Eighty-six cow-calf operations involved in the Colorado National Animal Health Monitoring System were monitored for a 12-month period, and data were collected on the incidence, prevention, and costs of disease. The costs of veterinary services and vaccines/drugs used in the treatment and prevention of disease conditions in these beef herds were determined and expressed on a per cow basis. Beef producers in this study spent an average of $2.04 ($0 to $29.88) per cow annually on veterinary services for treatment of disease conditions. The cost of veterinary services was a relatively small percentage (5.4%) of the total mean cost of disease incidence. The reproductive tract disease class was the most costly class in terms of veterinary services for disease treatment ($0.99/cow). Dystocia was the disease condition with the largest veterinary treatment cost. The total mean annual cost of drugs used in the treatment of disease conditions was $1.22/cow. The enteric, miscellaneous, and respiratory tract disease classes had similar mean drug costs for disease treatment and ranged from $0.31 to $0.39/cow. The total mean annual cost of veterinary services for administration of preventive measures in these herds was $1.85/cow ($0 to $12.03). Pregnancy examination, breeding soundness examination in bulls, brucellosis vaccination, pulmonary arterial pressure test, and campylobacteriosis vaccination accounted for over 90% of the money spent for preventive veterinary services. Approximately 60% of the total mean annual disease prevention cost was attributed to the purchase of vaccines/drugs ($6.59/cow).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Far from being laggards in mitigating climate change, health professionals should be leaders. They have scientific training, which means they are better able than many to understand the science that underpins climate change. They are more trusted than any other group, particularly after the bravery they have shown in countering the pandemic, and they interact with millions of citizens every day. Then the threat to health and the positive benefits to health from a low carbon life is probably the best way for citizens to be motivated to act on climate change. In many countries, health workers outnumber and other groups of employees, and the actions they and their families take as individuals can have a sizeable impact—and they provide leadership by example. Finally, health professionals have global networks, and mitigating climate change demands global action.


Electronic payments like mobile money services have been associated with unprecedented access to financial services in economies, where a large section of the population was underbanked or unbanked due to either lack of bank branches or their proximity. However, the continuous development of electronic payment systems, especially mobile payment in sub-Saharan Africa has brought about a rise in volume of cashless transactions, thereby reducing the use of cash for payment. This, therefore, promotes financial inclusion among the most vulnerable as it offers those without access to the formal banking system a safe and efficient payment alternative to cash. Also, electronic payment usage is also seen to have enormous benefits to governments as it could potentially help collect more tax revenue by providing a clear electronic trail and transparent transactions that can readily be taxed. This study investigates how mobile money services influence innovative economic growth. A linear regression analysis was conducted on sub-Saharan African data for period 2011-2018 and the study reveals that mobile services and payments system have significant positive effects on economic growth, hence innovative development in the region. The study concludes that mobile payment service or system is critical aspect of financial intermediation in sub-Saharan Africa as it offers them means through resources from both the banked, underbanked and unbanked populations could be attracted into the formal financial system, thus capable of facilitating innovative economic growth in the region.


The availability of traffic flow data on urban roads, as presently collected, is limited due to the sparse number of sensors over the spatially extensive network. We describe a prototype implementation of a sensor and data analysis system that could be deployed on transit or municipal vehicles to collect traffic flow data. It consists of a data collection vehicle with positioning sensors (GPS, IMU, and OEM vehicle state sensors) as well as multiple ranging sensors to monitor the ambient traffic (vertical LiDAR). Our premise is that some data on a given link is better than the current situation where most links go unobserved. The system is capable of detecting vehicles over multiple lanes, providing velocity and shape-based vehicle classification for each vehicle. We also present the results of several validation experiments, comparing the detection system against concurrent ground truth data.


It can easily be seen that there is an infinity of different ways of expressing a correlated wavefunction which consists of a Slater determinant multiplied by two-electron correlation functions. It is shown that it is possible to introduce an extra condition which does not affect the wavefunction but which causes the correlation factors to have the least effect on the Slater determinant. Here such a contraction condition is proposed in a form which only involves six-dimensional integrals and which has been found to give a very systematic procedure in a thorough calculation of a correlated wavefunction for neon. Certain correlation expansion functions can be defined so that any combination of these gives a function which satisfies this contraction condition. This contracted form provides canonical expressions for the correlation function and the orbitals so that if two different calculations are made in this form it is possible to compare the two correlation functions and the two sets of orbitals because in the completely accurate wavefunction they should be the same. Such a property has not occurred in previous calculations or theories.


The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Virtual Reality can be applied in the product development in the fashion industry. Therefore, the research focuses on potential areas of application as well as opportunities and challenges the implementation of Virtual Reality implies. A narrative literature review is conducted, thoroughly investigating the topic of product development and presenting the four application areas, namely Virtual Training, Virtual Prototyping, Virtual Manufacturing, and Virtual Factory, as well as identified opportunities and challenges. For the empirical part, semi-structured interviews are executed with five product developers of the fashion industry who are chosen based on a snowball sampling approach. The gathered data is evaluated using a thematic analysis. The findings of this study indicate that the areas Virtual Prototyping and Virtual Training were perceived as relevant for the product development in the fashion industry. However, Virtual Prototyping was regarded as most important, for instance, due to the decreased need for physical prototypes resulting in time and cost reductions. Further, the research shows that there are several opportunities and challenges when implementing the Virtual Reality technology in the product development in the fashion industry. This thesis indicates the potential of Virtual Reality in the product development for the fashion industry by showing major opportunities at different stages for the product development process. Nevertheless, there are several challenges that have to be considered in the implementation and handling of Virtual Reality.


Amino acids (aa) 50-77 of azurin, p28, a 128 aa member of the cupredoxin family of copper containing redox proteins, isolated from the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a cell penetrating peptide (CPP) that preferentially penetrates a wide variety of human cancer cells. Exposure of p53 wt, mut cancer cells to p28 produces a post translational increase in the level of p53, inhibition of the cell cycle at G 2 /M and apoptosis (Yamada et. al., Mol. Can. Therap., 8:2947-58, 2009). Computer simulation (ClusPro, GROMACS) and domain specific antibodies to p53 suggest p28 binds to motifs that span aa 110–146 in flexible L 1 loop and 80 and 276 of the p53 DNA binding domain (DBD), respectively. Western and RT-PCR analyses of human breast cancer, MCF-7 (p53 wt ), MCF-7 derived MDD2 (p53 dom/neg ), MDA-MB-231 (p53 mut ), and melanoma cells, Mel-29 (p53 wt ), Mel-23 (p53 mut ) and Mel-6 (p53 null ) exposed to p28 for 72 hrs showed a significant increase in the levels of p53 and p21 in MCF-7, MDA-MB-231, Mel-29 and Mel-23 cells, while significantly reducing the level of FoxM1 over a 72hr exposure. The level of STMN1 was not altered suggesting the block at G 2 /M does not involve microtubules. p28 significantly decreased the level of the E3 ligase COP1 in p53 wt, mut MCF-7, MDA-MB-231, Mel-29 and Mel-23, but not in p53 null Mel-6 cells. In addition, p28 did not significantly decrease the level of E3 ligases TOPORS, Pirh2 or HDM2 which also ubiquitinate p53. The levels of p53, p21, FoxM 1, STMN1, COP1, TOPORS and Pirh2 either remained essentially at control levels (p53, p21) or were elevated (FoxM1, STMN1, COP1, TOPORS, Pirh2) at some point during a 72 hr exposure of p53 dom/neg MDD2 cells to p28. In contrast, COP1 has also been reported to negatively regulate cell proliferation in a c-jun-dependent manner and not regulate intracellular levels of p53 (Migliorini et. al., J. Clin. Invest., 121: 1329-43, 2011). The p28 induced decrease in the level of COP1 in p53 wt, mut cancer cells was not accompanied by a sustained increase in c-jun, in any cancer cell line, suggesting that COP1 regulates the level of p53 in cancer cells independent of any effect on c-jun. These data also suggest that COP1, but not TOPORS or Pirh2, also binds within this region of p53, and that COP1 is a major regulator of p53 activity. In sum, these data suggest that p28 binds to a specific motif within the p53 DBD where it inhibits COP1 mediated binding to and ubiquitination of p53. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2870. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-2870


The fresh water Indian neopterigian teleost fish deals with some aspect concerning chromatic regulatory mechanisms, within the boundary of the two points of view: one of these is the value of colour pattern, as signals to other animals for the purpose of recognition, stimulation or warning or for the purpose of concealment of predator of prey. In this field is included the phenomenon of rapid colour change. The other point of view concerns the pharmacological nature of fiber which controls the activity of melanophores. Theophylline is a competitive nonselective phosphodiasterase inhibitor, which raises intracellular cAMP, activates PKA. Theophylline down regulates inflammatory and immune cell function in vitro in animals with airway inflammation. Theophylline increase the intracellular concentration of cyclic nucleotides in airway, smooth muscle and inflammatory cells by inhibiting phosphodiesterasemediated hydrolysis.


Infectious bronchitis (IB) is one of the most important viral diseases of poultry; it causes major economic losses to the poultry industry. This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) in commercial chicken flocks in Jordan. Serum samples from 70 commercial chicken flocks (40 broilers, 18 layers, and 12 broiler breeders) free from respiratory disease were collected and screened for the presence of Massachusetts-41 (M-41), D274, and 4/91 strain antigens of IBV by using the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) test. In addition, 51 commercial chicken flocks (25 broilers, 15 layers, and 11 broiler breeders) suffering from respiratory disease were tested for the presence of IBV, using the reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. Overall, 92.9% of the flocks free from respiratory disease were seropositive for antibodies to the M-41 strain, whereas 90% and 61.4% of the flocks were seropositive for antibodies to the 4/91 and D274 strains, respectively. Infectious bronchitis virus nucleic acid was detected in 16 broiler (64%), 8 layer (53%), and 6 broiler breeder (54.54%) flocks affected with respiratory disease. This study clearly demonstrates that several strains of IBV are present in poultry flocks in Jordan. Future work should include the isolation and serotyping of IBV in the region, so that a suitable vaccination program, using the common field serotypes as vaccines, can be adopted to protect against IBV-caused disease. Furthermore, farmers need to be educated about the clinical signs of IB and the importance of IBV.


