It is difficult to characterize Mahabharata. It is the longest poem ever written, there are over 100,000 verses, most of them sixteen syllables each. It is not just a heroic tale of battles and conquests; in it prayers and hymns are recited, long passages of advice are given on ethics and on kingly duties, all the places of pilgrimage are described, and all systems of philosophy and asceticism are summarised. In one section, the Bhagvadgitli, Krishna as the incarnation of God Vi~I).U advises Arjuna, the third Paf.19ava, how to attain liberation. As Katz has suggested', The Mahabharata may be said to embody the abundance of India, a nation that has been, through centuries, uniquely capable of living with untrammelled growth, even contradictions. To this day, "Bharata" (the family of Bhlirata) is the name for India in the modem Indian languages, with the implication that Bharata, besides simply having been the distant ancestor of the Piil;lqavas and Kauravas was somehow the forerunner of all Indian culture.


The history of erotic dreams, nightmares, and erotic nightmares offers a valuable opportunity to study how such dreams tested Western ideas about the self, desire, and self-control. Like Foucault, I find it more productive to analyse these dreams, and the struggles to introject them, as sites of self-making rather than of repression. Erotic dreams and nightmares have been inflected by various historical strategies of self-making, themselves produced by different regimes of knowledge such as Christian asceticism, medicine, or philosophy. Erotic nightmares still proliferate today in reports of alien abductions. A reason for this historical tenacity has been the ease with which the affective sensations of the erotic nightmare – terror and sexual arousal – have jumped between genres as various as monastic handbooks, medieval folk-tales, gothic fiction, and personal dreams. This study demonstrates the importance of historical perspective for the ability to identify and understand culturally elaborated ('culture-bound') syndromes.


This paper describes design methodologies for the optimal inductive peaking structures used for the 40-Gb/s serializing transmitter circuits presented in. The implemented transmitter had more than 400 on-chip inductors and transformers in order to achieve the bandwidth required for the 38.4-Gb/s operation demonstrated in a 0.13-μm CMOS process. A bridged T-coil network with inverted mutual coupling was found more effective than the conventional T-coil with sizeable driver-side capacitance. An iterative refinement procedure that directly optimizes the circuit's large-signal transient response at the presence of the inductor parasitics and device nonlinearities via HSPICE-ASITIC joint-simulation is described. The procedure resulted in more than 3 × improvement in bandwidth for the CML buffer, multiplexer, and latch circuits. It is shown that the area and the achievable bandwidth of the optimal inductive peaking structures will scale favorably with the CMOS technology trends.


Conventional multiplex PCR (cmPCR) reactions have been developed to monitor the most predominant serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae causing invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). Since cmPCR assigns serotypes based on differences in the capsule biosynthesis ( cps ) loci, DNA extracted from clinical specimens can be used directly to monitor changes in serotype distribution and assess the impact of pneumococcal vaccines. Given that cmPCR can require up to eight reactions to assign a serotype, testing is often conducted in sequential algorithms. Sequential cmPCR reactions; however, may not be the most cost effective strategy to determine whether a S. pneumoniae serotype is vaccine-preventable. This study used oligonucleotide permutations in a modified set of cmPCR reactions (termed cmPCRmod) to reduce the number of PCR reactions required to identify S. pneumoniae serotypes covered by the 7- and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV7 and PCV13, respectively) and the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV23). While oligonucleotide permutations have previously been reported for regional differences in serotype distribution, the impact on assay performance had not been assessed. This study demonstrated that equivalent analytical sensitivity and specificity was seen when comparing cmPCR and cmPCRmod, and 100% concordance was seen when 308 clinical isolates of S. pneumoniae were evaluated. Compared to cmPCR, cmPCRmod reduced the number and reactions required to detect serotypes covered by PCV7, PCV13, and PPV23. This study demonstrated that conventional multiplex reactions can be reformulated for more efficient detection of vaccine-preventable serotypes, without compromising test performance characteristics. As such, cmPCRmod reactions could provide significant cost savings for large surveillance studies.


This paper deals with a crucial aspect in the control of grid-connected power converters, i.e., the detection of the fundamental-frequency positive-sequence component of the utility voltage under unbalanced and distorted conditions. Specifically, it proposes a positive-sequence detector based on a new decoupled double synchronous reference frame phase-locked loop (DDSRF-PLL), which completely eliminates the detection errors of conventional synchronous reference frame PLL's (SRF-PLL). This is achieved by transforming both positive- and negative-sequence components of the utility voltage into the double SRF, from which a decoupling network is developed in order to cleanly extract and separate the positive- and negative-sequence components. The resultant DDSRF-PLL conducts then to a fast, precise, and robust positive-sequence voltage detection even under unbalanced and distorted grid conditions. The paper presents a detailed description and derivation of the proposed detection method, together with an extensive evaluation using simulation and experimental results from a digital signal processor-based laboratory prototype in order to verify and validate the excellent performance achieved by the DDSRF-PLL


We present a novel data-driven approach for detecting and correcting errors in text databases. We focus on information that was accidentally entered in an incorrect column. Unlike machine-learning approaches to data cleaning that assume the database cells to contain atomic or numeric content, our method takes into account substrings of textual cells, and treats error detection and correction as a text categorisation task. Errors are detected at points where the classifier disagrees with the data; corrections are the suggestions put forward by the classifier. We demonstrate that the method is suited for high-recall detection of errors in freetext columns of a zoological database, with a high correction accuracy as well.


This research paper reports the effect of natural fiber content on the physical and mechanical properties as well as fracture behavior of composite cement reinforced with coconut fiber. The mix design was based on 1:1 for cement:sand ratio and 0.55 was fixed for amount of water per cement ratio. Coconut fiber was added as reinforcement and replacing the composition of sand. Composites were developed based on 3 wt. %, 6 wt. %, 9 wt. %, 12 wt. % and 15 wt. % of coconut fiber by mixing and curing process. Composites were cured in water for 7, 14, and 28 days. It was observed that the composite reinforced with 9 wt. % of coconut fiber demonstrated the highest strength of modulus of rupture and compressive strength. Results of density, water absorption and moisture content are also presented.


Rating-based collaborative filtering (CF) predicts the rating that a user will give to an item, derived from the ratings of other items given by other users. Such CF schemes utilise either user neighbourhoods (i.e. user-based CF) or item neighbourhoods (i.e. item-based CF). Lemire and MacLachlan [1] proposed three related schemes for an item-based CF with predictors of the form f(x) = x+b, hence the name "slope one". Slope One predictors have been shown to be accurate on large datasets. They also have several other desirable properties such as being updatable on the fly, efficient to compute, and work even with sparse input. In this paper, we present a privacy-preserving item-based CF scheme through the use of an additively homomorphic public-key cryptosystem on the weighted Slope One predictor; and show its applicability on both horizontal and vertical partitions. We present an evaluation of our proposed scheme in terms of communication and computation complexity.


The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a very low level at the end of 2016, raising the question of whether the labor market has become too tight. After applying a new method to adjust for demographic changes in the labor force, the current unemployment rate is still 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point higher than at past labor market peaks. This indicates that the labor market may not be quite as tight as the headline unemployment rate suggests.


The nano-TiO2 powders with the average particle size of about 40nm were used as starting materials. The compacted powders were firstly performed in Spark-plasma-sintering (SPS) at a high temperature and then sintered in air for hours at a relatively low temperature. The obtained samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed an obvious reduction in grain size was achieved by taking advantage of modified two step sintering (MTSS). The value of the relative grain growth d/do for the samples prepared by MTSS was less than 3.


Recent methods for imitation learning directly learn a Q -function using an implicit reward formulation rather than an explicit reward function. However, these meth-ods generally require implicit reward regularization to improve stability and often mistreat absorbing states. Previous works show that a squared norm regularization on the implicit reward function is effective, but do not provide a theoretical analysis of the resulting properties of the algorithms. In this work, we show that using this regularizer under a mixture distribution of the policy and the expert provides a particularly illuminating perspective: the original objective can be understood as squared Bellman error minimization, and the corresponding optimization problem minimizes a bounded χ 2 -Divergence between the expert and the mixture distribution. This perspective allows us to address instabilities and properly treat absorbing states. We show that our method, Least Squares Inverse Q-Learning (LS-IQ), outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms, particularly in environments with absorbing states. Finally, we propose to use an inverse dynamics model to learn from observations only. Using this approach, we retain performance in settings where no expert actions are available.


One noteworthy feature of the political crisis in Indonesia, which followed the Asian financial crisis of 1997 was the speed with which the collapse of the Suharto government was subsumed by a wider crisis of the Indonesian nation-state. One aspect of this crisis is the strengthening of secessionist movements in several regions of Indonesia, calling into question the country's national boundaries, themselves a legacy of the Dutch colonial era. This article examines the tensions in the nation-building efforts of the Indonesian state by focusing on the three territories where secessionist movements have been strongest: East Timor, which has already successfully broken away from Indonesia, and Irian Jaya and Aceh, where long-standing secessionist movements experienced significant growth in the aftermath of the resignation of President Suharto on 21 May 1998. Our analysis emphasises that these secessionist movements arose in direct response to the ways in which the Indonesian state, especially during the Suharto period, went about the tasks of nation-building. In particular, each movement was to a large degree fuelled by brutal and indiscriminate state violence. At the same time, each has been greatly affected by global trends of decolonisation, the Cold War and its aftermath. The distinct timing and manner of each territory's incorporation into the Indonesian nation-state has had a profound influence on the character of, and appeals made by, each movement, as well as on their prospects for gaining support from the wider international system.


