This study assessed the heterogeneity of pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC1:2) and Exchangeable Sodium Potential (ESP) of Vertisols of a 0.5hectares farmland in Kerau village located in Guyuk Area of Adamawa state, Nigeria. The objective was to examine the soil salinity status and variability at the study site. The grid sampling technique was used to collect 50 soil samples at each of 0-15cm and 15-30cm depths of the study site. Accordingly, descriptive statistics were used to examine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. Semivariogram analysis was used to assess the spatial variation of soil properties while ordinary kriging interpolation technique was used to map the spatial distribution of soil properties. The findings showed that vertisols of the study area are alkaline in nature evident by the high pH values recorded. They however exhibited very low EC and ESP values indicating the absence of salinity or sodicity problems in the soil of the study area. The study recommends periodic assessment of soil salinity parameter in the study area in order to avoid its effects on crops.


Using the steepest descent method of Deift-Zhou, we derive locally uniform asymptotic formulas for the Meixner polynomials. These include an asymptotic formula in a neighborhood of the origin, a result which as far as we are aware has not yet been obtained previously. This particular formula involves a special function, which is the uniformly bounded solution to a scalar Riemann-Hilbert problem, and which is asymptotically (as the polynomial degree n tends to infinity) equal to the constant "1" except at the origin. Numerical computation by using our formulas, and comparison with earlier results, are also given. Mathematics Subject Classification 2000 : Primary 41A60. Secondary 33C45.


Dnmt3a is a de novo DNA methyltransferase that modifies unmethylated DNA. In contrast Dnmt1 shows high preference for hemimethylated DNA. However, Dnmt1 can be activated for the methylation of unmodified DNA. We show here that the Dnmt3a and Dnmt1 DNA methyltransferases functionally cooperate in de novo methylation of DNA, because a fivefold stimulation of methylation activity is observed if both enzymes are present. Stimulation is observed if Dnmt3a is used before Dnmt1, but not if incubation with Dnmt1 precedes Dnmt3a, demonstrating that methylation of the DNA by Dnmt3a stimulates Dnmt1 and that no physical interaction of Dnmt1 and Dnmt3a is required. If Dnmt1 and Dnmt3a were incubated together a slightly increased stimulation is observed that could be due to a direct interaction of these enzymes. In addition, we show that Dnmt1 is stimulated for methylation of unmodified DNA if the DNA already carries some methyl groups. We conclude that after initiation of de novo methylation of DNA by Dnmt3a, Dnmt1 becomes activated by the pre-existing methyl groups and further methylates the DNA. Our data suggest that Dnmt1 also has a role in de novo methylation of DNA. This model agrees with the biochemical properties of these enzymes and provides a mechanistic basis for the functional cooperation of different DNA MTases in de novo methylation of DNA that has also been observed in vivo.


In service sectors such as tourism production and consumption are tied to places. In these places different actors base their production on a set of shared resources. Such localized systems can be characterized by different service practices, disagreements among actors, lack of trust, and competition which may inhibit networked and open innovation. Tourist destinations are examples of such localized systems. In this paper we present two extreme cases of tourist destinations in which collaborative innovation processes were established in spite of fierce disagreements between actors. We argue that in tourist destinations actors belong to conflicting innovation spheres but can be brought together in innovation processes when a diplomat enable compromises and when innovation spheres change from personalized to more generalized forms of activity during interaction. The findings are relevant not only for tourism but also for other sectors characterized by localized systems.JEL Codes: L83, L14, L19, O30, Z00


A common comment on the state of reading in Nigeria today is that we have a poor reading culture. Yet up to the early 70s' school children had a healthy respect for reading because there was supportive environment for such activities through the school system, township/mobile libraries, British Council and United States Information Service (USIS) libraries, etc. To rekindle this interest would require not only the provision of reading materials but also democratising access, quality in time and space, environment considerations and technical expertise by teachers and enthusiasts. Above all, any intervention must be unobtrusive, yet must captivate the children especially given the ICT revolution which revolves round audio-visuals. One avenue for achieving this is the neighbourhood reading club. In this paper we present a report of a volunteer reading club situated within the University of Calabar for children of the neighbourhood. Insights into reading interests, impact of the club on the children's emotional, educational and psychological development are explored with very surprising results and outcomes.


As Francis turbines are chasing a higher efficiency, while trying to accommodate a wider load region, turbine blade fatigue is becoming a more pronounced problem. Details of the Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) between the turbine blades and the passing water is necessary to accurately predict the dynamic behavior of a runner in the design phase. The dynamic behavior of the turbine blades is characterized by three properties: The added mass of the surrounding water, the increased stiffness due to passing water, and the hydrodynamic damping provided by the surrounding water. Of the aforementioned properties, the hydrodynamic damping is not yet fully understood. When the turbine blades are excited close to resonance, the damping of the vibrating system determines the vibrational amplitude, and is therefore important in order to estimate the lifetime of a runner. The hydrodynamic damping of passing water has been investigated in a simplified setup, where the turbine blades are represented by a 2D hydrofoil. Two separate hydrofoil geometries have been tested. The hydrofoils were mounted in a "fixed-beam" configuration, meaning that both the deflection and the angle at the fastening point is zero. This setup was chosen, since it is the way that turbine blades are fastened in a Francis runner, and should therefore give applicable results when performing modal testing. The hydrofoils were mounted without any angle of attack, and exposed to water velocities up to 28 m/s. Modal tests in the entire velocity regime indicates that the damping factor increases linearly with water velocity, but at different rates below an above lock-in. The damping factor is rapidly increasing when the velocity goes beyond that of lock-in. This behavior is observed for both hydrofoils, even if the magnitude of the vortex shedding is of different magnitude for the two. A slight increase in natural frequency was also observed with increasing velocity, due to a combination of a stiffening effect of the water passing over the deflected blade, and a reduced added mass effect, in that the amount of water that vibrates with the hydrofoil is diminished when the water velocity is sufficiently high, i.e. it is blown away. The measurements have been compared with CFD simulations, indicating that the observed trend does indeed continue up to at least 45 m/s, indicating that the results are applicable to the velocity regimes occurring in a prototype Francis runner


ABSTRACT Accumulation of 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG) in mitochondrial DNA and mitochondrial dysfunction have been observed in cells deficient for the DNA glycosylase OGG1 when exposed to oxidative stress. In human cells, up to eight mRNAs for OGG1 can be generated by alternative splicing and it is still unclear which of them codes for the protein that ensures the repair of 8-oxoG in mitochondria. Here, we show that the α-OGG1 isoform, considered up to now to be exclusively nuclear, has a functional mitochondrial-targeting sequence and is imported into mitochondria. We analyse the sub-mitochondrial localisation of α-OGG1 with unprecedented resolution and show that this DNA glycosylase is associated with DNA in mitochondrial nucleoids. We show that the presence of α-OGG1 inside mitochondria and its enzymatic activity are required to preserve the mitochondrial network in cells exposed to oxidative stress. Altogether, these results unveil a new role of α-OGG1 in the mitochondria and indicate that the same isoform ensures the repair of 8-oxoG in both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. The activity of α-OGG1 in mitochondria is sufficient for the recovery of organelle function after oxidative stress. Summary: The α-isoform of OGG1 is imported into mitochondria, where its glycosylase activity is essential for mitochondrial maintenance in human cells exposed to oxidative stress.


Abstract Empowering State Capitalism in China: The Revival, Legitimizationand Development of Private EnterprisesbyZongshi ChenDoctor of Philosophy in SociologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Thomas Gold, ChairMy research explores the interplay between the state and market in the formation of the market, and how this in turn leads to the transformation or reproduction of such structures. This is a historical examination of the revival of private enterprise in China since the late 1970s against the contemporary hostile political environment and of the current development of private enterprise. It explores three main issues: (1) how private enterprise, and generally the market economy, a political taboo under Mao's regime, became legitimized; (2) how the state transformed in response to the development of private enterprise; (3) how private enterprise performed under such market institutions.My findings suggest that Wenzhou's marginal position in socialist economy, culture and administration enabled Wenzhou to become the first place for experimenting with private enterprise. The findings imply that marginalized areas had great potential for engendering new institutions; this advances the theory of institutional change. My archival study also shows that three categories of people were the earliest to engage in private enterprise: those who had some work experience in a collective or state entity;those who had done business individually elsewhere; and some cadres.The findings of my project reject the prevalent decentralization model in explaining China's institutional transition and lend partial support to the factional struggle theory. The findings suggest that the alliance between the local market model and central market-oriented leaders enhanced the legitimization of private economy. My findings also show that intellectual framing, which was rarely examined about China's transition, enhanced the gradual transition of institutional logic, the establishment of market institutions and, finally, market hegemony. In response to the development of private enterprise in the past three decades, Wenzhou transformed from a laissez faire state into a regulatory state, and then into an interventionist state. The findings reject a static view of state-society relations and advocate for an interactive approach to examining China's transition. This study also shows that institutional isomorphism drove the convergence of developmental models among four coastal cities and suggests an empowering state capitalism in these regions.The analysis of the nation-wide survey indicate that an entrepreneur's political connection is crucial for an enterprise's performance in both areas, and it contributed more to the performance of coastal enterprises than to that of inland enterprises. This gap may imply a stronger state intervention in the market on the coast than that in the inland and demonstrate the development of private enterprise may empower a strong state capitalism.


