The warm Neptune GJ 3470b transits a nearby (d = 29 pc) bright slowly rotating M1.5-dwarf star. Using spectroscopic observations during two transits with the newly commissioned NEID spectrometer on the WIYN 3.5 m Telescope at Kitt Peak Observatory, we model the classical Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, yielding a sky-projected obliquity of λ=98−12+15◦ and a vsini=0.85−0.33+0.27kms−1 . Leveraging information about the rotation period and size of the host star, our analysis yields a true obliquity of ψ=95−8+9◦ , revealing that GJ 3470b is on a polar orbit. Using radial velocities from HIRES, HARPS, and the Habitable-zone Planet Finder, we show that the data are compatible with a long-term radial velocity (RV) slope of γ̇=−0.0022±0.0011ms−1day−1 over a baseline of 12.9 yr. If the RV slope is due to acceleration from another companion in the system, we show that such a companion is capable of explaining the polar and mildly eccentric orbit of GJ 3470b using two different secular excitation models. The existence of an outer companion can be further constrained with additional RV observations, Gaia astrometry, and future high-contrast imaging observations. Lastly, we show that tidal heating from GJ 3470b's mild eccentricity has most likely inflated the radius of GJ 3470b by a factor of ∼1.5–1.7, which could help account for its evaporating atmosphere.


Utilizing controlled cryopreservation techniques, we were able to standardize the 51Cr release cytotoxicity assay and thereby ensured reliable comparisons between results obtained on different days. Optimal conditions for freezing of both effector and target cells were quite similar. Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) at a concentration of 7.5-10.0% was employed as the cryoprotective agent and cells were frozen at the rate of -1 degrees C/minute. The handling procedures for the cells before and after freezing were important. Factors affecting recovery of functional reactivity were related to toxicity of DMSO for the cells, the osmotic stress placed upon the cells as the DMSO was being removed after thawing, the handling temperature of the freshly thawed cells, and the susceptibility of cells to mechanical damage immediately after thawing. The recovery of lymphocytes after freezing was about 70%; the recovery of cytotoxicity was around 85%. Syngeneic cytotoxic reactivity induced by inoculation with the Moloney strain of murine sarcoma virus was cryopreserved, as were allogeneic cytotoxicity and natural cytotoxic reactivity. Multiple tests employing effector cells from the same frozen pool gave reproducible results; the standard error of the mean percent cytotoxicity was less than 1.5%. Cryopreserved target cells gave decreased day-to-day variability in susceptibility to lysis, since the same population of cells could be employed in each assay. These results demonstrated conclusively that we can now have a constant source of effector cells and target cells, which can be used from assay to assay as an internal standard.


"My fantasy is to be Uma Thurman in Kill Bill…and now I can… I'd pay $10 for her yellow jumpsuit and sword moves and I'm sure other people would too…
Hundreds and thousands of humans living in different time zones around the world are choosing to re-create and express themselves as three dimensional avatars in 3D virtual online worlds: An avatar is defined as an interactive 3D image or character, representing a user in a multi-user virtual world/virtual reality space. 3D virtual online worlds such as Second Life, and There, offer low entry costs, to actively encourage user generated content and creative social development projects. The residents of Second Life are in full control of their avatars through a highly visual, interactive software interface of 3D tools. Consumer buying trends in both virtual and physical worlds are merging through faster bandwidth and integrated 2D and 3D technologies. Fashion, identity and styling your avatar, is possibly one of the most consistently, popular activities in virtual worlds. Fashion business is booming in 3D virtual worlds; and clothing designers are experimenting with design, manufacture, marketing and promotion. In Second Life men's and women's wear designers are creating diverse ranges of styles, using digitized buttons and fabrics, and using 3D physics tools to simulate the movement. There is also a huge boutique market selling unique and unusual made to measure creations for uninhibited virtual customers, and for the less adventurous high street fashion and sportswear ranges are now available in virtual worlds. 3D Virtual worlds can provide powerful 3D design communication and visualization tools for fashion learners and the clothing/textile industries. This paper discusses the potential for fashion students and academics in using 3D virtual worlds for teaching and learning in fashion education. The main section of the paper outlines the 2D-3D digital design process for changing the appearance of the avatar and designing clothing in Second Life.


K-mer counting is a fundamental operation in DNA research and genome analytics; its application includes estimating genome assembly, understanding similarities in genomic samples, and merging a newly processed genome with a reference genome. As the genome dataset becomes larger and larger, designing a highly optimized distributed-memory implementation becomes more and more important. Current distributed-memory solutions have two limitations: they have a high memory footprint, and they do not provide advanced optimizations for loading enormous genome datasets into memory. Based on these observations, we present Bloomfish, a distributed, memory-efficient, scalable solution to the limits of current work. To keep a low memory footprint, Bloomfish leverages the compact hash array design of the single-node Jellyfish system and the optimized workflow of the high-performance MapReduce framework Mimir. We have also codesigned Mimir's I/O to efficiently load enormous datasets. We ran Bloomfish on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer with large sequence datasets (up to 24 TB). Our results show that Bloomfish achieves unprecedented scalability in genome analytics.


We present a 1.42 deg2 mosaic of diffuse X-ray emission in the Great Nebula in Carina from the Chandra X-ray Observatory Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer camera. After removing >14,000 X-ray point sources from the field, we smooth the remaining unresolved emission, tessellate it into segments of similar apparent surface brightness, and perform X-ray spectral fitting on those tessellates to infer the intrinsic properties of the X-ray-emitting plasma. By modeling faint resolved point sources, we estimate the contribution to the extended X-ray emission from unresolved point sources and show that the vast majority of Carina's unresolved X-ray emission is truly diffuse. Line-like correlated residuals in the X-ray spectral fits suggest that substantial X-ray emission is generated by charge exchange at the interfaces between Carina's hot, rarefied plasma and its many cold neutral pillars, ridges, and clumps.


We have reported recently that nocturnal melatonin levels are reduced in a subgroup of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). We have also noted in these patients a high incidence of hypercholesterolemia and propose that this may be linked to dysfunction of the pineal gland since pinealectomy in rats was reported to be associated with elevation of blood cholesterol levels. To test this hypothesis, we studied the relationship between nocturnal plasma melatonin levels and serum cholesterol levels in a cohort of 24 MS patients (4 men; 20 women; mean age: 40.2 years SD = 9.5) who were admitted to an inpatient neurologic clinic for acute exacerbation of symptoms. For the purpose of comparison we also evaluated in these patients the association between melatonin levels and serum triglyceride (TG) levels. As predicted, we found a significantly higher serum cholesterol level in 10 patients who had low nocturnal plasma melatonin levels (mean: 17.1 pg/ml rt 5.9) compared to 14 patients in whom melatonin levels were in the normal range (mean: 42.9 pg/ml I 10.6) (mean cholesterol = 241.5 mgldl +. 50.8 vs. 183.7 mg/dl -C 27.2; p < ,001). In contrast, serum TG levels did not differ significantly between the groups. As serum cholesterol levels were statistically unrelated to TG levels, these findings suggest a specific association between pineal melatonin and cholesterol metabolism. If confirmed in future research, these findings suggest that the pineal gland may exert a cholesterol reducing effect and that melatonin could be used therapeutically in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia.


Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) is an exciting yet challenging research topic. It is sensitive to all passive electromagnetic properties, and as such it has great appeal to many industries. This thesis presents an experimental investigation of MIT within two broad ar- eas of application: non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and industrial process tomography. Within both areas, MIT is presented as a low cost and non-invasive inspection tool with considerable developmental potential with regard to commercial applicability. Experi- mental investigations into the use of MIT demonstrate its versatility in imaging conduc- tive substances ranging from metallic structures, such as pipelines (s ⇡ 106 108S/m) to new composite material, such as carbon fibre reinforced polymers (s ⇡ 104 105S/m), as well as substances in a state of flow (s < 10S/m). Research innovations presented in this thesis constitute (i) the first experimental evalu- ation of MIT for pipeline inspection, an application never before attempted in the area of NDE, (ii) the development of a novel limited region algorithm, which can improve the traditional resolution from 10% to 2%, (iii) the first experimental 3D planar MIT study for subsurface imaging, which opens many opportunities for MIT as a limited access tomog- raphy technique, (iv) an in-depth experimental evaluation of the MIT system response towards various fluid measurements for the first time, while also reporting some of the first flow rig tests in this field. In addition, for each specific application, the capabilities of the prototype MIT systems are assessed with regard to (v) their flexibility in accommodating different sensor geometries, including circular, dual planar, planar and arc, (vi) situations in which the imaging subject has limited access, and (vii) their capacity to reconstruct a viable image of the subject given limited measurement data. Altogether, the results provide an evidential basis for future exploitation of this tech- nique. From the experimental investigations, it is concluded that the major limitations of this technique lie in both the hardware development in order to meet the standards of widespread commercial applications and the software capability for fully automated real time image reconstruction and structural analysis of the imaging subject. Nevertheless, with consistent development in both aforementioned areas, MIT could eventually be used as a rapid NDE technique for structural health monitoring and process tomography, as such contributing both to the social economy and public safety.


