Power Quality (PQ) has gained a lot of importance in the last decade. Several solutionsto power quality problems have been proposed and developed. With the advent of solid statetechnology and power electronics in the power system protection devices, faster switching isachievable. In order to control and minimize the power quality problems which occur in extremely short times of less than 100ms, the need arises for a selection of devices that can switch faster than today. Also, the economic losses that occur in the network due to the power quality problems increase the incentive to transform the existing devices into faster and e fficient devices.This transformation can be seen as valuable from both a technical and economical pointof view to the distribution networks today where a large number of customers are connected.However, in order to interpret the value these fast switching devices render to the distribution network a prior study is required.This thesis presents a picture of the devices that can be suitable for fast switching in today'sdistribution network, and how to determine their value to the distribution network. Further itsummarizes the research work related to this field. The description of the devices and technical aspects is presented first. A literature review of proposed devices is given. The technical aspects of power quality and its problems is described. An approach to estimate the value of the fast switching devices is detailed from different literature. The study shows that fast switching devices can be worthy to invest in when seen from a distribution network's perspective provided that different technical aspects are taken into account.


Starting from an arbitrary sequence of polygons whose total perimeter is $2n$, we can build an (oriented) surface by pairing their sides in a uniform fashion. Chmutov & Pittel have shown that, regardless of the configuration of polygons we started with, the degree sequence of the graph obtained this way is remarkably constant in total variation distance and converges towards a Poisson–Dirichlet partition as $n \to \infty$. We actually show that several other geometric properties of the graph are universal. En route we provide an alternative proof of a weak version of the result of Chmutov & Pittel using probabilistic techniques and related to the circle of ideas around the peeling process of random planar maps. At this occasion we also fill a gap in the existing literature by surveying the properties of a uniform random map with $n$ edges. In particular we show that the diameter of a random map with $n$ edges converges in law towards a random variable taking only values in $\{2,3\}$.


This experiment was designed to test various learning theories in the context of a Cournot oligopoly. We derive theoretical predictions for the learning theories and test these predictions by varying the information given to subjects. The results show that some subjects imitate successful behaviour if they have the necessary information, and if they imitate, markets are more competitive. Other subjects follow a best reply process. On the aggregate level we find that more information about demand and cost conditions yields less competitive behaviour, while more information about the quantities and profits of other firms yields more competitive behaviour.


The work is devoted to the development of new methods of surgical treatment of postinfarction aneurysms. An experience with performing 25 operations of tunneling the myocardium of the left ventricle and aneurysmoplasty has shown the possibility of performing such operations in patients when it is impossible to perform the direct aortocoronary shunting and aneurysmectomy under conditions of extracorporeal circulation.


1968 represents a crossroads of sorts, whose alternative political trajectories continue to influence the present in often confusing and contradictory ways. We have an increasingly exhaustive historical narrative detailing the long Black freedom struggle against white supremacist monopolizations of power and resources in the era before the Montgomery bus boycott. From the heroic mobilizations of Reconstruction-era Black politics in the face of white terror, through two great migrations, the mobilizations of Black labor, a new Black urbanism, and forms of worldly engagement in an era of global wars and decolonization struggles, the Black freedom movement simultaneously carried and deepened a demand for racial democracy. It is ironic, however, that even as aspects of this past become clarified, the more immediate history and political meaning of this long struggle have grown murky. I am specifically thinking about the foreclosure of Black freedom imperatives in the United States, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for which the year 1968 retains an iconic significance. Here the story often bifurcates, becoming a tale either of teleological fulfillment and narrative closure, or of violent fragmentation and ragged endings. These different trajectories lead us in turn to starkly different eventualities: the election of Barack Obama and the symbolic validation of the promise of Black politics, or the increasingly global US war-prison complex, where the tattered ends of our social contract once again meet the unforgiving cut of racialized governance. In this context, the searching question asked by Martin Luther King in his fateful final year—"Where Do We Go from Here?"—remains as relevant as ever.


Intracellular survival of Staphylococcus epidermidis inside macrophages, facilitated by the presence of a biomaterial, has been recognized as a pivotal process in the pathogenesis of biomaterial-associated infection (BAI). Interferon (IFN)-y is a potent activator of macrophages. Determined was whether subcutaneous injections of IFN-y can reverse macrophage-deactivation induced by implanted biomaterials. To induce a experimental BAI, mice received subcutaneous implants combined with an injection of 10 6 S. epidermidis. Subsequently, three groups of mice received subcutaneous injections of, 25,000 IU IFN-y 3 times weekly, or 10,000 IU IFN-y 3 times in 2 weeks, or saline 3 times weekly (saline-control), respectively. A fourth group received no injections (control). Segments and tissues of the IFNy-treated mice were significantly less (PO.05) culture-positive than those of the control groups. Histologically, high numbers of intracellularly persisting gram-positive cocci observed in control mice were absent in the IFNy-treated mice. These data indicates that IFN-y protects against experimental BAI.


We introduce environment predictive coding, a self-supervised approach to learn environment-level representations for embodied agents. In contrast to prior work on self-supervised learning for individual images, we aim to encode a 3D environment using a series of images observed by an agent moving in it. We learn these representations via a masked-zone prediction task, which segments an agent's trajectory into zones and then predicts features of randomly masked zones, conditioned on the agent's camera poses. This explicit spatial conditioning encourages learning representations that capture the geometric and semantic regularities of 3D environments. We learn the representations on a collection of video walkthroughs and demonstrate successful transfer to multiple downstream navigation tasks. Our experiments on the real-world scanned 3D environments of Gibson and Matterport3D show that our method obtains 2 6× higher sample-efficiency and up to 57% higher performance over standard imagerepresentation learning. Code and pre-trained models are publicly available:


We give an overview of the scripting languages used in existing cryptocurrencies, and in particular we review in some detail the scripting languages of Bitcoin, Nxt and Ethereum, in the context of a high-level overview of Distributed Ledger Technology and cryptocurrencies. We survey different approaches, and give an overview of critiques of existing languages. We also cover technologies that might be used to underpin extensions and innovations in scripting and contracts, including technologies for verification, such as zero knowledge proofs, proof-carrying code and static analysis, as well as approaches to making systems more efficient, e.g. Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees.


We propose a scheme to prepare the steady-state entanglement for two atoms, which are held in separate cavities that are coupled through a short optical fiber or optical resonator. The entangled steady-state with a high fidelity can be achieved even with a low cooperativity parameter, by making use of the driving laser fields. Such a cooling mechanism is based on a resonant laser pump of the unwanted ground states to the excited states, which finally decay to the desired steady-state.


We propose an ultrasmall device size all-optical triplexer based on two-dimensional photonic crystals (PCs). The numerical results show that the proposed PCs' waveguide structure could really function as an optical triplexer with respect to the three wavelengths, i.e., 1310, 1490, and 1550 nm, respectively. It can be widely used as the fiber access network element for multiplexer-demultiplexer wavelength selective in fiber-to-the-home communication systems. The ultrasmall PC devices are expected to lead to a new class of optical devices, which will take the advantage achieving an optical device of compact build; the total size of the proposed optical triplexer is only 16 mum times 20 mum. The transmission efficiency is larger than 94% and the crosstalk is less than -23 dB.


While XML-based Web Service architectures are successfully turning the Web into an infrastructure for cooperating applications, not all problems with respect to interoperability problems have yet been solved. XML-based data exchange has the ability to carry the full Unicode character repertoire, which is approaching 100'000 characters. Many legacy application are being Web-Service-enabled rather than being re-built from scratch, and therefore still have the same limitations. A frequently seen limitation is the inability to handle the full Unicode character repertoire. We describe an architectural approach and a schema language to address this issue. The architectural approach proposes to establish validation as basic Web Service functionality, which should be built into a Web Services architecture rather than applications. Based on this vision of modular an infrastructure-based validation, we propose a schema language for character repertoire validation. Lessons learned from the first implementation and possible improvements of the schema language conclude the paper.


Physicians often utilize different imaging techniques to provide clear, visual information about internal parts of the patient. Since the different imaging modalities give different types of information, the combination of them serves as a powerful tool while determining the diagnosis, planning of treatment or during therapy follow-up. To simplify the interpretation of the image information, image registration is often used. The goal of the registration is to put different images in a common coordinate system. It is essential that the registration between the images is accurate. Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) is a metric that quantifies the conformity between images. Even though NMI is a robust method it is often dominated by large structures as the external contour of the patient as well as by the structures of the bones. The prostate is an organ that does not have a fixed position relative to the other organs and host small amounts of image information. The accuracy of the registration is therefore limited with respect to the prostate when using the whole image volume. This master thesis investigates the possibility to restrict the part of the image used for registration to a small volume around the prostate with goal to receive a better registration of the prostate than if full sized images are used. A registration program, utilizing NMI, was written and optimized in MatLab. Four Magnetic Resonance (MR) series and one Computed Tomographic (CT) series where taken over the pelvic area of five patients with the diagnosis prostate cancer. The prostate were delineated by a physician. By adding margin to the delineations five different sized Regions of Interest (ROI) where created. The smallest ROI precisely covered the prostate while the largest covered the whole image. The deviation in Center of Mass (CoM) between the images and the Percentage Volume Overlap (PVO) were calculated and used as a measure of alignment. The registrations performed with sub-volumes showed an improvement compared to those that used full-volume while registering a MR image to another MR image. In one third of the cases a 2 cm margin to the prostate is preferable. A 3 cm margin is the most favorable option in another third of the cases. The use of sub-volumes to register MR images to CT series turned out to be unpredictable with poor accuracy. Full sized image registration between two MR image pairs has a high precision but, due to the motion of the prostate, poor accuracy. As a result of the high information content in the MR images both high precision as well as high accuracy can be achieved by the use of sub-volume registration. CT images do not contain the same amount of image information around the prostate and the sub-volume based registrations between MR and CT images are hence inconsistent with a low precision.


