Over 500,000 new patients in the U.S. develop heart failure (HF) annually and sudden cardiac death (SCD) has become a dominant problem in HF management1. Successful development of pharmacologic therapies that target neurohormonal abnormalities and modulate disease progression has changed the major cause of death in HF patients from progressive pump failure to SCD from cardiac arrhythmias. What underlies the increased risk of SCD in HF patients is only partially understood. While it is clear that underlying scar and fibrosis serve as a powerful arrhythmogenic substrate in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, extensive work over the past decade has shown that the failing ventricle undergoes significant electrical remodeling2; that is, the expression of some ion channels increases and expression of others is suppressed. This is of utmost clinical importance, as biophysical studies of many mutant channels responsible for Long QT Syndrome (LQTS) have shown that even subtle alterations in ion channel function can elicit life-threatening arrhythmias.

Electrical remodeling manifests in several ways, but none more prominently than an increase in the electrocardiographic QT interval, a hallmark of abnormally long ventricular repolarization that correlates with the risk of arrhythmias3-5. Repolarization at the level of a myocyte is the sum of multiple and counteracting repolarizing and depolarizing currents during an action potential, each carried by a specific ion channel. A delicate balance between the opposing depolarizing and repolarizing forces underlies normal repolarization and can be adjusted in either direction for specific physiologic purposes by various modulators. As sympathetic stimulation accelerates heart rate, for example, repolarization is enhanced by the actions of the β-adrenergic activated protein kinase A (PKA) on the KCNQ1 K+ channel6; IKs activity increases and the action potential duration thus shortens to meet the requirements demanded by the increased heart rate. The heart is not just a bunch of individual cells, however. Proper electrical activity also depends on the efficient and coordinated communication among cells throughout the entire organ, a result of various specialized cell-cell connections.

The delicate balance between repolarization and depolarization that assures proper electrical activity, so essential for physiologic adaptation, can be perturbed with dire consequences. Mutations altering ion channel function or the action of a channel modulator are the root of various inherited cardiac arrhythmias such as LQTS, Brugada Syndrome, or catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. In these cases, abnormal baseline cardiac electrical activity is the substrate for specific triggers that initiate life-threatening arrhythmias. In the failing heart, subject to increased wall stress and neurohormonal feedback attempting to compensate for decreased cardiac output, physiologic signaling mechanisms go awry and change the expression of certain channels or their modulators; the resulting ion channel remodeling is often very similar to what occurs with inherited arrhythmias.

Current pharmacologic treatments designed to address the neurohormonal abnormalities associated with HF do partially correct electrical remodeling and/or prevent the arrhythmogenic triggers, but arrhythmogenic SCD remains a major problem in HF. Thus, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), which successfully reduce mortality from SCD in patients with impaired left ventricular function7-9, have become an additional therapeutic option, but the absolute mortality benefit provided by ICDs is relatively small. Clearly, there is a pressing need for new approaches and solutions.

The Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology, in the accompanying series of review articles, has taken on the challenges of examining where we are and of exploring where we may be going in the quest for new pharmacologic therapies aimed at the treatment of arrhythmogenesis in HF. Opportunities abound for new therapeutic interventions that build upon the growing understanding of ion channels and electrical remodeling during HF by targeting ion channels and their regulatory partners. Starting with an examination of how neurohormonal activation can be a potent and multifaceted ion channel regulator and ending with an in-depth analysis of one drug that holds promise for affecting arrhythmogenesis in HF through targeting a specific ion channel defect, this eight article series succeeds in identifying many of these opportunities and sets the stage for further investigation.

Kurokawa & Abriel begin with a discussion about how activation of the HF-triggered activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) and the sympathetic catecholaminergic system modulate ion channel expression through both genomic effects and non-genomic effects. They describe the link between neurohormonal activation—the sine qua non of HF and what is now understood to be responsible for many of its adverse consequences—and ion channel dysfunction and remodeling. With this background they address how some current HF therapies, such as aldosterone antagonists, may have direct effects upon arrhythmogenesis10.

A pair of articles then discusses the role of ion channels and key cytoskeletal elements associated with channels that participate in mechanotransduction, the process by which the forces of cellular strain associated with a hypertrophying and dilating heart are transmitted to the cytoplasm and thereby alter myocyte function. Nilsson & Bennett focus on signaling microdomains and force transduction with a particular emphasis on ankyrins. These scaffolding proteins serve as critical spatial organizers for a variety of ion channels and transporters and ankyrin dysfunction has been found to underlie human disease11. Stiber et al. review mechanosenstive (stretch-activated) channels, which are instrumental in transducing the aberrant cellular forces associated with HF into cellular signaling pathways. With a particular spotlight on TRPC channels, they discuss the possibilities of stretch-activated channels as therapeutic targets in HF.

The next two articles address the role of ion channel regulators. Bers & Grandi summarize the modulatory effects of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) on cardiac ion channels function, discussing CaMKII actions upon the sarcolemmal L-type Ca2+ channel, the sarcoplasmic reticulum ryanodine receptor, the cardiac Na+ channel NaV1.5, and the pore-forming subunit for the transient outward K+ channel, Ito. With so many targets crucial to the cardiac action potential, this review helps elucidate a spate of recent reports from several groups showing that CaMKII activity promotes maladaptive responses in HF12. Gonazalez et al. describe new developments in the understanding of post-translational protein modification by nitrosylation and its consequent regulatory functions, with a specific emphasis on components of the excitation-contraction machinery. The recent discovery that a scaffold for nitric oxide synthase (NOS, the enzyme that generates the NO behind nitrosylation), syntrophin, is a Long QT Syndrome locus13 shows that nitrosylation may be a key regulator of arrhythmogenesis and is especially relevant since nitric oxide synthase activity is affected by HF.

The series then turns to gap junctions in an article by Hesketh et al. These cell-cell communication channels, which allow coordinated, rapid communication and the fast spread of electrical activity among cardiac myocytes, may be new therapeutic targets given that dynamic altered gap junction function and expression are associated with arrhythmogenesis.

The final two manuscripts get to the heart of the matter at hand by focusing on specific therapies for HF that target cardiovascular ion channels. Doshi & Marx provide an overview of recently described or proposed treatments that target a variety of channels, transporters, and pumps. Ranolazine, a blocker of the late Na+ current that may be arrhythmogenic in HF, is the subject of the review by Maier. Both of these reviews balance discussions of the pharmacology and physiology in the context of data from recent clinical trials.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to serve as the guest editor for this review series. I wish to express my gratitude first to the authors of these interesting manuscripts and then to the dedicated and expert group of outside reviewers for their helpful comments and insight. I believe the authors of the collected reviews would echo my sentiments that I sincerely hope and anticipate that this series serves as an educational boost for promoting further efforts into the development and treatment of SCD.


A residue method is described for measuring up to 6 naturally occurring pyrethrins in several varieties of fruits. Fresh samples are extracted into acetone, partitioned between water and hexane-dichloro-methane, and cleaned up by adsorption on a Florisil column followed by elution with acetone-hexane (15 + 85). Residues are detected and quantitated by gas chromatography with electron capture detection. Detection limits for single 10 g samples are about 10-30 ng/g. The method was applied to a survey of pyrethrins in fruit samples. Because of the high tolerance (1 ppm) allowed for pyrethrins, the expected low incidence, and the low detection limits of the method, composite samples (up to 5-6) of fruit were used to quickly determine residue levels. This procedure allowed 130 samples to be processed in the time normally needed for 30-40. Provided the above conditions can be met, composite sampling is proposed as an attractive approach to data gathering in pesticide residue analysis.


Owing to new regulations starting from 2025, all commercial canal boats have to comply to zero local emission standards in Amsterdam. It is therefore vital that a clear emission indicator is made available for vessels with a varying operational profile, such as canal boats. In this paper, it is argued that current indicators, such as the Energy Efficiency Design Index, are not suitable for these (passenger) vessels. This paper proposes environmental performance indicators that can quantify emissions, (non-dimensional) energy and fuel usage based on an operational profile set in the design phase. This profile includes part load operation and auxiliary consumers and it can compare new designed concepts with current baseline vessels based on the 'benefit for society' of different vessel types. In the proposed environmental performance indicators, several operational modes can be defined, in contrast with the currently proposed Energy Efficiency Design Index, which is a point index at 75% of installed power. To gauge not only local emissions but also global emissions, the environmental performance indicator methodology is used to determine a minimum efficiency from any power generation method. This minimum efficiency follows from a comparison between baseline vessels and concepts that are more energy efficient and emission friendly. The proposed environmental performance indicators were validated using measurements on typical propulsion configurations of canal boats in Amsterdam. Three full electric concepts were designed and compared with the measured baseline vessels. As full electric concepts do not have local emissions, the method of power generation must satisfy the requirement to have less global emissions than the mechanical baseline. Furthermore, an energy efficiency of at least 33% is calculated from a fossil-fuelled land-based power plant (including transport) to the boundary from quay to boat to be required for newly designed electric concepts to be more energy efficient than the mechanical baseline.


Significant advantages of lowcement refractory concrete with low porosity, high mechanical strength, chemical resistance and thermal stability, and adaptability to the operating conditions in linings of thermal units determine the prospects for further increase in consumption of concrete and development of scientific bases of technology of its production. A promising method of creation of composite materials with an efficient structure and improved properties is the mechanical activation. We have studied the effect of the mechanical activation of electric corundum and a matrix component of lowcement corundum concrete on the change of the morphology and physical properties of materials, hardening kinetics and properties of the concrete. It was determined that an increase in the duration of the mechanical activation of electric corundum has a significant impact on the change of acidbase balance of suspensions, reactivity of the matrix component and the rate of hardening of a paste. The experimental research showed the possibility of use of the mechanical activation of components of the lowcement corundum concrete, as an effective way of directed control of activity of the matrix component, rate of cement hydration, formation of hydrogel and colloiding of cement phase, development of crystallization contacts between cement and aggregate particles that promote formation of an efficient structure and properties of refractory concrete.


