This analysis of cultural representations of British intelligence between 1945 and 1999 explores three intertwined themes: constructions of gender identities; the representation of morality and moral dilemmas; and the relationship between fact and fiction. Cultural representations of spies are a particularly rich source of analysis of the three themes given the character of the profession, which has captured the public imagination, but about which information in the public domain is erratic and selective. The primary source base includes 89 British novels and 53 films (both cinema and television), cartoons and newspaper articles. A formalist approach to these sources is complemented by cultural materialism in order to work closely with the texts while emphasising the importance of the political and social contexts in which these sources were produced and consumed. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first identifies contrasting typologies of masculinities and femininities in popular representations. The spectrums of masculinity depend upon bisecting axes: the maverick/organisation spectrum is determined by the spy's role in and relationship to the organisation; the peacock/chameleon spectrum is determined by visibility and tradecraft and is more responsive to social change than the former category. Women fall on a singular spectrum ranging from Angel to Patriot to Whore. While these three categories are remarkably consistent over time, by the end of the period under investigation the new category of the Professional emerges who blends the three. The second section is thematic and maps these gender constructions on to two dominant themes of popular representations of espionage: betrayal and moral complexity. Part two explores the cultural circuit between the public and fictional representation of spies and the implicit and explicit explorations of gender identities thus generated in a period marked by major public scandals in the espionage world. The thesis concludes that although this is a genre which is little constrained by public knowledge of the world it depicts, it is nonetheless heavily constrained by societal norms and deeply revealing of gender roles, particularly masculine ones.


Oral feedback (OFB) in face-to-face conferencing plays a crucial role in the supervision process as it helps in scaffolding EFL postgraduate students" thesis work, and in the related academic socialization.Yet, the importance of OFB at the postgraduate level has not been specifically addressed or considered adequately. In view of this gap in the literature, this paper reports a study related to the problems EFL supervisees encounter in OFB face-to-face conferencing. Participants were international students from Yemen studying at a Malaysian public university and specializing in English language studies. This paper discusses the major findings obtained from an analysis of OFB face-to-face conferencing between supervisors and supervisees. The results showed that in the OFB conferencing, supervisors tended to dominate the conversations with their students. Students" lack of fluency in the English language that might be due to a heightened anxiety level in the face-to-face conferencing was a major reason behind passing their turns in the conversations to their supervisors. Another major finding of the study was the lack of rapport between the supervisors and supervisees during the OFB conferencing. The study indicated that OFB face-to- face conferencing was of limited use to postgraduate EFL students in helping them revise their thesis drafts.


. Russian and Chinese societies are undoubtfully experiencing social and gender transformation today. At the same moment they are still preserving (each in its own manner) patriarchal attitudes and principles of the organization of social life. Changes and un-certainty about new reality can cause a deep internal conflict (deformation of self-esteem and self-worth) to some men. The roots of the conflict are to be found in the contradiction between the expectations of stereotypical manifestations of the masculine ideal from men on the one hand, and demand for gender variability on the other. The consequences of such experience are very individual, but there are also general trends: the demonstration of hypermasculinity as a way of asserting one ' s masculinity, complete submission to the demands and expectations of society, or the formation of new variants of masculinity based on the " androgynous principle " of combining characteristics of different gender roles. The gender changes considered here turn out to be related to political, socio-cultural and economic processes. Manifestations of various models of masculinity are noticeable in a wide variety of fields, e. g. education, art, fashion, di-plomacy. The authors of the article, relying on scientific, historical, sociological sources, as well as reference literature and factual material, attempt to draw conclusions about how patriarchal be-havioral patterns and ideology are transformed in modern Russian and Chinese societies.


Over the last several years, a growing body of work has examined the nature of large-scale virtual organizations for data-intensive cooperative science. These projects, known as Cyberinfrastructures (CI) in the United States, are established realms of inquiry for the eScience and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) communities. Scholarship in these communities extends technology focused inquiries to investigate the sociotechnical concerns to such infrastructure creation and maintenance. In this paper we present findings from our qualitative study of a federated cyberinfrastructure organization known as GENI. We contribute to this body of scholarship by investigating how stakeholders in the GENI project position existing, and newly created, resources for use in educational settings. We examine how stakeholders acquaint new potential stakeholders with this CI in order to draw them into the community, and the ways in which stakeholder's roles evolve over time. Our findings illustrate several ways stakeholders leverage and align existing relationships and resources to expand the CI project's user base. Finally, this paper suggests avenues of further inquiry and implications for organizing future CI projects.


We report a simple, one step process for developing wrinkling patterns in azlactone-based polymer thin films and brushes in 2D and 3D surfaces. The polymer used in this work wrinkles spontaneously upon deposition and solidification on a substrate without applying any external strain to the substrate, with the mode of deposition defining the direction of the wrinkles. Wrinkle formation is shown to occur on a variety of substrates over large areas. We also find that a very thin brush-like layer of an azlactone-containing block copolymer also exhibits wrinkled topology. Given the spontaneity and versatility of wrinkle formation, we further demonstrate two proofs-of-concept, (i) that these periodic wrinkled structures are not limited to planar surfaces, but are also developed in complex geometries including tubes, cones and other 3D structures; and (ii) that this one step wrinkling process can be used to guide the deposition of metal nanoparticles and quantum dots, creating a periodic, nanopatterned film.


In a young male insulin-dependent diabetic patient with normal aldosterone levels an infusion of hypertonic glucose induced a paradoxical increase in serum potassium concentration and suppressed normally the elevated HGH levels, while on high sodium intake. On the other hand, during sodium restriction providing protection from the paradoxical hyperkalemia, a paradoxical increase in HGH level has been observed. A definite relationship was found between changes in serum potassium and HGH levels suggesting a possible role for the hypophyseal hormone in the cellular regulation of potassium distribution.


The results from computer simulations of the gas-dynamic processes that occur during and after the rupture of diaphragms within shock tubes and expansion tubes are presented. A two-dimensional and axisymmetric finite-volume code that solves the unsteady Euler equations for inviscid compressible flow, was used to perform the simulations. The flow domains were represented as unstructured meshes of triangular cells and solution-adaptive remeshing was used to focus computational effort in regions where the flow-field gradients were high. The ability of the code to produce accurate solutions to the Euler equations was verified by examining the following test cases: supersonic vortex flow between two arcs, an ideal shock tube, and supersonic flow over a cone. The ideal shock tube problem was studied in detail, in particular the shock speed. The computed shock speed was accurate when the initial pressure ratio was low. When the initial pressure ratio was high the ow was dificult to resolve because of the large density ratio at the contact surface where significant numerical diffusion occurred. However, solution- adaptive remeshing was used to control the error and reasonable estimates for the shock speed were obtained. The code was used to perform multi-dimensional simulations of the gradual opening of a primary diaphragm within a shock tube. The development of the flow, in particular the contact surface was examined and found to be strongly dependent on the initial pressure ratio across the diaphragm. For high initial pressure ratios across the diaphragm, previous experiments have shown that the measured shock speed can exceed the shock speed predicted by one- dimensional models. The shock speeds computed via the present multi-dimensional simulation were higher than those estimated by previous one-dimensional models and were closer to the experimental measurements. This indicates that multi- dimensional ow effects were partly responsible for the relatively high shock speeds measured in the experiments. The code also has the ability to simulate two-dimensional fluid-structure interac- tions. To achieve this the Euler equations are solved for a general moving frame of reference. Mesh management during a simulation is important. This includes the ability to automatically generate a new mesh when the current mesh becomes distorted (due to the motion of the structures) and the transfer of the solution from the old mesh to the new. The shock induced rupture of thin diaphragms was examined. Previous one dimen- sional models are awed because they do not simultaneously consider the diaphragm mass and allow the upstream gas to penetrate the diaphragm mass. Two multi- dimensional models which allow the upstream gas to penetrate are described. The first model assumes the diaphragm vaporises immediately after the arrival of the incident shock. The second model assumes the diaphragm shatters into a number of pieces which can be treated as rigid bodies. The results from both models are compared with experimental data.


In recent years, the e-commerce market has grown with the spread of the internet worldwide every year. Accordingly, in service industries, purchasing products with reservations has become common. With the spread of online reservations, the booking curve, which is the concept of the time series in the cumulative number of reservations and has been used for sales optimization in the airline ticket and hotel industries, has been used in various industries. Booking curves in specific industries have been studied, but a universally applicable model across various industries has not been developed. In this study, we show that booking curves can be modeled universally by the exponential decay function, and we also show that the model is valid by using real data from some industries before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, under completely different market conditions. The cross-industry exponential laws of booking curves constitute an important discovery in regard to mathematical laws in the social sciences and can be applied to give leading microeconomic indicators.


Extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts are a tool for predicting the convergence behavior of iterative processors for a variety of communication problems. A model is introduced that applies to decoding problems, including the iterative decoding of parallel concatenated (turbo) codes, serially concatenated codes, low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, and repeat-accumulate (RA) codes. EXIT functions are defined using the model, and several properties of such functions are proved for erasure channels. One property expresses the area under an EXIT function in terms of a conditional entropy. A useful consequence of this result is that the design of capacity-approaching codes reduces to a curve-fitting problem for all the aforementioned codes. A second property relates the EXIT function of a code to its Helleseth-Klove-Levenshtein information functions, and thereby to the support weights of its subcodes. The relation is via a refinement of information functions called split information functions, and via a refinement of support weights called split support weights. Split information functions are used to prove a third property that relates the EXIT function of a linear code to the EXIT function of its dual.


