Purpose: As specific emotional arenas, hospitals are characterized by the interweaving of various emotional requirements, arising from different sources of norms, rules, or guidelines. This study aims to highlight an often-overlooked dimension of emotional labor in healthcare by describing the coexistence of emotional rules (i.e. feeling and/or display rules) through a multilevel perspective (institutional level, cluster/department level, service level, ward level, professional level).
Study Design/Methodology/Approach: These emotional requirements for nurses and nursing assistants are investigated through three sets of data (observation, interviews, and internal documents) in a French public hospital, focusing on two hospital services: three long-term care units (primary field of investigation), and five adult medical emergency wards (secondary field of investigation).
Findings: The results of the analysis show the pervasive nature of emotional requirements which are intertwined and more or less implicit/explicit according to the level analyzed. In addition to organizational rules, professional and social emotional rules contribute to shaping emotional requirements, particularly through rules of "empathetic expression" and those of retenue bienveillante.
Research Limitations/Implications: This research has contributed to showing the dynamic nature of emotional requirements and their appropriation and modulation by healthcare professionals. The qualitative methodology used allows for unique insights but limits the generalization of results.
Originality/Value: This research has addressed various gaps in the existing literature by describing emotional requirements through a multilevel analysis, by outlining a set of rules that had not been previously described (retenue bienveillante) and by including the population of nursing assistants as well as nurses in a study on hospital emotional labor. Future research could envisage spatial analysis of emotional labor to help better understand emotional requirements' variability according to emotionalized zones.


Poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) films exhibit toughening by the addition of oils to the polymer casting. This was investigated by casting films from solution and evaporation in air; the investigated oils were linear alkanes, cyclic alkanes, and two terpenes (limonene and eugenol). The addition of the oils greatly influenced the morphology and thermal and mechanical properties of the films. Most oils rendered porous films, and a variety of morphologies was obtained. Films prepared with hexane and eugenol showed a solid, nonporous structure similar to neat PLLA films, with similar mechanical properties. The thermal transition temperatures of the films decreased through the addition of oil, depending on the oil used, the decrease could be up to 30°C (glass transition), 45°C (cold crystallization), and 15°C (melting temperature). The films prepared without oil were stiff and brittle. Upon addition of most of the oils, the maximum strength and elastic moduli decreased, but their ductility improved considerably. Limonene, the most extreme case, gave a very ductile film with an elongation at break up to 200%. The main conclusion of this study is that various oils can be used to tune and improve the properties of PLLA films


Background Previous studies have demonstrated that prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) could reduce the risk of brain metastases and prolong the overall survival (OS) of patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC). However, it remains controversial whether the efficacy and safety of PCI would be subjected to the different characteristics of patients with extensive stage of SCLC. This meta-analysis aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PCI in patients with extensive stage SCLC. Methods PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched for relevant studies from inception to May, 2021. Hazard ratios (HRs) were used to measure the OS and progression-free survival (PFS), and relative risks (RRs) were employed to calculate the incidence of brain metastases, survival rate, and adverse events. Summary results were pooled using random-effect models. Results There were 1215 articles identified, and 15 trials were included, with a total of 1,623 participants. Patients who received PCI did not result in significantly improved OS [HR=0.87, 95%CI (0.70, 1.08) p=0.417] and PFS [HR=0.81, 95%CI (0.69, 0.95) p=0.001], compared with those who did not receive PCI, while patients who received PCI had a significantly decreased incidence of brain metastases [RR=0.57, 95%CI (0.45, 0.74), p<0.001]. PCI group showed no improvements in 2-year (RR=1.03, p=0.154), 3-year (RR=0.97, p=0.072), 4-year (RR=0.71, p=0.101) and 5-year survival rates (RR=0.32, p=0.307), compared with non-PCI group, whereas the overall RR indicated that PCI was associated with a higher 1-year survival rate [RR=1.46, 95%CI (1.08, 1.97), p=0.013]. In addition, PCI treatment was shown to be associated with increased incidence of adverse events, including fatigue, dermatitis, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, malaise, and cognitive impairment. Conclusion This meta-analysis suggests that PCI can reduce the incidence of brain metastases in extensive stage SCLC. Although PCI has no significant effect on the OS, it improves 1-year survival in patients with extensive stage SCLC. However, PCI does not significantly affect 2,3,4,5-year survival and may result in a significantly increased risk of adverse events.


Introduction Many attempts to characterize dextro-thyroxine have been made with racemic mixtures of the thyroxine optical isomers. This actually concealed the characteristics of the dextro-thyroxine. The known change produced by levo-thyroxine alone was subtracted from the result obtained by administering both isomers. The remainder was assumed to be the independent effect of dextro-thyroxine. Interest was centered on what was assumed to be the principal, if not the only function of the thyroid hormone, the ability to increase oxygen consumption. It now seems that thyroxine, or one of its derivatives, affects many diverse processes in the body directly. Dextro-thyroxine has very little calorigenic potency as compared to levo-thyroxine or, especially, levo-triiodo-thyronine, but seems to be much stronger in cholesterol reduction than either of these in inverse ratio to heat production—i.e., an amount of dextro-thyroxine that does not increase the basal metabolic rate, at either athyreotic or euthyroid levels, has a pronounced


Pakistan is facing issues with respect to sustainable energy and increasing of greenhouse gases, therefore, there is needed to take holistic approach to reduce energy crisis through the solution of renewable energy by natural resource management in the future. That is why this work has been carried out to develop and evaluate the performance of energy efficient biomass gasifier stove for domestic purposes as well as to compare its performance with improved cooking stove using locally available biomass fuels like wood chips. A biomass gasifier stove was developed and evaluated on wood chips fuel at National Agriculture Research Center (NARC), Islamabad. The design improvement of the stove focused on the following areas: provision of insulation around the chamber to reduce conduction heat loss across the walls of the chamber, incorporation of pot supporter as to minimize the smoke by direct contact to the fire and provision of sizable and adjustable air inlet to ensure the availability of sufficient air for the complete combustion of the fuel wood. The results obtained from this study showed that the gasifer wood stove has a maximum thermal efficiency of 30% as compared the thermal efficiency of improved stove of 18 %. Similarly, with a higher the useful heat energy output per kg of wood used was 1239.60 kJ/ kg than the useful heat energy output per kg of wood used by improved stove was 144.43 kJ/ kg. So, the performance of gasifier stove much better than improved stove. Keywords: Energy, Biomass, Gasifier Stove, Cooking Stove and Gasifer Wood Stove


Recent advancements in utility-scale wind turbine technology and pricing have vastly increased the potential land area where turbines can be deployed in the United States. This presentation quantifies the new developable land potential (e.g., capacity curves), visually identifies new areas for possible development (e.g., new wind resource maps), and begins to address deployment barriers to wind in new areas for modern and future turbine technology.


The method of accounting for the correlation effects, based on the combination of perturbation theory and superposition of configurations, is described. The method described is aimed at theoretical description of much more complex atoms and ions, having open ndN and/or nfN shells, where MBPT or its 1/Z version fail. In order to increase the convergency the transformed radial orbitals were used. The method was applied to calculate the energy levels of the configurations 1s22s22p2 (Ar XIII and ions 8 ? Z ? 30), 1s22s2p3 and 1s22p4 (8 ? Z ? 30) as well as term energies of 3d2 Fe VII and 3d3 Fe VI. The examples studied show that the approach described allows fairly effectively to take into account the correlation effects while calculating the energy spectra of a large variety of atoms, containing open d shells.


Applying succinic acid as a versatile bidentate ligand to coordinate to cerium, resulted to a complex. The obtained crystalline complex was characterized by IR and melting point, then calcined at a certain temperature which was found by TGA method. Since in the first step, altering organic ligand type will affect on shape of precursor and as a result on the nano oxide, and in the next step, calcination time and temperature results in different morphologies of cerium oxide, we examine all these changes and conclude the optimum conditions and the best ligand to be succinic acid. Characterization of the nanorods of CeO2 was performed by XRD, SEM and IR. Cerium oxide in nano-scale has many applications such as oxygen reservation capacity, conductivity, high UV absorption, high hardness, catalysis, fuel cells, sensors.


Nine parents of three-line indica rice,including 5 sterile lines and 4 restoring lines,were chosen to analyze the combining ability of 14 yield characters and related characters by the way of p×q incomplete diallele cross(NCⅡ)design. The results showed:(1)both general combining ability(GCA)and specific combining ability(SCA) of all the characters tested were highly significant level;the additive variation was principal for the characters of days to initial heading(DIH),plant height(PH),spikelets per panicle(SPP),density of spikelet setting(DSS),grass weight of single plant(GWSP),ratio of grain via grass(RGG),biological yield of single plant(BYSP),while the non additive variation was greater for the characters of effective panicle(EP),seed-setting rate(SSR),1000-grain weight(1000GW);(2)most characters were more greatly influenced by restorer line than by sterile line,there was a relatively greater effect of sterile line on 1000-grain weight(1000GW);(3)the yield characters and related characters of GCA and SCA were greater for Jin 23A,Zhong 9A in sterile line and R121,R120 in restoring lines;(4)effects of various characters on the GCA and SCA were not significantly related to each other,which suggested that it is essential to pay attention to improvement of the parent characters.