0.5% plain bupivacaine is slightly hypobaric and behaves as one would expect a hypobaric solution to behave and is therefore affected by gravity in the cerebrospinal fluid. The excessive range of blocks or variability seen with 0.5% bupivacaine is far from ideal in subarachnoid anaesthesia when a restricted block is desired. This variability is due not only to its hypobaricity but also its relatively low concentration when compared with other subarachnoid local anaesthetics. Isobaric local anaesthetic solutions should be of sufficient concentration to allow an adequate dose to be given in a low volume.3 In clinical practice it is recommended that a true isobaric solution, 0.5% amethocaine in saline, is used when one wishes to restrict a block to the legs or perineum.4


Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is a symbolic language used on engineering drawings and computer generated three-dimensional solid models for explicitly describing nominal geometry and its allowable variation. Application cases using the concept of Rule 2 in the Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) are presented. The rule affects all fourteen geometric characteristics. Depending on the nature and location where each feature control frame is specified, interpretation on the applicability of Rule 2 is quite inconsistent. This paper focuses on identifying the characteristics of a feature control frame to remove this inconsistency. A table is created to clarify the confusions for students or designers, who can use it to justify their applications in the GD&T design.


Generalized quantiles of a random variable were defined as the minimizers of a general asymmetric loss function, which include quantiles, expectiles and M-quantiles as their special cases. Expectiles have been suggested as potentially better alternatives to both Value-at-Risk and expected shortfall risk measures. In this paper, we first establish the first-order expansions of generalized quantiles for extreme risks as the confidence level α↑ 1, and then investigate the first-order and/or second-order expansions of expectiles of an extreme risk as α↑ 1 according to the underlying distribution belonging to the max-domain of attraction of the Fréchet, Weibull, and Gumbel distributions, respectively. Examples are also presented to examine whether and how much the first-order expansions have been improved by the second-order expansions.


Document retrieval (DR) forms an important component in end-to-end question-answering (QA) systems where particular answers are sought for well-formed questions. DR in the QA scenario is also useful by itself even without a more involved natural language processing component to extract exact answers from the retrieved documents. This latter step may simply be done by humans like in traditional search engines granted the retrieved documents contain the answer. In this paper, we take advantage of datasets made available through the BioASQ end-to-end QA shared task series and build an effective biomedical DR system that relies on relevant answer snippets in the BioASQ training datasets. At the core of our approach is a question-answer sentence matching neural network that learns a measure of relevance of a sentence to an input question in the form of a matching score. In addition to this matching score feature, we also exploit two auxiliary features for scoring document relevance: the name of the journal in which a document is published and the presence/absence of semantic relations (subject-predicate-object triples) in a candidate answer sentence connecting entities mentioned in the question. We rerank our baseline sequential dependence model scores using these three additional features weighted via adaptive random research and other learning-to-rank methods. Our full system placed 2nd in the final batch of Phase A (DR) of task B (QA) in BioASQ 2018. Our ablation experiments highlight the significance of the neural matching network component in the full system.


Tunu is one of the biggest gas fields in Indonesia with 1400 km2 area in Mahakam Delta, East Kalimantan. This field has been producing since 1990 with cumulative production of more than 9.5 tcf and 190 mbbl condensate by the end of 2020 from over 1000 operating wells. Today, Tunu field contributes for approximately 40% of Mahakam production. After 30 years of production, Tunu production level is currently in declining phase, shown by its yearly production profile which exhibits a declining trend since 2008. Furthermore, Tunu well development project was considered marginally economical due to depleting reserve per well. Thus, an integrated study was conducted in order to reduce surface expenditure cost of Tunu pipeline based on current operating parameters. The study consisted of WHSIP history matching to determine new pipeline design pressure, evaluation of future wells production lifetime, and adjustment of pipeline corrosion allowance based on actual corrosion rate observed in Tunu field. Results show that most of future Tunu wells are predicted to have WHSIP below 200 barg and 1.5 to 3 years' production lifetime. Corrosion rate in Tunu field as measured using corrosion coupon in piping with corrosion inhibitor injection is found to be less than 1 mm/20 years. Therefore, corrosion allowance for Tunu pipeline is optimized from 5 to 3 mm for 10-years design lifetime. For exceptional circumstances where actual well WHSIP > 200 barg, other method of producing the well will be implemented. Hence, by integrating recent subsurface behavior (WHSIP and well lifetime) with surface understanding (corrosion rate), it was then proposed new pipeline design for Tunu development. This study has generated USD 13 million cost saving for pipeline procurement in 2020. Moreover, implementation of the new pipeline design reduces 40% of pipeline unit cost for future pipeline procurement. This study has become the basis for future well development projects in Tunu field which significantly prolong Mahakam's production sustainability.


Two hybrid materials based on decavanadates (DMAPH)6[V10O28] ̈H2O, (1) and (DMAPH)6[V10O28] ̈ 16H2O, (2) (where DMAPH = 4-dimethylaminopyridinium) were obtained by reactions under mild conditions at T = 294 and 283 K, respectively. These compounds are pseudopolymorphs, which crystallize in monoclinic P21{n and triclinic P1 space groups. The structural analysis revealed that in both compounds, six cations DMAPH interact with decavanadate anion through N-H ̈ ̈ ̈Odec hydrogen bonds; in 2, the hydrogen-bonding association of sixteen lattice water molecules leads to the formation of an unusual network stabilized by decavanadate clusters; this hydrogen-bond connectivity is described using graph set notation. Compound 2 differs basically in the water content which in turn increases the π ̈ ̈ ̈π interactions coming from pyridinium rings. Elemental and thermal analysis (TGA/DSC) as well as FT-IR, FT-Raman, for 1 and 2 are consistent with both structures and are also presented.


As a result of demographic effects over the next 10 years there will be a tightening of the youth labour market. The military in the UK are fully aware of the manpower problem that will arise and have introduced a number of measures to attempt to improve recruitment and retention. In order to project the military wage bill into the 1990s it is important to estimate the elasticity of substitution (σ) between military personnel and other military inputs. The elasticity of substitution is estimated from an interactive supply and demand model for military manpower thus getting around the endogeneity problem experienced in previous estimation work. A value of unity is estimated for σ, implying that over time the share of service personnel costs in total military expenditure remains constant. A wage elasticity is also identified from the estimation process and estimated to be equal to 0.2.


RE-INVENTING THE PAST Following the dissolution of the USSR, most Russian regions were left in disarray. Some of them sooner than others came to the realization that creating an attractive regional "image" might be crucial to successfully competing for resources nationally and abroad. One of these regions was the Novgorod oblast,'' where regional elites created such a stable collaborative environment for the local government, the intelligentsia and civil society, that the region, without much of an investment potential, became one of the country''s leaders in attracting foreign investment. The second region, the Kaliningrad oblast, was chosen for comparative purposes because of its extraordinary historical background, its complex search for self-indentification, and its unusual present day positioning as the enclave of the European Union. Both regions have attempted to create favourable images of themselves and to promote local development. And for both regions local histories and identities have proven crucial in the image- creating exercise.


Background: Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is an emerging public health challenge in India as well as globally. The WHO recognized it as a global problem since long time. In Western Odisha, its prevalence varies from 5% to 30%.

Aim and Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the alteration of the coagulation profile in SCA in comparison to healthy control.

Materials and Methods: This study was completed with 60 subjects that included 30 cases and 30 controls. This study was approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee. The hematological parameters such as bleeding time, clotting time, total platelet count, prothrombin time (PT), and activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) were tested. The data were analyzed through SPSS 20.

Results: In this study, it was found that patients with SCA have increased clotting time (P = 0.007), PT (P = 0.000), aPTT (P = 0.003), and total platelet count (P = 0.183), but decreased bleeding time (P = 0.000) in comparison to healthy control.

Conclusion: We found a significant increase in clotting time, PT, and aPTT, but decrease in bleeding time in SCA patients in comparison to healthy adults.


A 76-year-old man presented with gross hematuria and reported the use of anticoagulant for deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Blood tests revealed eosinophilia and thrombocytopenia. Urine cytology revealed a class I specimen with a few eosinophils in the urine. We performed cystoscopy, which revealed bladder masses with friable mucosa diffusely throughout the bladder. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed possible invasion of the bladder muscle by the masses. We performed transurethral resection of the bladder masses, and histopathological examination revealed eosinophilic infiltration of the bladder wall stroma without cancerous tissue. Therefore, the patient was diagnosed with eosinophilic cystitis.Eosinophilia and thrombocytopenia promptly resolved, and the bladder masses disappeared following the administration of prednisolone for eosinophilic cystitis. DVT also improved without recurrence of eosinophilic cystitis.


BACKGROUND Glycemic index has generated a lot of debate for nearly 30 years, especially as it relates to the control for the treatment of diabetes. OBJECTIVES This study determined the glycemic index (GI) of ten processed Nigerian foods and revealed their similarity in the release of glucose on consumption. METHODS The food items tested were made from yam tubers, cassava tubers and local cereals. These foods were served to human volunteers in several processed forms which resulted in viscous pastes. RESULTS The GI results are related to the increased incidence of overweight and obesity in the middle class Nigerians. CONCLUSION It is suggested that these processed foods should be discouraged in the regular dietary plan if Nigerians desire to stay slim and save the planet by reducing carbon emission and climate change.