Objective. The purpose of this study was to compare infection rates of peripheral intravenous (IV) lines placed under ultrasound guidance with traditionally placed IV lines. Methods. We conducted a retrospective review of emergency department (ED) and hospital records of adult patients who had a peripheral IV line placed in the ED and were admitted to the hospital over a 1‐year period. This study took place at a level I academic urban ED with an annual census of 75,000. All admitted patients with a peripheral IV placed under ultrasound guidance in the ED were identified. Control patients had a traditional landmark approach. Emergency department nurses followed standard aseptic precautions when inserting both ultrasound‐guided as well as traditionally placed IV lines. Researchers reviewed all parts of the medical record, including ED and inpatient notes. Descriptive statistics and χ2 and Fisher exact tests were used in data evaluation. Results. A total of 402 patients who had peripheral IV lines placed under ultrasound guidance were compared with 402 matched control patients. In the ultrasound‐guided IV group, the mean time between insertion to catheter removal was 2.6 days compared with 2.4 days in the traditional group (P = .03). There were 2 documented infections in the ultrasound group and 3 in the traditional group, yielding infection rates of 5.2 per 1000 in the ultrasound‐guided IV group and 7.8 per 1000 in the traditional approach group. There was no statistically significant difference between infection rates in the two groups (P = .68). Conclusions. Both traditional and ultrasound‐guided approaches had low infection rates, suggesting that there is no increased risk of infection with ultrasound guidance for peripheral IV lines.


In-context learning (ICL) is one of the most powerful and most unexpected capabilities to emerge in recent transformer-based large language models (LLMs). Yet the mechanisms that underlie it are poorly understood. In this paper, we demonstrate that comparable ICL capabilities can be acquired by an alternative sequence prediction learning method using clone-structured causal graphs (CSCGs). Moreover, a key property of CSCGs is that, unlike transformer-based LLMs, they are {\em interpretable}, which considerably simplifies the task of explaining how ICL works. Specifically, we show that it uses a combination of (a) learning template (schema) circuits for pattern completion, (b) retrieving relevant templates in a context-sensitive manner, and (c) rebinding of novel tokens to appropriate slots in the templates. We go on to marshall evidence for the hypothesis that similar mechanisms underlie ICL in LLMs. For example, we find that, with CSCGs as with LLMs, different capabilities emerge at different levels of overparameterization, suggesting that overparameterization helps in learning more complex template (schema) circuits. By showing how ICL can be achieved with small models and datasets, we open up a path to novel architectures, and take a vital step towards a more general understanding of the mechanics behind this important capability.


Consumption demand has transferred from quantitative consumption to "perceptual consumption" at nowadays through qualitative consumption changes along with arriving of information age. Development direction for guiding thoughts of designing creation shall be pursuing of more harmonious and closer perceptual relations between user and commercial goods in the future. Product designing shall not only focus on integration of visual elements but shall also pay more attention to perceptual part produced by overall sense organ in product using process. This essay discusses on how to implement product perceptual design by carrying out visual, touching, hearing, smelling and other organ element analysis.


Here we report for the first time a microwave assisted synthesis of polyglycerol dendron functionalized cyclodextrins (CD) with hydrophobic tails. These amphiphilic CDs consist of seven polyglycerol dendrons and fourteen alkyl chains on the primary and secondary rims of the cyclodextrin core, respectively. They self-assemble to form nanostructures in aqueous solutions and efficiently encapsulate hydrophobic aromatic guests. The size and shape of the self-assemblies and also their ability to encapsulate guest molecules depend on the generation of conjugated polyglycerol dendrons.


The bionomics of Stethorus tridens Gordon fed Tetranychus evansi Baker & Pritchard were studied in the laboratory. The number of prey consumed by S. tridens increased with increasing instar levels and the total mean number consumed during immature development was 184.1 ± 18.02 T. evansi nymphs per individual. For adult male and adult female, the daily consumption was 41.3 ± 0.80 and 67.8 ± 1.69 nymphs, respectively. Stethorus tridens successfully developed to adulthood between 20 and 30°C but failed at 10, 15 and 35°C. The lower thermal threshold for egg‐to‐adult development estimated via linear regression and the modified Logan model was 9.2 and 8.1°C, respectively. The optimum and maximum temperatures for egg‐to‐adult development were around 29–31 and 32.9°C, respectively. Egg to adult development time was 23.8 ± 0.24, 17.4 ± 0.22, 16.2 ± 0.22 and 12.1 ± 0.16 days at 20, 24, 27 and 30°C, respectively. At 27°C, the sex ratio, expressed as the proportion of females, was 0.54 and the mean preoviposition, oviposition and postoviposition periods were 10.3 ± 0.67, 31.2 ± 4.74 and 30.2 ± 5.24 days, respectively. The oviposition rate was 4.0 ± 0.16 eggs/female/day with a female mean longevity of 71.6 ± 6.19 days and an intrinsic rate of natural increase of 0.104. The potential of S. tridens as a candidate natural enemy of T. evansi is discussed.


PURPOSE
There is a correlation between cell volume changes and changes in the rate of aqueous humor outflow; agents that decrease trabecular meshwork (TM) cell volume increase the rate of aqueous humor outflow. This study investigated the effects of the nitric oxide (NO)-independent activators of soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC), YC-1, and BAY-58-2667 on TM cell volume and the signal transduction pathways and ion channel involved.

METHODS
Cell volume was measured with the use of calcein AM fluorescent dye, detected by confocal microscopy. Inhibitors and activators of sGC, 3',5'-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), protein kinase G (PKG), and the BK(Ca) channel were used to characterize their involvement in the YC-1- and BAY-58-2667-induced regulation of TM cell volume. cGMP was assayed by an enzyme immunoassay.

RESULTS
YC-1 (10 nM-200 microM) and BAY-58-2667 (10 nM-100 microM) each elicited a biphasic effect on TM cell volume. YC-1 (1 microM) increased TM cell volume, but higher concentrations decreased TM cell volume. Similarly, BAY-58-2667 (100 nM) increased TM cell volume, but higher concentrations decreased cell volume. The YC-1-induced cell volume decrease was mimicked by 8-Br-cGMP and abolished by the sGC inhibitor ODQ, the PKG inhibitor (RP)-8-Br-PET-cGMP-S, and the BK(Ca) channel inhibitor IBTX. The BAY-58-2667-induced cell volume decrease was mimicked by 8-Br-cGMP and was abolished by the PKG inhibitor and the BK(Ca) channel inhibitor. Unlike the YC-1 response, ODQ potentiated the BAY-58-2667-induced decreases in cell volume.

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that the NO-independent decrease in TM cell volume is mediated by the sGC/cGMP/PKG pathway and involves K(+) efflux.


OBJECTIVES. Although much has been published about breastfeeding rates, little is known about how breastfeeding is practiced in the United States. We describe the distributions and characteristics of practices related to common advice about breastfeeding during the infant's first year of life. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS. Participants in the 2005–2007 Infant Feeding Practices Study II received monthly questionnaires during their infants' first year of life. Among breastfeeding respondents, we investigated patterns and trends in types of breastfeeding (supplementing with formula or not, and at the breast or not) and maternal report of infant feeding behaviors corresponding to common breastfeeding advice on frequency, duration, and intervals of feedings. RESULTS. More than half of the breastfeeding mothers fed their infants nothing other than breast milk until 4 months of age. Formula supplementation declined from 42% at 1 month to 15% at 1 year; adding other foods/liquids increasingly surpassed supplementing with formula beginning at 5 months of age. Six percent of the mothers reported that the only breast milk the infant was fed was expressed, rather than at the breast. Frequency of breast milk feedings per day declined from 8 at 1 month to 3.5 at 1 year. Reported feeding durations of <20 minutes increased from 46% at 1 month to 88% at 1 year. Feeding from both breasts per feeding decreased 15% over the infant's first year (from 69% to 59%). Longest interfeeding intervals more than doubled over the year. CONCLUSIONS. Exclusive breastfeeding was common up to 4 but not to 6 months of age. Breastfeeding with only expressed milk was rare. Considerable variation existed in maternal report of practices that correspond to common breastfeeding advice. More research is needed to better understand how these variations relate to breastfeeding outcomes and the role of common breastfeeding advice in infant feeding decisions.


Introduction The factors responsible for the precise control of the ocular pressure remain an enigma despite extensive research concerning the various neural, vascular, hormonal, humoral, and local mechanical influences. While much interest in the effect of ocular innervation upon intraocular pressure is apparent in the literature, no adequate demonstrations have been made of any sustained controlling influence. The influence of the third cranial nerve and the parasympathetic outflow to the eye upon ocular hydrodynamics is somewhat confused despite the well-known effects of the various parasympathomimetic drugs. Schmerl and Steinberg (1949), 1 in one of a series of interesting experiments in rabbits, concluded that faradic stimulation in the region of the ciliary ganglion resulted, among other things, in an elevation in the ocular pressure. Perhaps more significantly, they noted a fall in the ocular pressure when destructive currents were applied in the same area. On occasion, this latter effect lasted for


Background: Recently, there has been renewed interest for the role of dietary modifications and supplements in dyslipidemia management. Among naturally occurring foods, daily nut intake has been shown to have a beneficial effect on lipid profiles that have been attributed to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have been conducted on patients at high cardiovascular risk. Aims: We aimed to study the impact of daily nut consumption on serum lipid and lipoprotein levels in cardiovascular high-risk patients who have not reached their target goals, despite optimal medical treatment and adherence to lifestyle changes. Methods:We conducted a prospective study from February to May 2019 in Habib Bourguiba University Hospital of Medenin to assess the impact of nut consumption on lipid profile of 21 patients at high cardiovascular risk and having a Low Density Lipoprotein- Cholesterol (LDL-cholesterol) value greater than 1.81 mmol/L. Results: Our results showed significant total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol lowering-effects of regular nut's consumption (p<0.05). We further found a significant increase in High Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol) levels by 25.6% (p=0.000). On multivariate analysis, initial high cholesterol levels, non-familial dyslipidemia, non-smoking and, non-obesity were predictive factors of good response to nuts consumption while advanced age and initial high HDL-cholesterol levels were predictors of poor response. Conclusion: The regular intake of nuts is a promising preventive approach against the development of cardiovascular diseases and may be recommended for patients at high cardiovascular risk in addition to the proposed drug therapies.


The Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), did for the ideal of freedom in America's public schools what Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), did for the ideal of equality. It made a core value of the Bill of Rights spring to life for young people facing unjust policies and authoritarian treatment at the hands of adult officials in local school systems. In his remarkable opinion for the majority, Justice Abe Fortas upheld thirteen-year-old Mary Beth Tinker's First Amendment right to wear a black antiwar armband to school by declaring censorship of student expression invalid unless a school can demonstrate that it causes 'material disruption' of the educational process. To be sure, this powerful libertarian doctrine has been eroded (much like the egalitarian vision of Brown) by the sharp undertow of the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts, but it still shines imperishably bright from the last century as a beacon not only for student rights but for constitutional democracy in public settings generally. It expresses the idea that every social institution must respect freedom of speech unless the exercise of that freedom would thwart the very purpose of having the institution in the first place.


Lupinus mutabilis is an important source of protein in different Andean countries, and its use in diets, particularly those of less wealthy individuals, has been observed for thousands of years. There is an increasing demand for protein crops suitable for Europe and this species is a potential candidate. Assessment of Lupinus mutabilis genetic material in European conditions started more than 40 years ago, with the characterization of a vast number of accessions from the Andean region. In this review, abiotic and biotic constraints to L. mutabilis cultivation in European soil and climatic conditions are discussed, and cultivation management practices are suggested. The beneficial interaction of L. mutabilis with Bradyrhizobium strains in the soil and various pollinator species is also discussed, and the effect of abiotic stresses on these interactions is highlighted. Prospects of alternative uses of L. mutabilis biomass in Northern Europe and opportunities for breeding strategies are discussed. In conclusion, the different approach to crop modeling for Southern and Northern European climatic conditions is highlighted.


Abstract Purpose: We aim to study the microstructural changes and thickness of individual retinal layers in patients with idiopathic epiretinal membrane (ERM) treated with peeling. Methods: 47 eyes of 46 patients underwent macular SD-OCT scan before and after ERM peeling. Visual acuity (VA) and central retinal layers thickness were recorded before and at the last follow up visit. Results: The layers that most have changed and contributed to the reduction of central thickness treated with peeling were the Internal Retinal Layers (IRL): Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer (RNFL), Ganglionar Cell Layer (GCL) and Internal Plexiform Layer (IPL). Conclusions : Visual acuity improvement was not statistically correlated with CMT or IRL thickness reduction, probably due to a small number of patients. However. alterations in the thickness of each retinal layers are easily obtained and its value as a noninvasive  biomarker of VA warrants further investigation. Keywords: idiopathic epiretinal membrane, individual retinal layers, thickness changes, automated segmentation, optical coherence tomography


Micro-focused X-ray beams produced by third generation synchrotron sources offer new perspective of studying strains and processes at nanoscale. Atomic force microscope setup combined with a micro-focused synchrotron beam allows precise positioning and nanomanipulation of nanostructures under illumination. In this paper, we report on integration of a portable commercial atomic force microscope setup into a hard X-ray synchrotron beamline. Details of design, sample alignment procedure, and performance of the setup are presented.


This article describes the relationship between the tracking error (TE) of the underlying portfolio in a large asset transition and of the residuals to be traded. It demonstrates that the issue, properly phrased, is really "what is the relationship between two linear functions?" Though seemingly obvious mathematically-the relationship is linear-in practice, too much trader and portfolio manager time is lost because of the difficulty in seeing to the heart of the question. With proofs and examples, the authors hope to settle the question for practitioners, making clear the common point between the two perspectives.


This paper applies a relatively straightforward remote sensing method that is commonly used to derive climatological variables. Measurements of surface reflectance and surface radiant temperature derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper data were used to create maps of fractional vegetation and surface soil moisture availability for the southern Nile delta in Egypt. These climatological variables were subsequently used to investigate the spatial distribution of the vector borne disease Bancroftian filariasis in the Nile delta where it is focally endemic and a growing problem. Averaged surface soil moisture values, computed for a 5-km border area around affected villages, were compared to filariasis prevalence rates. Prevalence rates were found to be negligible below a critical soil moisture value of 0.2, presumably because of a lack of appropriate breeding sites for the Culex Pipiens mosquito species. With appropriate modifications to account for local conditions and vector species, this approach should be useful as a means to map, predict, and control insect vector-borne diseases that critically depend on wet areas for propagation. This type of analysis may help governments and health agencies that are involved in filariasis control to better focus limited resources to identifiable high-risk areas.


The growth of enterotoxigenic Bacillus cereus in perishable foods is a well-known cause of food poisoning. In this study, we evaluated sprouting seeds (broccoli, green peas, lentil, mung bean, mustard, radish, red clover, soybean, and triticale) for their antimicrobial activity toward B. cereus. The filter-sterilized seed extracts of red clover, lentil, and mung bean yielded inhibition zones of 11.7, 9.2, 8.3 mm, respectively. However, no significant inhibition (≤ 6 mm) was observed with other seed extracts. Naturally occurring B. cereus multiplied from 1.1 to near 5.0 log CFU/g during broccoli and radish sprouting. In contrast, B. cereus growth was suppressed when brassica and red clover seeds were grown together. A mixture of seeds containing 10% red clover reduced B. cereus counts to ≤ 1 log CFU/g at the end of sprouting. Artificially inoculated B. cereus (1.1 log CFU/g) grew to 5.9 and 5.6 log CFU/g in white and black rice, respectively, during storage for 24 h at 24 o C. Adding a small amount of red clover seed extract (2.5 ml per 25 g of cooked rice) reduced the respective growth by 3.2 and 2.3 log CFU/g. B. cereus counts on the treated white and black rice were about 4.9 and 3.7 log CFU/g, respectively, after 48 h of storage at 24 o C. In conclusion, the antimicrobial activity of some


Periprosthetic supracondylar femur fractures following total knee arthroplasty are infrequent, but challenging to clinicians. In this article, we present a 74-year-old female case of bilateral supracondylar femoral periprosthetic fractures which were treated with locking plates. The fractures were healed with osseous union, the range of motion was 0-110° for each knee, and there was a 6° residual varus deformity in the left knee. The functional results were excellent during two-year follow-up. Open reduction and locking plate fixation are effective treatment methods for periprosthetic supracondylar fractures following total knee arthroplasty in selected patients. If an anterior femoral notching accidentally develops during the intraoperative setting, using a femoral component with an attached intramedullary stem supports weakened distal part of the femur.


Abstract To produce rapidly the traditional Kanjang soy sauce-like product with rich flavors, lactic acid bacteria of Enterococcus spp. isolated from Chungkukjang was used as one of starter cultures. Among 119 Enterococcus spp., eight strains were selected by protease-secreting activities and identified as four E. faecium, three E. faecalis, and one E. gallinarium. The strains showed low resistances toward eight antibiotics and had no resistant genes to the vancomycin. Especially, E. faecium O24 was cultivated well on 5% NaCl medium that was selected for further study as the starter. E. faecium O24 grew well on the steamed soybean and the counts increased by ten times overnight, which produced mostly 80 mg% glutamic acid and aspartic acid as the seasoning amino acids on the product. Various organic acids including principal lactic acid were also produced. Flavors of maltol and guaiacol, typical soy-sauce flavor, were produced in the mixed cultures of Zygosaccharomyces rouxii and Candida versatilis. Therefore, E. faecium O24 could be a starter of soybean fermentation for soy sauce-like product with rich flavors rapidly.Key words: soy-sauce, fermentation, Enterococcus spp., flavor, amino acid


Background: The previous documents demonstrated that iron deposition was identified in brain deep nuclei and periaqueductal gray matter region in chronic migraine (CM), and less is known about the cerebral iron deposition in CM. The aim of this study is to investigate the cerebral iron deposition in CM using an advanced voxel-based quantitative susceptibility mapping.Methods: A multi-echo gradient echo MR sequence was obtained from 14 CM patients and 28 normal controls (NC), and quantitative susceptibility mapping images were reconstructed and voxel-based analysis was performed over the whole cerebrum. The susceptibility value of all the positive brain regions was extracted and correlation was calculated between the susceptibility value and the clinical variables. Results: The brain regions with increased susceptibility value in CM patients located in right precuneus, dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, cuneus, insula and left postcentral gyrus compared with NC. The correlation analysis demonstrated that a positive correlation was identified between susceptibility value of all the positive brain regions and VAS score.Conclusion: The current study demonstrated increased cerebral iron deposition presented in chronic patients, which suggested that increased cerebral iron deposition might play a role in the migraine chronicization.


