Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) commonly co-occurs with mood disorders, especially Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), which are accompanied by activated neuro-immune and neuro-oxidative pathways. The aim of this narrative review is to review the phenomenological similarities and dissimilarities and the shared pathways between GAD and mood disorders. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar for articles published in English from 1980 to present. GAD and mood disorders, either MDD or BD, show some phenomenological overlaps and a high degree of comorbidity, especially between GAD and MDD. Both GAD and mood disorders are also frequently comorbid with other anxiety disorders, substance use disorders and medical conditions, including cardio- vascular disorder (CVD). Mood disorders have a worse prognosis when GAD is present. GAD and mood disorders are associated with female sex and may partly share genetic variants of risk. Moreover, both GAD and mood disorders frequently share similar environmental risks factors including Early Life Time Trauma (ELT) and Psychological Stressors in Adulthood (PSA). Increased nitro-oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation coupled to lowered lipid-associated antioxidant defenses are evident in GAD, MDD and type I bipolar patients. Patients with comorbid GAD and MDD show significantly higher nitro- oxidative biomarkers as compared with patients presenting with either GAD or MDD as well as patients with BD with or without co-occurring GAD. Activated immune-inflammatory processes characterized by increased levels of CRP and pro-inflammatory cytokines are other shared pathways that underpin GAD and mood disorders. Moreover, these pathways may explain comorbidities with medical disorders including CVD. Aberrations in HPA-axis, GABA and glutamate neurotransmission, NMDA and mu opioid-receptors and neuroimaging fields have yielded more inconsistent findings. In conclusion, here we propose a new model explaining GAD and the comorbidity between GAD and mood disorders. Common triggers such as ELT/PSA may underpin GAD and its comorbidity with mood disorders via activated neuro-oxidative, neuro-nitrosative and neuro-immune pathways.


Objects play a crucial role in our everyday activities. Though multisensory object-centric learning has shown great potential lately, the modeling of objects in prior work is rather unrealistic. ObjectFolder 1.0 is a recent dataset that introduces 100 virtualized objects with visual, acoustic, and tactile sensory data. However, the dataset is small in scale and the multisensory data is of limited quality, hampering generalization to real-world scenarios. We present ObjectFolder 2.0, a large-scale, multisensory dataset of common household objects in the form of implicit neural representations that significantly enhances ObjectFolder 1.0 in three aspects. First, our dataset is 10 times larger in the amount of objects and orders of magnitude faster in rendering time. Second, we significantly improve the multisensory rendering quality for all three modalities. Third, we show that models learned from virtual objects in our dataset successfully transfer to their real-world counterparts in three challenging tasks: object scale estimation, contact localization, and shape reconstruction. ObjectFolder 2.0 offers a new path and testbed for multisensory learning in computer vision and robotics. The dataset is available at https://github.com/rhgao/ObjectFolder.


PURPOSE
The RET fusion gene has been recently described in a subset of non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). Because we have limited knowledge about these tumors, this study was aimed at determining the clinicopathologic characteristics of patients with NSCLC harboring the RET fusion gene.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We examined the RET fusion gene in 936 patients with surgically resected NSCLC using a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR) plus quantitative real-time PCR strategy, with validation using immunohistochemical and fluorescent in situ hybridization assays. A subset of 633 lung adenocarcinomas was also studied for EGFR, KRAS, HER2, and BRAF mutations, as well as ALK rearrangements. Patient characteristics, including age, sex, smoking history, stage, grade, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer/American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society classification of subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma, and relapse-free survival, were collected.

RESULTS
Of 936 patients with NSCLC, the RET fusion gene was exclusively detected in 13 patients (11 of 633 patients with adenocarcinomas and two of 24 patients with adenosquamous cell carcinomas). Of the 13 patients, nine patients had KIF5B-RET, three patients had CCDC6-RET, and one patient had a novel NCOA4-RET fusion. Patients with lung adenocarcinomas with RET fusion gene had more poorly differentiated tumors (63.6%; P = .029 for RET v ALK, P = .007 for RET v EGFR), with a tendency to be younger (≤ 60 years; 72.7%) and never-smokers (81.8%) and to have solid subtype (63.6%) and a smaller tumor (≤ 3 cm) with N2 disease (54.4%). The median relapse-free survival was 20.9 months.

CONCLUSION
RET fusion occurs in 1.4% of NSCLCs and 1.7% of lung adenocarcinomas and has identifiable clinicopathologic characteristics, warranting further clinical consideration and targeted therapy investigation.


Examines various dimensions of the impact of Stephen Lawrence on policing policy and practice. This book identifies a series of dimensions and processes associated with British policing in terms of the role that the Lawrence agenda has had on forming and/or shaping policy and practice. February 2009 marks the 10th Anniversary of the publication of the Inquiry into the events surrounding the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. This book marks this anniversary and examines various dimensions of the impact of Lawrence on policing policy and practice. It identifies a series of dimensions and processes associated with British policing in terms of the role that the Lawrence agenda has had on forming and/or shaping policy and practice. In doing so it assesses the extent to which the original recommendations and issues raised within the Lawrence Inquiry have been reflected in policy, practice and, importantly, policing outcomes in service delivery. The book integrates practitioner and academic reflection on the impact of Lawrence and includes contributions from some of the key policing figures who were involved in post-Lawrence implementation and development programmes. As such the book will be of interest to both an academic police studies/criminology audience and police-practitioner audiences.


A strategy for oligodeoxyribonucleotide synthesis on a reusable CPG solid-phase support, derivatized with hydroxyl groups instead of amino groups, has been developed. Ester linkages, through a base labile hydroquinone- O, O '-diacetic acid ( Q-Linker ) linker arm, were used to couple the first nucleoside to the hydroxyl groups on the support. This coupling was rapidly accomplished (10 min) using O -benzotriazol-1-yl- N, N, N ', N '-tetramethyluronium hexafluorophosphate (HBTU) and 1-hydroxybenzotriazole as the activating reagents. Oligodeoxyribonucleotide synthesis was performed using existing procedures and reagents, except a more labile capping reagent, such as chloro-acetic anhydride, methoxyacetic anhydride or t-butylphenoxyacetic anhydride, was used instead of acetic anhydride. After each oligodeoxyribonucleotide synthesis, the product was cleaved from the support with ammonium hydroxide (3 min) and deprotected as usual. Residual linker arms or capping groups were removed by treatment with ammonium hydroxide/methylamine reagent and the regenerated support was capable of reuse. Up to six different oligodeoxyribonucleotide syntheses or up to 25 cycles of nucleoside derivatization and cleavage were consecutively performed on the reusable support. This method may provide a significant cost advantage over conventional single-use solid supports currently used for the manufacture of antisense oligodeoxyribonucleotides.


This paper proposes an alternative approach to the analysis and design of interaction in real-time performance systems. It draws on the idea that the connection between the human engagement with the interface itself (digital or analogue) and the resultant rich media output forms a proposed experiential dimension containing both technical and somatic considerations. The proposed dimension is characterised by its materiality and is referred to by the author as the techno-somatic dimension. The author proposes that the materiality of the techno-somatic dimension may be usefully examined as part of a re-consideration of the nature of interaction in systems where the input characteristics of the performer's actions, the musician's gesture, the dancer's movements and so on are analysed and also drive the rich media content of the work in real time. The author will suggest that such a techno-somatic dimension exists in all human engagement with technologies, analogue or digital. Furthermore, the author is proposing that design and analysis efforts for new interactive systems should focus on the techno-somatic dimension; that, if this dimension is designed with care to produce a detailed and nuanced experience for the user, design specifications for the interface will automatically result; and that such an interface will produce the somatic and functional characteristics to produce the desired materiality and actional intentionality. For the purposes of this discussion, the author will focus principally on musical interfaces.


Investigating geographic variations in mammography screening participation and breast cancer incidence help improve prevention strategies to reduce the burden of breast cancer. This study examined the suitability of health insurance claims data for assessing and explaining geographic variations in mammography screening participation and breast cancer incidence at the district level. Based on screening unit data (1,181,212 mammography screening events), cancer registry data (13,241 incident breast cancer cases) and claims data (147,325 mammography screening events; 1,778 incident breast cancer cases), screening unit and claims-based standardized participation ratios (SPR) of mammography screening as well as cancer registry and claims-based standardized incidence ratios (SIR) of breast cancer between 2011 and 2014 were estimated for the 46 districts of the German federal state of Lower Saxony. Bland-Altman analyses were performed to benchmark claims-based SPR and SIR against screening unit and cancer registry data. Determinants of district-level variations were investigated at the individual and contextual level using claims-based multilevel logistic regression analysis. In claims and benchmark data, SPR showed considerable variations and SIR hardly any. Claims-based estimates were between 0.13 below and 0.14 above (SPR), and between 0.36 below and 0.36 above (SIR) the benchmark. Given the limited suitability of health insurance claims data for assessing geographic variations in breast cancer incidence, only mammography screening participation was investigated in the multilevel analysis. At the individual level, 10 of 31 Elixhauser comorbidities were negatively and 11 positively associated with mammography screening participation. Age and comorbidities did not contribute to the explanation of geographic variations. At the contextual level, unemployment rate was negatively and the proportion of employees with an academic degree positively associated with mammography screening participation. Unemployment, income, education, foreign population and type of district explained 58.5% of geographic variations. Future studies should combine health insurance claims data with individual data on socioeconomic characteristics, lifestyle factors, psychological factors, quality of life and health literacy as well as contextual data on socioeconomic characteristics and accessibility of mammography screening. This would allow a comprehensive investigation of geographic variations in mammography screening participation and help to further improve prevention strategies for reducing the burden of breast cancer.


