Background
Nurses are disproportionately prone to experience incidents of violent victimization. Despite the vast literature on violence in healthcare settings, few studies have identified effective violence prevention interventions.

Aim
The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of nurses regarding the implementation of technology-based violence prevention interventions.

Methods
Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured focus groups and interviews with 11 nurses at Humber River Hospital. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and subjected to a content analysis to identify core themes from the data.

Results
Three themes were identified: reassurance of safety, an increase in proactive measures and limitations of technology. Nurses held positive perceptions of the impact of technology-based interventions on violent incidents. The interventions were regarded as effective for the detection of potentially violent patients as well as for providing assistance from security staff when a violent incident occurs or appears imminent. However, nurses also acknowledged that patient-related violence was "unavoidable" and that technology cannot fully prevent violence from occurring.

Conclusion
The findings from this study support the replication of these interventions in other healthcare facilities. Engaging staff, patients and families in this unique digital and technology-enriched environment has been critical for the successful implementation of the violence prevention electronic flagging system. Patient and family education and communication were essential for addressing concerns related to "labelling."


In a recent and fascinating study published in Israel, the history and achievements of Israeli - or Hebrew - modernist art, music, architecture and literature have been documented and discussed under the title 'How Do You Say Modernism in Hebrew?' Clearly, the authors and editors of the collection felt that, despite the rich modernist artistic heritage of modern Hebrew culture, the status of modernism in Israeli culture is still underappreciated or misunderstood and its rehabilitation is an important intellectual task. However, the editors did not explicitly raise any political consideration in their book. This essay seeks to address this question and argues that the modernist history of the Zionist movement needs to be re-examined in order to rehabilitate the universalist aspects of the project of Jewish nationalism that lie dormant in its intellectual heritage. This paper is not intended as a definitive statement and does not offer a detailed empirical or historical analysis but rather raises some theoretical and more generally philosophical questions based on what I take to be the ideological heritage of Zionist thought. I am aware that some of the following reflections may fall on deaf ears or even provoke hostile reactions due to the sensitivity of the topic, so I will try to be as clear as possible.


This article explores the spatial structure and development of settlements comprising the Saint Petersburg agglomeration. Previous studies and database sources, which were never used before (the Federal Tax Service [FTS] database and SPARK-Interfax), are analysed to reveal factors in the economic development of metropolitan areas as well as to understand how settlements develop in Russia's second-largest city agglomeration. The borders and composition of the Saint Petersburg agglomeration are brought up to date. Examining the population size of the settlements helps locate the 'growth belt' of the agglomeration. Lists of major enterprises of the city and the region make it possible to identify patterns in the economic development of the study area. The SPARK-Interfax database aids in clarifying relationships between spatial elements of the agglomeration (its core and satellites) in the distribution of revenues of economic agents. Data on the location of the largest retail stores — shopping malls and hypermarkets — are used to identify the main centres of commerce in the Saint Petersburg agglomeration. A map chart has been drawn using 2GIS and Yandex Maps geoinformation services. An important step in agglomeration analysis is the identification of residential development hotspots. FTS data on property tax base are the main source of relevant information. FTS reports contain data on the number of residential buildings and units covered by the database. Further, FTS statistics is employed to trace income and job distribution across the study area. The current functions of settlement in the Saint Petersburg agglomeration have been determined. According to the findings, the spatial structure of the agglomeration has three groups of 'backbone centres'. The agglomeration includes a core, a population growth area ('growth belt'), commuting sources and recipients, and 'backbone centres'.


The number of fully sequenced genomes increases steadily but the function of many genes remains unstudied. To accelerate dissection of gene function in Leishmania spp. and other kinetoplastids we developed previously a streamlined pipeline for CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, which we termed LeishGEdit [1]. To facilitate high-throughput mutant screens we have adapted this pipeline by barcoding mutants with unique 17-nucleotide barcodes, allowing loss-of-function screens in mixed populations [2]. Here we present primer design and analysis tools that facilitate these bar-seq strategies. We have developed a standalone easy-to-use pipeline to design CRISPR primers suitable for the LeishGEdit toolbox for any given genome and have generated a list of 14,995 barcodes. Barcodes and oligos are now accessible through our website www.leishgedit.net allowing to pursue bar-seq experiments in all currently available TriTrypDB genomes (release 41). This will streamline CRISPR bar-seq assays in kinetoplastids, enabling pooled mutant screens across the community. Highlights Developing tools for pooled bar-seq mutant screens across the kinetoplastid community Development of a standalone script to design primers suitable for the LeishGEdit toolbox Generation of 14,995 barcodes that can be used for bar-seq strategies in kinetoplastids Bar-seq primers for all TriTrypDB genomes (release 41) can be obtained from www.leishgedit.net


Case for Diagnosis.—D. F. A. NEILSON. Patient, male, aged 42. First complained of sore throat and dysphagia twelve months ago. Six months later noticed a lump on the right side of his neck. First seen three months ago. On Examination.—Extensive ulcer on right faucial pillar and smaller ulcer of similar appearance on left anterior pillar; both ulcers hard to the touch with indurated margins. Wassermann reaction, negative. Skiagram of chest: nothing abnormal. No evidence of tuberculosis. Swab from throat showed staphylococci and streptococci. Portions of growth from pharynx and from secondary swellings in cervical glands were reported as due to chronic inflammation, and without evidence of malignancy. During the last six weeks the ulcers have altered very little in appearance. The larynx appears to be normal. Pain and dysphagia still persist. The patient has had several injections of novarsenobillon without noticeable improvement. Mr. E. WATSON-WILLIAMS said that the section of the gland convinced him that this was a case of malignant lymphoma. Mr. NEILSON, in reply, said that the condition showed improvement in comparison with its appearance when he first saw it in July. Still, he intended to treat it as a malignant case, and apply radium.


We have developed two multilayer based solutions that provide reflectivity of EUV radiation and suppression of IR radiation. The first solution is based on the B4C/Si periodical multilayer mirror deposited on a specially designed resonant absorbing structure. Substantial transparency of B4C and Si for IR radiation allowed us to integrate the periodical multilayer structure with a quarter-wavelength thin film absorber. The samples produced demonstrated suppression of the infrared radiation by about a factor of 300, with the EUV peak reflectance currently being achieved of about 45% at 13.5 nm. The FWHM of the B4C/Si multilayer mirror is about 0.284 nm that matches the 2% bandwidth of a typical EUV litho tool optical system. A second very viable solution is the application of a standard high reflectance EUV Mo/Si multilayer with a reflective grating. First experimental results on the optical response of lamellar quarter lambda reflectors have been obtained, where the filtering principle is based on suppression of the 0th diffracting order for 10.6 mm, with the energy being diffracted into higher orders, thus eliminating the specular reflection. At these not yet optimized optical elements, an EUV peak reflectance of 53% is currently obtained.


Protein kinase B (PKB) (also referred to as RAC/Akt kinase) has been shown to be controlled by various growth factors, including insulin, using cell lines and transfected cells. However, information is so far scarce regarding its regulation in primary insulin-responsive cells. We have therefore used isolated rat adipocytes to examine the mechanisms, including membrane translocation, whereby insulin and the insulin-mimicking agents vanadate and peroxovanadate control PKB. Stimulation of adipocytes with insulin, vanadate, or peroxovanadate caused decreased PKB mobility on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels, indicative of increased phosphorylation, which correlated with an increase in kinase activity detected with the peptide KKRNRTLTK. This peptide was found to detect activated PKB selectively in crude cytosol and partially purified cytosol fractions from insulin-stimulated adipocytes. The decrease in electrophoretic mobility and activation of PKB induced by insulin was reversed both in vitro by treatment of the enzyme with alkaline phosphatase and in the intact adipocyte upon removal of insulin or addition of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) inhibitor wortmannin. Significant translocation of PKB to membranes could not be demonstrated after insulin stimulation, but peroxovanadate, which appeared to activate PI 3-kinase to a higher extent than insulin, induced substantial translocation. The translocation was prevented by wortmannin, suggesting that PI 3-kinase and/or the 3-phosphorylated phosphoinositides generated by PI 3-kinase are indeed involved in the membrane targeting of PKB.


Tracheobronchopathia osteochondroplastica is a rare disorder characterized by the projection of ossified formations into the trachea and bronchi. Unlike most cases, which are reported because of incidential postmortem findings, our patient presented with a slowly resolving pneumonia. The diagnosis was suspected by radiographic evaluation and bronchoscopic findings, then confirmed by histopathologic studis of a tracheal biopsy specimen. Pulmonary function studies were normal, except for flow-volume loops, which provided information for diagnosis and follow-up.


In this work, we present X-ray analysis result of SNR G27.4+0.0 observed by XMM-Newton satellite. Three EPIC detectors are studied comparatively. The spatial and spectral analysis are performed, 0.3-10 keV (all band). In order to define possible distribution of interested abundances soft, medium and hard X-ray images are constructed. NEI (Non-equilibrium ionization) plasma model is used for spectral modelling. Electron temperature (kT), neutral hydrogen column density and ionization time are estimated in the physical range. Flux and luminosity values are calculated for hard (2-10 keV) band. Intrinsic absorption is calculated to be higher than the expected galactic value, due to thick opaque remnant. Based on the analysis results we try to understand the undergoing physical mechanisms in the SNR G27.4+0.0.


