The aim of the paper was to evaluate the efficacy of laparoscopic uretero-cysto-anastomosis (UCA) in patients with lower ureteral strictures of various etiologies. Over the period from 2010 to 2014, 12 patients (8 females and 4 males) aged 19 to 64 years (mean age 35.6 ± 8.5 years) underwent laparoscopic UCA. In all females, iatrogenic ureteral injury occurred during gynecological surgery. Types of gynecological surgeries were an open or laparoscopic hysterectomy (5), excision of endometriosis nodules (2), and resection of the ovaries (1). In men indications for surgery were ureteral strictures after ureteroscopy (3) and neuromuscular dysplasia (1). The operation was performed in lithotomy position by transperitoneal access using 4 trocars. In all cases, extravesical ureteral reimplantation into the bladder was performed. The stent was removed after week four, excretory urography and cystography were conducted. The operation was thought to be successful in all patients. There were no cases of conversion and no need in blood transfusion. In 4 patients we performed psoas-hitch + UCA, in 2--Boari operation, in 5--direct UCA. The patient with neuromuscular dysplasia longitudinal resection of the lower third of the ureter was carried out. Then it was sutured on the stent by interrupted sutures, and extravesical implantation into the bladder was performed. Mean duration of surgery was 145 minutes (110 to 230 minutes), mean blood loss--180 ml (from 120 to 245 ml). Passive asymptomatic vesicoureteral reflux was observed in 3 patients. Laparoscopic UCA is a highly effective intervention with the functional results similar to those of open surgery.


The effects of various extractants removing Cr from the soil of chromite ore processing residue (COPR) deposited sites were studied in order to select the optimal extractant agent. The effects of this agent on the removal of Cr(VI) and Cr(III) in the contaminated soil were also investigated. The results showed that organic complexing agents had higher removal efficiency than that of inorganic complexing agents due to the high content of Cr(III) in the soil(90.3%). The Cr removal of citric/sodium citrate (mole ratio: 1:1) was 35.95% in 24h. The reason why citric/sodium citrate removed more Cr than other agents is that citric can solubilize the mineral matrix, compete for the surfaces sites to desorb Cr(VI) and remove Cr(III) by its complexation. The concentration radio of Cr(VI) and Cr(III) in the initial soil was 0.11. Thus improving the removal of Cr(III)is the key point of improving the total Cr removal.


Objectives This study has three objectives. (1) Investigate the association between body mass index (BMI) and the efficacy of primary hip replacement using a patient-reported outcome measure (PROMs) with a measurement floor and ceiling, (2) Explore the performance of different estimation methods to estimate change in PROMs score following surgery using a simulation study and real word data where data has measurement floors and ceilings and (3) Lastly, develop guidance for practising researchers on the analysis of PROMs in the presence of floor and ceiling effects. Design Simulation study and prospective national medical device register. Setting National Register of Joint Replacement and Medical Devices. Methods Using a Monte Carlo simulation study and data from a national joint replacement register (162 513 patients with pre- and post-surgery PROMs), we investigate simple approaches for the analysis of outcomes with floor and ceiling effects that are measured at two occasions: linear and Tobit regression (baseline adjusted analysis of covariance, change-score analysis, post-score analysis) in addition to linear and multilevel Tobit models. Primary outcome The primary outcome of interest is change in PROMs from pre-surgery to 6 months post-surgery. Results Analysis of data with floor and ceiling effects with models that fail to account for these features induce substantial bias. Single-level Tobit models only correct for floor or ceiling effects when the exposure of interest is not associated with the baseline score. In observational data scenarios, only multilevel Tobit models are capable of providing unbiased inferences. Conclusions Inferences from pre- post-studies that fail to account for floor and ceiling effects may induce spurious associations with substantial risk of bias. Multilevel Tobit models indicate the efficacy of total hip replacement is independent of BMI. Restricting access to total hip replacement based on a patients BMI can not be supported by the data.


We report the case of a girl with a dystrophic neurofibromatosis lumbar scoliosis with asymptomatic progression and spread of dystrophic characteristics over 18 years. Resorption of almost the entire anterior column of L1-L4 had occurred despite a previous posterior instrumentation and fusion. A vascularized fibula bone graft wrapped in titanium mesh was used as an anterior structural graft. With close follow-up, the need for this type of salvage surgery might have been averted. Further follow-up showed no graft resorption and unchanged sagittal alignment after 3 years.


Significance Mars has a liquid iron alloy core at its center. Using seismic data gathered by the InSight mission, we have made the first observations of seismic waves traveling through Mars' core. We use the travel times of core-transiting seismic waves, relative to ones which remain in the mantle, to constrain properties of the core and construct the first models of the elastic properties of the entire planet. Our results are consistent with a core rich in sulfur, with smaller fractions of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen.


Application of serifs in microlithography helps to extend and maintain more aggressive groundrules. Furthermore, this method of mask correction can be implemented in a conventional mask making environment. It puts no new demands on lithographic printing tools, and helps to extend their useful lifetime. Images whose dimensions are near the resolution limit of the imaging system are recorded in photoresist with size and shape different than predicted by geometrical optics. This difference is referred to as print bias. For small 2-dimensional features it can be characterized as shrinking of lateral dimensions and a corner rounding effect. It results in the loss of area, perimeter, and aspect ratio of printed features and makes it difficult to simultaneously maintain a desired tolerance for all features in the design. Modelling of optical projection printers is used to characterize printability of rectangles in a wide range of sizes and aspect ratios, with printed area being the primary parameter of concern. Motivation for use of the serif-like correction of reticle shapes is examined and a simple design procedure using experimental data on printability of small squares is developed. This procedure yields a serif design which, when added to reticle features, results in the area printed more closely to the nominal value and provides an optimal compromise between the compensation of the corner rounding effect and the associated process variability. A single size square serif is shown to correct a broad range of shapes and sizes. Improvements in terms of reduced radius of corner rounding, reduced area loss, and better preservation of aspect ratio of rectangles are shown. Use of serifs is also shown to result in a larger range of focus conditions for which, given a set exposure variation, all design features print with defined tolerances, i.e., a larger common process window. SEM microphotographs of resist images illustrate the use of serifs to improve lithography of small rectangles. Experiment confirms a substantial reduction of corner rounding and compensation for the loss of area, and aspect ratio in rectangles. An example of application to a dense pattern with typical circuit characteristics is also given.


