We have isolated a second human Stat5 cDNA, Stat5B, and demonstrated that the genes encoding both Stat5A and Stat5B are located at chromosome 17q11.2. Both genes were constitutively transcribed in peripheral blood lymphocytes. By using specific antisera, we demonstrated that both Stat5A and Stat5B are activated by interleukin-2 (IL-2) in peripheral blood lymphocytes, natural killer-like YT leukemia cells, and human T cell lymphotropic virus type I-transformed MT-2 T cells. In COS-7 cells, which constitutively express the Janus family tyrosine kinase Jak1, reconstitution of IL-2-induced Stat5A and Stat5B DNA binding activities was dependent on the coexpression of Jak3 along with the IL-2 receptor β chain and the common cytokine receptor -chain. This IL-2-induced Stat5 activation was dependent on the presence of either of two tyrosines (Tyr-392 or Tyr-510) in the IL-2 receptor β chain, indicating that either of these two tyrosines can serve as a docking site. Moreover, we demonstrated that human Stat5 activation is also dependent on Tyr-694 in Stat5A and Tyr-699 in Stat5B, indicating that these tyrosines are required for dimerization. The COS-7 reconstitution system described herein provides a valuable assay for further elucidation of the IL-2-activated JAK-STAT pathway.


Background: This study aimed to evaluate the anti-inflammation effects of the freeze-dried tuna whole blood (FTB), and freeze-dried tuna blood cell (FTC) in LPS-induced RAW264.7 cells. Methods: The RAW264.7 cells were pre-administered with FTB and FTC at different concentrations for 2 h and then stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 24 h. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), nitric oxide (NO), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) in RAW 264.7 cells were then determined. Results: The results showed that only FTB remarkably abolished LPS-induced ROS in RAW264.7 cells. FTB and FTC significantly decreased LPS-induced NO which IC 50  values of FTB and FTC after 24 h were 78.58 and 22.47 μg/mL, respectively. TNF-α and IL-1β secretion were abolished by FTB and FTC in LPS-stimulated macrophages which IC 50  values of both FTB and FTC after 24 h were more than 25 μg/mL, respectively. However, the efficacy of FTC against inflammatory mediators was due to cytotoxic effects on RAW 264.7 cells. Conclusion: Tuna whole blood potentially inhibits inflammation through modulating the synthesis of several mediators and cytokines associated with the development of inflammation. These findings suggest a role of tuna blood on anti-inflammatory activity. Keywords : Anti-inflammatory activity, RAW 264.7 cells, red blood cell, tuna blood, waste utilization


Summary

This study determined the levels of nutritionally important starch fractions in selected milled, nonparboiled rice cultivated in Nigeria. Five improved varieties (FARO 52, FARO 57, FARO 44, FARO 60 and FARO 61) and four local varieties (Kwandala, Yardass, Jeep and Jamila) were evaluated. There were significant differences in starch fractions among varieties. Resistant starch (RS) ranged between 1.43% and 3.13%. Rapidly digestible starch (RDS) was lowest in Jamila (27.70%) and highest in FARO 61 (39.26%). Generally, the local varieties had significant higher RS (2.71%) with a lower RDS (32.82%) compared with improved varieties (RS; 1.88% and RDS; 36.07%). RS was inversely related to RDS and starch digestion index (SDI). The SDI had a highly significant positive correlation with RDS (r = 0.879, P < 0.01). These results highlight the need for further work in the identification of milled, nonparboiled rice varieties with less rapid digestion for its associated health benefits to consumers.


Exogenous ATP-induced transient outward currents (IATP) were investigated in isolated adult rat hepatocytes using conventional whole cell patch and nystatin perforated patch recording modes. The IATP increased in a sigmoidal fashion with an increase in ATP concentration, where the half-maximal concentration was 1.4 microM. The order of current potency was 2-methylthio-ATP > or = UTP = ATP > > alpha, beta-methylene-ATP. IATP was depressed in a concentration-dependent manner by suramin and apamin. IATP reversed its direction at the K+ equilibrium potential. IATP occurred easily in hepatocytes obtained from female rats weighing > 250 g. Removal of extracellular Ca2+ had no effect on the peak amplitude of IATP, but thapsigargin abolished it. Intracellular perfusion with 1,2-bis(2-aminophenoxy)ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid, heparin, guanosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate), or neomycin also abolished IATP. Pretreatment with pertussis toxin or calmodulin antagonists had no effect on IATP. It was concluded that ATP binding to both P2Y and P2U purinoceptors coupled to G protein may raise apaminsensitive Ca(2+)-dependent K+ conductance via a phospholipase C-inositol trisphosphate-Ca2+ signaling pathway.


Whole blood clotting time was measured before and after four different intensities and durations of exercise, using 12 male college students as subjects. The exercises consisted of a 15-minute walk on a motor-driven treadmill at 2.5 m.p.h., a 2-hour walk on the treadmill at 2.5 m.p.h., a run to near exhaustion on the treadmill at 6.25 m.p.h., and a stepping exercise on a 12-inch bench, 30 steps per minute for 15 minutes. Thromboplastin generation rate was measured before and after the stepping exercise on blood samples drawn from 14 subjects, and thrombin generation rate was similarly measured on samples drawn from 16 subjects. No statistically significant variation was found in whole blood clotting time of samples drawn before the exercise, 1 minute after the exercise, or 15 and 30 minutes after. Neither was there any significant change in the thromboplastin generation rate of samples drawn before, 1 minute after, and 30 minutes after exercise. Ten of the 16 subjects showed no change in thrombin generation rate after exercise. However, six subjects experienced an acceleration of thrombin generation from a mean time of maximum thrombin concentration at 5.2 minutes before exercise to 4.0 minutes one minute after exercise. This difference was statistically significant. From these data it was concluded that, in general, exercise was not followed by hypercoagulability. However, in some subjects, thrombin generation rate was increased due to undetermined factors.


In this article, we integrate recent findings on the ways power affects goal pursuit. We review literature suggesting that power has two unique effects on goal pursuit: it affects the goals individuals choose to pursue, and the ways they pursue them. In short, we maintain that power-holders prefer goals that suit their privileged positions - reward oriented and hierarchy-maintenance goals - as well as goals that come easily to mind because they are chronically accessible or afforded in the situation. We go on to show that powerful individuals exhibit better self-regulation during goal striving than powerless individuals, independently of goal content. Finally, we review conditions that reverse the effects of power on goal pursuit. © 2011 The Authors. Social and Personality Psychology Compass © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


Gas turbine combustor performance was explored by utilizing a 1-D flow network model. To obtain the preliminary performance of combustion chamber, three different flow network solvers were coupled with a chemical reactor network scheme. These flow solvers were developed via simplified, segregated and direct solutions of the nodal equations. Flow models were utilized to predict the flow field, pressure, density and temperature distribution inside the chamber network. The network model followed a segregated flow and chemical network scheme, and could supply information about the pressure drop, nodal pressure, average temperature, species distribution, and flow split. For the verification of the model's results, analyses were performed using CFD on a seven-stage annular test combustor from TUSAS Engine Industries, and the results were then compared with actual performance tests of the combustor. The results showed that the preliminary performance predictor code accurately estimated the flow distribution. Pressure distribution was also consistent with the CFD results, but with varying levels of conformity. The same was true for the average temperature predictions of the inner combustor at the dilution and exit zones. However, the reactor network predicted higher elemental temperatures at the entry zones.


Primary and secondary data show the importance and distribution of human Chagas disease (HCD) in Northeast Brazil. Among the 27 detected vector species, Triatoma infestans, Panstrongylus megistus, Triatoma brasiliensis and Triatoma pseudomaculata are epidemiologically important. Major medical impact is attributed to T. infestans and P. megistus, the most domiciliated and vulnerable species, while the other two are native and more difficult to control. Regional differences in transmission and medical impact of HCD exist in the Northeast, where in general the disease appears to be less harmful than in other Brazilian regions like the Southeast and State of Goiás. There is a downward trend in HCD transmission and morbidity in the Northeast, its control in the region is a cause of concern because of the decommissioning of the National Health Foundation without a corresponding assimilation of its routine activities by regional and municipal institutions.


This study is necesary for preveting feedind the hens with feed that is contaminated with bacteria from the Salmonella genus to prevent the transmission of diseases caused by this kind of bacteria and to monitor the microbiological quality of the rations in order to improve food safety. Due to Salmonella implications in importat economical losses and their implications in human health by triggering food poisoning from eating contaminated products makes this one of the most pressing issues in veterinary medicine. There are infectious diseases caused by pathogens of the genus Salmonella. They are universal spread and specific zoonoses, some strains are ubiquitous, and others with regional character. In terms of food poisoning caused by Salmonella we can say that, in terms of frequency and sanitary implications, they occupy an important place in most countries of the European Community. The possibility of human infection is constantly growing in the context of the circulation of contaminated food. The disease can be triggered by eating powdered products with an increased shelf life. Microorganisms are present in feed, soil and surface water. In birds that carry it, the bacteria are located in the digestive tract, gall bladder, ovary and they can eliminate it in the environment all lifelong. Specific serotypes are represented by S. enteridis and S. typhimurium. Venue of the study was the unit S.C. Avicola Găești S.R.L. Measurements were taken on samples of feed and fodder, harvested amount is 1kg / sample, the sample is then divided into 5 units of equal mass. The method of investigation used was the Horizontal method for the detection of Salmonella spp. SR EN ISO 6579:2003 / AC 2009, a method that is RENAR approved. At the end, measurements found no pathogens in samples of feed and fodder (Absent / 25 g). Using this method, it proved one of the most important aspects, that of the desire to obtain safe and quality products coming from the poultry sector.


