Actin microfilaments are anchored to the plasma membrane at focal contacts. Using an indirect immunofluorescence method, we detected an autoantibody reactive with focal contacts in PtK2, HEp-2, and BHK-21 cells in serum from two patients with early systemic sclerosis. With double immunofluorescence, using the actin-binding drug phalloidin, we localized the plaques decorated by these sera specifically at the termini of microfilament bundles. The reactive antigens were identified by immunoblotting as proteins of 80,000- and 75,300-mol wt in PtK2, and of 53,500-mol wt in HEp-2 and BHK-2i cells. The 53,500-mol wt protein was also identified in rat skeletal, myocardial, and smooth muscle tissues. The detergent solubility of these proteins suggested that they may be linked to the plasma membrane. The autoantigens were immunologically distinct from vinculin and a-actinin, two major proteins also known to be concentrated at the ends ofmicrofilament bundles. Our observations suggest that this novel anticytoskeletal autoantibody may identify a novel family of vertebrate cell proteins involved in the linkage of microfilamnents to the plasma membrane at focal contacts.


Everywhere in the world people, face problems related to water. In some places massive
amounts of precipitation produce, disastrous floods while other regions gets so little rain that
it can be difficult to obtain enough drinking water. In Denmark, we do not experience
problems with getting drinking water because we have fair amounts of precipitations
throughout the year. In the northern parts of Algeria, the average annual rainfall is almost
the same as in Denmark, but the rain is more unevenly distributed with a dry period in the
summer and a rainy winter. In this project, the effect of a rainwater storage tank is
investigated with emphasis on the tank's behavior in the Danish and North Algerian climate.
The tank collects water from the roof of the house, which then is used in the house for toilet
flushing, and thereby replaces water of drinking water quality. The investigation of the
behavior of the tank is done by making a rather simple water balance model in both
MATLAB and Excel. Data used in the models is daily precipitation data from the European
Climate and Dataset database for the last 30 years. Variables in the model are the roof area
and tank volume ratio, the daily water usage in the household and the precipitation patterns.
The outputs are the amount of water in the tank every day, the amount water overflowed
from the tank, and the amount of water supplied to the tank in case of draught. The results
are displayed in graphs showing the impact from the tank/roof ratio and water consumption
on overflow and additional water supplied in both countries. From the results, it is clear that
persons wanting to implement a rainwater tank should take the water consumption of the
house into account, because inadequately sized tanks lead to a higher amount of either
overflow or added water than necessary, thus reducing the costs and the environmental
benefits. It is evident that the roof area/tank volume ratio is more important in Algiers in
order to reduce the drinking water usage and prevent overflow from the tank, meaning that it
pays off to invest in a bigger tank. In Copenhagen, the influence from the tank/roof ratio is
less important and mostly makes a difference for houses with very high water consumption.
This means that in the Copenhagen area it would be more of a waste to invest in a very
large tank than in Algiers, where added volume to the tank results in reduced overflow and
drinking water consumption. The reduction in drinking water consumption is bigger in
Copenhagen than in Algiers due to the mere evenly distributed rain. The rain distribution is
also the reason why the overflow in Copenhagen is generally higher than in Algiers. It is
concluded that the tank can help both countries saving drinking water, but is less efficient as
a solution to prevent floods, because the uncertainty of the amount of water in the tank
makes it a very unreliable solution.


A unique, in-depth approach to creating realistic characters in Maya. Maya Character Creation: Modeling and Animation Controls' author, Chris Maraffi, has expertise in the field and in the classroom that translates to the knowledge and solid teaching skills needed to make this book a "must-have"!The current trend in computer graphics is greater organic realism. Many of thetop-grossing movies today, such as Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park 3 ,and Star Wars Episode 2, all feature realistic 3D characters. There is a majorneed in the 3D community for educational material that demonstrates detailedtechniques for achieving this organic reality. Maya is one of the main packagesused on such cutting-edge films, and has an established toolset for creatingbelievable 3D characters. Maya Character Creation: Modeling and Animation Controls is designed to take you through the process of designing, modeling, and setting up animation controls for complex 3D characters. The concepts, techniques, and Maya tools used foreach step in the process are presented in each chapter, followed by manyhands-on exercises. NURBS, polygon, and subdivision surface modelingtechniques are shown for creating the character's skin, and skeleton-basedanimation controls are covered in detail. You will learn how a character'sskin should deform when the skeletal joints and muscles move. AdvancedMEL scripted animation controls are also covered extensively.


Nowadays in Europe sport and physical activity represent a strategic tool for public health policiesthat aim to promote the wellbeing of population, supporting dialogue for social cohesion and, at the same time, represent an important economic sector. The acknowledgement of sport capability to be a vehicle for integrating diversity- confirming the attention to intercultural dialogue at European level –in an evidence of its importance in the current debate on integration and multiculturalism.
Through comparing different sports models of integration within the EU, this paper is going to discuss some questions: what connection is there between the construction of a multicultural society and the diffusion of sports practices? What meanings, values and paradoxes coexist today in the culture of integration implemented in Europe? Is the "sports" habitus a field of competition between migrants and natives, or a space of integration for generations of new citizens?


Aim Prevention technology provides tools for realizing healthy ageing. Gerontechnology has evolved from 'technology for compensating restrictions of old age' to a scientific domain at the crossroad between gerontology and technology. It fosters cross-fertilization in research, engineering and design. Its mission is to enable good quality of life to the highest possible age including the prevention and delay of chronic conditions among which frailty and disabilities, in short: healthy ageing. Method Three-fold desk research on (i) analysis of existing successes and failures in prevention by public health engineering in main domains of life; (ii) different paradigms in gerontology for preventing disease and finding the best environmental fit including epigenetics; (iii) reflections on the role played by people themselves in taking care of their health, as exemplified by a recent shift in health paradigm for ageing people. Results Public Health Engineering has yielded  impressive preventive gains in several domains but other domains remain to be conquered. Primary prevention of disease has come in three historic waves: Communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, and mental illness of which prevention is still in its infancy. Prevention appears as a life-long issue.  Contributions of technology are indicated together with their possible actors.  Targets for secondary prevention of threats in old age are formulated. New vast resources, also of ageing people for realizing preventive gains are provided by Internet, tablets, and mobile phone technologies; but hindrances have to be cleared.


A method alternative to the ones already approved in the current legislation, called "Biomation" process, for the treatment of Category (Cat.) 2 and 3 Animal By-Products (ABP) 4 was assessed. The process consists of an alkaline treatment. The target parameters are: particle size ≤ 5mm, temperature 70 °C, pH 12.5, exposure time 20 minutes. According to the application received also Cat. 1 ABP can enter the processing plant and it has then to be removed from the rest of the ABP material and treated according to current legislation. The end product generated by the "Biomation" process is intended to be used as an organic fertiliser and soil improver. According to the legislation in force, before being used as an organic fertiliser, Cat. 2 (and mixes of Cat. 2 and 3) material should be treated with a sterilisation process (i.e. 133 °C / 20 min / 3 bars / 50 mm particle size) 5 . The hazard identification provided by the applicant was not adequately addressed, since the most resistant organisms (including TSE agents) were not properly identified, and an experimental validation with representative testorganisms under practical conditions was not performed. A laboratory experiment was performed but its results were not clear and did not allow a proper assessment of the level of risk reduction of the relevant biological hazards achieved by the process. Moreover, it was noticed that it is not certain that the values of the parameters used in the laboratory experiment would be homogenously reached in all the material under real scale conditions. Major deficiencies were noticed in the HACCP plan provided. It was concluded that there is no evidence that the proposed alternative method is equivalent to the sterilization process defined in the current legislation. © European Food Safety Authority, 2012


The global impact of increased human activities has consequences on the conservation of wildlife. Understanding how wildlife adapts to increased human pressures with urban expansion and agricultural areas is fundamental to future conservation plans of any species. However, there is a belief that large wild free-ranging carnivores and ungulates, cannot coexist with people, limited studies have looked at wildlife movements through differing human-dominated landscapes at finer spatial scales, in Africa. This information is vital as the human population is only going to increase and the wildlife protected areas decrease. We used remote-sensor camera traps to identify the movement patterns of African elephant (Loxodonta africana) through six wildlife corridors in Botswana. The wildlife corridors were located in two different human-dominated landscapes (agricultural/urban), with varying degrees of human impact. While we found that elephants use corridors in both landscapes, they use the urban corridors both diurnally and nocturnally in contrast to agricultural corridors which were only nocturnal. Our results provide evidence for temporal partitioning of corridor use by elephants. We identified that seasonality and landscape were important factors in determining the presence of elephants in the corridors. Our findings demonstrate that elephant diel patterns of use of the wildlife corridor differs based on the surrounding human land-uses on an hourly basis and daily basis, revealing potential adaptation and risk avoidance behaviour.


This paper presents an extension and generalization of the phase-plane method to automatic control systems governed by high-order nonlinear differential equations. A unified procedure of analysis is outlined. It is based on linear transformations in the phase space, correlated with the partial-fraction expansion of transfer functions to separate natural frequencies, and makes use of the root-locus method for the qualitative study of closed-loop stability. The analysis leads to replacing a high-order system with a second-order system which closely approximates the former. Excellent insight is obtained into difficult problems. The method is applied to a study of control systems subject to saturation. Appendix II summarizes the current state of knowledge concerning second-order optimum saturating systems.


