Abstract Ripgut brome is a difficult weed to manage in cereal crops of southern Australia because only a few herbicides can provide effective control in cereals. Knowledge of seed-dormancy mechanisms, germination ecology, and emergence behavior in the field could facilitate development of effective weed control programs for this weed species. Ripgut brome populations from cropping fields were found to possess much longer seed dormancy than that reported previously in the literature. Furthermore, some ripgut brome populations from cropping fields showed longer seed dormancy than those collected from adjacent noncropped fence lines. For example, all seeds of one of the populations from the fence line (SA-1F) germinated at 3 mo after maturity, whereas seeds from the cropping field at the same site (SA-1C) showed little germination (< 3%) even at 8 mo after maturity. These highly dormant ripgut brome populations from cropping fields were responsive to cold stratification, with germination increasing significantly after 2 to 14 d of exposure. Germination of dormant ripgut brome populations increased with addition of gibberellic acid (0.001 M GA3), particularly when lemma and palea had been removed. Ripgut brome populations from cropping fields (VIC-2C and SA-1C) showed strong inhibition of seed germination when exposed to light. These differences in seed dormancy among ripgut brome populations were also expressed in seedling emergence pattern in the field. The nondormant populations collected from fence lines showed high seedling establishment (> 80%) during autumn, which coincided with the planting time of winter crops in southern Australia. In contrast, five populations from cropping fields showed much lower seedling establishment (3 to 17%) before the time of crop planting. Delayed seedling establishment in populations from cropping fields could lead to less effective preseeding weed control and higher weed infestations in field crops. Results of this study also showed that the seedbank of these highly dormant ripgut brome populations can readily persist from one year to the next. Effective management of ripgut brome populations with long seed dormancy and increased seedbank persistence would require a major change in cropping systems used by the growers in southern Australia. Nomenclature: Ripgut brome, Bromus diandrus Roth.


Introduction: Intravenous regional anaesthesia (IVRA) or Bier's block is easy to administer, reliable, and cost-effective for short operative procedures of the extremities performed on an ambulatory basis where a local anaesthetic is injected intravenously using tourniquet. Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of i.v paracetamol as add on therapy to lidocaine in Intravenous Regional Anaesthesia with those receiving plain Lidocaine .Methodology:66 patients were randomly and blindly divided into 3 groups. All groups received IVRA lidocaine (3 mg/kg) diluted with saline to a total volume of 40 mL. Group 1 - lidocaine plus IV saline, Group - lidocaine and paracetamol (300 mg) admixture plus IV saline, and Group 3 - lidocaine plus IV paracetamol (300 mg).Sensory and motor block onset time, tourniquet pain, and analgesic use were assessed during operation. Visual analog scale (VAS) scores was used to assess pain. Results: Onset of motor block was shorter and recovery of motor and sensory block was significantly longer in Group 2 (P < 0.05). VAS scores were significantly lower in Group 2 (P < 0.05).Preoperative and postoperative analgesic consumption was significantly less in Group 2 (P <0.05). Conclusion: The addition of paracetamol during IVRA with lidocaine decreased tourniquet pain, increased anaesthesia quality, and decreased postoperative analgesic consumption.


To investigate the contribution of a neutrophil response to the oncolytic effect of replicating attenuated measles virus (MV), MVs expressing murine granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) were generated. The growth characteristics and kinetics of GM-CSF production of these viruses were characterized in vitro. Their biological effects were characterized in mice transgenic for the MV receptor CD46. The oncolytic efficacy of MV GM-CSF was then compared with that of a parental MV and a control, UV-irradiated MV using a human lymphoid tumor model in immunodeficient mice. Intratumoral injection of MV resulted in significant tumor regression or slowing of progression compared with injection of the control. Injection of MV GM-CSF further enhanced the oncolytic effect. In additional experiments, the cellular response to MV, MV GM-CSF, recombinant murine GM-CSF alone, or untreated tumors was quantified. The predominant response was an influx of neutrophils. Intratumoral natural killer cells and macrophages were not detected. The magnitude of the neutrophil response correlated well with tumor regression. Our studies suggest that therapy with replicating MV stimulates a strong neutrophil antitumor response, which can be cytokine-enhanced to improve oncolysis.


The aim of the present study was to test whether breathing pattern conditioning may occur just after birth. We hypothesized that sensory stimuli signaling the resumption of maternal care after separation may trigger an arousal and/or orienting response accompanied with concomitant respiratory changes. We performed a conditioning experiment in 2-day-old mice by using an odor (lemon) as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and maternal care after 1 h without the mother as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Each pup underwent two acquisition trials, in which the CS was presented immediately before (experimental paired group, n = 30) or 30 min before (control unpaired group, n = 30) contact with the mother. Conditioning was tested by using noninvasive whole body plethysmography to measure the respiratory response to the CS for 1 min. We found significantly stronger respiratory responses to the CS in the experimental group than in the control group. In contrast, somatomotor activity did not differ significantly between groups. Our results confirm the sensitivity of breathing to conditioning and indirectly support the hypothesis that learned feedforward processes may complement feedback pathways during postnatal maturation of respiratory control.


Historical, religious and monumental structures and their susceptibility to damage in recent earthqaukes in Turkey are presented and discussed in this chapter. Turkey has a very large number of historical structures and is located in one of the most seismically active regions of the world. Some of these historical and monumental masonry and reinforced concrete structures suffered substantial damage or collapsed during two major earthquakes in 1999. The Kocaeli (Mw7.4) and Duzce (Mw7.2) earthquakes occurred on August 17 and November 12, 1999, and ruptured approximately 110 km and 40 km of the 1550-km-long North Anatolian fault, respectively. This chapter describes briefly the construction materials and techniques for historical religious and monumental structures and state-of-practice in Turkey, and presents dynamic analyses of a masonry minaret example. The seismic performance of the mosques and minarets (tall slender towers) during the 1999 earthquakes is presented.


The wide diversity of proteins expressed in a cell or a tissue as a result of gene variants, RNA editing or PTMs results in several hundred thousand distinct functional proteins called proteoforms. The large‐scale analysis of proteomes has been driven by bottom‐up MS approaches. This allowed to identify and quantify large numbers of gene products and perform PTM profiling which yielded a significant number of biological discoveries. Trypsin is the gold standard enzyme for the production of peptides in bottom‐up approaches. Several investigators argued recently that the near exclusive use of trypsin provided only a partial view of the proteome and hampered the discovery of new isoforms. The use of multiple proteases in a complementary fashion can increase sequence coverage providing more extensive PTM and sequence variant profiling. Here the various approaches to characterize proteoforms are discussed, including the use of alternative enzymes to trypsin in shotgun approaches to expand the observable sequence space by LC‐MS/MS. The technical considerations associated with the use of alternative enzymes are discussed.


The Journal provides a forum for scientific and professional exchange among researchers and practitioners throughout the world that represent subspecialties of the discipline, including early intervention, neonatology, pediatric sports and fitness, school physical therapy, acute care for seriously ill children, and the prevention of primary and secondary conditions that lead to disabling conditions.


Although applied in organizational settings, storytelling is not commonly used or understood in change efforts. Furthermore, storytelling's impact on changing organizational culture has not been widely examined. This study therefore sought to answer the question: What is the effect of stories on culture change? Twenty-five participants (4 managers and 21 associates) completed one-on-one, in-person interviews prior to a storytelling workshop. All associates attended the storytelling workshop, followed by interviews of all four managers and four randomly selected associates regarding culture change. This study found that storytelling, in particular the storytelling workshop, influenced the behaviors and attitudes of organizational members and, as a result, began to impact the organization's culture. Organization development practitioners can apply storytelling to culture change strategies by telling their own stories, eliciting the personal stories of organization members, and encouraging management to reinforce the desired culture that has been changed.


Multi-walled carbon nanotubes were chemically cut by acid treatments and then deposited on 2-aminoethanethiol-modified gold substrate by the application of an external electric field. 2-aminoethanethiol-capped gold nanoparticles were then covalently bonded to the nanotubes to exploit their plasmon resonances. Reaction intermediates as well as the final products were analyzed by X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy. The synergetic interaction between carbon nanotubes and gold nanoparticles leads to an efficient signal enhancement in Raman spectra. This is of particular interest for the detection of toxic molecules dangerous for the environment.


Quantitative predictions of the Li intercalation voltage and of the electronic properties of rechargeable battery cathode materials are a substantial challenge for first-principles theory due to the possibility of (1) strong correlations associated with localized transition metal $d$ electrons and (2) significant van der Waals (vdW) interactions in layered systems, both of which are not accurately captured by standard approximations to density functional theory (DFT). Here, we perform a systematic benchmark of electronic structure methods based on the widely-used generalized gradient approximation of Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof (PBE) and the new strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-generalized gradient approximation for battery cathode materials. Studying layered Li$_x$TiS$_2$, Li$_x$NiO$_2$, and Li$_x$CoO$_2$, olivine Li$_x$FePO$_4$, and spinel Li$_x$Mn$_2$O$_4$, we compute the voltage, crystal structure, and electronic structure with and without extensions to incorporate on-site Hubbard interactions and vdW interactions. Within pure DFT (i.e., without corrections for on-site Hubbard interactions), SCAN is a significant improvement over PBE for describing cathode materials, decreasing the mean absolute voltage error by more than 50%. Although explicit vdW interactions are not critical and in cases even detrimental when applied in conjunction with SCAN, Hubbard $U$ corrections are still in general necessary to achieve reasonable agreement with experiment. We show that no single method considered here can accurately describe the voltage and overall structural, electronic, and magnetic properties (i.e., errors no more than 5% for voltage, volume, band gap, and magnetic moments) of battery cathode materials, motivating a strong need for improved electronic structure approaches for such systems.