The addition of carboxylic acids to polyolefins results in an apparent slippage flow along rheometer and die walls. In this article, we seek to extend this investigation to polymer/particulate compounds. An experimental study on the influence of carboxylic acid additive in polyethylene/filler and polystyrene/filler compounds in rheometers is described. Capillary and cone-plate experiments are reported. A series of particle fillers of varying character, including carbon black, calcium carbonate, zinc oxide, and talc are compared. The aliphatic fatty acid, octadecanoic acid, was used as an additive. Significant viscosity reductions were observed. The greatest effects were found in polyethylene/(carbon black) and polystyrene/(calcium carbonate) compounds. All of the polyethylene compounds exhibited slip flow, but the polystyrene compounds did not. Apparently much of the octadecanoic acid was interacting with the polar particle fillers and not with the die wall. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 651–658, 2004


Iron carbide was produced in a laboratory scale fluidized bed by carburizing reduced iron with CO-CH 4 -H 2 -H 2 S mixtures at 873K. The rates of carbide formation and steam reforming of methane have been measured by means of X-ray diffraction for the sampled particles and the outlet gas analysis. On the influence of sulfur activity and pressurization in the carburizing atmosphere, special attention was paid. With an increase in the total pressure, the carburization rate increases. The carburization with CH 4 proceeds to some extent, but that with CO-H 2 -H 2 O-H 2 S mixtures is the predominant reaction. At as low temperature as 873K, the rate of the reforming reaction is very slow and almost independent of the total pressure. Sulfur adsorbed on the surface of pores of reduced iron can suppress the decomposition of the iron carbides and the precipitation of free carbon, but it also retards the reforming reaction by poisoning the catalytic effect of reduced iron. Addition of some water vapor to the reaction gas also prevents the decomposition and the precipitation.


An explicit procedure is given for optimizing the design of the vacuum magnetic field geometry in a quadrupole-stabilized tandem mirror with regard to the conflicting requirements of interchange stability and reduction of radial losses. A simple tandem mirror application is presented to illustrate the technique. For some designs obtained by this procedure, almost all of the particles are trapped in regions of average good curvature.


Skin injury in adult mammals brings about a series of events and inflammation in the wounded area is initiated first and provides lots of inflammatory factors, which is critical for the final scar formation. While the postinjured skin of fetus and nude mice heals scarlessly owing to the absence of inflammation or immunodeficient, we designed a feasible acid-responsive ibuprofen-loaded poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) fibrous scaffolds via doping sodium bicarbonate to prevent excessive inflammation and achieve scarless healing finally. The morphological results of in vivo experiments revealed that animals treated with acid-responsive ibuprofen-loaded PLLA fibrous scaffolds exhibited alleviative inflammation, accelerated healing process, and regulated collagen deposition via interference in the collagen distribution, the α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and the basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) expression. The lower ratios of collagen I/collagen III and TGF-β1/TGF-β3 and higher ratio of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1)/tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) in acid-responsive ibuprofen-loaded PLLA fibrous scaffolds group were confirmed by real-time qPCR as well. These results suggest that inhibiting the excessive inflammation will result in regular collagen distribution and appropriate ratio between the factors, which promote or suppress the scar formation, then decrease the scar area, and finally achieve the scarless healing.


Galveston Bay sediments exhibit substantial spatial and seasonal variability in rates of nitrification and aerobic methane oxidation. We examined the biogeochemical and microbiological controls on these processes using aerobic enrichment slurries. Potential aerobic methane and ammonia oxidation rates from unamended control slurries were compared to rates in slurries amended with methane, ammonium, or methane + ammonium. Bacterial community composition was monitored using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis of PCR amplified ribosomal and functional gene DNA. Potential methane and ammonia oxidation rates increased over time in sediments amended with methane and ammonium, respectively. The highest potential methane oxidation rates occurred in treatments receiving both ammonium and methane suggesting that methanotrophs in the enrichment cultures were nitrogen limited. The highest ammonia oxidation rates occurred in treatments amended with ammonium only. Treatments receiving both ammonium and methane exhibited ammonia oxidation rates and porewater ammonium concentrations similar to those measured in the unamended control suggesting that methanotrophs may have inhibited ammonia oxidation by sequestering available ammonia. Sequence analysis revealed a decrease in general bacterial community diversity over time and a shift in ammonia-oxidizing bacterial composition corresponding with methane availability. However, methanotroph community composition similarities between treatments with different relative methane oxidation rates suggest that changes in physiological activity, as well as shifts in community composition, contributed to the observed patterns in potential rates.


In this study, we examine the nature and content of some phonetic/phonological designations to refer to central vowels. Bearing in mind that epenthetic vowels and unmarked vowels are not always central vowels, we will argue in favour of a thorough distinction between these designations and propose the use of: 1. 'Central vowels' to label vowels articulated along the central axis the of oral cavity, 2. 'epenthetic vowels' to refer to postlexically inserted vowels in order to regularize exceptional consonant strings, 3. 'unmarked vowels' to indicate the most frequent epenthetic vowels of a language. Additionally, the term 'schwa' is judged not strictly necessary to phonetic and phonological description, since it does not clearly separate the different meanings associated with more transparent designations such as 'central' or 'epenthetic vowels'.


Subspace clustering is an unsupervised learning problem that aims at grouping data points into multiple "clusters" so that data points in a single cluster lie approximately on a low-dimensional linear subspace. It is originally motivated by 3D motion segmentation in computer vision, but has recently been generically applied to a wide range of statistical machine learning problems, which often involves sensitive datasets about human subjects. This raises a dire concern for data privacy. In this work, we build on the framework of differential privacy and present two provably private subspace clustering algorithms. We demonstrate via both theory and experiments that one of the presented methods enjoys formal privacy and utility guarantees; the other one asymptotically preserves differential privacy while having good performance in practice. Along the course of the proof, we also obtain two new provable guarantees for the agnostic subspace clustering and the graph connectivity problem which might be of independent interests.


Daily streamflow forecasting through data-driven approaches is traditionally performed using a single machine learning algorithm. Existing applications are mostly restricted to examination of few case studies, not allowing accurate assessment of the predictive performance of the algorithms involved. Here we propose super learning (a type of ensemble learning) by combining 10 machine learning algorithms. We apply the proposed algorithm in one-step ahead forecasting mode. For the application, we exploit a big dataset consisting of 10-year long time series of daily streamflow, precipitation and temperature from 511 basins. The super learner improves over the performance of the linear regression algorithm by 20.06%, outperforming the "hard to beat in practice" equal weight combiner. The latter improves over the performance of the linear regression algorithm by 19.21%. The best performing individual machine learning algorithm is neural networks, which improves over the performance of the linear regression algorithm by 16.73%, followed by extremely randomized trees (16.40%), XGBoost (15.92%), loess (15.36%), random forests (12.75%), polyMARS (12.36%), MARS (4.74%), lasso (0.11%) and support vector regression (-0.45%). Based on the obtained large-scale results, we propose super learning for daily streamflow forecasting.


The entanglement entropy (EE) has emerged as an important window into the structure of complex quantum states of matter. We analyze the universal part of the EE for gapless systems on tori in 2D and 3D, denoted by χ. Focusing on scale-invariant systems, we derive general nonperturbative properties for the shape dependence of χ and reveal surprising relations to the EE associated with corners in the entangling surface. We obtain closed-form expressions for χ in 2D and 3D within a model that arises in the study of conformal field theories (CFTs), and we use them to obtain Ansätze without fitting parameters for the 2D and 3D free boson CFTs. Our numerical lattice calculations show that the Ansätze are highly accurate. Finally, we discuss how the torus EE can act as a fingerprint of exotic states such as gapless quantum spin liquids, e.g., Kitaev's honeycomb model.


The higher demand of using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles has made it
one of the major wastes generated by consumer. The large quantities of this waste
cannot be eliminated, however, the impact of the waste to the environment can be
reduced by changing it to a sustainable material in construction industries; where it
can be evaluated as lightweight aggregate. On this study, the shear behviour of
reinforced concrete contining PET aggregate using two point load configuration was
done. Prior to investigate the structural behaviour, the concrete physical and
mechanical properties for each 0%, 25%,50% and 75% of PET aggregate
replacement ratio was determined. As expected, the result of materials properties
which comprises of compressive strength test, split tensile strength and modulus of
elasticity (MOE) were decreased. The compressive strength decreased by 29%, 47%
and 52% for the replacement ratio of 25%, 50% and 75% respectively. Split tensile
strength also represent a 12%, 33%, 44% declination for each 25%, 50% and 75%
replacement of PET aggregate respectively. Furthermore, 15'76, 28% and 38%
decreasing for each 25% increment of PET aggregate were recorded for MOE test.
Despite all the reduction, one of the advantages of using PET aggregate as a
replacement for natural fine aggregate are the reduction of its density. For
replacement ratio of 50% and above, the density of the concrete fall into the
classification of lightweight concrete based on the requirement by ACI2 13R-03.For
structural beam test, it is shown that the reinforced concrete containing PET
aggregate behave in fundamentally the same manner as its normal weight concrete
with the difference in the performance of the parameter being tested. After that, the
experimental shear force were compare to the theoretical shear force compute by
BS8 1 10, ACI 3 18R-02 and Eurocode 2 where Eurocode 2 give a closer prediction to
the experimental result.


Little research has examined the views of Latin Americans on the use of animals in research. This study examined the degree to which Brazilians support the use of animals in research and the reasons they put forth to explain their position. Participants were randomly assigned to research scenarios describing the use of animals for biomedical or environmental benefits, and varying in the number of pigs required. Each scenario began by proposing the use of conventional pigs and then advanced to the development and use of genetically modified animals (GMA). A total of 151 quantitative and 307 qualitative answers were analysed. Scenario and number of animals had little effect on support, but opposition increased from 25% to 58% when pigs were used to develop a GM strain for the environmental scenario. Support to use of animals was often conditional upon adequate protection of the animals' welfare. Participants were less willing to support research on environmental scenario when this involved the creation of GMA, in part because they feared the risk associated with this technology.