This article summarises the current challenges related to legal obligations and restrictions associated with the use of chemicals, directly affecting space industrial sector. It also highlights issues surrounding the obsolescence of materials and processes, which are indirectly linked to the restrictions in use, but often have a serious impact on the space industry. Methods for risk assessment and means for the mitigation of risks associated with material and process obsolescence are described in the article. The most relevant substances under restrictions are discussed in detail. Lastly, the evolution in waste management, as well as some implications of the UK withdrawal from the EU are additionally analysed.


There are heat transfer advantages to reducing the size of channels used for internal cooling gas turbine components. As channel sizes decrease, however, there are concerns as to how manufacturing surface roughness may affect the channels expected pressure drop and heat transfer. For micro channel size scales, in particular, there is relatively little data indicating the effect of manufacturing roughness levels. The focus of this paper is to describe the development and validation of a testing method for micro channels as well as determine the effect of manufacturing roughness levels on these small channels. Convective heat transfer coefficients and friction factors were deduced based on measured flow conditions and known boundary conditions. It was shown that at an average roughness height of 6.1 μm, which corresponded to 2.2% of the channel height, heat transfer was augmented by 1.1–1.2 while the friction factor was augmented significantly more by 2.1–2.6 over a smooth channel.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Sociologists and criminologists have become increasingly concerned with nonlinear relationships and interaction effects. For example, some recent studies suggest that the positive relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and violent crime is nonlinear with an accelerating slope, whereas other research indicates a nonlinear decelerating slope. The present paper considers the possibility that this inconsistency in findings is partially caused by lack of attention to an important methodological concern. Specifically, we argue that researchers have not been sensitive to the ways in which logarithmic transformation of the dependent variable can bias tests for nonlinearity and statistical interaction. We illustrate this point using demographic and violent crime data for urban neighborhoods, and we propose an alternative procedure to log transformation that involves the use of weighted least-squares regression, heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors, and diagnostics for influential observations.


The purpose of the study was to investigate teacher attitudes toward following the Taiwanese arts and humanities curriculum and the relationship of teacher attitudes to four selected curriculum integration factors. These include (1) The quantity of content areas taught in music class, (2) Teachers' satisfaction of their students' learning outcomes, (3) Teachers' confidence in planning lessons, and (4) The number of years spent in curriculum integration. Questionnaires were distributed to 85 stratified random selected junior high schools throughout Taiwan. The school responses rate was 74%. Content validity was checked. The internal consistency reliability ranged from 0.74 to 0.92. Recorder playing, group singing, and music appreciation were found to be the most frequently taught musical skills, the most satisfied students' learning outcomes, the most confident lesson planning areas, and the most important to be included in the music instruction. Writing-by-ear and playing-by-ear were found to be the least frequently taught musical skills, the least satisfied students' learning outcome, the least confident lesson planning area, and the least importance. The two most frequently encountered barriers were insufficient administrative leadership and shallow student learning. The results of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient showed a low positive significant relationship between teachers' overall attitudes and the quantity of musical content areas taught (n = 83, r = 0.29, p = 0.007*, r2 = 0.09). Based on prior research, if attitudes that are formed from personal histories are difficult to change, and in order to change attitudes, multiple strategies must be used. The majority of teachers did not strongly support or reject this new curriculum, and strong support would be needed for the curriculum to be successfully implemented. One of the most important things that the Taiwan MOE could do is to provide music teachers with on-going in-service teacher development programs and monitoring mentor systems, in addition to the exploration and development of additional strategies that might possibly impact teachers' neutral beliefs about this new curriculum.


Place matters in human services. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) devolves spending to services, most often provided by nonprofit organizations. We argue that this devolution allows for people to "vote with their feet" (Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961: "The organization of government in metropolitan areas: A theoretical inquiry." American Political Science Review 55:831–42) in seeking jurisdictions where there will be more spending on human services. This paper considers the spatial patterns of human service expenditures, arguing that people of lower Socio-Economic Status (SES) are less likely to benefit from higher human service spending.We use a spatial Durbin regression to indicate the effects of SES on expenditures in a home county as well as the spillover effect to surrounding counties. The results show that while human service expenditures increase as African American and Renter populations increase in a home county, they also indicate that neighboring counties free-ride on the efforts of the home jurisdiction. Likewise, as a population ages, there is a very large free-riding effect. We conclude that the decentralized TANF policy regime allows for jurisdictions to specialize in human services.


Conventional scanning probe microscopy (SPM)-based nanomanipulations always have to face scanner accuracy problems such as hysteresis, nonlinearity, and thermal drift. Although some scanners consist of internal position sensors, the sensitivity is not high enough to monitor high-resolution nanomanipulations. Additionally, once the scan size decreases to a nanolevel such as less than 100 nm, the noise brought by sensors is large enough to affect the performance of the closed-loop motion control system. In this paper, a non-vector space control strategy based on compressive feedback is proposed in order to improve the accuracy of SPM-based nanomanipulations. In this approach, local images (or compressive data) are used as both the reference input and feedback for a non-vector space closed-loop controller which considers the local image (or compressive data) as a set. The controller is designed in non-vector space, and it requires no prior information on features or landmarks which are widely used in traditional visual servoing. In this paper, the atomic force microscopy is used as an example of SPM to implement the non-vector space control strategy for nanomanipulations. The motivation of designing such a non-vector space controller is to solve the accuracy problem in nanomanipulation. Without this technique, the SPM-based nanomanipulations, such as nanomeasurement and nanosurgery, are difficult to conduct, with accuracy controlled under several nanometers. In order to illustrate the contributions and potential applications of this non-vector controller, at the end of this paper, an application of carbon nanotube local electrical property characterization based on a non-vector space motion control is shown to clearly verify the concept. Compared with other research in the local electrical property characterization, the non-vector space controller can ensure that the measurement accuracy (position error) is controlled within a few nanometers, which also ensures the reliability of measurement results. Additionally, this non-vector space control method can be implemented into any kind of SPM to realize a real-time control for nanomanipulation such as nanofabrication and nanoassembly.


The aim of this work is to achieve zero waste discharge in leachate treatment. Advanced electrochemical processes were applied to leachate nanofiltration concentrate formed at the nanofiltration unit of Kömürcüoda Leachate Treatment Plant. The performance of the electrochemical processes with peroxymonosulfate, peroxydisulfate and hydrogen peroxide addition as oxidants was investigated in the removal of the UV254 parameter–representing recalcitrant organic matterfrom the leachate nanofiltration (NF) concentrate. To design and optimize the process parameters affecting the performance of electro-peroxymonosulfate (EPM), electro-peroxydisulfate (EPD) and electro-Fenton (EF) processes, central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology (RSM) were applied. Oxidant/chemical oxygen demand ratio, current, pH, and reaction time were selected as independent variables, and the UV254 parameter which is at high concentrations in NF concentrate of leachate was selected as the system's response. By the application of CCD, the regression quadratic model was developed, and the data obtained were analyzed by analysis of variance. Under optimum conditions, the removal efficiencies of the UV254 parameter through EPM, EPD and EF processes were determined as 84.9%, 98.6% and 92.2%, respectively and the operational cost of was found to be 2.2, 3.8 and 4.7 €/m3 for EPM, EPD and EF processes, respectively All three processes are effective advanced treatment methods for UV254 parameter removal from leachate NF concentrate and RSM is appropriate for designing and optimizing all three processes.


Large scale efforts to sequence whole human genomes provide extensive data on the non-coding portion of the genome. We used variation information from 11,257 human genomes to describe the spectrum of sequence conservation in the population. We established the genome-wide variability for each nucleotide in the context of the surrounding sequence in order to identify departure from expectation at the population level (context-dependent conservation). We characterized the population diversity for functional elements in the genome and identified the coordination of conserved sequences of distal and cis enhancers, chromatin marks, promoters, coding and intronic regions. The most context-dependent conserved regions of the genome are associated with unique functional annotations and a genomic organization that spreads up to one megabase. Importantly, these regions are enriched by over 100-fold of non-coding pathogenic variants. This analysis of human genetic diversity thus provides a detailed view of sequence conservation, functional constraint and genomic organization of the human genome. Specifically, it identifies highly conserved non-coding sequences that are not captured by analysis of interspecies conservation and are greatly enriched in disease variants.


Our previous studies demonstrated that treating pregnant rats with dioxins, including 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), targets the pituitary expression of luteinizing hormone (LH) to attenuate testicular steroidogenesis in fetuses, resulting in the imprinting of sexual immaturity of the offspring after reaching maturity. Furthermore, we found that although TCDD disturbs the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle in the fetal hypothalamus, maternal co-treatment with α-lipoic acid (α-LA), a cofactor of the TCA cycle, restores a TCDD-produced reduction in the LH-evoked steroidogenesis as well as the TCA cycle activity in fetuses. However, the mechanism underlying the beneficial effect of α-LA remains to be fully elucidated. To address this issue, we compared the effect of α-LA with that of thiamine, another cofactor of the TCA cycle. As with α-LA, supplying thiamine to dams exposed to TCDD alleviates the reduced level of not only hypothalamic ATP but also pituitary LH and testicular steroidogenic protein in fetuses. However, thiamine had a much weaker effect than α-LA. In agreement with ATP attenuation, TCDD activated AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a negative regulator of LH production, whereas the supplementation of α-LA allowed recovery from this defect. Furthermore, α-LA restored the TCDD-produced reduction in the pituitary expression of the receptor for gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), an upstream regulator of LH synthesis. These results suggest that α-LA rescues TCDD-produced attenuation during fetal steroidogenesis due not only to facilitation of energy production through the TCA cycle but also through suppression of AMPK activation, and the pituitary GnRH receptor may serve as a mediator of these effects.