Purpose of review This article reviews the recent literature regarding the impact of sarcopenia on microvascular free flap reconstruction outcomes. Recent findings Malnutrition, and consequent muscle loss, is a prevalent issue among head and neck cancer patients. However, diagnosis remains challenging due to a paucity of reliable objective measures. Traditional markers, such as albumin, have been used in the past to assess nutritional status, but cancer-related inflammation limits their predictive value. Recently, developments in the diagnosis of sarcopenia through the novel use of computed tomography (CT) cross-sectional muscle mass indices to evaluate body composition have proven effective and accessible. Summary Literature shows compelling evidence that sarcopenia is associated with higher rates of surgical complications that delay recovery and increase mortality. The use of CT imaging to quantify muscle loss offers an objective way to evaluate nutritional status, which is predictive of postoperative rates of complications. Research on ways to optimize muscle mass prior to surgery is limited, however, immunonutrition is emerging as a promising intervention that can attenuate sarcopenia-related inflammation to improve outcomes.


Objective: The purpose of this study was to provide empirical data describing the relationship between behavioral responses to dynamic visual motion in adults with chronic dizziness symptoms with and without clinically identifiable peripheral vestibular impairment. Design: Prospective, quasi-experimental study including individuals with chronic dizziness symptoms with identified unilateral peripheral vestibular impairment (n=27), and individuals with chronic dizziness symptoms without identified vestibular impairment (n=26). We measured (a) visual perception of verticality in a dynamic background, (b) postural displacement in a dynamic background, (c) eye movement behaviors in various visual contexts, and (d) self-rating degree of anxiety. Results: Status of peripheral vestibular function was not a significant predictor of behavioral responses to visual motion. The data show that the ability to fixate on a visual target was predictive of postural control in a dynamic visual background. Trial-to-trial variability in verticality responses and degree of self-rated anxiety were also associated with postural control. Conclusions: Apart from vestibular function, oculomotor control is important for maintaining control of whole-body motor responses during exposure to a dynamic visual stimulus. Vertical perception precision—not accuracy—may be more important for understanding real-world consequences of visual motion sensitivity. Traditional diagnostic evaluations focusing exclusively on characterizing the peripheral vestibular system may not provide insight into the behaviors associated with visual motion sensitivity.


Aim. The aim of this study was to test psychometrically the Italian and French versions of the Care Dependency Scale. Background. The Care Dependency Scale assesses changes in patients' level of care dependency including important functional and mental dimensions. Evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Italian version is still ongoing. The French version has to date not been validated. Design. Nationwide cross-sectional point prevalence study. Method. Data were extracted from the national, annual prevalence survey of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and inpatient falls in Swiss acute care hospitals in 2011. A total of 799 Italian and 1068 French-speaking patients were included in the analysis. For the evaluation, the psychometric properties were tested for each language both separately and conjointly. Results. The scales revealed high internal consistency. Factor analysis presented a one-factor solution for both versions separately as well as combined. Comparison of internal structure revealed an excellent degree of equivalence between the versions. Highly significant Spearman correlations between the Care Dependency Scale and the Braden Scale sum scores indicated satisfactory criterion validity. Conclusion. Both the Italian and the French versions of the Care Dependency Scale showed satisfactory psychometric properties and a high level of equivalence. Further psychometric testing, using modern test theory approaches, is required. However, the scale is recommended as a valid instrument for further use in Italian and French.


An experiment was conducted to determine if Natterer's bat Myotis nattereri and brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus exhibited an occupation preference between five different bat box types in an ancient, lowland mixed deciduous woodland in Buckinghamshire. Groups of Schwegler 2F, 2FN, 1FS, 1FF woodcrete boxes and 1 wooden Apex box were erected in 13 locations (5 around each tree). The box clusters were located on trees with a proven history of good box occupancy levels part of a 10 year woodland bat box scheme. The group positions were evenly spaced along a transect line of 300m in homogenous habitat of predominantly semi mature Pendunculate Oak Quercus robur and Ash Fraxinus excelsior closed canopy with lapsed Hazel Corylus avellana coppice understorey. The temperature regimes of the boxes were compared and found to be similar, and consistent with the ambient temperature due to the shaded nature of the sites. Aspect was experimentally controlled by progressively rotating the box positions around the tree. The occupancy rates of the five boxes were compared and showed a selection bias towards two box types, influenced by seasonal bird competition.


We propose a novel data augmentation approach, DistractFlow, for training optical flow estimation models by introducing realistic distractions to the input frames. Based on a mixing ratio, we combine one of the frames in the pair with a distractor image depicting a similar domain, which allows for inducing visual perturbations congruent with natural objects and scenes. We refer to such pairs as distracted pairs. Our intuition is that using semantically meaningful distractors enables the model to learn related variations and attain robustness against challenging deviations, compared to conventional augmentation schemes focusing only on low-level aspects and modifications. More specifically, in addition to the supervised loss computed between the estimated flow for the original pair and its ground-truth flow, we include a second supervised loss defined between the distracted pair's flow and the original pair's ground-truth flow, weighted with the same mixing ratio. Furthermore, when unlabeled data is available, we extend our augmentation approach to self-supervised settings through pseudo-labeling and cross-consistency regularization. Given an original pair and its distracted version, we enforce the estimated flow on the distracted pair to agree with the flow of the original pair. Our approach allows increasing the number of available training pairs significantly without requiring additional annotations. It is agnostic to the model architecture and can be applied to training any optical flow estimation models. Our extensive evaluations on multiple benchmarks, including Sintel, KITTI, and SlowFlow, show that DistractFlow improves existing models consistently, outperforming the latest state of the art.


This study assessed the disinfection byproduct (DBP) risks of algal impacted surface waters and the effects of peracetic acid (PAA) pre-oxidation on DBP risks. Authentic samples from three eutrophic lakes were collected over a 13-week period during the algal bloom season. The formation of 11 DBPs (four trihalomethanes, four haloacetonitriles, two haloketones, and trichloronitromethane) in these samples was assessed under uniform formation conditions (UFC) approximating drinking water disinfection. Trihalomethanes formed in the greatest abundance (90–370 μg L−1), followed by haloacetonitriles (6.5–87 μg L−1), haloketones (0.4–11.4 μg L−1), and trichloronitromethane (0.3–9.7 μg L−1). Total chlorophyll, a common indicator of algal activity, was not found to correlate with DBP yields. On the other hand, the yields of trichloronitromethane and haloacetonitriles correlated with nitrite/nitrate concentrations and DON concentrations in the samples, respectively. PAA pre-oxidation reduced the formation of trihalomethanes in the subsequent UFC tests in 80% of the samples, but promoted the formation of haloacetonitriles and trichloronitromethane in 70% and 50% of the samples, respectively. Analyses of DOC, DON, SUVA, and fluorescence excitation–emission matrices suggest that PAA pre-oxidation can alter the DBP precursors of a sample through the release of high haloacetonitrile/trichloronitromethane-yielding organic matter from algal cells and the oxidative transformation of existing and newly released dissolved organic matter. The results of this study, obtained from authentic surface water samples, suggest that mixed organic matter dynamics is an important consideration for the DBP risks of algal-impacted waters.


Focus and aim: Currently, lake Markermeer (680 km2) provides poor environmental conditions for the development of flora and fauna due to a thick fluffy layer that prevails at the lake's bed. To improve the conditions in the lake, large wetlands will be built from this fluffy layer, possibly mixed with sand or with the underlying Southern Sea deposit. The aim of this study is to distinguish biogeochemical processes influencing phosphorus dynamics in porewater during oxidation and desiccation of mud deposits from this lake. We focus on three important aspects that potentially influence these processes: granulometry, sediment type and modification by plants. Material and methods: A greenhouse experiment was conducted with three types of sediment that potentially will function as building material for the islands: fluffy mud (FM), sandy mud (SM) and Southern Sea deposit (SSD). Reed (Phragmites australis) was planted in half of the pots to distinguish influence by plants. For six months, the porewater-, soil- and plant quality was monitored to determine important biogeochemical processes. Variables measured from the porewater include: Cl􀀀, NO􀀀2 , NO􀀀3 , PO􀀀4 and SO24 (IC); Ca, Fe, K, Mn, Na, P, Si, Sr (ICP-OES); as well as Fe2+, pH, alkalinity and EC. A phosphorus fractionation was carried out on the sedimentto determine the phosphorus pools and the major elements of the sediments were determined following an aqua regia destruction using ICP-OES. Plant tissue was analysed for N, P, K and C content as well as the above- and belowground biomass. Results and discussion: It was found that sulfate production was the most important process influencing phosphorus availability in these soils. Due to oxidation processes in the mud, sulfate (SO4 ) concentrations rose drastically in porewater from 100 ppm at the beginning of the experiment to well over 2000 ppm at the end of the experiment. This effect was strongest in SSD soils, likely due to higher presence of pyrite that gets oxidized. Furthermore, SO4 concentrations are higher in SM than in FM soils, likely due to oxygen presence as an increase in pore size leads to enhanced oxidation. Presence of reed also enhanced sulfate production by actively pumping oxygen into the soils. Almost twice as much phosphorus is present in SSD than in FM soils (1348 and 773 mg/kg respectively). This difference is explained by the amount of iron bound phosphorus in SSD and FM soils (28.9 and 11.7 M/gr respectively), with the remaining 4 phosphorus pools being roughly the same. In combination with the high concentrations of SO4 , it is expected that a lot of phosphate will be mobilized during flooding events. When oxygen is replaced by water, reduction of SO4 to S􀀀2 will cause reduction of Iron(III) (hydr)oxides and iron bound phosphate leading to phosphate mobilization. Conclusion: Due to a difference in intrinsic properties of the building material, especially in terms of sulfate and iron-bound phosphate, it is expected that the phosphorus dynamics (and concomitantly also ecosystem development) on the future island will greatly depend on the sediment type used.