Incretin peptides, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), possess multiple physiological roles that make them important peptide biomarkers for metabolic disorder. GLP-1 and GIP contribute to approximately 60 -70 % of the total postprandial insulin response in healthy individuals, and potentially have a therapeutic value in treatment of type II diabetes. Glucagon-like peptides (GLP-1, and GLP-2) regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. GLP-1 also contributes to physiological roles in controlling energy homoestasis and balance through both peripheral signals and brain stem regulations of appetite in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). Circulating GLP-1 acts to inhibit food intake, acute GLP-1 reduces calorie intake, and GLP-1 neuronal circuits of NTS may have anorectic effect in energy homeostasis. However, the incretin effect is significantly decreased in patients with type 2 diabetes, delaying and reducing insulin release after oral glucose administration. It is well documented that circulating GLP-1 and GIP after their secretion are rapidly digested by the intrinsic blood enzyme dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV). The half-life of these two peptides in in vivo plasma is very short: approximately 2 minutes for intact GLP-1 and 5 minutes for intact GIP. Ex vivo stabilization of full functions of these peptides is critical for their utility in diagnostics and/or drug development. We directly investigated the stability of these peptides and their metabolites in conventional serum, EDTA plasma, or EDTA plasma with protease inhibitors as stabilizers. Using spiked blood samples, peptides were monitored by time-course MALDI-TOF MS. Mass spectrometry allows detection of the intact peptides for kinetic analysis as well as identification of the cleaved peptides. The results indicate that degradation of GLP-1 fits to a simple Michaelis-Menton Equation (K m = 21.36 nM and V m = 7.05 nM), while GIP fits an observed first-order reaction, and both having the greatest stability in the inhibited plasma sample. The half-life of GLP-1 peptide was also dependence of the peptide concentration, with lower concentration having less half-life time. Identification of the cleaved peptides indicates that both intrinsic DPP-IV and exo-carboxypeptidase contribute to the digestion of active GLP-1 in ex vivo sample. Further, our study indicates that stabilization of both GLP-1 and GIP was accomplished by including a cocktail of enzyme inhibitors in a blood-collection tube, allowing accurate measurement for biomarker development. We also conducted an evaluation of two commercially available ELISA kits for GLP-1 and GIP demonstrating some kits are sensitive to peptidase degradation while others are not. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 365. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-365


This study presented an uncertainty assessment of the high-resolution global analysis of daily-mean ocean-surface vector winds (1987 onward) by the Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) project. The time series was synthesized from multiple satellite sensors using a variational approach to find a best fit to input data in a weighted least-squares cost function. The variational framework requires the a priori specification of the weights, or equivalently, the error covariances of input data, which are seldom known. Two key issues were investigated. The first issue examined the specification of the weights for the OAFlux synthesis. This was achieved by designing a set of weight-varying experiments and applying the criteria requiring that the chosen weights should make the best-fit of the cost function be optimal with regard to both input satellite observations and the independent wind time series measurements at 126 buoy locations. The weights thus determined represent an approximation to the error covariances, which inevitably contain a degree of uncertainty. Hence, the second issue addressed the sensitivity of the OAFlux synthesis to the uncertainty in the weight assignments. Weight perturbation experiments were conducted and ensemble statistics were used to estimate the sensitivity. The study showed that the leading sources of uncertainty for the weight selection are high winds (>15 ms−1) and heavy rain, which are the conditions that cause divergence in wind retrievals from different sensors. Future technical advancement made in wind retrieval algorithms would be key to further improvement of the multisensory synthesis in events of severe storms.


A 63-year-old man had polymicrobial purulent pericarditis secondary to a silent esophageal perforation into the pericardium. His hospital course was complicated and prolonged. Defunctioning of his esophagus was needed to cure his pericarditis. The authors recommend an aggressive approach to his rare condition, emphasizing the importance of early defunctioning of the esophagus.


Electrical energy is a vital for feature of any developing nation. To meet the growing demand, power generating plants of all types are being installed; though the gap between the supply and the demand is continuously increasing, due to the depletion of natural resources, hence, rise in power demand, the way to over come the flaming problem is optimal utilization of available energy sources, limiting the wastage of electrical energy which includes both technical and non technical and limiting the demand during peak hours. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to solve burning problem with load management during peak hours, in case of domestic loads aiming to reduce the gap between the demand and the supply, such that both consumer and supplier get benefited simultaneously. The paper also presents the application of load controller and DSM techniques applied to domestic loads, where the power consumption can be limited during the peak hours and reliability of power can be increased by lowering the power cuts. The proposed method developed is the part of Demand Side Management (DSM). The results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method for load management.


Flavonoids are important active components of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) because of their many biological activities. We studied the interaction between 17 polysaccharides and eight flavonoids via high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the effect of the interactions on the solubility and stability of the flavonoids. The effect of the polysaccharides on the solubility of flavonoids was analyzed by statistical methods and showed significant solubility improvements. The constant temperature acceleration method (90°C/pH 9 buffer solution) was used to measure the degradation kinetics and half-life of flavonoids with and without polysaccharides. All the polysaccharides displayed a stabilizing effect on all eight flavonoids. The stabilizing effects varied in the order: quercetin, baicalein > baicalin > galuteolin > daidzin > rutin > luteolin > daidzien. The phase-solubility method was applied to quercetin and baicalein to study the mechanism of action of the polysaccharides. It appeared that the two flavonoids could form 1 : 1 inclusion complexes with polysaccharides, which may be one of the factors increasing solubility and stability. These findings increase our understanding of the role of endogenous polysaccharides in TCM in improving the stability and bioavailability of bioactive flavonoids.


Mobility has a significant impact on the ad hoc network protocol performance. Mainly, the protocol performance has been evaluated in simulations and using synthetic mobility models, which have two main drawbacks: (a) they assume that wireless devices start and remain in the simulation for a user defined simulation time; and, (b) they are unrealistic. Real mobility models that are derived from real user traces challenge the assumption that wireless devices start and remain in the simulation for the entire user defined simulation time, but they rather show that wireless nodes posses dynamic membership (nodes join and leave the simulation dynamically based on some random variable). In this paper, we evaluate the maximum node degree mobility metric for real mobility models, which has got little attention due to the assumption of static connectivity graph on the number of nodes. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, we introduce the algorithm that computes the maximum node degree mobility metric, which in turn provides the upper bound on the number of neighbors for a given node. Second, we show that the upper bound can be used to improve the algorithm complexity by introducing a new algorithm metric, namely efficiency. Its usefulness is shown through a case study for evaluating the gains in the algorithm complexity of incentive protocols.


ABSTRACT Pedigree information on 233,214 animal from the studbook of the Associacao Brasileira dos Criadores do Cavalo Mangalarga Marchador, related to 16 ancestors with, at least, 1% of genetic contribution to the actual population were used to describe the genetic structure of breed population. Principal component analyses were used to classify animals of the same genetic basis and to identify possible subdivision of the breed in families or genetics groups. The average relationship coefficient between each one of the ancestors and the actual breed population vary from 4.7%, for the mare Herdade Alteza, to .7%, for the stallion Tabatinga Fanfarra. The actual breed population can be subdivided into five families, represented, in order of importance, by animals related to the ancestors Herdade Alteza and Seta Caxias, Providencia Itu and Tabatinga Predileto, Abaiba Marengo, Tabatinga Cossaco and Agai Miron. Keywords: horse, Mangalarga Marchador, principal components, family, genetic group


Looking at the commemoration of slavery in the Netherlands, this article makes a twofold argument. First, my aim is to complicate the notions of historical silence, 'erasure' and 'secrecy' that have informed many post- and decolonial projects. I show that the violence and brutality of slavery are in some cases even showcased. The result is an often self-congratulatory image of a humanism that is often seen as 'typically' Dutch. At the same time, the national slavery memorial has shown that engaging in a politics of compassion can offer ground to refashion post-colonial futures. Here, humanism is neither accepted at face value nor discarded as damaged goods, but salvaged and held to its promise. Second, I analyse the politics of multiculturalism, and the related search for cultural essences in which 'culture' and 'nation' have turned into objects of love and anxiety. While analyses have rightly understood emotions such as compassion as neoliberal models of governance, I argue that such structures of feeling also have colonial roots. The highly affective politics of belonging and exclusion today can be more fully understood if their colonial roots are included in the analysis.


Interest is prohibited in all monotheist religions. Apart from religion, interest is also regarded as unjust price of money capital by pioneer secular philosophers as well as some renowned economists. However, it is argued by some economists that modern day, market driven interest rate in a competitive financial market is different from usury and that the interest based financial intermediation has served a useful purpose in allocation of resources as well as in allocation of risk, given the interpersonal differences in risk preferences that exist in any society. Hence, there is a need to delineate clearly whether Islamic economics distinguishes between usury and interest. Secondly, there is also a need to reassess the economic merits and demerits of modern day competitive financial markets fueled by interest based financial intermediation. This paper tries to serve this need and presents a brief review of literature on the issue and examines the economic rationale usually presented for legitimizing interest as the price of capital. The paper analyzes the impact of interest based financial intermediation on macroeconomic variables as well as on development goals by highlighting few glaring facts and statistics and empirical evidence documented in past studies. The paper concludes with delineating the role of capital in an Islamic economy and how it can be valued in an Islamic economy without compensating it with fixed payoffs and the paper also assesses how economic and financial decisions will be altered in this new interest-free framework.