Abstract Concomitant ingestion of alcohol and medications can greatly affect drug plasma concentrations as dose dumping or failure may occur as a result of the fact that formulation excipients may not always be resistant to alcohol. In this study, a natural polysaccharide (Sesamum radiatum gum) (SG) was extracted, characterized and used to formulate sustained release theophylline compacts to study the effect of varying alcohol concentrations (v/v) in dissolution media on drug release from these compacts. X-ray powder diffraction showed that the extracted gum was amorphous in nature with the powder having excellent compaction properties as observed with its compact being significantly harder than those prepared with pure hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) K4M. X-ray microtomography showed that the compacts produced were homogenous in nature, however, swelling studies showed failure of the compacts at the highest concentration of absolute ethanol used (40% v/v). Dissolution studies showed similarity at all levels of alcohol tested (f2 = 57–91) in simulated gastric (0.1 N HCl, pH 1.2) and intestinal fluids (phosphate buffer, pH 6.8) for the HPMC compacts whereas dissimilarity only occurred for the SG compacts at the highest alcohol concentration in both media (f2 = 35). The suitability of SG as a matrix former that can resist alcoholic effects therefore makes it suitable as an alternative polymer with wider applications for drug delivery.


BACKGROUND
Although the systemic inflammatory condition can be confirmed in cancer patients, the pathophysiological importance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by neutrophils has not yet been defined.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Twenty-one patients with inoperable, chemoresistant and radioresistant cancer were enrolled in this study. At least 4 weeks prior to sampling, the patients were free from antitumor treatments. Control samples were also obtained from a healthy donor (39-year-old male). Peripheral blood samples were set 150 μl each on the 2 ml tube with 50 μl Mebiol Gel, and the production of ROS from neutrophils was detected by luminol-dependent chemiluminescence (LmCL) in a kinetic mode at 30-minute intervals for 2.5 hours with a luminometer at 37°C.

RESULTS
Each point, peak value and sum of values of LmCL in the patient group was statistically higher than those in the healthy donor. There were no differences in LmCL according to performance status (PS), type of cancer, age, or gender in cancer patients.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggested that ROS produced by neutrophils universally reflects the systemic inflammatory condition in cancer patients.


Twenty-four children under 18 months of age with an initial diagnosis of cerebral palsy were observed for a minimum of six months on either experimental or control physical therapy programs using a double-blind study design. Medical and therapy evaluations indicated definite changes in motor, social, and management areas for those subjected to the experimental procedure and particularly among children expected to show higher intelligence. Change is found to be somewhat correlated with age at entry to the study and is more often associated with less actual treatment time. Findings suggest the need for additional treatment modalities for the youngest children who are most likely to have the greatest global involvement.


A synthetic flavonoid with vascular targeting properties. Flavone acetic acid exhibits an antiproliferative effect on endothelial cells as a result of a superoxide-dependent mechanism, which induces changes in permeability of the vasculature of the tumor. This agent may stimulate tumor necrosis and promote shunting of blood flow to viable regions of the tumor, increasing their oxygenation and rendering them more susceptible to the antitumor effects of hyperthermia and ionizing radiation.


Low circulating levels of insulin-like growth factor binding protein 1 (IGFBP-1) are associated with insulin resistance and predict the development of type 2 diabetes. IGFBP-1 can affect cellular functions independently of IGF binding through an Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) integrin-binding motif. Whether causal mechanisms underlie the favorable association of high IGFBP-1 levels with insulin sensitivity and whether these could be exploited therapeutically remain unexplored. We used recombinant IGFBP-1 and a synthetic RGD-containing hexapeptide in complementary in vitro signaling assays and in vivo metabolic profiling in obese mice to investigate the effects of IGFBP-1 and its RGD domain on insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion, and whole-body glucose regulation. The RGD integrin-binding domain of IGFBP-1, through integrin engagement, focal adhesion kinase, and integrin-linked kinase, enhanced insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion in C2C12 myotubes and INS-1 832/13 pancreatic β-cells. Both acute administration and chronic infusion of an RGD synthetic peptide to obese C57BL/6 mice improved glucose clearance and insulin sensitivity. These favorable effects on metabolic homeostasis suggest that the RGD integrin-binding domain of IGFBP-1 may be a promising candidate for therapeutic development in the field of insulin resistance.


We propose a novel preparation technology of CNTs modified electrode. CNTs are mixed with polymer into homogenate by mechanical ball grinder; spin homogenate into composite film; solidify and polish composite film; chemical etch polymer partly from the surface of the composite film, in order to keep part of the CNTs be inserted in polyimide and the remainder outside of film, then CNTs modified electrode can be got. The morphologies of CNTs modified electrode are observed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The application of CNTs modified electrode in alum solution battery is demonstrated. Cyclic voltammetry of CNTs modified electrodes in V4+ solution is discussed.


Objective trends of society development encourage substantially increased attention to the problem of person's self-fulfilment. Its insufficient understanding determines the necessity of its theoretical justification as well as empirical study. The article presents the research aimed at determination of comparative features of professional self-fulfilment of a skilled person working at 10 different lines of profession.


BACKGROUND
Despite progress in anticancer therapies, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) has still a low survival rate. Recent studies have shown that tumour stroma may play an important role in the pathogenesis of this malignant disease. Fibroblasts are a major component of the tumour microenvironment and may significantly influence HNSCC progression as indicated by the contribution they make to important hallmarks of cancer, such as inflammation, non-restricted growth, angiogenesis, invasion, metastasis, and therapy resistance. It is well known that tumour cells can confer a cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) phenotype that supports the growth and dissemination of cancer cells. CAFs can stimulate cancer progression through cell-cell contacts and communication, remodelling of extracellular matrix, and production of many signal molecules and matrix metalloproteinases. Consequently, genetic changes in epithelial cells are probably not the only factor that drives HNSCC carcinogenesis. Non-genetic changes in the tumour stroma can also be significantly involved. Stress-induced signals can induce a multicellular program, creating a field of tissue that is predisposed to malignant transformation. The "field cancerization" concept represents a process of active evolution of intercellular interactions and feedback loops between tumour and stromal cells. This model paves the way to study cancer from a new perspective and identify new therapeutic targets.

PURPOSE
In this review, we discuss current knowledge about CAFs, such as their cellular origin, phenotypical plasticity and functional heterogeneity, and stress their contribution to HNSCC progression. This article was supported by the project AZV 16-29835A. The authors declare they have no potential conflicts of interest concerning drugs, products, or services used in the study. The Editorial Board declares that the manuscript met the ICMJE recommendation for biomedical papers. Submitted: 18. 6. 2019 Accepted: 9. 9. 2019.


The concepts of condition number, taken from numerical linear algebra combined with logarithmic sensitivity are applied to analyze the robustness for model uncertainty of power systems eigensets. Sensitivity matrices to facilitate the estimations of the eigenvalue sensitivities in relation to elements of the state matrix are proposed. Eigenvector derivatives are analyzed and it is evidenced the trend of power system eigenvectors to present large sensitivities. A case study of a realistic single machine with excitation system connected to an infinite bus example is presented. Lack of stability robustness and also of eigenvector robustness are demonstrated.


We investigate if Big 4 firms are asymmetrically more effective than non-Big 4 firms in monitoring income-increasing vs. income-decreasing quarterly earnings management. We also study the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) 2000 requirement that audit firm reviews of quarterly financial statements be completed prior to their filing with the SEC ("timely reviews"). We find Big 4 firms are more effective than non-Big 4 firms in curbing income-increasing earnings management around seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), but not income-decreasing earnings management around open market repurchases (OMRs). In the post-2000 period, after the SEC's mandate for timely reviews began, we find income-increasing earnings management around SEOs declined significantly, and this decline is primarily driven by the clients of Big 4 firms. We provide evidence that timely quarterly reviews improve earnings quality, especially when companies have incentives to engage in income-increasing accruals and are reviewed by Big 4 firms.


Purpose: Widespread uses of Computed Tomography(CT) and image‐guidedradiation treatment(IGRT) can significantly increase the cumulative exposure to health tissues. AAPM TG‐75 was formed to compile data on imaging exposures and to identify ways to optimize the imaging procedure. To address the lack of organdoses and effective doses assessment in the IGRTimaging procedure, this paper describes a study to use a Monte Carlo based method to simulate kV and MV cone beam CT(CBCT) scanners and then calculate organdoses and effective doses.Method and Materials: This paper utilizes a whole‐body adult male phantom called the VIP‐Man, and Adult Male and Female that are adjusted to match with 50th percentile ICRP average population. The MCNPX code is used to simulate CT scanners and finally calculate doses. Several IGRT procedures are considered to demonstrate how this method can assess and compare various protocols. Results: For the VIP‐Man phantom, the effective dose for kV CBCT (assuming total exposure of 1350 mAs) is about 9.5 mSv for the two anatomical sites while the effective dose for MV CBCT (assuming a total of 6 MU) ranges from 5.10 mSv for the H&N case to 8.39 mSv for the prostate case. For different procedures, the effective dose data can be adjusted accordingly. Conclusion: With realistic patient phantoms and imaging scenario, organdosees can be obtained by Monte Carlo simulation, and consequently effective doses have been calculated. The results show that showed that the effective dose is a useful quantity for the comparison of the performance and patient safety between kV CBCT and MV CBCT. These information can aid the assessment of radiation risk to the patient from imaging procedure. This study demonstrates the feasibility of determining detailed organdoses for various IGRT related cone‐beam CT procedures.