Diabetes and obesity have reached an epidemic status worldwide. Diabetes increases the risk for cardiovascular disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Primary bile acids are synthesized in hepatocytes and are transformed to secondary bile acids in the intestine by gut bacteria. Bile acids are nutrient sensors and metabolic integrators that regulate lipid, glucose, and energy homeostasis by activating nuclear farnesoid X receptor and membrane Takeda G protein-coupled receptor 5. Bile acids control gut bacteria overgrowth, species population, and protect the integrity of the intestinal barrier. Gut bacteria, in turn, control circulating bile acid composition and pool size. Dysregulation of bile acid homeostasis and dysbiosis causes diabetes and obesity. Targeting bile acid signaling and the gut microbiome have therapeutic potential for treating diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.


Safety is paramount to the chemical process industries. Because many processes operate at high temperatures and/or pressures, involving hazardous chemicals at high concentrations, the potential for accidents involving adverse human health and/or environmental impacts is significant. Thanks to research and operational efforts, both academically and industrially, the occurrences of such incidents are rare. However, disastrous events in the chemical manufacturing industry are still of relevant concern and garner further attention – the Deepwater Horizon incident (2010) and the Texas City refinery explosion (2005) being two recent examples. Many techniques have been developed to understand, quantify, and predict alarm and safety system failures. In practice, hazards are identified using Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) analysis, and a network of independently-acting safety systems works to maintain the probabilities of such events below a Safety Integrity Level (SIL). The network of safety systems is studied with Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA), which uses failure probability estimates for individual subsystems to project the failures of entire safety system networks. With few alarm and safety system activations over the lifetime of a chemical process, particularly the critical last-line-of-defense systems, the failure probabilities of these systems are difficult to estimate. Statistical techniques have been developed, attempting to decrease the variances of such predictions despite few supporting data. This thesis develops methods to estimate the failure probabilities of rarely activated alarm and safety systems using process and operator models, enhanced by process, alarm, and operator data. Two repeated simulation techniques are explored involving informed prior distributions and transition path sampling. Both use dynamic process models, based upon first-principles, along with process, alarm, and operator data, to better understand and quantify the probability of alarm and safety system failures and the special-cause events leading to those failures. In the informed prior distribution technique, process and alarm data are analyzed to extract information regarding operator behavior, which is used to develop models for repeated simulation. With alarm and safety system failure probabilities estimated for specific special-cause events, near-miss alarm data are used, in realtime, to enhance the predictions. The transition path sampling method was originally developed by the molecular simulation community to understand better rare molecular events. Herein, important modifications are introduced for application to understand better how rare safety incidents evolve from rare special-cause events. This method uses random perturbations to identify likely trajectories leading to system failures – providing a basis for potential alarm and safety system design. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2487 First Advisor Warren D. Seider


Immunomagnetic selection of epithelial cells from peripheral blood was combined with flowcytometric or microscopic analysis to characterize and enumerate epithelium derived tumor cells in the circulation of patients with carcinoma of the breast. Highly significant differences in the number of circulating epithelial cells were found between normal controls and patients with breast cancer. In addition, significant differences in the number of circulating epithelial cells were found in patients in whom the tumor is confined to the primary tumor and those with metastatic disease to local lymphnodes or distant sites [1]. The malignant nature of the cells was demonstrated by their cytology and immunophenotype. In following up the number of epithelial cells in the blood of patients with metastatic carcinoma of the breast, it was shown that it was well correlated with the activity of the disease.


A new formalism for equivalent refractive indices in multi-quantum-well (MQW) waveguides with arbitrarily shaped base periods, which uses the transfer matrix technique in the thin-film approximation, has been developed for TM and TE polarizations. It clearly illustrates the intrinsic birefringence feature and can be used to produce the dispersion relation of MQW waveguides in a way that is more straightforward than in previous methods.


In this paper, by using the classical Lie symmetry approach, Lie point symmetries and reductions of one Blaszak- Marciniak (BM) four-field lattice equation are obtained. Two kinds of exact solutions of a rational form and an exponential form are given. Moreover, we show that the equation has a sequence of generalized symmetries and conservation laws of polynomial form, which further confirms the integrability of the BM system.


ABSTRACT For decades many local development and community leaders have been questioning the effectiveness of business attraction to create new jobs and expand local economies. At the same time, there has been growing interest among some professional planners and citizen groups in the concept of sustainable development, which suggests replacing short-sighted development plans which convey limited benefits with future-thinking strategies that improve and preserve the quality of life for the entire community. And yet, many local governments continue to rely on business attraction as a key component of their economic development strategies. This paper attempts to explain why these governments are resistant to more progressive economic development strategies. It first examines how and why traditional strategies are ineffective. It then argues that, by contrast, the more recent "economic gardening" approach, which centers on the cultivation of local entrepreneurship, is more effective, particularly with regard to long-term sustainability issues. The paper concludes by discussing economic gardening's prospects of becoming the dominant approach to economic development, and the key role coordinating agencies play in helping communities build the capacity to meet this challenge. Sustainable development is of growing interest to local planners and citizen groups concerned with the direction and impact of economic development on their communities. As the name suggests, sustainable development is development that can be sustained over an indefinite period, and which does not rely essentially on methods or strategies which undermine the possibility of their own continued use in the future. Thus, the idea of sustainable development implies that communities need to respect their surrounding environments and avoid irreversible damage to, or depletion of, available resources. (Kinsley, 1997) In the words of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), sustainable development "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (WCED 1987:8) Such a policy requires the eschewal of short-term, narrowly focused, and ad hoc planning practices in favor of long-term, broadly based strategic community planning. Strategic planning of this sort considers the impact of development on an area's natural resources, attempts to minimize the depletion or destruction of arable land, useable water, forests, parks, and clean air, and takes into consideration the impact of development on human resources. It also attempts to facilitate stable local industries and local entrepreneurs and to promote civic engagement and community pride. Obviously enough, such a far reaching set of goals can only be attained through an innovative and unified effort. Only when community design, planning, and management are retooled and then linked together in this common purpose are sustainable communities feasible. Local economic development is one of the most important aspects of community planning that must be subject to significant redesign if it is to fit into the sustainable communities vision. Innovative recent economic development strategies-in particular, those which have come to be grouped under the term "economic gardening"-fit much more closely than traditional strategies into the long-term, community-oriented outlook favored by proponents of sustainable development. Whereas the traditional approach focuses on the attraction of businesses from outside the local area, the economic gardening approach emphasizes attempts to foster and encourage businesses already located in the local area, and to upgrade the skills of workers living in that area. (Bradshaw and Blakely, 1999) Such strategies have received a particularly warm reception, and have shown to be particularly successful, in rural areas where the old business attraction schemes have proved largely unsuccessful. (Flynn, 1994) Economic gardening promotes sustainable practices in a number of ways. …


Abstract Grasslands represent a large potential reservoir in storing carbon (C) in plant biomass and soil organic matter via C sequestration, but the potential greatly depends on how grasslands are managed, especially for livestock and wild animal grazing. Positive and negative grazing effects on soil organic carbon have been reported by various studies globally, but it is not known if Canadian grasslands function as a source or a sink for atmospheric C under current management practices. This article examines the effect of grassland management on carbon storage by compiling historical range management facts and measurements from multiple experiments. Results indicate that grazing on grasslands has contributed to a net C sink in the top 15-cm depth under current utilization regimes with a removal rate of CO2 at 0.19 ± 0.02 Mg · C · ha−1 · yr−1 from the atmosphere during recent decades, and net C sequestration was estimated at 5.64 ± 0.97 Mg · C · ha−1 on average. Naturalization of 2.3 M ha of previously cultivated grasslands in the 1930s has also led to C sequestration in the Canadian prairies but has likely abated as the pool has saturated. Efforts made by researchers, policymakers, and the public has successfully led to the restoration of the Canadian prairies to a healthier state and to achieve considerable C sequestration in soils since their severe deterioration in the 1930s. In-depth analysis of management, legislation, and agricultural programs is urgently needed to place the focus on maintaining range health and achieving more C storage in soils, particularly when facing the reduced potential for further C sequestration.


South America is facing important challenges in electricity supply to allow for future economic development. Current electricity market designs are being reviewed to avoid supply difficulties and couple the existing outlook of primary energy resources and the investment interest by the private sector. While Brazil and Chile progress into a second stage of reforms with public power purchase agreement (PPA) auctions in a private environment, Argentina makes a backward movement to significant state intervention, as in the times previous to reform. This paper discusses the approaches to be used by each country to ensure sufficient capacity and investment to reliably serve their growing economies.


ZA27 alloy solidifies in the way of paste-solidification, and results in gravity segregation. The two-phase flow model was developed on the basis of the solidification characteristic of the ZA 27 alloy. And the governing equations of the solidification process were differentiated and computed in a 3-D cylindrical coordinate system through a heat and fluid simulation software package (PHOENICS). The computation of the concentration field indicated a segregation of Al, and is in good agreement with the experiments. This model could simulate the convection and the gravitational segregation during the solidification.