Inspiration from natural designs offers opportunities to develop novel functional materials having unique properties. An active area of research in this field is the construction of anisotropic nanostructured surfaces, which exhibit direction dependent wetting behavior. Here, we demonstrated the effects of surface chemistry and morphology on the directional wetting phenomenon. The nanofilms having directionality were fabricated at varying tilt angles (β) via oblique angle deposition (OAD) technique. The chemical modifications of engineered nanofilms were then carried out by using thiol molecules having different end groups (i.e., –CF3, –CH3, and –phenyl). We found that surface morphology and chemistry are extremely important parameters in the control of directional wetting. By this way, it was possible to manipulate the movement of a water droplet on the nanostructured surfaces. Such a control would have a great impact for several technological applications involving catalysis, tissue engineering, and biosensors.


To efficiently model fluid-thermal-structural problems for thermal protection design of hypersonic vehicles, a framework of Hypersonic Computational Coupling Dynamics (HyCCD) software integrates an independently developed program solving hypersonic aerthermodynamic simulation with a finite element analysis professional software. With the mathematical and physical description of multi-physics coupling mechanism, the corresponding efficient coupling strategies were proposed. Some representative coupling problems encountered in hypersonic vehicle were systematically analyzed to study the intrinsic fluid-thermal-structural coupling characteristics and mechanisms. The results can theoretically and technically support the studies on comprehensive performance assessment and optimization of thermal protection system and static or dynamic aerothermoelastic problem of hypersonic vehicles.


Information of legitimacy of oil palm progenies is important to guaranty the quality and to control commercial seeds procedures. A true and legitimate cross will produce progeny which has a combination of their parent's allele. The information could be obtained early in the nursery stage through DNA fingerprinting analysis. Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) is one of DNA markers used for DNA fingerprinting, since the marker system has advantages to acquire information of allele per individual in population and efficiency diverse allele of progeny and their parents. The aim of the research is to obtain legitimacy of 12 progenies analyzing in the oil palm nursery stage. Thirteen SSR markers were used to analyze 12 crossings number of oil palm. The genotypes data by alleles of SSR inferred and quantified using Gene Marker® Software version 2.4.0 Soft Genetics® LLC and analyzed based on Mendel's Law of Segregation. The result showed based on heredity pattern of progeny and their parent's allele that progenies H were indicated genetically derived from their known parents while progenies from A and G indicated as illegitimate crossing. Probability value for legitimacy of progenies of 9 other crosses has 0.031 and 0.5. Legitimacy analysis of progeny using SSR markers could be used to control the quality of crossing material and earlier selection in the oil palm nursery.


What does it mean to 'know' God today? Philosopher and Christian leader, Dallas Willard takes the reader on an intellectual journey showing how our culture has downgraded 'spiritual knowledge' to something less than real, making many believers begin to doubt their faith or opt out of the culture altogether. Willard corrects this trend by explaining the case for seeing what the Bible teaches as 'true knowledge' and so provides a basis for how Christians can most effectively engage their cultures. Here Willard tackles the roles of science, reason, and faith in the Christian life and how believers should engage the church, work, and the entertainment culture we live in. In the end, much of what Jesus taught us is a new way to think and act; here Willard updates Jesus' message for our day and age.


. Placed at the center of the Mediterranean, the Apennines chains provide a critical water supply for people living in the Italian Peninsula. Yet, the quantification of water resources in this region is challenging given that the different components of the water cycles (i.e., snowmelt, evapotranspiration, and subsurface water recharge) are highly variable in space and time due to the specificity of the climate, the reforestation trend, and the complex landscapes and geology. In this study, we investigated the 5 challenging hydrological river regime of a complex carbonate basin with significant external (and partially karst) groundwater contribution – the Upper Nera basin – affected by recent important seismic sequences. When dealing with such type of basins, the generic approach to delineate the basin boundaries based on the geomorphology of the area can lead to questionable results potentially yielding significant water budget imbalances. Therefore, both (hy-dro)geological and hydrological features have to be considered for understanding the challenging hydrological behavior of 10 these basins. Here we proposed a specific analysis of precipitation-runoff time series corroborated with hydro-geological survey to obtain information on the basin response time and the real contribution area of the basin. Then, we integrated this information within the structure of a hydrological model (i.e., the Geoframe modelling system) by using a parsimonious type of approach to im-prove the description of the different components of the water balance with a specific focus on external groundwater recharge. 15 We validated the model against in situ discharge observations and with remote sensing information of evapotranspiration and snow. Since these two variables (snow cover and evapotranspiration) play the crucial role in correct estimation of water balance in the basin, in this study we additionally focused on that. We show that the model (tested with several hydrological signatures and a new conceptual evaluation based on an empirical probability function) performs relatively well in reproducing the different water balance components (including remotely 20 sensed evapotranspiration and snow) and that the upper river basin is significantly impacted by carbonate rock river discharge (i.e., up to 85% in proportion to the total discharge for some stations) coming from outside the geomorphological boundary of the basin. Yet, the groundwater recharge effects on the river, gradually attenuates at the outlet of the basin (Visso station). simulated are simulation GEOframe. and the GEOframe most found https://geoframe.blogspot.com/2021/12/geoframe-winter-school-2022-gws2022.html. The Sentinel-1 snow depth retrievals are available online at https://ees.kuleuven.be/project/c-snow.


This paper reports on a corpus-based investigation of conventionalized English similes which follow the pattern (as) ADJECTIVE as NOUN GROUP. It begins by describing their formal and semantic characteristics, and then discusses issues of variation, approaches to handling variation, and procedures for establishing the simile lexicon. It reports on the frequencies observed in the Bank of English for as-similes, including their distribution in British English, and compares these to frequencies observed in other corpora. Finally, it speculates on how conventionalized as-similes survive in the lexicon, in spite of their apparent infrequency in (corpus) text; sets out a characterization of as-similes; and suggests some implications for phraseological studies in general.


The shift-and-invert Arnoldi method is a most effective approach to compute a few eigenpairs of a large non-Hermitian Toeplitz matrix pencil, where the Gohberg- Semencul formula can be used to obtain the Toeplitz inverse. However, two large non- Hermitian Toeplitz systems must be solved in the first step of this method, and the cost becomes prohibitive if the desired accuracy for this step is high — especially for some ill-conditioned problems. To overcome this difficulty, we establish a relationship be- tween the errors in solving these systems and the residual of the Toeplitz eigenproblem. We consequently present a practical stopping criterion for their numerical solution, and propose an inexact shift-and-invert Arnoldi algorithm for the generalised Toeplitz eigen- problem. Numerical experiments illustrate our theoretical results and demonstrate the efficiency of the new algorithm. AMS subject classifications: 65F15, 65F10


Soil, made up of countless interacting grains is a perfect example of granular materials. When soil is sheared, the flow is confined to narrow regions called flowing zones. In this thesis, DEM simulations are used to study the flowing zones induced by the geometry called the splitbottom geometry, with an aim to link the microscopic properties to the macroscopic bulk behavior. To begin with, we study the pairwise collisions between two cohesive particles. A contact model, which takes all essential effects into account is introduced. With increasing impact velocity, a stickreboundstickrebound behavior is observed. First sticking originates from the shortrange noncontact attractive forces, while the second appears due to the plasticity induced cohesion and dissipation. To study the effect of particle properties on the bulk behavior, first focus is the contact friction. Both the shear resistance and deviatoric fabric first increase and then saturate with increasing friction, while contact number density decreases. Increasing friction increases heterogeneity in spatial distribution of both the normal and tangential forces. Next, cohesion is introduced. To determine the intensity of cohesive forces, a nondimensional parameter, Bond number Bo which compares attractive forces to external compression forces is defined. Bo captures the crossover from essentially noncohesive freeflowing granular assemblies Bo 1. As next step, the effect of particle softness and gravity are studied. In literature, bulk behavior has been assumed to be independent of both. However our analysis, shows that the shear resistance of the material decreases systematically with increase in either. While, the shear resistance can be described as a unique power law, when analyzed against a nondimensional number, which is ratio of time scales related to both. Structural anisotropy shows similar behavior, leading to an interesting interpretation that shear resistance accompanies anisotropy in the contact network. Finally, we look at the rheology of granular flows. Both local shear resistance and structural anisotropy increase with increasing strain rate. This shows that the shear resistance increases with strain rate mainly due to an increase in structural anisotropy, which indicates that the mesoscopic contact network dominates the behavior even for fast flows.


Recently, an optimal Prior-knowledge method for DOA estimation has been proposed. This method solely estimates a subset of DOA's accounting known ones. The global idea is to maximize the orthogonality between an estimated signal subspace and noise subspace by constraining the orthogonal noise-made projector to only project onto the desired unknown signal subspace. As it could be surprising, no deflation process is used for. Understanding how it is made possible needs to derive the variance for the DOA estimates. During the derivation, oblique projection operators and their first order derivatives appear and are needed. Those operators show in consequence how the optimal Prior-knowledge criterion can focus only on DOA's of interest and how the optimality is reached.


The article discusses the legal treatment of honour crimes in Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. It examines the judicial context in Kurdistan Region, focussing on the criminal justice system and law implementation mechanisms in relation to honour-based violence in general and honour killings in particular. The article draws on several years' research into honour crimes in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, including an investigation into honour-based violence led by the University of Bristol between 2008–2010. The research involved 131 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders addressing honour crimes, including legal professionals, MPs, prosecutors, police officers, victims, women's rights activists, government officials and members of national and international agencies, including UNAMI and UNDP.The article will look at different sets of legal remedies for honour crimes along with the attempts and the challenges involved in establishing justice for women in the region torn by years of war, internal conflicts and the rise of radical ideologies in the form of political Islam.