In many cases of chronic microembolic pulmonary hypertension the source of the emboli is unknown. Disease or injury to the sinus node is usually accompanied by thrombus formation within the antrum atrii dextri, and this region is not often inspected carefully during necropsy. In the present study the hearts of 14 patients with right ventricular hypertrophy or documented pulmonary hypertension showed disease or injury in the sinus node, and each had both old and recent thrombosis in the antrum atrii dextri. In all 14 cases both lungs were available for histological examination. The group included six cases of rheumatic heart disease with mitral stenosis, four cases of disseminated lupus erythematosus, and four cases of so-called primary pulmonary hypertension. Every lung contained both new and old microemboli, as well as a wide variety of other histological abnormalities narrowing the small pulmonary arteries. Many of these narrowing lesions were recognisable as the consequence of prior microembolisation. For future postmortem examination of cases of chronic microembolic pulmonary hypertension, mural thrombi within the antrum atrii dextri should be considered as one important potential source for recurring microembolisation to the lungs.


We present models of polyhedra built from 12 heptagons meeting three per vertex. Unlike the analogous case with 12 pentagons, where there is a single unique combinatorial structure, there are six combinatorially distinct ways to combine 12 heptagons, meeting three per vertex, into a (possibly self-intersecting) polyhedron. We identified realizable (non-self-intersecting) examples for five of the six possible structures, and fabricated physical models of them. They all necessarily have genus 2 (topologically equivalent to a 2-holed donut), and they appear in a variety of aesthetically pleasing symmetries. These models demonstrate a form of art emerging from mathematics.


In this paper, a new mold-transfer method to pattern piezoelectric polymer has been developed and applied to fabricate innovative dome and bump shape polyvinylidene-fluoride-trifluoroethylene (PVDF-TrFE) films. The dome and bump shape PVDF-TrFE films have been successfully fabricated and characterized as a sensing component for flexible tactile sensors. The tactile sensors developed using these polymer microstructures show a high sensitivity which can measure as small as 40 mN force for bump shape sensors and 25 mN for dome shape sensors. The newly developed fabrication method provides a flexible way to pattern the piezoelectric polymer with different shapes and dimensions, including bump and dome shape piezoelectric polymer microstructures. In addition, a selective dc poling method for the PVDF-TrFE film has been developed for fabricating precisely located piezoelectric sensors with minimum crosstalk. The bump and dome shape PVDF-TrFE films developed in this paper can have numerous applications for microcatheters or other minimally invasive biomedical devices.


In this paper, we derive exact traveling wave solutions of the SRLW equation by a presented method. The method appears to be efficient in seeking exact solutions of nonlinear equations.


In this paper, we introduce a novel network that generates semantic, instance, and part segmentation using a shared encoder and effectively fuses them to achieve panoptic-part segmentation. Unifying these three segmentation problems allows for mutually improved and consistent representation learning. To fuse the predictions of all three heads efficiently, we introduce a parameter-free joint fusion module that dynamically balances the logits and fuses them to create panoptic-part segmentation. Our method is evaluated on the Cityscapes Panoptic Parts (CPP) and Pascal Panoptic Parts (PPP) datasets. For CPP, the PartPQ of our proposed model with joint fusion surpasses the previous state-of-the-art by 1.6 and 4.7 percentage points for all areas and segments with parts, respectively. On PPP, our joint fusion outperforms a model using the previous top-down merging strategy by 3.3 percentage points in PartPQ and 10.5 percentage points in PartPQ for partitionable classes.


Objective To determine responsiveness of functional mobility measures, and provide reference values for clinically meaningful improvements, according to disability level, in persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) in response to physical rehabilitation. Methods Thirteen mobility measures (clinician- and patient-reported) were assessed before and after rehabilitation in 191 pwMS from 17 international centers (European and United States). Combined anchor- and distribution-based methods were used. A global rating of change scale, from patients' and therapists' perspective, served as external criteria when determining the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), the minimally important change (MIC), and the smallest real change (SRC). Patients were stratified into 2 subgroups based on disability level (Expanded Disability Status Scale score ≤4 [n = 72], >4 [n = 119]). Results The Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale–12, physical subscale of the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale–29 (especially for the mildly disabled pwMS), Rivermead Mobility Index, and 5-repetition sit-to-stand test (especially for the moderately to severely disabled pwMS) were the most sensitive measures in detecting improvements in mobility. Findings were determined once the AUC (95% confidence interval) was above 0.5, MIC was greater than SRC, and results were comparable from the patient and therapist perspective. Conclusions Responsiveness, clinically meaningful improvement, and real changes of frequently used mobility measures were calculated, showing great heterogeneity, and were dependent on disability level in pwMS.


Abstract Objective: To determine umbilical cord blood total antioxidant capacity (TAC), ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), thiobarbituric acid-reacting substances (TBARS), advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and markers of oxidative stress in pregnancies complicated by preterm prelabor rupture of membranes (PPROM) and their associations with microbial invasion of the amniotic cavity (MIAC) and/or histological chorioamnionitis (HCA), funisitis and selected aspects of short-term neonatal morbidity. Materials and methods: One hundred and sixty-five women with singleton pregnancies complicated by PPROM were included in this study. Blood samples were obtained by venipuncture from the umbilical cord vein after the delivery of the newborn. The umbilical cord blood concentrations of TAC, FRAP, TBARS and AGEs were measured. Results: The presence of MIAC, HCA and funisitis did not show differences in the umbilical cord blood TAC, FRAP, TBARS and AGEs concentrations. Positive correlations were found between the gestational age at sampling and umbilical cord blood TAC and AGEs concentrations (TAC: rho = 0.26; p = 0.001; AGEs: rho = 0.35; p < 0.0001). There was no association between umbilical cord blood TAC, FRAP, TBARS and AGEs concentrations and selected aspects of short-term neonatal morbidity. Conclusions: Oxidative stress is associated with PPROM, as indicated by the presence of markers tested in the umbilical cord blood; however, the evaluated oxidative stress markers are not influenced by the presence of MIAC and/or HCA, and funisitis or subsequent development of selected aspects of short-term neonatal morbidity.


The payday loan, or more generally, the deferred deposit loan, is among the most contentious forms of credit. It typically signifies a small-dollar, short-term, unsecured loan to a high-risk borrower, often resulting in an effective annual percentage rate of 390 percent a rate well in excess of usury limits set by many states. Consumer advocates argue that payday loans take advantage of vulnerable, uninformed borrowers and often create "debt spirals." Debt spirals arise from repeated payday borrowing, using new loans to pay off old ones, and often paying many times the original loan amount in interest. ; In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many policymakers are considering strengthening consumer protections on payday lending. Yet few studies have focused on any unintended consequences of restricting such lending. Thus, the question arises: Could restrictions on payday lending have adverse effects? ; Edmiston examines payday lending and provides new empirical evidence on how restrictions could affect consumers. His analysis shows that restrictions could deny some consumers access to credit, limit their ability to maintain formal credit standing, or force them to seek more costly credit alternatives. Thus, any policy decisions to restrict payday lending should weigh these potential costs against the potential benefits.


Pulmonary metastasectomy has not been proven by randomized trials to be more effective than non-operative management, but currently has a well-accepted role for certain primary cancers, in particular colorectal cancer and sarcoma. One of the principal tenets for pulmonary metastasectomy is that all lesions are resected. A major technical difference compared to surgical management of primary lung cancer is that management of metastatic disease frequently requires the resection of multiple and possibly bilateral lesions. In addition, surgeons and patients must often consider repeat surgery for management of metachronous lesions that develop some time after a previous resection, given the nature of metastatic cancer. Therefore, surgeons must ensure complete resection of lesions with negative margins but also must be cognizant of minimizing resection of functional lung tissue as much as possible, in order to ensure that both current and future lesions can be resected while leaving patients with adequate pulmonary function. Segmentectomy is generally infrequently utilized for pulmonary metastasectomy, but has a role for lesions for which a wedge resection is technically not possible but a lobectomy is not required. Segmentectomy can be an important tool in achieving the dual goals of complete resection and impacting pulmonary function as little as possible. Using minimally invasive techniques with thoracoscopy to perform segmentectomy is associated with less short-term morbidity than thoracotomy. Although the use of minimally invasive techniques limits manual palpation and therefore potential resection of small lesions not identified by pre-resection imaging, the current literature does not suggest that these procedures should be done via thoracotomy.


This paper presents the use of trace-based performance visualization of a large scale atmospheric model, the Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Model (OLAM). The trace was obtained with the libRastro library, and the visualization was done with Paj´e. The use of visualization aimed to analyze OLAM's performance and to identify its bottlenecks. Especially, we are interested in the model's I/O operations, since it was proved to be the main issue for the model's performance. We show that most of the time spent in the output routine is spent in the close operation. With this information, we delayed this operation until the next output phase, obtaining improved I/O performance.


