The present experiment investigated ability-performance relationships for two memory skills, each of which required associative learning. Evidence suggests that, after practice, young and old adults have equivalent associative learning abilities (Fisk and Rogers, 1991; Kausler, 1982). We provided 41 young and 52 old adults with extensive practice on consistently and varied versions of a memory search task and a noun pair look-up task (Ackerman and Woltz, 1993). Only consistent practice allows associative learning because the stimulus items are consistently paired; in varied practice, item pairings change across practice and associative learning is not possible. We also assessed a wide range of abilities for each subject and were thus able to investigate ability-performance relationships across practice conditions and across age groups. These relationships provide an indication of the underlying abilities related to task performance (Ackerman, 1988). The mean data suggested that both young and old adults demonstrated successful associative learning in the two CM tasks. The individual differences data suggest, however, that different abilities may be driving performance across the two age groups. These data have important implications for predicting whether or not older adults will successfully acquire a new skill. If the target skill requires associative learning, older adults, may perform as efficiently as young adults if they are provided with sufficient, consistent practice. The ability-performance data suggest that predictions about which individuals will be most successful at skills requiring associative learning, may be dependent on the age of the target population.


A novel stochastic optimisation approach to solve constrained economic load dispatch problem using hybrid bacterial foraging (BF) technique is presented. in order to explore the search space for finding the local minima of the current location, the simplex algorithm called nelder-mead is used along with BF algorithm. the proposed methodology easily takes care of solving non-convex economic dispatch problems along with different constraints such as transmission losses, dynamic operation constraints (ramp rate limits) and prohibited zones. simulations were performed over various standard test systems with different number of generating units and comparisons are performed with other existing relevant approaches. the findings affirmed the robustness and proficiency of proposed methodology over other existing techniques.


We present short and long-term results of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation after hyper-fractionated total body irradiation and high dose cyclophosphamide in ten patients treated for leukaemia during the period 1985-89. Three patients died from complications connected to the transplantation, while seven are living free from leukaemia 18 to 59 months after transplantation (mean 41 months). Two patients need treatment for chronic graft versus host disease. Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation is expensive and risky. Close cooperation between clinicians and laboratory specialists is essential. The treatment increases long term survival and probably cures certain patients with leukaemia. Some of these patients will need treatment for chronic graft versus host disease and other late sequelae.


Patients with Hodgkin's disease, Stage I-III, underwent combined therapy (polychemotherapy according to the COPP scheme and irradiation) combined with splenectomy and levamisole immunostimulation. The circulating immune complexes (IC), serum immunoglobulins of I, A and M classes and the activity of neutrophil phagocytosis at the stages of treatment, at varying time of remission and in relapse of disease were determined. Polychemotherapy and its combination with irradiation caused a decrease in the content of circulating IC associated with a decrease in the level of immunoglobulins and an increase in relative phagocytic activity. The addition of the immunostimulator brought about better elimination of IC from the body. Immunostimulators are particularly recommended in large irradiation doses received by patients in prophylactic irradiation of zones of the accumulation of the lymph nodes. Combined therapy (with and without immunostimulator) in the presence of splenectomy produced no effect in the elimination of IC from the body in early time after treatment. A study of the IC level in the blood serum is an important factor in the evaluation of the patients' immune status, therapeutic efficacy and prognosis of disease.


Diabetes is a health issue for many Latinos. Extension can help provide diabetes self-management education for rural-residing Latinos. In a pilot study, we evaluated the Extension-delivered diabetes program Latinos Living Well (LLW), as provided to 76 rural-residing Latino adults in a midwestern state. LLW consists of four weekly lessons that include hands-on activities and cooking practicums. Participants completed diabetes self-management, self-efficacy, and knowledge questionnaires; significant (p ≤ .05) changes from before to after the program were detected for each outcome measure. Additionally, participants viewed LLW favorably. Results suggest that LLW is an effective, culturally relevant diabetes self-management education program for Latinos and is appropriate for Extension delivery.


Growing interest in the fields of core excited atomic, molecular and solid species has resulted in a demand for a compact, low cost laboratory source in the XUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) region of the spectrum. In contrast to the optical spectra of the valence electrons, which can mainly be described by the one-electron picture of the central field approximation, inner shell excitations are characterised by strong many electron effects causing the breakdown of the simple one-electron picture. Photoabsorption experiments provide valuable information on these many-electron correlation effects in atoms, excited atoms and ions. The measurement of photoionization cross sections of free ions pose considerable experimental difficulties, as a suitable absorbing column, of adequate density, must be produced and back lit by a bright, synchronised XUV continuum emitting source. Through the work reported in this thesis, a multi-laser, multi-channel spectrometer facility, for the measurement of photoionization cross sections of free atoms, excited atoms and ions, in the XUV has been developed.

The facility is based on the DLP (Dual Laser Plasma) technique, whereby the absorbing column is produced by the ablation of spectroscopically pure targets, in vacuo, by either a flashlamp pumped dye laser (= 1 J in 2.5 p,s) or by a Q-switched ruby laser (~ 1.5 J in 30 ns). The synchronised XUV continuum source is generated by tightly focusing the output of a Nd:YAG laser (= 1 J in 15 ns) on a metal of high atomic number. Selection and isolation of the absorbing species of interest is achieved by an appropriate combination of laser type, target irradiation, spatial probing position of absorbing target and temporal separation of laser optical pulses.The continuum XUV radiation passes through the absorbing column and is collected by a toroidal mirror which efficiently couples the light into a 2.2 m grazing incidence spectrometer. The spectrometer is equipped with an MCP (Micro Channel Plate) self scanning diode array detector.

The performance, capabilities and reliability of the facility have been demonstrated through the undertaking of a varied programme of XUV photoemission and photoabsorption experiments. The XUV photoabsorption characteristics of aluminium thin films, helium, argon,and free metal atoms and ions in the transition regions of the Periodic Table have been recorded. Where possible comparisons have been drawn against a background of recent significant experiments in the field.


Abstract Norfloxacin-azole hybrids 3 and 6a,b were synthesized starting from norfloxacin. The treatment of these compounds with amines as a one-pot three-component reaction produced the corresponding amino derivatives 4a,b, 7a–g and 8a,b in good yields. The conventional and microwave-assisted methods were used with the latter method being more efficient. The structures of the synthesized compounds were characterized by elemental analysis, IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS. All compounds were screened for their antimicrobial activities. Most of them exhibit excellent antibacterial activity but are not active against selected fungi.


In-memory computing (IMC) architectures provide a much needed solution to energy-efficiency barriers posed by Von-Neumann computing. The functions implemented in such in-memory architectures are often proprietary and constitute confidential intellectual property (IP). Our studies indicate that IMC architectures implemented using resistive RAM (RRAM) are susceptible to side channel attack (SCA). Unlike the conventional SCAs that are aimed to leak private keys from cryptographic implementations, SCA on IMC for reverse engineering (SCARE) can reveal the sensitive IP implemented within the memory through power/timing side channels. Therefore, the adversary does not need to perform invasive reverse engineering (RE) to unlock the functionality. We demonstrate SCARE by taking recent IMC architectures, such as dynamic computing in memory (DCIM) and memristor-aided logic (MAGIC) as test cases. Simulation results indicate that AND, OR, and NOR gates (which are the building blocks of complex functions) yield distinct power and timing signatures based on the number of inputs, making them vulnerable to SCA. We show that adversary can use templates (using foundry-calibrated simulations or fabricating known functions in test chips) and analysis to identify the structure of the implemented function by testing a limited number of patterns. We also propose countermeasures, such as redundant inputs and expansion of literals. Redundant inputs can mask the IP with 25% area and 20% power overhead. However, functions can be found at higher RE effort. Expansion of literals incurs 36% power overhead. However, it imposes a brute force search increasing the adversarial RE effort by $3.04\times $ .


Endoscopic skull base reconstruction (ESBR) is an established option
for complete reconstruction of the anterior skull base (ASB). While free
 mucosal grafts are still relevant for limited defects (<10 mm), the
evolution of vascular flaps has extended the limits of reconstruction
with up to 94% success in defect closure and avoidance of cerebrospinal
fluid (CSF) leak. This article discusses the planning and execution in
ESBR for anterior fossa defects. Factors influencing the choice of
reconstruction (flap location, size, influence of raised intracranial
pressure, high flow CSF leak, radiotherapy) are examined. The
reconstructive options are discussed, including the nasoseptal flap
(NSF), inferior turbinate pedicled flap and the endopericranial flap,
with particular emphasis on the technical aspects of reconstruction
using the NSF. A step-by-step description, with an accompanying video,
is provided. Techniques applicable to ESBR in general (subdural graft
placement, graft/flap placement, barrier and support dressing) are
covered. Novel flaps for ASB reconstruction are also briefly-described.


Spreading of molten core (corium) on reactor containment vessel floor and molten corium-concrete interaction (MCCI) are important phenomena in the late phase of a severe accident for assessment of the containment integrity and managing the severe accident. The severe accident research at Waseda University has been advancing to show that simulations with moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method (one of the particle methods) can greatly improve the analytical capability and mechanical understanding of the melt behavior in severe accidents. MPS models have been developed and verified regarding calculations of radiation and thermal field, solid-liquid phase transition, buoyancy, and temperature dependency of viscosity to simulate phenomena, such as spreading of corium, ablation of concrete by the corium, crust formation and cooling of the corium by top flooding. Validations have been conducted against experiments such as FARO L26S, ECOKATS-V1, Theofanous, and SPREAD for spreading, SURC-2, SURC-4, SWISS-1, and SWISS-2 for MCCI. These validations cover melt spreading behaviors and MCCI by mixture of molten oxides (including prototypic UO2-ZrO2), metals, and water. Generally, the analytical results show good agreement with the experiment with respect to the leading edge of spreading melt and ablation front history of concrete. The MPS results indicate that crust formation may play important roles in melt spreading and MCCI. There is a need to develop a code for two dimensional MCCI experiment simulation with MPS method as future study, which will be able to simulate anisotropic ablation of concrete.


