Arsenic trioxide (As2O3) exhibits important antitumor activities in vitro and in vivo, but the precise mechanisms by which it induces its effects are not known. We provide evidence that during treatment of BCR-ABL–expressing cells with As2O3, there is activation of a cellular pathway involving the p70 S6 kinase (p70S6K). Our data show that p70S6K is rapidly phosphorylated on Thr421 and Ser424 and is activated in an As2O3-inducible manner. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is also phosphorylated/activated in an As2O3-inducible manner, and its activity is required for downstream engagement of p70S6K. p70S6K subsequently phosphorylates the S6 ribosomal protein on Ser235/Ser236 and Ser240/Ser244 to promote initiation of mRNA translation. Treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia–derived cell lines with As2O3 also results in phosphorylation of the 4E-BP1 repressor of mRNA translation on Thr37/Thr46 and Thr70, sites required for its deactivation and its dissociation from the eukaryotic initiation factor 4E complex to allow cap-dependent mRNA translation. In studies to determine the functional relevance of this pathway, we found that inhibition of mTOR and downstream cascades enhances induction of apoptosis by As2O3. Consistent with this, the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin strongly potentiated As2O3-mediated suppression of primitive leukemic progenitors from the bone marrow of chronic myelogenous leukemia patients. Altogether, our data show that the mTOR/p70S6K pathway is activated in a negative feedback regulatory manner in response to As2O3 in BCR-ABL–transformed cells and plays a key regulatory role in the induction of anti-leukemic responses. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(11):2815–23]


Laboratory endurance tests were performed on a direct injected, turbocharged, and intercooled diesel engine. A 25/75 blend (v/v) of alkali refined sunflower oil with diesel fuel and a 25/75 blend (v/v) of high oleic safflower oil and diesel fuel were tested. For comparison prior to the tests with the experimental fuels, a baseline endurance run with Phillips D2 Reference Fuel was carried out. The major problems experienced while operating on the 25/75 blend of alkali-refined sunflower oil and diesel fuel were premature injection nozzle performance deterioration and heavier carbonaceous buildup in the compression ring grooves and on the piston lands. There were no significant problems with engine operation when using the 25/75 blend of high oleic safflower oil and diesel fuel. Based on the results of this investigation, the 25-75 blend of high oleic safflower oil with diesel fuel is a very promising candidate as an alternate fuel. This investigation provides evidence that chemical differences between the vegetable oils have a very important influence on long term engine performance. In the tested fuel viscosity range it appears that the chemical properties rather than fuel viscosity is the major factor which determines engine performance deterioration while using vegetable oil fuels.


In the closing decade of the twentieth century, increasing attention was given to the codification of ethical behavioural standards among public officials, internationally and throughout Australian jurisdictions. This paper describes, compares and provides a preliminary analysis of the limited Australian codification initiatives for elected public officials in State and federal Parliaments over this period, with particular focus on the New South Wales and Queensland legislatures. The paper shows that Members of Parliament are reluctant to adopt codes of ethics or conduct and forecasts that the focus on implementing codes alone, without a range of supporting ethics initiatives, is likely to be of little effect.


In this article we examine the dominant assumptions that immigrant youth living in the working-class suburban areas in Oslo, Norway are marginalized and angry. We argue that there is no proof that immigrants living in the Oslo suburbs are alienated from society. Nor do we see any indications of some form of mobilization among this group. This dominant assumption is linked to a larger misperception about "ghettos" in Oslo. The idea, that there are "immigrant ghettos" in Oslo, has similarities with, and draws on public debates about "immigrants" in other European cities and a broader international scholarly discourse. In this paper we show that teenagers and young adults in the most materially deprived areas in Oslo are not socially isolated, but actively participate in crucial mainstream institutions and arenas. We show that these youths have ideals, values, and ambitions that closely duplicate those of most Norwegian teenagers and young adults. We conclude therefore, that the young people labeled as "immigrants" are not only integral members of Norwegian society, but co-producers of it.


The authors examined how electing an out-group leader to an intergroup leadership position affects schism processes within the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Study 1 (N = 189) sampled Democrats and Republicans from two states (California, Texas) through MTurk and randomly assigned them to a bogus survey that projected either a Democrat or Republican candidate winning the election. Participants completed measures of identity-subversion, superordinate identification, subgroup identification, and subgroup schism support. Study 2 (N = 68) used a pre–posttest design conducted before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Results showed that people perceived more identity-subversion when an out-group leader was projected to win (Study 1) or did win the election (Study 2). Whereas Republicans increased schism support after an out-group leader was projected to win (Study 1), Democrats increased their schism support when an out-group leader was elected (Study 2). Identity-subversion partially mediated the effects of out-group leadership election on schism intentions.


For a continuum structure filled with many solid phases with different stiffness, the layout of the materials should be optimized to perform an excellent structural mechanical behaviour. The differences between the materials' moduli affect the final layout of materials in structure. To investigate the effects, a numerical approach is adopted to find the optimal topology of a continuum with multiple materials. In the method, the layout of the material is determined by the local strain energy density (SED). Briefly, in design domain, a material point with higher SED should have higher modulus. To show the effects obviously, a continuum with three phases is used for experiment. In the structure, the modulus of the stiffest material and the volumes of materials are fixed. The other materials' moduli change alternately. Numerical results demonstrate the layout of materials in structure depends on the differences between the moduli greatly, and the topology of the stiffest material is clear if its modulus is far more than the others.


The rapid development of information and communication technology has enabled more people to outsource and store their data on the networked databases. However, it brings challenges related to the data privacy and security. Our research focuses on the privacy in which the party who requests for a service discloses the minimum amount of personal information, whereas the party that o↵ers data is able to ensure that only the requested data are revealed. Particularly, we focus on the mechanism searching for keywords on encrypted data. There are numbers of techniques that can be applied in the keyword search, such as public encryption with keyword search (PEKS), oblivious transfer (OT), private information retrieval (PIR), symmetric key encryption and homomorphic encryption. In this work, we consider PEKS, symmetric key encryptions and OT to perform oblivious keyword search. Our work can be summarized as follows. • Keyword search in designated senders. Most of current keyword search schemes only consider the keyword stored in the email gateway or database service providers. Hence, an o↵-line keyword guessing attack was developed to perform brute force attacks on a limited keyword space. An e cient solution is providing another element, for example, the sender's identity, in the ciphertext in order to improve the security of encrypted keywords. This allows us to achieve a new cryptography primitive namely keyword search with designated signers. • Symmetric key encryption that provides a better security level than the other ones. The underlying principle of a symmetric key encryption is that the sender and the receiver must share the same secret key. We propose a construction based on the public key infrastructure that allows the sender and the receiver to exchange their public keys and construct a secret key. This scheme is based on a computable assumption that is more secure than the one based on v decisional assumption. • Oblivious keyword search. The idea of oblivious keyword search is from the oblivious transfer (OT). The security of OT requires that both sender's and receiver's privacy are preserved. Therefore, from the privacy point of view, OT is suitable for enabling privacy of outsourced data. • Public key encryption with oblivious keyword search. Combining the notions of PEKS and OT, we propose an oblivious keyword search scheme. The new scheme achieves the properties of both PEKS and OT. We note that the combination is done in a non-trivial manner in order to ensure the security of the system.


The surface V3 of the denuded corneal stroma was separated into the anterior and posterior segments; the swelling ratio of each was compared under zero pressure. In the rabbit, cat, and bovine corneas, the anterior segment was less hydrophilic than the posterior one, in both the central and peripheral regions. In the rabbit cornea, the swelling ratio of the posterior segment was significantly larger in the central region than in the peripheral. A fine glass capillary was implanted into the stroma as a landmark on the living eye. Corneal swelling was induced by means of irrigation with cold Ringer's solution. In vivo, under normal intraocular pressure, as in vitro, the anterior layers were less hydrophilic than the posterior. In order to clarify the relationship between uneven swelling and clouding of the stroma, successive observations of light scattering and simultaneous thickness measurements were made on the anterior and posterior layers of the enucleated eye at the various stages of swelling. An intense light scattering occurred with slight swelling in the anterior layers, while in the posterior layers, relatively slight scattering occurred with a high degree of swelling. This paradoxical finding leads to the supposition that the hydration of the stroma bears quite a different relation to light scattering in the respective layers. The principle that light scattering occurs in proportion to the degree of swelling cannot be applied to the other zone beyond the boundary between the anterior and posterior zones.


Aim: To determine the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B virus infection in closed communities and the relations between the risk behavior and VHB infection. Material and methods: In this study we included persons deprived of personal freedom at Bacau Correctional Facility. The subjects filled out a ques-tionnaire, which contained identification and epidemiologic data (detention history, evalua-tion of the risk factors), as well as an informed consent. All subjects were tested for HBsAg. Results: According to the performed tests, the general prevalence of hepatitis B and C in this correctional facility was 15,34%, with a prevalence of hepatitis B of 10,74%. Although these figures show a higher prevalence in this population than within the general population, they are lower than the figures reported in correctional facilities from other countries. Con-clusions: The results confirm the fact that the population in correctional facilities is at high risk for hepatitis B infection, the ways of disease transmission being already known (infected blood, injected drugs, tattooing, homosexual relationships).