In this paper, we investigate the performance of a practical aggregated LiFi-WiFi system with the discrete constellation inputs from a practical view. We derive the achievable rate expressions of the aggregated LiFi-WiFi system for the first time. Then, we study the rate maximization problem via optimizing the constellation distribution and power allocation jointly. Specifically, a multilevel mercy-filling power allocation scheme is proposed by exploiting the relationship between the mutual information and minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) of discrete inputs. Meanwhile, an inexact gradient descent method is proposed for obtaining the optimal probability distributions. To strike a balance between the computational complexity and the transmission performance, we further develop a framework that maximizes the lower bound of the achievable rate where the optimal power allocation can be obtained in closed forms and the constellation distributions problem can be solved efficiently by Frank-Wolfe method. Extensive numerical results show that the optimized strategies are able to provide significant gains over the state-of-the-art schemes in terms of the achievable rate.


This article presents a design concept of a time-gain-compensation (TGC) amplifier integrated circuit (IC) for ultrasonic echo signal processing. The TGC chain contains pre-amplification, attenuation, filtering and comparison circuit blocks. An on-chip oscillator, bias circuit and digital control core are also included. The presented TGC IC concept blocks are designed and modeled using Cadence's IC design tools using a 250 nm CMOS process. The operational amplifier implemented in the TGC IC has a gain of 35 dB with a -3 dB bandwidth of 750 kHz, which corresponds to ultrasonic signal frequency range. The second order active band pass filter is of a Sallen-Key topology with a 274 MHz center frequency and a filter quality factor of Q = 1.018. A ring oscillator with external tuning capability is modeled at 448 kHz and has a 0.09 % frequency deviation. The ultrasonic echo processing chain has a digital output where the length of the pulse corresponds to the received signal strength. This makes the presented TGC IC concept suitable for both simple and complex ultrasonic, medical, industrial or research equipment.


Tracking is to match the correspondences between a frame, and objects which are in motion. It is usually performed in the context of higher-level applications that require the location and / or shape of the object in every frame. Typically, assumptions are made to constrain the tracking problem in the context of a particular application. In this i had categorizes the tracking methods on the basis of the object and motion representations. In all the previous works, tracking is only depends on the low level correspondences between frames, but here I had proposed that a tracking is done based on both low and high level correspondences, and the tracked result is feed back into a recognition part to find category of an object it is the final result. Tracking is done based on the detection of the movable objects, it's done by Gaussian Mixture Model. Harris Corner is used for tracking and the classification is based on Naive-Bayes Classifier. This paper is works well in a challenging areas like drastic view change, background clutter, and morphable objects, crowd, complex scenes.


New load-bearing structures made of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites comprise adhesively-bonded joints, which are components vulnerable to fatigue failure. These structural components are frequently subjected to complex cyclic loading histories during their service life and the development of reliable methodologies for prediction of their fatigue life under variable amplitude loading patterns is therefore essential. Experimental investigations on FRP laminates showed significant effects of spectrum loading on the fatigue life. However, scientific efforts to study the fatigue behavior of adhesively-bonded FRP joints are mainly focused on constant amplitude fatigue loading and many loading parameters involved in the variable amplitude spectrums have not yet been investigated. The aim of this research is to understand the fatigue behavior of adhesively-bonded FRP joints under different loading patterns and establish a reliable methodology for the fatigue life prediction of these structural components. The fatigue response of a typical adhesivelybonded structural joint, a double-lap joint, was experimentally investigated under different loading patterns including constant amplitude, block and variable amplitude loading. The development of fatigue cracks during the lifetime and their correlation with the observed failure modes and applied cyclic load were analyzed. The experimental investigations revealed the loading parameters that significantly influence fatigue behavior and that therefore must be considered in the fatigue life prediction methodology. A new semi-empirical S-N formulation was developed to characterize the constant amplitude fatigue life and overcome the deficiencies of the fatigue models commonly used for composite materials. Based on the experimental investigation results, two phenomenological formulations were proposed in order to model the loading parameters that affect fatigue life. A new constant life diagram was developed to model the effect of mean stress on fatigue life and its accuracy was assessed using the experimental data. Also, a method was proposed to take into account the load interaction effects under variable amplitude loading. A fatigue life prediction methodology was established using the newly developed models and implemented in the form of a computational tool to predict the fatigue life of adhesivelybonded FRP joints. The variable amplitude fatigue life predictions obtained using this methodology correlated fairly well with the experimental results and proved its effectiveness in real applications.


Using National Household Survey data, this study examines the situation of Peruvian middle class households in Metropolitan Lima and Callao prior to the COVID-19 pandemic through financial and non-financial variables in order to identify vulnerability factors in the overall population and in income quintiles.The analysis has revealed that health, income and labor are the most vulnerable indicators and could be heavily affected by government measures against COVID-19, such as mandatory social isolation (lockdown), social distancing, and movement and gathering restrictions. In this context, households in the lowest quintile are substantially more susceptible to falling into poverty due to economic instability, labor informality and lack of social protection. The study results suggest that the definition of "vulnerability" needs to go beyond poverty measurements to improve the focalization of government policies and strategies in similar crises.


This study uses firm level data from two detailed surveys of Italian manufacturing firms to study the relationship between R&D expenditures and productivity growth. The analysis considers the different contributions of various forms of R&D (product, process, internal, external in collaboration with universities, research centres and other firms) to Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Thus, this paper answers the call for more research on the links between a firm's external R&D and its productivity. In the cross-section econometric analysis, we estimate a Treatment Effects model based on the assumption that the decision to carry out R&D is endogenous. We found evidence supporting such a methodological approach. The main results reveal a positive and statistically significant relationship between the detailed measures of R&D and TFP. It is noteworthy that among external R&D investments, only expenditures for projects run in collaboration with other firms turn out to be highly significant, while cooperation in R&D with universities does not seem to lead to productivity enhancements. Because of the public good nature of research, firms may resort to do R&D within laboratories run by universities only when the outcome of the research does not have important strategic consequences.


Thin, gel-like, hydrated soft contact lenses are directly placed on human eyes and can be used with a variety of eye drops containing over-the-counter drugs, even though some labels suggest caution. In this study, evaluation was carried out of the cytotoxic potential of soft contact lenses that had adsorbed the active ingredients of over-the-counter eye drops. Although there are some guidelines for in vitro cytotoxicity tests for preclinical biological evaluation of medical materials and devices, the shape of soft contact lenses makes these tests difficult to apply. We developed a new cytotoxicity test in which cored lenses 6 mm in diameter were pretreated with active ingredients and placed in direct contact with Chinese hamster lung V79 cells. Among the 11 chemicals tested, anionic and hydrated type-IV lenses that had been soaked in benzalkonium chloride, berberine chloride, and chlorhexidine indicated cytotoxic potential toward the cultured cells. Solutions of 0.002%-0.004% benzalkonium chloride, 0.025% berberine chloride, and 0.008% chlorhexidine were not cytotoxic to the cultured cells under the experimental conditions; however, type-IV lenses that had been immersed in the same concentrations of these active ingredients showed significant cytotoxicity to the cultured cells. These results suggest that cytotoxicity to the ocular surface may be caused by soft contact lenses that have been soaked in the usual ranges of nontoxic eye drops containing benzalkonium chloride, berberine chloride, and chlorhexidine. This modified in vitro safety test system for cored soft contact lenses is of use for evaluating the cytotoxic potential of ophthalmological drugs adsorbed on soft contact lens surfaces.


Motivated by recent experiments, the isotropic-nematic phase transition in chromonic liquid crystals is studied. As temperature decreases, nematic nuclei nucleate, grow, and coalesce, giving rise to tactoid microstructures in an isotropic liquid. These tactoids produce topological defects at domain junctions (disclinations in the bulk or point defects on the surface). We simulate such tactoid equilibria and their coarsening dynamics with a model using degree of order, a variable length director, and an interfacial normal as state descriptors. We adopt Ericksen's work and introduce an augmented Oseen-Frank energy, with non-convexity in both interfacial energy and the dependence of the energy on the degree of order. A gradient flow dynamics of this energy does not succeed in reproducing some simple expected feature of tactoid dynamics. Therefore, a strategy is devised based on continuum kinematics and thermodynamics to represent such features. The model is used to predict tactoid nucleation, expansion, and coalescence during the process of phase transition. We reproduce observed behaviors in experiments and perform an experimentally testable parametric study of the effect of bulk elastic and tactoid interfacial energy parameters on the interaction of interfacial and bulk fields in the tactoids.


We study the chiral anomaly in disordered Weyl semimetals, where the broken translational symmetry prevents the direct application of Nielsen and Ninomiya's mechanism and disorder is strong enough that quantum effects are important. In the weak disorder regime, there exist rare regions of the random potential where the disorder strength is locally strong, which gives rise to quasilocalized resonances and their effect on the chiral anomaly is unknown. We numerically show that these resonant states do not affect the chiral anomaly only in the case of a single Weyl node. At energies away from the Weyl point, or with strong disorder where one is deep in the diffusive regime, the chiral Landau level itself is not well defined and the semiclassical treatment is not justified. In this limit, we analytically use the supersymmetry method and find that the Chern-Simons term in the effective action which is not present in nontopological systems gives rise to a nonzero average level velocity which implies chiral charge pumping. We numerically establish that the nonzero average level velocity serves as an indicator of the chiral anomaly in the diffusive limit.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the efficacy of salvage therapy containing ritonavir and saquinavir after failure of indinavir- or nelfinavir-containing regimens, and to determine correlates of success or failure.

DESIGN
Retrospective chart review. SETTING. The Moore Clinic - the HIV clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

PATIENTS
Forty-one HIV-infected patients were identified through physician contacts, referrals from other providers, and review of a comprehensive clinical database.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
To determine response to salvage therapy, HIV-1 viral RNA (absolute and log10-transformed) was measured using the Roche Amplicor quantitative HIV-1 RNA assay after initiation of the salvage regimen. Potential correlates of response included: viral RNA at the time of switch; viral RNA at the time of switch as a percentage of baseline viral RNA; magnitude of decline in viral RNA; and the interval between virologic failure of single protease inhibitor therapy and switch to the salvage regimen.