The dimensionless thermoelectric figure-of-merit, ZT, of Bi2Te3 based alloys was investigated under a large temperature difference using a recently reported 'open/short circuit' measurement technique. It is shown that the measured ZT decreases with an increase in temperature difference. Theoretical analysis indicates that this dependence can be explained by taking into account the Thomson effect. An equation is obtained for a modified thermoelectric figure-of-merit which is valid for measurement over large temperature differences.


The objective of this letter is to provide a better understanding of the impact of temporal decorrelation on the tomographic phase of the P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission BIOMASS, selected as the Seventh Earth Explorer by the European Space Agency. In the context of Phase A BIOMASS activities, the tropical forest site of Paracou, French Guiana, was illuminated at P-band during the airborne campaign TropiSAR 2009 and the ground-based campaign TropiScat 2011. P-band data from TropiSAR were used to generate a high-resolution 3-D reconstruction of the Paracou forest, whereas TropiScat data provided information about temporal correlation considering different time lags and different heights within the vegetation layer. The ensemble of the two datasets were used to generate a synthetic SAR data stack that emulates BIOMASS acquisitions over the Paracou forest site, accounting for BIOMASS geometry and resolution, as well as for the forest temporal decorrelation. Different data stacks were produced by varying the revisit time between two consecutive passes from 1 to 17 days. The resulting vertical structure reconstruction and forest height retrieval were observed to yield valuable results as long as the revisit time is 4 days or less.


Olive plant produces a variety of bioactive molecules and thus has important medicinal value in folk medicine. In this study, different leaf and fruit extracts of Pakistani wild variety of Olea europaea was tested for their phytochemical content, antimicrobial activity and mass spectrometric analysis. Olive leaves and fruit samples were extracted with five different solvents to obtain the crude extract and screened for various kinds of phytochemicals. Phytochemicals were further confirmed through Fourier Transmission Infra-red Spectroscopy (FTIR).The plant extract showed significant antimicrobial activity against all the strains tested. Methanol, ethanol and ethyl acetate extracts were found more effective against most of the pathogenic bacteria with high zone of inhibition. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis revealed that olive fruits have Oleic acid, Palmitic acid, Linoleic acid, Octadecadienoic acid, Stearic acid, Palmitoleic acid and Tridecanoic acid as oil contents. In this work, the antimicrobial potential and phytochemical contents were explored which may further pave the way for the bio-industrial applications.
Keywords: Olea europaea; Phytochemical content; Antimicrobial activity; GC-MS analysis
http://dx.doi.org/10.19045/bspab.2017.60032


A detailed study has been carried out for water management and its scarcity in Alwar city (India) by authors in this paper. The drinking water supply requirement of Alwar city is expected to increased many folds in the future with the population growth. The demand for water in Alwar city is increasing due to increase in population and other reasons. There are many hand pumps, dug wells and tube wells in the Alwar city though which water is being continuously extracted on a large-scale. Drought simply aggravates the problem of over exploitation of these sources. The rate of decline of water level is increased from 0.19 to 1.70 meter per year in the Alwar. The authors have incorporated some suggestions to improve water management system and find out reasons of scarcity of drinking water in Alwar city. Therefore, urgent steps must be taken by Alwar administration otherwise drinking water will become be a big problem in Alwar city.


A fundamental requirement in drug delivery design is the development of robust, target-specific, biocompatible, and pharmocokinetically-active cargo carriers. The use of natural polysaccharides for drug delivery has been a subject of long standing interest because they display many of the necessary aforementioned attributes. Herein, the current research details a new approach to a drug release system composed of microspheres derived from unique acetylated Agave tequilana Weber var. Azul fructans. The driving force and novelty behind this approach is that these fructans are liposoluble while still being able to be metabolized by bifidobacteria (lower GI, native colon bacteria). Modification of fructan solubility through acetylation supported the preparation of microspheres by precipitation–coacervation, thus providing a new synthetic approach for polysaccharides-based cargo carriers to facilitate the encapsulation of liposoluble cargo molecules such as ibuprofen. It was found that the enzymatic activity of B. animalis, a representative bacteria found in the human colon, was reduced, albeit, but not at the expense of providing a very compellingly favorable drug release profile.


When children come to court as witnesses, or when their needs are decided in a courtroom, they face unique stressors from the legal proceeding and from the social predicament that resulted in court action. Effective pediatric support and intervention requires an understanding of the situations that bring children to court and the issues that will confront children and child advocates in different court settings.


Structure factors at room temperature are computed for LiF, NaF, NaCl and KCl by means of theoretical ionic form factors and theoretical Debye-Waller factors. The values obtained are compared with the best available experimental data. For LiF, KCl and NaF - for which good experimental data are available - there is generally very good agreement, with only a few sizeable discrepancies for NaF that can be attributed to deficiencies of the experimental data. It is concluded that there is no apparent need to question the validity of the Debye-Waller theory as recently proposed in the literature.


Summary
Under polyandry, males are selected to produce more competitive ejaculates. Theoretical models have explored how the mechanism of sperm competition drives males to partition investment within an ejaculate between sperm quantity and quality. The raffle-based competition model predicts that increased level of sperm competition selects for larger numbers of sperm in ejaculates. Sperm competition is also thought to promote the evolution of longer sperm, because longer sperm could be faster.
In eusocial Hymenoptera, the mating system imposes unique selective pressures on male ejaculates. Males are short lived; they reach adulthood with a finite amount of spermatozoa, and they mate typically with a single or a few females and die. The actual number of spermatozoa stored in their accessory testes at emergence is thus a reliable measure of total investment into sperm production. In a comparative study of 15 species of Cataglyphis desert ants, we used phylogenetically controlled analyses to investigate relationships between levels of sperm competition, sperm production and sperm length. We measured sperm production by quantifying the number of spermatozoa present in testes, instead of using a proxy measure such as size of testes. Multiple queen mating is the ancestral state in the genus but reduction in mating frequency evolved secondarily and independently in some clades, providing a unique opportunity to examine how reduction from multiple to single mating influences sperm traits.
Our results provide phylogenetically robust evidence that species experiencing greater levels of sperm competition produce more sperm. After controlling for male size, investment in sperm production decreases significantly according to the sequence obligatory multiple queen mating > multiple–single queen mating > single–double queen mating. Furthermore, the number of spermatozoa produced per male decreases significantly with reduction in paternity frequency for each species. In contrast, neither sperm length nor male size was significantly associated with the mating system classes or the number of patrilines.
Our measures of sperm number provide the first direct evidence that sperm production covaries with the level of sperm competition in a eusocial insect. Given the reversal from multiple to single mating in Cataglyphis, our comparative analysis also shows convincingly that reduction in sperm competition influences sperm traits.


In this work, we propose a generally applicable transformation unit for visual recognition with deep convolutional neural networks. This transformation explicitly models channel relationships with explainable control variables. These variables determine the neuron behaviors of competition or cooperation, and they are jointly optimized with the convolutional weight towards more accurate recognition. In Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) Networks, the channel relationships are implicitly learned by fully connected layers, and the SE block is integrated at the block-level. We instead introduce a channel normalization layer to reduce the number of parameters and computational complexity. This lightweight layer incorporates a simple l2 normalization, enabling our transformation unit applicable to operator-level without much increase of additional parameters. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our unit with clear margins on many vision tasks, i.e., image classification on ImageNet, object detection and instance segmentation on COCO, video classification on Kinetics.


Abstract #201 Purpose: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) for breast cancer was introduced to prevent the high morbidity seen with Axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Although multiple comparison studies have confirmed that SLNB consistently has lower morbidity and lymphedema rates than ALND; it is still clinically significant ranging from 0∼13%. The aim of this study was to confirm the feasibility of the technique, so called Axillary reverse mapping (ARM), and to test the hypothesis that arm lymphatics are never involved by the metastatic process of breast cancer.
 Methods: We reviewed prospectively maintained database of 129 patients who operated for primary breast cancer since June 2007. Sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) were identified by using a radiolabeled isotope (TC99m-phytate or human serum albumin). Under general anesthesia, 2.5∼3 mL of blue dye was injected in the upper inner arm along the medial intramuscular groove of ipsilateral arm in order to locate the draining lymphatics or lymph node from the arm. We then proceeded as usual with the SLNB or ALND. During axillary procedure, we take the blue node (ARM node) and SLN (hot node), and both were sent to pathology department for frozen section analysis. If SLNs were positive, ALND was performed and axillary contents were sent to pathology. Histological results of ARM node were compared with that of the other nodes of the SLNB or ALND.
 Results: The mean age of patients was 48.3 years old (rang 27∼73). Surgeries included 41 mastectomies, 80 breast conserving surgeries and eight skin sparing mastectomies with immediate reconstruction. Of the 129 procedures, 81 were in SLNB (62.8%), 43 SLNB+ALND (33.3%), and five ALND. One hundred one of 129 (78.3%) blue ARM nodes were identified in the axilla. The average number of removed ARM node was 1.5 (range 1∼5). In 19 of 96 SLNB cases, the ARM nodes were hot, yielding 18.9% of concordance rate between ARM node and SLN. Among these 19 cases, seven ARM nodes contained metastasis. In one SLNB case, the metastatic ARM node was not hot. In all five ALND cases, ARM nodes were identified and one of five ARM nodes was positive for metastasis. Thus, ARM node metastasis rate of identified ARM node during ARM procedure was 8.9% (9/101).
 Conclusion: According to our study, it is thought that lymphatic drainage from arm share common lymphatic channel in axilla with lymphatic flow from breast. Therefore, intentional preservation of lymphatics or lymph node drained from arm during performing axillary surgery in breast cancer could be a dangerous one. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(2 Suppl):Abstract nr 201.