Background: An ectopic pregnancy (EP) is a type of conception in which, the fertilized egg is lodged outside the uterine cavity. Twin ectopic pregnancies are a rarity, and the reported cases of twin tubal pregnancies are a handful to date.Case Report: We report a case of a 35 years old patient who presented to the emergency with the complaint of lower abdominal pain and intermittent vaginal discharge. She was diagnosed with twin tubal alive gestation, underwent exploratory laparotomy and right salpingectomy.Conclusion: Ectopic pregnancy can occur even in the absence of known risk factors. Its incidence is on the rise. It is a leading cause of first-trimester maternal deaths and can be easily diagnosed with Beta HCG levels and transvaginal ultrasound.


21st Conference of European Comparative Endocrinologists, Bonn, Germany, August 26±31, 2002 Scienti®c contributions will cover all aspects of comparative endocrinology.


Canopy structure plays an essential role in biophysical activities in forest environments. However, quantitative descriptions of a 3-D canopy structure are extremely difficult because of the complexity and heterogeneity of forest systems. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) provides an opportunity to automatically measure a 3-D canopy structure in large areas. Compared with other point cloud technologies such as the image-based Structure from Motion, the power of ALS lies in its ability to penetrate canopies and depict subordinate trees. However, such capabilities have been poorly explored so far. In this paper, the potential of ALS-based approaches in depicting a 3-D canopy structure is explored in detail through an international benchmarking of five recently developed ALS-based individual tree detection (ITD) methods. For the first time, the results of the ITD methods are evaluated for each of four crown classes, i.e., dominant, codominant, intermediate, and suppressed trees, which provides insight toward understanding the current status of depicting a 3-D canopy structure using ITD methods, particularly with respect to their performances, potential, and challenges. This benchmarking study revealed that the canopy structure plays a considerable role in the detection accuracy of ITD methods, and its influence is even greater than that of the tree species as well as the species composition in a stand. The study also reveals the importance of utilizing the point cloud data for the detection of intermediate and suppressed trees. Different from what has been reported in previous studies, point density was found to be a highly influential factor in the performance of the methods that use point cloud data. Greater efforts should be invested in the point-based or hybrid ITD approaches to model the 3-D canopy structure and to further explore the potential of high-density and multiwavelengths ALS data.


How did religious freedom emerge? I address this question by building on the framework of Johnson and Koyama's Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom (2019). First, I establish that premodern societies, reliant on identity rules, were incapable of liberalism and religious freedom. Identity rules and restrictions on religious freedom were part of a political-economy equilibrium that ensured social order. Second, I examine developments like the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, as shocks to this premodern identity rules and conditional toleration equilibrium. Finally, I consider several examples that support the claim that the move from identity rules to general rules allowed religious freedom to flourish.


For the first time the dry adhesion was measured for an all-wood biopolymer system using Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) contact mechanics. The polydimethylsiloxane hemisphere was successfully surface-modified with a Cellulose I model surface using layer-by-layer assembly of nanofibrillated cellulose and polyethyleneimine. Flat surfaces of cellulose were equally prepared on silicon dioxide substrates, and model surfaces of glucomannan and lignin were prepared on silicon dioxide using spin-coating. The measured work of adhesion on loading and the adhesion hysteresis was found to be very similar between cellulose and all three wood polymers, suggesting that the interaction between these biopolymers do not differ greatly. Surface energy calculations from contact angle measurements indicated similar dispersive surface energy components for the model surfaces. The dispersive component was dominating the surface energy for all surfaces. The JKR work of adhesion was lower than that calculated from contact angle measurements, which partially can be ascribed to surface roughness of the model surfaces and overestimation of the surface energies from contact angle determinations.


The purpose of this study was to examine the effects that time and community assistance (in the form of donations) had on accrued recoveries from the Novel Coronavirus. This study examined donation transaction data from a community-based national virtual donation platform in conjunction with government released figures on populations and COVID-19 cases in the Philippines. Findings from a Generalized Linear Model showed that at a 0.001 level of significance, the passage of time affected accrued recoveries by about 14 (13.23) daily, while cumulative individual donations improved recoveries by about 2 (1.69) people. A series of simulations that visualized the effects of time and donations on recoveries evidenced that accrued recoveries were accelerated by donations. Results from the analysis generated a series of recommendations based on Resource-Advantage Theory, along with Disaster Management Theory as applied to supply-chains. The first recommendation was to allow broader access to the platform as an information exchange. An expansion of the crowdsourcing features on the platform was a second recommendation. A third recommendation was establishing a relief distribution network prior to the next disaster.


We numerically study both the avalanche instability and many-body resonances in strongly-disordered spin chains exhibiting many-body localization (MBL). Finite-size systems behave MBL within the MBL regimes, which we divide into the asymptotic MBL phase , and the finite-size MBL regime ; the latter regime is, however, thermal in the limit of large systems and long times. In both Floquet and Hamiltonian models, we identify some "landmarks" within the MBL regimes. Our first landmark is an estimate of where the MBL phase becomes unstable to avalanches, obtained by measuring the slowest relaxation rate of a finite chain coupled to an infinite bath at one end. Our estimates indicate that the actual MBL-to-thermal phase transition occurs much deeper in the MBL regimes than has been suggested by most previous studies. Our other landmarks involve system-wide many-body resonances: We find that the effective matrix elements producing eigenstates with system-wide many-body resonances are enormously broadly distributed. This broad distribution means that the onset of such resonances in typical samples occurs quite deep in the MBL regimes, and the first such resonances typically involve rare pairs of eigenstates that are farther apart in energy than the minimum gap. Thus we find that the resonance properties define two landmarks that divide the MBL regimes of finite-size systems into three subregimes: (i) at strongest randomness, typical samples do not have any eigenstates that are involved in system-wide many-body resonances; (ii) there is a substantial intermediate subregime where typical samples do have such resonances, but the pair of eigenstates with the minimum spectral gap does not, so that the size of the minimum gap agrees with expectations from Poisson statistics; and (iii) in the weaker randomness subregime, the minimum gap is larger than predicted by Poisson level statistics because it is involved in a many-body resonance and thus subject to level repulsion. Nevertheless, even in this third subregime, all but a vanishing fraction of eigenstates remain non-resonant and the system thus still appears MBL in most respects. Based on our estimates of the location of the avalanche instability, it might be that the MBL phase is only part of subregime (i), and the other subregimes are entirely in the thermal phase, even though they look localized in most respects, so are in the finite-size MBL regime.


The important role of the cytoskeletal scaffold is increasingly recognized in host-pathogen interactions. The cytoskeleton potentially functions as a weapon for both the plants defending themselves against fungal or oomycete parasites, and for the pathogens trying to overcome the resisting barrier of the plants. This concept, however, had not been investigated in marine algae so far. We are opening this scientific chapter with our study on the functional implications of the cytoskeleton in 3 filamentous brown algal species infected by the marine oomycete Eurychasma dicksonii. Our observations suggest that the cytoskeleton is involved in host defense responses and in fundamental developmental stages of E. dicksonii in its algal host.


A Nonlinear Generalized Minimum Variance (NGMV) control algorithm is introduced for the control of piecewise affine (PWA) systems. Under some conditions, discrete-time PWA systems can be transferred into an equivalent state-dependent nonlinear system form. The equivalent state-dependent systems maintain the hybrid nature of the original PWA systems and include both the discrete and continuous signals in one general description. In a more general way, the process is assumed to include common delays in input or output channels of magnitude . Then the NGMV control strategy can be applied. The NGMV controller is related to a well-known and accepted solution for time delay systems (Smith Predictor) but has the advantage that it may stabilize open-loop unstable processes.


3D many-core NoCs are emerging architectures for future high-performance single chips due to its integration of many processor cores and memories by stacking multiple layers. In such architecture, because processor cores and memories reside in different locations (center, corner, edge, etc.), memory accesses behave differently due to their different communication distances, and the performance (latency) gap of different memory accesses becomes larger as the network size is scaled up. This phenomenon may lead to very high latencies suffered from by some memory accesses, thus degrading the system performance. To achieve high performance, it is crucial to reduce the number of memory accesses with very high latencies. However, this should be done with care since shortening the latency of one memory access can worsen the latency of another as a result of shared network resources. Therefore, the goal should focus on narrowing the latency difference of memory accesses. In the paper, we address the goal by proposing to prioritize the memory access packets based on predicting the round-trip routing latencies of memory accesses. The communication distance and the number of the occupied items in the buffers in the remaining routing path are used to predict the round-trip latency of a memory access. The predicted round-trip routing latency is used as the base to arbitrate the memory access packets so that the memory access with potential high latency can be transferred as early and fast as possible, thus equalizing the memory access latencies as much as possible. Experiments with varied network sizes and packet injection rates prove that our approach can achieve the goal of memory access equalization and outperforms the classic round-robin arbitration in terms of maximum latency, average latency, and LSD1. In the experiments, the maximum improvement of the maximum latency, the average latency and the LSD are 80%, 14%, and 45% respectively.