4. PURGE OF THE MONARCHISTS Almost immediately, leading military figures were publicly displayed by the new regime in what was to become a string of summary executions that took place in "an atmosphere of arbitrariness and lack of control." (Note 1) This "reign of terror" was intended to send a clear message to the military to submit unconditionally to the new regime.(Note 2) In Tehran, three generals were paraded in front of foreign journalists as "some of the honorable thieves who have ruled this country for the last 10 years." (Note 3) The new leadership had in fact decided that a "purge of the armed forces would be undertaken, but on a limited scale, concentrating on 'corrupt elements.'" (Note 4) Provisional Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan quickly appointed Major General Muhammad Vali Gharavi as the Chief of the Supreme Commander's Staff, in the first of what were to be many military personnel replacements carried out by the new regime.(Note 5) Bazargan also appointed Lieutenant General Sa'id Mehdiyun as Commander of the Iranian Air Force. When announcing General Mehdiyun's appointment, all air force personnel, to include "officers, warrant officer technicians, NCO's, administrative staff and enlisted men," were ordered to report for duty on the following day to their units.(Note 6) By doing so, the new regime ensured that the military were not only present and accounted for,(Note 7) they could also be employed against any potential dissident elements. Air Force Brigadier General Ayatollah Mahaqqeqi, the commander of air force fighters, was arrested. There was no reason immediately given.(Note 8) On February 13, 1979, Major General Gharavi, Chief of the General Staff, issued an order to all senior officers of the staff command to report immediately to Staff Command Headquarters for a conference. The urgency of the order was emphasized by the proviso that the officers were allowed to come in civilian clothes if necessary.(Note 9) Additionally, all officers, staff, and soldiers of the Army's Staff Command were ordered to report for duty to their respective sections to "discharge their duties" for the following day.(Note 10) On the same day, an order was issued from Prime Minister Bazargan for all "officers, servicemen and employees of the War Ministry and its related organizations" to report for duty and "resume work immediately after receiving this message." (Note 11) Simultaneously, Colonel Tavakkoli, Head of the Provisional Islamic Revolution Staff Command, issued the following directive to all members of the armed forces: Since all the units of the armed forces have accepted the leadership of His Eminence Imam Khomeyni, the leader of the revolution, all the units that have started moving toward Tehran in order to assist the units in the capital are hereby informed to immediately return to their barracks and report the whereabouts of all units in the relevant garrisons to the provisional revolution staff command. People who are on the route of these units are asked not to obstruct their movement.(Note 12) This same day, Khomeini addressed the Iranian populace, stressing that the army, as well as the police and gendarmerie, should not be attacked because they "have returned to us, and are one of us." The Ayatollah also stated that the "army is ours," appealing not only to those elements of society who harbored anti-military sentiment, but also to the military itself.(Note 13) Deputy Prime Minister Amir Entezam issued a statement that the 487,000-man Iranian Army was "dissolved, unfortunately." He then went on to proclaim that he entertained hopes of improving the state of affairs for the military to "put it back together again." (Note 14) This sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Medhi Bazargan, who stated the desire to rebuild the fragmented military rapidly with the same organizational hierarchy and a distinct command hierarchy of new, appointed officers,(Note 15) cast in the mold of the nascent Islamic Republic. …


This paper explores a two-dimensional (2-D) processing approach for co-channel speaker separation of voiced speech. We analyze localized time-frequency regions of a narrowband spectrogram using 2-D Fourier transforms and propose a 2-D amplitude modulation model based on pitch information for single and multi-speaker content in each region. Our model maps harmonically-related speech content to concentrated entities in a transformed 2-D space, thereby motivating 2-D demodulation of the spectrogram for analysis/synthesis and speaker separation. Using a priori pitch estimates of individual speakers, we show through a quantitative evaluation: 1) Utility of the model for representing speech content of a single speaker and 2) Its feasibility for speaker separation. For the separation task, we also illustrate benefits of the model's representation of pitch dynamics relative to a sinusoidal-based separation system.


With the increasing gap between the speeds of the processor and memory system, memory access has become a major performance bottleneck in modern computer systems. Recently, Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) systems have emerged as a major class of high-performance platforms. Improving the memory performance of Parallel applications with dynamic memory-access patterns on Symmetric Multi-Processors (SMP) is a hard problem. The solution to this problem is critical to the successful use of the SMP systems because dynamic memory-access patterns occur in many real-world applications. This dissertation is aimed at solving this problem.
Based on a rigorous analysis of cache-locality optimization, we propose a memory-layout oriented run-time technique to exploit the cache locality of parallel loops. Our technique have been implemented in a run-time system. Using simulation and measurement, we have shown our run-time approach can achieve comparable performance with compiler optimizations for those regular applications, whose load balance and cache locality can be well optimized by tiling and other program transformations. However, our approach was shown to improve significantly the memory performance for applications with dynamic memory-access patterns. Such applications are usually hard to optimize with static compiler optimizations.
Several contributions are made in this dissertation. We present models to characterize the complexity and present a solution framework for optimizing cache locality. We present an effective estimation technique for memory-access patterns to support efficient locality optimizations and information integration. We present a memory-layout oriented run-time technique for locality optimization. We present efficient scheduling algorithms to trade off locality and load imbalance. We provide a detailed performance evaluation of the run-time technique.


The area under study is located near Estarreja, in central Portugal where chemical industries are the main source of pollution. Until 1975, liquid effluents produced by these industrial units were discharged directly into several nearby streams. These effluents contained many different types of contaminants, such as aniline, benzene, monochlorobenzene, mononitrobenzene, As, Hg, Zn and Pb, amongst others. The industrial units also dumped a large amount of solid waste, which was stockpiled, directly on the surrounding land. This solid waste contains pyrite-rich ashes, dusts and sludge containing Hg and calcium hydroxide. A geochemical soil survey was conducted in a 49-km2 area where a total of 985 soil samples were collected during 1998 and 1999, on a regular grid of 200 × 200 m. The soil samples were analysed for Cu, Pb, Zn, Fe, Mn, Co, Ni, Cr and As, following an HCl–HNO3–HF digestion. To identify the main soil contaminants and to map the most important contaminated areas, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and geostatistical techniques (Variography and Kriging map) were used. The results of PCA data analysis, compared to the available information in pollution indices (Contamination Index – Cidx), outline one important area contaminated by Cu, Pb, Zn and As as a result of effluent dumping by the chemical industry.


Although it is increasingly recognised that higher education institutions have to play a critical role in the progression towards a sustainable development, the question of what fields and issues universities should attend to in their attempt to become more sustainable remains subject to debate. In recent years, sustainability assessment tools have begun to play a prominent role in strategies to reorient higher education institutions systematically and holistically towards sustainability. In the course of their further advancement, sustainability assessment tools have not only become instrumental facilitators of change processes towards sustainability, but also established implicit normative standards by framing the overall understanding of what fields and issues a sustainable university should engage with. So far, researchers in the field have paid little attention to the understandings of a sustainable university that are underpinning and informing sustainability assessment tools. This paper addresses this gap. Based on a comparative analysis of indicators and criteria, as well as introductory passages in supporting documents of twelve sustainability assessment tools, the authors sketch the dominance and marginalisation of different fields and issues. In doing so, the paper contributes to building the capacity for a more sophisticated and reflexive engagement with different approaches to assess and evaluate sustainability in higher education institutions.


Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans is arare malignant skin tumor; locally aggressive. It has a high raie of local recurrence but metastasis is very rare. Aggressive excision is required with a surgieal margin of at least 3 em. The authors analyse a remarcable case weighing 3850 g and measuring 28 x 23 x 16 em) on the upper limb of a male patient, treated at the Plastic Surgery Service ofthe Hospital Universitario Clementino Fraga Filho (UFRJ) in 1993. A retrospective study of this pathology) perfonned at the same Service betweenJanuary 1984 and May 1994) detected other four casessited in different areas of the body and which were also surgically treated. Using data from the pertinent literature, the authors discuss the etiopathogenic aspects and the treatment methods of this tumor which, in addition to its rarity, presents special characteristics as to size, malignity and evolution.


In clause problems of psychology of the creativity, connected with actualization primary creativity are considered. The concept «primary creativity», supplementing such concepts as «primary creativity» and «primary perception» is formulated. The variant of the decision of one of the most paradoxical problems of psychology of creativity is offered to «the organized spontaneity of creative activity».


ABSTRACT This paper extends the literature on the investment decision-making of business angels. Using insights from the emerging body of research on entrepreneurial learning processes, particularly the use of heuristics and the nature of learning from meagre experience, we explore whether angels learn from experience, how they learn and what they learn. These issues are addressed using verbal protocol analysis, a methodology for examining decision-making in real time, with three groups of business angels with differing levels of investment experience, and with follow-up debriefing interviews with these angels. This reveals some differences in the speed of decision making and the emphasis given to various investment criteria. There is some evidence for the use of heuristics in the decision making process, and for the critical role played by vicarious learning from the experience of others. Learning in the individual angel decision making process is a social as well as an individual phenomenon.


The availability of new operational services for ocean circulation modeling presents a unique opportunity to rethink the operational forecasting of ocean waves and how circulation and waves may be combined to provide a better understanding of the upper ocean and enhanced services to society. The largescale oil spill caused by the wreck of the tanker Prestige off the Spanish coast in November 2002, and uncertainties on the fate of that pollution, illustrated the gaps in means of observations and knowledge of relevant processes.

The idea of a coupled atmosphere-wavesocean model was proposed by Klaus Hasselmann [Hasselmann, 1991], in the context of climate modeling. As waves are the "gearbox" between the atmosphere and the ocean, a detailed understanding of waves can significantly improve the parameterization of air-sea fluxes and surface processes. Besides, Earth observation systems rely extensively on satellite remote sensing techniques for surface winds, temperature, sea level, ocean color, and sea ice, all affected by surface waves. Hasselmann viewed the future of wave modeling as the development of this central gearbox of a general Earth observation and monitoring system, providing fluxes between ocean and atmosphere in a way consistent with satellite observations. This vision, though slow to materialize, is highly relevant for short-term forecasting in the coastal ocean.


In Hegel's philosophical system, the owl of Minerva is not just a metaphor, but a significant symbol. In the symbolism of Hegel's time, it stood for ideas of enlightenment and political emancipation, including radical, revolutionary, cosmopolitan, anti-monarchical, and even anarchistic ideas. Hegel, however, places the owl in a context that appears utterly un-revolutionary. "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk," he writes in the preface to the Philosophy of Right, thus summing up his argument that philosophy's task is not to teach the world how it ought to be, nor to issue instructions to the state, but rather to comprehend the world as reasonable. Not only does Hegel's owl seem to defend the reactionary present state (a state against which she previously fought in the name of reason and freedom), but she also seems to teach us to accept the present with joy. The point is not merely to reconcile oneself with reality, but also to enjoy it. This paper traces a number of explanatory trajectories — philosophical, psychological, and anthropological — in order to elucidate the paradoxical nature of this enjoyment, and compares the figure of Minerva's owl with another flying creature, Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. Such a comparison aims to pave the way towards a new interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of history and time.


. The last decade has yielded the first images of exoplanets, considerably advancing our understanding of the properties of young giant planets. In this talk I will discuss current results from ongoing direct imaging efforts as well as future prospects for detection and characterization of exoplanets via high contrast imaging. Direct detection, and direct spectroscopy in particular, have great potential for advancing our understanding of extrasolar planets. In combination with other methods of planet detection, direct imaging and spectroscopy will allow us to eventually: 1) study the physical properties of exoplanets (colors, temperatures, etc.) in depth and 2) fully map out the architecture of typical planetary systems. Direct imaging has offered us the first glimpse into the atmospheric properties of young high-mass (3-10 M Jup ) exoplanets. Deep direct imaging surveys for exoplanets have also yielded the strongest constraints to date on the statistical properties of wide giant exoplanets. A number of extremely high contrast exoplanet imaging instruments have recently come online or will come online within the next year (including Project 1640, SCExAO, SPHERE, GPI, among others). I will discuss future prospects with these instruments.


The studies reported in this thesis have been performed to gain a better understanding about motivational mediators of selective attention and memory for emotionally relevant stimuli, and about the roles that some steroid hormones play in regulation of human motivation and emotion. The stimuli used are pictures of human facial expressions of emotion. The main interest was in establishing psychoneuronedocrine and psychological motivational predictors of biased processing of angry and fearful faces. Whereas previous research has used angry facial expressions and their attentional and mnemonic processing as models for anxiogenic selective cognition, one of the themes of this thesis is that this angry facial expression does not provide an optimal model to measure fearful responses. Motivated responses to angry facial expressions are instead inherently ambiguous. Depending on the motivational stance of the observer, expressions of anger can be met with fearful withdrawal or aggressive reciprocity. The fearful facial expression, especially when gaze direction is taken into account, is likely a better stimulus to evoke anxiogenic responses. One important goal of this thesis was to disambiguate attentional and mnemonic processing of angry facial expressions and to explore the latter claim about fearful facial expressions. This has been done by relating biases in attentional and mnemonic processing of facial expressions to individual differences in various endocrine and self report measures of motivation. In addition, this thesis describes the development and application of an innovative experimental method for measuring attentional responses to (fearful) facial expressions, utilizing manipulation of gaze direction as a critical component to emotional expression. The other main goal of this thesis was to study motivational effects of the steroid hormones testosterone and cortisol. This thesis describes several studies that have been performed to causally test relations between measures of endocrine-motivational functioning and attentional and mnemonic biases to these facial expressions. Specifically, acute effects on such motivational processes from single administrations of testosterone and cortisol have been tested and are reported here. Together, these studies provide some further insights into the fascinating interplay between emotion and cognition, between brain/body and mind. Their interest lies mainly in their relation to fundamental research questions into the nature of human motivational processes and endocrine regulation thereof, but hopefully they will also add some to our understanding of human psychopathology.