ABSTRACT Notions of who counts as a sexual partner – that is, what specific actions, feelings, or relationships become defined as part of one's sexual history – often carry assumptions about sexual scripts, power, and social identities. In this exploratory study, we analysed semi-structured interviews with eighteen women from a diverse 2019 community sample (mean age = 36.39, SD = 12.24) collected in a large Southwestern U.S. city in order to examine how women made decisions about who was classified as a sexual partner throughout their lifetime when reviewing their sexual histories and previous sexual encounters. We identified six behavioural, relational, and emotional themes in how women defined and demarcated sexual versus nonsexual partners: 1) Having penile-vaginal intercourse; 2) Engaging in non-penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) forms of sex; 3) Having an orgasm with someone; 4) Any physical sexual contact involving genitals; 5) Having a romantic relationship with someone; and 6) Feeling attraction and desire for a person. Tensions about heterosexist biases in sexual inventories were discussed, as were methodological implications for measuring, studying, and identifying non-PVI sexual encounters.


Introduction: We reported that Wnt Pathway (WP) upregulation, one of the salient genetic features of metastatic TNBC, controls the acquisition of integrin-directed metastasis-associated (ID-MA) phenotypes of TNBC cells (Dey et al., 2013). RAC-GTPases, small G-proteins which transduce signals from cell surface proteins including integrins, have been implicated in tumorigenesis and metastasis by their role in essential cellular functions like motility. Aim: Here we tested the role of the mechanism of involvement of RAC1 in the regulation of WP-mediated ID-MA phenotypes in TNBC cells and examined how WP signals are transduced via RAC1 in the context of ID-MA phenotypes in TNBC. Method: Oncoprints showed that the major alterations of RAC1 gene in TNBC were constituted by the amplification/gain of the gene. The collective percentage of alteration(s) in RAC1 in ER+ve BC was 35% as compared to 57% in ER-ve BC (brca/tcga/pub2015). Using pharmacological agents (sulindac sulfide), genetic tools (siRNA), WP modulators (Wnt-C59, XAV939), RAC1 inhibitors (NSC23766, W56) and WP stimulations (LWnt3ACM, Wnt3A recombinant) in a panel of 6-7 TNBC cell lines, we studied fibronectin-directed migration and various motility parameters (actin dynamics, filopodia and lamellipodia by confocal microscopy) in the context of fibronectin-directed RAC1 and Cdc42 activation. Result: Breaking down by molecular subtypes of BC, RAC1 gene alterations are observed in 20% in PAM50 Luminal A, 35% in PAM50 Luminal B, 37% in PAM50 HER2 enriched and 40% in PAM50 Basal-like. For the samples set of TCGA, Cell 2015, RAC1 gene was altered in 42% total while it was altered 37% in PAM50 Luminal A, 57% in PAM50 Luminal B, 55% in PAM50 HER2 enriched and 60% in PAM50 basal-like. An attenuation of WP, which (a) decreased cellular levels of beta-catenin, as well as its nuclear active-form, (b) decreased fibronectin-induced migration, (c) altered actin dynamics and (d) decreased podia-parameters was successful in blocking fibronectin-mediated RAC1/Cdc42 activity. Both Wnt-antagonists and RAC1 inhibitors blocked fibronectin-induced RAC1 activation and inhibited the fibronectin-induced ID-MA phenotypes following specific WP stimulation. To test a direct involvement of RAC1-activation in WP-mediated ID-MA phenotypes, we stimulated brain-metastasis specific MDA-MB231BR cells with LWnt3ACM. LWnt3ACM-stimulated fibronectin-directed migration was blocked by RAC1 inhibition in MDA-MB231BR cells. In the light of our previous report (De et al., 2016) that WP upregulation stimulates ID-MA phenotypes in TNBC tumor cells, here we provide the first mechanism based evidence to demonstrate that WP upregulation signals ID-MA tumor cell phenotypes in an RAC1-GTPase dependent manner involving exchange-factors like TIAM1 and VAV2. Citation Format: Nandini Dey, Jennifer H. Carlson, Casey Williams, Tyler Jepperson, Pradip De, Brian Leyland-Jones. How does RAC1 GTP-ase signal Wnt-beta-catenin pathway-mediated integrin-directed metastasis-associated tumor cell phenotypes in TNBC [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1359. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-1359


The reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization of 1-ethoxyethyl acrylate (EEA) was demonstrated. Temperature optimization revealed an optimum polymerization temperature of 70 °C. Deprotection of the p(EEA) could be performed by a simple heating step, under mild conditions leading to well-defined poly(acrylic acid) (p(AA)) and under more severe conditions resulting in cross-linked networks of p(AA). In addition, block copolymers with a poly(methyl acrylate), a poly(n-butyl acrylate), a poly(methyl methacrylate), or a poly(N,N-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) first block and a p(EEA) second block were successfully synthesized by RAFT polymerization in toluene as was demonstrated by GPC and 1H NMR characterization. For all these experiments, a high-throughput workflow procedure was used. Deprotection of the p(EEA) containing block copolymers was also performed, resulting in well-defined p(AA) containing materials as evidenced by both GPC and 1H NMR spectroscopy.


Abduction (also called abductive reasoning) is a form of logical inference which starts with an observation and is followed by finding the best explanations. In this paper, we improve the tabling in contextual abduction technique with an advanced tabling feature of XSB Prolog, namely tabling with interned terms. This feature enables us to store the abductive solutions as interned ground terms in a global area only once so that the use of table space to store abductive solutions becomes more efficient. We implemented this improvement to a prototype, called as TABDUAL+INT. Although the experiment result shows that tabling with interned terms is relatively slower than tabling without interned terms when used to return first solutions from a subgoal, tabling with interned terms is relatively faster than tabling without interned terms when used to returns all solutions from a subgoal. Furthermore, tabling with interned terms is more efficient in table space used when performing abduction both in artificial and real world case, compared to tabling without interned terms.


In this paper, decision making problems arising from optimal operation planning for hot parts scheduling of gas turbines of thermal power plants are formulated as multiobjective 0-1 integer programming problems. By considering the imprecise or fuzzy nature of human judgments, the fuzzy goals of the decision maker (DM) for each of the objective functions are introduced. Then approximate solutions for the formulated problems are derived through the genetic algorithms for solving general combinatorial optimization problems. In order to decrease the difficulties for the determination of not only appropriate parameter values in the genetic algorithms but also membership functions representing the fuzzy goals of the DM, simple genetic algorithms are revised and auto-tuning method of the membership functions are proposed. On the basis of the proposed methods, an interactive decision support system is developed on the workstation and the feasibility and efficiency of both the proposed methods and the corresponding decision support system are demonstrated via numerical examples.


The hawthorn spider mite, Tetranychus viennensis, is a pest of apples and a quarantine pest from some countries that import apples from Korea. A controlled atmosphere and temperature treatment system (CATTS) was developed as an alternative disinfestation method to methyl bromide fumigation treatment, and has been applied to control various insects and other arthropod pests on fruits. We applied CATTS to disinfect T. viennensis under conditions that were previously developed to control the peach fruit moth, Carposina sasakii. First, T. viennensis was sampled from Japanese apricot, Prunus mume, and identified by its morphological characters. In addition, both cytochrome oxidase I (COI) and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences supported the morphological identification. Second, the heat-tolerant developmental stage was determined in T. viennensis. When a 46℃ heat treatment was applied to egg, nymph, and adult stages of T. viennensis, adults were the most tolerant stage. Third, when heat temperature was used along with 1% O 2 and 15% CO 2 , the mites showed a significant increase in susceptibility to the heat treatment. Finally, CATTS at 46℃ with 15% CO 2 and 1% O 2 for 30 min resulted in 100% mortality of all T. viennensis development stages. These results indicated that CATTS isapplicable to disinfest T. viennensis in post-harvest apples.


Direct assessment competency-based education (CBE) is an online, self-directed learning innovation that is disrupting higher education. This study examined the development and early diffusion of direct assessment CBE at a private, nonprofit university. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the presence of organizational factors and the ways in which they affect planning, development, quality assurance, and delivery of the direct assessment CBE learning model. This study was conducted at Southern New Hampshire University's College for America (CfA). Ten executive leaders and CfA administrators were interviewed during this study. The interview guide was designed to elicit participants' perceptions of the mission and vision of CfA, the involvement of external stakeholders in CfA's development, strategies and challenges considered during CfA's planning and implementation, the organizational structure and dissemination of resources between CfA and the university, critical success factors affecting CfA's development, practices to ensure that quality learning and demonstration of learning occur, and how success is measured and evaluated.

The researcher found that the missions of SNHU and CfA seem strongly aligned in support of student success and innovative learning models. CfA's culture incorporates these mission-oriented values as well as an appreciation for emergent, iterative improvement within an ongoing cycle of effort and feedback. This cycle is evident in CfA's direct assessment learning model and promotes organizational learning across its employees. A strategic vision and implementation process for CfA were evident, following steps from Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation theory. Moreover, a balance between employee autonomy, leadership support, organizational decentralization, and dedicated resources (at the university and divisional level) were among the factors respondents consider critical to CfA's development.

The findings suggest that organizational factors did influence the adoption and development of direct assessment CBE at College for America. Accordingly, leaders who are in the planning stages of an innovative project should contemplate their organization's culture, how the organization is structured, the resources available to support the project, the extent to which project staff roles will depart from traditional employee roles within the institution, and how much autonomy and leadership support will be given to individuals in these roles.