Post-vasectomy pain syndrome (PVPS) is a rare, but devastating outcome following vasectomy. Given the widespread utilization of vasectomy for permanent contraception, with more than 500,000 procedures performed annually in the United States, it can be a significant challenge for both patients and providers. Vasectomy reversal is a surgical option for men who fail conservative or medical management. Despite improvements in technique, vasectomy carries some inherent risks making pre-procedure counseling regarding the risks of PVPS paramount. Chronic post-operative pain, or PVPS, occurs in 1–2% of men undergoing the procedure. This review will examine the utility of vasectomy reversal as a means of addressing PVPS.


Research Findings: Children's early academic achievement is supported by positive social and behavioral skills, and difficulties with these skills frequently gives way to underachievement. Social and behavioral problems often arise as a product of parent–child interactional patterns and environmental influences. Few studies have examined the role of a salient aspect of children's environments, community locale, in the relationship between parenting practices and child outcomes. Using a large, nationally representative sample, we examined whether preschool parenting practices and children's social-behavioral skills in kindergarten were related to geographic setting (rural vs. city, suburban, and town). Results indicated that rural children experienced greater difficulties with parent-reported externalizing behaviors. Furthermore, rural parents displayed less emotional support than parents in other settings. Preschool parenting behaviors were associated with social skills and behavior problems in kindergarten, as reported by both parents and teachers. Parents' emotional supportiveness was found to account for the relationship between geographic setting and parent-reported children's social skills, such that rural parents who provided less emotional support had children with lower social skills in kindergarten. Practice or Policy: Findings of this research indicate that rural children may face particular risk for behavioral issues and highlight the need for increased behavioral supports in rural communities. Moreover, our results suggest that interventions designed to promote parents' support of children's emotions may have particular utility for rural families.


This essay examines the possibilities for peace education through the teaching of history, with a specific focus on the Queensland Senior Modern History Curriculum. An examination is made of the major themes within the Curriculum, namely, nationalism, internationalism, economic history, Asian and Australian history, imperialism, neo-imperialism, racism, and recent social and cultural history, and within each of these it is argued that there are substantive possibilities for teaching the value of peace.


The advancement of technology is ensured by step-by-step innovation and its implementation into society. Autonomous decentralized systems (ADSs) have been growing since first proposed in 1977 by Kinji Mori, and then the ADS technologies and their implementations have interacted with the evolving markets, sciences, and technologies. The ADS concept is proposed on biological analogy, and its technologies have been advanced according to changing and expanding requirements. These technologies are now categorized into three generations for different missions according to the heterogeneous requirements of customers and systems. These technologies have been widely applied in manufacturing, telecommunications, information provision/utilization, transportation, and so on. They have been operating successfully throughout the world. The paradigm shift of ADS technologies is shown in this chapter.


—Recent works have shown the use of diffusion geometry for various pattern recognition applications, including non-rigid shape analysis. In this paper, we introduce spectral shape distance as a general framework for distribution-based shape similarity and show that two recent methods for shape similarity due to Rustamov and Mahmoudi & Sapiro are particular cases thereof.


This paper sets forth a fully validated quasianalytical method for determining the fluid flow in a multi-inlet collection manifold. The method is based on first principles, which are the conservation laws for mass and momentum. Although it is necessary to use numerical means to extract results from the model, the solution task is accomplished by the use of a spreadsheet, without the need for complex software or large computer assets. The validation of the method was achieved by comparing the key results with those from a numerically exact simulation. The comparison included both local results and global results. For the local results, the accuracy of the model was found to be in the 1% range, while the global results from the model were accurate to about 4%. The investigated manifold was a case study drawn from a problem involving thermal management of electronic equipment, in which an array of coldplates discharged spent air into the manifold. It was found, from both the quasianalytical method and the numerical simulation, that there is a variation in the per-coldplate flowrate due to axial pressure variations in the manifold. These pressure variations can be attributed to the streamwise acceleration of the manifold flow due to the accumulation of the flow entering the manifold from the coldplate array. The utility of the quasianalytical method was further demonstrated by applying it to a number of other cases. In particular, the method was used to design a manifold capable of producing a uniform mass flowrate through all of its ports. DOI: 10.1115/1.2717620


Background: Excessive lipid accumulation by macrophages plays a crucial role in atherosclerosis. Foam cells are generated by uncontrolled uptake of modified LDL, especially oxidized LDL (oxLDL), and/or impaired cholesterol efflux mediated by ATP-binding cassette (ABC) family transporters, ABCA-1 and ABCG-1. Shockwave, elicited by transient pressure disturbance, have been used for extracorporeal lithotripsy or for treating musculoskeletal disorders. Our current study suggests an evidence that shockwave may have anti-atherogenic effect by inhibiting foam cell formation.

Methods/Results: Murine peritoneal macrophages were exposed to shockwaves at 0.04 mJ/mm2 with 1000 impulses, lysed after 6, 18 and 24 hours, and tested for expression of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1. The western blot showed that shockwave induced 2.0-2.8 fold increase of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1 within 18-24 hours. mRNA levels of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1 were also increased by shockwave with 2.0 fold of peak increase in 18 hours. The increased expression of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1 was mediated by phosphorylation of ERK 1/2 (Tyr204). Western blot analysis revealed that shockwave induced phosphorylation of ERK 1/2 (Tyr204) in murine macrophages. Shockwave-induced increase of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1 was blocked by U0126 (40µM), a specific inhibitor for ERK. Oil-red O staining showed that macrophages exposed to shockwave had 25% less intracellular lipid droplets. Intracellular cholesterol measured by cholesterol oxidase and esterase revealed that macrophages exposed to shockwave had 23% less intracellular cholesterol when incubated with oxLDL (50µg/ml) for 16 hours. In vitro migration assays including modified Boyden chamber migration assay and scratch wound healing migration assay showed that macrophages exposed to shockwave had 1.2 fold more migration and had diminished migration-inhibitory effect of oxLDL.

Conclusions: Shockwave reduces macrophage foam cell formation via ERK-mediated increase of ABCA-1 and ABCG-1 mediating lipid efflux and promotes macrophage migration which may induce macrophage egress from atherosclerotic lesion. Our study suggests anti-atherogenic effects of shockwave as a potential treatment modality for atherosclerosis.


The Dirac Delta function is usually used to express the discrete distribution of electric charges in electrostatic problems. The integration of the product of the Dirac Delta function and the Green functions can calculate the electric potential and the electric field. Using fractal calculus, characteristic function, $\chi_{C_{n}}(x)$, as an alternative for dirac delta function is used to describe Cantor set charge distribution which is typical example of a discrete set. In these cases we deal with $F^{\alpha}$-integration and $F^{\alpha}$-derivative of the product of characteristic function and function of staircase function, namely $f(S^{\alpha}_{C_{n}}(x))$, which lead to calculation of electric potential and electric field. Recently, a calculus based fractals, called F$^{\alpha}$-calculus, has been developed which involve F$^{\alpha}$-integral and F$^{\alpha}$-derivative, of orders $\alpha$, $0<\alpha<1$, where $\alpha$ is dimension of $F$. In F$^{\alpha}$-calculus the staircase function and characteristic function have special roles. Finally, using COMSOL Multiphysics software we solve ordinary Laplace's equation (not fractional) in the fractal region with Koch snowflake boundary which is non-differentiable fractal, and give their graphs for the three first iterations.


Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is reported to be caused by traumatic events that are outside the range of usual human experience including (but not limited to) military combat, violent personal assault, being kidnapped or taken hostage and terrorist attacks. Initial data suggests that at least 1 out of 5 Iraq War veterans are exhibiting symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD. Virtual Reality (VR) delivered exposure therapy for PTSD has been previously used with reports of positive outcomes. The current paper is a follow-up to a paper presented at IEEE VR2006 and will present the rationale and description of a VR PTSD therapy application (Virtual Iraq) and present the findings from its use with active duty service members since the VR2006 presentation. Virtual Iraq consists of a series of customizable virtual scenarios designed to represent relevant Middle Eastern VR contexts for exposure therapy, including a city and desert road convoy environment. User-centered design feedback needed to iteratively evolve the system was gathered from returning Iraq War veterans in the USA and from a system deployed in Iraq and tested by an Army Combat Stress Control Team. Results from an open clinical trial using Virtual Iraq at the Naval Medical CenterSan Diego with 20 treatment completers indicate that 16 no longer met PTSD diagnostic criteria at post-treatment, with only one not maintaining treatment gains at 3 month follow-up.


Soils are the universal reservoirs through which living organisms get the resources for their livelihoods either directly like plants and indirectly like other organisms and animals. The ability of soils to serve as a universal reservoir depends on its fertility. Agroforestry practices have been seen to improve and conserve soil fertility. This research work carried out from the 10 th of May 2015 to the 10 th of November 2015 was aimed at assessing the role of agroforestry practices in the improvement of soil fertility in the study area. Information was collected using questionnaires, field surveys and the analysis of soil samples in the laboratory. The results obtained were subjected to regression and correlation analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). These results showed that the main agroforestry practices in this area include live fences and scattered trees on farmlands. It was also observed that farmers use indicators such as yields, softening of soil, wilting of the crops, rotten tubers, erosion and rains to determine soil fertility. There was no significant difference between various soil parameters (pH, acidity, CEC, ECEC, C/N, and exchangeable Al) in the two major agroforestry practices identified. There was equally no significant difference between the various soil elements and yields in the two major systems identified. The only element that showed a significant difference (P<5%) in the two systems and also for yields was phosphorous. Since only phosphorous significantly influenced yields in this area, a model was established to show that crop yields are dependent on phosphorous as indicated by the equation Yields = 1.77+ 0.03 P. Scattered trees on farm lands were recommended to farmers, the practice of improved fallow using a local fertilizing species identified as well as the use of Guatemala grass ( Tripsacum laxum ) and Vetiver grass ( Vetiveria zizanoides ) should be introduced on slopes to control erosion.