Photovoltaic (PV) powered DC motors driving dedicated loads (e.g. water pumps) are increasingly used in the remote rural areas of many developing countries. The key to their success is simplicity (direct coupling, no DC-AC inversion, no storage batteries, etc.). In this paper, a PV powered DC motor is used to drive an isolated three-phase self-excited induction generator (SEIG). It is found that due to the unique torque-speed characteristics of the SEIG, utilization efficiency is close to maximum at all insolation levels with no peak-power tracking. The proposed arrangement is useful as part of an integrated renewable energy system (IRES), which takes advantage of the inherent diversity of wind and insolation in most developing countries to improve power quality. The SEIG is driven by wind turbine, DC motor, or both. Performance of the system under different insolation conditions is analyzed.


The PCFH is an alternative technology to conventional disinfection methods used to control the microbial quality of water. To verify its effectiveness, it is necessary to generate new information related to inactivation kinetics of MS2 coliphage by PCFH. Therefore, in this research we studied the mathematical modeling of the virus inactivation by PCFH-Al/Fe-PILC in presence of a synthetic pattern of natural organic matter. The inactivation constant was subjected to two approximations, finding out that the experimental data were adjusted to the pseudo-first order Chick-Watson model with constant inactivation rate. With the PCFH technology it was possible to obtain the maximum inactivation constant $k=0.1648\, min^{-1}$ in the catalytic tests MS2-3 and MS2-7, kinetics indicates that a rapid inactivation occurs in the first minutes of the reaction, followed by a slow inactivation in the rest of the reaction time. This research suggests the potential of PCFH to improve the quality of drinking water


The full-length and truncated ns2 gene (2881-3078 bp) were gained through PCR using p90-HCV as template. The truncated ns2 gene was cloned into the prokaryotic expression vector PET32a. The fusion protein Trx-His-NS2C expressed in a soluble form in E.coli, and then was purified by His resin. Highly specific and efficient antibody was produced by immunizing the rabbit with purified fusion protein. In addition to this, recombinant adenovirus containing the full-length ns2 gene was constructed. The NS2 protein was expressed successfully in a size of 23.2kDa by infecting 293 and HepG2 cells with recombinant adenovirus. These results had set a base for the further stulies on the structure and function of the NS2 protein.


Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality following conventional allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). A study in mice (see related article on pages 101–108) demonstrates that the selective administration of donor memory CD4+ T cells results in immune reconstitution without GVHD, a result that, if translatable to humans, has important clinical implications for HSCT.


Control of the oxygen concentration in silicon wafers is important for the fabrication of high quality integrated circuits. Techniques for the fast detection of oxygen would be desirable for production line quality control. The oxygen concentration in silicon has traditionally been measured by a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIS). Due to the slow response time (1-10 min), it is not suitable for wafer screening. In this report, we describe a diode laser spectroscopy technique for the fast (10 ms) detection of oxygen in production line silicon wafers. The results are in good agreement with those measured by the Fourier transform technique.


Medulloblastoma is one of the most common malignant tumours of the central nervous system in children. It affects two persons per million per year worldwide and is increasing. More than 70% of patients diagnosed with medulloblastoma are predominantly below age 10 years. Histological variants of medulloblastoma are recognized as classic, nodular-desmoplastic, large cell/anaplastic and medulloblastoma with extensive nodularity. Symptoms include headache, general malaise, failure to feed, vomiting, clumsiness and other presentations that mimic common and benign childhood pathologies seen in primary care. Study data suggested an inverse correlation between high-stage disease and duration of symptoms. Currently, medulloblastoma is classified clinically into high risk and standard (average) risk depending upon factors solely clinical - age, metastases and resection. The treatment strategies for medulloblastoma are maximal safe resection (plus/minus cerebrospinal fluid diversion), neuraxis radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Medulloblastoma is the first brain tumour to show efficacy of chemotherapy in large prospective trials. Effective chemotherapy regimens remain elusive for almost all patients with high-grade cortical or brainstem gliomas and for most young patients with residual or metastatic disease of any histology. Conventional chemotherapeutic agents continue to be developed to reduce toxicity and/or improve efficacy. Recent advances in tumour biology have changed the emphasis to novel agents that target molecular changes crucial for tumour proliferation or survival. The toxicity and efficacy of several of these novel agents are currently being assessed in children with brain tumours.


In this work, we performed atomistic simulations to study the structural properties of mixed self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of hydrophilic and hydrophobic alkylthiols, with two different chain lengths (C5 and C11), on gold nanoparticles (NPs) at three different arrangements, namely: random, patchy, and Janus domains. In particular, we report the effect of mixing of thiols with unequal carbon chain lengths (C5 and C11) at three different arrangements on the structural properties and hydration of SAMs. Our simulation study reveals that the arrangement of thiols having unequal carbon chains in mixed SAMs is a key parameter in deciding the hydrophilicity of the coated gold NPs. Thus, our findings suggest that the hydration of the SAMs-protected gold NPs is not only dependent on the molecular composition of the thiols, but also on the organization of their mixing. In addition, our results show that the bending of longer thiols, when these are mixed with shorter thiols, depends on the arrangement of thiols as ...


The effects on handling due to suspension component and assembly tolerances are analysed focusing on three anomalies affecting passenger cars travelling on straight paths, namely 'pull to side', 'steering wheel misalignment' and 'drift leeward'. These anomalies do not constitute safety problems but represent a cost factor in the automotive industry since they occur in small but not negligible percentage of the overall car production. The present contribution is therefore focused on understanding which are their causes, and on reducing their extent, in the specific case of vehicles with front Double wishbone suspension and rear Five arms suspension. To this purpose, the vehicle assembly process is analysed in terms of errors and tolerances for identify the most influential parameters on handling irregularities. Sensitivity analysis by multibody virtual modelling, and subsequent correlation with experimental data from pre-setting and wheel aligner benches, have provide sufficient information for setting tolerance thresholds, able to keep the handling anomalies under study within acceptable bounds. As a result, 'pull to side' and 'steering wheel misalignment' has been found to be mainly related to the set up phase of wheel angles (front camber angles influencing pull to side, front and rear toe angles influencing steering wheel misalignment), while the main cause of 'drift leeward' has been identified with (rear) ride steer. Application of the procedure to a production line led to a consistent reduction (from 3% down to about 1% of the overall production) of anomalous vehicles.


