part in a population-based large-scale cross-sectional survey in Kano state from 2007–2010. Demographic information coupled with socioeconomic status, smoking status and house environment of each household member, was collected from participants. Results Out of a total of 528, 800 people resident in 102,334 homes indentified in the survey areas and visible/present as at the time of the study, 52,888 (10%) were children aged 7 years and below. While the prevalence of ETS exposure on children was 81%, the prevalence of reported pneumonia cases was 3.5%. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that exposure to ETS was independently associated with reports of pneumonia cases (adjusted odds ratio 1.55, 95% CI 1.25 to 1.92). The prevalence of tobacco smoking was higher among men than women (63.5% vs 44.1%). It is estimated that 32.7% of childhood pneumonia in the northern region of Nigeria is attributable to ETS. Conclusions Attention should be given to reduction to children's exposure to ETS not only in Nigeria but in all affected areas mostly all parts of the world.


In response to declining school enrollments, some local school districts are using performance criteria to determine the order of teacher layoffs. In this article, Susan Moore Johnson reviews efforts to implement such practices in four local school districts. The findings of the study indicate that performance-based layoff policies are not easily translated into practice. Furthermore, interviews with principals in these districts suggest that the unintended consequences of performance-based layoff practices may limit their educational worth.


The effects of inner rotating plate on the heat transfer in a differentially heated inclined enclosure were investigated experimentally. The aspect ratio of the enclosure height/width was 1 throughout the experiments. An acrylic plate was installed with horizontal axis at the center of the square enclosure, and was rotated at various speeds. The inclination angle of the enclosure was varied from -90° to 90°. Purified water was used for the working fluid. The flow pattern was sketched by a visualization experiment using aluminum powder. The heat transfer enhancement can be clearly seen for the inclined enclosure with hot wall of downward facing. The rotating plate used here is useful for the regulation of wide-ranging heat transfer rate.


Objectives The aim of the current study was to compare a neoadjuvant regimen containing oxaliplatin with standard preoperative treatment for rectal cancer. Methods From December 2006 to December 2007, 20 patients with rectal cancer were treated at our Institution with the weekly addition of oxaliplatin (50 mg/m2) to radiotherapy (50.4–54.0 Gy in 28–30 daily fractions) and continuous infusion of 5-fluorouracil (200 mg/m2). The results of the regimen were compared with a historical control group including 21 consecutive patients previously treated with standard 5-fluorouracil treatment from December 2004 to October 2006. Results Both the rate of sphincter preservation in low rectal cancer (91.7% vs 36.4%, P = 0.009) and the rate of downstaging (84.2% vs 47.6%, P = 0.023) were higher in the oxaliplatin group than in the control group. Pathological complete response was achieved in 8 patients (42.1%) in the oxaliplatin group and in 4 patients (19.0%) in the control group (P = 0.172). When ypT0-pT1 stages were analyzed together, the P value was 0.051. Acute toxicity was increased in the oxaliplatin group, with a higher incidence of G3 diarrhea and pelvic pain than in the control group (30.0% vs 14.3%, P = NS). Conclusions Our data seem to correlate the addition of oxaliplatin to the standard treatment for rectal cancer with higher rates of sphincter preservation, down-staging and complete response. Toxicity is increased and requires careful monitoring. However, our results refer to a retrospective comparison of a small series of patients and need to be validated by the large, phase III randomized trial currently ongoing.


On-Line monitoring evaluates instrument channel performance by assessing its consistency with other plant indications. Industry and EPRI [1] experience at several plants has shown this overall approach to be very effective in identifying instrument channels that are exhibiting degrading or inconsistent performance characteristics. On-Line monitoring of instrument channels provides information about the condition of the monitored channels through accurate, more frequent monitoring of each channel's performance over time. This type of performance monitoring is a methodology that offers an alternate approach to traditional time-directed calibration. On-line monitoring of these channels can provide an assessment of instrument performance and provide a basis for determining when adjustments are necessary. Elimination or reduction of unnecessary field calibrations can reduce associated labor costs, reduce personnel radiation exposure and reduce the potential for miss-calibration. PEANO [2–9] is a system for on-line calibration monitoring developed in the years 1995–2000 at the Institutt for energiteknikk (IFE), Norway, which makes use of Artificial Intelligence techniques for its purpose. The system has been tested successfully in Europe in off-line tests with EDF (France), Tecnatom (Spain) and ENEA (Italy). PEANO is currently installed and used for on-line monitoring at the HBWR reactor in Halden. This paper describes the results of performance tests on PEANO with real data from a US PWR plant, in the framework of a co-operation among IFE, EPRI and Edan Engineering, to evaluate the potentials of PEANO for future installations in US nuclear plants.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


Extraskeletal osteosarcomas are rare. Few primary mammary osteosarcomas have been reported; many of these have been described in association with a biphasic tumor. Fifty pure osteosarcomas of the breast, diagnosed between 1957 and 1995, were reviewed after excluding those of biphasic origin. The absence of epithelial differentiation was confirmed using a panel of immunohistochemical markers in 32 cases and using ultrastructural evaluation in an additional four cases. Tumors occurred in 49 women and one man; age ranged from 27 to 89 years (median, 64.5 years). One patient received radiotherapy for ipsilateral breast carcinoma 9 years before presentation. Patients were treated by excisional biopsy (n = 13), tylectomy (n = 5) or mastectomy (n = 32). All axillary nodes, dissected in 20 patients, were free of tumor. One patient had extramammary spread at diagnosis. The neoplasms were 1.4 cm to 13.0 cm (mean, 4.6 cm), and 60% were grossly circumscribed. Tumors were classified as fibroblastic (n = 28), osteoclastic (n = 14), or osteoblastic (n = 8). Of 39 patients with available follow-up information, locally recurrent (n = 11) and metastatic (n = 15) disease developed in 23 (59%) at a mean of 10.5 and 14.5 months from diagnosis. Eight (73%) patients in whom local recurrence developed were treated with excisional biopsy or tylectomy; of these, seven had a positive margin. Sixteen (41%) patients died of disease at a mean of 17.1 months, within 20 months of onset of metastases, most commonly to the lung. Mammary osteosarcomas are aggressive tumors with a propensity for blood-borne rather than lymphatic spread. Total excision without axillary dissection is advised.