Background Whether higher levels of physical activity can counteract the elevated risk of death associated with adiposity is controversial. Methods We examined the associations of the body-mass index and physical activity with death among 116,564 women who, in 1976, were 30 to 55 years of age and free of known cardiovascular disease and cancer. Results During 24 years of follow-up, 10,282 deaths occurred — 2370 from cardiovascular disease, 5223 from cancer, and 2689 from other causes. Mortality rates increased monotonically with higher body-mass-index values among women who had never smoked (P for trend <0.001). In combined analyses of all participants, adiposity predicted a higher risk of death regardless of the level of physical activity. Higher levels of physical activity appeared to be beneficial at all levels of adiposity but did not eliminate the higher risk of death associated with obesity. As compared with women who were lean (i.e., they had a body-mass index lower than 25) and active (they spent ...


The labour share of income in China substantially declined from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s. We analyse the effect of power relations among the state, workers and managers on the labour share, during China's economic transition from a state–socialist economy to a market economy. We take a Marxian approach in variable selection to reflect power relations over the two stages of China's reform era. The econometric analysis shows that two major changes in power relations—the social contract between the state and workers disappeared and workers' power relative to management declined—have a significant effect on the labour share. Furthermore, sectoral changes have no significant effect on the labour share between 1999 and 2010.


Background and Purpose— Among patients with transient ischemic attack, the ABCD2 score predicts short-term stroke risk. Use of the ABCD2 score assumes the underlying diagnosis to be transient ischemic attack; however, most transient ischemic attack services assess a variety of diagnoses. We hypothesized that patients with low ABCD2 score predominantly have noncerebrovascular diagnoses. Methods— Our transient ischemic attack clinics assess all suspected cerebrovascular events referred. Comprehensive clinical and investigation details are prospectively recorded. We collated data for patients seen between August 1992 and January 2005 inclusive. We calculated ABCD2 scores and compared proportions of noncerebrovascular diagnoses for each ABCD2 grade using &khgr;2 analysis. We ran similar analyses for atrial fibrillation, vascular lesions on brain imaging, and carotid stenosis. We calculated positive predictive value of low (0 to 1) ABCD2 score for noncerebrovascular diagnosis and described properties of ABCD2 as a diagnostic tool using receiver operating characteristic curves. Results— We derived ABCD2 scores for 3646 patients of whom 1769 had a noncerebrovascular diagnosis. There was a positive association between increasing ABCD2 score and cerebrovascular diagnosis (P<0.001). Higher ABCD2 score was associated with vascular lesions on brain imaging (P<0.001) and moderate–severe carotid disease (P<0.001) but not atrial fibrillation (P=0.097). The positive predictive value of low ABCD score was 0.81 for noncerebrovascular diagnosis and 0.93 for negative imaging. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis suggested reasonable accuracy (area under the curve, 0.745). Conclusion— For low scores, ABCD2 may assist in selecting out noncerebrovascular diagnoses. However, this approach will potentially misclassify many true transient ischemic attacks. Further refinement would be needed before clinical application.


For the rolling bearing with expensive test cost or of inconvenient test, in order to efficiently and accurately analyze its contact fatigue reliability under elliptical contact elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL), an intelligent reliability assessment method is proposed. Contact stress under EHL is obtained by the mapping of oil film pressure, gotten by finite difference method (FDM), in the Hertz contact zone of the finite element model of rolling bearing. Considering the randomness of the EHL, material and fatigue strength correction factors, the limit state function is established by using artificial neural network (ANN). For finding the optimal reliability index and the design point, genetic algorithm (GA) based on normalized real number encoding is employed and the two adjusting factors are introduced into fitness function to resolve convergence and stability problem. Reliability sensitivity analysis is achieved by the advanced first-order secondmoment (AFOSM) method. Compared with the traditional Monte Carlo method (MCM), the proposed intelligent assessment method could embody the influence of EHL on contact fatigue reliability and has higher calculation efficiency and a wonderful global search capability in the whole optimization room.


We found a beautiful empirical rule (α ∝ η-0.4) between the electrochemical Seebeck coefficient α for Fe2+/Fe3+ redox pair and viscosity coefficient η of the organic solvent.


The wet brakes used in an industrial forklift often produce noise on braking. Elimination or reduction of this squeal noise is an important task for the improvement of comforts. In this paper, a test rig was developed which was possible for testing of brake noise and an experimental measurement on squeal noise was performed. The causes of the brake noise are identified by experimenting how the factors such as automatic transmission fluid, the groove of friction-plate pad and the material of friction-plate pad affect the squeal noise. In order to identify the squeal characteristics, the signal analyses for noise are performed by using frequency spectrums. Experimental results showed that the viscosity of automatic transmission fluid and the groove pattern of friction-plate pad largely affect the reduction of the wet brake squeal noise in an industrial forklift.


Aim: This study aimed to evaluate clinical, radiological and laboratory (neutrophil-to-lymphocyte and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratios, and mean platelet value) features that may better define the rate of malignancy in order to contribute to the management of thyroid nodules with AUS/FLUS. Material and Methods: The data of patients with histologic findings of AUS/FLUS on FNA, who underwent surgery at General Surgery Department in a tertiary care hospital between January 2012 and December 2019, were reviewed retrospectively. The patients with any other malign and/or inflammatory diseases and continued on corticosteroid therapy and/or chemotherapy were excluded. Results: The current study included 60 patients (73.3% women), who underwent surgery for 62 thyroid nodules classified as AUS/ FLUS. The specimen pathology revealed a thyroid malignancy in 16 patients, including 10 patients with papillary cancer, 5 patients with micro-papillary thyroid cancer, 1 patient with minimally invasive follicular carcinoma. Ten patients had follicular adenoma. The remaining 35 patients (37 nodules) had nodular colloidal hyperplasia and/or chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. The rates of malignancy (ROM) and neoplasia (RON) were 25.8% and 40.3%, respectively. Nearly half of the cases (41.9%) had chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. The malignancy rate in cases with chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis was 26.9%, which was similar in cases without (25%). In multivariate analysis, only microcalcifications were found to be positively associated with malignancy (p: 0.1; [OR] 5.185; CI95% 1.4-19.18). Conclusion: Chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis may lead to overestimation of AUS/FLUS results. It was not associated with malignancy in thyroid nodules with AUS/FLUS. Inflammatory values, such as NLR, PLR and MPV, were not useful markers of malignancy. Among all variables only US findings (microcalcifications according to the current study) may be useful in risk-stratification of malignancy in thyroid nodules with AUS/FLUS.


Pineal tissue was removed from eight 6-wk-old bull calves (PX), whereas eight similar calves received sham pinealectomies (SPX). Before and after surgery, calves received 8 h of light (L):16 h of darkness (D) daily until 20 wk of age (wk 0 of experiment), at which time eight calves (four PX and four SPX) were maintained under 8L:16D for 12 additional wk, whereas the remaining eight calves received 16L:8D. At 0, 4, 8 and 12 wk of experiment, blood was collected from each animal for 26 h at 30-min intervals. Melatonin in SPX calves at wk 12 increased from 16.2 pg/ml of plasma when lights were on to 81.6 pg/ml during lights off, whereas in PX calves the nocturnal increase was absent. However, the nocturnal surge did occur in three PX calves on 8L:16D treatment, and those animals were excluded from calculations and analysis. At wk 0, prolactin (PRL) averaged 47 ng/ml among all calves. By wk 4 PRL increased (P less than .01) to 80 and 96 ng/ml in PX and SPX calves receiving 16L:8D, respectively; PRL averaged 53 and 48 ng/ml, respectively in PX and SPX calves maintained on 8L:16D. Prolactin was greater (P less than .05) through wk 12 in PX (64 ng/ml) and SPX (64 ng/ml) calves receiving 16L:8D than in calves exposed to 8L:16D, which remained unchanged (54 and 48 ng/ml). Testosterone was unaffected by photoperiod, but tended to be less (P = .13) in plasma of PX than of SPX calves at wk 0 (.90 vs 1.45 ng/ml of plasma).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


This is an elementary introduction to the phenomena of diffraction of waves by crystals, one of the most striking and important discoveries of the last twenty years of physics. These phenomena have proved that X-rays and electrons are partly of the nature of waves, and have supplied the best available methods of measuring their wave-lengths; while on the other hand, the study of the diffraction-pattern of a crystalline substance makes it possible to determine the arrangement and the interrelations of the atoms with a precision and fullness heretofore unimagined, which has already yielded knowledge of great value in all the fields of science and promises immeasurably more.


When rendering social educational assistance in community (on selfgovernment level), coordination of activities of different institutions working with risk group children is important: in order to attain this goal development of social partnership is one of the ways. The aim of the article is disclose development of social partnership when working with children at risk in community. In order to attain this aim three objectives were formulated. While implementing the first objective, the conception of risk group children, factors of emergence of this socially vulnerable group are discussed; the second – theoretical assumptions for social partnership in community while working with children at risk are disclosed and the third – the viewpoint of the specialists (social pedagogues and social workers), who work with children at risk in community, to development of social partnership is identified. Research methods: analysis of scientific literature, semi-structured interview. Twelve specialists (social pedagogues and social workers), who work with risk group children in community, were interviewed by the qualitative method (semi-structured interview).


