Objective: To analyze the incidence and risk factors for development hernia after elective  lower midline caesarean section(ElMCS). Method: A prospective cohort study of 284 women for development of incisional hernia after  repeated elective midline CS. Patients enrollment done from April 13th 2001 and December  12th 2002. follow up to two years for hernia development. Hernias were identified radiographically  or during physical exam. 2-year hernia rates were calculated. Patients were distributed in two  groups, study group consisted of women who had incisional hernia and control group consisted  from women who had not within 2-years postoperatively. Within the two groups potential risk  factors (age, body mass index (BMI), parity, number of previous cesareans, chronic cough,  diabetes mellitus(DM), heart disease, low serum albumin, type of previous incision, anesthesia  type, presence of postoperative fever and wound complications) were collected and statistically  analyzed with the development of incisional hernia (IH).  Setting: Prince Hashem Ben Al-Hussein Hospital, Jordanian Royal Medical Services of Jordan  / Zarqa.  Results: The 2-year hernia was 5.6 % .Independent risk factors of IH development include:  increase in number of previous CSs, wound complications and obesity.  Conclusion: An incisional hernia is higher than previously estimated in women undergoing  ElMCS. Counseling on the family size will reduce the chance for further CS with its associated  risk. Also measures to reduce wound infection after surgery may reduce the incidence of  incisional hernia following ElMCS. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjog.v25i1.13724 Bangladesh J Obstet Gynaecol, 2010; Vol. 25(1) : 9-14


HIV clinical care now involves prevention and treatment of age-associated comorbidity. Although physical function is an established correlate to comorbidity in older adults without HIV infection, its role in aging of HIV-infected adults is not well understood. To investigate this question we conducted cross-sectional analyses including linear regression models of physical function in 3227 HIV-infected and 3240 uninfected patients enrolled 2002-2006 in the Veterans Aging Cohort Study-8-site (VACS-8). Baseline self-reported physical function correlated with the Short Form-12 physical subscale (ρ = 0.74, p < 0.001), and predicted survival. Across the age groups decline in physical function per year was greater in HIV-infected patients (β(coef) -0.25, p < 0.001) compared to uninfected patients (β(coef) -0.08, p = 0.03). This difference, although statistically significant (p < 0.01), was small. Function in the average 50-year old HIV-infected subject was equivalent to the average 51.5-year-old uninfected subject. History of cardiovascular disease was a significant predictor of poor function, but the effect was similar across groups. Chronic pulmonary disease had a differential effect on function by HIV status (Δβ(coef) -3.5, p = 0.03). A 50-year-old HIV-infected subject with chronic pulmonary disease had the equivalent level of function as a 68.1-year-old uninfected subject with chronic pulmonary disease. We conclude that age-associated comorbidity affects physical function in HIV-infected patients, and may modify the effect of aging. Longitudinal research with markers of disease severity is needed to investigate loss of physical function with aging, and to develop age-specific HIV care guidelines.


In the Conceive – Design – Implement - Operate (CDIO) project course in automatic control, an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is constructed, utilising an existing radio controlled model aircraft. By adding an inertial sensor that measures acceleration and rotation, together with a Global Positioning System (GPS) sensor, the aim is to construct an accurate positioning system. This is used by an onboard computer to calculate control surface signals to a set of servos in order to follow a predefined way-point trajectory. The project involves 17 students and comprises both positioning, control and hardware design. The main pedagogical goal is for students to apply their theoretical knowledge within a project framework in order to improve important aspects of their engineering skills in a realistic manner.


: We investigated the skin condition in rats with immunodeficit induced by cyclophosphane. Cyclophosphane induced in the blood the development of two phases pathological process. The first leukopenic phase is mediated by the action ofcytostatics, and the second hyperleucocytic phase is induced by liver injury and splenomegalia. Dysbiosis and inflammation are developed in the skin, especially during the second phase.


Background: Physical activity (PA) is impaired from the early stages of COPD, is associated with a worsening of disease prognosis, and causes COPD patients to restrict their daily activities in order to avoid breathlessness. The development of a simple tool to estimate physical activity level (PAL) could be useful for the management of COPD. Objectives: We investigated the differences in PA according to the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) grade in patients with COPD. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on stable outpatients with COPD. PA was measured for 2 weeks using a triaxial accelerometer, and dyspnea grade was evaluated in all patients using the mMRC scale. Results: Ninety-eight patients were recruited. Significant differences in PA duration were observed at all intensities according to the mMRC grade. Despite treatment with controller medications, 59.2% of COPD patients had low PAL, which was  1.5 metabolic equivalents multiplied by hour per day. COPD patients with an mMRC grade $ 2, which was the most balanced cutoff point in the receiver operating characteristic curve, showed a higher reduction rate of PAL (80.0% at mMRC grade 2, 71.4% at mMRC grade 3, and 100% at mMRC grade 4). Conclusion: PA differed according to the mMRC grade, and mMRC grade $ 2 could predict a low PAL. Therefore, assessment of breathlessness by the mMRC questionnaire would be useful to stratify the risks of reduced PA in


In this study, a broadband stripline multisection coupled-line coupler is designed and fabricated. The coupler has 50 dB coupling in the frequency range of 30 to 1000 MHz. The coupler is designed by cascading several unit section couplers consisting of two unequal length coupled line sections connected by different length uncoupled transmission lines. The unequal length coupled line sections with different coupling coefficients introduce a degree of freedom for bandwidth improvement and can help to reduce the overall dimensions of the multisection coupler. A lumped-element compensating circuit is used in series with the coupling port of the coupler to flatten the overall coupling response of the coupler over multioctave frequency bands. The fabricated coupler is compact in size and handles up to 200 W of RF power. The flatness of the coupler depends on the frequency response of the multisection coupler and the compensating circuit. The designed coupler has maximum 1 dB ripple in the coupling response over multioctave bandwidth.


The activities of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in soil samples and building materials have been carried out using Hyper Pure Germaniumgamma ray detector. It is observed that the 226Ra and its progeny concentrations are higher in the houses having granite flooring.Activity concentration of 226Ra is measured by collection chamber method and the exhalation rate is done using solid state nuclear track detectors. A good correlation is observed for 226Ra and 232Th activity in soil with indoor 222Rn, 220Rn and its progeny in dwellings.


Public relations practitioners play a central role in the construction and maintenance of discourse. Through the use of specialised techniques and strategies, texts are designed so that they have the power to mean something. Australia was one of the first countries to roll out a national HPV vaccination program for schoolgirls. However, research indicated that parents lack knowledge about HPV and HPV vaccination. This paper reports on a discourse analysis of the brochure: "Questions and Answers (Q&A) about HPV Vaccination Program: A prevention strategy for cervical cancer". This brochure is given to parents prior to vaccination and as such is a primary source of information about HPV for these audiences. The research strove to answer the question: What are the discourses contained in the information given to parents about the NSW HPV school vaccination program? A critical discourse analysis of the Q&A brochure found a discourse of the risk of cancer, supported by a discourse that HPV is sexually transmitted. The findings should provide an avenue to further research the role, motivations and techniques of public relations practitioners working as discourse technologists and in whose interests such discourses operate.


: Conventional fixation with glutaraldehyde fixatives at pH 7.4 did not preserve/promote thick filaments in Bufo smooth muscle. However, if pH was lowered to 6.0, thick filaments were present and addition of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) led to a greater number of thick filaments. Stretch alone had little effect on the presence of thiber seen. Calcium had little effect on the numbers of thick filaments, but it affected the appearance of the thick filaments. Low calcium (10(-7) M) caused a higher proportion of rod-shaped filaments, while in high calcium (10(-3) M) most thick filaments were ribbons. The great lability of the thick filaments in amphibian smooth muscles makes them ideal for studying factors which affect the appearance of thick filaments in smooth muscle, but it also raises the question of the degree of aggregation of myosin in the living cell.


The tropical Malay spa design associated with a traditional Malay Single's House (Rumah Bujang) reveals a design construction in a setting that exploits the surroundings. It is strongly linked to the Malay heritage and cultural values. This paper explores the tropical design found in the Malay spa and how the spa activities are interrelated with the architecture that houses them. The Malay spa activities are glorified by the Malay people for the values of mysticism, spiritual enhancement, physical well being and emotional uplift and this architecture ensures the perpetuity of these cultural elements. This research ventures further into the design of the Malay spa, which can now only be found in small villages in the northern region of Malaysia and the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The methodology employed for this research records the visual data collection, architectural drawing documentation of spa design and observation of the activities that take place. Interviews with the owners of spas and the people receiving treatment provide a primary source of information. The Malay spa design depicts a humble vernacular architecture that nestles in a setting planted with fruit trees, flowers, herbs and spices. The Malay spa design in a Single's House can be studied as one example of sustainable tropical design. Proper planning of this architecture and its activity must be explored by complying with the traditional Malay philosophy, rituals and customs. The traditional values of the Malay people are apparent in this Malay spa, which justifies its continuation and has long been viewed as embracing nature in every sense of existence. The architectural elements portrayed are made strong with the symbiotic relationships between cultural elements and the natural surroundings.