RESULTS
Thirteen (56.5%) of 23 patients failing indinavir responded to salvage therapy (HIV RNA < 400 copies/ml) with persistence throughout the follow-up period (median of 37 weeks; range 18-67 weeks). Mean absolute viral RNA at the time of switch was 20 238 copies/ml (median, 9281) compared with 42 953 copies/ml (median, 24 650) for the 10 non-responders. Mean log10 viral RNA at switch was 3.804 for responders versus 4.405 for non-responders (P = 0.040). Among four responders who had failed nelfinavir, mean viral RNA was 9634 copies/ml and mean log10 viral RNA was 3.749 at the time of switch. Two non-responders had a mean viral RNA of 21 551 and a mean log10 viral RNA of 4.037 at switch.

CONCLUSIONS
In contrast with previous reports, salvage regimens containing ritonavir and/or saquinavir can be effective and durable following the failure of combination regimens containing either indinavir or nelfinavir. Salvage therapy may be more likely to succeed when it is initiated early in failure at low viral loads.


Inspired by questions of convergence in continued fraction theory, Erdős, Piranian and Thron studied the possible sets of divergence for arbitrary sequences of Möbius maps acting on the Riemann sphere, S. By identifying S with the boundary of three-dimensional hyperbolic space, H, we show that these sets of divergence are precisely the sets that arise as conical limit sets of subsets of H. Using hyperbolic geometry, we give simple geometric proofs of the theorems of Erdős, Piranian and Thron that generalise to arbitrary dimensions. New results are also obtained about the class of conical limit sets, for example, that it is closed under locally quasisymmetric homeomorphisms. Applications are given to continued fractions.


This paper describes the path of vehicles following a collision with another vehicle at a metropolitan intersection. The aim was to provide guidance to transport authorities on roadside design at intersections to protect vehicles from secondary collisions with roadside objects. Detailed information from in-depth investigations of 78 intersection crashes were analysed. Crashes at signalised and unsignalised intersections were analysed separately. Secondary collisions with roadside objects were identified with 16 signalised and 16 unsignalised intersection cases. Nine of these 32 collisions were more severe than the initial vehicle-to-vehicle collision, three at signalised intersections and six at unsignalised intersections. Of the 78 intersection crashes, more than half of the vehicles came to rest within 10 metres of the impact point. More than a quarter travelled 15 metres or further and approximately 10% travelled further than 27 metres. It was found that 28 of the 70 crash involved vehicles at signalised intersections encroached into the designated pedestrian crossing areas. It was also found that 10 of those vehicles departed the roadway. The study has indicated the most likely locations that vehicles will traverse following collisions at urban intersections. This information can be used by road designers to make decisions in relation to the protection or removal of roadside objects in the vicinity of intersections.


In this article, I examine an anecdote concerning a counterfeit coin included in João do Rio's Portugal d'agora (1911). After contextualizing Rio's interest in Portugal, I argue that the anecdote reveals a latent anxiety about the security of money as a reliable signifier, and about the integrity of the Portuguese monetary system. I contend that this anxiety constitutes one side—the obverse, in numismatic terms—of Rio's portrait of Portugal during the first years of the 20th century. The "reverse" consists of his descriptions of what we, following Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in Raízes do Brasil (1936), might term Luso-Brazilian desleixo. In my conclusion, I connect Rio's two-sided view of Portugal with his later positions, as articulated in the journal Atlântida (1915-20), which he co-edited with João de Barros.


: Tracheobronchopathia osteochondroplastica is a rare abnormality, characterised by the presence of polyps in the trachea and main bronchi; these polyps consist of cartilaginous and/or osseous metaplastic tissue. The clinical findings in four patients are described. The pathogenesis is unknown. Treatment is usually not indicated and the prognosis is good. Where there is significant obstruction of the airways, endoscopic removal seems to be the treatment of choice.


ABSTRACT Deposits linked to abandonment have been widely recorded across the Maya lowlands, associated with the final activities occurring in ceremonial areas of Classic Maya centers. Various models have been applied to explain the activities that lie behind the formation of these contexts, including those linked to rapid abandonment (e.g., warfare) and others focused on more protracted events (termination rituals, and/or pilgrimages). Here, we assess Bayesian models for three chronological scenarios of varying tempo to explain the formation of peri-abandonment deposits at Baking Pot, Belize. Using stratigraphic information from these deposits, hieroglyphic dates recovered on artifacts, and direct dates on human skeletal remains and faunal remains from distinct layers in three deposits in Group B at Baking Pot, we identify multiple depositional events that spanned the eighth to ninth centuries AD. These results suggest that the processes associated with the breakdown of institutionalized rulership and its command of labor to construct and maintain ceremonial spaces were protracted at Baking Pot, with evidence for the final depositional activity dated to the mid-to-late ninth century. This interval of deposition was temporally distinct from the earlier deposition(s) in the eighth century. Together, these data offer a detailed view of the end of the Classic period at Baking Pot, in which the ceremonial spaces of the site slowly fell into disuse over a period of more than a century.


Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a vascular proliferative disease affecting preterm infants, is a leading cause of childhood blindness. Various studies have investigated the pathogenesis of ROP. Clinical experience indicates that oxygen levels are strongly correlated with ROP development, which led to the development of oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) as an animal model of ROP. OIR has been used extensively to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying ROP and to evaluate the efficacy of new drug candidates. Large clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) agents to treat ROP, and anti-VEGF therapy is presently becoming the first-line treatment worldwide. Anti-VEGF therapy has advantages over conventional treatments, including being minimally invasive with a low risk of refractive error. However, long-term safety concerns and the risk of late recurrence limit this treatment. There is an unmet medical need for novel ROP therapies, which need to be addressed by safe and minimally invasive therapies. The recent progress in biotechnology has contributed greatly to translational research. In this review, we outline how basic ROP research has evolved with clinical experience and the subsequent emergence of new drugs. We discuss previous and ongoing trials and present the candidate molecules expected to become novel targets.


Internet surveys are becoming increasingly popular. Concerns about the representativeness of online samples, however, frequently cast doubts on the validity of conclusions derived from internet survey data. These doubts rest on the fact that not all persons have internet access and on the premise that people are more likely to participate in a survey if the subject matter interests them. This paper presents a two-step procedure for weighting data from online surveys that is based on an explicit behavioral model of internet access and survey participation decisions. We illustrate the application of this scheme in a case study of Perspektive Deutschland, a very large online survey that was conducted in Germany in 2001 with almost 170,000 online respondents. We discuss practical aspects of weighting procedures such as problems caused by large weights as well as theoretical aspects such as the statistical implications of weighting.


The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the entrepreneurial competencies and the strategic behavior patterns of entrepreneurs in response to the social and economic environment in which they operate, taking into consideration limitations that are common to emerging countries. The study takes a quantitative approach with a survey of 211 Individual Micro Entrepreneurs (IME) operating in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. The results demonstrated that there were differences between mean scores for the entrepreneurial competencies when compared across the entrepreneurs' strategic behavior types. Moreover, entrepreneurs who were Reactors possessed a mean of 6 out of the ten entrepreneurial competencies, Defenders had 7.97, Analyzers had 8.38, and Prospectors had 8.56. The paper reveals which competencies are most likely to be associated with each strategic behavior type. The findings also indicate that entrepreneurial competencies can impact the adoption of more consistent business strategies, contributing to actions that respond to unstable social and economic scenarios.


Hospital indoor air can be a source for transmitting nosocomial infections in resource limited settings. This study was undertaken over two months period (February – March 2010) in Chennai, India, to 1) characterise bacteria isolated from indoor air of healthcare facility; and 2) establish whether environmental and clinical isolates are similar by molecular typing methods. Daily visits were made to microbiology laboratory to determine clustering of cases of nosocomial infections. Patients with illnesses related to respiratory tract and skin and soft tissues were included. Clinical strains (from laboratory) with similar antibiogram patterns were systematically stocked. Indoor air samples were collected from such locations by exposed plate method for 30 minutes. Growth was identified by standard microbiological procedures. Phenotypically similar strains were further subjected to genotyping by polymerase chain reaction and pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to confirm similarity. Coagulase-negative Staphylococci (CNS) were only isolated from both environmental and clinical samples during the study period. Totally, 15 clinical and six environmental strains of CNS were isolated over two months. One airborne and one clinical strain, isolated subsequently from a patient in the same location, had similar phenotypic (biochemical and antibiogram) characteristics. Isolates were identified as Staphylococcus haemolyticus using API STAPH system (bioMe´rieux), and confirmed to be methicillin resistant CNS using appropriate primers. When subjected to typing by PFGE, they were found to be similar (F=0.51). This is the first study documenting the similarity of CNS of environmental and clinical origin, thus establishing the possibility of air as a source for transmitting nosocomial infections.


Identity as the unique characteristics of a person or an entity that make them different from others has attracted an overwhelming attention in management studies over the last few years. This paper explores the emergence of an IT-related identity and argues that this will influence IT diffusion and use in different organizations. It is based on the assumption that while interacting with IT, people also make sense of it. Hence, IT identity could shape subsequent people's actions and understandings of the technology. This study employs the interpretivist approach using the case-study method. The use of Lotus Notes in four organizations is investigated. In each of these cases, four different identities of Notes have been found, namely Notes as a unique and integrated business application, Notes as a replaceable communication tool, Notes as a reporting tool and Notes as complementary tool to other IT tools. Analysis has shown that several factors have contributed to the development of these different types of identities; factors such as the organizational context, including sector and size of the firm, mediators' role, and the availability of other IT applications that may replace or complement Notes.


