Author(s): Sakellariou, Nikolaos | Advisor(s): Iles, Alastair T. | Abstract: AbstractLife Cycle Assessment of Energy Systems: Closing the Ethical Loophole of Social SustainabilitybyNikolaos SakellariouDoctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and ManagementUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Alastair T. Iles, ChairThis dissertation investigates the historical and normative bases of what contemporary engineers consider to be the embodiment of sustainability: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It explores the interplay among technology ethics, energy systems, and how engineering cultures foster sustainability by adopting normative assumptions and problem-solving practices—particularly LCA—as part of their professional identities. Specifically, I provide a broad conceptual analysis of "sustainability engineering" in the US (1989-present) to unpack its history, epistemology and politics. I first show that the 1990's produced two distinct engineering ideologies of sustainability—one emphasizing engineering creativity and innovation, and the other emphasizing normative ethics and socio-cultural change. I find that the dialectic between sustainability and engineering has been defined largely by an ideology of technological change. I argue that engineering ideologies of sustainability not only affect how professionals imagine LCA as a medium of technological and environmental transformation, but also how they conceptualize sustainability as a vehicle to renegotiate engineering knowledge and identity in addressing some of the most pressing existential dilemmas facing their discipline. Next, I investigate the politics of engineering identity formation in relation to social, political, regulatory and community pressure to reshape the ethics and boundaries of LCA. I show that starting around 2000, a small group of engineers and, vitally, companies and consulting firms with an eye to addressing technology's "social impacts" have laid a basis for developing an interesting sustainability tool called Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). SLCA, I argue, is an ideological hybrid where there are many spots of dissent and disagreement but also some surprising fundamental alignments between those who see engineering as technics and those who believe that engineering needs to be socially contextualized. SLCA attests to a messy, ongoing tussle between different viewpoints, where the dominant engineering ideology and culture begins to morph into a more open-ended approach. Finally, I focus on two case studies of sustainable energy system building—solar and wind project development in California's West Antelope Valley (WAV)—to understand in more detail the politics and ethics of LCA in energy systems. I describe how LCA became embedded in narratives and decision-making concerning renewable energy in the US—in their design, as well as in their regulatory, economic and environmental planning. California's inaugural utility scale solar and wind projects were trumpeted as conforming to principles derived from LCA. At one level, I show, the siting of solar PV projects in the WAV was predicated on a mechanism linking legitimacy and life cycle thinking. At another level, along with projects' contentious permitting and pre-construction phases, the interrelated questions of legitimacy and sustainability emerged from the LCA shadows and became central issues in rural renewable energy project development. I explore the tensions between technical expert and lay expert knowledges that swirl around the deployment of LCAs in solar project development and I argue that LCAs enabled disembodied and context-less decision-making. Seen through my ethnography in the WAV, I present material on the internecine politics of renewable energy project development that took place locally and at the Los Angeles County level—a local-regional scale perspective that is often not seen in the literature. I describe how the fractured relationships between stakeholders and the disparity between rural and urban mechanisms of governance facilitated the diminishing fairness and participatory democracy in renewable energy project dispute resolution.


Infertility and its treatment via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) represent a global health area of increasing importance. However, the physical and psychological burden of IVF can negatively impact psychological wellbeing, as well as treatment retention and success. Social support has been found to have positive health effects among populations facing health-related stressors worldwide, and its potential protective role for IVF patients merits further attention. We present a protocol for a systematic review of peer-reviewed published studies quantitatively investigating associations between social support and i) mental health; ii) the decision to (dis)continue with IVF treatment cycles and; iii) IVF success (pregnancy and birth rates); among individuals who are undertaking or have undertaken IVF cycles. Studies will be included if they work with human subjects, provide correlation coefficients between measures of social support and at least one of the outcomes of interest, and are in the English language. Social support may derive from both naturally occurring networks and more formalized sources or interventions. The protocol for this systematic review was developed according to the PRISMA-P guidelines. Ten health-, psychology- and sociology-related databases will be searched using composite search terms that include keywords for 'IVF' and 'social support'. To assess methodological quality, the authors will use a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Should three or more moderate or good quality studies be identified for any one outcome of interest, correlation meta-analyses, using the Hedges-Olkin method, will be conducted to pool effect sizes and heterogeneity will be assessed. Should the number, quality and characteristics of eligible studies not allow for reliable quantitative synthesis, the authors will limit the analysis to qualitative synthesis, with a focus on implications of findings for future research and programming.


The internal dynamics during the axisymmetric coalescence of an initially static free droplet and a sessile droplet of the same fluid are studied using both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. A high-speed camera captured internal flows from the side, visualized by adding a dye to the free droplet. The numerical simulations employ the volume of fluid method, with the Kistler dynamic contact angle model to capture substrate wettability, quantitatively validated against the image-processed experiments. It is shown that an internal jet can be formed when capillary waves reflected from the contact line create a small tip with high curvature on top of the coalesced droplet that propels fluid toward the substrate. Jet formation is found to depend on the substrate wettability, which influences capillary wave reflection; the importance of the advancing contact angle subordinated to that of the receding contact angle. It is systematically shown via regime maps that jet formation is enhanced by increasing the receding contact angle and by decreasing the droplet viscosity. Jets are seen at volume ratios very different from those accepted for free droplets, showing that a substrate with appropriate wettability can improve the efficiency of fluid mixing.


Molybdenum cofactor containing sulfite oxidase (SO) enzyme is an important player in protecting plants against exogenous toxic sulfite. It was also demonstrated that SO activity is essential to cope with rising dark-induced endogenous sulfite levels and maintain optimal carbon and sulfur metabolism in tomato plants exposed to extended dark stress. The response of SO and sulfite reductase to direct exposure of low and high levels of sulfate and carbon was rarely shown. By employing Arabidopsis wild-type, sulfite reductase, and SO-modulated plants supplied with excess or limited carbon or sulfur supply, the current study demonstrates the important role of SO in carbon and sulfur metabolism. Application of low and excess sucrose, or sulfate levels, led to lower biomass accumulation rates, followed by enhanced sulfite accumulation in SO impaired mutant compared with wild-type. SO-impairment resulted in the channeling of sulfite to the sulfate reduction pathway, resulting in an overflow of organic S accumulation. In addition, sulfite enhancement was followed by oxidative stress contributing as well to the lower biomass accumulation in SO-modulated plants. These results indicate that the role of SO is not limited to protection against elevated sulfite toxicity but to maintaining optimal carbon and sulfur metabolism in Arabidopsis plants.


Abstract. A geohazard assessment workflow is presented that maximizes the use of 3D seismic reflection data to improve the safety and success of offshore
scientific drilling. This workflow has been implemented for International
Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Proposal 909 that aims to core seven sites
with targets between 300 and 1000 m below seabed across the north-western Greenland continental shelf. This glaciated margin is a frontier petroleum province containing potential drilling hazards that must be avoided during drilling.
Modern seismic interpretation techniques are used to identify, map and
spatially analyse seismic features that may represent subsurface drilling
hazards, such as seabed structures, faults, fluids and challenging
lithologies. These hazards are compared against the spatial distribution of
stratigraphic targets to guide site selection and minimize risk. The 3D
seismic geohazard assessment specifically advanced the proposal by providing
a more detailed and spatially extensive understanding of hazard distribution
that was used to confidently select eight new site locations, abandon four others and fine-tune sites originally selected using 2D seismic data. Had several
of the more challenging areas targeted by this proposal only been covered by
2D seismic data, it is likely that they would have been abandoned,
restricting access to stratigraphic targets. The results informed the
targeted location of an ultra-high-resolution 2D seismic survey by
minimizing acquisition in unnecessary areas, saving valuable resources. With future IODP missions targeting similarly challenging frontier environments
where 3D seismic data are available, this workflow provides a template for
geohazard assessments that will enhance the success of future scientific
drilling.


Energies and wave functions are calculated for d-wave quasiparticles in the mixed state using the formalism of Franz and Tes\ifmmode \breve{}\else \u{}\fi{}anovi\ifmmode \acute{c}\else \'{c}\fi{} for the low-lying energy levels. The accuracy of the plane-wave expansion is explored by comparing approximate to exact results for a simplified one-dimensional problem, and the convergence of the plane-wave expansion to the two-dimensional case is studied. The results are used to calculate the low-energy tunneling density of states and the low-temperature specific heat, and these theoretical results are compared to semiclassical treatments and to the available data. Implications for the muon spin resonance measurements of vortex core size are also discussed.


BACKGROUND
Norway has no overview of the number of patients who are transfused, their age and gender distribution or reasons for transfusion. We wished to investigate which patient groups received blood at Sørlandet Hospital in 2010-2011, and to test a method of electronic data linkage from treatment systems, with a view to further monitoring of blood consumption.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
Data from all patients treated in somatic departments at Sørlandet Hospital in the period from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2011 were linked to data from the blood bank with the aid of the system 'Forskning i sykehus'. SPSS version 23.0 was used for the statistical analyses.

RESULTS
A total of 19 108 red blood cells and platelet concentrates were transfused to 3 967 patients, with the same number of units for both genders. Patients older than 60 years accounted for 79 % of the total blood consumption. Patients in the main diagnostic group neoplasms had the most transfusion episodes, followed by the diagnostic groups injuries, diseases of the digestive system and diseases of the blood. In cases of primary and secondary hip prostheses, 33.8 % and 65.6 % of the patients received blood, respectively. For caesarean section the figure was 8.9 %.

INTERPRETATION
Our data are comparable to data from other countries. The method is suitable for assessing and monitoring transfusion practice. It could also be used by other health trusts and to collect national data after all blood components and parameters such as haemoglobin, blood group and transfusion complications are included.