Many surfactant-based formulations are utilised in industry as they produce desirable visco-elastic properties at low-concentrations. These properties are due to the presence of worm-like micelles (WLM) and, as a result, understanding the processes that lead to WLM formation is of significant interest. Various experimental techniques have been applied with some success to this problem but can encounter issues probing key microscopic characteristics or the specific regimes of interest. The complementary use of computer simulations could provide an alternate route to accessing their structural and dynamic behaviour. However, few computational methods exist for measuring key characteristics of WLMs formed in particle simulations. Further, their mathematical formulation are challenged by WLMs with sharp curvature profiles or density fluctuations along the backbone. Here we present a new topological algorithm for identifying and characterising WLMs micelles in particle simulations which has desirable mathematical properties that address short-comings in previous techniques. We apply the algorithm to the case of Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micelles to demonstrate how it can be used to construct a comprehensive topological characterisation of the observed structures.


Ti/IrOx–TiO2/IrO2 and Ti/IrO2–Ta2O5 electrodes were prepared using thermal decomposition procedure, respectively. The microstructure and electrochemical properties of the electrodes were studied with scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), potentiodynamic polarization and accelerated life test. Experimental results showed that the Ti/IrOx–TiO2/IrO2 electrode has better electrocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution and higher stability, compared with the Ti/IrO2–Ta2O5 electrode under the same conditions. The high electrocatalytic activity of Ti/IrOx–TiO2/IrO2 electrode could be correlated with a large number of IrO2 particles on coating surface. The Ti/IrOx–TiO2/IrO2 electrode exhibits a three times longer service life than that of Ti/IrO2–Ta2O5, its superior stability was attributed to the IrOx–TiO2 interlayer, which contributes to form a metastable solid solution between IrOx and thin titanium oxide layer on titanium substrate during calcination and the improvement of the bonding of IrO2 layer with the substrate.


OBJECTIVEMedical students applying for neurosurgery residency positions almost all aspire to become academic neurosurgeons. However, most graduates of neurosurgery residency programs ultimately follow careers in private practice. We hypothesized that there might be factors in a resident's application, interviews, or performance during residency that might predict this change in career orientation. METHODSWe retrospectively reviewed the applications, interview evaluations, and residency performance reviews of graduates from the Neurological Surgery program at the University of California, San Francisco and examined factors that might correlate with their career choices. RESULTSBetween 1968 and 2003, 69 neurosurgical residents graduated from the residency program. Of the 54 respondents (78%), 25 (46%) held academic positions and 29 (54%) were in private practice. None of the application data correlated with career choice, and no significant differences in interview scores were observed between academic and private practitioners. Board scores, publications, presentations, and awards received during residency were not predictive of practice orientation. Favorable evaluations during the junior (P = 0.04) and chief residency (P = 0.03) years and pursuit of a subspecialty fellowship (P = 0.006) were predictive. CONCLUSIONHonest discussion between residents and faculty about the choice between academic and private practice careers may be as informative as the three identified predictors of residents' career orientation. Academic faculty members can encourage communication by discouraging the perception that a resident's education might be compromised if he or she expresses interest in private practice rather than academic neurosurgery. Open communication on this issue might enable faculty mentors to actively advise residents in their career decisions and improve the residents' educational environment.


Recently, there has been growing interest in multi-speaker speech recognition, where the utterances of multiple speakers are recognized from their mixture. Promising techniques have been proposed for this task, but earlier works have required additional training data such as isolated source signals or senone alignments for effective learning. In this paper, we propose a new sequence-to-sequence framework to directly decode multiple label sequences from a single speech sequence by unifying source separation and speech recognition functions in an end-to-end manner. We further propose a new objective function to improve the contrast between the hidden vectors to avoid generating similar hypotheses. Experimental results show that the model is directly able to learn a mapping from a speech mixture to multiple label sequences, achieving 83.1% relative improvement compared to a model trained without the proposed objective. Interestingly, the results are comparable to those produced by previous end-to-end works featuring explicit separation and recognition modules.


Methane hydrates have been recovered or postulated for virtually all continental margins around the world and a few areas onshore. Volumes of about 2 × 10 14 m 3 have been estimated for this potential resource. However, only a few sites have been suggested offshore northwest Europe, despite extensive hydrocarbon exploration and academic studies of the margin. Reasons for this anomaly are unclear. To aid the search a new hydrate stability zone map for the UK is presented. As well as identifying a resource, hydrate studies are also important in assessing geohazards to deep-water exploration and development. Stability, processes and distribution information contribute to the wider climate change debate as methane hydrates are estimated to hold a significant part of the global organic carbon budget. To quantify reserve potential and to identify suitable methods of methane extraction, a full understanding of how hydrates are held within sediments is required. Although modelling (physical and theoretical) can contribute to an understanding, it is important to evaluate in situ conditions to 'ground truth' acoustic data and imagery. How hydrate is held and its control of dynamic geotechnical behaviour within the sedimentary system is still very poorly understood. Parameters such as pore size, fluid saturations, sediment mineralogy and cementation will affect hydrate morphology, distribution, behaviour (during dissociation) and potential recovery from porous media. Assessing physical parameters and processes under in situ conditions provides the next step along the route to exploiting methane hydrates as a resource. The requirement to recover samples under in situ pressures and temperature conditions provides a significant technological challenge that has been attempted over the last few years with some success. Currently, the European HYACINTH project is developing systems to recover, analyse and manipulate hydrate-bearing sediments under in situ pressures and temperatures. On Leg 204 of ODP this equipment was used for the first time to recover hydrate cores at in situ pressure, transfer them without loss of pressure into laboratory chambers and to log them geophysically. As the database of in situ properties grows, integrated laboratory studies of synthetic sediment-hosted hydrates can be developed to provide important benchmarking, which is crucial for the study of rare natural core samples.


In this paper, we investigate the secrecy performance of an energy harvesting relay network, where a legitimate source communicates with a legitimate destination via the assistance of multiple trusted relays. In the considered system, the source and relays deploy the time-switching based radio frequency energy harvesting technique to harvest energy from a multi-antenna beacon. Different antenna selection and relay selection schemes are applied to enhance the security of the system. Specifically, two relay selection schemes based on the partial and full knowledge of channel state information are proposed. The exact closed-form expressions of the systems secrecy outage probability in these schemes are derived. A Monte-Carlo based simulation validates our analysis results.


BACKGROUND/AIM
The aim of this study is to research whether urinary symptoms and disruption of quality of life observed in Parkinson disease patients are different than those of their healthy peers. Additionally, whether these complaints were affected by characteristics such as age at onset of Parkinson disease, sex, disease duration, and severity was investigated.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study comprised a total of 79 individuals, 39 Parkinson patients and a control group of 40 individuals. Parkinson diagnosis was provided by a neurology expert according to the UK Parkinson's Disease Society Brain Bank Criteria. All patients were evaluated by a urologist with the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) and an overactive bladder (OAB) questionnaire.

RESULTS
Compared with the control group, the Parkinson patient group had statistically significantly higher rates of urological complaints (P < 0.001), irritative symptoms (P < 0.001), voiding symptoms (P < 0.001), OAB score (P < 0.001), IPSS total score (P = 0.007), and treatment requirements (P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION
Urologic complaints were observed more frequently in the Parkinson patient group compared to the control group. Another important result of this study is that in the Parkinson patient group there was no difference found between urologic complaints in terms of sex.


Hypertension is a leading risk factor for death and dependency after ischaemic stroke. However, administering anti-hypertensive medications post-stroke remains contentious with concerns regarding deleterious effects on cerebral blood flow and infarct expansion. This study sought to determine the effect of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) treatment in both lissencephalic and gyrencephalic pre-clinical stroke models. Merino sheep underwent middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) followed by GTN or control patch administration (0.2 mg/h). Monitoring of numerous physiologically relevant measures over 24 h showed that GTN administration was associated with decreased intracranial pressure, infarct volume, cerebral oedema and midline shift compared to vehicle treatment (p < 0.05). No significant changes in blood pressure or cerebral perfusion pressure were observed. Using optical imaging spectroscopy and laser speckle imaging, the effect of varying doses of GTN (0.69–50 µg/h) on cerebral blood flow and tissue oxygenation was examined in mice. No consistent effect was found. Additional mice undergoing MCAO followed by GTN administration (doses varying from 0–60 µg/h) also showed no improvement in infarct volume or neurological score within 24 h post-stroke. GTN administration significantly improved numerous stroke-related physiological outcomes in sheep but was ineffective in mice. This suggests that, whilst GTN administration could potentially benefit patients, further research into mechanisms of action are required.


There is growing interest from ecological experts to create qualitative models of phenomena for which numerical information is sparse or missing. We present a number of successful models in the field of environmental science, namely, the domain of global warming. The motivation behind the effort is to enrich the DynaLearn interactive learning environment model repository. We first model two of the negative feedback factors (snow and ice albedo and cooling aerosols), then two of the positive feedback ones (water vapor and warming aerosols). We then combine the two mechanisms in a larger model (low and high clouds), proving the possibility of extracting general mechanisms that can be reapplied to other systems sharing similar characteristics. Two field experts have evaluated the results.