In the modelling study, two models are presented by gene expression programming (GEP) for estimation of compressive strength (fc) of self-compacting concrete (SCC) with fly ash (FA). The main difference between two models is the number of heads determined in the development of models. These established models are proposed to predict the fc values by utilizing amount of cement, water, FA, coarse and fine aggregate, and superplasticiser, and age of specimen as input values for SCC mixtures. In establishment of the proposed models, 516 compressive strength values are utilized; these values were obtained from 34 published scientific experimental literatures on SCC with FA. The training and testing sets employed in the creation of models consist of 368 fc results of SCC mixtures. The models are confirmed with remaining 148 fc results of SCC mixtures, which are not employed in training and testing sets. The estimated fc results attained from established models were compared with fc results of experimental studies, and previously proposed artificial neural network (ANN) model. These comparisons and results of statistical evaluation have strongly revealed that results of established models match well with the experimental results, and they are considered very reliable


A conventional transmitted reference (TR) modulation scheme is an effective means to combat severe multipath distortion in an ultra-wideband (UWB) system, significantly relaxing the equalization requirements. However, it suffers from multiple-access interference and a data rate loss. In this paper, we propose a multiuser TR scheme to extend TR modulation to the multiuser case, while almost doubling the data rate by allowing arbitrarily small spacing of pulse pairs. The proposed scheme assigns a pair of pseudorandom sequences to each user to enable multiple access, modulating the amplitude of data and reference pulses, respectively. A waveform template is first estimated, followed by data demodulation. A time-hopping code can be employed to further minimize the effect of signal collisions. The method is appropriate for both pulse amplitude modulation and pulse position modulation. Waveform estimation and bit-error rate analysis are provided, and confirmed with simulations. Substantial detection improvements over conventional TR detectors are observed.


This article examines some economic problems concerned with profit sharing in a Socialist economy. Two alternative systems of incentives have been made the subject of parallel investigations, comparing the effects which each of these systems have on the firm's behavior. We also examine some problems of price regulation. In the investigation both linear and nonlinear programming methods have been used.


In January 1995 the Austrian Institute of Economic Research carried out a preliminary assessment of the consolidation measures as provided in the Working Agreement between the two coalition parties ("austerity package"). In the meantime, several items contained in this package have been changed, and the Parliament has passed the federal budget for 1995. The new evaluation is based on the federal budget 1995 as well as on the likely development of expenditure cuts up to 1998 according to the intentions of the government expressed so far. According to the present program, expenditure cuts are only half as large as envisaged in the austerity package; furthermore an increase in revenues is proposed in the budget. These changes move the budget further away from the consolidation target, but at the same time ameliorate possible negative distributive effects. The consolidation measures are estimated to relieve the federal budget by a cumulated Sch 127.5 billion over the period 1995-1998, with half of the savings coming from expenditure cuts, the other half from an increase in revenues. Compared to a scenario without fiscal restraint, new indebtedness of the central government will be reduced by Sch 29 billion in 1995. These savings more than offset the direct and indirect cost of accession to the EU (contribution to the EU and compensation for farmers). According to the simulations of the macroeconomic model, the consolidation measures lower the level of real GDP by 0.4 percentage points and reduce the number of jobs by 13,000 in the year 1998. The increase in the mineral oil tax will raise consumer prices by ¼ percent. The balance in the current account will be relieved by Sch 17 billion (0.5 percent of GDP) in 1998. Net lending of general government will improve by 1 percent of GDP, and in 1998 will total 2.6 percent of GDP, dropping below the Maastricht convergence goal of 3 percent. The public debt ratio is expected to steadily decline to 64 percent. The austerity program pursues two goals: to strengthen the hard-currency policy by fiscal restraint and to meet the convergence criteria for participation in a future European Monetary Union. The budget proposal for 1995 is a first step in the direction of a medium-term consolidation of the budget. Over the following years there will be some maneuvering room left in the choice of specific instruments for attaining this goal.


Although videos are common instructional materials, traditional videos don't let users to view the environment from different angles and there is no interaction. On the other hand, creating virtual interactive environments are expensive, time consuming and also it's difficult to create environments which reflects the real world. Spherical videos have the advantage of reflecting the environment as it is. It takes less time and effort to record. There is no need for an extra player or software other than Adobe Flash based players to display interactive spherical videos. Video files can be streamed over the internet or can be transferred using flash disc, CD etc. Recorded spherical videos can also be used in 3D applications as background. Interactive Flash Panoramic video, by the help of approximately 360° view, lets user to focus any point on the screen he/she wishes by using his/her mouse while video is playing or stopped. Learning can be strengthened by watching the video multiple times from different angles. As an addition to these, embedding objects (sound, picture, text, graphic, movie, and links) makes panoramic videos interactive. Learner has unique learning experience by interacting with the objects during the film. In this paper, interactive video was created using a spherical video camera discussed employing the example of educational uses. For this aim, the videos which were shot by using spherical video camera were made interactive using Ladybug PRO, Lucid Viewer and XML. This study shows how spherical videos can be prepared as an instructional material.


Comparing the office networks of selected global service firms in 2000 with 2001 reveals 1,074 changes. Despite the period being one of world economic slowdown, approximately two-thirds of the changes were expansions. Legal services were the most expansionary; banking/finance and advertising grew the slowest. The geography of these changes is described in two ways. First, regional patterns are examined which show Pacific Asia as the leading growth region. Second, strata of world cities defined by their connectivity show that the ratio of expansion to retraction increases with the importance of cities. A map of change featuring 123 cities across the world confirms these regional and hierarchical geographies. Thus in a period of world economic slowdown, financial and business services are becoming more concentrated within the world city network.


This paper describes the Patent Retrieval Task in the Fourth NTCIR Workshop, and the test collections produced in this task. We perform the invalidity search task, in which each participant group searches a patent collection for the patents that can invalidate the demand in an existing claim. We also perform the automatic patent map generation task, in which the patents associated with a specific topic are organized in a multi-dimensional matrix.


Since first described by Chief Justice John Marshall, the United Stated has been deemed to have a moral and legal "trust responsibility" to the American Indian tribal nations who gave way so that the United States could exist. For nearly two centuries, the trust responsibility reflected a paternalistic view toward Indian tribes. As the United States has developed a more enlightened policy characterized by greater respect for "tribal self-governance," tribal governments have experienced a renaissance. Instead of federal paternalism, federal policy has moved away from federal control and toward tribal empowerment. As a result, the trust responsibility's paternalistic features have come to seem anachronistic, and the trust responsibility can be described today by a new set of norms. The evolution, however, is not complete. Some of the old paternalistic features continue to animate federal Indian law and serve as obstacles to tribal self-governance. Moreover, as tribal governments exercise greater powers, they are subject to new scrutiny. Perhaps ironically, even some Native Americans have sought to reinstate federal oversight of tribal nations. The shifting norms of federal policy have produced new conflicts and will require a new reckoning about the federal role as old norms clash with new.


A window structure has been applied, for the first time, to the individually addressable monolithic array of GaAlAs high-power lasers. A 100- mu m spaced array of four window diffusion stripe lasers with a long-cavity of 600 mu m has been fabricated by controllable open-tube two-step diffusion and single-step metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The window structure and the p-type active stripes with a sufficiently narrow width around 2 mu m are formed by diffusion of zinc, which just passes through an n-type active layer. CW output power up to 120 mW without catastrophic damage and a threshold current around 30 mA have been achieved for each element in the wavelength range of 830 nm. Excellent uniformity of device characteristics across an array chip is confirmed. Thermal crosstalk of the elements operating simultaneously is investigated. >


Most scheduling literature considers a "one-job-on-one-processor" pattern, which assumes that a processor processes exactly one job at a time. In this paper we consider a new scheduling problem with a "multiple-job-on-one-processor" pattern, where several jobs can be processed by a single processor simultaneously, provided that the total size of the jobs being processed does not exceed the capacity of the processor at any point in time. This problem is motivated by the operation of berth allocation, which is to allocate vessels (jobs) to a berth (processor), where the vessels, if small in dimension, may share the berth with some other vessels for loading/unloading the goods. We consider the problem to minimize the makespan of the schedule. The well-known First-Fit Decreasing heuristic is generalized and applied to several variations of the problem, and the worst-case behavior of the generalized heuristics is studied. Worst-case error bounds are obtained for those models. Co mputational experiments are conducted to test the heuristics. The results suggest that the heuristics are effective in producing near-optimal solutions.


Turbochargers are widely used to help reduce the environmental impact of automotive engines. However, a limiting factor for turbochargers is compressor surge. Surge is an instability that induces pressure and flow oscillations that often damages the turbocharger and its installation. Most predictions of the surge limit are based on low-order models, such as the Moore–Greitzer model. These models tend to rely on a characteristic curve for the compressor created by extrapolating the constant speed lines of a steady-state compressor map into the negative mass flow region. However, there is little validation of these assumptions in the public literature. In this article, we develop further the first-principles model for a compressor characteristic presented in Powers, K., Brace, C., Budd, C., Copeland, C., & Milewski, P., 2020, "Modeling Axisymmetric Centrifugal Compressor Characteristics From First Principles," J. Turbomachinery, 142(9), with a particular emphasis on reverse flow. We then perform experiments using a 58 mm diameter centrifugal compressor provided by Cummins Turbo Technologies, where we feed air in the reverse direction though the compressor while the impeller is spinning in the forward direction to obtain data in the negative mass flow region of the compressor map. This demonstrated experimentally that there is a stable operating region in the reverse flow regime. The recorded data showed a good match with the theoretical model developed in this article. We also identified a change in characteristic behavior as the impeller speed is increased, which, to the authors' knowledge, has not been observed in any previously published experimental work.