ABSTRACT Indole is a molecule of considerable biochemical significance, acting as both an interspecies signal molecule and a building block of biological elements. Bacterial indole degradation has been demonstrated for a number of cases; however, very little is known about genes and proteins involved in this process. This study reports the cloning and initial functional characterization of genes (iif and ant cluster) responsible for indole biodegradation in Acinetobacter sp. strain O153. The catabolic cascade was reconstituted in vitro with recombinant proteins, and each protein was assigned an enzymatic function. Degradation starts with oxidation, mediated by the IifC and IifD flavin-dependent two-component oxygenase system. Formation of indigo is prevented by IifB, and the final product, anthranilic acid, is formed by IifA, an enzyme which is both structurally and functionally comparable to cofactor-independent oxygenases. Moreover, the iif cluster was identified in the genomes of a wide range of bacteria, suggesting the potential of widespread Iif-mediated indole degradation. This work provides novel insights into the genetic background of microbial indole biodegradation. IMPORTANCE The key finding of this research is identification of the genes responsible for microbial biodegradation of indole, a toxic N-heterocyclic compound. A large amount of indole is present in urban wastewater and sewage sludge, creating a demand for an efficient and eco-friendly means to eliminate this pollutant. A common strategy of oxidizing indole to indigo has the major drawback of producing insoluble material. Genes and proteins of Acinetobacter sp. strain O153 (DSM 103907) reported here pave the way for effective and indigo-free indole removal. In addition, this work suggests possible novel means of indole-mediated bacterial interactions and provides the basis for future research on indole metabolism.


A double-blinded, randomized, controlled trial was carried out in in Melbourne, Australia, to determine the contribution of drinking water to gastroenteritis. Melbourne is one of the few major cities in the world that draws drinking water from a protected forest catchment with minimal water treatment (chlorination only). Six hundred families were randomly allocated to receive either real or sham water treatment units (WTUs) installed in their kitchen. Real units were designed to remove viruses, bacteria, and protozoa. Study participants completed a weekly health diary reporting gastrointestinal symptoms during the 68-week observation period. There were 2,669 cases of highly credible gastroenteritis (HCG) during the study (0.80 cases/person/year). The ratio of HCG episode rates for the real WTU group compared to the sham WTU group was 0.99 (95% confidence interval, 0.85-1.15, p = 0.85). We collected 795 fecal specimens from participants with gastroenteritis, and pathogens were not more significantly common in the sham WTU group. We found no evidence of waterborne disease in Melbourne. The application of this methodology to other water supplies will provide a better understanding of the relationship between human health and water quality.


The study of information-seeking behaviour of scientists has been one of the main concerns of librarians and information scientists since mid twentieth century and yet we need to improve our understanding of their information behaviour in order to maximise the efficiency of information services provided. This thesis studies the information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers with an intradisciplinary approach in order to look at similarities and dissimilarities among the subfields within physics and astronomy. The study also looks at the information-seeking behaviour of people with different academic status and investigates the information-seeking activities of physicists and astronomers in different stages of research projects with the focus of the thesis being research related information-seeking behaviour. Moreover, the research investigates reading behaviour and publishing patterns of physicists and astronomers. The study is a mixed-methods study that uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The population of the study included the staff and PhD students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of University College London. Fifty-six face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted, an online questionnaire survey of 114 respondents (out of 242 sample, 47% response rate) was carried out and 88 information-event cards were completed by participants. The findings of the study showed that although some similarities exist in information-seeking behaviour of people in the different subfields of physics and astronomy, each subfield has its own characteristics. Variations were found with regard to different aspects of information-seeking behaviour including the reliance on e-print archives and journal articles, methods used for keeping up-to-date and methods used for identifying articles. The study showed the importance of human information sources and informal communication in the information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers and highlighted the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists.


In this paper I examine children's play as a context for managing physiological arousal and learning to regulate strong emotions. I define emotion regulation as the process by which children monitor and control their emotional states and their expression to adapt to different social situations or demands. Age trends and gender differences in emotion regulation problems and competencies are described. I then review the development of play, deprivation studies, and the biological functions of different forms of play in primates before discussing children's play. Vigorous social play benefits children by promoting the development of communication, perspective-taking and emotion regulation skills. For boys especially, rough-and-tumble play in early childhood provides a scaffold for learning emotion regulation skills related to managing anger and aggression.


Firefly luciferase is homologous to fatty acyl-CoA synthetases. We hypothesized that the firefly luciferase substrate d-luciferin and its analogs are fatty acid mimics that are ideally suited to probe the chemistry of enzymes that release fatty acid products. Here, we synthesized luciferin amides and found that these molecules are hydrolyzed to substrates for firefly luciferase by the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). In the presence of luciferase, these molecules enable highly sensitive and selective bioluminescent detection of FAAH activity in vitro, in live cells, and in vivo. The potency and tissue distribution of FAAH inhibitors can be imaged in live mice, and luciferin amides serve as exemplary reagents for greatly improved bioluminescence imaging in FAAH-expressing tissues such as the brain.


Objective To compare four faecal markers for their ability to predict steroid refractoriness in severe paediatric ulcerative colitis (UC). Construct validity and responsiveness to change were also assessed. Methods This was a prospective multicentre cohort study. Stool samples from 101 children (13.3±3.6 years; Pediatric UC Activity Index (PUCAI) at admission 72±12 points) were obtained at the third day of intravenous steroid therapy. Repeated samples at discharge were obtained from 24 children. Predictive validity was assessed using diagnostic utility statistics to predict steroid failure (ie, the need for salvage treatment). Concurrent validity was assessed using correlational analysis with the following constructs: PUCAI, Lindgren and Seo scores, physician's global assessment, albumin, erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein (CRP). Responsiveness was assessed using test utility and correlational strategies. Results Median values (IQR) were very high at baseline for all four markers (calprotectin 4215 μg/g (2297–8808); lactoferrin 212 μg/g (114–328); M2-pyruvate kinase (M2-PK) 363 U/g (119–3104); and S100A12 469 μg/g (193–1112)). M2-PK was numerically superior to the other three markers and CRP in predicting response to corticosteroid treatment (area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve 0.75 (95% CI 0.64 to 0.85; p<0.001) vs <0.65 for the others). However, it did not add to the predictive ability of the PUCAI (area under the ROC 0.81 (95% CI 0.73 to 0.89)). M2-PK also had the highest construct validity but with a modest mean correlation with all constructs (r=0.3; p<0.05). None of the markers was responsive to change (Spearman's rho correlation with change in the PUCAI <0.1; p>0.05, area under the ROC curve <0.65; p>0.05). Conclusions The four markers were greatly elevated in severe paediatric UC. Only M2-PK had good construct and predictive validity, and none was responsive to change. The PUCAI, a simple clinical index, performed better than the faecal markers in predicting outcome following a course of intravenous corticosteroids in severe UC.


This review assesses the impacts, both direct and indirect, of man-made changes to the composition of the air over a 200 year period on the severity of arable crop disease epidemics. The review focuses on two well-studied UK arable crops, wheat and oilseed rape, relating these examples to worldwide food security. In wheat, impacts of changes in concentrations of SO2 in air on two septoria diseases are discussed using data obtained from historical crop samples and unpublished experimental work. Changes in SO2 seem to alter septoria disease spectra both through direct effects on infection processes and through indirect effects on soil S status. Work on the oilseed rape diseases phoma stem canker and light leaf spot illustrates indirect impacts of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, mediated through climate change. It is projected that, by the 2050s, if diseases are not controlled, climate change will increase yields in Scotland but halve yields in southern England. These projections are discussed in relation to strategies for adaptation to environmental change. Since many strategies take 10–15 years to implement, it is important to take appropriate decisions soon. Furthermore, it is essential to make appropriate investment in collation of long-term data, modelling and experimental work to guide such decision-making by industry and government, as a contribution to worldwide food security.


Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been reported to have both positive and negative effects on carcinogenesis. Here, we show that the loss of c-Met signaling in hepatocytes enhanced rather than suppressed the early stages of chemical hepatocarcinogenesis. c-Met conditional knockout mice (c-met, AlbCre ; MetLivKO) treated with N-nitrosodiethylamine developed significantly more and bigger tumors and with a shorter latency compared with control (w/w , AlbCre ; Cre-Ctrl) mice. Accelerated tumor development was associated with increased rate of cell proliferation and prolonged activation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling. MetLivKO livers treated with N-nitrosodiethylamine also displayed elevated lipid peroxidation, decreased ratio of reduced glutathione to oxidized glutathione, and up-regulation of superoxide dismutase 1 and heat shock protein 70, all consistent with increased oxidative stress. Likewise, gene expression profiling done at 3 and 5 months after N-nitrosodiethylamine treatment revealed up-regulation of genes associated with cell proliferation and stress responses in c-Met mutant livers. The negative effects of c-Met deficiency were reversed by chronic p.o. administration of antioxidant N–acetyl–L-cysteine. N–acetyl–L-cysteine blocked the EGFR activation and reduced the N-nitrosodiethylamine– initiated hepatocarcinogenesis to the levels of Cre-Ctrl mice. These results argue that intact HGF/c-Met signaling is essential for maintaining normal redox homeostasis in the liver and has tumor suppressor effect(s) during the early stages of Nnitrosodiethylamine–induced hepatocarcinogenesis. [Cancer Res 2007;67(20):9844–51]


The main purpose of this study is determining the predictive power of the levels of the school readiness in the preschool children by some variables such as social skills, social interaction practices and education status of the parents. The population of the study in the general screening model is composed of 60 to 66-month old children attending to independent preschools registered by the Ministry of National Education in Konya, Turkey. The sample of this study is selected through stratified sampling method among schools, which represent families and their children of three different socio-economic (low, mid and high), in three central districts of Konya. These levels are determined by the Directorate of National Education. Sample group is composed of 42 preschool teachers and 210 children in total, which is sufficient in terms of the number of the participants. Social Skills Test for Preschool-aged Children, Social Interaction Practices for the Preschool Years (SIPPY) Questionnaire and Metropolitan School Readiness Test were employed in the study. Multiple regression analysis and stepwise regression analysis were used for the analyses of the study. By employing linear multiple regression analysis, it was determined that to what extent the variables social skills, social interaction practices, and education status of the parents predict the school readiness level. At the end of the stepwise regression analysis that was utilized to find out whether aforementioned variables have a significant contribution to predict school readiness level, it was found that 10 % of the school readiness level of 60 to 66-month old children attending pre-school education was explained by environmental strategies about social interaction practices applied by preschool teachers, 4% of it was explained by communication skill that is one of the social skills of the children, and 3 % of it was explained by the education status of the father


