This article reviews historical forms of localised government on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and contrasts them with the contemporary struggle to attain a communal form of autonomy undertaken by the region's indigenous population. It suggests that the contemporary autonomy process shares few features with the historical precedents of localised government which are commonly invoked to legitimise it. Instead, its roots can be located in the emergence of a Moskitian nationalism amongst the Miskitu which occurred to counter the assimilating impulse of an increasingly developmentally determined national state during the 1960s under the Somoza dictatorship, and then more thoroughly during the Sandinista revolution.


All-solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries (ASSLSBs) are promising candidates as the power source for future electric vehicles due to their high energy density and superior safety properties. However, one of the major challenges of state-of-the-art ASSLSBs is related to the high interfacial resistance resulting from the instability between the solid-state electrolyte (SSE) and electrodes and/or the side reactions between polysulfides and SSE. Herein, we propose and demonstrate the significant enhancement of the cycling stability of an ASSLSB through atomic layer deposition interfacial engineering on the polymer/oxide ceramic/polymer sandwich-structured SSE. The results show that as few as 10 cycles of ALD Al2O3 on the LATP can endow ASSLSBs with a discharge capacity of 823 mA h g−1 after 100 charge/discharge cycles, which is almost two times higher than that of the ASSLSB without an ALD coating and that of a Li–S battery with a liquid-based electrolyte. Such improvement is attributed not only to the blocking of the polysulfide shuttling effect via the use of a sandwich SSE but also the significant reduction of the side reaction between the polysulfide and oxide ceramic SSE, which introduces high interfacial resistance and degrades the electrochemical performance. The protection role and mechanism of the ALD layer is also confirmed and revealed by XRD, SEM and XPS measurements.


Environmental controversy over unconventional natural gas development utilizing horizontal drilling and hydraulic "fracking" has been on the rise in recent years. While most of the media attention has been focused on the conflicts in states like Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, and Colorado, the discovery of huge natural gas reserves in the Haynesville Shale formation in 2008 set off a drilling rush that has resulted in differential benefits and risks for various residents. Drawing on current research and extensive interview data collected from a relevant cross-section of community stakeholders, this study offers a descriptive and comparative analysis of the types of benefits and opportunities perceived to accompany increased unconventional natural gas development, the range of perceived negative impacts and threats associated with such development, and the extent to which respondents viewed the benefits of the Haynesville boom as outweighing the costs. While most stakeholders perceived that natural gas development offered the community a host of positive socioeconomic benefits in the form of increased jobs, tax revenues, services, and new economic opportunities for local businesses and landowners, a substantial minority of residents also associated shale development with a larger number of negative social, economic, and environmental impacts. Those included the degradation of water resources; increased road damage, noise, and traffic accidents; and other assorted threats to public health, animals, and the rural landscape. Moreover, while most Haynesville residents believed that the socioeconomic benefits of development had outweighed the collective socioeconomic/environmental costs to the region, a substantial minority of respondents was also skeptical or disagreed that the benefits to date had been worth the risks. These findings both support and extend existing sociological research in several key respects. The implications of the study, both for the region and the national debate over fracking, are discussed.


This paper describes the structure of a transputer-based laboratory flight simulator designed to ease the development cycle of experimental flight control laws. The core of the system is designed to be flexible and maintainable, and offers easy access to users implementing new aircraft models and control systems. The system may be run in nonreal-time on a single processor, or in real-time using as many processors as required to achieve the necessary frame rate. In this way, controllers and aircraft models of almost arbitrary complexity and frame rate can be simulated.


Drug delivery system relates to the production of a drug, its delivery medium, and the way of administration. Drug delivery systems are even used for administering nitroglycerin. Transdermal drug delivery system is the system in which the delivery of the active ingredients of the drug occurs by the means of skin. Various types of transdermal patches are used. There are various methods to enhance the transdermal drug delivery system. But using microfabricated microneedles drugs are delivered very effectively to skin patch. There has been great progress in the Transdermal drug delivery system for the delivery of different forms and our aim is to collect the information about what progressed have done in Transdermal drug delivery system and developments in Transdermal drug delivery systems in theoretical form. Also, to collect the information about the advantages and application of the Transdermal drug delivery systems.


In this paper the author argues that social scientists need to do more to provide policy-relevant research. Rapid technological and economic change raise new issues about how policy should adjust that are not adequately addressed by older and narrower approaches. The author suggests two ways in which the domain of policy-relevant scholarship can be expanded. First, social scientists should be more flexible about the kinds of data they use and the ways they use them. Preliminary data can suggest new hypotheses, which can widen debate, and ethnographic and other qualitative methods can uncover patterns of behaviour invisible in quantitative sources. Second, social theories, concepts and ideas should play a greater role in the policy arena, shaping the way policy actors think about how the world works.


Keeping the global population fed in times of climate change and population growth is considered to be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Plant stress is defined as any external factor that negatively impacts on growth, productivity, reproductive capacity or survival. The use of salinized water in agriculture is likely to become a more regular occurrence, as diminishing freshwater supplies are available for crop irrigation. High salt drastically affects growth and it is therefore necessary that crops be bred to be able to withstand such adversity.

Recent advancements in technology allow us to measure gene expression on a genome wide scale, techniques resulting in the development of theoretical models of regulation and the identification of key regulatory genes have been used in Arabidopsis. There is need to transfer this knowledge from model plant to crop, ensuring the application of such technologies to the issue of food security.

A large microarray experiment was performed during this project in which the expression of over 60,000 genes were measured in Brassica oleracea GD33DH over a period of 36 hours following salt shock. The use of bioinformatics tools allowed the identification of 7,141 significantly differentially expressed genes in the early response to salt shock in GD33DH. Additional information on the time of differential expression revealed potential genes and mechanisms indicating that metabolism was highly affected by salt shock.

Germplasm from crop wild relatives in breeding programmes is a crucial source of genetic material to replace variation lost through years of selective breeding allowing the development of crops with higher stress tolerance. By screening a collection of wild C-genome Brassica species for salt shock tolerance, tolerant germplasm was identified and sequenced alongside susceptible germplasm. Comparative analyses revealed the genes and mechanisms used by wild Brassica species protect themselves from the adverse effects of salt shock.

Whole genome duplication events occurring in the recent evolutionary history of C-genome Brassica was examined whereupon it was found that stress specific duplicate genes are on average expressed more highly than single copy suggesting that WGD has implications on the response to stress.

These results provide a wealth of potential gene targets for future study and germplasm that can be used in the development of stress tolerant B. oleracea varieties.


Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations have long been used to test electronic control units (ECUs) and software in car manufacturers. It provides an effective platform to the rapid development process of the ECU control algorithms and accommodates the added complexity of the plant under control. Accurate Model based HIL simulation (AMHIL) is considered as a most efficient and cost effective way for exploration of new designs and development of new products, particularly in calibration and parameterization of vehicle stability controllers. The work presented in the paper is to develop a mathematical model of a windscreen wiper system for the purpose of conducting HIL vehicle test and eventually to replace the real component with the model for cost cutting and improved test efficiency. The model is developed based on the electro-mechanical engineering principles. Matlab/Simulink was used as a platform for simulating the mathematical model, in which the real-time code (C language) of the model is complied via Real-time Workshop. dSPACE HIL simulator is adopted as a real-time platform for the HIL tests to the Body Control Module (BCM). The mathematical model of the windscreen system is firstly verified in real-time in line with the real components, wherein varied operational conditions are applied. A real value single population Genetic Algorithm (GA) is adopted to optimize the model parameters with the performance criteria for minimizing the errors between the model simulated swing angles of both cranks and their corresponding swing angels measured from the real wiper system in real time. With the AMHIL, control algorithms embedded in the BCM can be verified in a full scope of the operational ranges. With the ability of adjusting the model parameters to represent different designs of the windscreen wiper systems (e.g. geometric design of the linkage system), AMHIL can verify the control strategy BCM before the real prototype is built, not only in terms of functional tests, but also in terms of reliability and robustness, which can accordingly accelerate production process.


Abstract Context. The cane toad (Rhinella marina), a native species of central and southern America, was introduced to Australia in 1935 as a biocontrol agent after a complex history of prior introductions. The population rapidly expanded and has since spread through much of the Australian landmass, with severe impacts on the endemic wildlife, primarily via toxicity to predators. The invasion process has taken its toll on the cane toad, with changes in the immunological capacity across the Australian invasive population. Aims. To investigate the immunogenetic underpinnings of these changes, we studied the diversity of the Major Histocompatiblity Complex (MHC) genes in introduced cane toad populations. Methods. We studied the diversity of two MHC genes (the classical class I UA locus and a class II DAB locus) and compared these with neutral microsatellite markers in toads from the Australian site of introduction and the Australian invasion front. We also included toads from Hawai'i, the original source of the Australian toads, to infer founder effect. Key results. Diversity across all markers was low across Australian and Hawai'ian samples, consistent with a reduction in genetic diversity through multiple founder effects during the course of the successive translocations. In Australia, allelic diversity at the microsatellite markers and the UA locus was reduced at the invasion front, whereas all three alleles at the DAB locus were maintained in the invasion-front toads. Conclusions. Loss of allelic diversity observed at the microsatellite markers and the UA locus could be the result of drift and bottlenecking along the invasion process, however, the persistence of DAB diversity warrants further investigation to disentangle the evolutionary forces influencing this locus. Implications. Through the use of different molecular markers, we provide a preliminary description of the adaptive genetic processes occurring in this invasive population. The extremely limited MHC diversity may represent low immunogenetic competence across the Australian population, which could be exploited for invasive species management.