Objective: To determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of parenteral penicillin and moxifloxacin against Streptococcus pneumoniae strains isolated at a hospital center. Methods: In-vitro, prospective study involving 100 S. pneumoniae isolates collected from patients who had been treated, between October of 2008 and July of 2010, at the Hospital das Clinicas complex of the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine, located in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The isolates were obtained from respiratory tract cultures or blood samples unrelated to meningeal infections, and they were tested for penicillin and moxifloxacin susceptibility by E-test. The MIC category interpretations were based on updated standards. Results: All isolates were fully susceptible to parenteral penicillin (MIC ≤ 2 µg/mL), and, consequently, they were also susceptible to amoxicillin, ampicillin, third/fourth generation cephalosporins, and ertapenem. Of the S. pneumoniae strains, 99% were also susceptible to moxifloxacin, and only one strain showed an MIC = 1.5 µg/mL (intermediate). Conclusions: Our results showed high susceptibility rates to parenteral penicillin and moxifloxacin among S. pneumoniae isolates unrelated to meningitis, which differs from international reports. Reports on penicillin resistance should be based on updated breakpoints for non-meningitis isolates in order to guide the selection of an antimicrobial therapy and to improve the prediction of the clinical outcomes.


Abstract : The Plasma Motor Generator (PMG) experiment was launched on 26 June 1993. The purpose was to verify the ability of the Hollow Cathode plasma contactor to provide a low impedance contact between the spacecraft and the ambient plasma. This thesis uses the data from Plasma Diagnostics Package (PDP) to study the effects of different modes on the rocket body. The electron data normally show a warm. or hot power law distribution with a characteristic energy of 10's eV. There is a consistent peak in the ion data at approx. 10 eV, which is also a peak in phase space density (distribution function). The average potential difference due to the varying bias (+65 and +0V) between rocket and ambient plasma is approx. 4 V. Subtle changes in the spectrum occur when the Far End Package (FEP) hollow cathode is switched off. Attempts were made to estimate the potential of the Delta rocket body. The variations in the data due to environmental (orbital) effects and the rapid sequencing of the PMG, made it difficult to analyze the data. The most of the measurements are interpreted as generated locally. The non-Maxwellian character of the electron distributions suggest a heating process has occurred. These processes may be due to collisions between gas or plasma einifled from the experiment and the ambient neutral oxygen, due to the high orbital energy of the system. (AN)


ABSTRACT The disaccharide trehalose has shown outstanding anti-aggregation properties for proteins, which are highly important for the possibility to treat neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. However, the role and mechanism of trehalose for such stabilising effects are still largely unknown, partly because a direct structural picture of how trehalose organises around proteins in an aqueous system is missing. Here we compare small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) data on myoglobin in aqueous solutions of either sucrose or trehalose, in order to investigate their effect on protein–protein interactions. We find that both trehalose and sucrose induces a well-defined protein–protein distance, which could explain why these inhibit protein–protein interactions and associated protein aggregation. It does not however explain the superior anti-aggregation effect of trehalose and suggests that the local solvent structures are highly important for explaining the protein stabilisation mechanism. In a broader perspective, these findings are important for understanding the role of sugars in biological stabilisation, and could provide a structural explanation for why trehalose is a promising candidate for the treatment of neurodegenerative and other protein aggregation related diseases. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


One hundred noninsecticidal carbamates were synthesized and evaluated as synergists for fenitrothion and pirimiphos-methyl against the OP-resistant rice stem borer. Substituted aryl (including phenyl and heterocyclic groups) N,N-dimethylcarbamates had a synergistic activity. In substituted phenyl esters, the order of positional effectiveness of the substituent group on the benzene ring was para meta>ortho. 3-Methyl-4-nitrophenyl (SK-2) and 3-methyl-4methylthiophenyl (SK-9) esters were excellent synergists. In substituted heterocyclic esters, 5-phenyl-3-isoxazolyl (SK-40) and 2-dimethylamino-6-methyl-4-pyrimidinyl (SK-102) esters were extremely effective, and the latter reduced the resistance level against pirimiphos-methyl from 1202 to 1.1-fold. When the aryl esters of N,N-dimethylcarbamate were changed to corresponding N, N-diethyl-, N, N-dimethylthio-, and N, N-dimethylthiolcarbamates, their synergistic activities decreased from 1/18 to 1 /2 that of N, N-dimethylcarbamates. Aryl esters of N-methyl-, N-ethyland N-phenylcarbamates, and aliphatic esters of N, N-dimethylcarbamates were inactive. SK-2, -9, -40 and -102 had no synergistic activity against the susceptible strain. The synergistic mechanism of SK-102 for fenitrothion was strong inhibition of fenitroxon detoxication by binding protein and hydrolysis.


In the Multiagent Connected Path Planning problem (MCPP), a team of agents moving in a graph-represented environment must plan a set of start-goal joint paths which ensures global connectivity at each time step, under some communication model. The decision version of this problem asking for the existence of a plan that can be executed in at most a given number of steps is claimed to be NP-complete in the literature. The NP membership proof, however, is not detailed. In this paper, we show that, in fact, even deciding whether a feasible plan exists is a PSPACE-complete problem. Furthermore, we present three algorithms adopting different search paradigms, and we empirically show that they may efficiently obtain a feasible plan, if any exists, in different settings.


There are some undetermined parameters that can be get values only in a certain range about products and other objects in the product design rules and calculations. The parameters to be determined are usually affected by many factors and constraints, which are often bound with fuzzy. The problem is solved in the past usually by the designer getting values of undetermined parameters in a limited range based on their experiences. That is inevitable to deal with subjectivity. Two algorithms about solving undetermined parameters are proposed based on evidence theory and fuzzy comprehensive decision-making methods in this paper. The algorithm is as a reasoning method applied in a knowledge-based intelligent system.


www.biosciencemag.org The editors of BioScience welcome original manuscripts written for a broad audience of professional biologists, biology teachers, advanced students, and policymakers. Overview articles summarize recent advances in important areas of biological research. Roundtable articles bring together the views of different authors on issues important to biologists. The Education department contains essays on the teaching of biology to students and to the general public. Professional Biologist discusses issues in the practice of biological professions. Thinking of Biology consists of essays on the philosophy of biology, and Biology in History articles address the history of biological thought. Biologist's Toolbox articles discuss technology's contribution to the practice of biology. Forum essays address topical issues. Articles in the preceding categories, whether invited or independently submitted, undergo peer review of content and writing style. BioScience also publishes some nontechnical material that is generally not subject to peer review. In this category are letters pertaining to previously published material; Features, which are stories of general interest to scientists; Editorials, which are short opinion pieces; Viewpoints, which are longer opinion pieces; book reviews and special book articles; and occasional Special Reports. The editors reserve the right to edit all manuscripts for style and clarity. Contributions are accepted for review and publication on the condition that they are submitted solely to BioScience and will not be reprinted or translated without the publisher's permission. Authors must transfer certain copyrights to the publisher.


2D-based Industrial Anomaly Detection has been widely discussed, however, multimodal industrial anomaly detection based on 3D point clouds and RGB images still has many untouched fields. Existing multimodal industrial anomaly detection methods directly concatenate the multimodal features, which leads to a strong disturbance between features and harms the detection performance. In this paper, we propose Multi-3D-Memory (M3DM), a novel multimodal anomaly detection method with hybrid fusion scheme: firstly, we design an unsupervised feature fusion with patch-wise contrastive learning to encourage the interaction of different modal features; secondly, we use a decision layer fusion with multiple memory banks to avoid loss of information and additional novelty classifiers to make the final decision. We further propose a point feature alignment operation to better align the point cloud and RGB features. Extensive experiments show that our multi-modal industrial anomaly detection model outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on both detection and segmentation precision on MVTec-3D AD dataset. Code at github.com/nomewang/M3DM.


The enzymes that comprise the family of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) share the capacity to degrade extracellular matrix components. A large body of evidence indicates that certain members of this metalloproteinase gene family play critical roles in determining the malignant phenotype of solid tumors. We previously have derived transformed cell lines with vastly different metastatic potentials by transfecting different combinations of oncogenes into primary rat embryo cells. Conditioned medium from those cell lines was assayed by Western blot analysis for the production of four separate matrix metalloproteinases to see whether a correlation could be found between protease expression and the metastatic phenotype. The transformed rat embryo cell lines with high metastatic potential were found to produce high levels of the stromelysin 1 (MMP-3) and stromelysin 2 (MMP-10) proteases, while the nonmetastatic lines produced low or undetectable levels of these two enzymes. No correlation was seen between the metastatic phenotype of the cell lines and the level of expression of two other matrix metalloproteinases, the M(r) 72,000 type IV collagenase (MMP-2) and the M(r) 92,000 gelatinase (MMP-9). These data suggest that the differential regulation of the stromelysin proteases may contribute to the difference seen in the metastatic potential of these cell lines.


Proterozoic rocks exposed in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico record the history of the assembly of North America, providing insight into crustal growth, accretion, and recycling. Here, we present six well-constrained Lu-Hf garnet ages showing that regional amphibolite-facies metamorphism and deformation occurred between 1.46 and 1.40 Ga. The samples come from the kyanite, sillimanite, and andalusite zones of the "Al 2 SiO 5 triple-point terrane" of northern New Mexico. Porphyroblast-matrix textures in dated samples provide definitive evidence for garnet growth during three phases of deformation associated with crustal thickening during the development of a regional-scale north-vergent contractional orogenic belt. The development of first-generation deformation fabrics is constrained to a period between 1.46 and ca. 1.45 Ga; second-generation deformation fabrics are constrained to the period 1.42−1.40 Ga; and third-generation fabrics were formed after ca. 1.40 Ga. Our results demonstrate that crustal-scale structures and regional metamorphism in northern New Mexico are both the result of a Mesoproterozoic orogenic event, the Picuris orogeny. We found no evidence for amphibolite-facies metamorphism during the Paleoproterozoic Mazatzal or Yavapai orogenies in northern New Mexico.