The epidemiology of work-related musculo-skeletal pathologies of the upper limbs has become significantly relevant in the last years, and a sharp increasing trend can be observed. This paper mainly focuses on the chronic inflammatory and degenerative conditions, which are more complex and difficult to accurately diagnose and treat. A synthesis of the diagnostic picture of the different types, involving the joints, muscles and tendons, and peripheral nerves is provided, with mention of the sensitivity and specificity of the main diagnostic tests. The possible entrapments of the radial, median and ulnar nerves are described in detail. Finally, a brief critical review on the principal movements of the upper limbs which are responsible of the onset of such conditions is presented.


This paper presents the results of experimental tests performed with an impulse voltage of short tail (STLI: 1.2/4 ¿s), similar to lightning-induced overvoltages, on composite insulators used in the electric traction lines. The characteristics of volt-time breakdown under STLI waves are shown and compared with the characteristics obtained under standard lightning impulse (LI:1.2/50 ¿s). Models based on the disruptive effect, as proposed by Kind and Chowdhuri, are considered and applied in order to reproduce the volt-time characteristics under standard and nonstandard lightning voltages. The application viability of these models to tested insulators is considered and discussed and the accuracy in their reproduction is evaluated. It is demonstrated that the Kind model, calibrated with a suitable selection of the parameters using standard flashover data (LI), is able to estimate the response of the insulators to the short tail lightning impulses (STLI) with satisfactory accuracy.


Software running on embedded systems is playing an increasingly important role in safetycritical and mission-critical applications. Formal documentation methods, like the Tabular Expressions invented by Parnas et al., avoid the ambiguities inherent in natural language by using mathematical notation. This allows the intended behavior of software to be precisely defined, reducing the number of errors that are caused by misleading documentation. Despite its shortcomings, software testing is considered an important part of software quality assurance. A fundamental assumption of software testing is the existence of some mechanism, which is called an oracle, that is able to determine whether the results of a test execution are correct. The oracle is often implemented by manually deriving the expected output from informal and possibly inconsistent documentation and then comparing it to the actual test results. This procedure is both time-consuming and error-prone. However, if a formal specification exists, it can be used to automatically evaluate the test results and determine the success or failure of a test execution. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a working prototype, which combines the use of Tabular Expressions and embedded-systems products developed by Ashling Microsystems Ltd. in a tool that is able to automatically execute function tests on a target embedded system, and evaluate their results using an existing formal specification of the tested function. In addition to testresult-evaluation, the tool is able to determine the specification-coverage of a given set of testcases on the basis of a formal specification, without depending on knowledge or even existence of program code. This allows measuring and improving test quality at any phase of a software project, even prior to implementation. A small trial application demonstrates the usefulness of the methods described in this work. Possible applications in projects and expected benefits are discussed. It is shown that using tests based on formal documentation enforces consistency between documentation and implementation, which greatly increases the value of such a documentation, especially to maintenance programmers. It is further argued that tools performing such tests help to reduce costs for software testing while improving test quality, and by doing so more than compensate the additional costs of creating formal specifications.


Nowadays, foods exclusively intended for indulgence are so often included in the basic human diet. Thus, we are so attached to them that they have become part of our everyday life, recognizable in the culture and the society surrounding us. Coffee is one of those foodstuffs: a drink known as "black gold", which had to travel a long way in space and time to be in our warm cups today. Coffee, however, is much more than an ordinary drink that satisfies our senses of smell and taste. It has eventually become a true socio-cultural phenomenon which has acquired specific characteristics and has shaped norms of behaviour in different societies. In this paper we will present the significance and the influence of coffee on the culture of contemporary societies in Italy and Serbia, as well as on the formation of significantly different customs and rituals associated with coffee drinking. The aim of this paper is to point out potential cultural disagreements that could arise between members of these two nations due to the different historical development of the coffee culture that has led to emergence of different customs.


Intracranial fungal infections have increased in incidence in the past decade caused in part by the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. The biology, epidemiology, and appearance on computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the more common fungal infections of the central nervous system (CNS) will be reviewed. The radiographic appearance alone is often not specific, but the combination of the correct clinical setting along with the CT or MRI may help the radiologist suggest the correct diagnosis.


In 1919 the Dodge brothers successfully sued Henry Ford for his intended largesse, i.e. decreasing dividend payments by using his company to pursue broader social goals "to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes," one of the mechanisms of which included increasing their wages. The Michigan Supreme Court stated that a corporation exists to benefit its stockholders, and may not use profits for "other purposes" (Hood, 1998). This landmark case demonstrated that the prime purpose of any corporation is to maximize its profits for shareholders. Therefore, it is probably naïve of doctors, researchers and the general public to expect the pharmaceutical industry to be driven by other principles, regardless of how noble they might seem. As a result, the driving force that supports the interests of the pharmaceutical industry may not be always aligned with the interests of doctors, patients and the communities to which they belong. How are we to judge that this conflict has evolved in such a way as to produce "excessive" influence of the pharmaceutical industry over other interested parties?


PurposeThe study attempted to gauge the relative effectiveness of celebrity and product image match-up in comparison to non-celebrity attractive endorsers for two distinct high involvement situations. Also, due to the expected demographic diversity among target consumers, the study aimed at assessing the impact of respondent's age and gender on the effectiveness of image match-up.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on the three-order hierarchy model, two experiments were conducted (utilising celebrity and non-celebrity endorsers) for two high involvement hierarchies, i.e. standard learning and dissonance/attribution. Through fictitious print advertisement, the experiments assessed the effectiveness of the match-up in terms of consumer attitudes towards advertisement and brand and intentions to purchase.FindingsThe match-up consistently and significantly outperformed non-celebrity attractive endorser in case of standard learning hierarchy. The same conclusion was not established for dissonance/attribution hierarchy due to the lack of significant results. The findings also suggest that the match-up subdues the impact of consumer's gender and age on consumer attitudes only in case of standard learning hierarchy.Research limitations/implicationsThe study provides interesting theoretical implication by challenging a widely held postulation about the applicability of celebrity and product match-up under high involvement.Practical implicationsThe research provides the practitioners with a better understanding of important issues, mainly, whether to use a celebrity endorser and selecting the right celebrity, especially if high involvement is expected.Originality/valuePrevious research concerning celebrity endorsements has largely considered consumer involvement as unitary, i.e. either high or low. However, the multifaceted aspect of consumer involvement is well established in the field of consumer psychology. The present research, therefore, is a pioneering attempt as it studies the effectiveness of match-up for two distinct high involvement situations. Moreover, unlike the majority of previous studies that have focused on the performance of "celebrity match" versus "celebrity mismatch", the impact of match-up was studied in comparison to a non-celebrity attractive endorser.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the efficacy of cognitive and/or behavioral therapies in improving health-related quality of life (HRQOL), depression, and anxiety associated with tinnitus.

DATA SOURCES
EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane Registry were used to identify English studies from database inception until February 2018.

STUDY SELECTION
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing cognitive and/or behavioral therapies to one another or to waitlist controls for the treatment of tinnitus were included.

DATA EXTRACTION
Quality and risk were assessed using GRADE and Cochrane's Risk of Bias tool respectively.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Pairwise meta-analysis (12 RCTs: 1,144 patients) compared psychological interventions to waitlist controls. Outcomes were measured using standardized mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). I and subgroup analyses were used to assess heterogeneity. Network meta-analysis (NMA) (19 RCTS: 1,543 patients) compared psychological therapies head-to-head. Treatment effects were presented by network diagrams, interval plots, and ranking diagrams indicating SMDs with 95% CI. Direct and indirect results were further assessed by inconsistency plots.

CONCLUSIONS
Results are consistent with previously published guidelines indicating that CBT is an effective therapy for tinnitus. While guided self-administered forms of CBT had larger effect sizes (SMD: 3.44; 95% CI: -0.022, 7.09; I: 99%) on tinnitus HRQOL, only face-to-face CBT was shown to make statistically significant improvements (SMD: 0.75; 95% CI: 0.53, 0.97; I: 0%). Guided self-administered CBT had the highest likelihood of being ranked first in improving tinnitus HRQOL (75%), depression (83%), and anxiety (87%), though statistically insignificant. This NMA is the first of its kind in this therapeutic area and provides new insights on the effects of different forms of cognitive and/or behavioral therapies for tinnitus.