Given any set of points $S$ in the unit square that contains the origin, does a set of axis aligned rectangles, one for each point in $S$, exist, such that each of them has a point in $S$ as its lower-left corner, they are pairwise interior disjoint, and the total area that they cover is at least 1/2? This question is also known as Freedman's conjecture (conjecturing that such a set of rectangles does exist) and has been open since Allen Freedman posed it in 1969. In this paper, we improve the best known lower bound on the total area that can be covered from 0.09121 to 0.1039. Although this step is small, we introduce new insights that push the limits of this analysis. Our lower bound uses a greedy algorithm with a particular order of the points in $S$. Therefore, it also implies that this greedy algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of 0.1039. We complement the result with an upper bound of 3/4 on the approximation ratio for a natural class of greedy algorithms that includes the one that achieves the lower bound.


Background The role of rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies (anti-CCP) in the response to treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is not fully understood. Studies investigating changes in the levels of RF in response to synthetic and biological DMARDs have not been able to confirm a definitive relationship between decreased RF subtypes and clinical response, while studies investigating changes in anti-CCP levels have yielded conflicting results. In addition, to our knowledge the correlation between autoantibodies and tocilizumab treatment has been poorly investigated. Objectives This study investigates the relationship between the presence and levels of RF and anti-CCP and clinical response to tocilizumab in patients with RA. Methods This was an observational longitudinal study in 27 patients with active, long-standing RA despite previous treatment with >2 DMARDs and/or steroids. Patients were treated with tocilizumab 8 mg/kg every 4 weeks. All patients were assessed using approved clinical scales (VES, PCR, HAQ, DAS28-VES, DAS28-PCR, CDAI, and SDAI). IgM-, IgA- and IgG-RFs and anti-CCP antibodies were assessed using ELISA at baseline, 3 months (T1), 6 months (T2), and 12 months (T3). Results All patients showed significant and sustained clinical response to tocilizmuab treatment. All clinical scales with the exception of HAQ significantly decreased. There was a significant correlation (p=0.03) between anti-CCP and SDAI changes from baseline at T1 and T2. Likewise there were no significant correlations between antibody count at T0 and changes in the DAS-28 VES at T1 and at T2. No significant relationship between clinical scales and antibody levels RF-IgG, IgA, IgM and anti-CCP levels were observed. Conclusions Tocilizumab is effective in treating the clinical symptoms of RA, and the efficacy of this molecule was not correlated with either RF or anti-CCP levels. There is now a growing body of evidence suggesting that markers associated with clinical response may not be the same biomarkers that predict risk of further joint damage References MIKULS TR, O'DELL JR, STONER JA, ET AL: Association of rheumatoid arthritis treatment response and disease duration with declines in serum levels of IgM rheumatoid factor and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody. Arthritis Rheum 2004; 50: 3776–82. KARSDAL MA, WOODWORTH T, HENRIKSEN K, ET AL: Biochemical markers of ongoing joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis--current and future applications, limitations and opportunities. Arthritis Res Ther 2011; 13: 215 TAKEUCHI T, TANAKA Y, AMANO K, ET AL: Clinical, radiographic and functional effectiveness of tocilizumab for rheumatoid arthritis patients-REACTION 52-week study. Rheumatology 2011; 50: 1908–15. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


The Indian pearl oyster Pinctada fucata can be used for producing cultured pearls of good quality, by artificially inducing the oyster to secrete mother- of -pearl around an implanted spherical core material produced from shells. Pearl culture is an industrial scale operation.The estimated production in a five-year project employing a total of 2 million oysters would be around 1.2 million cultured pearls of Grades A and B. The approximate cost of production is Rs.4.20 per cultured pearl.
 Due to uncertainity in population of pearl oysters a pearl culture industry in India will have to depend largely on pearl oyster seed produced in hatcheries. Broodstocks are artificially spawned in the hatchery and the larvae are reared in tanks. These young pearl oysters may be supplied to pearl production farms.The production in hatchery is described. A hatchery with about 50 larval rearing tanks can yield a production of about 500,000 spat per spawning. The approximate production cost is Rs 0.22 per spat. The hatchery can work either as a composite unit of pearl culture or as an independent unit supplying spat, depending on the growth of the industry.


Many methods have set state-of-the-art performance on restoring images degraded by bad weather such as rain, haze, fog, and snow, however they are designed specifically to handle one type of degradation. In this paper, we propose a method that can handle multiple bad weather degradations: rain, fog, snow and adherent raindrops using a single network. To achieve this, we first design a generator with multiple task-specific encoders, each of which is associated with a particular bad weather degradation type. We utilize a neural architecture search to optimally process the image features extracted from all encoders. Subsequently, to convert degraded image features to clean background features, we introduce a series of tensor-based operations encapsulating the underlying physics principles behind the formation of rain, fog, snow and adherent raindrops. These operations serve as the basic building blocks for our architectural search. Finally, our discriminator simultaneously assesses the correctness and classifies the degradation type of the restored image. We design a novel adversarial learning scheme that only backpropagates the loss of a degradation type to the respective task-specific encoder. Despite being designed to handle different types of bad weather, extensive experiments demonstrate that our method performs competitively to the individual and dedicated state-of-the-art image restoration methods.


ABSTRACT AND SUMMARY OF EXPERIMENTAL FINDINGS The frontotemporal dementias (FTD) are a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative diseases that cause variable profiles of fronto-insulo-temporal network disintegration. Loss of empathy and dysfunctional social interaction are a leading features of FTD and major determinants of care burden, but remain poorly understood and difficult to measure with conventional neuropsychological instruments. Building on a large body of work in the healthy brain showing that embodied responses are important components of emotional responses and empathy, I performed a series of experiments to examine the extent to which the induction and decoding of somatic physiological responses to the emotions of others are degraded in FTD, and to define the underlying neuroanatomical changes responsible for these deficits. I systematically studied a range of modalities across the entire syndromic spectrum of FTD, including daily life emotional sensitivity, the cognitive categorisation of emotions, interoceptive accuracy, automatic facial mimicry, autonomic responses, and structural and functional neuroanatomy to deconstruct aberrant emotional reactivity in these diseases. My results provide proof of principle for the utility of physiological measures in deconstructing complex socioemotional symptoms and suggest that these warrant further investigation as clinical biomarkers in FTD. Chapter 3: Using a heartbeat counting task, I found that interoceptive accuracy is impaired in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia, but correlates with sensitivity to the emotions of others across FTD syndromes. Voxel based morphometry demonstrated that impaired interoceptive accuracy correlates with grey matter volume in anterior cingulate, insula and amygdala. Chapter 4: Using facial electromyography to index automatic imitation, I showed that mimicry of emotional facial expressions is impaired in the behavioural and right temporal variants of FTD. Automatic imitation predicted correct identification of facial emotions in healthy controls and syndromes focussed on the frontal lobes and insula, but not in syndromes focussed on the temporal lobes, suggesting that automatic imitation aids emotion recognition only when social concepts and semantic stores are intact. Voxel based morphometry replicated previously identified neuroanatomical correlates of emotion identification ability, while automatic imitation was associated with grey matter volume in a visuomotor network including primary visual and motor cortices, visual motion area (MT/V5) and supplementary motor cortex. Chapter 5: By recording heart rate during viewing of facial emotions, I showed that the normal cardiac reactivity to emotion is impaired in FTD syndromes with fronto-insular atrophy (behavioural variant FTD and nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia) but not in syndromes focussed on the temporal lobes (right temporal variant FTD and semantic variant primary progressive aphasia). Unlike automatic imitation, cardiac reactivity dissociated from emotion identification ability. Voxel based morphometry revealed grey matter correlates of cardiac reactivity in anterior cingulate, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. Chapter 6: Subjects viewed videos of facial emotions during fMRI scanning, with concomitant recording of heart rate and pupil size. I identified syndromic profiles of reduced activity in posterior face responsive regions including posterior superior temporal sulcus and fusiform face area. Emotion identification ability was predicted by activity in more anterior areas including anterior cingulate, insula, inferior frontal gyrus and temporal pole. Autonomic reactivity related to activity in both components of the central autonomic control network and regions responsible for processing the sensory properties of the stimuli.


Gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) were selected for the reactive brilliant red X-3B simulated wastewater treatment, perovskite oxide LaNiO3 as the catalyst. And a satisfying degradation effect was achieved. The optimal conditions for the catalyst preparation with sol-gel method were 1.5 as the molar ratio of citric acid and metal ions, 10 as the pH, and 750 °C as the roasting temperature. The optimal conditions for the electrodes preparation were 1 g pore-forming agent, 0.6 g catalyst, 3 g PTFE and 300 °C as the roasting temperature. Scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction were applied to analyze the performance of catalyst and electrodes, and the results were satisfying.