Clinical recurrence of Crohn's disease after surgical resection is a significant problem, with reported rates as high as 55% at 5 yr and 76% at 15 yr. Specific factors that predispose to postoperative recurrence of Crohn's disease have not been well defined. In addition, the underlying pathophysiology of recurrent disease and the reason for its localization to the neoterminal ileum are not well understood. Various operative techniques have been evaluated but none, aside from formation of an ostomy, has been shown to reduce the risk of recurrence. In contrast, there is increasing evidence that postoperative medical therapy has the potential to decrease the risk of postoperative recurrence.Historically, sulfasalazine may have a modest effect on reducing postoperative recurrence of ileal or ileocolonic disease. However, 5-ASA preparations that can selectively deliver mesalamine to the small bowel or anastomotic margin should be more effective. Indeed, in several studies and as confirmed by a meta-analysis, mesalamine has been demonstrated to reduce significantly postoperative recurrence of Crohn's disease. Metronidazole and 6-mercaptopurine or azathioprine also seem to be of benefit in postoperative prophylaxis of disease recurrence, but additional controlled studies are required to define better the efficacy and dose-response of these agents. Corticosteroids are ineffective at reducing postoperative recurrence.


The drug abuse known to occur during growth of animals intended for food production, because of their use as either a prophylactic or therapeutic treatment, promotes the emergence of bacterial drug resistance. It has been reported that at least 25% of the foodborne isolates show drug resistance to one or more classes of antimicrobials (FAO 2018). There are diverse mechanisms that promote drug resistance. It is known that the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics in animals intended for food production promotes mutations of some chromosomal genes such as gyrA-parC and mphA, which are responsible for quinolone and azithromycin resistance, respectively. Also, the horizontal transfer of resistance genes as groups ("cassettes") or plasmids makes the spread of resistance to different bacterial genera possible, among which there could be pathogens. The World Health Organization considers the emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria as a health problem, since the illnesses caused by them complicate the treatment and increase the morbidity and mortality rates. The complication in the illness treatment caused by a multidrug-resistant pathogen causes economic losses to patients for the payment of long stays in hospitals and also causes economic losses to companies due to the absenteeism of their workers.


Methods: All cases with a confirmed diagnosis of TD seen in our Units since 1995 were identified, and records reviewed to ascertain ultrasound findings and measurements. Charts of fetal size were constructed using the LMS model and compared with those used in normal pregnancies and other skeletal dysplasias. Since 2007, the Genetics Laboratory at GOSH has offered cffDNA testing for selected single gene disorders; cases referred because of suspected TD were ascertained and cffDNA results compared with postnatal diagnoses. Results: Fetal size charts derived from 39 cases demonstrated long bone length ≤ 3rd centile from 12 weeks' gestation, with minimal growth in the 3rd trimester. Commonly reported sonographic features included bowed femora, frontal bossing, short fingers, cloverleaf skull, a small chest and polyhydramnios. Analysis of cffDNA in six cases confirmed the presence of 1948 A>G mutation in four, and 742 C>T mutation in a fifth. In the 6th case, no result could be issued because of the low concentration of cffDNA. Conclusions: A combination of ultrasound features with reference to disease-specific fetal size charts and molecular analysis of cffDNA permits accurate, non-invasive prenatal diagnosis of TD. For cases diagnosed in early pregnancy this approach may facilitate surgical intervention without compromising acquisition of the definitive diagnosis needed for genetic counselling.


We report a capacitor-based cross-point array that can be used to train analog-based Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), fabricated with trench capacitors in 14nm technology. The fundamental DNN functionalities of multiply-accumulate and weight-update are demonstrated. We also demonstrate the best symmetry and linearity ever reported for an analog cross-point array system. For DNNs, the capacitor leakage does not impact learning accuracy even without any refresh cycle, as the weights are continuously updated during training. This makes capacitor an ideal candidate for neural network training. We also discuss the scalability of this array using optimized low-leakage DRAM technology.


Surrealism, whose doctrine was originally conceived as an uncanny hybrid of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud, was not easily transplanted from its Parisian hothouse to the wide-open spaces of the United States. Surrealism's materialist dream-logic caught on mainly among the poets and painters of New York City during World War II when war refugees André Breton and his cohort spread their influence there. After the war and the return of the French surrealists to Europe, American surrealism withered until the cultural revolution of the 1960s when it underwent a new and even more vigorous flowering, often blending with left-wing political activism. With the end of postwar economic expansion, paralleled by a more conservative turn in American culture, surrealism as a self-conscious literary movement once again receded to the margins. At the same time, the surrealist image has become broadly disseminated in contemporary American poetry as a readily available and legible trope, used whenever a moment of sublime estrangement is needed in a poem. Surrealism persists in this way as an individualized stylistic flourish, maintaining a dilute yet ubiquitous presence in American literary culture. Yet even as surrealism appears to have been assimilated into and domesticated by the larger culture, a number of more or less marginalized American poets have remained committed to the original vision of surrealism as a revolutionary worldview, as a word- and world-transforming practice.
 The second wave of surrealist writing in the Untied States broke and bifurcated during the 1950s and 1960s into various channels represented by the New York School, Deep Image, and the orthodox Chicago Surrealist Group. In the first quarter of the 21st century, few American poets claim a purely surrealist identity. Nonetheless, an occulted surrealist practice runs through the dominant trend in contemporary American avant-garde poetry, namely, the synthesis of Language writing and the New York School.
 American culture in the 21st century, characterized by a more or less complete commodification of the life-world, where desire—another key term in surrealism—has been sublated into consumerism, brings a new set of challenges to the surrealist imperative to achieve utopia by way of profane illumination.


An idea of implementing three-dimensional model for coloring mode of Platonic solids in accordance with space rotational group of Platonic solids is raised, and the problem in constructing three-dimensional model directly related to symmetry is thus resolved. A new classification method of group elements in a rotational group of Platonic solids is given. Three new concepts such as abstracted symmetry of group elements, local number of colors and saturated number of colors are put forward. Constructing coloring mode for the abstracted object and then constructing a method that the abstracted coloring mode is mapped into a three-dimensional space are raised. An algorithm for implementing this method is developed, and the algorithm and the three-dimensional model are visualized by means of Visual C++6.0 and Direct 3D. The results validate both the method put forward in this paper and the correctness of the algorithm.


Model interpretability and systematic, targeted model adaptation present central challenges in deep learning. In the domain of intuitive physics, we study the task of visually predicting stability of block towers with the goal of understanding and influencing the model's reasoning. Our contributions are two-fold. Firstly, we introduce neural stethoscopes as a framework for quantifying the degree of importance of specific factors of influence in deep networks as well as for actively promoting and suppressing information as appropriate. In doing so, we unify concepts from multitask learning as well as training with auxiliary and adversarial losses. Secondly, we deploy the stethoscope framework to provide an in-depth analysis of a state-of-the-art deep neural network for stability prediction, specifically examining its physical reasoning. We show that the baseline model is susceptible to being misled by incorrect visual cues. This leads to a performance breakdown to the level of random guessing when training on scenarios where visual cues are inversely correlated with stability. Using stethoscopes to promote meaningful feature extraction increases performance from 51% to 90% prediction accuracy. Conversely, training on an easy dataset where visual cues are positively correlated with stability, the baseline model learns a bias leading to poor performance on a harder dataset. Using an adversarial stethoscope, the network is successfully de-biased, leading to a performance increase from 66% to 88%.


The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has signalled a radical shift in the approach to tackling tobacco related harm in England and Wales by recommending the use of licensed products that contain nicotine for patients who don't think that they would be able to stop smoking in one step.

Previous advice to doctors and other health professionals has focused on encouraging patients to quit in one step by setting specific dates to stop smoking completely.

But NICE said that its new public health guidance was the first in the world to recommend licensed products such as nicotine gum or patches for helping people—particularly those who are "highly dependent" on nicotine—to cut the amount they smoke.1

It advises doctors to consider suggesting the "harm reduction approach" to people who may not be able to stop smoking in …


An approximate analytical expression is developed for the attenuation of middle ultraviolet radiation along slant paths through the atmosphere. The independent variables are wavelength, altitude of source (the detector is assumed to be above the atmosphere), angle of path with respect to zenith, and three parameters which characterize the ozone distribution. An approximate analytical expression is also developed for the scattered solar radiance seen by a satellite. Here the independent variables are the wavelength, the look angle and the sun angle with respect to the zenith, the scattering angle, and again three parameters which characterize the ozone distribution. The results based upon the formula are compared with previous studies and an experimental measurement.


Prediction of the location and timing of rainfall‐induced shallow landslides is desired by organizations responsible for hazard management and warnings. However, hydrologic and mechanical processes in the vadose zone complicate such predictions. Infiltrating rainfall must typically pass through an unsaturated layer before reaching the irregular and usually discontinuous shallow water table. This process is dynamic and a function of precipitation intensity and duration, the initial moisture conditions and hydrologic properties of the hillside materials, and the geometry, stratigraphy, and vegetation of the hillslope. As a result, pore water pressures, volumetric water content, effective stress, and thus the propensity for landsliding vary over seasonal and shorter time scales. We apply a general framework for assessing the stability of infinite slopes under transient variably saturated conditions. The framework includes profiles of pressure head and volumetric water content combined with a general effective stress for slope stability analysis. The general effective stress, or suction stress, provides a means for rigorous quantification of stress changes due to rainfall and infiltration and thus the analysis of slope stability over the range of volumetric water contents and pressure heads relevant to shallow landslide initiation. We present results using an analytical solution for transient infiltration for a range of soil texture and hydrological properties typical of landslide‐prone hillslopes and show the effect of these properties on the timing and depth of slope failure. We follow by analyzing field‐monitoring data acquired prior to shallow landslide failure of a hillside near Seattle, Washington, and show that the timing of the slide was predictable using measured pressure head and volumetric water content and show how the approach can be used in a forward manner using a numerical model for transient infiltration.