This paper abstracts the problem of network nodes discovering one another in a network of unknown size using all-to-all gossip. The problem is studied in terms of evolving directed graphs where vertices represent the participating nodes and an edge represents one node's knowledge about another. Ideally, such a graph has diameter one, i.e., each node knows all others. Nodes share their knowledge by sending gossip messages. Gossip among the nodes allows them to discover one another, decreasing the diameter of the graph. Here this problem is considered in several synchronous settings under different assumptions about the ability of the participating nodes to communicate. Specifically, the following aspects of communication are considered: (1) the ability of the nodes to multicast gossip messages, and (2) the size of the messages. The results describe the lower and upper bounds on the number of synchronous rounds required for the participants to discover each other. A particular question of interest is if the network size is unknown, how does a node know that it has discovered all other nodes? Given a weakly-connected graph describing the initial knowledge of the nodes, every node in our algorithm can stop the discovery process knowing that there are no unknown nodes-this is done without any prior knowledge of the total number of nodes participating in the computation.


In their collegiate studies, students are given a wide range of concepts, theories, and equations to assist them in their future endeavors. However, students have not been sufficiently exposed to practical critical thinking methodologies that will benefit them as they encounter open-ended problems. A course developed at the University of Michigan exposed upperclassmen undergraduates enrolled in the College of Engineering to strategies to develop their creativity and to enhance their problem solving abilities. These abilities, along with a number of "softer" skills necessary for student upon entering the workforce, are developed by the use of real-world examples and a course term project where students interacted with local businesses.


This note studies the problem of optimal H2 filtering in networked control systems (NCSs) with multiple packet dropout. A new formulation is employed to model the multiple packet dropout case, where the random dropout rate is transformed into a stochastic parameter in the system's representation. By generalization of the H2-norm definition, new relations for the stochastic -norm of a linear discrete-time stochastic parameter system represented in the state-space form are derived. The stochastic H2-norm of the estimation error is used as a criterion for filter design in the NCS framework. A set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is given to solve the corresponding filter design problem. A simulation example supports the theory.


This paper has two purposes: 1) to clarify the relationship between the quantum theory of radiation, where the electromagnetic field-expansion coefficients satisfy commutation relations, and the semiclassical theory, where the electromagnetic field is considered as a definite function of time rather than as an operator; and 2) to apply some of the results in a study of amplitude and frequency stability in a molecular beam maser. In 1), it is shown that the semiclassical theory, when extended te take into account both the effect of the field on the molecules and the effect of the molecules on the field, reproduces almost quantitatively the same laws of energy exchange and coherence properties as the quantized field theory, even in the limit of one or a few quanta in the field mode. In particular, the semiclassical theory is shown to lead to a prediction of spontaneous emission, with the same decay rate as given by quantum electrodynamics, described by the Einstein A coefficients. In 2), the semiclassical theory is applied to the molecular beam maser. Equilibrium amplitude and frequency of oscillation are obtained for an arbitrary velocity distribution of focused molecules, generalizing the results obtained previously by Gordon, Zeiger, and Townes for a singel-velocity beam, and by Lamb and Helmer for a Maxwellian beam. A somewhat surprising result is obtained; which is that the measurable properties of the maser, such as starting current, effective molecular Q, etc., depend mostly on the slowest 5 to 10 per cent of the molecules. Next we calculate the effect of amplitude and frequency of oscillation, of small systematic perturbations. We obtain a prediction that stability can be improved by adjusting the system so that the molecules emit all their energy h Ω to the field, then reabsorb part of it, before leaving the cavity. In general, the most stable operation is obtained when the molecules are in the process of absorbing energy from the radiation as they leave the cavity, most unstable when they are still emitting energy at that time. Finally, we consider the response of an oscillating maser to randomly time-varying perturbations. Graphs are given showing predicted response to a small superimposed signal of a frequency near the oscillation frequency. The existence of "noise enhancing" and "noise quieting" modes of operation found here is a general property of any oscillating system in which amplitude is limited by nonlinearity.


A total of 228 species of vascular plants from 159 genera and 44 families were found in various types of weed flora of Mirijevo (NE Belgrade). The results represent analysis from floristic, ecological and phytogeographical aspects.  An analysis of life forms in the weed flora of Mirijevo showed that hemicryptophytes were dominant (47.81%), with summer-blooming, mostly tall and scapose hemicryptophytes and biannual and caespitose forms prevailing. Among therophytes, which accounted for 34.21%, a significant increase in the number of spring species and lower categories of growth was observed, which may be interpreted as a result of their annual character, i.e. a need to complete their life cycle (seed-to-seed) within a single vegetation season.  The phytogeographical analysis of the weed flora of Mirijevo revealed the presence of 135 different floristic elements grouped into 7 main area types. The largest group includes 131 species of the Holarctic area type (57.46%), with a domination of European-West Asia...


The highly dense TiC/Fe ceramic coating was fabricated on Q235 steel surface by self- propagating high-temperature synthesis combined with pseudo hot iso-static pressing. The wear-resistant properties were examined by means of ball-on-disk contact wear test. The microstructure of TiC/Fe cermets coating was investigated. The results show that TiC/Fe cermets coating has an excellent wear-resistant property. There is little mass loss after 1200s under 30N loading under the condition of dry sliding wear testing. The major wear mechanisms are described by the following stages: sticking friction, grain abrasion and stripping of hard phase.


Copyright © 2015, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. During the last decade, as the overexploitation and scarcity of the global natural water resources have led to a plethora of negative environmental, social and economic impacts, the preservation of freshwater resources has emerged as a major challenge for governmental authorities, businesses and consumers. To that effect, the concept of water footprint (WF) has been introduced at a national, corporate and product level. Since national WFs are obtained mainly from agricultural production and food manufacturing or processing operations, WF assessment and management are considered to be of utmost importance for the agrifood industry. In this context, several agrifood companies map the WF of their supply chain networks as a part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. In this manuscript, we first review the scientific literature and several real-world corporate sustainability reports and we then provide a critical taxonomy of management policies that mitigate the water WF at each echelon of an agrifood supply chain (AFSC). Following that, a firsteffort System Dynamics (SD) model that effectively captures the dynamics of the WF and water scarcity along the entire supply chains of agrifood products is developed. The obtained simulation results reveal the need for responsible freshwater management across AFSCs in order to reduce the total WF and to further create a green corporate image. The literature taxonomy along with the proposed SD modelling approach is anticipated to provide value-added managerial insights with respect to corporate policy-making interventions towards the sustainable development of the agrifood sector.


Using a large dataset of over 100,000 Chinese firms created between 2000 and 2006, we explore whether there is a link between innovation effort RD or innovation output the share of innovative sales and the firms duration of survival. We estimate a complementary log-log model with time-varying explanatory variables controlling for individual heterogeneity. We find that innovative firms tend to survive longer, more so because of RD than because of introducing new products. There seems to be an inverted-U relationship between RD or innovation output and long-term survival, suggesting that too much RD or product innovation can cause firms to die, perhaps because of excessive risk. Survival has a cyclicalbehaviour, and it varies across provinces. It also varies with ownership. State-owned firms have a higher hazard rate than privately-owned firms, which have a higher hazard rate than foreign-owned firms.


1,3-Butadiene (BD) is an important industrial chemical used in the manufacture of rubber and plastics as well as an environmental pollutant present in automobile exhaust and cigarette smoke. It is classified as a known human carcinogen based on the epidemiological evidence in occupationally exposed workers and its ability to induce tumors in laboratory animals. BD is metabolically activated to several reactive species, including 1,2,3,4-diepoxybutane (DEB), which is hypothesized to be the ultimate carcinogenic species due to its bifunctional electrophilic nature and its ability to form DNA-DNA and DNA-protein cross-links. While 1,4- bis-(guan-7-yl)-2,3,-butanediol ( bis-N7G-BD) is the only type of DEB-specific DNA adduct previously quantified in vivo, four regioisomeric guanine-adenine (G-A) cross-links have been observed in vitro: 1-(guan-7-yl)-4-(aden-1-yl)-2,3-butanediol (N7G-N1A-BD), 1-(guan-7-yl)-4-(aden-3-yl)-2,3-butanediol (N7G-N3A-BD), 1-(guan-7-yl)-4-(aden-7-yl)-2,3-butanediol (N7G-N7A-BD), and 1-(guan-7-yl)-4-(aden-6-yl)-2,3-butanediol (N7G-N (6)A-BD) ( Park ( 2004) Chem. Res. Toxicol. 17, 1638- 1651 ). The goal of the present work was to develop an isotope dilution HPLC-positive mode electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI (+)-MS/MS) method for the quantitative analysis of G-A DEB cross-links in DNA extracted from BD-exposed laboratory animals. In our approach, G-A butanediol conjugates are released from the DNA backbone by thermal or mild acid hydrolysis. Following solid-phase extraction, samples are subjected to capillary HPLC-ESI (+)-MS/MS analysis with (15)N 3, (13)C 1-labeled internal standards. The detection limit of our current method is 0.6-1.5 adducts per 10 (8) normal nucleotides. The new method was validated by spiking G-A cross-link standards (10 fmol each) into control mouse DNA (0.1 mg), followed by sample processing and HPLC-ESI (+)-MS/MS analysis. The accuracy and precision were calculated as 105 +/- 17% for N7G-N3A-BD, 102 +/- 25% for N7G-N7A-BD, and 79 +/- 11% for N7G-N (6)A-BD. The regioisomeric G-A DEB adducts were formed in a concentration-dependent manner in DEB-treated calf thymus DNA, with N7G-N1A-BD found in the highest amounts. Under physiological conditions, N7G-N1A-BD underwent Dimroth rearrangement to N7G-N (6)A-BD ( t 1/2 = 114 h), while hydrolytic deamination of N7G-N1A-BD to the corresponding hypoxanthine lesion was insignificant. We found that for in vivo samples, a greater sensitivity could be achieved if N7G-N1A-BD adducts were converted to the corresponding N7G-N (6)A-BD lesions by forced Dimroth rearrangement. Liver DNA extracted from female B6C3F1 mice that underwent inhalation exposure to 625 ppm BD for 2 weeks contained 3.1 +/- 0.6 N7G-N1A-BD adducts per 10 (8) nucleotides ( n = 5) (quantified as N7G-N (6)A-BD following base-induced Dimroth rearrangement), while the amounts of N7G-N3A-BD and N7G-N7A-BD were below the detection limit of our method. None of the G-A cross-links was present in control animals. The formation of N7G-N1A-BD cross-links may contribute to the induction of AT base pair mutations following exposure to BD. Quantitative methods presented here may be used not only for studies of biological significance in animal models but potentially to predict risk associated with human exposure to BD.