In 1975 Theodore W. Schultz suggested that the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create "disequilibria." In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to shocks becomes most valuable. In the case of negative shocks, government policies that mitigate the impact of the shock will also limit the returns to the skills of managing risk or adapting resources to changing market forces. In the case of positive shocks, government policies may restrict access to credit, labor, or financial markets in ways that limit reallocation of resources toward newly emerging profitable sectors. This article tests the hypothesis that the returns to skills are highest in countries that allow individuals to respond to shocks. Using estimated returns to schooling and work experience from 122 household surveys in 86 developing countries, the article demonstrates a strong positive correlation between the returns to human capital and economic freedom, an effect that is observed throughout the wage distribution. Economic freedom benefits those workers who have attained the most schooling as well as those who have accumulated the most work experience.


ABSTRACT Lychagin, M.Yu.; Tkachenko, A.N.; Kasimov, N.S., and Kroonenberg, S.B., 2015. Heavy metals in the water, plants, and bottom sediments of the Volga River mouth area. Deltaic landscapes occupy a special place in environmental geochemical studies of water bodies. Their ecotone position at the land–sea boundary determines the biological richness of the deltaic ecosystems and creates a unique variety of landscape–geochemical conditions. The Volga River delta is one of the largest in the world. It serves as a geochemical "focus" that reflects the character of fluxes of substances of natural and anthropogenic origin in the entire system of the Volga basin. This paper presents the results of long-term environmental geochemical research of aquatic landscapes in the mouth area of the Volga River. The study has shown the high spatial and temporal variability of the chemical element migration in the area due to the influence of hydrodynamic conditions, variations in water and sediment discharge, and local features of the aquatic systems that determine their geochemical identity. The environmental geochemical conditions of the Volga delta are still relatively safe, especially compared with many other estuaries of the major rivers. Contamination of aquatic systems is manifested mainly in excess of heavy metals (Cu, Pb, and Cd) in suspended matter over the global background values, most notably in the flood period. The content of heavy metals in the water and sediments during the most recent decades remains low; pollution of the bottom sediments is largely insignificant and local.


Background : Tumor cells need food and oxygen supply for growth and division. Therefore one of the most promising areas of cancer therapy focuses on using agents that inhibit tumor angiogenesis. Inhibition of angiogenesis prevents cell growth, division and metastasis. Previous studies showed that plasminogen related Protein- B has an anti-tumor activity in mice. This protein has a high level of homology with preactivation Peptide (PAP) of human plasminogen. According to this high homology, antiangiogeneic activity of PAP was investigated in an in vitro angiogenesis model. Methods : PAP encoding region of human plasminogen gene was isolated by Polymerase Chain Reaction and cloned in p GEX-2T vector. This plasmid was expressed in Escherichia coli as a fusion protein (GST-PAP). GST-PAP was expressed as inclusion body and purified by affinity chromatography on GSH -sepharose resin after refolding. antiangiogenic effects of purified protein were surveyed with Matrigel assay . Results : The GST-PAP was expressed and purified and its accuracy was confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis and immunoblotting. Microscopic studies showed that GST-PAP inhibited angiogenesis in Matrigel system which is shown by shrinking the length of capillary like structures and a decrease in the number of tubule. While applying concentarations of 25 μ g/ml of GST-PAP and concentrations above that, antiangiogenic activity of GST-PAP was significant comparing to the controls. Conclusion : Finding shows that GST-PAP can inhibit network formation in Matrigel system. This findings support the theory that PAP is a potent angiogenesis inhibitor. Abstract


Summary Published isotopic ages, together with new determinations on sixteen intrusions, show that the majority of the Newer Granites were emplaced 400 ± 10 million years ago. Potassium-argon ages reveal a peak in the Moine rocks at about 420 to 430 million years and a somewhat earlier peak in the Dalradian. Although the majority of the Newer Granites were therefore emplaced in country rocks which had already become closed systems to radiogenic argon, several important exceptions to this rule have been recognized and present results indicate that some intrusions yield potassium-argon ages concordant with those of their country rocks. It is suggested that variations in intrusive style of the granitic masses may be related to their age and hence to the temperature of their country rocks and depth of cover.


The aim of this work is to investigate the sound produced by a Helmholtz resonator excited by a boundary layer. A deep cylindrical cavity with a small rectangular opening was designed to allow Helmholtz resonance as well as longitudinal and azimuthal acoustic modes within the cavity to be excited by varying the wind tunnel flow speed. Experiments performed show how lock-on between each of these three acoustic resonances and the shear layer hydrodynamic modes can been generated. The pressure measured by means of a microphone flush mounted with the internal surface of the cavity wall is used to phase-average the planar Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) data in the shear layer region. The acoustic energy generated is calculated by applying the vortex sound theory developed by Powell and modified by Howe for its application to wall bounded flows. Practically, this can be achieved by extracting the flow velocity and vorticity the from the PIV data and by computing numerically the acoustic particle velocity field. The acoustic sources are localised in space and quantified over an acoustic period providing insight into the sound production of flow-excited cylindrical cavities.


The main objective of the present work was to study the factors affecting the deployment of knowledge management in Agriculture Bank of Qom Province. It was a causative- relational study in terms of data collection. Also, it was a field study, non-experimental in terms of variables control. Sample size was estimated by Morgan table and the data were collected by a questionnaire. The statistical population included manager, experts and assistants of Agriculture Bank in Qom Province including 250 people. Sample size was calculated (n = 152) by Morgan table. The reliability was estimated by a pretest with 20 questionnaires filled out by a statistical population similar the studied one. The validity was confirmed by experts whose advice was taken care of about modifying or replacing some questions. Finally, Cronbach's alpha was estimated for the questionnaire to be 0.81. To achieve research objectives, the descriptive statistics of frequency, mean, variance, and standard deviation and the inferential tests of correlation and multiple regressions were conducted by SPSS Statistical Software Package. Results revealed the significant relationship of knowledge management deployment with organization culture, knowledge sources, organization memory, and information technology at the one percent level with modified determination coefficient of 0.632. In other words, 63.2% of the variation of the dependent variable was accounted by independent variables (organization culture, knowledge sources, organization memory, and information technology)


Abstract Social distrust of AI stems in part from incomplete and faulty data sources, inappropriate redeployment of data, and frequently exposed errors that reflect and amplify existing social cleavages and failures, such as racial and gender biases. Other sources of distrust include the lack of "ground truth" against which to measure the results of learned algorithms, divergence of interests between those affected and those designing the tools, invasion of individual privacy, and the inapplicability of measures such as transparency and participation that build trust in other institutions. Needed steps to increase trust in AI systems include involvement of broader and diverse stakeholders in decisions around selection of uses, data, and predictors; investment in methods of recourse for errors and bias commensurate with the risks of errors and bias; and regulation prompting competition for trust.


Large-scale software development requires coordination within and between very large engineering teams, each of which may be located in different locations and time zones. Numerous studies, and indeed, a whole conference (ICGSE), are dedicated to discovering the causes of problems with distributed development in the software industry. Microsoft has long had product teams too large to be considered co-located, even when sitting in neighboring buildings on the same campus. Recently, it has been expanding its engineering workforce into India and China, and our research is showing that Microsoft is encountering many of the coordination problems that go along with differences of location, time zone, and culture. As we go forward, our research has been changing from learning about the problem to experimenting with solutions. What are the best practices for improving coordination? Can they be applied to all software teams? How does one move past simple readings of research results towards effective intervention?


The absence of continuous, age progressive volcanic hotspot chains in the central Pacific has been reason for an ongoing discussion about the existence of mantle plumes. Plate reconstruction models of Wessel and Kroenke (2008) are based on a fixed hotspot frame and interpolate between the missing parts of recent hotspot trails, such as the Society Island Hotspot, Pitcairn Hotspot or Tahiti Hotspot. In this interpolated region, all of these trails cross the Manihiki Plateau between 54-42 Ma and 25-12 Ma and therefore make it possible to study hotspot volcanism.
The Manihiki Plateau is a Large Igneous Province (LIP), which formed during the Early Cretaceous (~125Ma) together with the Ontong Java and Hikurangi Plateaus (Taylor, 2006). The emplacement period is characterized by voluminous outpourings of lava and break-up related tectonism. It was followed by a volcanic and tectonic quiet period. During the Tertiary a reactivation occurred, which was restricted to the south-western part of the High Plateau. We present high resolution seismic reflection data, gathered during cruise So224 in 2012, to show in detail the relationship of tectonic and volcanic features in the sedimentary strata. We illuminate the questions: What is the spatial and temporal distribution shift of the reactivation? What are the causes? Was it triggered by hotspot volcanism or by internal strain?


Steel and concrete construction can still be regarded as two distinct industrial sectors leading to separated design procedures. Even steel-concrete composite buildings remain designed as steel structures, with a limited benefit of the presence of concrete slabs. For some years however, a more integrated design between both materials is investigated. It tries to combine them in order to take advantage from their respective qualities : the high resistance of the steel on one hand and the low cost and good fire resistance of the concrete on the other hand, for example. One of the advantages of the concrete is also the easiness in the fabrication of joints, thanks to the monolithic nature of the concrete cast in place, whereas the metallic joints by bolting or welding ask for more technical work, and represent a non-negligible part of the cost of a structure. It is therefore rather natural, in a hybrid concrete-steel conception, to try to use this advantage of the concrete. In this context, this article presents a work that was made in the RFCS SMARTCOCO project. It focuses on the design of the support of a steel secondary beam crossing a primary beam in concrete, by simple direct contact. On the basis of an experimental campaign comprising five full-scale tests, the angle of diffusion of the forces and the distribution of the stresses in the stirrups are studied and a specific strut-and-tie model is developed. Specimens of this campaign consist of a simply supported concrete beam crossed in its middle by a steel profile, with or without stiffeners, loaded by two jacks, one at each end of the steel profile. First the experimental campaign is described. Then, internal stresses are compared with the predictions of a strut and tie model deduced from elastic stress trajectories. Finally, simplified design guidance is deduced.