The genes involved in the 2,3-butanediol pathway coding for alpha-acetolactate decarboxylase, alpha-acetolactate synthase (alpha-ALS), and acetoin (diacetyl) reductase were isolated from Klebsiella terrigena and shown to be located in one operon. This operon was also shown to exist in Enterobacter aerogenes. The budA gene, coding for alpha-acetolactate decarboxylase, gives in both organisms a protein of 259 amino acids. The amino acid similarity between these proteins is 87%. The K. terrigena genes budB and budC, coding for alpha-ALS and acetoin reductase, respectively, were sequenced. The 559-amino-acid-long alpha-ALS enzyme shows similarities to the large subunits of the Escherichia coli anabolic alpha-ALS enzymes encoded by the genes ilvB, ilvG, and ilvI. The K. terrigena alpha-ALS is also shown to complement an anabolic alpha-ALS-deficient E. coli strain for valine synthesis. The 243-amino-acid-long acetoin reductase has the consensus amino acid sequence for the insect-type alcohol dehydrogenase/ribitol dehydrogenase family and has extensive similarities with the N-terminal and internal regions of three known dehydrogenases and one oxidoreductase.


Students work individually to selectively enrich, isolate, purify, and characterize
microorganisms from the soil belonging to two of the groups (the actinomycetes and the fungi) well
known for their ability to produce compounds belonging to the world of secondary metabolites. The
secondary metabolites encompass any materials that are not part of primary metabolism and we know
many of these products such as pigments, odors, and most importantly antibiotics. The students
evaluate isolates for their ability to produce antibiotics as part of a group project. Zones of
inhibition for the various isolates are measured against a panel of test organisms. This laboratory
is an excellent starting point for discussions of antibiotic discovery and use, microbial ecology,
diversity, and antibiotic resistance. Group discussion and a formal report are used to assess the
project.


Like any regulatory effort, private transnational standard-setters need to legitimate themselves to the audiences from which they seek support or obedience. While early scholarship on private transnational governance has emphasized the centrality of democratic legitimation narratives in rendering private governance socially acceptable, evidence from more recent standard-setting schemes suggests a declining relevance of that narrative over time. In my analysis of private sustainability regulation, I identify a combination of two factors that jointly contribute to this diminished role of democratic legitimation. First, private transnational governance has become a pervasive phenomenon. This means that new entrants to the field no longer face the same liability of newness that required first movers to make an extra effort in legitimation. Second, private standard-setting has moved from areas characterized by 'governance gaps' to areas in which meaningful intergovernmental regulation already exists. In these areas, however, the 'state prerogative' in legitimating governance holds. As a result, transnational standard-setters rely not so much on stressing their democratic credentials, but instead emphasize their contribution to achieving internationally agreed goals.


Background:

Patients with chronic lung diseases are well known to have colonisation of lower respiratory tract with Haemophilus Influenza (HI). D Roberts et al have demonstrated increased growth of HI invitro in the presence of nicotine1. However, it is not known if that leads to increased risk of clinical infection requiring hospital readmission.

Hypothesis:

Smoking increases the risk of acute clinical infections and hospital readmission due to HI.

Methods:

Retrospective study of adult patients admitted with acute HI infection over a 2 year period in an acute teaching hospital setting.

Results :

N= 133, mean age 70 yrs., male 57%, Smokers 89%; Respiratory co-morbidities 83% (COPD 79%, Bronchiectasis 7%, Asthma 7% and Combined 7%).

Current smokers had increased risk of recurrent admissions 17/29(59%) compared to Ex-smokers 33/89(37%). P = 0.05 Fisher's exact test.

Patients with >40 pack years smoking history had increased risk of recurrent admissions 34/63(54%) compared to <40 pack year group 15/50(30%). P = 0.01 Fisher's exact test.

Smokers with background chronic lung disease had a tendency to have a higher number of recurrent admissions (46% vs 25%), but this was not statistically significant. P = 0.09 Fisher's exact test.

Conclusions :

This study shows a significant association with smoking and increased HI related hospital readmissions. Smokers should be informed of this risk and strongly advised to quit smoking.

Reference :

1. Effect of tobacco and nicotine on growth of Haemophilus influenzae in vitro; J Clin Pathol. 1979 July; 32(7): 728–731.


OBJECTIVE To determine what health problems concern youth in the Canadian North and what solutions these youths propose to address these problems by interviewing Inuvik youths, using their photographs to spark discussion.

DESIGN Qualitative study and photo-novella technique.

SETTING Inuvik, NWT, from July 1 to August 31, 2004.

PARTICIPANTS Thirty-five youths from Inuvik between the ages of 10 and 22. Two boys and 2 girls between the ages of 17 and 22 from the Inuvialuit and Gwich'in cultures featured in an educational video developed from the study.

METHOD Disposable cameras were distributed to 35 youths; interviews structured around the photographs were recorded with 14 youths. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was completed; the themes identified formed the basis of a 19-minute video featuring 4 of these youths.

MAIN FINDINGS Themes developed around mothers, culture, the land, and boredom. Specific health concerns identified were smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, and teen pregnancy. Solutions suggested included sources of recreation and distraction from substance abuse, such as a movie theatre, a shopping mall, and upgrades to the skatepark.

CONCLUSION By having Inuvik youths share their stories and perspectives, health care providers can gain insight into the issues and concerns of youth in northern communities and expand their capacity to heal. Photo novella is a useful method for research in adolescent health.


Abstract. We report a detailed study of the different categories and types of abnormal morphologies in planktic foraminifera recognizable in the lowermost Danian, mainly from the El Kef and Aïn Settara sections, Tunisia. Various types of abnormalities in the test morphology were identified, including protuberances near the proloculus, abnormal chambers, double or twinned ultimate chambers, multiple ultimate chambers, abnormal apertures, distortion in test coiling, morphologically abnormal tests, attached twins or double tests, and general monstrosities. Detailed biostratigraphic and quantitative studies of the Tunisian sections documented a major proliferation of aberrant planktic foraminifera (between approximately 5% and 18% in relative abundance) during the first 200 Kyr of the Danian, starting immediately after the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary mass extinction (spanning from the Guembelitria cretacea Zone to the lower part of the P. pseudobulloides Zone). This contrasts with the proportionately low frequency of aberrant tests (generally <2%) identified within the uppermost Maastrichtian, suggesting more stable environmental conditions during the last ~ 50–100 Kyr of the Cretaceous. Two main pulses with abundant aberrant tests were recognized in the earliest Danian, the one recorded in the well-known K/Pg boundary clay being the more intense of those (maxima of >18%). These main pulses of aberrants coincide approximately with relevant quantitative and evolutionary turnovers in the planktic foraminiferal assemblages. In this paper, we explore the relation of these high values of the foraminiferal abnormality index with the environmental changes induced by the meteorite impact of Chicxulub in Yucatan, Mexico, and the massive eruptions of the Deccan Traps, India.


Bio‐Psycho‐Socio‐Ecological Risk Factors for Legionella Infection among Japanese 24‐Hour Hot Water Bath Users and Non‐Users: Masahiro Irie, et al. Department of Mental Health, Institute of Industrial Ecological Sciences, University of Occupational and Environmental Health—The purpose of this study was to examine the risk of Legionella pneumophila (Lp) infection due to the use of a 24‐h hot water bath (24HHWB), which is popular for bathing in Japan because of its water conservation through the use of recycled bath water, and to investigate other possible factors that may be associated with Legionella infection. The risk of anti‐Lp serum antibody formation associated with the 24HHWB use and various bio‐psycho‐socio‐ecological factors was estimated based on the logistic model among 204 employees (161 men, 43 women) who were either 24HHWB users or non‐users. There was a significantly higher rate of anti ‐Legionella antibody titers (≧ 8) in the 24HHWB users than in the non‐users, particularly against Lp serogroup (SG) 5 (odds ratio, 16.3; 95% Cl, 2.1‐126.5; p<0.01) and Lp SG 6 (odds ratio, 2.9; 95% Cl, 1.3‐6.5; p<0.01). However, most of the titers were <64, and no clinical cases of Legionnaires' disease among the 24HHWB users were found. No significant correlations were observed between the duration of the 24HHWB use and the increased antibody titers. The impossibility of relieving stress, a decrease in age, the use of artificial marble bathtubs, and a decrease in the bathing frequency per week were also related to the increased antibody titers against Lp SG 6 (odds ratio, 5.9; 95% Cl, 1.6‐22.1; p<0.01), Lp SG 3 (odds ratio, 0.9; 95% Cl, 0.8‐1.0; p <0.01:odds ratio, 10.5; 95% Cl, 1.4‐76.9; p<0.05), and Lp SG 1 (odds ratio, 1.9; 95% Cl, 1.2‐3.2; p<0.05), respectively. The anti‐Legionella antibodies were considered to be IgM dominant, because most of the antibodies were sensitive to 2‐mercaptoethanol treatment. In conclusion, the use of a 24HHWB was associated with Legionella sensitization, but not with clinically apparent legionellosis. Psychological, environmental, and lifestyle factors also seemed to have causal relations to antibody formation.