It is a commonplace in statistics that uncertainty about parameters drives learning. Indeed one of the most influential models of behavioural learning has uncertainty at its heart. However, many popular theoretical models of learning focus exclusively on error, and ignore uncertainty. Here we review the links between learning and uncertainty from three perspectives: statistical theories such as the Kalman filter, psychological models in which differential attention is paid to stimuli with an effect on the speed of learning associated with those stimuli, and neurobiological data on the influence of the neuromodulators acetylcholine and norepinephrine on learning and inference.


BACKGROUND
Lentivirus vectors provide a delivery system that can both transduce nondividing cells and integrate transgenes into the genome of target cells without cytotoxicity. However, their relatively low transduction efficiency presents a significant obstacle to progress.

OBJECTIVES
In the present paper, a simple and easy method using calcium phosphate (CaPi) to enhance the efficiency of lentivirus gene transfer in both vascular smooth muscle cells and cardiac myocytes is reported.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Delivery of lentivirus vectors in the presence of CaPi coprecipitates increased vector-encoded transgene expression up to 13-fold. Of interest, the magnitudes of enhancement of transgene expression by CaPi coprecipitates in 293T cells, vascular smooth muscle cells and cardiac myocytes were greater during brief periods (10 min and 120 min) of virus-cell contact than during long periods (16 h). Moreover, with a short duration of incubation with CaPi coprecipitates (up to 120 min), there was little evidence of direct cell toxicity. CaPi coprecipitates had no effect on host range specificity of ecotropic viruses and thus appears to enhance transduction efficiency physiologically by facilitating physical interaction between virus and cell.

CONCLUSIONS
These data show that lentivirus with CaPi coprecipitates increases both the efficiency and the speed of gene transfer. These approaches provide an efficient method and an improved tool for research and possibly for therapy of cardiovascular diseases.


It is often believed that the consumer sentiment index has predictive power for future consumption levels. While Granger causality tests have already been used to test for this, no attempt has been made yet to quantify the predictive power of the consumer sentiment index over different time horizons. In this article, we decompose the Granger causality at different time lags, by looking at a sequence of nested prediction models. Since the consumer sentiment index turns out to be cointegrated with real consumption, we resort to error correcting models. Four consumption series are studied, namely total real consumption, real consumption of durables, non-durables and services. Among other findings, we show that the consumer sentiment index Granger causes future consumption with an average time lag of 4–5 months. Furthermore, it is found that the consumer sentiment index has more incremental predictive power for consumption of services than for consumption of durables or non-durables, and that the index is not only useful as a predictor at the very short term, but keeps predictive power at larger time horizons.


ZnO was synthesized by the hydrothermal method using proper aqueous solutions of ZnCl2 and NaOH, as the main raw materials, corresponding to the molar ratio of Zn2+ : OH- = 1 : 20 (solution 'A'), and a proper proportion of water as solvent, ethanol (EtOH) as non solvent and polyethylene glycol (PEG) as nonionic surfactant (solution 'B'). The reaction takes place in an autoclave at 200 °C for a defined period of time (1-20 h). The solid ZnO products received after centrifugation, washing and drying were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The percentage of unreacted Zn present after the reaction in the liquid phase (incumbent solution) was determined by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. The parameters of processing (i.e., temperature, pressure, residence time) and the raw materials parameters (i.e. proportion of , amount of PEG) influence the morphology and the dimensions of the product. Increasing the residence time from 1 h → 3 h → 20 h, the amorphous regions illustrated in SEM images are decreased and the number and dimensions of the obtained single or branched rods of the final product are increased. Avoiding the use of additional water, i.e. the denominator in the aforementioned ratio, mL, water, is equal to zero, but simultaneously using ethanol, the ZnO material is mainly amorphous. Increasing the amount of the additional water without ethanol, no amorphous material is observed and single rods or flowerlike/starlike structures having ends of regular hexagonal pyramid structure, are formed. Increasing the proportion of PEG, many flowerlike or starlike branched structures having ends of regular hexagonal prismatic structure, are formed. The ZnO materials having much of amorphous regions do not show XRD peaks. On the other hand, the crystalline ZnO materials show many XRD peaks, which are indexed and they correspond to the wurtzite-structured (hexagonal) ZnO. Furthermore, the lattice constants  and c are determined.


Dynamics and instabilities occurring in the near-wake of wind turbines have a crucial role for the wake downstream evolution, and for the onset of far-wake instabilities. Furthermore, wake dynamics significantly affect the intra-wind farm wake flow, wake interactions and potential power losses. Therefore, the physical understanding and predictability of wind turbine wake instabilities become a nodal point for prediction of wind power harvesting and optimization of wind farm layout. This study is focused on the prediction of the hub vortex instability encountered within wind turbine wakes under different operational conditions of the wind turbine. Linear stability analysis of the wake flow is performed by means of a novel approach that enables to take effects of turbulence on wake instabilities into account. Stability analysis is performed by using as base flow the time-averaged wake velocity field at a specific downstream location. The latter is modeled through Carton-McWilliams velocity profiles by mimicking the presence of the hub vortex and helicoidal tip vortices, and matching the wind turbine thrust coefficient predicted through the actuator disc model. The results show that hub vortex instability is promoted by increasing the turbine thrust coefficient. Indeed, a larger aerodynamic load produces an enhanced wake velocity deficit and axial shear, which are considered the main sources for the wake instability. Nonetheless, wake swirl also promotes hub vortex instability, and it can also affect the azimuthal wavenumber of the most unstable mode.


Performance of piezoresistive thick-film pressure sensors on steel substrates is hindered by the high required firing temperatures of the layers, which cause degradation of the substrate mechanical properties. Special steels or alloys that are relatively unaffected by these temperatures are available, but their cost is very high. A much more promising alternative is the reduction of the thick-film firing temperature, in order to allow application of the standard high-strength steels used in thin-film cells. Therefore, a series of thick-film materials systems (dielectrics, resistors and conductors) firing at low temperatures (<700°C) on steel substrates has been developed and electrically characterised (sheet resistance and thermal coefficient of resistance – TCR). It was found that the main issue in these systems lies in mastering the materials interactions during firing, especially at the silver- based resistor terminations. The interaction of silver, resistor and dielectric tends to give rise to highly resistive zones at the terminations, affecting reliability. This can be circumvented by post-firing the resistor terminations at a moderate temperature. Key words: Thick-film materials, steel substrates, low-temperature processing, resistors, termination effects


Mannose‐binding lectin (MBL) is an important component of innate immunity that can bind to certain sugar residues on the surface of many types of pathogenic micro‐organisms. On binding, MBL generates opsonic activity mainly through activation of the complement system. Genetically determined MBL deficiency is very common and can be associated with increased susceptibility to a variety of infections, especially in children and immunosuppressed individuals. The potential benefits of MBL reconstitution therapy therefore need to be evaluated. We have carried out a phase I safety and pharmacokinetic study on 20 MBL‐deficient healthy adult volunteers. The MBL was prepared from plasma of nonremunerated, voluntary Danish donors tested and found negative for hepatitis B surface antigen, antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus. Each volunteer received a total of 18 mg of MBL in three 6 mg doses given intravenously, once weekly over a period of 3 weeks. The volunteers were closely monitored at the University Hospital in Reykjavik for 8 h after each infusion and daily thereafter for 5 days after each infusion. No adverse clinical or laboratory changes were observed in any of the 20 participants, and frequent measurements did not reveal any signs of infusion‐associated complement activation. No antibodies to MBL, HIV or hepatitis viruses were observed 24 weeks after the last infusion. Serum MBL levels increased up to normal levels (1200–4500 ng/ml) immediately after each infusion, but the half‐life of the infused MBL was highly variable, ranging from 18 to 115 h (mean 69.6). It is concluded that infusion of purified MBL as prepared by Statens Serum Institut (SSI) is safe. However, adults have to be given at least 6 mg twice or thrice weekly for maintaining protective MBL levels assumed to be about 1000 ng/ml.


This paper analyses relevant determinants for the probability to initiate a dispute on policy measures under the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system. The empirical analysis focuses on agro-food-related disputes to provide sector-specific information on the driving factors in dispute settlement, and complements and extends previous studies by incorporating new potential determinants. The focus is shifted to bilaterally dependent characteristics to take care of trade related and power-based relationships between Members. Contrary to recent analyses of overall trade disputes, the results show that some determinants such as export value and monetary means are not statistically significant. However, the import dependency from the defendant party could be identified as a relevant determinant in disputes.


The quality of liquid fuel spray injection determines to a large extent the steady state performance and dynamics of gas turbine and aero-engine combustors. The present investigation is focused on the detailed characterization of the liquid fuel spray in a single sector test rig targeted at aero-engine applications. The liquid fuel (heptane) is injected in a hollow cone spray pattern by a simplex atomizer and the injector comprises a radial swirler. Two features of the droplet distribution that are less commonly found in the technical literature are identified. First, the distributions of mean droplet diameters exhibit non-axisymmetric patterns, a lack of symmetry that is investigated for three types of swirlers differing by their swirl number and/or head loss. Second, it is found that the size-conditioned velocity distributions feature a single wide peak for small droplets and become bimodal for the largest droplets, with a first peak at low velocities, and a second one at higher velocities. The spray behavior analysis is complemented by making use of Large Eddy Simulations with Lagrangian Particle Tracking. Droplet injection is achieved with a model in which the initial size and velocity distributions are specified from experimental data in the atomizer near field. The initial spray interacts with the lateral injector surface and requires a droplet-wall interaction model accounting for the existence of a liquid film. Simulations do not retrieve the lack of rotational symmetry that is found experimentally indicating that this is not linked to the nature of the swirling flow. This is also consistent with further experiments with a different atomizer confirming that this is due to imperfections in the initial atomizer geometry. Another result is that certain swirler designs appear to be more robust to these atomizer imperfections. Simulations accounting for the liquid film yield a bimodal distribution for the droplets' axial velocity distribution which would not be obtained without this model indicating that it is important to represent the droplet-wall interaction, a feature that is not commonly found in the literature.