Numerous high school students, including many who are enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) courses, do not have the math skills necessary for today's high-skill workplace or college entrance requirements. This study tests a model for enhancing mathematics instruction in five high school CTE programs (agriculture, auto technology, business and marketing, health, and information technology). The model includes a pedagogy and intense teacher professional development. Volunteer CTE teachers were randomly assigned to an experimental (n = 59) or control (n = 78) group. The experimental teachers worked with math teachers to develop CTE instructional activities that integrated more mathematics into the occupational curriculum. After 1 year of the math-enhanced CTE lessons, students in the experimental classrooms performed equally on technical skills and significantly better than control students on two standardized tests of math ability (TerraNova and ACCUPLACER®).


Algorithmic bias and fairness in the context of graph mining have largely remained nascent. The sparse literature on fair graph mining has almost exclusively focused on group-based fairness notation. However, the notion of individual fairness, which promises the fairness notion at a much finer granularity, has not been well studied. This paper presents the first principled study of Individual Fairness on gRaph Mining (InFoRM). First, we present a generic definition of individual fairness for graph mining which naturally leads to a quantitative measure of the potential bias in graph mining results. Second, we propose three mutually complementary algorithmic frameworks to mitigate the proposed individual bias measure, namely debiasing the input graph, debiasing the mining model and debiasing the mining results. Each algorithmic framework is formulated from the optimization perspective, using effective and efficient solvers, which are applicable to multiple graph mining tasks. Third, accommodating individual fairness is likely to change the original graph mining results without the fairness consideration. We conduct a thorough analysis to develop an upper bound to characterize the cost (i.e., the difference between the graph mining results with and without the fairness consideration). We perform extensive experimental evaluations on real-world datasets to demonstrate the efficacy and generality of the proposed methods.


To see any change in seismic velocities that may be associated with an abrupt change in the regional geology (granitic rock in contact with sediments), we conducted a refraction seismic study in the Peninsular Ranges of Baja California, which is in the Mexico–southwestern Laguna Salada (LS) region. We installed 30 three‐component portable seismic stations, supplemented with two permanent six‐component stations of the Northwest Mexico Seismic Network (RESNOM). The stations, spaced ∼6  km along a refraction profile, recorded two blasts; these were the direct shot located to the south of the city of Ensenada and the reverse shot in the southwestern LS (southwest–northeast direction). Record sections show seismograms with impulsive P arrivals at nearby stations. Rays from the two blasts were modeled (using asymptotic ray theory) to obtain a P‐wave velocity model from 0 to ∼15  km depth along the refraction profile. Our modeling results are as follows: in the southwestern part of the profile (0–25 km distance), a low‐velocity zone of ∼2  km/s exists between the depths of 0 and 3.5 km; in Sierra Juarez, the mean P‐wave velocity is ∼5.6  km/s between the depths of 0 and 5 km; and in southwestern LS, a low‐velocity layer of ∼2.5  km/s exists between the depths of 0 and ∼3  km. We also modeled a layer of ∼6.5  km/s between 4 and 12 km in the Ensenada–Ojos Negros region, and between the depths of 4 and 8 km below the southwestern LS. From a profile distance of 0 to 50 km, a velocity zone of ∼6.7  km/s appears between the depths of 12 and 15 km.


The fragmentation mechanism of the penetrator with lateral effect (PELE) after perforating a thin target plate has been summarised and analysed firstly. Then the fragmentation of radial layered PELE was analysed qualitatively and verified by experiment. In the experiment, the target plates were made of 45# steel and 2A12 aluminium respectively. Qualitative analysis and experimental results show that: for normal PELE without layered, after perforating the thin metal target plate, from the bottom to the head of the projectile, the number of fragments formed by the jacket gradually increases, and the mass of the fragment decreases correspondingly. Compared with the normal PELE without layered, the radial layered PELE is less likely to break into fragments, when impacting the thin metal target plate with the same material and thickness under the same impact velocity. However, from the mechanism of the PELE, when the resistance of the target plate is large enough, and the duration of pressure is long enough, the radial layered PELE also can break into fragments with transverse velocity component. The resistance of the target plate plays an important role in the fragmentation of radial layered PELE. The radial layered PELE produced massive fragments with transverse velocity component when impacting the 45# steel plate with5 mm thickness under the impact velocity of 657.2 m/s.


Excepted in a few cases where metallurgical bonding occurs between deposit and substrate, thermal spray deposit adhesion generally results from a mechanical anchoring. In this case, the very first impinging particles forming the first deposited layer spread and solidify into and around the cavities of the grit-blasted surface. A palliative process to degreasing and grit-blasting prior to thermal spraying is simultaneous laser ablation; i.e., the PROTAL process. In such a case, little topographic change results from the laser-matter interaction: deposit adhesion does not derive anymore mainly from mechanical anchoring but from other types of bonding such as chemical bonding. This paper aims to clarify the bonding mechanisms of thermal spray coatings manufactured implementing the PROTAL process. The case of metallic coatings deposited on metallic substrates is especially discussed. At first, laser ablation effects on various metallic substrates are presented, from the topographic and energetic points of view. Then, the induced effects on impinged particle morphologies are discussed. The results are correlated to thick deposit adhesion.


At least 36 genes have now been located in a 680 kb segment of DNA between the class I and class II multigene families within the class III region of the human major histocompatibility complex on chromosome 6p21.3. The complete nucleotide sequence of the 4.3 kb mRNA of one of these genes, G7a (or BAT6), has been determined from cDNA and genomic clones. The single-copy G7a gene encodes a 1265-amino-acid protein of molecular mass 140,457 Da. Comparison of the derived amino acid sequence of the G7a protein with the National Biomedical Research Foundation protein databases revealed 42% identity in a 250-amino-acid overlap with Bacillus stearothermophilus valyl-tRNA synthetase, 38.0% identity in a 993-amino-acid overlap with Escherichia coli valyl-tRNA synthetase (val RS), and 48.3% identity in a 1043-amino-acid overlap with Saccharomyces cerevisiae valyl-tRNA synthetase. The protein sequence of G7a contains two short consensus sequences, His-Ile-Gly-His and Lys-Met-Ser-Lys-Ser, which is the typical signature structure of class I tRNA synthetases and indicative of the presence of the Rossman fold. In addition, the molecular mass of the G7a protein is the same as that of other mammalian valyl-tRNA synthetases. These features and the high sequence identity with yeast valyl-tRNA synthetase strongly support the fact that the G7a gene, located within the major histocompatibility complex, encodes the human valyl-tRNA synthetase.


The aim of this experiment was to quantify the milk production capacity of cows undergoing extended lactations while fed a pasture-based diet typical of those used in the seasonal-calving dairying systems of Victoria, Australia. One hundred twenty-five Holstein cows were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 groups. Breeding was progressively delayed after calving to enable management of the groups for lactation lengths of 10, 13, 16, 19, and 22 mo (equivalent to calving intervals of 12 to 24 mo). Cows were provided with a daily energy intake of at least 180 MJ of metabolizable energy/cow. This was supplied primarily by grazed pasture with supplementary cereal grain, pasture silage, and hay. Cows were dried off when milk volume fell below 30 kg/wk or when they reached 56 d before their expected calving date. Most cows (>96%) could lactate above this threshold for 16 mo, >80% for 19 mo, and >40% for 22 mo. There were negative relationships between lactation length and annual production of milk and milk solids (milk fat + protein), but losses were small until 16 mo. Annualized yields of milk solids were 497, 498, 495, 474, and 463 kg/cow for the 10, 13, 16, 19, and 22 mo groups, respectively. This reduction in annual production of milk solids with increasing lactation length was relatively less than for milk volume because during extended lactation, cows produced milk with higher concentrations of protein. Cows undergoing extended lactations also finished their lactations having gained more body weight and body condition than cows lactating for only 10 mo. The data showed that many cows on pasture-based diets were capable of lactating longer than the 10 mo that is standard for Victorian herds with seasonally concentrated calving patterns. Further, such extended lactations could be achieved with little penalty in terms of annual milk solids production.


Despite the apparent stability of the wage bargaining institutions in West Germany, aggregate union membership has been declining dramatically since the early 90's. However, aggregate gross membership numbers do not distinguish by employment status and it is impossible to disaggregate these sufficiently. This paper uses four waves of the German Socioeconomic Panel in 1985, 1989, 1993, and 1998 to perform a panel analysis of net union membership among employees. We estimate a correlated random effects probit model suggested in Chamberlain (1984) to take proper account of individual specfic effects. Our results suggest that at the individual level the propensity to be a union member has not changed considerably over time. Thus, the aggregate decline in membership is due to composition effects. We also use the estimates to predict net union density at the industry level based on the IAB employment subsample for the time period 1985 to 1997.


BACKGROUND
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) subtypes, diffuse large B-cell (DLBCL) and follicular lymphoma (FL) have different sex ratios and are diagnosed at ages over 60 years; DLBCL is more common in men and diagnosed at older ages than FL, which occurs more among women. This analysis of postmenopausal women examines the relationship between postmenopausal hormone therapy and NHL.

DESIGN
Self-reported use of postmenopausal hormone therapy from 2094 postmenopausal women with NHL and 2731 without were pooled across nine case-control studies (1983-2005) from North America, Europe and Japan. Study-specific odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) estimated using logistic regression were pooled using random-effects meta-analyses.

RESULTS
Postmenopausal women who used hormone therapy were at decreased risk of NHL (pooled OR = 0.79, 95% CI 0.69-0.90). Risks were reduced when the age of starting was 50 years or older. There was no clear trend with number of years of use. Current users were at decreased risk while those stopping over 2 years before diagnosis were not. Having a hysterectomy or not did not affect the risk. Favourable effects were present for DLBCL (pooled OR = 0.66, 95% CI 0.54-0.80) and FL (pooled OR = 0.82, 95% CI 0.66-1.01).