Bioanode sensors utilizing exoelectrogenic bacteria can be used for real-time and in situ assessment of water quality. The main challenges for practical applications of bioanode sensors in water quality assessment include their narrow detection range, long analysis time, and hysteresis effects. To overcome these limitations, a new operation method was proposed and examined in microbial electrolysis cell (MEC)-based bioanode sensors. The new operation method consists of normal operation (0.6 V application), a reset step (1.8 V application for 1 min), and a test step (1.2 V application for 2 min). The inclusion of the reset step in the sensor operation eliminated potential hysteresis effects and thus resulted in accurate correlations between readily biodegradable COD (chemical oxygen demand) and electric current with consistent R2 values of 99% in triplicated sensor experiments. The high voltage application (1.2 V) during the test step not only enhanced sensor accuracy but also extended the detection range up to 130 mg-COD L−1. The combination of a reset step and a test step was proven to allow reliable sensor applications of MECs and other bioelectrochemical systems. Even with the greatly improved sensor accuracy, the correlation between readily biodegradable COD (acetate) and electric current varied substantially in 2 days. The findings indicate that bioanode sensors can be used for rapid organic detection in 3 min with very high accuracies but require frequent sensor calibration.


Hyperemesis gravidarum is defined variably as vomiting being sufficiently severe enough to produce weight loss, dehydration, ketosis, alkalosis from loss of hydrochloric acid and hypokalemia. It is not common for a patient affected with hyperemesis gravidarum to present with idiopathic acute pancreatitis in the same time period. This case pertains to a 22-year-old pregnant woman, admitted to our hospital with complaint of severe and frequent episodes of vomiting and severe epigastric pain at 14 weeks of gestation. After treatment with parenteral fluid and antiemetics, the patient's condition failed to improve. Further investigations confirmed a diagnosis of idiopathic acute pancreatitis. Patient was managed conservatively. Early and rapid diagnosis and supportive treatment play a vital role in the management of such cases.


The exponential growth of the World Wide Web (WWW) users has made the deployment of proxy servers popular on a network with limited resources. WWW clients perceive better response time, improved performance and speed when response to requested pages are served from the cache of a proxy server, resulting in faster response times after the first document fetch. This work focuses on the development of a cyclic multicast proxy server through the use of a cyclic multicast engine for the delivery of popular web pages from the proxy server cache to increasingly large users under limited server capacity and network resources. The cyclic multicast technique would be more efficient for the delivery of highly requested web pages from the cache to large numbers of receivers. We describe the operation of the cyclic multicast proxy server and characterized the gains in performance through simulation of the cyclic multicast proxy server.


Several programming languages and frameworks offer actor-based concurrency inspired by Erlang. Among them, Akka has been adopted in numerous applications and frameworks running on the Java Virtual Machine. Unfortunately, despite the spread of Akka-based applications, there are few dedicated profilers. In this paper, we aim at filling this gap by presenting a novel profiling tool for Akka applications. In contrast to existing profilers for Akka, our tool focuses particularly on actor utilization and on the communication between them. We evaluate our tool on various applications and frameworks in both parallel and distributed settings, such as Signal/Collect, Apache Spark and Apache Flink. Our results show that our profiler helps understanding actor utilization, investigating load balancing in computing frameworks, and analyzing communication performance in the message exchange process.


Main objective of the study is to evaluate the heavy metal content in the river bed and estuarine sediment in Kadiyapattanam Estuary, which is located in the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, south west coast of India. For this study, five various sampling stations were selected along Valliyar River leading to Kadiyapattanam Estuary. Sediment samples from river bed and estuary were collected throughout the year continuously from June 2015 to May 2016 covering the monsoon (June-September), post-monsoon (October-January), and pre-monsoon (February-May) seasons. In the present study heavy metal such as zinc, copper, iron, manganese, lead, cadmium, and Mercury were estimated using standard procedures. The results obtained show that the order of heavy metal content of sediment in the study area was Fe > Mn > Zn> Cu > Pb> Cd>Hg. Mercury was found absent in the samples in the study area throughout the year. Concentration of Iron was found higher compared to other metals. The results of the study shows sediment of Kadiyapattanam estuary was contaminated with toxic heavy metals, land runoff from agricultural field and anthropogenic activities.


Ionizing radiation has long been known to induce heritable mutagenic change in DNA sequence. However, the genome-wide effect of radiation is not well understood. Here we report the molecular properties and frequency of mutations in phenotypically selected mutant lines isolated following exposure of the genetic model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana to fast neutrons (FNs). Previous studies suggested that FNs predominantly induce deletions longer than a kilobase in A. thaliana. However, we found a higher frequency of single base substitution than deletion mutations. While the overall frequency and molecular spectrum of fast-neutron (FN)–induced single base substitutions differed substantially from those of "background" mutations arising spontaneously in laboratory-grown plants, G:C>A:T transitions were favored in both. We found that FN-induced G:C>A:T transitions were concentrated at pyrimidine dinucleotide sites, suggesting that FNs promote the formation of mutational covalent linkages between adjacent pyrimidine residues. In addition, we found that FNs induced more single base than large deletions, and that these single base deletions were possibly caused by replication slippage. Our observations provide an initial picture of the genome-wide molecular profile of mutations induced in A. thaliana by FN irradiation and are particularly informative of the nature and extent of genome-wide mutation in lines selected on the basis of mutant phenotypes from FN-mutagenized A. thaliana populations.


OBJECTIVE
To measure the intensity of hematoxylin staining for the analysis of chromatin distribution and to define a clear set of standards.

STUDY DESIGN
Cervical smears obtained from 12 patients with glandular lesions, 5 with squamous lesions and 3 without cervical lesions were used for NIH image analysis (public domain NIH image program developed at the U.S. National Institute of Health, available through the Internet by anonymous ftp from zippy.nimh.nih.gov or on floppy disk from the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia). In addition, the same cervical smears were restained with propidium iodide, and the DNA content in the nuclei was compared with that with hematoxylin staining.

RESULTS
Chromatin distribution was categorized into 3 patterns. Pattern A was that for which the highest staining density was localized in the periphery of the nucleus, while in pattern C it was localized in the center of the nucleus. Pattern B was the intermediate type between patterns A and C. In patients with adenocarcinoma, pattern B was predominant; pattern C was also relatively frequent in this group. In atypical glandular cells observed in patients with squamous lesions, patterns A and B were predominant and pattern C rarely seen. Analysis of DNA content in the nucleus revealed that nuclei showing pattern B contained significantly higher quantities of DNA than those showing pattern A.

CONCLUSION
Nuclear chromatin distribution seems to correlate well with DNA content, and analysis of the chromatin distribution pattern is helpful for the diagnosis of cervical glandular neoplasia.


The formation of mesoscopic titania is done by templated mechanism in which the films are prepared by co-assembly of titania precursor species and complexing agent acetyl acetone (acac) and an amphiphilic structure-directing agent, Pluronic F127 (a triblock copolymer). Thinner films of titania having well organized mesoscopic structure were prepared by doctorblading method. These films were characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, etc. UV-Vis absorption studies showed good dye intake in very thin mesoscopic titania layers. Prototype photovoltaic device fabricated utilizing the mesoscopic titania films showed reasonable power conversion efficiency and fill factor (FF). The device with mesoscopic TiO2 layer with thickness as low as 300 nm gave solar cell efficiency 0.31% and FF of 50.2%. This proves the utility of very thin layer of mesoscopic titania fabricated by doctor-blading technique. Such a thin layer may be useful in perovskite solar cells as well. Application of versatile dye molecules, polymers with suitable anchoring functionality could lead to desired high-performance photovoltaic devices. Copyright © 2018 VBRI Press.


Previously, a virtual Grid-based dynamic routes adjustment scheme (Grid Routing) for mobile sink-based wireless sensor networks using NS-2 was introduced. The virtual grid routing design and implementation using Matlab is a basic concern of this paper. The same energy model is used in this paper as used in [12]. Distance and energy of the network communication used in grid routing approach are calculated in matlab.


The object of this study was to analyze the role of public policies in the development of technological capacities in firms of the wind energy sector and the impacts of this development in social and environmental performances of these firms. The investigation was organized through semi-structured interviews with ten professionals of political policies in different Brazilian states and seven professionals of wind energy corporations in Brazil. The main implications in the field of public policies reveal they were fundamental for the sectors development, but were inefficient regarding the transfer of technology to Brazil, training and qualification of the workforce, development of the infrastructure to the wind energy sector, and the development of technological capacities of the firms.