Achieving realistic, vivid, and human-like synthesized conversational gestures conditioned on multi-modal data is still an unsolved problem due to the lack of available datasets, models and standard evaluation metrics. To address this, we build Body-Expression-Audio-Text dataset, BEAT, which has i) 76 hours, high-quality, multi-modal data captured from 30 speakers talking with eight different emotions and in four different languages, ii) 32 millions frame-level emotion and semantic relevance annotations. Our statistical analysis on BEAT demonstrates the correlation of conversational gestures with facial expressions, emotions, and semantics, in addition to the known correlation with audio, text, and speaker identity. Based on this observation, we propose a baseline model, Cascaded Motion Network (CaMN), which consists of above six modalities modeled in a cascaded architecture for gesture synthesis. To evaluate the semantic relevancy, we introduce a metric, Semantic Relevance Gesture Recall (SRGR). Qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate metrics' validness, ground truth data quality, and baseline's state-of-the-art performance. To the best of our knowledge, BEAT is the largest motion capture dataset for investigating human gestures, which may contribute to a number of different research fields, including controllable gesture synthesis, cross-modality analysis, and emotional gesture recognition. The data, code and model are available on https://pantomatrix.github.io/BEAT/.


AbstractReflecting upon China's current path of regional urbanization, this research studies the polycentric structure of China's megaregions. It defines the concept and measurement for megaregional polycentricity and utilizes the spatial statistics tool—standard deviational ellipse of directional distribution—to measure the demographic spatial pattern of individual megaregions. The result reveals that most megaregions in China do not have significant polycentricity. They are either dominated by a single major center or by a number of major centers clustered closely. A challenge for China's megaregional development is to explore the potential policy instruments that can promote a more polycentric megaregional spatial pattern and more balanced spatial development.


Equity and neutrality are distinct concepts in housing taxation and weak and strong tenure neutrality should be distinguished. When a tax system is tested for those criteria, the taxes paid by landlords must be included, as they affect the rents renters pay. This paper defines appropriate tests, applies them to a stylised tax system and simulates tax changes designed to restore equity and/or neutrality. It shows how the homeowner's implicit income should be computed for taxes to be fundamentally tenure neutral or equitable or both. And it shows the key role played by the differential in producing housing services under owner-occupation and renting.


An analytical procedure using micro-Raman spectroscopy (MRS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was developed to elucidate both the chemical states and isotope ratios of individual micron-sized uranium particles. Each uranium particle was identified by scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive X-ray detection and transferred onto each specific location on a substrate by micro-manipulation. After optimization of the analytical conditions, the chemical states of each uranium particle were determined with MRS non-destructively. The substrate containing each particle was then introduced into a SIMS instrument and uranium isotope ratios of each particle were determined. The developed method is expected to be used for clarifying the origin and history of each particle in environmental samples.


Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence, modalities, and determinants of use of unconventional therapies among children with cancer receiving conventional treatment at an urban academic medical center in the United States. Patients and Methods We interviewed the parents of patients and/or patients who were receiving or had received conventional therapy for treatment of childhood cancer. Of 78 patients/parents asked, 75 consented to the interview, which included demographic factors, life events, and use of unconventional therapies. All participants also consented to the abstraction of chart data for this study. Results Overall, 84% of respondents reported the use of one or more unconventional therapies. The most commonly used modalities were changes in diet, nutritional and herbal agents, and mind/body treatments. Most users had tried more than one unconventional modality. No difference in use was seen by cancer diagnosis, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, or educational attainment of the respondent. Of the therapies used, 50% were not reported to the physicians. Of patients reporting use of an unconventional approach, 85% were concurrently enrolled on clinical trials for primary treatment of their cancer. Conclusions The use of unconventional therapies is highly prevalent among children with cancer and is not associated with demographic or clinical factors or participation in clinical trials. The possibility that an unconventional treatment may interact with a protocol treatment underscores the need for more information about the use of such therapies among all patients.


Prenatal cigarette smoke is an environmental stressor that has a profound effect on DNA methylation in the exposed offspring. We have previously shown that some of these effects persist throughout childhood and into adolescence. Of interest is whether these signals persist into adulthood. We conducted an analysis to investigate associations between reported maternal smoking in pregnancy and DNA methylation in peripheral blood of women in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) (n=754; mean age 30 years). We observed associations at 15 CpG sites in 11 gene regions, MYO1G, FRMD4A, CYP1A1, CNTNAP2, ARL4C, AHRR, TIFAB, MDM4, AX748264, DRD1, FTO (FDR < 5%). All but two of these CpG sites have previously been identified in relation to prenatal smoke exposure in the offspring at birth and the majority showed persistent hypermethylation among the offspring of smokers. We confirmed that most of these associations were not driven by own smoking and that they were still present 18 years later (N = 656; mean age 48 years). In addition, we replicated findings of a persistent methylation signal related to prenatal smoke exposure in peripheral blood among men in the ALSPAC cohort (N = 230; mean age 53 years). For both participant groups, there was a strong signal of association above that expected by chance at CpG sites previously associated with prenatal smoke exposure in newborns (Wilcoxon rank sum p-value < 2.2 × 10−4). Furthermore, we found that a prenatal smoking score, derived by combining methylation values at these CpG sites, could predict whether the mothers of the ALSPAC women smoked during pregnancy with an AUC 0.69 (95% 0.67, 0.73).


[1] Heat flow data near the San Andreas Fault (SAF) do not reveal a near-fault anomaly as expected from frictional heat generation, an observation interpreted to indicate that the fault slips at a depth-averaged shear stress <20 MPa. The data also contain large unexplained scatter, which has been a separate major issue in the analysis of heat flow within the California Coast Ranges. Here we use numerical models of heat conduction to evaluate the hypothesis that thermal refraction, due to contrasts in thermal conductivity in the subsurface, both produces the observed scatter in heat flow and as a result obscures the thermal signature from frictional heating on a fault that supports large shear stress during slip. Our study focuses on the region around the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) near Parkfield, California. Our results show that surface heat flow is most sensitive to the contrast between Tertiary sediments and basement rocks and to wavelengths of basement topography of ∼10 km. With realistic thermal conductivity contrasts and a reasonable interpretation of this geologic contact, we show that thermal refraction is a plausible explanation for the observed heat flow scatter. However, refraction effects are unable to mask frictional heat generation in a manner consistent with observations. We show that even with large refraction effects, low background heat flow, a regional NW–SE decrease in heat flow, or nonsteady state heat conduction, the data are most consistent with a fault that produces little to no frictional heat.


Facilities for travel are developing conveniently in recent years. A lot of people do not exercise sufficiently in daily life. As a result, the life-style related diseases like high blood pressure and obesity increase. A moderate exercise is very important to keep a healthy body for them but it is too difficult to know how to exercise moderately. Then, this paper shows the audio advising system and method to keep a moderate exercise with heart rate (HR). Additionally, a user is able to choose the exercise level from light exercise to heavy exercise.


Aim: It remains unclear whether spinal anesthesia is beneficial instead of general anesthesia in total hip arthroplasty (THA) performed via the direct anterior approach (DAA) in elderly patients. The aim of the present research was to investigate the safety and effectiveness of SA in elderly patients underwent DAA-THA.
Materials and Methods: We made a retrospective analysis of 166 elderly patients underwent DAA-THA between January 2018 and December 2021. Patients were divided into two groups: general anesthesia (group GA, n=88) and spinal anesthesia (group SA, n=78). We compared the two groups regarding to 90-day readmission rate, amount of bleeding, blood product transfusion, length of hospital stays (LOS), major adverse cardiac events (MACE), postoperative pulmonary complications (PPC), and intensive care unit (ICU) requirement. We also recorded the demographics and procedure data of the two groups.
Results: Ninety-day readmission rate, PPC, and ICU requirement in group SA were significantly lower than group GA (p<0.05). There was no statistical difference between the two groups in terms of amount of bleeding, blood product transfusion, MACE, and LOS.
Conclusion: Spinal anesthesia in elderly patients underwent DAA-THA may reduce 90-day readmission rate, PPC, and ICU requirement without increasing amount of bleeding, blood product transfusion, MACE, and LOS.


Gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is a condition characterized by the retrograde passage of the gastric contents into the esophagus and subsequently into the oral cavity. Dentists can frequently diagnose a systemic disease by analysing the oral cavity – especially GERD with a minimal expression of digestive symptoms. Typical oral manifestations in GERD are dental erosions, burning sensation, mucosal erythema of the palate and uvula, and bruxism. Late diagnosis and, implicitly, late treatment of GERD can lead to significant deterioration of the teeth and mastication system. The successful treatment of GERD requires a multidisciplinary approach involving gastroenterologists, ENT specialists and dentists.


Background: Many epidemiologic studies are using metabolomics to discover markers of carcinogenesis. However, limited data are available on the influence of pre-analytic blood collection factors on metabolite measurement. Methods: We quantified 166 metabolites in archived plasma from 423 Health Professionals Follow-up Study and Nurses' Health Study participants using liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS). We compared multivariable-adjusted geometric mean metabolite LC-MS peak areas across fasting time, season of blood collection, and time of day of blood collection categories. Results: The majority of metabolites (160 of 166 metabolites) had geometric mean peak areas that were within 15% comparing samples donated after fasting 9 to 12 versus ≥13 hours; greater differences were observed in samples donated after fasting ≤4 hours. Metabolite peak areas generally were similar across season of blood collection, although levels of certain metabolites (e.g., bile acids and purines/pyrimidines) tended to be different in the summer versus winter months. After adjusting for fasting status, geometric mean peak areas for bile acids and vitamins, but not other metabolites, differed by time of day of blood collection. Conclusion: Fasting, season of blood collection, and time of day of blood collection were not important sources of variability in measurements of most metabolites in our study. However, considering blood collection variables in the design or analysis of studies may be important for certain specific metabolites, particularly bile acids, purines/pyrimidines, and vitamins. Impact: These results may be useful for investigators formulating analysis plans for epidemiologic metabolomics studies, including determining which metabolites to a priori exclude from analyses. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 25(5); 823–9. ©2016 AACR.