CONCLUSION
Postmenopausal hormone therapy, particularly used close to menopause, is associated with a decreased risk of NHL.


Soft (nano)colloids are increasingly used in medical applications due to the versatile options they offer in terms of e.g. tunable chemical composition, adaptable physical properties and (bio)functionalization perspectives. Obtaining a clear understanding of the nature of the interaction forces that such particles experience with neighboring charged (bio)surfaces is a mandatory prerequisite to draw a comprehensive and mechanistic picture of their stability and reactivity and to further optimize their current functionalities. In this study, adopting an original strategy for nanoparticle attachment to atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips, we demonstrate that the sign of electrostatic forces between carboxylate-terminated poly(amidoamine) nanodendrimers (∼9 nm in diameter) and planar cysteamine-coated gold surfaces can be tailored under fixed pH conditions upon the sole variation of the monovalent salt concentration in solution. The origin of this unconventional electrostatic force reversal is deciphered upon confrontation between AFM force measurements and mean-field force evaluation performed beyond the Derjaguin approximation by integrating the dendrimer and cysteamine electrostatic properties derived independently from electrokinetic measurements. It is shown that the electrostatic force reversal (i) originates from the zwitterionic character of the nanodendrimer-solution interphase, and (ii) becomes operational under the strict condition that the sub-nanometric separation distance between peripheral carboxylate groups and intraparticulate amines is of the order of the characteristic electric Debye layer thickness. The possibility to mediate - via suitable adjustment of monovalent salt content in solution - both the magnitude and sign of the electrostatic forces acting on soft interfaces with zwitterionic functionality paves the way for the design of innovative strategies to control the stability of nanoparticles against aggregation, and to modulate their adhesion onto inorganic surfaces or living organisms.


We propose a new strategy to evaluate the quality of multi and hyperspectral images, from the perspective of human perception. We define the spectral image difference as the overall perceived difference between two spectral images under a set of specified viewing conditions (illuminants). First, we analyze the stability of seven image-difference features across illuminants, by means of an information-theoretic strategy. We demonstrate, in particular, that in the case of common spectral distortions (spectral gamut mapping, spectral compression, spectral reconstruction), chromatic features vary much more than achromatic ones despite considering chromatic adaptation. Then, we propose two computationally efficient spectral image difference metrics and compare them to the results of a subjective visual experiment. A significant improvement is shown over existing metrics such as the widely used root-mean square error.


This short paper discusses the modeling of random fuzzy renewal reward processes in which the interarrival times and rewards are represented by nonnegative random fuzzy variables. Based on random fuzzy theory, a random fuzzy variable denotes a measurable function from a credibility space to a collection of random variables. Under this setting, the long-run expected reward per unit time is addressed and the theorem on random fuzzy renewal rewards is established. The utility of this research is demonstrated with a realistic application case.


ABSTRACT Descartes analysed the mind into various faculties or powers, including pure intellect, imagination, senses, and will. This article focuses on his account of the sensory power, in relation to its Aristotelian background. Descartes accepted from the Aristotelians that the senses serve to preserve the body by detecting benefits and harms. He rejected the scholastic Aristotelian sensory ontology of resembling species, or 'forms without matter'. For the visual sense, Descartes offered a mechanistic ontology and a partially mechanized account of sensory processes, including some previously ascribed to judgement. He did this in the context of his theory of brain signs that prompt sensations. The article contends that Descartes's use of the sign-relation was modelled on standard discussions of non-resembling signs in commentaries on Aristotle's De interpretatione. It follows three uses of the sign-relation: brain states that cause colour sensations; brain states that cause experiences of spatialized contents, such as shapes; and brain states that realize a 'natural geometry'. It argues that Descartes's natural geometry does not involve mental operations but physiological mechanisms that co-vary with the distance to seen objects. While retaining the language of sensory powers, Descartes offered a partial mechanization of those powers.


This article focuses on the impact of human rights on American-Iranian relations in the Seventies. By devoting speci c attention to the role of the Iranian Students Association in the United States, Am- nesty International and the International Commission of Jurists in shaping up a negative image of the Shah and in uencing receptive congressmen, the primary goal of this study is to assess the US State Department's dual approach to improve the Shah's image in the United States and, therefore, preserve the alliance between Washington and Tehran. On the one hand, the State Department implemented obstructionist tactics to neutralize Congress' opposition to American security assistance to Iran; on the other, it engaged in con dential exchanges with Iranian o cials to dampen public and congressional criticism against the alliance. If we want to understand how, notwithstanding US public and con- gressional opposition, American-Iranian relations remained mostly unchanged until the 1979 Iranian revolution, the State Department tactics to improve the Shah's image in the United States seem a good place to start.


In this paper, we propose a simple synthesis of isoindoline-4-carboxylic acids by means of the aromatization of 3a,6-epoxyisoindoles in alkaline media. The method is facile from an experimental point of view: a short-term (0.5–2h) reflux of epoxyisoindoles in 5% aqueous solutions of alkali leads to the target products in 40–90% yields. The absence of by-products, ease of isolation of the target products and applicability to acidophobic group bearing substrates favorably distinguishes the proposed procedure from previously utilized acid-catalyzed methods. The proposed strategy has been successfully utilized for isoindole containing compounds and nuevamine-type alkaloids.


The decision of what kind of labor that should be held is intermittently generating a great debate in Brazil. The growth in the number of cesarean sections has raised worries in some of the involved sectors of the society. It was proposed to investigate the factors which lead the women to take this decision, trying to understand the principle involved. A bibliographic review about the subject was made. The research happened in the town of Formiga, where some data were collected in two hospitals—public and private —about the number of labors during two months. Subsequently, the obstetricians and a group of pregnant women were submitted to a questionnaire, the answers were compiled and transformed into graphs which were analyzed. Finally, the data were compared with the related literature. The number of cesarean sections in the town was above the standard recommended. According to the obstetricians, the main reason would be the preference of the pregnant women, fact which was not confirmed by them, that discrepancy was confirmed by the literature. The level of information about the clinical indications for the type of labor was considered satisfactory by the doctors and the pregnant women, data contestable by the academics. The fear and the pain were identified by obstetricians and pregnant women as a predominant factor for the preference of cesarean sections, provided that, according to the literature, shows the precariousness of information for pregnant women about the normal birth. Another important data is that the doctors can have an important role in the kind of labor to be made. According to the obstetricians, their role would be very limited, but according to some pregnant women, they did trust in the doctors which should be the ideal labor for them. The analysis of most of the data collected shows a discrepancy between the information of pregnant women and obstetricians. Both sides involved in the issue do not admit as responsible for the elevate number of cesarean sections, so, some new approaches are needed for analysis. This analysis and diagnosis indicate the next step of the research: the supervision of the pregnant women, since the beginning of the gestation until the birth, trying to figure out the real factors which lead them to decide what kind of delivery should be taken.


Laboratory flume experiments were carried out to evaluate the effect of particle density on bedload transport of sand‐sized particles and the effect of a suspended load of clay particles (kaolinite) on bedload transport of sand‐sized particles in rill flow conditions. Three materials in the range 400–600 µm were selected to simulate bedload transport of primary particles and aggregates: sand (2650 kg/m3), crushed brick (2450 kg/m3) and anthracite (1300–1700 kg/m3). In the two first experiments, two different methods were applied to determine bedload transport capacity of coarse particles for various conditions of flow discharge (from 2 to 15 L/min) and slope (2.2, 3 and 4%). In the third experiment, clear water was replaced with kaolinite–water mixture and bedload transport capacity of crushed brick particles was determined for a 4% slope and different concentrations of kaolinite (0, 7, 41 and 84 g/L). The results showed that bedload transport increased significantly with the decrease in particle density but the effect of particle density on transport rates was much less important than flow discharge. Velocity measurements of clear flow, flow mixed with coarse particles and coarse particles confirmed the existence of a differentiation between suspended load and bedload. In these experimental conditions, suspended load of kaolinite did not affect bedload rates of crushed brick particles. Three transport capacity formulae were tested against observed bedload rates. A calibration of the Foster formula revealed that the shear stress exponent should be greater than 1.5. The Low and the Govers unit stream power (USP) equations were then evaluated. The Low equation was preferred for the prediction of bedload rates of primary particles but it was not recommended in the case of aggregates of low density because of the limited experimental conditions applied to derive this equation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Anticardiolipin antibody (aCL), anti-b 2 glycoprotein I antibodies, and lupus anticoagulant (LA) are the only laboratory tests considered within the revised criteria for the classification of the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Recently, antibodies against phosphatidylserine-prothrombin complex (aPS/PT) have been detected, and these antibodies, rather than antibodies against prothrombin alone, are closely associated with APS and LA. The sensitivity and specificity of aPS/PT for the diagnosis of APS were assessed in a population of patients with a variety of autoimmune disorders. aCL and aPS/PT have similar diagnostic value for APS, therefore aPS/PT should be further explored, not only for research purposes but also as a candidate for one of the laboratory criteria for the classification of the APS.