The development of craniofacial distraction techniques represents a significant advancement in the management of craniofacial dysplasias. For distraction of the midface after Le Fort III osteotomy, two levels of anchorage to the moving segments are necessary. In this report, the authors connected the distraction forces directly to the infraorbital rims, using a surgical wire for superior anchorage. They performed this technique in four patients with craniofacial dysplasia for the management of severe maxillary hypoplasia using RED II system. This configuration not only simplified the placement of the system but also made the removal of the device much easier. The authors did not have any problems with the wire traction unit, such as wire breakdown or bony tunnel disruption. It is a cheap, simple, and effective configuration that can be easily performed without any complication.


Abstract : There has been a growing interest in the colloidal processing of nanocomposites because of the advantages or using nanometer-sized particles.1-3 For example, it is possible to mix different components on a nanometer scale and achieve improved electronic and structural properties for multifunctional applications. 3 -5 Another advantage is that the materials can be processed to full density at much lower temperatures than by conventional methods. Previous literature has discussed some of the advantages and difficulties in colloidal processing with nanometer-sized particles compared to the processing of micrometer and submicrometer-sized particles.1 .2 The most significant difficulty is that nanometer-sized particles in general result in the formation of low-density gels which display large shrinkages during solvent extraction and, therefore, cracking during drying or sintering.6,7 In this paper, we discuss this problem from a more fundamental point of view and summarize our recent work in this area. We then extend our discussion to binary systems, which have not been understood as well. The study and understanding of multicomponent systems is essential for processing composite materials with two or more components. Through such an understanding, high-packing density can be realized, and also the distribution of species can be controlled so that regularity in the structure and the scale of homogeneity in composition can be predicted.


Considering the impact of customers' demand uncertainty, a problem of optimal supply chain network design for group enterprise was studied in this paper. Putting every component of the supply chain such as suppliers, plants, warehouses, distribution centers and customers into an identical decision system, we presented an integrated optimal design model of multi-products, multi-echelon supply chain network with objective of minimizing operation cost on the condition of maximizing customers' satisfaction. According to characteristics of the supply chain network, materials transference between different nodes and stochastic chance constraints, a genetic algorithm based on real number genome matrix encoding with stochastic sampling constraints verifying is proposed. Numeric example is performed and the results illustrate that proposed model and algorithm are feasible and effective.


We apply the quantum optimal control theory based on the Krotov method to implement single-qubit $X$ and $Z$ gates and two-qubit CNOT gates for inductively coupled superconducting flux qubits with fixed qubit transition frequencies and fixed off-diagonal qubit-qubit coupling. Our scheme that shares the same advantage of other directly coupling schemes requires no additional coupler subcircuit and control lines. The control lines needed are only for the manipulation of individual qubits (e.g., a time-dependent magnetic flux or field applied on each qubit). The qubits are operated at the optimal coherence points and the gate operation times (single-qubit gates $< 1$ ns; CNOT gates $\sim 2$ ns) are much shorter than the corresponding qubit decoherence time. A CNOT gate or other general quantum gates can be implemented in a single run of pulse sequence rather than being decomposed into several single-qubit and some entangled two-qubit operations in series by composite pulse sequences. Quantum gates constructed via our scheme are all with very high fidelity (very low error) as our optimal control scheme takes into account the fixed qubit detuning and fixed two-qubit interaction as well as all other time-dependent magnetic-field-induced single-qubit interactions and two-qubit couplings. The effect of leakage to higher energy-level states and the effect of qubit decoherence on the quantum gate operations are also discussed.


OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori and the associated upper gastrointestinal findings in diabetic outpatients with dyspepsia. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study in which diabetes mellitus outpatients aged 18 years and above were screened for dyspepsia. Demographic information (age, sex, residential area and employment status), and clinical information (type and duration of diabetes, weight, height, blood pressure, mode of glycemic control) was obtained from those who had dyspepsia and consented to an upper GIT endoscopy. HbAlc was determined and upper GIT endoscopy was performed. H. pylori was detected by the urease test and Cold ZN-stain while HE-stain was used for histological evaluation of the gastric biopsy specimens. RESULTS Of the 257 diabetics screened, 137 (53.3%) had dyspepsia. 71 of the dyspeptic diabetics underwent an upper GIT endoscopy, out of whom, 55 (77.5%) had H. pylori infection. The prevalence of H. pylori increased with HbAlc level but there was no statistically significant association with poor glycemic control (HbAlc >7.0%). Of the 71 patients, 48 (67.6%) had gastritis, 17 (25.7%) had duodenitis, 8 (11.3%) had oesophageal candidiasis, 7 (9.9%) had bile reflux and 6 (8.5%) had reflux oesophagitis. Six (8.4%) had ulcers (5 duonenal, 1 gastric) and 1 (1.4%) had gastric cancer. Endoscopically normal mucosa was found in 14 (19%) patients. The prevalence of H. pylori was 82.3% (32/38) and 82.4% (14/17) in patients with antral gastritis and duodenitis respectively. All ulcers and the cancer lesion (adenocarcinoma) were associated with H. pylori. Histological gastritis was found in 57 (81.8%) and was significantly associated with H. pylori. CONCLUSION Dyspeptic diabetics have upper GIT endoscopic findings and H. pylori prevalence which are comparable to those of non-diabetic dyspeptic historical controls.


Rigorous curricular review of post-graduate veterinary medical residency programs is in the best interest of program directors in light of the requirements and needs of specialty colleges, graduate school administrations, and other stakeholders including prospective students and employers. Although minimum standards for training are typically provided by specialty colleges, mechanisms for evaluation are left to the discretion of program directors. The paucity of information available describing best practices for curricular assessment of veterinary medical specialty training programs makes resources from other medical fields essential to informing the assessment process. Here we describe the development of a rubric used to evaluate courses in a 3-year American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM)-recognized residency training program culminating in a Master of Science degree. This rubric, based on examples from medical education and other fields of graduate study, provided transparent criteria for evaluation that were consistent with stakeholder needs and institutional initiatives. However, its use caused delays in the curricular review process as two significant obstacles to refinement were brought to light: variation in formal education in curriculum design and significant differences in teaching philosophies among faculty. The evaluation process was able to move forward after institutional resources were used to provide faculty development in curriculum design. The use of a customized rubric is recommended as a best practice for curricular refinement for residency programs because it results in transparency of the review process and can reveal obstacles to change that would otherwise remain unaddressed.


India celebrates itself as a nation of unity in diversity, but where does that sense of unity come from? One important source is a widely-accepted narrative called the bhakti movement. Bhakti is the religion of the heart, of song, of common participation, of inner peace, of anguished protest. The idea known as the bhakti movement asserts that between 600 and 1600 CE, poet-saints sang bhakti from India s southernmost tip to its northern Himalayan heights, laying the religious bedrock upon which the modern state of India would be built.Challenging this canonical narrative, John Stratton Hawley clarifies the historical and political contingencies that gave birth to the concept of the bhakti movement. Starting with the Mughals and their Kachvaha allies, North Indian groups looked to the Hindu South as a resource that would give religious and linguistic depth to their own collective history. Only in the early twentieth century did the idea of a bhakti movement crystallize in the intellectual circle surrounding Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal. Interactions between Hindus and Muslims, between the sexes, between proud regional cultures, and between upper castes and Dalits are crucially embedded in the narrative, making it a powerful political resource."A Storm of Songs" ponders the destiny of the idea of the bhakti movement in a globalizing India. If bhakti is the beating heart of India, this is the story of how it was implanted there and whether it can survive."


Acoustic current meter data collected in the shallow ( 3m depth) Trinity Bay, (TB a
sub-bay in Galveston Bay), TX, estuary were used to characterize locally generated windwaves.
Significant wave heights, periods, and directions were estimated from dynamic
pressure time-series (P; near bottom) and horizontal current velocities (U, V). Surface wave
spectra were calculated from the pressure time-series and fitted to the empirical shallowwater
Texel, Marsen, and Arsloe wave spectrum. The mean shape parameters used to define
the TB wave spectra were:alpha = 0:016, gamma = 4:26, sigma-a = 0:063, sigma-b = 0:089. Waves heights
were also hindcast using empirical and numerical models. The empirical formulas were
derived from fetch-limited shallow water observations and follow the current proposed
asymptotic limit to wave growth in shallow depth. The depth range for this empirical
formulation is extended from 0.5?2m out to 3.5m. The model does not work for wind
speeds less than 1m/s and during rapid wind direction changes.
The Shallow WAves Nearshore numerical model was implemented in a Galveston Bay
(GB; encompassing TB) computational domain. The model was forced with wind speeds
and directions measured on-site and in four surrounding locations maintained by the NOAA
PORTS. Currents measured on-site in TB and calculated bottom frictions were input homogeneously
in space. The model was run in steady and unsteady conditions, and the
modeled wave spectra were compared to the observations. The modeled wave spectra do
not recreate the observed spectral shape for the steady and unsteady conditions. However,
the total wave energy is represented in the unsteady conditions. In both the steady and unsteady cases, the wave period is underpredicted by one-half times the observed spectra
and the model direction agrees with the observed wave directions.


A case study is conducted to evaluate the photovoltaic (PV) performance in a horizontal and in an inclined PV solar thermal collector (PVT) for two different PVT geometries; the series flow and the parallel series flow. It is shown that the series flow gives a better photovoltaic performance at a horizontal PVT surface as compared to the parallel series flow. At mass flow rate of 0.03 kg/s and zero inclination angle (horizontal PVT surface), the PV efficiencies are 14.32 % and 14.25 % for series and parallel series flow, respectively. But for an inclined PVT surface, the parallel series performs better than that of the series flow. At mass flow rate of 0.03 kg/s and inclination angle of 45 °C, the PV efficiencies are 13.76 % and 13.87 % for series and parallel series flow, respectively. It can be concluded that the inclination angle is one of the essential parameters that can be used to evaluate any PVT design and make better comparison between different designs. It is also beneficial for researchers and PVT product designers to know the effectiveness of their collector designs for cooling the PV panel at the early product design stage and to base on the optimum inclination angle of the region.