In this dissertation, we conducted a stereoscopic eye tracking experiment using naturalistic stereo images. We analyzed low level 2D and 3D scene features at binocular fixations and randomly selected places. The results reveal that humans tend to fixate on regions with higher luminance variations, but lower disparity variations. Because of the often observed co-occurrence of luminance and depth changes in natural environments, the dichotomy between luminance features and disparity features inspired us to study the accurate statistics of 2D and 3D scene properties.
Using a range map database, we studied the distribution of disparity in natural scenes. The natural disparity distribution has a high peak at zero, and heavier tails that are similar to a Laplace distribution. The relevance of natural disparity distribution to other studies in neurobiology and visual psychophysics are discussed in detail.
We also studied luminance, range and disparity statistics in natural scenes using a co-registered luminance-range database. The distributions of bandpass 2D and 3D scene features can be well modeled by generalized Gaussian models. There are positive correlations between bandpass luminance and depth, which can be captured by varying shape parameters in the probability density functions of the generalized Gaussians. In another study on suprathreshold luminance and depth discontinuities, we show that observing a significant luminance edge at a significant depth edge is much more likely than at homogeneous depth surfaces. It is also true that a significant depth edge happens at a significant luminance edge with a greater probability than at homogeneous luminance regions. Again, the dependency between luminance and depth discontinuities can be modeled successfully by generalized Gaussians.
We applied our statistical models in 3D natural scenes to stereo correspondence. A Bayesian framework is proposed to incorporate the bandpass disparity prior, and the luminance-disparity dependency in the likelihood function. We compared our algorithm with a classical simulated annealing method based on heuristically defined energy functions. The computed disparity maps show great improvements both perceptually and objectively.


Each domain and its underlying communities evolve in time and each period is centered on specific topics that emerge from textual sources that characterise the domain. In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of the article abstracts extracted from the citation index Web of Science, from the category Education and Educational Research, taken between the years 2000-2004. Our analysis represents an extension of other researches performed on the same corpora that were focusing more on evaluating co-citations between the articles in order to compute their importance score (Jensen & Grauwin and Jensen, Grauwin, Lund & Jeong). Our approach presents a general perspective of the domain by performing semantic comparisons between article abstracts using natural language processing techniques such as Latent Semantic Analysis, Latent Dirichlet Allocation or semantic distances in lexicalized ontologies, i.e. WordNet. Moreover, graph visual representations are generated using Gephi in order to highlight the keywords of each paper and of the domain, making nevertheless possible the comparison of the articles marked as important to the ones extracted by Jensen, Grauwin and their colleagues. Overall, the articles' abstracts contain more relevant semantic information than co-citations and are less prone to errors while capturing the specificity of the domain. Also, in order to further argue the benefits of our approach, a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of these complementary methods is presented, together with potential refinements of the methods for classification that can be performed as future improvements. We hope that our research will give a better comprehension of the domain of Education and Educational Research.


REB 35 1977 France p. 277-285 ; P. Magdalino, Some additions and corrections to the list of Byzantine churches and monasteries in Thessalonica. — The author presents evidence for five religious institutions in late Byzantine Thessalonica not listed by R. Janin (Les eglises et les monasteres des grands centres byzantins, Paris 1975) and data affecting the identification of two other monasteries. Two documents are published in an appendix. Attention is drawn to the existence of an artist, Michael Proeleusis, who must have been active in Macedonia at the beginning of the fourteenth century.


In order to exploit usage and attention metadata, one needs to define what properties of usage to use and why, second, how to gather data on that property, and third, what to do with that information. In this paper, we propose to consider usage and attention metadata as an example of the wider notion of context and give an overview of dimensions of context that are relevant in technology enhanced learning (TEL). We consider the intersection of the areas of digital learning resource repositories, digital libraries, and other Web environments including social tagging systems. Specifically, we argue that context comprises the usage situation and environment as well as persistent and transient properties of the user. Therefore, we distinguish between the macro-context and the micro-context of TEL. We further subdivide the latter into user models, material/environment models, interaction models, and background knowledge, showing that usage and attention metadata are of different types and play different roles for learning about context. We then concentrate on teachers using learning-resource repositories as an important use-case example of TEL and focus on language and country as context variables. We describe different ways in which these variables can be measured, i.e., ways of operationalising the construct and data gathering to provide values for the variable. Finally, we outline how TEL can use such context information to improve the use and reuse of repositories by making them more useful in a multilingual and multicultural context. A key theme of our article is the central role that social tagging can play in this process: on the one hand, tags describe usage, attention, and other aspects of context; on the other hand, they can help to exploit context data towards making repositories more useful, and thus enhance the reuse.


De capability approach als normatief-evaluatief kader voor sociale interventies: Kwalitatief onderzoek in India met inzichten voor de Vlaamse en Nederlandse praktijk In deze kwalitatief-empirische casestudy wordt de Capability Approach (CA) gehanteerd voor het evalueren van sociale interventies van de Indiase NGO Women Helpline ten opzichte van partnergerelateerd seksueel misbruik. Er werden 12 diepte-interviews en een groepsgesprek afgenomen met medewerkers van Women Helpline en slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik. Daarnaast werden twee semigestructureerde focusgroepen met tien mannelijke en tien vrouwelijke studenten georganiseerd. De analyse bracht een opvallende empowerment-paradox aan het licht tussen "well-being freedom" en "agency freedom". Die paradox benadrukt de invloed van subjectieve en structurele factoren op de realisatie van welzijn. We besluiten dat wanneer de CA wordt ingezet als evaluatief kader voor sociale interventies het belangrijk is om bij onsuccesvolle interventies te kijken naar de externe invloeden die het individu beperken in zijn/haar agency freedom of de keuzes die hij/zij maakt ter realisatie van een waardig leven. Zo blijkt dat sommige vrouwen berusten in of zelfs kiezen voor een gewelddadige of objectief ongunstige partnerrelatie, ook na interventies en bewustmaken van hun mogelijkheden (verhoging well-being freedom), omdat deze vrouwen willen voldoen aan de patriarchale waarden in de samenleving. Ten slotte is de transfer van de resultaten naar de Nederlands-Vlaamse Eigen Kracht methodiek en algemene sociaal werk praktijk een belangrijke betrachting van het artikel. Utilizing the Capability Approach as a normative-evaluative framework for social interventions: Qualitative research in India with insights for social work practice in the Netherlands and Flanders  The Capability Approach is a broad normative framework used to evaluate individual wellbeing, the development of a country, and gender inequalities. Den Braber (2013) argued in an article published in the Journal of Social Intervention that the CA can be used as an evaluative instrument for social policies, arrangements, and actions. As an evaluative instrument, the CA takes various aspects of the well-being process into account: resources, client conversion factors, sets of capabilities, freedom of choice, and sets of functionings. This makes the CA more comprehensive than other well-being approaches, such as welfarism, which mainly focuses on "happiness", and resourcism, which primarily focusses on "primary goods". The aim of this study is to explore whether and how the CA can function as an evaluative framework for social interventions for cases of partner-related sexual abuse by the Indian NGO Women Helpline (WHL). We also aim to make recommendations for social work practice in India, Flanders, and the Netherlands. The study adopts a qualitatively grounded theory of research methodology in the analysis of 12 in-depth interviews and two focus groups. The respondents include the director of the WHL, its coordinator, benefactor, social workers, an external advocate, and victims of partner-related sexual abuse. In addition, two semi-structured focus groups – with 10 male students and 10 female students – were organized by the Xavier Institute of Social Service. Before we discuss the findings of the study in more detail, we first distinguish two different forms of partner-related sexual abuse. The first form of sexual abuse is "sexual violence" and can be defined as rape and other forms of non-consensual sexual intercourse. The second form is "sexual abuse under the false promise of marriage". This type of abuse is unique to Indian society as it reflects the stigma that women face if they lose their virginity before marriage. If a man ends a sexual relationship with a woman after promising to marry her, this is considered abuse. We focus on the latter definition of sexual abuse because the majority of the WHL's clients who had a partner-related sexual abuse charge could be identified under that definition. It is important to mention that in order to make the CA more suitable as an evaluative framework for social interventions, we adapted two of Sen's original concepts: "individual resources" and "individual capabilities". We redefined resources as the finances, goods, and services of the organization. We did not change the definition of capabilities, which are the real opportunities that a person has to lead the life he/she has reason to value. In this study, we focus on the real opportunities for women to lead a dignified life without a sexually abusive relationship with a partner. The difference with other frameworks is that in this study we investigate the WHL's interventions as opportunity-enhancers for women to escape from or cope with a sexually abusive partner relationship. The main results of the study were revealed during the evaluation of interventions in the women's social and environmental factors (or conversion factors), capabilities, and freedoms of choice. The results on freedoms of choice were particularly interesting. We introduce the term "empowerment-paradox", a paradox between well-being freedom and agency freedom. Well-being freedom is the ownership and awareness of the capabilities that a person has. Agency freedom is the ability to choose between several capabilities, influenced by the context in which one lives. We found that the WHL promotes agency freedom in such a way that it promotes patriarchal values, for example by supporting a woman's choice to enter into an arranged marriage with their abuser. We argue that this choice is an "adaptive preference" and a survival mechanism in Indian society, rather than the woman's objective or counterfactual choice of a dignified life. On the other hand, the WHL promotes well-being freedom through various outreach and counselling methods which contribute to the empowerment and knowledge of abused women. We argue that while NGOs enhance the well-being of the victims of partner-related sexual abuse, they should continue to reflect on the influence of patriarchal values on the choices that women make during the intervention process. We recommend interventions that encourage greater awareness of gender equality in wider Indian society and more specifically in communities and families. Outreach activities such as open houses and home visits are specific interventions that contribute to gender equality awareness as they are set up to talk about violence against women and the possible interventions of the WHL. Those outreach activities contribute to a holistic perspective in tackling intimate partner violence. We argue that the CA offers some interesting perspectives for various vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities, homeless people, and children with disabilities. The use of the CA in a social work context is significant because it unravels hidden inequalities, which is essential in order to establish successful interventions against marginalization. In conclusion, we therefore recommend more capability research in various social work contexts. The results of the study are relevant to the current focus on the CA in social work, stressing the added value of the approach when evaluating social work interventions, and furthering the debate on how the CA can be used in practice. Social work is not static. It is a constantly changing discipline and it is therefore important that a critical, universal, and comprehensive framework is available to evaluate social work interventions in various contexts and situations. Additionally, we argue that the WHL's counseling services are similar to Family Group Conferencing used in the Netherlands and Belgium and that the Family Group Conferencing is a good methodology for culturally competent social workers. In a multicultural Europe, it is important that we have culturally competent social workers. Finally, we argue that the CA's normative perspective and inner strength – striving for social equality, respect for diversity, and the promotion of well-being for everybody – is universal to social work around the world.