Protection and enforcement of trade secrets outside the USA have been minimal and undeveloped and of particular concern when using the Internet. Substantive and procedural laws vary from country to country. In recent years there has been a move toward harmonization under the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994. However, the provisions of TRIPS allow for varying periods for member countries to come into compliance. In the meantime international protection of trade secrets is uncertain, thus necessitating the development and implementation of strategies for preserving trade secrets in the international business environment. This paper discusses those strategies, beginning with defining and identifying a company?s trade secrets and the formulation of various policy measures to be taken to protect trade secrets, with emphasis on the risks inherent in the loss of trade secrets when using the Internet and how to eliminate or reduce that risk.


Recently, there has been increasing interest in transparency and interpretability in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) systems. Verbal explanations, as the most natural way of communication in our daily life, deserve more attention, since they allow users to gain a better understanding of the system which ultimately could lead to a high level of trust and smooth collaboration. This paper reports a novel work in generating verbal explanations for DRL behaviors agent. A rule-based model is designed to construct explanations using a series of rules which are predefined with prior knowledge. A learning model is then proposed to expand the implicit logic of generating verbal explanation to general situations by employing rule-based explanations as training data. The learning model is shown to have better flexibility and generalizability than the static rule-based model. The performance of both models is evaluated quantitatively through objective metrics. The results show that verbal explanation generated by both models improve subjective satisfaction of users towards the interpretability of DRL systems. Additionally, seven variants of the learning model are designed to illustrate the contribution of input channels, attention mechanism, and proposed encoder in improving the quality of verbal explanation.


Dalbergia cochinchinensis is a species of legume in the Fabaceae family. This species is popular and valuable in Vietnam and is currently listed on the Vietnam Red List and on the IUCN Red List as endangered. Genetic diversity of the 35 genotypes of D. cochinchinensis species were evaluated by using 52 markers random amplified polymorphic DNA and inter simple sequence repeats (27 RAPD and 25 ISSR). The RAPD primers produced 74 fragments in which 31 were polymorphic with an average of 1.148 polymorphic bands per primer. The number of amplified fragments varied from 1 (OPR15, OPB05, RA142, OPR08, UBC348, OPE14 and OPO04) to 8 (OPP19) and their sizes ranged from 250 to 1600 bp. Amplification of genomic DNA of the 35 genotypes using ISSR analysis yielded 94 fragments of which 64 were polymorphic with an average of 2.560 polymorphic bands per primer. The number of amplified fragments ranged from 1 (ISSR8, ISSR13 and ISSR18) to 6 (ISSR3, ISSR15 and ISSR61) and their size varied from 300 to 2000 bp. The estimated value of molecular diversity parameters within 35 genotypes such as the different number of alleles, effective number of alleles, Shannon's information index, intralocus gene diversity and Nei's gene diversity for RAPD were 1.149, 1.125, 0.109, 0.366 and 0.094, respectively; 1.284, 1.246, 0.206, 0.732 and 0.156, respectively in ISSR; 1.225, 1.193, 0.164, 0.542 and 0.124, respectively in RAPD + ISSR. The results indicate that both marker systems RAPD and ISSR, individually or combined can be effectively used in the determination of genetic diversity among D. cochinchinensis.


: The probability of motor unit discharges and changes in the inter-spike interval duration before the voluntary contraction were studied on m. soleus of human beings. A strong motoneuron facilitation was revealed 15-20 ms before the burst of potentials in EMG and only in some experiments a weak facilitation took place earlier (30-50 ms before the burst). So, "tuning" (H-reflex increasing) 60 ms before the voluntary contraction may be regarded as a result of H-reflex presynaptic disinhibition.


The aim of the study was to evaluate the xeno-oestrogenic
potential of propylparaben in vivo using zebrafish (Danio
rerio). Experimental juvenile zebrafish (20 days post hatching)
were fed a feed containing 500, 1000, or 2000 mg kg-1 of
propylparaben, fish in a positive control group were given a
feed treated with 20 mg kg-1 of 17-oestradiol, and the control
fish were given the feed free of either tested substance. The
exposure of fish to propylparaben did not affect vitellogenesis
after 20 days exposure but seemed to influence the sex
differentiation processes, as evidenced by a sex ratio
significantly skewed towards females in the group fed 500 mg
kg-1 of propylparaben following 45 days of exposure. The
potential of the fish to respond to oestrogenic stimulation was
confirmed, since significantly higher vitellogenin
concentrations were detected in the fish from the positive
control group.


A simple, analytical model for carrier transport and buildup in the separate confinement layer of a quantum well laser is developed. The time constant characterizing the low-frequency roll-off is separated into components describing electron and hole transport and components related to the charge storage effects arising from electron and hole capture. In contrast to previous work, the analysis shows that both the transport and capture- related delays are sensitive to the placement of the well within the separate confinement heterostructure and that the carrier concentrations change abruptly across the quantum well. ECENT WORK to identify the speed-limiting mech-


This paper addresses the problem of frequency domain packet scheduling (FDPS) incorporating spatial division multiplexing (SDM) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques on the 3GPP Long-Term Evolution (LTE) downlink. We impose the LTE MIMO constraint of selecting only one MIMO mode (spatial multiplexing or transmit diversity) per user per transmission time interval (TTI). First, we address the optimal MIMO mode selection (multiplexing or diversity) per user in each TTI in order to maximize the proportional fair (PF) criterion adapted to the additional frequency and spatial domains. We prove that both single-user (SU-) and multi-user (MU-) MIMO FDPS problems under the LTE requirement are NP-hard. We therefore develop two types of approximation algorithms (ones with full channel feedback and the others with partial channel feedback), all of which guarantee provable performance bounds for both SU- and MU-MIMO cases. Based on 3GPP LTE system model simulations, our approximation algorithms that take into account both spatial and frequency diversity gains outperform the exact algorithms that do not exploit the potential spatial diversity gain. Moreover, the approximation algorithms with partial channel feedback achieve comparable performance (with only 1-6 percent performance degradation) to the ones with full channel feedback, while significantly reducing the channel feedback overhead by nearly 50 percent.


In this thesis, volumetric, optical and vibrational properties of H2O were studied at high pressures by combining techniques of Raman spectroscopy, interferometry and optical imaging. Pressures up to 7 GPa were generated in the diamond anvil cell (DAC), entering the stability fields of liquid water and ices VI, VII and VIII. A new integrated system for Raman, interferometric and optical-imaging studies has been built up. Utilizing the interferometric patterns formed between closely-spaced diamond anvils, the system allowed the complete monitoring and control of pVT-conditions of studied ices, as well as the determination of their dispersive properties in the visible range using the Airy equation and Cauchy formulation. This setup and technique thus represent a novel tool for the precise determination of equations of state (EOSs) of transparent materials, including fluids and low-Z materials. Data-sets on thermal pressure were obtained from heating/cooling experiments carried out on the liquid water and used for checking the mutual consistency between published EOSs. A pVT-EOS for ice VIII and room temperature isotherms for ices VI and VII at 300 K were derived by combined methods of interferometry and imaging. While the agreement with the available EOSs of ices VII and VIII is very good, some inconsistent EOSs of ice VI were identified in the present study.The technique of micro-Raman spectroscopy was applied for the monitoring of phase transformations, identification of various ice phases and for studying the response of vibrational symmetry modes to varying conditions. Analysis based on the combination of the pT-dependencies of the vibrational frequencies with the pVT-EOSs showed that, in the studied ices, the implicit volume-driven contributions dominate over the explicit phonon effects in the total temperature-induced changes in vibrational frequencies. The results provide valuable insight on the anharmonic effects and interactions in these molecular solids.


Mobile phones and electronic gadgets on the market today have become more and more powerful, in both processing power and functionalities. Accessing files and documents residing at users' home networks via a vast amount of devices is therefore anticipated. The current solution to remote home access, i.e. Virtual Private Network (VPN), is not supported on all different types of devices. In particular, limited processing power and memory footprint on mobile devices such as PDAs and cell phones are not suitable for VPN clients that require high processing power during encryption and decryption of data. In addition, setting up VPN on home network is not a straight-forward task that anyone can complete. Regular users do not have knowledge to set up and configure VPN correctly. It is obviously that we need another approach/method to access home network in an easier manner. The specified system, Mobile Home Access, will provide ubiquitous access to the home network independent of network infrastructures, platforms and terminals. This goal has many challenges and obstacles, such as firewall and routing issues as well as compatibility and the restrictions of the well-known networked file system, i.e. Common Internet File System (CIFS). Based on the previous research project, Mobile Home Access will be implemented as web services and written in Java, the platform independent programming language. XML web services offers intercommunication between applications and protocols running on various network infrastructure. Using web services, the networked file system's services can be exposed to remote clients. The system will operate in two different modes, the reduced-mapping mode for restricted clients (mobile phones, PDA, etc) and the tunneling mode for rich clients (desktop computers, laptop, etc). This thesis will address and try to overcome challenges associated with the tunneling mode in addition to the design of the overall system.