Commissural axons generally cross the midline only once. In the Drosophila nerve cord and mouse spinal cord, commissural axons are guided by Slit only after they cross the midline, where Slit prevents these axons from recrossing the midline. In the developing corpus callosum, Slit2 expressed by the glial wedge guides callosal axons before they cross the midline, as they approach the corticoseptal boundary. These data highlighted a potential difference between the role of Slit2 in guiding commissural axons in the brain compared with the spinal cord. Here, we investigate whether Slit2 also guides callosal axons after they cross the midline. Because such questions cannot be addressed in conventional gene knock-out animals, we used in utero injections of antisense oligonucleotides to specifically deplete Slit2 on only one side of the brain. We used this technique together with a novel in vitro assay of hemisected brain slices to specifically analyze postcrossing callosal axons. We find that in the brain, unlike the spinal cord, Slit2 mediates both precrossing and postcrossing axonal guidance. Depletion of Slit2 on one side of the brain causes axons to defasciculate and, in some cases, to aberrantly enter the septum. Because these axons do not recross the midline, we conclude that the principle function of Slit2 at the cortical midline may be to channel the axons along the correct path and possibly repel them away from the midline. We find no evidence that Slit2 prevents axons from recrossing the midline in the brain.


Foil bearing that has a soft surface is a kind of air bearing. The performances of foil bearings are greatly affected by the materials of bearing surface, which is called foil element. In order to estimate the performance of foil bearings, two kinds of foil thrust bearings that are made of different materials respectively were tested in a micro turbine system, which contains rotation part and static part. Load capacity and stability of these foil thrust bearings were investigated in experiments. The results show that bearing which contains rubber has higher load capacity and bearing which contains copper foil has higher stability. According to the work in this paper, applications with different requirements can adopt suitable foil thrust bearing.


Sixty-six patients with brain tumors were evaluated with resting-state fMRI using seed-based analysis of hand and orofacial motor regions. Rates of supplementary motor area localization were compared with those in healthy controls and with localization results by task-based fMRI. Localization of the supplementary motor area using hand motor seed regions was more effective than seeding using orofacial motor regions for both patients with brain tumor and controls. Bilateral hand motor seeding was superior to unilateral hand motor seeding in patients with brain tumor for either side. The authors conclude that in addition to task-based fMRI, seed-based analysis of resting-state fMRI represents an equally effective method for supplementary motor area localization in patients with brain tumors, with the best results obtained with bilateral hand motor region seeding. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The supplementary motor area can be a critical region in the preoperative planning of patients undergoing brain tumor resection because it plays a role in both language and motor function. While primary motor regions have been successfully identified using resting-state fMRI, there is variability in the literature regarding the identification of the supplementary motor area for preoperative planning. The purpose of our study was to compare resting-state fMRI to task-based fMRI for localization of the supplementary motor area in a large cohort of patients with brain tumors presenting for preoperative brain mapping. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-six patients with brain tumors were evaluated with resting-state fMRI using seed-based analysis of hand and orofacial motor regions. Rates of supplementary motor area localization were compared with those in healthy controls and with localization results by task-based fMRI. RESULTS: Localization of the supplementary motor area using hand motor seed regions was more effective than seeding using orofacial motor regions for both patients with brain tumor (95.5% versus 34.8%, P < .001) and controls (95.2% versus 45.2%, P < .001). Bilateral hand motor seeding was superior to unilateral hand motor seeding in patients with brain tumor for either side (95.5% versus 75.8%/75.8% for right/left, P < .001). No difference was found in the ability to identify the supplementary motor area between patients with brain tumors and controls. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to task-based fMRI, seed-based analysis of resting-state fMRI represents an equally effective method for supplementary motor area localization in patients with brain tumors, with the best results obtained with bilateral hand motor region seeding.


In the in vivo rat sciatic nerve tibialis muscle preparation the potency and pharmacodynamics of vecuronium, atracurium, pancuronium, tubocurarine and their combinations were studied. Considering the potency only, there was no beneficial difference between the pure compounds and their combinations. As both vecuronium and atracurium are almost free from side-effects individually, a combination of the two relaxants brings no advantage.


Objective: The aims of this study are to evaluate the relationship between the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) risk score and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and to determine whether a combination of these factors improves the predictive value for long-term cardiovascular events in Chinese Han patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods: In this prospective, observational, and single-center study, NLRs (neutrophil count/lymphocyte count) were calculated from the complete blood count of 1050 patients with ACS, whereas GRACE risk scores were calculated from patients' clinical parameters obtained on arrival at our hospital. Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine independent factors associated with cardiovascular events. Results: NLR was positively correlated with the GRACE risk score (r=0.66, p<0.001), and both the GRACE risk score (HR: 1.01; 95% CI: 1.01–1.02; p<0.001) and NLR (HR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.06–1.14; p<0.001) independently predicted cardiovascular events. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.69 (95% CI: 0.64–0.72; p<0.001) when the GRACE score was calculated alone; however, it significantly increased (p<0.001) to 0.77 (95% CI: 0.74–0.80; p<0.001) when the GRACE score was combined with NLR. Conclusion: This study shows for the first time that NLR is positively associated with the GRACE risk score and demonstrates that a combination of these two factors may improve the predictive value for cardiovascular events in Chinese Han patients with ACS.


The effects of an organic solvent on the electrospinning of water-soluble polyacrylamide with ultrahigh molecular weight were investigated. An organic solvent, DMF, was introduced to the polyacrylamide aqueous solution and subsequently, transparent spinning solutions were obtained. The spinning solution was electrospun at the voltage of 10 kV and the electrospun products were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results indicated that all the electrospinning products including colloidal particles, beaded fibers and smooth fibers were fabricated in the DMF/H2O bi-component solvent and the morphology of electrospun products changed from smooth fiber to beaded fiber with the increasing amount of DMF used.


OBJECTIVE
To gain a more comprehensive understanding of patients' perceptions of access to their primary care practice and how these relate to patient characteristics.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
Ontario.

PARTICIPANTS
Adult primary care patients in Ontario (N = 1698) completing the Quality and Costs of Primary Care (QUALICOPC) Patient Experiences Survey.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Responses to 11 access-related survey items, analyzed both individually and as a Composite Access Score (CAS).

RESULTS
The mean (SD) CAS was 1.78 (0.16) (the highest possible CAS was 2 and the lowest was 1). Most patients (68%) waited more than 1 day for their appointment. By far most (96%) stated that it was easy to obtain their appointment and that they obtained that appointment as soon as they wanted to (87%). There were no statistically significant relationships between CAS and sex, language fluency, income, education, frequency of emergency department use, or chronic disease status. A higher CAS was associated with being older and being born in Canada, better self-reported health, and increased frequency of visits to a doctor.

CONCLUSION
Despite criticisms of access to primary care, this study found that Ontario patients belonging to primary care practices have favourable impressions of their access. There were few statistically significant relationships between patient characteristics and access, and these relationships appeared to be weak.


Objectives Concurrent chemoradiotherapy is standard of care in locally advanced oropharyngeal cancer (LA-OPC). This treatment regimen results in significant acute toxicities. This study investigates the effect of treatment-related toxicity on patient outcomes. Methods Patient information was retrospectively collected for patients treated for LA-OPC between 2007 and 2014. Factors analyzed included age, gender, pretreatment ECOG performance status, smoking history, patient BMI prior to and following treatment, tumor histology, disease stage, disease recurrence, incidence, and timing of feeding tube placement, radiation dose received, chemotherapy regimen used and if it was completed, and patient survival. All statistical analysis was provided through the University of Nebraska Medical Center Department of Biostatistics. Results 74 patients were identified with a median follow-up of 3.4 years and a median age of 58.5. Most patients were male (87.8%) and had squamous cell histology (98.7%). Most patients underwent chemoradiotherapy alone (98.6%) and received concurrent cisplatin (78.4%) with approximately half (53.4%) receiving all planned chemotherapy. Upon multivariate analysis, both disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates were improved by lower pretreatment BMI, increased weight lost during treatment, and lack of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement prior to treatment initiation. Neither DFS nor OS was impacted by placement of a PEG tube during active treatment. Conclusion These data suggest that weight loss and PEG tube placement during chemoradiotherapy for LA-OPC, presumably due to treatment-associated mucositis and xerostomia, are not associated with worse outcomes.