Background Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a leading cause of mortality in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Although medications have improved their prognosis, optimal therapy remains undefined. The goal of this study was to compare time to clinical worsening (TTCW) and survival based on initial oral PAH therapy. Methods Using data from the PHAROS registry (a multicenter prospective observational study enrolling SSc patients with incident pulmonary hypertension), patients with group I PAH, 6 months of initial therapy with either an endothelin-receptor antagonist (ERA), phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor (PDE5), or a combination of ERA/PDE5 were included. Patients treated initially with prostacyclins were excluded. The starting point for all analyses was the date of therapy initiation. Outcomes were survival and TTCW, defined as the first occurrence of death, PAH-related hospitalization, lung transplant, initiation of parenteral prostacyclin, or worsening symptoms. Results Ninety-eight patients (initial ERA=24, initial PDE5=59, initial ERA/PDE5=15) were included; no significant differences in baseline variables existed. TTCW was significantly worse in patients initially started on ERA compared to PDE5 or ERA/PDE5 (p=0.0001). Baseline factors independently associated with shorter TTCW were initial ERA (HR 2.63, p=0.009), lower DLCO (HR 0.69 per 10% change, p=0.04), and higher PVR (HR 1.10 per Wood unit change, p=0.007). Three year survival was significantly worse in the initial ERA group (52.9%) compared to the PDE5 (91.5%) or ERA/PDE5 group (92.9%, p=0.004). The only baseline factor independently associated with risk for death in this cohort was initial ERA therapy (HR 4.55, p=0.004). Conclusions Compared to PDE5 or combination ERA/PDE5, initial therapy with an ERA in SSc-PAH patients was associated with a significantly worse TTCW and survival, even after adjustment for commonly accepted prognostic factors. Although these findings may be the result of unmeasured imbalances between groups, it is plausible that known ERA side effects such as fluid retention may have led to clinical worsening. Limitations include data collection over non-uniform points in time and limited supplementary information as well as potential selection-bias in medication assignment. Further study into the optimal initial oral therapy in patients with SSc-PAH is needed. Acknowledgements PHAROS is supported by an investigator initiated grant from Gilead Science. Disclosure of Interest M. Lammi: None declared, L. A. Saketkoo Grant/research support from: ACR/EULAR Exchange Awardee; Gilead, S. Mathai Grant/research support from: National Heart and Blood Institute, Consultant for: Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Bayer, R. Domsic: None declared, V. Steen Grant/research support from: Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Bayer CSL Berhing Intermune Roche Pharmaceuticals Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceutical UCB United Therapeutics, D. Furst: None declared


Facing climate change, The European Union has set ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. Within Europe, heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) account for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector and therefore plays a central role in achieving the climate targets. A potential solution to reduce GHG emissions is the use of battery electric vehicles (BEV). However, the limited range of BEV requires a European public fast-charging network to ensure widespread deployment of BEV. Here, European road freight transport flows are modelled based on the publicly available European Transport policy Information System (ETISplus) dataset. The resulting truck flows serve as input for a charging infrastructure network model. Potential charging stations are located using a coverage-oriented approach and sized according to a queuing model such that an average waiting time of five minutes is guaranteed at each location. Our results show that for a share of 15% BEV in HDV stock and a dense network with charging locations every 50 km, a total of 4,067 charging points at 1,640 locations are required by 2030. In contrast, with a share of 5% BEV and charging locations every 100 km, 1,715 charging points are needed at 812 locations. Our findings provide insights for the design of a public fastcharging network in Europe and thus supports the planning of future infrastructure projects. Figure 1: Distribution and size of fast-charging stations in the "close mesh network" Table of Content Page


Human behavior analysis has become an active topic of great interest and relevance for a number of applications and areas of research. The research in recent years has been considerably driven by the growing level of criminal behavior in large urban areas and increase of terroristic actions. Also, accurate behavior studies have been applied to sports analysis systems and are emerging in healthcare. When compared to conventional action recognition used in security applications, human behavior analysis techniques designed for embedded applications should satisfy the following technical requirements: (1) Behavior analysis should provide scalable and robust results; (2) High-processing efficiency to achieve (near) real-time operation with low-cost hardware; (3) Extensibility for multiple-camera setup including 3-D modeling to facilitate human behavior understanding and description in various events. The key to our problem statement is that we intend to improve behavior analysis performance while preserving the efficiency of the designed techniques, to allow implementation in embedded environments. More specifically, we look into (1) fast multi-level algorithms incorporating specific domain knowledge, and (2) 3-D configuration techniques for overall enhanced performance. If possible, we explore the performance of the current behavior-analysis techniques for improving accuracy and scalability. To fulfill the above technical requirements and tackle the research problems, we propose a flexible behavior-analysis framework consisting of three processing-layers: (1) pixel-based processing (background modeling with pixel labeling), (2) object-based modeling (human detection, tracking and posture analysis), and (3) event-based analysis (semantic event understanding). In Chapter 3, we specifically contribute to the analysis of individual human behavior. A novel body representation is proposed for posture classification based on a silhouette feature. Only pure binary-shape information is used for posture classification without texture/color or any explicit body models. To this end, we have studied an efficient HV-PCA shape-based descriptor with temporal modeling, which achieves a posture-recognition accuracy rate of about 86% and outperforms other existing proposals. As our human motion scheme is efficient and achieves a fast performance (6-8 frames/second), it enables a fast surveillance system or further analysis of human behavior. In addition, a body-part detection approach is presented. The color and body ratio are combined to provide clues for human body detection and classification. The conventional assumption of up-right body posture is not required. Afterwards, we design and construct a specific framework for fast algorithms and apply them in two applications: tennis sports analysis and surveillance. Chapter 4 deals with tennis sports analysis and presents an automatic real-time system for multi-level analysis of tennis video sequences. First, we employ a 3-D camera model to bridge the pixel-level, object-level and scene-level of tennis sports analysis. Second, a weighted linear model combining the visual cues in the real-world domain is proposed to identify various events. The experimentally found event extraction rate of the system is about 90%. Also, audio signals are combined to enhance the scene analysis performance. The complete proposed application is efficient enough to obtain a real-time or near real-time performance (2-3 frames/second for 720×576 resolution, and 5-7 frames/second for 320×240 resolution, with a P-IV PC running at 3GHz). Chapter 5 addresses surveillance and presents a full real-time behavior-analysis framework, featuring layers at pixel, object, event and visualization level. More specifically, this framework captures the human motion, classifies its posture, infers the semantic event exploiting interaction modeling, and performs the 3-D scene reconstruction. We have introduced our system design based on a specific software architecture, by employing the well-known "4+1" view model. In addition, human behavior analysis algorithms are directly designed for real-time operation and embedded in an experimental runtime AV content-analysis architecture. This executable system is designed to be generic for multiple streaming applications with component-based architectures. To evaluate the performance, we have applied this networked system in a single-camera setup. The experimental platform operates with two Pentium Quadcore engines (2.33 GHz) and 4-GB memory. Performance evaluations have shown that this networked framework is efficient and achieves a fast performance (13-15 frames/second) for monocular video sequences. Moreover, a dual-camera setup is tested within the behavior-analysis framework. After automatic camera calibration is conducted, the 3-D reconstruction and communication among different cameras are achieved. The extra view in the multi-camera setup improves the human tracking and event detection in case of occlusion. This extension of multiple-view fusion improves the event-based semantic analysis by 8.3-16.7% in accuracy rate. The detailed studies of two experimental intelligent applications, i.e., tennis sports analysis and surveillance, have proven their value in several extensive tests in the framework of the European Candela and Cantata ITEA research programs, where our proposed system has demonstrated competitive performance with respect to accuracy and efficiency.


This study was accomplished with the objective of knowing the seasonal distribution of the main species of parasites causes of branchial damages to the fish from fee-fishing at Guariba, State of São Paulo. This city is situated at 21 degrees 15'22'' S, 48 degrees 18'58'' W, in altitude 595 meters. This research was conducted between April, 1997 to March, 1999. From 408 fishes examined, 29.1% of them were infested by the protozoans e metazoans. Leporinus macrocephalus showed the highest parasitism by Trichodina sp., although Piaractus mesopotamicus and Cyprinus carpio were also parasited. Piscinoodinium pillulare infestation were found in L. macrocephalus, P. mesopotamicus, C. carpio e Colossoma macropomum. Monogenetics metazoan have largely been observed in L. macrocephalus, P. mesopotamicus, C. carpio, C. macropomum e cross-bred tambacu. The incidence of this parasite was elevated in the summer for L. macrocephalus, spring for P. mesopotamicus and C. macropomum, and both seasons for cross-bred tambacu. Lernaea cyprinacea copepodes were observed in L. macrocephalus, P. mesopotamicus, C. carpio and cross- breeding tambacu, in spite of the fact that C. carpio has demonstrated high parasitism of adult form. The fish L. macrocephalus, P. mesopotamicus and C. carpio were sponged intensely by Dolops carvalhoi, in situation of high population density. Piaractus mesopotamicus was considered the species more parasited by myxosporídeos, that were also observed in L. macrocephalus and cross-breeding tambacu.