To face the future challenges in the nuclear industry as dismantling and decommissioning, the Advanced Decontamination Processes Laboratory (Laboratoire des Procedes Avances de Decontamination - LPAD) is developing new decontamination processes for the nuclear industry to protect workers and to reduce strongly the quantity of secondary wastes produced.First, two decontamination processes for liquid nuclear wastes are under studies: the "coprecipitation process" and the "column process".Coprecipitation Process The processes using solid precipitates are the most versatile and thus the most commonly used to perform decontamination of low- and medium-active aqueous effluent. For decades, the coprecipitation process has been used and thus the best chemical conditions were defined thanks to systematic experiment plan. Nevertheless, the chemical mechanisms involved remain unclear.To bring out improvement ways, it is necessary to control the two coupled mechanisms involved in the process: the formation of adsorbent particles and the uptake of radionuclides.The approach is based on the study of the impact of process parameters (reactor design, mixing, mean residence time…) on the two steps. To support the experimental investigations, a modeling study at the reactor scale is initiated to distinguish the influence of each process parameter. The aim is to determine the decisive parameters which allow the increase of the decontamination efficiency in a defined reactor design.Column Process Moreover, many studies have been devoted for the cesium removal and recovery from nuclear liquid waste. A restricted number of inorganic exchangers allowed the cesium removal, but often they could not be eluted or needed prohibitive volumes of saline eluent, leading to important amounts of secondary waste. There is a need to developed new materials that can be used in a column process to adsorb cesium in a reversible way. Other advantage, the extraction of cesium being reversible, the stripping of cesium is carried out in deionised water; this property leads to very high concentration factors. Characterization studies, such as adsorption isotherms on new materials, breakthrough curves for fixed bed operation show promising results for cesium separation.Secondly, the advanced decontamination processes laboratory is developing three new decontamination processes for solid materials to reduce strongly the quantity of secondary wastes produced with regard to the classic techniques (soaking solutions, spraying of abrasives or high pressure water): gels, foams and surfactants aqueous solutions.Process Using Drying Gels In 1990, the first mineral gel formulations were defined: however, in spite of an efficiency of the process turned out, a phase of rinsing by means of aqueous solution was necessary. To reduce more the volume of secondary wastes, fundamental studies are going on to improve usual formulations. The aim is not to reduce but to avoid completely secondary liquid contaminated waste. At the conclusion of 5 years of studies the first drying gel process was world patented in 2001. The advantages of the process are then considerable because the gel formulation is mineral, can be pulverized like paint, dry onto the surface by forming cracks to lead to solid tiles easily recovered by vacuum cleaning or by brushing. Then the studies continued to develop different formulations to treat several materials as lead, aluminum, iron, and stainless steel and to optimize the process by introducing few quantities of surfactants in order to reduce the mass fraction of the mineral viscosifier.Recently, real decontamination operations of hot cells (ISAI in Marcoule, Gascogne and Cyrano in Fontenayaux-Roses) by drying gel process was achieved by the LPAD and revealed a decontamination factor included between 16 and 25 on stainless steel.Decontamination Process Using Aqueous Foams In the frame of the future dismantling of nuclear facilities, the foam decontamination process has been assessed as an alternative technique to liquid decontamination. Because decontamination foam is a non stable two-phase fluid within the aqueous phase representing not more than 10 % of the total volume, it strongly decreases the amount of chemicals used during the decontamination processes and the secondary nuclear waste volume. Moreover using foams allows the decommissioning of complex shape facilities.A decontamination foam comprises at least one surfactant to generate the foam and one or more chemical reactants to achieve the dissolution of the contaminants at the solid surface. Recently, new decontamination processes, called "static foam process", were developed using new foams stabilized by biodegradable non-ionic surfactants: alkyl polyglucosides (APGs) and viscosifiers or particles. This allows to increase the foam lifetime and thus the contact time of chemical reactants with the reactor walls.Surfactants in Solutions Decontamination Process The LPAD started to developed new acidic surfactant liquid solutions to remove organic matter located at the surfaces of equipment used in reprocessing facilities in 2002. The aim of developing acidic formulations is to avoid sodium hydroxide in the final liquid wastes to ease glass conditioning. These equipments are often covered with radioactive Tributylphosphate (TBP). In 2006, we developed specific acidic surfactants formulations containing Pluronics and characterized their degreasing effectiveness. The idea is to combine emulsification and wetting power. A specific experiment was performed to follow the kinetic of TBP drop detachment from stainless surfaces. We have confirmed the two ways of TBP detachment depending of the kind of surfactant: the roll-up mechanism and the emulsification.Finally, the degreasing process needs a high TBP solubilization. In this way, results of turbidity measurements are presented. These experiments evidenced synergy phenomena with two specific surfactants. Moreover, the emulsions existing when the concentration of TBP is superior to what micelles can contain are proved to be stable upon several weeks without any phase separation. So, for all these scientific reasons, this association of surfactants is now in 2007 considered as the best potential degreasing formulation for future rinsing operations of nuclear facilities.


The vinasse, produced as the bottom product of the distillation column of the ethanol production process, is the main liquid residue of this industry. It is a dark brown liquid of acidic nature and high organic matter content, thus making it a polluting effluent. Currently, it is used to fertilise and irrigate sugarcane fields, taking advantage of its nutrients and high water content. However, its disposition is still a problem because of its high production rate, which ranges from 10 to 15 litres of vinasse per litre of ethanol produced. This way, this work addresses the vinasse problem by a preliminary exergy cost analysis of three alternatives for vinasse disposition with energy recovery and a Base Case for comparison purposes; being the analysed cases: i) a Base Case (conventional production process), ii) the vinasse concentration with subsequent incineration, iii) the vinasse biodigestion with burning of the produced biogas in the boiler of the cogeneration system, and iv) the vinasse biodigestion and subsequent biogas purification aiming at the biomethane production. The preliminary results show the clean biogas of Case iii as the product with the highest unit exergy cost (7.03), followed by the biomethane of Case iv (with a unit exergy cost of 6.95), indicating that important irreversibilities are associated to the biogas production route.


The authors of this paper assessed the effect of psychosocial and biomedical factors on the prescription rate for upper respiratory infections. Their study, using written clinical vignettes mailed to a random sample of Ontario family practitioners, achieved a 69% response rate. Family practitioners most often used physical signs and symptoms in forming their decision to prescribe antibiotics. Psychosocial data, when present in the vignettes, significantly modified the prescription rate, often overriding the biomedical factors alone. The study is another step in exploring a complex decision-making process.


This study aimed to characterize medical terms in an online cancer forum, with particular focus on specialization and semantic features. A three-step analysis was carried out on a 60-million-word corpus to detect and characterize the most typical medical terms used in a cancer forum by means of (1) keywords contrastive, (2) co-text-guided, and (3) semantic analyses. More than half of the 1000 words analysed were medical terms according to the co-text-guided analysis carried out. Most of them (73%) were dictionary-defined medical terms, followed by co-text-defined terms (9%) and medical initialisms (8.5%). The semantic analysis showed a higher number of terms within the fields of Anatomy, Treatment, Hospital and Symptoms. Our findings suggest that medical terms are commonly used in cancer forums, especially to share e-patients' concerns about treatment, symptoms and hospital environment. The method followed is efficient and could be applied in future studies. Altogether, this article contributes to characterizing medical terms used by e-patients in online cancer forums


Whether on Broadway or at the movies, considering a new novel or revisiting a classic work of literature, Daniel Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming emotionality, and tart wit. Now, in "How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken", we see all at once the overwhelming depth and intelligence infused in Mendelsohn's writings, as he brings his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and genres, from Roman games to video games. His striking interpretations of our most important films - from the work of Pedro Almodovar to "Brokeback Mountain", "United 93" and "World Trade Center", "300", "Troy", and "The Hours" - have sparked debate and changed the way we watch movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches on theater and literature, from "The Producers" to Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex", from Euripides' "Medea" to "The letters of Truman Capote". "How Beautiful It Is" makes it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as Mendelsohn is.