The ease of operation and versatility of a FACS II cell sorter were improved by replacing the original pulse height analyzer (PHA) with a computer-based dual parameter PHA and a single channel analyzer (SCA). An ND620 LSI-11 based PHA is now used to generate the sorting decisions. Sorting windows are created by intensifying one or more regions of any shape on the PHA single or dual parameter histograms. For three parameter operation, the third parameter SCA contols the dual parameter information sent to the analyzer. The SCA can also trigger an abort circuit during the PHA 15 microsecond analyzing dead time, improving the purity of the sorted fraction. The electronics that interfaces the new PHA to the sorter replaces all of the original FACS II analog signal processing circuitry with an interchangeable circuit board. The principles involved should apply to any cell sorter.


This work investigated the catalytic performance of PGA engineered with a variety of functional groups in organic solvents at room temperature for different interval, such as nalkanes, chlorinated methane, alcohols and acids. The major research highlights are listed as: ① With the extension of time, as for hydrophobic organic solvent, catalytic activity retention rate (Cr) decreased and achieved equilibrium gradually, in a series of solvent, the smaller log P, the lower Cr; as for hydrophilic organic solvent, Cr increased first and then decreased to an equilibrium value, in a series of solvent, the smaller log P, the higher Cr. ②With the increasing of the solvent molecular size (l), equilibrium Cr achieved showed different trends: when l 6.9 A, it was fast and decreased with the increasing of l. ③ In the series solvents, PGA treated with polyalcohol, especially glycerine, its Cr reached maximum and maintained stability.


Bone-patellar tendon-bone graft has been an attractive option for single-bundle anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in clinical practice. However, the graft-tunnel mismatch in the proximal part of the tibial tunnel and the ultimate strength after postoperative ligamentization process have been potential problems for the traditional 10-mm wide graft. We modified the traditional bone-patellar tendon-bone allograft to make it double-layer, as an ideal substitute graft for single-bundle anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with better graft-tunnel match and higher initial graft strength.


Objective: To describe the clinical and molecular epidemiology of mupirocin-resistant (MR) and mupirocin-susceptible (MS) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at a Veterans' Affairs hospital and to assess risk factors associated with the acquisition of MR MRSA. Design: All clinical MRSA isolates for the period October 1990 through March 1995 underwent susceptibility testing to mupirocin. Mupirocin resistance trends were measured, and MS MRSA and MR MRSA isolates underwent typing by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). A retrospective case-control study was conducted to evaluate risk factors for having MR versus MS MRSA. Setting: The James H. Quillen Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Mountain Home, Tennessee, included a 324-bed acute-care hospital, a 120-bed nursing home, and a 525-bed domiciliary. Colonizations and infections with MRSA were endemic, and mupirocin ointment was commonly used. Patients: Inpatients and outpatients at the facility. Results: MS MRSA was recovered from 506 patients and MR MRSA from 126. Among MR MRSA isolates, 58% showed low-level mupirocin resistance (minimum inhibitory concentration [MIC] ≥4 to 256 μg/mL), and 42% showed high-level mupirocin resistance (MIC ≥512 μg/mL). A significant increase (P=.002) in the number of high-level MR isolates occurred during the 1993 to 1995 period. A case-control study showed that presence of a decubitus ulcer correlated with high-level resistant isolates (P<.05). The distribution of PFGE patterns did not differ for MR and MS MRSA. Conclusions: Use of mupirocin ointment in a program aimed at managing endemic MRSA infection or colonization resulted in a significant increase in the recovery of high-level MR MRSA isolates. These isolates appeared to emerge from our existing MRSA pool. A case-control study provided few clues concerning patients likely to harbor MR MRSA We confirmed the position that the extended use of mupirocin ointment should be avoided in settings where MRSA is endemic.


This paper addresses the applications, behaviour and construction of high performance steels in steel-concrete composite structures.   For the purposes of this paper, high performance steels will include high strength, stainless and weathering steels. Akin to many innovations in the construction industry, high performance steels have generally been adopted for the use in iconic projects well before design procedures have been developed in standards.  This paper will provide a summary of many of the applications particularly as they pertain to iconic projects in Australasia and internationally.   Recent research in these areas will also be summarised and important design parameters as they deviate from traditional mild structural steel will be highlighted.   Australasian advances in the standardisation of both bridges and buildings incorporating high performance steels will also be summarised, with particular reference to the Australasian Design Codes in Bridge Structures, ASNZS 5100 Part 6; and Building Structures ASNZS 2327 which have both been published in 2017.   The paper will conclude with suggestions for further research and will identify areas of significant gaps in Australasian and international standards which will also guide future research in this area.


We derive an effective two-dimensional low-energy theory for thin superconducting films coupled to a three-dimensional fluctuating electromagnetic field. Using this theory we discuss plasma oscillations, interactions between charges and vortices and extract the energy of a vortex. Having found that the effective theory properly describes the long-distance physics, we then use it to investigate to what extent the superconducting film is a topologically ordered phase of matter.


BACKGROUND
The role of endothelial injury and circulating adhesion molecule in the development and progression of diabetic peripheral neuropathy in the long-term has been established previously.

AIMS
To study the effects of short-term glycemic control using insulin and oral hypoglycemic agent therapy (OHA) on the peroneal nerve function and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) and advanced glycation endproducts (AGE) levels in type 2 diabetic patients.

SETTINGS AND DESIGN
A randomized controlled study involving poorly controlled (HbA1c, 7.5%-11%) type 2 diabetic patients attending the endocrinology outpatient center in a tertiary hospital in Kuala Lumpur.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Twenty-nine patients were randomized to receive insulin (n=15) or OHA (n=14) for 8 weeks. The glycemic variables (HbA1c, fasting plasma glucose [FPG], fructosamine), VCAM-1, serum AGE and the peroneal motor conduction velocity (PMCV) were measured at baseline and at 4-week intervals.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED
Paired 't' test or Kruskal Wallis test; and the unpaired 't' test or Mann-Whitney U test were used for within-group and between-group analyses, respectively. Correlation was analyzed using Spearman's correlation coefficient.

RESULTS
Within-group analysis showed significant progressive improvement in HbA1c at weeks 4 and 8 in the insulin group. The PMCV improved significantly in both groups by week 8, and by week 4 (P = 0.01) in the insulin group. PMCV correlated negatively with VCAM-1 (P = 0.031) and AGE (P = 0.009) at week 8.

CONCLUSION
Aggressive glycemic control with insulin improves the peroneal nerve function within 4 weeks. Improvement in the serum VCAM-1 and AGE levels correlated significantly with improvement in peroneal nerve conduction velocity only in the insulin group.


In Indonesia, land registration is promulgated in articles 19 of UUPA. To follow up such article, then PP No 10 of 1961 is established. Both regulations require negative system within land registration. This becomes one of the shortcomings of PP No 10 of 1961 which is then completed by PP No 24 of 1997. PP No 24 of 1997 itself adheres to negative system with positive system tendency.
Negative system in the land registration means that information or official statements described within land certificate (land book) is absolutely could be changed. Hence, everyone deserves or has a chance to file a lawsuit to the court as long as he/she is able to prove his/her legal right of land. Such a lawsuit can only be submitted within period of 5 years after the certificate published.
As for positive system tendency indicate the active role of relevant official in the application of land registration. Such official has to examine the land record carefully. Hence, it is land registration requires long duration to publish (30 days for systematic way and 60 days for sporadic way) in order to give everyone a chance to submit a protest or objection.This policy is established to prevent error or mistake as well as to gain the conformity between land certificate (land book) and the physics of land.
Furthermore, it is for the holder of certificate (either private person or legal entity) couldn't be charged after 5 years of legally possessing such certificate as long as he/she obtain it on the basis of good faith as well as real occupation principles (article 32 (2) PP No 24 of 1997). It indicates that such article adopts the concept of "Rechtsverwerking" (Waiver of Right) established in Adat law as one of the causes of losing land's right; it is called "rechtsverwerking" if someone or the holder of land right do not within long term exploit the land and it is occupied by other party through transfer of right which based on good faith.


Introduction Fragile X syndrome (FXS), resulting from a mutation in the Fmr1 gene, is the most common monogenic cause of autism and inherited intellectual disability. Fmr1 encodes the Fragile X Messenger Ribonucleoprotein (FMRP), and its absence leads to cognitive, emotional, and social deficits compatible with the nucleus accumbens (NAc) dysfunction. This structure is pivotal in social behavior control, consisting mainly of spiny projection neurons (SPNs), distinguished by dopamine D1 or D2 receptor expression, connectivity, and associated behavioral functions. This study aims to examine how FMRP absence differentially affects SPN cellular properties, which is crucial for categorizing FXS cellular endophenotypes. Methods We utilized a novel Fmr1−/y::Drd1a-tdTomato mouse model, which allows in-situ identification of SPN subtypes in FXS mice. Using RNA-sequencing, RNAScope and ex-vivo patch-clamp in adult male mice NAc, we comprehensively compared the intrinsic passive and active properties of SPN subtypes. Results Fmr1 transcripts and their gene product, FMRP, were found in both SPNs subtypes, indicating potential cell-specific functions for Fmr1. The study found that the distinguishing membrane properties and action potential kinetics typically separating D1- from D2-SPNs in wild-type mice were either reversed or abolished in Fmr1−/y::Drd1a-tdTomato mice. Interestingly, multivariate analysis highlighted the compound effects of Fmr1 ablation by disclosing how the phenotypic traits distinguishing each cell type in wild-type mice were altered in FXS. Discussion Our results suggest that the absence of FMRP disrupts the standard dichotomy characterizing NAc D1- and D2-SPNs, resulting in a homogenous phenotype. This shift in cellular properties could potentially underpin select aspects of the pathology observed in FXS. Therefore, understanding the nuanced effects of FMRP absence on SPN subtypes can offer valuable insights into the pathophysiology of FXS, opening avenues for potential therapeutic strategies.