BACKGROUND: Oral communication impairments (OCIs) are a common childhood problem with often long-term negative outcomes for both the child and society. Despite the growing body of knowledge about the epidemiology of this problem, the shift from traditional treatment approaches to population based approaches to management has been slow. One suggested reason for this is a lack of community based population data on such problems with which to plan services more broadly. AIM: The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the population knowledge of children with OCIs by developing and trialing a data collection method at a community level. LITERATURE REVIEW: One of the major issues in understanding OCIs from a population perspective is the disparate and often incongruent nature of epidemiological data reported in the literature. Five areas of epidemiological research were reviewed in order to critically evaluate the existing evidence base and identify gaps for further research. The five areas reviewed were: Prevalence (Regardless of the methodology used to collect prevalence data, OCIs have been described as a common childhood problem), Life Course (Children with OCIs often have ongoing communication problems and are at risk for poorer life outcomes in social, educational and occupational domains), Comorbidities (OCIs rarely occur in isolation and most children will have other developmental or health issues), Risk factors (There is no one easily definable cause of OCIs, however, genetic and environmental factors appear to increase the risk of OCI in the general population), and Service use (Only around half of children with recognised OCIs will access specialist intervention services).The review concluded that local community data measuring the 'burden', or impact, of the problem, comorbidities and service use in children with and without OCIs would assist in service planning. Therefore a methodology would need to be developed which addressed these issues.A further review of the literature considered this methodology development with specific reference to the issues of study design, sampling and identification of OCIs. The review concluded that a cross-sectional survey design of a community sample could provide the necessary data. Parent and teacher report was suggested as a method for identifying OCIs in surveys, however, a tool needed to be developed and trialed to ensure this method was effective, valid and reliable. PILOT STUDY: A survey tool for parents was designed which included the Child Health Questionnaire (PF - 28), questions relating to socio-demographic features, health and development conditions, service use and specifically developed questions regarding OCIs. The survey methodology was trialed in one school and one childcare centre. The results of the study were reviewed and suggestions made for methodological changes before a community trial was carried out. The reliability and validity of the questions designed to identify OCIs was assessed in a number of ways. Test-retest reliability of parent completed questionnaires proved to be good. Interrater reliability was examined by comparing parent and teacher responses. Parents and teachers agreed on identification of OCI in over 75% of cases for each of the OCIs studied. Criterion validity was assessed by comparing parent report to speech pathologist evaluation in a clinical sample and by comparing parent and teacher report to screening assessments of communication skills in a school sample. Both parents and teachers tended to over-identify children, however, when parent and teacher reports were considered together the validity approached that of the 'gold standard'. Construct validity was assessed by comparing reported OCIs with reports of other developmental conditions known to be commonly comorbid with OCIs. Once again using both parent and teacher report proved to be the most valid method of identifying OCIs using the developed tool. COMMUNITY STUDY: A targeted community survey of 3 to 7 year old children was conducted in a regional centre in Queensland, Australia. Children were sampled through schools and childcare centres. Information letters were distributed to the parents of 898 eligible children. Completed questionnaires were received for 397 children. Teachers completed questionnaires on 375 children which was 42% of the population sampled. Parents and teachers identified OCIs in 16% of the children. However, only 3% of the population were rated by parents or teachers as having severe problems. Over 70% of parents and teachers of children with a reported OCI rated the problem as having an impact on the child's life. Ratings of impact were not related to parent/teacher ratings of severity. Children with OCIs were reported to have significantly more health, developmental and behaviour problems than their peers. Children with OCIs were rated lower by their parents on most aspects of the Child Health Questionnaire (PF-28). In particular, parents reported impacts on their own time and family activities due to the child's problems. No significant differences were found between children with and without reported OCIs on any of the socio-demographic variables studied. Children with reported OCIs used more health and educational services than their peers. Around 60% of children with reported OCIs had seen a speech pathologist, but many parents had also sought advice from a range of other health and educational professionals. Those with two or more OCI conditions were more likely to have seen a professional, however socio-demographic variables did not generally predict service use. Parents reported that the type of service they chose was most commonly influenced by advice from a doctor or teacher. The limitations of this methodology for collecting this type of data are discussed. However despite these limitations data were collected which has major implications for the provision of population based services for children with OCI. CONCLUSION: This thesis has contributed to the understanding of children with OCIs by researching the development of a methodology to study this problem in a defined community sample. The information gained from the literature review and the community study were considered within two models of service provision. The models encompass service delivery from individualised to more population based approaches to the management of OCIs in children. From these models, specific suggestions for the community involved in the study were discussed. This thesis, therefore, provided a survey methodology that is resource efficient in the collection of community data useful in suggesting improved services for children with oral communication impairments.


Due to the current limited knowledge about the role of filamin A (FLNA) in pituitary tumour progression, we aimed to analyse FLNA expression levels and its impact on aggressive markers of pituitary neuroendocrine tumours (PitNETs), using an integrative approach of in vivo and in vitro models and human samples. An increase in the expression levels of FLNA was observed in the advanced tumoral stages of the hyperplasic adenomatous pituitary model, concomitant with a decrease in cell proliferation and with a modification in the subcellular localisation of this protein. Similarly, overexpression of FLNA in the somatolactotropic GH3 cell line induced a decrease in the cell proliferation, promoted a migratory phenotype, increased invasion activity, and decreased the prolactin secretion. Cyclin D1 (CCND1) and cyclin dependent kinase 4 (CDK4) expression increased in both models in correlation with the increase observed in FLNA levels. When human tissues were analysed a significant increase of FLNA was observed in PitNETs compared to normal pituitary gland, with heterogeneous intracellular localisation. Higher levels of FLNA expression were observed in tumours with invasive characteristics. These results underline the crucial roles of FLNA as a modulator of pathological markers and as a potential prognostic marker in pituitary tumours.


Samples extracted from several divertor tiles following the 2011–2012 operation of JET with the ITER-Like wall were analyzed using ion beam analysis methods, x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis and x-ray diffraction. The emphasis was on the determination of light species and on material mixing including compound formation on the bottom and the outer divertor tiles. Deposition of deuterium, beryllium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, chromium, nickel and molybdenum has been detected on all studied tiles. The thickest deposition, of around 4 µm, was measured on the bottom of the outer divertor, whereas the other surfaces (inner bottom and vertical outer) the co-deposits were around 1 µm. x-ray diffraction measurements have revealed the formation of the compound W2C on all specimens.


Screening tests for atopy risk in newborns have a low predictive value. If early atopic symptoms and signs could be used as predictors for the next expected atopic disorder then secondary prevention could be employed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capacity of early atopic dermatitis to predict aeroallergen sensitization and the manifestation of respiratory atopic disorders at 5 years of age.


In recent years, the application of computing technology to the arts and humanities has been a topic of increased focus in the post-secondary environment. With growing understanding of how these applications can serve the ongoing mission of humanities research, teaching, and training, technology is playing a larger role than ever before in these disciplines. Arising in part from a joint venture between the Consortium for Computers in the Humanities / Consortium pour ordinateurs en sciences humaines (COCH/COSH; now SDH/SEMI, the Society for Digital Humanities / Societe pour l'etude des medias interactifs) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community is the first volume to broadly document the internationally significant work of the Canadian academic community in the area of humanities computing. With Contributions By: Michael Best John Bonnett Susan Brown Alan Burk Terry Buttler Lisa Charlong James Chartrand Charles Clarke Patricia Clements Renee Elio Natasha Flora Paul Fortier Scott Gerrity Robert Good Sean Gouglas Nicholas Griffin Isobel Grundy Ian Lancashire Peter Liddell Karen McCloskey Murray McGillivray Andrew Mactavish France Martineau David Moorman Aimee Morrison Stephen Reimer Geoffrey Rockwell Ray Siemens Stefan Sinclair David Strangway Elaine Toms Christian Vandendorpe Russon Wooldridge


To improve the quality control effect and decrease the manufacturing cost in the product's multistage machining processes, based on the quality loss of single stage machining process, an overall mean quality loss model of multistage machining processes is established by the integration of Duncan cost model, Taguchi quality loss model, mean shift index and average time to signal (ATS). By using this quality loss model, the overall mean quality loss optimal function of multistage machining processes is constructed and the control parameters of this function are optimally solved. Besides, The Shewhart control chart and Cause-selecting control chart can be optimally designed with the control parameters of this optimal function. Finally, on the basis of an application, the multistage machining quality control based on minimum overall mean quality loss is verified to improve the control chart's performance under the condition of the minimum overall mean quality loss.


Aims. The purpose of this study is to test our numerical model of cometary dust coma structures and to use the results to infer information about the nucleus surface activity of comet 9P/Tempel 1. Methods. Parameters on the activity were first estimated from simulations of ground-based observation acquired during the preperihelion period (January to June 2005) and compared with published results for the same period. The parameters retrieved were then used to simulate previously unpublished images of the comet acquired during the post-perihelion period (in July and August 2005). Results. Our model was able to retrieve the spin axis orientation of comet 9P/Tempel 1 as well as information on active regions at the surface of the nucleus. We could localize at least six active areas and characterize them with parameters such as the velocity of the dust particles, grain size, and activity profile. Our model confirms published results from spacecraft measurements but is also able to make realistic predictions on the evolution of the coma morphology during the post-perihelion period.


The import substitution becomes one of the strategic tasks of national economy as a result of prolongation of economic sanctions concerning the Russian Federation of part of the USA, EU countries, Japan and number of other countries. It is not proper to be limited in import substitution only by goods because in conditions ofsanctions when access toforeign technologies is complicated Russia is needed to substitute foreign technologies by national designs in faster manner One of directions of effective import substitution is localization of production of laboratory equipment and consumables for clinical and sanitary microbiology on the territory ofthe Russian Federation and countries of Customs union. In Russia, in the field ofdiagnostic of dangerous and socially significant infections, all components for import substitution to implement gene diagnostic, immune diagnostic. bio-sensory and biochip approaches, isolation and storage of live microbial cultures, implementation of high-tech methods of diagnostic are available. At the same time, national diagnostic instrument-making industry for microbiology is factually absent. The few devices of national production more than on 50% consist of import components. The microbiological laboratories are to be equipped only with import devices of open type for applying national components. The most perspective national designs to be implemented are multiplex polimerase chain reaction test-systems and biochips on the basis of national plotters and readers. The modern development of diagnostic equipment and diagnostic instruments requires supplement of national collections of bacterial and viral pathogens and working-through of organizational schemes of supplying collections with strains. The presented data concerning justification of nomenclature of laboratory equipment and consumables permits to satisfy in fill scope the needs of clinical and sanitary microbiology in devices, growth mediums, consumables of national production and to refuse import deliveries without decreasing quality of microbiological analysis. This approach will ensure appropriate response to occurring challenges and new biological dangers and maintenance of biosecurity of the Russian Federation at proper level.