Abstract. This paper provides a bibliometric review between integration of authoritative and volunteered geographic information for the purpose of cartographic updating of urban mappings. The adopted methodology was through a bibliometric survey of the literature published by Web of Science and Science Direct. The period was evaluated from 2005 to 2020 and the keywords used were: integration of authoritative data, volunteered geographic information, VGI, large scale topographic mapping, Authoritative urban mapping. The number of publications found was small for the topic that deals with this integration, totalizing 14 articles at Web of Science and 23 at Science Direct. 38% of them were published in the International Journal of Geo Information (ISPRS), 16% in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. 5% were published in the Cartography and Geographic Information Science and the Computer Geosciences respectively. The other 36% is shown in several other journals, approximately 3% each. Regarding the origin of publications, 25% are in Germany (University of Heidelberg), 14% in the UK (New Castle University), 13% in China (Wuhan University), 11% in Canada (Calgary University), and other countries show percentages between 3% and 5%. Among the research, areas are physical geography, remote sensing, computer science, information science, engineering, and public administration. Among themes addressed in the articles, potentials can be pointed out as existence of models which institutions can implement management of information received collaboratively, existence of several methodologies for quality control of this information so that they can be integrated into authoritative data that are called as data conflation. Methodologies for handling big data and semantic interoperability, as well as automation of processes. This data potential is not only on platforms such as OpenStreetMap, but also on data collected through scraping from social networks such as twitter, sites, and others. Among the challenges, there are still somethings to investigate regarding consideration of temporal, historic, political, and economic aspects, as well as the consideration of legal aspects. The integration of this volunteered geographic information is necessary, mainly in cities with economic and cultural difficulties to maintain their mapping up to date, as well as the difficulty of accessing information that allows access to authoritative data.


Wireless Local Area Network location fingerprinting has emerged as a key enabler for Location Based Services (LBS) in indoor environment. Careful design of location fingerprinting systems is necessary in order to ensure that the localization information is able to meet the Quality of Service requirements of the LBS. Furthermore, location fingerprinting systems have a high labour cost associated with the offline calibration phase and system testing, which limits the feasibility of some design approaches. Consequently, there is a need for design tools which takes in to account these limitations. This thesis proposed three such design tools. Firstly, a measurement framework for supporting measurements related to location fingerprinting systems was introduced. This framework referred to as Location Fingerprinting Measurement Framework (LFMF) significantly reduces errors and tedious steps in data acquisition for system designers. Secondly, a simulation testbed referred to as WiLocSim was proposed as a tool for the comparison of localization algorithms and associated design trade-offs. This was built around a beacon RSS simulator which consists of the physical processes models of multipath propagation, measurement noise and body loss. The beacon RSS simulator in WiLocSim was verified on its ability to reasonably approximate the measurement values by comparing with measurement data. Next, WiLocSim was applied for asymptotic performance analysis of nearest neighbour classification algorithms and the results of the simulation agreed with measurement based experiments in literature. Thirdly, LocationInfo which is a metric to quantify the localization efficacy of APs prior to calibration phase was introduced. This metric was able to solve the problems of identifying the optimal AP deployment locations as well as filtering of APs which do not significantly improve the localization accuracy in crowded WLAN environments.


This study investigates the potential of using a partial flow filter (PFF) to assist a wall flow diesel particulate filter (DPF) and reduce the need for active regeneration phases that increase engine fuel consumption. First, the filtration efficiency of the PFF was studied at different engine operating conditions, varying the filter space velocity (SV), through modification of the exhaust gas flow rate, and engine-out particulate matter (PM) concentration. The effects of these parameters were studied for the filtration of different particle size ranges (10-30 nm, 30-200 nm and 200-400 nm). Over the different engine operating conditions, the PFF showed filtration efficiency over 25% in terms of PM number and mass. The PFF filtration behaviour was also investigated at idle engine operation producing a high concentration of nuclei particulates for which the filter was able to maintain 60% filtration efficiency. After a 14 hour soot loading phase, the filter trapping efficiency remained over 20% and showed unexpectedly high small PM filtration efficiency. Finally, a system composed of a PFF placed upstream of a DPF was studied and the filtration efficiency, soot mass accumulated, as well as the pressure increase over a loading period of 7 hours were compared to the ones from a standalone DPF, in order to estimate the beneficial effects of using a PFF to assist the main DPF and reduce the regeneration duration and/or frequency.


As the complexity of online services increases, there is a corresponding need for service-oriented systems to provide support for answering questions about how they have processed and produced data. This need is particularly evident in compositions of services, where audits of each individual service's use do not provide a connected picture of the composition's processing history. The provenance awareness of a system is its ability to answer questions about the history of its processing, through recording provenance data during execution. As the size and usage of a system increases, so can the size of the provenance data recorded, leading to increased demands on storage and decreased performance of the service. However, the exact impact of provenance recording depends on what details of the service execution are being documented. Our goal is to make provenance awareness accessible as an explicit non-functional property (NFP) in composite service specifications, as is common for performance or reliability properties. This would enable composite service designers to analyse the properties of their services to see whether they meet users' requirements based on the provenance questions they could ask about the service's outputs and the dependent performance, storage and other properties. We present a preliminary approach towards this end, focusing on the step of categorising potential provenance questions according to their effect on other NFPs, so that the provenance awareness of a service can be specified as the categories of questions it can answer.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to analyze the residual content of used syringes.

METHODS
Used syringes were collected in March 2014 at 9 sites in Marseille (automatic injection kit dispensers, streets, drug-user risk reduction centers [Centres d'accueil et d'accompagnement à la réduction de risques pour usagers de drogues [CAARUD]). Several substances (n=28) were investigated using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry method.

RESULTS
On average, 2±1 substances in each syringe were found among 254 syringes analyzed. The most detected substances were cocaine, buprenorphine, methylphenidate and cathinones (in 57 %, 56 %, 39 % and 19 % of the syringes respectively). Heroin and morphine were found in 10 % of the syringes.

DISCUSSION-CONCLUSION
This study helps define the main substances consumed by injection drugs users. It highlighted differencies in used substances according to neighborhood and site of collection and thus help to adjust prevention and harm reduction strategies.


This chapter examines Germany's profile as a European Union member state. It is divided into two parts, looking at EU-Germany relations from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. The first considers Germany's increasing influence on the EU, notably during the eurozone and refugee crises. It considers the question of whether Germany has assumed the role of the EU's hegemon. At the same time the chapter argues that Germany is a very Europeanized member state. It uses the comparative politics paradigm by considering public opinion on Europe, the European dimension of party politics, and the Federal Republic's major political institutions and their role in European policy. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the two perspectives, seeking a balance between the arguments for a German Europe and a Europeanized Germany.


BACKGROUND
Over the past quarter century, efforts to bridge between research in the neurosciences and research, theory, and practice in education have grown from a mere hope to noteworthy scholarly sophistication. Many dedicated educational researchers have developed the secondary expertise in the necessary neurosciences and related fields to generate both empirical research and theoretical syntheses of noteworthy promise. Nonetheless, thoughtful and critical scholars in education have expressed concern about both the intellectual coherence and ethical dangers of this new area. It is still an open question whether educational neuroscience is for some time yet to remain only a formative study area for adventurous scholars or is already a fully fledged field of educational scholarship.

AIMS
In this paper, I suggest that to be a worthy field of educational research, educational neuroscience will need to address three issues: intellectual coherence, mutually informing and respected scholarly expertise, and an ethical commitment to the moral implications and obligations shared within educational research generally. I shall set forth some examples of lapses in this regard, focusing primarily on work on reading development, as that is my area of expertise, and make recommendations for due diligence. Arguments. First, intellectual coherence requires both precision in definition of technical terms (so that diverse scholars and professionals may communicate findings and insights consistently across fields), and precision in the logical warrants by which educational implications are drawn from empirical data from the neurosciences. Both needs are facilitated by careful attention to categorical boundary and avoidance of category error. Second, educational neuroscientists require focused and broad expertise in both the neurosciences and educational scholarship on teaching and learning in classrooms (and/or ancillary fields). If history is our guide, neuroscience implications for practice will prove unlikely in practice without expertise on practice. Additionally, respect for the expertise of others in this hybrid and necessarily collaborative enterprise is required. Third, educational neuroscience must take seriously the heightened moral and ethical concerns and commitments of educational professionals generally and educational researchers particularly. This means keeping a vigilant eye towards preserving the integrity of empirical and theoretical findings against rhetorical misuse by educational marketers, policy makers, and polemicists targeting the general public.

CONCLUSIONS
I conclude that educational neuroscience is more than a hybrid patchwork of individual interests constituting a study area, and is perhaps ready to stand as a legitimate field of educational inquiry. It will not be accepted as such, however, nor should it be, unless the need to demonstrate a capacity for consistent intellectual coherence, scholarly expertise, and ethical commitment is met.


Abstract: A neuraminidase activity in myelin isolated from adult rat brains was examined. The enzyme activity in myelin was first compared with that in microsomes using N‐acetylneuramin(α2 → 3)lactitol (NL) as a substrate. In contrast to the microsomal neuraminidase which exhibited a sharp pH dependency for its activity, the myelin enzyme gave a very shallow pH activity curve over a range between 3.6 and 5.9. The myelin enzyme was more stable to heat denaturation (65°C) than the microsomal enzyme. Inhibition studies with a competitive inhibitor, 2,3‐dehydro‐2‐deoxy‐N‐acetylneuraminic acid, showed the Ki value for the myelin neuraminidase to be about one‐fifth of that for the microsomal enzyme (1.3 × 10−6M versus 6.3 × 10−6M). The apparent Km values for the myelin and the microsomal enzyme were 1.3 × 10−4M and 4.3 × 10−4M, respectively. An enzyme preparation that was practically devoid of myelin lipids was then prepared and its substrate specificity examined. The "delipidated enzyme" could hydrolyze fetuin, NL, and ganglioside substrates, including GM1, and GM2. When the delipidated enzyme was exposed to high temperature (55°C) or low pH (pH 2.54), the neuraminidase activities toward NL and GM3 decreased at nearly the same rate. Both fetuin and 2,3‐dehydro‐2‐deoxy‐N‐acetylneuraminic acid inhibited NL and GM3 hydrolysis. With 2,3‐dehydro −2‐deoxy‐N‐acetylneuraminic acid, inhibition of NL was greater than that of GM3; however, the Ki values for each substrate were almost identical. GM3 and GM1, also competitively inhibited the hydrolysis of NL and NL similarly inhibited GM3 hydrolysis by the enzyme. These results indicate that rat brain myelin has intrinsic neuraminidase activities toward nonganglioside as well as ganglioside substrates, and that these two enzyme activities are likely catalyzed by a single enzyme entity.