The postprocessing method of ensemble forecasts is usually used to find a more precise estimate of future precipitation, because dynamic meteorology models have limitations in fitting fine-grained atmospheric processes and precipitation is driven more often by smaller-scale processes, while ensemble forecasts can hit this precipitation at times. However, the pattern of these hits cannot be easily summarized. The existing objective postprocessing methods tend to extend the rain area or false alarm the precipitation intensity categories. In this work, we introduce a multi-layer structure to simultaneously reduce the bias in forecast ensembles output by meteorology models and merge them to a quality deterministic (single-valued) forecast using cross-grid information, which differs quite dramatically from the previous statistical postprocessing method. The multi-layer network is designed to model the spatial distribution of future precipitation of different intensity categories(IC-MLNet). We provide a comparison of IC-MLNet to simple average as well as another two state-of-the-art ensemble quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPFs) postprocessing approaches over both single-model and multi-model ensemble forecasts datasets from TIGGE. The experimental results indicate that our model achieves superior performance over the compared baselines in precipitation amount prediction as well as precipitation intensities categories prediction.


This article describes a quick and easy method for determining relative binding affinities between proteins and metal ions. The method is based on separating unbound metal ions from metal ions bound to protein by ultrafiltration using microcentrifuge ultrafiltration units. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used as the test protein and the relative affinity towards divalent metal ions was found to be Cu 2+ > Zn 2+ > Cd2+> Pb 2+ > Ni 2+ > Co 2+, which corresponds to the relative orders reported in the literature. Index Entries: Metal-binding affinity; protein metal-ion interactions: BSA; ultrafiltration.


Introduction: Plasma cell neoplasms are monoclonal proliferations characterized by the secretion of an immunoglobulin product known as component "M" or monoclonal. The World Health Organization (WHO 2008) defines as plasma cell neoplasms the following: plasma cell myeloma, plasmacytoma and those syndromes defined by immunoglobulin deposits and primary amyloidosis, The objective of the present work was to correlate their clinical, morphological and phenotype characteristics in 21 patients. Material and Methods: A 2-year retrospective review was performed of the files of the surgical pathology laboratory and of the hematology service of the General Hospital of Mexico, searching for patients with a diagnosis of plasma cell neoplasm. We analyzed the following variables: age, gender, clinical symptoms, evolution, localization, laboratory tests, morphology, and expression of immunohistochemical markers. Of the 21 patients, 12 (57.1%) corresponded to plasma cell myelomas and 9 (42.8%) were plasmacytomas (seven extraosseous and two solitary bone plasmacytoma); women predominated with 61.4% and age ranged between 22 and 84 years. Mass and epistaxis were observed in the patients with plasmacytomas, and symptoms of medullary compression and anemia were observed in those patients with plasma cell myeloma. The time of symptomatology varied from 3 to 12 months. Laboratory tests revealed that lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), beta 2 microglobulin, C-reactive protein were altered and that hypercalcemia and anemia were present more in the systemic form of the disease. Treatment depended on the clinical staging and laboratory data. Mature forms predominated morphologically. Immunohistochemical stain revealed a constant expression for CD 138, six patients expressed CD 56, and expression of the Kappa and Lambda light chains was while.


President Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument more than sixteen years ago. At the time of its creation, the Monument outraged Utahns, and speculation about the future effects of the Monument ran rampant. After providing the historical geography of the Monument and explaining the authority with which the Executive Branch can proclaim land a national monument, this paper addresses the significant elements of the Monument's sixteen year existence. Specifically, this paper explains the impacts the Monument has had on (1) private land within the Monument; (2) livestock grazing in the Monument; (3) county-claimed roadways within the Monument; (4) State-owned land in Monument; and (5) the local and state economies. In effect, this paper addresses and analyzes all of the major concerns that existed when the Monument was created and the current status of those issues.


This document presents a brief description of the Medical Image Processing (MIP) library developed by the Brain Group of the Signal Processing Institute (ITS) at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). This library is a result of more than three years of research by Meritxell Bach Cuadra, Torsten Butz, Eduardo Solanas and Olivier Cuisenare, carried out under the supervision of Jean-Philippe Thiran. You can find more detailed information about the library at our web page located at http://ltswww.epfl.ch/ brain in the Manuals section.


Cytological verification of the angiographic, sonographic, and/or intraoperative diagnosis of pancreatic or ampullary carcinoma may be achieved by fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB). Fifteen biopsies were done in 13 patients, 12 of whom were thought to have pancreatic carcinoma clinically. The FNAB specimen confirmed this in 11 of them. Also, one equivocal (suspicious), two false-negative, and no false-positive results were recorded. Complications were not seen. In addition, four patients with ampullary carcinoma had pancreatoduodenectomy on the basis of FNAB specimens. Since this method is more accurate and is safer and simpler than the traditional wedge or core biopsy of suspected pancreatic or ampullary tumors, and since it may eliminate the need for laparotomy in selected cases, we consider it the preferred method for immediate diagnosis of these neoplasms.


In the die casting mould design, there is some over-constrained locating which have serious influence on the manufacturing and life-span in some certain spots. In this paper, over-constrained locating of die casting mould structure was studied based on the example of slider block core pulling mechanism. Some improving measures in die casting mould structure design were presented in this paper. Changing the rigid connection between slider block and side core into floating connection, forced action can be applied on the side core by the slider block only from the necessary radial side instead of from other directions. Side core can be located according to the constraints of insert core hole. It simplified the machining and assembling of slider block core pulling mechanism. Thus, the manufacture cost of the die casting mould was also reduced.


We have recently reported the growth of freestanding, single-crystal, seamless nanorings of zinc oxide via a spontaneous self-coiling process during the growth of polar-nanobelts [X.Y. Kong et al., Science 303, 1348 (2004)]. The nanoring is made by coaxial and uniradius loop-by-loop winding of a fine ZnO nanobelt. An important fact is that each and every nanoring is made of a nanobelt that contains basal-plane planar defects, which are suggested to be important for leading the fastest growth of the nanobelt as well as lowering its elastic deformation energy. In this paper, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy is applied to investigate the nature of the planar defects in the nanobelts and in nanorings. The planar defects were initiated and formed by single-layer segregation of the doping element, such as indium, which was introduced in the growth process. The accumulation of impurity ions forms two vicinal Inu O octahedral layers parallel to the basal plane. They form "head-to-head" and "tail-to-tail" polar-inversion domain boundaries. For a nanobelt that self-coils into a nanoring, we found that the head-to-head and tail-to-tail polar-inversion domain boundaries are paired, thus, the polarity of the nanobelt is unchanged. Therefore, our data support the proposed model [X.Y. Kong et al., Science 303, 1348 (2004)] that the nanoring is initiated by circularly folding a nanobelt due to long-range electrostatic interaction between the surface polar charges on the two sides, and a loop-by-loop winding of the nanobelt forms a complete ring.


The current work presents a novel methodology for the experimental quantification of the crack tip plastic zone during fatigue crack growth. This methodology is based on the application of yield criteria to estimate the area and the shape of the plastic zone at the crack tip. The implementation of the proposed methodology requires the use of strain maps calculated from the differentiation of the displacement fields obtained by digital image correlation (DIC). Stress maps can subsequently be inferred from both von Mises and Tresca yield criteria. Fatigue tests and associated measurements of plastic zone size and shape were conducted on a compacttension specimen made from commercially pure titanium at R ratio of 0.6. In addition, the ability to predict the shape and size of the experimentally observed crack tip plastic zone has been explored using three different analytical elastic crack tip models [Westergaard, Williams and Christopher- James-Patterson (CJP)]. This analysis indicated that the CJP model provided the most accurate prediction of the plastic zone and shape.


This article explores the logic underlying alternative marketing exchange systems in community and the conditions under which each operates. Through ethnographic work in a town impacted by a tornado, we observe how a local exchange system morphs and evolves to reveal the functions, mechanisms, and meanings of two different yet complementary exchange systems: a commercial marketing exchange system and an ad hoc marketing exchange system. While these systems operate for unique purposes, they often meet consumer needs through the exact same consumption offerings. This results in confusion or tension for people who may participate in an ad hoc system while operating under assumptions of a commercial system. Thus, by extending exchange theory to the community level, we expose the logic, nature, and operation of these competing systems, and offer the marketing field theoretical and practical bases from which to transcend prevailing stereotypes about marketing and its role in society.


ABSTRACT As universities seek to become more international, their need to engage with a wider range of languages, particularly English, seems more prominent. At the same time, universities are also regarded by many stakeholders as key institutions to preserve a given national language and culture. This apparent tension makes universities a fruitful ground to explore relevant issues of language policymaking. This paper analyses language policies in higher education in two northern European countries, Sweden and Estonia. Applying qualitative content analytical tools, we tackle the following questions: (1) what major themes emerge from the analysis of institutional language policy documents in Estonia and Sweden? and (2) how is English perceived in relation to other languages? Our analysis shows that, despite their different historical and sociopolitical trajectories, universities in the two countries tend to adopt similar stances vis-à-vis their language policy developments. There also exist, however, different nuances in approaching the language question, which we interpret as being the result of the particular cultural backgrounds of each country.


Background Variation in microbial metabolism poses one of the greatest current uncertainties in models of global carbon cycling, and is particularly poorly understood in soils. Biological Stoichiometry theory describes biochemical mechanisms linking metabolic rates with variation in the elemental composition of cells and organisms, and has been widely observed in animals, plants, and plankton. However, this theory has not been widely tested in microbes, which are considered to have fixed ratios of major elements in soils. Methodology/Principal Findings To determine whether Biological Stoichiometry underlies patterns of soil microbial metabolism, we compiled published data on microbial biomass carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) pools in soils spanning the global range of climate, vegetation, and land use types. We compared element ratios in microbial biomass pools to the metabolic quotient qCO2 (respiration per unit biomass), where soil C mineralization was simultaneously measured in controlled incubations. Although microbial C, N, and P stoichiometry appeared to follow somewhat constrained allometric relationships at the global scale, we found significant variation in the C∶N∶P ratios of soil microbes across land use and habitat types, and size-dependent scaling of microbial C∶N and C∶P (but not N∶P) ratios. Microbial stoichiometry and metabolic quotients were also weakly correlated as suggested by Biological Stoichiometry theory. Importantly, we found that while soil microbial biomass appeared constrained by soil N availability, microbial metabolic rates (qCO2) were most strongly associated with inorganic P availability. Conclusions/Significance Our findings appear consistent with the model of cellular metabolism described by Biological Stoichiometry theory, where biomass is limited by N needed to build proteins, but rates of protein synthesis are limited by the high P demands of ribosomes. Incorporation of these physiological processes may improve models of carbon cycling and understanding of the effects of nutrient availability on soil C turnover across terrestrial and wetland habitats.