We review the construction of chiral four-dimensional compactifications of type IIA string theory with intersecting D6-branes. Such models lead to four-dimensional theories with non-Abelian gauge interactions and charged chiral fermions. We discuss the application of these techniques to the building of models with spectrum as close as possible to the standard model, and review their main phenomenological properties. We also emphasize the advantages/disadvantages of carrying out this idea using supersymmetric or non-supersymmetric models.


Conceptual models are used in IS development for capturing and specifying requirements. However, the mere understanding of the syntax or semantics of a modeling language is not the most crucial factor. More relevant is pragmatic knowledge about the application domain. The problem that this paper addresses is how one can verify that a shared understanding of the application domain exists. In our study we show that domain-specific languages are an indicator for separating novices from experts in a given application domain. Novices and experts can be distinguished based on the domain-specific language they use. We demonstrate that these different language communities can be observed empirically by employing latent semantic analysis (LSA) as an instrument and by measuring semantic similarity. The separation of groups using LSA is also possible if the terminology, the application domain, or the expert-layperson-status of the examined group are unknown. Therefore the separation based on domain-specific languages is independent of the domain under consideration or the prior knowledge of the researcher. This provides a useful measurement instrument for studying the role of application domain knowledge in future research.


The catalytic enantioselective propargylation of aldehydes with newly prepared stannyl allenyl amides is described. The reaction has been accomplished by using catalytic amounts of indium chloride, zinc chloride, and a chiral BINOL derivative, affording amide-functionalized homopropargyl alcohols in excellent yields and enantioselectivities.


Phosphorus and sulfur are detected as phosphorus oxide and sulfur oxide ions (PO+ and SO+), produced by oxidation reactions with O2 performed in the reaction cell of the inductively coupled plasma dynamic reaction cell mass spectrometer (ICP-DRC-MS), at sub-ng mL−1 detection limits. This allows pM mL−1 detection of phospho-proteins, with S used as an internal standard (see ref. 9). The method was applied to digests (in HCl) of in-vitro tyrosine kinase assays, both as an evaluation of kinase autophosphorylation and phosphorylation of substrate. Detecting the phosphorus/sulfur ratio (via measured PO+/SO+) in cell cultures is shown to provide a distinguishable difference between malignant cell lines and primary cultures. The PO+/SO+ ratio for human colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRC) tissue samples compared with matched normal (N) tissue samples from the same patients is shown to be higher, at (PO+/SO+)CRC/(PO+/SO+)N
 = 1.75 ± 0.18 (n
 = 4). Samples used in this analysis were of needle biopsy amounts (0.2–0.5 mg), with a greater than 70% tumor burden in CRC. The phospho-protein phosvitin is detected directly from dried one-dimensional polyacrylamide gels using laser ablation ICP-MS by detecting phosphorus at sub-nM amounts. The phosphorus detection limit for direct ablation, assessed from ablating gel doped with P and blank gel, is 0.6 µg g−1 in gel. Direct detection of sulfur from the gels is obscured by the high sulfur background for the blank gels, which is attributed to the sulfur-containing catalysts used in polymerization and to sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) used for protein denaturing.


To determine the best conditions for superovulation in rabbits, we analyzed the influence of age, season and hormone treatment on the numbers of eggs collected over five years from 509 rabbits aged 4–10 months using follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) or pregnant mare serum gonadotropin (PMSG) hormone stimulation. The number of eggs recovered was significantly higher in younger rabbits in both treated groups ( P < 0.01–0.05). The number of eggs collected from rabbits treated with FSH were significantly higher than from rabbits treated with PMSG at all ages ( P < 0.01). Seasonal differences were not observed in either hormone treatment group as they were maintained under constant temperature, humidity and light cycle through the year. Thus, younger rabbits are more sensitive to hormonal superovulation treatment with both FSH and PMSG, and FSH offers a better regimen for egg collection.


This article contributes to the concept of social values by presenting analytical tools that explore how social values are classified, re-presented and interpersonally performed in the construction of identities. I approach social values as classificatory systems of acceptability and desirability that are collectively generated. The meanings of social values are embedded in culture and in power imbalanced social relations; they constantly undergo reformulation in identification processes and are also used to define the social order. I suggest that social values can be analysed in relation to aspects of representation and interpersonal positioning that are also involved in the construction of identities: Value classifications involve compartmentalising moral orders into e.g. good, desirable, important, necessary; value projects are concerned with how value classifications and content occupy roles and become oriented to action; and value positioning is concerned with how narrators align with value classifications and projects as well as with individuals and groups seen to share or reject such classifications and projects.


This paper presents a fast boundary-element method (BEM) algorithm that is well suited for solving electrostatics problems that arise in traditional and bio-microelectromechanical systems (bio-MEMS) design. The algorithm, FFTSVD, is Green's-function-independent for low-frequency kernels and efficient for inhomogeneous problems. FFTSVD is a multiscale algorithm that decomposes the problem domain using an octree and uses sampling to calculate low-rank approximations to dominant source distributions and responses. Long-range interactions at each length scale are computed using the FFT. Computational results illustrate that the FFTSVD algorithm performs better than precorrected-FFT (pFFT)-style algorithms or the multipole-style algorithms in FastCap.


Sub-District Panarukan, Distric of Situbondo has many food processing and non-food processing centers based on marine resources, all of which reaches 197 business units which include: Craft, Fish Cracker, Fish Chips, Shrimp paste and rengginang fish. The socio-economic phenomena of coastal communities should provide added value, absorb a lot of unemployment, but the people are still not prosperous in economically. The purposes of this study are to: Analyze the value added of resource-based on agroindustry, and to know the opportunity of marine resource development based agroindustry. The type of research used is descriptive with survey technique. Furthermore, the excavated data consists of qualitative and quantitative data which collected by using depth interview technique and the determination of respondents is done by simple random sampling technique. In order to answer the first, and second, the Hayami value-added analysis, and cost efficiency (R/C-Ratio) are used. The result of the research revealed that the ratio of added value of agribusiness activity of marine basis is 37,5% (value added ratio 15% - 40%), then the added value is classified. While the business opportunity of agribusiness activity in the research area is very big which indicated the value of R / C reach 1.95. If marine resource-based agroindustry activities in the research area are intervened with a touch of modern science-based management, then the value-added ratio potentially reaches more than 40% (> 40% high added value categories).


This study uses autoethnography as a research method to reflect on the impact the author's life and career influences have had on the success of his role as a vice principal in a new school. Leadership theory was also examined to provide a theoretical understanding of the author's experience. The interplay between expectations, influences, and reality were examined to illustrate the complexity of the authors experience as a school based administrator. Themes of leading with intense moral purpose, strong communication, and trust and relationships with employees emerged as the author strived to be a successful formal school leader in a new school. Through these lenses, autoethnographic research was used as means to deeply reflect on personal leadership development while looking at how external expectations and dynamics interact with leadership qualities to define role effectiveness.


ABSTRACT This empirical qualitative study aims (1) to understand the Chinese context in promoting accessible high-quality education for deaf communities and (2) to create an opportunity for deaf experts to contribute to sign language research, instruction, interpreting programmes, and deaf education in China. Using a focus group methodology, we gathered data from 48 participants from four different stakeholder groups (10 teachers, 16 administrators/researchers, 6 interpreters, 16 community members) identifying concerns and solutions to achieving educational access. Video recorded discussions were transcribed, analysed and consolidated into themes. Results show a fragile trust between deaf and hearing professionals, a need for continued investigation on sign language standardisation and preservation, and a desire for worldwide collaboration and inclusion of deaf and hearing scholars in establishing a deaf university in China. This participatory, community-based research method yielded insights toward improving deaf education and sign language training within Chinese special education and toward the design, implementation and establishment of a future university serving only deaf students in China.