Species of terebratulide brachiopods have been largely characterized qualitatively on the basis of morphology. Furthermore, species-level morphological variability has rarely been analyzed within a quantitative framework. The objective of our research is to quantify morphological variation to test the validity of extant named species of terebratulide brachiopods, focusing on the lophophore-supporting structures—the "long loops." Long loops are the most distinctive and complex morphological feature in terebratellidine brachiopods and are considered to be phylogenetically and taxonomically informative. We studied eight species with problematic species identities in three genera distributed in the North Pacific: Laqueus, Terebratalia, and Dallinella. Given how geometrically complex long loops are, we generated 3D models from computed tomography (CT) scans of specimens of these eight species and analyzed them using 3D geometric morphometrics. Our goal was to determine ranges of variation and to test whether species are clearly distinguishable from one another in morphospace and statistically. Previous studies have suggested that some species might be overly split and are indistinguishable. Our results show that these extant species of terebratellidines can be reliably distinguished on the basis of quantitative loop morphometrics. Using 3D geometric morphometric methods, we demonstrate the utility of CT beyond purely descriptive imaging purposes in testing the morphometric validity of named species. It is crucial to treat species described and named from qualitative morphology as working hypotheses to be tested; many macroevolutionary studies depend upon the accurate assessment of species in order to identify and seek to explain macroevolutionary patterns. Our results provide quantitative documentation of the distinction of these species and thus engender greater confidence in their use to characterize macroevolutionary patterns among extant terebratellidine brachiopods. These methods, however, require further testing in extinct terebratellidines, which only rarely preserve the delicate long loop in three dimensions. In addition, molecular analyses of extant terebratellidines will test the species delimitations supported by the morphometric analyses presented in this study. [Species determination; morphological variability; 3D geometric morphometrics; terebratulide brachiopods; long loops.]


Skilled immigrants have achieved great success in founding U.S. engineering and technology startups, which have in turn contributed greatly to the country's economic growth over time. In this work we explore the educational attainment and career trajectories of these immigrant entrepreneurs. Our research confirms that advanced education in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is correlated with high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation among both immigrant and U.S.-born founder populations. To maintain and grow the U.S. entrepreneurial landscape, future policy endeavors may target means of attracting and retaining innovative, highly skilled foreign minds.


SIR JAMES MACKENZIE AND THE SYMPATHETIC INNERVATION OF STRIATED MUSCLE. SIR,-It is probably not an overstatement to say that the tecent work on the sympathetic innervation of striated miuscle has created a profound rev-olution in anatomy and physiology. The new facts contained in the lectures by the late Professor J. I. Hunter, recently delivered by Professor Elliot Smith,1 afford an entirely new basis from which to approach a great variety of clinical plhenomenla. I wish to call attention to one form of mruiscular acti-ity wlhich has not so far been mentioned, upon whlichl these discoveries throw light, while at the same time they strikinigly confirm a view of minscular action wlhichl was formulated and expressed by Sir James Mackenzie fromi purely clinical observation. TJlhe muscular action to which I refer is that shown in what we term the " viscero-motor reflex," in wlhicll there is a hardness and rigidity of the muscles of the abdominial wall, or of some portion of them, produced reflexly by certain afferent impulses from the -iscera. From repeated observation and consideration of this clinical conditioni Sir James Mackenzie was led to poinlt out that there are twvo varieties of muscular action, one the ordinar,y -oluntary, contraction, and this otlher form shown in the " visceromotor reflex," differing from the first in its nature, since it does not produce shortening of the muscle, it does not as a ru-le involve the whole extent of a muscle, and it can last for an indefinite timue, or, in other words, is not subject to fatigue as is the ordinary contraction. In the fourth editioni of his Symptoms and Thcir Intcrprctation (p. 78) he said:


The angular force model of Clark, Gazis and Wallis (CGW) have been applied to calculate the phonon frequencies of antiferromagnetic Fe-30%Mn alloy. Furthermore, the second order elastic constants of the alloy have been computed using a new empirical many body potential (MBP), which has been developed by Akgun and Ugur. The parameters defining the MBP for the alloy have been computed following a procedure given by Akgun and Ugur. The computed elastic constants have been used to calculate the phonon frequencies of the alloy. Finally the theoretical results have been compared with the corresponding experimental values.


The institutional and ecological structure of Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" appears deceptively simple: the open-access pasture eventually will be overexploited and degraded unless (i) it is privatized, (ii) the government regulates access and use, or (iii) the users themselves impose a common-property regime to regulate their own access and use. In this paper, we argue that the institutional structure of the "Herder Problem" (as it is known to game theorists) is far more complicated than it is usually portrayed. Specifically, it is not just about the pasture. It is equally about the grass that grows on the pasture and the cattle that consume the grass. Even Elinor Ostrom — a scholar known for embracing complexity — presented an overly simplistic portrayal of Hardin's open-access pasture when she described its governance system as a null set of institutions. A more careful assessment of the situation, employing Ostrom's Social-Ecological System (SES) framework, broadens the focus from the res communes omnium pasture to incorporate the res nullius grass that grows upon it and the res private cattle grazing there. The "tragedy" arises from the combination and interactions of the resources and their governing institutions, not just from the absence of property in the pasture. If the grass was not subject to appropriation, the cattle were not privately owned, or if property- and contract-enforcement institutions supporting market exchange were absent, the "tragedy of the commons" probably would not arise regardless of the pasture's open-access status.


Time-stamped data are increasingly available for many social, economic, and information systems that can be represented as networks growing with time. The World Wide Web, social contact networks, and citation networks of scientific papers and online news articles, for example, are of this kind. Static methods can be inadequate for the analysis of growing networks as they miss essential information on the system's dynamics. At the same time, time-aware methods require the choice of an observation timescale, yet we lack principled ways to determine it. We focus on the popular community detection problem which aims to partition a network's nodes into meaningful groups. We use a multi-layer quality function to show, on both synthetic and real datasets, that the observation timescale that leads to optimal communities is tightly related to the system's intrinsic aging timescale that can be inferred from the time-stamped network data. The use of temporal information leads to drastically different conclusions on the community structure of real information networks, which challenges the current understanding of the large-scale organization of growing networks. Our findings indicate that before attempting to assess structural patterns of evolving networks, it is vital to uncover the timescales of the dynamical processes that generated them.


We hypothesize the existence of cosmic luminous shock waves which might participate in the formation of clouds and severe weather events. These waves would have the peculiarity to be created and modulated by the shock of the galactic cosmic rays with the particles of the solar corona: the energetic particles of cosmic rays collide with atoms of the solar atmosphere, shatter them, with the result that the velocity of the ultra-relativistic electron in the solar plasma might be greater than the speed of light in this medium. What would produce a secondary radiation of higher intensity analogous to that of the shock waves radiating in liquids by Cherenkov effect. Their existence may be linked to a visual phenomenon called «experience of bright light flashes» with which all the astronauts are confronted.


—We consider results of magnetotelluric and magnetovariational soundings in the period range 10 < T ≪ 20 000 s in the North Vietnam area. The simple structure of magnetovariational responses is shown, which generally reflects the electrically conductive quasi-two-dimensional structure of the Earth's crust. Impedance responses form as a superposition of responses of local complex subsurface and quasi-two-dimensional regional deep-seated structures. Separation of local and regional effects made it possible to construct a geoelectrical depth model of the regional tectonosphere, whose main elements are electrically conductive subvertical trans-lithospheric faults and high-resistivity disturbances of the conductive asthenosphere. These elements, favoring the flow of telluric currents induced in deep-seated electrically conductive systems into the sedimentary cover, form zones of abnormal apparent-resistivity curves. The apparent resistivity monotonously increases with increasing the period up to 20,000 s. We called the combination of such elements of the geoelectrical model a ultradeep fluid–fault system (UDFFS). The modeling has established the location of three orthogonally intersecting UDFFS of NE and SE strikes in the North Vietnam area. It shows that conductive (fluid-saturated) translithospheric faults extending to the base of the sedimentary sequence control the location of petroleum fields and ore deposits. A method for separating local and regional magnetotelluric effects is proposed. It permits one to determine reliably the main strikes of a regional two-dimensional structure and the configuration of the apparent-resistivity curves along them.


BACKGROUND
Several different types of in vitro fermentation systems are currently employed to investigate pro- and prebiotic activities in the human large intestinal microbiota, ranging from simple batch cultures, with or without stirring and pH control, to more complex models involving pH controlled single and multiple-component continuous culture systems.

METHODS
In this investigation, we used a three-stage continuous culture model to study the activities of colonic bacteria. This fermentation system reproduces several of the nutritional and environmental characteristics of the proximal large intestine (vessel 1) and the distal colon (vessels 2 and 3), and was validated using bacteriological, metabolic and chemical measurements made with intestinal material obtained from different regions of the large bowel. In this paper, we report studies on prospective probiotic effects of Bifidobacterium longum NCFB 2259 in relation to other bacterial populations, production of tyrosine and phenylalanine metabolites, and bacterial synthesis of enzymes involved in the formation of putatively genotoxic metabolites, including ß glucosidase (GS), arylsulphatase (AS), ß-glucuronidase (GN), nitroreductase (NR) and azoreductase (AR).