Abstract Mining towns in Angola have followed a different growth trajectory from urban agglomerations elsewhere on the continent. Colonial mining cities were treated as regional strategic locations mainly under the direction of mining companies, with an orientation towards natural and human resources management and planned urbanisation. As Angola became engulfed in civil war after independence in 1975, urban planning and control fell into disarray, which led to rapid and unplanned urban growth as rural populations fled the insecurity of the countryside. In the provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, where diamond mining dominates economic activity, new 'unplanned' clandestine towns appeared during the civil war. Since the advent of peace in 2002 and the cessation of war-induced urbanisation, Lundas' towns have resumed their status of government and mining company-dominated settlements, where control and planning prevail. However, improved infrastructural conditions prevail alongside new forms of social and economic exclusion. This article traces urban growth and welfare in Lunda, analysing the impact of its divergent growth pattern on the urban population.


Inspired by the behavior of humans talking in noisy environments, we propose an embodied embedded cognition approach to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems for robots in challenging environments, such as with ego noise, using binaural sound source localization (SSL). The approach is verified by measuring the impact of SSL with a humanoid robot head on the performance of an ASR system. More specifically, a robot orients itself toward the angle where the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of speech is maximized for one microphone before doing an ASR task. First, a spiking neural network inspired by the midbrain auditory system based on our previous work is applied to calculate the sound signal angle. Then, a feedforward neural network is used to handle high levels of ego noise and reverberation in the signal. Finally, the sound signal is fed into an ASR system. For ASR, we use a system developed by our group and compare its performance with and without the support from SSL. We test our SSL and ASR systems on two humanoid platforms with different structural and material properties. With our approach we halve the sentence error rate with respect to the common downmixing of both channels. Surprisingly, the ASR performance is more than two times better when the angle between the humanoid head and the sound source allows sound waves to be reflected most intensely from the pinna to the ear microphone, rather than when sound waves arrive perpendicularly to the membrane.


Armed external intervention may sometimes be required to halt barbaric attacks on the vulnerable, but rebuilding political, economic and social order in the aftermath of an intervention is fraught with difficulty. Post-intervention problems may include coping with new and fractious actors, managing complex processes of change, addressing fundamental questions of political philosophy, coping with `spoilers' and low levels of trust, and avoiding inadvertent damage to the intervention's beneficiaries - all in situations where resources may be scarce and intervening powers at odds with each other. Interveners should strive to absorb the lessons of past interventions and master the complexities of the territory on which they propose to act. Patience and humility are sterling qualities in an intervening force, even where robust action is required. Adapting Montesquieu's advice, if one must intervene, one should do so with a trembling hand.


Let $H=(V,F)$ be a simple hypergraph without loops. $H$ is called linear if
$|f\cap g|\le 1$ for any $f,g\in F$ with $f\not=g$. The $2$-section of $H$,
denoted by $[H]_2$, is a graph with $V([H]_2)=V$ and for any $ u,v\in
V([H]_2)$, $uv\in E([H]_2)$ if and only if there is $ f\in F$ such that $u,v\in
f$. The treewidth of a graph is an important invariant in structural and
algorithmic graph theory. In this paper, we consider the treewidth of the
$2$-section of a linear hypergraph. We will use the minimum degree, maximum
degree, anti-rank and average rank of a linear hypergraph to determine the
upper and lower bounds of the treewidth of its $2$-section. Since for any graph
$G$, there is a linear hypergraph $H$ such that $[H]_2\cong G$, we provide a
method to estimate the bound of treewidth of graph by the parameters of the
hypergraph.


With the explosive growth of the volume and resolution of high-resolution remote sensing (HRRS) images, the management of them becomes a challenging task. The traditional content-based remote sensing image retrieval (CBRSIR) technologies cannot meet what we expect due to the large volume of image archives and complex contents within HRRS images. As a successful approximate nearest neighborhood (ANN) search technique, Hash learning has received wide attention, especially when deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) appear. Due to DCNNs' strong capacity of feature learning, many DCNN-based hashing methods have been proposed and achieved good performance for large-scale CBRSIR tasks. Nevertheless, their limitation is that a large of labeled training samples should be collected for training the deep models. To overcome this limitation, this paper, therefore, develops a new supervised hash learning method for the large-scale HRRS CBRSIR task based on meta-learning, which could achieve well retrieval performance with a few labeled training samples. First, taking the characteristics of HRRS into account, we develop a self-adaptive convolution (SAP-Conv) block and design a hashing net based on the block. SAP-Conv can learn robust features from HRRS images by exploring their multi-scale information. Second, to enhance the generalization of the hashing net under a few labeled training samples, the hash learning is formulated in a meta way, and we name it meta-hashing. Meta-hashing can effectively preserve the similarities between support and query set and the similarities between samples within support set by the developed loss function. To further improve the performance of meta-hashing, we expand it to a dynamic version named dynamic-meta-hashing, in which the numbers of support and query are changeable in the training phase. Experimental results counted on the three widely used HRRS data sets demonstrate our dynamic-meta-hashing and meta-hashing can achieve promising performance in large-scale HRRS CBRSIR tasks based on a few training samples. Our source codes are available at https://github.com/TangXu-Group/Meta-hashing.


Sequence pattern mining aims to discover frequent subsequences as patterns in a single sequence or a sequence database. By combining gap constraints (or flexible wildcards), users can specify special characteristics of the patterns and discover meaningful subsequences suitable for their own application domains, such as finding gene transcription sites from DNA sequences or discovering patterns for time series data classification. Due to the inherent complexity of sequence patterns, including the exponential candidate space with respect to pattern letters and gap constraints, to date, existing sequence pattern mining methods are either incomplete or do not support the Apriori property because the support ratio of a pattern may be greater than that of its subpatterns. Most importantly, patterns discovered by these methods are either too restrictive or too general and cannot represent underlying meaningful knowledge in the sequences. In this paper, we focus on a nonoverlapping sequence pattern mining task with gap constraints, where a nonoverlapping sequence pattern allows sequence letters to be flexibly and maximally utilized for pattern discovery. A new Apriori-based nonoverlapping sequence pattern mining algorithm, NOSEP, is proposed. NOSEP is a complete pattern mining algorithm, which uses a specially designed data structure, Nettree, to calculate the exact occurrence of a pattern in the sequence. Experimental results and comparisons on biology DNA sequences, time series data, and Gazelle datasets demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and the uniqueness of nonoverlapping sequence patterns compared to other methods.


The paper focuses on econometrically justified robust analysis of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial markets in different countries across the World. It provides the results of robust estimation and inference on predictive regressions for returns on major stock indexes in 23 countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia incorporating the time series of reported infections and deaths from COVID-19. We also present a detailed study of persistence, heavy-tailedness and tail risk properties of the time series of the COVID-19 infections and death rates that motivate the necessity in applications of robust inference methods in the analysis. Econometrically justified analysis is based on heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) inference methods, recently developed robust t-statistic inference approaches and robust tail index estimation.


AIM Subtyping of lipooligosaccharides (LOS) of non-typeable strains of Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) isolated from children with bronchopulmonary diseases. MATERIALS AND METHODS Lipooligosaccharides obtained from 62 acapsular strains of H. influenzae were studied by vertical SDS-electrophoresis in PAAG. RESULTS Majority of LOS formed electrophoretically mobile components in low molecular mass zone. Obtained results allowed to differentiate 23 subtypes of LOS. Lipooligosaccharides of majority of strains (67.7%) belonged to one of 10 main subtypes, 30.6% of strains belonged to mixed subtypes because they had signs of 2-3 subtypes. CONCLUSION Strains possessing LOS of three subtypes--VI, VII, and X--were significantly more prevalent in pediatric patients (p < 0.05). More than one third (43.5%) of studied NTHi strains belonged to these subtypes.


The strength of nanocrystalline (NC) metal has been found to be sensitive to strain rate. Here, by molecular dynamics simulation, we explore the strain rate effects on apparent Young's modulus, flow stress and grain growth of NC gold with small size. The simulation results indicate that the apparent Young's modulus of NC gold decreases with the decrease of strain rate, especially for strain rates above 1 ns−1. The rearrangement of atoms near grain boundaries is a response to the decrease of apparent Young's modulus. Indeed, the flow stress is also sensitive to the strain rate and decreases following the strain rate's decrease. This can be found from the change of strain rate sensitivity and activation volume with the strain rate. Temperature has little effect on the activation volume of NC gold with small grain size, but has an obvious effect on that of relatively large grain size (such as 18 nm) under low strain rate (0.01 ns−1). Finally, grain growth in the deformation process is found to be sensitive to strain rate and the critical size for grain growth increases following the decrease of strain rate.


Approximately thirty to forty percent of all bridges across North America have some form of deterioration on them. Many organizations/agencies across North America are investing significant amounts of money on repairing and rehabilitating their bridges. The reason being, these bridges are deteriorating due to heavy use (overloading from today's oversized trucks), old age (many built in late 1950s and 1960s) and environmental and chemical attacks (deicing salt applications during the winter season).