Simple and proven techniques to quickly speed up your ASP.NET website Speed up your ASP.NET website by identifying performance bottlenecks that hold back your site's performance and fixing them Tips and tricks for writing faster code and pinpointing those areas in the code that matter most, thus saving time and energy Drastically reduce page load times Configure and improve compression - the single most important way to improve your site's performance Written in a simple problem-solving manner - with a practical hands-on approach and just the right amount of theory you need to make sense of it all In Detail Do you think that only experts with a deep understanding of the inner workings of ASP.NET, SQL Server, and IIS can improve a website's performance? Think again - because this book tosses that notion out of the window. It will help you resolve every web developer's nightmare - a slow website - with angry managers looking over your shoulder, raging calls from advertisers and clients - the lot. You don't have the time or energy to gain a thorough and complete understanding of ASP.NET performance optimization - You just need your site to run faster! This book will show you how. This hands-on book shows how to dramatically improve the performance of your ASP.NET-based website straight away, without forcing you through a lot of theoretical learning. It teaches you practical, step-by-step techniques that you can use right away to make your site faster with just the right amount of theory you need to make sense of it all. Start reading today and you could have a faster website tomorrow. Unlike other performance-related books, here you'll first learn how to pinpoint the bottlenecks that hold back your site's performance, so you can initially focus your time and energy on those areas of your site where you can quickly make the biggest difference. It then shows you how to fix the bottlenecks you found with lots of working code samples and practical advice, and just the right amount of theoretical detail. The first chapter details techniques for diagnosing performance issues using Waterfall charts. Subsequent chapters then each focus on one individual aspect of your website, providing you with numerous real-life scenarios and performance-enhancing techniques for each of them. In the last chapter, you learn how to effectively load-test your environment in order to measure the change in performance of your site without having to update your production environment - whether it is a new release or simply a small change in the database. What you will learn from this book Learn how to pinpoint and fix bottlenecks relating to all aspects of your site - server side, client side, code, images, and database. Ensure shorter wait times for your site. Eliminate the need to hire a DBA, by speeding up database access using insight into index structures and other advanced techniques. Drastically speed up image loading, by exploiting browser behavior and by removing the hidden overhead in each image file. Use ASP.NET's caching feature to dramatically improve performance by adding just a few lines of code. Prevent a little known bottleneck overlooked by most developers - a shortage of worker threads in IIS - by using asynchronous methods. Enable compression in IIS 6 and IIS 7 to cut file transfer times and bandwidth costs. Reduce your Memory and CPU usage. Optimize the deployment and usage of forms on your website. Speed up JavaScript and CSS loading. Diagnose problems as they occur, using waterfall charts. Load-test your environment to measure the level of improvement in performance. Find heaps of reference links and descriptions of free and low cost tools and services that make it easy to spot performance issues right away. Approach Written in a practical and clear conversational style, this book is filled with real-life website performance scenarios. It is replete with lots of working code samples and practical advice, and just the right amount of theory you need to make sense of it all. Who this book is written for This book is written for ASP.NET/SQL Server-based website developers who want to speed up their site using simple, proven tactics without going through a lot of unnecessary theoretical learning. If your website isn't performing well, this is the ideal book for you.


eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Abstract: Due to the rapid growth of the organic food industry and the increasing popularity of organic fruits and vegetables, the health benefits and risks of organic produce are issues of significant importance. This review will compare organic and conventional produce in terms of nutritional value, pesticide contamination, and microbiological safety. The current literature shows that organic produce tends to contain higher levels of vitamin C and lower levels of nitrates, though more well controlled studies are necessary in order to reach any definitive conclusions. It has been definitively shown that organic produce contains fewer and lower levels of pesticides than conventional produce, though the long-term health consequences of ingestion of pesticides, and the clinical relevance of fewer and lower levels of pesticides in organic food, has yet to be determined. Organic farming methods can potentially lead to microbiological contamination, but the literature has shown that organic produce does not carry any higher risk of significant microbiological contamination than conventional produce. These findings in the current literature seem to suggest that organic produce can potentially be more beneficial, but certainly not more harmful, than conventional produce for the health of the consumer.


Changes in mitochondrial dynamics (fusion and fission) are known to occur during stem cell differentiation; however, the role of this phenomenon in tissue aging remains unclear. Here, we report that mitochondrial dynamics are shifted toward fission during aging of Drosophila ovarian germline stem cells (GSCs), and this shift contributes to aging‐related GSC loss. We found that as GSCs age, mitochondrial fragmentation and expression of the mitochondrial fission regulator, Dynamin‐related protein (Drp1), are both increased, while mitochondrial membrane potential is reduced. Moreover, preventing mitochondrial fusion in GSCs results in highly fragmented depolarized mitochondria, decreased BMP stemness signaling, impaired fatty acid metabolism, and GSC loss. Conversely, forcing mitochondrial elongation promotes GSC attachment to the niche. Importantly, maintenance of aging GSCs can be enhanced by suppressing Drp1 expression to prevent mitochondrial fission or treating with rapamycin, which is known to promote autophagy via TOR inhibition. Overall, our results show that mitochondrial dynamics are altered during physiological aging, affecting stem cell homeostasis via coordinated changes in stemness signaling, niche contact, and cellular metabolism. Such effects may also be highly relevant to other stem cell types and aging‐induced tissue degeneration.


Rapid assessment of immune or stem cells, which are now widely applied in the clinical setting of cancer treatment, is necessary to speed their development and to determine their quality. We have evaluated immature dendritic cells (iDC) by semiautomated imaging cytometry which provides detailed assessment at a single cell level. Nuclear translocation of NF-kappaB was studied by imaging analysis as well as electrophoretic mobility shift assay with an excellent correlation (r = 0.981) over a broad range of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) concentrations. Imaging analysis was time saving (5 h vs. 3 days), and required 30- to 100-fold less cells per analysis. Single cell information revealed remarkable heterogeneity between individual iDC and permitted detection of responses to 40 pg/ml of LPS. In IL-1beta/IFNgamma activated iDC, STAT1 responses preceded NF-kappaB responses, and the expression of both was strongly correlated in individual cells (p < 0.001). IFNgamma amplified IL-1-induced NF-kappaB responses. NF-kappaB responses to IL-1beta, CD40L, and LPS were donor-dependent (n = 7), correlated with the quality of iDC preparations (p = 0.002), and IL-12 p70 production (p = 0.010). NF-kappaB measurements in iDC within mixed cell cultures (iDC, NK, K562) demonstrated that these strategies are applicable for analyses of complex cell-cell interactions. Imaging analysis is a method that could be valuable for quality control of cell therapy preparations.


Since the Crick Report, active citizenship has been promoted as a vehicle for
enhancing community involvement and political literacy among school and
higher education students. This ostensibly progressive educational and social
goal is beset with a number of tensions and contradictions, notably around the
nature of participation and between enhancing social control and encouraging
political engagement. This article examines the various tensions surrounding
citizenship education with reference to an evaluation of an innovative undergraduate
sociology module called 'Teaching Citizenship'. The aim of the module
was to provide students with an experience of active citizenship based on local
community involvement that took the form of students' facilitating citizenship
education at two secondary modern schools. Drawing upon evaluation research
findings, the article discusses the ways in which the sociology students actively
negotiated the dilemmas of participation and power characteristic of citizenship
education.


Introduction: Unsafe abortion is one of the major public health problems in developing countries including Nepal. After integration of comprehensive abortion care in safe motherhood service, there has been improvement in maternal and women health in Nepal. Furthermore, improvements are required in raising awareness and accessibility to safe abortion services to all the women in throughout the country.
Methods: This is a retrospective study carried out in Western Regional Hospital after reviewing the data from the hospital records. Demographic details, parity, types of abortion for spontaneous abortion, and methods of induced abortion were noted and analyzed.
Results: Maximum number of women belonged to 20-24 years of age and is Brahmin/Chhetri. Multi gravida are more than primi and they underwent induced abortion by medical termination of pregnancy. Similarly, incomplete abortion was in highest number among the spontaneous abortion.
Conclusion: Easy availability of the safe abortion services and awareness among the people regarding it would certainly improve the maternal health and quality of life.


Over the years, interpretivism has been gradually gaining ground in Information Systems (IS) research. At the heart of this interpretivist movement is a belief in theoretical and methodological pluralism. In this study, we argue the need for a better leverage of methodological pluralism in interpretive IS research. Specifically, we note that greater research insights may be obtained by considering the complementarity of various strategies of inquiry (such as ethnography, grounded theory, case study and action research) with respect to a specific IS phenomenon. Indeed, we suggest that when complementary strategies of inquiry are purposefully employed in a portfolio of separate studies over time, they may collectively help to shed new light on complex IS phenomena. A good example of such phenomena is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). While ERP implementations in the industry reached their peak in the late 1990s, research in this area is still in a stage of infancy. In this study, we use this ERP phenomenon and the symbolic interactionism theoretical perspective to demonstrate the complementarity of three strategies of inquiry: the "descriptive strengths" of ethnography, the "analytical edge" of grounded theory and the "practical contribution" of participatory action research Individually, each strategy of inquiry boasts a unique platform from which a certain complex IS phenomenon (such as ERP implementations) can be investigated; when purposefully employed in different studies over time, they may help to collectively and synergistically shed new light on the phenomenon in question. By highlighting the possible leverage of methodological pluralism in such a complementary manner, this study may thus have valuable implications for interpretive IS research.


Soils in semi-arid regions have been degraded by overgrazing, which reduces the production capacity and, in certain situations, leads to desertification. An alternative to recover degraded areas is the fallow period, which works through the resilience of the soil itself, increasing the supply of organic matter and improving soil physical properties. Thus, the objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that 14-year grazing exclusion improves soil physical and chemical attributes in degraded areas under desertification. The study was conducted in Iraucuba, Ceara State, Brazil. The experimental design was completely randomized, in a 4 x 2 factorial scheme corresponding to four areas and two managements (overgrazing and fallow), with four replicates, plus an area with native vegetation (reference), with characteristics of secondary vegetation. Fallow led to improvements in soil physical and chemical attributes after 14 years; however, in comparison to the study conducted in the same area with a 7-year fallow period, there were few alterations. Organic carbon content was higher in fallow areas than in overgrazing areas, and the fraction in highest proportion was the mineral-associated organic carbon.