In the paper, a new application and development of a highly integrated GPS receiver with reflected GPS signals for ocean state and sea tide will be described. First, both Right Hand Circular Polarization (RHCP) and Left Hand Circular Polarization (LHCP) antennas are employed so that direct and reflected signals can be acquired simultaneously. The direction of arrival of the signals may be along the reflected signal path or even along the line-of-sight of a particular satellite. The goal of the study is to exploit the carrier phase, Doppler shift, reflectivity of L1/L2 S / No signal-to-noise density ratio components of the reflected signals and direct signals for ocean water and coastal ground object detection with surface. The Sea states are predicted by using Doppler shifts due to surface reflection as a moving surface. During the development and test stage, the digital terrain elevation data and satellite's images has been used and mapped with the integrated software. An integer ambiguity algorithm has also been implemented. The precise point positions for RHCP and LHCP antennas are enhanced and processed by repeating instantaneous ionosphere delay correct model with deriving from LI and L2 carrier phase and troposphere estimated parameter model. During the development and test stage, the DTED and visual elements of satellite's images has been used and mapped with the integrated software. According to A GPS radio occultations with CHAMP's technology of remote sensing for ocean two-dimensional tide and flow. The three dimensional ocean tide model is predicted by using Doppler shifts due to surface reflection as a moving surface. The each instantaneous moving surface should be exploited by each reflected GPS carrier phase and reflected point. For remote sensing of ocean, landscape, and stream, the accuracies of each reflected altitude are among 10 cm and 30 cm. The accuracies of each reflected area are converged among 2 cm and 10 cm.


In this paper, the failure probability is estimated by using the FORM (first order reliability method), the SORM (second order reliability method) and the Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the reliability of the corroded pipeline. It is found that the FORM technique is more effective in estimating the failure probability than the SORM technique for B31G and MB31G models with three different corrosion models. Furthermore, it is noted that the difference between the results of the FORM, the SORM and the Monte Carlo simulation decreases with the increase of the exposure time.


Experimental observations have shown that cardio toxins (cobra cytotoxins), small proteins of three-fingered cytotoxin group, damage nanobiomembranes in different cells and vesicles. However, the molecular mechanism of this damage is not yet completely cleared. Molecular dynamics simulations have been used here to study the interaction of cardiotoxins A3 and A4 from Naja atra cobra venom with hydrated 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-1-sn-3-phosphatidylcholine (POPC) lipid bilayer in two separate systems. Each of studied systems included one cytotoxin molecule, 128 lipid molecules (64 molecules in each monolayer) and 11817 water molecules. It has been found that the toxin interacts with zwitterionic bilayer formed by POPC. At the beginning of simulation the cytotoxins have been oriented toward nanobiomembrane surface by their loops' tips. This orientation has changed during first 50 ns of classical molecular dynamics simulation for both of studied cytotoxins. The A3 toxin finally meets POPC nanobiomembrane with sides of loops near tips including cytotoxin region THR148 and VAL155. The A4 cytotoxin molecule has been finally oriented toward surface of nanobiomembrane with base and one of loop's tip including THR184, ARG186 and LEU158 amino acids, after 50 ns molecular dynamics simulation. Then 25 ns steered molecular dynamics simulation has been done for both of systems. The obtained data suggest that cytotoxin A3 meets the nanobiomembrane with sides of loops near tips and A4 meets POPC nanobiomembrane with base and one of loop's tips. The difference between final orientations of these two cytotoxins comes from the difference in the structure of them.


Today in real world the actual application usually needed only a few key features of UART. Specific interface chip will cause of resources and increased cost. In parallel communication the cost as well as complexity of the system increases due to simultaneous transmission of data bits on multiple wires. Serial communication alleviates this drawback of parallel communication and emerges effectively in many applications for long distance communication as it reduces the signal distortion because of its simple structure. This paper focuses on the VHDL implementation of UART with status register which supports asynchronous serial communication. The paper presents the architecture of UART which indicates, during reception of data, parity error, framing error, overrun error and break error using status register. APB is used for solved interfacing problem. With APB other devised are easy to connect with UART. The proposed design of UART satisfies the system requirements of high integration, stabilization, low bit error rate, and low cost. It also supports configurable baud rate generator and variable data length from 5-8 bits per frame. For solving interfacing complexity used an APB. Keywords- Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter, status register, VHDL implementation, ISE simulator, asynchronous serial communication. 1. INTRODUCATION UART is a type of "asynchronous receiver/ transmitter", a piece of computer hardware that translates data between parallel and serial forms. A UART is usually an individual (or part of an) integrated circuit used for serial communications over a computer or peripheral device serial port. UARTs are now commonly included in microcontrollers. Many modern ICs now come with a UART that can also communicate synchronously; these devices are called USARTs.


In general, plants synthesize sucrose for translocation of photosynthate. However, some horticultural crops of Rosaceae family are known to translocate sorbitol. Both types of crops are important in horticultural science. Although sucrose metabolism in source and sink tissue is well-known, regulation of sugar composition has not been investigated yet. Fruit generally contains three major sugars i.e., sucrose, glucose and fructose. As the sweetness of these three sugars is quite different, the manipulation of sugar composition in fruit could be useful for improving fruit quality. Thus genes encoding fructokinase that might be related to the level of fructose in fruit were cloned and analyzed. In contrast to sucrose, there are fewer studies on sorbitol metabolism in source and sink tissue. Therefore cloning and expression analysis of the gene encoding sorbitol-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (S6PDH) that may play a key role in sorbitol biosynthesis are also reported here. Two fructokinase cDNAs, Frk1 and Frk2, were isolated from tomato and identified using transformed yeast with those genes. The response of both genes to sugar and their expression patterns shown by northern and in situ hybridization suggest that Frk1 responds to carbon availability and plays a primary role in fructose metabolism in plant cells while Frk2 is localized specifically in cells that import and store carbohydrate. On the other hand, S6PDH cDNA was cloned from apple seedlings. The levels of S6PDH activity and protein were high in source tissue such as cotyledons and leaves in apple seedlings. Besides the S6PDH transcripts were induced during germination corresponding to sorbitol synthesis. On peach trees, the levels of S6PDH transcripts were also higher in more developed leaves compared with folded young leaves. The results strongly suggest that the S6PDH gene is expressed for biosynthesis of sorbitol in source tissue. Now some groups are executing mapping and overexpression of S6PDH.


We present Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), a novel routing protocol for wireless datagram networks that uses the positions of routers and a packet's destination to make packet forwarding decisions. GPSR makes greedy forwarding decisions using only information about a router's immediate neighbors in the network topology. When a packet reaches a region where greedy forwarding is impossible, the algorithm recovers by routing around the perimeter of the region. By keeping state only about the local topology, GPSR scales better in per-router state than shortest-path and ad-hoc routing protocols as the number of network destinations increases. Under mobility's frequent topology changes, GPSR can use local topology information to find correct new routes quickly. We describe the GPSR protocol, and use extensive simulation of mobile wireless networks to compare its performance with that of Dynamic Source Routing. Our simulations demonstrate GPSR's scalability on densely deployed wireless networks.


The emerging field of nanoscience and nanotechnology are becoming more and more popular everyday. Nanotechnology is truly interdisciplinary; it involves manipulating and controlling individual atoms and molecules to design and create new materials, nanomachines, and nanodevices for application in all aspects of our lives. Recent advances and envisioned developments in enabling nanotechnology provide challenges to academia in educating and training a new generation of skilled engineers and competent scientists. These engineers and scientists should possess the ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering in order to design, analyze and fabricate nanodevices and nanosystems, which are radically different when compared with traditional technological systems. In this paper, the current status of the progress and developments in nanotechnology and nanoeducation is briefly reviewed, from the perspective of its applications. Strategies for teaching nanotechnology are also presented with a few basic samples.


Urogenital Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates (266) collected in San Francisco, CA, in 2009 were analyzed for antimicrobial susceptibility and were subsequently genotyped by N. gonorrhoeae multiantigen sequence typing (NGMAST). Isolates of identical or closely related sequence types were found to possess highly similar phenotypes with regard to drug susceptibility. Isolates containing decreased susceptibility to oral cephalosporins were detected in 2009 and were found to contain the mosaic penA allele (XXXIV) found previously to be associated with decreased susceptibility to cephalosporins. A better understanding of the relationships between phenotypic and genotypic markers for antimicrobial resistance may be helpful to the development of effective surveillance systems for drug-resistant N. gonorrhoeae.


Copyright: © 2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited, a link to the Creative Commons license is provided, and any changes are indicated. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. From neurology to neuropathology and back


What leads people to describe some of their interpersonal relationships as "close" and "warm" and others as "distant" and "cold"? Landau, Meier, and Keefer (2010) proposed that conceptual metaphors facilitate social cognition by allowing people to use knowledge from a relatively concrete (source) domain (e.g., physical distance) in understanding a different, usually more abstract (target) concept (e.g., love). We concur that such a notion of metaphors can greatly enrich the field of social cognition. At the same time, we believe it is important to devote greater theoretical attention to the nature of metaphorical representations in social cognition. We believe that Landau et al. place too much emphasis on socio-cognitive metaphors as top-down knowledge structures and pay too little attention to the constraints that shape metaphors from the bottom up. In the present contribution, we highlight important bottom-up constraints, imposed through bodily constraints and social scaffolds. Socio-cognitive metaphors do not exist just for mental representation but for action as well. We discuss the relevance of grounding socio-cognitive metaphors for broader motivational purposes.