Viral and cellular factors responsible for parvovirus target cell specificity have been examined for two serologically indistinguishable strains of the minute virus of mice which infect mouse cells of dissimilar differentiated phenotype. Both the prototype strain and the immunosuppressive strain grow in and form plaques on monolayers of simian virus 40-transformed human fibroblasts, a finding that has allowed the comparison of several aspects of their virus-host cell interactions. Although closely related by antigenic and genomic criteria, both the prototype strain and the immunosuppressive strain are restricted for lytic growth in each other's murine host cell, that is, in T cells and fibroblasts, respectively. The host range of each virus variant appears to be specified by a genetic determinant that is stably inherited in the absence of selection. In the restrictive virus-host interaction lytic growth is limited to a small or, in some cases, undetectable subset of the host cell population, and the majority of the infected cells remain viable, continuing to grow at the normal rate without expressing viral antigens. The susceptible host cell phenotype is dominant in T lymphocyte x fibroblast fusion hybrids, implying that different cell types express different developmentally regulated virus helper functions that can only be exploited by the virus variant that carries the appropriate strain-specific determinant.


Globally, cities have been experiencing neoliberal urbanization processes since the 1970s, while also contributing to the production of the neoliberal condition per se. The neoliberal state plays a core role in such processes, which have deepened the commodification of urban space via various mechanisms such as the privatization of public land and key urban infrastructure. This article critically investigates the direct involvement of the neoliberal state in the commodification of urban space by focusing on its triple role as a restructuring mechanism, a land developer and a volume housing developer in Turkey. The research develops and applies a theoretical framework based on Lefebvre's production of space and Gramsci's theory of hegemony. The paper examines the development of branded housing projects, which are private neighbourhoods, by analysing national legislative and organizational changes leading to the production of this type of development and illustrates this using four example projects in Istanbul. The paper contributes to the international evidence of the variegated characteristics of the neoliberal state in relation to urban development, and the neoliberal state's role in the accumulation of capital in contemporary capitalism.


The segmentation results of any clustering algorithm are very sensitive to the features used in the similarity measure and the object types, which reduce the generalization capability of the algorithm. The previously developed algorithm called image segmentation using fuzzy clustering incorporating spatial information (FCSI) merged the independently segmented results generated by fuzzy clustering-based on pixel intensity and pixel location. The main disadvantages of this algorithm are that a perceptually selected threshold does not consider any semantic information and also produces unpredictable segmentation results for objects (regions) covering the entire image. This paper directly addresses these issues by introducing a new algorithm called fuzzy image segmentation using location and intensity (FSLI) by modifying the original FCSI algorithm. It considers the topological feature namely, connectivity and the similarity based on pixel intensity and surface variation. Qualitative and quantitative results confirm the considerable improvements achieved using the FSLI algorithm compared with FCSI and the fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm for all three alternatives, namely clustering using only pixel intensity, pixel location and a combination of the two, for a range of sample of images.


The issue about corporate environment disclosure nowadays is increasing. This research aims to analyze the influence of firm size, leverage, proportion of independent commissioners, corporate secretary and firm age to corporate environmental disclosure. Thirteen companies that listed at Jakarta Islamic Index during 2011-2014 are used as sample. Data was analyzed using multiple regression technique. The independent variables are firm size, leverage, and proportions of independent commissioners, corporate secretary, and firma age. The result shows that simultaneously all independent variables have significant influence to corporate environmental disclosure. Whereas partially, firm size and firm age have significantly influence to corporate environmental disclosure. The implication of this research is the larger of the firm size and the longer firm will make a better corporate environmental disclosure in companies that listed at Jakarta Islamic Index. DOI: 10.15408/aiq.v8i2.3158


A slurry bubble column reactor to produce green fuel through hydrocracking of vegetable oil with Ni-W/SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 catalyst was simulated in this research with the objectives being to obtain a mathematical model of the reactor and an optimum operation condition. The steady state two-dimensional axisymmetric model of the slurry bubble column reactor with the diameter of 2.68 m and height of 7.14 m was modelled by considering mass and heat transfers. The very small liquid superficial velocity reflects that the liquid phase is in batch-like operation. The gas of 0.01 m/s in superficial velocity flows upward to suspend and agitate the spherical catalyst particles of 100 μm in diameter inside the reactor. The reactor operated at 80 bar and 420°C. Triglyceride of 5% w/w in dodecane and hydrogen of 105.5 mol hydrogen/triglyceride enter the reactor from the bottom. The research also considered pressure drop and loading catalyst distribution inside the reactor. Simulation results show that the triglyceride conversion is 99.26%, the product yield is 40.68% w/w, and the product purity is 45.55% w/w.


We describe Syskill & Webert, a software agent that learns to rate pages on the World Wide Web (WWW), deciding what pages might interest a user. The user rates explored pages on a three point scale, and Syskill & Webert learns a user profile by analyzing the information on each page. The user profile can be used in two ways. First, it can be used to suggest which links a user would be interested in exploring. Second, it can be used to construct a LYCOS query to find pages that would interest a user. We compare six different algorithms from machine learning and information retrieval on this task. We find that the naive Bayesian classifier offers several advantages over other learning algorithms on this task. Furthermore, we find that an initial portion of a web page is sufficient for making predictions on its interestingness substantially reducing the amount of network transmission required to make predictions.


Power feeder electromagnetic interference/radio frequency interference (EMI/RFI) filters are widely used in the Army and industry for filtering unwanted signals on power lines supplying sensitive loads such as computers and communication equipment. Typically, these low pass filters are passive circuits designed to attenuate frequencies above 10 kHz. Under 60-Hz sinusoidal conditions, the filters dissipate little power. But when nonlinear loads are present (such as those associated with computers, adjustable speed drives, electronic power supplies, and communication equipment), significant power dissipation can occur within the filters. This can shorten filter lifetime or even lead to complete filter failure. Laboratory testing and mathematical analyses were performed on a selected EMI/RFI filter to: 1) determine its frequency response in the 60 Hz–3 kHz range, 2) identify the filter components that dissipate the most power when subjected to harmonic currents, and 3) measure filter component temperature rises when harmonic line currents are present. It is shown that power line harmonics, not considered by EMI/RFI filter manufacturers, interact with filter component parasitics and cause considerable power dissipation in the filters.


Human parvovirus B19 (B19) infection during pregnancy is associated with the adverse foetal outcome known as non-immune hydrops fetalis (NIHF). Although B19 is known to infect erythroid-lineage cells in vivo as well as in vitro, the mechanism leading to the occurrence of NIHF is not clear. To investigate the possible involvement of the B19 non-structural protein NS1 in NIHF, three independent lines of transgenic mice were generated that expressed NS1 under the control of the Cre-loxP system and the GATA1 promoter. Two of the three lines expressed NS1 in erythroid-lineage cells. Most of the transgenic mice died at the embryonic stage, some of which developed hydropic changes caused by severe anaemia at embryonic day 15.5 (E15.5). Histological examination of embryos at E15.5 showed significantly fewer erythropoietic islands in the liver parenchyma, whereas their hearts showed no abnormal signs, such as cardiomegaly and apoptotic cells. The NS1-transgenic mouse lines established here provide an animal model for human NIHF and suggest that NS1 plays a crucial role in the adverse outcome associated with intrauterine B19 infection in humans.


Acta Crystallographica Section C: Structural Chemistry specializes in the rapid dissemination of high-quality detailed studies of novel and challenging crystal and molecular structures of interest in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, mineralogy, pharmacology, physics and materials science. The unique checking, editing and publishing facilities of the journal ensure the highest standards of structural reliability and presentation, while providing for reports on studies involving special techniques or difficult crystalline materials. Papers go beyond reporting the principal numerical and geometrical data, and may include the discussion of multiple related structures, a detailed description of non-routine structure determinations, placing the structure in an interesting scientific, physical or chemical context, or the discussion of interesting physical properties or modes of association. Reports of difficult or challenging structures, such as cases of twinning, severe disorder, or diffuse solvent regions are welcomed, provided the presented structures are correct and the difficulties and strategies used to treat them are scientifically discussed and properly documented. Section C readers have access to an extensive back archive of high-quality structural data.


It is well known that the baroreflex system is one of the most important indicators of the pathophysiology in hypertensive patients. We can check the sensitivity of the baroreflex by observing heart rate (HR) responses; however, there is no simple diagnostic method to measure the arterial behavior in the baroreflex system. Presently, we report the development of a method and associated hardware that enables the diagnosis of baroreflex sensitivity by measuring the responses of both the heart and the artery. In this system, the measurements are obtained by monitoring an electrocardiogram and a pulse wave recorded from the radial artery or fingertip. The arterial responses were measured in terms of the pulse wave velocity (PWV) calculated from the pulse wave transmission time (PTT) from the heart to the artery. In this system, the HR change corresponding to the blood pressure change in time series sequence was observed. Slope of the changes in blood pressure and HR indicated the sensitivity of the baroreflex system of the heart. This system could also measure the sensitivity of the baroreflex system of an artery. Changes in the PWV in response to the blood pressure changes were observed. Significant correlation was observed in the time sequence between blood pressure change and PWV change after calculating the delay time by cross-correlation. The slope of these parameter changes was easily obtained and it demonstrated the sensitivity of the baroreflex system of an artery. We evaluated this method in animal experiments using rotary blood pump (RBP) with undulation pump ventricular assist device, and PTT elongation was observed in response to increased blood pressure with RBP assistance. Furthermore, when tested clinically, decreased sensitivity of the baroreflex system in hypertensive patients was observed. This system may be useful when we consider the ideal treatment and follow-up of patients with hypertension.