Anisotropic noble metal nanoparticles exhibit unique optical and catalytic properties that have the potential to revolutionize applications ranging from cancer therapy to hydrogen storage. While there is considerable drive for the commercial implementation of these materials, a significant barrier to industrial translation lies in the lack of rational synthetic methods to produce them. This gap introduces difficulties with both the reproducibility and the sustainability of anisotropic nanoparticle synthesis. Here, a robust approach for the solution-phase synthesis of gold nanoparticles of technological interest has been developed. Instead of using a seed template to access canonical gold nanomaterials such as nanorods and nanoprisms, a homogeneous nucleation approach has been developed where nucleation and growth occur in the same chemical environment. By regulating the stages of particle nucleation and growth, nanorods with lengths from 30 to 630 nm and triangular or hexagonal prisms with vertex-to-vertex lengths ranging from 120 to over 700 nm were produced in high yield. These results shed light on the factors that influence the growth of anisotropic nanomaterials, and allow for drastically more efficient synthetic routes. Specifically, this methodology allows for the reduction in the amount of reagents needed to synthesize nanorods and nanoprisms by as much as 90% by weight, and represent the first report of spectroscopically-discernible, colloidal gold nanoplates obtained using a seedless approach. Methods developed will facilitate future investigations concerning the formation of complex, hybrid nanoparticle architectures from anisotropic nanomaterial substrates.


Seventeen patients, ages 14-74 years, with severe, isolated aortic insufficiency and reduced ejection fraction (0.25-0.49) underwent aortic valve replacement between January 1973 and July 1977. Three had coronary artery disease and also underwent coronary bypass surgery. By New York Heart Association criteria, one patient was functional class IV, seven were class III, seven were class II and two were class I. Left ventricular (LV) end-diastolic pressure was 19 ± 2 mm Hg (mean ± SEM). LV end-diastolic volume index (218 ± 18 ml/m'), end-systolic volume index (124 ± 11 ml/mi) and LV mass index (240 ± 10 g/m') were increased in all patients. Mean velocity of circumferential fiber shortening (mean Vcf) (0.75 ± 0.05 circ/sec) was depressed in all patients. LV ejection fraction averaged 0.43 i 0.02. There were no operative deaths; one patient had a perioperative myocardial infarction and one developed complete atrioventricular block. Five late deaths occurred, including two patients who were not anticoagulated and died within the first year from severe prosthetic valve obstruction. Actuarially determined 3-year survival is 61 15%. Of the late survivors, six are class I, five are class IX and one is class III. Ten patients who were restudied 14.5 3 months after surgery had satisfactory prosthetic function. In these 10 patients, LV end-diastolic pressure decreased from 16 ± 3 to 10 + 2 mm Hg, LV end-diastolic volume index decreased from 209 + 15 to 155 ± 17 mI/M2, LV end-systolic volume index decreased from 118 ± 10 to 82 ± 14 mI/mn and LV mass decreased from 234 ± 11 to 170 i 16 g/m2. LV volumes returned to normal in only two patients, however, and none had normalization ofLV mass. Ejection fraction increased slightly in the restudied patients (0.43 ± 0.03 to 0.49 0.04; 0.05 < p < 0.10); however, it increased more than 15% in five patients and in four of these it returned to normal. Mean Vcf increased from 0.72 ± 0.08 to 0.95 ± 0.11 cir/sec (p < 0.05), but became normal in only two patients. Our data indicate that aortic valve replacement can be performed with acceptable risk in patients with severe aortic insufficiency and moderately severe impairment of LV function. Functional class was improved or maintained in late survivors, LV systolic pump function improved in 50% of patients, and there was consistent (but usually incomplete) regression of LV dilatation and hypertrophy even in patients who did not improve their ejection fraction.


In Reply.— The concerns raised by Sturges are quite valid. In our study, 1 we did not obtain specific data on meat consumption or meat contact, and, consequently, we cannot be certain that our Seventh-Day Adventist participants did not eat or handle meat. However, assuming that a substantial percentage of the Seventh-Day Adventists were adherent to a strict vegetarian diet (a not unreasonable assumption, as blood samples were collected from church attendees at the close of Sabbath services), we would have expected to see some evidence of decreased seroprevalence if meat consumption was a significant risk factor for Helicobacter pylori infection. We would also have expected to find a greater degree of heterogeneity in the responses of the Seventh-Day Adventists compared with their meateating neighbors (ie, if meat consumption was a risk factor, and there were both meat eaters and strict vegetarians within our group of Seventh-Day Adventists, the range


Distinguishing between the development of functional potential in antigen-specific T helper (Th) cells and the delivery of these specialized functions in vivo has been difficult to resolve. Here, we quantify the frequency of cytokine-producing cells within the primary and memory B10.BR Th cell response to pigeon cytochrome c (PCC). In vitro analysis of acquired functional potential indicated no Th1/Th2 cytokine polarity at the peak of the primary response with surprisingly little evidence for the selective preservation of interleukin (IL)-2, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, IL-4, and interferon (IFN)-γ potentials into the memory compartment. However, the expression of these functional potentials appears tightly regulated in vivo. The staggered appearance of primary response cytokines directly ex vivo contrasts markedly with their rapid coordinate expression in the memory response. Frequencies of IL-2–, TNF-α–, IFN-γ–, and IL-10–expressing memory responders increased over their primary response counterparts, but were still markedly lower than revealed in vitro. IL-4–, IFN-γ–, and IL-10–expressing Th cells remained at low but stable frequencies over the first 6 d of the memory response. Analysis of T cell receptor β chain sequences of IL-4– and TNF-α–expressing PCC-specific Th cells provides evidence for early functional commitment among clonal progeny. These data indicate that the development of functional potential is a consequence of initial antigen experience, but delivery of specialized functions is differentially regulated in primary and memory immune responses.


Particulate matter emissions from the California in-use vehicle fleet were measured as 37,500 vehicles traveled through two bores of the Caldecott Tunnel located in the San Francisco Bay area. Microorifice cascade impactors and filter-based samplers were used to determine the particle chemical composition as a function of particle size. Ammonia emissions from the vehicle fleet were measured as well. Concentrations of aerosol mass, organic carbon, elemental carbon, sulfate ion, nitrate ion, and ammonium ion, as well as 13 elements are reported. The particle mass distribution peaks in the particle size range 0.1-0.18 microm aerodynamic diameter (Da). Elemental carbon and organic matter were the largest components of particle mass in all the size ranges studied. The Caldecott Tunnel bores studied include one which carries light-duty vehicle traffic and one which carries a mixture of light- and heavy-duty vehicle traffic. From experiments conducted in both bores, estimates are made of the size distribution and chemical composition of particulate matter emissions extrapolated to the 100% light-duty and 100% heavy-duty vehicle fleets. The heavy-duty vehicle fleet emitted 1285 +/- 237 mg of fine particulate matter (Da < 1.9 microm)/kg of C contained in the fuel burned (corresponding to approximately 430 +/- 79 mg/km driven). Light-duty vehicles emitted less than 85 +/- 6 mg/kg of C in the fuel burned (corresponding to less than approximately 5.5 +/- 0.4 mg/km driven). Emissions of gas-phase ammonia in the Caldecott Tunnel were measured to be 194 and 267 mg/L of gasoline-equivalent fuel burned in the tunnel. The ammonia emissions are attributed to automobiles that were equipped with 3-way catalysts and operating fuel rich.


This paper analyzed the shortages of S/KEY OTP system in mobile commerce identity authentication and suggested an improved one-time password system based on bidirectional virtual authorization in mobile application systems. On one hand, this suggestion can reduce the calculation stress of both client and server, accordingly increases the efficiency of authorization and withstands the DoS attack. On the other hand, the suggestion can implement the bidirectional authorization and reduce the possibility of fishing attack.


of a Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. BEDLOAD TRANSPORT IN BRAIDED GRAVEL-BED RIVERS: A HYDRAULIC MODEL STUDY A 1 :50 scale hydraulic model was designed based on Froude Number similarity using hydrological and sediment data from a braided gravel-bed river (the North Branch of the Ashburton River, Canterbury, New Zealand). An experimental programme was devised to investigate firstly, the relationships between discharge-slope product and bedload transport rate under steady and varying discharges; and secondly, the changes in bedload transport rate resulting from flow abstractions. Seven experiments using steady flow conditions were conducted (with six different discharge-slope combinations), and eleven experiments using unsteady flow cOfiditions were also conducted (with five different discharge-slope combinations). The experiments were carried out in a 20 m x 3 m tilting flume equipped with a sediment feed device and an automated data acquisition and control system. In all experiments water at 30 °c was used to reduce viscosity-related scale effects. Braided stream development was in some experiments found to be limited by the 3 m flume width; however, using available data from the narrower reaches of the North Branch of the Ashburton River, it was shown that good hydraulic similarity was achieved. Analyses of the experimental results revealed that bedload transport rates in braided channels are highly variable, with relative variability being inversely related to mean bedload transport rate. Variability was also found to be cyclic with short-term variations being caused by the migration of bedforms. Assessments of two bedload transport prediction rate equations were made: the Schoklitsch (1962) equation and the Bagnold (1980) equation. It was concluded that the Schoklitsch (1962) equation is unlikely to be useful for braided gravel-bed rivers, however the Bagnold (1980) equation was found to be very reliable, with the experimental data displaying a close adherence to the empirical 3/2 power-law dependence.of bedload transport rate on excess stream power which is the basis of this equation. A verage bedload transport rate was found to be dependent on channel form, although insufficient measurements were made to define the relationshb, Bedload transport was found to be more efficient under steady flow than under unsteady flow, and it was postulated that this is caused by a tendency for channel form to evolve towards a condition which maximises bedload transport for the occurring flow. Using the results from the unsteady flow experiments, it was shown that stream power is a reliable basis for predicting the bedload transport capacity reductions caused by flow abstractions from braided rivers.