Caries-like lesion formation around Class V preparations restored with fluoride-releasing sealant, glass ionomer and conventional sealant materials was evaluated with polarized light microscopy following lesion initiation and progression periods. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found among the three treatment groups for mean surface lesion depth following lesion initiation and progression and between the conventional sealant and fluoride-containing material groups for incremental increase in surface lesion depth following lesion progression. Surface lesion depths were significantly reduced in both the fluoride-releasing sealant and glass ionomer groups when compared with the conventional sealant group. The glass ionomer material provided the greatest degree of caries protection at the enamel-restorative interface and had the least number of wall lesions (7.5%); in contrast, the conventional sealant group had the greatest number of wall lesions (17.5%). The incorporation of fluoride from a dental material into adjacent tooth structure may provide enhanced resistance to caries initiation and progression.


The aim of this study was to determine the effect on non-specific defence mechanisms in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) fed diets containing different doses of b-glucan (MacroGard), Schizosaccharomyces pombe and S. pombe P450. Over a period of 3 weeks, fish were given 0.1% and 1% MacroGard, 0.1% and 1% S. pombe, 0.1% and 1 % S. pombe P450 in their food. Then phagocytosis, intracellular and extracellular respiratory burst activity, total protein, and specific growth ratio and condition factor values were determined. After feeding for 3 weeks with three different immunostimulants, extracellular and intracellular respiratory burst and phagocytic activity were significantly increased in the groups fed 1% MacroGard and 0.1% S. pombe P450 compared with the control group and the other experimental groups (P < 0.05). Respiratory burst activity was higher in all the experimental groups than in the control group. Phagocytic activity was elevated in all the experimental groups except that fed 0.1 % MacroGard (P < 0.05). Total protein levels were higher in all the experimental groups than in the control group, but the difference was not significant (P < 0.05). The results indicate that rainbow trout fed different doses of MacroGard, S. pombe and S. pombe P450 all showed increased intracellular and extracellular respiratory burst activity, and phagocytic activity. However, there was no effect on total protein. In conclusion, S. pombe P450 could confer the same non-specific immunity as MacroGard.


In order to research the bionic mechanics in unsteady flow and the hydrodynamic performance of the oscillating tail fin, in this paper, an experimental device imitating bionic tail fin were built, the design concepts and the rolling systems of the mechanical tail fins were demonstrated, including the procedures and correlated works on the selection of the servo motors, online control and signal data collecting and processing. The movements of the mechanical tail fin could be optimized by the comparisons of the propulsion efficiency, thrust coefficient, lateral force coefficient and torque coefficient at different conditions. Meanwhile, error analysis is carried out to correct the movement curves and obtain more precise experimental data and results.


It seems clear that one of the challenges of change to be faced by organisations in the 1990s will be that of dealing effectively with the impact of AIDS. According to Trebilcock (1989) the vast majority (90%) of those in the developed countries who will contract the HIV virus will be in employment. At present the US Centre for Disease Control estimates that one in 250 people in the US is infected with the HIV virus and that, in 1991, AIDS‐related illness cost US industry more than $50 billion (Brown 1991). This, according to Kohl et al (1990) may mean that there may be 1.5 million Americans infected with the virus, with an expectation of well over 300,000 'active' AIDS cases by 1993 (see also Ross and Middlebrook, 1990).


Since its establishment in the late 1980s, data warehousing and business intelligence have become an integral part of business information management in most organizations. Data warehousing and business intelligence speed up decision processes and provide timely, accurate, integrated information for tactical decision making. In contrast to computer science where performance and architectural issues dominate, the information systems discipline focuses on the organizational and economical aspects of data warehousing and business intelligence. The data warehousing process is comprised of sub-processes which are development oriented, operations oriented or use oriented. Due to the business-to-IT character of these processes, the information systems perspective on data warehousing and business intelligence combines contributions from management and from computer science.


The gradation of the asphalt mixture is the critical factor that affects the performance of the pavement. In order to test the gradation of the pavement core sample by using the image processing techniques, a line-scan camera based pavement core sample image acquisition system is built. The hardware of the system mainly contains the image acquisition part, core sample rotation platform and the lighting part and the parameter setting method of the line scan camera are also depict. The software of the system implemented by using the double buffering techniques and the ActiveMIL controls in the Visual Studio C# .NET integrated development environment. Finally, the laser diode is selected as the light source and the line period is set to 300 μs after the comparative analysis to the acquired images. The line-scan camera based pavement core sample image acquisition system could acquire high quality images of the asphalt mixture with low distortion, which is worthy trying in practice.


In this study, the effects of internet book piracy in the case of the Japanese comic book market were examined using direct measurement of product level piracy ratio and a massive deletion project as a natural experiment. Total effect of the piracy is negative to the legitimate sales, but panel regression and difference-in-difference analysis consistently indicated that the effect of piracy is heterogeneous: piracy decreased the legitimate sales of ongoing comics, whereas increased the legitimate sales of completed comics. The latter result is interpreted as follows: piracy reminds consumers of past comics and stimulates sales in that market.


Lipid droplets are dynamic subcellular organelles that participate in a range of physiological processes including metabolism, regulation and lipid storage. Their role in disease, such as cancer, where they are involved in metabolism and in chemoresistance, has emerged over recent years. Thus, the value of lipid droplets as diagnostic markers is increasingly apparent where number and size of droplets can be a useful prognostic. Although diverse in size, LDs are typically too small to be easily enumerated by conventional microscopy. The advent of super-resolution microscopy methods offers the prospect of detailed insights but there are currently no commercial STED probes suited to this task and STED, where this method has been used to study LDs it has relied on fixed samples. Here, we report a pyrene-based ceramide conjugate PyLa-C17Cer, that stains lipid droplets with exceptionally high precision in living cells and shows excellent performance in stimulated emission depletion microscopy. The parent compound PyLa comprises a pyrene carboxyl core appended with 3,4-dimethylaminophenyl. The resulting luminophore exhibits high fluorescent quantum yield, mega-Stokes shift and low cytotoxicity. From DFT calculations the Stokes shifted fluorescent state arises from a dimethylaminophenyl to pyrene charge-transfer transition. While the parent compound is cell permeable, it is relatively promiscuous, emitting from both protein and membranous structures within the living mammalian cell. However, on conjugation of C17 ceramide to the free carboxylic acid, the resulting PyLa-C17Cer, remains passively permeable to the cell membrane but targets lipid droplets within the cell through a temperature dependent mechanism, with high selectivity. Targeting was confirmed through colocalisation with the commercial lipid probe Nile Red. PyLa-C17Cer offers outstanding contrast of LDs both in fluorescence intensity and lifetime imaging due to its large Stokes shift and very weak emission from aqueous media. Moreover, because the compound is exceptionally photochemically stable with no detectable triplet emission under low temperature conditions, it can be used as an effective probe for fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). These versatile fluorophores are powerful multimodal probes for combined STED/FCS/lifetime studies of lipid droplets and domains in live cells.


This paper examines the consumption response to monthly paycheck receipt. Since the amount and arrival date of paychecks are known in advance, the receipt of a paycheck does not coincide with the receipt of new information. Under the basic rational expectations Life-Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis, household consumption should not respond to paycheck arrival. Using data from the United Kingdom's Family Expenditure Survey, this paper finds that household consumption is excessively sensitive to paycheck receipt. The results cannot be explained by any underlying monthly expenditure fluctuations common to all households. The presence of liquidity constraints as measured by wealth can account for the excess sensitivity results although the availability of credit cards cannot.


Summary The objective of this study was to isolate and identify novel potential probiotic Lactobacillus using a culture method and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification of the 16S rRNA gene. Seventeen Lactobacillus strains were isolated from a full honey comb of the honey bee Apis dorsata using selective media. The 16S rRNA genes from the extracted DNA of bacterial colonies were amplified with PCR using universal bacteria primers. All bacterial 16S rRNA genes were sequenced, aligned and the distant bacteria were deposited in GenBank. The lactobacilli strains were identified as Lactobacillus spp. related-sequences (64.15%) with other abundant sequences being related to Lactobacillus kunkeei (34.85%). The findings revealed that Apis dorsata honey comb has potential to be a source of new bacteria with probiotic activities in honey bee or as natural food preservatives for the food industry.


Acharya Sushruta was well aware about importance of vranashopha (stages of abscess formation), vrana (wound) and their management in surgical practice. The vranashopha is described as earlier phase of vrana. Sushruta has mentioned detail description of inflammatory swelling under the heading of vranashopha which has 3 progressive stages. These are amawastha (just early stage of inflammatory process), pachyamanawastha (true inflammatory stage) and pakwawastha (suppurative stage) respectively. Further acharya described six types of vranashopha as; vattika, paittika, kaphaja, shonita, sannipattaja, agantuja. He described their description according to color, consistency, pain and other symptoms. Acharya Sushruta perceived that the process of the pathogenesis has a definite sequential pattern, distributed over six occasions for treatment called shatkriyakala. Sixty procedures for management of vranashopha (inflammatory swellings) and vrana (abscess or wound) was told by Sushruta. Out of these first eleven from apatarpana to virechana were mentioned for vranashopha specially and rest of other forty eight procedures were truly for vrana only. It is very important to know all about vranashopha as treatment in this stage can prevent hazardous complications occur by infected wound.