In the last few years, the world toward attention to the renewable and clean energy sources in order to reduce the environmental pollutions and reduce the coast. Therefore, the windmills technology was essential in these applications. In this paper, the climatic data and geographic information system (GIS) facilities were used to study and produce the wind speed map on the ground level for Iraq country. Many Field data, (climatic monitoring) from the periods, (1953-1970) and (19712010) were collected and prepared. The data source was the Iraqi metrological department, this establishment operates and control wide climatic stations distributed around country. Many image processing and remote sensing techniques were used to present the results. The full Iraq photomap of Landsat TM (bands 1, 3, 5) with 28.5m in spatial resolution was used to overlay the results. The output of research was a photomap that locates the best sites for windmills .The locations have been selected through certain criteria. The results indicate that the Nasrya, Basrah, Nukhaib, Alhai and Hadeetha are promising places for establishing wind turbine due to the best wind velocities values. Keyword: windmill, wind speed, site selection.


: Entrepreneurs and investors face challenges in the 'thin market' for early stage entrepreneurial finance. Improving the situation has been a priority of policy makers for at least a decade, however, the challenges in this matching process are still poorly understood. Theory suggests that matching problems may originate in different perceptions in areas such as evaluation criteria, risk and risk management by investors and entrepreneurs. To find a good match it is essential to understand what is important to your counterpart. These problems are likely to be strongest in new and capital intensive sectors, like green tech innovations. Based on a mixed methods approach using semi structured interviews and a survey with both entrepreneurs and investors mostly active in green tech innovation, this study systematically analyses where their perceptions deviate and frictions in the matching process may occur. We find that a mismatch exists in the perception of risk, the importance attached to risk, the search channels used to find a potential partner and the evaluation criteria applied in evaluating a proposition (i.e. exit, innovativeness, capabilities of teams). Our results call for policy measures to increase market transparency and inform both sides of the searching process to create a mutual understanding of the investment process. JEL codes: O31, O38, G24, G28


This paper considers device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying cellular networks with a multi-antenna base station (BS). The BS serves its own cellular users while letting another remote terminal directly transmit signals to its nearby receiver via a D2D link. Two transmit strategies including beamforming (BF) and interference cancellation (IC) are considered at the BS for performance evaluation in terms of achievable channel capacity. The capacity performance of two different cases with perfect and quantized channel knowledge at the transmitter is derived with closed-form expressions. Based on these results, an adaptive transmission scheme to switch between BF and IC is proposed. Numerical results verify the accuracy of the derived expressions and draw the operating regions of BF/IC strategies.


OBJECTIVE To determine the mean diameter of the main portal vein (PV) in healthy dogs by use of CT angiography, identify any associations between PV diameter and certain dog characteristics, and validate a clinically valuable ratio for quantifying the size of the PV. ANIMALS 100 dogs with no hepatic, cardiac, or vascular anomalies that underwent abdominal CT angiography. PROCEDURES Diameters of the main PV, abdominal aorta (Ao), and caudal vena cava (CVC) were measured by 2 observers at a defined location on postcontrast CT angiographic images in axial, sagittal, and transverse planes. Dog characteristics were evaluated for associations with PV diameter, and a PV:Ao diameter ratio was calculated. Intraclass correlations were calculated to assess intra- and interobserver agreement in vessel diameter measurements. RESULTS Mean diameter values were 7.9 mm (range, 4.1 to 14.8 mm) for the PV, 8.9 mm (range, 3.7 to 13.7 mm) for the Ao, and 11.4 mm (range, 4.4 to 22.5 mm) for the CVC. The PV:Ao diameter ratio was 0.91 mm. The PV diameter was significantly associated with dog body weight but not with dog age, sex, or neuter status. Intra- and interobserver reliabilities for measurements of all 3 vessels were considered excellent (intraclass correlation coefficients > 0.85). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Findings indicated that the PV:Ao diameter ratio was a repeatable measurement that may be useful for evaluating the size of the portal vasculature in dogs and possibly for distinguishing healthy PVs from abnormal PVs in dogs with hepatic vascular anomalies.


Published BGS gravity data of the UK Southern North Sea Basin show the presence of a gravity low trending to the ESE across the northern half of Quadrant 47. Two simplified geological cross-sections have been constructed across this feature with sedimentary structure based upon well information and reflection seismic data. Gravity modelling of these sections demonstrates that the gravity anomaly is unlikely to be produced by the presence of thick, low density sediments. Consequently, the presence of a large, buried granite batholith is postulated. The buoyant influence of such a granite may have exerted considerable tectonic control during the development of the Southern North Sea Basin. In particular, its presence may help to explain the development of the East Midland Shelf, the associated complex fault movements along the Flamborough Head and Dowsing Fault Zones, and the areal distribution and thickness of the Rotliegendes sand.


We first developed a green, mild and rapid method for the preparation of hierarchical manganese dioxide nanoflowers (MnO2 NFs) as nanozymes with intrinsic oxidase-like activity using citric acid for the reduction of potassium permanganate. The open structure of MnO2 NFs can lead to a larger specific surface area for improving the antibody loading amount and oxidase mimicking activity. In addition, carboxyl groups from the residual citric acid on the surface of MnO2 NFs afford a good affinity with the antibody through an amidation coupling reaction, which does not need complex surface modification anymore. Then, a reliable ratiometric fluorescence nanozyme-linked immunosorbent assay towards C-reactive protein (CRP) was designed successfully based on the MnO2 NFs. The high sensitivity and clinical feasibility of the presented methodology were demonstrated, which hold great promise in biomedical fields. Moreover, the mild and simple process for the synthesis of MnO2 NFs will make good contributions to many other applications.


Diabetic foot is considered to be the severe causative infection which has the prolonged onset and response rate to the medication is very slow. In the initial stages of diabetic foot, the minor symptoms are like increased swelling of the foot, changing of the skin colour to black and patches will be formed, there by the complete discoloration comes. Post complications of the diabetes foot include numbness in the skin and toes. The final stage of diabetes has severe complications such as any injury caused to the feet will not be cured and the rate of response to the medication will be very slow.


Semantic communication technologies enable wireless edge devices to communicate effectively by transmitting semantic meanings of data. Edge components, such as vehicles in next-generation intelligent transport systems, use well-trained semantic models to encode and decode semantic information extracted from raw and sensor data. However, the limitation in computing resources makes it difficult to support the training process of accurate semantic models on edge devices. As such, edge devices can buy the pretrained semantic models from semantic model providers, which is called "semantic model trading". Upon collecting semantic information with the semantic models, the edge devices can then sell the extracted semantic information, e.g., information about urban road conditions or traffic signs, to the interested buyers for profit, which is called "semantic information trading". To facilitate both types of the trades, effective incentive mechanisms should be designed. Thus, in this article, we propose a hierarchical trading system to support both semantic model trading and semantic information trading jointly. The proposed incentive mechanism helps to maximize the revenue of semantic model providers in the semantic model trading, and effectively incentivizes model providers to participate in the development of semantic communication systems. For semantic information trading, our designed auction approach can support the trading between multiple semantic information sellers and buyers, while ensuring individual rationality, incentive compatibility, and budget balance, and moreover, allowing them to achieve higher utilities than the baseline method.


These immunopathogenesis studies of leprosy have provided new insight into the immune response to M leprae at the site of disease activity, the skin lesions. The study of leprosy provides a model for studying the immune response to foreign pathogens as well as the immunopathologic study of skin lesions. Further developments in immunology and molecular biology will increase our ability to dissect such immune mechanisms. For example, the advent of the polymerase chain reaction will allow for a more complete elucidation of the cytokines in inflammatory skin lesions.


Due to interference from natural factors and the intensity of human activities, the complex characteristics of the regional precipitation process have become increasingly evident, which creates a challenge for the rational development and utilisation of precipitation resources. In this perspective of complexity diagnosis, the multi-timescale variation characteristics of precipitation were analysed in the Northern Jiansanjiang Administration of Heilongjiang land reclamation, China, by the wavelet analysis method. The results showed that the most complex precipitation series was at Qinglongshan Farm. There are five significant main periods of approximately 2, 3, 4, 9 and 12 years in the seasonal and annual precipitation of Qinglongshan Farm; these periodic variation characteristics are almost identical to the periods of the EI Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomena and sunspot activity, which illustrates that climate change has a major influence on the local precipitation variation characteristics. At the same time, precipitation in summer and autumn has similar periods and a similar variation trend to the annual precipitation at Qinglongshan Farm, which indicates that the local annual precipitation variation characteristics are mainly affected by summer and autumn precipitation variation. In contrast with the harmonic analysis method based on Fourier transform, wavelet analysis has a significant advantage in terms of accurately identifying the main cycle of the hydrological time series.