Abstract. Precise point cloud classification can enhance lidar performance in various applications, such as land cover mapping, forestry management and autonomous driving. The development of multispectral lidar improves classification performance with rich spectral information. However, the employment of spectral information for classification is still underdeveloped. Therefore, we proposed a spectrally improved classification method for multispectral LiDAR. We conducted spectral improvement in two aspects: (1) we improved the eigenentropy-based neighbourhood selection by spectral angle match (SAM) to reform the more reliable neighbour; (2) we utilized both geometric and spectral features and compare the contributions of these features. A three-wavelength multispectral lidar and a complex indoor experimental scene were used for demonstration. The results indicate the effectiveness of our proposed spectrally improved method and the promising potential of spectral information on lidar classification.


A study of the marketing strategies of the clothing enterprise, American Apparel, how it targets affluent, educated youth through socially conscious tactics, including a focus on pro-immigrant rights and Los Angeles-made, "sweatshop-free" advertising. The essay analyzes the ideologies and stances behind marketing materials that often contain images of Latinas/os as laborers, and white (European origin) population as consumers, and examines how U.S.-based ethical capitalism operates as a neoliberal form of social regulation to champion personal responsibility and individual freedom, in often hidden and inferentially racist and classist ways.


Abstract The interface instability of the coextrusion flow of a polyethylene and a polystyrene is experimentally studied with industrial and laboratory equipments for various flow rates and temperature. Stable and unstable coextrusion conditions are identified as a function of flow rate ratio, shear rate and temperature. It is found that temperature and flow rate ratio are the most relevant parameters. Experimental results are then compared with stability analysis assuming White-Metzner constitutive equations. Agreement is fair at temperatures of 180°C and 200°C. However the longwave stability analysis is not sufficient to predict all experimental data.


Nearly 100 proteins are proposed to be substrates for GSK3, suggesting that this enzyme is a fundamental regulator of almost every process in the cell, in every tissue in the body. However, it is not certain how many of these proposed substrates are regulated by GSK3 in vivo. Clearly, the identification of the physiological functions of GSK3 will be greatly aided by the identification of its bona fide substrates, and the development of GSK3 as a therapeutic target will be highly influenced by this range of actions, hence the need to accurately establish true GSK3 substrates in cells. In this paper the evidence that proposed GSK3 substrates are likely to be physiological targets is assessed, highlighting the key cellular processes that could be modulated by GSK3 activity and inhibition.


Existing deep learning based HDRTV reconstruction methods assume one kind of tone mapping operators (TMOs) as the degradation procedure to synthesize SDRTV-HDRTV pairs for supervised training. In this paper, we argue that, although traditional TMOs exploit efficient dynamic range compression priors, they have several drawbacks on modeling the realistic degradation: information over-preservation, color bias and possible artifacts, making the trained reconstruction networks hard to generalize well to real-world cases. To solve this problem, we propose a learning-based data synthesis approach to learn the properties of real-world SDRTVs by integrating several tone mapping priors into both network structures and loss functions. In specific, we design a conditioned two-stream network with prior tone mapping results as a guidance to synthesize SDRTVs by both global and local transformations. To train the data synthesis network, we form a novel self-supervised content loss to constraint different aspects of the synthesized SDRTVs at regions with different brightness distributions and an adversarial loss to emphasize the details to be more realistic. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we synthesize SDRTV-HDRTV pairs with our method and use them to train several HDRTV reconstruction networks. Then we collect two inference datasets containing both labeled and unlabeled real-world SDRTVs, respectively. Experimental results demonstrate that, the networks trained with our synthesized data generalize significantly better to these two real-world datasets than existing solutions.


The subtype H6N6 has been identified worldwide following the increasing frequency of avian influenza viruses (AIVs). These AIVs also have the ability to bind to human-like receptors, thereby increasing the risk of animal-human transmission. In September 2019, an H6N6 avian influenza virus—KNU2019-48 (A/Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)/South Korea/KNU 2019-48/2019(H6N6))—was isolated from Anas platyrhynchos in South Korea. Phylogenetic analysis results revealed that the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of this strain belongs to the Korean lineage, whereas the neuraminidase (NA) and polymerase basic protein 1 (PB1) genes belong to the Chinese lineage. Outstanding internal proteins such as PB2, polymerase acidic protein, nucleoprotein, matrix protein, and non-structural protein belong to the Vietnamese lineage. Additionally, a monobasic amino acid (PRIETR↓GLF) at the HA cleavage site; non-deletion of the stalk region (residue 59–69) in the NA gene; and E627 in the PB2 gene indicate that the KNU2019-48 isolate is a typical low-pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) virus. The nucleotide sequence similarity analysis of HA revealed that the highest homology (97.18%) of this isolate is to that of A/duck/Jiangxi/01.14 NCJD125-P/2015(H6N6), and the amino acid sequence of NA (97.38%) is closely related to that of A/duck/Fujian/10.11_FZHX1045-C/2016 (H6N6). An in vitro analysis of the KNU2019-48 virus shows a virus titer of not more than 2.8 Log10 TCID 50/mL until 72 h post-infection, whereas in the lungs, the virus is detected at 3 dpi (days post-infection). The isolated KNU2019-48 (H6N6) strain is the first reported AIV in Korea, and the H6 subtype virus has co-circulated in China, Vietnam, and Korea for half a decade. Overall, our study demonstrates that Korean H6N6 strain PB1-S375N, PA-A404S, and S409N mutations are infectious in humans and might contribute to the enhanced pathogenicity of this strain. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of continuous and intensive surveillance of the H6N6 virus not only in Korea but also worldwide.


Introduction Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is an inflammatory autoimmune condition associated with endothelial dysfunction, elevating the risk of cardiovascular disease 50-fold in young women. The QRISK2 algorithm is used currently to predict the 10 year cardiovascular risk in the UK population; however, an updated QRISK3 model was recently released, which considers inflammatory variables such as SLE and steroid prescription. This study aims to elucidate whether QRISK3 is more representative of endothelial dysfunction and cardiovascular risk in SLE patients and if novel biomarkers of SLE disease activity, including endothelial microvesicles (EMVs), correlate with increased risk. Methods QRISK scores of SLE patients (n=109) and controls (n=29) were determined using clinical data. Potential markers of SLE-specific endothelial dysfunction were quantified in a smaller patient cohort (n=60) using flow cytometry and ELISA techniques and included; CD144 +EMVs, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and triglycerides. Results QRISK3 scores were significantly elevated in SLE patients (average 5.1%) compared to controls (0.3%; p<0.001), newly identifying 19% of patients as _x0018_high risk' (QRISK3 vs QRISK2: 30 vs 9; p<0.001). _x0018_Missed' high risk patients had increased likelihood of lupus nephritis, corticosteroid prescription and positive anti-cardiolipin antibody test compared to low risk patients. Levels of EMVS, hsCRP and triglycerides were significantly elevated in the missed group (p<0.05) whereas rates of antiplatelet (38.1%) and statin (23.8%) prescription were low. Abstract 143 Figure 1 Abstract 143 Figure 2 Conclusion QRISK3 identifies significantly more SLE patients at high cardiovascular risk than QRISK2, and is associated with standard and novel markers of SLE-specific inflammation and endothelial dysfunction. The use of QRISK3 as a predictor of cardiovascular risk will support improved management of vascular health and assist in prevention of premature mortality in SLE patients.


In this work, the multi-step differential transformation method (MSDTM) is applied to approximate a solution of the hyperchaotic Rossler system. MSDTM is adapted from the differential transformation method (DTM). In this method, DTM is implemented in each subinterval. Results are compared with a fourth-order Runge Kutta method and a standard DTM. The results show that the MSDTM is an efficient and powerful technique for solving hyperchaotic Rossler systems and this method is more accurate than DTM.


This article aims to analyse the origins and development of the comics industry in Argentina from a comparative and transnational perspective, positing its business model, professionalisation of artistic and editorial work and adoption of certain styles as part of a triangle in which Argentine comics are in constant dialogue with European (mainly Spanish, French and English) and US comics traditions. The article places a special emphasis on the latter. As part of the overall process of cultural modernisation, the early twentieth century encompasses a period in which the production of comics grew, was established and modified its creative patterns in all the countries involved in the study. Comics in Argentina consistently moved between innovation and imitation, with some original narrative and formal solutions that were sparked by a process of adaptation and mistranslation.


The focus of this article is on analyzing the impact of the number of hops and the number of transmit and receive antennas, at the relay nodes, on the performance of multihop networks. The vision of future wireless networks includes a greater role for ubiquitous ad hoc networks based on multihop transmissions between machines and general mobile devices carried around by users. With this in mind, the standards are set to include greater capabilities and specifications regarding ad hoc mesh networks, especially ones that employ multiple antennas for transmissions. Therefore, there is a need for an in-depth analysis of the performance of such networks. In this analysis, we consider equidistant distributed relays between the source and destination. The statistics of the channels of all hops and the noise powers at all terminals are assumed to be the same. The capacity for the amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying schemes over the single-input single-output (SISO) channel is compared. Moreover, we derive a closed-form solution of the ergodic capacity in the presence of Rayleigh fading for multihop wireless transmissions when the DF-relaying scheme and SISO links between the relay nodes are employed. The quality of service (QoS) of the single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) [Alamouti space-time block code (STBC)-based scheme] multihop networks are studied, and their performance is compared analytically with each other.