Corruption is both a major cause and a result of poverty around the world. It occurs at all levels of society, from local and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions, large and small businesses, military and other services and so on. Corruption affects the poorest the most, whether in rich or poor nations. The issue of corruption is very much inter-related with other issues. At a global level, the "international" (Washington Consensus-influenced) economic system that has shaped the current form of globalization in the past decades requires further scrutiny for it has also created conditions whereby corruption can flourish and exacerbate the conditions of people around the world who already have little say about their own destiny. In this paper worldwide concept of corruption with reference to India, causes and anti corruption efforts has been highlighted.


Background and Aims: Existed studies about Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) were mainly aimed at certain patient populations and data came from China are quite limited. Our aim was to investigate whether PEG in South China is effective and to compare the indications and complications of PEG with those reported in the literature.
Materials and Methods: Patients underwent PEG procedure during the period from January 2000 to October 2014 in Nanfang Hospital were retrospectively collected and analysed. The patients' lymphocyte counts, leukocyte counts, serum albumin, hemoglobin, serum total protein, weight and BMI before and after PEG operation were reviewed as the main outcome measurement. Indications, complications and success rates of PEG procedure were also evaluated.
Results: A total of 84 patients (61 males, 23 females) were enrolled, with an average age of 55.01 ± 15.16 y (range 3.0-92 y). The overall success rate is about 98.8%. The most common indication for PEG in South China is head and neck cancer (27/84, 32.1%). Significant differences were observed in parameters such as lymphocyte counts, serum albumin, serum total protein, body weight, BMI before and after PEG operation.(1.29 vs. 1.76, p=0.005; 33.58 vs. 33.66, p=0.012; 62.82 vs. 67.29, p=0.018; 43.62 vs. 48.29, p=0.044; 16.24 vs. 18, p=0.030; respectively). The most common procedure-related complication was PEG tube removal (6/84, 7.14%), which were all well managed.
Conclusions: This is the first retrospective case series evaluating PEG procedure in South China. Our results indicate that PEG is an effective and safe method for long-term enteral nutrition.


Air gap breakdown voltage prediction by mathematical calculations instead of experiments has been a long sought goal in the area of high-voltage engineering. In this chapter, a prediction method is proposed based on the electric field features and support vector machine (SVM). Two sets of electric field features are defined on the shortest interelectrode path of sphere-sphere and rod (sphere)-plane gap to characterize their spatial structures, which can be extracted from the electric field calculation results by finite element method (FEM). A breakdown voltage prediction model is established by SVM, while the input parameters are the electric field features, and the output parameters are 1 and 1, respectively, characterizing withstanding and breakdown of an air gap under the applied voltage. The proposed method is used to predict the power frequency breakdown voltages of IEC standard sphere-sphere air gaps and the switching impulse discharge voltages of large sphere-plane air gaps. The prediction results coincide well with the experimental data, the mean absolute percentage error of the 260 spheresphere gaps is within 2% and that of the 16 sphere-plane gaps is 3.2%. The results preliminarily validate the validity and accuracy of the proposed method for air gap breakdown voltage prediction.


Abstract. We present the first forcing interpretation of the future
anthropogenic aerosol scenarios of CMIP6 with the simple plumes
parameterisation MACv2-SP. The nine scenarios for 2015 to 2100 are based on
anthropogenic aerosol emissions for use in CMIP6
(Riahi et al., 2017; Gidden et al., 2018). We use the emissions to scale the
observationally informed anthropogenic aerosol optical properties and the
associated effect on the cloud albedo of present-day
(Fiedler et al., 2017; Stevens et al., 2017) into the future. The resulting scenarios in
MACv2-SP are then ranked according to their strength in forcing magnitude and
spatial asymmetries for anthropogenic aerosol. All scenarios, except SSP3-70
and SSP4-60, show a decrease in anthropogenic aerosol by 2100 with a range
from 108 % to 36 % of the anthropogenic aerosol optical depth in 2015. We estimate
the radiative forcing of anthropogenic aerosol from high- and low-end
scenarios in the mid-2090s by performing ensembles of simulations with the
atmosphere-only configuration of MPI-ESM1.2. MACv2-SP translates the
CMIP6 emission scenarios for inducing anthropogenic aerosol forcing. With the
implementation in our model, we obtain forcing estimates for both the
shortwave instantaneous radiative forcing (RF) and the effective radiative forcing (ERF) of
anthropogenic aerosol relative to 1850. Here, ERF accounts for rapid
atmospheric adjustments and natural variability internal to the model. The
ERF of anthropogenic aerosol for the mid-2090s ranges from −0.15 W m−2
for SSP1-19 to −0.54 W m−2 for SSP3-70, i.e. the mid-2090s ERF is
30 %–108 % of the value in the mid-2000s due to differences in the emission
pathway alone. Assuming a stronger Twomey effect changes these ERFs to
−0.39 and −0.92 W m−2, respectively, which are similar to
estimates obtained from models with complex aerosol parameterisations. The
year-to-year standard deviations around 0.3 W m−2 associated with
natural variability highlight the necessity to average over sufficiently
long time periods for estimating ERF; this is in contrast to RF that is typically
well constrained after simulating just 1 year. The scenario interpretation
of MACv2-SP will be used within the framework of CMIP6 and other cutting-edge
scientific endeavours.


Tau is a developmentally regulated protein found in axons, whose physiological role is to stabilize and bundle microtubules (MTs). Hyper-phosphorylation of tau is thought to cause its detachment from MTs and subsequent aggregation into pathological fibrils that have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Despite its known MT binding role, there is no consensus regarding which tau residues are crucial for tau-MT interactions, where on the MT tau binds, and how binding results in MT stabilization. We have used cryo-EM to visualize the interaction of different tau constructs with MTs at high resolution (3.2-4.8 Å) and used computational approaches to generate atomic models of tau-tubulin interactions. Our work shows that the highly conserved tubulin-binding repeats within tau adopt very similar structures in their interactions with the MT. Each tau repeat binds the MT exterior and adopts an extended structure along the crest of the protofilament (PF), interacting with both α- and β-tubulin, thus stabilizing the interface between tubulin dimers. Our structures agree with and explain previous biochemical data concerning the effect of phosphorylation on MT affinity and lead to a model in which tau repeats bind in tandem along a PF, tethering together tubulin dimers and stabilizing longitudinal polymerization interfaces. These structural findings could establish a basis of future treatments aiming at the selective stabilization of tau-MT interactions.


PURPOSE
A phase II study was conducted to evaluate the activity and safety of topotecan in pediatric patients with recurrent Wilms' tumor.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients with favorable histology Wilms' tumor (FHWT) and recurrence after at least one salvage chemotherapy regimen or with anaplastic histology Wilms' tumor (AHWT) in first or subsequent recurrence were eligible. Patients were stratified according to histology, with statistical considerations based on the FHWT stratum. Topotecan was administered intravenously over 30 minutes for 5 days on 2 consecutive weeks. Treatment dosages were adjusted to achieve a target area under the curve (AUC) of 80 +/- 10 ng/mL*h. Tumor responses were measured after two cycles of treatment.

RESULTS
Thirty-seven patients (26 patients with FHWT) were enrolled and received a total of 94 cycles of topotecan (range, one to six cycles). The median topotecan dosage required to achieve the target AUC was 1.8 mg/m2 (range, 0.7 to 3.2 mg/m2). Of 25 assessable patients with FHWT, 12 had partial response (PR), six had stable disease (SD), and seven had progressive disease (PD), for an overall response rate of 48% (95% CI, 27.8% to 68.7%). Of 11 assessable patients with AHWT, two had PR, one had SD, and eight had PD. The main toxicities were grade 3 and 4 neutropenia (median duration, 13 days) and thrombocytopenia (median duration, 7.5 days).

CONCLUSION
Topotecan administered on a protracted schedule is active against recurrent FHWT. Inclusion of topotecan in front-line clinical trials for patients with recurrent Wilms' tumor should be considered.


Seismic hazard assessment of earthquake prone terrain is estimated in numerous ways for civil underground structures such as tunnels which receives little attention on the seismic zones of the country. The resemblance of the past behaviour of earthquake is seen in the present seismotectonic block, and this is considered for this study. With this, the magnitudes of future earthquakes and its effects are predicted with Matlab software. In order to emphasize the need for carrying out a detailed Seismic Hazard analysis in underground openings, a proposed communication (road) tunnel project located in Kashmir Himalayas (GPS coordinates of Latitude 32.20° to 37.20° N, Longitude 72.50° to 80.50° E) one of the highest seismic zones of the Country (zone-V, BIS-2002) was taken up and the results reported in the paper. The paper incidentally has brought to light the need for carrying out such detailed seismic analyses in a routine manner for underground structures to be constructed in the country particularly in higher seismic zones, besides adumbrating structural support measures required for the various ground classes in the proposed road tunnel at Kashmir in response to seismic loading and also recommending retrofitting for other structures already in existence. A spin off the study is expected to be in the area of refining seismic zonation of the country and micro-zonation studies that are slated for the future.