The purpose of this thesis concentrated on one area, namely bridge decks. To better understand how these organizations/agencies were dealing with bridge deck deterioration, a survey containing thirteen questions was developed and sent out throughout North America, to Department of Transportation, Ministry of Transportation, Municipalities, Bridge Authorities and Consultants.

The survey was made up of six parts, each focusing on different areas during a bridge rehabilitation/repair operation. Areas looked at were: Condition Surveys, Concrete Removal, Rehabilitation Techniques, Environmental Impacts and Service Life.


This paper outlines the contours of a new research agenda for the analysis of food price crises. By weaving together a detailed quantitative examination of changes in corporate profit shares with a qualitative appraisal of the restructuring in business control over the organisation of society and nature, the paper points to the rapid ascendance of a new power configuration in the global political economy of food: the Agro-Trader nexus. The agribusiness and grain trader firms that belong to the Agro-Trader nexus have not been mere 'price takers', instead they have actively contributed to the inflationary restructuring of the world food system by championing and facilitating the rapid expansion of the first-generation biofuels sector. As a key driver of agricultural commodity price rises, the biofuels boom has raised the Agro-Trader nexus's differential profits and it has at the same time deepened global hunger. These findings suggest that food price inflation is a mechanism of redistribution.


Dr Keizo Sugimachi, Editor‐in‐Chief of Surgery Today (The Japanese Journal of Surgery), has selected from the July to September 1997 issues of his journal for this quarter's digest. A digest of BJS for the same period written by Mr Colin Johnson, European Editor, appears in the Japanese journal. © 1998 British Journal of Surgery Society Ltd


Tyrosine O-sulfation is a post-translational modification mediated by one of two Golgi tyrosylprotein sulfotransferases (TPST-1 and -2) expressed in all mammalian cells. Tyrosine sulfation plays an important role in the function of some known TPST substrates by enhancing protein-protein interactions. To explore the role of these enzymes in vivo and gain insight into other potential TPST substrates, TPST-2-deficient mice were generated by targeted disruption of the Tpst2 gene. Tpst2+/- mice appear normal and, when interbred, yield litters of normal size with a Mendelian distribution of the targeted mutation. Tpst2-/- mice have moderately delayed growth but appear healthy and attain normal body weight by 10 weeks of age. In contrast to Tpst1-/- males that have normal fertility, Tpst2-/- males are infertile. Tpst2-/- sperm are normal in number, morphology, and motility in normal media and appear to capacitate and undergo acrosomal exocytosis normally. However, they are severely defective in their motility in viscous media and in their ability to fertilize zona pellucida-intact eggs. Adhesion of Tpst2-/- sperm to the egg plasma membrane is reduced compared with wild type sperm, but sperm-egg fusion is similar or even increased. These data strongly suggest that tyrosine sulfation of unidentified substrate(s) play a crucial role in these processes and document for the first time the critical importance of post-translational tyrosine sulfation in male fertility.


High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) shows considerable promise as a minimally-invasive technique for tumor ablation. A typical HIFU procedure involves focusing of acoustic energy in a small region, with the absorbed acoustic energy causing localized rise in tissue temperature. Temperature rise of the order of 40–60°C is achieved within seconds, causing immediate cell necrosis in the targeted region.


For networked sensors that report binary local decisions to a fusion center, we use a fusion rule that employs the summation of these local decisions for hypothesis testing. Based on the assumption that the received signal power decays as the distance from the target increases, exact system level detection performance measures are derived analytically. The evaluation of the probability of detection involves multiple-fold integrations. Two approximations of the probability of detection, by using binomial distribution with or without ignoring the border effect of the region of interest (ROI), are presented. It is shown that for various system parameters we have explored, the approximation that takes into account the border effect provides a very accurate estimation of the probability of detection. To achieve a better system level detection performance, the local sensor level decision threshold is chosen such that it maximizes the Kullback Leibler distance of the distributions conditioned on the two hypotheses.


Abstract : Aluminum alloys exhibiting high strength and improved creep resistance at elevated temperatures offer the potential for lower weight and reduced cost in aerospace components. Powder processing, involving controlled atomization and hot consolidation, provides a means for fabricating candidate alloys; the microstructure consists of a stable fine-scale uniform dispersion of intermetallics in the aluminum marix. Retention of elevated temperature strength has been demonstrated in a P/M Al-Fe-Ni alloy. Atomized powder is characterized by a duplex microstructure of fine and coarse regions of FeNiAl9 (Vf approximately = 0.3) in the aluminum matrix. The fine microstructure is harder than the coarse microstructure and is table up to approximately 350 C, above which its hardness decreases rapidly. There is a gradual coarsening and decrease in hardness of the initially coarse regions with increasing temperature. The duplex microstructure is carried over into the hot pressed and extruded material. Changes in microstructure and hardness of the extruded material during elevated temperature exposure are similar to those occurring in the powder form. Hot tenisle test data (up to 400 C) indicate that the extruded material retains approximately 60% of its ambient strength up to approximately 250 C with ductility approaching 10%. This reflects a promising level of structural stability. These results and observations can be explained in terms of particle cooling rate, precipitation of aluminides, and aluminide coarsening during powder processing; powder consolidation temperatures should be kept as low as possible. (Author)


The deficient oxidation and accumulation of very-long-chain fatty acids in the Zellweger cerebro-hepato-renal syndrome (CHRS) and X chromosome-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), coupled with the observation that peroxisomes are lacking in CHRS, prompted us to investigate the subcellular localization of the catabolism of lignoceric acid (C24:0). Peroxisomal and mitochondrial-rich fractions were separated from rat liver crude mitochondria by sucrose density gradient centrifugation. Enzyme activity for the oxidation of [1-14C]palmitic acid to water-soluble acetate was 2- to 3-fold higher in the mitochondrial than in the peroxisomal-rich fraction whereas [1-14C]lignoceric acid was oxidized at a 2- to 3-fold higher rate in the peroxisomal than in the mitochondrial fraction. Moreover, unlike palmitic acid oxidation, lignoceric acid oxidation was not inhibited by potassium cyanide in either rat liver fractions or human skin cultured fibroblasts, showing that lignoceric acid is mainly and possibly exclusively oxidized in peroxisomes. We also conducted studies to clarify the striking phenotypic differences between CHRS and the childhood form of ALD. In contrast to CHRS, we found normal hepatocellular peroxisomes in the liver biopsy of a childhood ALD patient. In addition, in the presence of potassium cyanide, the oxidation of palmitic acid in cultured skin fibroblasts was inhibited by 62% in control and X chromosome-linked ALD patients compared with 88% in CHRS and neonatal ALD. This differential effect may be related to differences in peroxisomal morphology in those disorders.


Equilibrium was achieved in centrifugal fields with tobacco mosaic virus by the Beams magnetically suspended ultracentrifuge. An attempt was made to account for the earth's gravitational component by using tilted cells in the rotor. The determinations of particle weight on highly uniform rods of tobacco mosaic virus in the apparent absence of nonideal behavior gave a value of (41.6 � 0.1) 106.


It is very important for a student to study regularly so that the results of effective training given by the teacher can be positive. It is an inevitable fact that daily and regular work will bring success to students. Therefore, daily work is highly important in music education. Daily work in instrumental education, which is a part of music education, is important for students to get successful results. The purpose of this study, which was prepared on the basis of these considerations, is to investigate to a what extent a student that works every day in piano education has been able to memorize a piano he has worked on. The students of experimental and control groups, which were generated for this purpose, studied with different methods at different times. Students in the control group studied only for 60 min in one day. Students in the experimental group studied for 60 min in total of four consecutive days with a period of 15 min in a day. In this research, memorization levels of the experimental and control groups were measured. SPSS 17.00 package program was used for the measurements. A significant difference was determined between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. A significant difference was also determined between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group students using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. According to the results of the Mann-Whitney U test, a significant result (p= .004 >.05 ) has emerged in favor of the experimental group students studying on a daily basis. Thus, it has been concluded that the study conducted is effective and applicable in the following studies.


Mobile applications markets with app stores have introduced a new approach to define and sell software applications with access to a large body of heterogeneous consumer population. This research examines key seller- and app-level characteristics that impact success in an app store market. We tracked individual apps and their presence in the top-grossing 300 chart in Apple's App Store and examined how factors at different levels affect the apps' survival in the top 300 chart. We used a generalized hierarchical modeling approach to measure sales performance, and confirmed the results with the use of a hazard model and a count regression model. We find that broadening app offerings across multiple categories is a key determinant that contributes to a higher probability of survival in the top charts. App-level attributes such as free app offers, high initial ranks, investment in less-popular (less-competitive) categories, continuous quality updates, and high-volume and high-user review scores have positive effects on apps' sustainability. In general, each diversification decision across a category results in an approximately 15 percent increase in the presence of an app in the top charts. Survival rates for free apps are up to two times more than that for paid apps. Quality (feature) updates to apps can contribute up to a threefold improvement in survival rate as well. A key implication of the results of this study is that sellers must utilize the natural segmentation in consumer tastes offered by the different categories to improve sales performance.


Video consumption over Internet has increased significantly over the recent years and occupies the majority of the overall data traffic. To decrease the load on the Internet infrastructure and reduce bandwidth taken by video, higher efficiency video codecs, such as H.265/HEVC and VP9, have been developed. The availability of these two new competing video coding formats raises the question of which is more efficient in terms of rate-distortion and by how much they outperform the current state-of-the-art coding standard, H.264/AVC. This paper provides an answer to this difficult question for low-delay video applications, e.g., real-time video streaming/conferencing or video surveillance. The benchmarking of HEVC and VP9 video compression was conducted by means of subjective evaluations, assuming web browser playback, an uncontrolled environment, and HD video content. Considering a wide range of bit rates from very low to high bit rates, corresponding to low quality up to transparent quality (when compared to the original video), results show a clear advantage of HEVC with average bit rate savings of 59.5% when compared to AVC and 42.4% when compared to VP9.