Rossby waves are the slow atmospheric waves that propagate thousands of kilometres on the time scale of days and are associated with weather. The small amplitude linear theory of Rossby waves on the sphere goes back over two centuries to Laplace's tidal equations and is today considered thoroughly understood. However, with a more realistic background flow that includes both the tropical trade winds and the midlatitude jetstream, the global wave theory has not been fully established. To study this problem, this thesis uses the rotating shallow water (RSW) equations on the sphere as a model for Earth's atmosphere. The spectrum of the RSW equations is numerically computed using a Galerkin method. It is found that the Rossby spectrum of this global model consists of two parts that naturally correspond respectively to local tropical and midlatitude theories. The first part of the spectrum is the countably infinite set of discrete eigenmodes with arbitrarily small wavelength near the equator, consistent with the local tropical β-plane theory. These discrete modes however achieve only a finite limiting wavelength in the midlatitudes. To account for smaller scales in the midlatitudes, it is necessary to consider the continuous spectrum that results from regular singular points in the RSW operator arising from shear in the background flow. The regular singular points correspond to critical latitudes, which prevent wave propagation from the midlatitudes into the tropics. The numerical results are complemented by small wavelength asymptotics of ray theory and Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) analysis to gain an understanding of the local wavelength, amplitude and group velocity for Rossby waves. The global understanding of Rossby waves presented in this thesis is used to provide some explanation of the small number of Rossby modes found in long-term climatological observations of the atmosphere.


Due to the ever-increasing amount of online information, manual processing of data is impractical. Social media such as Twitter play an important role in storing such information and helping people share their ideas. Extracting the attitude and opinion of people from user entered data is worthwhile for companies. Sentiment analysis attempts to extract the embedded polarity from a segment of text (or other data types) with many commercial and con-commercial applications. Companies are interested in opinions of their customers. On the other hand, customers are interested in opinions of other customers. Politicians and policy makers are also interested in public's feedback on political events. The above mentioned opinions can be (semi)automatically extracted from social media such as Twitter or Facebook by the help of sentiment analysis techniques. Sentiment analysis is a language (e.g. English) dependent task that relies on natural language processing techniques. The richest language in terms of resources and research in sentiment analysis is English, while many other languages such as Turkish su er from a lack of resources and techniques for sentiment analysis. In this thesis, we try to ll this gap by designing and implementing a framework for sentiment analysis in Turkish. This framework can also be adapted to other languages with some minor changes. In the scope of the framework, we have built a few Turkish polarity lexicons for the rst time in the literature. We also comprehensively investigated the problem of sentiment analysis in Turkish and suggested some solutions. Experimental evaluation shows the e ectiveness of the proposed resources and techniques for Turkish.


Student's math achievement was not good. It was huge loss from the perspective of the math's importance and its great influence in human life, most of students considered that math is a difficult lesson. It was proven by the low math score rate in school compared with another lesson. The low math result caused by improper teaching method, lack of student's interest, low formal reasoning. If the students' formal reasoning high, the math study achievement would be
high, and the opposite, if the formal reasoning was low, so that the students' achievement.
So, in applying a learning model to the students, the teacher would pay attention to the material taught to the students and also the formal reasoning owed by the students. The serial problem caused the teaching and learning was not as it hoped, that the students could increase their formal reasoning. According to the fact, the writer considered it was important to implement learning method by using problem solving in math learning to increase students' formal reasoning, since the ability in formal reasoning was needed in daily life, especially to conclude a problem. The research aimed to describe model implementation by problem solving in math learning in order
to increase formal reasoning in cube and beam to students of 8th-A Grade SMP Muhammadiyah Dau Malang study year 2008/2009 The subjects were students of 8th-A Grade SMP Muhammadiyah Dau Malang study year 2008/2009, consisted of 38 students. The research used qualitative with action research.
Participant was done by cycle work procedure, all cycle consisted of four phases, planning, application, observation, and reflection. According to the data needed in the research, data collection technique used were: (1) test, to find out the formal reasoning level of the students in the end of cycles; (2) interview, it was done to the students of 8th-A Grade SMP Muhammadiyah Dau Malang study year 2008/2009 used to find material explanation to cube and beam material and the difficulty of students in problem solving which influenced the students' formal reasoning ability; (3) observation, that was to find out the students and teacher activity in learning problem
solving, data found in this research were qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data analyzed in three phased, they were: data reduction, data served and data verification. While quantitative data analyzed by descriptive quantitative in percentage. To check data validation, there used three techniques, they were: (1) observation persistence, that was done by came to the
location in continuous in data collection period; (2) source triangulation with: (a) comparing observation with interview; (b) comparing cycle test with interview; and (c) comparing cycle test with observation; and (3) doing peer discussion, by exposing temporary result with latest result
in discussion with peers.
According to the research done, there found: (1) students' formal reasoning before the learning was still "low", that was 46,34; (2) students' formal reasoning in cycle I still "average, that was 69,92, but in cycle II, there was increasing with mean value 81,28 that considered "high"; (3) students study fulfillment in cycle I reached 68,42% with fulfilled students 26 people and unfulfilled were 12 people, while in cycle II there was 23,68% increasing, that reached 92,10% with un-fulfilled students 35 people and unfulfilled were 3 students; (4) students' activity in
cycle I reached 70% in "good" criteria and in cycle II there was 1% increasing, that was 72% included "good" criteria and more progress in cycle II to reach 73% included into "good" criteria, it was showed by the fulfillment of all problem solving indicators.
From above conclusion there could be concluded that learning model with problem solving in math learning is an innovation in repairing learning process quality aimed to help students in increasing their formal reasoning. In this research, learning model implementation with problem
solving could increase the reasoning formal of students 8th-A Grade SMP Muhammadiyah Dau Malang study year 2008/2009.


Using a novel enterprise survey from Kenya (FinAccess Business), we document a strong positive association between the use of mobile money as a method to pay suppliers and access to trade credit. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, imperfect credit markets and the risk of theft to account for this empirical pattern. Mobile money dominates fiat money as a medium of exchange in its capacity to avoid theft, but comes with higher transaction costs. The interaction between risk of theft and limited access to trade credit generates demand for mobile money as a payment method with suppliers and the use of mobile money in turn raises the value of a credit relationship and hence the willingness to apply for trade credit. Calibrating the stationary equilibrium to match a set of moments that we observe in Kenyan FinAcces enterprise survey data and quantifying the importance of the endogenous interactions between mobile money and trade credit on entrepreneurial performance and macroeconomic development, we find that the availability of the mobile money technology increases GDP by 0.33-0.47%.


Many Ponto-Caspian invertebrate species have been introduced to new areas in Europe, Baltic Sea and North America. In Turkey, the Ponto-Caspian fauna has spread in the inland waters, following different patterns and in different geological periods. Lake Sapanca is located on a tectonic hole in the Marmara region in the north-western part of Turkey. Except for a few studies, there has been no detailed information about the non-indigenous and Ponto-Caspian species in the lake. In the present study (from June 2011 to December 2013), the benthic macroinvertebrate fauna of Lake Sapanca was determined. The following Gastropoda species, which originate from the Ponto-Caspian area, were detected: Lithoglyphus naticoides, Esperiana esperi, and Borysthenia naticina. The presence of these species in different parts of Turkey suggests that the main routes of migration might be the rivers flowing into the Black Sea. Some notes on the Ponto-Caspian and invasive Clitellata species in the lake were made.


Autoimmune disease is 4 times more common in women than men. This bias is largely unexplained. Female skin is "autoimmunity prone," showing upregulation of many proinflammatory genes, even in healthy women. We previously identified VGLL3 as a putative transcription cofactor enriched in female skin. Here, we demonstrate that skin-directed overexpression of murine VGLL3 causes a severe lupus-like rash and systemic autoimmune disease that involves B cell expansion, autoantibody production, immune complex deposition, and end-organ damage. Excess epidermal VGLL3 drives a proinflammatory gene expression program that overlaps with both female skin and cutaneous lupus. This includes increased B cell-activating factor (BAFF), the only current biologic target in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); IFN-κ, a key inflammatory mediator in cutaneous lupus; and CXCL13, a biomarker of early-onset SLE and renal involvement. Our results demonstrate that skin-targeted overexpression of the female-biased factor VGLL3 is sufficient to drive cutaneous and systemic autoimmune disease that is strikingly similar to SLE. This work strongly implicates VGLL3 as a pivotal orchestrator of sex-biased autoimmunity.


Background. Court-mandated drug treatment has become more common in the United States over the last decades. However its effectiveness has not been investigated nationally in terms of gender and pregnancy status.

Methods. We used the 2006 Treatment Episode Data Set. The primary outcome was treatment completion including transfers to further care. The primary exposure was criminal justice referrals. Demographic and treatment characteristics were compared with chi-squared and t-tests. Confounding was assessed via a backwards elimination method using change-in-estimate criteria. Logistic regression models were stratified by gender and pregnancy. Results are reported as Odds Ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Results. Of the 1.5 million treatment admissions, 38% of men, 29% of women, and 35% of pregnant women entered treatment from the criminal justice system. Overall pregnant women were younger, with lower educational achievement and employment, less likely to use alcohol, and more likely to use methamphetamines. Pregnant women were less likely to complete treatment (55%) than non-pregnant women (57%) or men (61%). After controlling for confounders, the subset of pregnant women (OR 1.37 [1.29, 1.46]) and non-pregnant women (1.25 [1.23, 1.26]) who entered treatment via the criminal justice system had a higher odds of treatment completion than men (0.95 [95% CI: 0.94, 0.96]).

Conclusion. Criminal justice referral appears to be an important effect measure modifier in drug treatment completion. The reasons why pregnant women especially do better in this context needs to be further explored.