Rose, Hawksworth and Coppins 77recorded a rich, corticolous lichen flora from Horsley Hope Ravine, despite its position just S.W. of Consett - a major source of S02-pollution. This study attempts to explain the apparently anomalous presence of a luxuriant lichen vegetation in the ravine. Three possible explanations were considered:1. Prevailing winds transport S02 N.E., so that the entire area S.W. of Consett, including the ravine, is relatively unpolluted. 2. The ravine is protected from S02-pollution by its physiographical shape and/or woodland cover. 3. The variations of certain abiotic factors within the ravine account for its diverse lichen flora. Records of corticolous lichen frequency in the area indicate that: (a) the lichen vegetation is impoverished S.W. of Consett, and (b) the E. sides of trees (exposed to S02-laden winds) support a poorer lichen flora than the W. sides. It is thus concluded that the distribution of lichens S.W. of Consett is affected by S02-impaction, so that explanation 1. may be discounted. Measurements of S02, and other doiotic factors, showed that S02-concentrations, light intensities and substrate moisture-content varied significantly within Horsley Hope Ravine. Transects down the sides of the ravine revealed two distinct patterns of lichen distribution: (i) the variation in frequencies of species downslope, (ii) the consistent, preference of species for the upper or lower sides of trees. Pattern (i) was correlated with downslope changes in S02-levels and light; pattern (ii) was explained by variations of S02, light, and substrate moisture-content. Species similarly distributed according to these two patterns were grouped into four lichen units. A model was developed which showed that the luxuriant lichen flora, and distribution of these four units, in Horsley Hope Ravine may be explained by (in order of importance): reduced levels of S02, variations in light intensity, and substrate moisture-content. The decline in S02-levels in the ravine was ascribed to topographical shelter from S02-bearing winds.


Mediator is an open architecture information and knowledge management system designed to provide a flexible technology to support the management of complex manufacturing activities throughout the product life cycle. A heterogeneous environment is assumed in which the sub-systems are geographically dispersed and involve different application packages, not necessarily designed to work together, multiple platforms, protocols and forms of user interface. The function of Mediator is to provide a knowledge support system for all those involved in the manufacturing process from requirements through design, engineering, production, to maintenance and recycling. It is designed to facilitate communication, compliance with constraints including physical restrictions and legal obligations, and to generally represent knowledge about any activity or subsystem relevant to the manufacturing process. This paper reports on a second-generation Mediator implementation based on World-Wide-Web protocols and browsers augmented by specialist helper and server applications.


Energy efficiency is a significant characteristic of battery-run devices such as sensors, RFID and mobile phones. In the present scenario, this is the most prominent requirement that must be served while introducing a communication protocol for an IoT environment. IoT network success and performance enhancement depend heavily on optimization of energy consumption that enhance the lifetime of IoT nodes and the network. In this context, this paper presents a comprehensive review on energy efficiency techniques used in IoT environments. The techniques proposed by researchers have been categorized based on five different layers of the energy architecture of IoT. These five layers are named as sensing, local processing and storage, network/communication, cloud processing and storage, and application. Specifically, the significance of energy efficiency in IoT environments is highlighted. A taxonomy is presented for the classification of related literature on energy efficient techniques in IoT environments. Following the taxonomy, a critical review of literature is performed focusing on major functional models, strengths and weaknesses. Open research challenges related to energy efficiency in IoT are identified as future research directions in the area. The survey should benefit IoT industry practitioners and researchers, in terms of augmenting the understanding of energy efficiency and its IoT-related trends and issues.


According to analysis on the adoption problem of the third-party mobile payment, this paper put forward a third-party mobile payment adoption model based on value acceptance model. To test the capability of the proposed model in interpreting affecting factors of users in adoption of third-party mobile payment service, structural equation model method is used and the data is obtained from questionnaire investigation. The results shows that except for perceived cost and perceived risk, which are widely recognized as two remarkable affecting factors, perceived benefit, perceived convenience and herd mentality convenience are also three outstanding factors that influence the use of the third-party mobile payment. According to this conclusion, suggestions for improvement of service are put forward to the third-party mobile payment business operators.


The more general reactions of the cardiovascular system of man to the inhalation of oxygen-poor gas mixtures have been described by numerous investigators. 1 They consist of an almost immediate increase in the heart rate, a slight rise in the systolic blood pressure, with no significant change in the diastolic level, and a definite augmentation in the cardiac output. With respect to alterations in the peripheral circulation, the results are not as clearcut. Freeman and his associates 2 studied the rate at which blood flows through the hand during a period of acute anoxia, using the venous occlusion plethysmographic method. They found that either an increase or a decrease of rate was produced. Gellhorn and Steck, 3 utilizing the same procedure and the same vascular bed, also noted apparently inconsistent results, the flow being decreased, unchanged or slightly increased. Since the circulation through the hand is affected by a variety


This historical overview of criticism of the famous Danish writer is the first such collection available in English. Composed of selections from major critics and scholars both here and abroad (including Aage Henriksen, Eudora Welty, Curtis Cate, Abdul JanMohamed, and Lionel Trilling, among others) Isak Dinesen would have suited the self-absorbed artist, who so delighted in being continually appropriated and invented within different forms of critical discourse that it became a source of amusement and distraction for her. For us, it is a reminder that literary works and their authors must yield gracefully to critical shaping for a literary reputation to take on a life of its own. To watch the unfolding of reputation under such continual reinvention becomes high literary spectacle. Readers of this collection will witness a major twentieth-century writer emerge from the judgments imposed by various critical schools in vogue from the early 1950s.


The inherent challenges and opportunities of mobile services design have recently led designers to embrace the theory of presence, as evidenced by recent white papers. However, our research finds that presence is a much richer theoretical construct than these studies suggest. Building on this viewpoint and drawing on prior communication research, we more fully explore the application of three types of presencephysical presence, social presence, and self-presenceto mobile services design and to the corresponding opportunities for value creation. We present a series of design challenges for mobility and identify opportunities for overcoming these challenges by incorporating presence. The implications of designing with presence are (1) a greater awareness of and response to the users' needs and behaviors; (2) strategies for design that leverage this awareness; and (3) methods for integrating unique features of mobile devices based on user-driven and environment-driven factors rather than technology-driven factors. Our research suggests the development of middle-range theories of presence for specific application domains such as mobility that combine theoretical aspects of presence theory with the real-world design factors of mobile services. Numerous real-world examples illustrate both the complete nature of presence and its application to mobile services.


Myofibroma is an uncommon benign mesenchymal neoplasm. Solitary myofibroma is common in soft tissues of head and neck, but rare in the jaw bones. Only a few sporadic cases of solitary myofibroma of mandible have been described. The aim of the present study was to present a clinical case of a patient with a myofibroma in mandible bone and its management. Differentiating this lesion from other benign and malignant neoplasms is crucial in deciding between a radical and a conservative treatment approach. We explained that diagnosis of myofibroma can be reached by a histopathologic and immunohistochemical analysis and surgical excision is the treatment of choice. Key words : Intraosseous, Mandible, Myofibroma.


Background: As England is starting to ease lockdown restrictions in a phased manner, it is important to determine the level of social distancing compliance, quantified here as the daily number of social contacts per person, i.e. the daily contact rate, needed to maintain control of the COVID-19 epidemic and not exceed acute bed capacity in case of a secondary wave later this year. This work uses mathematical modelling to simulate the levels of COVID-19 in North East London (NEL) and inform the level of social distancing necessary to protect the public and the healthcare demand from a secondary COVID-19 wave during 2020. Methods: We used a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Removed (SEIR) model describing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in North East London (NEL), calibrated to data on confirmed COVID-19 associated hospitalisations, hospital discharges and in-hospital deaths in NEL. To account for the uncertainty in both the infectiousness period and the proportion of symptomatic infection, we simulated nine scenarios for different combinations of infectiousness period (1, 3 and 5 days) and proportion of symptomatic infection (70%, 50% and 25% of all infections). Across all scenarios, the calibrated model was used to assess the risk of occurrence and forecast the strength and timing of a second COVID-19 wave under varying levels of daily contact rate from July 04, 2020. Specifically, the daily contact rate required to suppress the epidemic and prevent resurgence of COVID-19 cases, and the daily contact rate required to stay within the acute bed capacity of the NEL system without any additional intervention measures after July 2020, were determined across the nine different scenarios. Results: Our results caution against a full relaxing of the lockdown, predicting that a return to pre-COVID-19 levels of social contact from July 04, 2020 may induce a second wave up to eight times the original wave. With different levels of social distancing continuing into next year, the second wave can be avoided or the strength of the second wave can be mitigated. Keeping the daily contact rate lower than 5 or 6, depending on scenarios, for the rest of this year, can prevent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, could keep the effective reproduction number R below 1 and a second COVID-19 wave may be avoided in NEL. A daily contact rate between 6 and 7, across scenarios, is likely to increase R above 1 and result in a secondary COVID-19 wave with significantly increased COVID-19 cases and associated deaths, but with demand for hospital based care remaining within the bed capacity of the NEL health and care system. In contrast, an increase in daily contact rate above 8 to 9, depending on scenarios, will likely exceed the acute bed capacity in NEL and may potentially require additional lockdowns. This scenario is associated with significantly increased COVID-19 cases and deaths, and acute COVID-19 care demand is likely to require significant scaling down of the usual operation of the health and care system, and should be avoided.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that to avoid a second COVID-19 wave and to stay within the acute bed capacity of the NEL health and care system, phased relaxing of the social distancing in NEL is advised with a view to limiting the average number of social interactions in the population. Increasing the social interaction rapidly could result in a second COVID-19 wave that will likely exceed the acute bed capacity in the system, and depending on the strength of the resurgence may require additional lockdown measures.