The specific heats of lunar samples 10057 and 10084 returned by the Apollo 11 mission have been measured between 90 and 350 degrees Kelvin by use of an adiabatic calorimeter. The samples are representative of type A vesicular basalt-like rocks and of finely divided lunar soil. The specific heat of these materials changes smoothly from about 0.06 calorie per gram per degree at 90 degrees Kelvin to about 0.2 calorie per gram per degree at 350 degrees Kelvin. The thermal parameter γ=(kpC-� for the lunar surface will accordingly vary by a factor of about 2 between lunar noon and midnight.


Abstract. To assess the regional multi-decadal to multi-centennial climate variability at the southern Iberian Peninsula during the mid- to late- Holocene transition multi-proxy records of two marine sediment cores were established for two sites in the Alboran Sea (ODP-161-976A) and the Gulf of Cadiz (GeoB5901-2). High-resolution records of organic geochemical proxies and planktic foraminiferal assemblages are used to decipher precipitation and vegetation changes as well as the sea surface conditions with respect to Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and marine primary productivity (MPP). n-Alkane records as a proxy for precipitation changes suggest a series of six distinct drought events at 5.4 ka BP, from ca. 5.1 ka BP to 4.9 ka BP, from 4.8 to 4.7 ka BP, at 4.6  ka BP, from 4.4 to 4.3 ka BP and, from 3.8 to 3.7 ka BP. Each drought event is associated with a major vegetation change towards higher proportions of C4 vegetation. The drought events are further accompanied by annual and spring/ winter SST warming as well as decreasing MPP in the Alboran Sea. Altogether, the close correlation of the observed droughts with North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)-like variability suggests changes in the atmospheric circulation as important driving mechanism of terrestrial and oceanic variability at southern Iberia and the Alboran Sea, respectively. Sea surface variability in the Gulf of Cadiz, instead, is intimately linked to the North Atlantic Bond Events. In particular, during Bond Events 3 and 4 a pronounced increase in seasonality is found.


Adventures in Space and Time brings together key academic, critic and fan writings about Doctor Who alongside newly-commissioned work addressing contemporary issues and debates to form a comprehensive guide to the wider Whoniverse.
 The perennially popular BBC series holds a unique place in the history of television and of TV fandom: the longest running science-fiction show, the series and its fan communities have tracked social and cultural changes over its sixty-year lifetime. Adventures in Time and Space presents classic writings on Who and its fandom by leading scholars including John Fiske, Henry Jenkins, John Tulloch and Matt Hills, but also represents writings and art by fans, including fans who went on to become showrunners, writers or even the Doctor himself, with contributions by Steven Moffat, Chris Chibnall, Douglas Adams and Peter Capaldi. This innovative anthology addresses Doctor Who's showrunners, Doctors, companions, enemies and collaborators as well as issues and debates around queer fandom, intersectionality, the 'wokeness' of the Doctor, fan media including websites, podcasts and vlogs, fan activism and questions of race and sexuality in relation to the show and its spin offs. It considers Doctor Who as a peculiarly British phenomenon but also one that has delighted, engaged and sometimes enraged viewers around the world.


The purpose of this study was to examine participants' experiences and descriptions of a municipal activation program, and how participants perceive their opportunities for influence on their own needs and requirements. The results are based on statements from six semi-structured, individual interviews conducted by the qualitative method. Empowerment, paternalism and social capital are among the study's theoretical frame of reference. The main results show that more participants are critical of aspects of coercion and involuntary willingness in participation. Motivation for participation seems to mainly be linked to whether the activity is experienced as meaningful, as well as to the attitude of the staff. An individual, affirmative response from the staff seems to be of concern to the participants' general experience of the program. The contact with other participants interpreted from theory of social capital and collective empowerment.


Small-x divergences of Abelian gauge theory in the front form of Hamiltonian dynamics are regulated using a mass parameter for gauge bosons, introduced through a mechanism analogous to the spontaneous breaking of global gauge symmetry. A corresponding family of ultraviolet and infrared finite scale-dependent renormalized Hamiltonians, is calculable order-by-order using the renormalization group procedure for effective particles. The second-order terms described here suggest the magnitude of mass corrections that may be involved in resolving the small-x parton and front-form vacuum and zero-mode problems, assuming that the gauge boson mass that counts does not exceed the current upper bound on the photon mass.


This paper analyses stock market reactions after the occurrence of major negative corporate social responsibility (CSR) events and the possibility of mitigating these effects through the upfront provision of CSR information in firms' annual reports. For this purpose, we follow a three-step procedure. First, we analyse the major concerns gathered from REPRisk® data via event study analysis. Herein, we cover a window of 5 to 20 days. Second, we analyse all annual reports of the firms mentioned in the covered period over the entire time horizon and conduct a textual analysis to examine firms' disclosure of CSR information. Finally, we draw conclusions from the two approaches and show that firms with more upfront CSR information suffer from stronger negative market reactions after the occurrence of a negative CSR event. Herein, we show that if the occurrence of a negative CSR event conflicts with investors' expectations, then it leads to an important update of investors' beliefs about firms' prospects. Our results also confirm that such an event leads to an adjustment of the subsequent year's CSR disclosure in the annual reports.


The article links leadership and legitimacy in globalizing business. It forwards a framework for analyzing how actors in organizations may build and maintain organizational legitimacy through different strategies. The discussion connects strategies for legitimizing organizational conduct across levels of analysis, highlighting the role of leadership in this process. The article builds on organizational discourse analysis to explain how individual actors may shape societal perceptions around organizational legitimacy. The presented framework highlights three generic strategies and the corresponding processes associated with leading toward legitimacy. In this way, it emphasizes mechanisms for gaining and maintaining legitimacy for each strategic response of the organization in relation to rhetorical tactics used to influence discourses and the resulting necessary leadership resources. The framework offers future theoretical and empirical research directions for the analysis of legitimacy discourses.


Classical shell elements have difficulty to accurately capture the nonlinear throughthickness stress gradients and the stresses due to material anisotropy. The improved plate and shell theory by means of Mechanics of Structure Genome (MSG) appears as a feasible approach to reproduce high fidelity residual stress simulations in thermoset polymers while greatly reducing the computational time. The Structure Genome (SG) is defined as the smallest mathematical building block of the structure containing many such building blocks. For composite laminates, the reference surface can be described as a 2D continuum and the microstructure of every material point of this continuum is modeled by means of the specific SG, which is the material line of the transverse normal. Thereby, the original 3D anisotropic elasticity problem is cast in an intrinsic form and hence, arbitrarily large displacements and global rotations can be handled subjected only to strains being small. In this work the simulation of a continuous fiber-reinforced composite de-tooling process using two different approaches is presented, which are then compared against the detailed 3D FEA developed in the ABAQUS/COMPRO CCA platform. On the one hand, smeared though-thickness properties are considered in the ABAQUS/COMPRO CCA platform in order to minimize the amount three-dimensional solid elements required. On the other hand, the same simulation is carried out using the MSG-based plate and shell theory. The comparison of the results reveal that later methodology considerably reduces the computational time and cost without compromising the accuracy of displacement results and providing detailed stress distribution.


Translated by Laura Cunniff Scholars tend to interpret the European peasantry's incorporation into mass politics at the beginning of the twentieth century in terms of two equally extreme situations, citing either the peasantry's support for traditional oligarchies, or its anti-capitalist radicalism. By contrast, this article explores how the confluence between a broad network of peasant families and leased agricultural properties in the Valencian region of Spain helped generate mass support for an anti-liberal (and eventually Francoist) legal system. The authors highlight the uniqueness of the social and productive context of Valencian agriculture during the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as the tensions that existed between landowners and tenants. Such tensions, they argue, did not stop these two groups from efficiently collaborating in favour of an economic orientation that was both developmentalist and politically anti-liberal.


A 16-HOUR-OLD boy was found to have a scrotal mass, on his initial physical examination. Exploration at 18 hours of age revealed a necrotic appendix testis (hydatid of Morgagni). Torsion of the appendix testis has never been reported in the newborn, the youngest previously recorded case being at 11 months of age.1This case is reported to record a rarity and to jog the awareness of those who care for the newborn. The appendix testis was first descrived by Morgagni2,3in 1761. Embryologically, it is the persistence, in the male subject, of the upper end of the mullerian duct, and is reported to be present in about 90% of all male subjects.4It is found as a sessile or more frequently as a pedunculated structure arising from the superior pole of the testicle adjacent to the caput major of the epididymis, and varies in size from 0.1


Recent data-driven approaches to visual servoing have shown improved performances over classical methods due to precise feature matching and depth estimation. Some recent servoing approaches use a model predictive control (MPC) framework which generalise well to novel environments and are capable of incorporating dynamic constraints, but are computationally intractable in real-time, making it difficult to deploy in real-world scenarios. On the contrary, single-step methods optimise greedily and achieve high servoing rates, but lack the benefits of the MPC multi-step ahead formulation. In this paper, we make the best of both worlds and propose a lightweight visual servoing MPC framework which generates optimal control near real-time at a frequency of 10.52 Hz. This work utilises the differential cross-entropy sampling method for quick and effective control generation along with a lightweight neural network, significantly improving the servoing frequency. We also propose a flow depth normalisation layer which ameliorates the issue of inferior predictions of two view depth from the flow network. We conduct extensive experimentation on the Habitat simulator and show a notable decrease in servoing time in comparison with other approaches that optimise over a time horizon. We achieve the right balance between time and performance for visual servoing in six degrees of freedom (6DoF), while retaining the advantageous MPC formulation. Our code and dataset are publicly available†.