A 33-year-old para-3 was admitted in the 33rd week of gestation because of a suspected foetal anomaly. Ultrasound examination showed polyhydramnios, exaggerated cervico-thoracic lordosis and significant shortening of the spine because of a reduced number of vertebrae. The facial profile was flat, the foetal movements were rare and slow, and the extremities normal. A biopsy of the placenta revealed a normal female karyotype. Based on ultrasound examination, the diagnosis of iniencephaly was made. Because of the fatal prognosis of this malformation, labour was induced at 35 weeks of gestation. The patient delivered spontaneously. The infant died after 90 minutes. The postmortem examination confirmed the diagnosis of iniencephaly. Iniencephaly is a very rare malformation comprising a bone defect at the occiput, malformation of the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, spina bifida, and retroflexion of the head. The aetiology is not clear. 90% of the probands are female. The malformation is incompatible with survival after birth.


"Sustainability" term has not only become increasingly important globally for individual companies, but also become important for whole supply chains. The selection of supplier is a significant decision for the sustainability of supply chains. Literature review revealed that supplier selection is made traditionally based on economic attributes which are insufficient for sustainability of supply chains as sustainability requires taking economic, environmental, and social issues into account. For this purpose, this paper proposes determining the green supplier selection attributes and then developing a methodology for assessment and ranking of green suppliers based on determined attributes. The first contribution of this study is to propose a novel method, which is FROV (fuzzy extension of range of value) to literature. The latter is to utilize fuzzy extension of preference selection index (FPSI) to identify the weights of attributes. The third is to develop a novel fuzzy multiattribute decision-making model consisting of FPSI and FROV to determine the best supplier for a Turkish textile company.


The molar oxygen concentration in a seawater medium in equilibrium with a high-pressure oxygen-helium atmosphere was measured directly in pressurized subsamples, using a modified version of the Winkler oxygen analysis. At a partial pressure of oxygen of 1 atm or less, its concentration in the aqueous phase was adequately described by Henry's Law at total pressures up to 600 atm. This phenomenon, which permits a straightforward determination of dissolved oxygen within hyperbaric systems, resulted from pressure-induced compensatory alterations in the Henry's Law variables rather than from a true obedience to the Ideal Gas Law. If the partial pressure of a gas contributes significantly to the hydrostatic pressure, Henry's Law is no longer adequate for determining its solubility within the compressed medium.


Health is a basic need of every human being. Therefore, the necessary means
of adequate health services. Hospital Sultan Imanudin is one of the important places for
people who experience the disorder on the health of injecting. At the hospital is stored
a variety of problems, such as injecting the baby nurses are still having trouble  nding
the baby's blood vessels. Therefore there should be a tool that helps  nd out and see
the baby's blood vessels. So the tool can help and ease the nurse injected babies
who are need help. Health facilities and infrastructure increased steadily improved. The
Government is increasingly encouraging potential place health services by improving
the quality of services at hospitals and clinics. Any private party indirectly contributed
in the improvement of the quality of health care. This can be seen with more and more
health clinics emergence that penetrated not only in the city, even to the remote villages.
Growing number of places the more health services also need health equipment. Each
place health services will also meet the needs of medical instruments, which have a
wide range of usability and to improve the quality of his service. Developments in the
 eld of health services requires a reliable technician-technician to maintain, repair and
calibrate these health tools. Seen from the medical personnel often need to  nd trouble
when blood vessels are Older Baby to do the injection or infuse. Medical personnel are
often several times to detect the baby's blood vessels and even not rarely the needles
already logged in but turned out to be wrong. As a result of blood vessels can rupture
the Toddler.This research is the design tool of blood vessel Detection based toddler
Touc sensors that can penetrate the skin of newborn children. Besides being able to
penetrate the skin of newborn children, this tool is designed so that the baby can feel
safe and comfortable. This tool easy to carry where where.The results of this research
show that this tool can  nd and know the blood vessels veins toddlers With this tool,
early childhood or toddler feel safe and comfortable. This tool easy to carry with the
voltage supply 9 volt.


In Romania the mountain soils are developed on unstratified parent materials such as recent deluviums-eluviums formed from direct weathering of the rocks, and on stratified parent materials, a clayey interglacial layer, covered by postglacial deposits. In the Central Europe soil parent materials are stratified, formed in cold periods by periglacial processes. There were identified and described three layers who differ by the rock fragments litology, texture, mineralogy and heavy metals content (Kleber, 1990, 1992, 1997); additional those layers could incorporate loess, by periglacial processes (Semmel, 1993). This study has shown a very close connection between the parent material litology and granulometry and the soil types developed on mountain areas. There were identified both monogenetic soils, developed in present day conditions (Humosiosols, Criptopodzols, Podzols, Prepodzols), and poligenetic soils, formed on stratified parent materials (Eutricambosols and Districambosols).


Affective disorders associated with a psycho-traumatizing situation have been studied in 82 patients with attack-type progressive schizophrenia undergoing inpatient forensic psychiatric examination at the All-Union Research Institute of General and Forensic Psychiatry. The results have shown that patients with attack-type progressive schizophrenia present in this situation affective disorders varying in depth and clinical characteristics which mask endogenic symptomatology and hinder forensic psychiatric assessment of these states in some cases. The following abnormalities have been defined as a result of the study: reactive conditions (psychogenic affective responses and reactive psychoses), psychogenic exacerbations of schizophrenia with such predominant clinical manifestations as affective disorders and attacks of schizophrenia taking the course of phase-affective conditions.


Tritiated gas and water should be properly treated to minimize an environmental tritium emission in nuclear fusion research facilities. Tritiated gas is usually treated in two steps: it is first oxidized to a tritiated water vapor by a catalyst and then the vapor is adsorbed in a molecular sieve drier. We have used a 1wt.% Pt/SDBC polymer catalyst and Zeolite 13X for the tritiated gas removal system. We confirmed that the decontamination factor of the equipment was more than 100 under a gas flow rate of 90 liters/hr and at a temperature of 65-80 °C.Furthermore we have developed a tritiated organic liquid treatment process. We have used a 0.5wt.% Pd/Al2O3 catalyst to oxidize an organic liquid. The simulated organic liquid was converted to water by over 99%. We have also developed a small scale CECE (Combined Electrolysis and Chemical Exchange) process by combining an LPCE (Liquid phase Catalytic Exchange) catalytic column with SPE (Solid Polymer Electrolyte) electrolysis. The experimental results of the CECE process produced a decontamination factor of 13-20. We used the electrolyte Nafion 117 which was coated with Pt as a cathode catalyst and IrO2 as an anode catalyst. We also tested a palladium alloy membrane for a purification of the hydrogen in the detritiation process.


In this article, we introduce a new technique to find an approximate solution for first order neutral delay differential equations. This technique depends on approximate the solution using the spline functions expansion. Special attention is given to study the error estimation and the convergence of the proposed method. Also, the stability of the technique is presented. The numerical results are compared with the conventional approximate method, variational iteration method.


Aim: Women are faced with a number of health risks and vulnerabilities particular to their gender which impact their access to healthcare. The aim of this study was to assess variations in satisfaction with access to healthcare for women in Bolivia and throughout eighteen Latin American countries and demographic and contextual level variables associated with differences in satisfaction. Data and Methods: Data from the Latinobarometro Survey and World Health Organization country indicators for the 2004-2007 periods was obtained for eighteen countries providing a sample of 37,971 women. Multiple linear and non-linear regression models examined the association of satisfaction with access and health condition, income, health insurance, location of home, ethnicity and national levels of healthcare spending per capita. Results: In multivariate analyses, lower levels of satisfaction with access were associated with lower income, poorer health condition and being uninsured or having public insurance (compared with having private insurance). Women living in rural and peri-urban areas are generally more satisfied with access to care than those living in provincial capitals. When the sample is stratified by health condition, those in poor or fair health are less satisfied, even when they have greater income or are better insured (private) or taking into account the country they live in. Country to country variations in satisfaction with access to healthcare are wider for women whose income is insufficient, women living in the peri-urban areas and those lacking health insurance. Greater national healthcare spending per capita does not guarantee satisfaction for women in the region. Conclusions: As women continue to be the first educators, caretakers and protectors of children, their role is fundamental to any effective development strategy. The primary focus of health policy in Latin America should be to improve equitable access for women to high quality healthcare. Satisfaction with access to healthcare is a signal of health system performance, and this study finds substantial room for improvement. Health information systems are needed to compile and analyze data on an ongoing basis to better measure women's access to and use of health services to aid decision-making on improving healthcare systems.


More and more devices contain computers with limited amounts of memory. As a result, code compaction techniques are gaining popularity, especially when they also improve performance and power consumption, or at least not degrade it. This paper quantifies the side-effects of code abstraction on performance using extensive measurements and simulations on the SPECint2000 benchmark suite and some additional C++ programs. We show how to use profile information in order to obtain almost all the code size reduction benefits of code abstraction, yet experience almost none of its disadvantages.


In linguistic literature, learner language has been extensively analysed from various perspectives. A number of studies have reported on the differences between non-native and native learner English. The former has been repeatedly characterised as showing the overuse of the features associated with spoken English (Gilquin and Paquot 2007, 2008; Russell 2014; Yoon 2015). Though in linguistic analysis, due to its polyfunctional nature, 'then' has been addressed under a number of various labels, from the quantitative perspective it is reported to be characteristic of spoken English (Biber et al. 1999). The present study, limited to the analysis of non-native language data, aims at determining the roles of language mode and text genre on the use of 'then' in the Lithuanian learners' English. Using quantitative and qualitative approaches three corpora representing the spoken (LINDSEI-LIT) and written (LICLE-VU-LIT and CALE-LIT) English produced by the Lithuanian students were analysed. While the results indicate a direct correlation between language mode and the use of 'then', the role of genre proved to be less unequivocal.