Background Overweight and obesity have become threats to public health in all regions across the globe including sub-Saharan Africa where prevalence used to be low. Policies to regulate the food environment and promote healthy food consumption look promising to reducing the prevalence obesity but in Ghana there is not enough data to elicit a policy response. This study assessed the association between dietary consumption, Body Mass Index (BMI) and body composition among rural and urban Ghanaian adults. Methods This was a cross-sectional study involving 565 Ghanaian adults. Structured interviewer-administered questionnaires were used to collect information on socio-demographics. Dietary consumption was assessed using household food frequency questionnaire and 24-hour recall. Height, weight, BMI, waist circumference and body composition of all participants were determined. Mann Whitney U test was used to analyze differences in anthropometric measures, body composition and consumption among rural and urban participants. Principal component analysis was used to analyze household food frequency data. Chi-square was used to measure differences in obesity prevalence by community and gender. Multinomial logistic regression was used to model the risk factors associated with obesity. Results The prevalence of overweight and obesity using BMI were 29.9 and 22.9 respectively. Use of waist circumference measurement resulted in the highest overall obesity prevalence of 41.5%. Prevalence of obesity was higher among females compared to males across all measures with the exception of visceral fat that showed no significant difference. Four different patterns were derived from principal component analysis. Vegetable convenience dietary pattern showed significant negative correlation with visceral fat (r=-0.142, p 0.002), body fat (r=-0.102, p 0.209) and BMI (r=-0.136, p 0.003). Multinomial logistic regression revealed that males (OR 21.968, CI 10.876-44.373, p-value


It is unknown whether road traffic crashes (RTCs) involving young unlicensed drivers follow the downward trend of those involving licensed drivers. Our national register-based study from 2000 to 2011 indicates that the downward trend for young unlicensed drivers (<25 years) is significantly less pronounced. These drivers account for 10.7% to 11.5% of the fatal RTCs involving young drivers during that time period; this percentage is consistently higher in the Western and Southern states and has increased in recent years in the Midwest.


This ground-breaking collec� on of essays examines the scope and consequences of digital vigilan� sm — a phenomenon emerging on a global scale, which sees digital audiences using social pla� orms to shape social and poli� cal life. Longstanding forms of moral scru� ny and jus� ce seeking are disseminated through our contemporary media landscape, and researchers are increasingly recognising the signifi cance of societal impacts eff ected by digital media.


Successful and efficient use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) depends on the choice of the genotype, the problem representation (mapping from genotype to phenotype) and on the choice of search operators that are applied to the genotypes. These choices cannot be made independently of each other. The question whether a certain representation leads to better performing EAs than an alternative representation can only be answered when the operators applied are taken into consideration. The reverse is also true: deciding between alternative operators is only meaningful for a given representation. In EA practice one can distinguish two complementary approaches. The first approach uses indirect representations where a solution is encoded in a standard data structure, such as strings, vectors, or discrete permutations, and standard off-the-shelf search operators are applied to these genotypes. To evaluate the solution, the genotype needs to be mapped to the phenotype space. The proper choice of this genotype-phenotype mapping is important for the performance of the EA search process. The second approach, the direct representation, encodes solutions to the problem in its most 'natural' space and designs search operators to operate on this representation.
 Research in the last few years has identified a number of key concepts to analyse the influence of representation-operator combinations on EA performance. These concepts are *locality and *redundancy. Locality is a result of the interplay between the search operator and the genotype-phenotype mapping. Representations are redundant if the number of phenotypes exceeds the number of possible genotypes. Furthermore, redundant representations can lead to biased encodings if some phenotypes are on average represented by a larger number of genotypes. Finally, a bias need not be the result of the representation but can also be caused by the search operator.
 The tutorial gives a brief overview about existing guidelines for representation design, illustrates the different aspects of representations, gives a brief overview of theoretical models describing the different aspects, and illustrates the relevance of the aspects with practical examples. It is expected that the participants have a basic understanding of EA principles.


To overcome the constraints presented by the conventional hydrogel-based skin patch, including poor transdermal penetration activity and reluctant release of the encapsulated lipophilic drugs, a facile organogel constituted of amphiphilic hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI)-based polyurethanes (PUs) was developed in 1,3-propanediol, and the amphiphilic components of poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) and HDI allow for the formulation of distinctive segregated domains of PEG and HDI based on the inter- and intra-molecular interactions between HDI segments. Of note, a convenient cooling down process allows for the formulation of a stable and homogenous organogel. In addition, a functional host 2,6-dimethyl-β-cyclodextrin (CD) group, acting as a drug reservoir, was included in PEG-HDI, characterized by its gel to sol state transition in the range of 24–36 °C, for the encapsulation of a pharmaceutical compound (norfloxacin), consequently contributing to a minimal drug release profile at 4 °C but an accelerated rate of drug release at physiological temperature. The in vitro drug release and transdermal experimental results show that the organogel as a drug carrier was capable of releasing the drug efficiently, improving the transdermal delivery, and exhibiting bactericidal activity over 80% in vivo. Moreover, the introduced CD moieties could increase the solubility of lipophilic drugs and the dissociation rate in biological milieu, which appears to benefit the promoted drug release rate and transdermal efficiency as compared to a CD-free organogel.


This thesis began as an investigation of a legal problem which has aroused considerable public discussion in relation to a large number of compensation claims brought against asbestos miners and manufacturers. The best known manufacturer of asbestos products in Australia was a group of companies controlled by James Hardie Industries Limited. The group was restructured in 2001 with the effect of quarantining within a controlled entity its present and future tort liabilities to meet the claims of asbestos victims. The restructure was able to be effected because of the operation of two venerable company law concepts: the separate legal entity principle and limited liability. This legal problem will probably remain an increasingly important social and economic issue as mass torts involving large corporate groups and huge monetary claims are likely to become more common.
The thesis examines the history of these legal concepts to answer the question of how they came about and why they developed as they did. This historical study then raised a number of further questions. Were these historical developments inevitable or necessary to encourage economic development and business enterprise? What was the relationship between legal change and economic development and did one influence the other? Are there underlying mechanisms that drive legal change? Does legal change tend to progress towards greater efficiency or to some end point?
In attempting to answer these questions the thesis puts forward the assertion that a 'legal evolution' approach provides a useful theoretical framework in analysing the relationship between legal change and social and economic development and the nature of legal change. The sense in which the term 'legal evolution' is used in this thesis incorporates evolutionary ideas that have been developed and utilised in a range of disciplines that include biology and the social sciences. The central idea behind this approach is that cultural transmissions, including law, interact with their environments in a similar manner to how natural species evolve and interact with their environments.
An evolutionary perspective does not purport to provide a determinist or comprehensive theoretical explanation of how law changes nor does it attempt to predict the directions in which change will occur. Rather, it emphasises the importance of examining the past and placing legal change in its social and economic context and seeing it as driven by a wide range of historical factors. An evolutionary perspective therefore sees the development of the law as ongoing and the result of contingencies, choices and accidents that were by no means inevitable, nor did the law necessarily progress to an endpoint or develop towards its most efficient or optimal form.
The thesis argues that the application of the separate legal entity principle, attributed to Salomon's case, to corporate groups was not inevitable but a choice that was made.


This paper presents the design and the development of an interactive multimediafuturistic Smart Mirror with artificial intelligence for the ambient home environment as well as for commercial uses in various industries.The project which would collect real world machine data and the data would be transmitted from the machine and would be managed by the Raspberry Pi. The Smart Mirror implemented as a personalized digital device equipped with peripherals such as Raspberry PI, microphone, speakers, LED Monitor covered with a sheet of reflective one way mirror provides one of the most basic common amenities such as weather of the city, latest updates of news and headlines and local time corresponding to the location. Using speech processing techniques the Smart Mirror therefore interacts with the user through verbal commands, functions and listens to the user's question and responds them adequately.


My paper is related to applied ethics with special reference to the ethics of communication. The task of this discipline is to defend otherness in the various contexts where it exists. The departure point for my paper is the observation that the physician–patient relationship, instead of being the place of therapeutic alliance, is increasingly becoming a source of conflict, as is shown by the statistics on legal actions between doctors and patients, lack of communication skills identified amongst patients, and cases of burnout amongst doctors. This situation calls on ethics to take two steps simultaneously. Firstly, it must not forego the duty of indicating the rules. Secondly, it must be capable of suggesting directions where those same rules can be applied. Succeeding in this task is decisive not only in domains where the ethical approach may be welcomed, but also for ethics as such, otherwise destined to be a disembodied specialization.


This paper documents the existence and character of a little known fire‐maintained anthropogenic ecosystem in the southeastern Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, U.S.A. Due to cessation of anthropogenic burning, there is no longer an intact example of this ecosystem. We present evidence from Skokomish oral tradition, historical documents, floral composition, tree‐ring analysis, stand structure, and site potential to describe former savanna structure and function. We believe this system was a mosaic of prairies, savannas, and woodlands in a forest matrix maintained through repeated burning to provide culturally important plants and animals. The overstory was dominated by Douglas‐fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax) likely was a dominant understory component of the savannas, woodlands, and prairie edges. These lands grew forests in the absence of anthropogenic burning. Wide spacing of older trees or stumps in former stands and rapid invasion by younger trees in the late 1800s and early 1900s suggest a sudden change in stand structure. Shade‐intolerant prairie species are still present where openings have been maintained but not in surrounding forests. Bark charcoal, fire scars, tree establishment patterns, and oral traditions point to use of fire to maintain this system. A common successional trajectory for all these lands leads to forested vegetation. These findings suggest that frequent application of prescribed burning would be necessary to restore this ecosystem.