FELiChEM is an infrared free electron laser (FEL) facility currently under construction, which consists of two oscillators generating middle-infrared and far-infrared laser covering the spectral range of 2.5–200 μm. In this paper, we numerically study the output characteristics of the middle-infrared oscillator with accurate cavity length detuning. Emphasis is put on the temporal structure of the micropulse and the corresponding spectral bandwidth. Taking the radiation wavelengths of 50 μm and 5 μm as examples, we show that the output pulse duration can be tuned in the range of 1–6 ps with corresponding bandwidth of 13%–0.2% by adjusting the cavity length detuning. In addition, a special discussion on the comb structure is presented, and it is indicated that the comb structure may arise in the output optical pulse when the normalized slippage length is much smaller than unity. This work has reference value for the operation of FELiChEM and other FEL oscillators.


Children with only spelling (n=24) or handwriting and spelling disabilities (n=24) were randomly assigned to a pencil or computer response mode. They were taught 48 words of varying orders of sound-spelling predictability using a method that emphasized hearing the word in the mind's ear and seeing the word in the mind's eye and making connections between the phonological and orthographic representations at the whole word and subword levels. Although no main effects were found for response mode, at posttest the pencil was superior to the computer for easy orders (single-letter spelling units with high sound-spelling predictability), but the computer was superior to the pencil for moderate and difficult orders (multiletter spelling units with intermediate or low sound-spelling predictability). Prior to and in response to treatment, children with handwriting and spelling problems spelled less well than children with only spelling problems. Multiletter spelling units of moderate or difficult orders of sound-spelling predictability explained unique increments of variance in spelling achievement, whereas single-letter spelling units of easy order of sound-spelling predictability did not. Based on these findings, instructional recommendations are to provide explicit instruction in the correspondence between sound and multiletter spelling units.


A profinite group is called strongly complete if every subgroup of finite index is open and of type (AF) if it has only finitely many subgroups of any fixed index. In this paper it is shown that a topologically finitely generated abelian by pro-nilpotent profinite group is strongly complete, and that a pro-solvable profinite group is strongly complete if is of type (AF).


The modern era of angiogenesis research is generally considered to have begun with the proposal by Folkman 1971 that tumors release diffusible factors that promote the formation of new blood vessels. Although there has been interest in this topic for 30 yr, the last 6–7 yr have seen an explosion of interest in this field. This explosion is evidenced in the number of meetings on the topic, the number of press reports, and especially the number of publications. A search of the Medline database reveals that in 1990 approximately 200 papers were published on the topic of angiogenesis, whereas in the year 2000 more than 1,700 papers appeared on the same subject. To what can we attribute this rise? My own feeling is that while the previous two decades were devoted to proving that angiogenesis was a real biological phenomenon and to the isolation of angiogenesis-stimulating factors, the 1990s were devoted to the identification, purification, and cloning of potentially effective angiogenesis inhibitors. This allowed the establishment of clinical trials to test the therapeutic efficacy of these agents and has stimulated a torrent of activity among biologists in both academic and industrial settings to find out more about the mechanisms by which these inhibitors work.

A large number of angiogenesis inhibitors have entered or will soon enter clinical trials. These have been identified and isolated using a variety of strategies. Some were chosen on the basis of their ability to interfere with key angiogenesis stimulators such as the vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptors (Presta et al. 1997; Fong et al. 1999) or key endothelial receptors for extracellular matrix molecules such as the αvβ3 integrin (Brooks et al. 1994). Others were isolated from tissues such as cartilage that are naturally devoid of blood vessels (Moses et al. 1999). Some were known cytokines such as interferon alpha (White et al. 1989) or interleukin 12 (Voest et al. 1995) that were subsequently found to have antiangiogenic properties. Still others were identified on the basis of their structural characteristics (D'Amato et al. 1994; Klauber et al. 1997) or on the basis of their ability to inhibit endothelial cell migration or proliferation (Ingber et al. 1990) or to function as a tumor suppressor (Good et al. 1990). Information regarding angiogenesis inhibitors in clinical trials can be found on the Cancer Trials web site of the National Cancer Institute (http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov/news/angio/table.html).

One of the first angiogenesis inhibitors described in the 1990s was angiostatin, a molecule originally collected from the urine of tumor-bearing mice (O'Reilly et al. 1994). Angiostatin is a proteolytically generated fragment of plasminogen consisting of the first four kringle domains of the parent molecule. Angiostatin is thought not to be produced inside the tumor cells, but rather to be generated in the circulation by tumor-derived proteolytic enzymes (Gately et al. 1996). The observation that angiostatin as well as other angiogenic inhibitors are derived from molecules involved in hemostasis has encouraged speculation that these molecules may have a role in normal wound healing, as well as in tumors and other pathological states (Browder et al. 2000). Angiostatin is currently in clinical trials to determine its utility as an antitumor drug.

Despite the intense effort and research output on the topic of angiogenesis inhibitors, much remains to be learned. For many of these newly described inhibitors, we know little of their mechanism of action and less about the nature of the receptors that mediate their effects on endothelial cells. For this reason, the paper by Troyanovsky et al. 2001 is a welcome addition to our understanding of angiogenesis. This team has described angiomotin, a new, functional angiostatin-binding protein that mediates the inhibition of endothelial cell motility, a critical component of the angiogenic process (Zetter 1980). Because of the importance of cell migration in the angiogenesis process, the discovery of a cell-surface protein that mediates the effects of angiostatin on endothelial cell motility represents a significant step forward for this field.

The data are convincing. Angiomotin was discovered using a yeast two-hybrid screen for proteins that interact with the first four kringle domains of plasminogen. It is described as a 72-kD cell surface–associated protein that is expressed in capillary endothelial cells as well as in actively angiogenic tissue such as placenta and solid tumors. Like other surface-associated proteins that can bind plasminogen and its derivatives, angiomotin does not appear to have a signal sequence, thus its association with the cell surface may be via protein–protein interaction. It is localized to the lamellipodia at the leading edge of migrating endothelial cells. Most importantly, transfection of control HeLa cells with angiomotin results in an increased response to migration-stimulating proteins. Furthermore, angiostatin treatment blocked cell migration and three-dimensional tube morphogenesis in cells transfected with angiomotin but not in vector-control cells. These results solidly implicate angiomotin in the angiostatin-mediated regulation of cell motility and capillary differentiation.

Angiomotin is not the first angiostatin-binding protein discovered. ATP synthase was previously described as a high affinity angiostatin-binding protein (Moser et al. 1999) that bound preferentially to angiostatin relative to the parent molecule plasminogen. Antibodies to ATP synthase were reported to inhibit the antiproliferative activity of angiostatin on endothelial cells. Plasminogen itself binds to other cell-surface proteins such as annexin II and alpha enolase (Miles et al. 1991; Hajjar et al. 1994). Should we be concerned, then, that a potent antiangiogenic molecule should have more than one potentially important cell surface binding molecule? Probably not. The positive and negative regulation of blood vessel growth is a critical determinant of tissue repair and of normal tissue mass. Angiogenesis has essential roles in embryonic development, tissue hyperplasia, and a variety of diseases. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a positive regulator of angiogenesis, has at least three receptors, and fibroblast growth factor, another positive regulator, has more receptors than VEGF. It would be no surprise if a potent angiogenesis inhibitor such as angiostatin were to have multiple receptors. These multiple receptors could act independently or in concert, as is the case for the high- and low-affinity receptors for fibroblast growth factor (Yayon et al. 1991).

As always, a discovery of this type generates many new questions. Among those undoubtedly being asked in the Holmgren laboratory today are: (a) what is the binding affinity of angiostatin's interaction with angiomotin? (b) what is the nature of the binding interactions between angiomotin and plasminogen? (c) what signaling molecules are downstream of angiomotin? (d) does binding of angiostatin to angiomotin cause activation of the focal adhesion kinase previously shown to be modulated by angiostatin (Claesson-Welsh et al. 1998)? and (e) does angiomotin mediate other functions of angiostatin action such as endothelial proliferation in vitro or the inhibition of angiogenesis and tumor growth in vivo? There is considerable work left to be done.

Who are the beneficiaries of this new discovery? Those who will try to add more flesh to the bones of this new finding, those who will attempt to identify or construct novel small molecules that regulate angiogenesis via the angiomotin pathway, those curious about angiogenesis, and, with any luck, those who may have or will later acquire a disease characterized by untoward angiogenesis.


This paper examines the determinants of the exit behaviour of banks in the Nigerian consolidation program during July 2004 and December 2005. We conceptualise the exit process in a flexible bivariate competing risks model to examine the importance of macroeconomic and industry-specific factors for both merged banks and failed banks jointly. The preliminary results suggest that bank-specific characteristics mattered more for preventing bank failure than they did for emergence of the M&A banks. Second, the Central Bank of Nigeria's assistance was highly influential in preventing bank failure, and, for banks that benefited, the assistance increased their probability of being merged or acquired. Also, we found no strong evidence suggesting that the prevailing macroeconomic conditions and industry-specific factors had influenced exit behaviour of banks during the consolidation exercise. We found evidence of structural dependence between failure and merger and acquisition hazards induced by CBN incentive.