BACKGROUND
Gonad shielding has been extensively advocated during pelvic radiography at or below reproductive ages. The popular practice of gonad shielding is placement of a lead shield in the midline of the pelvis. The aim of this study was to address the prevalence of gonad shielding and find out whether the current practice of gonad shielding can be considered as an effective method to reduce radiation exposure in patients undergoing pelvic radiography.

METHODS
National and international electronic databases, including PubMed, MEDLIN, EMBASE, and Google-Scholar, were searched up to January 2016. The database searches were supplemented with manual searches of reference lists. Two authors independently assessed the eligibility of all studies and extracted data.

RESULTS
The searches yielded a total of 243 publications. After assessing each identified study against specific inclusion exclusion criteria, 18 studies were deemed as relevant for this review. The total prevalence rate of gonad shielding was estimated at 58% (95% CI: 40 to 74%). It was estimated that only 34% (95% CI: 25 to 44%) of the radiographs had correct positioning of the shield. Also, incorrect positioning of the shield was statistically significantly higher in females than males (85% vs. 52 %; P-value < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Our study demonstrates that the current practice of gonad shielding during female pelvic radiography should be no longer considered as an effective method to reduce radiation exposure. Training the best qualified radiographers is the key to accurate positioning of the shield in male subjects.


This research is motivated by the number of students who have low grades in mathematics learning. Students have difficulty working on questions that are different from the example problems given by the teacher. To find out the level of mastery of student material can be seen from the acquisition of student learning outcomes. There are still many student learning outcomes below the KKM value. This is because students do not understand the learning material and they are not trying to find and solve the problems they face. To overcome this problem, the effort made was by applying the Inquiry learning model to the mathematics learning outcomes of students of class VIII of SMP Negeri 22 Padang. The type of research used is experimental research. The population in this study were all eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 22 Padang. The sample classes were taken randomly, so that the sample classes were students of class VIII.3 as the control class, and students of class VIII.7 as the experimental class. Based on data on learning outcomes of mathematics in the sample class using the t test. Obtained t '= 2.60 and. Because t '> it can be concluded that the hypothesis H 0 is rejected. So the result of mathematics studies of students that learn model of inquiry studies is better than the result of the mathematic studies and use the ussuall studies in vii class of smp negeri 22 padang. From the results of this study the researchers suggest that mathematics teachers apply the Inquiry model to mathematics learning as an effort to make learning more active and can make student learning outcomes better. Keywords: Inquiry, learning outcomes


This paper concerns the decomposition of income risk into permanent and transitory components using repeated cross-section data on income and consumption. Our focus is on the detection of changes in the magnitudes of variances of permanent and transitory risks. A new approximation to the optimal consumption growth rule is developed. Evidence from a dynamic stochastic simulation is used to show that this approximation can provide a robust method for decomposing income risk in a nonstationary environment. We examine robustness to unobserved heterogeneity in consumption growth and to unobserved heterogeneity in income growth. We use this approach to investigate the growth in income inequality in the UK in the 1980s.


The US market is currently making a double jump in its HRSG requirements. Heretofore, HRSGs were used largely in industrial size cogen applications. According to the PURPA (Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act), public utilities were required to purchase that electric power generated in excess of the steam host's needs. Thus, HRSGs were relatively small and operated under constant conditions. Now, HRSGs are much larger (utility size) and also more complex due to the introduction of triple pressure plus reheat behind powerful heavy duty gas turbines. With the onset of deregulation and consequent merchant power, combined cycle plants are now required to supply electrical power to the grid as and when needed with consequent day/night and weekday/weekend cycling. Those merchant plants have to come on and off line with minimal notice and be run sometimes at partial loads. Even units which were originally designed for base load are all eventually forced to cycle as new more efficient power plants are built. Thus, substantial changes in basic HRSG design are needed to cope with these changes. Coincidentally, the types of service projected for USA HRSGs have been in effect in Europe for over two decades. For this reason, European HRSG manufacturers/operators have adopted cycling tolerant Vertical HRSGs based on designs which permit the tubes to expand/contract freely and independently of one another, as distinguished from the more rigid horizontal gas pass design. Thus, fatigue stresses related to load following swings are minimized. This is just an illustration of the specific features of the Vertical European HRSGs for minimizing damages due to cycling related fatigue stresses. Vertical HRSG design shall be considered not only in terms of smaller footprint, but also as a solution to cycling related problems. As generally recognized, the cycling criterion is an integral part of HRSG design. This paper presents solutions to HRSG design issues for cycling tolerant operation. It relates to published data on problems observed with cycling Horizontal HRSGs, and it describes how these problems can be overcome. Concepts, design features and calculation methods applied to cycling tolerant HRSGs are reviewed in detail. Vertical HRSGs have been criticized because of their need for circulation pumps. Interestingly, the need for such pumps was eliminated a decade ago, with the advent of natural circulation for Vertical HRSGs up to 1800 psia (124 bar A) operating pressure.Copyright © 2003 by ASME


The distorted wave is introduced into the relativistic impulse approximation to generate the Dirac optical potentials for proton elastic scattering. Those potentials, produced by folding the target ground state wavefunction with the free nucleon-nucleon interactions, are used to reevaluate scattering observables, such as differential cross section, analysing power and spin rotation function, for proton elastic scattering from 12C and 16O at Elab = 200 MeV, respectively. The inclusion of the distorted wave in the original relativistic impulse approximation has brought out better results of the observables, especially at small scattering angles.


The particles sinking out of the ocean's surface layer are made up of a mixture of living and dead algal cells, fecal pellets, and aggregates, while the parameters used to describe the behavior of biogenic silica (bSiO2) in today's models are experimentally determined on freely suspended diatoms (FC). In a simple advection‐reaction model we combine sinking rates of FC, zooplankton fecal pellets, and aggregates with recent measurements of bSiO2 dissolution to reconstruct theoretical downward profiles of bSiO2 fluxes at eight sites in the world ocean. Statistical analyses showed that sinking and dissolution parameters for two pools of bSiO2 are required to model particle fluxes accurately. The two‐pool model results confirm the importance of seasonality for particle formation and its connection to the percentage of the bSiO2 production that reaches the seafloor. The depth of bSiO2 recycling appears to be influenced more by particle formation than by dissolution rates of bSiO2 or the ballast effect of the dense diatom frustules.


There have been growing interests in privacy preserving data mining. Secure multiparty computation (SMC) is often used to give a solution. When data is vertically partitioned scalar product is a feasible tool to securely discover frequent itemsets of association rule mining. However, there may be disparity among the securities of different parties. To obtain equal privacy, the security of some parties may be lowered. This paper discusses the disharmony between the securities of two parties. The scalar product of two parties from the point of view of matrix computation is described. We present one algorithm for completely two-party computation of scalar product. Then we give a method of security improvement for both parties.


Summary: It has been observed that glucocorticoids stimulate fetal lung maturation. This study examined the effects of glucocorticoids on the phosphatidylcholine (PC) metabolism in maternal and fetal lungs and livers. At 24 days of gestation, pregnant does were injected im with either hydrocortisone or an equal volume of saline. At 27 days of gestation, the maternal and fetal lungs and livers were removed for study. Maternal hydrocortisone treatment significantly decreased the fetal body weight and lung weight, but had no effect on the weights of fetal liver or the ratios of maternal lung/body or liver/body weights. Concentrations of protein, total phospholipids, or PC of fetal lung and liver and of maternal liver were not affected by hydrocortisone. However, the amounts of maternal lung protein, total phospholipids, and PC were significantly increased. No stimulation by hydrocortisone was seen in the specific activities of the enzymes: choline kinase, phosphocholine cytidyltransferase, and choline phosphotransferase of cytidine 5′-diphosphocholine (CDP-choline) pathway and lysoPC-lysoPC acyltransferase, lysophospholipase, and acyl-CoA lysoPC acyl-transferase of PC-lysoPC cycle pathway.Maternal administration of hydrocortisone stimulated the incorporation of [methyl-14C] choline into fetal lung PC. Additionally, hydrocortisone also accelerated the secretion of PC from maternal lung tissue. The acceleration of the secretion of PC was not observed in the fetal lung tissue, possibly because of a low basal secretory rate. The acceleration of PC secretion by hydrocortisone in maternal lung may suggest a relation of this mechanism to the fetal lung maturation affected by steroids.Speculation: One biochemical effect of antenatal maternal hydrocortisone is the acceleration of choline incorporation into fetal lung PC. Maternally administered glucocorticoids, in addition to affecting fetal lung, might also affect maternal lung and liver PC metabolism by alteration of enzyme activity or changing turnover or transfer rates. Though studied indirectly, hydrocortisone might stimulate the secretion of lung PC onto the alveolar surface.