The author briefly describes some of the Jini networking system's features and attempts to show how this system's assumptions differ from those used to construct other distributed system frameworks. The author then characterizes mobile agent systems, showing such system's intrinsic differences from Jini and some of their basic problems. Finally, he discusses how agent systems could use the Jini system approach to solve some of these intrinsic problems.


This paper studies fog computing systems, in which cloud data centers can be supplemented by a large number of fog nodes deployed in a wide geographical area. Each node relies on harvested energy from the surrounding environment to provide computational services to local users. We propose the concept of dynamic network slicing, in which a regional orchestrator coordinates workload distribution among local fog nodes, providing partitions/slices of energy and computational resources to support a specific type of service with certain quality-of-service guarantees. The resources allocated to each slice can be dynamically adjusted according to service demands and energy availability. A stochastic overlapping coalition-formation game is developed to investigate the distributed cooperation and joint network slicing between fog nodes under randomly fluctuating energy harvesting and workload arrival processes. We observe that the overall processing capacity of the fog computing network can be improved by allowing fog nodes to maintain a belief function about the unknown state and the private information of other nodes. An algorithm based on a belief-state partially observable Markov decision process is proposed to achieve the optimal resource slicing structure among all fog nodes. We describe how to implement our proposed dynamic network slicing within the 3GPP network sharing architecture and evaluate the performance of our proposed framework using the real base station (BS) location data of a real cellular system with over 200 BSs deployed in the city of Dublin. Our numerical results show that our framework can significantly improve the workload processing capability of fog computing networks. In particular, even when each fog node can coordinate only with its closest neighbor, the total amount of workload processed by fog nodes can be almost doubled under certain scenarios.


Abstract Aflatoxins produced by several species in Aspergillus section Flavi are a significant problem in agriculture and a continuous threat to human health. To provide insights into the biology and global population structure of species in section Flavi, a total of 1,304 isolates were sampled across six species (A. flavus, A. parasiticus, A. nomius, A. caelatus, A. tamarii, and A. alliaceus) from single fields in major peanut‐growing regions in Georgia (USA), Australia, Argentina, India, and Benin (Africa). We inferred maximum‐likelihood phylogenies for six loci, both combined and separately, including two aflatoxin cluster regions (aflM/alfN and aflW/aflX) and four noncluster regions (amdS, trpC, mfs and MAT), to examine population structure and history. We also employed principal component and STRUCTURE analysis to identify genetic clusters and their associations with six different categories (geography, species, precipitation, temperature, aflatoxin chemotype profile, and mating type). Overall, seven distinct genetic clusters were inferred, some of which were more strongly structured by G chemotype diversity than geography. Populations of A. flavus S in Benin were genetically distinct from all other section Flavi species for the loci examined, which suggests genetic isolation. Evidence of trans‐speciation within two noncluster regions, whereby A. flavus SBG strains from Australia share haplotypes with either A. flavus or A. parasiticus, was observed. Finally, while clay soil and precipitation may influence species richness in Aspergillus section Flavi, other region‐specific environmental and genetic parameters must also be considered.


Post conflict housing reconstruction plays an important role in establishing the country's development and prospect of peace. Despite this importance, it was identified that there are inconsistencies between the provision of built housing and the needs of the users. Therefore many post conflict housing reconstruction projects lead to dissatisfaction on the part of residents and remodelling by themselves or rejection and abandonment. Hence it is important and necessary to address conflict affected communities' housing reconstruction needs in post conflict housing reconstruction. With regard to this, it is worthwhile to examine the concept of housing needs in general and to explore the housing needs of conflict affected communities. Therefore this paper aims to present a synthesis of housing needs literature relevant to usual and post conflict contexts. In relevance to housing needs in general, housing preferences in a market context and adequate housing measures were identified. Following this, housing needs of conflict affected communities were identified. In a market context, housing needs were exhibited in terms of the subjective preferences of households. Adequate housing was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Hence adequate housing measures identified certain aspects of housing that must be taken into account for this purpose in any particular context. Whilst most housing considerations of conflict affected communities were similar to adequate housing measures, conflict affected communities gave greater importance to their social, cultural and religious values in post conflict housing reconstruction. In addition they considered the aspects of safety and security as being vital, and various perceptions of these communities in relation to housing reconstruction and post occupancy evaluation were important in post conflict housing reconstruction. Nevertheless, no relevant data on special housing needs of disadvantaged groups in post conflict environments were found.


Abstract This study investigated the adhesion of resin composite to mineral trioxide aggregate based cements after different chemical and physico-chemical surface conditioning methods. Mineral trioxide aggregate based cements (Biodentine, ProRoot MTA, Imicryl MTA) were embedded in Teflon disks (N = 180). After storing at 37 °C at 100% humidity for 72 h, substrate surfaces were polished using silicon carbide papers. Specimens were allocated to 3 groups to be conditioned with one of the following (n = 15 per group): a) Adhesive resin (Clearfil SE Bond, CSE), b) Adhesive resin (Adper Single Bond 2, SB2), c) air-abrasion with 30 μm alumina coated with silica + silane + adhesive resin (ALB), d) no surface conditioning, control group (CON). Microhybrid resin composite (Filtek Z250) was applied on the conditioned substrate surfaces and photo-polymerized. After storage at 37 °C at 100% humidity for 24 h, adhesive interfaces were loaded under shear (1 mm/min) in a universal testing machine. After debonding failure types were analyzed. Data were analyzed using 2-way ANOVA and Tukey's test (alpha = 0.05). SBS results were significantly affected by surface conditioning (p < 0.05) and materials (p < 0.05). Interaction terms were significant (p < 0.05). Biodentine-ALB resulted in significantly higher SBS values (3.96 ± 1.24) compared to those of other combinations, while ALB and SB2 resulted in no significant difference for ProRoot MTA and Imicryl MTA (p > .05). CSE (1.36 ± 0.5- 1.98 ± 0.76) did not significantly increase SBS for all MTA materials compared to the control group (0.8 ± 0.52 – 2 ± 0.91) (p > 9.05). While CON groups resulted in exclusively adhesive failures, ALB presented the highest incidence of mixed failures for all materials tested (60–100%).