The whare whakairo or traditional Māori meeting house plays an important part in Māori society and identity. These whare tell the tale of their origin, and in so doing, the origins of their people. The analysis of the meeting house, the histories expressed in its decorative carvings and structural elements are inextricably linked with and dependent upon the structure of the world created by myth and the Māori worldview. However, due to the deleterious effects of colonisation, the art of wood carving and associated architectural practices - central to Māori identity, suffered decline in many parts of the country, leading to the decline of Māori culture and identity. Sir Apirana Ngata instigated the National Institute of Māori Arts and Crafts to resurrect the dying art of Māori carving and carved houses would be a catalyst for the restoration of Māori culture throughout the country. Ngata saw these whare whakairo as being the heart of Māori communities by establishing a renewed sense of belonging and identification with space for Māori, through the telling of tribal histories and emphasising key geographical features. New threats in the form of global hegemony and urbanisation have further impacted on Māori notions of identity, creating a generation of displaced urban Māori youth. This research proposes to establish an architectural response to capture displaced Māori youth through the resurrection of the Māori carving school and return to them the lost stories of their cultural history and identity. This program will be developed within the complex challenges that exist within post-earthquake Ōtautahi/Christchurch, where many have lost homes and livelihoods, especially Māori youth in the Eastern Suburbs. The building elements of the proposed Māori carving school give reference to the historio-cultural features of the original Ōtautahi/Christchurch landscape that are situated in tribal song and myth. It is envisioned that the development of a Māori carving school will help restore Māori identity and a renewed sense of belonging, and allow for the telling of this generations stories through traditional narratives.


Simultaneous consideration of $N$ statistical decision problems having identical generic structure constitutes a compound decision problem. The risk of a compound decision problem is defined as the average risk of the component problems. When the component decisions are between two fully specified distributions $P_1$ and $P_2, P_1 \neq P_2$, Hannan and Robbins [5] give a decision function whose risk is uniformly close (for $N$ large) to the risk of a best "simple" procedure based on knowing the proportion of component problems in which $P_2$ is the governing distribution. This result was motivated by heuristic arguments and an example (component decisions between $\mathfrak{N}(-1, 1)$ and $\mathfrak{N}(1, 1)$ given by Robbins [8]. In both papers, the decision functions for the component problems depended on data from all $N$ problems. This paper generalizes and strengthens a result of Hannan and Robbins (Theorem 4, [5]) to the case where each component problem consists of making one of $n$ decisions based on an observation from one of $m$ distributions. Specifically, we find upper bounds for the difference in the risks (the regret function) of a certain compound procedure and a best "simple" procedure which is Bayes against the empirical distribution on the component parameter space. Theorem 2 gives sufficient conditions for a uniform (in parameter sequences) bound on the regret function of order $N^{-\frac{1}{2}}$, while Theorem 3 states sufficient conditions for a uniform bound of order $N^{-1}$. For $m = n = 2$, Theorem 2 furnishes a strengthening of Theorem 4 of [5]. More extensive results for the case $m = n = 2$ are given in a paper by Hannan and Van Ryzin [6]. Please note that the case considered here makes the $N$-decisions after the data from all $N$ problems are available. The sequential case ($k$th decision after observations $1, 2, \cdots, k, k = 1, \cdots, N$) is treated by Hannan in [3] and by Samuel in [10].


ABSTRACT Reverse transcription-PCR assays have been established for a quick, sensitive, and specific diagnosis of acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), a common virus of the honeybee (Apis mellifera), directly from clinical samples. A 3,071-nucleotide fragment of the ABPV genome, which includes the entire capsid polyprotein gene, was amplified from Austrian, German, Polish, and Hungarian ABPV samples and sequenced, and the sequences were compared. The alignment of a smaller fragment with ABPV sequences from the United States and the United Kingdom revealed nucleotide identity rates between 89 and 96%, respectively. Phylogenetic trees which display the molecular relationship between the viruses of different geographic origin were constructed.


Since the 1990s Sally Haslanger has argued that part of the work of philosophers is not to describe a concept like women but to change it in order to help bring about a fairer society. Since, she argues, the definitions of such concepts should be formulated in accordance with an epistemological framework that foregrounds their normative role, the work of feminists is crucial in identifying the legitimate values that such concepts ought to serve and thus what their meanings should be. This article evaluates Haslanger's proposal that our values are best served by reducing the concept woman to a 'person subordinated on the grounds of her sex' by contrasting it with an alternative that draws on Richard Rorty's early work on the mind–body problem. According to this, the concept women should be subject not to reduction but to elimination, the consequence being that there never were any women.


In the course of riparian ecological restoration work, tamarisk biomass is often piled and burned, generating air pollution, or shipped to landfills—a costly alternative. Information on processing and utilizing tamarisk biomass is becoming increasingly valuable in light of the spread of the tamarisk leaf beetle (Diorhabda spp.) as a biological control agent. As beetle populations expand, information on the properties of both green and beetle-killed tamarisk biomass and their suitability as feedstocks for conversion to energy will be useful for land managers seeking to offset the costs of tamarisk removal, restore wildlife habitat and ecosystem function, and reduce wildfire threat posed by standing dead tamarisk. Field trials, feasibility studies, and economic analyses are needed to enable pioneering restorationists and land managers to incorporate tamarisk biomass utilization into their project plans. We collected both green (live) and dead tamarisk impacted by the tamarisk leaf beetle and tested both as fuels for conversion to a clean producer gas via downdraft gasification and then to electricity in a spark-ignited engine/genset at Community Power Corporation in Littleton, Colorado. Both green and dead tamarisk chips were good fuels for gasification, performing more efficiently than a sample of mixed softwood. Further, the data suggest that significantly more energy can be recovered from tamarisk when harvested green, compared to waiting for the tamarisk to die and age. When incorporated into a comprehensive restoration plan, tamarisk appears to have potential to be used as a valuable energy source rather than viewed as unwanted waste.


High-speed local area networks (HSLANs) operate at channel capacities of at least 100 Mbit/s. Taking advantage of the progress in optical transmission technique, the first HSLAN based on a token passing ring, namely FDDI (fiber distributed data interface) has now become commercially available. However, several other strategies to determine the token holding duration at a station may be applied, e.g. single service or exhaustive service. The author evaluates and compares the performance of these token ring protocols for a high-speed backbone network interconnecting possibly heterogeneous conventional local area subnetworks. Every media access protocol under consideration has been shown to work very well for typical numbers of stations (<or=25) in the asynchronous mixed traffic environment. At heavy load the FDDI protocol performs better than the single service strategy due to the educed token rotation overhead, especially for larger values of T-OPR.<<ETX>>


This paper analyses why and how design‐centred industrial firms with internal design teams contract external designers. This research is based on an exploratory multiple case study methodology, with a sample of five highly reputable design‐centred industrial firms, operating in hypercompetitive industries. While some results challenge the mainstream literature on design management, others expand the existing literature, highlighting that not all firms extract the same benefits from external designers; neither do all external designers bring the same benefits to firms. The paper shows that firms with internal design teams contract external design for (1) reputation (external designers sign products and bring their reputation to the product and to the firm), (2) perspective (external designers bring a different perspective, especially when they come from a different industry from the firm), and (3) exposure (external designers bring exposure that enriches internal design teams).


Our interest in this paper is in meeting a rapidly growing industrial demand for information extraction from images of documents such as invoices, bills, receipts etc. In practice users are able to provide a very small number of example images labeled with the information that needs to be extracted. We adopt a novel two-level neuro-deductive, approach where (a) we use pre-trained deep neural networks to populate a relational database with facts about each document-image; and (b) we use a form of deductive reasoning, related to meta-interpretive learning of transition systems to learn extraction programs: Given task-specific transitions defined using the entities and relations identified by the neural detectors and a small number of instances (usually 1, sometimes 2) of images and the desired outputs, a resource-bounded meta-interpreter constructs proofs for the instance(s) via logical deduction; a set of logic programs that extract each desired entity is easily synthesized from such proofs. In most cases a single training example together with a noisy-clone of itself suffices to learn a program-set that generalizes well on test documents, at which time the value of each entity is determined by a majority vote across its program-set. We demonstrate our two-level neuro-deductive approach on publicly available datasets ("Patent" and "Doctor's Bills") and also describe its use in a real-life industrial problem.


Of 41 patients with craniofrontonasal syndrome, 35 were female and 6 were male. Although most cases were sporadic, 7 familial instances were found. Craniofrontonasal syndrome represents a unique, incompletely understood X-linked disorder. Unusual manifestations in females included thick, wiry, and curly hair (49%), anterior cranium bifidum (6%), axillary pterygia (9%), unilateral breast hypoplasia (postpubertal; 11%), and asymmetric lower limb shortness (14%).


In this paper, we report on an on-going project to change the culture of tutor feedback at the Open University, based on a new Level 1 Computing and IT module, My Digital Life, which currently has 4000 students enrolled, supported and assessed by a network of over 200 regional tutors.

At Level 1, effective feedback on assessment is essential for students' retention and progression. However, the OU's need to deal with such large cohorts has led to an assessment culture that tends towards consistency across multiple markers, with highly prescriptive marking guides, heavily geared to the allocation of marks, rather than encouraging tutors to provide focussed and constructive feedback. The project attempts to redress the balance towards tutor autonomy with a new style of assessment material, intended to develop students' core skills and self-directed, reflective learning, and a new style of marking guides, focussed on promoting future-altering feedback. This new strategy is being evaluated through structured interviews with a group of tutors.