A perspective on zeolite synthesis: how do you know what you'll get? influence of physicochemical and structural properties of aluminosilicate gel precursors on the kinetics of crystallization zeolites A and X homogeneous versus heterogeneous zeolite nucleation: a SAXS-WAXS study synthesis and characterization of UTD-1: a novel neolite molecular sieve the synthesis of omega zeolite from a TMA-free system which uses p-dioxane as a co-solvent the structure directing effect of fluoride in the AL2O3-P2O5-HF-TEAOH-H2O system the deposition of zeolites from gas phase stable suspensions of colloidal silicalite-1 crystals free from organic materials factors affecting the MTW zeolite crystallization process semi-batch synthesis of sillicalite-1 alkaline aqueous solutions by monitored addition of an acid or an alcohol flux growth of millimetre-sized single crystal aluminate sodalite synthesis of aluminophosphates in the presence of metal-chelate complexes synthesis of octahedral molecular sieves and layered materials preparation of two cobalt-substituted zincophosphate molecular sieves synthesis of VPI-8: the first large pore zincosilicate template directed synthesis of the high-silica microsporous materials RUB-3, RUB-10 and RUB-13 synthesis and characterization of several gallium-containing molecular sieves with the offretite structure synthesis and characterization of Ga-substituted zeolite ZSM-20 ferrierite: as synthesized and dealuminated with a Si/AI ration from 10 to infinity kilogram scale production of EMT zeolite: optimization of the synthesis conditions the kinetics of solid-state ion exchange between CuCI and sodium forms of zeoliotes heteropolytungstates with cavities: the influence of the template on the structure the synthesis and reactivity of zeolite NaX encapsulated ruthenium perfluorophthalocyanines self assembly silica-surfactant liquid crystals during mesophase materials synthesis a simple geometric modelling of the porosity of MCM-41 type materials. (Part contents).


Previous investigations indicate that noise may be a serious health problem in preparatory schools. The high sound pressure levels originate mainly from the children's own activities indoors. Little is known of how preschool children (1-6 years) are affected. To gain a deeper understanding of how preschool-aged children recognize, communicate, perceive and are affected by the soundscape at their preparatory school. This, in order to develop a questionnaire assessing possible adverse effects on children. 36 children (4-6 years old) were interviewed in 18 focus-groups. The interviews were analysed with grounded theory. The children described their experience of sounds related to which consequences the sound had for themselves, the type of sound, their understanding of its source and the communicability of the "sound". Children described physical symptoms, i.e. pain in ears, stomach, head and also feeling sick. Sounds described as "screaming, crying and angering noise" was experienced as disturbing and threatening. They handled this by avoiding strategies, e.g. withdrawal and "holding their ears". Squeaking, creaking and scratching noise was described as unexpected and as a physical experience. Background sounds were often non-reflected, unknown sounds, not easy to communicate. Based on the findings a questionnaire was developed.


Screenings for genetic modifiers, such as suppressors or enhancers, in model organisms have identified and characterized important signaling pathways. Likewise, a phenotype induced by a chemical compound can be suppressed or enhanced by another compound. Here, I introduce chemical modifier screenings as phenotype-based assays that expand therapeutic targets to unexpected molecules and that facilitate identification of target signaling pathways. Also, chemical modifier screening can be applied to predicting possible drug-drug interactions that cause adverse effects.


The aim of this study was to explore the childhood experience of living with a parent with depression from a retrospective point of view. Five women between 39 and 47 years of age, who grew up with a mother with depression, were interviewed about their current perspectives on their childhood experiences. Interviews were semi-structured and the data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Data analysis led to a narrative organized in two parts. The first part (retrospective understanding of childhood experiences) reports on feelings of desolation contrasted to exceptional support, context-related dwelling on own experiences, and growing into a caring role as a way to keep standing. The second part (towards an integration of childhood experiences in adult realities) evidences ongoing processes of growing understanding of the situation at home, coping with own vulnerabilities, making the difference in their current family life and finding balance in the continued bond with the parents. This retrospective investigation of adults' perspectives on their childhood experiences gave access to aspects of their experience that remain underexposed in research based on data from children and adolescents.


There is growing state and national attention on addressing the achievement gap and increasing reading proficiency by 3rd grade. As state governments continue to face challenging fiscal conditions, there is a need to identify strategies that will lead to improved school readiness for at-risk children within state education budget constraints. The sustainable financing model for high quality preschool presented in this report is one strategy that could potentially increase the resources available to school districts to invest in high quality preschool programs for at-risk children.


Human ALR gene sequence was amplified by PCR from human total DNA and inserted into pIRES(2)-EGFP vector. The bicistronic eukaryotic expression vector, pIRES-EGFP/ALR, expressing EGFP, Neo(r) and ALR genes was constructed. Sheep fetal fibroblast cells (sEFCs) were transfected with pIRES-EGFP/ALR by the induction of lipofectAMINE(TM). The positive cell clones were selected with medium containing G418 (800 μg/mL). The fluorescence of transgenic cells was examined with a confocal laser scanning microscope. The expression of ALR gene was tested by PCR, RT-PCR and immuno-histochemical staining. The transgenic cells were used as donors for nuclear transfer to enucleated ovine oocytes. Transgenic embryos were tested by confocal laser scanning microscope and immuno-histochemical staining. Results showed that the EGFP and ALR genes linked with IRES were coexpressed simultaneously in sFFCs; the blastocysts formed by nuclear transfer using tranfected donor cells are all transgenic blastocysts. EGFP, ALR and Neo(r) gene were all expressed in the transgenic embryos. In conclusion that a method to construct the positive embryos before pre-implantation which stably express ALR gene by the indication of EGFP expression has been successfully established. The application of this method can simplify the procedure of testing the targets and contribute to the efficiency increasing of transgenic domestic animal production.


PURPOSE
This New Approaches to Brain Tumor Therapy CNS Consortium study sought to determine the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) of carmustine (BCNU) that can be implanted in biodegradable polymers following resection of recurrent high-grade gliomas and the systemic BCNU exposure with increasing doses of interstitial BCNU.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Forty-four adults underwent tumor debulking and polymer placement. Six patients per dose level were studied using polymers with 6.5%, 10%, 14.5%, 20%, and 28% BCNU by weight. Toxicities were assessed 1 month after implantation by a safety monitoring committee to determine whether subsequent escalations should occur. Nine additional patients were studied at the MTD to confirm safety. BCNU blood levels were obtained before and after polymer implantation.

RESULTS
No dose-limiting toxicities were identified at the 6.5%, 10%, or 14.5% dose levels, although difficulties with wound healing, seizures, and brain edema were noted. At the 20% dose, these effects seemed more prominent, and six additional patients were treated at this dose and tolerated treatment well. Three of four patients receiving the 28% polymers developed severe brain edema and seizures, and accrual to this cohort was stopped. Nine additional patients received 20% polymer, confirming this as the MTD. Maximum BCNU plasma concentrations with the 20% loaded polymers were 27 ng/mL. Overall median survival was 251 days.

CONCLUSION
The MTD of BCNU delivered in polymer to the surgical cavity is 20%. This polymer provides five times more BCNU than standard commercially available BCNU polymers and results in minimal systemic BCNU exposure. Additional studies are needed to establish the efficacy of high-dose BCNU polymers.


Direct synthesis of well-defined heterotelechelic polymers having functional groups allowing the chemoselective bioconjugations would be desirable to enhance the versatility of polymers for bioconjugations and bio-related applications. Considering this, well-defined α-azide, ω-dithiopyridine polymers were synthesized in one step via the reversible addition−fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. The telechelic functionality (i.e., mole ratio of the ω-dithiopyridine to the α-azide end group) of polymers was above 0.90, indicating the efficient generation of well-defined heterotelechelic polymers. The heterotelechelic functionality for chemoselective bioconjugations was tested by reacting α-azide, ω-dithiopyridine poly(NIPAAm) with model biomolecules, i.e., biotin/avidin, glutathione, and bovine serum albumin, via click and thiol−disulfide exchange chemistries. Near-stoichiometric conjugation with biomolecules indicated high functionality of the polymer end groups.


Technology plays a major role in our daily lives. In healthcare, technology assists in treating and detecting diseases and can improve patients' quality of life. Alzheimer's disease patients are generally elderly people who suffer from disabilities in vision, hearing, speech, and movement. The disease is one of the most common types of dementia. This paper proposes a design for a mobile application with an adaptive user interface for Alzheimer's patients based on an elderly model developed using grounded theory. The application aims to improve the patients' quality of life and allow them to remain engaged in society. The design of the application is based on spaced retrieval therapy (SRT), a method that helps Alzheimer's patients to recall specific pieces of important information. User-centered design method was used to design and build this application. In the requirements phase, a user model for elderly people was elicited based on a classification developed through grounded theory. The prototype for the proposed model was designed and developed considering the default user interfaces and the adaptive user interfaces. A test was conducted with 15 elderly Arab users. The participants were 50–74 years old with varying levels of education and experience with technology. The authors proposed a user model for elderly people containing all the design implications in terms of physical and cognitive changes. The results of testing with elderly Arab users supported the proposed user model in terms of colors, fonts, pictures, and symbols. However, there were problems with the menu design and color preferences. Keywords—Grounded theory, adaptive user interface, designing user interface, spaced retrieval therapy (SRT), elderly people, Alzheimer's disease, elderly


A mean field statistical mechanics model of two interacting groups of spins is introduced and the phase transition studied in terms of their relative size. A jump of the average magnetization is found for large values of the mutual interaction when the relative percentage of the two populations crosses a critical threshold. It is shown how the critical percentage depends on internal interactions and on the initial magnetizations. The model is interpreted as a prototype of resident-immigrant cultural interaction and conclusions from the social sciences perspectives are drawn.