Objectives: Intra-articular application of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) are found to effectively improve knee function in patients with Knee osteoarthritis (KOA). This study is to identify the factors that influence the effect of PRP in the treatment of KOA. Methods: PRP was performed with a rich-leukocyte autologous conditioned plasma (ACP) system in 82 patients who were diagnosed with KOA. A Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) was used to score the level of KOA by 3 features as the evaluation indicator of therapeutic effect. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), X-ray and subsequent Kellgren-Lawrence (K-L) scale level evaluation were performed before the treatment. Basic information of participants and disease duration were also collected. Simple correlation analysis, single-factor ANOVA and multivariant regression analysis were used for identifying factors associated with the efficiency of PRP injection. Results: WOMAC decreased after PRP therapy by 10.12 ± 0.98 points (P < 0.001). Simple correlation analysis and ANOVA suggest BMI, pre-treatment VAS scores, and pre-treatment K-L scale level positively correlated with the therapeutic effect of PRP treatment (P < 0.05), while the other factors were not significantly correlated with the effect (P > 0.05). Further multivariate model indicates that the responsible variable Y (Post-treatment changes of WOMAC scores) was affected by exploratory variables BMI (X1), VAS (X2), K-L scale level (X3) and Gender (X4) (F = 7.857, P < 0.001). The exploratory variable X3 had the biggest effect on Y.Conclusion: This study found that the therapeutic effect of PRP is better in male patients with higher BMI, higher VAS and lower K-L scale level.This study was qualified and registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry as ChiCTR2000039856.


We present ProbUI, a mobile touch GUI framework that merges ease of use of declarative gesture definition with the benefits of probabilistic reasoning. It helps developers to handle uncertain input and implement feedback and GUI adaptations. ProbUI replaces today's static target models (bounding boxes) with probabilistic gestures ("bounding behaviours"). It is the first touch GUI framework to unite concepts from three areas of related work: 1) Developers declaratively define touch behaviours for GUI targets. As a key insight, the declarations imply simple probabilistic models (HMMs with 2D Gaussian emissions). 2) ProbUI derives these models automatically to evaluate users' touch sequences. 3) It then infers intended behaviour and target. Developers bind callbacks to gesture progress, completion, and other conditions. We show ProbUI's value by implementing existing and novel widgets, and report developer feedback from a survey and a lab study.


Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an itchy chronic relapsing inflammatory skin condition mostly affecting children than adults. Eczematous conditions are common worldwide with increase in the prevalence in both developed and developing countries. AD in adults is of two types – the first type starts as AD in childhood and gradually progresses to adulthood (Persistent AD) and the second type results from AD developing in adulthood (Adult-onset AD). The article reviews and discusses this condition in adults considering the epidemiology, risk factors, pathogenesis, diagnostic criteria, and management of this condition.


The application of a modified version of dynamic TOPMODEL for two subcatchments at Plynlimon, Wales is described. Conservative chemical mixing within mobile and immobile stores has been added to the hydrological model in an attempt to simulate observed stream chloride concentrations. The model was not fully able to simulate the observed behaviour, in particular the short‐ to medium‐term dynamics. One of the primary problems highlighted by the study was the representation of dry deposition and cloud‐droplet‐deposited chloride, which formed a significant part of the long‐term chloride mass budget. Equifinality of parameter sets inhibited the ability to determine the effective catchment mixing volumes and coefficients or the most likely partition between occult mass inputs and chloride mass inputs determined by catchment immobile‐store antecedent conditions. Some success was achieved, in as much as some aspects of the dynamic behaviour of the signal were satisfactorily simulated, although spectral analysis showed that the model could not fully reproduce the 1/f power spectra of observed stream chloride concentrations with its implications of a wide distribution of residence times for water in the catchment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Several important issues in multi-channel signal processing are discussed. It is shown that in some situations nonstationarity may help to solve problems that are unsolvable when assuming a stationary setup. In addition, the behavior of several adaptive algorithms operating in such non-stationary environments is analyzed and explained. The ideas are illustrated using the acoustic teleconferencing setup as a framework. Similar principles can be applied to other problems in acoustic telecommunication. Since the main goal of this paper is to provide insight, most of the theory is developed in terms of Wiener filtering and ensemble averaging operations.


A review of the literature reveals that the relationship between development speed and new product profitability is not as strong and straightforward as conventional wisdom suggests. A number of studies show positive results, others show mixed results, and some present no evidence of a relationship. In other words, the valence of the link between development speed and new product profitability is unclear at this time. Therefore, this study investigates whether or not speeding new products to market has positive or negative effects on new product profitability. Prior research shows that product innovativeness influences both development speed and new product profitability. This raises the question of whether increasing speed is equally successful in improving profitability across new products that differ in their degree of innovativeness. Therefore, this study also investigates the moderating effect of product innovativeness on the relationship between development speed and new product profitability. The results from a survey-based study of 233 manufacturers of industrial products in the Netherlands reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between development speed and new product profitability. The findings also show that the optimal point is different for two new product types—product improvements and line additions—that vary in their innovativeness. These results provide an onset for the development of a decision tool that helps managers to determine how much to spend on accelerating the development of individual new products and how they should allocate that spending across products in their new product portfolio.


In the present scenario, work life balance for women employees is highly desirable and if there is no job satisfaction and consistency in life, it can create a dilemma for working women. Work life balance requires attaining equilibrium between professional work and personal work, so that it reduces friction between official and domestic life. The ultimate performance of any organization depends on the performance of its employees, which in turn depends on numerous factors. These factors can be related to job satisfaction or family or both. A comparative study is conducted among the working women of some Govt. colleges and national institutes of Bhopal in education sector and nationalized banks, running their in Bhopal (M.P.) for banking sector. The objective of this research is to study the working environment and women's perception about the work life balance and job satisfaction, who are working in banking and education sector. Apart from it, another significant objective is to study effects of work life balance on job satisfaction and initiatives taken by the organizations for effective work life balance and its relation with the job satisfaction. Standard Deviation is applied in this paper to check the authenticity of data given by the respondents of both the sectors. Finding suggests that WLB can be achieved by the factors responsible for job satisfaction such as: supportive colleagues, supportive working conditions, mentally challenging work, equitable rewards and employee oriented policies etc.