Institutional investor portfolios typically hold a significant allocation of foreign currency denominated assets. Very often at least some of this currency exposure has been viewed as bad or unwanted. On the other hand, recent studies have concluded that currency is itself an asset class that offers investors favorable risk-adjusted returns that could benefit a typical portfolio of stocks and bonds. There are two basic types of currency management mandates. In a currency hedging mandate (currency overlay), investors strive to manage (usually meaning reduce) the risk associated with the foreign currency exposure in their international assets. With an absolute return mandate (currency alpha), investors seek to earn a positive return subject to acceptable risk levels. The existing literature analyses these two basic types of currency management mandates separately. In this study, we investigate their impact on institutional investment performance simultaneously. We find that both absolute return and currency hedging mandates can have a positive impact on the portfolio risk/return characteristics. Absolute return mandates have the potential to increase the portfolio return with little impact on volatility. Risk reduction mandates tend to reduce portfolio volatility with little impact on returns. Due to the safe haven status of the U.S. Dollar, higher hedge ratios provide diversification for US dollar based investors when needed most, namely in periods of negative equity returns. Combining both currency hedging and absolute return mandates improves overall investment performance while allowing managers to stay within their portfolio risk budget.


Transforming the nonlinear equations representing the free and synchronized oscillations to linear ones with periodically varying coefficients, the complete solutions of oscillator equations to the first power of the tube parameters are obtained. The relation between frequency variation and harmonic contents is given. The effect of the harmonics on the asymmetry of the resonance curves of a synchronized oscillator is obtained for the first time. Experimental verification has been carried out, and the results agree well with the theoretical predictions.


A person-oriented approach was adopted to examine joint developmental trajectories of physical and indirect aggression. Participants were 1183 children aged 2 years at the initial assessment and followed over 6 years. Most children followed either low or declining trajectories of physical aggression (PA), but 14.6% followed high stable trajectories. Approximately two-thirds of participants followed low indirect aggression (IA) trajectories (67.9%), and one-third (32.1%) followed high rising trajectories. The results combining both PA and IA group memberships indicate that most children (62.1%) exhibit desisting levels of PA and low levels of IA. A significant proportion followed a trajectory of moderately desisting PA and rising IA (14.2%), and 13.5% followed high level trajectories of both forms of aggression. Virtually no children were high on one type and low on the other. Multinomial regressions analyses were used to predict joint trajectory group membership from selected child and family variables measured at 2 years. Young motherhood and low income predicted membership in the high PA-high IA trajectory, but only hostile parenting remained significant after family processes variables were entered in the model. Being a boy, young motherhood, and hostile parenting were generally associated with higher levels of PA. Girls were more likely than boys to follow a trajectory of desisting PA and rising IA. The results suggest that some children, mostly girls, reduce their use of PA and tend to increase their use of IA, and that highly physically aggressive children also tend to be highly indirectly aggressive. Early family risk characteristics and hostile parenting interfere with the socialization of aggression.This research was supported by research grants from Quebec's FQRSC and CIQSS, Canada's CIHR and SSHRC, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Molson foundation, St-Justine Hospital's Research Center, and the University of Montréal. We thank Danielle Forest (University of Montréal) for her work on data analysis and Franck Larouche (Statistics Canada) for his sustained commitment to assist us in managing the data.


With current trends like continuous delivery the application deployment process is automated as much as possible. Manual steps would slow down this process substantially and are prone to mistakes, so they are reduced where the possibility exists. To achieve a higher level of automation many tools are in use with varying features. In practice, often more than one technology is used to get the best of all worlds. However, with the usage of more tools the complexity of managing their interactions increases. This thesis provides a framework that enables and manages the deployment with multiple deployment technologies. This is achieved by first defining a technology agnostic model on the basis of the Essential Deployment Meta Model. Afterwards, concepts for the automatic transformation to technology specific models and then the automatic execution with the desired tools are described. As a validation for the concept a prototypical implementation is provided.


Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and disturbances in endothelial function (EF) are implicated in its pathogenesis (1,2). EF also depends on endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) that enhance angiogenesis, promote vascular repair and have potential as a marker of CVD (3,4,5). SLE patients have endothelial dysfunction and fewer EPCs (6,7). Objectives To evaluate the effect of supervised physical exercise (SPE) on quality of life, exercise tolerance, body composition, endothelial function, EPCs number and on vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) level in SLE patients. Methods Prospective, controlled, nonrandomized study. Women with SLE were allocated according to availability to participate in exercise group (EG) or control group (CG). Intervention: SPE was performed for 1 hour, 3X/week, for 16 weeks. Patients were evaluated at baseline (T0) and after 16 weeks (T16): exercise tolerance by cardiopulmonary exercise test; quality of life by SF-36; body composition by DEXA; high-resolution ultrasound of brachial artery in resting conditions, after reactive hyperaemia (flow-mediated dilation-FMD) and after oral glyceryl trinitrate (GTMD) was performed to assess endothelial function; EPCs were evaluated by flow cytometry using anti-CD34 (FITC), anti-CD133 (PE) and anti-KDR (APC); and VEGF was assessed by ELISA (R&D Systems, Minneapolis, USA). Results 535 SLE patients were invited, 239 manifested interest, but 127 were excluded due to exclusion criteria. 55 patients dropped out due to personal reasons. Twenty four patients completed the evaluations (mean age 33.2±8.2 years and mean disease duration of 99±77.9 months). Thirteen patients were assigned in the EG and eleven in the CG. Both groups were comparable and homogeneous regarding demographic variables and cardiovascular traditional risk factors. After 16 weeks, we observed a significant increase in FMD (7.7±7.2% vs 16.9±8.8%, p=0.005) in EG without changes in the GC (4.1±4.4% vs 7.4±5.7%, p=0.62). In the EG, we also found a significant improvement in exercise tolerance (12±2.1min vs 13.5±2min, p=0.021), maximum speed (7.6±1km/h vs 8.3±1km/h, p=0.049), threshold speed (5.5±0.6km/h vs 5.9±0.6km/h, p=0.012), functional capacity (66.2±23.8 vs 82.1±11.6, p=0.035) and vitality (72.9±31.4 vs 78.8±19.7, p=0.007). EPCs were analyzed in 10 patients of the EG and in seven of the CG. We observed a significant increase in number of CD34/CD133/KDR positive cells at T16 in the EG (0.38±0.37 vs. 1.57±1.38, p=0.005), with no difference in the CG (0.62±0.83 vs. 0.82±0.58, p=0.176). There was no difference on body composition and VEGF levels in both groups comparing T0 and T16. Conclusions Despite the small sample, this is the first study demonstrating that SPE can improve EF and EPCs number in SLE patients. The higher number of EPCs may be one of the mechanisms associated with EF improvement after an exercise program. Physical exercise can be a useful strategy to prevent CVD morbidity and mortality in SLE patients. References Kao et al. Curr Opin Rheumatol. 2003. Pearson JD. Lupus. 2000. Asahara et al. Science. 1997. Hill et al. N Engl J Med. 2003. Werner et al. N Engl J Med. 2005. Lima et al. J Rheumatol. 2002. Westerweel et al. Ann Rheum Dis. 2007. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


In the study of a large series of phenyl propylamines several members of the group were found to possess greater bronchodilator activity than ephedrine with little or no pressor action. According to stability and activity the methoxyphenylisopropylamines seemed most interesting. The intravenous toxicities, pressor actions, and bronchodilator properties of 14 of these amines are reported. Ortho-methoxy-β-phenylisopropyl methylamine hydrochloride ('Orthoxine'), because of its relatively high activity and low toxicity, was investigated further with the following results:

1. In perfusion experiments with isolated lungs using pilocarpine, histamine, or acetyicholine as the constrictor agents, 'Orthoxine' was found to be on the average a much more effective agent than ephedrine for relieving bronchoconstriction. Against pilocarpine and histamine it is more than twice as effective as ephedrine and about 1/5 to 1/20 as effective as epinephrine.

2. When tested for activity in relieving intestinal smooth-muscle spasms, using isolated strips of jejunum or ileum, 'Orthoxine' was found to be 4 to 8 times as effective as ephedrine against the spasmogenic agents, histamine, acetylcholine and barium chloride. Compared to epinephrine, 'Orthoxine' is about 1/10 as effective a barium chloride antagonist. In quieting the normal contractions of the unstimulated intestinal muscle, 'Orthoxine' is 5 times as effective as ephedrine. On the non-pregnant uterus, 'Orthoxine' is only 1/2 as active as ephedrine in stimulating the muscle to contraction.

3. 'Orthoxine' produces little or no pressor response, possessing at most in this regard 1/2000 the activity of epinephrine and 1/8 that of ephedrine. Four times as much 'Orthoxine' as ephedrine must be administered to normal dogs to produce the bradycardia characteristic of the latter.

4. Inhibition of histamine bronchoconstriction, vasodepression, and smooth-muscle spasm shows that 'Orthoxine' possesses antihistaminic properties. The intestinal smooth-muscle tests indicate that the order of activity is 1/20 that of 'Benadryl' but is much greater than that of ephedrine.

5. Except for a higher intravenous toxicity, acute and chronic toxicity tests in rats, rabbits and guinea pigs show that the toxicity of 'Orthoxine' is of the same order as that of ephedrine. No pathological changes were found after the continuous daily administration of either 20 or 100 mgm. per kgm. doses for 21 days.

6. The pharmacological properties of 'Orthoxine' suggest that it may be of value in the treatment of asthma, for which it is presently being clinically evaluated.