This Article addresses two related first-order questions about morality that enable us to discern solutions that address second-order questions in the specific policy context of regulation of tax competition and BEPS: (1) what kind of justice conception has sufficient normative support to undergird regulation attempts of this global phenomenon to ensure cosmopolitan tax rights? (the global tax justice question); and (2) what are the pre-conditions of effective cooperation, not based on immediate self-interest, that eschew a market-based approach to tax competition, enabling background conditions for the morality of multilateral cooperation? (the morality of cooperation question). The Article addresses the global tax justice question by discussing the Rawlsian premises to the concept of tax justice and its developments within the internationalist approach; the Article then shifts the focus on the cosmopolitan challenge to Rawls, which introduces, atleast theoretically, the possibility of fundamental rights of global tax justice to then draw conclusions about three available normative options for the governance of tax competition and BEPS, which can be derived from the previous analysis. The Article then addresses the morality of cooperation question by examining current literature about non-self-interested cooperation, extending this analysis to the social sanctioning of tax competition, and concludes by proposing a broad first-order framework for second-order policy decisions.


This study examines why some pretribulation premillennialist Christian leaders in the United Kingdom instructed their followers, both implicitly and explicitly, to vote to leave the European Union in the referendum in June 2016. The formation of the European Union is regarded as central to the fulfilment of prophecy by many premillennialists as it is purported to be the revived Roman Empire found in the books of Daniel and Revelation in the Bible. On the face of it, to vote to leave the European Union would seem to be contrary to such prophetic conjecture given the importance of the United Kingdom's role in the Union, and the perceived destabilising impact this would have on it. This article argues, utilising evidence from interviews with two premillennialist leaders and other contemporary sources, that voting to leave did not necessarily contradict previous teaching. Rather, voting to leave was not only consistent with this teaching but also reflected the rejection of many features of the late modern condition. However, the rejection of the latter has sometimes resulted in a move beyond the premillennialist prophetic framework into the realm of conspiracy beliefs.


The paper addresses the following issues: (a) how to represent semantic information from natural language so that a vision model can utilize it? (b) how to extract the salient textual information relevant to vision? For a given domain, we present a new model of semantic extraction that takes into account word relatedness as well as word disambiguation in order to apply to a vision model. We automatically process the text transcripts and perform syntactic analysis to extract dependency relations. We then perform semantic extraction on the output to filter semantic entities related to actions. The resulting data are used to populate a matrix of co-occurrences utilized by the vision processing modules. Results show that explicitly modeling the co-occurrence of actions and tools significantly improved performance.


A number of IEEE 802.15.4 devices can be connected by a tree topology as proposed by ZigBee specification. Address configuration in tree-based ZigBee networks needs to assign every device a network address that uniquely identifies it from others, and such addressing should also assist routing. The addressing method recommended by the specification forces a static assignment that is coupled with node's location in the tree, resulting in an inflexibility in allocating addresses. This property may significantly decrease the ratio of addressable devices and cause routing detour. To alleviate the problem, this paper considers three alternatives that manage address space with flexibility but require additional storage in ZigBee routers. Performance evaluations indicate that proposed approaches provide different levels of tradeoff between the ratio of addressable devices and storage costs in ZigBee routers.


Coded multicasting has been shown to improve the caching performance of content delivery networks with multiple caches downstream of a common multicast link. However, the schemes that have been shown to achieve order-optimal performance require content items to be partitioned into a number of packets that grows exponentially with the number of users [1]. In this paper, we first extend the analysis of the order-optimal multiple-groupcast coded multicasting scheme in [2] to the case of heterogeneous cache sizes and demand distributions, providing an achievable scheme and an upper bound on the optimal performance when the number of packets goes to infinity. We then show that the scheme achieving this upper bound can very quickly loose its promising multiplicative caching gain for finite content packetization. To overcome this limitation, we design a novel polynomial-time algorithm based on greedy local graph-coloring that, while keeping the same content packetization, recovers a significant part of the multiplicative caching gain. Our results show that the achievable schemes proposed to date to quantify the fundamental limiting performance, must be properly designed for practical regimes of finite content packetization.


The development of wild caves into show caves is required an installation of electric lights along the cave passages for illumination and decoration purposes for tourist attraction. The presence of artificial lights can stimulate the growth of photosynthetic organisms such as lampenflora and alter the typical cave ecosystem. The study was aimed to detect the effect of lampenflora on cave-dwelling arthropods community. Four caves were sampled during the study, 2 caves are show caves with the existence of lampenflora and 2 others are wild caves without lampenflora. Arthropods sampling were conducted by hand collecting, pitfall trap, bait trap and berlese extractor. Lampenflora comprises of algae (Phycophyta), moss (Bryophyta) and fern (Pteridophyta) grow mostly around white light lamps. Richness, diversity, and evenness indices of Arthropods are higher in caves with the existence of lampenflora compared to caves without lampeflora. This study clearly shows that the presence of lampenflora can increase Arthropods diversity and suppress dominancy of common Arthropods species in caves, also increasing the relative abundance of predators. This condition will shift the ecosystem equilibrium and lead to cave ecosystem destruction. The results of this study should be a scientific consideration for show cave development and management. Lampenfloras have to be removed from all caves and preventive efforts should be taken to minimize their growth.


The purpose of the present study was to investigate the imagery ability of 8 "probable" Alzheimer disease patients using a standard task sensitive to the disruption of the imagery system. These patients were selected based on their good performance on a prerequisite clock-setting task, and with 8 matched control subjects were then required to compare the angles made by the hands on clock faces using only imagined stimuli. There were no significant differences between patients and controls in performance on the clock-imagery task. These data are consistent with models of information processing which postulate the relationships between visual imagery and a short-term memory store and include a central executive system for allocation of cognitive resources.


Police corruption is ubiquitous and is a serious problem for numerous reasons. One is that police officers are often armed and can therefore pose a physical threat to citizens in a way that most other state officials do not. Another is that citizens typically expect the police to uphold the law and be the "final port of call" in fighting crime, including that of other state officials: if law enforcement officers cannot be trusted, most citizens have nowhere else to turn when seeking justice. Leading on from this, if citizens do not trust the police, they are much less likely to cooperate with them, resulting in higher unsolved crime rates.
 Yet according to Transparency International's 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, more people pay bribes to law enforcement officers globally than to any other public officials, rendering the police the most corrupt branch of the state in many countries. Police corruption assumes numerous forms, from relatively benign but irritating demands for bribes from motorists to improper procurement procedures and—most dangerously—collusion with organized crime gangs in the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and humans, and occasionally even in contract killing. One other form of miscreancy was identified in the 1980s as largely peculiar to the police, namely "noble cause corruption." This term, also known as the "Dirty Harry problem," is applied when police officers deliberately bend or break the law not for personal benefit but in the belief that this is ultimately for the good of society.
 Many factors drive police corruption, including inadequate salaries, frustration with the leniency of the courts, opportunity, envy (of wealthy criminals), and simple greed. Combating it is no easy task, but methods that have significantly lowered corruption rates in countries such as Singapore and Georgia include reducing discretionary decision-making, radical restructuring, risk assessments, greater use of psychological testing, improving working conditions, lifestyle monitoring, civilian review, and introducing anti-corruption agencies that are completely independent of the police. But police corruption is ultimately a "wicked" problem, meaning that it is so complex and changeable that it can never be completely solved; the best that can be hoped for is that it will be brought down to manageable proportions.


Left ventricular systolic pressure-volume area (PVA) has been reported to be a reliable predictor of cardiac oxygen consumption rate per beat (VO2) in a given heart with a stable inotropic background. PVA is the specific area in the pressure-volume (PV) diagram, consisting of the area (EW) within the PV loop and the area (PE) bound by the end-systolic and end-diastolic PV lines and the relaxation segment of the PV loop. EW and PE correspond to the external mechanical work and the end-systolic elastic potential energy in the ventricular wall, respectively. We determined the optimal combination of EW and PE for the best prediction of VO2, using the linear multiple regression analysis. From EW, PE, and VO2, data of many isovolumic and ejecting contractions, the optimal coefficients of EW and PE were 1.67 +/- 0.43 (SD; 7 hearts) and 1.74 +/- 0.49 (10(-5) ml O2/mmHg . ml), virtually identical to each other, corroborating that PVA, i.e., a simple sum of EW and PE, can reliably predict VO2 of a given heart in a stable contractile state.


Objectives: The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the capacity for same-day discharge in clinical stage I endometrial cancer (EC) patients treated with total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH), bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) and bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection (BPLND). Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the charts of stage I EC patients who were treated with TLH, BSO and BPLND and discharged on the same day. The intra- and postoperative clinical variables (e.g., age, complications, surgery time, patient hospital stay) were evaluated in an attempt to discern which factors may predispose a patient to same-day discharge. Results: Twenty-one patients were successfully discharged on the same day of surgery. Mean operative time was 1.48 h and length of hospital stay was 6.35 h. There were no intraoperative complications or hospital readmissions. Conclusions: We present a single, institutional experience solely assessing the capacity for same-day discharge in clinical stage I EC patients treated with TLH, BSO and BPLND. Since the postoperative complication rate was minimal with no hospital readmissions, we suggest that particularly selected stage I EC patients are amenable to outpatient management.


The electrical methods used to study the molecular movements in dielectric materials are based on the movement of the dipoles, which are parts of the component molecules, under a convenient external applied DC or AC electric field. We have proposed recently a combined isothermal and non-isothermal measuring protocol to analyze charge injection/extraction, transport, trapping and de-trapping in low mobility materials. During an electric polarization process or an electric charging process, besides the polarization process, electric charge is injected into the material. This charge is partially transported and partially trapped in the material, depending on the material properties and on the experimental conditions. As a consequence of the charge trapping process, the structure is decorated with space charge and during the subsequent thermally stimulated discharge current experiment we are observing an apparent peak and the genuine peaks that are related to dipole randomization and charge de-trapping determined by the molecular movements. The aim of this paper is to present a combined measuring protocol that allows to separate the apparent peak and the genuine peaks in polar and non-polar dielectric materials. The method is very sensitive, very selective and allows to reveal, in a single run, details that are not observed when other electrical and non-electrical techniques are used.