We consider broadcasting on the multiple-access channel when packets are injected continuously. Multiple-access channel is a synchronous system with the properties that a single transmission at a round delivers the message to all nodes, while multiple simultaneous transmissions result in a conflict which prevents delivering messages to any among the recipients. The traditional approach to dynamic broadcasting has been concerned with stability of protocols under suitable stochastic assumptions about injection rates. We study deterministic protocols competing against adversaries restricted by injection rate and burstiness of traffic. Stability means that the number of packets in queues is bounded by a constant in any execution, for a given number of stations, protocol, and adversary. Strong stability denotes the property that the number of queued packets is proportional to the burstiness of traffic, that is, the maximum number of packets an adversary may inject simultaneously. There are three natural classes of protocols we consider. The weakest acknowledgement-based protocols have a station rely on its local clock and on a feedback from the channel during its own attempts of transmissions. Full-sensing protocols allow a station to rely on a global clock and to store the history of all the previous successes/failures of transmissions in the course of an execution. A station running an adaptive protocol can rely on a global clock, may add control bits to be piggybacked on messages, and may store the complete history of the feedback from the channel during an execution. It turns out that there is no adaptive broadcast protocol stable for the injection rate λ = 1 for the multiple-access channel with at least n ≥ 4 stations, even when collision detection is available. We show that a simple full-sensing protocol is universally stable, which means it can handle any constant injection rate λ ‹ 1 in a stable manner. A more involved full-sensing protocol is shown to be both universally stable and strongly-stable for injection rate ρ (n) ≤ 1over>d lg2 n, where d>0 is a sufficiently large constant and n is the number of stations. We show that there is an acknowledgement-based protocol that is strongly stable for injection rate ρ(n)≤ 1<over>d lg2 n, for a sufficiently large constant d0. Regarding the stability of acknowledgement-based protocols, we show that no such a protocol is stable for injection rate ρ(n)> 2<over>1+lg n. This implies that there are no universally stable acknowledgement-based protocols. We show that when collision detection is available, then a simple full-sensing protocol is both universally stable and strongly stable for injection rate ρ(n)≤ 1<over>2 lgn. As a complementary fact, we prove that no adaptive protocol for a channel with collision detection can be strongly stable for the injection rate that satisfies ρ (n) = ω (1<over>log n). This shows that the protocol we give is optimal with respect to injection rates it handles in a strongly stable manner.


Despite the lack of a scientifically proven link between silicone implants and disease, many women have chosen to have their implants removed out of concern for their health. Unfortunately, there are few studies in the literature that have investigated the outcome of explantations, and there are no prospective analyses of the effect explantation has on a patient's general health. The goal of this study was to use a prospective database to determine whether there were any preoperative parameters that could be used to predict which patients would be improved following removal of silicone breast implants and to provide a quantifiable measure of that improvement. A total of 38 patients with silicone breast implants underwent operative removal of their breast implants by faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. They were given questionnaires regarding several personal and medical parameters to be completed preoperatively, at 6 weeks postoperatively, and at 6 months postoperatively. In addition, their physicians completed preoperative and postoperative evaluations of the patient's general health status. A control group of 38 patients was established; they were matched with the experimental group with regard to age and other initial parameters. Their responses to questionnaires were then grouped according to standard subscales to evaluate physical functioning, physical role, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, emotional role, mental health, appearance evaluation, appearance orientation, illness orientation, and body area satisfaction. When compared with the control group, we found that patients who had undergone explantation showed a temporary decrease in musculoskeletal symptoms and bodily pain, as well as an increase in vitality, mental health, and body area satisfaction. Of the experimental group, those who initially indicated a higher number of musculoskeletal symptoms and a higher appearance evaluation were more likely to indicate a significant improvement in general health since explantation.


We present a novel method for efficiently searching top-k neighbors for documents represented in high dimensional space of terms based on the cosine similarity. Mostly, documents are stored as bag-of-words tf-idf representation. One of the most used ways of computing similarity between a pair of documents is cosine similarity between the vector representations, but cosine similarity is not a metric distance measure as it doesn't follow triangle inequality, therefore most metric searching methods can not be applied directly. We propose an efficient method for indexing documents using a pivot tree that leads to efficient retrieval. We also study the relation between precision and efficiency for the proposed method and compare it with a state of the art in the area of document searching based on inner product.


To detect differences between two care services units: regarding family-caregiver (FC) depression, perceived-burden and confidence in the provision of care to people with end-stage dementia (PWESD); examine predictors such as FC age, depression, confidence in the provision of care to PWESD and satisfaction with the community-home-care service to burden; and explore a mediation model.The participants were 139 FC, caring for PWESD living at home. The questionnaire was composed of FC background characteristics, perceived-burden, satisfaction with the community-home-care services, depression, and confidence in the provision of care to the PWESD. HCUs' FC felt significantly more burdened than HHUs' FC. Furthermore, satisfaction with the community-home-care services mediated the relationship between FC confidence in the provision of care to the PWESD and FC burden. The study results may affect the development of end-of-life care policies and services which meet the needs of PWESD and their FC.


The scoring function is a central component in mobile visual search. In this paper, we propose an embedded 3D geometry score for mobile 3D visual search (M3DVS). In contrast to conventional mobile visual search, M3DVS uses not only the visual appearance of query objects, but utilizes also the underlying 3D geometry. The proposed scoring function interprets visual search as a process that reduces uncertainty among candidate objects when observing a query. For M3DVS, the uncertainty is reduced by both appearance-based visual similarity and 3D geometric similarity. For the latter, we give an algorithm for estimating the query-dependent threshold for geometric similarity. In contrast to visual similarity, the threshold for geometric similarity is relative due to the constraints of image-based 3D reconstruction. The experimental results show that the embedded 3D geometry score improves the recall-datarate performance when compared to a conventional visual score or 3D geometry-based re-ranking.


Latitudinal gradients in diversity of organisms represent an equilibrium distribution for at least the last 270 x 106 years. Faunas endemic to tropical regions evolved significantly faster than extra-tropical faunas. The latitude-dependent difference in rates of evolution also represents an equilibrium condition for at least the last 270 x 106 years and has consequences for paleontological correlation of rocks because the attainable resolution depends on rate of evolution and will thus be greater in tropic regions than in extra-tropical ones.


BACKGROUND
Previous studies have shown that atrial fibrillation of recent onset in man is based on a varying number of simultaneously present activation waves reentering either themselves or each other. In the present study, right atrial activation during chronic atrial fibrillation in man was studied.

METHODS AND RESULTS
In 16 patients with chronic atrial fibrillation multiple epicardial recordings of 8 s each were made at the right atrial posterior free wall and at the appendage using a 20 x 35 mm electrode array with 56 bipolar measurement points. The preferable activation pattern of each recording and the propagation direction, cycle length and conduction velocity of individual activation waves within each recording were determined. Activation was characterized by unorganised activation with several simultaneously present activation waves: inconsistent preferable activation pattern (n = 5), predominantly organised activation with either frequent episodes of uniform activation: consistent preferable activation pattern (n = 7) or frequent episodes of activation with focal spread; focal preferable activation pattern (n = 4). Random re-entry was frequently documented in recordings with the inconsistent preferable activation pattern and less frequently in recordings with the consistent and focal preferable activation pattern. Complete re-entry circuits were rarely documented. The median fibrillation cycle length was 146, 159 (P < 0.05) and 165 ms (not significant) and the mean conduction velocity during uniform activation was 64, 67 and 83 cm. s-1 (not significant) in recordings with the inconsistent, consistent and focal preferable activation pattern, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
During chronic atrial fibrillation in man, right atrial free wall activation ranges from disorganised activation with multiple co-existing activation waves to predominantly organised activation characterized by either uniform activation consistent with the presence of large re-entry circuits or repetitive activation of unknown mechanism and focal spread.


This essay takes issue with the idea that liberals are necessarily enamored with either regulation or large government programs. It argues that regulations to protect workers and consumers become necessary in a context where the rules have been written to disadvantage them. Different rules can obviate the need for regulation. In the same vein, programs like Social Security and Medicare are more efficient than private-sector alternatives. For this reason, government provision can be seen as the most efficient way for meeting a widely perceived need.


The morphological and structural development of the syrinx was studied with a light microscope in 100 female and male Japanese quails from 1 to 60 days old and adults. The quails had a tracheobronchial syrinx since it was based on both tracheal and bronchial elements. Two tracheal syringeal cartilages were attached at both ends to the pessulus in the tympanum. In this species the tympanum had a slightly increased diameter. The pessulus was a wedge-shaped cartilage, its blade lying dorsoventrally so that it divided the airway vertically. The pessulus examined histologically at 35 and 42 days post-hatching showed marked and uneven basophilia of the matrix in males and females, respectively. The chondrocytes showed varying degrees of degeneration. The marrow foci were encountered but no bone tissue was recognized. In the adults bone was present while at 60 days post-hatching it was absent. The basis of the divided part of the syrinx which was C-shaped was formed by bronchial syringeal cartilages. The first bronchial syringeal cartilage was attached at both ends to the pessulus. The external or lateral tympaniform membranes were present on each side of the syrinx. The internal or medial tympaniform membranes were present on the medial wall of the bronchus on either side of and behind the pessulus. The lateral and medial tympaniform membranes were covered by stratified cuboidal epithelium post-hatching which showed different regional features. The epithelium of the medial membranes had more layers of cells than that covering the lateral membranes. The total thickness of the medial membranes was more than that of the lateral membranes.


A single large specimen (613.0 mm standard length) of Epinephelus magniscuttis Postel, Fourmanoir, and Guézé, 1963, previously known from scattered localities of the Indo-West Pacific and the Philippines as the northernmost record, was collected at a depth of 50 m off Tanega-shima island in the Osumi Islands, southern Japan. The specimen represents the first record from Japan and the northernmost record of the species as well as the largest record as a museum specimen. The new standard Japanese name "Uguisu-gomadara-hata" is proposed for the species.