BACKGROUND: Wheelchair skills training is an essential part of rehabilitation of the disabled persons with lower limb amputation (LLA) due to peripheral artery disease (PAD). However, nowadays this issue is poorly addressed in our country, there are no standardized technologies.
AIM: Investigation of dynamics of the extent of wheelchair usage among disabled persons with LLA due to PAD during adjustment to the wheelchair using the Wheelchair Skills Program (WSP, Canada).
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Altogether, 350 patients with lower limb stump [unilateral tibial stump ― 116 (33.1%), hip stump ― 223 (63.7%), bilateral tibial stumps ― 6 (1.7%), hip stump ― 5 (1.4%)] were examined in clinical settings at the Federal State Budgetary Institution Novokuznetsk Scientific and Practical Centre for Medical and Social Expertise and Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation. Male ― 268 (76.6%), female ― 82 (23.4%). Mean age 63.10.52 years. Cause of LLA: obliterative PAD (lower limb atherosclerotic arterial disease) ― 226 (64.6%), type 2 diabetes mellitus ― 124 (35.4%). WSP effectiveness was assessed in 227 disabled persons. Wheelchair skills retention in 1.1 (0.591.87) years was assessed in 48 persons, 25 persons have undergone training second time.
RESULTS: It was found that 86% of the disabled persons with LLA needed the wheelchair skills training. Upon the completion of the course the level of individual wheelchair skills was increased in all participants. This contributed to an increase in their activities and participation, which was indirectly evidenced by 1.8 fold increase in the proportion of those using the wheelchair outdoors by the time of second hospitalization.
CONCLUSION: The program provides an individual approach to training, based on the results of a study of the initial level of proficiency in wheelchair skills, the wishes of the user himself, his physical, somatic and psychological condition. Thanks to this, novice users were able to master basic skills, and relatively experienced ones ― more complex, and thereby increase their level of safe use of the wheelchair, as well as the degree of independence and everyday activity, which can indirectly be evidenced by a significant increase in the share of wheelchair users outside the house.


A long-term ethnography of an interdisciplinary geriatric oncology team at a regional cancer center revealed the existence and importance of backstage communication that occurred outside of team meetings to the enactment of teamwork. Seven inductively derived categories describe the communication involved in backstage teamwork in the clinic: informal impression and information sharing; checking clinic progress; relationship building; space management; training students; handling interruptions; and formal reporting. The centrality of backstage communication to caring for patients is explored, and a view of embedded teamwork is proposed, extending upon the bona fide group construct. The study provides a valuable complement to controlled studies of group decision-making through its focus on dynamic communication outside of meetings among dyads and triads of team members in a web-like organization and extends bona fide group theory.


The Analytic Network Process (ANP) approach was
applied to evaluate the overall project performance. The
interdependencies between the performance factors in sanitation
infrastructure projects have been modeled, and their cumulative
influences were simulated and quantified. This model focuses on
the planning and construction phase of projects under unit price
contracts and is intended for use by owners, supervision
consulting firms (Owner's representative) and/or contractors as
well. The proposed model assist both owners, consultants and
contractors in controlling projects during the different phases
and can also be used as a basis for simulation of various
managerial scenarios/interventions to explore the best solution to
correct the negative effect of poor performance. The proposed
model is generic and may be applicable to almost any project in
the construction industry, since all projects, regardless of size or
type, follow a broadly similar pattern of development. This model
focuses on the two phases; planning phase and construction
phase of a project and is intended for implementation by both
owners and contractors. Although the proposed evaluation
model reflects to a great extent the contractors' preferences, most
contractors perceive performance according to project objectives
and contractual aspects. The model also reflects to some extent
the owner's and/or its consultant's interventions within the
different project cycle. Therefore, the objective of this research is
not to standardize the priorities of performance factors, but
rather to establish a systematic framework for consistent and
quantitative evaluation process for performance of planning and
construction of sanitation infrastructure projects in Egypt that
take into consideration the interdependencies between multidimensional performance factors.


Thalidomide is an immunomodulatory agent; although its mechanisms of action are not fully understood, many authors have described its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties. More interestingly, thalidomide has shown the ability to suppress tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF alpha) production and to modify the expression of TNF alpha induced adhesion molecules on endothelial cells and on human leukocytes. Thalidomide has been used in several diseases (i.e. dermatological, autoimmune, gastrointestinal). In this review we focus specifically on the use of this drug in disorders with rheumatological features such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and Still's disease, ankylosing spondylitis, and Behçet's disease. Despite its well known side effects, first of all peripheral nerve involvement and teratogenesis, which can be avoided by following strict guidelines, thalidomide could represent an alternative drug in some rheumatological conditions, particularly in patients who show resistance, contraindication or toxicity with other conventional treatments.


rought and dwindling supplies coupled with a growing population are severely straining California's water resources, and traditional water supply planning and analysis are proving inadequate to help the state prepare for future needs. To help ascertain the value of urban water use in California, one alternative has been the development of economic loss functions, which represent a flexible yet rigorous method to replace yield, shortage, and requirements-based approaches to assessing water supply performance for planning studies, regulatory impact assessments, and other evaluations. The approach in this article applied residential water demand elasticities for residential willingness-to-pay for water, used an industry study for industrial willingness-to-pay for water, and assumed fixed commercial sector water use for 2020 population levels. On the basis of economic loss functions described in this article, urban water scarcity in California in 2020 would cost end users an estimated average of $1.6 billion per year, given current operations, allocations, and infrastructure.—MPM D Marion W. Jenkins, Jay R. Lund, and Richard E. Howitt


The overall perspective of this article will be how drama as theatre , plays a part in the making of common worlds. I disagree with Benedict Anderson when he argues that the development of a printed national language was a basis for an imagined community and a condition for the modern nation state. When Ibsen and his contemporaries were fighting for a Norwegian theatre and theatre aesthetics in the 1850s and early 1860s, a written Norwegian language, which was distinctly different from written Danish, did not exist. In order to explain how the Norwegians could have a common imagined community before 1814 and the background for the young Ibsen's theatre aesthetics, it is necessary to take a look at the theatre traditions Ibsen and his generation inherited – from, what is often referred to as the generation of 1814. It is also necessary to establish a perspective, which does not focus on written or printed language, but on theatre as human action . From 1850 to 1864 Ibsen was a prominent representative for a movement who wanted to develop a national theatre. The function of this national theatre was to be a mirror that could help the nation to correct itself, to strengthen the national self-consciousness. The theatre should be a place where the Norwegian people could experience an inner unity and an external demarcation of the nation. Ibsen participated in this national theatre project both as a theatre critic, as a playwright, as the author of prologues, epilogues and songs filled with national sentiment – and he was struggling for governmental support for the Norwegian theatre on this basis.


Background Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global health burden. However, the efficacy of different modes of eHealth care in facilitating self-management for patients with CKD is unclear. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mobile app–based intelligent care system in improving the kidney outcomes of patients with CKD. Methods Our study was a retrospective analysis based on the KidneyOnline intelligent system developed in China. Patients with CKD but not dependent on dialysis who registered on the KidneyOnline app between January 2017 and January 2021 were screened. Patients in the the KidneyOnline intelligent system group and those in the conventional care group were 1:1 matched according to their baseline characteristics. The intervention group received center-based follow-up combined with the KidneyOnline intelligent patient care system, which was a nurse-led, patient-oriented collaborative management system. Health-related data uploaded by the patients were integrated using deep learning optical character recognition (OCR). Artificial intelligence (AI)–generated personalized recipes, lifestyle intervention suggestions, early warnings, real-time questions and answers, and personalized follow-up plans were also provided. Patients in the conventional group could get professional suggestions from the nephrologists through regular clinical visits, but they did not have access to the service provided by AI and the health coach team. Patients were followed for at least 3 months after recruitment or until death or start of renal replacement therapy. Results A total of 2060 eligible patients who registered on the KidneyOnline app from 2017 to 2021 were enrolled for the analysis. Of those, 902 (43.8%) patients were assessed for survival analysis after propensity score matching, with 451(50%) patients in the KidneyOnline intelligent patient care system group and 451(50%) patients in the conventional care group. After a mean follow-up period of 15.8 (SD 9.5) months, the primary composite kidney outcome occurred in 28 (6%) participants in the KidneyOnline intelligent patient care system group and 32 (7%) in the conventional care group, with a hazard ratio of 0.391 (95% CI 0.231-0.660; P<.001). Subgroup survival analysis demonstrated that the KidneyOnline care system significantly reduced the risk of composite kidney outcome, irrespective of age, sex, baseline estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and proteinuria. In addition, the mean arterial pressure (MAP) significantly decreased from 88.9 (SD 10.5) mmHg at baseline to 85.6 (SD 7.9) mmHg at 6 months (P<.001) in the KidneyOnline intelligent patient care system group and from 89.3 (SD 11.1) mmHg to 87.5 (SD 8.2) mmHg (P=.002) in the conventional CKD care group. Conclusions The utilization of the KidneyOnline intelligent care system was associated with reduced risk of unfavorable kidney outcomes in nondiabetic patients with CKD.


The phylogeographic studies of unrelated species that share overlapping distributions lead to new perspectives. Indeed, if different species with similar distributions shared the same phylogeographic pattern, then a common extrinsic cause could be proposed, involving some important issues for species conservation. Considering different mitochondrial studies of European freshwater fishes (threatened or not), it will be possible to perform such a comparative phylogeographic analyses. However, we illustrated how similar mitochondrial patterns can be due to different demographic models or evolutionary scenarios inducing numerous pitfalls. In this review, we present some major theoretical and practical challenges on phylogeography that need to be overcome before the inference of a global scenario. More than the evolution of the phylogeography discipline, estimation of the history of populations/species and their relationships is one of the most important challenges for conservation managers.