To develop stable and high-yielding maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids for a diverse target population of environments (TPE), breeders have to decide whether greater gains result from selection across the undivided TPE or within more homogeneous subregions. Currently, CIMMYT subdivides the TPE in eastern and southern Africa into climatic and geographic subregions. To study the extent of specific adaptation to these subregions and to determine whether selection within subregions results in greater gains than selection across the undivided TPE, yield data of 448 maize hybrids evaluated in 513 trials across 17 countries from 2001 to 2009 were used. The trials were grouped according to five subdivision systems into climate, altitude, geographic, country, and yield-level subregions. For the first four subdivision systems, genotype × subregion interaction was low, suggesting broad adaptation of maize hybrids across eastern and southern Africa. In contrast, genotype × yield-level interactions and moderate genotypic correlations between low- and high-yielding subregions were observed. Therefore, hybrid means should be estimated by stratifying the TPE considering the yield-level effect as fixed and appropriately weighting information from both subregions. This strategy was at least 10% better in terms of predicted gains than direct selection using only data from the low- or high-yielding subregion and should facilitate the identification of hybrids that perform well in both subregions.


This is a retrospective review of data of 70 patien ts who underwent endoscopic nasal septoplasty . The case records of 70 patients who underw ent endoscopic septoplasty during the period from January 2009 to December 2011 at the Sa udi German Hospital, Aseer Region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were reviewed. Patients had septal deviation and symptomatic nasal obstruction for at least 3 months, and medica l management had failed. Preoperatively, nasal endoscopic findings were sept um deviations (34 patients, 48.6%), spurs (30 patients, 42.9%) and septum deviations + spurs (6 patients, 8.6%). The most common presenting symptoms were nasal obstruction ( 55 patients, 78.6%), headache (42, 60%) and posterior nasal discharge (34, 48.6%), whi ch improved significantly postoperatively. After the end of the follow up period of 6 months, there were no recorded immediate or late postoperative complications among all patie nts. Endoscopic nasal septoplasty is an effective technique that can be performed safely wi th a significant postoperative improvement in patient's symptoms and minimal or no postop erative complications.


Virtual space and all its attached Internet services, mobile applications, computers and networks are extensions of our daily needs and life. But are most of us prepared to use them in a responsible manner? The global networking can be used not only with the good intentions. Some of the problems can be avoided with an Internet-usage literacy campaign. In this way users will be aware of their rights, their duties and the dangers that may arise if they treat electronic/Internet/mobile-issues as details not worthy for their attention. With small awareness and little knowledge of how the things work, regular users can be safer in the computer wastelands, mobile frenzy and Internet services nebulae. By buying a device, which can help you to enlist/write in a social network or on a blog, the user starts to share information that can be used against ones will. An unsecured computer or network, social engineering, fake websites can be avoided even by a regular user if there is enough knowledge upon these subjects. Banning Internet or avoiding technology in general is not the key for development, but learning how to operate and understanding the processes involved is the intelligent way. Knowing your computer, understanding how the network is actually working, securing your gateways to the Internet, comprehending and smartly using the tools of the available services from the Internet or for your mobile/smart phone will not make the user a programmer or an Internet geek, but a responsible citizen in the virtual environment. Internet-literacy is a must at any age, for all that are living in the 21th century electronic and real worlds.


Evidence Connection articles provide clinical application of systematic reviews developed in conjunction with the American Occupational Therapy Association's (AOTA's) Evidence-Based Practice Project. Findings from the systematic review of occupational therapy for older adults with low vision were published in the January/February 2020 issue of the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) and in AOTA's Occupational Therapy Practice Guidelines for Older Adults With Low Vision, published in the March/April 2020 issue of AJOT. In this article, we describe a case report of an older adult with low vision who was referred to outpatient occupational therapy services because of a recent progression of her age-related macular degeneration that led to a decline in functional independence. Each article in the Evidence Connection series summarizes the evidence from the published reviews on a given topic and presents an application of the evidence to a related clinical case. These articles illustrate how the research evidence from the reviews can be used to inform and guide clinical decision making.


— Agriculture is among the most crucial sector in almost all countries around the world. It provides both income and employment opportunities among people ensuring food security and sustainability. However, an insect pest called spiralling whitefly, Aleurodicus dispersus Russell (Hemiptera:Aleyrodidae) threatens the agricultural industry. This pest is native to Caribbean Region and Central America and was first reported and described in Florida in 1965. From there on, it logistically spreads and invades many countries around the world. The spiralling whitefly is an intensively polyphagous pest with a wide range of host plants. It affects the plants by directly feeding on leaves competing with nutrients to the host. Indirect effects were also observed, such as producing honeydew and waxy substances that affect the host plants' overall physiological ability. Management strategies against the pest include releasing insect predators and parasitoids, removing infested leaves, installing light and sticky traps, selecting possible resistant crop varieties, using naturally occurring insecticides, and some synthetic control tactics. However, in the Philippines, very few studies have been conducted concerning the biology, ecology, and management of this polyphagous pest. Considering that the country is looking for a sustainable, healthier, and environmentally friendly pest management approach, research efforts should therefore give considerable attention to mitigate and prevent the possible impacts of this polyphagous insect pest in the future of the Philippine agricultural sector.


Background: Cadmium (Cd) is a toxic heavy metal of both environmental and occupational concerns. The health impact of ethno-botanical approaches in attempts to ameliorate its deleterious effects in biological systems should be an area of scientific interest since established therapies are often burdened with undesirable side effects. Aim: To determine the effects of polyphenol-rich extract of the leaf of Vernonia amygdalina (PEVA) on Cd-induced testicular toxicity, oxidative stress, and histopathology in Wistar rats. Materials and Methods: A total of twenty five (25) male Wistar rats were divided into five groups as follows: Group 1 (Control) received distilled water (0.2 ml/100 g i.p.) for 5 consecutive days and thereafter left untreated for 28 days. Group 2 received Cd alone at 5 mg/kg (i.p.) for 5 consecutive days. Group 3 was pre-treated with Cd as Group 2 and thereafter left untreated for a period of 28 days, whereas Groups 4 and 5 were pre-treated with Cd as Group 2 and thereafter received PEVA (orally) at two dose levels (200 and 400 mg/kg, respectively) for 28 days. Results: Cd administration induced reproductive toxicity as evidenced by lowered level of follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and testosterone (P < 0.05); perturbation of sperm characterization (P < 0.05); deleterious disruptions of the antioxidant system as evidenced by lowered levels of reduced glutathione and superoxide dismutase as well as elevation in thiobarbituric acid reactive substances level (P < 0.05); decrease in relative testicular weight (P < 0.05); and severe disseminated necrosis of the seminiferous tubules with terminally undifferentiated/necrotic cells as revealed by the histopathological examination. These conditions were sustained following administration of the two dose levels of PEVA. Conclusion: PEVA administration is not a suitable therapeutic choice for fertility enhancement in male Wistar rat model of Cd-induced decline in reproductive function.


Background: The hormone leptin is produced by fat cells and to help the regulation of energy balance by inhibiting hunger. Fat reserves are a set of actions of leptin. Obesity is associated with increased mortality in a range of cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma, colon cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and prostate cancer. This communication mechanism is not known so far. In this study, were studied the relationship between nucleotide changes LEP Rs 7799039 (-G2548A) in the leptin gene and concentration of leptin in serum.


Title of Document: EVALUATION OF AN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL'S IMPACT ON THE GRADUATION RATE OVERALL AND FOR STUDENTS RECEIVING FREE OR REDUCED PRICE MEALS IN ONE LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM Wendy Zimmerman, Doctorate of Education, 2017 Directed By: Dr. David Imig, College of Education Free and reduced meals (FARM) students in one Maryland school system are dropping out of school at a rate almost five times greater than non-FARM students. In order to address the overall and the FARM subgroup dropout rate an intervention program was implemented. The program invited students with the greatest risk of dropping out to attend. Small class sizes and faculty that focused on building relationships and meeting each individual student's social and emotional needs are hallmarks of the intervention. The effectiveness of the program was established through three tests: 1. Finding the average overall dropout rate before the inception of the program compared to dropout rate after the implementation; 2. A logistic regression to determine the probability of a student graduating from high school based on data from a group of students who attended the intervention as compared to a demographically matched group of students who did not attend; 3. A logistic regression to determine the probability of a student graduating based on data from a group of students who attended the program as compared to a pooled group of students who where invited to attend, but did not. The results suggest the program is effective; however, the reader should be cautioned as the results are based on a small sample size. The county experienced a 5.35% decrease in the overall dropout rate and a 6.80% decrease in the FARM dropout rate after the implementation of the program. Matched students who attended the program were almost fifteen times more likely to graduate than their peers who did not attend the program, and matched FARM students were fourteen times more likely to graduate. Students who attended the program had an almost nine times greater chance of graduating, and FARM students had an eight times greater probability of graduating, than students who were invited to attend but did not. The results show a relationship between the implementation of the dropout intervention program and a decrease in the dropout rate for the county and for the FARM subgroup. EVALUATION OF AN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL'S IMPACT ON THE GRADUATION RATE OVERALL AND FOR STUDENTS RECEIVING FREE OR REDUCED PRICE MEALS IN ONE LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM


Abstract— We report on the effectiveness of using magnetic measurements in the search for meteorites on the Antarctic ice sheet, which is thus far the Earth's most productive terrain. Magnetic susceptibility measurements carried out with a pocket meter (SM30) during the 2003/04 PNRA meteorite collection expedition to northern Victoria Land (Antarctica) proved to be a rapid, sensitive, non‐destructive means for the in situ identification, pairing, and classification of meteorites. In blue ice fields characterized by the presence of moraines and glacial drifts (e.g., Miller Butte, Roberts Butte, and Frontier Mountain), magnetic susceptibility measurements allowed discrimination of meteorites from abundant terrestrial stones that look like meteorites thanks to the relatively high magnetic susceptibility of the former with respect to terrestrial rocks. Comparative measurements helped identify 16 paired fragments found at Johannessen Nunataks, thereby reducing unnecessary duplication of laboratory analyses and statistical bias. Following classifications schemes developed by us in this and previous works, magnetic susceptibility measurements also helped classify stony meteorites directly in the field, thereby providing a means for selecting samples with higher research priority. A magnetic gradiometer capable of detecting perturbations in the Earth's magnetic field induced by the presence of meteorites was an efficient tool for locating meteorites buried in snow along the downwind margin of the Frontier Mountain blue ice field. Based on these results, we believe that magnetic sensors should constitute an additional payload for robotic search for meteorites on the Antarctic ice sheet and, by extension, on the surface of Mars where meteorite accumulations are predicted by theoretical works. Lastly, magnetic susceptibility data was successfully used to crosscheck the later petrographic classification of the 123 recovered meteorites, allowing the detection of misclassified or peculiar specimens.


Video frame interpolation has seen important progress in recent years, thanks to developments in several directions. Some works leverage better optical flow methods with improved splatting strategies or additional cues from depth, while others have investigated alternative approaches through direct predictions or transformers. Still, the problem remains unsolved in more challenging conditions such as complex lighting or large motion. In this work, we are bridging the gap towards video production with a novel transformer-based interpolation network architecture capable of estimating the expected error together with the interpolated frame. This offers several advantages that are of key importance for frame interpolation usage: First, we obtained improved visual quality over several datasets. The improvement in terms of quality is also clearly demonstrated through a user study. Second, our method estimates error maps for the interpolated frame, which are essential for real-life applications on longer video sequences where problematic frames need to be flagged. Finally, for rendered content a partial rendering pass of the intermediate frame, guided by the predicted error, can be utilized during the interpolation to generate a new frame of superior quality. Through this error estimation, our method can produce even higher-quality intermediate frames using only a fraction of the time compared to a full rendering.


Purpose
As noted in this forum, more research is needed to support the work of school-based speech-language pathologists who are designing and implementing interventions for students with language disorders. This article presents the findings of a multiple-baseline, single-subject study that was conducted to assess the outcomes of an intervention designed to improve narrative discourse proficiency for children with language disorders.

Method
Four school-age children with language disorders that included deficits in narration received an experimental version of a 3-phase narrative language intervention program called Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy (Gillam, Gillam, & Laing, 2014). Two additional children remained in baseline throughout the study and served as controls for history, testing, and maturation effects. Measures of story productivity (number of different words) and overall story complexity (Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language; Gillam, Gillam, Fargo, Olszewski, & Segura, 2016) were used to assess the children's self-generated narratives.

Results
After the onset of treatment, all 4 children who received the narrative intervention made moderate-to-large improvements in narrative productivity (number of different words). Three of the 4 children also made moderate-to-large improvements in narrative complexity (Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language). The narrative abilities of the 2 children who did not receive intervention did not change over the course of the study.

Conclusion
This study provides evidence for the feasibility of the Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy narrative instruction program for improving self-generated narratives by children with language disorders. Future research is needed to determine how gains in oral narration transfer to written narrative skills.


Enhancement of heat or mass transport in a spherical drop of a dielectric fluid translating in another dielectric fluid in the presence of uniform electric field is investigated. The internal problem or the limit of the majority of the transport resistance being in the dispersed phase is considered. The transient energy conservation equation is solved using a fully implicit finite volume method.In the literature, there is a plenty of studies that had been carried out when the electric field acts in the same plane of translation. In this paper, considering creeping flow regime, numerical computations have been conducted when the electric field acts perpendicular to the plane at which translation acts. As such the flow is no longer a two dimensional flow as a third component velocity comes to picture. At the first glance, thoughts of transport enhancement come to mind on the presence of a third velocity component that might promote mixing and consequently enhance transport effectiveness. Results are expressed in terms of the Nusselt number. Nusselt numbers are plotted in terms of Peclet number, Fourier number and the parameter L which is defined as the ratio of the maximum electric-field-induced surface velocity to translation-induced surface velocity. The code was validated by comparing, results for Peclet numbers of 500 and 1000 to corresponding cases available in literature. Results showed good agreement with previous results. A 3-D grid of 20×40×60 has been considered to cover the computational domain. A grid independence study has been carried out by doubling the whole grid. Results show acceptable results compromising accuracy and code running time. The effect of electric field is expressed in terms of parameter L.For low Peclet numbers (Pe ≤ 250), the application of electric field perpendicular to the plane at which translation acts leads to enhancement of heat/mass transport compared to that in pure translation. Such enhancement is about the same when the electric field and translation act in the same plane. On the other hand, for moderate Peclet numbers (Pe= 250∼1000), the transport enhancement is significant when compared to the enhancement obtained by an electric field acts in the same plane of action of translation as well as pure translation. These results can be understood by comparing time scales for diffusion and convection. When Peclet number is low the convection time scale is very large and hence mixing is not that effective in promoting heat / mass transfer. Whereas for moderate Peclet number, when the convection time scale gets smaller, heat/mass transfer is considerably enhanced compared to low Peclet numbers.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


This paper presents a tool called ASM-SPV (Abstract State Machines-Security Protocols Verifier) for verifying security protocols by model checking. In ASM-SPV, a security protocol is modeled by CoreASM language which is an executable ASM (Abstract State Machines) language. Then a modified CoreASM engine takes the CoreASM model of the protocol to build state space on-demand. Furthermore, security properties of the protocol are described as CTL (Computation Tree Logic) formulas and an adapted model checking algorithm is introduced to check whether the CoreASM model satisfies a given CTL formula or not. In this paper, we show the effectiveness of ASM-SPV with regard to memory consumption and speed of generating states compared with another CoreASM based model checker [mc]square.


Both experimental and clinical evaluation of nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT) as a method of identifying ischemic and necrotic muscle is described. Colorless NBT was reduced to a blue formazin by viable muscle but remained colorless in necrotic muscle. Muscle samples were rated for viability on a scale of 0-100% based on the relative amount of muscle sample that reduced NBT. There was good correlation between gross appearance, distribution of staining, and histologic findings in all nonviable experimental and clinical muscle specimens. All tissue that reacted with NBT proved to be viable histologically. Metabolically active or viable muscle fibers are rich in respiratory enzymes (dehydrogenases). The loss of dehydrogenase activity from ischemic or necrotic muscle can be detected by NBT reduction capacity. NBT technique identified nonviable tissue, clearly showed the even distribution of muscle damage characteristic of electric burns, was useful in defining ischemic muscle prior to obvious necrosis, and was a rapid, simple, and reliable semiquantitative test that can be used intraoperatively.


Power monitoring of nuclear reactors is normally done by means of neutronic instruments, i.e. by the measurement of neutron flux. The greater the number of channels for power measuring the greater is the reliability and safety of reactor operations. The aim of this research is to develop new methodologies for on-line monitoring of nuclear reactor power using other reliable processes. One method uses the temperature difference between an instrumented fuel element and the pool water below the reactor core. Another method consists of the steady-state energy balance of the primary and secondary reactor cooling loops. A further method is the calorimetric procedure whereby a constant reactor power is monitored as a function of the temperature-rise rate and the system heat capacity. Another methodology, which does not employ thermal methods, is based on measurement of Cherenkov radiation produced within and around the core. The first three procedures, fuel temperature, energy balance and calorimetric, were implemented in the IPR-R1 TRIGA nuclear research reactor at Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and are the focus of the work described here. Knowledge of the reactor thermal power is very important for precise neutron flux and fuel element burnup calculations. The burnup is linearly dependent on the reactor thermal power and its accuracy is important in the determination of the mass of burned 235U, fission products, fuel element activity, decay heat power generation and radiotoxicity. The thermal balance method developed in this project is now the standard methodology used for IPR-R1 TRIGA reactor power calibration and the fuel temperature measuring is the most reliable way of on-line monitoring of the reactor power. This research project primarily aims at increasing the reliability and safety of nuclear reactors using alternative methods for power monitoring.