Although the operation of national coordinated wage-bargaining systems in EMU has produced low inflation rates, EMU-wide inflation has been above the ECB target rate for the last 3 years. By contrast, under the ERM, inflation rates declined steadily after 1992 to below 2 per cent in both the last 2 years of the regime. It is argued that this was the consequence of two low-inflation incentives under ERM: (i) the Maastricht inflation condition for EMU entry; and (ii) the combination of the Bundesbank threat to raise interest rates if German wage and price inflation rose above acceptable limits, linked to the need for other ERM members to follow low German inflation to stay within the exchange-rate bands. These incentives no longer operate under EMU, where individual economies do not have an incentive to contribute to low EMU-wide inflation. We suggest that inflation coordination between the large EMU member states might contribute to a solution while permitting the continuation of real exchange-rate adjustments of smaller economies. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.


Stylolite networks and their insoluble residues (IR) are among the major concerns and the fundamental controls on the mining and processing of sedimentary decorative stones, largely made from dolomitized limestones. They are mainly used, as natural rock blocks and polished slabs, to construct and decorate floors and walls of buildings and monuments. Representative quarries in Khur areas, east of Esfahan Province, central Iran, are selected for this study in order to evaluate the type and geometry of the stylolite networks in differentially dolomitized limestones and their control on the quality of the mined rock blocks and processed polished rock slabs. Field observation, examining the mined wall-rock cuttings in quarries, and petrography of the selected thin sections of Upper Cretaceous Haftoman Formation were performed with a comparative study of thickly developed, rudist-bearing rudstones-grainstones to bioclastic packstone-wackestone microfacies. What is typically considered in this study is evaluating the geometry of stylolite networks (cells), as they merge and result in a 3D network, rather than laterally continuous single stylolites.


Latah County lies within the Coeur d'Alene Mountains and the Columbia Plateau. The plateau is mantled with loess which is dissected into the mature Palouse topography. The origin of the Palouse Hills is considered in relation to certain newly discovered closed depressions on the tops of some of the hills. Folding of the Clearwater monocline followed deposition of the loess and rejuvenated Potlatch River. The mountains are underlain by metamorphosed formations of the Belt series, by rhyolite and rhyodacite flows correlated with the Seven Devils volcanics, and by the Thatuna batholith correlated with the Idaho batholith. Metamorphism of the Belt rocks was dynamothermal followed by retrograde changes. The principal intrusive rock is granodiorite grading into adamellite, tonalite, and granite. Thirty Rosiwal analyses are tabulated. The order of crystallization is normal, but quartz, microcline, orthoclase, albite, and sphene have been introduced by late replacement. Most of the granite and adamellite resulted from replacement of the other types. The Gold Hill stock is more like the igneous rocks in the Coeur d'Alene district. The principal type is syenite with considerable monzonite and syenodiorite. Dike rocks with the stock include adamellite porphyry, adamellite aplite, pyroxenite, dark syenitic pegmatite, magnetite dunite, and magnetitite. The Columbia Plateau is underlain by Columbia River basalt. Younger flows fill valleys in the Columbia River basalt and also occur 300 feet above the plateau. The principal economic resources are residual granitic and transported clays. The geologic conditions and mineralogy suggest weathering rather than hydrothermal origin. Certain basaltic clays resulted from hydrothermal alteration.


Nonreductive conversion of carbon dioxide has received wide attention in the area of homogeneous catalysis, especially in the context of cyclic organic carbonate formation processes. Whereas the synthesis of such carbonates has been central in the majority of the scientific contributions with a crucial role for catalyst design, much less attention has been paid to the mechanistic requisites that allow for more challenging transformations to occur. In this perspective article, a detailed summary of the efforts leading to a better understanding of the manifolds providing efficient preparative routes for cyclic organic carbonates is presented, considering primarily experimental and theoretical breakthrough results.


The cleavage of a peptide resin attached to a phenylacetomidomethyl (PAM) resin was investigated using bromotrimethylsilane (TMSBr) with thioanisole in trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), and by chlorotrimethylsilane (TMSCl) in the same reagents with lithium bromide. Both TMSBr and TMSCl cleaved the peptide from the resin, but TMSCl required elevated temperature (50 degrees C) to effect the cleavage. Procedures were investigated for the deprotection and cleavage of either N(g)-tosyl (Tos)- or mesitylenesulfonyl (MTS)-arginine residues attached to 4-methylbenzylhydrylamine (MBHA) resin, and of a peptide containing an MTS-arginine residue attached to MBHA resin, using either TMSCl or TMSBr as cleavage reagents. The MTS group is cleanly removed from arginine using TMSBr with thioanisole in TFA and by TMSCl in the same reagents with lithium bromide.


Most educators, parents, and students seem to agree that computers and information technology should play an increasingly important role in education. As schools continue to add hardware and software, there has been concern about equity. One fear has been that students in rural schools may be at a disadvantage compared to students in urban or suburban school districts. A major problem in interpreting the small, existing body of research comparing the use of information technology in urban and rural schools is the variety of ways that the term rural is defined by researchers. This study developed two matrices (Appendix A and B) and used them to categorize rural districts as either frontier (extremely isolated) or other rural and compared computing resources. The study determined that frontier schools have a higher quantity and quality of information technology resources per student and per classroom while rural schools tend to have faster and higher quality Internet connections.


The methane adsorption properties in M-MOF-74 (M = Mg, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, and Zn) were investigated for potential adsorbed natural gas (ANG) vehicle applications. In particular, density functional theory (DFT) simulations were conducted to derive the force field parameters that were used in the grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations to obtain the methane adsorption isotherm curves. Our results indicate that commonly used DFT exchange correlation functionals (e.g. vdW-DF, vdW-DF2, PBE+D2) overestimated the methane binding strength to the metal sites, leading to inaccurate description of the adsorption properties. As such, the global scaling factor within the exchange correlation functional, PBE+D2, was optimized to find a suitable functional that leads to good agreement with the available experimental methane adsorption data. From the newly derived force field parameters, our computational simulations predict a methane uptake of 279 cm3 cm-3 in V-MOF-74 at T = 298 K and P = 65 bar (condition relevant to ANG storage operation), which would be higher than the current record holder of HKUST-1 (270 cm3 cm-3). Although the methane working capacity (65-5.8 bar uptake difference) is low due to strong binding of methane with the V-MOF-74, varying the process conditions (e.g. lower adsorption temperature, higher desorption temperature, lower desorption pressure) can lead to a significantly high methane working capacity, towards the goal of meeting the DOE requirements for ANG technology.


INTRODUCTION
There is evidence that health care utilization increases after incident dementia, particularly after dementia diagnosis and toward the end of life; however, less is known about utilization in the years before dementia identification.

METHODS
In this retrospective cohort study we obtained data on n = 5547 beneficiaries from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)-Medicare linked sample (n = 1241 with and n = 4306 without dementia) to compare longitudinal trends in health care costs and utilization in the 6 years preceding dementia identification relative to a confounder-balanced reference group without dementia.

RESULTS
We found that persons with dementia had a greater prevalence of outpatient emergency department (ED), inpatient hospital, skilled nursing, and home health use, and total health care costs in the years preceding dementia identification compared to their similar counterparts without dementia across a comparable timespan in later life.

CONCLUSIONS
This study provides evidence to suggest greater healthcare burden may exist well before clinical manifestation and identification of dementia.

HIGHLIGHTS
Several studies have documented the tremendous healthcare-related costs of living with dementia, particularly toward the end of life. Dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, which, for some, includes a prolonged pre-clinical phase. However, health services research to date has seldom considered the time before incident dementia. This study documents that health care utilization and costs are significantly elevated in the years before incident dementia relative to a demographically-similar comparison group without dementia.


A model of absolute measuring instrument of power of synchrotron radiation in soft X-ray range of wavelengths of 8 – 0.4 nm based on high-temperature superconductor bolometer with electrical substitution has been developed, fabricated and tested. Tests have been carried out at the synchrotron radiation (SR) station "Cosmos" on the VEPP-4 storage ring of Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the SB RAS. It was ascertained that sensitivity of the device allows carrying out measurements of an SR flux power in the given spectral range. The minimum measured power was 3.2 W. A predicted threshold sensitivity of bolometer ~10-10 W/Hz1/2 at modulation frequency of 10 Hz and analysis of other factors influencing the measurement accuracy prove it to be real to achieve a 1 % accuracy at measurement of SR flux power of about 1 W.


The demand side for agritourism in Italy has not been fully investigated despite the relatively high number of studies of the supply side. Thus, this paper statistically examined the trends in the demand side for agritourism in Italy in comparison with tourism demand in general, such as that for hotels. Data were obtained from 'Annuario Statistico Italiano', edited and issued by ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica). Data from 1997 were compared with those from 2006. We examined the regional characteristics and trends in the composition of domestic and inbound tourists in relation to agritourism. The results are as follows. (1) Agritourism experienced rapid growth in the number of beds available and of those tourists who stayed overnight during the last decade, while the operation rate of agritourism is much lower than that of tourism in general. (2) Region-wise, the central region accounts for a large portion of agritourism demand and the southern region had the largest growth rate, while more than half of tourism demand in general went to the north in the case of hotel demand. (3) The market for agritourism domestic demand accounted for more than half of the total agritourism demand. The remaining demand was filled by inbound tourists from European countries. Among inbound European tourists, tourists from Scandinavia, UK and Germany increased sharply and therefore these inbound tourists are driving the growth of agritourism in this country. Even if we consider the particular reasons for low barriers to travel in Europe, such as the availability of land routes, a common currency with no risk presented by exchange rates, etc., these findings clearly indicate that it is essential for the development of agritourism to count not only on domestic, but also inbound tourists to raise the operation rate.