Medical imaging tools technologically supported by the recent advances in the areas of computer vision can provide systems that aid medical professionals to carry out their expert diagnostics and investigations more effectively and efficiently. Two medical application domains that can benefit by such tools are ophthalmology and Total Hip Replacement (THR). Although a literature review conducted within the research context of this thesis revealed a number of existing solutions these are either very much limited by their application scope, robustness or scope of the extensiveness of the functionality made available. Therefore this thesis focuses on initially investigating a number of requirements defined by leading experts in the respective specialisms and providing practical solutions, well supported by the theoretical advances of computer vision and pattern recognition.
This thesis provides three novel algorithms/systems for use within image analysis in the areas of Ophthalmology and THR. The first approach uses Contourlet Transform to analyse and quantify corneal neovascularization. Experimental results are provided to prove that the proposed approach provides improved robustness in the presence of noise, non-uniform illumination and reflections, common problems that exist in captured corneal images. The second approach uses a colour based segmentation approach to segment, measure and analyse corneal ulcers using the HVS colour space. Literature review conducted within the research context of this thesis revealed that there is no such system available for analysis and measurement of corneal ulcers. Finally the thesis provides a robust approach towards detecting and analysing possible dislocations and misalignments in THR X-ray images. The algorithm uses localised histogram equalisation to enhance the quality of X-ray images first prior to using Hough Transforms and filtered back projections to locate and recognise key points of the THR x-ray images. These key points are then used to measure the possible presence of dislocations and misalignments. The thesis further highlights possible extensions and improvements to the proposed algorithms and systems.


In November 2005, the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform issued a report that, among other things, proposed a significant change in the rules for taxing foreign income of U.S. companies: a move from the present worldwide/credit system to a territorial or exemption system under which U.S. persons' income from active business operations in foreign countries, whether carried on directly or thru subsidiary corporations, would be exempt from U.S. taxation. Earlier in 2005, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation suggested a similar shift. The Panel and Joint Committee staff relied on two arguments: (1) The current system, by deferring taxation of foreign earnings of U.S.-owned foreign corporations, distorts business decisions on where and how to invest these earnings; and (2) the current system often allows U.S. multinational enterprises to achieve U.S. tax results more favorable than they could obtain under a territorial system. This paper addresses the second of these justifications. It explains some of the techniques used by U.S. multinational enterprises to achieve U.S. tax results more favorable than territorial taxation, and it examines whether these results are inevitable consequences of the current regime or flow from aspects of the current rules that could easily be changed. It concludes that Congress and the Treasury could, without adding significant complexity to the law, reform the historical worldwide/credit system in ways that would ensure tax results largely consistent with the underlying premises of this system. Moreover, if not corrected, many of the deficiencies in the current system will plague the proposed system much as they have the current system. The Panel and the Joint Committee staff fell into a common error in tax policy discussions: comparing current law, in its highly-corrupted state, with an idealized alternative and reaching the obvious conclusion that the latter is preferable. In fairness, the proposed system must be compared with the best feasible version of a worldwide/credit system.


Fire is well recognized as a key Earth system process, but its causes and influences vary greatly across spatial and temporal scales. The controls of fire are often portrayed as a set of superimposed triangles, with processes ranging from oxygen to weather to climate, combustion to fuel to vegetation, and local to landscape to regional drivers over broadening spatial and lengthening temporal scale. Most ecological studies and fire management plans consider the effects of fire-weather and fuels on local to sub-regional scales and time frames of years to decades. Fire reconstructions developed from high-resolution tree-ring records and lake-sediment data that span centuries to millennia offer unique insights about fire's role that cannot otherwise be obtained. Such records help disclose the historical range of variability in fire activity over the duration of a vegetation type; the role of large-scale changes of climate, such as seasonal changes in summer insolation; the consequences of major reorganizations in vegetation; and the influence of prehistoric human activity in different ecological settings. This paleoecological perspective suggests that fire-regime definitions, which focus on the characteristic frequency, size and intensity of fire and particular fuel types, should be reconceptualized to better include the controls of fire regimes over the duration of a particular biome. We suggest that approaches currently used to analyze fire regimes across multiple spatial scales should be employed to examine fire occurrence across multiple temporal scales. Such cross-scale patterns would better reveal the full variability of particular fire regimes and their controls, and provide relevant information for the types of fire regimes likely to occur in the future with projected climate and land-use change.


Information on fault zone structure is essential for our understanding of earthquake mechanics, continental deformation and seismic hazard. We use the scattered seismic wavefield to study the subsurface structure of the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) in the region of the 1999 İzmit and Düzce ruptures using data from an 18-month dense deployment of seismometers with a nominal station spacing of 7 km. Using the forward- and back-scattered energy that follows the direct P-wave arrival from teleseismic earthquakes, we apply a scattered wave inversion approach and are able to resolve changes in lithospheric structure on a scale of 10 km or less in an area of about 130 km by 100 km across the NAFZ. We find several crustal interfaces that are laterally incoherent beneath the surface strands of the NAFZ and evidence for contrasting crustal structures either side of the NAFZ, consistent with the presence of juxtaposed crustal blocks and ancient suture zones. Although the two strands of the NAFZ in the study region strike roughly east–west, we detect strong variations in structure both north–south, across boundaries of the major blocks, and east–west, parallel to the strike of the NAFZ. The surface expression of the two strands of the NAFZ is coincident with changes on main interfaces and interface terminations throughout the crust and into the upper mantle in the tomographic sections. We show that a dense passive network of seismometers is able to capture information from the scattered seismic wavefield and, using a tomographic approach, to resolve the fine scale structure of crust and lithospheric mantle even in geologically complex regions. Our results show that major shear zones exist beneath the NAFZ throughout the crust and into the lithospheric mantle, suggesting a strong coupling of strain at these depths.


Abstract This study investigates the effects of servant leadership on employee attitudes, behaviors, and psychological climates. In Study 1, the empirical results are based on data for 284 employees from 12 different organizations, and in Study 2, the results are based on data for 286 employees from 15 different organizations. The results show that servant leadership is positively and significantly related to organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and psychological climate. The relationship between servant leadership and job satisfaction is also partially mediated by psychological climate. With these results, this study contributes to research showing that leadership has both direct and mediating effects on employee attitudes and behaviors.


The Qinling Mountain Range (QMR), where more than 500 hominin fossils and Paleolithic sites have been preserved, was a major center of hominin evolution and settlement and an important link for the hominin migration and dispersal between the north and the south during the Pleistocene in China. The rich culture remains and the related data make it possible and meaningful to study the characteristics and mechanisms of hominin occupation and dispersal in the region. This paper has summarized and analyzed the geographical distributions and chronologies of 55 dated hominin fossils and Paleolithic sites in the QMR to date. By combining them with the evidence from the loess–paleosol sequence, a relatively continuous and chronological sequence of hominin occupation and dispersal has been established, in which we have identified five stages, viz. ~before 1.2 Ma, the sporadic occurrence stage of early hominin occupation; ~1.2–0.7 Ma, the initial expansion stage; ~0.7–0.3 Ma, the stability and maintenance stage; ~0.3–0.05 Ma, the large-scale expansion stage; ~0.05–0.01 Ma, the sharp decline stage of the record of hominin occupation. We conclude that the environmental and ecosystem changes associated with the MPT drove early hominins to disperse southwards across the QMR. In addition, the evidence suggests that the hominin occupation and dispersal here was broadly continuous during both glacial and interglacial scales from early to late Pleistocene, and that the southern QMR provided a glacial refuge.


As quantum network technologies develop, the need for teaching and engineering tools such as simulators and emulators rises. QuNetSim addresses this need. QuNetSim is a Python software framework that delivers an easy-to-use interface for simulating quantum networks at the network layer, which can be extended at little effort of the user to implement the corresponding link layer protocols. The goal of QuNetSim is to make it easier to investigate and test quantum networking protocols over various quantum network configurations and parameters. The framework incorporates many known quantum network protocols so that users can quickly build simulations using a quantum-networking toolbox in a few lines of code and so that beginners can easily learn to implement their own quantum networking protocols. Unlike most current tools, QuNetSim simulates with real time and is, therefore, well suited to control laboratory hardware. Here, we present a software design overview of QuNetSim and demonstrate examples of protocols implemented with it. We describe ongoing work, which uses QuNetSim as a library, and describe possible future directions for the development of QuNetSim.


This paper deals with 18 species of the genus Palpita Hubner from China. Among them, P. curvispina sp. nov. is described as new to science; P. kiminensis Kirti et Rose, P. indannulata Inoue and P. perunionalis Inoue are newly recorded to the Chinese fauna. The genital structures of the new species are illustrated. A key to all the known species is given.


Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) are two dissimilar personalities who inhabited different universes but whose poetry presents many similarities. They even share some influences and it is possible that Emily Dickinson influenced MacDiarmid through Ezra Pound. Theirs is a poetry with a powerful lyrical conciseness and an aphoristic nature that makes possible to define it as aphoristic haikai. Apart from their parallel form, they deal with similar themes: Life, Death, God, Eternity, Immortality, Beauty, Truth, Memories and Oblivion. Moreover, Horace's philosophy of carpe diem underlies their poetry and their lives. Their work (taking into account that we do not take into account in this paper MacDiarmid's most political poetic corpus) is similar because it shares a universal side. But at the same time, we cannot forget that for Emily Dickinson her universe was her Poetry and her home, whereas for MacDiarmid his universe was Scotland and Poetry. This paper shows how they are very alike, but very different at the same time.