The article reviews the results of the VIII Scientific and Practical Conference with international participation "Technology and Safety of Drilling and Blasting Operations in Surface and Underground Mines of the Urals" which was held at the Ekaterinburg-EXPO Exhibition Center and the Uralasbest Industrial Complex as part of the IX Urals Mining Industry Forum and the URAL MINING' 21 Exhibition dedicated to the Year of Science and Technology in the Russian Federation and the 30th Anniversary of the Urals Mining and Industrial Association. The article also informs about the winners of the Ural Mining Award 2021 and about the research and engineering reports and presentations made during the conference and dedicated to blasting operations. Results are summarized of the visiting seminar at the Uralasbest Industrial Complex, where the Chief Engineer of Promtekhvzvzryv Company N.A. Chistyakov and General Director of the Urals Explosives Association G.P. Bersenev conducted tours to the open-pit mine, the 'Poremit' Plant - the first emulsion explosives production facility in the Urals, a bulk explosives storage, the museum and training center of the Urals Asbestos Mining and Processing Complex. Following the tours of the training center site of the Processing Complex, the second part of the conference was held, during which a number of reports were delivered. Upon completion of the seminar, the Urals Explosives Association awarded honorary certificates and valuable gifts to specialists of the Promtekhvzvzryv Company for their contribution to improvement of drilling and blasting technology and organization of labor on blasting sites. The article is concluded by a summary of the Conference's decisions.


Faraday rotators using permanently magnetized ferrite materials are used to make quasi-optical isolators and circulators at millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave frequencies that have far higher performance than their waveguide equivalents. This paper demonstrates state-of-the-art performance for four-port quasi-optical circulators with 60-dB isolation, 0.2-dB insertion loss, and better than 80-dB return loss for devices centered at 94 GHz. A method is presented for the accurate characterization of the complex permeability and permittivity of permanently magnetized ferrites via a series of frequency and polarization dependent transmission and reflection measurements. The dielectric and magnetic parameters for the sample are determined by fitting theoretical curves to the measured data. These fitted parameters are then used in a model for a complete quasi-optical Faraday rotator, including matching layers, allowing the accurate design and fabrication of these devices for any specific operational frequency band in the millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave regime. Examples are given showing typical results and demonstrating how temperature cycling can significantly improve the temperature stability of these devices, while allowing fine tuning of the center frequency. We also indicate the performance possible at higher frequencies to above 1 THz and outline performance of truly planar isolators where lossy polarizer material is built into the Faraday rotator matching structure


We expand the substantive terrain of QI's reach by illuminating a body of political theory that to date has been elaborated in strictly classical language and formalisms but has complex features that seem to merit generalizations of the problem outside the confines of classicality. The line of research, initiated by Fiorina in the 1980s, seeks to understand the origins and nature of party governance in two-party political systems wherein voters cast partisan ballots in two contests, one that determines partisan control of the executive branch and another that determines party control of a legislature. We describe how research in this area evolved in the last two decades in directions that bring it now to the point where further elaboration and study seem natural in the more general formalistic and philosophical environments embraced in QI research. In the process, we find evidence that a restriction of a classical model that has animated work in the field appears violated in a form that leads one naturally to embrace the superposition principle. We then connect classical distinctions between separable and nonseparable preferences that are common in political science to their quantum and quantum-like counterparts in the QI literature, finding special affinity for a recently-introduced understanding of the distinction that provides a passageway into the boundary between fully quantum and fully classical views of the distinction and thereby provides new leverage on existing work germane to the theory.


Introduction. Although there has been made great progress in understanding the epidemiology of high-grade cervical intraepithelial lesions (CIN 2/3), the cofactors involved in the dynamics of cervical HPV infection are still a subject of debate. The purpose of this paper was to assess the patients' demographic characteristics correlated with the risk of lesions' persistence/recurrence post-cervical excisional therapy for CIN 2/3.
Materials and method. We conducted an analytical, observational, prospective cohort study carried out in the "Prof. Dr. Panait Sirbu" Clinical Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology over a 3-year period. We included 290 patients diagnosed with high-grade cervical dysplasia who benefited from conization in our clinic. The demographic variables obtained from the anamnesis were statistically correlated with the rate of persistent/recurrent cervical lesions post-therapy.
Results. The mean age for our study group was 44.1 years old; more than half of the patients (73.1%) came from urban environments and were highly educated (54.1%). Regarding personal obstetrical history, most of the patients were multiparous (71.3%), with 14.5% having more than four births and 67.6% having delivered vaginally. The mean age at the first sexual intercourse was 22.13 years old, and more than half of the patients claimed never having used the condom. Nine patients (3.1%) had been diagnosed with immunodeficiency syndromes, out of which six patients were HIV-positive. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age (OR=1.08; p<0.01), smoking status (OR=3.96; p<0.01) and age at first pregnancy (OR=0.87; p<0.01) were independent predictive factors for the risk of persistence/recurrence of CIN lesions.
Conclusions. The three factors that were statistically correlated with persistent/recurrent CIN after therapy can be used as a predictive model for clinicians struggling to prevent cervical neoplastic invasive lesions.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Bowel urgency is the most bothersome symptom in irritable bowel syndrome patients with diarrhea, but its pathophysiology is poorly understood. Our aim was to assess the relationships among reporting the symptom, the reservoir functions of the colon and rectum, and the patients' psychologic profile.

METHODS
The study involved 28 consecutive patients with irritable bowel syndrome and 17 healthy subjects. The presence or absence of bowel urgency was verified by means of a questionnaire during the 3 days required for the ingestion of radio-opaque markers. On the fourth day, an abdominal x-ray was taken to assess colonic transit time, and rectal sensory and motor responses were measured during rectal distention. The subjects' psychologic profiles were assessed using a psychologic symptoms checklist.

RESULTS
Forty-six percent of the patients reported urgency associated with at least 1 defecation. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that colonic transit was the only variable independently associated with reported bowel urgency, but the threshold for the sensation of urgency was not removed from the model since its borderline significance level. Rectal compliance was closely associated with the threshold for the sensation of urgency during rectal distention but was not an independent factor for reporting the sensation. The patients with and without urgency showed altered psychologic profiles.

CONCLUSIONS
The symptom of urgency is associated with objective alterations in the colonic and rectal reservoir of patients with irritable bowel syndrome.


The fabrication of next-generation semiconductor devices has created a need for low-temperature (≤400 °C) deposition of highly-conformal (>95%) SiO2, SiNx, and SiC films on high-aspect-ratio nanostructures. To enable the growth of these Si-based dielectric films, semiconductor manufacturers are transitioning from chemical vapor deposition to atomic layer deposition (ALD). Currently, SiO2 films deposited using ALD are already being integrated into semiconductor device manufacturing. However, substantial processing challenges remain for the complete integration of SiNx films deposited by ALD, and there are no known processes for ALD of SiC at temperatures that are compatible with semiconductor device manufacturing. In this focused review, the authors look at the status of thermal and plasma-assisted ALD of these three Si-based dielectric films. For SiO2 ALD, since low-temperature processes that deposit high-quality films are known, the authors focus primarily on the identification of surface reaction mechanisms using chlorosilane and aminosilane precursors, as this provides a foundation for the ALD of SiNx and SiC, two material systems where substantial processing challenges still exist. Using an understanding of the surface reaction mechanisms, the authors describe the underlying reasons for the processing challenges during ALD of SiNx and SiC and suggest methodologies for process improvement. While both thermal and plasma-assisted SiNx ALD processes have been reported in the literature, the thermal NH3-based ALD processes require processing temperatures >500 °C and large NH3 doses. On the other hand, plasma-assisted SiNx ALD processes suffer from nonuniform film properties or low conformality when deposited on high-aspect-ratio nanostructures. In the SiNx section, the authors provide a broad overview of the currently known thermal and plasma-assisted SiNx ALD processes using chlorosilane, trisilylamine, and aminosilane precursors, describe the process shortcomings, and review the literature on precursor reaction pathways. The authors close this section with suggestions for improving the film properties and conformality. In the case of SiC, the authors first outline the limitations of previously reported SiC ALD processes and highlight that unlike SiO2 and SiNx plasma-assisted ALD, no straightforward pathway for low-temperature plasma-assisted growth is currently apparent. The authors speculate that low-temperature ALD of SiC may require the design of completely new precursors. Finally, they summarize the progress made in the ALD of C-containing SiNx and SiO2 films, which may provide many of the benefits of SiC ALD in semiconductor manufacturing. In closing, through this review, the authors hope to provide the readers with a comprehensive knowledge of the surface reactions mechanisms during ALD of Si-based dielectrics, which would provide a foundation for future precursor and process development.The fabrication of next-generation semiconductor devices has created a need for low-temperature (≤400 °C) deposition of highly-conformal (>95%) SiO2, SiNx, and SiC films on high-aspect-ratio nanostructures. To enable the growth of these Si-based dielectric films, semiconductor manufacturers are transitioning from chemical vapor deposition to atomic layer deposition (ALD). Currently, SiO2 films deposited using ALD are already being integrated into semiconductor device manufacturing. However, substantial processing challenges remain for the complete integration of SiNx films deposited by ALD, and there are no known processes for ALD of SiC at temperatures that are compatible with semiconductor device manufacturing. In this focused review, the authors look at the status of thermal and pla...