Significance Control of gene expression and the cell cycle is critical for appropriate cell growth and timely cell division. Failure of the mechanisms regulating these processes can result in proliferative diseases. A molecular complex termed the CDK-activating kinase (CAK) impinges on both of these regulatory networks in human cells and is thus a possible drug target for treatment of cancer. Here, we use cryoelectron microscopy to describe the detailed molecular structure of the human CAK, revealing its architecture and the interactions between its regulatory elements. Additionally, we have obtained the structure of the CAK in complex with a small-molecule inhibitor. The human CDK-activating kinase (CAK), a complex composed of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 7, cyclin H, and MAT1, is a critical regulator of transcription initiation and the cell cycle. It acts by phosphorylating the C-terminal heptapeptide repeat domain of the RNA polymerase II (Pol II) subunit RPB1, which is an important regulatory event in transcription initiation by Pol II, and it phosphorylates the regulatory T-loop of CDKs that control cell cycle progression. Here, we have determined the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the catalytic module of human CAK, revealing the structural basis of its assembly and providing insight into CDK7 activation in this context. The unique third component of the complex, MAT1, substantially extends the interaction interface between CDK7 and cyclin H, explaining its role as a CAK assembly factor, and it forms interactions with the CDK7 T-loop, which may contribute to enhancing CAK activity. We have also determined the structure of the CAK in complex with the covalently bound inhibitor THZ1 in order to provide insight into the binding of inhibitors at the CDK7 active site and to aid in the rational design of therapeutic compounds.


Epidemiological data on seasonal influenza show that the growth rate of the number of infected individuals can increase passing from one exponential growth rate to another one with a larger exponent. Such behavior is not described by conventional epidemiological models. In this work an immuno-epidemiological model is proposed in order to describe this two-stage growth. It takes into account that the growth in the number of infected individuals increases the initial viral load and provides a passage from the first stage of epidemic where only people with weak immune response are infected to the second stage where people with strong immune response are also infected. This scenario may be viewed as an increase of the effective number of susceptible increasing the effective growth rate of infected.


The inter-organisational collaboration with Building Information Modelling (BIM) is one of the hottest topics in construction sector nowadays. The implementation of BIM is a complex inter-organisational process, and the sharing of information among numerous actors from multi-disciplinary backgrounds may affect the actors' role perception and performance. This study offers insights into the BIM roles of various actors by analysing a BIM-based project carried out by an integrated partnership across many tiers. The analysis identified inconsistencies between the actors' perceptions and their partners' expectations of their BIM roles. Inconsistencies in BIM roles were more related to soft rather than hard (domain- or technical) skills. Mismatches were found in the architect's role, as it was deemed necessary to be more domain- and BIM-related, contrary to their perceptions. Likewise, the suppliers' role called for an enhanced BIM orientation. The paper concludes with set of suggestions for increasing the joint responsibility and supporting the multi-actor collaboration.


This paper demonstrates the adjustment speed of firm working capital and the relationships between working capital and firm performance in Japan during the global financial crisis. Using quarterly firm-level data, we find that the adjustment of working capital was weaker during the crisis. Moreover, the negative relationship between excess working capital and firm performance became more significant during the crisis, especially for larger firms. However, this crisis-related working capital-firm performance effect does not appear to persist for very long, because to finance any excess working capital, firms borrow from banks and reduce their internal cash both during and outside periods of crisis.


The Baja Verapaz ophiolite complex (BVP) is one of the six ophiolites in Guatemala associated with the Motagua Suture Zone (MSZ). The MSZ represents the NW corner of the Caribbean Plate with ages of obduction ranging from post Triassic to Tertiary in a west - east direction. The geological information of BVP presented in this publication is the result of the mapping efforts of the team of Nichromet Guatemala, S.A. directed by Ricardo Valls, P. Geo., together with the interpretation of the aeromagnetic survey recently completed by the Company with the financial support of CVRD. This includes a model of the geological evolution of the complex as well as an updated stratigraphic column for Central Guatemala. Nickel-cobalt laterites are the most important ore resource in this area. A typical laterite profile consists of 10 to 12 meters of a "Limonitic Horizon", followed by a leached zone called the "Mottled Zone", with thickness from 0 to 2 meters. The Mottled Zone contains the "Stoneline" and is usually enriched in heavy metals like gold, chromite, and platinum group metals. The "Saprolite Horizon" is located below the Mottled Zone and ranges from 15 to 20 m thick. It overlies the "Saprock" with thickness of one to two meters. The "Saprock" grades transitionally into the unaltered bedrock. Full lateritic profiles develop only over serpentinized olivine-rich rocks. Because of their young age, Guatemalan laterites still contain large amounts of magnetite. Aeromagnetic surveys are therefore effective not only as a mapping tool, but also to locate new lateritic targets. Satellite image interpretation is another technique used for the location of laterites. Finally, the Company recently completed a lineament analysis that merged all this information and defined several new lateritic targets within the ophiolitic complex.


The purpose of this study was to determine whether prosody contribute to the integration of the syntactic level during the reading of relative sentences. A behavioural experiment was run on 20 French subjects. First, they had to read sentences silently presented visually (without prosodic markers such as commas). In an additional task using the same procedure, 10 subjects have to read sentences in a loud voice. The comparison between the two tasks reveals that words with the greater reading time in the first study correspond in the second study to a major prosodic phrase boundary. Results suggest that subjects have to restore prosodic contour in order to process syntactically relative sentences. The study of prosody in such a task provides a new methodology to access to the on-line syntactic processing.


An ideal antimicrobial should be not toxic and possess board spectrum antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal activity, excluding resistance and should affect pathogen-mediated damage of host physiology including immune, nervous and endocrine systems. With the purpose of a combination of nonspecific antimicrobial action of molecular and ionized iodine with systemic immune-modulating property of the negatively charged polysaccharides a complex drug of iodine and lithium on a template of a alpha-dextrin liquid crystal was designed. The physicochemical model of iodine-lithium-alpha-dextrin (ILalphaD) is based on the human blood and the stereochemistry of moving equilibred systems of dynamically balanced organic polymers conformation complexed with the iodine and lithium molecules. Here we reviewed the antibacterial, antiviral, immune-modulating and anti-inflammatory mechanisms in vivo and in vitro as well as pharmacokinetics, metabolism, chronic toxicity, cumulative properties, embryo toxicity and carcinogenicity of ILalphaD. Clinical efficacy, tolerability and safety of ILalphaD monotherapy have been evaluated in HIV-infected patients, administered intravenously for a total of 12 infusions in 4 cycles. ILalphaD therapy contributes to anti-HIV and anti-inflammatory effects, resolution of dermatological and neurological pathology and dramatically improves the quality of life reflecting on enhanced treatment adherence. ILalphaD appears to be safe and perspective for an adjuvant therapy of bacterial and viral infections, including HIV/AIDS, hypothyroid, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases for controlling pathogen production from infected cells, immune response, inflammation and metabolism.


Abstract. There will be a change in the Earth's local sub-surface thermal structure before and/or after an earthquake. In this work we have introduced a new parameter (I) which relates integral effect of temperature variation and seismic activity. This parameter in its various forms integrates the temperature variations during one year before and after earthquake. Some recent earthquakes are chosen throughout Iran on Alps-Himalayas fault zone with magnitudes 4.5 and more. Subsurface temperatures up to one meter depth measured in nearby weather stations are used as there is no deeper data available. We found the new defined parameter (I) has a direct relation with earthquakes magnitude (M) and reverse relation with distance (d) between earthquake focus and station in which temperature is measured. Suitable formulas for these relations are suggested regarding the magnitude ranges and time period with respect to the earthquake time. There may be a way to use this new parameter as a quake precursor.


Valeo, involved in engine cooling fan system design for many years, is interested in noise prediction tools for axial fans. Thus, this paper describes a two-part study of tonal noise computation. The first part deals with the prediction of tonal noise using analytical models. As for the second part, it describes a hybrid approach for predicting tonal noise where the sources are extracted from an Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Naviers-Stocks (URANS) simulation and then propagated into the far, free field using the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings' acoustic analogy. The computational domain is meshed with 46 million polyhedral elements and the simulation takes into account the exact geometry of the rotor blades, the stator blades and the shroud. The results from the first part show that analytical models can be used for comparisons between different fan geometries, but are unable to provide accurate noise predictions compared to experimental results. The simulation shows non-periodic blade loading over a whole fan revolution, and different blade loading between the blades. This introduces some bias in the assessment of the acoustic performance of the fan. Overall, the results from the hybrid method are in accordance with the experimental results.


The aim of this work is to face dog's behavioural problems according with the cognitive relational method, working on both cognitive skills and relational system. 122 dogs with behavioural problems attributed to early adoption, strong limitations in intra and interspecific relationships, lack of experience and traumas, mistaken interspecific relationship, incorrect role of the dog in the family group participated to the study. A therapy based on knowledge modification and correction of relationship's structure was implemented in all the subjects. The 122 dogs were divided in 2 groups: the first group constituted by72 dogs with problems related to lack of experience, followed an educational training, the second group constituted by 50 dogs with problems related to traumas, followed a re-educative training. The interventions lasted from 4 to 12 months with 3 sessions per week. In 64 dogs from the first group behavioural problems were completely solved, 7 showed remarkable improvements and are continuing the therapy, 1 still shows the starting problem. In 42 dogs from the second group behavioural problems were solved, 5 showed improvements and are continuing the therapy, 3 still show the starting problem. The results evidence that dog's behaviour is strictly related with epigenetic factors as variety and quality of environmental stimulations. A good knowledge of behavioural characteristics of an individual prevents behavioural problems and is necessary to solve them.


Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi increase fitness of their host plants under Cu deficient and toxic conditions. In this study, we have characterized two Cu transporters of the CTR family (RiCTR1 and RiCTR2) and a CTR-like protein (RiCTR3A) of Rhizophagus irregularis. Functional analyses in yeast revealed that RiCTR1 encodes a plasma membrane Cu transporter, RiCTR2 a vacuolar Cu transporter and RiCTR3A a plasma membrane protein involved in Cu tolerance. RiCTR1 was more highly expressed in the extraradical mycelia (ERM) and RiCTR2 in the intraradical mycelia (IRM). In the ERM, RiCTR1 expression was up-regulated by Cu deficiency and down-regulated by Cu toxicity. RiCTR2 expression increased only in the ERM grown under severe Cu-deficient conditions. These data suggest that RiCTR1 is involved in Cu uptake by the ERM and RiCTR2 in mobilization of vacuolar Cu stores. Cu deficiency decreased mycorrhizal colonization and arbuscule frequency, but increased RiCTR1 and RiCTR2 expression in the IRM, which suggest that the IRM has a high Cu demand. The two alternatively spliced products of RiCTR3, RiCTR3A and RiCTR3B, were more highly expressed in the ERM. Up-regulation of RiCTR3A by Cu toxicity and the yeast complementation assays suggest that RiCTR3A might function as a Cu receptor involved in Cu tolerance.


This Article provides theoretical and empirical support for the claim that organized crime competes with the state to provide property rights enforcement and protection services. Drawing on extensive data from Japan, this Article shows that, like firms in regulated environments everywhere, the structure and activities of organized criminal firms are significantly shaped by state-supplied institutions. Careful observation reveals that in Japan, the activities of organized criminal firms closely track inefficiencies in formal legal structures, including both inefficient substantive laws and a state-induced shortage of legal professionals and other rights-enforcement agents. Thus, organized crime in Japan--and, by extension, in other countries where significant gaps exist between formal property rights structures and state enforcement capacities--is the dark side of private ordering. Regression analyses show negative correlations between membership in Japanese organized criminal firms and (a) civil cases, (b) bankruptcies, (c) reported crimes, and (d) loans outstanding. We interpret these data to support considerable anecdotal evidence that members of organized criminal firms in Japan play an active entrepreneurial role in substituting for state-supplied enforcement mechanisms and other public services in such areas as dispute mediation, bankruptcy and debt collection, (unorganized) crime control, and finance. We offer additional empirical evidence indicating that arrests of gang members do not curb the growth of organized criminal firms. These findings may have a significant normative implication for transition economies: efforts to eradicate organized crime should focus on the alteration of institutional incentive structures and the stimulation of competing rights-enforcement agents rather than on traditional crime-control activities.


Multi-instance point cloud registration is the problem of estimating multiple poses of source point cloud instances within a target point cloud. Solving this problem is challenging since inlier correspondences of one instance constitute outliers of all the other instances. Existing methods often rely on time-consuming hypothesis sampling or features leveraging spatial consistency, resulting in limited performance. In this paper, we propose PointCLM, a contrastive learning-based framework for mutli-instance point cloud registration. We first utilize contrastive learning to learn well-distributed deep representations for the input putative correspondences. Then based on these representations, we propose a outlier pruning strategy and a clustering strategy to efficiently remove outliers and assign the remaining correspondences to correct instances. Our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on both synthetic and real datasets by a large margin.


In the era of opioid abuse epidemics, there is an increased demand for understanding how opioid receptors can be allosterically modulated to guide the development of more effective and safer opioid therapies. Among the modulators of the µ-opioid (MOP) receptor, which is the pharmacological target for the majority of clinically used opioid drugs, are monovalent and divalent cations. Specifically, the monovalent sodium cation (Na+) has been known for decades to affect MOP receptor signaling by reducing agonist binding, whereas the divalent magnesium cation (Mg2+) has been shown to have the opposite effect, notwithstanding the presence of sodium chloride. While ultra-high resolution opioid receptor crystal structures have revealed a specific Na+ binding site and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation studies have supported the idea that this monovalent ion reduces agonist binding by stabilizing the receptor inactive state, the putative binding site of Mg2+ on the MOP receptor, as well as the molecular determinants responsible for its positive allosteric modulation of the receptor, are unknown. In this work, we carried out tens of microseconds of all-atom MD simulations to investigate the simultaneous binding of Mg2+ and Na+ cations to inactive and active crystal structures of the MOP receptor embedded in an explicit lipid/water environment. Analyses of these simulations shed light on (a) the preferred binding sites of Mg2+ on the MOP receptor, (b) details of the competition between Mg2+ and Na+ cations for specific sites, (c) estimates of binding affinities, and (d) testable hypotheses of the molecular mechanism underlying the positive allosteric modulation of the MOP receptor by the Mg2+ cation. Statement of Significance Overprescription of opioid drugs in the late 1990s, followed by abuse of both prescription and illicit opioid drugs, has led to what is nowadays called "opioid overdose crisis" or "opioid epidemic", with more than 130 Americans dying daily from opioid overdose at the time of writing. To reduce opioid doses, and thereby prevent or treat overdose and opioid use disorders, attention has recently shifted to the use of co-analgesics. Understanding how opioid receptor targets can be allosterically modulated by these elements, including cations, is key to the development of improved therapeutics. Here, we provide an atomic-level understanding of the mechanism by which magnesium binds to the µ-opioid receptor and enhances opioid drug efficacy by stabilizing the receptor activated state.


ABSTRACT Chandipura virus (CHPV; genus Vesiculovirus, family Rhabdoviridae) is an emerging tropical pathogen with a case fatality rate of 55 to 75% that predominantly affects children in the age group of 2 to 16 years. Although it has been established as a neurotropic virus causing encephalitis, the molecular pathology leading to neuronal death is unknown. The present study elucidates for the first time the mechanism of cell death in neurons after CHPV infection that answers the basic cause of CHPV-mediated neurodegeneration. Through various cell death assays in vitro and in vivo, a relationship between viral replication within neuron and neuronal apoptosis has been established. We report that expression of CHPV phosphoprotein increases up to 6 h postinfection and diminishes thereafter in neuronal cell lines, signifying the replicative phase of CHPV. Various analyses conducted during the investigation established that CHPV-infected neurons are undergoing apoptosis through an extrinsic pathway mediated through the Fas-associated death domain (FADD) following activation of caspase-8 and -3 and prominent cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). Knocking down the expression of caspase-3, the final executioner of apoptosis, in a neuronal cell line by endoribonuclease-prepared small interfering RNA (siRNA) validated its pivotal role in CHPV-mediated neurodegeneration by showing reduction in apoptosis after CHPV infection.


The modelling capacity of transparent soil was investigated by comparing boundary soil displacement fields under a model footing in a transparent soil model with those from a natural soil model. Transparent soil is made of either amorphous silica gels or powders and a pore fluid with a matching refractive index to model sand and clay. An optical system consisting of a laser light, camera, frame grabber, and computer was developed to optically slice a transparent soil model. A distinctive laser speckle pattern was generated by the interaction between the laser light and transparent soil. Two laser speckle images before and after a deformation were used to calculate the displacement field using an image processing technique called digital image correlation. The comparative study shows that transparent soil can be used to study natural soil with some limitations. Transparent soil and the developed optical system could be used to explore opportunities for more advanced nonintrusive three-dimensional deformati...


Balance impairment due to vestibular feedback loss is considered a significant disabling factor. While older adults are more often impacted by this impairment, unfortunate events and infections can cause a similar impairment in younger adults as well. This paper reports the design evolution of a prototype wearable system proposed to help reduce the recovery time of vestibular balance impairment. We describe the design evolution and rationale from a baseball cap design to a headband design, including the separation of the sensing and processing components, to reduce the weight positioned on the skull, which may adversely affect balance. We assessed balance performance of participants using the Motor Control Test (MCT) and Sensory Organization Test (SOT) in conjunction with Functional Gait Assessment as a balance test protocol. To evaluate system effectiveness, the tests were performed before the biofeedback system was activated and then again with the system active. Based on experiments with two participants (one healthy and one with bilateral vestibular balance impairment), the preliminary results show that our proposed system can be effective in the rehabilitation of impaired individuals.


We report Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations of a reconnecting current sheet in the presence of a weak density asymmetry with large guide field at the dayside magnetopause. An ion diffusion region (IDR) was detected associated with this current sheet. Parallel current dominated over the perpendicular current in the IDR, as found in previous studies of component reconnection. Electrons were preferentially heated parallel to the magnetic field within the IDR. The heating was manifested as a flattop distribution below 400 eV. Two types of electromagnetic electron whistler waves were observed within the regions where electrons were heated. One type of whistler wave was associated with nonlinear structures in E|| with amplitudes up to 20 mV/m. The other type was not associated with any structures in E||. Poynting fluxes of these two types of whistler waves were directed away from the X‐line. We suggest that the nonlinear evolution of the oblique whistler waves gave rise to the solitary structures in E||. There was a perpendicular super‐Alfvénic outflow jet that was carried by magnetized electrons. Intense electrostatic lower hybrid drift waves were localized in the current sheet center and were probably driven by the super‐Alfvénic electron jet, the velocity of which was approximately equal to the diamagnetic drift of demagnetized ions. Our observations suggest that the guide field significantly modified the structures (Hall electromagnetic fields and current system) and wave properties in the IDR.


The unofficial translation of Law No. 188(I)/2004 entitled Framework Law Providing for the Legal Framework for Electronic Signatures and Associated Matters of 2004' which was enacted by the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus on 30 April 2004, is by Olga Georgiades of Lellos P. Demetriades Law Office. In translating the Cypriot law, Olga compared the English version of the EU Directive with the Greek text of the Law. Due to the fact that the EU Directive was largely transposed into Cypriot law, Olga used the official English version of the EU Directive to provide the English translation of the Cypriot law.