West Kalimantan Province, Indonesia, is an area that is crossed by the equator and its territory is mostly peat area. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of losses due to forest and land fires and srategies for preventing forest and land fires in the Forest Management Unit (FMU) in West Kalimantan Province. This research was conducted from May to October 2018 in the FMU Kubu Raya, the FMU South Ketapang, and FMU North Ketapang. The research method used was descriptive method. Vegetation Data were measured with the stratified random sampling in 20 x 100 m transect. Social economic data were taken by using 30 respondents from 6 vilages with based on purposive sampling. Data analysis regarding losses due to forest and land fires was performed using the economic valuation value analysis while forest and land fires' prevention strategies in the FMUs were determined using SWOT and IE (Internal-External) Matrix. The results showed that the area of forest and land fires reached 50 ha with a total loss of IDR 8 billion. Forest and land fire prevention strategies using SWOT were determined in the growing and developing parts with the implemented alternative strategies, i.e., intensive and integrative.


The 2021 East Asia sandstorm began from the Eastern Gobi desert steppe in Mongolia on March 14, and later spread to northern China and the Korean Peninsula. It was the biggest sandstorm to hit China in a decade, causing severe air pollution and a significant threat to human health. Capturing and predicting such extreme events is critical for society. The Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART and the associated dust emission model FLEXDUST have been recently developed and applied to simulate global dust cycles. However, how well the model captures Asian dust storm events remains to be explored. In this study, we applied FLEXPART to simulate the recent 2021 East Asia sandstorm, and evaluated its performance comparing with observation and observation-constrained reanalysis datasets, such as the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) and CAMS global atmospheric composition forecasts (CAMS-F). We found that the default setting of FLEXDUST substantially underestimates the strength of dust emission and FLEXPART modelled dust concentration in this storm compared to that in MERRA-2 and CAMS-F. An improvement of the parametrization of bare soil fraction, topographical scaling, threshold friction velocity and vertical dust flux scheme based on Kok et al. (Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2014, 14, 13023–13041) in FLEXDUST can reproduce the strength and spatio-temporal pattern of the dust storm comparable to MERRA-2 and CAMS-F. However, it still underestimates the observed spike of dust concentration during the dust storm event over northern China, and requires further improvement in the future. The improved FLEXDUST and FLEXPART perform better than MERRA-2 and CAMS-F in capturing the observed particle size distribution of dust aerosols, highlighting the importance of using more dust size bins and size-dependent parameterization for dust emission, and dry and wet deposition schemes for modelling the Asian dust cycle and its climatic feedbacks.


Mikhail Gorbachev's reform promised to accelerate the growth of the Soviet economy, leading it out of the trap of stagnation. Boris Yeltsin's circle of reformers also believed that shedding the status of empire would encourage Russia's process of "catching up." Nationalists from Soviet republics believed that the independence of their homelands would prompt similar economic effects. Did these hopes and promises materialize? Two measures are used to assess the economic effects of the dissolution of the USSR . (1) Acceleration performance: did the GDP per capita of the former Soviet (fSU) republics grow more rapidly during post-communist independence than in the late Soviet "stagnation era"? (2) Catching up performance: did fSU republics decrease the GDP per capita gap, separating them from the U.S. (fulfilling the promise to catch up and overtake U.S. which legitimated Communist rule in the USSR since 1961)? After dividing the fSU republics into two subsets ("success" and "failure" cases), multi-value qualitative comparative analysis ( QCA ) is applied to explore the explanatory power of differences in the models of post-communist capitalism, involvement in wars, and natural resource endowments.


The compositional profile of olive oil is strictly connected to the raw material characteristics, nevertheless technological processes utilized to extract the oil fraction can deeply impact on its final chemical composition. Trace quantities of elements are naturally present in olive oil. To make objective and measurable food quality and traceability, it is necessary to develop analytical methods useful to detect contaminants potentially coming from any phases of the supply chain and define characteristic markers and patterns for the authenticity verification and origin demonstration. The objective of the paper is twofold: a) to verify the influence of the addition of cryogen (CO2,s), directly to olives during pre-milling phase, on the yield of the oil production; b) to develop specific analytical methods for evaluating the elemental profile of olive oil and to collect some preliminary data about the possibility to use these methods in order to put in evidence the possible influence of different process conditions on the olive oil elemental profile. The experimental evidences show as the addition of cryogen directly to the olives during pre-milling phase seem induce a general increase in the oil extraction yield, ranging from 2 to 12,4%. While preliminary results show a rather homogeneous elemental content among all the analyzed samples of olive oil, samples of olive oil obtained by the "traditional" process showed in general a higher content of Ca, Cr, Mg, Si and Zn, compared to those obtained by the addition of "carbonic snow". The analytical methods for evaluating the olive oil elemental profile by ICP-AES and ICP-MS were set up and the methodologies for data processing and statistical analysis were developed, so they could be applied during the next crop season to study in depth the influence of different process conditions on the olive oil elemental profile.


Political scientists studying institutional development face the challenge of accounting for both continuity and change over time. Models of path dependence based on increasing returns, inspired by the example of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard, have played an important role in the analysis of institutional continuity, but they have been criticized for their inability to accommodate change. In this article I present an alternative model of path dependence inspired by the example of the Internet, a technology that has changed fundamentally since its invention. The composite-standard model of path dependence illustrates how complex political institutions subject to increasing returns can evolve gradually over time through a changing mix of lower-level component parts. By incorporating mechanisms of institutional change, such as conversion and layering, within an increasing returnsbased theoretical framework, the composite-standard model highlights new interconnections among these previously distinct processes and offers new insights into the nature of long-term political change.


Existing space-time codes have focused on multiple- antenna systems with linear modulation schemes such as phase- shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation. Continuous phase modulation (CPM) is an attractive scheme for digital transmission because of its constant envelope which is needed for power efficient transmitters. Recent research has shown that space-time coded CPM can achieve transmit diversity to improve performance while maintaining the compact spectrum of CPM signals. However, these efforts mainly combine space- time coding (STC) with CPM to achieve spatial diversity at the cost of a high decoding complexity. In this paper, we design space-time block codes (STBC) for binary CPM with modulation index h = 1/2 and derive low-complexity receivers for these systems. The proposed scheme has a much lower decoding complexity than STC CPM with the Viterbi decoder and still achieves near-optimum error performances.


Bovine TB (bTB) is endemic in Irish cattle and has eluded eradication despite considerable expenditure, amid debate over the relative roles of badgers and cattle in disease transmission. Using a comprehensive dataset from Northern Ireland ( > 10,000 km 2 ; 29,513 cattle herds), we investigated interactions between host populations in one of the first large-scale risk factor analyses for new herd breakdowns to combine data on both species. Cattle risk factors (movements, international imports, bTB history, neighbours with bTB) were more strongly associated with herd risk than area-level measures of badger social group density, habitat suitability or persecution (sett disturbance). Highest risks were in areas of high badger social group density and high rates of persecution, potentially representing both responsive persecution of badgers in high cattle risk areas and effects of persecution on cattle bTB risk through badger social group disruption. Average badger persecution was associated with reduced cattle bTB risk (compared with high persecution areas), so persecution may contribute towards sustaining bTB hotspots; findings with important implications for existing and planned disease control programmes.


The authors provide practical insights for investors seeking exposure to the growing cryptocurrency space. Today, crypto is much more than just bitcoin, which historically dominated the space but accounted for just a 31% share of total crypto trading volume in June 2022. The authors discuss a wide variety of tokens, highlighting both their functionality and their investment properties. The authors critically compare popular valuation methods, and they contrast buy-and-hold investing with more active styles. The authors only deem return data from 2017 representative, but the use of intraday data boosts statistical power. Underlying crypto performance has been notoriously volatile, but volatility-targeting methods are effective at controlling risk, and trend-following strategies have performed well. Crypto assets display a low correlation with traditional risky assets in normal times, but the correlation also rises in the left tail of these risky assets. Finally, the authors detail important custody and regulatory considerations for institutional investors.


Past studies as well as the opinion of some top executives have suggested that inertia or outright resistance from operating management often thwarts the good intentions of top management in defining and implementing policies of corporate social responsibility. On the basis that managerial attitudes may reflect or give rise to such inertia or resistance, a study was done among a sample of Fortune 500 executivesboth operating-level and top-level managers. As contrasted to some previous research and speculation, differences between the attitudes of operating managers and top managers were found to be surprisingly infrequent and small in magnitude. The results suggest that, as a result of several recent developments, the attitudes among managers at both levels have reached a high degree of consensus.


The structure and performance of space-time multiuser detection receiver at base stationsof WCDMA system is analyzed, in which smart antenna is employed. WCDMA uplink signal model is established in this paper. Space-time multiuser receiver presented in this paper combines 2D-RAKE with parallel interference cancellation(PIC), and the improved parallel interference cancellation methods are given. A novel space-time multiuser detection scheme, 2DRAKE-GPPIC is proposed. This scheme employs smart antenna to suppress unexpected DOA (Direction Of Arrival) signal, uses RAKE receiver to combine different delays of expected signal, and utilizes grouped partial parallel interference cancellation (GPPIC) algorithm to suppress further the interference signal in the main lobe of array antennas. The simulation results reveal that the scheme of space-time multiuser detection presented in this paper has better performance for WCDMA system.


Using a known interpolation formula we introduce a class of numerical methods for approximating the solutions of scalar initial value problems for first order differential equations, which can be identified as explicit Runge-Kutta methods. We determine bounds for the local truncation error and we also compare the convergence order and the stability region with those for explicit Runge-Kutta methods, which have convergence order equal with number of stages (i.e. with 2, 3 and 4 stages). The convergence order is only two, but our methods have a larger absolute stability region than the above mentioned methods. In the last section a numerical example is provided, and the obtained numerical approximation is compared with the corresponding exact solution. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 65L05, 65L06.