PURPOSE To compare two different techniques to improve vessels opacification in coronary angiography with multislice CT (MSCT) scanner. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty consecutive patients were divided into two groups. In group 1, the synchronisation was obtained administering 20 ml of cm at 4 ml/s during a dynamic monitoring sequence. In group 2, the real time monitoring of the main bolus was used to trigger the scan. The CT angiography was performed in both groups by administering 100 ml of cm at 4 ml/s, with MSCT scanner and the following parameters: collimation 16 x 0.75 mm, rotation time 0.42 s, retrospective ECG gating. Three regions of interest were created in order to measure attenuation at: 1) ascending aorta (ROI 1); 2) descending aorta (ROI 2); 3) pulmonary artery (ROI 3). Attenuation was also measured at the origin of the main coronary arteries and their larger branches. RESULTS The average time/density curve showed lower enhancement in group 1 compared to group 2 in the first 4 s and 7 s in ROI 1 and ROI 2, respectively (p<0.05). The maximum enhancement value were 342 HU and 347 HU for group 1 in ROI 1 and ROI 2, and 356 HU and 352 HU for group 2 in ROI 1 and ROI 2, respectively. The attenuation at the origin of the main coronary arteries was higher in group 2 than in group 1 (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS Real time monitoring technique allows to use 20% less cm and provides better and more homogeneous enhancement.


The authors present an algorithm for order reduction of linear dynamic SISO discrete systems using the combined advantages of the improved generalised Least squares method and error minimization by Differential Evolution technique (DE). The denominator of the reduced order model is obtained by improved generalise least squares method and the numerator coefficients are determined by minimizing the integral square error between the transient responses of original and reduced order models using DE technique, pertaining to unit step input. The reduction procedure is simple, efficient and computer oriented. The algorithm is illustrated with the help of two numerical examples to highlight the advantages of the approach and the results are compared with the other existing techniques.


The natural connectivity as a novel robustness measure of complex networks is proposed. The natural connectivity has a clear physical meaning and a simple mathematical formulation. It is shown that the natural connectivity can be derived mathematically from the graph spectrum as an average eigenvalue and that it changes strictly monotonically with the addition or deletion of edges. By comparing the natural connectivity with other typical robustness measures within a scenario of edge elimination, it is demonstrated that the natural connectivity has an acute discrimination which agrees with our intuition. The robustness of global Internet AS-level topology and Chinese Internet AS-level topology is studied using natural connectivity.


Summary ERBE cryoprobes and the associated cryotherapy systems (ERBE Elektromedizin) use freezing technology for diagnostic biopsies and therapeutic interventions such as recanalisation as part of bronchoscopy procedures. The published evidence summarised in this briefing comes from 5 studies in adult populations. Three randomised controlled studies showed that cryobiopsy improved the diagnostic yield when compared with conventional forceps biopsy. Two additional studies examined the safety and efficacy of cryorecanalisation for airway obstruction caused by tumours, which was shown to be successful in most patients. The typical list price for the ERBECRYO 2 system is £10,051, excluding VAT. This includes 1 reuseable cryoprobe.


Humans are confronted with an increasingly complex array of ingestion substances and dietary choices that influence health and well being. However, even with strong medical evidence that clearly links ingestion strategies and heath consequences, the general public struggles to make health-optimizing ingestion decisions. Based on our literature review, we delineate a typology of barriers to formulating health-optimizing ingestion strategies. We propose that the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) as "decision management" (AI-DM) technology into the ingestion decision-making network would increase the likelihood of more predictable and optimized health outcomes. Also, we delineate the key informational constituencies needed to enable a comprehensive and effective AI-DM system. While no author has yet proposed AI in the particular context discussed in this paper, the theoretical and empirical literature suggests that this might be possible. We conclude by discussing areas for additional research.


This guide provides a tutorial on how to use the online catalog ArchivesSpace, in order to search for items and collections in the Beloit College Archives.


The data flow diagram has been extensively used to model the data transformation aspects of proposed systems. However, previous definitions of the data flow diagram have not provided a comprehensive way to represent the interaction between the timing and control aspects of a system and its data transformation behavior. An extension of the data flow diagram called the transformation schema is described. This schema provides a notation and formation rules for building a comprehensive system model, and a set of execution rules to allow prediction of the behavior over time of a system modeled in this way. The notation and formation rules allow depiction of a system as a network of potentially concurrent `centers of activity' (transformations), and of data repositories (stores), linked by communication paths (flows). The execution rules provide a qualitative prediction rather than a quantitative one, describing the acceptance of inputs and the production of outputs by the transformations but not input and output values.


1. There is still considerable debate about the most effective methods of sampling invertebrates in monitoring and assessment programmes.

2. The above-ground invertebrates of a limestone grassland in north-east England were compared between samples from pitfall traps and from a D-vac suction trap combined with a lightweight swish net (SW/DV).

3. Over 14 000 individuals were captured, with similar numbers in the pitfall and SW/DV samples. A total of 480 species of Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Diptera and Araneae was identified and placed into 14 taxa for further analysis.

4. The pitfall sample produced species/specimen curves from which it was possible to estimate species richness for all the Coleoptera and Araneae taxa and the calypterate Schizophora. The SW/DV sample was adequate to estimate the species richness of Hemiptera, most Diptera taxa, herbivorous Coleoptera and Linyphiidae.

5. The proportion of Coleoptera and Araneae taxa that were method-unique was higher in the pitfall sample than the SW/DV sample and vice versa for the Hemiptera and Diptera taxa. Nevertheless, a relatively high proportion of method-unique species of most taxa was found in both sample types, indicating that they can each contribute to assessing species assemblages in grasslands.

6. Both pitfall traps and SW/DV samples are needed to estimate species richness in grasslands for all taxa except Heteroptera, Homoptera and Lycosidae. Herbivorous Coleoptera and Linyphiidae were collected in numbers adequate for assessing richness in both sample types, but more specimens were required in one or other sample for the remaining taxa.


ABSTRACT The paper will consider instances of the interweaving of theory and practice within drawing research, in order to suggest potential approaches to the development of hybrid methodologies in fine art practice-led research. The paper is written from the position of two current supervisors and creative research collaborators: Deborah Harty and Phil Sawdon (aka humhyphenhum from 2007), who historically were supervisee/supervisor. The paper will make reference to Harty's experience as a Ph.D. researcher undertaking practice-led research within a fine art context (completed 2010) and supervised by Sawdon. A discussion of Harty's hybrid methodology: action theoria, will provide an instance of the interweaving of theory and practice. Action theoria incorporates the cyclical and iterative process of action research – intention; action; review – with a process of theoria – the dialogue of both practice and theory's relationship to a given subject matter. Following this, the paper will discuss the interweaving of action theoria into humhyphenhum's collaborative research methodology: meaningful play. This interwoven methodology evolved during collaborative practice-led research projects from 2005 to the present. The paper will make reference to several of humhyphenhum's projects as a means to identify the interweaving of theory and practice within collaborative research. As current supervisors (2015), the paper will conclude with a discussion of how reflection on these experiences has informed our position as supervisors. We will consider, for example, how this has impacted on our ability, as individual supervisors, to offer insights into the interweaving of theory and practice, without defaulting to the position of compelling our supervisees to adopt our methodology.


Abstract. A four-dimensional nonlinear spectral ocean model is used
to study the transition to chaos induced by periodic forcing in systems that
are nonchaotic in the autonomous limit. The analysis relies on the
construction of the system's pullback attractors (PBAs) through ensemble
simulations, based on a large number of initial states in the remote past. A
preliminary analysis of the autonomous system is carried out by investigating
its bifurcation diagram, as well as by calculating a metric that measures the
mean distance between two initially nearby trajectories, along with the
system's entropy. We find that nonchaotic attractors can still exhibit
sensitive dependence on initial data over some time interval; this apparent
paradox is resolved by noting that the dependence only concerns the phase of
the periodic trajectories, and that it disappears once the latter have
converged onto the attractor. The periodically forced system, analyzed by the
same methods, yields periodic or chaotic PBAs depending on the periodic
forcing's amplitude ε. A new diagnostic method – based on the
cross-correlation between two initially nearby trajectories – is proposed
to characterize the transition between the two types of behavior. Transition
to chaos is found to occur abruptly at a critical value εc
and begins with the intermittent emergence of periodic oscillations with
distinct phases. The same diagnostic method is finally shown to be a useful
tool for autonomous and aperiodically forced systems as well.


Sexually transmitted disease poses an increasing challenge for the clinician in the 1980s, with increasing numbers of pathogens and diseases. This article discusses the diagnosis and outpatient management of gonorrhea, herpes virus type II, chlamydia trachomatis, and condyloma accuminatum. In addition, the diagnosis and outpatient management of pelvic inflammatory disease is reviewed.