Glutaric aciduria type II, also known as multiple acyl coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency, is an autosomal recessive, mitochondrial organic acid disorder that impairs electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) or ETF-ubiquinone oxidoreductase, and causes a defect in flavin metabolism or transport. It has a heterogeneous clinical presentation, with at least three different phenotypic appearances. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the brain in this disorder shows a T2-weighted prolongation in the corpus striatum, putamen, caudate nucleus, middle cerebral peduncles and splenium of the corpus callosum. We report a seven-month-old male Caucasian child who presented at the paediatrics emergency department with a sweetish breath. He was clinically diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis. However, on MR imaging, brain evaluation and laboratory analysis, he was found to have glutaric aciduria type II.


In-line skating has become one of the fastest-growing recreational sports in the United States. Recent studies emphasize the value of protective gear in reducing the incidence of injuries. Recommendations are provided for parents and pediatricians, with special emphasis on the novice or inexperienced skater.


This paper studies the performance of dual-hop multiuser relay systems over mixed free-space optical/radio frequency (FSO/RF) links. We consider a system where a source node wants to communicate with multiple users through a single relay. The source node communicates with the relay point over an FSO link with heterodyne detection or direct detection, and the relay supports multiple users through the nonorthogonal multiple access technique over an RF link. One application scenario is in ultradense networks, where FSO links provide high-speed backhauling and RF links support multiple users. The FSO link is modeled by the M distribution in the presence of pointing errors, while the RF link is modeled by Nakagami-m fading. Utilizing amplify-and-forward fixed-gain relaying, we derive a novel closed-form expression for the outage probability in terms of the Fox H-function. Furthermore, a new asymptotic result for the outage probability in the large average signal-to-noise ratio regime is also presented in terms of simple functions. We then capitalize on these results to derive the diversity order of the system. Moreover, the ergodic capacity of the proposed system is also presented. Finally, Monte Carlo simulation results are presented to corroborate the derived results.


The new psychosomatic treatment modalities of biofeedback and relaxation techniques have in common an emphasis on self-control or self-regulation. The surging popularity of the self-control techniques at present may reflect a change in the self-image of medicine, which emphasizes its role as a collaborator of the patient in his self-control of disease processes. The modern concept of psychosomatic medicine emphasizes a systems or field approach to evaluation and treatment rather than 'psychogenic' causes of physical illness. The self-control treatment modalities form an important part of the armamentaria of a modern 'psychosomaticist'. We present preliminary data suggesting that 'potentiation' of biofeedback treatment may be useful. In borderline hypertensives, using pharmacologic means to reduce blood pressure during a biofeedback session may help subjects identify and re-create the 'low blood pressure states' without further aid of drugs. Hypertensives seeking biofeedback treatment are extremely internal in locus of control and tend to generalize their self-control to other areas of life to foster health and to prevent illness.


PURPOSE
To determine the optimum pigments concentration on the physical and mechanical properties.

METHODS
In this study, control samples were prepared from MDX-4-4210 silicone base and tested along with the pigmented samples for comparison in accordance with the national standards. The pigments concentration to base elastomer was set at 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3wt%,respectively; while other conditions were kept same, then the major physical properties of the elastomer were studied with a tensile tester. The data was processed with SPSS10.0 software package.

RESULTS
When comparing the pigmented samples with the control, the tensile strength, the ultimate elongation, the tear resistance and the Shore A hardness of the MDX-4-4210 silicone elastomer was affected by the addition of the pigments. A decrease was found,while, the incorporation of pigments had no effect on the permanent deformation rate of the resulting elastomer by the addition of the pigments.

CONCLUSIONS
The results obtained from physical and mechanical testing of pigmented silicone samples suggest that incorporation of 0.2wt% by weight of pigments can alter the initial physical and mechanical behavior of the base elastomer. Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (30630066).


Abstract An increase in the number of students entering higher education has intensified the need for targeted strategies to support a wider range of student requirements. Current research suggests that emotional intelligence (EI) may be associated with academic success, progression and retention in university students but the use of EI screening as a prospective measure of success requires further investigation. This study evaluates the utility of prospective EI screening to predict progression rates, mean grades, attendance and online engagement in a sample of first-year undergraduate students enrolled on the same degree programme (N = 358). A supportive text messaging intervention was employed during potentially stressful periods of the academic year with a subsection of participants (n = 60) who demonstrated low total EI scores relative to the cohort. Results showed no effects of EI classification on progression rates, mean grades, attendance or online engagement (all p > 0.418). Alternatively, the text messaging intervention was associated with significant improvements compared with a matched control group for progression rates (p = 0.027), mean grades (p = 0.026) and attendance (p = 0.007). The frequency of access to the virtual learning environment also tended to be higher in the intervention group compared with the control group (p = 0.059). In conclusion, this study did not identify any benefits of EI screening as a prospective indicator of student success but provides encouraging indications that a text messaging support intervention could help to improve progression rates, mean grades, attendance and online engagement in first-year undergraduate students. Further research is warranted to develop these proof-of-concept findings.


A simple two-atom system is used to probe complex quantum phenomena [Also see Report by Preiss et al.] Quantum effects emerge from an intricate interplay of the wave nature of massive particles, quantum statistics, and interactions in many-body systems. Each individual aspect can lead to nonclassical behavior and is often well understood; in many-body systems, however, it can be hard to identify the mutual influence of these three aspects on a single-particle level. On page 1229 of this issue, Preiss et al. (1) present an experimental study illustrating the effect of quantum statistics as well as of various interaction strengths on the matter wave quantum dynamics of two ultracold atoms. Starting from the matter wave dynamics of a single atom, adding a second atom allows them to observe the two-body dynamics of interacting bosons. By controlling the interparticle interaction, they are able to bring the atoms into the strongly interacting regime, where the system resembles two weakly interacting fermions. The work by Preiss et al. allows the role of different quantum mechanisms to be identified. It also constitutes a step toward the study of more complex quantum systems in a controlled fashion, where the level of complexity is not accessible to classical simulations.


A series of fully conjugated oligo(3-hexylthiophene)s bearing different starting- and end-groups have been synthesized by means of externally initiated Kumada catalyst-transfer polymerization (KCTP) and Grignard Metathesis Polymerization (GRIM). These kinds of oligomers' starting- and end-groups include tert-butyl protected thiols to be used for binding of oligomers to gold electrodes and tetracyanobutadiene-based donor–acceptor (DA) end-groups, such as dimethylaniline-tetracyanobutadiene (DMA-TCBD) and ferrocene-tetracyanobutadiene (Fc-TCBD), introduced to control the charge transport through the oligomers. The DMA-TCBD and Fc-TCBD end groups were incorporated by means of a Diederich-type click transformation of appropriately end-terminated oligo(3-hexylthiophene)s. The efficiency of the end-group functionalization was comprehensively assessed by NMR spectroscopy and MALDI-TOF spectrometry whereas the redox activities of the DA end-groups were examined by cyclic voltammetry. KCTP showed a much superior performance compared to GRIM in the introduction of a desirable end-group functionality. The thus-prepared conjugated oligomers are attractive materials for application in molecular electronics which will be explored in future studies.


In this study, Zn1-xCrxO thin films were successfully fabricated on glass substrates by magnetron sputtering technique. The relationship between Cr doping concentration and the structural and optical characteristics of the produced samples was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical transmittance and photoluminescence(PL). EDS results demonstrate that Cr ions are substitutionally incorporated into ZnO. XRD analysis reveals that all the prepared films with a preferential c-axis orientation exhibit the wurtzite structure of ZnO. The spectrometer transmittance data indicates that the band gap energies of the Zn1-xCrxO films are calculated by a linear fitting method. The band gap is found to be large with the increasing dopant concentration. The PL spectra suggest that all the samples have an ultraviolet emission peak centered at 370 nm. With the improved Cr-doped concentration, the peaks of ultraviolet emission have a blue shift to the region of higher photon energy, which is coincident with those values calculated by the linear fitting from the transmittance data. It is also found that the intensity of ultraviolet emission has been remarkably improved when Cr content is approximately 2.0at.%, but it is decreased when doping concentration of Cr is excessively high.


BACKGROUND
Although the reliability of pain drawings (PDs) has been confirmed in people with chronic pain, there is a lack of evidence about the validity of the PD, that is, does the PD accurately represent the pain experience of the patient?

OBJECTIVES
We investigate whether people with chronic neck pain (CNP) can recognize their own PD to support the validity of the PD in reporting the experience of pain. Moreover, we examined the association between their ability to recognize their own PD with their levels of pain intensity and disability and extent of psychosocial and somatic features.

STUDY DESIGN
Experimental.

SETTING
University Laboratory.

METHODS
Individuals with CNP completed their PD on a digital body chart, which was then automatically modified with specific dimensions using a novel software, providing an objective range of distortion and eliminating errors, which could potentially occur in manually controlled visual-subjective based methods. Following a 10-minute break listening to music, a series of 20 PDs were presented to each patient in a random order, with only 2 being their original PD. For each PD, the patients rated its likeliness to their own original PD on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 representing "this is my pain."

RESULTS
Overall, the patients rated their original PD with a median score of 92% similarity, followed by 91.8% and 89.5% similarity when presented with a PD scaled down to 75% and scaled up by 150% of the original size, respectively; these scores were not significantly different to the ratings given for their original PD. The PD with horizontal translation by 40 pixels (8%) and vertical translation by 70 pixels (12.8%) were rated as the most dissimilar to their original PD; these scores were significantly different to their original PD scores. The Spearman correlation coefficient revealed a significant negative association between their ability to recognize their original PD and their Modified Somatic Perceptions Questionnaire scores.