Understanding deep learning model behavior is critical to accepting machine learning-based decision support systems in the medical community. Previous research has shown that jointly using clinical notes with electronic health record (EHR) data improved predictive performance for patient monitoring in the intensive care unit (ICU). In this work, we explore the underlying reasons for these improvements. While relying on a basic attention-based model to allow for interpretability, we first confirm that performance significantly improves over state-of-the-art EHR data models when combining EHR data and clinical notes. We then provide an analysis showing improvements arise almost exclusively from a subset of notes containing broader context on patient state rather than clinician notes. We believe such findings highlight deep learning models for EHR data to be more limited by partially-descriptive data than by modeling choice, motivating a more data-centric approach in the field.


The fragmentation chemistry of the protonated and ionized nanoPutian 1 has been studied in the gas phase via electrospray ionization and tandem mass spectrometry. A direct analogy was observed between the fragmentation chemistry of this fascinating "humanoid molecule" and "cleavages" at certain parts of the human body. We argue that such direct analogy and illustrative schemes for the fragmentation of molecular ions of 1 offer a ludic and efficient tool to teach and capture attention to ion chemistry in mass spectrometry. Using the changes in mass for the two heavier nanoPutians with different head styles but the same body design, the analogy has also been used to predict mass spectra. The concepts of isotopic labelling and dissociation thresholds have also been illustrated. For many years, the approach has been successfully used by one of us in classes and lectures, mainly when presenting ion chemistry to students and audiences from fields other than Chemistry, most particularly from Biology, Medicine, and Forensic Chemistry.


Literature-based instruction is one of the approaches to teach students to read and it has been applied in English language class in secondary high school in Malaysia. There are many reading materials such as short stories, novel, and poems used as literature-based instruction approach. Literature-based instruction also helps in language growth such as English proficiency. However, using this approach is quite challenging for teachers as they need to come out with activities that require them to evaluate the content of the reading material and attract students that have no interest in reading. This will be time-consuming as the time is used to develop the activities. To improve the learning method and improve students performance in class, a mobile learning application will be developed which is an interactive AR literary reading application. This application is based on a short story taken from a Form 1 book which contains the literature component. It has simple animations and buttons were used to navigate thrrough the application. It aims to encourage the students to learn reading and improve their motivation in class using AR. Other activities were also included for better understanding of the reading materials. This application creates a new fun and joyful learning ambience in the classroom.


Quality assurance for diagnostic ultrasound in ophthalmology is of growing importance and will be the subject of new standards and regulations. Methods for equipment performance testing by means of electric test signals in A- and B-mode equipment are described, both for comparative evaluation of equipment and for routine quality assurance tests. Newly developed test signal generator for checking the time scale in ultrasonic biometry of the eye are presented.


Background: Studies have shown that Guinea is a natural reservoir for many serious infectious diseases: cholera, Lassa, Ebola, measles. The analysis that underlies the emergence and spread of infectious diseases are dominated by a certain ecosystem, favorable customs, the fragility of the health system resilience: warning, surveillance, adequate response or lack of research and biosafety. The objective is to analyze the links between disease and community commitment for action. Methodology qualitative, participatory and focused on the triangulation of the literature review, in-depth interviews with target and comments. Results: In Guinea, a strategy "Active Monitoring belt around Heal Ebola" (SA-Ceint) was implemented to ensure enhanced oversight and assurance á their medical and psychosocial needs. Monitoring is implemented by "National Safety Agency" in collaboration with various partners. Community-based monitoring is required to prevent new outbreaks of Ebola in the country and bring them to life and health events. The Ebola outbreak (2013–2016) reveals that in a context of vulnerability, mistrust and rumors, the management deserves a preparation. Thus, the incentive mechanisms at the community commitment of the response including surveillance have enabled side. Lessons learned have pushed the country to engage in a process of implementation of ERARE, separates, the platform "One Health" and institutionalization of community health strategies preservation of human health, animal health and protection of the environment. Conclusion: Without communication that improves knowledge and helps in solving health and biosecurity issues, it is illusory to imagine that the prevention and response programs against infectious diseases will be successful long term. Community involvement is critical to the prevention, detection, monitoring, response.


ABSTRACT During the last decades the map of Europe has changed considerably. New claims for independent statehood were brought forward and demanded for recognition. These claims had to be answered by the European Union and its member states. This article evolves around the idea that state recognition is as much a matter of politics as it is of law. It starts from the assumption that 'who we are defines what we see', claiming, that EUropean identity, the images the EU and the member states hold about themselves, shape the mental maps they hold of territories and space. Building on this identity a geopolitical imaginary is formed, which can be defined as ideas, allowing actors to ascribe meaning to territories, establish order in a seemingly chaotic world by means of classification and categorisation and allow to develop strategies for action. The geopolitical imaginary of EUrope contains the vision, that if all states were more like EUrope itself, the world would be a better place: a world determined not by power and coercion, but by rules, norms and values; with conflict mechanisms, not based on the rule of the strongest, but the rule of law; stability, created through common rules, negotiation and economic prosperity; and a determination not to let 'blunt power-politics' prevail. This imaginary shapes the way in which Europe makes meaning of claims for statehood and decides which claims to recognise as legitimate. The different elements of the imaginary sometimes contradict each other: law may have to take the back seat in the quest for stability or justice. Law is open to creative interpretations to allow the 'right' claims for recognition to prevail and the 'wrong' ones to be rejected The tool of recognition is caught between legal arguments and political considerations, between normative visions and pragmatic possibilities.


Background microRNAs (miRNAs) can regulate the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Aberrant expression of miR-195 has been found to be involved in colorectal cancer (CRC); however, its function and underlying mechanism in the radioresistance of CRC remains unclear. Methods The levels of miR-195 and CARM1 were detected by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analysis in HCT-116 and HT-29 cells, respectively. Colony survival and apoptosis were determined by clonogenic assay and flow cytometry analysis, respectively. The apoptosis-related proteins Bax, Bcl-2, and γ-H2AX were detected using Western blot. The targets of miR-195 were identified by bioinformatic prediction and luciferase reporter assays. CRC cells in vitro and in vivo were exposed to different doses of X-ray radiations. Results miR-195 was downregulated, and CARM1 was upregulated in HCT-116 and HT-29 cells. miR-195 overexpression or CARM1 knockdown suppressed colony survival, induced apoptosis, promoted expression of Bax and γ-H2AX, and inhibited Bcl-2 expression in CRC cells. CARM1 was identified and validated to be a functional target of miR-195. Moreover, restored expression of CARM1 reversed the enhanced radiosensitivity of CRC cells induced by miR-195. Furthermore, miR-195 increased the sensitivity of CRC cells to radiation in vivo. Conclusion miR-195 enhances radiosensitivity of CRC cells through suppressing CARM1. Therefore, miR-195 acts as a potential regulator of radioresistance for CRC cells and as a promising therapeutic target for CRC patients.


This paper deals with mechanical fault monitoring in induction machines from stator current measurements. The considered faults lead to amplitude and/or phase modulations of the measured stator current. The different faults can be characterized by their time-frequency signatures via the Wigner distribution. The time-frequency representations apply to complex signals that may be obtained through the Hubert transform of the real measured signal. In case of high frequency modulations, it can not be taken advantage of the time frequency signatures. This study proposes an alternative complex signal representation for modulated stator currents. The so-called space vector is obtained through the Concordia transform. From three stator current measurements, the Concordia transform builds a complex vector which conveniently carries the information about phase and amplitude modulations. This paper applies and compares the Wigner distribution computed with the Hilbert and Concordia transforms in case of simulated and experimental signals with various modulation frequency ranges.


Up to 80% of the body's immune system is localized in the gastrointestinal tract. This offer unique opportunities to modulate the immune response and prevent disease by eating right. Among the substances regarded as having positive effects are many thousand antioxidants, not only traditional vitamins but numerous flavonoids , carotenoids and similar plantand vegetable produced antioxidants. Also health-promoting bacteria (probiotics) and numerous plant and vegetable fibres (prebiotics) are increasingly documented to have strong health-promoting influence. The intestine harbours about 300,000 genes, to be compared to the about 60,000 in the rest of the body . This is an indication of the enormous chemical activity going on in the intestine. One can anticipate that there are several times more enzymes active in the intestine than in the rest of the body. These enzymes release 100,000 or more of substances, which are absorbed and hereby serving as health-promotors in the body. Among these are antioxidants, but also amino acids , polyamines, short chain and other long chain fatty acids, various carbohydrates etc. In addition do the microbial cells produce signal molecules, called bacteriokines, with which the microbes communicate both with the mucosal cells and the immune system. The world of fermentation products, often referred to as synbiotics are poorly investigated and understood. It is a priority task for this new millennium to explore and understand the production of synbiotics and their role both for human and animal health, well-being, performance and long life.