Inhalt: Non-equilibrium quantum physics has become one of the central fields of research in particular due to an impressive degree of control in recent cold atom and quantum optics experiments. On the theoretical side, the topic provides a very fruitful playground where many seemingly diverse fields of theoretical and mathematical physics meet and overlap, such as condensed matter theory, statistical mechanics and field theory, string theory, quantum information, and dynamical systems. Having relevant and nontrivial exactly solvable models displaying key universal phenomena is a crucial aspect of every successful theory. In non-equilibrium quantum interacting many-body systems, such exact solutions have been very rare, and only very recently substantial progress has been made. In this talk I will describe one thread of recent progress, which started from exact solutions of boundary driven master equations of interacting quantum spin chains and ended up in discovering new families of quasilocal conservation laws. The latter are relevant for describing equilibration after quantum quenches and rigorously establishing ballistic or diffusive high temperature transport in integrable systems.


With the capability of support mobile computing demand with small delay, fog computing has gained tremendous popularity. Nevertheless, its highly virtualized environment is vulnerable to cyber attacks such as emerging Advanced Persistent Threats attack. In this paper, we propose a novel approach of cyber risk management for the fog computing platform. Particularly, we adopt the cyber-insurance as a tool for neutralizing cyber risks from fog computing platform. We consider a fog computing platform containing a group of fog nodes. The platform is composed of three main entities, i.e., the fog computing provider, attacker, and cyber-insurer. The fog computing provider dynamically optimizes the allocation of its defense computing resources to improve the security of the fog computing platform. Meanwhile, the attacker dynamically adjusts the allocation of its attack resources to improve the probability of successful attack. Additionally, to prevent from the potential loss due to attacks, the provider also makes a dynamic decision on the purchases ratio of cyber-insurance from the cyber-insurer for each fog node. Thereafter, the cyber-insurer accordingly determines the premium of cyber-insurance for each fog node. In our formulated dynamic Stackelberg game, the attacker and provider act as the followers, and the cyber-insurer acts as the leader. In the lower level, we formulate an evolutionary subgame to analyze the provider's defense and cyber-insurance subscription strategies as well as the attacker's attack strategy. In the upper level, the cyber-insurer optimizes its premium determination strategy, taking into account the evolutionary equilibrium at the lower-level evolutionary subgame. We analytically prove that the evolutionary equilibrium is unique and stable. Moreover, we provide a series of insightful analytical and numerical results on the equilibrium of the dynamic Stackelberg game.


Virtually all accelerator based research facilities nowadays use a mixture of software libraries, tools, protocols and development techniques to address the facilities' various control system* requirements efficiently. Many of these technologies are open-source and shared between laboratories to various extents. Motivated by the planning of MAX-lab's new light source project, the MAX IV facility, we have conducted a state-of-the-art survey of these technologies, which will serve as a knowledge base for upcoming design decisions. This paper provides a summary of the topics and conclusions of our survey. In this scope the survey compares software technologies with respect to user features (scientific analysis and operation requirements), quality requirements (integration, performance, services, reliability, security, safety), and other issues. Control system design goals are beneficial long-term effects on future improvements, development costs and maintenance costs.


Many cellular functions depend on the correct delivery of proteins to specific intracellular destinations. Mutations that alter protein structure and disrupt trafficking of the protein (the "cargo") occur in many genetic disorders. In addition, an increasing number of disorders have been linked to mutations in the genes encoding components of the vesicular transport machinery responsible for normal protein trafficking. We review the clinical phenotypes and molecular pathology of such inherited "protein-trafficking disorders", which provide seminal insights into the molecular mechanisms of protein trafficking. Further characterisation of this expanding group of disorders will provide a basis for developing new diagnostic techniques and treatment strategies and offer insights into the molecular pathology of common multifactorial diseases that have been linked to disordered trafficking mechanisms.


BACKGROUND
The respiratory allergies, including allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma, represent a substantial medical and economic burden worldwide. Despite their dimension and huge economic-social burden, no data are available on the costs associated with the management of respiratory allergic diseases in Italy. The objective of this study was to estimate the average annual cost incurred by the National Health Service (NHS), as well as society, due to respiratory allergies and their main co-morbidities in Italy.

METHODS
A probabilistic prevalence-based cost of illness model was developed to estimate an aggregate measure of the economic burden associated with respiratory allergies and their main co-morbidities in terms of direct and indirect costs. A systematic literature review was performed in order to identify both the cost per case (expressed in present value) and the number of affected patients, by applying an incidence-based estimation method. Direct costs were estimated multiplying the hospitalization, drugs and management costs derived by the literature with the Italian epidemiological data. Indirect costs were calculated based on lost productivity according to the human capital approach. Furthermore, a one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analysis with 5,000 Monte Carlo simulations were performed, in order to test the robustness of the results and define the proper 95% Confidence Interval (CI).

RESULTS
Overall, the total economic burden associated with respiratory allergies and their main co-morbidities was € 7.33 billion (95% CI: € 5.99-€ 8.82). A percentage of 27.5% was associated with indirect costs (€ 2.02; 95% CI: € 1.72-€ 2.34 billion) and 72.5% with direct costs (€ 5.32; 95% CI: € 4.04-€ 6.77 billion). In allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, combined allergic rhinitis and asthma, turbinate hypertrophy and allergic conjunctivitis, the model estimate an average annual economic burden of € 1,35 (95% CI: € 1,14-€ 1,58) billion, € 1,72 (95% CI: € 1,14-€ 2,43) billion, € 1,62 billion (€ 0,91-€ 2,53) billion, € 0,12 (€ 0,07-€ 0,17) billion, € 0,46 (€ 0,16-€ 0,92) billion respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
To our knowledge, this is the first study in which direct costs (incurred by NHS) and indirect ones (incurred by the society) were taken into account to estimate the overall burden associated with respiratory allergies and their main co-morbidities in our Country. In conclusion, this work may be considered an efficient tool for public decision-makers to correctly understand the economic aspects involved by the management and treatment of respiratory allergies-induced diseases in Italy.


The Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain, PAO1, has three putative γ-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) genes: ggtI, ggtII, and ggtIII. In this study, the expression of each of these genes in P. aeruginosa PAO1 was analyzed, and the properties of the corresponding GGT proteins were investigated. This is the first report on biochemical characterization of GGT paralogs from Pseudomonas species. The crude extracts prepared from P. aeruginosa PAO1 exhibited hydrolysis and transpeptidation activities of 17.3 and 65.0 mU/mg, respectively, and the transcription of each gene to mRNA was confirmed by RT-PCR. All genes were cloned, and the expression plasmids constructed were introduced into an Escherichia coli expression system. Enzyme activity of the expressed protein of ggtI (PaGGTI) was not detected in the system, while the enzyme activities of the expressed proteins derived from ggtII and ggtIII (PaGGTII and PaGGTIII, respectively) were detected. However, the enzyme activity of PaGGTII was very low and easily decreased. PaGGTII with C-terminal his-tag (PaGGTII25aa) showed increased activity and stability, and the purified enzyme consisted of a large subunit of 40 kDa and a small subunit of 28 kDa. PaGGTIII consisted of a large subunit of 37 kDa and a small subunit of 24 kDa. The maximum hydrolysis and transpeptidation activities of PaGGTII25aa were obtained at 40ºC-50ºC, and the maximum hydrolysis and transpeptidation activities of PaGGTIII were obtained at 50ºC-60ºC. These enzymes retained approximately 80% of their hydrolysis and transpeptidation activities after incubation at 50ºC for 10 min, reflecting good stability. Both PaGGTII25aa and PaGGTIII showed higher activities of hydrolysis and transpeptidation in the alkali range than in the acidic range. However, they were highly stable at a wide pH range (5-10.5).


Fully Attentional Networks (FAN) like Transformer (Vaswani et al. 2017) has shown superior results in Neural Machine Translation (NMT) tasks and has become a solid baseline for translation tasks. More recent studies also have reported experimental results that additional contextual sentences improve translation qualities of NMT models (Voita et al. 2018; Müller et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2018). However, those studies have exploited multiple context sentences as a single long concatenated sentence, that may cause the models to suffer from inefficient computational complexities and long-range dependencies. In this paper, we propose Hierarchical Context Encoder (HCE) that is able to exploit multiple context sentences separately using the hierarchical FAN structure. Our proposed encoder first abstracts sentence-level information from preceding sentences in a self-attentive way, and then hierarchically encodes context-level information. Through extensive experiments, we observe that our HCE records the best performance measured in BLEU score on English-German, English-Turkish, and English-Korean corpus. In addition, we observe that our HCE records the best performance in a crowd-sourced test set which is designed to evaluate how well an encoder can exploit contextual information. Finally, evaluation on English-Korean pronoun resolution test suite also shows that our HCE can properly exploit contextual information.


: Outhospital pneumonia and bronchitis by service men by call-up in Northern fleet is still high. In 2004 for prophylaxis of these diseases in calendar of prophylactic immunization for service men was used vaccine "Pneumo-23" of the firm "Aventis Paster" (France). In the autumn period 900 call-up persons were vaccined. There was analyzed the dynamic of morbidity of bronchitis and outhospital pneumonia among the call-up persons during following 4 months. Veridical reduction of morbidity in analyzed groups of vaccined and not vaccined wasn't found. It was proposed to realize vaccination by "Pneumo-23" for 1-3 months earlier the call-up.