RESULTS
Bacterial activities at two different retention times were studied (31.1 and 68.4 h), which correspond to large intestinal transit times. At R = 31.4 h, significant probiotic effects were observed with respect to reductions in GS and GN, upon adding B. longum. However, despite the fact that this organism does not ferment aromatic amino acids or produce significant amounts of genotoxic enzymes, dysbiotic manifestations occurred in that both NR synthesis and dissimilatory tyrosine metabolism were stimulated. In contrast, at R = 68.4 h, GS formation increased between five and 20-fold, while GN and NR activities increased by a factor of two after adding the bifidobacterium. These data are reviewed in relation to potential health hazards that may be encountered with long-term probiotic administration. In the prebiotic experiments, the three-stage fermentation system was operated at R = 65 h. Oligofructose was added to VI to give an initial concentration of 30 grams per litre, when the system was in steady state, to study its effects on a number of experimental parameters including bifidogenicity, bacterial growth, fermentation product formation and mutagenicity. After addition of the oligosaccharide, a multiplicity of effects were observed in VI, where synthesis of NR and AR, bifidobacterial populations and overall fermentation processes were stimulated, although these influences progressively diminished in V2 and V3.

CONCLUSIONS
These studies indicate that bacterial metabolism and putative beneficial consequences associated with the breakdown of readily fermentable prebiotics in the large intestine may in some circumstances be spatially and temporally limited to the proximal bowel.


Although irrigation projects often provide water for more than crop irrigation, water allocation and management decisions often do not account for nonirrigation uses of water. Failure to account for the multiple uses of irrigation water may result in inefficient and inequitable water allocation decisions. Decision-makers often lack information on the relative economic contributions of water in irrigation and nonirrigation uses. This report addresses this problem. It examines the relative economic contributions of irrigated agriculture and reservoir fisheries in the Kirindi Oya irrigation system, located in southeastern Sri Lanka. The results of the analysis indicate the importance of both irrigated paddy production and reservoir fisheries to the local economy. They also demonstrate significant potential financial and economic gains to irrigated agriculture from improvements in water management practices.


Ali Bilgiç This article explores why and how authoritarian regimes become resilient in the face of strong resistance of counter-hegemonic forces to neoliberal social and economic projects. The discussion is illustrated in the case of Turkey. The political subjectivities produced by authoritarian neoliberalism and the AKP govern- ment's attempt to reassert its hegemony through consent production are analysed by revisiting the Gezi Park protests and the 'National Will' meetings in 2013. I argue that once the AKP's neoliberal hegemony was challenged by the Gezi protestors, the government appropriated the Turkish right's existing 'national will' narrative with a neo-Ottomanist and neoliberal makeover. To unpack this argument, the article (1) retraces the Gezi protestors' own accounts to explore how the resistance to authoritarian neoliberalism materialised; (2) examines how the AKP government attempted to reproduce its hegemony through consent generation at the 'National Will' meetings through analysing discursive strategies of the government and pro-government media.


Most securities provide effective opportunities for investing money capital in order to increase it,at the same time, they are the legal priority of investments. On the one hand, issuing securities,organizations attract funds for the development of their entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand,for purchasers, securities, above all, a way of generating income, usually without active participation,without difficulty in the organization itself. Attraction of securities (capital) and investments of capital(citizenship of securities) are joined by civil-legal, financial and economic relations that regulatethe issue of securities. The carriers of these conditions are the securities themselves. This is theircorrectness, if the securities are on all the time before the end of the period of use to get rid of it.However, the main value of securities is that they are investors who can participate in special, moreactive and diversified relationships and transactions that are based on the conditions and contentof securities. If the movement of bank credit capital, the credit and credit organization will be one oranother amount of money capital, then the relationship of the investor and the organization issuingsecurities are built on the securities themselves. For each security there is capital, namely, moneyinvested in productive, useful purposes, working within the framework of some entrepreneurial orsocially useful activity. By selling a security, the previous owner thereby gives access to securities totake his place as an investor in this financial and economic sense. Leaving his place as an investor,the seller of a security «Quality», it is invariably guaranteed by the issuer that issued the security. Inthis article, the authors examine the securities taking into account their ability to simultaneously actin the trade aspect of the financial and economic interest and the object of civil law relations.


Effects of yokukansan, a traditional Japanese medicine, on proliferation
and differentiation of oligodendrocytes were examined using purified mouse
cortical oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). OPCs were cultured for four
days, and proliferation was evaluated by counting A2B5 (a specific antibody to
OPC)-reactive cells on the second day of cell culture. Differentiation from OPC
to oligodendrocyte was evaluated by counting O4 (a specific antibody to detect
differentiated cells in various stages)-reactive cells on the fourth day of
culture. The effects of yokukansan (final concentration: 100 or 200 μg/ml) on
proliferation and differentiation were examined by adding it to the medium for
four days. Yokukansan increased not only the number of A2B5-positive cells on
the second day but also the number of O4-positive cells on the fourth day
compared to those in the corresponding controls. A WST-8 assay was used to
identify active components from seven components of Uncaria Hook (UH), one of
the constituent galenicals of yokukansan. Geissoschizine methyl ether (GM: 0.1
- 3.0 μM) was identified by this screening assay and increased the number of
A2B5-positive cells on the second day and O4-positive cells on the fourth day
as yokukansan did. These results suggest that yokukansan promotes the
proliferation and differentiation of oligodendrocytes, and also that GM
contained in UH is one of active components responsible for this effect of
yokukansan.


Senior year is a busy time for most college students as they are preparing for their upcoming transition into adulthood. They are constantly answering the question "What are you doing after graduation?" This results in many college seniors pulling away from their community in order to focus strictly on their major field of study and less on their upcoming transition (Henscheid, 2008). Senior Year Experience programs are a way colleges can provide intentional programming to support college students throughout this transition into adulthood. The purpose of this study was to explore existing Senior Year Experience programs at other institutions with the intention of implementing a new program at Merrimack College. Focus groups involving senior students at Merrimack were conducted, to explore the resources these students have utilized on campus, and to document what they are most nervous about in their upcoming transition. The findings indicated that a Senior Year Experience or transitional program is necessary at this institution, and that many students requested support in areas such as life skills, counseling, maintaining relationships, and professional etiquette. The conclusion of this study recommends a senior retreat experience to be implemented through collaboration with various offices on Merrimack's campus. EXPLORING TRANSITION 3


The diet of 84 East Pacific green turtles Chelonia mydas agassizii, captured in 2003 and 2004 at Gorgona National Park in the Colombian Pacific, was studied through analysis of lavage sam- ples collected from the lower oesophagus. We identified 5 food diet components, with rank in order of percent dry mass being: tunicates (Salpidae and Doliolidae), red mangrove fruits (Rhizophora mangle), algae (Rhodophyta, Chlorophyta, Cyanophyta), small crustaceans (shrimp larvae) and leaves (Ficus spp.). Three non-food diet items included coral fragments, shells, and sand/pebbles that were found in large amounts in most retrieved samples. Nutritional analyses were carried out to determine the contribution of diet components to the foraging turtles. Tunicates had the highest pro- tein value (438 g kg -1 ), followed by algae (174 g kg -1 ), leaves (170 g kg -1 ) and mangrove fruits (65 g kg -1 ). The frequency of retrieved components grouped in animal (including coral), vegetal and sand/pebbles categories did not vary between sampling seasons. The immature East Pacific green sea turtle population at Gorgona National Park showed an omnivorous behaviour, feeding on a range of animal and vegetal components with a bias towards tunicates (Salpidae and Doliolidae). In contrast to the generally herbivorous diet of juvenile green turtles (over 40 cm straight carapace length; SCL), Gorgona's immature population was composed of large juveniles, subadults and a few adults feeding mainly on animal matter. Mean SCL of 86 measured turtles was 58.4 ± 7.8 cm (ranging from 37.0 to 72.9 cm). Mean mass was 28.0 ± 10.7 kg (ranging from 7.5 to 50.5 kg). We speculate that this omniv- orous strategy of Gorgona's immature green turtles might provide energetic benefits for continuing long distance migrations to further developmental or mating grounds in the Pacific basin.


A total of 44 one day advance care planning (ACP) communications workshops were developed and delivered across two counties to health and social care practitioners Band 5 and above. This collaborative project between two Hospices and a University aimed to develop knowledge, skills and confidence in ACP discussions underpinned by national and local initiatives and policy and the evidence base. Satisfaction with the programme was excellent with 98% of participants very satisfied/satisfied that the programme was clinically relevant. There were post programme increases in confidence in exploring patient cues, structuring an ACP discussion and identifying patient & relatives concerns. The workshops also highlighted areas for further development in more general communication skills including identifying and following through cues and use of questions and silence. The structure of these workshops has since been used for the development of other local programmes addressing ACP and dementia. However recommendations from this evaluation would suggest that further communication skills training prior to the application to ACP discussions would facilitate conversations taking place particularly in getting conversations started.


In the push-pull-clone collaborative editing model widely used in distributed version control systems users replicate shared data, modify it and redistribute modified versions of this data without the need of a central authority. However, in this model no usage restriction mechanism is proposed to control what users can do with the data after it has been released to them. In this paper we extended the push-pull-clone model with contracts that express usage restrictions and that are checked a posteriori by users when they receive the modified data. We propose a merging algorithm that deals not only with modifications on data but also with contracts. A log-auditing protocol is used to detect users who do not respect contracts and to adjust user trust levels. Our proposed contract-based model has been implemented and evaluated by using PeerSim simulator.


This article aims to critically review the literature on the consequences of obesity among older adults and its association with health, well-being, and social care need. A search was conducted using, primarily, three databases: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online (MEDLINE) and Academic Search Elite with the help of Boolean operators. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were set to avoid bias in the selection of articles. Publications were reviewed to identify the impact of obesity among older people in terms of health and social care needs and to establish a relation between them. Gaps in the literature have been identified concerning obesity in the older adults, their health status, well-being, and social care need. The research questions were formulated to satisfy these gaps. A conceptual model was developed to map out the theoretical threads to form a diagrammatic representation to satisfy the research questions based on existing literature.The literature review established that the degree of disabilities and comorbidities related to obesity are directly proportionate and identified the gaps in the literature, where further research work is needed. The research objectives were built according to the identified gaps, the research questions were formulated to satisfy the research objectives, and a conceptual framework was also drawn to establish the links between the research questions. This review will guide a way forward to explore the unmet care needs of the aging society.