Chiari III malformation is an extremely rare anomaly characterized by low occipital and high cervical encephalocele with herniation of posterior fossa contents, that is, the cerebellum and/or the brainstem, occipital lobe, and fourth ventricle. We report the case of Chairi III malformation in a neonate with associated hypertelorism and microcephaly, discuss the etipopathogenetic and radiological features, and review the pertinent literature. The neonate, a two-day-old child, with Chairi-III malformation had a large low occipital and cervical osseous defect with nearly a nonexistent posterior fossa due to the herniation of the cerebellum and a part of the occipital lobe into the large encephalocele sac. The patient also had associated microcephaly and hypertelorism without hydrocephalus. The existence of significant, viable neural tissue within the encephalocele sac precluded any surgical intervention. In our patient, it is proposed that during early embryogenesis, incomplete distension of the telencephalic and the rhombencephalic ventricles resulted in Chiari III malformation (based upon unifying theory of embryogenesis of McLone and Knepper) with a large encephalocele containing major portions of cerebellum and occipital lobe, and left the chondrocranium without an adequate inductive force of the underlying neural mass. The skull was, therefore, microcephalic and the posterior fossa virtually nonexistent. Hypertelorism also resulted from failure of eyes to completely rotate forward during fetal life owing to the presence of this large posterior encephalocele and the absence of neural cues for the chondrocranial expansion. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the association of Chairi-III malformation with microcephaly and hypertelorism has not been previously reported.


The study was undertaken to make long-term observations on the level of cholesterol and phospholipid in the blood and bile of patients with or without cholelithiasis. It was hoped that, by comparison, some variations in these components of the bile and blood might be observed that could possibly explain the occurrence or absence of cholelithiasis. Material and Method Four patients were studied on a metabolic unit for periods of from five to eight weeks after cholecystectomy and common duct exploration. Three of these patients had established cholelithiasis, the stones being of the mixed (inflammatory) type, while one had an essentially normal gallbladder and common bile duct. Following recovery after the operation, the patients were moved to the metabolic unit where liver function studies were done and the basal metabolic rate measured. The common duct tube was then occluded and the patients received a formula diet that consisted of the following:


This publication began as a need for a short summary of farm programs and farm bills for two agricultural economics courses focusing on agricultural policy -- ag. economics 429, and ag. economics 614. Over time, it became clear that many students taking these courses had less and less background in agriculture and less (even cursory) knowledge of policies than those of the recent past. After this list was developed, a number of other professional agricultural economists found copies and began to use it, hence its publication in a more structured form. The list of Farm Program Provisions is not all-inclusive. It certainly does not contain all the laws and provisions that have affected agriculture over the years. However, it is an easy reference to farm bills and provisions since 1933. We intend to update this list as time goes on to continue its usefulness to professionals and students alike.


A CALPHAD assessment of the Au-Cu system, based on using cluster expansion theory for the energy representation and the cluster variation method for the configuration entropy of the solid phase, has been carried out. This improved modelling of the solid phases has been achieved within the Thermo-Calc software package. An optimised thermodynamic description for the liquid and the disordered and ordered solid phases has been obtained. The assessment satisfactorily reproduces both the experimental phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties for the liquid and solid phases, except for the enthalpy in the ordered state. A major challenge facing CALPHAD is to develop techniques which will permit this kind of modelling to be used for multicomponent systems.


: Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are promising building blocks for water purification due to the high surface area, tuneability of surface charge and grafting of surface groups depending on the pollutants. In this report we have converted CNCs into photocatalysts, without altering the surface groups, by in situ growth of TiO 2 nanorods (NRs) and functionalization with Au nanocrystals (NCs) for enhanced light absorption. The control on the density of the NRs assures that the CNC surface and functionalities are accessible for the pollutant, followed by the photocatalytic degradation on the light absorption layer under solar illumination. This seed-mediated NRs synthesis can be applied to realize a series of CNC-inorganic NRs photocatalysts. The low temperature (90 °C compared to commonly reported growth at 150 °C) of the NR growth provides the opportunity to use nanostructured biopolymers as functional substrates for preparation of photocatalysts using a bio-inspired design.


Healthcare within the United States is notoriously fragmented and inefficient. Contemporary innovations for policy, reimbursement, and care delivery are consistently directed towards the promotion of value based care (Bates, 2010). These initiatives routinely coalesce around the promising potential of a robust primary care system. The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model is increasingly becoming the standard of quality care and use of this model by healthcare providers is poised to bring about a paradigm shift towards value-based care (Henderson, Princell & Martin, 2012). This scholarly project incorporated an evidence based approach to establishing continuous quality improvement in a primary care office pursuing PCMH recognition. Application of The Donabedian Model (Donabedian, 1998) and PARiHS framework (Kitson, Harvey, & McCormack, 1998) provided a strategic approach to developing and successfully adopting the foundation for continuous quality improvement. This project demonstrated how addressing the fundamental need for supportive structure and process improvements, based upon evidence and the context of an organization, can facilitate the successful adoption of continuous quality improvement (QI) in a Midwest primary care clinic. Systematic efforts to address issues of structure, process, and outcomes for a nurse-managed health center translated to improvement in quality performance scores for cervical cancer screening, breast cancer screening, and tobacco cessation counseling rates. Staff perceptions of organizational QI strategy also improved following implementation. Alternative revenue through incentivized reimbursements went unchanged, but an extended implementation period would likely foster an increase in the relative fiscal benefits of continuous quality improvement. Additionally, several unplanned benefits, including increased number of new patients establishing care at the practice, were actualized QUALITY IMPROVEMENT 3 through organizational engagement in quality improvement work. Ultimately, this project demonstrated how addressing the fundamental need for supportive structure and process improvements, based upon evidence and the context of an organization, can impact outcomes and facilitate the successful adoption of continuous quality improvement in a nurse-managed primary care clinic. QUALITY IMPROVEMENT 4 Table of


Around six hundred astronomers and space scientists gathered at the University of Portsmouth in June 2014 for the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM). NAM is one of the largest professional astronomy conferences in Europe, and this year's gathering included the UK Solar Physics annual meeting as well as attendance from the magnetosphere, ionosphere and solar-terrestrial physics community. Conference tracks ranged from discussion of the molecular universe to cosmic chronometers, and from spectroscopic cosmology to industrial applications of astrophysics and astronomy.


Purpose The aim of this study was to compare the performances pretargeted immunoPET 68Ga-PETimaging (68Ga-pPET) with anti carcino-embryonic antigen (CEA) and anti-histamine-succinyl-glycine (HSG) recombinant humanized bispecific monoclonal antibody (TF2) and 68Ga-labeled HSG peptide (IMP288) to conventional 18FDG-PET in an orthotopic murine model of liver metastases of human colonic cancer. Methods Hepatic tumor burden following intra-portal injection of luciferase-transfected LS174T cells in nude mice was confirmed using bioluminescence. One group of animals was injected intravenously with TF2 and with 68Ga-IMP288 24 hours later (n=8). Another group received 18FDG (n=8), and a third had both imaging modalities (n=7). PET acquisitions started 1 hour after injection of the radioconjugate. Biodistributions in tumors and normal tissues were assessed one hour after imaging. Results Tumor/organ ratios were significantly higher with 68Ga-pPET compared to 18FDG-PET (P<0.05) with both imaging and biodistribution data. 68Ga-pPET sensitivity for tumor detection was 67% vs. 31% with 18FDG PET (P=0.049). For tumors less than 200 mg, the sensitivity was 44% with 68Ga-pPET vs. 0% for 18FDG PET (P=0.031). A strong correlation was demonstrated between tumor uptakes measured on PET images and biodistribution analyses (r2=0.85). Conclusion 68Ga-pPET was more sensitive than 18FDG-PET for the detection of human colonic liver metastases in an orthotopic murine xenograft model. Improved tumor/organ ratios support the use of pretargeting method for imaging and therapy of CEA-expressing tumors.