Using motivational theories of engagement and adopting a multidimensional perspective of academic engagement, the authors investigate the associations among teacher and parent support, students' academic self-efficacy, and academic engagement among a sample of reconnected youth who have returned to academic pursuit after dropping out (N = 938, mean age = 16.50, SD = 1.78). In addition, they examine how youth's adverse life experiences moderate the pathways in this model, an analysis notably missing from much of the academic engagement literature. They find that students' academic self-efficacy mediates parent and teacher support and youth academic engagement. Moreover, participants' adverse life experiences moderate the connections among perceived support from parents, academic self-efficacy, and academic engagement. Implications for practice and future directions are discussed.


ed Persons: We are risk-neutral wealth maximizers. We are willing to risk a loss in the hope of achieving even greater wealth. We have no knowledge whether we'll be the widow who is disfavored, or the investment banker who reaps all the gains. 15 The efficient rule, however, increases the value of our chances for the good life. Therefore, we consent to the rule that favors investment bankers over widows. Such arguments, I think, are ineffective. One cannot really fathom a time when people are so disembodied from their histories that they have no idea whether they are more likely to be investment bankers or widows. It can hardly be denied that most people's fates are substantially determined at the moment they are born. Therefore, the ex post losers in the above example need not always be persuaded that it is a 13. A redistribution of resources is Kaldor-Hicks efficient if and only if under the redistri· bution the winners win enough so that they could compensate the losers. The notion of Kaldor-Hicks efficiency does not require that the winners actually compensate the losers. In effect, a redistribution is Kaldor-Hicks efficient if and only if it is a "possible" Pareto superior redistribution. Coleman, Efficiency, Exchange and Auction: Philosophic Aspects of the Economic Approach to Law, 68 CALIF. L. REV. 221, 239 (1980). 14. "A change is said to be Pareto superior if it makes at least one person better off and no one worse off. Such a change by definition increases the total amount of (human) happiness in the world." R. POSNER, THE EcONOMlCS OF JUSTICE 54 (1981). 15. They do know 'they are adult humans, which fixes the game with regard to such difficult issues as abortion (i.e., they know they won't be aborted fetuses) and the superiority of average utility standards over total utility standards. See Hare, supra note 12, at 99-101. April-May 1987] Philosophy in Bankruptcy 1345 good thing that investment bankers win at their expense.16 Such arguments depend for their validity upon how attractive a portrait contractarians draw of the abstracted individual. I therefore come to Jackson's scholarship with a great deal of skepticism that contractarian fictions can breach the enormous gap between Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks economics. But beyond challenging the persuasiveness of the technique, I have two other complaints about the way Jackson practices his contractarianism. First, in pursuit of efficiency, Jackson uses the model ineptly. His models don't show what he claims they do. Second, Jackson, without warning, maintains the facade of contractarianism while dropping utilitarianism as the basic normative goal. The switch from utilitarianism to a "justice as fairness" view suggests to me that Jackson's jurisprudence is ad hoc and inconsistent, having as its only end (a) the legitimation of whatever the legal status quo happens to be, and (b) the maintenance of a deceptively calm contractarian surface. My critique of the efficiency version of his contractarianism will center on his allegation that all or most creditors would bargain to get equal priority in bankruptcy. My critique of his nonefficiency contractarianism will focus on Jackson's explanation of bankruptcy discharges. Each justification is based on radically different theories of the human personality, a change that Jackson fails to justify or even to make explicit. A. Creditor Priorities A central claim of Jackson's book is that all creditors would agree to equal priority in bankruptcy. This is the so-called "creditor's bargain."17 The logical steps to this conclusion are as follows: (a) Nonbankruptcy law is the "state of nature" out of which the creditor's bargain emerges (pp. 4, 8). (b) The essence of nonbankruptcy debtorcreditor law is "first in time, first in right,"18 a concept that preexists creditor equality. (c) Creditor equality is in tum the essence of bankruptcy (p. 15). (d) Creditors have a precisely equal perception of their chance of winning a priority collection in case the debtor becomes insolvent (pp. 15, 30-31). (e) Creditors care only about maximizing their recovery; they have no altruism about their fellow creditors and no 16. See J. RA.WIS, supra note 8, at 171 ("We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather, we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case."). 17. The phrase is introduced in Jackson, Bankruptcy, Non-Bankruptcy Entitlements, and the Creditors' Bargain, 91 YALE L.J. 857 (1982). 18. Pp. 8-9 ("It is like buying tickets for a popular rock event or opera: the people first in line get the best seats; those at the end of the line may get nothing at all."). Query whether this metaphor describes either state debtor-creditor Jaw or allocating seats to the opera. In my experience, the people with the best seats would never dream of standing in line for them. 1346 Michigan Law Review [Vol. 85:1341 particular animus toward them either. (f) If the creditors act together, they can gain, either by (i) capturing the "going concern" value of an enterprise, or at least by (ii) reducing the administrative cost of recovering from the debtor. Unfortunately, each and every assumption in Jackson's model is open to challenge. As a result, this model proves nothing about the institution of creditor equality in bankruptcy. In fact, even on his assumptions, Jackson does not prove that equality is the only agreement the creditors could possibly reach. Not only would these creditors agree to bankruptcy equality, but they would agree to bankruptcy inequality as well, if Jackson asked them to. Let's go over Jackson's logical steps one by one. I think we'll find almost no step along the way that is valid. In addition, we'll see that the model itself is a failure, because the conclusion is a non sequitur in relation to the premises of the model. 1. Essences and Exceptions In attempting to show that the status quo is fueled by rational normative principles, Jackson must, of course, describe what he takes the status quo to be. According to Jackson, the essence of state debtorcreditor law is a race of creditors to grab what they can. In contrast, the essence of federal bankruptcy law forces creditors to be treated equally. If Jackson has wrongly identified these essences, his work has been severely disabled, since these claims of competing essences fuel a gigantic portion of the book. The following paragraphs will argue that Jackson has no good justification for his essentialism. a. The essence of state law. State (or nonbankruptcy) law does give rise to a race among creditors to obtain judicial liens, of course, but it also contains norms of creditor equality. These equality norms are found in state receiverships and assignments for the benefit of creditors. Because receiverships and assignments for the benefit of creditors exist in state law along with the creditor race, Jackson cannot rely on the content of state law as the source of essence. On what basis, then, can Jackson say that the creditor race is the essence of state debtor-creditor law while creditor equality is the exception? One possible method of supporting this statement would be an empirical study counting up the number of times creditors pursue insolvent debtors with judicial liens and how many times they pursue debtors under state-law regimes of creditor equality. This is not done in Jackson's book. Indeed, Jackson simply assumes the essence of state law is self-evident. Let's stipulate that state courts today see relatively few receiverships or assignments for the benefit of creditors. This was not necessarily true throughout the nineteenth century, before Congress established the current federal bankruptcy regime, when business insolvencies were especially likely to be the subject of April-May 1987] Philosophy in Bankruptcy 1347 state-created collective proceedings. Certainly in the nineteenth century it might have been possible to claim that neither creditor equality nor creditor races predominated in state debtor-creditor law. If "first in time" is the essence of state debtor-creditor law, it is only a twentieth-century essence. This development is itself surely the product of federal bankruptcy law. That is, once Congress enacted a federal bankruptcy law,19 the use of creditor equality systems in state law became subject to competition from the federal system. This does not necessarily mean that state legislatures no longer cared about or would oppose creditor equality. It does say something about the comparative advantages of federal or state forums, but this conclusion is a far cry from arguing that creditors would contract out of "bad" state law in favor of "good" federal law. These comments are designed to show that the norm of "first in time, first in right" cannot necessarily be essentialized on the strength of historical claims. But a further point must be made against using history to justify Jackson's essentialism. In the absence of a bankruptcy, surely the most common practice of creditors is to walk away from a claim and forget about it. 20 If we are going to assign "essences" on the basis of practice rather than the content of state law, the essence of state debtor-creditor law will be no law at all, an essence in which creditors find themselves treated equally. b. The essence of bankruptcy. Not only is Jackson's account of the essence of state debtor-creditor law open to challenge, but his account of bankruptcy's essence is also dubious. Jackson claims that the essence of bankruptcy is creditor equality. This claim is not borne out by examining the content of the bankruptcy statute, which contains all sorts of creditor priorities,21 nor is it borne out by empirical investigation. Bankruptcy statistics show that the vast majority of dollars produced by bankruptcy trus


A database of 301 atolls from the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans has been analyzed with respect to factors governing maximum atoll lagoon depth. Statistically significant correlations between maximum atoll lagoon depth and both atoll area and present-day rainfall are viewed as the combined effect of paleorainfall precipitation and catchment area in contributing to overall atoll morphology. This interpretation is supported by the gross saucer-shaped morphology of several of the Lau group of the Fiji Islands, and the subsurface Cretaceous Golden Lane atoll of Mexico, where evidence of reef rim construction is lacking but evidence for significant solution relief is compelling. The contribution of reefs to atoll rim construction appears to be limited generally to ∼10 m, leaving more than 20 m of relief to be explained at most atolls. At a number of these, the last interglacial highstand surface is ∼15−20 m beneath Holocene rim sediments. Subsidence rates of even 5 cm/ k.y. do not suffice to explain the subsea depth of this unconformity, suggesting the dominating influence of solution on relief expression. Calculations of solution rates relative to the residence time of sea level below given depths during the past 700 k.y. suggest that the observed atoll relief is in part inherited from more than one Pleistocene, or perhaps earlier, glacial stage. Whatever the precise time of origin, the data available strongly suggest that atoll morphology is solution determined rather than growth predicated.


The design of a subharmonically pumped mixer in the submillimeter wave range is discussed, in which several single diode mixers are used. An important design criterion is the separate biasing of each single diode mixer. A distribution structure for the RF signal is given that avoids power splitting. The feeding network of the LO frequency was assembled at 150 GHz. Preliminary measurement results are presented, in which the required phase shifts between the beams of the LO signal have been achieved. Practical misalignments of lambda/10 in the quasi-optical LO network are found to be negligible


This paper examines the media as a co-constructor of education policy. Starting out with a study of education coverage in the press in a Swedish context, it approaches the question of the functions of the media in offering a space of possibility for education through framing it in specific ways. In focus is the question of how the media works as to establish a situation for the educational system as true, form school discursively and positioning the partners involved in education, not least the teacher, and possible political consequences of this. Specific interest is given to media framing of education in relation to reforms within educational systems.