Both virtual and embodied intelligent agents are being designed and deployed in multi-user situations, and we join this research effort by proposing a series of research projects that aim to design and build a meeting facilitation agent. The agent should be able to facilitate the right activities, in the right way, and at the right moment. Our designs are informed by humanhuman group meeting theories and meeting facilitation frameworks. Moreover, we are interested in exploring the differences between human-human collaboration and human-agent collaboration, and how such uniqueness of an agent can expend human teams' capabilities in the meeting context.


Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) is a modeling framework in decision making under uncertainty where the probability distribution of a random parameter is unknown while its partial information (e.g., statistical properties) is available. In this framework, the unknown probability distribution is assumed to lie in an ambiguity set consisting of all distributions that are compatible with the available partial information. Although DRO bridges the gap between stochastic programming and robust optimization, one of its limitations is that its models for large-scale problems can be siginificantly difficult to solve, especially when the uncertainty is of high dimension. In this paper, we propose computationally efficient inner and outer approximations for DRO problems with a moment-based ambiguity set and a combined ambiguity set including Wasserstein distance and moment information. In these approximations, we split a random vector into smaller pieces, leading to smaller matrix constraints. In addition, we use principal component analysis to shrink uncertainty space dimensionality. We quantify the quality of the developed approximations by deriving theoretical bounds on their optimality gap. We display the practical applicability of the proposed approximations in a production-transportation problem and a multi-product newsvendor problem. The results demonstrate that these approximations dramatically reduce the computational time while maintaining high solution quality.


A combination technique to reduce the physicaldimension of device to be more compact is proposed in this paperto design an antenna for medical implant application. Two designtechniques, i.e. planar inverted-F and geometry modification, arecombined and implemented to construct a compact circularlyspiral planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) to operate aroundfrequency of 920MHz. The antenna is deployed on an FR4Epoxy dielectric substrate with the thickness of 0.8mm. Before thehardware realization, the parameters of antenna including reflectioncoefficient, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), gain, andradiation pattern as well as its physical dimension are investigatednumerically to obtain the optimum performance design. Fromexperimental characterization, it shows that the realized antennain circular shape which has the diameter of 18mm resonatesat frequency of 911MHz with measured bandwidth and gain of20MHz and -29.82dBi, respectively.


In the first instance, this paper offers a new interpretation of the logic of Xenophanes B18.1. Contrary to the two ways in which previous commentators have construed this line, Xenophanes neither categorically rejects the notion of divine disclosure nor acquiesces in traditional understandings of it. Rather, Xenophanes rejects traditional conceptions of divine disclosure as theologically faulty and supplants them with his own, alternative notion of disclosure. Having argued that Xenophanes developed a conception of divine disclosure, I advance further suggestions concerning its function and characteristics. I follow and develop Lesher's (1983) argument that Xenophanes arrives at his understanding of the limitations of human knowledge by rejecting traditional divinatory assumptions. But Lesher, I suggest, tells only half the story. On Xenophanes' conception of disclosure, the divine purposively facilitates mortal belief-formation and mortal inquiry. That is, Xenophanes' own understanding of disclosure underlies his positive views regarding what does lie within the scope of mortal epistemology. More speculatively, I develop two alternative interpretations of the precise notion of purposiveness which underlies Xenophanean disclosure. Most probably, Xenophanes reconceptualises the notion of divine disclosure radically as the view that the divine purposively facilitates all mortal experience and belief-formation as part of its intelligent direction of the cosmos and its inhabitants. Another, somewhat less likely possibility is that Xenophanes maintains less idiosyncratically that the divine guides particular mortals in particular circumstances. Finally, I ask how the proposed interpretation of Xenophanes' epistemology may lend nuance to our understanding of the complexity of his critical engagement with the traditional mantic model of divine disclosure.


Social psychiatry started over a century ago under the auspices of mental and racial hygiene, but after World War II it embraced concepts of community-based care and de-institutionalization. The major psychiatric reforms in the second half of the last century were mainly based on such concepts, including the reforms of Swiss and especially Zurich psychiatry. The present needs for psychiatric care, and the specific political and economic conditions for a continuation along this line are explored and found to be favourable. Also, the profile of future psychiatrists, as formulated by professional associations and expert groups, corresponds to concepts of social psychiatry. The World Health Organization stimulates service improvements in the same direction. The consequences concern the education and training, and the professional role of future psychiatrists. Finally, the future of social psychiatry will be shaped by public expectations and acceptance of community-based services.


This paper describes a threshold concept-driven e-assessment system that supports teachers in writing effective formative multiple-choice questions, creating quizzes tailored to students' learning pathways. The system, which has been co-designed with teachers, acts as the 'bun' on either side of an 'e-assessment burger' pedagogically scaffolding quiz creation (the top of the bun), integrating the quiz within personalized learning trajectories (the burger) and feeding the results back to the learners and teachers to guide the direction of future learning pathways (the bottom of the bun). The evaluation with 26 students in 3 subjects across two schools identified that supporting the before and after e-assessment empowers a shift in teachers' encouragement for student ownership of assessment, guiding their learning pathways. Teachers also provide insights into how the system scaffolding and visualisations inspired changes to sequencing learning and teaching practices. In conclusion the changing role of assessment within a school ecosystem is debated.


Proteolysis of transmembrane receptors is a critical cellular communication mechanism dysregulated in many diseases, yet decoding proteolytic regulation mechanisms of the estimated 400 receptors shed from the cell surface has been hindered by difficulties in controlling stimuli and unknown fates of cleavage products. Notch proteolytic regulation is a notable exception, where decades of study have revealed that intercellular forces drive exposure of a cryptic protease site within a juxtamembrane "proteolytic switch" domain to activate transcriptional programs inside the cell. Thus, we created a Synthetic Notch Assay for Proteolytic Switches (SNAPS) that exploits the modularity and unequivocal input/response of Notch proteolysis to screen surface receptors for other putative proteolytic switches. Here, we identify several new proteolytic switches among receptors with structural homology to Notch. We demonstrate that SNAPS can detect shedding in chimeras of diverse cell surface receptors, leading to new, testable hypotheses. Finally, we establish that the assay can be used to measure modulation of proteolysis by potential therapeutics.


Many questions may be raised concerning the relationship in achievement that lies between the pupil on the one hand and the experience and training of the teacher on the other. Parents, school officials, and others interested in the efficiency of schools have raised such questions as these, \does teacher preparation and experience materially effect pupil achievement\ or, "does the standardization of a school have an effect upon pupil achievement?" Answers pro and con are to be found to these questions, some based upon careful study and inquiry and others on mere subjective opinion. The writer of this thesis has had experience as a teacher at the high school level. This experience most of which was in the field of social science raised questions regarding the relationship 1 of pupil. achievement and teacher preparation and experience. Furthermore this question may be raised as it applies to one school or another, for example, a one-teacher school or an eight grade elementary school. To be more specific, the question of achievement may be tied to a specific subject or to several subjects in these types of schools. Very naturally then out of this experience not only as a teacher but 1 as an administrator as well grew the particular problem of this thesis, which may be stated as follows: The Relationship of Eighth Grade Pupil Achievement to Teacher Preparation and Experience. The problem as stated divides itself into two parts: achievement of eighth grade pupils in history and geography (2) teacher preparation and experience.


The oncolytic measles virus (MeV) vaccine strain provides a flexible vector platform which allows for targeted, tumor-restricted immunomodulation. We have developed MeV vectors to support different phases of the cancer immunity cycle. This enables therapy directly tailored to the specific immune micromilieu of individual tumors. We have validated MeV vectors for T cell activation in preclinical models. MeV encoding bispecific T cell engagers (BiTEs) recruit cytotoxic T cells to the tumor site. Tumor antigen-specific T cell activation is achieved with MeV oncolytic vaccines. MeV encoding IL-12 directs T cell responses towards a Th1 phenotype. Combining MeV with immune checkpoint inhibition increases the ratio of effector to regulatory T cells. Furthermore, our preclinical data support the notion that MeV-mediated oncolysis can break resistance to checkpoint antibodies. A clinical Phase Ib/II trial combining MeV with an anti-PD1 antibody in patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma is currently in preparation. Aside from safety and anti-tumor efficacy, a main focus of the trial is the accompanying translational research program. Sequential biopsies for analysis of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, cytokine and chemokine profiling, transcriptome and immunoreceptor sequencing are performed to identify biomarkers predictive of response. Citation Format: Christine E. Engeland, Rūta Veinalde, Christof von Kalle, Dirk Jaeger, Guy Ungerechts. Clinical translation of oncolytic measles virus for T cell activation [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Second CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science into Survival; 2016 Sept 25-28; New York, NY. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Immunol Res 2016;4(11 Suppl):Abstract nr B128.


AUTHOR'S REPLY I am writing in response to the Letter to the Editor by Irving M. Blatt. MD. FACS,concerning our June 1990 article entitled, "A comparison of postoperative bleeding incidence between general and local anesthesia tonsillectomies. I I would like to refer Dr. Blatt to page 656 of this article, on which this topic is discussed. The use of local anesthesia with epinephrine was specifically compared between general and local anesthesia and there was a statistically significant difference, with anesthesia having a higher rate. There did not appear to be a significant increase in the postoperative bleeding rate of patients who were operated on using general anesthesia in which lidocaine containing epinephrine was infiltrated during the procedure. Another study was recently published indicating that the use of lidocaine containing epinephrine is a safe and effective method.' Concerning Dr. Blatt's mention that his personal experience in postoperative tonsillectomy bleeding in more than 1000 patients shows an incidence of operative bleeding of less than 1%. this article particularly addresses this attitude. The article supports the concept that he may have no idea how many postoperative tonsillectomy bleeding episodes his patients have encountered since they have been evaluated elsewhere by a physician and he may have never been contacted concerning this fact.'