From the Publisher:
The move toward worldwide wireless communications continues at a remarkable pace, and the antenna element of the technology is crucial to its success. With contributions from more than 30 international experts, the Handbook of Antennas in Wireless Communications brings together all of the latest research and results to provide engineering professionals and students with a one-stop reference on the theory, technologies, and applications for indoor, hand-held, mobile, and satellite systems.Beginning with an introduction to wireless communications systems, it offers an in-depth treatment of propagation prediction and fading channels. It then explores antenna technology with discussion of antenna design methods and the various antennas in current use or development for base stations, hand held devices, satellite communications, and shaping beams. The discussions then move to smart antennas and phased array technology, including details on array theory and beamforming techniques. Space diversity, direction-of-arrival estimation, source tracking, and blind source separation methods are addressed, as are the implementation of smart antennas and the results of field trials of systems using smart antennas implemented. Finally, the hot media topic of the safety of mobile phones receives due attention, including details of how the human body interacts with the electromagnetic fields of these devices.Its logical development and extensive range of diagrams, figures, and photographs make this handbook easy to follow and provide a clear understanding of design techniques and the performance of finished products. Its unique, comprehensive coverage written by top experts in their fields promises tomake the Handbook of Antennas in Wireless Communications the standard reference for the field.


p-Hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase (PHBH) hydroxylates activated benzoates using NADPH as a reductant and O(2) as an oxygenating substrate. Because the flavin, when reduced, will quickly react with oxygen in either the presence or absence of a phenolic substrate, it is important to regulate flavin reduction to prevent the uncontrolled reaction of NADPH and oxygen to form H(2)O(2). Reduction is controlled by the protonation state of the aromatic substrate p-hydroxybenzoate (pOHB), which when ionized to the phenolate facilitates the movement of flavin between two conformations, termed "in" and "out". When the hydrogen bond network that provides communication between the substrate and solvent is disrupted by changing its terminal residue, His72, to Asn, protons from solution no longer equilibrate rapidly with pOHB bound to the active site [Palfey, B. A., Moran, G. R., Entsch, B., Ballou, D. P., and Massey, V. (1999) Biochemistry 38, 1153-1158]. Thus, one population of the His72Asn enzyme reduces rapidly and has the phenolate form of pOHB bound at the active site and the flavin in the out conformation. The remaining population of the His72Asn enzyme reduces slowly and has the phenolic form of pOHB bound and the flavin in the in conformation. We have investigated the mechanisms of proton transfer between solvent and pOHB bound to the His72Asn form of the enzyme by double-mixing and single-mixing stopped-flow experiments. We find that, depending on the initial ionization state of bound pOHB and the new pH of the solution, the ionization/protonation of pOHB proceeds through the direct reaction of hydronium or hydroxide with the enzyme-ligand complex and leads to the conversion of one flavin conformation to the other. Our kinetic data indicate that the enzyme with the flavin in the in conformation reacts in two steps. Inspection of crystal structures suggests that the hydroxide ion would react at the re-face of the flavin, and its reaction with pOHB is limited by the movement of Pro293, a conserved residue in similar flavoprotein hydroxylases. We hypothesize that this type of breathing mode by the protein may have been used to compensate for the lack of an efficient proton-transfer network in ancestral hydroxylases, permitting useful catalysis prior to the emergence of specialized proton-transfer mechanisms.


Macroalgal blooms are increasing world-wide and have negative effects on benthic invertebrates and sediments. These include loss of species diversity and development of hostile sediment environments. This thesis considers ecological effects of Ulva lactuca L., and its mechanical removal on benthic invertebrates and sediments in Avon-Heathcote Estuary, New Zealand. Benthic communities comprised 34 species from 12 groups recorded from seven sites during seasonal general surveys. Dominant groups at each site were Gastropoda and Bivalvia. The most abundant species were Austrovenus stutchburyi, Micrelenchus tenebrosus and Amphibola crenata. Community composition varied significantly between sites, and there were significant site-specific differences in abundances of most species between winter and summer. U. lactuca had the greatest seasonal variation. Several species correlated with U. lactuca biomass, and the strength of correlation for different species varied between sites. There were seasonal changes in sediment physicochemical variables between sites with greatest change in the silt/clay fraction. The sediment variables silt/clay fraction, dissolved oxygen and temperature correlated with seasonal changes of patterns in benthic community assemblages. A similar study was carried out by Bressington in 2003. In both studies, Bivalvia and Gastropoda were the most abundant groups, with Gastropoda having a higher, and Bivalvia a lower, proportion in the present study compared with 2003. Summer communities were significantly different between the two studies. Compared with 2003 there were higher percentages of sediment pore water and volatile solids present in 2005. Experimental removal of U. lactuca was conducted by mechanical broom at two sites: an open, exposed central sand flat, and McCormacks Bay, a shallow, sheltered mud flat. Removing U. lactuca had several immediate effects. These included a significant decrease in abundance of mobile epifauna (Micrelenchus tenebrosus and Zeacumantus subcarinatus) and an increase in abundance of infauna, including Arthritica bifurca and Austrovenus stutchburyi. There was no effect of U. lactuca removal on Austrovenus stutchburyi condition and 46 days following removal, invertebrate abundances approached pre-removal levels at each site. U. lactuca removal also caused short-term increases in dissolved oxygen and temperature of pore water. The greatest visual impact of removing U. lactuca was to sediments in McCormacks Bay from trampling. II _ It was concluded that the variables having the greatest effect on seasonal species' distribution and abundance at each site were temperature and sediment grain size. Differences between the present study and the study in 2003 were due to differences in sampling procedure mainly due to the two different quadrat sizes. Greater accuracy in representing long-term changes in ecosystems would be achieved by using standard sampling protocols. Removal of U. lactuca by mechanical broom was effective and had low impact on benthic invertebrates and physico-chemical variables, but it should be used only in sandy habitats because of severe disturbance to soft-sediment environments. Options for management and control of U. lactuca in Avon-Heathcote Estuary are discussed.


There are currently no effective therapies for metastatic melanoma and targeted immunotherapy results in the remission of only a very small percentage of tumors. In this study, we show that the noncanonical Wnt ligand, Wnt5A, can increase melanoma metastasis in vivo while down-regulating the expression of tumor-associated antigens important in eliciting CTL responses (e.g., MART-1, GP100, and tyrosinase). Melanosomal antigen expression is governed by MITF, PAX3, and SOX10 and is inhibited upon signal transducers and activators of transcription 3 (STAT3) activation, via decreases in PAX3 and subsequently MITF expression. Increasing Wnt5A in Wnt5A-low cells activated STAT3, and STAT3 was decreased upon Wnt5A knockdown. Downstream targets such as PAX3, MITF, and MART-1 were also affected by Wnt5A treatment or knockdown. Staining of a melanoma tissue array also highlighted the inverse relationship between MART-1 and Wnt5A expression. PKC activation by phorbol ester mimicked Wnt5A effects, and Wnt5A treatment in the presence of STAT3 or PKC inhibitors did not lower MART-1 levels. CTL activation studies showed that increases in Wnt5A correspond to decreased CTL activation and vice versa, suggesting that targeting Wnt5A before immunotherapy may lead to the enhancement of current targeted immunotherapy for patients with metastatic melanoma.


This work was financially supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology. Tânia Albuquerque is grateful for research grant (BRJ/DAN-2012) funded by National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge, I.P.


How can you change your negative thinking? This column describes a process that, on the surface, seems too simplistic to be beneficial, but that works: choose a few good words to repeat to yourself constantly, progress to better thoughts, and then improve what you say to others. If you want to be more satisfied with your work life and your personal life, you must change the internal dialogue in your head. If you have some version of negative internal chatter, you need to substitute positive statements. You need to say something different from what you have been saying every spare minute of the day. You must say it even if it is the biggest lie you have ever heard yourself think. You must say it for days or weeks before you notice a difference in your attitude, relationships, and health. Eventually, you will notice you feel better and people are behaving better.


Introduction: Bilateral sagittal split osteotomy (BSSO) is a technique commonly used to correct mandibular disproportions, while neurosensory disorders are common following this technique. Low-level laser irradiation has shown promising results to relieve the neurosensory disorders of BSSO technique. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of low-level laser irradiation on the neurosensory complications related to the BSSO technique. Materials and methods: In this prospective, double-blinded clinical trial, 13 patients candidate for BSSO surgery were selected and went under complete clinical neurosensory tests (CNTs) including brush stroke discrimination; two-point discrimination; and contact, thermal, and pinprick discrimination, as well as visual analog scale (VAS) assessments. The laser GaAlAs (820–830 μm wavelength) irradiation was done for total six sessions after surgery for the patients at one side accidentally, and the opposite site was a control by irradiation of placebo. The values of CNT assessments between the experimental and control sites were analyzed employing Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: Higher values of VAS and brush stroke discrimination test were observed in the laser-irradiated sites than in the control sites, although without any significant differences (p > 0.05). Moreover, significantly higher values of pinprick discrimination test were noted in the experimental sites on days 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, 28, and 60 (p < 0.05). The thermal test results were higher in the study sides, and the differences of both sides were significant on days 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, and 28 (p < 0.05). Conclusion: In total, GaAlAs low-level laser irradiation after the BSSO surgery results in both subjective and objective improvements regarding the time and magnitude of return of function; however, in some tests no significant differences were found between laser-irradiated and control areas.


We used event-related functional MRI to examine the neural consequences of detecting the presence or absence of a stimulus. Subjects detected a brief interval of coherent motion embedded in dynamic noise that was presented throughout a test period. Several brain regions, including V1/V2, middle temporal complex (MT+), left intraparietal cortex, and the frontal eye field, were activated at the onset of the dynamic noise, irrespective of whether a coherent motion target was presented early or late in the test period, or not at all. These regions, many of which were motion sensitive, were likely involved in searching for and detecting the target. The blood oxygenation level-dependent signal in these regions was higher in trials in which a target was detected than in trials in which it was missed or not presented, indicating that these regions were modulated by detection. Moreover, the blood oxygenation leveldependent signal in these regions decayed quickly once a target was detected, even though the dynamic noise continued to be displayed, indicating that they were shut down after detection. Therefore, detection-related modulations occurred in the same regions that accumulate target information over time, in agreement with current psychological and neural models of detection. Many other regions, however, including areas in prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, were not involved in searching for a target. In these regions, activation began early in the test period when an early target was detected but began late in the test period when a late target was detected or when a response was correctly withheld in the absence of a motion target. The signal in these regions was therefore triggered by a discrete event during the test interval that was related to presence-absence detection.