The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), one of the main bioturbators, creates extensive disturbances in the soil of the alpine meadow of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). This study investigated the effects of the presence and intensity of plateau pika disturbances on the main soil nutrients of the Kobresia pygmaea meadow across three study sites in the QTP by using the method of counting the active burrow entrance densities of plateau pika in the field as a representation of the disturbance intensity. Our results showed that the presence of plateau pika significantly increased the soil total nitrogen (TN), soil organic carbon (SOC) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations and decreased the available phosphorus (AP) concentrations across the three study sites. The presence of plateau pika increased the NO3−-N and NH4N concentrations in Luqu County and Maqu County, but had no significant effect on these concentrations in Gonghe County. The soil TN, SOC and TP concentrations showed a downward parabola and the NO3−-N, NH4-N and AP concentrations showed an upward parabola as the intensity of the disturbances increased in Luqu County and Maqu County. These soil nutrients had a threshold (inflection point) of 475 (475 ± 90) burrow entrances per ha. However, the soil TN, SOC and TP concentrations increased linearly while the NO3−-N, NH4-N and AP concentrations decreased linearly with the increasing intensity of disturbances in Gonghe County (≤512 burrow entrances per ha). These results implied that the soil nutrient changes induced by plateau pika disturbances are not only related to their presence but are also related to the intensity of the disturbances, and that the most appropriate disturbance intensity (475 (475 ± 90) burrow entrances per ha) of plateau pika was beneficial to the storage of soil carbon and nitrogen in the alpine meadow in the QTP. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Abstract—This paper addresses the mathematical model of wind energy system useful for designing fault tolerant control. To serve the demand of power, large capacity wind energy systems are vital. These systems are installed offshore where non planned service is very costly. Whenever there is a fault in between two planned services, the system may stop working abruptly. This might even lead to the complete failure of the system. To enhance the reliability, the availability and reduce the cost of maintenance of wind turbines, the fault tolerant control systems are very essential. For designing any control system, an appropriate mathematical model is always needed. In this paper, the two-mass model is modified by considering the frequent mechanical faults like misalignments in the drive train, gears and bearings faults. These faults are subject to a wear process and cause frictional losses. This paper addresses these faults in the mathematics of the wind energy system. Further, the work is extended to study the variations of the parameters namely generator inertia constant, spring constant, viscous friction coefficient and gear ratio; on the pole-zero plot which is related with the physical design of the wind turbine. Behavior of the wind turbine during drive train faults are simulated and briefly discussed.


This paper develops a fuzzy-logic model to aggregate the numerous managerial risks driven by the various project stakeholders at different project stages. The model accounts for the various perceptions of assessors involved in the risk evaluation process. The proposed model provides means for performing scenario analysis at an early project procurement stage to manage macro risks. Four managerial processes or competencies were considered as critical success factors for infrastructure projects. These are communication, coordination, knowledge sharing and decision-making. A Sugeno fuzzy logic model was calibrated using three input variables representing the importance of the various projects stakeholder groups, the criticalness level of the management process as perceived by the various groups at the various project stages, and the effectiveness level of the management competency. The model was validated using surveys of various stakeholder groups of a mega project.


The chapter focuses on the implementation of accountability practices in Australia since the Dawkins' educational reforms of the mid 1980s. The Dawkins' approach represented an aggressive, government-led strategy that proposed to tie the funding of institutions to performance-based quantitative measures or on using funding as a lever for securing the desired institutional changes, whereas the Baldwin approach that followed was subtler and shrewder in its attempts to make accountability practices more palatable to tertiary teachers who were concerned about maintaining professional autonomy. The chapter shows how members of an elite group of university administrators can attempt to secure the compliance and cooperation of academics by being placed strategically on committees that are advisory to the government, thus serving as bona fide members of the academic community yet fundamentally advancing the government's position. Three case studies of universities are provided.


With the advent of the Internet and the limitless information it contains, were less sure about what we know, who knows what, or even what it means to know at all. And yet, human knowledge has recently grown in previously unimaginable ways and in inconceivable directions. In Too Big to Know, David Weinberger explains that, rather than a systemic collapse, the Internet era represents a fundamental change in the methods we have for understanding the world around us. With examples from history, politics, business, philosophy, and science, Too Big to Know describes how the very foundations of knowledge have been overturned, and what this revolution means for our future.


Super-Resolution is the process of obtaining a spatial resolution greater than that of the original resolution of a data source. This can be done through the fusion of original data with an additional source that has the desired resolution. These approaches can either be qualitative for visual appeal, quantitative for data accuracy, or some combination of both. The super-resolution approach offers an alternative to traditional sub-pixel deconvolution identification and provides higher resolution TIR data for Earth and Mars.The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) has provided the highest spatial resolution (100 meter / pixel) thermal infrared (TIR) data of the Mars surface to date. These data have enabled the discovery of small-scale compositional units and helped to constrain surface processes operating at these scales. Higher resolution visible instruments have revealed smaller-scale differences, creating a need to detect compositional variability using TIR data at scales below 100 meters. Putative chloride deposits identified on Mars are one such area. These deposits have a unique spectral signature in the TIR and are present within topographic lows. The super-resolution algorithm helped constrain the local mineral assemblages and stratigraphic order. This data reveals that associated phyllosilicate-rich units may be part of a common lithostratigraphic unit with a phyllosilicate-poor ST-2 material.Lunar Lake playa, located ~100 km northeast of Tonopah, Nevada, has been used as an analog site for multiple planetary surfaces and as a vicarious calibration site for Earth-orbiting satellites. As such, the ability to obtain higher resolution data through super-resolution has the potential to improve Earth data and give to insight into the formation of similar environments on other planetary surfaces. Super resolved data show Lunar Lake playa to be more compositionally heterogeneous than previously thought. A gradation of mineralogy exists within the playa, seen in both super-resolved data and in samples collected during fieldwork. The composition of the playa is influenced by the immediate surroundings, with variation existing between the western side of the playa, bounded by basaltic units, and the eastern, bounded by rhyolitic tuff. As the surrounding material weather, different clasts are transported onto the playa, and weather into different mineral assemblies.


Abstract 3384 Poster Board III-272 Purpose: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is routinely offered to suitable candidates with high-risk or advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In this report we describe our experience with a novel conditioning regimen, previously reported to confer low TRM and high OS in AML, in this population. Patients and Methods: Between 05/2000 and 06/2008 44 patients with high-risk (either adverse cytogenetics, age > 35 or high WBC at diagnosis) or advanced (>CR1) ALL received HSCT after myeloablative conditioning using Fludarabine 50 mg/m2 days -6 to -2, Busulfan 3.2 mg/kg days -5 to -2, and TBI 2 Gy x 2 doses. GVHD prophylaxis was with rabbit ATG 0.5 mg/kg day -2, then 2 mg/kg days -1 and 0, CyA (tapered on day +56) and short-course methotrexate. All patients were in remission at the time of transplant. Imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) was not used routinely before or after transplant for patients with BCR-Abl+ ALL. Median (range) follow-up of surviving patients is 4.3 (1.0 – 9.0) years. All patients were followed for at least 1 year after BCT. Results: The cohort consists of 32 patients with high-risk (median age 40 (19-64) years) and 12 patients with advanced (median age 25 (19-65) years) disease who received bone marrow (n=5), G-CSF mobilized blood stem cells (n=38) or umbilical cord blood stem cells (n=1) from 25 related (21 fully-matched) or 19 unrelated (16 fully-matched) donors. Median times to neutrophil and platelet engraftment were 14 (11-28) days and 18 (9-105) days, respectively. Five patients did not require platelet transfusion. Cumulative incidences of grade II-IV and grade III-IV acute GVHD were 53.2% (95% CI 36.3%-67.5%) and 20.6% (95% CI 3.5%-47.6%), respectively. Chronic GVHD complicated 55% (95% CI 38.4%-68.8%) of transplants. Six patients (13.6%) died in remission before day +100. Event-free and overall survivals at 5 years were 56.7% (95% CI 39.1%-71.0%) and 66.0% (95% CI 48.8%-78.6%), respectively. Nine patients (20%) died in remission, 6 (14%) died after relapse and two patients remain alive following second transplants for relapsed disease. Five of 11 patients age > 50, 8/12 patients with advanced disease and 13/23 patients with adverse-risk cytogenetics remain alive. Conclusion: We found encouraging results with FluBup-ATG-TBI in a cohort of patients with advanced or high-risk ALL. These results warrant comparison with other conditioning regimens in a randomized, multi-center study. Disclosures: Daly:Hoffmann-Laroche: Advisory Board, Honoraria. Stewart:Hoffmann La Roche: Advisory Board, Honoraria, Research Funding.


Students imagine jobs in the tourism sector with boring jobs, long working hours, unsafe work, low social status, unsatisfactory promotions, low wages, inadequate benefits, and poor physical working conditions. This study aims to determine student perceptions of self-image, career development, and job choices in the tourism industry. This study was a quantitative descriptive method. Quantitative research is intended to measure the problem, how well, and to whom a particular problem applies. This study involved 162 D3 Tourism Management study programs, Merlimau Polytechnic, Melaka, Malaysia, based on Krejcie and Morgan tables. Data was obtained using a questionnaire survey and observation. The questionnaire consists of Parts A, B, and C as instruments and measurements with a five-point Linkert scale. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 23 was used to analyze data and information in research. The results showed that the value of self-image was 3.60, career development was 4.12, and job choice in the tourism industry was 3.80. Students' perceptions of self-image, career development, and job choices are high. Students feel the influence of research variables can attract interest to work in the tourism industry in the future.