Reports from studies conducted among drivers in countries with high burden of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) show very high prevalence of HIV infection in multiples of the national average. HIV risk perception has been identified as an important antecedent for one's adoption of protective behavior against contracting the disease. This study was conducted to assess the knowledge of HIV/AIDS, risk perception, sexual lifestyle and condom use among drivers in Sokoto, Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 264 randomly selected drivers in March, 2011 using pre-tested, interviewer administered, semi-structured questionnaire. Data analysis was done using computer software, SPSS version 17. Awareness of HIV/AIDS was high (93.9%), and majority had adequate knowledge of transmission (83.3%) and prevention (84.9%) of HIV infection. Only a few (12.9%) perceived the disease to be a threat to them. Twenty seven (10.9%) had engaged in casual sex in the past 12 months and the determinants included age below 40 years (OR = 2.119, 95% CI = 0.006 to 0.175) and being single, separated or divorced (OR = 2.848, 95% CI = 0.055 to 0.304). Although consistent use of condom was low (19.7%), it was twice as prevalent among respondents that had casual sex in the past 12 months (44.4%) compared to those that did not (18.1%), c2 = 10.077, p = 0.002. This study demonstrated poor HIV/AIDS risk perception, unsafe sexual practices and poor condom use among drivers in Sokoto despite adequate knowledge of the disease. The findings in this study suggest the need for intensification of mass media campaigns and other public health measures aimed at discouraging unsafe sexual practices, stimulating appropriate risk perception and promoting consistent use of condom.

 Key words: Knowledge, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), risk perception, sexual lifestyle, condom use.


This study aimed at identifying the effects of self-paced cycling on the cognitive and functional status and fall risk on institutionalized older adults without cognitive impairment. A total of 39 individuals were randomly assigned to an exercise group or to a control group. The exercise group participants cycled at their self-selected intensity at least for 15 min daily during 15 months. The control group participants performed recreational activities. The Mini-Mental State Examination, Fuld object memory evaluation, and symbol digit modality test were used for cognitive assessments. The Katz index, the timed "Up & Go" test, and the World Health Organization questionnaire were used to assess functional independence, mobility, and fall risk. Significant improvements were observed in the exercise group for global cognition and attention, visual scanning, and processing speed. Long-term self-paced cycling training seems to have a protective effect on cognitive status and attention, visual scanning, and processing speed in older institutionalized individuals.


Attenuation correction is required in positron emission tomography for accurate quantitation and to reduce artifacts. In previous work, the authors have shown that consistency information can be used to perform attenuation correction in the absence of any transmission measurements. In the previous work, a separate object was used for each slice and was transformed in two dimensions. Here, the authors introduce an extension that performs three-dimensional transformations on a single object over many slices. The aim is to produce a useful attenuation correction in situations where either it is impractical to acquire transmission data or there is significant misregistration between the transmission and emission data. Results are presented for simulated test cases with uniform and nonuniform attenuation and experimental cardiac phantom data. The algorithm as it stands is too unstable to allow for accurate attenuation correction without any transmission measurements. However, it may be useful for correcting misregistration, and may possibly be extended to perform coregistration.


Background: Chronic low back pain is a common disease in clinic. The prevention and treatment of this disease requires a great deal of medical care resources, which is now the third medical economic burden in China. Although non-steroidal analgesics have been shown to be effective for chronic low back pain, considering the obvious side effects of these drugs, more and more patients are inclined to employ non-drug therapies. Typical examples are exercise therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Exercise therapy of traditional Chinese medicine is an important part of non-drug therapy in China, such as sinew-strengthening exercise (SSE). Originating from traditional Chinese medicine exercise therapy, it has long been used for the prevention and treatment of chronic low back pain in Shuguang Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SGH), but it has not been validated by clinical trials. In this trial, we will seek to determine whether SSE is an effective and safe treatment option for persons with chronic nonspecific low back pain (CNLBP) by comparing it with CBT and explore a new method to CNLBP. Methods/Design: In this trial, we will randomize 480 adults with CNLBP to CBT and SSE arms (240 per group). Participants in both groups will be followed for 52 weeks after randomization with home practice. Interviewers will assess outcomes 4, 8, 12, 26 and 52 weeks postrandomization. The primary measure instrument will be Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) with 26-week follow-up being the primary endpoint. Discussion: If SSE is found to be an effective treatment option for patients with chronic back pain, it will become a meritorious addition to the current limited treatment approaches available to patients with significant psychosocial contributors to their pain.


Quasi-one-dimensional (1D) semiconductor nanocrystals manifest linearly polarized emission, reduced lasing threshold, and improved charge transport compared with their counterparts such as spherical quantum dots. Present investigations of colloidal semiconductor quantum rods are mainly based on cadmium chalcogenide systems because of their facile synthetic accessibility. However, it is still a big challenge to fabricate quasi-1D zinc chalcogenide nanocrystals with controlled aspect ratios. Here we report a general strategy for synthesizing zinc chalcogenide quantum rods via a colloidal chemical synthetic approach. Unlike the most common growth mechanisms of quasi-1D colloidal nanocrystals such as monomer attachment and particle coalescence, the synthesis of zinc chalcogenide quantum rods is performed by a ripening process starting from their respective ultrathin nanowires through thermodynamically driven material diffusion. We anticipate that this strategy is general and could be applied to other systems to construct quasi-1D nanostructures. Moreover, the presence of cadmium-free (or "green") zinc chalcogenide quantum rods synthesized through this strategy provides a desirable platform for eco-friendly photocatalysis, optoelectronic devices, biolabeling, and other applications.


In this work, by using an Electronic Nose, human breath samples were analyzed. Breaths samples were collected from three different groups. These are lung cancer patients, healthy people and healthy smokers. In structure of developed E-Nose, Quartz Crystal Microbalance and Metal Oxide Semiconductor gas sensors were used. Data acquired from system were preprocessed and dimension of these data were reduced with Linear Discriminant Analysis algorithm. Classification of data was performed with k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines algorithms. For both algorithms, maximum classification success rates were obtained as 94.1% with 5 Fold Cross Validation.


OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate if oropharyngeal swab polymerase chain reaction (PCR) could predict osteoarticular infection (OAI) due to Kingella kingae in young children. METHODS: One hundred twenty-three consecutive children aged 6 to 48 months presenting with atraumatic osteoarticular complaints were prospectively studied. All had a clinical evaluation, imaging, and blood samples. Blood and oropharyngeal specimens were tested with a PCR assay specific for K kingae. OAI was defined as bone, joint, or blood detection of pathogenic bacteria, or MRI consistent with infection in the absence of positive microbiology. K kingae OAI was defined by blood, bone, or synovial fluid positivity for the organism by culture or PCR. RESULTS: Forty children met the OAI case definition; 30 had K kingae OAI, 1 had another organism, and 9 had no microbiologic diagnosis. All 30 oropharyngeal swabs from the K kingae case patients and 8 swabs from the 84 patients without OAI or with OAI caused by another organism were positive. The sensitivity and specificity of the oropharyngeal swab PCR assay for K kingae were 100% and 90.5%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Detection of K kingae DNA in oropharyngeal swabs of children with clinical findings of OAI is predictive of K kingae OAI. If these findings are replicated in other settings, detection of K kingae by oropharyngeal swab PCR could improve the recognition of OAI.


Infragravity waves (frequency, f = 0.005–0.05 Hz) are known to dominate hydrodynamic and sediment transport processes close to the shoreline on low-sloping sandy beaches, especially when incident waves are large. However, in storm wave conditions, how their importance varies on different beach types, and with different mixes of swell and wind-waves is largely unknown. Here, a new dataset, comprising shoreline video observations from five contrasting sites (one low-sloping sandy beach, two steep gravel beaches, and two compound/mixed sand and gravel beaches), under storm wave conditions (deep water wave height, H0 up to 6.6 m, and peak period, Tp up to 18.2 s), was used to assess: how the importance and dominance of infragravity waves varies at the shoreline? In this previously unstudied combination of wave and morphological conditions, significant infragravity swash heights (Sig) at the shoreline in excess of 0.5 m were consistently observed on all five contrasting beaches. The largest infragravity swash heights were observed on a steep gravel beach, followed by the low-sloping sandy beach, and lowest on the compound/mixed sites. Due to contrasting short wave breaking and dissipation processes, infragravity frequencies were observed to be most dominant over gravity frequencies on the low-sloping sandy beach, occasionally dominant on the gravel beaches, and rarely dominant on the compound/mixed beaches. Existing empirical predictive relationships were shown to parameterize Sig skillfully on the sand and gravel beaches separately. Deep water wave power was found to accurately predict Sig on both the sand and gravel beaches, demonstrating that, under storm wave conditions, the wave heights and periods are the main drivers of infragravity oscillations at the shoreline, with the beach morphology playing a secondary role. The exception to this was the compound/mixed beach sites where shoreline infragravity energy remained low.


Inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, the key enzyme in the breakdown of acetylcholine, is considered as a promising strategy for the treatment of neurological disorders such as AlzheimerÂ's disease, senile dementia and myasthenia gravis. A potential source ofAChE inhibitors is certainly provided by the abundance of plants belonging to family Amaryllidaceae. In the presentwork, an In situ High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) autobiographicmethod was employed for preliminary screening of extracts and fractions of the different organs of Crinum bulbispermum Milne-Redhead &Schweick. for compounds withAChE inhibitory effects. Among the tested fractions, the chloroformextract ofCrinumbulbispermum bulbs demonstrated a significant inhibition ofAChE in the assay. Complete phytochemical investigation of this biologically active extract resulted in the isolation of eight crystalline alkaloids (I-VIII) in addition to the wellknown Amaryllidaceae alkaloid, lycorine. The structures of the isolated compounds were characterized by spectral evidence and by comparing the results with the reported physical and spectral data as ismine (I), trisphaeridine (II), latifine (III), 1-O-Acetyllycorine (IV), crinamine (V), powelline (VI), crinine (VII) and 1-epideacetylbowdensine (VIII). It isworth mentioning that this is the first report for the isolation of alkaloids I-IV and VIII fromCrinum bulbispermumMilne-Redhead&Schweick.


Growing interest in 21-cm tomography has led to the design and construction of broad-band radio interferometers with low noise, moderate angular resolution, high spectral resolution and wide fields of view. With characteristics somewhat different from traditional radio instruments, these interferometers may require new calibration techniques in order to reach their design sensitivities. Self-calibration or redundant calibration techniques that allow an instrument to be calibrated off complicated sky emission structures are ideal. In particular, the large number of redundant baselines possessed by these new instruments makes redundant calibration an especially attractive option. In this paper, we explore the errors and biases in existing redundant calibration schemes through simulations, and show how statistical biases can be eliminated. We also develop a general calibration formalism that includes both redundant baseline methods and basic point source calibration methods as special cases, and show how slight deviations from perfect redundancy and coplanarity can be taken into account.


The objective of this study was to find out the role of varicocele surgery in oligospermic infertile patients. It was a prospective and descriptive study carried out in Surgical Unit-I, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and Karachi Medical and Dental College (KMDC), Karachi from April 2004 to March 2014. In this study, all patients of infertility due to low sperm count having bilateral varicocele were included while those patients having azoospermia or patients with unilateral varicocele were excluded. All patients were clinically assessed for bilateral varicocele and confirmed by ultrasonography of scrotum and relevant investigations were done. Patients were prepared for varicocele surgery and ligation of pampiniform plexus done. Semenanalysis were done during follow up and results were analyzed on SPSS version 14. Total fifty seven patients (n=57) were included in which age range was 20 to 30 years in 33.3%, 31 to 40 years in 42.1%, 41 to 50 years in 19.3% and 51 years to onwards in 05.3% patients only. Chronic smoking was found in 68.4% patients while 31.6% were nonsmokers. Normal testes was found in 77.19% while 22.81% had smaller (atrophied) testes. Very low sperm count was in 15.79%, 50.88% had low sperm count and 33.33% had near normal sperm count. All patients were operated for bilateral varicocele and discharged. Follow-up semen analysis showed improvement and semen analysis became normal in 19.3% after six months, 21.05% after nine months and 36.84% after one year of surgery while 22.81% had no improvement even after one year of surgery. Thus, patients with bilateral varicocele having low sperm count showed improvement in sperm count after varicocele surgery and so infertile patients may become fertile after varicocele surgery.


In March 2014, the largest Ebola outbreak in history exploded across West Africa. As of November 14, 2014, the World Health Organization has reported a total of 21,296 Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases, including 13,427 laboratory‐confirmed EVD cases reported from the three most affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone). As the outbreak of EVD has spread, clinical disease severity and national EVD case‐fatality rates have remained high (21.2–60.8%). Prior to 2013, several EVD outbreaks were controlled by using routine public health interventions; however, the widespread nature of the current EVD outbreak as well as cultural practices in the affected countries have challenged even the most active case identification efforts. In addition, although treatment centers provide supportive care, no effective therapeutic agents are available for EVD‐endemic countries. The ongoing EVD outbreak has stimulated investigation of several different therapeutic strategies that target specific viral structures and mechanisms of Ebola viruses. Six to eight putative pharmacotherapies or immunologically based treatments have demonstrated promising results in animal studies. In addition, agents composed of small interfering RNAs targeting specific proteins of Ebola viruses, traditional hyperimmune globulin isolated from Ebola animal models, monoclonal antibodies, and morpholino oligomers (small molecules used to block viral gene expression). A number of EVD therapeutic agents are now entering accelerated human trials in EVD‐endemic countries. The goal of therapeutic agent development includes postexposure prevention and EVD cure. As knowledge of Ebola virus virology and pathogenesis grows, it is likely that new therapeutic tools will be developed. Deployment of novel Ebola therapies will require unprecedented cooperation as well as investment to ensure that therapeutic tools become available to populations at greatest risk for EVD and its complications. In this article, we review several agents and strategies that are now under active development.


Identifying and understanding mechanisms that generate phenotypic diversity is a fundamental goal of evolutionary biology. With a diversity of pigmented shell morphotypes governed by Mendelian patterns of inheritance, the common grove snail Cepaea nemoralis (Linnaeus, 1758) has been a model for evolutionary biologists and population geneticists for decades. However, the genetic mechanisms by which C. nemoralis generates this pigmented shell diversity remain unknown. An important first step in investigating this pigmentation pattern is to establish a set of validated reference genes for differential gene expression assays. Here we have evaluated eleven candidate genes for reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in C. nemoralis. Five of these were housekeeping genes traditionally employed as qPCR reference genes in other species, while six alternative genes were selected de novo from C. nemoralis transcriptome data based on the stability of their expression levels. We tested all eleven candidates for expression stability in four sub-adult tissues of C. nemoralis: pigmented mantle, unpigmented mantle, head and foot. We find that two commonly employed housekeeping genes (alpha tubulin, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase) are unsuitable for use as qPCR reference genes in C. nemoralis. The traditional housekeeping gene UBIquitin on the other hand performed very well. Additionally, an RNA-directed DNA polymerase (RNAP), a Potassium Channel Protein (KCHP) and a Prenylated Rab acceptor protein 1 (PRAP), identified de novo from transcriptomic data, were the most stably expressed genes in different tissue combinations. We also tested expression stability over two seasons and found that, although other genes are more stable within a single season, beta actin (BACT) and elongation factor 1 alpha (EF1α) were the most reliable reference genes across seasons.


The purpose of this study was to examine how SOS Children's Villages as an organization in Swaziland is affected by, and takes into account, the cultural, organizational and societal context in which it acts. Material was gathered through a field study during one month in one of the three SOS Children's Villages in Swaziland. The study has a qualitative approach and is based on the result from 12 semi-structured interviews with village mothers and other representatives from the organization. The other representatives were: social worker, program director, child and youth development coordinator, board member and educational manager. Since this study is both characterized by a specific historical, cultural and organizational context, we decided to connect the postcolonial perspective with an organization theory with focus on the concepts of culture, power and a children's right perspective. The result from the study showed that SOS Children's village is affected by and takes into account the cultural and societal context in Swaziland in several ways. They do so, mainly by inlvolving the children in cultural values and activites. The result also showed that the village is influenced by the organizational field, because the SOS-Children´s village is in need of creating legitimacy. However, it becomes thus a dilemma how much the social work should be built upon, adapted, or should take into account the cultural, organizational and societal contexts to not maintain colonial worldviews.


Novel decorporation agents are being developed to protect against radiological terrorist attacks. These sorbents, known as the self-assembled monolayer on mesoporous supports (SAMMS™), are hybrid materials where differing organic moieties are grafted onto mesoporous silica (SiO2). In vitro experiments focused on the evaluation and optimization of SAMMS for capturing radiocesium (137Cs); therefore, based on these studies, a ferrocyanide copper (FC-Cu-EDA)-SAMMS was advanced for in vivo evaluation. In vivo experiments were conducted comparing the performance of the SAMMS vs. insoluble Prussian blue. Groups of jugular cannulated rats (4/treatment) were evaluated. Animals in Group I were administered 137Cs chloride (∼40 &mgr;g kg−1) by intravenous (i.v.) injection or oral gavage; Group II animals were administered pre-bound 137Cs-SAMMS or sequential 137Cs chloride + SAMMS (∼61 ng kg−1) by oral gavage; and Group III was orally administered 137Cs chloride (∼61 ng kg−1) followed by either 0.1 g of SAMMS or Prussian blue. Following dosing, the rats were maintained in metabolism cages for 72 h and blood, urine, and fecal samples were collected for 137Cs analysis (gamma counting). Rats were then humanely euthanized, and selected tissues analyzed. Orally administered 137Cs chloride was rapidly and well absorbed (∼100% relative to i.v. dose), and the pharmacokinetics (blood, urine, feces, and tissues) were very comparable to the i.v. dose group. For both exposures the urine and feces accounted for 20 and 3% of the dose, respectively. The prebound 137Cs-SAMMS was retained primarily within the feces (72% of the dose), with ∼1.4% detected in the urine, suggesting that the 137Cs remained tightly bound to SAMMS. SAMMS and Prussian blue both effectively captured available 137Cs in the gut with feces accounting for 80–88% of the administered dose, while less than 2% was detected in the urine. This study suggests that the functionalized SAMMS outperforms Prussian blue in vitro at low pH, but demonstrates comparable in vivo sequestration efficacy at low exposure concentrations. The comparable response may be the result of the low 137Cs chloride dose and high sorbent dosage that was utilized. Future studies are planned to optimize the performance of SAMMS in vivo over a broader range of doses and conditions.