Experimental results are presented from a study of the effects of thermal annealing on recovery of fracture toughness of low upper-shelf submerged-arc welds (weld designations 61W through 67W) from the Heavy-Section Steel Irradiation (HSSI) Program Second and Third Irradiation Series. Most of the study was conducted to evaluate the effects of annealing on the J-R curves of the submerged-arc welds. The recovery of fracture toughness in the transition range as the result of annealing was studied for welds 63W, 64, and 65W only. Compact specimens of 12.7- and 20.3-mm-thick (0.5T and 0.8T, respectively) were tested in this study. The specimens had been previously irradiated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Bulk Shielding Reactor. Each weld was irradiated to a certain value of neutron fluence in the range from 0.4 to 1.3 {times} 10{sup 19} neutrons/cm{sup 2} (> 1 MeV) in the average temperature range of 275 to 300 C. Annealing of the irradiated specimens was done at 454 C for 168 h. Fracture toughness tests were performed at temperatures selected to match those of the previously conducted unirradiated and irradiated tests.


Our goal in this paper is to provide enough of an account of the origins of cognitive ethology and the controversy surrounding it to help ethicists to gauge for themselves how to balance skepticism and credulity about animal minds when communicating with scientists. We believe that ethicists' arguments would benefit from better understanding of the historical roots of ongoing controversies. It is not appropriate to treat some widely reported results in animal cognition as if their interpretations are a matter of scientific consensus. It is especially important to understand why loose references to ''cognitive ethology'' by philosophers can signal ignorance of the field to scientists who are more deeply immersed in the relevant literature. Understanding the variety of approaches to cognitive phenomena in animals is essential if such capacities are to form the foundation of scientifically-informed ethical reasoning about animals.


Flowering times are well-documented indicators of the ecological effects of climate change and are linked to numerous ecosystem processes and trophic interactions. Dozens of studies have shown that flowering times for many spring-flowering plants have become earlier as a result of recent climate change, but it is uncertain if flowering times will continue to advance as temperatures rise. Here, we used long-term flowering records initiated by Henry David Thoreau in 1852 and Aldo Leopold in 1935 to investigate this question. Our analyses demonstrate that record-breaking spring temperatures in 2010 and 2012 in Massachusetts, USA, and 2012 in Wisconsin, USA, resulted in the earliest flowering times in recorded history for dozens of spring-flowering plants of the eastern United States. These dramatic advances in spring flowering were successfully predicted by historical relationships between flowering and spring temperature spanning up to 161 years of ecological change. These results demonstrate that numerous temperate plant species have yet to show obvious signs of physiological constraints on phenological advancement in the face of climate change.


There has been a growing interest in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a multilateral initiative of six founding partner countries in the region - Australia, China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and the US - for addressing air pollution, energy security and climate protection in a way that facilitates development and poverty eradication. Canada became the 7th member in October 2007. This paper presents an overview of the Asia Pacific Partnership, beginning with a literature review. This is followed by a comparison of the initiative with the EU energy and climate change package and an examination of the role that the Partnership can play in the emerging landscape of reorganising climate cooperation in both its formal and informal aspects: bilateral and multilateral technology partnerships which are compatible with the UNFCCC objective; and development of tools for measuring progress such as benchmarking, performance indicators and energy efficiency or environment indices. Through coordination with actions in each aspect in other parts of the world or those on a global scale, the Partnership could have wider implications beyond its partner countries.


We suggest a conceptually simple Bayesian approach to inferences about the conditional probability of a specimen being infection-free given the outcome of a diagnostic test and covariate information. The approach assumes that the infection state of a specimen is not observable but uses the outcomes of a second test in conjunction with those of the first, that is, dual testing data. Dual testing procedures are often employed in clinical laboratories to assure that samples are not contaminated or to increase the likelihood of correct diagnoses. Using the CD4 count and a proxy for risk behavior as covariates, we apply the method to obtain inferences about the conditional probability of an individual being HIV-1 infection-free given the individual's covariates and a negative outcome with the standard enzyme-linked immunoad-sorbent assay/Western blotting test for HIV-1 detection. Inferences combine data from two studies where specimens were tested with the standard and with the more sensitive polymerase chain reaction test.


Foliar, stem, and fruit lesions were observed on watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai) and pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima Duchesne) in two separate research fields in the district of Arusha, Tanzania during the warm, rainy season from February to April 2010. Similar symptoms were observed in commercial watermelon fields and intercropped pumpkin fields in Same and Moshi districts with as much as 100% fruit loss in watermelon. Disease symptoms on watermelon were dark brown, V-shaped leaf lesions. On pumpkin, V-shaped leaf lesions were light brown. On both hosts, stems showed water-soaked lesions after rain, which dried up and cracked. On pumpkin, a gummy, amber exudate was seen after rain on stem and fruit lesions. Flowers and fruits of both hosts developed black rot spots and aborted. Isolation of the causal agent on potato dextrose agar (PDA) from leaf and stem pieces of watermelon and pumpkin plants in Arusha showed white-to-olivaceous green mycelium. Pycnidia formed on one-quarter-strength PDA and produced hyaline, oblong conidia mainly with two guttules, nonseptate, 5 to 11 × 3 to 5 μm. Pathogenicity was tested with three isolates from watermelon and one from pumpkin on four 1-month-old plants per watermelon cvs. Sugar Baby and Charleston Grey and pumpkin cv. Small Sugar per isolate. The test was repeated on the watermelon cultivars. One site on the main stem and two leaves per plant were misted, pricked with a scalpel, inoculated with 3-day-old mycelial plugs (5 × 5 mm), and kept humid at 20 to 30°C in cellophane bags for 3 days. All plants developed leaf and/or stem lesions. Detached, misted leaves were also laid on 2% water agar and inoculated as above. Water-soaked lesions developed around inoculation sites and microscopy of infected tissue revealed pycnidia with conidia as described above. All isolates infected both hosts. A set of control plants and detached leaves, mock inoculated with agar plugs, remained symptomless. The fungus was reisolated from infected leaves and stems of both hosts. On the basis of the morphological characteristics, the fungus was identified as Didymella bryoniae (Auersw.) Rehm (anamorph Phoma cucurbitacearum (Fr.:Fr.) Sacc.) (1,3) and this was confirmed by amplification of species-specific PCR products. The isolates from both hosts were cultured in liquid medium, and DNA was extracted using a DNeasy Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA). PCR and multiplex PCR involving D. bryoniae-unique primer sequences D6 and D7S, in combination with primer UNLO28S22, produced the expected band sizes (2). To our knowledge, this is the first report of gummy stem blight and black fruit rot of watermelon caused by D. bryoniae in Tanzania, which confirms a previous report of leaf spot on pumpkin (4), and the first report of black fruit rot on pumpkin. The disease was previously an unidentified problem in watermelon and the severe outbreak was associated with favorable weather conditions. References: (1) A. P. Keinath et al. Phytopathology 85:364, 1995. (2) C. A. Koch and R. S. Utkhede. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 26:291, 2004. (3) E. Punithalingam and P. Holliday. No. 332 in: Descriptions of Pathogenic Fungi and Bacteria. CMI, Kew, Surrey, UK, 1972. (4) E. A. Riley. Mycol. Pap. 75:1, 1960.


Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) need to be agile to adapt to new situations by using detailed, precise, and appropriate data for intelligent decision-making. The intricacy of the relationship of strategic goals to operational performance across the many levels of a manufacturing system inhibits the realization of SMS. This paper proposes a method for identifying what aspects of a manufacturing system should be addressed to respond to changing strategic goals. The method uses standard modeling techniques in specifying a manufacturing system and the relationship between strategic goals and operational performance metrics. Two existing reference models related to manufacturing operations are represented formally and harmonized to support the proposed method. The method is illustrated for a single scenario using agility as a strategic goal. By replicating the proposed method for other strategic goals and with multiple scenarios, a comprehensive set of performance challenges can be identified.


Annotations are important for the description of any object. They give understanding about the object in a summary form. Annotations, unlike tags, are structured form of meta-data information. Best structured information is prepared by humans. However, given the large volume and variety of objects like images, videos and documents, to name a few, it is practically impossible to annotate all the objects in the world. In such a situation, automated approaches to subscribe semantically correct and structured annotations is an extremely important task. In this paper we have proposed a novel problem of semantic annotation of research datasets. Explosion in the usage of social media and various electronic devices has led to collection of huge volumes of datasets for scientific research. Although, most of the datasets are available online, the lack of semantic annotations/meta-data and the lack of a unified public repository has made it difficult for researchers to browse through the datasets even with popular search engines. In this work we propose an algorithmic approach to automate the task of annotating the datasets in structured and semantic manner. We have used knowledge from the World Wide Web and organized knowledge bases such as dbpedia, yago, freebase and wordnet to derive context and annotations for the research datasets. The proposed approach is evaluated on two real world datasets, namely, UCI dataset repository and SNAP dataset collections. Using various experimental setups we show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches. We also perform a case study to compare our results with Google search engine. We find that using the semantic annotations the search accuracy increases by 18% over the normal search for datasets.