Starting from a yeast suppressor screening platform, we have identified the SKI complex as a potential broad-spectrum antiviral target. We found that the NS1 protein of influenza A virus (IAV) and the ORF4a protein of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which both function to bind double-strand RNA and inhibit cellular interferon responses, cause a slow growth phenotype when expressed in yeast. Knockout of the components of the yeast SKI complex caused a loss of this slow growth phenotype, suggesting a functional link between the viral proteins and the SKI complex. The SKI complex is a helicase that unwinds double-strand RNA and sends it to the RNA exosome for degradation. We next investigated whether the highly conserved human SKI complex was important for replication of IAV and MERS-CoV. RNAi based experiments showed that both viruses were inhibited when the SKI complex was removed, suggesting the complex has a proviral role in replication. Through in silico modelling using the published crystal structure of the SKI complex, we looked for potential binding pockets for chemical compounds. We screened a selection of these compounds for antiviral activity and have found four different chemicals capable of inhibiting IAV infection. Our most studied of these also inhibits not only MERS-CoV, but also Ebolavirus Makona. Our data suggests the SKI complex may be a target for broad-spectrum antiviral therapy and we have multiple chemical structures from which to work to develop therapeutic approaches.


Our previous studies of pancreatic tumors have demonstrated that invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) usually showed expression of MUC1 (membrane bound type mucin) detected by monoclonal antibody DF3, whereas intraductal papillary-mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) showed no expression of MUC1. In the present study, we examined 50 IDCs, and 63 IPMNs which were morphologically classified into two histological subtypes, "dark cell type" (IPMN-D, 27 cases) and "clear cell type" (IPMN-C, 36 cases). Patients with either type of IPMN showed significantly better survival than those with IDC. To clarify the relationship of the expression patterns of mucins with their biological behavior, we examined the expression profiles of various glycoforms of membrane mucin (MUC1) and secretory mucin (MUC2, MUC5AC and MUC6) in the neoplasms using immunohistochemistry. IDCs showed high expression of all the glycoforms of MUC1 (66%-98%). In contrast, IPMNs-D showed no or low expression of all the glycoforms of MUC1 (0%-4%), while IPMNs-C showed low expression of poorly glycosylated MUC1 (3%-6%), but expression of sialylated MUC1 (41%) and fully glycosylated MUC1 (69%). Expression of MUC2 was negative (0%) in IDC, high (96%) in IPMN-D and low (3%) in IPMN-C. MUC5AC was highly expressed in all types. MUC6 expression was higher in IPMNs-C (92%) than in IDCs (56%) and IPMNs-D (37%). In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that IDCs showed high expression of all the glycoforms of MUC1, and also that two types of IPMNs showed different expression patterns of glycosylated MUC1 as well as MUC2 and MUC6. These different expression patterns of mucins may be related with the malignancy potential of pancreatic neoplasms.


We consider compact Hankel operators realized in $ \ell^2(\mathbb Z_+)$ as infinite matrices $\Gamma$ with matrix elements $h(j+k)$. Roughly speaking, we show that if $h(j)\sim (b_{1}+ (-1)^j b_{-1}) j^{-1}(\log j)^{-\alpha}$ as $j\to \infty$ for some $\alpha>0$, then the eigenvalues of $\Gamma$ satisfy $\lambda_{n}^{\pm} (\Gamma)\sim c^{\pm} n^{-\alpha}$ as $n\to \infty$. The asymptotic coefficients $c^{\pm}$ are explicitly expressed in terms of the asymptotic coefficients $b_{1} $ and $b_{-1}$. Similar results are obtained for Hankel operators $\mathbf \Gamma$ realized in $ L^2(\mathbb R_+)$ as integral operators with kernels $\mathbf h(t+s)$. In this case the asymptotics of eigenvalues $\lambda_{n}^{\pm} (\mathbf \Gamma)$ are determined by the behaviour of $\mathbf h(t)$ as $t\to 0$ and as $t\to \infty$.


Alex Marsh argues that to embrace the call to go further and faster on public
service reform would play into the hands of corporate actors and lead to a further
concentration of economic power. The development of alternative models of
service provision that enhance industrial democracy should be pursued instead.


This article looks at the evolution of international competitiveness in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s, focusing on the microeconomic and sectoral aspects. It evaluates the competitive performance of the region's countries, contrasting it with that of their main competitors in the developing world; it analyses the corporate actors involved, including the subsidiaries of transnational enterprises and large locally owned firms; and it sets forth some political considerations. Although progress has been made with competitiveness in the region, this has been largely confined to just a few countries, sectors and firms. Differences in the institutional conditions under which the countries participate in the world economy, and in their comparative cost advantages, have resulted in the emergence of two distinct trading styles. In Mexico and the Caribbean Basin, exports of manufactures assembled for the United States market predominate. In South America, on the other hand, natural resource production and processing activities prevail, with more technologically advanced manufactures having some presence in intraregional trade, especially within Mercosur. Both sectoral specializations present opportunities and problems. Improvements in the competitiveness of large companies (whether transnational or locally owned); have enhanced their efficiency. But the same is not true of other agents in the countries' economies, whose production structures have thus become more polarized. This polarization needs to be dealt with by policy initiatives. Four areas of action are important: increasing efforts to attract selected foreign direct investment (FDI);; strengthening the links between leading companies and the other firms in each country; supporting the creation of global knowledge networks; and enhancing the ability of domestic companies to enter into joint ventures and strategic alliances with their global competitors.


MOTIVATION Biological knowledgebases, such as UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, constitute an essential component of daily scientific research by offering distilled, summarized, and computable knowledge extracted from the literature by expert curators. While knowledgebases play an increasingly important role in the scientific community, the question of their sustainability is raised due to the growth of biomedical literature. RESULTS By using UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot as a case study, we address this question by using different literature triage approaches. With the assistance of the PubTator text-mining tool, we tagged more than 10,000 articles to assess the ratio of papers relevant for curation. We first show that curators read and evaluate many more papers than they curate, and that measuring the number of curated publications is insufficient to provide a complete picture. We show that a large fraction of published papers found in PubMed is not relevant for curation in UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot and demonstrate that, despite appearances, expert curation is sustainable. AVAILABILITY UniProt is freely available at http://www.uniprot.org/. CONTACT email@example.com


Background: The appearance of new drugs for cancer treatment has increased patient survival but it has also brought adverse effects, such as the sensation of dry mouth and hyposalivation. Objective: To assess the relationship of using hormone therapy in breast and prostate cancer patients and the occurrence of xerostomia and hyposalivation. Method: Cross-sectional study with 114 patients diagnosed with cancer and treated with hormone therapy (anastrozole or bicalutamide). Age, type of neoplasia, sex, presence of xerostomia (yes or no), and type of medication were obtained with a questionnaire. The researcher collected resting and stimulated salivary flows in the morning. The descriptive statistic analysis, chi-square test (p<0.005), and t-test (<0.005) were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Science™ (SSPS), version 21, for different variables of hyposalivation and hormone therapy. Results: The results showed that 67 (55.8%) patients using hormone therapy drugs presented hyposalivation and 73 (64%) patients presented xerostomia. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, there is a positive association between stimulated hyposalivation and the use of hormone therapy drugs (p = 0.015). There was also a positive association between hyposalivation and xerostomia and the use of hormone therapy drugs (p = 0.049 and p = 0.001).


One of the amazing successes of biological systems is the ability of animals to learn to control the complicated dynamics of their muscles and joints smoothly and efficiently. Traditional engineering control techniques, on the other hand, often do not perform well when confronted with intrinsically complex systems with many degrees of freedom such as a robot arm (human arm). This paper presents new work on compliant motion control. Based on previous physiological information, the authors propose an intelligent adaptive system based on a decentralised motor learning model of the cerebellum. The resultant neuro-adaptive model is used as a hybrid force/position controller for a dual arm. To optimise the neural network learning strategy, a hybrid neuro-genetic algorithm is introduced and simulation results are given for comparisons.


In this paper, we make a move to build a dialogue system for automatic diagnosis. We first build a dataset collected from an online medical forum by extracting symptoms from both patients' self-reports and conversational data between patients and doctors. Then we propose a task-oriented dialogue system framework to make diagnosis for patients automatically, which can converse with patients to collect additional symptoms beyond their self-reports. Experimental results on our dataset show that additional symptoms extracted from conversation can greatly improve the accuracy for disease identification and our dialogue system is able to collect these symptoms automatically and make a better diagnosis.


1 This paper considers the contribution of the UNDP's Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP) framework to the rights and poverty reduction discourse. It argues that the value of LEP, as envisaged by its architect, Stephen Golub, is less of a new development paradigm, but rescues one of the strands of the rights-based approaches from a contested discourse, which is being lost to an overly legalistic interpretation. I respond to the critique that the LEP framework lacks conceptual rigour, by initiating a discussion on power and empowerment, the objective of which is to contribute to LEP's conceptual development. LEP's focus on power, as opposed to law, critically distinguishes it from the dominant rights-based discourse, yet little attention is paid in LEP literature to constructing a coherent concept of power or empowerment. This paper aims to contribute to the concept of empowerment within the LEP framework. I draw on the work of Lukes and the substantial body of work on empowerment by development scholars.


The American geopolitical analysts perceive the steady rise of China as a strategic competitor and challenger to the United States' sole superpower stature in the twenty-first century. The vibrance of the United States (US) economy is on the wane as the Belt and Road Initiative of China is heralded as a vision of shared prosperity. Therefore, Trump administration adopted a hostile-cum-containment foreign policy posture towards China. The main fear of the administration was that China could transform the prevalent global geopolitical order to its advantage. Therefore, the administration constructed and publicised the anti-China narrative internally and externally which seems detrimental to Pakistan's geoeconomic pursuits through CPEC. Besides, Washington's reservation over the CPEC undermines Pakistan-US strategic cooperation. The study systematically analyses how the US ruling elite, academia and media constructs, shapes, and rebuilds anti-China and CPEC narratives to pursue their geopolitical objectives during the Trump administration.