The description of new species and genera of bivalves by incorrect methods has led to the fact that the systematics of many families was confusing. In particular, it was demonstrated that the ratios of the shell measurements and the comparator method do not reliably identify the species of mussels. As a result, the problem of determining valid species became urgent. In particular, this applies to the family Margaritiferidae. Various authors include in the family from 1 to 35 genera. The number of described species exceeds 200. Relying on modern databases and other sources, which mention the names of genera and species included in Margaritiferidae family, I compose synonymy of genera and species of the family. Total synonymy includes 132 generic names, described by at least one author as part of the Margaritiferidae. Of these: 33 names are related to Margaritiferidae, 81 — to the Unionidae, 6 — to the Mycetopodidae, 3 — to Iridinidae, 3 — to Pseudocardiniidae, 2 — to Pteriidae, 1 — to Hyriidae, 1 — to Malleidae, 1 — to Plicatounionidae and 1 — to Myidae. The main difficulty in the synonymy of extinct genera associated with the identification to the species determined as Margaritifera sp. Larvae of mollusks of this genus parasitize on the salmonid fish Salmonidae, which arose no earlier than in the Eocene. Therefore, the species described for the Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic cannot be included in the genus Margaritifera. I attribute these species to the extinct genus Palaeomargaritifera. The number of species names mentioned in connection with the family. Margaritiferidae is 201. For extinct species, the author's names are mostly kept. I believe that 4 valid genera and 12 valid species belong to Margaritiferidae: Cumberlandia monodonta, Margaritanopsis laosensis, Margaritifera dahurica, M. falcata, M. laevis, M. margaritifera, M. middendorffi, Pseudunio auricularius, P. hembeli, P. homsensis, P. marocanus, P. marrianae. This species composition is confirmed by data of genetic analysis and is shared by many researchers. I also proposed 8 extinct valid genera: Dianoconcha, Mengyinaia, Martinsoniconcha, Palaeomargaritifera, Proarcidopsis, Pseudomargaritifera, Qiyangia, Shifangella. The synonymy does not pretend to be complete and will be refined as new data are accumulated. How to cite this article: Zotin A.A. 2018. Synonymy in the family Margaritifera (Bivalvia: Unionidae) // Invert. Zool. Vol.15. No.1. P.131–152. doi: 10.15298/invertzool.15.1.10


Wildlife conservation in terrestrial ecosystems requires an understanding of processes influencing population sizes. Top-down and bottom-up processes are important in large herbivore population dynamics, with strength of these processes varying spatially and temporally. However, up until recently the role of human-induced top-down and bottom-up controls have received little attention. This is despite the fact that almost all terrestrial ecosystems are influenced by human activities thereby likely altering the natural control of animal populations. Therefore, in this thesis, the role of natural and human-induced controls in influencing large herbivore populations and how human controls (i.e., policy instruments, incentives and provisions) influence human activities and wildlife conservation in a semi-arid African savanna ecosystem are investigated. This study primarily focuses on Gonarezhou National Park (hereafter, Gonarezhou), Zimbabwe and adjacent areas. Zimbabwe experienced an economic crisis and political instability between 2000 and 2008 following the land reforms that started in 2000 which were widely covered in the mass media. The results indicated a weak synchrony in rainfall and drought occurrence (natural bottom-up process) in areas within the same "climatic" region, and variable responses of large herbivore species to the 1992 severe drought with most large herbivore species' populations declining following the 1992 drought and increasing thereafter. Therefore, droughts are important in influencing large herbivore populations in semi-arid ecosystems. Furthermore, the results showed variation in the intensity of illegal hunting (top-down human control) which was associated with variation in law enforcement efforts in Gonarezhou. Law enforcement efforts in Gonarezhou were strengthened in 2004 following the employment of additional patrol rangers which resulted in increased park coverage and a decline in recorded illegal activities. Thus, the results show that political instability and economic collapse does not necessarily lead to increased illegal hunting in situations where policy instruments, such as laws, are enforced. A higher perceived effectiveness of Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE - a community-based program that allows local people living in communal areas near protected areas in Zimbabwe to financially benefit from using the wildlife resources within their area) was partly associated with a decline in human-wildlife conflicts. In addition, local communities with higher perceived effectiveness of CAMPFIRE programs partly had more favourable attitudes towards problematic wild animals. Moreover, the results showed that in the 1990s, the majority of newspaper articles highlighted that wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe was largely successful. However, following the land reforms that occurred in 2000, the international media lost interest in wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe, as evidenced by a sharp decline in published articles. Also, the frames changed in the international media with the "political unrest and land reform" blame frame becoming more dominant, and nature conservation was portrayed more negatively. The change in media frames shows that there was a spill-over effect from the political domain into wildlife conservation following Zimbabwe's land reforms in 2000. Overall, this study provides new insights on the processes influencing large herbivore population dynamics in human-dominated semi-arid savanna ecosystems which consist of diverse wildlife management regimes and also illuminates the importance of media framing and (mis-)representation of wildlife conservation issues following political instability, crisis or societal unrest. With these findings, it is concluded that natural bottom-up processes (e.g., droughts) influence large herbivore population dynamics whereas policy instruments, incentives, provisions and societal frames mainly have a top-down effect on wild large herbivore populations in savanna ecosystems.


This study concerned an action research project undertaken within a mainstream 11-18 secondary school with a high proportion of pupil premium students in the north of England. Pupil premium is a grant given by the government to schools in England to decrease the attainment gap for the most disadvantaged children, whether by income or by family upheaval. The purpose was to investigate whether context-dependent memory impacts student recall during examinations. Students were tested within their standard classroom environment, then moved to a different environment for their second test. The results of this were statistically analysed and compared between genders and school years. The study demonstrated an impact, with students performing statistically worse when tested in an area that is removed from their standard environmental classroom context. Gender was shown to have no impact upon the effects, however, the school year was. Year 7 students were less affected than all other years. The reasons for this are unclear. There were limitations within this study, primarily with ensuring the examination papers were similar enough to act as a control variable. With the range of new topics introduced between the two sets of exams, students had a greater breadth of required knowledge. It was plausible therefore that there were other factors influencing the students' poorer performance. More research will need to be undertaken to establish that is the change in context that causes lower performance.


Background Most patients have moderate or severe pain after surgery. Opioids are the cornerstone of treating severe pain after surgery but cause problems when continued long after discharge. We investigated the efficacy of multifunction pain management software (MServ) in improving postoperative pain control and reducing opioid prescription at discharge. Methods We recruited 234 patients to a prospective cohort study into sequential groups in a nonrandomised manner, one day after major thoracic or urological surgery. Group 1 received standard care (SC, n = 102), group 2 were given a multifunctional device that fed back to the nursing staff alone (DN, n = 66), and group 3 were given the same device that fed back to both the nursing staff and the acute pain team (DNPT, n = 66). Patient-reported pain scores at 24 and 48 hours and patient-reported time in severe pain, medications, and satisfaction were recorded on trial discharge. Findings. Odds of having poor pain control (>1 on 0–4 pain scale) were calculated between standard care (SC) and device groups (DN and DNPT). Patients with a device were significantly less likely to have poor pain control at 24 hours (OR 0.45, 95% CI 0.25, 0.81) and to report time in severe pain at 48 hours (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.47–0.80). Patients with a device were three times less likely to be prescribed strong opioids on discharge (OR 0.35, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.95). Interpretation. Using an mHealth device designed for pain management, rather than standard care, reduced the incidence of poor pain control in the postoperative period and reduced opioid prescription on discharge from hospital.


In recent years, the potential to produce economic benefits has become increasingly important to the decision-making process for urban passenger rail investments. Such benefits are seen as a motivation for rail investment either by encouraging jobs to locate in a particular location or by opening up new journey-to-work opportunities for residential areas. However, while a significant portion of the benefits (e.g. travel time savings) are already well captured under the present Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) methodology, the current conventional frameworks do not take into consideration other potentially significant impacts such as agglomeration benefits in production.

Agglomeration benefits in production are positive impacts on productivity amongst firms due to an increasing concentration of firms or increasing concentration of employment or widening of labour markets. A synthesis of evidence from previous studies suggests that agglomeration effects associated with urban rail projects might be significant. However, the wide range of estimated elasticity values clearly indicates that there is a knowledge gap pertaining to the plausible range of its economic value and the methodology to estimate such effects associated with urban rail.

The focus of this research is to explore the economic impacts of agglomeration economies for urban rail projects. The research uses a framework of survey and secondary research as well as an experimental modelling approach involving transport modelling and economic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling. The Central Business District (CBD) of Melbourne City is adopted as the case study in this thesis to explore and estimate such agglomeration effects associated with urban rail.

The fundamental assumption underlying the research methodology is that the urban passenger rail system serving Melbourne CBD is an enabler of the CBD's economic growth. Therefore, if urban rail capacity is constrained (i.e. rail demand exceeds rail capacity provision), agglomeration diseconomies due to the corresponding increase in traffic congestion would set in. The poorer accessibility of the CBD may impact upon the CBD's employment size and hence its productivity. The economic value of this urban dis-agglomeration will provide a mirror indication of the agglomeration benefits associated with the expansion of urban passenger rail provision. A major motivation for this approach is the overcrowding of Melbourne CBD rail services which has occurred over the last 5 years.

Two measures of agglomeration economies in urban rail were explored in this research - the potential CBD employment suppression impact and the reduction in the proximity between CBD firms and workers due to an urban rail capacity constraint. This research estimated the potential CBD employment suppression impacts using three different approaches - outputs from the transport modelling with trip elasticities, findings from a CBD employer survey and outputs from secondary data analysis. Productivity elasticities (from secondary research) were applied on the employment suppression impacts to estimate the agglomeration dis-benefits associated with an urban rail constraint.