ABSTRACT Different designs and concepts of low-energy and zero-emission buildings (ZEBs) are being introduced into the Norwegian market. This study analyses and compares the life cycle emissions of CO2 equivalents (CO2e) from eight different single-family houses in the Oslo climate. Included are four ZEBs: one active house, two passive houses, and a reference house (Norwegian building code of 2010). Monthly differences in CO2e emissions are calculated for the seasonally sensitive Norwegian context for electricity generation and consumption. This is used to supplant the previous applied symmetric weighting approach for CO2e/kWh factors for import and export of electricity for the ZEB cases. All the ZEBs have lower use-stage emissions compared with the other buildings or the reference case. Embodied impacts are found to be 60–75% for the analysed ZEB cases, confirming the importance of embodied impacts in Norwegian ZEBs. The lowest total emissions were from the smallest ZEB, emphasizing area efficiency. The highest emissions were from the reference case. By abandoning the symmetric approach, a new perspective was developed for assessing the performance of ZEBs within the Norwegian context. One of four ZEB cases managed to balance out its annual energy-related emissions.


Newly developed P. aeruginosa vaccine has been shown to be safe and apyrogenic for experimental animals. Immunization with the vaccine in a single injection of 0.5 ml has been found to ensure the protection of 80--98% of mice from lethal infection caused by virulent vaccine strains, with the exception of P. aeruginosa strain No. 1311, for 9 weeks. Immunity to P. aeruginosa strain No. 1311 develops only by day 56 after vaccination. No sharp correlation between the specific agglutinin level and the degree of protective effect induced by the immunization of animals with the polyvalent vaccine has been established. The vaccine has been shown to possess high immunogenicity in respect to clinical P. aeruginosa strains belonging to different serotypes (homo- and heterological vaccine strains).


Narrative journalism is a method to craft stories worth reading about real people. In this article, we explore the ability of that communicative power to produce insights complementary to those obtainable through traditional qualitative and quantitative research methods. With examples from a study of journalistic narrative as patient involvement in professional rehabilitation, interview data transcribed as stories are analyzed for qualities of heterogeneity, sensibility, transparency, and reflexivity. Building on sociological theories of thinking with stories, writing as inquiry, and public journalism as ethnography, we suggest that narrative journalism as a common practice might unfold dimensions of subjective otherness of the self. Aspiring to unite writing in both transparently confrontational and empathetically dialogic ways, the narrative journalistic method holds a potential to expose dynamics of power within the interview.


Background/Aims Skin (STs) and drug provocation (DPTs) tests are essential for identifying the culprit drugs causing drug hypersensitivity reactions (DHRs). Several protocols have been developed for the identification of some culprit drugs, but they are neither thoroughly validated nor standardized. Furthermore, language barriers may impede the exchange of information necessary for test standardization. Methods We searched the Korean literature for articles on drug hypersensitivity published from 1933 to 2016 using the KoreaMed search engine and archives of Korean journals. We reviewed and rated all articles according to the description of STs and DPTs. Results Of the 632 articles obtained in our initial search, 34 had adequate descriptions of 15 STs and 22 DPTs. Up to 27 healthy control subjects in STs were enrolled to determine non-irritating concentrations. The concentrations used for intradermal tests were commonly a 1/10 dilution of those used for skin prick tests. The interpretations of the STs were mostly similar among researchers. For DPTs, most procedures were single-arm open-label tests of various drugs. The initial dose ranged from a quarter dose to a single therapeutic dose, depending on the severity of the original hypersensitivity reaction. The interval between doses was usually 30 to 60 minutes, and a positive reaction usually occurred within twice the time of the original reaction. Conclusions Efforts to distribute information are necessary to standardize protocols and better understand DHRs.


ABSTRACT Bartonella quintana is a vector-borne bacterial pathogen that causes fatal disease in humans. During the infectious cycle, B. quintana transitions from the hemin-restricted human bloodstream to the hemin-rich body louse vector. Because extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigma factors often regulate adaptation to environmental changes, we hypothesized that a previously unstudied B. quintana ECF sigma factor, RpoE, is involved in the transition from the human host to the body louse vector. The genomic context of B. quintana rpoE identified it as a member of the ECF15 family of sigma factors found only in alphaproteobacteria. ECF15 sigma factors are believed to be the master regulators of the general stress response in alphaproteobacteria. In this study, we examined the B. quintana RpoE response to two stressors that are encountered in the body louse vector environment, a decreased temperature and an increased hemin concentration. We determined that the expression of rpoE is significantly upregulated at the body louse (28°C) versus the human host (37°C) temperature. rpoE expression also was upregulated when B. quintana was exposed to high hemin concentrations. In vitro and in vivo analyses demonstrated that RpoE function is regulated by a mechanism involving the anti-sigma factor NepR and the response regulator PhyR. The ΔrpoE ΔnepR mutant strain of B. quintana established that RpoE-mediated transcription is important in mediating the tolerance of B. quintana to high hemin concentrations. We present the first analysis of an ECF15 sigma factor in a vector-borne human pathogen and conclude that RpoE has a role in the adaptation of B. quintana to the hemin-rich arthropod vector environment.


INTRODUCTION
AIDS mortality is decreasing in Brazil, especially after the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy. A study was conducted to evaluate AIDS incidence and mortality in a certain area of Brazil.

METHODS
The number of AIDS deaths according to sex in the study period, obtained from registry sources, were used as the numerator of mortality rates. From 1985 to 1995, deaths with underlying cause classified as code 279/1 in the 9th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and, from 1996 onwards, B20 to B24 codes in the 10th Review were considered AIDS cases. SINAN/MS disease compulsory notification data were used as the numerator of incidence rates. Percentage of variation of the incidence and mortality rates were calculated using a Poisson regression model.

RESULTS
In the study period, there were 1,211 AIDS cases and 501 deaths. AIDS incidence increased 21.6% during this period (p<0.05) in both sexes, though higher among women. The mortality rates increased exponentially (122.5%) from 1985 to 1991. From 1991 to 1998, mortality remained steady among men but continued to rise among women.

CONCLUSIONS
Stabilization of AIDS mortality in men may be a reflection of large utilization of anti-retroviral therapy. Increasing mortality rate among women could be due to different epidemic dynamics according to sex. This trend is different from the observed in the rest of Brazil, where there has been a fall in AIDS mortality for both sexes since 1991.


Several seven-coordinate manganese complexes have been synthesised, characterised and tested for both superoxide dismutase and catalase activity. Macrocyclic ring contractions have led to a series of new seven coordinate mononuclear manganese(II) macrocycles that have potential for their use as working superoxide dismutase mimics.

Numerous polynuclear seven coordinate manganese(II) macrocycles have been synthesised via Schiff base condensation. Subsequent reduction of the imine bonds has led to a variety of reduced amine analogues with varying axial ligands. The geometry has been compared about the manganese centres where possible. From the results of each complex tested for superoxide dismutase activity, the µ-chloro bridged tetranuclear complex [Mn2(C24H29N6O2)(Cl)2]2(ClO4)2 has proved to be the most efficient mimic with a calculated KMcCF value of 7.7 x 106 [M-1 s-1].

A method for measuring catalase activity has been developed, and the most efficient catalase active compound was found to be [Mn5(C24H29N6O2)2(OAc)2(ClO4)2](ClO4)2 with one molecule of complex breaking down approximately 59000 molecules of hydrogen peroxide after one minute. Catalase testing showed that a reduction of the imine bonds produced an increase in activity overall for the complexes of H2L1 (C24H29N6O2), but a decrease was observed for the reduced tripodal complexes. An increase in the number of manganese centres resulted in a rise in catalase activity.

Many of the complexes tested for catalase activity showed an induction period prior to the activity being observed. This may suggest that the complexes undergo a change in structure, or that there is a rearrangement occurring before catalase activity may be observed. The results that are presented indicate that the axial ligands have an effect on the rate of catalase activity and the observed induction period.

Of the molecules that were tested for both superoxide dismutase and catalase activity, the pentanuclear complex [Mn5(C24H29N6O2)2(OAc)2(ClO4)2](ClO4)2 showed high activity for both analyses. This may be due to the extra manganese centre within the complex and the axial ligands that are present when compared with other tetranuclear complexes. The complex [Mn5(HL1)(OAc)2(ClO4)2](ClO4)2 may prove to be a good candidate for a working superoxide dismutase mimic.

Ring contracted complexes show high rates of superoxide dismutase activity but possess limited catalase activity.

Attempts have been made to produce a direct method of measuring superoxide dismutase activity using a stop-flow technique to complement the results using the indirect NBT (Nitro blue Tetrazoleum) method. This was carried out by analysing low concentration solutions of both complex and superoxide on a millisecond timescale. Progress has been made for this method with preliminary results being obtained.