A-kinase anchoring protein 79 (AKAP79) is a human anchoring protein that organizes cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA), Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM)-dependent protein phosphatase (PP2B), and protein kinase C (PKC) for phosphoregulation of synaptic signaling. Quantitative biochemical analyses of selected AKAP79 complexes have determined the quaternary structure of these signaling complexes. We show that AKAP79 dimerizes, and we demonstrate that, upon addition of a lysine-reactive cross-linker, parallel homomeric dimers are stabilized through K328–K328 and K333–K333 cross-links. An assembly of greater complexity comprising AKAP79, PP2B, a type II regulatory subunit fragment (RII 1–45) of PKA, and CaM was reconstituted in vitro. Using native MS, we determined the molecular mass of this complex as 466 kDa. This indicates that dimeric AKAP79 coordinates two RII 1–45 homodimers, four PP2B heterodimers, and two CaM molecules. Binding of Ca2+/CaM to AKAP79 stabilizes the complex by generating a second interface for PP2B. This leads to activation of the anchored phosphatases. Our architectural model reveals how dimeric AKAP79 concentrates pockets of second messenger responsive enzyme activities at the plasma membrane.


Mn(1-x)Zn(x)Fe(2)O(4) films were prepared by alternative rf-sputtering from targets of MnFe(2)O(4) and ZnFe(2)O(4). The films were deposited on substrates such as single-crystal Si(100), oxidized single-crystal Si(100), single-crystal Si(100) with ZnFe(2)O(4) underlayer and single-crystal MgO(100). The deposited films are amorphous. After annealing in vacuum furnace at 550 degrees C, the polycrystalline Mn-Zn ferrite crystallizes. The film with composition of Mn(0.5)Zn(0.5)FeO(4) shows better magnetic properties: high magnetization M(s) and lower coercivity H(c). The coercivity of the film deposited on MgO(100) substrate is the lowest. In this paper, the influences of substrate on film structure and the magnetic properties are investigated. It is believed that the magneto-elastic anisotropy resulting from stress in films dominates the coercivity of Mn-Zn ferrite films. The grain size may be refined to nanometer scale instrumentally by using suitable substrate; the stronger exchange coupling between grains would lead to a lower magneto-elastic anisotropy by averaging to the grains. Therefore, the soft magnetic properties of Mn-Zn ferrite films are improved.


In this report, we address combined liver-kidney transplantation, with particular attention to the apparent phenomenon of protection of kidney allografts to antibody mediated destruction by liver allografts. Four patients were found to have positive crossmatch before the liver phase of the combined transplant (pre-OT/KT samples). These positive crossmatches were due entirely to anti-HLA class I antibodies, as demonstrated by their removal by immunoabsorption on pololed platelets. In three of these patients, post-OT/pre-KT samples showed a conversion to a negative crossmatch (in the fourth patient this was not done). A kidney allograft, harveted from the same donor, was then placed into the recipient, and in patients no. 3, 7, and 12, good initial function was noted. In one of these patients was there evidence of hyperacute rejection. Post-OT/KT samples were collected in patients no. 3, 7, and 8, and then analyzed for the reappearance of donor specific lymphocytotoxic antibodies in the posttransplant period (data on patient no. 12 was not available at time of preparation). Lymphocytotoxic antibodies with donor specificity could not be detected in any of the samples during the first week posttransplant. The decrease in %PRA and conversion of a positive to negative crossmatch following liver transplantation was correlated to the HLA specificty of the antibody found in the pretransplant serum and the HLA type of the tranplanted organs. In the two instances where an HLA specificity could be determined by panel analysis, transplantation with donor organs bearing these HLA specificities led to a specific disppearance of these antibodies during the postransplant phase.


Architectural professionals can contribute to efforts at achieving sustainable urbanism. However, the realm of professional discourse is extremely limited. Grounded architectural practice (GAP) is developed as a conceptual framework to explore an emergent form of contextually appropriate architectural practice in the context of a resident-driven in situ informal settlement upgrading project. The exploration takes the form of a descriptive narrative. Each challenge that arose during the descriptive narrative was mapped according to Engeström's activity system model, an analytical tool emanating from cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). By participating in live projects in informal settlements and analysing these projects by means of CHAT, the authors explored the highly improvising and generative everyday practices of the urban majority. Architectural practice in such a context requires a multi-disciplinary approach which extends beyond conventional professional boundaries, and attention must be paid to building the capacity of all participants to function in such uncharted territory.


Melville's texts continue to be relevant to a contemporary readership well over a century since original publication, as his words not only illuminate and examine nineteenth century experiences, but also present concepts and ideas that continue to be worthy of consideration by modern audiences. One such issue that is regularly addressed in Melville's works is that of identity: of the individual, of society, and of the individual as he navigates between the fabrics of various social worlds. This paper examines Social Identity Theory and its components that both achieve identification of the individual and the aggregate in society and define boundaries between social groups. In conjunction with Social Identity Theory, this paper draws from Melville's own background and identify parallels between his personal history and his published works. Using these elements, along with an examination of the role of setting, I analyze the protagonists of two of Melville's texts – Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) and Redburn (1849) – and assert that these characters and their circular journeys, which frequently stray from the social roles and identities ascribed to them, are reflections of Melville's personal experiences and ideologies. Furthermore, I argue that the protagonists and the plots in which they function are vehicles of Melville's social commentary for a nineteenth-century readership.


This thesis proposes a new methodology to determine the quality characteristics of meat products (Iberian loin and ham) in a non-destructive way. For that, new algorithms have been developed to analyze Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and data mining techniques have been applied on data obtained from the images.The general procedure consists of obtaining MRI of meat products, and applying different computer vision algorithms (texture and fractal approaches, mainly), which allow the extraction of sets of computational features. Figure 1 shows the design of the proposed procedure.To achieve this, different research have been done, based on:high-field and low-field MRI scannersdifferent acquisition sequences: Spin Echo (SE), Gradient Echo (GE) and Turbo 3D (T3D)different texture approaches: Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Gray Level Run Length Matrix (GLRLM) and Neighboring Gray Level Dependence Matrix (NGLDM)fractals algorithms: Classical Fractal Algorithm (CFA), Fractal Texture Algorithm (FTA) and One Point Fractal Texture Algorithm (OPFTA)FTA [1] and OPFTA [2] have been developed in this thesis. They allow analyzing MRI images, properly, noting OPFTA for its simplicity and lower computational cost. At the same time, the meat products, Iberian hams and loins, were also analyzed by means of physico-chemical and sensory techniques. Databases were constructed with all these data. Different data mining techniques have been applied on them: deductive (Multiple Linear Regression (MLR)) [3], classification (Decision Trees (DT) and Rules-based Systems (RBS)) [4], and prediction techniques [5-7]. Figure 2 shows the MRI images of fresh and dry-cured Iberian loins (Figure 2A and 2B) and fresh and dry-cured hams (Figure 2C and 2D).The accuracy of the analysis of the quality parameters of Iberian ham and loin is affected by the MRI acquisition sequence, the algorithm used to analyze them and the data mining technique applied. Considering the data mining techniques, MLR and DT are appropriate, respectively, to deduce physico-chemical parameters of hams, and to classify as a function of salt content in hams. Regarding to the predictive technique, MLR could be indicate it allows obtaining equations to determine the physico-chemical characteristics and sensory attributes of Iberian loins and hams with a high degree of reliability, and analyzing the quality of these meat products in a non-destructive, efficient, effective and accurate way.


Brain circuits exhibit very complex dynamics, where individual neurons fire action potentials determining coordinated activity patterns. During behavior, a multitude of brain areas are engaged in planning and execution. A particular focus has been recently put on fronto-parietal circuits, which have well-established roles in coordinating complex movements, and which were recently shown to encode whole-body posture. Individual cells in these areas can exhibit striking behavioral tuning, but it is less well known how the collective firing of the neurons correlates with behavior. Here, our objective was to find a way to highlight ensemble firing patterns correlated with behavioral events. To accomplish this, we introduce a machine learning approach for revealing such associations between high-dimensional multi-neuronal firing patterns and behavioral events in freely running rats. We introduce data representations that can extract firing patterns evolving on multiple timescales, and propose an ordered mapping using Kohonen maps to reveal the stereotypically appearing patterns on different timescales in a way that considers the structure of the data space. Furthermore, we apply machine learning on the raw and Kohonen-mapped data and study how and why these approaches can reveal complementary information about the relation between firing patterns and behavior. We conclude that fronto-parietal firing patterns exhibit specific expression in relation to behavior. Depending on the type of data representation, machine learning can reveal patterns with different complexity and evolving on various timescales.


In recent years, there has been a panoply of new forms of 'social' government, as manifest in 'social enterprise' and 'social media'. This follows an era of neoliberalism in which social logics were apparently being eliminated, through the expansion of economic rationalities. To understand this, the article explores the critique of the very notion of the 'social', as manifest in neoliberal contributions to the socialist calculation debate from the 1920s onwards. Understood as a zone lying between market and state, the social was accused by Mises and Hayek of being both unaccountable (lacking any units of measurement) and formless (lacking instruments of explication). The article then asks to what extent these critiques still retain their purchase, following recent developments in hedonic measurement and data analytics. The argument is made that new post-neoliberal forms of 'social government' may now be entirely plausible, though focusing on the corporation rather than the state.