The Nordic countries, including Greenland, have a long tradition in mining. Documented mining dates back to the 8th century AD. Today this region is the most important metallic mining district of the European Union. Metals are produced from active mines in all countries except Iceland and related industries are thriving in all countries. Important ore deposit types include: volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits (Cu, Zn, Pb, Au, Ag), orogenic gold deposits (Au), layered intrusions (Ni, PGE, Ti±V), intrusive hosted Cu-Au, apatite-Fe deposits, Cr- and anorthosite hosted Ti deposits. Besides these welldocumented deposits, new kinds of deposits are being explored, e.g., iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG), shale-hosted Ni-Zn-Cu and different types of uranium deposits.


Today's most pressing constitutional question is posed by a global economic system whose expansive tendencies seem no longer controllable. In addressing this question, the theory of Societal Constitutionalism apparently shifts established ideological coordinates by developing a theory of the self-constitutionalization of social spheres. It seeks to combine the virtues of grassroots democracy with the sophistication of systemic social theory. Thus, its normative claim can be formulated as an oxymoron: "Occupy the System!" The claim is an oxymoron because it points to the apparent impossibility of critical social theory in a functionally differentiated society: How can a functional system such as the economy be "occupied" or "democratized"? Yet the oxymoron contains a grain of truth. With a view to the concrete example of transnational standard-setting procedures in the field of corporate accounting, this article examines institutional and systemic processes that enable an emerging political discourse at the core of the global economic system.


A 27-year-old woman experienced anterior myocardial infarction three weeks after the delivery of her second child. Coronary arteriography subsequently showed primary dissection of the left coronary artery. This patient is believed to be the second reported survivor of angiographically proven peripartal left coronary artery dissection and the only such patient to achieve and maintain asymptomatic status for a prolonged period without operative intervention.


Processed pseudogenes result from reverse transcribed mRNAs. In general, because processed pseudogenes lack promoters, they are no longer functional from the moment they are inserted into the genome. Subsequently, they freely accumulate substitutions, insertions and deletions. Moreover, the ancestral structure of processed pseudogenes could be easily inferred using the sequence of their functional homologous genes. Owing to these characteristics, processed pseudogenes represent good neutral markers for studying genome evolution. Recently, there is an increasing interest for these markers, particularly to help gene prediction in the field of genome annotation, functional genomics and genome evolution analysis (patterns of substitution). For these reasons, we have developed a method to annotate processed pseudogenes in complete genomes. To make them useful to different fields of research, we stored them in a nucleic acid database after having annotated them. In this work, we screened both mouse and human complete genomes from ENSEMBL to find processed pseudogenes generated from functional genes with introns. We used a conservative method to detect processed pseudogenes in order to minimize the rate of false positive sequences. Within processed pseudogenes, some are still having a conserved open reading frame and some have overlapping gene locations. We designated as retroelements all reverse transcribed sequences and more strictly, we designated as processed pseudogenes, all retroelements not falling in the two former categories (having a conserved open reading or overlapping gene locations). We annotated 5823 retroelements (5206 processed pseudogenes) in the human genome and 3934 (3428 processed pseudogenes) in the mouse genome. Compared to previous estimations, the total number of processed pseudogenes was underestimated but the aim of this procedure was to generate a high-quality dataset. To facilitate the use of processed pseudogenes in studying genome structure and evolution, DNA sequences from processed pseudogenes, and their functional reverse transcribed homologs, are now stored in a nucleic acid database, HOPPSIGEN. HOPPSIGEN can be browsed on the PBIL (Pôle Bioinformatique Lyonnais) World Wide Web server (http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/) or fully downloaded for local installation.


Emergency responders are faced with a number of significant challenges when managing major disasters. First, the number of rescue tasks posed is usually larger than the number of responders (or agents) and the resources available to them. Second, each task is likely to require a different level of effort in order to be completed by its deadline. Third, new tasks may continually appear or disappear from the environment, thus requiring the responders to quickly recompute their allocation of resources. Fourth, forming teams or coalitions of multiple agents from different agencies is vital since no single agency will have all the resources needed to save victims, unblock roads and extinguish the fires which might erupt in the disaster space. Given this, coalitions have to be efficiently selected and scheduled to work across the disaster space so as to maximize the number of lives and the portion of the infrastructure saved. In particular, it is important that the selection of such coalitions should be performed in a decentralized fashion in order to avoid a single point of failure in the system. Moreover, it is critical that responders communicate only locally given they are likely to have limited battery power or minimal access to long-range communication devices. Against this background, we provide a novel decentralized solution to the coalition formation process that pervades disaster management. More specifically, we model the emergency management scenario defined in the RoboCup Rescue disaster simulation platform as a coalition formation with spatial and temporal constraints (CFST) problem where agents form coalitions to complete tasks, each with different demands. To design a decentralized algorithm for CFST, we formulate it as a distributed constraint optimization problem and show how to solve it using the state-of-the-art Max-Sum algorithm that provides a completely decentralized message-passing solution. We then provide a novel algorithm (F-Max-Sum) that avoids sending redundant messages and efficiently adapts to changes in the environment. In empirical evaluations, our algorithm is shown to generate better solutions than other decentralized algorithms used for this problem.


In spite of extensive studies on the preparation and characterization of nanocomposite materials, the correlation of their properties at the nanoscale with those in bulk is a relatively unexplored area. This is of great importance, especially for materials with potential biomedical applications, where surface properties are as important in determining their applicability as bulk characteristics. In this study, the nanomechanical characteristics of thin poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVOH)–poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)–cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) membranes were studied using the nanoindentation module in an atomic force microscope (AFM) and the properties were compared with the macro-scale properties obtained by tensile tests. In general, the elastic properties measured by nanoindentation followed the same trend as macro-scale tensile tests except for the PVOH 85-PAA 0-CNC 15 sample. In comparison to the macro-scale elastic properties, the measured elastic moduli with AFM were higher. Macro-scale tensile test results indicated that, in the presence of PAA, incorporation of CNCs up to 20 wt% improved the elastic modulus of PVOH, but when no PAA was added, increasing the CNC content above 10 wt% resulted in their agglomeration and degradation in mechanical properties of PVOH. The discrepancy between macro-scale tensile tests and nanoindentation in the PVOH 85-PAA 0-CNC 15 sample was correlated to the high degree of inhomogeneity of CNC dispersion in the matrix. It was found that the composites reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals had smaller indentation imprints and the pile-up effect increased with the increase of cellulose nanocrystal content.


This study explores Facebook-based state media accounts from various geopolitical players and focuses on three practices—content volume, intermedia agendasetting/following, and coordinated sharing through networks of Facebook pages, groups, and verified public profiles. Findings suggest that Russian and Chinese state media are more active in content production than their global peers, yet with limited reach. Chinese state media stand out as both agenda-setters and followers: They inject distinct agendas into the global news flows while closely following agendas first covered by other global outlets. State media from all types of geopolitical players engage in inauthentic coordinated sharing, but with notable differences in the ideological composition of the mobilized Facebook networks: The Chinese coordinated-sharing network is homegrown and limited; the Russian network consists of right-leaning and counter-mainstream political groups worldwide, while the coordinated-sharing networks mobilized by the state media in the Middle East, Venezuela, and Western liberal democracies are left-leaning and human-rights focused.


Message-driven confidence-driven (MDCD) error containment and recovery, a low-cost approach to mitigating the effect of software design faults in distributed embedded systems, is developed for onboard guarded software upgrading for deep-space missions. In this paper, we first describe and verify the MDCD algorithms in which we introduce the notion of "confidence-driven" to complement the "communication-induced" approach employed by a number of existing checkpointing protocols to achieve error containment and recovery efficiency. We then conduct a model-based analysis to show that the algorithms ensure low performance overhead. Finally, we discuss the advantages of the MDCD approach and its potential utility as a general-purpose, low-cost software fault tolerance technique for distributed embedded computing.


PURPOSE
The impact of an interprofessional faculty development fellowship (FDF) on pharmacy graduates' careers is described.

SUMMARY
The FDF instructional approach is a longitudinal acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and attitudes fostered by clinical care delivery, teaching experiences, structured reflection, the giving and receiving of feedback, research and scholarly projects, and leadership development and exercises. Interprofessional FDF fellows teach, learn, and provide care together in both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings as a part of the evidence-based medicine curriculum, providing educational sessions for medical students, pharmacy students, medical residents, attending family medicine physicians, and clinical pharmacy faculty throughout the year. Twenty-seven of the 30 pharmacist graduates of the fellowship (90% response rate) responded to an electronic survey about the influence of the FDF on their careers. Overall, pharmacy graduates were very satisfied with the fellowship. The fellowship fostered a clear pattern of continued, collaborative learning. While additional training beyond a pharmacy residency program is not necessary for a successful clinical career, 41% of graduates pursued additional training after completing the fellowship. Open-ended responses for motivations for completing the FDF and influences the FDF had on their careers fell unforced into the FDF curriculum domains, which reinforced the belief that these are the right areas to target for development.

CONCLUSION
Pharmacy residents participated in a broad, interprofessional faculty development curriculum, which fostered teaching, scholarship, leadership, professional development, and clinical skills. Pharmacist graduates indicated that the experience significantly influenced their careers and professional development.


In Jane Austen's Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey there is a central theme of finding a marriage partner from economic, social and love perspectives. The focus of this essay is to look from a materialist feminist perspective at how these factors influence the characters' marital matches. I have also looked at how love as a sought after ideal in marriage conceals the social and economic factors' influence. The novels all discuss how women's marginalized economic position forces them to marry. Social factors such as women's need to find a husband and their expected domestic role have also had an influence. Love works in the novels to support the oppression of women by justifying marriage and concealing women's unequal role in society.