LIMITATIONS
The patients in the study presented with relatively mild CNP, and the results may not be generalized to those with more severe symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS
People with CNP are generally able to identify their own PD but that their ability to recognize their original PD is negatively correlated with the extent of somatic awareness.

KEY WORDS
Chronic pain, perception, pain drawings, somatic awareness.


Interactive image segmentation which needs the user to give certain hard constraints has shown promising performance for object segmentation. In this paper, we consider characters in text image as a special kind of object, and propose an adaptive graph cut based text binarization method to segment text from background. The main contributions of the paper lie in: 1) in order to make the binarization local adaptive with uneven background, the text region image is firstly roughly split into several sub-images on which graph cut is applied, and 2) considering the unique characteristics of the text, we propose to automatically classify some pixels as text or background with high confidence, severed as hard constraints seeds for graph cut to extract text from background by spreading the seeds into the whole sub-image. The experimental results show that our approach could get better performance in both character extraction accuracy and recognition accuracy.


SIGNIFICANCE
Endothelial dysfunction and the imbalance between nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species production in the vascular endothelium are important early steps in atherogenesis, a major socioeconomic health problem. Statins have well-established roles in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD), due to both their lipid-lowering capacity and their pleiotropic properties. It is therefore important to understand the mechanisms by which statins can modify endothelial function and affect atherogenesis.

RECENT ADVANCES
In the last decade, the concept of statin pleiotropy has been reinforced by a large number of cell culture, animal, and translational studies. Statins have been shown to suppress the activity of pro-oxidant enzymes (such as NADPH oxidase) and pro-inflammatory transcriptional pathways in the endothelium. At the same time, they enhance endothelial NO synthase expression and activity while they also improve its enzymatic coupling. This leads to increased NO bioavailability and improved endothelial function.

CRITICAL ISSUES
Despite significant recent advances, the exact mechanisms of statin pleitropy are still only partially understood. The vast majority of the published literature relies on animal studies, while the actual mechanistic studies in humans are limited.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The success of statins as endothelium redox-modifying agents with a direct impact on clinical outcome highlights the importance of the endothelium as a therapeutic target in CVD. Better understanding of the mechanisms that underlie endothelial dysfunction could lead to the design of novel therapeutic strategies that target the vascular endothelium for the prevention and treatment of CVD.


Recent studies highlighted the influence of epigenetic marks in the variability of many complex traits, both in plants and animals. These studied focused only on specific sites of the genome having differentially methylated profiles among individuals and/or tissues. In contrast, we recently used the methylation rate of the entire genome as a unique measure considered as a novel quantitative phenotype in sheep. This phenotype named global DNA methylation rate (GDMR), measured by luminometric assay, integrates the methylation level of each CpG dinucleotide within the 6 million of CCGG sites along the ovine genome. GDMR measured in blood previously showed moderate heritability of 0.20 and provided evidence for a genetic determinism. The main objective of the present study was to better characterize the GDMR phenotype in various tissues and investigate its variability in several breeds of sheep reared in the same environment. GDMR was measured on blood samples collected monthly from 59 growing male and female lambs (24 Romane, 23 Blackbelly and 12 Charollais), between birth and 4 months of age. Blood GDMR was on average around 80% and was influenced by the sampling date (p < 0.001), the breed (p = 0.002) and the sex (p = 0.002). In addition, GDMR was determined in 12 somatic (frontal lobe, pituitary gland, heart, lung, sub cutaneous and perirenal adipose tissue, skeletal muscle, liver, spleen, adrenal gland, medulla and cortical kidney) and 6 reproductive tissues (ovary, oviduct, uterus, testis, epididymis and seminal vesicle). GDMR was on average 70% in somatic tissues but marked variation was observed depending on the tissue. The GDMR measured in blood was higher than that measured in other somatic tissues, and is not a good proxy of less accessible tissues. Female reproductive tissues had a 10% higher GDMR than male reproductive tissues. We demonstrated a significant influence of the breed on blood GDMR, certainly reflecting the influence of different genetic backgrounds. The effect of the breed on GDMR may be related to their specific abilities to adapt to and live in different conditions.


Thick marine shales occur in the Wufeng Formation and Longmaxi Formation of Sanquan Town of the Nanchuan District, Chongqing Municipality, which is located on the southeast margin of the Sichuan Basin. However, few details of the characteristics of the Wufeng–Longmaxi shales in this area have been reported. In this study, a well approximately 100 m (∼328 ft) deep was drilled. A high-quality shale (total organic carbon [TOC] >2.0 wt. %, clay <40%) interval that was approximately 24 m (∼79 ft) thick with an average TOC value of 3.0 wt. % mainly occurs in the Ordovician Wufeng Formation (Katian and Hirnantian) and base of the Silurian Longmaxi Formation (Rhuddanian). Shales with higher TOC values commonly have a higher porosity and specific surface area. Tectonic movements may also have been very important factors that influenced the petrophysical properties of the shales. For example, a detachment layer that resulted from complex tectonic movements is extensive in the Wufeng Formation. The cracks and microcracks in the detachment layer can result in good pore connectivity. Consequently, the detachment layer can be an effective migration pathway. The Longmaxi–Wufeng shales of Sanquan Town are also compared with those of the famous Jiaoye 1 well in the Jiaoshiba shale gas field in the eastern Sichuan Basin. Although the shales in Sanquan Town have considerable shale gas generation potential, the shale gas resource potential in Sanquan Town is probably poor because the escape of shale gas may be accelerated by the detachment layer in destroyed anticlines and synclines.


This work studied on the composting process of organic waste. Organic waste is the easily biodegradable waste. Organic wastes are produced from many sources Such as agricultural waste, market waste, kitchen waste, urban solid waste and municipal solid waste. Without proper management, this waste could create several environments problem. Therefore, composting is the best low-cost alternative solution to overcome this problem. The composting method can degrade all types of organic waste such as fruits, vegetables, plants, yard waste and others. The organic waste composition can be used as nutrients for crops, soil additives and for environmental management. However, many factors can contribute to the quality of compost products since different types of organic waste have different concentrations of nutrients, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (N, P, K) that are the common macro energetics present in fertilizers. The presence of heavy metals shows how Composts can be applied to soils without contributing any negative effects. In terms of the factor affecting the composting process, temperature, pH, moisture content and carbon nitrogen ratio (C: N) are the main parameters that contribute to the efficiency of the composting process.


Optimization of the chemical composition of Ti2AlNb-based alloy resulted in development of high-strength Ti-20.3Al-22.1Nb-1.2Zr-1.3V-0.9Mo-0.3Si (at.%) intermetallic with rather low density ρ≈5.1 g/cm3. Mechanical properties of the alloy were considerably improved due to formation of the homogeneous ultrafine-grained structure. The ultrafinegrained material exhibited both high strength and ductility at room temperature (σUTS=1400 MPa; δ=25%) and superplastic behavior in the temperature range of 850-1000°C (δmax=930% at T=900°C). The metal-intermetallic composites consisting of alternating layers of the orthorhombic intermetallic alloy and the commercial high-temperature titanium alloy were produced. The 3-layered composite had high strength and reasonable ductility both at room and elevated temperatures: σUTS=1235 MPa and δ=4% at T=20°C; σUTS=875 MPa and δ=21% at T=600°C.


The probability tail structure of over 22,000 weather stations globally is examined in order to identify the physically and mathematically consistent distribution type for modeling the probability of intense daily precipitation and extremes. Results indicate that when aggregating data annually, most locations are to be considered heavy tailed with statistical significance. When aggregating data by season, it becomes evident that the thickness of the probability tail is related to the variability in precipitation causing events and thus that the fundamental cause of precipitation volatility is weather diversity. These results have both theoretical and practical implications for the modeling of high‐frequency climate variability worldwide.


Abstract One of the major goals for Wendelstein 7-AS (W7-AS) was the testing of the theoretical basis for the optimized configuration of Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), currently under construction in Greifswald, Germany. In the last experimental campaign of W7-AS, volume-averaged β values >3% have been achieved. The underlying experimental changes leading to these results are briefly reviewed. The equilibrium characteristics expected from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory are modeled in a simplified picture and compared with three-dimensional equilibrium calculations. A wide range of parameters has been covered in the experiments with and without net toroidal currents. Experimental data are compared with free-boundary equilibrium calculations and exhibit good agreement. The high-β equilibria usually showed only small MHD activity. The most prominent activities are low-frequency pressure-driven modes connected with low-order rationals also expected from numerical calculations using the CAS3D code, and Alfvén modes driven by energetic particles from the tangential neutral beam injection. Comparison of experimentally measured frequencies and mode structures from soft-X-ray tomography with theoretical predictions also shows the improving understanding of these modes in stellarators. The agreement of experiment and theory gives confidence in the predictions for W7-X.


The replication of Chlamydia trachomatis serovar K was studied in human peripheral blood monocytes (PBMo). The intracellular fate of the bacteria was examined by determining the presence of chlamydial major outer-membrane protein (MOMP), lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). In-vitro infection of PBMo with C. trachomatis serovar K was not productive. However, chlamydial MOMP antigen, demonstrated by immunofluorescence, was present in PBMo for up to 14 days. Infected monocytes also contained chlamydial rRNA, measured by in-vitro hybridisation, and LPS, measured by enzyme immunoassay, for up to 14 days. These data are compatible with the hypothesis that the infection of PBMo with C. trachomatis may play a role in the systemic distribution of chlamydial antigens, leading to systemic manifestations of urogenital chlamydial infection.