This paper describes a method to characterizing the digital camera. The nonlinear relationship between the RGB signals generated by a digital camera and original image CIEXYZ values was obtained using the polynomial regression procedures. The reasonable structures of the polynomial were found for two digital cameras. The better number of polynomial terms was 19, yielding a modeling accuracy typically averaging 2.1~2.2 E ∆ units and maximally 9.5~10.9 E ∆ units. The experiments results showed that the polynomial regression could be used to characterize commonly digital camera.


Experiments involving supra-maximal electrical stimulation of the vagus have indicated that the stimulation of the peripheral cut ends of the branchial cardiac branches produces a more intense cardio-inhibition than the stimulation of visceral cardiac branches. It is suggested that the visceral cardiac branches may have a mainly sensory function. In no case could cardioacceleration be obtained during vagal stimulation either before or after injection of atropine, and any increases in stroke volume that occurred accompanied reductions in heart rate. This relationship was considered to be a manifestation of Starling9s Law of the heart and it has been concluded that there is no augmentary sympathetic innervation to the dogfish heart. Evidence also indicates that the Starling relationship is responsible for the increase in stroke volume which accompanies the bradycardia during hypoxia. Circulating catecholamines do not appear to be of importance in this response although they are concerned in cardio-vascular regulation during normoxia.


The study examined how the self-systems of users of the social networking website Facebook (where a self-system comprises four elements—self-efficacy, self-assertion, social presence, and self-esteem) and intensity of use affected the above mentioned social relations and the social capital effect. The study also found that bridging and bonding social relationships are mediated by Facebook users' self-systems and social capital effects. The study's findings provide potentially significant implications that can be used to develop guidelines and a framework for assessing SNS users' behavior.


Interactions between flow regime, sediment dynamics and benthic invertebrates have seldom been studied in rivers experiencing naturally high suspended sediment loads. This paper examines invertebrate responses to hydrological and sedimentary processes over an annual cycle in a morphologically heterogeneous reach of a river that receives large volumes of fine sediment. Flow regime and sedimentary conditions showed a marked seasonal pattern, with fine sediment accumulating during low flows and after small flood events and not being removed until the large floods that occurred in autumn. The magnitude of sediment accumulation differed between habitats (e.g. being greater in pools than in riffles). The turnover in invertebrate assemblages, measured as beta diversity, was greatest in winter and decreased during summer as deposited fine sediment accumulated across the reach, suggesting that observed patterns of turnover were influenced by seasonal and habitat‐specific rates of sedimentation. Some of the spatial and temporal patterns in invertebrate assemblages were subtle, complex and difficult to interpret, but co‐inertia analysis indicated an overriding influence of low flows and associated sedimentation on their composition. Floods capable of entraining coarser bed material, along with smaller events accompanied by extensive mobilization of fine sediment, also influenced assemblages and resulted in immediate changes to assemblage composition and abundance. Assemblages appeared to exhibit resilience over the timescale of the study, with similar assemblages found at the beginning and at the end of the study period. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper proves that the approximation of pointwise derivatives of order $s$ of functions in Sobolev space $W_2^m(\R^d)$ by linear combinations of function values cannot have a convergence rate better than $m-s-d/2$, no matter how many nodes are used for approximation and where they are placed. These convergence rates are attained by {\em scalable} approximations that are exact on polynomials of order at least $\lfloor m-d/2\rfloor +1$, proving that the rates are optimal for given $m,\,s,$ and $d$. And, for a fixed node set $X\subset\R^d$, the convergence rate in any Sobolev space $W_2^m(\Omega)$ cannot be better than $q-s$ where $q$ is the maximal possible order of polynomial exactness of approximations based on $X$, no matter how large $m$ is. In particular,scalable stencil constructions via polyharmonic kernels are shown to realize the optimal convergence rates, and good approximations of their error in Sobolev space can be calculated via their error in Beppo-Levi spaces. This allows to construct near-optimal stencils in Sobolev spaces stably and efficiently, for use in meshless methods to solve partial differential equations via generalized finite differences (RBF-FD). Numerical examples are included for illustration.


This paper investigates the role of collateral and personal guarantees in small business lending using the unique data set of Japan's small business loan market. Consistent with conventional theory, collateral is more likely to be pledged by riskier borrowers, implying they may be useful in mitigating debtor moral hazard. Contrary to conventional theory, we find that banks whose claims are either collateralized or personally guaranteed monitor borrowers more frequently. We also find that borrowers who establish long-term relationships with their main banks are more likely to pledge collateral. Our empirical evidence thus suggests that collateral and personal guarantees are complementary to relationship lending. JEL classification number: D82, G21, G30


A multifidelity surrogate (MFS) model is a data fusion method for the enhanced prediction of less intensively sampled primary variables of interest (i.e., high-fidelity (HF) samples) with the assistance of intensively sampled auxiliary variables (i.e., low-fidelity (LF) samples). In this article, an MFS model based on the gradient-enhanced radial basis function, termed gradient-enhanced multifidelity surrogate based on the radial basis function (GEMFS-RBF), is proposed to establish a mapping relationship between HF and LF samples. To identify the scaling factor and the undetermined coefficients in GEMFS-RBF, an expanded correlation matrix is constructed by considering the correlations between the acquired samples, the correlations between the gradients, and the correlations between the samples and their corresponding gradients. To evaluate the prediction accuracy of the GEMFS-RBF model, it is compared with the co-Kriging model, multifidelity surrogate based on the radial basis function (MFS-RBF) model, and two single-fidelity surrogate models. The influences of key factors (i.e., the correlations between the HF and LF functions, the subordinations between the sample sets) and the effect of the cost ratio on the performance of GEMFS-RBF are also investigated. It is observed that GEMFS-RBF presents a more acceptable accuracy rate and is less sensitive to the aforementioned factors than the other benchmark models in most cases in this article, which illustrates the practicability and robustness of the proposed GEMFS-RBF model.


Herout M., Malaťak J., Kucera L., Dlabaja T., 2011. Biogas composition depending on the type of plant biomass used . Res. Agr. Eng., 57: 137–143. The aim of the work is to determine and analyse concentrations of individual biogas components according to the used raw materials based on plant biomass. The measurement is focused on biogas production depending on input raw materials like maize silage, grass haylage and rye grain. The total amount of plant biomass entering the fermenter during the measurement varies at around 40% w/w, the rest is liquid beef manure. The measured values are statistically evaluated and optimised for the subsequent effective operation of the biogas plant. A biogas plant operating on the principle of wet anaerobic fermentation process is used for the measurement. The biogas production takes place dur ing the wet fermentation process in the mesophile operation at an average temperature of 40°C. The technology of the biogas plant is based on the principle of using two fermenters. It follows from the measured results that maize silage with liquid beef manure in the ratio of 40:60 can produce biogas with a high content of methane; this performance is not stable. At this concentration of input raw material, the formation of undesirable high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide occurs as well. It is shown from the results that the process of biogas production is stabilised by the addition of other components of plant biomass like grass haylage and rye grain and a limitation of the formation of hydrogen sulphide occurs. It follows from the results that the maize silage should form about 80% w/w from the total amount of the plant biomass used.


A clinical study was conducted to compare the use of oral fluid to urine for compliance monitoring of pain patients. Patients (n = 133) undergoing treatment for chronic pain at four clinics participated in the study and provided paired oral fluid and urine specimens. Oral fluid specimens were collected with Quantisal(TM) saliva collection devices immediately following urine collection. Oral fluid specimens were analyzed for 42 drugs and/or metabolites by validated liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry procedures. Accompanying urine specimens were initially screened by immunoassay and non-negative results were confirmed. Of the 1544 paired tests, 329 (21.3%) drug analytes were positive, and 984 (63.7%) were negative for both specimens resulting in an overall agreement of 85%. There were 83 (5.4%) analyte results that were positive in oral fluid and negative in urine, and 148 (9.6%) were negative in oral fluid and positive in urine for an overall disagreement of 15%. Cohen's Kappa value was 0.64, indicating "substantial" agreement. The primary exceptions to agreement were the lower detection rates for hydromorphone, oxymorphone, and benzodiazepines in oral fluid compared to urine. The authors conclude that, overall, oral fluid tests produced comparable results to urine tests with some minor differences in detection rates for different drug classes.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the results of combination chemotherapy with mitomycin (MMC), vindesine (VDS) and cisplatin (DDP) in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

METHODS
A total of 108 patients with advanced NSCLC was enrolled in this study. Adenocarcinoma (74 cases) and squamous-cell carcinoma (23 cases) were the most common type of malignancy. Thirty patients received prior chemotherapy while 78 did not.

RESULTS
Complete response was observed in 1 patient and partial response in 36 patients with an overall response rate (RR) of 34.3%. The RR was significantly higher in the previously untreated patients (41.0%) and than that in the pretreated patients (P = 0.0169). The RR did not significantly differ between patients with squamous--cell carcinoma (30.4%) and adenocarcinoma (32.4%). That of patients with metastases to the lymph nodes, to the other parts of lung, liver and bone was 43.1%, 32.4%, 25.0% and 0, respectively. The median response duration was 3 months and the median survival period was 7 months. The dose limiting toxicity was neutropenia, which was in grade III and IV in 41.7% of the treated patients. Grade III and IV thrombocytopenia was observed in 6.5% and grade III and IV nausea and vomiting in 21.3% of the treated patients.