Cholesterol drug lowering is a paradigm on how to best apply clinical evidence to clinical practice. Considering the available options, it is essential that statins have a clear safety and tolerability profile and a favourable benefit/risk relationship. Intensive cholesterol drug lowering is not associated with deleterious consequences, dependent on a greater efficacy or on serious side effects. Statins are not hepatotoxic. Enzyme fluctuation is common in dyslipidemia. The risk of increased transaminases is directly and closely related to the dosage (and type of statin used). Minor changes in baseline liver profile are not regarded as contraindications to their use (in patients with a cardiovascular justifiable risk). Iterative monitoring of the liver profile is not necessary. The etiology of miotoxicity with statins is not completely clear. The risk of myopathy or rhabdomyolysis is not related to the absolute or percent change in the LDL-C (or with the achieved LDL-C value). The adverse effects of statins may depend on the physical and chemical characteristics of the molecule and its pharmacokinetic characteristics. On a pharmacovigilance


The thesis presents analytical and experimental methods of studying various aspects of the optical and thermal performance of a transwall passive solar system. Some of these methods are applicable to other solar systems. Two ray-tracing techniques, 1-dimensional and 3-dimensional, are presented for an accurate calculation of the optical properties of a transwall module with its outside glass plate(s). These techniques calculate not only the reflected, absorbed or transmitted fractions of the incident radiation but also the spectrum of the transmitted radiation. This information is required for a better assessment of the transwall system as an illuminating source and as a thermal system. Both techniques are applied to a particular transwall module with one outside glass plate and the importance of various features of the incident solar radiation (such as spectrum, angular variation, polarization, etc.) are discussed. The difficulties associated with the nature of the diffuse solar radiation coming from the sky, or the ground , are overcome by employing a discretization method in which the continuous diffuse radiation is divided into discrete pencils of radiation. An analytical thermal model of a passive solar system is presented and its verification is established by using a test-box containing a full size transwall module. The outcome of this verification is satisfactory given the uncertainties of the optical and thermal properties of the various elements of the test-box. The success of the analytical modelling depends on accounting for the 3-dimensional solar radiation field outside and inside the passive solar system. The methods developed, accompanied by the two ray-tracing techniques, allow for an accurate distribution of the total incident radiation among the semitransparent elements and the external and internal surfaces of any passive system. The method of distributing the solar radiation among the internal surfaces of an enclosure is applied to the convex parallelepiped enclosure of the test-box and, as additional example of the method, also applied to the non-convex enclosure of a typical glasshouse with E-w transwalls. The phenomenon of the natural convection of a fluid inside a transwall module induced by the absorption of radiation is predicted by a numerical method, first introduced by Patankar. Examples of the temperature, pressure and velocity fields of three transwall modules filled with distilled water under the irradiance conditions of 400 to 500 W/m2 are presented. By introducing the effective conductivity concept the complicated phenomenon of the fluid convection inside the module is simplified to a conduction phenomenon. This is also necessary for the long term-days or months - analytical modelling of the total transwall passive system because the numerical prediction of the former phenomenon requires an excessive amount of computer time. The calculation of the effective conductivity is obtained by employing an analytical approach which makes use of the data collected from the application of the numerical method, mentioned above. Values of the ratio of the effective conductivity to the conductivity of the still water are calculated at two interfaces inside the water of four different transwall modules. Measurements of the temperature and the velocity at certain points in a small transwall module irradiated by a solar simulator have been performed to support some of the numerical predictions.


Mental stress and chronic pain are leading causes for failure and breakdown in nursing and other health professions. This unique book contains a series of Yoga exercises specifically for the fatigue-stricken health professional. This book details a Yoga practice for managing stress and relieving pain, while gaining the strength necessary to work efficiently for patients and with colleagues.The exercises are presented within an anatomical and physical framework, with health professionals describing the afflicted part of the body, reasons for pain, and the beneficial effects of Yoga. This book offers a tested therapy to health professionals to resolve mental and physical stress from work; and explains Yoga using titles and languages familiar to health professionals as well as excellent photos. It is usable both inside and outside healthcare settings.


Ultra-deep drilling activity on the Gulf of Mexico shelf is targeting a new deep gas play fairway below established older production. The fairway extends from the Mississippi delta across the Texas shelf in the section below 25,000 feet. Large relatively simple anticlines with inverted Paleogene and Cretaceous sediment packages have been identified. These packages have been mapped regionally and locally to identify isopach thicks that should be favorable for accumulation of reservoir sandstone. The main exploration risks identified for the ultra-deep fairway are reservoir presence and quality. The targeted deep structures contain sediments that exhibit internal ponded geometries with thickening axes coincident with present day anticlinal axes. Closure on many of the deep inversion anticlines formed very early as a result of initial autochthonous salt withdrawal. The deep structures are de-coupled from the shallower growth faulted section. Restoration of the structures through geological time indicates a complex interaction between salt thickness, depositional thickening and structural geometry.


In a variety of organisms morphological variation is discrete rather than continuous. Discrete variation within a sex has attracted particular interest as it is thought to reflect the existence of alternative adaptations to a heterogeneous selection environment. The beetle Onthophagus taurus shows a dimorphism for male horns: males that exceed a critical body size develop a pair of long, curved horns on their heads, while smaller males remain hornless. In this study we report on the alternative reproductive tactics used by males with these two morphologies, and present experimental and behavioural data suggesting that these alternative tactics selectively favour discretely different male phenotypes. Horned males aggressively defended tunnel entrances containing breeding females. Fights involved the use of horns, and males with longer horns were more likely to win fights. In contrast, hornless males employed nonaggressive sneaking behaviours when faced with competitively superior males. Sneaking behaviours appeared to require high degrees of manoeuvrability inside tunnels to access and mate with females despite the presence of a guarding male. Comparisons of running performances of males with identical body sizes but different horn lengths suggest that the possession of horns reduces male agility inside tunnels. Thus, horn possession confers a clear advantage to males using fighting behaviours to access females, whereas hornlessness may be favoured in males that rely primarily on sneaking behaviours. Combined, the two alternative reproductive tactics used by male O. taurus appear to favour opposite horn phenotypes, which may explain the paucity of intermediate morphologies in natural populations of O. taurus. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.


In this paper we propose a new modeling approach for uncertain nonlinear dynamical systems using fuzzy set theory. The main idea of the proposed modeling approach is to interpret an uncertain dynamical system as a dynamic fuzzy system and provide its fuzzy model. The latter is described by a new fuzzy differential equation. Procedures to take into account system uncertainty in the new fuzzy model are described. To construct the fuzzy model, no a priori information on the uncertain system parameters is required except that their constraint set is assumed to be known and compact. Furthermore, the proposed fuzzy modeling approach does not impose restrictive assumptions on the structure of uncertainty (heretofore required by most traditional control design approaches). This fact makes it possible to design robust controllers for a wide range of practical systems. In addition, it sets the groundwork for systematic design of fuzzy controllers.


Biogenic silica (BSi) is a major component in marine geochemical cycles and a suitableproxy for paleoproductivity. The Southern Ocean plays a key role in the biogeochemicalcycle of silicon. To understand opal preservation mechanisms and to assessthe global biogenic silica cycle it is important to study the processes controlling BSidissolution kinetics. Common techniques for the assessment of dissolution kineticsare flow-through and batch experiments. In this study, information on BSi dissolutionkinetics will be considered in a regional context. For this purpose about 60 samplesfrom the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean were investigated. To identify spatialpatterns of a BSi-Dissolution-Index, the result from fitting the leaching curves, derivedby wet-alkaline-extraction of biogenic silica, gives an estimate of the reactivityof biogenic silica in sediments. To get detailed information on kinetics and solubilityof biogenic silica, continuously stirred flow-through experiments were performed.Use of flow through reactors allows quantification of dissolution rates and saturationconcentrations under well defined conditions. Dissolution rates of sediment samplesin stirred flow-through reactors were measured as a function of the degree of undersaturationby varying the silica acid concentrations or the flow rate of the inflow solution.Sediment samples were selected from different regions of the Southern Ocean, e.g.Weddel Sea, Scotia Sea, Polar Front Zone. The results of the BSi dissolution kineticsand detailed information on diatom assemblages and clay mineralogy are considered.The combination of results from laboratory measurements and regional distribution ofparameters affecting the benthic silica cycle can be used to decipher processes regulatingthe BSi burial. In addition a more detailed understanding of the dissolution of BSi in surface sediments within certain regions of the Southern Ocean can be provided.


A new simple and efficient purification method for alpha 2-antiplasmin is described that is based on the interaction between alpha 2-antiplasmin and a fragment from elastase-digested plasminogen constituting the three N-terminal triple-loop structures in the plasmin A-chain (LBSI). After a single-step adsorption of the alpha 2-antiplasmin from plasminogen-depleted plasma to LBSI-Sepharose and elution with 6-aminohexanoic acid, an 80-90% pure preparation with a yield of 50-60% is obtained. The major impurity is fibrinogen, which can easily be removed by gel filtration, and, as a result, a homogeneous fully active alpha 2-antiplasmin preparation is obtained that has the same properties as previously described for alpha 2-antiplasmin. Evidence is put forward that a form of alpha 2-antiplasmin with less affinity for the lysine-binding sites in plasminogen may exist, even in unfractionated plasma.