Forecasting and online classification are challenging tasks for the current day industry. Under the influence of many unobservable factors, the concepts that are derived from data tend to change over time. In the sales domain, for instance, the sales of a particular product can change continuously under the influence of temperature, preferences, and many other factors. This problem is known as concept drift and poses the operation of information systems with the challenge of handling this type of behavior. Traditionally, research in the field of concept drift has dealt with concept drift by either adapting to or detecting changes in the target concept. Yet, in large information systems there is, typically, a multitude of products for which we would like to derive a concept. In this dissertation we investigate and show that certain properties of real applications are not covered by state-of-the-art research in this field. Concept drift appears in many different shapes and forms. Each application domain has its own goals and challenges. The contribution of this dissertation is a common framework in which each of the information system applications can be fitted. Using this framework we investigate several use-cases in order to check whether the framework is consistent with their operational assumptions and propose refinements to the general framework. In general, these refinements fall into two categories; the change handling framework and the evaluation framework. In some domains, e.g. the food sales domain, the behavior of objects over time can be unpredictable. Even if an adaptive strategy is used to predict this behavior, the results will be poor due to the absence of information in the object. This, in turn, means that in order for the information system to be fully automated, we need to have a mechanism that is aware of this distinction apart from change handling mechanisms. One of such solutions is to learn the dependency between aspects of behavior and the best suited model for prediction. And even this process is subject to change. Some tasks assume the presence of the true target values. But in many domains this assumption is not valid. In this dissertation we will discuss at least two issues that arise from this mismatch. The first is that, in absence of true values, a learner still has to be on time to cast a prediction. This can be solved by monitoring both the found predictions and changes online and allow for some delay in prediction. The second is that in some cases we simply do not know how to evaluate the outcome of a prediction, even if we do observe the true value. In the case of the food sales prediction, we observe sales figures, but these figures might have a memory. Which means there is a dependency between subsequent instances. This, in turn, implies that simply computing the error over individual instances does not reflect the true performance of the predictors. This could be solved by using a utility based evaluation mechanism rather than one based on a pair-wise error computation. The main contribution of this dissertation is three-fold. The first is in the area of change detection. In the fuel mass prediction we present a change detection framework that uses a parametric, a non-parametric, and a heuristic approach to change detection. For food sales time-series we propose a method of catching abrupt changes in individual products. For stress detection case we propose an automatic labeling mechanism and describe a pipeline design. The second contribution is in the field of meta-learning. Our framework for the prediction of food sales time-series uses product categorization in order to improve the overall food sales prediction based on observed behavioral aspects. The third contribution is in the field of online prediction evaluation. We show that commonly used evaluation methods for time-series prediction do not capture all of the properties of real applications. We propose different views on the performance of predictors that do take these properties into account. These contributions together form the starting point for a better understanding of online performance of predictors under the influence of change and, eventually, for the proactive handling of changes based on observed properties of time-series and groups of time-series.


Sea State is significant to the operations on the sea. The traditional model-based approaches need lots of knowledge of vessels, which limit the real-world use. This paper proposes a spectrogram-based deep learning model for sea state estimation (SpectralNet). In this model, the ship motion data is converted to spectrogram using short time Fourier transform (STFT). Unlike other methods, the spectrogram of each sensor will be combined to a new image. And then, a 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) is built as the classifier and the sea state can be identified. The experimental results show the proposed approach can achieve higher classification accuracy compared these methods applied directly in raw time series data. Through the comparison results of the proposed approach and the combination of spectrogram of different number of sensors, the proposed approach can achieve highest classification accuracy, and the classification accuracy is growing with the number of combined sensors. The sensitivity analysis finds the classification accuracy is easily influenced by the scale factor of images.


In the post-Cold War and post-apartheid era in South Africa, global and local interest has arguably shifted from politics to economics. With an awareness of the current and formidable influence of globalisation on people's lives, Paul's letters should be reread with a view to identifying and formulating what emerges as his economic vision. This essay is a brief and preliminary investigation into how Pauline sentiments on economic matters could be brought into play with late twentieth-century globalisation.


In a clinical and biochemical study of 559 subjects over the age of 65 years living in the community, in residential homes and in hospital, seven patients with thyroid disease were found. This gave a prevalence rate of 0.94% of hypothyroidism and 0.47% of hyperthyroidism in people aged 80 years or more. Five of these seven subjects were suspected clinically of having thyroid disease. Therefore routine biochemical screening does not appear to be justified. Within each of the age strata there was no significant change in serum thyroxine with age. Women had significantly higher serum thyroxine levels than men, in the group aged 75 years or more.


The authors report the case of a 20-year old male patient presenting with a lateral thoracic tumour which at pathological examination looked like an extra-osseous Ewing's sarcoma. Strongly positive NSE immunolabeling suggested a recently described variant of this lesion: Askin's tumour. In 1979, F. B. Askin described a tumour made of round small cells, located on the side of the thorax and possibly derived from differentiated neuroectodermal tissue. Since that time, the ever wider use of electron microscopy and immunohistochemical methods has made it possible to demonstrate the existence of peripheral neuroectodermal tumours (PNETs) distinct from neuroblastomas. Askin's tumour being only, as it turned out, one of their clinical forms. Following a brief presentation of the clinical, pathological and therapeutic features of PNETs, the authors underline the great similarity between these tumours and Ewing's sarcoma. Owing to the successive discoveries of a cytogenetic abnormality common to these tumour--t(11;22)(q24;q12)--, of a similar expression of proto-oncogens and of identical neuroenzymatic characteristics, Ewing's syndrome can now be regarded as the most undifferentiated of all PNETs, probably arising from the postganglionic neuron of the parasympathetic system.


We consider a scenario where multiple users, powered by energy harvesting, send version updates over a fading multiple access channel (MAC) to an access point (AP). Version updates having random importance weights arrive at a user according to an exogenous arrival process, and a new version renders all previous versions obsolete. As energy harvesting imposes a time-varying peak power constraint, it is not possible to deliver all the bits of a version instantaneously. Accordingly, the AP chooses the objective of minimizing a finite-horizon time average expectation of the product of importance weight and a convex increasing function of the number of remaining bits of a version to be transmitted at each time instant. The objective enables importance-aware delivery of as many bits, as soon as possible. In this setup, the AP optimizes the objective function subject to an achievable rate-region constraint of the MAC and energy constraints at the users, by deciding the transmit power and the number of bits to be transmitted by each user. We obtain a Markov Decision Process (MDP)-based optimal online policy to the problem and derive structural properties of the policy. We then develop a neural network (NN)-based online heuristic policy, for which we train an NN on the optimal offline policy derived for different sample paths of energy, version arrival and channel power gain processes. Via numerical simulations, we observe that the NN-based online policy performs competitively with respect to the MDP-based online policy.


The wealth of data being gathered about humans and their surroundings drives new machine learning applications in various fields. Consequently, more and more often, classifiers are trained using not only numerical data but also complex data objects. For example, multi-omics analyses attempt to combine numerical descriptions with distributions, time series data, discrete sequences, and graphs. Such integration of data from different domains requires either omitting some of the data, creating separate models for different formats, or simplifying some of the data to adhere to a shared scale and format, all of which can hinder predictive performance. In this paper, we propose a classification method capable of handling datasets with features of arbitrary data types while retaining each feature's characteristic. The proposed algorithm, called Random Similarity Forest, uses multiple domain-specific distance measures to combine the predictive performance of Random Forests with the flexibility of Similarity Forests. We show that Random Similarity Forests are on par with Random Forests on numerical data and outperform them on datasets from complex or mixed data domains. Our results highlight the applicability of Random Similarity Forests to noisy, multi-source datasets that are becoming ubiquitous in high-impact life science projects.


TET enzymes oxidize 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) and other oxidized methylcytosines, mediating DNA demethylation and serving as new epigenetic marks. Here we examine the role of TET proteins in Foxp3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells, a distinct lineage of CD4+ T cells that prevent autoimmunity and maintain immune homeostasis. We report that Tet2/3fl/flFoxp3Cre mice that lack Tet2 and Tet3 specifically in Treg cells develop splenomegaly, leukocyte infiltration into tissues and inflammatory disease. Treg cells from these mice showed altered expression of Treg signature genes, with upregulation of genes involved in cell cycle regulation, DNA damage repair and cancer. In littermate mice with more severe inflammation, both CD4+ Foxp3+ and CD4+ Foxp3- cells showed strong skewing towards Tfh and/or Th17 phenotypes. Notably, the presence of wild type Treg cells in mixed bone marrow chimeras and Tet2/3fl/flFoxp3WT/Cre heterozygous female mice did not suppress the aberrant phenotype and function of Tet2/3fl/flFoxp3Cre Treg cells. Fate-mapping experiments indicated that Treg cells from Tet2/3fl/flFoxp3Cre mice were more prone to lose Foxp3 expression; moreover, transfer of total CD4+ T cells isolated from Tet2/3fl/flFoxp3Cre mice could elicit inflammatory disease in fully immunocompetent mice. Together, these data indicate that Tet2 and Tet3 are guardians of Treg cell stability and immune homeostasis in mice.


An anomaly is noted between reported low-temperature thermomagnetic measurements on bismuth crystals and the intrinsic theory developed by Korenblit to account for phonon drag effects. It is shown that an intrinsic description of bismuth is invalid at low temperatures, even for the purest available samples. Improved agreement between theory and experiment is obtained when an appropriate modification of the theory is made. Measurements on short bismuth crystals are reported which indicate that the large phonon drag effects observed in larger samples are quenched, possibly owing to boundary scattering of phonons in the presence of impurities.


We report in this work the behaviour of the magneto-impedance in twisted wires of amorphous that have been subjected to a current annealing with an applied tensile stress and have various induced anisotropies and saturation magnetostriction coefficients. The samples were annealed at 0.5 A for 1 min, with applied stresses in the range 100-800 MPa. The magneto-impedance is studied in the best frequency and current-amplitude ranges. High sensitivities to the applied magnetic field (up to ) and to the torsion (around ) are obtained.