Millennials (Generation Y) and the Generation Z population comprise the majority of occupational therapy student cohorts and new graduates entering the workforce. While fieldwork education has historically prepared students for generalist, entry-level practice, there is still a gap between what students versus employers feel are career-ready skills and qualities to be successful in the workforce. This manuscript presents evidenced-based strategies for educators, occupational therapists, and managers to enhance the preparation and professional development of occupational therapy students and new graduates. Use of coaching philosophies, emphasizing practice-ready skills, and a growth mindset are methods to target the strengths of Generations Y and Z members and address areas of growth as they prepare to enter the workforce. Emphasizing human relationships over task completion or skill mastery helps uphold the values of millennials and the Generation Z population that they can make an impact in the workplace. Modeling practice-ready skills, explicit discussion of "soft" skills, and use of guided discovery supports these generations' understanding of basic workplace etiquette and culture. Using a growth mindset philosophy can help foster initiative and self-awareness, which are potential areas of growth for these generations. These strategies can then promote healthy, productive collaboration in the workplace and, ultimately, enhance the client-provider relationship. Comments The authors report no potential conflicts of interest.


Glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is a key homeostatic regulator involved in governing immune response, neuro-integration, metabolism and lung function. In conjunction with its pivotal role in human biology, GR action is critically linked to pathology of various disease types, including cancer. While pharmacological activation of GR has been used for treatment of various liquid cancers, its role in solid cancers is less clearly defined and seems to be cancer-type dependent. This review focuses on the molecular aspects of GR biology, spanning the structural and functional basis of response to glucocorticoids, as well as how this transcription factor operates in cancer, including the implications in disease development, progression and drug resistance.


Disturbed natural areas frequently experience invasion by introduced plant species that can reduce native biodiversity. Biological control can suppress these introduced species, but without restoration another introduced species can invade. Integration of biological control with concurrent revegetation can both aid in weed reduction via interspecific plant competition and establish a restored native plant community. This 3‐year study investigated an integrated approach to controlling the introduced annual Mile‐a‐minute weed (Persicaria perfoliata [L.] H. Gross [Polygonaceae]) using the biocontrol weevil Rhinoncomimus latipes Korotyaev (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) and restoration planting using a native seed mix. A fully factorial design tested weevils and seeding, separately and together, using insecticide to eliminate weevils. The weevils together with the native seed mix reduced P. perfoliata percent cover in 2009 and 2010, and peak seed cluster production in 2010, compared to the insecticide − no seed control treatment. Persicaria perfoliata final dry biomass was reduced by 75% in 2010 and by 57% in 2011 in the weevils plus seed treatment compared to the control, with weevils having the greatest effect in 2010 and the seed treatment having the greatest impact in 2011. Results suggest an additive effect of biocontrol and seeding in suppressing P. perfoliata. Seeded treatments also developed the highest native plant species richness and diversity, comprised of spontaneous recolonization in addition to species from the seed mix. Results support the use of integrated management of this invasive weed, with suppression through biological control and native revegetation together helping prevent reinvasion while restoring native plant biodiversity.


In this paper, it demonstrates how to use a sticker-based model to design a simple DNA-based algorithm for solving the clique problem. We first construct the solution space of memory complexes for the clique problem via the sticker-based model. Then, with biological operations, separate and combine, we remove those which encode illegal vertices from the solution space of memory complexes. The computation proceeds by using an inverted electronic version of gel electrophoresis to obtain a solution of the maximum clique problem.


Context. SS 433 is historically a well-known microquasar in the Galaxy that has been deeply studied during the four decades elapsed since its discovery. However, observations at very high radio frequencies with good angular resolution are still very scarce in the literature. The present paper tries to partially fill this gap using archival data of the source obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA).
Aims. We aim to study the SS 433 jet properties at radio frequencies corresponding to millimetre wavelengths where the synchrotron emitting particles are expected to lose their energy much faster than at lower frequencies of centimetre wavelengths.
Methods. We applied the methods of connected radio interferometry adapted to the ALMA spectral domain for data calibration and reduction. Afterwards, the resulting map was corrected for relativistic and geometric effects. While a detailed theoretical modelling was beyond our scope, we assessed the broad evolutive properties of the jet brightness profile in the context of a semi-analytic model. Results. A resolved view of the SS 433 radio core and jets is presented. In addition to spectral index and magnetic field measurements, we are able to estimate the age of the oldest visible ejecta still radiating significantly at millimetre wavelengths. By combining our findings with those of previous authors at lower frequencies, we confirm that the energy loss of the radiating electrons is dominated by adiabatic expansion instead of synchrotron radiative losses. In addition, we find suggestive evidence for the previously proposed period of slowed expansion within the first months of the ejecta flow, needed to simultaneously match the radiative lifetime observed in the centimetre domain. Our results argue for the need for future coordinated millimetre and centimetre interferometric observations with good time sampling throughout the SS 433 precessional cycle to better understand energetic processes in stellar relativistic jets.


Bike sharing systems are present in several modern cities. They provide citizens with an alternative and ecological mode of transportation, allowing them to avoid the use of personal car and all the problems associated with it in big cities (i.e., traffic jam, roads reserved for public transport, ...). However, they also suffer from other problems due to their success: some stations can be full or empty (i.e., impossibility to drop off or take a bike). Thus, to predict the use of such system can be interesting for the user in order to help him/her to plan his/her use of the system and to reduce the probability of suffering of the previously presented issues. This paper presents an analysis of various regressors from the state of the art on an existing public dataset acquired during two years in order to predict the global use of a bike sharing system. The prediction is done for the next twenty-four hours at a frequency of one hour. Results show that even if most regressors are sensitive to over-fitting, the best performing one clearly beats the baselines.


Partial Discharge (PD) in cable systems causes deterioration and failure, identifying the presence of PD is crucial to Asset Management. This paper presents methods for interference signals rejection and for PD interpretation for five types of artificial defect in 11 kV ethylene-propylene rubber (EPR) cable. Firstly, the physical parameters of the artificial defects used for PD signal generation are introduced. Thereafter, the sample stress regime, PD testing and detection systems, including IEC 60270 measurement system and High Frequency Current Transformer (HFCT), are outlined. Following on, a novel Synchronous Detection and Multi-information Fusion (SDMF) based signal identification method is developed, to separate PD and interference signals within raw data. Finally, a comparative PD analysis of two detection systems is carried out and several characteristics of insulation related PD signals of EPR cables are reported. The SDMF based data pre-processing and the comparative PD activity analysis contribute to improvement of PD pattern recognition and assist in on-line PD monitoring systems.


Endowed with rapidly changing physical and socio-economic conditions, Semarang City in Central Java Province serves as an interesting case study of Indonesia's urban transformation. Secondary data, coupled with field observations and in-depth interviews with key informants and experts, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative descriptive methods to show complex variations in urban evolution between Semarang's numerous districts, with changes occurring much faster in some locations than in others. We show that urbanisation proceeds most rapidly where vacant open spaces and investment in various kinds of new public infrastructure are dominant, especially in such districts as Tembalang, Gunungpati, Genuk and Pedurungan. In contrast, transformation processes operate more slowly in Semarang's saturated inner core.