Springs of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) are among the most revered, structurally complex, ecologically diverse and threatened groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Australia. In 2018, the Council of The Royal Society of Queensland recognised the need for consolidated knowledge to support evidence-based management and conservation of these unique, endangered ecosystems. Recent developments make this Special Issue of papers on GAB springs, their cultural values, endemic biota, and the challenges of management and conservation, especially timely. Two decades have passed since formal listing in 2001 of "The community of native species dependent on natural discharge of groundwater from the Great Artesian Basin" as endangered under the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act, 1999). This formal designation was followed by the preparation of the Recovery Plan for the GAB endangered community. Similarly, two decades have passed since the publica tion of the original national strategic manage ment plan for the basin. These two national initiatives are now being renewed with greater vigour and focus on the importance of saving water, a major factor in improving spring health. Papers in the Special Issue contribute to the broad objectives of the Recovery Plan and the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative from a range of sectors, individuals and perspectives. We anticipate that papers in this volume will stimulate new research, novel insights across all forms of expertise, and greater commitment to the wise use and protection of these miraculous oases of life and cultural history in Australia's Great Artesian Basin.


As data centers are increasingly focused on energy efficiency, it becomes important to develop low power implementations of the various applications that run on them. Data compression plays a critical role in data centers to mitigate storage and communication costs. This work focuses on building a low power, high performance implementation for canonical Huffman encoding. We develop a number of different hardware and software implementations targeting Xilinx Zynq FPGA, ARM Cortex-A9, and Intel Core i7. Despite its sequential nature, we show that our hardware accelerated implementation is substantially more energy efficient than both the ARM and Intel Core i7 implementations. When compared to highly optimized software running on the ARM processor, our hardware accelerated implementation has approximately 15 times more throughput with 10% higher power usage, resulting in an 8X benefit in energy efficiency (measured in encodings/Watt). Additionally, our hardware accelerated implementation is up to 80% faster and over 230 times more energy efficient than a highly optimized Core i7 implementation.


Studies of cardiomyocyte death during calcium overload induced by ischemia-reperfusion injury or heart failure have implicated the mitochondrial permeability transition as a key pathway. During the permeability transition, an opening of a channel in the inner membrane leads to mitochondrial depolarization and swelling. Despite extensive studies in mammalian systems, the machinery responsible for this phenomenon remains only partially identified. If present in non-mammalian species, the components of the permeability transition may be further elucidated, given potential advantages within these systems for high-throughput screens. However, the existence of a permeability transition remains controversial in non-mammalian organisms. In Drosophila , prior studies have documented calcium-induced mitochondrial depolarization, but no obvious swelling. Here we show that Drosophila S2R+ cells do possess the machinery for permeability transition, but that the threshold for a calcium trigger is significantly higher than in mammalian systems. Using a calcein-loading method, we show that Drosophila permeability transition can be triggered by calcium overload, using ionomycin, and by cysteine oxidation, using phenylarsine oxide. As in mammalian systems, blockade of mitochondrial cyclophilin or the ATP/ADP transporter appears to inhibit the Drosophila permeability transition. Finally, we examine three alternative hypotheses that may explain these differences in permeability transition. First, we test if perturbing the pathways for calcium influx into S2R+ mitochondria can trigger this phenomenon. Second, we test if the discrepancy in the calcium threshold is due to structural differences in the key regulators, particularly the mitochondrial cyclophilin. Third, we compare Drosophila and human genomes to see if any novel molecules may be responsible for setting the lower threshold for calcium-induced permeability transition in mammalian cells. Since the Drosophila cells possess such significant resistance to permeability transition, the results of our investigations suggest potential new strategies for the development of therapeutics inhibiting mitochondrial permeability transition in cardiac calcium-induced injury.


Branch&rank is an object detection scheme that overcomes the inherent limitation of branch&bound: this method works with arbitrary (classifier) functions whereas tight bounds exist only for simple functions. Objects are usually detected with less than 100 classifier evaluation, which paves the way for using strong (and thus costly) classifiers: We utilize non-linear SVMs with RBF-χ2 kernels without a cascade-like approximation. Our approach features three key components: a ranking function that operates on sets of hypotheses and a grouping of these into different tasks. Detection efficiency results from adaptively sub-dividing the object search space into decreasingly smaller sets. This is inherited from branch&bound, while the ranking function supersedes a tight bound which is often unavailable (except for too simple function classes). The grouping makes the system effective: it separates image classification from object recognition, yet combines them in a single, structured SVM formulation. A novel aspect of branch&rank is that a better ranking function is expected to decrease the number of classifier calls during detection. We demonstrate the algorithmic properties using the VOC'07 dataset.


Depression is a complex mood disorder with many types and treated in a number of ways. There are large numbers of synthetic drugs which are used in treating major depressive disorder. However they are also found to have bad impact on the health of a patient. Depression is multifactorial phenomenon, in which hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalance plays imperative role in its causation. Though large number of pharmaceutical drugs is available but they also pose serious threat due to extended use as serious side effects also develop. It is very important to look for antidepressants from natural sources which are advantageous, less hazardous and has least side effects on human health. This article aims to focus on specific natural antidepressant St John's Wort and how it can act as alternative medicine exhibiting the potential for the treatment of depression.


The recent extending empirical evidence regarding the power of factor models versus the traditional CAPM has motivated the research in the current thesis. Substantial controversy has been raised over two issues: 1) Are the new factors, market value and book-to-market equity, the most important sources of risk? and 2) Is it time to consider CAPM as a useless model? Effectively, these are the main questions we attempt to address in the current research within a unified framework of firm attributes and more aspects of the econometrical applied approaches. The main findings of the empirical research in this thesis show that, firstly the beta portfolio returns exhibit the highest volatility, confirming thus the beta as the most significant risk source. Secondly, the market portfolio absorbs the excess returns of the majority of value-weighted factor portfolios which is partly attributed to the mitigation of the January effect. In the seasonality area, we identify a strong October effect with high volatility but not high returns, a phenomenon that cannot be explained with a rational story. The re-examination of the Fama and French 1992 model with corrections of econometrical problems and the application of panel data methodology reveals that the sole significant factor over all the candidate variables is the price variable. Yet, even the power of the price factor is eliminating with the application of non-linear systems where the CAPM constraints are directly validated but with a negative sign. However, the presence of negative risk premium is consistent with the valid application of CAPM in a financial world where the occurrence of bad states of world is more frequent than the presence of up markets. Overall, the results of this thesis contribute to a thorough understanding of the factor models' performance which plays a key role in the financial investment decisions. The implication is that the CAPM should be still regarded as the basic financial model in the risk-return management process.


Article history: Received on: 07/05/2017 Accepted on: 07/07/2017 Available online: 30/10/2017 Dimethyl-4-(2-chlorophenyl)-2,6-dimethyl-1,4-dihydropyridine-3,5-dicarboxylate which is impurity of amlodipine besilate was synthesized. Hantzsch condensation of methyl acetoacetate with 2-chlorobenzadehyde in 2-propanol at heated under reflux temperature at 85 o C for about 10 hours yielded the yellow powder. This product was purified by column chromatography and the structure was identified by spectroscopic methods (IR, MS, NMR), that was characterized amlodipine impurity G (dimethyl -4-(2-chlorophenyl)-2,6-dimethyl-1,4dihydropyridine-3,5-dicarboxylate). The quality of the impurity was determined by high performance liquid chromatography HPLC method and validated by guideline of The International Conference on Harmonization 2003 Then this impurity was determined homogeneity and assigned value to establish reference standard as Appendix 3 of World Health Organization (WHO technical series 943, 2006) and Statistical methods for use in proficiency testing by inter-laboratory comparison, International Organization for Standardization (ISO 13528), 2005.


Abstract From the early ages of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), different protocols have been developed with different gonadotropin preparations at different dosages with or without gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist or antagonist cotreatment. Various adjuvants have also been incorporated in controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) protocols in an attempt to increase the efficacy and safety. The "best" protocol for COH should minimize stimulation burden while maintain the highest healthy, singleton, term live birth rates. Understandably, the one that meets all these expectations may not exist and COH should be individualized. Currently, there are worldwide differences in COH protocols and gonadotropin dose algorithms used depending on the country, demographics, funding stream, and existing guidelines/legislations. In 2014, despite efforts to individualize COH, currently, many of the protocols employ lack of high-quality evidence-based data. The aim of this review is to overview the efficacy and safety of available COH protocols, in normal responders, poor responders, and hyperresponders from evidence-based medicine perspective.