In this work a computational fluid dynamics study (CFD) was carried out with the aim to diagnose and mitigate the causes of damage in the pipeline that transport reduced crude oil from the heater to the vacuum distillation tower in the YPF Petrochemical plant at Ensenada. The reduced crude oil is mainly a two phase flow (liquid and vapor) that contains significant amounts of naphthenic acids. The operating conditions (temperature, flow velocity, annular flow, presence of drops and possibly solid coke particles) become it susceptible to erosive-corrosive attack, being the distillation tower frequently shut down. The two phase flow was assumed as a homogeneous mixture and the drop-mean size and the net mass exchange from the annular film to the gas core were estimated. The NavierStokes equations and the Lagrangian particle tracking were applied to solve the mixture and the drop trajectories. Two damage mechanisms were investigated: 1- mechanical pick-up of material by drop-impact erosion enhanced by corrosion (DIEC) 2- loss of material by corrosion enhanced by relatively high flow velocity (NAEC). Numerical results allowed identified regions of impact of drops (DIEC) and high wall shear stresses (NAEC) take place, these being in good agreement with the burst zones found in the pipeline. Nevertheless, due to the fact that there are no works reporting DIEC and scarce information about NAEC, the uncertainty about the damage mechanisms made impossible to accurately predict the erosion-corrosion rate. So, a comparative analysis in order to propose geometric modifications and operating condition changes to mitigate the damages was performed. It was proposed to modify a part of the pipeline, replacing several elbows by one large radius curve, reducing drop impacts and wall shear stresses. On the other hand, due to the corrosive composition of the reduced crude, a change on the duct material, replacing the currently carbon steel by stainless steel (317 L or similar), was also recommended based on bibliographic data.


Many industrial applications require variable flow control of fluid (air, chemical gases, water and liquid chemicals). The traditional method of such flow control is to use an induction motor at constant speed with 50-Hz power supply and then control the flow by means of a throttle. Many fixed-speed motor load applications that are supplied direct from AC line power can save energy when they are operated at variable-speed, by means of VFD. Such energy cost savings are especially used in variable-torque centrifugal fan and pump applications, where the load's torque and power vary with the square and cube, respectively of the speed. This change gives a large power reduction compared to fixed-speed operation for a relatively small reduction in speed. Also by Using a variable frequency drive to control the fluid flow with a fully open throttle saves a considerable amount of power. As most of the drives operate at part load most of the time, the accumulated energy saving or the corresponding financial benefit, may be substantial over a prolonged period of time. Because this type of fluid flow control is common in industry, widespread application of variable-frequency drives with power electronics area can help in large energy conservation. The main aim of this paper is to reduce the energy consumption by the implementation of VFD and hence the proper control of fluid flows.


The strong electroabsorption modulation possible in Ge/SiGe quantum wells promises efficient, CMOS-compatible integrated optical modulators. Using an asymmetric Fabry-Perot design, we demonstrate the first surface-normal semiconductor modulator structure grown on silicon.


. me current smus of evidena for saddle-pint elecuons is discussed critically. Applications of the saddle-point model to the Barkas effect ionizing collisions involving highlycharged projectiles, and proton-H collisions are considered


A prototype of voltage-source soft-switching PWM inverter-type auxiliary resonant bridge-leg link snubbers is proposed with bidirectional active power switches and voltage clamping diodes for a new high-power high-voltage application. The voltage clamping diodes in the active resonant snubber are more effective in protecting the bidirectional active switches in the bridge-leg linked auxiliary resonant snubber from surge voltage spikes caused by energy stored in the auxiliary quasiresonant inductors and inductive parasitic wiring components. A variety of resonant snubber circuit topologies with voltage clamping diodes are presented and demonstrated. As an example of the variations of the proposed auxiliary active resonant-commutation snubber topologies, operation of a single-IGBT bidirectional switch with two voltage clamping diodes is analysed and discussed in detail for the auxiliary resonant bridge-leg link snubbers. The operating performance of the new active auxiliary resonant snubber-associated inverter-fed DC to DC power converter with voltage clamping diodes is practically demonstrated and evaluated to verify its effectiveness for a high-power high-voltage X-ray generator.


Personal experiences of heroin addiction in prison have been often overlooked in research. This study aims to examine the lived experience of former prisoners who experienced heroin addiction during incarceration, with a specific focus on the social and psychological components of the phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with four participants who had been diagnosed with opioid dependence. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Four superordinate themes emerged from the analysis. These were:heroin as emotion regulator, relationship with heroin, feelings of isolation and fear, and conceptualisation of heroin on behaviour change. Superordinate themes with the corresponding subthemes are presented. This study brings attention to individuals' relationship with heroin and impact of heroin use on interpersonal relationships. Further studies and practical application of scientific knowledge are required to effectively support prisoners with heroin addiction and help them achieve recovery.


It is striking the extent to which many liberals have seen themselves as figures on the margins of politics. This is partly an ideological issue. Of all the great 'isms' of the modern age, liberalism has had neither the historical certainty of the two great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, nor the reassuring hierarchical logic of conservatism. Most liberals have agonised about how much humans can achieve and have repeatedly stressed the fallibility of rational or democratic solutions, at least in comparison with more revolutionary ideologies like communism. But liberals' sense of living on the margins is also a consequence of the context in which liberalism was born. In Europe, the spectre of the French Revolution – and, later, the Bolshevik Revolution – gave liberalism a specific flavour. Liberals were often keen on reform, but they always feared social upheaval. Time and again, liberals found themselves in power only to lose control of the pace of social change. In the worst cases – 1815, 1848 or 1917 spring to mind – this put the liberal cause back by generations. For much of modern European history, to be a liberal was to be in a perpetual state of siege.


This research discusses the use of a class of heuristic optimization to obtain the weights in neural network model for time series prediction. In this case, Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN) was chosen as the class of network architecture. The heuristic algorithm determined to obtain the weights in network was Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). It is a non-gradient optimization technique. This method was used for optimizing the connection weights of network. The lags used as the input were selected based on the strong relationship with the current. The eight architectures were conducted to improve the accuracy of the neural network model. In each architecture, we repeated the running thirty times to get the statistics of mean and variance. The comparison of the performance of various architectures based on the minimum MSE and the stability of the results is presented in this paper. The optimal number of neurons in hidden layer was determined by these criteria. The proposed procedure was applied in air pollution data, i.e. Solid Particulate Matter (SPM). The results showed that the proposed procedure gave promising results in terms of prediction accuracy. A few neurons in hidden layer are strongly recommended in choosing the optimal architecture.


Medical linear accelerators (LINAC) for cancer treatment require pulse modulators to generate high-power pulses with a fast rise time, flat top and short duration to drive high-power magnetrons. Solid-state pulse modulators (SSPM) for medical LINACs that use high power semiconductor switches with high repetition rates, high stability and long lifetimes have been introduced to replace conventional linear-type pulse generators that use gaseous discharge switches. In this paper, the performance of a developed SSPM, which mainly consists of a capacitor charger, an insulatedgate bipolar transistor (IGBT)–capacitor stack and a pulse transformer, is evaluated with a dummy load and an X-band magnetron load. A theoretical analysis of the pulse transformer, which is a critical element of the SSPM, is carried out. The output pulse has a fast rise time and low droop, such that the modulator can drive the X-band magnetron.


Freely dissolved pore water concentrations are difficult to assess in complex matrixes such as soils or sediments. In this study, a negligible-depletion partitioning-based sampling technique was applied to measure freely dissolved pore water concentrations. A poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-coated glass fiber was exposed to a slurry of a soil spiked with several PAHs at concentrations ranging from 2 to 2000 mg/kg. PAH-concentrations in the PDMS coating increased linearly with the total soil concentration until a certain maximum was reached. Freely dissolved pore water concentrations were calculated using PDMS-water partition coefficients, and the calculated maximum pore water concentrations corresponded with the aqueous solubility of the tested compounds. Furthermore, the sampling technique is very sensitive because it can detect freely dissolved pore water concentrations in the ng/L range for the tested PAHs. Freely dissolved pore water concentrations are an important parameter for the exposure of organisms in soil. Saturation of the pore water with increasing soil concentrations should therefore be considered in soil toxicity testing. Sorption coefficients that were calculated from freely dissolved concentrations were slightly higher than estimates based on octanol-water partition coefficients. These differences are discussed in relation to the effects of dissolved organic matter in soil pore water on the determination of sorption coefficients.


The article is dedicated to one of the "blank pages" in the historiography of Latvian libraries − the beginnings of children's departments in public libraries and independent children's libraries, from the idea, its implementation and the first twenty years of operation in the independent Republic of Latvia (1918−1940). As there are no academic or popular publications on this topic, the so-called historical method is used in the research, which allows the reconstruction of the emergence and development of Children's departments in public libraries and children's libraries in the context of the library sector's development in Europe and the United States. The main base of the research: press articles and books of the respective period, as well as documents in the National Archives of Latvia on the children's departments of Rīga public libraries.
The study shows that the ideological justification for free children's libraries in Latvia was the same as in Russia and Sweden: the public's desire to protect children and young people from the harmful effects of "pulp" literature (at that time even the term "dirty" literature was used) and to offer them "good" books instead. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Latvia lacked the main precondition – a network of free public libraries, within which children's departments in public libraries or independent children's libraries could be organised. The first children's department in a public library was only opened in December 1919 in Liepāja (the largest city in Latvia's Kurzeme region), thanks to the enthusiasm of publicist and politician, library manager Voldemārs Caune and his conviction of the need for such a service. Until the Soviet occupation, it was the only children's department at a public library in the province.
The situation in the capital Rīga was different. Here, the first children's department aimed at reducing the "book famine" was established by the State Library of Latvia in February 1922, but soon other organisations became involved in the provision of library services to the younger generation. During the first period of independence of the Republic of Latvia, ten Children's departments were opened in the public library system and at least ten more children's libraries were opened by charity organisations in different city districts. The encouragement of Caune and like-minded enthusiasts, mostly members of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Hermanis Kaupiņš, Teodors Līventāls, Emma Kalniņa, etc.) also played an important role in their establishment, as did the municipality's readiness to provide the necessary financial support.
Although the Liepāja and Rīga children's libraries were used very actively, insufficient state and local government funding for libraries hindered the establishment of special library services for children in the rest of Latvia. Thus, until the Soviet occupation in 1940, a network of children's departments at public libraries and children's libraries was created only in Rīga. The Soviet occupation saw a new phase in the development of children's library services, as the establishment of children's departments at public libraries or separate children's libraries became mandatory throughout Latvia.