On the Origin of the World (henceforth: Orig. World), one of the long lost Christian texts that were unearthed 1945 in Nag Hammadi, presents a fascinating retelling of the creation narrative in Genesis 1-3. One of the most striking departures from the "prooftext" is the manner in which the world and its plants and animals are conceived. Instead of the ex nihilo creation of the Hebrew Bible, Orig. World uses the imagery of procreative activities – conception and birth – to illustrate how the cosmos and its inhabitants came into existence.As Ismo Dunderberg points out in the introduction to his recent book Gnostic Morality Revisited, these early Christian cosmogonies aimed not only to provide a colorful story, but also to impart paraenetic teachings concerning everyday matters.[1] Could there be a particular reason why the mythmaker(s) of Orig. World replace the pseudo-procreative creations of the Hebrew bible with more explicit sexual imagery? And if so, what is the purpose of this creative exegesis? How does the cosmogony, the creation myth, relate to the cosmology, the understanding and evaluation of the created world?In this essay, it is argued that the procreative imagery in Orig. World has close parallels in the discourses of other early Christian teachers, who employed biological symbols in order to dispel the hypnotic hold of corporeal beauty. Worldly beauty, while not negative in itself, could provide a distraction and distance the believer from God. The procreative imagery in Orig. World, I suggest, has a similar function: through graphic depictions of bodily fluids, the mythmaker(s) of Orig. World wanted to remind its readers that the beauty of nature (as well as the worldly creations) was transitory and destined for destruction, as is the case for all things created through natural means.Furthermore, I suggest that Orig. World uses the sexual appetite of the gods and angels of the cosmos to provide the reader with an antitype that the believer must outshine through the practice of self-restraint and moderation.


Wealth management activity has grown rapidly in Australia over the past 25 years and the major banks now comprise a much larger share of the industry than they did previously. The returns on these activities across the major banks have varied, being close to those on traditional banking activities in some cases but below the cost of capital in others. By undertaking this line of business, banks have increased their resilience (by diversifying their income) but also face new risks. In part reflecting these risks, as well as a greater focus on capital management, banks have begun to re-examine the nature and extent of their involvement in wealth management.


Due to high rates of poverty, violence, and discrimination, the Roma (or Gypsy) population in Hungary is clearly seen as a "problem population." As such, in recent years, there has been a great proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working with and for this subordinated minority. In their work, NGOs use specific discursive strategies that clearly maintain the Roma as problems in need of solutions. In this article, I focus specifically on the manner in which well-meaning organizations, due to constraints from external forces, rely upon stories of discrimination and an overemphasis on poverty. In doing so, they construct the Roma as "needy subjects." Such a construction is problematic because (1) it often deprives the aid recipient of agency, (2) it obscures in-group differentiation and projects a homogenized identity focused on the most marginalized members of the group, and (3) it does not solve a double bind facing the agencies, whose continued funding and recognition rely upon continued reinforcement of differentiated rather than integrated status for those they try to serve. Given NGOs' growing role in delivering services and serving as a voice for marginalized people such as the Roma, recognizing and resolving this double bind is a critical task for European NGOs – and for the funding sources that support them –if they want to be effective in achieving their stated goals.


Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) functions as a signal molecule in plants under abiotic and biotic stresses. Leaves of detached maize (Zea mays L.) seedlings were used to study the function of H2O2 pretreatment in osmotic stress resistance. Low H2O2 concentration (10 mM) which did not cause a visual symptom of water deficit (leaf rolling) was applied to the seedlings. Exogenous H2O2 alone increased leaf water potential, endogenous H2O2 content, abscisic acid (ABA) concentration, and metabolite levels including soluble sugars, proline, and polyamines while it decreased lipid peroxidation and stomatal conductance. Osmotic stress induced by polyethylene glycol (PEG 6000) decreased leaf water potential and stomatal conductance but enhanced lipid peroxidation, endogenous H2O2 content, the metabolite levels, and ABA content. H2O2 pretreatment also induced the metabolite accumulation and improved water status, stomatal conductance, lipid peroxidation, ABA, and H2O2 levels under osmotic stress. These results indicated that H2O2 pretreatment may alleviate water loss and induce osmotic stress resistance by increasing the levels of soluble sugars, proline, and polyamines thus ABA and H2O2 production slightly decrease in maize seedlings under osmotic stress.


The aim of this study was to determine the effects of a post activation potential application response in sprinting and change of direction performance. Fifteen physically active, healthy men (age 23.5±2.0 years, height 175.0±7.6 cm, body weight 72.2±8.5 kg, body fat 15.7±2.9 %) voluntarily participated in this study. Cross sectional research design with a single group (n=15) and repeated tests was used and applicants participated in sprint and pro-agility tests 8 minutes after the pre-conditioning (PC) with weight wests that corresponded 5% and 10% of their body weights in different days without pre-conditioning. For PC, 8 minutes before for each 30m sprint and pro-agility tests, they did a resisted running with a weight vest corresponding 5% and 10% of their body weights. Analysis shows that, sprint after PC activity as resistance running with %5 and %10 of body weight (p<0.05) and agility (p<0.05) data showed statistically significant difference. According to the results of Bonferroni post-hoc correction, 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the PC which includes a 30m sprint with weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 4.34±0.23 seconds to 4.40±0.24 seconds respectively. This 0.07 second increase is statistically significant (p<0.05). In our study, PAP effect being observed as negative, might be related with the lower body weight percentages of resisted running exercise which was selected for PAP.


The Davao City ordinance banning non-biodegradable containers has been implemented starting June 28, 2012. Ideally, this ordinance has noble purposes; however, its merits will only be realized if its corresponding provisions are conscientiously implemented. This study was conducted to explore the issues encountered by the vendors who are using non-biodegradable plastic bags in Davao City. This study is qualitative in nature. Eight purposively chosen vendors from Piapi, Agdao, and Bankerohan Public Markets were interviewed using structured questions. Findings disclosed that most of the interviewed vendors in Piapi and Bankerohan Public Market in Davao City were in favor of the ordinance as they believed that it could help lessen the problem on solid waste in Davao City. Others were not in favor with this ordinance because of the low quality and the relatively higher costs of biodegradable plastic bags which adversely affected their profit. In relation to urban flooding some said that it could be attributed to the lack of discipline and concern towards the environment of the residents and not because of the type of plastic bags we are using.


Turneraceae, with just over 200 species in 10 genera, is today often included in a widely circumscribed Passifloraceae. The vast majority of the species are found in the New World, whereas generic diversity is largest in the Old World. According to current circumscriptions, three of the genera show trans-Atlantic disjunctions: Turnera with over 135 species in America and two species in Africa (one in the south-western and one in the north-eastern part), Piriqueta with 44 species in America and one in southern Africa, and Erblichia with one species in Central America and four in Madagascar. The phylogeny of Turneraceae is reconstructed based on DNA sequences from plastid trnL-F and nuclear ITS and sampling for all genera, including both New and Old World species for the trans-Atlantic groups to test their monophyly. The genera of Turneraceae form a strongly supported monophyletic group, the Turneraceae clade, within Passifloraceae s.l. The phylogeny is geographically structured, with one clade comprising American species only, except for the two African species of Turnera, and another clade with all other African species plus the Central American Erblichia odorata. Turnera is retrieved as monophyletic with the two African species appearing as close relatives of T. ulmifolia, the type of Turnera. The existence of a trans-Atlantic disjunction in Turnera is therefore supported. It is most likely caused by long-distance dispersal and estimated to be not older than late Miocene. In Piriqueta only the American species are supported as a monophyletic group, whereas the single African species is resolved as a member of the African clade. The trans-Atlantic disjunction in Piriqueta is therefore not supported and the African species is proposed to be placed in a genus of its own, Afroqueta gen. nov., as Afroqueta capensis comb. nov. Erblichia on Madagascar is supported as sister to Mathurina, a genus endemic to Rodrigues Island in the Mascarenes, and does not group with E. odorata in Central America, the type of Erblichia. The trans-Atlantic disjunction in Erblichia is therefore not supported either and the genus Arboa gen. nov. is proposed to accommodate the four Malagasy species, Arboa integrifolia comb. nov., Arboa berneriana comb. nov., Arboa madagascariensis comb. nov., and Arboa antsingyae comb. nov.


welding of fixed prostheses frameworks can be identified by macroscopic and microscopic visual inspection. The purpose of this study was to highlight the visible discontinuities present in the laser welds of dental Ni-Cr alloys. Ni-Cr base metal alloys designated for fixed prostheses manufacture were selected for the experiments. Using cast plates, preliminary tests were conducted by laser welding. Macroscopic visual inspection was done carefully to assess the defects of the welding rib. Electron microscopy images allowed visualization of small discontinuities, which escapes visual inspection. Making comparison to Ni-Cr alloys taken in the experiment and laser welded, after visual analysis, the best welds appear for Heraenium NA alloy.


The decrease in stylar pO2 encountered by pollen as it approaches the ovary can induce bursting of pollen tube tips. Anaerobic conditions induced a high percentage of tube tip bursting in most pollen germinated in vitro. Changes in tube tip metabolism with decreased oxygen probably sets up cell wall stress resulting in pollen tube rupture.


Scientists and writing studies scholars agree that students need to be able to repurpose scientific knowledge across audiences, goals, and genres. This article offers a much-needed, practical example of an assignment that allows students to work towards these goals. Working collaboratively, a faculty member from biology, a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) administrator, and an Encyclopedia of Alabama (EOA) editor redesigned a conservation biology course assignment around communication with multiple audiences. The assignment required students to produce a webpage about a rare species in Alabama that fulfills the technical, scientific writing component of the course and then repurpose that webpage into an entry for EOA aimed at a non-expert audience. We elaborate on the context in which the repackaging assignment developed, explain how it fits with student learning outcomes in biology, and share themes we noticed in students' reflections on the practice of repurposing their writing.