Fluoride is a critical micronutrient for human health and is usually ingested through food and drinking water. This technique has done in monitoring the concentration of fluoride in water complications at mining operation that it effects on the environment. Fe3O4 nanoparticles were synthesized by coprecipitation of Fe2+ and Fe3+ in an alkaline solution, their surface was then modified with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and a Ga(III) porphyrin complex, Ga(TCPP)Cl2[TCPP: tetrakis (4-carboxyphenyl) porphyrin]. The morphology and physical properties of these modified magnetic nanoparticles were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The batch experiments showed that the nanoparticles could be used to remove fluoride ions from aqueous solution, achieving an extraction efficiency in excess of 96% for an initial fluoride concentration of 10 mg/L. This was obtained at pH 5.5 using 50 mg of modified nanoparticles and a contact time of 30 min.


This paper proposes an unsupervised neural network model for facies pattern recognition and formation characterization using borehole images. The goal is to create an automated workflow for rock fabric identification using high resolution acoustic or electrical borehole images with the aim of supporting 3D geological modeling. The results are compared and validated with geological and petrophysical interpretation.
 Image-based facies recognition is challenging when applying Deep Learning techniques: 1/ the volume of released labeled data constrains the abilities to build a robust neural network model 2/ data classification itself is subject to geologist interpretation. Additionally, indirect measurements can bias data, hindering the correlation between log response and any particular classification.
 We propose, therefore, an application of a fully convolutional autoencoder for borehole image data clustering to extract the most representative information displayed by the images without relying on labeled data.
 The data set corresponds to electrical borehole images with high-resolution at 0.2in and 80% borehole coverage. First, we apply an autoencoder reconstruction loss for network pre-training, then a joint training using cluster assignment hardening. After training and applying the model, patterns represented by each cluster of geological facies or geomechanical features constitute a library that can be assigned by the user to specific facies or can be automatically correlated to the core description. The method provides pattern recognition and facies prediction with higher resolution and accuracy than conventional Machine Learning methods based on the clustering of petrophysical properties.


Climate change is an increasingly prevalent and urgent topic of debate and there is little dispute that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are required. The food system contributes almost 20% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, making it a significant area on which to focus in terms of reduction targets, therefore changes in food consumption are fundamental (Garnett 2008). Understanding how to change consumer food purchasing behaviour to become more environmentally sustainable is undeniably an important social issue and a challenge for social marketers to address.
Carbon labelling is an innovative approach to influencing consumer food purchasing behaviour, in which the amount of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) emitted over its lifecycle is displayed on pack (The Carbon Trust 2009). Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket began carbon labelling in April 2008 following the announcement of their intention to carbon label their own brand products in the anticipation that it would allow consumers to "compare their carbon footprint as easily as they….compare their price or their nutritional profile" (Leahy 2007). There was considerable debate as to the validity and efficacy of carbon labelling, particularly with regard to the impact on consumer behaviour (for example Berry, Crossley et. al, 2008; Upham and Bleda, 2009; Newcastle Business School, 2010; Vision TwentyOne, 2008).
This paper presents the results of a study conducted in 2010 which highlights the barriers to achieving behaviour change through the use of conventional marketing methods in a mainstream (supermarket) environment. The research involved a mixed method case study approach. A mixed methods approach is strongly advocated by Carrington, Neville et al. (2010), who suggest the combination of methods leads to a more significant understanding. Having multiple sources of evidence and developing a "chain of evidence" also increases the construct validity of the research (Yin 2009 p. 41). The first phase of the case study involved exploratory focus groups, designed to provide an understanding of the reasons behind current food shopping habits and patterns and to gain an appreciation of current levels of awareness, understanding and use of carbon labelling. Focus groups were considered an appropriate tool to use since their purpose is to obtain information on how people think or feel about a specific issue/product (Kruger & Casey 2000) and systematic procedures were followed to overcome some of the criticisms of this methodology (Tull & Hawkins 1993; Krueger and Casey 2000). Results paved the way for phase two of the case study, a series of social marketing interventions both pre-store (working with schools) and in-store (various activities) designed to raise awareness and understanding of carbon labelling, and ultimately to create an environment more conducive to purchasing of a carbon labelled product. The key element of the pre-store interventions was to work with a significant number of primary schools to run a 'Carbon Footprint Week', engaging children and parents in carbon footprinting/labelling topics. In designing the in-store interventions, there was consideration of all elements of the marketing mix but most scope for intervention was in the area of promotion. Various merchandising activities were designed, centred on carbon labelling, such as floor stickers, shelf talkers and leaflets. The interventions were specifically targeted towards young families. Young families were the lifestage chosen because it is a diverse group, amenable to change (due to the influence of their children), facing a range of constraints (stay at home versus working mums, shopping with/without children) and often demonstrating a higher level of involvement with food in general and supermarket shopping in particular. The experimental design was intended to assess the effectiveness of the different combinations of interventions – pre-store only, in-store only and both pre-store and in-store interventions. Comparable stores with no interventions were used as control. Whilst other laboratory experiments, which could have provided greater control, were considered, these interventions represented an opportunity to gain 'real' consumer behaviour data and research done in natural settings such as the supermarket have higher external validity (Meiselman 2007).

Results of the interventions were evaluated using several sources of evidence – interviews with teachers, two questionnaires (designed using principles such as those described by Tull and Hawkins 1993) and, most significantly, using actual purchasing behaviour data through the use of supermarket loyalty card data. Using this data is an important element of this research, bringing strength to the quality of the research by providing actual purchasing behaviour data, void of social desirability bias (Carrington, Neville et al. 2010). This was particularly salient given that most of the sustainable consumption literature uses self-reported or intended behaviour measures (for example Schwepker and Cornwell 1991; Shrum, McCarty et al. 1995; Robinson and Smith 2002; Selfa, Jussaume et al. 2008; Vermeir and Verbeke 2008).

Results from the study showed some impact on raising awareness, understanding and claimed behaviour, but no discernible impact on actual purchasing behaviour.

This research highlights the challenges associated with changing behaviour in the face of competing and often conflicting drivers of supermarket purchasing behaviour. It highlights the benefits of mixed methods in understanding behaviour and evaluating impacts of targeted interventions, particularly in such complex contexts as sustainability, consumption and the supermarket shopping mission. This paper also makes a contribution in understanding the role of and challenges presented to social marketers as they embark on activity involving industry, academic, independent advisory and education partners.


A functional automotive part, reaction shaft support, was fabricated by local squeeze and vacuum Diecasting (LSVD) with light-weight Al-15%Si hypereutectic alloy which has good fluidity and excellent wear resistance. The effects of local squeezing pressure and time-lag of LSVD process on the microstructure of the product were investigated. Measurement of specific gravity with the change of local squeeze pressure and time-lag showed that the local squeezing effect can be increased by increasing squeeze pressure and decreasing time-lag. However, too high a squeeze pressure and too a low time-lag brought about insufficient squeezing effect due to instant movement to the squeeze plunger stroke end point. Through the combination of vacuum suction before melt injection and local squeezing after melt injection in LSVD process, light-weight Al-15%Si alloy reaction shaft support was successfully developed, resulting in excellent microstructural and mechanical properties


Results of a Monte Carlo study of upsilon family production in p-Pb and Pb-p collisions at the LHC and its detection in the muon spectrometer of the ALICE detector are presented. The study was done on the basis of the fast simulation method developed within the ALICE simulation and reconstruction framework AliRoot. In this method, the expected efficiency, momentum and mass resolution of the spectrometer have been taken into account for smearing the generated particle parameters in the muon spectrometer acceptance. The upsilon production has been simulated using the Pt and rapidity parameterization for the resonances. Secondary interactions and decays of bottom quarks are the main sources of background. The simulation of the background, i.e. the bottom quark pair production has been carried out by the Pythia generator. The merging of the background and signal was done with weights proportional to corresponding production cross sections. The signal to background ratio and significance have been estimated for each member of upsilon family for the collider running scenario. The Bjorken variable x distributions for the target and projectile are presented. A good separation between the signal and background is demonstrated.


BACKGROUND
Visual hallucinations have been reported to occur in up to 25% of patients who meet the criteria for posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). It is not known, however, whether patients who meet the criteria for PCA and have hallucinations are different from those who meet the criteria and do not have hallucinations.

OBJECTIVE
To compare the clinical and imaging features of patients with PCA with and without well-formed visual hallucinations.

DESIGN
Case-control study.

SETTING
Tertiary care medical center.

PATIENTS
Fifty-nine patients fulfilling the criteria for PCA were retrospectively identified and divided into 2 groups based on the presence (n = 13) or absence (n = 46) of visual hallucinations.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Statistically significant clinical differences and imaging differences using voxel-based morphometry between the 2 groups.

RESULTS
In patients with PCA and hallucinations, parkinsonism and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder occurred more frequently, as did myoclonic jerks (P<.001 for both). Voxel-based morphometry showed greater atrophy in a network of structures, including the primary visual cortex, lentiform nuclei, thalamus, basal forebrain, and midbrain, in patients with hallucinations.

CONCLUSIONS
Hallucinations in patients with PCA are associated with parkinsonism, rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, and myoclonic jerks. The voxel-based morphometry results suggest that hallucinations in PCA cannot be exclusively attributed to atrophy of the posterior association cortices and may involve a circuit of thalamocortical connections.