The purpose of this investigation is to determine the multidisciplinary factors that impact on green banking practices in the banking industry in Sri Lanka. The study is carried out by establishing relevant variables to measure the economic factors, management support, customer pressure, competitor pressure, environmental concern and its extend of impact on practices of green banking. Data were collected from 300 staff of selected bank branches using a structured questionnaire to carry out the study. Five variables are considered for the research framework of this study which is namely, economic factors, competitor pressure, customer pressure, management support and environmental concerns which are used to measure the multidisciplinary factors and its impacts on green banking practices in Sri Lankan banking industry. Findings of the research show that economic factors, competitor pressure, management support and environmental concerns have high impacts while a moderate level of influence was noted for customer pressure on the adoption of green banking practices. Hypothesis testing shows a positive relationship between economic factors, management support, competitor pressure and environmental concerns while customer pressure did not show a positive relationship against green banking practices in Sri Lankan banks


The Permo-Triassic "Buntsandstein" facies was studied from outcrops in the Aragonian branch of the Iberian range (Zaragoza, Spain). Using an integrated analysis of sedimentological and palynological data, we propose a sequence stratigraphic analysis for the Permo-Triassic deposits in this area. A comparison with the stratigraphical cycles of other parts of the Iberian domain and other peri-Tethyan basins enables us to specify the stratigraphic context of the Lower Triassic in the western European domain and characterize the importance of the Lower Triassic hiatus.

The "Buntsandstein" deposits studied here from the Aragonian branch occur in three outcrop areas: Tabuenca-Rodanas, Morata de Jalon and Fombuena. The Permo-Triassic deposits lie unconformably on the Hercynian (Variscan) basement. The "Buntsandstein" facies were attributed to the "Detrital Group" by Arribas [1984], who recognized four informal formations: the Araviana, Tierga, Calcena and Trasobares formations, in ascending stratigraphic order.

Based on sedimentological criteria indicating fluvio-lacustrine environments for the Araviana cycle, the basal "Buntsandstein" facies of this area can be attributed to the Permian. The discontinuity observed between the Araviana and Tierga formations, and the palaeobotanical evidence indicating an Anisian age (i.e. Middle Triassic) for the Tierga, suggests a hiatus during the Lower Triassic in this area. The Lower Triassic in Spain and many other parts of western Europe is characterized by fluvial sediments preserved in arid palaeoenvironments, associated with occasional aeolian deposits, and lacking any palaeoflora. At the scale of the western European domain, the onset of Triassic sedimentation would appear mainly in the Olenekian. Stratigraphic continuity between Permian and Triassic non-marine deposits, with sediments attributable to the Induan (lower part of the Lower Triassic), is only observed in the central Germanic Basin. In the Aragonian branch, the first Triassic sediments are dated as Anisian and characterize the retrogradational trend of a major cycle (Tierga -- Calcareous Group major cycle) showing the vertical evolution from braided rivers to marine Muschelkalk deposits. At the scale of the west-European domain, the Anisian is always characterized by fluvial and fluvio-lacustrine deposits, with palaeosols, passing upward into marine deposits. Thus, the connection with the open sea was established during the Anisian. In this western Peritethyan domain, the diachronous nature of the Muschelkalk transgression is evident: the onset of Muschelkalk facies occurs during the lower Anisian in the Germanic Basin, the middle Anisian in the eastern part of the Paris Basin and the late Anisian in the Iberian Peninsula.


Background:Stump and phantom pains are debilitating sequelae of amputations that are often resistant to treatment. The efficacy of pharmacologic therapies, including opioids and sodium channel blockers, for postamputation pain is uncertain. Methods:The authors conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study in adult patients with postamputation pain of 6 months or longer and greater than 3 on a 0–10 numeric pain rating scale. Each of the three treatment periods (morphine, mexiletine, or placebo) included a 1-week drug-free interval followed by 4-week titration, 2-week maintenance, and 2-week drug-taper phases. The primary outcome measure was change in average pain intensity from the drug-free baseline to the last week of maintenance. Results:Sixty amputees were enrolled; data were analyzed from 56 subjects for one drug period, 45 subjects for two drug periods, and 35 subjects who completed all three drug periods. The mean morphine and mexiletine dosages were 112 and 933 mg, respectively. Morphine treatment provided lower pain scores compared with placebo and mexiletine (P = 0.0003). The mean percent pain relief during treatment with placebo, mexiletine, and morphine was 19, 30, and 53%, respectively (P < 0.0001, morphine vs. placebo and mexiletine). The numbers needed to treat to obtain 50% and 33% decreases in pain intensity with morphine were 5.6 and 4.5, respectively. Treatment with morphine was associated with a higher rate of side effects. Conclusions:Therapy with morphine, but not mexiletine, resulted in a decrease in intensity of postamputation pain but was associated with a higher rate of side effects and no improvement in self-reported levels of overall functional activity and pain-related interference in daily activities.


In the context of environment reconstruction for inspection, it is important to handle sensor noise properly to avoid distorted representations. A short survey of available sensors is realize to help their selection based on the payload capability of a robot. We then propose uncertainty models based on empirical results for three models of laser rangefinders: Hokuyo URG-04LX, UTM-30LX and the Sick LMS-151. The methodology, used to characterize those sensors, targets more specifically different metallic materials which often give distorted images due to reflexion. We also evaluate the impact of sensor noise on surface normal vector reconstruction and conclude with observations about the impact of sunlight and reflexions.


The years between the first world war and the great stock market crash marked the arrival of the United States of America as a world military, business, scientific, and cultural leader. Americans from all stripes and in all fields achieved great notoriety. Babe Ruth, Margaret Sanger, Duke Ellington, Alfred Stieglitz, Aimee Semple McPherson, Woodrow Wilson, Clarence Darrow, Langston Hughes, and Henry Ford are just a few of the luminaries who shined on the world's stage. Combining substantial biographical accounts of 60 Americans who influenced or represented their times with portraits and other photographs and up to five often hard-to-find primary documents written by or relating to the subject, Lifetimes offers readers a comprehensive account of the person's life and work and first-hand accounts of what they thought and what other people thought about them. This all-in-one biographical resource is perfect for students and anyone interested in this pivotal era in American history. Among the Americans included in the volume who made a profound impact on society are music greats Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, and Bessie Smith; sports stars Jack Dempsey, Knute Rockne, and Helen Wills; writer Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway; scientists or inventors Edwin Armstrong and George and Gladys Dick; leaders for women's rights Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul; social and political leaders Emma Goldman, Marcus Garvey, and Eugene Debs; movie stars Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, and Anna May Wong, and notorious figures like Al Capone or Sacco and Vanzetti. Each entry contains a biography of 750-1500 words, the portrait, other photographs, primary documents featuring items such as Al Smith's response to charges that he was not fit to be president because he was Catholic, or the NAACP's attack on the racial stereotypes portrayed in D.W. Griffith's epic, Birth of a Nation, and sources for further reading. The volume ends with an analytical index.


The conventional sensitivity analysis based on model-order reduction (MOR) techniques guarantees the passivity and, consequently, the stability of the reduced sensitivity circuit provided that the original circuit is passive. This excludes a large class of circuits that are stable but not necessarily passive. In this article, an efficient MOR method is presented for the sensitivity analysis of active stable circuits. The proposed algorithm preserves the stability of both the original and associated sensitivity equations, and is based on reducing the first-order variational equations in the form of a set of stable multi-input differential equations. The sensitivity equations are decomposed into several subsystems of equations where each subsystem contains a dedicated cluster of inputs, thereby avoiding the significant increase in the size of the reduced model due to increasing the number of inputs.


Pleurotus pulmonarius (grey oyster mushroom) is a well-known edible mushroom that has been acknowledged as a curative agent for many diseases. The antihypertensive potential of Pleurotus pulmonarius mycelium was investigated in vitro via angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory activity. The study was commenced with cultivation of P. pulmonarius mycelium using small scale liquid submerged fermentation for seven days in which brown sugar-spent yeast medium was used as substrate. The mycelial yield was separated from the whole broth to produce mycelial aqueous extract and broth extract, respectively. A preliminary ACE inhibitory assay was performed on the mycelial aqueous extract and broth extract. The result demonstrated almost twofold higher anti-ACE activity of the mycelial aqueous extract at the IC50 value of 0.72 mg/ml. Ammonium sulphate precipitation was therefore carried out on the mycelial aqueous extract for protein extraction and fractionations. Proteins were fractionated into ten fractions based on gradual ammonium sulphate saturation and labelled as F10 to F100. Each fraction was tested for their ACE inhibitory activity and result showed the highest activity by F40 with the IC50 value obtained was 0.022 mg/ml, which was 32 times stronger than the IC50 value of mycelial aqueous extract. Fraction F40 was subjected to RP-HPLC for protein purification using a semi-preparative column C18 (10 × 100 mm). Eight apparent chromatogram peaks were observed and labelled as P1 to P8. All peaks were evaluated for their ACE inhibitory activity and P6 demonstrated the highest ACE inhibitory activity at the IC50 value of 0.012 mg/ml. The IC50 value of P6 was 60 times stronger than that of the mycelial aqueous extract, and considered among the strongest IC50 values for ACE inhibitory activity discovered from mushrooms. Proteins from P6 were further analysed via SDS-PAGE. Consequently, there were four protein bands emerged via silver staining method. Each band was then
excised and treated with trypsin in-gel digestion prior to MALDI-TOF/TOF MS. Database search from MALDI-TOF/TOF MS has nominated three potential antihypertensive proteins that work via different mechanisms; serine proteinase inhibitor-like protein, nitrite reductase-like protein and DEAD/DEAH box RNA helicase-like protein. MRPS5-like protein could also be one of the desired proteins due to the highest protein score among all other proteins in MALDI database. Fraction P6 was also subjected to LC-MS/MS to support the protein identification. DEAD/DEAH box RNA helicase-like protein was the only protein that has been identified in both mass spectrometries. This study demonstrated the first reported ACE inhibitory activity from the mycelium of P. pulmonarius (Fr.) Quel cultivated locally.