ABSTRACT Background: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by cognitive and adaptive impairment. FASF can be presented or not with sentinel facial features (SFF). The presence of such SFF have been positively correlated with cognitive impairment in children with FASD. Objectives: The current study explores difference in global intellectual functioning and how cognition affects adaptive behavior in children with and without SFF. Methods: A total of 88 children and adolescents (55 males, 33 females) with confirmed FASD diagnosis were included in the study, of which 16 had sentinel facial features. Childrens' neuropsychological functioning was assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V) and The Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndromes for Children (BADS-C). Adaptive behavior was explored through the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System (ABAS-3). Results: Children with SFF performed more poorly in tasks assessing processing speed (t = 2.495, t = .020) and executive functioning (t = 4.147, t = .001). Those children also had lower IQ scores than children without SFF (t = 2.658, t = .016). BADS-C overall scaled score was related to three of the four domains of the ABAS scale (conceptual, social, and practical) but only in the group of FASD children without SFF (B = 0.547, t = .020; B = 0.544,t = .049; B = 0.431,t = .040, respectively). Conclusions: The present study founds poorer cognitive outcomes in children who have FASD with sentinel facial features. In children without SFF, stronger executive functioning is also related to significantly stronger reported conceptual, social, and practical adaptive behaviors. Better understanding of cognitive and adaptive functioning in children with FASD may help in the design of tailored evidenced-based interventions.


Purpose. Empirical soft toric contact lens fitting based on manifest refraction and keratometry often presents unanticipated fitting and power errors upon initial lens dispensing. However, corneal topography may provide features that influence soft toric lens performance, flexure, and back vertex power in situ, which may assist in improved fitting guidelines. In this study, quantitative topographic descriptors were generated and analyzed as potential variables in predicting soft toric fitting success. Methods. One hundred five eyes of 54 patients were empirically fit with back surface toric, prism ballasted, soft contact lenses after videokeratography was performed with the EyeSys 2000 (v. 4.0) or Humphrey Atlas (v. A6) instrument. Custom software was written to generate 54 separate quantitative descriptors of shape and astigmatism from the raw data files. A logistic regression was used to determine which variables significantly contributed to a successful or failed fit. Results. Two types of empirical fitting failures were identified: loose fit (n = 15) and power errors (n = 17). The following variables were associated with a fitting failure: flat simulated keratometry (SimKf2b) within the central 3 mm zone, steep simulated keratometry (SimKs2b) within the central 3 mm zone, a difference between central and peripheral flat meridian axis (DIFFAXIS), and a difference between central and peripheral astigmatism (DIFFASTIG). For fitting failures caused by power errors, a larger steep SimKs2b (p < 0.01) and smaller DIFFAXIS (p < 0.05) were associated with a failed fit. For failures caused by physical fit of a selected base curve, a smaller DIFFAXIS (p < 0.05), larger steep SimKs2b (p < 0.05), and larger DIFFASTIG (p < 0.01) were associated with a failed fit. Conclusions. Novel quantitative descriptors of corneal shape and toricity derived from topography are associated with empirical soft toric contact lens fitting failures. Future algorithms or recommendations for improved soft toric lens selection may be derived from such indices to develop a predictive model for successful soft toric lens fitting using corneal topography data.


The importance of the Vulgate needs no introduction. It represents the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as the Church in the 4th century saw it to be. Add the New Testament, and we have the text which was basic for worship, theology and even jurisprudence for a millenium and a half; in fact, until the vernacular revolution of Vatican II. This edition, called into being by Paul VI and presented to us by John Paul II. is now the official Vulgate. It is beautifully printed, fairly well bound, and on a somewhat better paper than usual for the Vatican Press. But all it is is text. There is no ratio editionis apart from what may be gleaned from the short prefatory COllslitutio Apostolica. There is no apparatus criticus, such as one finds in, say, the Marietti Vulgate of 1959. And the very useful subheadings of the Marietti are entirely missing. We have simply sheer text. Apart from the renewed official status given to the text, only three pointers emerge from the prefatory Constitutio of John Paul II, all willed by Paul VI. Vatican II is to be borne in mind. There is no clear indication of what this involves unless it is the second pointer. The traditional text and the just demands of the progress of biblical studies are to meet. And thirdly, the stress is on liturgical use. That is perfectly just. Substance serves the liturgy, where worship subsumes. without really noticing, what is the more refined province of the exegete, unless essentials are involved.


Introduction: Radical surgery is the "gold standard" for treatment of invasive penile carcinoma but very poor aesthetic, functional and psychological outcomes have been reported. Our purpose was to assess the impact of organ potency-sparing surgery in locally confined carcinoma of the penis. Materials and Methods: We evaluated retrospectively 42 patients with early penile cancer (Ta,T1,T2), treated with glandulectomy and glanduloplasty with urethral mucosa and sparing of cavernosal apexes, or glandulectomy and limited apical resection in cases of Stage T2. Sexual function, ejaculation and libido were evaluated with an IIEF-15 questionnaire before the appearance of neoplasia (about three months before the surgery) and six months after surgery. Quality of life was evaluated by the Bigelow-Young questionnaire. The scores relating to two weeks prior to the surgery have been compared to those obtained six months after surgery. The statistical analysis was conducted using t-Student for repeated measures and analysis of variance. Results: Six months after surgery 73% of patients reported spontaneous rigid erections, 60% coital activity while 76% of the group treated with urethral glanduloplasty reported normal ejaculation and orgasm, regained an average of 35 days after surgery. The average IIEF-15 scores reported in the entire series in the domains of erection, libido and coital activity of the pre-cancer period were not statistically different than those recorded six months after surgery. In the group treated with glandular reconstruction, pre-and postoperative IIEF-15 mean scores related to ejaculation and orgasm domains were not significantly different. Mean scores of Bigelow-Young questionnaires related to sexual pleasure, familial, social and professional relationships showed significant improvement after surgery. Conclusions: Potency sparing-sparing surgical treatments have a positive impact on a wide spectrum of the patient's life including family relationships, and social and working conditions.


Abstract Bovine lactoferricin (LfcinB) is a multifunctional peptide derived from bovine lactoferrin that demonstrates antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antitumor, and immunomodulatory activities. Recently, studies have focused on the anti-catabolic and anti-inflammatory potential of LfcinB. LfcinB is able to modulate the effects cytokines such as IL-1 and fibroblast growth factor 2 as well as promote specific cartilage anabolic factors. These properties are particularly important in maintaining cartilage homeostasis and preventing a catabolic state, which leads to clinical pathology. This review focuses on the recent literature elucidating the role of LfcinB in preventing cartilage degradation.


Author(s): Hochberg, Y; Lin, T; Zurek, KM | Abstract: © 2016 American Physical Society. Superconducting targets have recently been proposed for the direct detection of dark matter as light as a keV, via elastic scattering off conduction electrons in Cooper pairs. Detecting such light dark matter requires sensitivity to energies as small as the superconducting gap of O(meV). Here we show that these same superconducting devices can detect much lighter DM, of meV to eV mass, via dark matter absorption on a conduction electron, followed by emission of an athermal phonon. We demonstrate the power of this setup for relic kinetically mixed hidden photons, pseudoscalars, and scalars, showing that the reach can exceed current astrophysical and terrestrial constraints with only a moderate exposure.


Communication over the low-voltage distribution networks is of great importance to the electrical engineering and networks engineering. The signal transmission characteristics over the distribution networks are the key factors to be considered in designing the communication systems. In this paper, the signal transmission characteristics in frequency band of 100 kHz /spl sim/400 kHz over 220-V distribution networks in China is investigated and its mathematical models are derived from the measured data. After the procedure of transmission measurement based on HP4395A is discussed briefly, the measurement results including in-phase and cross-phase transmission are described and analyzed. The impulse response of the channel is estimated from the frequency domain measurement based on the linear minimum mean square error in which the measurement noise is reduced during the parameters estimation processes, the estimation shows that the channel could be well described by the 20-taps finite-impulse response model. On the basis of a large amount measurements, we believe the transmission channel is the stationary stochastic process and a stochastic channel model of in-phase transmission is discussed and a six-order autoregressive of the channel model was given out.


In a companies that do export activities, a profit is the ultimate goal. One
way to achieve that goal is to optimize the charging container stuffing is
made effective and efficient. Rakabu Furniture is a company that has made
exports. To learn the steps in the optimization firms charging container,
conducted this study in order to know the process of stuffing the effective
and efficient in the preparation of goods into the container.
Research method is qualitative descriptive source of practical internship
for two months in Rakabu Furniture. To further described and conclusions
drawn to describe the conditions of research objects obtained through data
collection from interviews, data collection, and study the literature
related to these activities. The data used are primary data and secondary
data.
The results obtained are include the importance of an effective process for
stuffing Rakabu Furniture is reduced damage to goods, trucking costs, and
improve corporate profitability. Company stuffing process with three main
activities: the activities before, processes, and after stuffing. Companies
doing optimization filling containers with a few steps to calculate the
ratio of container volume with the volume of goods and arrange items by
considering the ratio between the size of the container with the size of its
foreign goods into account the requirements of a good stuffing.
In the above explanation stuffing process efficient and effective
optimization filling containers can be concluded that the comparison with
the volume of container volume of goods and attention to good stuffing
requirements are important in decisions about stuffing method is applied to
the company. The advice given should Rakabu Furniture conduct employee
performance management by forming a team for stuffing activities that meet
the requirements of the export department and establish a functioning
permanent care of all export activities so that the company achieved the
expected goals.
Keywords: stuffing, container optimization