This work presents a probabilistic seismic assessment method able to manage the physical complexity of the dam–foundation–reservoir system and the uncertainties regarding structural data and external actions. The seismic response of the structure is estimated from a reduced number of dynamic time-history analyses, performed employing a finite element discretisation of dam body, reservoir water and foundation rock mass. The system fragility curves are then obtained via a standard Monte Carlo simulation procedure. The methodology has been applied to the case of Kasho Dam, a concrete gravity dam located in Japan, which experienced in 2000 the Western Tottori earthquake with no damage at dam body. The assessment has been carried out with respect to an operational limit state, for which several 'critical' failure mechanisms have been identified and numerically evaluated, both in terms of demand definition and capacity evaluation.


Several major eye diseases may be characterized by deficits in ocular blood flow. Maintaining adequate nutrient delivery to the choroid, retina, and optic nerve head may prevent cellular damage and loss, complementing efforts to provide neuroprotection. The ability to quantify deficits in ocular blood flow has increased in recent years with the introduction of several new techniques. 1) Scanning laser ophthalmoscopic fluorescein angiography allows the measurement of bulk retinal flow and macular capillary transit rates. 2) Scanning laser ophthalmoscopic indocyanine green angiography measures choroidal perfusion in selected areas near the optic nerve head and macula. 3) Confocal scanning laser Doppler flowmetry permits quantitation of retinal capillary perfusion. 4)Color Doppler ultrasound imaging measures flow velocities in the ophthalmic, central retinal, and short posterior ciliary arteries. While these techniques represent a major advance, significant issues regarding blood flow and ocular disease remain. First, the hemodynamic characteristics of the disease state need further definition. Second, the blood flow effects of current and future treatments must be established. Third, improvements in ocular blood flow techniques are required, both to increase anatomic precision and to allow non-invasive measurements during times of potential ischemic risk such as sleep. These developments could enhance prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of several major eye diseases.


Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) are notorious in causing nosocomial
infections. Staphylococcus epidermidis is deemed the most significant species infecting
human, apart from Staphylococcus haemolyticus and Staphylococcus chromogenes. In
Malaysia, there is an increasing trend of antimicrobial resistance among CoNS
whereby more than 50% has been reported as methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative
staphylococci (MR-CoNS) which these organisms harbour mecA gene which is
acquired by a mobile genetic element in staphylococci called staphylococcal cassette
chromosome mec (SCCmec). This study aims to investigate species distribution among
100 MR-CoNS, to determine antimicrobial susceptibility pattern among the species and
to detect their SCCmec types.
Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) isolated from blood cultures were collected
from Microbiology laboratory, Hospital Serdang in year 2016 and proceeded to
phenotypic identification by gram-staining, catalase and coagulase test. Species
identification was done by using API® Staph kit. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing
(AST) was performed by using Kirby-Bauer method with nine antibiotic discs and was
interpreted following Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) 2016.
Detection of SCCmec was performed by using multiplex polymerase chain reaction
(PCR). Staphylococcus epidermidis (n=56, 56%) was the most common species
isolated in this recent study, followed by S. haemolyticus (n=19, 19%), S. chromogenes
(n=12, 12%), Staphylococcus xylosus (n=6, 6%), Staphylococcus hominis (n=5, 5%),
Staphylococcus capitis (n=1, 1%) and Staphylococcus cohnii (n=1, 1%). All isolates
were resistant to cefoxitin (n=100, 100%) and penicillin (n=100, 100%). More than
80% of the isolates were resistant to erythromycin and 70% were resistant to fucidic
acid. All isolates were sensitive to vancomycin. A total of 54 (54%) isolates harboured
SCCmec type IVa (n=32, 32%) in which was widely distributed in S. epidermidis
(n=27, 48.2%). Fifteen (15%) isolates showed combination types which the most common was type I & IVa (n=9, 9%) and another 31 strains (31%) were non-typeable.
Type IVa was observed to have multiple antibiotic resistance with high rates of
resistance towards erythromycin (n=32, 100%) followed by fucidic acid (n=25, 78.1%)
and clindamycin (n=24, 75%).
In conclusion, S. epidermidis was the most common isolated species. Apart from
penicillin, high percentages of resistance towards erythromycin and fucidic acid were
observed in this recent study. This is probably due to the high usage of these antibiotics
in outpatient clinical setting. Type IVa was the most detected SCCmec with multiple
antibiotic resistance harbouring.


The first success in the continuous cultivation of vertebrate infective forms of Trypanosoma brucei has been recently reported (Hirumi et al., 1977a, b; Hill et al, 1978a). These investigators used HEPES buffered RPMI 1640 (Rosewell Park Memorial Institute) medium supplemented with 20% inactivated foetal bovine serum over a feeder layer of bovine or other fibroblast-like cells. Le Page (1967) had earlier attempted similar experiments, using a feeder layer in combination with tissue culture medium but with little success. It has to be pointed out that these investigators were using the monomorphic T brucei stock 427 which no longer exhibits pleomorphism in the vertebrate host and is not transmissible by the tsetse fly. Hill et al. (1978b) have reported the successful growth of a pleomorphic T. rhodesiense stock as vertebrate infective forms in vitro. In this note we present a new culture system for the long-term cultivation of vertebrate infective bloodstream-like forms of pleomorphic, tsetse fly transmissible stocks of T. brucei and T rhodesiense. The trypanosome stocks grown in vitro (Table


Diesel fuel in contrast has many benefits in our daily lives, which is use to power up vehicles and heavy machineries. Besides that, from the usage of diesel, it will produce sulfur when combustion is involved. Currently, Malaysia is making its effort to reach the sulfur target of 50 ppm as implemented by the Euro IV standards. Sulfur is very harmful towards humans, animals, machines and the environment. Sulfur contributes to air pollution by creating acid rains; in conjunction to machineries, it will corrode the equipment from the inside and thus reducing its effectiveness and requires a high cost to repair and maintenance. In this research, a sulfur compound called dibenzothiophene (DBT) is chosen as the study case. The objective of this research is to determine whether dibenzothiophene (DBT) can be extract or remove from model oil of n-hexane using an ionic liquid. The ionic liquid that is to be used is 1-methylpyrazolium ethyl sulphate C6H13N2O4S. The ionic liquid is to be tested on a model oil of n-hexane to check its sulfur removal efficiency. A Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) is conducted on the ionic liquid to check its content and an Infra-Red (IR) absorptions classification according to the wavelength is obtained to determine their functional groups. Next, the ionic liquid is tested on a Carbon Hydrogen Nitrogen and Sulfur (CHNS) analysis, to check its sulfur content. From the CHNS analysis, a manual calculation is to be done to check the molecular formula and compare it with the existing molecular formula, C6H13N2O4S. On top of that, a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis is conducted. A series of concentration for standard sample and sample is prepared. The samples consist of concentration in the range of 1500ppm to 250ppm. For the standard sample, the model oil of n-hexane is mixed with dibenzothiophene (DBT) is analyse and a calibration curve is plotted. For the sample, the ionic liquid is mixed with the model oil and dibenzothiophene (DBT) is analyse. From the data obtained it is then compared with the calibration curve and the sulfur removal efficiency is calculated. A bar chart for each of the concentration was plotted. From the result, it was found out that the sulfur removal is highly efficient at concentration of 1500ppm with 90.98%. In return of this work, perhaps a further research on diesel using ionic liquid will be conducted


It is given in Weil and Rosenlicht ([1], p. 15) that (resp. 2) for all non-negative integers m and n with m≠n if c is any even (resp. odd) integer. In the present paper we generalize this. Our purpose is to give other integral sequences such that G.C.D.(ym,yn)=1 for all positive integers m and n with m≠n. Roughly speaking we show the following 1) and 2). 1) There are infinitely many polynomial sequences such that G.C.D.(fm(a),fn(a))=1 for all positive integers m and n with with m≠n and infinitely many rational integers a. 2) There are polynomial sequences such that G.C.D.(gm(a,b),gn(a,b))=1 for all positive integers m and n with m≠n and arbitrary (rational or odd) integers a and b with G.C.D.(a,b)=1. Main results of the present paper are Theorems 1 and 2, and Corollaries 3, 4 and 5.


PURPOSE
The correlation between the presence of specific gene sequence of M. tuberculosis and specific diagnosis of clinical tuberculosis is not known. This study compared the results of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of M. tuberculosis specific DNA sequences (IS6110, 65kDa, 38kDa and mRNA coding for 85B protein) from different clinical samples of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis.

METHODS
One hundred and seventy-two clinical samples from suspected tuberculosis patients were tested for smear examination, culture (LJ and rapid BACTEC 460 TB system) and PCR. PCR was performed with specific primers for the targets: IS6110, 65 kDa, 38 kDa and 85 B.

RESULTS
Each PCR test was found to have a much higher positivity than conventional test and BACTEC culture (P < 0.05). Smear positive samples (56) and the samples (36) showing positive results by conventional methods (smear and LJ medium culture) and BACTEC were found to be positive by all PCR protocols. No significant difference was found between the four PCR protocols (P> 0.05). The primer specific for amplifying the 123bp IS6110 fragment gave the highest positivity (83%), followed by 65kDa, 38kDa and 85B RT-PCR in descending order.

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that the presence of IS6110 correlates more closely with the diagnosis of clinical tuberculosis than that of 65kDa, 38kDa and 85B proteins.