Subpopulations of pathogenic or nonpathogenic Th17 cells were reported to develop when presensitized CD4 cells were activated with their target Ag during polarization by either IL-23 or IL-6 and TGF-β, respectively. In this study, we generated two Th17 subpopulations by using a system in which naive CD4 cells from TCR transgenic mice specific to hen egg lysozyme (HEL) are polarized with IL-6/TGF-β and, concurrently, are activated either with HEL presented by APCs, or with anti-CD3/CD28 Abs. Only the former cells were pathogenic, inducing inflammation in eyes expressing HEL. Naive CD4 cells activated by the anti-CD3/CD28 Abs acquired pathogenicity, however, when cocultured with HEL/APC. Importantly, the naive CD4 cells did not acquire pathogenicity when cocultured with APCs stimulated with LPS or when separated from the HEL-presenting cells by a semipermeable membrane. Unlike with presensitized Th17, soluble IL-23 does not participate in pathogenicity acquisition by naive CD4 cells; no pathogenicity was induced by adding IL-23 to cultures activated with anti-CD3/CD28 Abs. Furthermore, Abs against IL-23 or IL-23R did not inhibit acquisition of pathogenicity in cultures of naive CD4 cells activated by HEL/APC. Our data thus show that, unlike presensitized CD4 cells, naive CD4 cells polarized toward Th17 phenotype acquire pathogenicity only by direct interaction with APCs presenting the Ag, with no apparent involvement of soluble IL-23. We suggest that the Th17 lymphocytes derived from naive CD4 cells participate in pathogenic and other immune processes, along with the IL-23–dependent Th17 cells.


The endometrial response to the varying levels of ovarian steroids is exhibited as alterations in its form and function. These changes in endometrial morphology and physiology, especially those observed during the implantation window are prerequisites to support embryo attachment and invasion. However the state of endometrial receptivity to embryo results from an operative network of several molecular events triggered by estrogen, progesterone and probably some other factors, yet to be discovered. It is well established that estrogen and progesterone are the critical endocrine determinants of endometrial functions. However the precise delineation of hormone driven events and their interaction is yet to be ascertained. Several attempts have been made to understand these cascades, however most of these studies have been conducted in vitro using one or the other component of endometrial tissues. We have attempted to investigate in vivo morphological and biochemical/molecular changes in endometrium in response to neutralization of progesterone synthesis/ function in two primate animal models. In one of the models, ovariectomized rhesus monkeys, artificial menstrual cycles were simulated and subsequent effects on the _expression of various genes were investigated in presence and absence of sufficient progesterone levels. The results coincided with those observed in the endometrium of the other model, bonnet monkeys presenting normal hypothalamus-ovarian-pituitary function but displaying retarded endometrial growth due to blocked progesterone receptor. A significant decline was observed in the expression of transforming growth factor beta, transforming growth factor beta receptor, leukaemia inhibitory factor, whereas no remarkable changes were observed in the expression of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptors in response to neutralization of progesterone synthesis/function in these two animal models. Taking support from the inferences drawn from previously published in vitro studies and our data from in vivo studies conducted in these two models, we propose a hypothesis supporting a potential link between the expressions of transforming growth factor beta, leukaemia inhibitory factor, cyclooxygenases and integrins.


Carbon capture is widely recognised as an essential strategy to meet global goals for climate protection. Although various CO2 capture technologies including absorption, adsorption and membrane exist, they are not yet mature for post-combustion power plants mainly due to high energy penalty. Hence researchers are concentrating on developing non-aqueous solvents like ionic liquids, CO2-binding organic liquids, nanoparticle hybrid materials and microencapsulated sorbents to minimize the energy consumption for carbon capture. This research aims to develop a novel and efficient approach by encapsulating sorbents to capture CO2 in a cold environment. The conventional emulsion technique was selected for the microcapsule formulation by using 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) as the core sorbent and silicon dioxide as the shell. This paper reports the findings on the formulated microcapsules including key formulation parameters, microstructure, size distribution and thermal cycling stability. Furthermore, the effects of microcapsule quality and absorption temperature on the CO2 loading capacity of the microcapsules were investigated using a self-developed pressure decay method. The preliminary results have shown that the AMP microcapsules are promising to replace conventional sorbents.


The characteristics of the mixture of recycled asphalt pavements with emulsified asphalt and cement, as the pavement material, was investigated in this research. Kantabro Loss test was used to evaluate initial performance of the recycling mixture and to propose appropriate parameter. Rutting test, split test and low-temperature bending test were carried out to evaluate the long-term performance. The performance of the mixture at low temperature was one of the most important factors to be considered to ensure its application in cold areas. The results showed that the performance of the mixture was effect by old mixes milled. The proposed application conditions of the recycled mixture were also discussed in this paper.


Microblogging services have revolutionized the way people exchange information. Confronted with the ever-increasing numbers of social events and the corresponding microblogs with multimedia contents, it is desirable to provide visualized summaries to help users to quickly grasp the essence of these social events for better understanding. While existing approaches mostly focus only on text-based summary, microblog summarization with multiple media types (e.g., text, image, and video) is scarcely explored. In this paper, we propose a multimedia social event summarization framework to automatically generate visualized summaries from the microblog stream of multiple media types. Specifically, the proposed framework comprises three stages, as follows. 1) A noise removal approach is first devised to eliminate potentially noisy images. An effective spectral filtering model is exploited to estimate the probability that an image is relevant to a given event. 2) A novel cross-media probabilistic model, termed Cross-Media-LDA (CMLDA), is proposed to jointly discover subevents from microblogs of multiple media types. The intrinsic correlations among these different media types are well explored and exploited for reinforcing the cross-media subevent discovery process. 3) Finally, based on the cross-media knowledge of all the discovered subevents, a multimedia microblog summary generation process is designed to jointly identify both representative textual and visual samples, which are further aggregated to form a holistic visualized summary. We conduct extensive experiments on two real-world microblog datasets to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework as compared to the state-of-the-art approaches.


A total of 251 tracheal swabs and a total of 102 tracheae, lungs, airsacs, livers and spleens were collected from commercial layer, broiler and broiler parent stock flocks with respiratory infection. From turkey flocks, 96 tracheal swabs and 5 tissue samples from the trachea, lung, airsac, liver and spleen were also taken. Cultivations on Blood Agar supplemented with 5- 10%sheep blood, on Chocolate Agar and on MacConkey Agar were incubated at 37…C for 24-72 hours in the presence of 10%CO2. Gram staining was carried out for the smooth and non-hemolytic colonies 1-3 mm in diameter and for those showing grayish pigmentation after approximately 48 hours of culture. Gram negative pleomorphic rods were considered to be Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale (ORT) and other conventional tests were made as follows: hemolysis, motility, spore formation, growth on MacConkey and TSI agars, catalase, indol, sorbitol, inositol, rafinose, trehalose, xylose, dulcitol, nitrate, methyl red, oxidase, β-D galactosidase, urease, glucose, galactose, lactose, maltose, fructose and Voges-Proskauer. ORT was isolated from none of the samples taken from turkeys, broiler or broiler parent stock flocks. However, two ORT isolations were achieved from two commercial pullets aged 12 and 15 weeks. One of these isolates was serotyped as "B" by the AGP test while the other was not found to belong to any of the serogroups. Both of the isolates were found to be susceptible to oflaxacin, erythromicin, lincomycin, amoxicillin, and amoxicillin+clavulonic acid by antibiotic suspectibility tests.


Body weight gain in middle age is thought to be mainly attributable to body fat gain. However, the association between the change in body weight and change in fat weight is not fully understood. In this study, we aimed to clarify the association between the changes in body weight and fat weight in a middle-aged general population using a community-based cohort. We studied 3,193 subjects who underwent health check-ups. Fat weight was measured using a TANITA DC-270A body composition analyzer (Tanita Corporation, Tokyo). Good correlation was observed between the changes in body weight and fat weight (Pearson r = 0.88, P < 0.001). Among the study subjects, 408 (13%) were categorized in the weight loss group (weight loss ≥ 5%), 2,442 (76%) in the weight stable group, and 343 (11%) in the weight gain group (weight gain ≥ 5%). The percentage of change in fat weight in relation to the change in body weight was 65% on average in subjects with body weight loss, and 70% on average in those with body weight gain. Good correlation between changes in body weight and fat weight was observed regardless of age, gender, and baseline body mass index. A change in body weight was closely correlated with a change in fat weight among the middle-aged general population. Body weight change in the middle-age population appears to be mainly attributable to the change in fat weight.


ABSTRACT Epidemics of early leaf spot of peanut (Arachis hypogaea), caused by Cercospora arachidicola, are less severe in strip-tilled than conventionally tilled fields. Experiments were carried out to characterize the effect of strip tillage on early leaf spot epidemics and identify the primary target of suppression using a comparative epidemiology approach. Leaf spot intensity was assessed weekly as percent incidence or with the Florida 1-to-10 severity scale in peanut plots that were conventionally or strip tilled. The logistic model, fit to disease progress data, was used to estimate initial disease (y(0)) and epidemic rate (r) parameters. Environmental variables, inoculum abundance, and field host resistance were assessed independently. For experiments combined, estimated y(0) was less in strip-tilled than conventionally tilled plots, and r was comparable. The epidemic was delayed in strip-tilled plots by an average of 5.7 and 11.7 days based on incidence and severity, respectively. Tillage did not consistently affect mean canopy temperature, relative humidity, or frequency of environmental records favorable for infection or spore dispersal. Host response to infection was not affected by tillage, but infections were detected earlier and at higher frequencies with noninoculated detached leaves from conventionally tilled plots. These data suggest that strip tillage delays early leaf spot epidemics due to fewer initial infections; most likely a consequence of less inoculum being dispersed to peanut leaves from overwintering stroma in the soil.