ABSTRACT Background: Acceptance is a coping strategy associated with chronic pain management, but its effectiveness is unclear for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME). Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between acceptance, fatigue severity, pain and self-reported physical activity in individuals with CFS/ME. Method: Ten females and seven males diagnosed with CFS/ME (51.9 ± 8.8 years), and gender, age-matched sedentary controls, completed self-reported measures of acceptance, fatigue severity and physical activity. Acceptance was measured using the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II. Fatigue was assessed with the Fatigue Severity Scale, and Physical Activity using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire – Short Form. Self-reported physical activity was calculated using categorical and continuous measures (MET-minutes). Result: CFS/ME and control groups were compared using Independent t-tests and Spearman's Rho correlations. The CFS/ME group reported significantly greater fatigue severity and psychological inflexibility, and lower pain willingness and time spent sitting than controls. However, no between-group differences for activity engagement or physical activity. The CFS/ME group showed a negative relationship between pain willingness and psychological inflexibility, and a positive relationship between walking time and the time since symptom onset, and time since diagnosis. Conclusion: Despite reporting greater fatigue and less acceptance of their illness, CFS/ME patients had comparable levels of physical activity to controls, possibly due to pacing their activity to avoid symptom exacerbation. CFS/ME patients with an older diagnosis walked further than the newly diagnosed, suggesting the development of better coping skills and management strategies over time.


Introduction. Quality of life is a complex concept which draws the attention of specialists from various
domains such as: sociology, medicine, finance, psychology, epidemiology, political science, etc.
Data collection and methods. In order to evaluate the oral health-related quality of life various
instruments with a variable number of items were employed. A well-known and much employed
instrument in evaluating the quality of life is World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL).
It has six domains, twenty-four facets or dimensions and one hundred items.
Results. An absolutely certain prerequisite for the improvement of the oral health-related quality of
life is that which motivates, with strong arguments, the responsibility of dental specialists for a current
preventive oncological check-up. In our experience only 30% of the oral cancer cases are detected
and referred to experts by dental specialists.
Conclusion. Regarding the most important items in the questionnaires, the multiple choice options
should be simplified and adjusted to the Romanian language and to the comprehension ability of
the respondents (interviewees). Oral and maxillofacial oncological pathology does not draw the
attention and interest of dental specialists as much as other pathologies such as dental caries and
parodontopathy.


— The strength of reinforced concrete beams is reduced to high extent when openings are created in their webs, so it is necessary to strengthen these beams by any modern strengthening methods to restore the strength of the beams before openings are created in their webs to continue in use of these beams. Analytical study is presented in this research to study CFRP strengthening effect around created opening in reinforced concrete beams under torsion and bending. The research depends on finite element method using Ansys 15. It is used SOLID65 to model concrete beam, SOLID 185 to model CFRP, supports and steel arms, and LINK 181 for long steel and stripes. Then analytical model is built to model reinforced concrete beams. This model gives results which are closed to experimental results.


Abstract Bizarrely shaped voting districts are frequently lambasted as likely instances of gerrymandering. In order to systematically identify such instances, researchers have devised several tests for so-called geographic compactness (i.e. shape niceness). We demonstrate that under certain conditions, a party can gerrymander a competitive state into geographically compact districts to win an average of over 70% of the districts. Our results suggest that geometric features alone may fail to adequately combat partisan gerrymandering.


Ports, warehouses and courier services have to decide online how an arriving task is to be served in order that cost is minimized (or profit maximized). These operators have a wealth of historical data on task assignments; can these data be mined for knowledge or rules that can help the decisionmaking? MOO is a novel application of data mining to online optimization. The idea is to mine (logged) expert decisions or the offline optimum for rules that can be used for online decisions. It requires little knowledge about the task distribution and cost structure, and is applicable to a wide range of problems. This paper presents a feasibility study of the methodology for the wellknown k-server problem. Experiments with synthetic data show that optimization can be recast as classification of the optimum decisions; the resulting heuristic can achieve the optimum for strong request patterns, consistently outperforms other heuristics for weak patterns, and is robust despite changes in cost model.


In patients with cardiovascular disease, partial correction of anaemia with epoetin improves quality of life and exercise capacity, and reduces left ventricular hypertrophy. The currently recommended haemoglobin in these patients is 11-12 g/dl. The optimal haemoglobin in patients with diabetes mellitus does not differ from that in non-diabetic patients; however, haemoglobin should be increased slowly. There is no difference in the recommended haemoglobin between children and adults. However, epoetin sensitivity is lower in children who, therefore, typically need the same absolute dose of epoetin as adults. Epoetin treatment may delay the progression of chronic renal failure (CRF) in paediatric patients. Elderly patients obtain similar benefits from epoetin as younger adults; moreover, there are no differences in the doses of epoetin required or the optimal haemoglobin. There are very few data available on the effects of epoetin in patients with CRF and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. At present, a haemoglobin of 11 g/dl seems appropriate. In sickle-cell anaemia patients with CRF, a high haemoglobin could precipitate painful crises; consequently, the recommended haemoglobin is the pre-CRF concentration of 6-9 g/dl. There is no convincing evidence of any effect of previous epoetin treatment on the long-term outcome of renal transplantation. In patients with a failing or failed transplant, the required dose of epoetin may be higher than in pre-transplantation patients. In such cases, transplant nephrectomy might be considered.


Analyzing accumulated data has recently attracted huge attention for its ability to generate values by identifying useful information and providing an edge in global business competition. However, heterogeneous data and imbalanced class distribution present two major challenges to machine learning with real-world business data. Traditional machine learning algorithms can typically only be applied to standard data sets, which are normally homogeneous and balanced. These algorithms narrow complex data into a homogeneous, a balanced data space an inefficient process that requires a significant amount of pre-processing. In this paper, we focus on an efficient solution to the challenges with heterogeneous and imbalanced data sets that does not require pre-processing. Our approach comprises a novel, unified, end-to-end cost-sensitive hybrid neural network that learns real-world heterogeneous data via a parallel network architecture. A specifically-designed cost-sensitive matrix then automatically generates a robust model for learning minority classifications. And the parameters of both the cost-sensitive matrix and the hybrid neural network are alternately but jointly optimized during training. The results of comparative experiments on six real-world data sets reflecting actual business cases, including insurance fraud detection and mobile customer demographics, indicate that the proposed approach demonstrates superior performance over baseline procedures.


This paper describes advances in automated health service selection and composition in the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) domain. We apply a Service Value Network (SVN) approach to automatically match medical practice recommendations to health services based on sensor readings in a home care context. Medical practice recommendations are extracted from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines. Service networks are derived from Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) listings. Service provider rules are further formalised using Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR), which allows business participants to identify and define machine-readable rules. We demonstrate our work by applying an SVN composition process to patient profiles in the context of Type 2 Diabetes Management.


An enclosed colony of bumblebees (Bombus pennsylvanicus) was restricted to foraging on two artificial flower types. The means and variances were adjusted in the two flower types in order to detect risk sensitivity. Both the mean and the variance contributed to the bees' foraging decisions. A series of experiments was designed to construct the bees' indifference curve under a variety of ecological conditions. The difference curve represents combinations of mean and variance in nectar reward for which bees showed no preference. In three of the four experiments there was a positive tradeoff between the mean and the variance, i.e., a relatively more variable flower type could be compensated for by increasing its expected reward. The quantitative nature of the tradeoff is shown to be sensitive to ecological parameters (e.g., spatial distribution of flowers) and independent behavioral parameters (e.g., intrinsic color preference). See full-text article at JSTOR


In the first part of this chapter, we present a sample of the best known and most used classical size distributions with their main statistical properties. In the second part, we introduce the concept of composite models and based on the size distributions of the first part, we describe those which already exist in the literature. In the last part of this chapter, we apply the described statistical size distributions and some of the composite models to two real data examples and compare their goodness-of-fit.


While economic theory assumes that risk is of central importance in financial decision making, it is difficult to measure the uncertainty faced by investors. Commonly used empirical proxies for risk (such as the moving standard deviation of the returns on an asset) are not firmly grounded in economic theory. Risk measures have been developed by other studies, but these are generally based on subjective weights attaching to a range of objective component indicators and are difficult to replicate. The contribution of this paper is to develop a methodology to construct theory-defensible empirical risk measures. It has the advantages of being explicitly consistent with economic theory and easily replicable. We illustrate this methodology by specific application to the South African context. The time-varying risk measure developed in this paper is consistent with the expectations hypothesis and captures the asymmetric nature of shocks. This measure reflects investors' risk perceptions and accords with the literature on risk in South Africa.


Does the performance of one of the four largest banks in South Africa justify the customers' complaints about the higher bank fees? Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to estimate the technical efficiency and returns to scale of one of the largest banks in South Africa. The intermediation approach was applied to classify the inputs and outputs and the analyses were conducted with both inputand outputorientation under variable returns to scale. Returns to scale efficiency and technical efficiency for 37 districts over a period of 22 months were estimated. The analyses indicated that 19 districts out of the 37 districts were never fully technically efficient during the 22 months (inputand output-orientated). It appears that customers' complaints about high service fees are justified.