Caloric restriction (CR) is a robust dietary intervention known to delay age-related heart disease. CR is able to antagonize cardiac remodeling in animal and human under various pathological conditions. However, the direct effect of CR on the heart at basal physiological state is not well characterized. In this study, we examined the impact of CR on cardiac homeostasis and explored the signaling mechanisms that mediate the cardiac effect of CR. Male C57BL/6J mice underwent 20% CR,
 i.e.
 20% less food than
 ad libitum
 (AL), for 2 weeks and 40% CR for another 2 weeks. This CR regimen caused a roughly 20% decrease in heart weight and myocyte cross-sectional area. CR diminished the activity of the
 mammalian target of rapamycin

 (
 mTOR)

 and accelerated autophagic flux. To determine the functional role of mTOR inhibition in CR-induced heart size reduction, we used transgenic mice that express a constitutively active mTOR (mTORca) in the heart. CR did not inhibit cardiac mTOR signaling in mTORca mice as it did in wild type (WT) mice. As a result, the ability of CR to reduce heart size in WT mice was severely impaired in mTORca mice. Specifically, CR reduced the heart weight by 23.1% in WT mice (p<0.01 vs AL), but only tended to reduce it in mTORca mice (13.1%, p>0.05 vs AL). Strikingly, when animals were treated with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin, CR decreased heart weight in both WT and mTORca mice to the same extent, strongly suggesting that mTOR inhibition is required for CR to exert its cardiac effect. Autophagy is a cellular degradation pathway that may contribute to CR-induced heart size reduction. Surprisingly, CR can still decrease heart weight in 2 different autophagy-deficient mouse models, namely, beclin 1 heterozygous knockout mice and ATG16L1 hypomorphic mice. Nonetheless, cardiac function in these mice was markedly deteriorated during CR as indicated by decreased fractional shortening (Beclin 1+−: AL 37.9±2.8 vs CR 29.6±2.1, p<0.01; ATG16L1-HM: AL 36.8±1.8 vs CR 30.1±2.1, p<0.05). This was accompanied by increased oxidative injury, suggesting that autophagy is indispensible for a normal cardiac function during CR. In conclusion, both mTOR inhibition and autophagy induction are essential for maintaining cardiac homeostasis in response to CR-triggered mild stress.


This paper analyzes the multiangle imaging results for bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BSAR) based on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS-BSAR). Due to the shortcoming of GNSS-BSAR images, a multiangle observation and data processing strategy based on BeiDou-2 navigation satellites was put forward to improve the quality of images and the value of system application. Twenty-six BSAR experiments were conducted and analyzed in different configurations. Furthermore, a region-based fusion algorithm using region-of-interest (ROI) segmentation was proposed to generate a high-quality fusion image. Based on the fusion image, typical targets such as water area, vegetation area, and artificial targets were compared and interpreted among single/multiple-angle images. The results reveal that the multiangle imaging method was a good technique to enhance image information, which might extend the applications of GNSS-BSAR.


Bubble formation at a submerged orifice was studied experimentally for non-Newtonian liquids (aqueous CMC solutions) and highly viscous Newtonian liquids (aqueous glycerol solutions). The bubble volumes formed in both non-Newtonian and highly viscous Newtonian liquids are large compared to those formed in relatively low-viscosity Newtonian liquids. The formation regime of the constant-pressure condition, usually found for low-viscosity Newtonian liquids as reported by Tadaki et al., 12) was not observed. Using an extended two-stage bubble-formation model, the bubble volumes formed at a submerged orifice in non-Newtonian and highly viscous Newtonian liquids are considered. The predicted bubble volumes compare satisfactorily with the experimental data over a wide range of parameters of power law liquid (m n > 0.57) and viscosities of Newtonian liquids (5.05 Pa. s > μl > 0.439Pa s) including the results of the present work and that of Tsuge et al.13, 15)


The atypical porcine pestivirus (APPV) belongs to the species Pestivirus K of the genus Pestivirus and the family Flaviviridae, and it has been associated with congenital tremor (CT) type A-II in newborn piglets. Although APPV was discovered in 2015, evidence shows that APPV has circulated in pig herds for many years, at least since 1986. Due to the frequently reported outbreaks of CT on different continents, the importance of this virus for global pig production is notable. Since 2015, several studies have been conducted to clarify the association between APPV and CT. However, some findings regarding APPV infection and the measures taken to control and prevent the spread of this virus need to be contextualized to understand the infection better. This review attempts to highlight advances in the understanding of APPV associated with type A-II CT, such as etiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, and control and prevention measures, and also describes the pathophysiology of the infection and its consequences for pig production. Further research still needs to be conducted to elucidate the host's immune response to APPV infection, the control and prevention of this infection, and the possible development of vaccines.


OBJECTIVES
We report our experience in the diagnosis and treatment of ureteral injury.

METHODS
Review of the experience in our hospital.

RESULTS
We describe two cases of complete rupture of the ureter from blunt and penetrating abdominal trauma that had been recognized late. A urinoma was the presenting feature in both cases. Treatment was by end-to-end anastomosis in the first case and by appendix interposition in the other case.

CONCLUSIONS
Ureteral injuries owing to abdominal trauma are usually silent. Veriform appendix interposition of the ureter is, in selected cases, a therapeutic option.


The heat generated by underground cables has been known to cause the soil around the cables to dry, increasing its thermal resistivity and potentially causing the cables to overheat. The ability of soil to maintain a constant resistivity while being subjected to a heat source is known as its "thermal stability". A method using the Law of Times has often been recommended to determine soil stability. To test whether this method can accurately predict soil thermal stability an experiment was performed that tested the hypothesis inherent in the Law of Times that the diameter of the heat source affects the drying time of the soil surrounding it. This paper reports the results of that experiment and includes the statistical analysis of the data. The experimental evidence resulted in rejecting the Law of Times as an accurate predictor of the drying time of soil around a buried cable.


The median problem is a type of network location problem that aims at finding a node with the total minimum demand weighted distance to a set of demand points in a weighted graph. In this research, an algorithm for solving the median problem on real road networks is proposed. The proposed algorithm, referred to as the Multi-Threaded Dijkstra's (MTD) algorithm, is used to locate Walmart distribution centers on the 28-million node road network of the United States with the objective of minimizing the total demand weighted transportation cost. The resulting optimal location configuration of Walmart distribution centers improves the total transportation cost by


The dynamics of the surface heterogeneities formation in low-dimensional phononic crystals is studied. It is shown that phononic transverse perturbations in this medium are highly nonlinear. They can be described with the help of the Riemann wave and may form stable wave structures of the finite amplitude. The Riemann wave deformation is described analytically. The Riemann wave time existence up to the beginning of the gradient catastrophe is calculated.


Vibrio cholerae, the etiological agent of the severe diarrheal disease cholera, is a common inhabitant of the world's temperate and tropical waters. To cope the multitude of stresses found in these aquatic environments, V. cholerae has evolved many different survival mechanisms. Variations in gene content and regulation between strains allow for niche specialization within the species, and are possibly a determining factor behind fluxes of environmental populations. The work in this dissertation examines the underlying genetic and molecular components that are responsible for these mechanisms, focusing on biofilm formation. It was found that while the morphology of the biofilms of environmental and clinical strains of V. cholerae are distinct from one another; the genes driving these processes are generally conserved between the strains. Also, many new genes involved in the biofilm formation process on abiotic surfaces in V. cholerae have been identified, including those known to have a role in molecular transport, vibrio polysaccharide (VPS) production and its regulation, amino acid metabolism, among others. However, many of these same genes are not required when biofilms are formed on biotic surfaces common in the marine environment (e.g. copepods and dinoflagellates). Under these conditions, only genes responsible for chemotaxis and motility are essential for V. cholerae's ability to colonize biotic surfaces. These results suggest that the distinct biofilms of different strains and within various environments is due to variability in the regulation of the expression of genes involved in biofilm formation and not variability in gene content. One of the genes identified to be involved for abiotic biofilm formation in multiple strains of V. cholerae was the tryptophanase gene. This work has shown that this gene's role appears to be indirect, as it is the indole by-product of the tryptophanase reaction, which can act as an extracellular signaling molecule that triggers an intracellular regulatory cascade and ultimately influences the expression of genes responsible for biofilm formation. This regulatory cascade is comprised of previously identified regulators of VPS production and the DksA protein, which appear to affect global gene regulation through altering intracellular concentrations of the second messenger, cyclic diguanulate (cdiGMP)


We provide a proof using HOL and SPIN of convergence for the Routing Information Protocol (RIP), an internet protocol based on distance vector routing. We also calculate a sharp realtime bound for this convergence. This extends existing results to deal with the RIP standard itself, which has complexities not accounted for in theorems about ab stract versions of the protocol. Our work also provides a case study in the combined use of a higher-order theorem prover and a model checker. The former is used to express abstraction properties and inductions, and structure the high-level proof , while the latter deals efficiently with case analysis of finitary properties.


In Reply. —Dr Lang's comments are appreciated. It was not our intention, as implied by Dr Lang's letter, to suggest that the epidemiology of hemiballism-hemichorea has recently changed or that our selected patient population reflects the experience of other neurologists or primary care physicians. We agree that, because of our special interest in movement disorders, our population of patients is probably different from that seen by general neurologists. However, most of the previous series with which we compared our results, although smaller than ours, were also reported from centers specializing in movement disorders, therefore their referral populations should be similar to ours. Rather than a change in epidemiology, we suggest that the younger average age in our patients is due to a more diverse cause of hemiballism-hemichorea. For example, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which was not seen at the time of previous studies, was responsible for the hyperkinesia in two of