The deterioration in the CBD's accessibility (i.e. the 2nd measure of agglomeration economies used in this research) has also been employed to estimate the agglomeration dis-benefits and to derive a range of productivity shocks, using the method adopted by the UK and New Zealand to estimate agglomeration benefits. The productivity shocks were then inputted into a CGE model to estimate its impact on Melbourne CBD's economy. A comparative assessment of the agglomeration estimates from the various approaches was carried out and the results presented in this thesis.

This research provides an important contribution to knowledge by exploring a range of alternative methods to estimate agglomeration economies in urban rail and compares the results of these with the conventional method to understand the robustness and variability of outcomes. To the best knowledge of the author, no other published research has undertaken a comparative assessment of this kind. In particular, no previous published study has explored agglomeration economies associated with urban rail using CGE models in this manner. The main contribution of the CGE modelling work includes the development of the modelling approach for agglomeration economies in urban rail and the demonstration of how such agglomeration economies may impact Melbourne CBD and other regions in the short and long term. This finding contributes to the understanding of the overall effect of agglomeration economies in urban rail which is beneficial in the appraisal of future rail proposals. In addition, this understanding is also valuable as it can help eradicate the double-counting ambiguity regarding agglomeration benefits.


BACKGROUND
The COVID-19 global pandemic has disrupted the lives of millions and forced countries to devise public health policies to reduce the pace of transmission. In the Middle East and North Africa, falling oil prices, disparities in wealth and public health infrastructure, and large refugee populations have significantly increased the COVID-19 disease burden. In light of these exacerbating factors, public health surveillance is particularly necessary to help leaders understand and implement effective disease control policies to reduce Sars-CoV-2 persistence and transmission.

OBJECTIVE
The goal of this study is to provide advanced surveillance metrics, in combination with traditional surveillance, for COVID-19 transmission that account for weekly shifts in the pandemic speed, acceleration, jerk and persistence, to better understand country risk for explosive growth and to better inform those who are managing the pandemic. Existing surveillance coupled with our dynamic metrics of transmission will inform health policy to control the COVID-19 pandemic until an effective vaccine is developed.

METHODS
Using a longitudinal trend analysis study design, we extracted 30 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries. We use an empirical difference equation to measure the daily number of cases in the Middle East and North Africa as a function of the prior number of cases, the level of testing, and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel data model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R.

RESULTS
The regression Wald statistic is significant (χ^2 (5)=859.5, P<.001). The Sargan test is not significant, failing to reject the validity of over identifying restrictions (χ^2 (294)= 16 P=.99). Countries with the highest cumulative caseload of the novel coronavirus include Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel with 530,380, 426,634, 342,202, and 303,109 cases respectively. Many of the smaller countries in MENA have higher infection rates than those countries with the highest caseloads. Oman has 33.3 new infections per 100,000 population while Bahrain has 12.1, Libya has 14, and Lebanon has 14.6. In order of most to least number of cumulative deaths since January 2020, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have 30,375, 10,254, 6,120, and 5,185 respectively. Israel, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Oman had the highest rates of COVID-19 persistence which are the number of new infections statistically related to new infections 7 days ago. Bahrain had positive speed, acceleration and jerk signaling the potential for explosive growth.

CONCLUSIONS
Static and dynamic public health surveillance metrics provide a more complete picture of pandemic progression across countries in MENA. Static measures capture data at a given point in time such as infection rates and death rates. By including speed, acceleration, jerk, and 7-day persistence, public health officials may design policy with an eye to the future. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all demonstrated the highest rate of infections, acceleration, jerk, and 7-day persistence rates prompting public health leaders to increase prevention efforts.

CLINICALTRIAL


During experimentation, traditional Taguchi analysis often uses L18 or L27 orthogonal array, with a considerable number of test sequences for Run 18 or Run 27. Both are time-consuming and expensive. A progressive Taguchi-neural network model is proposed in this study, which combines the Taguchi method with a neural network construction, and can construct a prediction model for surface roughness in ultrasonic-assisted turning. According to the results, the Stage-1 initial-network, due to its limited number of network training examples, generates good predictive ability results for regions near Taguchi factor level points. For learning and training examples from regions farther out, prediction results are increasingly unreliable. Comparably, the Stage-3 precision-network generates the more reliable predictions for global regions.


In geographic (or geometric) routing, messages are expected to route in a greedy manner: the current node always forwards a message to its neighbor node that is closest to the destination. Despite its simplicity and general efficiency, this strategy alone does not guarantee delivery due to the existence of local minima (or dead ends). Overcoming local minima requires nodes to maintain extra non-local state or to use auxiliary mechanisms. We study how to facilitate greedy forwarding by using a minimum amount of such non-local state in topologically complex networks. Specifically, we investigate the problem of decomposing a given network into a minimum number of Greedily Routable Components (GRC), where greedy routing is guaranteed to work. We approach it by considering an approximate version in a continuous domain, with a central concept called the Greedily Routable Region (GRR). A full characterization of GRR is given concerning its geometric properties and routing capability. We then develop simple approximate algorithms for the problem. These results lead to a practical routing protocol that has a routing stretch below 7 in a continuous domain, and close to 1 in several realistic network settings


A couple of studies in Ethiopia have explored the impacts of social capital on measles vaccinations. However, the basic relationship between social capital and measles vaccination remains unexplained. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influences of caregivers' structural social capital on measles vaccinations among nine-month-old infants in Ethiopia. The 2011 first round worldwide Young Lives Survey dataset for Ethiopia was utilized, and the situation of 1652 children living with a mother/father was analyzed through the clustered sample and logistic regression. Results show that caregivers' social interaction and membership (professional union, political, religious and funeral/credit groups), social support (from political pioneers, government officials, charitable NGOs, family/relatives, and friends), and collective activities (which they join along with other family units, and talk to local authorities) were significantly positively associated with measles vaccination at a 0.05 significance level after adjusting for covariates. Any future attempts to advance measles vaccination status in Ethiopia without understanding caregivers' social group enrolment, social support, and collective activity are likely to be unsuccessful.


Understanding the topology of complex systems abstracted to networks is important for unraveling their functional capabilities. Many such networks follow the small-world and scale-free regimes. Several models of artificially growing networks lead to this observed network topology. Most previously proposed models for growing networks, such as rich-get-richer and duplication-divergence, produce realistic network topologies but do not consider the effects of exogenous forces such as optimization for adaptation in shaping network topology. It is likely that such forces have shaped complex systems throughout their evolution. To develop further insights into possible mechanisms that shape networks, a model that uses several previously proposed network growth algorithms was developed to grow networks that adapt under exogenous stress. A decision tree problem was used to generate a complex Boolean function. Growing networks were required to adapt to correctly decode this function using an evolutionary selection process. Under this growth regimen all growing network models are similarly adaptable. The newly added nodes tend to cluster into pathways emanating from few inputs, regardless of the growth algorithm. Distribution of redundant pathways from inputs to the output follow a power-law function with a scaling exponent (approximately 1.3). Similar distribution of redundant pathways was observed from inputs in a cell signaling network and an air traffic control network. A flat distribution of redundant pathways from inputs was observed in growing networks that do not attempt to adapt. This analysis provides initial insights into distribution of pathways in naturally evolving complex systems that have defined input-output relationships.


ABSTRACT MgtC is important for the survival of several bacterial pathogens in macrophages and for growth under magnesium limitation. Among eukaryotes, a gene homologous to mgtC was found only in the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. Our data show that the A. fumigatus MgtC (AfuMgtC) protein does not have the same function as the bacterial MgtC proteins.


Aim of work: This study is a prospective randomized trial aiming to investigate whether radiotherapy volume can be reduced without loss of efficacy from involved field radiotherapy (IFRT) to involved node radiotherapy (INRT) after four cycles of ABVD chemotherapy in the treatment of early stage Hodgkin's lymphoma. Patients and Methods: Between September 2009 and January 2012, all patients with newly diagnosed early-stage favorable and unfavorable Hodgkin's lymphoma attending to the Clinical Oncology department of Cairo University, faculty of medicine were enrolled into this study after a written consent was obtained from those cases enrolled. Patients were assigned to receive (ABVD) for four cycles followed by randomization for radiotherapy into two arms one arm of 30 Gy INRT +/– 6 Gy to residual disease or another arm of 30 Gy IFRT +/– 6 Gy to residual disease. Results: 35 patients were enrolled in this study: 16 patients in the INRT arm and 19 patients in the IFRT arm. The median observation time was 25 months. The overall survival for all eligible patients was 97% and freedom from treatment failure was 85.7%. Survival rates at the end of the study revealed no differences between INRT and IFRT arms. Also, in terms of complete remission post radiotherapy (14 versus 15), relapse (1 versus 4), and death (0 versus 1) respectively the outcome was similar in both arms. As regard acute and sub-acute toxicities no significant difference could be detected between both arms except that IFRT arm was associated with a higher incidence of radiation pneumonitis (4 versus 1 patient). Conclusion: Radiotherapy volume size reduction from IFRT to INRT after ABVD chemotherapy for four cycles produces similar results and less toxicity in patients with early-stage Hodgkin's lymphoma especially in patients with mediastinal disease.