CONCLUSION
A higher response rate is attainable in patients with advanced NSCLC treated by MMC, VDS and DDP with tolerable toxicity.


This study was based on the parasite fauna of three anuran systems. In two of the systems; the spadefoot toads, Scaphiopus bombifrons and S.multiplicatus and the fire and yellow-bellied toads, Bombina bombina and B.variegata, inter-species hybridisation occurs. In the third system an autopolyploid species complex involves the Gray treefrogs, Hyla chrysoscelis and H.versicolor. The status of the Scaphiopus hybrid zone in Arizona was re-assessed by cellulose-acetate gel electrophoresis. Genotypic frequencies were comparable to those previously documented, indicating that a region of 'balanced introgression' may exist. Specimens were collected in areas of host sympatry and the distribution of helminths within hosts of different genetic constitution investigated. From extensive surveys of all three systems, parasite frequency distributions were typically aggregated with no evidence of any change in host genetic predisposition to infection. In addition, the surveys have documented a number of new host and/or parasite locality records for each system. Of particular interest was the discovery of the digenean Clinostomum complanatum in a desert environment, an introduction related to human management of the ecosystem. Particular reference was made to the specificity of the polystomatid monogeneans, Polystoma nearcticum infecting members of the H.chrysoscelisH.versicolor complex and Neodiplorchis scaphiopodis infecting S.bombifrons and S.multiplicatus. For Polystoma, worms from H.chlysoscelis and H.versicolor could not be separated by morphology, which was supported by preliminary crossinfections. This suggests that P.nearcticum infects both members of this complex. For Neodiplorchis, morphological similarity was confirmed by cross-infections which revealed that N.scaphiopodis can reach sexual maturity and produce fully developed larvae in heterospecific hosts. The neotenic development of P. nearcticum and the initial post-oncomiracidial stages of N.scaphiopodis were documented. Furthermore, certain aspects of transmission dynamics were examined by the experimental infection of H. versicolor tadpoles with P. nearcticum .


. This study explores the evolving discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the various definitions given to EA in literature and by practitioners. Due to the potential benefits, such as business and IT alignment, academics and practitioners have maintained an interest in enterprise architecture. EA has been developed outside of scientifically tested foundations, and is characterized by di-versified views, seen in varied definitions given to the concept. Prior research has identified the need for conceptual strengthening as a necessity for the maturing the discipline. We contribute to this on-going discussion with a systematic literature review on the state-of-the-art of EA definitions and 26 in-depth practitioner interviews. Our study indicates that while there is still no shared definition of EA, its scope and purpose are increasingly extending from the original purpose of IT-business alignment towards a tool of holistic organizational design and development in the system-in-environment setting.


As the global workplace becomes increasingly complex, there is a need to develop and retain a skilled workforce able to support students as they embark on potentially global careers. This paper explores a range of both innovative and award winning talent management strategies. These have been successfully implemented in the University sector and yet are of equal importance to industry.

- Practical and innovation strategies to support skill development. Including the first UK programme to achieve 100% of teaching staff recognised as Fellows of the Higher Education Academy (often using evidence from their CWIE activities).
- Supporting and mentoring staff for national and international recognition through success in schemes such as National Teaching Fellowship (Achieved the most in UK for the period 2008-14).
- Rewarding and recognising staff who support the student experience. Evidenced by 'The Thank You Awards' a student nominated scheme with typically 800 nominations. Winning these awards has been cited by staff as the pinnacle of their career. Excellent examples of where staff support students to make informed career choices.
- Building a culture of collaboration and support, through multi-disciplinary projects, inspiring conferences and networking fora.

At the end of the session participants will be able to see approaches that could be transferred back into their university or industry workplace.


The aim of this paper is to model the processes of the aggregation of weighted information in a linguistic framework. Three aggregation operators of weighted linguistic information are presented: linguistic weighted disjunction (LWD) operator, linguistic weighted conjunction (LWC) operator and linguistic weighted averaging (LWA) operator. A study of their axiomatic is presented to demonstrate their rational aggregation.


Jargon aphasia describes the profile of individuals producing fluent but largely unintelligible output, often comprising high proportions of non-word errors. This thesis presents a series of studies exploring possible mechanisms underlying the output difficulties in these individuals, drawing on data from 19 individuals from the Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistic Database and six individuals who participated in experimental testing.
The studies addressed four research questions: a) to what extent target phonological information is preserved in non-word errors; b) how manipulating semantic and phonological activation affects output; c) whether a phonological-level breakdown is responsible for output difficulties in all individuals or does impairment at prior/subsequent levels play a role; and d) the origin of non-target phonemes in non-word errors. Analysis of phonological overlap between non-word errors and their targets suggested that participants were consistently accessing target phonology, with non-word errors falling along a continuum of how much target phonology was available. Experiments involving manipulation of phonological and semantic activation through characteristics of target words (Chapters 2 & 3: Principal Components Analysis comprising variables such as length, frequency and imageability; Chapter 5: Phonological Neighbourhood Density experiment) or semantic/phonological blocking paradigms (Chapter 4) suggested that increasing the activation reaching target phonemes improves output. A comparison of performance on different tasks (picture-naming, word/non-word repetition) where the majority of individuals showed a difficulty activating phonemes across tasks, and consistent effects of phonological-level variables, supported a phonological-level breakdown as the primary difficulty. Finally, analysis of the non-target phonemes produced by participants suggested that highly-activated phonemes can be selected in place of weakly activated target phonemes. Non-target phonemes may become more activated than target phonemes because they have been previously produced (i.e. perseveration), are high frequency, or a semantic or phonological relationship exists between a competing word and the target. It is argued that non-word errors in jargon aphasia arise, at least in part, from insufficient activation of target phonology. This can result from insufficient activation at any level of the lexical system, but the deficit is primarily localised to the phonological system.


In this paper, we address the problem of apparent age estimation. Different from estimating the real age of individuals, in which each face image has a single age label, in this problem, face images have multiple age labels, corresponding to the ages perceived by the annotators, when they look at these images. This provides an intriguing computer vision problem, since in generic image or object classification tasks, it is typical to have a single ground truth label per class. To account for multiple labels per image, instead of using average age of the annotated face image as the class label, we have grouped the face images that are within a specified age range. Using these age groups and their age-shifted groupings, we have trained an ensemble of deep learning models. Before feeding an input face image to a deep learning model, five facial landmark points are detected and used for 2-D alignment. We have employed and fine tuned convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that are based on VGG-16 [24] architecture and pretrained on the IMDB-WIKI dataset [22]. The outputs of these deep learning models are then combined to produce the final estimation. Proposed method achieves 0.3668 error in the final ChaLearn LAP 2016 challenge test set [5].


In recent years, environmental sustainability has received widespread attention due to continued depletion of natural resources and degradation of the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for quantifying multiple environmental impacts of a product, across its entire life cycle — from creation to use to discard. The key object of interest in LCA is the inventory tree, with the desired product as the root node and the materials and processes used across its life cycle as the children. The total impact of the parent in any environmental category is a linear combination of the impacts of the children in that category. LCA has generally been used in "forward: mode: given an inventory tree and impact factors of its children, the task is to compute the impact factors of the root, i.e., the product being modeled. We propose a data mining approach to solve the inverse problem, where the task is to infer inventory trees from a database of environmental factors. This is an important problem with applications in not just understanding what parts and processes constitute a product but also in designing and developing more sustainable alternatives. Our solution methodology is one of feature selection but set in the context of a non-negative least squares problem. It organizes numerous non-negative least squares fits over the impact factor database into a set of pairwise membership relations which are then summarized into candidate trees in turn yielding a consensus tree. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach over real LCA datasets obtained from a large computer manufacturer.


Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of 'just sustainability' provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.


We address generating efficiently goal-oriented scenarios that are based on initial values and lead to goal values. These scenarios are generated with qualitative and quantitative hybrid simulation, which propagates the effect from initial values by Monte Carlo Simulation. Because the most of scenarios do not often lead to the goal value, we take an approach to combine the scenarios by hybrid simulation (forward simulation) and the scenarios by the inverse simulation that decides initial values from the goal values. The high-speed generation method of goal-oriented scenarios combines the scenarios when the qualitative values on both scenarios are equal. Because the inverse simulation takes longer than the forward simulation, the proposed method keeps the number of trials of the inverse simulation small. As a result of experiments, it is confirmed that the proposed method can decrease the computational time by over 98% compared to the method using only forward simulation.


"Automated Attendance Management and Alert System (AAMAS)" was developed to help UiTM lecturers and Academic Affairs Department in monitoring students' absenteeism and improving the absenteeism record management. AAMAS provides various functions, from managing and recording students' attendance record, to sending automatic alerts to students with high absenteeism via short messaging system (SMS) and email. The system is also able to track the number of alerts sent. Through AAMAS, a significant amount of time and money can be saved, for instance time needed to fill out forms and issue notification letters manually can be minimized significantly. Besides, message interception, human resources and human errors can also be reduced. AAMAS which was tailored to UiTM could be also enhanced and custom-made to cater other learning institutions' requirements throughout Malaysia.