Air pollution is a high-risk factor in megacities' dwellers because of its effects on health. One of the most important components of the pollution is particulate matter (PM) on which metals are adhered. One element adhered to its surfaces is vanadium (V), and through this route, PM reaches the respiratory system, then the systemic circulation and the rest of the organs. Vanadium is released in the atmosphere as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels. Vanadium pentoxide is the com-pound liberated after the combustion and adhered into PM. Previous studies from our group have reported effects on diverse systems in a mouse model. Besides the morphological changes in the spleen and the decreased function of the immune humoral response, the thymus was also affected. Vanadium inhalation diminished thymic dendritic cells (DCs) and the biomarkers: CD11c and MHCII; in addition, thymic cytoarchitecture changed, demonstrated by cytokeratin-5, and also, modification in the expression of 3-nitrotyrosine was observed. Our findings suggest that autoreactive T cells could be released into the systemic circulation and favor the increase in autoimmune diseases in cities with high concentrations of PM.


AbstractThis article presents a study on set of PID parameters of blade pitch angle controller of wind turbine with fuzzy logic algorithm. Three individual control methods were used to control the wind turbine pitch angle. These control methods are conventional PI, fuzzy and fuzzy PID. With the use of these control methods, the system was protected from possible harms in high wind speed region and maintained changing of nominal output power. It was aimed to the control the wind turbine blade pitch angle in different wind speeds and to hold the output power stable in the set point by simulation of controllers with Matlab/Simulink Software. By evaluating the steady state time of output power received from the simulation results and steady state errors, the performances of the control systems have been measured and compared with one another. As a result of these simulation comparisons, it is clear that fuzzy PID controller performed better than PI and Fuzzy Controller.


Many social aphids form spectacular galls on their host plants, in which hundreds to thousands of aphids thrive for several months or even for over a year. Here, in addition to colony defense against natural enemies, waste disposal is an important task for the gall dwellers to sustain their social life. In open galls, soldier nymphs actively clean colony wastes such as honeydew droplets, cast-off skins, and cadavers by pushing them with their head out of the gall opening. In the gall, the excreted honeydew is coated with aphid-derived powdery wax to form "honeydew balls," which prevents the aphids from wetting and drowning with their own excretion. How the aphids deal with the accumulated honeydew in closed galls has been a mystery. Here, we report a novel gall-cleaning mechanism: the gall inner surface absorbs and removes the liquid waste through the plant vascular system. Such a plant-mediated water-absorbing property is commonly found in aphids forming closed galls, which must have evolved at least three times independently. By contrast, the inner surface of open galls is wax-coated and water-repelling, and in some cases, the inner surface is covered with dense trichomes, which further enhance the water repellency. In conclusion, gall-forming aphids induce novel plant phenotypes to manage the waste problems by manipulating plant morphogenesis and physiology for their own sake. This review describes our recent studies on waste management strategies by gall-forming social aphids and discusses future directions of this research topic.


This article looks into the current difficulties many UK paramedics face when trying to manage patients presenting with a mental health condition in a safe and respectful manner; particularly when the patient requires some form of treatment but refuses this against medical advice. By utilising a reflective format, the article explores some of the laws surrounding treatment without consent and how these may aid or hinder a paramedics' ability to provide good quality care to patients in these situations. Confusions surrounding said laws have been extracted from the case report and discussed in more generic terms in order to be more readily applicable to other similar cases. In doing so, the article attempts to provide a clearer format of understanding of the laws and management of these situations, both for the benefit of future patients and the emergency services alike.


. A greenhouse trial was used to evaluate 159 accessions of bottle gourd [ Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.] obtained from the U.S. National Plant Germplasm for tolerance to clomazone herbicide. Most accessions tested were moderately or severely injured by clomazone at 3.0 mg · kg L 1 incorporated into greenhouse potting medium; however, several exhibited lower injury. Seeds were produced from tolerant and susceptible plants for use in a greenhouse concentration–response experiment. About three to four times higher clomazone concentrations were required to cause moderate injury to tolerant bottle genotypes in comparison with susceptible genotypes. The differences in tolerance among genotypes were observed with injury ratings, chlorophyll measurements, and shoot weights. Clomazone may be used safely on tolerant bottle gourd genotypes, but the herbicide may not be safe for susceptible genotypes. Also, tolerant genotypes such as Grif 11942 may be desirable for use as rootstocks in grafted watermelon production.


Background: Different DNA targets have been introduced for detection of M. tuberculosis. Of these targets, IS 6110 has been used frequently. However, certain strains of M. tuberculosis , particularly those identified in Southeast Asia, lack this insertion sequence. Aims and objectives: Cytochrome P450 CYP141 has not been used as target for detection of M. tuberculosis . The aim of this study was to develop a new sensitive and specific PCR method for detection of M. tuberculosis directly from respiratory specimens. Method: The identification of M. tuberculosis isolates was confirmed using standard biochemical tests. Primer 3 plus software was used to design primers from CYP141. The expected size of the amplicon was 173 bp. We collected sputa from 247 suspected patients of different cities of Iran. Results: With the exception of M. tuberculosis complex, no amplification was obtained with DNA from other mycobacteria, potentially pathogenic bacteria in the respiratory tract and human cells. These results give evidence that CYP141 can be used as a target for direct detection of M. tuberculosis from respiratory specimens. The sensitivity of this target in smear positive- culture positive and smear negative-culture positive samples was 92% and 62.5%, respectively, and the specificity of the PCR was 97.8%. Discussion We obtained positive results with a trace amount of template DNA, as little as 1pg. Rv3121 or CYP141 exists in all M. tuberculosis isolates used in this study. The high overall specificity (97.8%) and sensitivity (85.7%) of this target in gene amplification illustrates that CYP141 can be a good target for detection of M. tuberculosis complex from sputum and possibly other clinical specimens.


Driving style evaluation by smartphones depends on the quality of the features extracted from sensors data. Typically, these features are extracted based on experiments, expertness, or heuristics. In more modern approaches, some automatic methods such as convolutional neural network (CNN) are used to extract features including obvious and hidden ones. We also used the CNN on acceleration data collected by smartphones to extract the knowledge regarding driving style, vehicle, environment, and human characteristics. We found that this novel idea was more successful for evaluating the driving style compared with the previous machine learning algorithms. However, we faced over-fitting in the training process of the CNN and to avoid this, we proposed the state-of-the-art learning method applying two adaptive regularization schemes called adaptive dropout and adaptive weight decay. To evaluate these techniques, first, we checked the results on three popular large-scale datasets. When we proved the efficiency, we utilized them on two transportation data sets. In transportation-modes dataset, the accuracy was at least 95.8%'; and regarding the driving-style dataset, the classification accuracy was 95%. Thus, the adaptive regularized CNN is an amazing option for driving style evaluation on smartphones.


In the last decades the ant checklists of most Central and Eastern European countries were updated, with the exception of Romania. The last Romanian checklist was published in 1978 and contained only 76 species. The present work lists all species mentioned in publications until 2006. Up to now, altogether 103 valid species were recorded in the Romanian fauna (102 outdoor species), besides these there are eleven species of uncertain occurrence in Romania and two names which cannot be assigned to existing valid species. The comparison of Romanian and other Central and Eastern European myrmecofaunas reveals that the Romanian fauna is insufficiently known and that a considerable number of species (mostly parasitic and Mediterranean) remains to be detected.


OBJECTIVES
To describe the attitudes about and experiences with cervical cancer, Pap smear screenings and the HPV vaccine among a sample of Inuit women from Nunavik, Quebec, Canada. We also evaluated demographic and social predictors of maternal interest in HPV vaccination.

STUDY DESIGN
A mixed method design was used with a cross-sectional survey and focus group interviews.

METHODS
Women were recruited through convenience sampling at 2 recruitment sites in Nunavik from March 2008 to June 2009. Differences in women's responses by age, education, and marital status were assessed. Unconditional logistic regression was used to determine predictors of women's interest in HPV vaccination for their children.

RESULTS
Questionnaires were completed by 175 women aged 18-63, and of these women a total of 6 women aged 31-55 participated in 2 focus groups. Almost half the survey participants had heard of cervical cancer. Women often reported feelings of embarrassment and pain during the Pap smear and older women were more likely to feel embarrassed than younger women. Only 27% of women had heard of the HPV vaccine, and 72% of these women were interested in vaccinating their child for HPV. No statistically significant predictors of maternal interest in HPV vaccination were found.

CONCLUSIONS
Our findings indicate that health service planners and providers in Nunavik should be aware of potential barriers to Pap smear attendance, especially in the older age groups. Given the low awareness of cervical cancer, the Pap smear and the HPV vaccine, education on cervical cancer and prevention strategies may be beneficial. 1Published 'ahead-of-print' 26 October 2011 (at www.ijch.fi ) in accordance with previous publisher's routines.


Calls for greater protection of national boundaries – both physical and ideological – and the politicising of immigration and citizenship are increasingly characteristic of the global geo-political landscape. Several signatory countries to the UNHCR refugee convention have sought to legislate higher levels of language proficiency for citizenship eligibility. Most recently, this has been attempted in Australia, reigniting controversy about the use of language testing to assess a potential citizen's 'worthiness'. In this paper, we identify contested conceptions of belonging and citizenship, manifested in mediatised debates around language proficiency and citizenship which emerged following the announcement of proposed changes to Australian citizenship rules. We use Graff's (1981) concept of the 'Literacy Myth' to analyze associations between language proficiency and 'morality' evident in Australian media articles, to explore the underpinning discourses of these proposals, and to probe the relationship between citizenship, belonging and language. We argue that these myths work discursively to frame language proficiency as a proxy measure of the morality of prospective citizens and their willingness to 'integrate' or 'assimilate' into resettlement contexts. Relatedly, these myths can be deployed to justify the denial of the possibility of belonging to those who do not possess the linguistic capital privileged by policy and media elites.