The essence of Building Management Systems and Intelligent Buildings is in the control technologies, which allow integration, automation, and optimization of all the services and equipment that provide services and manages the environment of the building concerned. Intelligent Buildings and Building Management Systems technologies contribute directly to the reduction in energy use in office building. In short, Intelligent Buildings and suitably applied Building Management Systems are good for the environment. The intention of this research is to study the effectiveness of intelligent building to users. The research also identifies the types of system in each building. The studies are based o three selected office building in Klang Valley. This research is also identifies the characteristics of intelligent building in each of building. In addition, the studies also identified the problem that has been arising for the system at the building. This research involved a qualitative methodology. The qualitative study was to examine the perceptions of the users about the satisfaction of system in intelligent building. 30 questionnaires were distributed to each case study (Putrajaya Convention Centre PCC), Pusat Tenaga Malaysia (PTM) Zero Energy Office Building (ZEO Building),and The Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications (MEWC) Low Energy Office (LEO Building)) and almost the same total of 90 respondents responded and returned for analysis. This survey was made possible with the help and permission from the operation management. Moreover this research also uses structured interview to get more detail information about intelligent building. In interview session, many differentiation and analogy of intelligent building can complete this research.


When a PWM converter starts operation with non - zero load, the initial DC-link voltage could not be high enough to generate converter output voltage vector for current regulation. This lack of converter voltage vector could cause unregulated over-current at converter operation start. In this paper, a new current control scheme is proposed for a PWM converter against low DC-link voltage. To avoid unregulated over-current, the proposed control scheme regulates only one phase current and generates the current command considering the uncontrolled current magnitude information calculated in advance. Simulation is performed with resistive load, and the results support the validity of the proposed scheme.


Urban sprawl is a phenomenon observed in most cities around the globe and especially in Latin America, where it is associated to socioeconomic segregation. In the case of Chile, sprawl has been generally based on large real estate projects. Developers target their projects to different types of consumers, which translates into submarkets with a broad range of housing-unit's characteristics, but also different location strategies. This heterogeneity has been analyzed and measured in the literature, but quantitative studies have used exogenous or sequential methods to identify submarkets, leading to potential bias in the segmentation. In this paper, we propose an econometric model to measure location drivers for different types of real estate projects that fills this gap. The modeling framework is based on discrete-choice and latent-class models, allowing us to simultaneously identify market segmentations, and their particular location choice preferences, without the need of arbitrary or ex-ante definitions of submarkets. The model is applied to the city of Santiago, Chile. The results reveal two clearly different approaches taken by developers to produce housing, with one submarket of "exclusive" and more sprawling projects, and another submarket of "massive" and more density driven projects. Location strategies are very different between submarkets, reproducing the socio-spatial segregation already observed in the consolidated city.


Immunogenicity of a pneumococcal 74 kDa surface protein in the rabbit model was investigated in this study. For this, Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 7F was collected and water extraction procedure was applied for the preparation of surface materials, which was used for further isolation of the 74 kDa surface protein. Rabbits were immunized with the sonicated nitrocellulose membrane containing the 74 kDa surface protein and the control group of rabbits was injected with same concentration of sonicated nitrocellulose membrane only. The antibody response against the 74 kDa surface protein was evaluated by both ELISA and immunoblot assay. Sera collected from the 74 kDa surface protein immunized rabbits were examined and the high titre (1:1600) ELISA values (OD 490 ) indicated the production of adequate amounts of anti-74 kDa antibodies in the rabbits. In the immunoblot analysis, a single antigenic band was obtained on the nitrocellulose membrane treated with sera obtained from rabbits immunized with the 74 kDa surface protein. The high titre antibody production in the rabbits indicates the immunogenicity of the 74 kDa surface protein in rabbit model. Bangladesh J Microbiol, Volume 31, Number 1-2,June-Dec 2014, pp 25-28


OF THESIS REFLECTED IMAGE PROCESSING FOR SPECULAR WELD POOL SURFACE MEASUREMENT The surface of the weld pool contains information that can be exploited to emulate a skilled human welder to better understand and control the welding process. Of the existing techniques, the method that uses the pool's specular nature to an advantage and which is relatively more cost effective, and suitable for welding environment is the one that utilizes reflected images to reconstruct 3D weld pool surface by using structured light and image processing techniques. In this thesis, an improvement has been made to the existing method by changing welding direction to obtain a denser reflected dot-matrix pattern allowing more accurate surface measurement. Then, the reflected images, obtained by capturing the reflection of a structured laser dot-matrix pattern from the pool surface through a high-speed camera with a narrow band-pass filter, are processed by a newly proposed algorithm to find the position of each reflected dot relative to its actual projection dot. This is a complicated process owing to the increased density of dots and noise induced due to the harsh environment. The obtained correspondence map may later be used by a surface reconstruction algorithm to derive the three-dimensional pool surface based on the reflection law.


Four types of hollow glass microspheres, having the density of 0.125–0.60 g/cm3, were filled into epoxy-matrix, and volume fraction of hollow glass microsphere was varied from 0% to 60%. The thermal, dielectric and compressive properties of the composites were investigated. The results show that the thermal conductivity, dielectric constant (Dk) and loss (Df) and compressive modulus and strength of the composites show decreased trend with increasing hollow glass microsphere content or decreasing hollow glass microsphere density, which indicates that the properties of the composites are mainly dependent on the characteristics of hollow glass microsphere. By comparing the experimental data and theoretical predictions, it is found that the properties of the composites, especially for thermal conductivity, are also related to the voids in epoxy-matrix. To conveniently predict thermal conductivity and Dk in the investigated materials system, theoretical models reported in the literature are analyzed and compared with the experimental data. Finally, suitable models are recommended. In addition, the thermal conductivity and dielectric properties of the composites were investigated as a function of testing temperature. This work indicates that thermal, dielectric and compressive properties of epoxy-matrix composites can be tailored by adjusting hollow glass microsphere content and density, which makes hollow glass microsphere filled composites a promising candidate in related fields.


One-year-old birch-leaved pear (Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge) seedlings were subjected to 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 mmol/L NaCl solutions for 27 days in order to study the effects of salinity stress on photosynthesis, ion accumulation and enzymatic and non-enzymatic scavenging of reactive oxygen species in the seedlings. The research was performed in a greenhouse using potted trees. Salinity stress reduced photosynthetic rates, stomatal conductance and water use efficiency of leaves of the pear seedlings, but increased transpiration rates and leaf temperature. Hydrogen peroxide and superoxide anion radical contents increased with increasing NaCl concentrations, a phenomena also observed for malondialdehyde, suggesting that leaves of the pear seedlings suffered from oxidative injury. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities quickly responded by increasing when the pear seedlings were subjected to salinity stress. Total protein content in leaves of the seedlings was restrained by salinity stress, whereas ascorbate content increased. Salinity stress reduced glutathione content once the birch-leaved pear seedlings were exposed to a low level (50 or 100 mmol/L) of NaCl, whereas a high level (150 or 200 mmol/L NaCl) of salinity stress stimulated the accumulation of glutathione. Salinity stress increased the accumulation of Na+, Cl-, K+ and Mg2+ in the seedlings, but reduced Ca2+ levels and the ratio of other ions to Na+ except K+/Na+ under 50 mmol/L NaCl conditions. This suggests that leaves of birch-leaved pear seedlings possess the capacity for salt exclusion only under 50 mmol/L NaCl conditions, and Ca2+ does not play a fundamental role as a secondary messenger under salinity stress conditions.


Tomato trade between the U.S. and Mexico has grown significantly during the past decade. Although the tariff reductions accorded under NAFTA may explain part of his increase, there are other supply and demand factors that affect trade flows. This study develops a U.S.-Mexico tomato trade model, with special focus on the interdependence between trading costs and the volume of Mexican imports. As expected, the exchange rate is a significant determinant of trading costs, but the level of tariffs was insignificant in both the trading and tomato supply equations. The shipping point price level and volume of imports also appear to affect these costs. For the import supply and demand models, there appears to be a significant share of imports that rely on previous levels of imports, rather than the expected economic factors (prices, income, and producer price index). We conclude that the structure and performance of the tomato trading market is changing, and may be more influential than tariff reductions in explaining increased trade flows.


ABSTRA C T The effects of merging histories of proto-objects on the angular momentum distributions of the present-time dark matter haloes are analysed. An analytical approach to the analysis of the angular momentum distributions assumes that the haloes are initially homogeneous ellipsoids and that the growth of the angular momentum of the haloes halts at their maximum expansion time. However, the maximum expansion time cannot be determined uniquely, because in the hierarchical clustering scenario each progenitor, or subunit, of the halo has its own maximum expansion time. Therefore the merging history of the halo may be important in estimating its angular momentum. Using the merger tree model by Rodrigues & Thomas, which takes into account the spatial correlations of the density fluctuations, we have investigated the effects of the merging histories on the angular momentum distributions of dark matter haloes. It was found that the merger effects, that is, the effects of the inhomogeneity of the maximum expansion times of the progenitors which finally merge together into a halo, do not strongly affect the final angular momentum distributions, so that the homogeneous ellipsoid approximation happens to be good for the estimation of the angular momentum distribution of dark matter haloes. This is because the effect of the different directions of the angular momenta of the progenitors cancels out the effect of the inhomogeneity of the maximum expansion times of the progenitors. The contribution of the orbital angular momentum to the total angular momentum when two or more pre-existing haloes merge together was also investigated. It is shown that this contribution is more important than that of the angular momentum of diffuse accreting matter to the total angular momentum, especially when the mergers occur many times.