Abstract Introduction Weight distribution and off-loading at the stance are commonly used subjective assessments during the orthopaedic examination. The clinical relevance, sensitivity and specificity of limb off-loading have not yet been established. The aim of the study was to assess off-loading on a weight distribution platform (WDP) and determine the sensitivity and specificity at various cut-off points for the detection of objective lameness (OL) and orthopaedic disease (OD). Materials and Methods The total pressure index was used to determine OL on a pressure-sensitive walkway (PSW). Normal weight distribution on both the PSW and WDP was considered 30/30/20/20. A total pressure index standard deviation of 2 was used. The sensitivity and specificity of the WDP for the identification of OL and OD was determined at cut-off points 1 to 6 below normal weight distribution values. Results All patients in the study (n = 50) had confirmed OD. The PSW identified 36/50 (74%) patients as OL; these were deemed to be OL for sensitivity and specificity analysis of WDP data. At cut-off point 1, the WDP had the highest sensitivity for OD (84%) and OL (97%). At cut-off point 6, the WDP had the highest specificity for OD (98%) and OL (98%). The highest combination of sensitivity and specificity for both OD (1.65) and OL (1.80) was at cut-off point 2. Discussion/Conclusion The WDP provided the highest combined sensitivity and specificity at cut-off point 2 below the normal value for the detection of both OL and OD.


Plant remains were recovered from an Urartian settlement, Yoncatepe, situated in the Van province of eastern Turkey and dating to the Iron Age period (first millennium B.C.E.). Large quantities of hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and of bread/macaroni wheat (free-threshing wheat) Triticum aestivum L./T. durum Desf.), both mixed with small quantities of domesticated emmer wheat (T. dicoccum Schübl.), were found in the storerooms of the Yoncatepe palace, indicating the storage of agricultural surplus. Rye (Secale cereale L.) grains occur very occasionally, while pulses include lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.), chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), and bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia [L.] Willd.). Grape seeds unearthed in a tomb at Yoncatepe provide physical evidence supporting written records of vineyards. Numerous seeds of gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa [L.] Crantz), found in a storage vessel, provide evidence of the cultivation of this plant. It is likely, that the Urartians used the seeds for oil extraction.


Infrastructure industries and services are crucial for generating economic growth, alleviating poverty, and increasing international competitiveness. Safe water is essential for life, and health. Reliable electricity saves businesses and consumers from having to invest in expensive backup systems, or more costly alternatives, and keeps rural women and children from having to spend long hours fetching firewood. Widely available and affordable telecommunications and transportation services can foster grassroots entrepreneurship, and thus are critical to generating employment, and advancing economic development. In most developing and transition economies, private participation in infrastructure, and restructuring have been driven by the high costs, and poor performance of state-owned network utilities. Under state ownership, services were usually under-priced, and making it difficult to expand services. The report indicates that although privatization, competitive restructuring, and regulatory reforms improve infrastructure performance, several issues must be considered and conditions met for these measures to achieve their public interest goals. First, reforms have significantly improved performance, leading to higher investment, productivity, and service coverage and quality. Second, effective regulation-including the setting of adequate tariff levels-is the most critical enabling condition for infrastructure reform. Regulation should clarify property rights, and assure private investors that their investments will not be subject to regulatory opportunism. Third, for privatization to generate widely shared social benefits, infrastructure industries must be thoroughly restructured and able to sustain competition. Thus restructuring, to introduce competition should be done before privatization, and regulation should be in place to assure potential buyers of both competitive, and monopoly elements.


Multiple-object tracking and segmentation (MOTS) is a novel computer vision task that aims to jointly perform multiple object tracking (MOT) and instance segmentation. In this work, we present PointTrack++, an effective on-line framework for MOTS, which remarkably extends our recently proposed PointTrack framework. To begin with, PointTrack adopts an efficient one-stage framework for instance segmentation, and learns instance embeddings by converting compact image representations to un-ordered 2D point cloud. Compared with PointTrack, our proposed PointTrack++ offers three major improvements. Firstly, in the instance segmentation stage, we adopt a semantic segmentation decoder trained with focal loss to improve the instance selection quality. Secondly, to further boost the segmentation performance, we propose a data augmentation strategy by copy-and-paste instances into training images. Finally, we introduce a better training strategy in the instance association stage to improve the distinguishability of learned instance embeddings. The resulting framework achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the 5th BMTT MOTChallenge.


In the present work in situ neutron diffraction and acoustic emission were used concurrently to study deformation twinning in two ZM20 Mg alloys with significantly different grain sizes at room temperature. The combination of these techniques allows differentionation between the twin nucleation and the twin growth mechanisms. It is shown, that yielding and immediate post-yielding plasticity in compression is governed primarily by twin nucleation, whereas the plasticity at higher strains is governed by twin growth. The current results further suggest that yielding by twinning happens in a slightly different manner in the fine-grained as compared to the coarse-grained alloy.


Electronic catalogs are information about products and services in the electronic commerce environment, and require diverse and flexible schemas. A catalog management system supports the definition, storage, retrieval, and management of product information throughout the e-commerce process, and thus, is an essential component in almost all e-business applications. However, the diversity in product types, applications, and vocabulary (language) makes it a difficult system to design and implement. We present in this paper the modeling and design issues in an e-catalog management system and introduce a system that implements our approaches to these issues.


Agricultural production is strongly conditioned by the fact that inputs are transformed into outputs with considerable time lags, causing the rural household to balance its budget during the season when there are high expenditures for input purchases and consumption and few revenues. With limited access to credit, the budget balance within the year can become a constraint to agricultural production. As is the case in many developing countries, Chinese rural households have been suffering from a lack of access to capital. While China is one of the biggest countries in terms of rural areas and agricultural production, few studies have focused on the impact of credit on agriculture in China. Using survey data, this study aims to examine how credit constraints currently affect agricultural productivity and rural household income in China. The study findings suggest that under credit constraints, production inputs, along with farmers' capabilities and education, cannot be fully employed. By removing credit constraints, agricultural productivity and rural household income can be improved.


Secretion of insulin in a group of children with normal stature and without endocrine-metabolic (47 cases), versus another group with constitutional short stature (35 cases). Is study authors made a glucose tolerance test (1 g/kg) to both groups and they study the fisiologic secretion of insulin during 24 hours. It was observed that rates of insulin were similar after glucose tolerance test in both groups, but study of fisiologic secretion of insulin during 24 hours shows low rates of insulin in the group of constitutional short stature (p less than 0.005). The problem group rises higher rates of insulin after a glucose tolerance test than after the study of fisiologic secretion of insulin in 24 hours, but the other group shows similar answer in both tests.


A new Hg2+-sensing and selective fluorescent sensor, 1-(1-pyrenecarboxaldehyd e)-thiocarbohydrazone, was synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR and 1H NMR spectra. Its fluorescence and recognition properties to the mercury ion were studied by the fluorescence emission spectra. With adding mercury ion into solution, the fluorescence emission intensities at different characteristic wavelength changed continually. Hence the ratiometric fluorescence measurement was used for detecting the complex process. It was found that a 1:1 stoichiometry complex is formed between the mercury ion and the compound with the association constants were 2.04×105 L/mol, respectively. And the detection limits of the mercury ion were 2.52×10-8 mol/L.


Data labeling is currently a time-consuming task that often requires expert knowledge. In research settings, the availability of correctly labeled data is crucial to ensure that model predictions are accurate and useful. We propose relatively simple machine learning-based models that achieve high performance metrics in the binary and multiclass classification of radiology reports. We compare the performance of these algorithms to that of a data-driven approach based on NLP, and find that the logistic regression classifier outperforms all other models, in both the binary and multiclass classification tasks. We then choose the logistic regression binary classifier to predict chest X-ray (CXR)/ non-chest X-ray non-CXR) labels in reports from different datasets, unseen during any training phase of any of the models. Even in unseen report collections, the binary logistic regression classifier achieves average precision values of above 0.9. Based on the regression coefficient values, we also identify frequent tokens in CXR and non-CXR reports that are features with possibly high predictive power.


Isolines can be used for studies regarding the cytoplasmic influence of certain maize traits, for improving some of these traits but also for avoiding the cytoplasmic uniformity of the genetic basis. The aim of this paper was to identify any differences between five inbred line and their isogenic counterpart regarding the plant height, ear height, the number of leaves/ plant, leaf area and tassel length. The novelty of this study consists on the inbred lines used and the very specific conditions from the two experimental years. Several research were conducted on male sterile germplasm, but our study relate to fertile inbred lines. The biological material used consists of 25 inbred lines: 20 isolines and the five original inbreds. The isolines were obtained after transferring the nucleus of five inbred lines on four cytoplasm sources using the backcross method for ten generations. The inbred lines were studied in 2013 and 2014 at the maize breeding field of the Agricultural Research and Development Station Turda, Romania. There were identified two cytoplasm (T 248 and TC 221) that significantly influenced the plant and ear height, leaf area and the tassel length. These two cytoplasms can be used to improve these four traits. On this study we also found some interaction between the cytoplasm and the nucleus that caused significant differences when the isoline was compared to the original inbred, so each particular situation should be taken into consideration. The use of different cytoplasms caused increases or decreases for every trait; one cytoplasm can led to one trait increase for one inbred line, and decreases for another one. The results obtained can be used in further maize inbred line breeding programs, but also for obtaining more performant maize hybrids. The cytoplasms used in this study can be starting biological material for new isolines, but is very important to test their reaction to other inbred lines.