Denture stomatitis (DS) is a very common disorder that affects upper denture wearers. Clinically, DS presents erythema and inflammation of the palatal mucosa covered by the denture. The objective of the study was to assess the etiological factors related to DS. A search for articles on etiological factors related to DS was performed in the following electronic databases: PubMed (MEDLINE, Cochrane Library), Web of Science (WoS), and Spanish Medical Index (IME). One thousand five hundred thirty-two articles were found (683 in PubMed, 829 in WoS, and 19 in IME), 340 of them were duplicates. From 330 articles with full-text availability, 306 were excluded for several reasons. Finally, 24 studies were included in this meta-analysis. For dichotomous outcomes, the estimates of effects of an intervention were expressed as odds ratios (ORs) using Mantel–Haenszel method with 95% confidence intervals. Data were processed using the statistical software RevMan 5.3. The most important risk factors for DS were Candida species infection (OR: 5.64,P < 0.001), denture age over 10 years (OR: 5.36, P = 0.02), the existence of denture trauma related to ill-fitting denture (OR: 4.30, P = 0.02), night sleeping with the denture (OR: 4.09,P < 0.001), poor denture cleaning (OR: 2.81, P = 0.02), high carbohydrate intake (OR: 1.83, P = 0.01), and female gender (OR: 1.42, P = 0.02). The most common microorganisms in DS were the Candida albicans fungus and the Stafilococcus aureus bacteria. Infection by species of the genus Candida seems to be the main etiological factor of DS.


SUMMARY

The dynamic response of the crust and upper mantle to asthenospheric convective flow related to hot mantle diapiric upwelling is numerically evaluated in order to examine the implications for geological phenomena such as rifting, back-arc spreading, sedimentary basin and mountain building. For island arc areas such as the Japanese Islands and for ridge subducting areas such as the Basin and Range region, where both lower crust and upper mantle may behave as ductile layers in some evolutionary stages, the mechanical coupling between convection in the two layers may play an important role in the mantle dynamics related to these geological phenomena. Significant surface response to mantle diapiric upwelling occurs even when the whole crust effectively works as an elastic layer. The magnitude of surface uplift predicted for this crustal rheological state depends on the thickness of the lithosphere and on the spatial scale of the mantle diapir. However, the effective viscosity of the lower crust may decrease with increasing duration of diapiric upwelling. If the effective viscosities of the lower crust and asthenosphere are 1019-1021 Pa s, the asthenospheric convective flow induced by a mantle diapiric upwelling with a radius about 50 km, a scale of feature which has been seismically observed in the upper mantle beneath the Japanese Islands, may squeeze out the lower crustal material laterally. This would be followed by maximum surface subsidence of about 300–500 m and by upward migration of the Moho discontinuity by up to 3–5 km on a geological time-scale of 5–50 Ma. Thus, the coupling between the convection in the lower crust and upper mantle is mechanical, and the lower crustal material is dragged along by the shear stresses operating at the base of the lower crust. In this process, the space originally occupied by lower crustal material is replaced by mantle material, leading to thinning of the lower crust. Thus, in some geological situations having a hot mantle plume beneath the crust, a change of tectonic style can be expected as a result of a change of the state of convective coupling between the lower crust and upper mantle. Geological phenomena associated with this convective coupling may also depend on the geometry of the region surrounding the mantle diapiric upwelling. For example, the subducted slab in island arc areas will operate as a barrier to the lateral movement of lower crustal material. Thus, accumulation of lower crustal material, referred to as lower crustal megalith, may occur at the edge of the overriding plate. The overpressure caused by the accumulation of this megalith may be a crucial factor in determining the coupling state between the subducted slab and island arc, and may play an important role in and/or work as a trigger in the evolutionary histories of the island arc and related back-arc spreading.


Pentaalkylcyclopentadienyl (Cp*R) iridium (Ir) and cobalt (Co) 1,2-diamine complexes were synthesized. Susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus and recent patient methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolates to the transition metal–diamine complexes were measured by broth microdilution and reported as the MIC and MBC. Hemolytic activities of the transition metal-complexes as well as toxicity toward Vero cells were also measured. The transition metal complex of Cp*RIr with cis-1,2-diaminocyclohexane, had strong antibiotic activity against S. aureus and MRSA (MIC = 4 μg mL−1, MBC = 8 μg mL−1) strains and killed 99% of S. aureus cells in 6 hours. Stronger antibiotic activity was associated with the presence of octyl linked to the cyclopentadienyl group and cyclohexane as the diamine backbone. Activity was greatly diminished by tri- or tetramethylation of the nitrogen of the diamine. A cyclopentadienylcobalt complex of cis-1,2-diaminocyclohexane also showed significant anti-microbial activity against both S. aureus and MRSA strains. The absence of hemolytic activity, Vero cell cytotoxicity and the significant anti-microbial activity of several members of the family of compounds reported suggest this is an area worth further development.


Potato late blight, caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary, is one of the most serious potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) diseases, causing considerable yield loss in potato production worldwide, including Latvia. At present, the data on the population characteristics of P. infestans in Latvia is sparse. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to collect new data on Latvian isolates of P. infestans, to determine the main characteristics of the pathogen, particularly mating types, metalaxyl resistance and virulence with Black's differential set of potato genotypes containing resistance (R) genes R1–R11. During 2010–2012, 181 isolates of P. infestans were collected from 23 potato fields, from 13 locations in Latvia. Out of 181 isolates tested, 52.5% were A1, 43.1% – A2 and 4.4% – self-fertile mating type. Of 116 isolates screened for resistance to metalaxyl, 25.9% were resistant, 19.8% – intermediate and 54.3% – sensitive. More than 80% of isolates were virulent to R1, R3, R4, R7, R10 and R11, while 33% or fewer isolates were virulent to R5, R8 and R9. The least frequent was virulence against R9 in 24% of isolates. Our study revealed that the Latvian population of P. infestans is diverse. The proportion of mating types and the occurrence of both A1 and A2 in the same field indicate the possibility of sexual recombination in Latvian fields. Thus, it is very important to keep the crop rotation system, to prevent soil contamination with long-living oospores. The Latvian population of P. infestans shares many similarities with other European populations, which suggests gene flow between populations.


Background Providing HIV/STD testing and prevention education, medical and nonmedical case management, housing assistance, transportation services, and patient navigation are just a few examples of how community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations will help the United States realize the goals of the updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy. Objective In this study, the aim was to assess electronic data security confidence level, electronic communication behaviors, and interest in using eHealth communication tools with clients of staff at community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations. Methods Staff were recruited from 7 community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations in the southern United States (3 in South Carolina and 4 in Texas). The principal investigator used state department of health websites to identify community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations. Staff were included if they provided HIV/STD prevention education to clients. A recruitment letter was sent to community-based HIV/AIDS service organization leaders who then used snowball sampling to recruit eligible staff. Chi-square tests were used. Results Among staff (n=59) who participated in the study, 66% (39/59) were very or completely confident that safeguards are in place to keep electronically shared information from being seen by other people; 68% (40/59) used email, 58% (34/59) used text messages, 25% (15/59) used social media, 15% (9/59) used a mobile app, 8% (5/59) used web-enabled videoconferencing, and 3% (2/59) used other tools (eg, electronic medical record, healthnavigator.com website) to communicate electronically with their clients. More than half were very interested in using eHealth communication tools in the future for sharing appointment reminders (67%, 38/59) and general health tips (61%, 34/59) with their clients. Half were very interested in using eHealth communication tools in the future to share HIV medication reminders with their clients (50%, 29/59). Forty percent (23/59) were very interested in using eHealth communication tools to share vaccination reminders with their clients. Conclusions Community-based HIV/AIDS service organization staff had some level of confidence that safeguards were in place to keep electronically shared information from being seen by other people. This is critically important given the sensitivity of the information shared between community-based HIV/AIDS service organization staff and their clients, and because many staff were very interested in using eHealth communication tools with their clients in the future. It is very likely that eHealth communication tools can be used in community settings to improve health outcomes across the HIV care continuum; in the interim, more research is needed to better understand factors that may facilitate or impede community-based HIV/AIDS service organization staff use and client acceptability.


As the incidence of heart failure increases, more patients and their caregivers are faced with needs related to the unpredictable nature of the illness. Palliative care interventions are an appropriate way to meet these needs; however, palliative care remains underutilized. Family caregivers, particularly spouses, play an important role providing care to these patients; thus, it is important to consider their needs when planning interventions. The purpose of this article was to describe the needs of spousal caregivers of patients followed up at specialized heart failure centers within the context of the dynamic ebb and flow of heart failure. Forty-five spouses (n = 45) were interviewed over 12 to 18 months to follow their changing needs. Grounded theory methods were used to collect and analyze data. Four categories of overarching needs amenable to palliative care interventions were identified: informational, financial, psychosocial, and physical. These needs were always present but changed during times of medical stability versus exacerbation/medical instability. Caregivers continually reprioritized their needs in response to the heart failure experience; therefore, episodic offerings of palliative care during exacerbations are inadequate. Nurses can play a pivotal role in facilitating comprehensive palliative care interventions to improve the experience of those caring for and living with heart failure.


This study was conducted in an environment of widespread use of social media and mobile applications in the mass media. The general goal of the study was to analyze the use of WhatsApp in cybermedia, specifically in radio. A case study was proposed to examine the use of WhatsApp on the program Las mañanas de RNE, broadcast by Spanish National Radio. It was found that the public was very accepting of the program's initiative to solicit WhatsApp voice messages, beginning in November 2015. The case study used audio files of a direct broadcast that included specific times for audience participation. The use of WhatsApp was accepted by the audience, in addition to the use of the conventional telephone, as a tool well-suited to listener participation in radio programming. Finally, the study highlights the importance of interactive, participatory spaces in broadcasts through the creation of synergies with new forms of online participation.