Erosion processes are accelerated by the presence of unpaved roads in catchments with shallow soils and steep slopes, favoring overland flow and sediment connectivity between hillslopes and the river network. Soil erosion modeling studies conducted at the catchment scale focus primarily on the hydrological behavior of cultivated hillslopes. Few studies address unpaved roads and
suitable practices to limit their impact on hydro-sedimentary transfers in a catchment system. This study simulates soil nonservation measures on unpaved roads and hillslopes and their effect on the hydrological and erosive dynamics in a small order catchment. The rainfall events were monitored at Lajeado Ferreira's creek, in Arvorezinha, Southern Brazil (1.2 km$^2$). The catchment is characterized by shallow soils, steep slopes, intense agricultural activity and sediment yields (SY) of around 150 t km$^{-2}$y$^{-1}$. Unpaved roads cover about 3% of the catchment surface area and supply 36% of the annual average SY. The Limburg Soil Erosion Model (LISEM) was used to simulate the roads' impact on soil erosion. Eight rainfall events, monitored from 2014 to 2017, were calibrated. Rainfall ranged from 9 to 97 mm, total runoff volume (Q) varied from 1462 to 60765 m$^3$ and SY from 0.6 to 81 tons. These events represent different precipitation and land use conditions, so that the road's effects on the hydrological dynamics of this catchment may be investigated. Then, modeling scenarios consisting of three levels of intervention to mitigate sediment supply were tested. The low intervention (LI) level was based on cost-efficient practices, applied to the road only through the installation of rockfill and energy-deflecting small reservoirs.
The medium intervention (MI) included the sowing of grass for gutter protection on the road area and filter strips were installed near the drainage channels. For the high intervention scenario (HI), additional grass strips were installed on hillslopes. Their impact was evaluated by comparing the hydrosedimentological variables Q (m$^3$), peak flow (L s${-1}$) and SY (tons), modelled at the catchment's outlet. Rockfill and energy-deflecting small reservoirs were not enough for reducing peak flow (Qp), on average. Indeed, the main proportion of overland flow originates from other landscape components, such as hillslopes. Under the MI and HI scenarios, Qp decreased by 2 and 46%, respectively. The LI and MI scenarios led to an average Q reduction of 12%, compared to 53% under scenario HI. For one event, HI promoted a reduction of 92% of calculated Q, representing 15,693 m$^3$. HI also showed the most positive effects on limiting SY. It becomes evident that hillslope interventions are necessary, as they allow increasing infiltration, reducing both runoff volume and stream power when the flow reaches the roads. For rainfall events of higher magnitude, it was observed that HI was responsible for reducing Qp between 9 and 25%, while during smaller events, this reduction reached 61 to 93%. This indicates the importance of managing roads in order to reduce runoff energy and concentration, but also to take measures on hillslopes to limit overland flow and erosion inputs, as well as to delay peak Q.


Amount of elderly people that visit online communities is constantly growing. However, there is a research gap considering elderly people as Internet users and online community members. Therefore, in this paper we scrutinized elderly people's perceptions of factors that encourage them to join online communities and, on the other hand, of factors preventing them from joining the communities. The empirical data was gathered by both posing questions and linking a web questionnaire in discussion forums aimed for elderly people. The study at hand seems to verify the existence of the attraction factors identified in earlier studies. On the other hand, the study does not seem to support the suggestion that elderly people need any other special web services than focused communities. According to the study, elderly people prefer discussions with others from the same age group. At the time being, the number of online communities targeted at Finnish senior citizens is low. As a conclusion we propose that by offering elderly people more online communities their social well-being could be increased.


Background Isolation due to a COVID-19 infection can limit activities and cause physical and mental decline, especially in older adults and people with disabilities. However, due to limited contact, adequate rehabilitation is difficult to provide for quarantined patients. Telerehabilitation technology could be a solution; however, issues specific to COVID-19 should be taken into consideration, such as strict quarantine and respiratory symptoms, as well as accessibility to deal with rapid increases in need due to the pandemic. Objective This study aims to develop and to investigate the feasibility of a telerehabilitation system for patients who are quarantined due to COVID-19 by combining existing commercial devices and computer applications. Methods A multidisciplinary team has identified the requirements for a telerehabilitation system for COVID-19 and developed the system to satisfy those requirements. In the subsequent feasibility study, patients diagnosed with COVID-19 (N=10; mean age 60 years, SD 18 years) were included. A single session of telerehabilitation consisted of stretching exercises, a 15-minute exercise program, and a video exercise program conducted under real-time guidance by a physical therapist through a video call. The system included a tablet computer, a pulse oximeter, videoconferencing software, and remote control software. The feasibility of the system was evaluated using the Telemedicine Satisfaction Questionnaire (TSQ; 14 items) and an additional questionnaire on the telerehabilitation system (5 items). Each item was rated from "1 = strongly disagree" to "5 = strongly agree." Results The telerehabilitation system was developed by combining existing devices and applications, including a pulse oximeter and remote control mechanism, to achieve user-friendliness, affordability, and safety, which were determined as the system requirements. In the feasibility study, 9 out of 10 patients were able to use the telerehabilitation system without any on-site help. On the TSQ, the mean score for each item was 4.7 (SD 0.7), and in the additional items regarding telerehabilitation, the mean score for each item was 4.3 (SD 1.0). Conclusions These findings support the feasibility of this simple telerehabilitation system in quarantined patients with COVID-19, encouraging further investigation on the merit of the system's use in clinical practice.


Recent non-local self-attention methods have proven to be effective in capturing long-range dependencies for semantic segmentation. These methods usually form a similarity map of R^(CxC) (by compressing spatial dimensions) or R^(HWxHW) (by compressing channels) to describe the feature relations along either channel or spatial dimensions, where C is the number of channels, H and W are the spatial dimensions of the input feature map. However, such practices tend to condense feature dependencies along the other dimensions, hence causing attention missing, which might lead to inferior results for small/thin categories or inconsistent segmentation inside large objects. To address this problem, we propose a new approach, namely Fully Attentional Network (FLANet), to encode both spatial and channel attentions in a single similarity map while maintaining high computational efficiency. Specifically, for each channel map, our FLANet can harvest feature responses from all other channel maps, and the associated spatial positions as well, through a novel fully attentional module. Our new method has achieved state-of-the-art performance on three challenging semantic segmentation datasets, i.e., 83.6%, 46.99%, and 88.5% on the Cityscapes test set, the ADE20K validation set, and the PASCAL VOC test set, respectively.


Prestressed structures experience limited tensile stresses in concrete, which limits or completely eliminates the occurrence of cracks. However, in some cases, large tensile stresses can develop during the early age of the concrete due to thermal gradients and shrinkage effects. Such stresses can cause early-age cracks, termed 'pre-release cracks', which occur prior to the transfer of the prestressing force. When the prestressing force is applied to the cross-section, it is assumed that partial or full closure of the cracks occurs by virtue of the force transfer through the cracked cross-section. Verification of the closure of the cracks after the application of the prestressing force is important as it can either confirm continued structural integrity or indicate and approximate reduced structural capacity. Structural health monitoring (SHM) can be used for this purpose. This paper researches an SHM method that can be applied to prestressed beam structures to assess the condition of pre-release cracks. The sensor network used in this method consists of parallel long-gauge fiber optic strain sensors embedded in the concrete cross-sections at various locations. The same network is used for damage detection, i.e. detection and characterization of the pre-release cracks, and for monitoring the prestress force transfer. The method is validated on a real structure, a curved continuous girder. Results from the analysis confirm the safety and integrity of the structure. The method and its application are presented in this paper.


Author(s): Branson, Catherine Moreno | Advisor(s): Glik, Deborah C | Abstract: As marijuana policy continues to rapidly evolve in California and LA County, many regulatory approaches have been undertaken with very little evidence of their effectiveness. After storefront medical marijuana dispensaries became legal in California in 2005, some cities chose to allow them while others chose to ban them. To date, however, no empirical research has documented whether banning dispensaries or allowing and regulating them results in less harm to communities. Even less is known about which approach is more effective at achieving a policy goal that unites all sides of the debate on marijuana legalization: preventing adolescent marijuana use. This dissertation examined the impact of city policies restricting or banning medical marijuana dispensaries on the marijuana use behaviors of public high school students in Los Angeles County, California. My first research question was whether city laws that ban or enact more restrictions on dispensaries have a preventative impact on marijuana use among high school students. My other research questions concerned what other factors might be important determinants of whether stricter dispensary regulations or total bans on dispensaries were effective in preventing high school students' cannabis use. I theorized that the effectiveness of dispensary bans would be at least partially dependent on effective enforcement and that MMD bans would be positively correlated with greater perceptions of the risk of marijuana use among adolescents. I therefore examined the degree to which the relationship between dispensary bans and student marijuana use was mediated by the actual number of dispensaries in the city, how dispensary bans impacted students' perceptions of the risk of marijuana use, how close dispensaries were located to participants' schools, and how many dispensaries were located in the close vicinity of the school. Neither dispensary bans nor the number of dispensaries in a city (normalized by population to a rate of dispensaries per 10,000 city residents) were associated with student marijuana use in cross sectional analyses comparing the prevalence of student marijuana use across 57 cities in LA County. While lower risk perceptions were related to higher use, city dispensary bans were not directly rated to students perceptions of the risk of marijuana use and therefore did not mediate the relationship between city MMDs and adolescent marijuana use. However, a trend analysis using a difference-in-difference approach revealed a significant decline in the prevalence of lifetime marijuana use among City of Los Angeles high school students after Proposition D (a voter-approved ballot measure that outlawed over two thirds of the dispensaries in the city) was implemented in 2013. Dispensary bans were also significantly correlated with a longer distance between high schools and unlicensed dispensaries and a lower number of dispensaries located with 2,000 feet of participants' high schools, factors which were in turn associated with less lifetime and recent marijuana use among students. Accounting for these factors strengthened the association between dispensary bans and student marijuana use but not to the point of statistical significance. The positive correlation between the number of licensed dispensaries located within 2,000 feet of high schools and a greater prevalence of lifetime marijuana use among students was statistically significant, but the positive correlation with recent marijuana use was not and the number of dispensaries located near schools was not a significant mediator of the negative association between dispensary bans and student marijuana use. In a cross-sectional analysis using data from 57 LA County cities during the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 school years, dispensary bans were negatively, not but significantly correlated with lifetime or recent marijuana use among students, which negated my focal hypothesis that MMD bans would have a significant suppressing effect on adolescent marijuana use in cities where they were enacted. This study did confirm, however, that enacting more restrictive dispensary policies can have a significant preventative impact on high school students' marijuana use over time when followed by a committed enforcement effort as was seen in the City of Los Angeles with implementation of Proposition D. This research has also identified neighborhood and enforcement factors that are significantly associated with high school students' marijuana use, such as how far unlicensed dispensaries are located from their school and/or how many unlicensed dispensaries were located near their school. Based on these findings, the primary conclusion of this dissertation is that regardless of whether a city chooses to ban or to allow dispensaries, rigorous enforcement of restrictions on their number and location is essential to prevent adolescent marijuana use.