We present a quantitative, statistical analysis of random lambda terms in the De Bruijn notation. Following an analytic approach using multivariate generating functions, we investigate the distribution of various combinatorial parameters of random open and closed lambda terms, including the number of redexes, head abstractions, free variables or the De Bruijn index value profile. Moreover, we conduct an average-case complexity analysis of finding the leftmost-outermost redex in random lambda terms showing that it is on average constant. The main technical ingredient of our analysis is a novel method of dealing with combinatorial parameters inside certain infinite, algebraic systems of multivariate generating functions. Finally, we briefly discuss the random generation of lambda terms following a given skewed parameter distribution and provide empirical results regarding a series of more involved combinatorial parameters such as the number of open subterms and binding abstractions in closed lambda terms.


The aim of this review is to examine studies which explored whether melody or rhythm played a more integral role in the facilitation of music-based speech and language rehabilitation for the population of individuals with nonfluent aphasia. This paper is intended to serve as a succinct synthesis of the myriad articles covering the efficacy of the treatment program called Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) and the impact of its primary musical mechanisms. Secondarily, it may assist in a deeper examination into speech and language-based music cognition and neurologic music therapy research. The speech and language disorder of aphasia; the relationships between music, speech and the brain; and the mechanisms of neuroplasticity and entrainment are explained. Additionally, the history, components, protocol, and efficacy of MIT are discussed. Furthermore, the musical qualities of melody and rhythm in regards to MIT and speech and language rehabilitation are analyzed. The findings suggest that it is the combination of melody and rhythm that best facilitates the recovery of speech in music-based aphasia treatment. Moreover, attempting to separate the qualities of melody and rhythm may be a reductionist viewpoint that fails to advance this particular realm of music cognition research. Finally, the individual merits of melody and rhythm within MIT may be impossible to distinguish. Suggestions for future research in this area are provided.


DNA base pair mismatches occur naturally in cells as a result of incorporation errors and damage. Most cells are able to identify and correct these mistakes before replication, allowing for high genome fidelity between cellular generations. In some forms of cancer, however, proteins involved in the machinery of mismatch repair (MMR) undergo mutation, making those cells unable to correct mismatches and leading to an increase in mutations. Since higher mismatch frequency serves as an early indicator of cancer progression, for many researchers mismatches have provided a novel target for the design of organic and inorganic small-molecule therapeutics. In particular, transition metal complexes have shown great promise in this context owing to their valuable spectroscopic and photophysical properties and flexibility with respect to modification of their coordination spheres. Thus far, experimental designs have ranged from targeting the thermodynamic destabilization of mismatched sites to the hydrogen-bonding pattern of specific mismatched base pairs. Here, we review the diversity, practical application, and evolution of mismatch-targeting small molecules, with an emphasis on rhodium metalloinsertors and luminescent ruthenium compounds. Importantly, we highlight the discovery of metalloinsertion, a noncovalent DNA binding mode that is specific towards destabilized sites, such as mismatches, within the DNA duplex.


Recent use of ion currents as a sensing strategy in the mechanized oxyfuel cutting process motivated a series of studies which revealed that the steel work piece contributes secondary ions in addition to the primary ions classically identified in the oxyfuel flame. In this work, we present a computational model that has linked carbon related chemi-ions as a source of secondary ions in preheating stage of oxyfuel cutting process subject to electric bias voltages. The flames' response to the electric field at different positive and negative polarity manifested a better understanding of the physical behavior of current- voltage (i-v) relationship. While copper surface exhibits stable and repeatable i-v characteristics, sporadically enhanced current was observed in positive saturation regime for steel surface, and this is believed be due to the presence of secondary chemi-ions. To this extent, a source term of gaseous carbon has been assigned to mimic the 'work surface' reactions. The hypothesis is that since carbon is an important element, it will be diffusing out of the steel surface and evaporating into the flame.


The formulation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) is one of the main conditions for concessional lending by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to developing countries. Nevertheless, while evidence indicates that the fisheries sector can contribute (often markedly at the local level) to improved livelihoods and the achievement of food security in many developing countries, the sector is often neglected in PRSPs. This Circular first identifies of 129 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, economies in transition and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) the significance of the fisheries sector as motor of economic growth or likely poverty refuge. Secondly, it examines the extent to which National Development Plans (NDPs), PRSPs, Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) of the European Union and other donor support programmes have presently incorporated the fisheries sector into such documents. Subsequently, a comparison with data indicating the importance of the sector to the national economy (in terms of generating foreign exchange and/or supporting domestic protein consumption levels) enables us to pinpoint those countries with substantive fisheries sectors, but a correspondingly lower than expected degree of sectoral mainstreaming in NDPs, PRSPs and CSPs, and allows us to identify countries which are currently "punching above their weight" in this respect. Findings are discussed on a regional basis - regional averages suggesting that the sector has been most effectively mainstreamed in Asia (case of PRSPs, NDPs and the World Bank donor support strategies) - closely followed by the African economies and the SIDS. In contrast Latin America, home to two of the top six global fishing nations (Chile and Peru), scores extremely poorly as far as mainstreaming the fisheries sector in PRSPs and NDPs concerns.


We describe a strategy for specific immunotherapy of myasthenia gravis (MG) based on genetic engineering of antigen presenting cells (APCs) to present the autoantigen acetylcholine receptor (AChR) and express the "warhead" Fas ligand (FasL). For transduction of APCs we prepared recombinant attenuated vaccinia virus vectors carrying the following three gene constructs: (i) AChR fused to LAMP1 to present AChR and target AChR-specific T cells; (ii) FasL to eliminate the targeted T cells; and (iii) truncated FADD to protect APCs from self-destruction by FasL. The engineered APCs effectively expressed the genes of interest and killed AChR-specific T cells in culture by the Fas/FasL pathway. T cells specific for an unrelated antigen were spared. Our in vitro demonstration that engineered APCs target and kill antigen-specific T cells represents a promising novel strategy for specific immunotherapy of MG and other autoimmune diseases.


Old age social security plays a pivotal role in a welfare state and one of the major components of old age social security is pension. The developed countries generally provide pension to those who contribute for pension whereas in majority of the developing countries pensions are provided in a discretionary manner which reduces the coverage of pension. India is no exception to this phenomenon and has a low coverage of pension too. The paper proposes a universal pension scheme that will bring relief to the working population in the unorganized sector and argues that it will increase the coverage of pension without disturbing the fiscal situation. The main purpose of pensions is smoothening of consumption and mitigating longevity risks, poverty and inter-intra generation inequality. Universal pension scheme would do this successfully for citizens in country.


Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (cid:2) activation improves renal oxygenation and mitochondrial function in early chronic kidney disease. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 313: F282–F290, 2017. pathophysiology of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is driven by alterations in surviving nephrons to sustain renal function with ongoing nephron loss. Oxygen supply-demand mismatch, due to hemodynamic adaptations, with resultant hypoxia, plays an important role in the pathophysiology in early CKD. We sought to investigate the underlying mechanisms of this mismatch. We utilized the subtotal nephrectomy (STN) model of CKD to investigate the alterations in renal oxygenation linked to sodium (Na) transport and mitochondrial function in the surviving nephrons. Oxygen delivery was significantly reduced in STN kidneys because of lower renal blood flow. Fractional oxygen extraction was significantly higher in STN. Tubular Na reabsorption was significantly lower per mole of oxygen consumed in STN. We hypothesized that decreased mitochondrial bioenergetic capacity may account for this and uncovered significant mitochondrial dysfunction in the early STN kidney: higher oxidative metabolism without an attendant increase in ATP levels, elevated superoxide levels, and alterations in mitochondrial morphology. We further investigated the effect of activation of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (cid:2) (HIF-1 (cid:2) ), a master regulator of cellular hypoxia response. We observed significant improvement in renal blood flow, glomerular filtration rate, and tubular Na reabsorption per mole of oxygen consumed with HIF-1 (cid:2) activation. Importantly, HIF-1 (cid:2) activation significantly lowered mitochondrial oxygen consumption and superoxide production and increased mitochondrial volume density. In conclusion, we report significant impairment of renal oxygenation and mitochondrial function at the early stages of CKD and demonstrate the beneficial role of HIF-1 (cid:2) activation on renal function and metabolism.


Critical Information Literacy is a commitment to social justice by which people can be empowered through various information sources to question dominant values and beliefs in the society thereby enabling an awareness on issues of democracy and good governance. This article investigated some of the critical challenges faced by libraries with respect to information skills empowerment of the citizens of Jos, Plateau State in the democratic process. The paper is set within the context of the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. It examined the ways that libraries in the city of Jos facilitate knowledge of political issues and awareness of electoral processes for effective democratic participation in elections through quality information provision. A survey research method was adopted for the study and data was collected through the administration of structured questionnaires. Outcomes from the study emphasized the collaborative role of libraries, the Plateau State government and other stakeholders in advocating for the importance of critical information literacy as an important policy agenda for providing access to quality information sources for informed political participation in the electoral process in Plateau State, Nigeria.