3 Abstract: The present study was conducted to compare the performance of exotic meat strains (Hybro and Hubbard) and native chicken ecotypes (Bare- neck, Large Beladi and Betwil) under hot climate of the Sudan. A total of 505 one day old chicks were reared together using a Completely Randomized Design with 9 replicates for each genotype. Traits studied up to 8 weeks of age were body weight, feed intake, live weight gain, feed conversion ratio and mortality. Results revealed that there were significant differences (p<0.01) for body weight at various ages among the different genotypes. Body weights for the exotic strains at hatch, 4 and 8 weeks were in the range of 37.85±2.23 - 39.76±3.77, 497.37±101.50 - 516.25±107.95 g an d 1230.46±258.06 - 1269.63±242.16 g respectively, whereas the corresponding results for the local ecotypes were 24.68±2.60 - 27.83±4.24, 109.28±25.77 - 141.53±33.75 g and 271.90±25.18 - 341.73±63.77 g. Average live weight gain during the first 4 weeks of age (starter stage) was significantly lower than that during the second 4 weeks (finisher stage) for both exotic strains and native ecotypes. Hybro strain exhibited the highest total live weight gain (1231.78 g.) whereas Large Baladi ecotype was the lowest (247.22). Feed intake and feed conversion ratio showed significant differences (p<0.01) between the exotic strains and the local ecotypes with the former consumed amount of feed three times that consumed by the latter and had better feed efficiency. Although the overall mortality and mortality during the first 4 weeks of age were higher among the local ecotypes than those of the exotics, the reverse was true during the second 4 weeks of age. It can be concluded that the performance of the exotic strains was substantially higher than that of the local chicken ecotypes. This can be attributed to the unimproved genetic potentials of the local chicken ecotypes. On the other hand, the performance of the exotic strains was also lower than that which can be expected under optimum environmental conditions. This may be due to the effect of high ambient temperature.


The Casimir force between two objects is notoriously difficult to calculate in anything other than parallel-plate geometries due to its non-additive nature. This means that for more complicated, realistic geometries one usually has to resort to approaches such as making the crude proximity force approximation (PFA). Another issue with calculation of Casimir forces in real-world situations (such as with realistic materials) is that there are continuing doubts about the status of the standard Lifshitz treatment as a true quantum theory. Here we demonstrate an alternative approach to calculation of Casimir forces for arbitrary geometries which sidesteps both these problems. Our calculations are based upon a Born expansion of the Green's function of the quantised electromagnetic vacuum field, interpreted as multiple scattering, with the relevant coupling strength being the difference in the dielectric functions of the various materials involved. This allows one to consider arbitrary geometries in single or multiple scattering simply by integrating over the desired shape, meaning that extension beyond the PFA is trivial. This work is mostly dedicated to illustration of the method by reproduction of known parallel-slab results -- a process that turns out to be non-trivial and provides several useful insights. We also present a short example of calculation of the Casimir energy for a more complicated geometry, namely that of two finite slabs.


Induced dichroism in molecular gases was studied using a three-level scheme. A density-matrix calculation in all orders of the pump field that are linear in the probe field may lead to a coherent dip in the absorption-line shape of the probe field, depending on the polarization arrangement. Such a coherent dip is a manifestation of the polarization pulsation induced by the fields.


This study explores the prospects of using scaled model experiments for capturing the influence of a novel spray deflection concept on planing craft performance in calm water and in waves. An experimental setup with a towed planing craft model is designed and systematic experiments are performed, first with a bare hull model and then with the same model equipped with spray deflectors. Measured trim, sinkage and resistance in calm water and accelerations and resistance in waves are presented. The results, as well as various aspects of the experimental setup and the spray phenomenon, are discussed. The experimental results indicate that the studied spray deflector concept can have positive effects by lowering the resistance as well as the acceleration in waves. The detailed tailoring of the deflectors is concluded to be crucial. The developed experimental setup is concluded to give consistent results that capture the influence of the spray deflection details on the craft resistance and responses and is concluded to be useful for further research as well as for design purposes.


Computed tomographic imaging spectrometers measure the spectrally resolved image of an object scene in an entirely different manner from traditional whisk-broom or push-broom systems, and thus their noise behavior and data artifacts are unfamiliar. We review computed tomographic imaging spectrometry (CTIS) measurement systems and analyze their performance, with the aim of providing a vocabulary for discussing resolution in CTIS instruments, by illustrating the artifacts present in their reconstructed data and contributing a rule-of-thumb measure of their spectral resolution. We also show how the data reconstruction speed can be improved, at no cost in reconstruction quality, by ignoring redundant projections within the measured raw images.


The problem of failure diagnosis has received a considerable attention in the domain of reliability engineering, process control and computer science. The increasing stringent requirement of quality of a product needs considerable attention in the performance and reliability of the manufacturing system. In general, the feedback control algorithm for a process designed to handle small perturbation that may arise under normal operating condition but can not accommodate any abnormal behavior due to fault. Thus the automated maintenance or early detection of worn equipment is becoming a critical issue. This justifies the need of development of effective methodology in the area of fault aware controller. In this paper we proposed a novel Algorithm and it have been tested and implemented for making Highly reliable system like Automated Cricket Ball Stitching Machine. Considering this need the present paper proposes the work on the development methodology of fault aware controller using embedded processor with reference to an early needle failure detection of a leather stitching machine.


A. In a recent paper, M. Green and P. Griffiths used R. Thomas' work on nodal hypersurfaces to sketch a proof of the equivalence of the Hodge conjecture and the existence of certain singular admissible normal functions. Inspired by their work, we study normal functions using Morihiko Saito's mixed Hodge modules and prove that the existence of singularities of the type considered by Griffiths and Green is equivalent to the Hodge conjecture. Several of the intermediate results, including a relative version of the weak Lefschetz theorem for perverse sheaves, are of independent interest.


This essay focuses on metadiscourse, a name for elements of texts that convey meanings other than those that are primarily referential. The essay provides some theoretical background to the study of metadiscourse, briefly reviews a taxonomy of metadiscourse, and explores four reasons why the study of metadiscourse is interesting and important: (a) Such study shows how intricately structured language is; (b) Such study opens up intriguing questions about ethics and language use; (c) Such study reveals differences in how metadiscourse is used in similar texts in different languages; (d) And such study provides reasons why metadiscourse deserves a special place in second-language instruction.


This paper proposes a novel 2D mesh-based object motion estimation architecture that generates a content-based video object. The video object is represented using an alpha plane and a texture. The alpha plane consists of two layers (1) a mesh layer and (2) a binary layer that defines the object boundary. The texture defines the object's colors. The mesh layer is represented by a new adaptive hierarchical mesh. The proposed mesh is formed by recursive triangulation of the initial coarse mesh geometry, which reduces the mesh code. The proposed architecture generates a progressive mesh code. The proposed architecture offers low power performance at the algorithm level as follows: (1) decomposing the mesh into independent triangular patches that can be processed in parallel, (2) using a hierarchical structured triangulation technique, that simplify the processing unit, and (3) using the three steps motion estimation algorithm to simplify the motion estimation of the mesh nodes. The proposed architecture is suitable for very low bit rate online applications and it can be used as a building block for an MPEG-4 codec.


BACKGROUND
Annual US health-related productivity losses are estimated to reach some $260 billion, attributable not only to absenteeism but also to presenteeism (being present at work but working at a reduced capacity). The search for remedies has been hampered by the lack of accurate estimates of the loss of productivity and its true costs. To date, little effort has been made to assess the availability of measurement instruments or the validity and reliability of those that exist.

OBJECTIVES
To systematically review the instruments used to measure productivity loss and its costs and to assess limitations in current research.

DESIGN
A systematic search was conducted of the published and gray-market research literature from 1995 through 2005 on methods for estimating productivity loss and monetizing that loss.

RESULTS
Twenty survey instruments were identified that assess the effect of health problems on absenteeism or presenteeism by attempting to quantify self-perceived or comparative impairment or by measuring unproductive work time. Some of the methods have been validated. The challenges of measuring presenteeism far exceed those of measuring absenteeism primarily because many jobs do not have easily measurable output. Methods to estimate the cost of lost productivity were also identified; however, none have been validated, to our knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS
The greatest impediment to estimating the cost of productivity lost to illness is the lack of established and validated methods for monetization. The issues raised in this review are intended to stimulate future research to validate and improve such methods.


In this paper, a differentially-driven wideband multiple-feed on-chip antenna design in $0.13\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ SiGe technology is proposed for millimeter-wave power combining applications. The in-antenna power combining concept is achieved by combining parallel amplifiers in the multi-port radiator where each port corresponds directly to a differential power amplifier (PA) stage. Specifically, the radiator is composed of a leaky slot with multiple set of differential microstrip feed lines. A wideband Marchand balun with 1.5 dB insertion loss is applied to convert the differential output to the single-ended input of microstrip feed line. In addition, the proposed differential PA has a combined output power of 10 dBm and its output is directly connected with the balun. As a result, the proposed multiple-feed antenna has four differential microstrip feed lines connected with four Marchand baluns which are driven by four parallel differential PAs respectively. Also, to compensate for the loss along the signal route such as power splitters and baluns, pre-amplification PA stage is a necessity at the input of each PA stage. In order to suppress the surface waves in the high permittivity substrate, an extended hemispherical silicon lens is integrated with the chip. Simulation results show that the antenna can cover more than 50 % fractional bandwidth at 250 GHz and calculated EIRP is 19.3 dBm.


The crisis in Poland in 19801981 imposed great demands on the U.S. intelligence community. On the one hand, U.S. intelligence analysts sought to determine whether the Soviet Union might send troops into Poland to crush the Solidarity movement. On the other hand, a small group of senior intelligence and national security officials who were privy to reports from Colonel Ryszard Kukliski, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff who was secretly working for the United States, had to decide how best to use the enormously valuable information the colonel was providing. These issues and others pertaining to the activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Polish crisis are examined in a new book by Douglas J. MacEachin, a former CIA deputy director who oversaw the agency's efforts vis--vis Poland and the Soviet Union. MacEachin's book, as this essay shows, provides an astute and refreshingly candid evaluation of the CIA's performance.