The objective of this paper is to obtain pitch contour model for noun, verb in kannada language. One of the major problems in text-to-speech synthesis systems consists in the automatic generation of natural prosody. Prosody is described in terms of fundamental frequency contours (for voiced portion of speech), duration of speech segments (mainly phonemes or syllables) and the amplitude of the speech segments. Speech synthesizers having correct prosodic information can produce very high quality synthetic speech. In unit based speech synthesis we use large database of recorded speech. The recorded speech is divided into words and sentences. After doing manual correction with the help of PRAAT, extract pitch values of words or sentences. Normalize all the words to 100 points and for sentences to 1000 points. Then using cftool plot try out the best fit. In unit selection synthesis, the units selected may not have the required pitch characteristics. There needs to be pitch modification for naturalness of output speech. To modify the pitch, it is necessary to know the pitch variations for different types of sentences. Hence we are analysing the natural Kannada speech to obtain mathematical model for noun and verb in kannada language which would fit for any declarative and interrogative sentences.


By studying the conventional algorithm of contour extraction, a new method of contour extraction in blood vessel of brain is proposed based on the MOC maximum optimization cost. First of all, the theory computes the gray differential of the image by conventional differential method to build the cost space. Then, by using dynamic programming theory, the maximum optimization cost curve in the space is extracted to serve as the specific cerebrovascular profile. The experiments show that this method ensures high efficiency in extracting cerebrovascular contour and a high accuracy in positioning cerebrovascular contour, and it diminishes the target image ambiguity caused by noise to improve the anti-interference ability of Contour extraction.


Industry is constantly looking for new developments in software for use in increasingly complex computer applications. Today, the development of component-based systems is an attractive area for both Industry and Academia. The systems we focus on in this thesis are embedded computers, in particular those in automotive systems. A modern car incorporates several embedded computers that control different functions of the car, e.g., anti-spin and anti-lock breaks. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how component technologies for use in embedded systems can reduce resource usage without compromising non-functional requirements, such as timeliness. The component-technologies available have not yet been used extensively in the vehicular domain. To understand why this is the case we have conducted a survey and performed evaluations of the requirements of the vehicular industry with respect to software and software development. The purpose of the evaluation was to provide a foundation for defining models, methods and tools for component-based software engineering. The main contribution of this work is the implementation and evaluation of a framework for resource-efficient mappings between component-models and real-time systems. Few component technologies today consider the mapping between components and run-time tasks. We show how effective mappings can reduce memory usage and CPU-overhead. The implemented framework utilizes genetic algorithms to find feasible, resource efficient mappings. We show how component-models designed for resource constrained safety-critical embedded real-time systems can use powerful compile-time techniques to realize the component-based approach and ensure predictable behaviour. Further, we propose a resource reclaiming strategy for component-based real-time systems, to decrease the impact of pessimistic execution time predictions. In our approach, components run in different quality levels as unused processor time is accumulated.


As internet penetration surges in different parts of the world, access to a wide range of subject matters also increases. Matters of sexuality are no exceptions. While there is ample empirical evidence that youths seek knowledge about sexuality, and get involved in sexually stimulating and/or gratifying activities on the internet, the relationship between involvement in these online sexual activities (OSAs) and real life sexual behaviour remains a matter of polemic. Modelling theorists contend that exposure to sexuality related information propel acting out such information. Catharsis on the other hand holds the view that exposure to such information serves as safety valves for the peaceful release of imperfectly sublimated antisocial sexual drives. Using data gathered from adolescent internet users involved in OSAs as well as those not involved within the city of Lagos, this study concludes that OSA is associated with involvement in risk-bearing sexual behaviours.


Application of combination studies with essential oils and standard antifungal drugs may reduce adverse effects of synthetic drugs and serve as alternative approach against various pathologies including candidiasis. The aim of the present study was to determine the interaction of two commercial lavender ( Lavandula angustifolia Miller) essential oils in combination with ketoconazole against clinical and standard strains of the human pathogens Candida albicans ATCC 10231, C. krusei NRRL Y-7179 and C. glabrata ATCC 66032. The chemical compositions of the investigated essential oils were confirmed both by gas chromatography/flame ionization detector (GC/FID) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) methods. Anticandidal activities of the essential oils were screened in vitro by the microdilution method. The resulting interaction of combining lavender essential oils and ketoconazole was tested using the checkerboard method. The results showed that the interaction between essential oils and ketoconazole revealed additive and indifferent effects against the tested strains. In conclusion, the effects observed by the combination of lavender essential oils and ketoconazole may be encouraging to be used against pathogenic Candida strains.


This paper reports on the primary school design processes carried out around the 1940s in the County of Hertfordshire in Great Britain, which later evolved into innovative strategies developed by Mary and David Medd in the Ministry of Education from the late 1950s. The whole process, undertaken during more than three decades, reveals a way of breaking with the traditional spatial conception of a school. The survey of the period covered has allowed an in-depth understanding of how learning spaces could be transformed by challenging the conventional school model of closed rooms, suggesting a new way of understanding learning spaces as a group of Centres rather than classrooms. Historians have thoroughly shown the ample scope of this process, which involved many professionals, fostering a true cross-disciplinary endeavour where the curriculum and the learning spaces were developed in close collaboration. A selection of schools built in the county has been used to typologically analyse how architectural changes began to arise and later flourished at the Ministry of Education. The Medds had indeed a significant role through the development of a design process known as the Built-in variety and the Planning Ingredients. A couple of examples will clarify some of these strategies, revealing how the design of educational space could successfully respond to an active way of learning.


Dance/movement therapy (DMT) is a therapeutic approach that incorporates the physical, emotional, and cognitive processes as a method for healing. Within the field of DMT, there has been limited research working with the elderly LGBTQ+ bereaved community. This research inquiry aims to expose this gap in the literature and offer approaches for future research based on the current literature in DMT and psychology. Through a review of literature conducted on google scholar and Lesley University's library, relevant articles examining the experience of grief among elderly LGBTQ+ individuals, DMT among elderly and bereaved populations, and working with individuals who have experienced oppression were identified. Theoretical perspectives on working with grief and the elderly community are discussed along with the historical context of the current generational cohort of the elderly LGBTQ+ community. The discussion of the literature review identifies DMT approaches and techniques for this community including fostering awareness, meaning making, and creating connections to allow space for grieving among the elderly LGBTQ+ community. The research inquiry suggests a need for further research to examine how DMT can meet the specific needs of this population and the importance of considering how societal expectations, historical context, and individual experiences inform an individual's grieving process.


Anatomical characteristics, such as shallow vestibular depth, high frenum attachments, and thin labial bone tend to make treatment of mandibular gingival recession defects particularly challenging. Even though a number of recent systematic reviews have identified the connective tissue graft (CTG) in combination with coronally advanced flaps (CAF) as the most consistently effective treatment procedure for Miller Class I and II defects, they did not separate maxillary vs mandibular outcomes, reporting instead aggregate results. In this prospective consecutive case series, recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor-BB (rhPDGF-BB) was combined with CTGs for the treatment of Miller Class I or II mandibular gingival recession defects in 11 healthy patients. Changes for both mean recession depth and width from baseline to week 24 were statistically significant, with mean recession depth decreasing from 3.4 ± 0.5 mm to 0.8 ± 0.8 mm and mean recession width decreasing from 3.1 ± 0.7 mm to 1.7 ± 1.3 mm. As a result of the improvement in recession depth, the mean percent root coverage seen in this mandibular prospective consecutive case series at 6 months was 79.6%. Despite treatment results that were comparable to historical norms, the outcomes, especially percent root coverage at 24 weeks, were somewhat less favorable, emphasizing the anatomical challenges of mandibular recession defects.


Background: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a complex lung pathological lesion secondary to multiple factors and one of the most common chronic lung diseases with a poor prognosis, especially in preterm infants. However, effective therapies for this disease are lacking. Stem cell therapy is a promising way to improve lung injury and abnormal alveolarization, and the human umbilical cord (hUC) is a good source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which have demonstrated efficacy in other diseases. We hypothesized that intravenous allogeneic hUC-MSCs are safe and effective for severe BPD. Methods: The MSC-BPD trial is a randomized single-center open-label dose-escalation phase II trial designed to investigate the safety and efficacy of hUC-MSCs in children with severe BPD. In this study, 72 patients will be enrolled and randomly divided into two intervention groups and one control group. Patients in the intervention groups will receive a low dose of hUC-MSCs (n = 24; 2.5 million cells/kg) or a high dose of hUC-MSCs (n = 24; 5 million cells/kg) in combination with traditional supportive treatments for BPD. The patients in the control group (n = 24) will be treated with traditional supportive treatments alone without hUC-MSCs. The primary outcome measures will be cumulative duration of oxygen therapy. Follow-up assessments will be performed at 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months post-intervention, and the key outcome during follow-up will be changes on chest radiography. Statistical analyses will evaluate the efficacy of the hUC-MSC treatment. Discussion: This will be the first randomized controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of intravenous hUC-MSCs in children with severe BPD. Its results will provide a new evidence-based therapy for severe BPD. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03601416; registered on July 26, 2018) Keywords: bronchopulmonary dysplasia, human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells, clinical trial, protocol