A large number of mutual savings and loan associations (MSLs) converted their charters into stock ownership between the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Because these conversions tended to generate windfall profits for insiders and investors, new conversion guidelines and regulations were proposed by the FDIC to make sure that prices of the conversion IPO were right and fair. As pointed out by Mr. Henry B. Gonzales, former Chairman of the House Banking Committee, "conversion regulations of the Office of Thrift Supervision have ensured that insiders and acquirers don't benefit at the expenses of the institutions and its account holders. ; This study examines the price behavior of the mutual-to-stock conversions from 1985 to 1996. We show that if the thrift members exercised their rights to subscribe the new shares allotted to them or were allowed to sell their rights, whether the conversion IPOs were under-or-over-priced would not create any wealth transfer. Given the absence of wealth transfers, in order to guarantee full subscription, price discounts might be necessary. Empirically, we find that under- pricing was common for the thrift conversions, but not as significant as found in non-banking industries. We also examine the relationship between insider the subscriptions and after market price movements and find that insider-subscriptions have a positive correlation with after-market performance. We believe that insider- subscriptions can therefore be used as a "signal" to encourage unsophisticated mutual depositors to exercise their in-the-money rights. Finally, using options-pricing theory, we find that underwriters' spreads can be explained by volatility but not by the relationship between the offering price and the estimated market price. Therefore, the use of uninsured rights, instead of rights with standby underwriting, appears to be a more cost-effective method of equity flotation for thrift conversions. This occurs because the "insurance premium" associated with the latter does not reflect the discount that would increase the probability of the offer's success.


The key issue of this paper is how to build a knowledge society and knowledge economy for rural areas through the utilization of information and communication technology (ICT). The purpose is to apply and implement the product service system (PSS) information and multimedia access for learning communities in West Java, especially in rural or village. Our hope that the public welfare and quality of life can be improved.


Abstract There is an emergent consensus that the disposition of Black young men is an important determinant of their labor market troubles. The problem, we are told, is not labor market discrimination but the fatalistic attitudes (the "enemy within") held by many Black youth. This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to examine race differences in fatalism and joblessness. I find that the greater fatalism of Blacks is explained by their more disadvantaged background and subsequent problems in schools and the labor market, not by their distinctive cultural orientations. I also find a modest effect of measures of fatalism on subsequent joblessness and a more pronounced effect for more disadvantaged White and Black young men.


Tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome presents with either renal or ocular manifestations, and associated weight loss. We report two adolescents with transient hyperthyroidism early in the course of the syndrome. Hyperthyroidism may represent an unrecognized feature of the disorder and potentially contributes to the accompanying weight loss. Thyroid function should be evaluated in patients with tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome and symptomatic therapy provided when necessary.


SUMMARY Papillary squamous neoplasms of the upper respiratory tract are rare variants of squamous cell carcinomas. They are characterised by an exophytic, papillary growth and generally have favourable prognosis. The tumour has been described in the upper aerodigestive tract. In this context, most common sites of involvement are the larynx and hypopharynx, and rarely the oral cavity and oropharynx. The limited studies and small number of published cases of papillary squamous cell carcinoma of the palatine tonsil led us to make a complete analysis of this tumour by analysing the clinical, histological, radiological, virological and therapeutic aspects that are not always present in the literature. A case of papillary squamous cell carcinoma of the palatine tonsil is reported. The lesion (T2N0M0) was located into the left palatine tonsil that hung towards the oral cavity. Both HPV 16 DNA and E6/E7 mRNA were detected in the lesion. The clinicopathological profile of the neoplasm is presented and a comprehensive review of recent literature was made by analysing all aspects of interest of this neoplasm.


Transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1 or CD71) is the major gateway for iron entry into cells and is overexpressed on a variety of cancer cells. Antibodies targeting TfR1 have shown efficacy in vitro and in vivo against different malignancies by affecting internalization of iron into target cells; however, in some cases their response rate is limited despite the high expression of TfR1 on the target cells. The cause of this limited response is still not well understood. We have developed a mouse/human chimeric IgG3-avidin fusion protein (ch128.1Av) that binds specifically to human TfR1 and exhibits a significant intrinsic anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic activity against hematopoietic malignant cells by inducing TfR1 degradation and iron starvation. We have previously found a wide range of responses to treatment with ch128.1Av, which can be categorized as high, intermediate, or low sensitivity to the drug. Among the cells tested, the human B-lymphoblastoid cell line IM-9 was one of the most sensitive to ch128.1Av, while the human myeloma cell line U266 was tolerant. To identify the mechanisms responsible for mediating sensitivity or tolerance to the treatment with ch128.1Av, we conducted confocal microscopy studies and a whole genome time-course microarray analysis of IM-9 and U266 cells treated with this drug. In the current work we describe the molecular pathways associated with sensitivity or resistance to this therapy in vitro . We demonstrate that IM-9 cells treated with ch128.1Av can re-route TfR into the lysosomal compartment and exhibit a cytotoxic response that is predicted to be mediated in part by p53 and its target genes based on a transcription factor binding site analysis of the promoter region of genes affected by treatment with ch128.1Av. We show that a siRNA mediated reduction of wild type p53 expression rescues in part the inhibition of proliferation of IM-9 cells treated with ch128.1Av, which validates the in silico promoter analysis. In contrast, we show that U266 cells are tolerant to the cytotoxic response induced by ch128.1Av, probably due to a combination of factors including their failure to redirect trafficking of TfR targeted by ch128.1Av into the lysosomal compartment, lack of a wild type copy of the p53 protein, an early pro-proliferative response to treatment, and a high expression of the cyclin D1 gene. This work has important implications in the clinical use of TfR targeted therapies and is broadly applicable to the advancement and development of novel therapeutics targeting iron metabolism in hematopoietic malignancies.

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Figure

Hierarchical clustering of expression changes ( p <0.05) in ch128.1Av treated IM-9 and U266 cells, or between the two cell lines sampled at 1 h, 3 h, 9 h, and 24 h post treatment. The hierarchical clustering of genes and treatment times is based on their expression changes and determined by an un-centered correlation algorithm. Genes shown are also those with the greatest time-dependent variance in ch128.1Av treated IM-9 and U266 cells compared to their time-matched controls. Color scale-bar included shows fold changes in gene expression in log base 2 scale.

 [1]: pending:yes


We propose and analyze a high-fidelity hot gate for generic spin-resonator systems which allows for coherent spin-spin coupling, in the presence of a thermally populated resonator mode. Our scheme is nonperturbative in the spin-resonator coupling strength, applies to a broad class of physical systems, including, for example, spins coupled to circuit-QED and surface acoustic wave resonators as well as nanomechanical oscillators, and can be implemented readily with state-of-the-art experimental setups. We provide and numerically verify simple expressions for the fidelity of creating maximally entangled states under realistic conditions.


The present invention provides an excellent uniformity in a projector of high contrast and brightness. The projector comprising: a light source (12), and the light from the light source (12) is illuminated by the modulated liquid crystal light valves (15 to 17); the liquid crystal light valve (15), comprising: sandwiched between a pair of substrates vertical alignment mode liquid crystal layer of a liquid crystal panel (15c), the sandwiched liquid crystal panel (15c) of the pair of polarizing plates arranged (15b, 15d), disposed on the pair of polarizing plates (15b, 15d) between, a first retardation plate (15a) at least on the liquid crystal panel (15c) to compensate a phase difference, and disposed in the pair of polarizing plates (15b, 15d) between at least the pair of polarizing plates (15b, a second retardation plate (15e) 15d) for compensating a phase difference.


SUMMARY: A procedure is described for measuring the viabilities (% viable/total organisms) of populations of Aerobacter aerogenes by short-term incubation on agar films followed by differential counting under the microscope. The only special apparatus needed is a supply of metal annuli. The procedure estimates viability with 95 % fiducial limits of ± 9%; it appears applicable to other aerobic bacteria, to yeasts and to spore suspensions.


We determine the conditions under which singular values of multiple $\eta$-quotients of square-free level, not necessarily prime to~6, yield class invariants, that is, algebraic numbers in ring class fields of imaginary-quadratic number fields. We show that the singular values lie in subfields of the ring class fields of index $2^{k' - 1}$ when $k' \geq 2$ primes dividing the level are ramified in the imaginary-quadratic field, which leads to faster computations of elliptic curves with prescribed complex multiplication. The result is generalised to singular values of modular functions on $X_0^+ (p)$ for $p$ prime and ramified.


Although recommendation techniques have achieved distinct developments over the decades, the data sparseness problem of the involved user-item matrix still seriously influences the recommendation quality. Most of the existing techniques for recommender systems cannot easily deal with users who have very few ratings. How to combine the increasing amount of different types of social information such as user generated content and social relationships to enhance the prediction precision of the recommender systems remains a huge challenge. In this paper, based on a factor graph model, we formalize the problem in a semi-supervised probabilistic model, which can incorporate different user information, user relationships, and user-item ratings for learning to predict the unknown ratings. We evaluate the method in two different genres of datasets, Douban and Last.fm. Experiments indicate that our method outperforms several state-of-the-art recommendation algorithms. Furthermore, a distributed learning algorithm is developed to scale up the approach to real large datasets.


Anatomical features of some selected wood species were investigated in this study. The microscopic properties such as rays, vessels and fibre dimensions were related to the other properties such as the mechanical properties. This study reflected the implication of large pores in Ceiba pentandra, Bombax and some other wood species in printing papers which may require some fillers before they are finished to a smooth surface. The effects of density, small lumen, thick cell wall and some deposits are also presented. Wood micrographs showing microscopic features unique to Ceiba pentandra, Bombax bounopozense and Ricinodendron heudelotii were included as these anatomical properties could explain the reason why some wood are used for different categories construction purposes, furniture, particle boards, matches, boxes, crates, cabinet making and paper. Small-vessel wood species such as Nesogordomia papaverifera, Diospyros mespiliformis and Mansonia altissima were also discussed to possess characteristics that have bestowed fine texture and are often heavy and therefore are often used for flooring, tool handles, sculpture (as in Diospyros mespiliformis) and other heavy constructional