The effects of vitamin C and/or E deficiency on lipoprotein metabolism were investigated in the inherently scorbutic Osteogenic Disorder Shionogi (ODS) rat. In the vitamin C-deficient (C-def) group, marked increases in plasma VLDL and LDL cholesterol were observed (by comparison with the vitamins C- and E-sufficient control group). In rats kept deficient in both vitamin C and vitamin E (C,E-def), LDL cholesterol was significantly higher than in the C-def group even though the levels of VLDL and HDL cholesterol were similar between the two groups. TBARS values for the LDL fraction in the C-def group were of the same magnitude as in the E-def group, and these values were significantly higher than those obtained for the control group. In the C,E-def group, the values were even higher than in the E-def and C-def groups. The nondenatured PAGE of the LDL fraction indicated the appearance of HDLc in the C-def and C,E-def groups. The SDS-PAGE of the LDL fraction showed increased apo B-48 in the C-def and C,E-def groups and increased apo E in the C,E-def group. Decreased plasma LCAT activity in the E-def, C-def, and C,E-def groups indicated an alteration in HDL metabolism as a result of oxidation. These results suggest that lipid peroxidation and some distinct features of lipoprotein metabolism resulting from vitamin C deficiency become more significant when vitamin E is also deficient along with vitamin C deficiency.


The Salafi movement in Tunisia in general and in the area of Sidi Ali Ben Aoun in particular, emerged as an antisocial movement that adopted the defense of a cultural identity based mainly on the rejection of democracy and the foundations of the modern state, seeking change in every way through a set of well-studied strategies that made young people deeply involved. In general, the Salafi movement is not separated from the social context in which it was born. It is also a reflection of the social actors who, by engaging in the Salafi movement, desire to achieve their objectives in negotiations. The Salafi movement is a social movement born out of the womb of society and its crises. It then adopted the same society, which has been muddling in the ignorance of religion and worldly dichotomies, as a target for change. This study attributes the growth in the number of Salafist youth to social exclusion. The social conditions of the youth in the Tunisian town of Sidi Ali Ben Aoun and of Tunisian youth in general make them look for alternatives that will provides them with what the state and its institutions failed to provide: an income and a small capital that will elevate their status in the social pyramid as belonging to the surviving group. The research will focus on the relationship between the social exclusion of Tunisian youth and the growing involvement of the Salafi movement. The following questions reflect the core issues behind this investigation: What are the representations of the youth of Sidi Ali Ben Aoun to the Salafi movement in their actions and interactions? How does social exclusion contribute to the growing involvement of Tunisian and Ben Aouni youth in the Salafi movement?


Abstract. Fluorine-doped tin dioxide (FTO) thin films were produced via conventional spray pyrolysis and ultrasonic spray pyrolysis (USP) methods using alcohol-based solutions. The prepared films were compared in terms of crystal structure, morphology, surface roughness, visible light transmittance, and electronic properties. Upon investigation of the grain structures and morphologies, the films prepared using ultrasonic spray method provided relatively larger grains and due to this condition, carrier mobilities of these films exhibited slightly higher values. Dye-sensitized solar cells and 10×10  cm modules were prepared using commercially available and USP-deposited FTO/glass substrates, and solar performances were compared. It is observed that there exists no remarkable efficiency difference for both cells and modules, where module efficiency of the USP-deposited FTO glass substrates is 3.06% compared to commercial substrate giving 2.85% under identical conditions. We demonstrated that USP deposition is a low cost and versatile method of depositing commercial quality FTO thin films on large substrates employed in large area dye-sensitized solar modules or other thin film technologies.


This article traces the emergence of what the author calls predation TERFism to the development of US Jewish-identified feminism and, in particular, Zionist lesbian separatism. This historical connection is reflected in the rhetorical and ideological similarities between predation TERFism and Zionism, both of which are defined by an "extinction phobia" that confuses oppressor and oppressed, presenting the subordinate party as capable of eliminating the dominant one. This extinction phobia transforms into "right-wing annihilationism" via a dehumanization of the subordinate party as innately harmful and therefore requiring elimination; hence the hallmark predation TERF abjection of trans women as rapists of cis women and the Zionist abjection of Palestinians as "savage" and/or "terrorist." These connections can be obscured by the siloization of social justice movement work in the United States, wherein anti-colonial and anti-imperial organizing is often separated from organizing for gender and reproductive justice and sexual freedom. Recognizing the continuities, however—whether historical, material, or ideological—between predation TERFism and Zionism offers useful lessons for understanding not only the power of the contemporary global anti-trans resurgence, but also how we might build solidaristic, anti-colonial movements to defeat it.


The intensive and continuous use of high-performance computing systems for executing computationally intensive applications, coupled with the large number of elements that make them up, dramatically increase the likelihood of failures during their operation. The interconnection network is a critical part of such systems, therefore, network faults have an extremely high impact because most routing algorithms are not designed to tolerate faults. In such algorithms, just a single fault may stall messages in the network, preventing the finalization of applications, or may lead to deadlocked configurations. This paper introduces a novel fault-tolerant routing method provided with a new deadlock avoidance technique designed to solve an unbounded number of faults appearing at random during system operation. Our method provides escape paths for the stalled messages. In addition, the routing algorithm configures alternative paths to avoid the faulty areas taking advantage of communication path redundancy by means of multipath routing approaches. Deadlock avoidance is achieved by adding a small-sized queue and applying a simple set of actions when accessing output buffers with limited free space. Experiments show that our method allows applications to successfully finalize their execution in the presence of several number of faults, with an average performance value of 96% compared to the fault-free scenarios.


Architectures obtained by Neural Architecture Search (NAS) have achieved highly competitive performance in various computer vision tasks. However, the prohibitive computation demand of forward-backward propagation in deep neural networks and searching algorithms makes it difficult to apply NAS in practice. In this paper, we propose a Multinomial Distribution Learning for extremely effective NAS, which considers the search space as a joint multinomial distribution, i.e., the operation between two nodes is sampled from this distribution, and the optimal network structure is obtained by the operations with the most likely probability in this distribution. Therefore, NAS can be transformed to a multinomial distribution learning problem, i.e., the distribution is optimized to have a high expectation of the performance. Besides, a hypothesis that the performance ranking is consistent in every training epoch is proposed and demonstrated to further accelerate the learning process. Experiments on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. On CIFAR-10, the structure searched by our method achieves 2.55% test error, while being 6.0× (only 4 GPU hours on GTX1080Ti) faster compared with state-of-the-art NAS algorithms. On ImageNet, our model achieves 74% top1 accuracy under MobileNet settings (MobileNet V1/V2), while being 1.2× faster with measured GPU latency. Test code with pre-trained models are available at https: //github.com/tanglang96/MDENAS


We recently identified a novel family of macrocyclic amidinoureas showing potent antifungal activity against Candida spp. In this study, we demonstrate the fungicidal effect of these compounds as well as their killing activity in a dose-dependent manner. Transcriptional analysis data indicate that our molecules induce a significant change in the transcriptome involving ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter genes. Notably, experiments against Candida albicans mutants lacking those genes showed resistance to the compound, suggesting the involvement of ABC transporters in the uptake or intracellular accumulation of the molecule. To probe the mode of action, we performed fluorescence microscopy experiments on fungal cells treated with an ad-hoc synthesized fluorescent derivative. Fluorescence microscopy images confirm the ability of the compound to cross the membrane and show a consistent accumulation within the cytoplasm. Finally, we provide data supporting the in vivo efficacy in a systemic infection murine model setup with a drug-resistant strain of C. albicans.


This paper presents the analysis of real-time object detection method for embedded system particularly the Android smartphone. As we all know, object detection algorithm is a complicated algorithm that consumes high performance hardware to execute the algorithm in real time. However due to the development of embedded hardware and object detection algorithm, current embedded device may be able to execute the object detection algorithm in real-time. In this study, we analyze the best object detection algorithm with respect to efficiency, quality and robustness of the algorithm. Several object detection algorithms have been compared such as Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT), Speeded-Up Feature Transform (SuRF), Center Surrounded External (CenSurE), Good Features To Track (GFTT), Maximally-Stable External Region Extractor (MSER), Oriented Binary Robust Independent Elementary Features (ORB), and Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) on the GalaxyS Android smartphone. The results show that FAST
algorithm has the best combination of speed and object detection performance.


Dengue is considered to be the fastest re-emerging disease in the world. Currently, it is one of the most prevalent diseases in the Central Visayas Region, Philippines particularly in Cebu City. Each year, large number of dengue outbreaks continues to occur causing tremendous burden not only to health but to the economy as well. Thus, to address the increasing concern about the threat posed by Dengue Incidence, a clearer picture of epidemiology and important risk factors is needed. In this study, the weekly data on Dengue morbidity for each barangay in Cebu City from year 2011- 2015 were obtained from the Department of Health (DOH) region 7. A network is created per week based on the number of incidence occurring in each barangay. A hotspot or hub is then produced after running the network analysis for five (5) years. Results showed that there is a statistically significant cluster present in Cebu City and that its geographical distribution has expanded over the years. This finding provides data to inform program planning for possible Dengue Incidence control in the locality.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of ordinary and high doses of fluoride on rat growth plate cartilage and surrounding bone. Thirty-six newborn Wistar albino male rats were divided equally into three groups and, three weeks after birth, were given the same 1.2 ppm (control group), 100 ppm, and 150 ppm fluoridated water their mothers had been drinking. Radiological and histopathological examinations were performed in the 15th, 17th, 20th, and 23rd weeks. There were significant histopathological variations in chondrocyte morphology and extracellular matrix volume in the zone of growth plate between the control group and the fluoride-treated groups. The main histopathological findings in the rats treated with high doses of fluoride were a decrease in matrix volume and cartilage septae thickness, and an increase in the number and diameter of chondrocytes on growth plate. On the epiphyseal ossification center, irregular lamellae, minimally increased osteoblast numbers, rare zones of woven bone, and irregular and thinned trabeculae were observed. On radiological examination, the main findings were relative widening and late partial fusion of the growth plate of high-dose fluoride treated groups.