The frequencies of precursors of C57BL/6 T lymphocytes that respond to DBA/2 alloantigens by secreting the lymphokines interleukin 2 (IL-2), macrophage-activating factor (MAF), and granulocyte-macrophage colony- stimulating factor (GM-CSF) have been directly compared with cytolytic T lymphocyte precursor (CTL-P) frequencies in limiting dilution microcultures established from spleen cells positively or negatively selected on the basis of Lyt-2 phenotype. A clear dichotomy was observed between CTL-P, which were contained in the Lyt-2+ fraction, and precursors of IL-2-secreting cells, which were detected almost exclusively in the Lyt-2- population. In contrast, precursors of cells secreting MAF and GM-CSF were found in both populations: almost all responding cells from the Lyt-2- fraction produced both these factors, whereas the precursor frequency of MAF-secreting and GM-CSF-secreting cells was three- to fourfold lower in the Lyt-2+ population. These frequency data were consistent with quantitative differences observed in the average production of these lymphokines by Lyt-2+ and Lyt-2- populations.


Phase retrieval deals with the estimation of complex-valued signals solely from the magnitudes of linear measurements. While there has been a recent explosion in the development of phase retrieval algorithms, the lack of a common interface has made it difficult to compare new methods against the state-of-the-art. The purpose of PhasePack is to create a common software interface for a wide range of phase retrieval algorithms and to provide a common testbed using both synthetic data and empirical imaging datasets. PhasePack is able to benchmark a large number of recent phase retrieval methods against one another to generate comparisons using a range of different performance metrics. The software package handles single method testing as well as multiple method comparisons.The algorithm implementations in PhasePack differ slightly from their original descriptions in the literature in order to achieve faster speed and improved robustness. In particular, PhasePack uses adaptive stepsizes, line-search methods, and fast eigensolvers to speed up and automate convergence.


We study the Wigner crystal melting in a two-dimensional quantum system of distinguishable particles interacting via the 1/r Coulomb potential. We use quantum Monte Carlo methods to calculate its phase diagram, locate the Wigner crystal region, and analyze its instabilities towards the liquid phase. We discuss the role of quantum effects in the critical behavior of the system, and compare our numerical results with the classical theory of melting, and the microemulsion theory of frustrated Coulomb systems. We find a Pomeranchuk effect much larger then in solid helium. In addition, we find that the exponent for the algebraic decay of the hexatic phase differs significantly from the Kosterilitz-Thouless theory of melting. We search for the existence of mesoscopic phases and find evidence of metastable bubbles but no mesoscopic phase that is stable in equilibrium.


AbstractIn addition to genetic changes affecting the function of gene products, changes in gene expression have been suggested to underlie many or even most of the phenotypic differences among mammals. However, detailed gene expression comparisons were, until recently, restricted to closely related species, owing to technological limitations. Thus, we took advantage of the latest technologies (RNA-Seq) to generate extensive qualitative and quantitative transcriptome data for a unique collection of somatic and germline tissues from representatives of all major mammalian lineages (placental mammals, marsupials and monotremes) and birds, the evolutionary outgroup.In the first major project of my thesis, we performed global comparative analyses of gene expression levels based on these data. Our analyses provided fundamental insights into the dynamics of transcriptome change during mammalian evolution (e.g., the rate of expression change across species, tissues and chromosomes) and allowed the exploration of the functional relevance and phenotypic implications of transcription changes at a genome-wide scale (e.g., we identified numerous potentially selectively driven expression switches).In a second project of my thesis, which was also based on the unique transcriptome data generated in the context of the first project we focused on the evolution of alternative splicing in mammals. Alternative splicing contributes to transcriptome complexity by generating several transcript isoforms from a single gene, which can, thus, perform various functions. To complete the global comparative analysis of gene expression changes, we explored patterns of alternative splicing evolution. This work uncovered several general and unexpected patterns of alternative splicing evolution (e.g., we found that alternative splicing evolves extremely rapidly) as well as a large number of conserved alternative isoforms that may be crucial for the functioning of mammalian organs.Finally, the third and final project of my PhD consisted in analyzing in detail the unique functional and evolutionary properties of the testis by exploring the extent of its transcriptome complexity. This organ was previously shown to evolve rapidly both at the phenotypic and molecular level, apparently because of the specific pressures that act on this organ and are associated with its reproductive function. Moreover, my analyses of the amniote tissue transcriptome data described above, revealed strikingly widespread transcriptional activity of both functional and nonfunctional genomic elements in the testis compared to the other organs. To elucidate the cellular source and mechanisms underlying this promiscuous transcription in the testis, we generated deep coverage RNA-Seq data for all major testis cell types as well as epigenetic data (DNA and histone methylation) using the mouse as model system. The integration of these complete dataset revealed that meiotic and especially post-meiotic germ cells are the major contributors to the widespread functional and nonfunctional transcriptome complexity of the testis, and that this "promiscuous" spermatogenic transcription is resulting, at least partially, from an overall transcriptionally permissive chromatin state. We hypothesize that this particular open state of the chromatin results from the extensive chromatin remodeling that occurs during spermatogenesis which ultimately leads to the replacement of histones by protamines in the mature spermatozoa. Our results have important functional and evolutionary implications (e.g., regarding new gene birth and testicular gene expression evolution).Generally, these three large-scale projects of my thesis provide complete and massive datasets that constitute valuables resources for further functional and evolutionary analyses of mammalian genomes.


The Komodo project concerns the handling of multiple real-time events by Java threads that are supported by a multithreaded Java microcontroller. The architecture of the processor core and resulting implications are considered. The use of thread-based event handling is introduced and explained in combination with an Automatic Guided Vehicle (AGV) application. The advantages of thread-based event handling over a normal Interrupt Service Routine (ISR) strategy are demonstrated by the development of the AGV example.


Dealing with datasets of very high dimension is a major challenge in machine learning. In this paper, we consider the problem of feature selection in applications where the memory is not large enough to contain all features. In this setting, we propose a novel tree-based feature selection approach that builds a sequence of randomized trees on small subsamples of variables mixing both variables already identified as relevant by previous models and variables randomly selected among the other variables. As our main contribution, we provide an in-depth theoretical analysis of this method in infinite sample setting. In particular, we study its soundness with respect to common definitions of feature relevance and its convergence speed under various variable dependance scenarios. We also provide some preliminary empirical results highlighting the potential of the approach.


BackgroundIntradermal buffered lidocaine is known to be effective in producing local anesthesia prior to IV catheterization. Recently, intradermal bacteriostatic normal saline has been suggested as a possible alternative. ObjectiveTo compare the efficacy of intradermal bacteriostatic normal saline with that of intradermal buffered lidocaine in providing local anesthesia to adult patients prior to IV catheterization. MethodsIn a randomized, double-blind, parallel-design, quasiexperimental study, we compared pain ratings of adult patients receiving either intradermal buffered lidocaine or intradermal bacteriostatic normal saline before IV catheterization. We measured pain at venipuncture through the use of a verbal numeric rating scale, used the test to compare group differences, and performed an analysis of covariance to test for outcome differences related to age, sex, and race or ethnicity. ResultsThe final sample (N = 148) was 65% women and 82% white, with a mean age of 52 years (range, 19 to 80 years). Demographic characteristics between the two treatment groups were similar. Intradermal buffered lidocaine was demonstrated to be significantly superior to intradermal bacteriostatic normal saline in reducing the pain of IV catheterization (P = 0.007). Differences in pain ratings between the two groups were not associated with age, sex, race or ethnicity, catheter size, or location of the IV site. ConclusionsIntradermal buffered lidocaine was superior to intradermal bacteriostatic normal saline in providing local anesthesia prior to IV catheterization in this group of predominately white adults and should be the solution of choice for venipuncture pretreatment. Keywordsintradermal bacteriostatic normal saline, intradermal buffered lidocaine, intravenous catheterization, local anesthesia, preintravenous local anesthesia


ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS. Petunia integrifolia, Petunia littoralis, Petunia altiplana, molecular markers, taxonomy ABSTRACT. The sequence of the intron within the chalcone synthase A gene (ChsA) was used to characterize Petunia integrifolia subsp. integrifolia var. depauperata (Fries) Smith et Downs, P. altiplana Ando et Hashimoto, P. littoralis Smith et Downs, and an unknown taxon from the town of Torres in Brazil. Based upon the intron, the Torres taxon most closely resembled P. integrifolia. The unrooted phylogenetic tree suggested that P. integrifolia was more closely related to P. littoralis than P. altiplana.


We present a system prototype for self-determination and privacy enhancement in video surveilled areas by integrating computer vision and cryptographic techniques into networked building automation systems. This paper describes research work that has been done within the first half of the collaborative blue-c-II project and is conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers. Persons in a video stream control their visibility on a per-viewer base and can choose to allow either the real view or an obscured image to be seen. The parts of the video stream that show a person are protected by an AES cipher and can be sent over untrusted networks. Experimental results are presented by the example of a meeting room scenario. The paper concludes with remarks on the usability and encountered problems.