This paper explores the role of knowledge flows and TFP growth by using direct survey data on knowledge flows linked to firm-level TFP growth data. Our knowledge flow data correspond to the kind of information flows often argued, especially by policy-makers, as important, such as within the firm, or from suppliers, purchasers, universities and competitors. We examine three questions (a) What is the source of knowledge flows? (b) To what extent do such flows contribute to productivity growth? (c) Do such flows constitute a spillover flow of free knowledge? Our evidence show that the main sources of knowledge are competitors; suppliers; plants that belong to the same group and universities. We conclude that the main "free" information flow spillover is from competitors and that multi-national presence may be a proximate source of this spillover.


The shoot apex of overwintering perennials ceases its morphogenetic activity at the end of the growing season and transforms into a bud which is dormant and freezing-tolerant. In birch (Betula pubescens) these events are triggered by short photoperiod, and involve the production of 1,3-beta-D-glucan containing sphincters on the plasmodesmata. As a result, all symplasmic pathways shut down. Here we show that breakage of bud dormancy by chilling involves restoration of the symplasmic organization of the meristem. This restoration is likely to be mediated by 1,3-beta-D-glucanase, which was present in small spherosome-like vacuoles that arose de novo during dormancy induction. During chilling these vacuoles were displaced from the bulk cytoplasm to the cortical cytoplasm where they became aligned with the plasma membrane, often associated with plasmodesmata. At this stage the enzyme also appeared outside the vacuoles. During chilling, 1,3-beta-D-glucan disappeared from the plasmodesmal channels and wall sleeves, and the plasmodesmata regained the capacity for cell-cell transport, as demonstrated by microinjection of Lucifer Yellow CH and Fluorescein-tagged gibberellic acid. Collectively, the present experiments demonstrate that restoration of the symplasmic organization of the meristem is indispensable for the release of buds from dormancy and the assumption of a proliferation-competent state, and implicate 1,3-beta-D-glucanase action at the plasmodesmata. Based on these findings we propose a model for 'dormancy cycling' which depicts the meristem as passing through three sequential states of cellular communication with characteristic sensitivities to distinct environmental cues.


Background Early pulmonary rehabilitation after exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has previously been shown to reduce the risk of hospital admission and improve physical performance and quality of life. However, the impact of attendance at early rehabilitation programmes has not been established. Objectives To evaluate the impact of increasing attendance to pulmonary rehabilitation on the risk of hospital admission, physical performance and quality of life in patients attending an early rehabilitation programme after an exacerbation of COPD. Methods This study was a secondary exploratory analysis of the randomised controlled trial COPD-EXA-REHAB study, involving patients hospitalised with an exacerbation of COPD. The COPD-EXA-REHAB study compared early pulmonary rehabilitation, starting within 2 weeks after an exacerbation, with standard treatment, that is, the same programme starting 2 months later. The present analysis included only the 70 patients allocated to early pulmonary rehabilitation. Results At 1-year follow-up, we found an association between the number of sessions attended and a reduction in hospital admissions (incidence rate ratio 0.93 (95% CI 0.88 to 0.99), p=0.02), corresponding to a 7% reduction for each session attended. Similarly, at 2-month follow-up, physical performance was positively associated with sessions attended: the mean Incremental Shuttle Walk Test result improved by 8 m with each session (95% CI 2.54 to 13.56, p=0.005) and the Endurance Shuttle Walk Test result by 44 s (95% CI 18.41 to 68.95, p=0.001). Quality of life, assessed using the COPD Assessment Test, was not significantly associated with the number of attended sessions, with the average score increasing by 0.15 points with each session (95% CI −0.35 to 0.65, p=0.55). Conclusion Increased attendance at early pulmonary rehabilitation after exacerbation of COPD was associated with reduced risk of hospital admission and improved physical performance.


Defective DNA mismatch repair in neoplasia is manifested by extra, aberrant bands within multiple microsatellite markers. The replication error (RER) phenotype is present in most colorectal and endometrial carcinomas in patients with the hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal carcinoma syndrome. In addition, a minority of sporadic colorectal and endometrial carcinomas are RER positive. RER in sporadic colorectal carcinomas has been associated with improved prognosis, but its clinical significance in sporadic endometrial cancer has not been characterized. We analyzed DNA extracted from 109 formalin-fixed sporadic endometrial carcinomas for microsatellite instability. The RER-positive phenotype was demonstrated by microsatellite instability in more than one of the eight dinucleotide markers tested. RER was correlated with pathological and clinical parameters as well as with immunohistochemical staining for the p53 gene product and alterations in codon 12 of Ki-ras. Nine percent of the endometrial carcinomas were RER positive, and RER was significantly associated with high grade and adverse outcome. We found no significant correlation of RER with histological subtype, stage, depth of invasion, mutations in the 12th codon of Ki-ras, or p53 immunoreactivity. We conclude that the RER phenotype is present in a minority of sporadic endometrial carcinomas and is associated with high grade and poor prognosis.


The increasing component packing density and consequent reduction in feature size in printed circuit assemblies (PCA's) continues to place manufacturers under extreme pressures. The most significant demand is for improved first-off process yields because of the high cost and technical difficulty of rework processes and concerns over the reliability of reworked products. The dominant process for the production of PCA's is reflow soldering of a stencil/screen printed solder paste to form the interconnection between the component termination and the substrate. It is crucial for the manufacturer to ensure that each termination experiences a suitable thermal history throughout the reflow cycle. Despite the advances in processes to cope with complex product features, such as increasing the uniformity and amount of heat transfer in the process, ensuring right-the-first-time is still a problem leading to increased lead-times, reduced yields and the scrapping of assemblies used to establish the ideal process parameters for each particular product. This paper describes the utilization of a predictive model as a tool for the off-line determination of the most appropriate process and its specific set-up for a PCA. Results are also presented where PCA design is altered to improve thermal mass distribution.


Abstract The article describes an interpretive case study of a group of six dual-use school community libraries in one remote region of South Africa. Its focus is rather more on the libraries as school libraries than public libraries. The recent government sponsored LIS Transformation Charter has placed a spotlight on the backlogs in school and public library provision. The case study, conducted in April 2009, investigates if dual or joint use libraries might help fill gaps and, if so, under what conditions. The article describes the background, research questions, methodology, site and some of the findings. The study highlights the relationships among role-players, the realities of dualuse functioning and the complex issue of librarian identity. The study concludes that, although many of the international criteria for dual-use libraries are not met, the six libraries do provide a crucial service for their schools and other schools in the surrounding areas. And they offer a tantalising picture of the possibilities of dual-use for rural information services. The article suggests that, with more dynamic leadership, these possibilities could be fulfilled.


Single-crystal and polycrystalline Ba4Cu8Se13 were synthesized; the average crystal structure was solved by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and the structural model was confirmed by a detailed electron microscopy study of polycrystalline Ba4Cu8Se13. The title compound can be rationalized as (Ba2+)4(Cu+)8(Se2-)2(Se22-)4(Se34-) and crystallizes in a new structure type (space group C2/c with a = 9.171(8) Å, b = 9.146(8) Å, c = 27.35(3) Å, β = 93.21(3)°, and V = 2291 Å3). It contains unprecedented Cu4Se9 fragments with planar Cu rectangles. These fragments form two-dimensional layers via regular (2c-2e) Se-Se bonds. Two of these layers are then connected in the third dimension via linear, hypervalent Se34- units, resulting in "sandwichlike", layered building blocks, which are stacked along c and separated by Ba. Ba4Cu8Se13 is the first example where Se22- and Se34- groups coexist. We were able to visualize the crystal structure by recording HAADF images, which clearly reveal the Cu4Se9 fragments and linear Se34- units. The title compound is a charge-balanced semiconductor and possesses a large Seebeck coefficient (380 μV K-1 at 200 K) and a low thermal conductivity (0.77 W m-1 K-1 at 200 K)-two requirements for efficient thermoelectric materials.


A human diet containing a significant amount of flavonoids, such as present in tea, red wine, apple, and cocoa has been associated with reduced disease risks. After consumption, a part of these flavonoids can be directly absorbed by the small intestine, but the greatest part passages towards the large intestine where microbes break the flavonoids down into phenolic metabolites. After absorption into the blood, both intact and metabolized flavonoids are subsequently methylated, sulphated, and glucuronidated or a combination thereof. The exact chemical structural elucidation and quantification of these conjugates present in the human body are key to identify potential bioactive components. However, this is still a tedious task due to their relative low abundance in a complex background of other high-abundant metabolites and the many possible isomeric forms. Therefore, we aimed to systematically identify these conjugates by using a combination of pre-concentration and separation by solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by LC-FTMSn and 1D 1H NMR. The combination of LC-FTMSn and HPLC-TOF-MS-SPE-NMR resulted in the efficient identification and quantification of low abundant polyphenol metabolites down to micromolar concentrations and thus opens up new perspectives for in depth studying of the bioavailability and the possible mode of action of flavonoids like flavan-3-ols and their gut-microbial break-down products circulating in the human body.