The interest, research and development in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is increasing day by day. In WSN the sensor nodes play the role of routers in broadcasting. One of the simplest way in broadcasting in WSN is flooding in which all the sensor nodes relay the data packets once with their full transmission range to attain the full network coverage. But as we know sensor nodes operate on limited battery power, resulting in wastage of power resources due to transmission at full power. So flooding proves itself to be an inefficient broadcasting technique. So there must be some other efficient techniques to solve the problem of minimum or lesser transmission energy broadcasting. In the WSN nodes have capabilities of adjust their transmission range in a limit, as lesser transmission range leads us to more number of transmission but lesser power consumption at individual node. We try to cover both the aspects of WSN, that the nodes can be stationary or moving. We uses the concept of an optimal transmission radius, computed with a hexagonal tiling of the network area, that minimizes the total power consumption for a broadcasting task. We assume energy consumption for both the packet transmission and receptions. In this thesis a Local Minimum Spanning Tree (LMST) algorithm is used to generate a LMST tree for the specified network area. In LMST we generate a fully connected graph containing all the sensor nodes with minimum sum of edge lengths. The idea behind using the minimum edge length( i.e. minimum transmission range) is that, transmission energy a transmission range. For thesis purpose MATLAB is used to generate the LMST and to calculate the energy spent in broadcasting, and CPN is used to validate the LMST generated by MATLAB. CPN is a formal languagefs product which can validate the working of any algorithm or the protocol designed by any simulator.


Abstract As has been the case in a number of countries, parents in England have increasingly been given the opportunity to choose between different types of schools. Doing so is regarded as a way of meeting individual needs and improving academic standards. Faith-based schools long predate this move towards a more diversified educational system, but have come to be regarded as one of the ways of fulfilling the recent agenda. Drawing on social identity theory, we suggest that attitudes towards faith-based schools reflect social (religious) identities and group interests associated with those identities rather than beliefs about the merits of individual choice. We demonstrate this is the case using data from all four parts of the UK. However, the extent to which attitudes towards faith-based schools are a reflection of religious identities varies across the four parts in line with the structure of the religious economy and educational provision locally. We conclude that rather than reflecting a supposedly a-social concern with choice, support for diversity of educational provision may be rooted instead in collective – and potentially antagonistic – social identities.


The functional significance of uncoupling proteins UCP2 and UCP3 in the cell and the organism remains unknown. There have been reports about their involvement in cellular protection mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of ischemic preconditioning. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of uncoupling proteins UCP2 and UCP3 in the formation of cardioprotective effect of ischemic preconditioning. In experiments on isolated rat hearts we show here an increase in the level of UCP2 and UCP3 gene expression in the heart tissue under the influence of ischemic preconditioning with three episodes of 5 min stopping the flow perfusion. Similar effects were induced by a prolonged ischemia-reperfusion of myocardium. The blockade of the UCP2 activity by genipin (Wako Inc., USA, 10(-5) mol/L, isolated heart perfusion for 15 minutes) abolished the protective effect of adaptation to ischemia. It was concluded that uncoupling proteins take part in the cardioprotective effect ofischemic preconditioning.


The article considers the peculiarities of market conjuncture in the system of marketing analysis as a component of the marketing complex of the enterprise. The ability to conduct conjuncture research is becoming especially relevant today due to the constant changes in the markets. Market conjuncture is its state or economic situation on it, which is characterized by the ratio of supply and demand, price dynamics, the activity of entities. The conjuncture situation depends on many factors, which must be analyzed in conjuncture research.
The main tasks of conjuncture research and the main approaches for its implementation are indicated, a certain sequence of conjuncture research is given. Conjuncture analysis in the marketing system should be conducted continuously and systematically, it is a complex intellectual process and requires comprehensive and systematic approaches. If a systems approach is a multi-level or hierarchical description of the market as an object, then within the framework of an integrated approach, the market is considered through the interaction of many factors of the internal and external environment.
To study conjuncture conditions, an appropriate system of indicators is developed, which differs for individual types of markets, but in general, based on it, the most complete and systematically real conjuncture situation of a particular market is presented. The stages of conjuncture research are given and the main methods used by marketers in the analysis of market conjuncture are emphasized. Among such methods the most complete and often used are methods of comparison, grouping, visual and graphic. It is mandatory to build time series, more and more experts turn to correlation-regression analysis, as well as the index method. It is also essential for marketing analysis to monitor the factors that affect market conjuncture, among which micro- and macro-level factors are distinguished. Significant among such factors of market conditions is the presence or absence of competition on this market, the product range of its products, the specifics of pricing by competitors. Forecasting the further development of markets as the end result of conjuncture research and the basis of future market behavior completes conjuncture research.


Oceanographic in situ data collected in the Gulf of Guinea during six cruises carried out between 2005 and 2007 were analysed to study the influence of equatorial upwelling on the productivity of the region. At 10°W, observations during boreal summer and autumn cruises captured seasonal upwelling influences. In response to the shoaling pycnocline in June 2005, higher concentrations of nitrate and chlorophyll fluorescence were recorded at the ocean surface in June than in September. Our findings challenge the paradigm that westward advection from the nutrient-rich African coast is responsible for equatorial enrichment in the Gulf of Guinea. Vertical sections of the parameters under study in the summer of 2005 showed no westward advection from 3°E to 10°W within the equatorial band. This emphasizes the important role of vertical processes in equatorial enrichment at 10°W. An additional aspect of our study provides evidence of the impact on nutrient and chlorophyll distribution of off-equatorial westward recirculation of equatorial undercurrent waters (observed between 2°and 3°S).

 Key words: Advection, equatorial undercurrent, equatorial upwelling, Gulf of Guinea, nutrients, phytoplankton biomass.


The article proposes a new model for the exclusion of evidence obtained as an indirect result of police illegality, which aims to strike the appropriate balance between the intrinsic and the extrinsic objectives of criminal evidence — truth seeking vis-a-vis procedural values. To this end, the article critically examines the underlying theories and the doctrinal approaches to the admissibility of derivative evidence in three legal systems: the United States, the European Court of Human Rights, and Israel. Whereas deterrence, which is the sole justification under current U.S. law, is conceived of as the only theory that clearly warrants the suppression of derivative evidence, the rationales for exclusion that prevail in other jurisdictions — moral integrity and the protection of rights — are regarded as predominantly entailing the suppression of primary evidence. The article argues, however, that all three rationales may equally mandate the suppression of derivative evidence and that only a combination of the guiding principles could sustain a coherent theory for the exclusionary doctrine. It also contends that the different doctrinal approaches are largely based on the degree of each legal system's adherence to considerations associated with the "crime control model," and that a narrowly construed discretionary regime, based exclusively on due process considerations, is preferable to a rigid one, as it enables the courts to avoid the adverse consequences of exclusion.


Devoted to the Freud-Signorelli case, this study by French art-historian/philosopher Hubert Damisch offers an in-depth analysis of "the implication of the subject in the various dimensions of perception, remembering, analysis, and interpretation." To better reflect the complex relationships between art, psychoanalysis, and interpretation, Damisch's commentaries take the form of a diary. By discussing his comings and goings between the 1960s and 1990s and by making an effort to remember his own life and practice, Damisch builds a dispositif where Freud's analyses of the mechanisms of oblivion, Signorelli's painting of "the damned," Dante's Inferno, and Primo Levi's testimony on the Shoah reverberate with each other. This study, which is one of the chapters of the unfinished book La machine d'Orvieto, was first published in French in Y voir mieux, y regarder de plus près (Rue d'Ulm, 2010).


Computational techniques are used to model the defect chemistry of perovskite-structured LaBO3(B = Al, Mn or Co), which is of relevance to their use as oxidation catalysts and as oxygen-ion conductors. We consider a range of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal dopant substitutions at the La site with oxygen vacancy compensation. Correlations with ion size are found with Sr predicted to have the most favourable solubility within all three systems, in accord with observation. We also calculate the energetics of oxidation in the doped oxide involving the creation of hole centres from the incorporation of molecular oxygen at O2– vacancy sites.


An optical scanning system is developed for the detection of recombination radiation from power devices. The instrument facilitates two-dimensional characterization of the excess-carrier content in a device. A bilateral technique enables measurements along various perpendicular surfaces of the devices under investigation. Hence, measurements of processes not present, or less dominant, in one direction may be observed in another. Examples taken from gate turn-off (GTO)-thyristor investigations are presented. All stages of the switching cycles as well as during the ON-state can be investigated with the instrument. Detailed three-dimensional carrier maps are produced for the visualization of measurement results, and sequences of maps are used to observe time-dependent phenomena involved in the transient operation of a device. Features associated with placement of the optical focus are explained, and possibilities of tomographic mapping of power devices are discussed. >


An Amberlite XAD-4 polymeric resin technique was used to independently evaluate the contribution of easily desorbable hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) to overall sediment toxicity. After incubation with native sediments, XAD resins were extracted with the organic solvents, and material captured in the extracts amended back unto reference sediment either intact or after fractionation to isolate different compound classes. A variety of bioassays utilizing fish embryos and larvae and invertebrates exposed to whole sediments, and luminescent bacteria (Microtox, Mutatox) 4 exposed to sediment extracts were then used to compare the toxicity of native sediments to reference sediments amended with XAD extracts, and to compare the relative sensitivity of the bioassays used. The data obtained support the use of the XAD method as a tool for toxicity identification evaluation in sediments contaminated with HOCs, the use of'Ampelisca abdita as a sensitive indicator of acute sediment toxicity, and the use of Microtox as a screening tool to obtain a relative estimate of potential toxicity.