Professionalization is one of the most ancient and popular issues in the sociology of the professions. Starting from the seminal article of Harold Wilensky (1964), scholars have extensively debated on which are the criteria to identify professionals, usually focusing on liberal professions. However, in recent years, post-industrial trends have transformed the character of the labour force dramatically and new groups have raised demands for professionalism going beyond this model. Such a dilemma raises a new interest on the topic: the paper, instead of applying the liberal professional model assumed to be an a- historical standard, will face the problem by analysing the challenges facing knowledge workers' seeking to legitimize their professional status. In this paper, I address this issue through an in-depth analysis of Arianna's account, a female management consultant, using the technique of positioning. The interview with Arianna reveals the strategies and argumentative referents of a freelance management consultant who chooses to stress her professionalism. It presents the role of personal networks, on-the-job training, and market success as evidence to classify who is professional and who is not, but also to explain how she uses their competencies and market experience as the basis of her claim to professionalism. Using Arianna's interview as an emblematic example, this paper argues that management consultants are trying to establish professional status based on a process of professionalization, albeit an innovative one that does not pursue public regulation nor the mediation of intermediate bodies.


Systemic homeostasis in animals is maintained by a network of complex signalling pathways involving several kinds of endogenous molecules/metabolites. Over the years, the role of microbiota present in the digestive tract in animal physiology has been under focus and path-breaking findings have been reported. It seems that the gut microbiota has an influence in perhaps almost all the physiological functions, including the central nervous system in animals. The means by which the microbiota impinges control on the host system biology is manifold and complex. However, one of the mechanisms involve microbiota-derived metabolites that functions as ligands to modulate host tissue gene expression via the nuclear receptors (NRs), which is a novel way of exerting control over the host physiology. Few of the host NRs, such as the pregnane X receptor (PXR), farnesoid X receptor (FXR) and peroxisome-proliferator activated receptors (PPARs) gene transcriptional activities have been demonstrated to be modulated by the binding of microbial-secreted metabolites acting as ligands. Such interactions control vital functions in the host such as intestinal epithelial barrier protection, immune tolerance and anti-inflammatory responses. In this article, recent important findings in understanding gut microbiota-derived metabolites and select host NRs signalling will be briefly reviewed.


A new concept for shielded enclosures of electronics is presented in this paper. An inexpensive doubled heat sink in extruded aluminum forms the base of the enclosure. The electronics are inserted into one part and is enclosed by a complementary shielding surface. The outer heat sink is cooled by forced ventilation. As openings are made redundant, seams between the parts of the enclosure are the only path for significant electromagnetic emissions. EMC-issues are also addressed in this paper; seams are modeled and simulated as short wave guides intercepted by screw joints. The simulations were carried out in CST Microwave Studio.


Purpose Vessel deconstruction of the ophthalmic artery is occasionally required in the treatment of periophthalmic internal carotid artery (ICA) intracranial aneurysms or more rare lesions such as dural arteriovenous fistulas (AVF), arteriovenous malformations or symptomatic intraorbital ophthalmic artery aneurysms. Multiple external carotid artery (ECA) to ophthalmic artery collaterals can prevent ocular ischemia in 90% of cases. However, despite visualization of ECA collateral supply to the distal ophthalmic–retinal artery and preservation of a choroidal blush on angiographic assessment, vision loss can still occur due to retinal ischemia or delayed thromboembolic complications, presumably due to inadequate collateral retinal perfusion following ophthalmic artery sacrifice. Materials and methods We studied three separate endovascular interventions resulting in proximal ophthalmic artery deconstruction: patient No 1 with a Cognard type 3 dural AVF treated with n-butyl cyanoacrylate glue embolization; patient No 2 with a fusiform intraorbital ophthalmic artery aneurysm treated with coil embolization; and patient No 3 with a giant periophthalmic ICA aneurysm incorporating the ophthalmic artery treated with ethylene vinyl alcohol (Onyx) liquid embolization. In patient Nos 2 and 3, ICA balloon test occlusion studies were performed across the ophthalmic artery origin prior to sacrifice. Photopic electroretinography was recorded using surface or needle infraorbital electrodes by measuring both averaged a and b waves before and after ICA balloon inflation and intermittently during ophthalmic artery sacrifice. Additionally, diffuse flash visual evoked potentials were recorded from scalp electrodes over the occipital cortex. Results Following endovascular treatment, compromise of the ophthalmic artery was confirmed on angiography in each patient with ECA–ophthalmic artery collaterals reconstituting the retinal arteries. An intact choroidal blush was present either during ICA balloon test occlusion study or post-ophthalmic artery deconstruction. All three patients were visually and neurologically intact postprocedure. However, patient No 1 returned 5 days later with blurred vision and a central retinal artery occlusion. For patient Nos 2 and 3, visual evoked potentials remained intact throughout the procedure. However, electroretinography demonstrated 30–50% reduced baseline b values for patient No 2 during the balloon test occlusion study and after ophthalmic artery sacrifice, in contrast with preserved values in patient No 3. Patient No 2 returned 4 days later with spontaneous vision loss and branch retinal artery occlusion. Patient No 3 has remained visually intact. Conclusion We present a novel intraoperative application of electroretinography to assess retinal perfusion following ophthalmic artery sacrifice. During a balloon test occlusion study across the ophthalmic artery origin, concomitant electroretinography may assist in predicting retinal ischemia or delayed thromboembolic complications with greater sensitivity than the angiographic presence of ECA–ophthalmic artery collaterals. Although we do not anticipate this technique to significantly alter treatment planning for ophthalmic artery deconstruction, implications remain for postprocedure management such as fluid augmentation, hypertensive therapy and utilization of dual antiplatelet medication.


Voltage sags and swells in the medium and low voltage distribution grid are considered to be the most frequent type of power quality problems based on recent power quality studies. Their impact on sensitive loads is severe. The impact ranges from load disruptions to substantial economic losses up to millions of dollars. Different solutions have been developed to protect sensitive loads against such disturbances but a series compensator is considered to be the most efficient and effective solution. Even the conventional concept suffers with effective controller problems. To tackle these situations, custom power apparatuses are utilized. Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) is a modified power apparatus that is utilized to enhance voltage stability i.e. to minimize the power quality problems in electrical power system network. The important parts of the DVR comprise of voltage source inverter (VSI), booster transformers, filter and a dc energy source. The principle of the DVR is utilized to inject the voltage in series and in synchronism with the standard voltages with a goal to compensate voltage influences. There are various control techniques used for the operation of dynamic voltage restorer. This paper presents the hysteresis voltage control technique for generation of switching pulses for inverter of dynamic voltage restorer.


Amazon ecosystem degradation profoundly impacts life supporting processes of global importance such as climate regulation, as well as local conditions for livelihoods. In Peru's highland jungle, an expanding deforestation front of forest conversion to agriculture has vastly transformed the landscape. Small-scale farming, the main driver of forest degradation, and consequently household natural resource management affect ecosystem functionality. To investigate farmers' attitudes and priorities to services provided by the ecosystems (ES) we interviewed 51 farmers, both local and colonists. They strongly agreed that over the last three decades, local conditions for livelihoods have deteriorated following forest degradation and climate change. The latter was reported the primary contributor to an impaired life quality and their greatest concern. Overall, local farmers perceived greater environmental change than did colonists who were also more positive towards intensive agriculture and forestry. This should be considered in environmental conservation efforts in the upper Amazon.


Pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-17 has been implicated in tissue damage associated with various autoimmune diseases. IL-17 is also known to contribute in immunity against bacterial and fungal pathogens. Most research over the past decade focused on understanding how IL-17- producing cells are generated, but far less is known about the organ specific responses of IL-17. In this thesis, we delineate the specific roles for IL-17 in the kidney, an organ susceptible to both auto-inflammatory conditions and infection. With the help of murine models, we outline the IL-17-driven responses in infection and autoimmunity. We studied the role for IL-17 mediated protection in disseminated candidiasis, a fatal nosocomial infection associated with high mortality. We discovered a previously unappreciated connection between IL-17 and the kallikrein- kinin system in renal protection against disseminated candidiasis. Simultaneously, we defined the cellular and molecular events in IL-17 driven renal tissue damage in murine models of autoimmune glomerulonephritis and lupus nephritis. Our results suggest that the kidney specific role of IL-17 is in the regulation of innate immune cells associated with kidney pathology. In addition, we were the first to show that neutralization of IL-17 ameliorated renal pathology in the autoimmune glomerulonephritis model. The consequence of unchecked renal inflammation is irreversible damage in the kidney, leading to fibrosis. In the case of inflammation mediated end organ fibrosis, the role for pro-fibrotic or anti-fibrotic role for IL-17 is debatable. We focused our attention on the role for IL-17-mediates immune responses in the kidney in a mouse model of fibrosis. We uncovered a surprisingly protective, anti-fibrotic role for IL-17 in the kidney that was driven by the IL-17-Klk1 axis. In summary, our findings have advanced the understanding of IL-17 mediated immunity and immunopathology and opens up the potential to develop therapeutic strategies based on the context of the disease.