A new approach is presented that introduces interparticle forces induced by a change of temperature at which polymer coated particles are exposed. The particle cohesive flow behavior is shown for two different applications. The first one considers a dense granular flow that is typically observed for wet powder granulation using a modified spheronizer. The other application shows the possibility of mimicking the particle flow behavior observed in high-temperature fluidized beds with the advantage of being operated at ambient conditions. For the first application, as the temperature increases, significant changes in the particle bed surface morphology were observed and an important reduction of the dynamic density was noticed. For the gas–solid fluidized-bed application, pressure drop measurements revealed that the behavior of the particles transited from Geldart group B to Geldart group A and even Geldart group C as the temperature increased. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012


polyarteritis nodosa, etc. There is considerable evidence that these substances do not consist of fibrin and may not be the same in different diseases.5-8 The fibrinoidhypothesis, however unsatisfactory the name, does not depend on the nature of the lesions in the valves of acute rheumatic disease. It is a concept based on the changes in many tissues in many diseases. The views expressed by Tweedy on the " myxomatous " material in the valves of acute rheumatic disease are also open to question. A certain amount of mucoid material is present in many normal heart valves, and this is greatly increased in active rheumatic disease, where it may also be found in the subendocardium, mainly on the left side of the heart, the myocardium, and around and within blood-vessel walls. It is commonly associated with developed Aschoff lesions in these situations, and, according to Talalajew9 and others, precedes the deposition of the eosinophilic material. My own observati6ns on this mucoid material will be published shortly. It is found in situations where organizing thrombus can be ruled out. Organizing thrombus also contains similar material. It may not be justified to interpret its appearance in the valves as due to organizing thrombus.


Recent epidemiological and laboratory-based studies suggest that the anti-diabetic drug metformin prevents cancer progression. How metformin diminishes tumor growth is not fully understood. In this study, we report that in human cancer cells, metformin inhibits mitochondrial complex I (NADH dehydrogenase) activity and cellular respiration. Metformin inhibited cellular proliferation in the presence of glucose, but induced cell death upon glucose deprivation, indicating that cancer cells rely exclusively on glycolysis for survival in the presence of metformin. Metformin also reduced hypoxic activation of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1). All of these effects of metformin were reversed when the metformin-resistant Saccharomyces cerevisiae NADH dehydrogenase NDI1 was overexpressed. In vivo, the administration of metformin to mice inhibited the growth of control human cancer cells but not those expressing NDI1. Thus, we have demonstrated that metformin's inhibitory effects on cancer progression are cancer cell autonomous and depend on its ability to inhibit mitochondrial complex I. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02242.001


Hepatocytes, known as polarized epithelial cells, are composed of sinusoid, basolateral and bile canalicular domains. Each domain contains proteins specific for it. Our studies indicate that the well‐differentiated human hepatoma cell lines HepG2 and HuH‐7 formed bile canaliculi in tissue culture, whereas the poorly differentiated hepatoma cell lines HA22T/VGH and SK‐HEP‐1 did not. We also used the 9B2 monoclonal antibody, previously shown to be specific for the human bile canalicular domain, to study formation of bile canaliculi in these human hepatoma cell lines. All four cell lines synthesize the 140‐KD 9B2 antigen. Studies using peroxidase‐antiperoxidase staining and immunoelectron microscopy revealed that the 9B2 antigen was first detected in cytoplasm and packaged in microvilli‐lined vesicles, then vectorially transported to the cell surface and eventually fused with microvilli‐lined vesicles from neighboring cells to form bile canaliculi in well‐differentiated hepatoma cell lines. However, the 9B2 antigen of poorly differentiated lines was synthesized in cytoplasm, then transported directly to and evenly distributed on the cell membrane. These results lead us to conclude that human hepatoma cell lines could serve as a good in vitro model to study the formation of bile canaliculi in human hepatocytes. The bile canaliculi of human hepatocytes may be preformed and assembled in the intracellular, microvilli‐lined vesicles, then vectorially transported to the cell surface, where they form the bile canaliculi through vesicles fusion. Finally, formation of bile canaliculi and transport of 9B2 antigen may be related to the differentiation of hepatocytes or progression stages of human hepatoma cells.(HEPATOLOGY 1990; 11:834‐842.)


Abstract While I am in broad agreement with the main thrust of Fine's and Milonakis's argument, I pose sixteen questions for them. The first ten questions relate to the history of economic thought (Ricardo, Marxian economics after Marx, institutionalism in Britain); substantive issues of economic theory (their neglect of macroeconomics); methodological and philosophical matters (induction and deduction, positivism, internal and external sources of paradigm change); and the other social sciences (political science, the origins of sociology). I conclude by asking six questions about the 'old' and 'new' economics imperialism, the prospects for mainstream economics, and the precise nature of the political-economy alternative that Fine and Milonakis propose. Is it simply Marxian political economy in disguise?


Automated versions of a mass-produced vehicle use fuzzy logic techniques to both address common challenges and incorporate human procedural knowledge into the vehicle control algorithms. In-vehicle computing has been largely relegated to auxiliary tasks such as regulating cabin temperature, opening doors, and monitoring fuel, oil, and battery-charge levels. However, computers are increasingly assuming driving-related tasks in some commercial models. Among those tasks are: maintaining a reference velocity or keeping a safe distance from other vehicles; improving night vision with infrared cameras; and building maps and providing alternative routes


Broadcasting is a vital communication mechanism in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, as it is the key element for exchanging control packets to support some services such as management and routing protocols. Simple Flooding, which is mostly used as the broadcasting mechanism, is neither resource efficient nor reliable especially in high populated and dense networks. The Distance-Based(DB) scheme is one of the schemes proposed to alleviate the Flooding effects. However, DB uses constant pre-determined distance threshold value regardless of network dynamics. In this paper, we propose an adaptive Distance-Based (DibA)scheme, which locally determines the density of the network and adjusts the distance threshold of everyr ebroadcasting operation without relying on HELLO packets or GPS systems. Our simulation study shows that our proposed scheme achieves considerable performance improvement over DB while the average value of transmission packets is not a function of network size.


Information regarding medicinal plants sold in the El Rio Market, Camaguey, Cuba, revealed 184 species belonging to 69 vascular plant families. The most important family was Fabaceae s.l. with 13 species, followed by Lamiaceae with 12, and Asteraceae with 8. More than 90 general medicinal indications were recorded to treat a wide range of illnesses and ailments. The highest number of species and applications were reported for digestive system disorders, the musculoskeletal system (rheumatism and the complex of contusions), kidney and other urological problems, and gynecological disorders. The part of the plant most frequently used was the leaf (42.9%) and the fruit (22.3%). The remedies were mainly prepared as a decoction (51.6%) and an infusion (39.1%). The present data document the knowledge of herbal medicine by villagers of Camaguey for to treat health problems.


Non-precious metal and nitrogen codoped carbon catalysts have emerged as promising candidates to replace noble platinum (Pt)-based catalysts in the processes of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we use a 1D/2D hybrid strategy to synthesize a Co,N-codoped carbon nanotube (CNT)/graphene heterostructure bifunctional catalyst (Co/NCNT/NG). The Co/NCNT/NG heterostructure catalyst shows not only a positive half-wave potential of 0.85 V (versus RHE) and long-term stability for the ORR, but also a low overpotential of 123 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and ultrahigh stability in 0.5 M H2SO4 for the HER. The superior performance of the Co/NCNT/NG catalyst is attributed to the inimitable 1D/2D CNT/graphene heterostructure, in which 1D and 2D structures provide different catalytically active sites (including metallic Co, CoN2 and N–C) for the HER and ORR, respectively. Moreover, the catalyst also exhibits similar discharge performance and robust durability as an air electrode in Zn–air batteries to the Pt-based one. This work provides a new approach for the in situ synthesis of bifunctional and multifunctional catalysts by integrating 1D/2D/3D materials with different catalytically active sites into one heterostructure.


This paper described the liquid flow battery system with graphite felt electrode and a single electrolyte, lead (II) in methanesulfonic acid. The kinetics and cyclic voltammetry behavior of graphite felt electrode and effects of modifying graphite felt on them were studied. The results show that the dynamic characteristics of graphite felt electrode in strong polarization region was better than that in weak polarization region. The oxidation and reduction peak potentials were basically unchanged with the increase of cycle number, and the redox reversibility of the graphite felt electrode was good. The graphite felts soaked by methanesulfonic acid (99.8%) hadmore excellent cyclic voltammertry behavior.


The objective of this study was to realize a scoping review the literature in order to identify the profile of DPSCs isolation and analyze the possible risk factors that could change the native behavior of these cells. An initial search was conducted using the following MeSH terms: "(dental pulp stem cell [MeSH])"; "(dental pulp [MeSH])" AND "(stem cell [MeSH])"; "("dental pulp stem cell" [MeSH]")". The electronic search was done without date restriction up to and including April 2014, in PubMed, Scopus, Scielo and ISI Web of Knowledge databases. Studies were submitted to inclusion and exclusion criteria and 222 articles were included. Data showed that over the past 15 years many studies have been conducted using DPSCs. However this is the first systematic review regarding the isolation of stem cell, and more specifically of dental pulp stem cells. The isolation of dental pulp stem cells showed great variability, hampering the development of standard protocols to achieve in vitro dental pulp stem cells with similar characteristics. This scoping review combined, for the first time, the methodologies used for dental pulp stem isolation, highlighting the most frequently used.


The local church has traditionally provided services to the elderly. During this century, the role of government in human services has grown and partially replaced that of local churches. Re-cent reductions in government spending on human services, however, have led to a rediscovery of the local church by the service system. Research has focused mainly on the potential for link-ages between churches and the social services network.