Hydroxyapatite (HAp) and Si-containing hydroxyapatite (SiHAp) particles were synthesized by a wet chemical method. Local structures around Si, P and H in the hydroxyapatites were analyzed by solid-state magic-angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In vitro solubility of those SiHAp particles was evaluated by soaking them in acetic acid/acetate buffer solution (pH=4.0) at 36.5°C. As the Si content increased, the in vitro solubility of the SiHAp particles increased, while their crystallite size changed little.


A focus in the development of the next generation of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants is the integration of high temperature particle receivers with improved efficiency supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycles. The feasibility of this type of system depends on the design of a particle-to-sCO2 heat exchanger. This work presents a finite element analysis (FEA) model to analyze the thermal performance of a particle-to-sCO2 heat exchanger for potential use in a CSP plant. The heat exchanger design utilizes a moving packed bed of particles in crossflow with sCO2 which flows in a serpentine pattern through banks of microchannel plates. The model contains a thermal analysis to determine the heat exchanger's performance in transferring thermal energy from the particle bed to the sCO2. Test data from a prototype heat exchanger was used to verify the performance predictions of the model. The verification of the model required a multitude of sensitivity tests to identify where fidelity needed to be added to reach agreement between the experimental and simulated results. For each sensitivity test in the model, the effect on the performance is discussed. The model was shown to be in good agreement on the overall heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchanger with the experimental results for a low temperature set of conditions with a combination of added sensitives. A set of key factors with a major impact on the performance of the heat exchanger are discussed.


In this study, we aimed to detect the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) of the chicken PRKAG3 gene and discern the potential association with meat quality traits. A total of 240 meat-type quality chickens were screened by using single-strand conformational polymorphism analysis (SSCP) and DNA sequencing. Two SNPs (g.1744G>C and g.3207A>G) were identified in chicken PRKAG3 with medium polymorphism (0.25C were significantly associated with water content, crude protein, and crude ash (P<0.05/0.01). The SNP genotypes g.3207A>G were significantly associated with water content, and crude protein (P<0.01). The results suggested that PRKAG3 gene is potential major genes or is in close linkage disequilibrium with the QTL affecting meat quality traits in this population of chickens.


Powder-impregnated fiber tows provide a means of producing composite precursor materials from otherwise intractable or difficult-to-process materials, which is common with hightemperature resins [1,2]. Powder towpreg production entails measurement and control of polymer deposition, line tension, and line speed. A powder towline has been constructed that is capable of operation with small volumes of polymer for use with experimental materials. The line is also capable of producing production quantities of towpreg or tapes. Mechanical activities on the towline are monitored continuously, which also implements quality control, providing a certificate for each towpreg package showing that the batch is within established specifications. This paper also provides input data for subsequent analysis of polymer deposition uniformity. Specifically, application of fast fourier transforms and autocorrelation algorithms shows if variations in polymer loading are periodic or random. If they are periodic, fluctuations in loading may correlate with changes in line tension and velocity or other mechanical effects from the production line. The objective is to manipulate line parameters to deliver the most uniform polymer loading, with all sources of periodic fluctuations tuned out. The essential objective of quality control is to minimize variation in polymer loading and to achieve the most homogeneous coating possible. Thermoset and thermoplastic powders have been processed with and without added fillers. Details of the powder towpreg process, including tension control, spreading, powder deposition, sintering, process control instrumentation, and packaging are discussed along with examples and characterization of various types of powder towpregs that have been prepared.


This paper is concerned with estimating the column space of an unknown low-rank matrix A ∈Rd1×d2 , given noisy and partial observations of its entries. There is no shortage of scenarios where the observations—while being too noisy to support faithful recovery of the entire matrix—still convey sufficient information to enable reliable estimation of the column space of interest. This is particularly evident and crucial for the highly unbalanced case where the column dimension d2 far exceeds the row dimension d1, which is the focal point of the current paper. We investigate an efficient spectral method, which operates upon the sample Gram matrix with diagonal deletion. While this algorithmic idea has been studied before, we establish new statistical guarantees for this method in terms of both 2 and 2,∞ estimation accuracy, which improve upon prior results if d2 is substantially larger than d1. To illustrate the effectiveness of our findings, we derive matching minimax lower bounds with respect to the noise levels, and develop consequences of our general theory for three applications of practical importance: (1) tensor completion from noisy data, (2) covariance estimation/principal component analysis with missing data and (3) community recovery in bipartite graphs. Our theory leads to improved performance guarantees for all three cases.


These practice parameters address the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of conduct disorder in children and adolescents. Voluminous literature addresses the problem from a developmental, epidemiological, and criminological perspective. Properly designed treatment outcome studies of modern psychiatric modalities are rare. Ethnic issues are mentioned but not fully addressed from a clinical perspective. Clinical features of youth with conduct disorder include predominance in males, low socioeconomic status, and familial aggregation. Important continuities to oppositional defiant disorder and antisocial personality disorder have been documented. Extensive comorbidity, especially with other externalizing disorders, depression, and substance abuse, has been documented and has significance for prognosis. Clinically significant subtypes exist according to age of onset, overt or covert conduct problems, and levels of restraint exhibited under stress. To be effective, treatment must be multimodal, address multiple foci, and continue over extensive periods of time. Early treatment and prevention seem to be more effective than later intervention.


Multi-channel satellite imagery, from stacked spectral bands or spatiotemporal data, have meaningful representations for various atmospheric properties. Combining these features in an effective manner to create a performant and trustworthy model is of utmost importance to forecasters. Neural networks show promise, yet suffer from unintuitive computations, fusion of high-level features, and may be limited by the quantity of available data. In this work, we leverage the scattering transform to extract high-level features without additional trainable parameters and introduce a separation scheme to bring attention to independent input channels. Experiments show promising results on estimating tropical cyclone intensity and predicting the occurrence of lightning from satellite imagery.


This dissertation explores how the movement of workers around the Atlantic shaped emerging understandings of politics, labor, and society in the United States. Focusing on early republican New York City between 1790 and 1820, it examines the interplay between land and sea labor, arguing that the transatlantic mobility of the "floating population" shaped how transient laborers found work, shared knowledge, formed identities, and participated in politics and society. The term "floating population" describes the array of workers at the heart of this study: sailors and other semi-skilled and unskilled workers – both male and female – such as washerwomen, dockworkers, peddlers, day laborers, servants, and the enslaved, whose precarious employment meant that they drifted from job to job and from city to city.

The radical turmoil of the Age of Revolution serves as the backdrop for this study. The upheavals of the American Revolution, the French and Haitian Revolutions, and resistance and rebellion in England and Ireland sent massive numbers of people in motion around the Atlantic in search of work, subsistence, and liberty, thereby shaping the political and social relations of many Atlantic ports, especially New York city. In this era, American political and economic elites sought to create an orderly workforce that would allow them to expand commerce and national prosperity. The floating population alternatively both embraced and challenged emerging perceptions of national belonging and citizenship, the politics of immigration, the practice of commerce, and the development of city space. Placing this transient working population at the center of the narrative highlights the Atlantic influences that shaped developing national ideologies in the early republic and offers a new approach to its labor history.


In this paper, we study a family of conservative bandit problems (CBPs) with sample-path reward constraints, i.e., the learner's reward performance must be at least as well as a given baseline at any time. We propose a One-Size-Fits-All solution to CBPs and present its applications to three encompassed problems, i.e. conservative multi-armed bandits (CMAB), conservative linear bandits (CLB) and conservative contextual combinatorial bandits (CCCB). Different from previous works which consider high probability constraints on the expected reward, we focus on a sample-path constraint on the actually received reward, and achieve better theoretical guarantees (T-independent additive regrets instead of T-dependent) and empirical performance. Furthermore, we extend the results and consider a novel conservative mean-variance bandit problem (MV-CBP), which measures the learning performance with both the expected reward and variability. For this extended problem, we provide a novel algorithm with O(1/T) normalized additive regrets (T-independent in the cumulative form) and validate this result through empirical evaluation.


The phase 3 ECHELON-1 study demonstrated that brentuximab vedotin (A) with AVD (A+AVD) exhibited superior modified PFS versus ABVD for the frontline treatment of patients with stage III/IV classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) (NCT01712490; 2011-005450-60). Maturing data from positron emission tomography (PET)-adapted trials highlight potential limitations of PET-adapted approaches, including toxicities with dose intensification and higher-than-expected relapse rates in PET2(-) patients. We present here an update of the ECHELON-1 study, including an exploratory analysis of 3-year PFS per investigator. 1334 patients with stage III or IV cHL were randomized 1:1 to receive six cycles of A+AVD (n = 664) or ABVD (n = 670). Interim PET scan after cycle 2 (PET2) was required. At a median follow-up of 37 months, 3-year PFS rates were 83.1% with A+AVD and 76.0% with ABVD; 3-year PFS rates in PET2(-) patients aged <60 years were 87.2% versus 81.0%, respectively. A beneficial trend in PET2(+) patients aged <60 years on A+AVD was also observed, with a 3-year PFS rate of 69.2% versus 54.7% with ABVD. The benefit of A+AVD in the intent-to-treat population appeared independent of disease stage and prognostic risk factors. Upon continued follow-up, 78% of patients with peripheral neuropathy (PN) on A+AVD had either complete resolution or improvement compared with 83% on ABVD. These data highlight that A+AVD provides a durable efficacy benefit compared with ABVD for frontline stage III/IV cHL which is consistent across key subgroups regardless of patient status at PET2, without need for treatment intensification or exposure to bleomycin.