Critics ranked poem "Pabudimas is miego" (Waking Up from Sleep) as one of the best Alfonsas Maldonis's poems in his collection Rytas vakaras (Morning Evening) (1978). The first manuscript of the poem written in 1970 can be found in poet's archive. Poem's text and the exact date of the document indicate that the poem was inspired by the death of a famous Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kazlauskas. It is believed that the Soviet KGB which persecuted Kazlauskas is to blame for the linguist's death. By comparing the manuscript and the printed version of the poem, we can see how the poet eliminates the details of a particular event from the text. However, the foreboding of danger and violence that is very strongly felt from the very beginning remains in the final version. The inner turmoil of the lyric subject also stays. The subject is trying but is unable to understand what kind of behavior would be suitable in that specific situation. It can be assumed that Maldonis had two goals when editing the manuscript. First, he wanted the poem to be published. The poet knew that censors would have removed the poem from the book because of the references to Kazlauskas's death. Second, Maldonis's aim was to write a poem which would have carried a universal meaning. From the poet's manuscripts one can conclude that it is precisely the move from the mundanely concrete to the more general image is characteristic to the genesis of Maldonis's poems. Keywords: Alfonsas Maldonis, archive, manuscript, versions of the poem, genesis of the poem. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.15823/zz.2018.5


The subtropical western boundary currents (WBCs) carry a large amount of heat from the low latitudes to the mid- and high-latitudes, which contribute to the Earth's energy balance and have a broad impact on the weather and climate over the adjacent mainland. Based on the analysis of ocean surface turbulent heat fluxes (THF) trends, we recognize a prominent increase of ocean heat loss over all the mid-latitude expansions of WBCs during the past half century, suggesting significant dynamic changes of these currents.

To understand the background mechanism, several coupled parameters are analyzed, including the SST, net surface heat flux, ocean velocity, near-surface wind and sea level pressure. These data are collected from three types of independent data resources, i.e., reanalysis products, satellite-blended observations and climate model outputs from the third and fifth phase of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3/CMIP5). Based on these broad ranges of data sets, we find that the WBCs (except the Gulf Stream) are intensifying and shifting toward the poles as long-term effects of global warming. An intensification and poleward shift of near-surface ocean winds are proposed to be the forcing of such dynamic changes over both hemispheres. In contrast to the other WBCs, the Gulf Stream is expected to be weaker under global warming, which is most likely related to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

The systemic intensification and poleward shift of ocean surface wind are proposed to be attributed to the positive trends of annular modes. Over the Northern Hemisphere, strong natural variations of Northern Annular Mode (NAM) are observed, which conceal the long-term effect of global warming. While both observations and climate models record a robust positive trend of Southern Annular Mode (SAM) under global warming. The mechanism for this phenomenon is still under debate. Here, we find that the major feature of global warming induced SST pattern over the Southern Hemisphere is characterized by a stronger equator-to-pole gradient. Model sensitivity study demonstrates that such meridional gradient in SST is potential to drive a stronger Southern Annular Mode in a warming climate.


The aim of this study was to evaluate an instrumentation system for a bench scale fluid bed granulator to determine the parameters expressing the changing conditions during the spraying phase of a fluid bed process. The study focused mainly on four in-line measurements (dependent variables): fluidization parameter (calculated by inlet air flow rate and rotor speed), pressure difference over the upper filters, pressure difference over the granules (lower filter), and temperature of the fluidizing mass. In-line particle size measured by the spatial filtering technique was an essential predictor variable. Other physical process measurements of the automated granulation system, 25 direct and 12 derived parameters, were also utilized for multivariate modeling. The correlation and partial least squares analyses revealed significant relationships between various process parameters highlighting the particle size, moisture, and fluidization effect. Fluidization parameter and pressure difference over upper filters were found to correlate with in-line particle size and therefore could be used as estimates of particle size during granulation. The pressure difference over the granules and the temperature of the fluidizing mass expressed the moisture conditions of wet granulation. The instrumentation system evaluated here is an invaluable aid to gaining more control for fluid bed processing to obtain repeatable granules for further processing.


The omnipresence of the Internet and computers has transformed communication, providing access to unimaginable information and resources. This has led to the definition of a new paradigm of the knowledge society in which education plays a central role. The phenomenon of globalization imposed the concept of mobility of access to information and education. In order to synchronize with the pace of technical and socio-economic development, educational institutions should abandon the exclusivity of using the formal, classic face to face of education and orientate themselves to the mobility needs of the users of the educational services. One of the most used modalities by educational institutions is to address education through the systemic framework of eLearning, with all its tools, media, technologies and rules.
The complexity of tools has grown enormously, and those who acquire and use technology are no longer just ICT professionals, but also educational content creators, managers, teachers and students. These rapid changes have left many behind those who have failed to adapt and document properly.
"Informatics restores not only the unity of pure and applied mathematics, concrete technique and abstract mathematics, but also that of the natural sciences, of man and of society.
Rebalancing abstract and formal concepts and reconciling art with science, not only in the human science, where they were always reconciled, but also in their philosophy. "[1]
Temporarily, collaborative tools allow communication between participants synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous communication, often called a conference, takes place in real time, where participants are present online at the same time. Synchronic communication channels can include chatting, sharing applications, tabular, audio or video conferences, etc.


Purpose: Targeting HER2 with multiple HER2-directed therapies represents a promising area of treatment for HER2-positive cancers. We investigated combining the HER2-directed antibody–drug conjugate trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) with the HER2 dimerization inhibitor pertuzumab (Perjeta). Experimental Design: Drug combination studies with T-DM1 and pertuzumab were performed on cultured tumor cells and in mouse xenograft models of HER2-amplified cancer. In patients with HER2-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer (mBC), T-DM1 was dose-escalated with a fixed standard pertuzumab dose in a 3+3 phase Ib/II study design. Results: Treatment of HER2-overexpressing tumor cells in vitro with T-DM1 plus pertuzumab resulted in synergistic inhibition of cell proliferation and induction of apoptotic cell death. The presence of the HER3 ligand, heregulin (NRG-1β), reduced the cytotoxic activity of T-DM1 in a subset of breast cancer lines; this effect was reversed by the addition of pertuzumab. Results from mouse xenograft models showed enhanced antitumor efficacy with T-DM1 and pertuzumab resulting from the unique antitumor activities of each agent. In patients with mBC previously treated with trastuzumab, lapatinib, and chemotherapy, T-DM1 could be dosed at the maximum tolerated dose (MTD; 3.6 mg/kg every 3 weeks) with standard dose pertuzumab. Adverse events were mostly grade 1 and 2, with indications of clinical activity. Conclusions: Dual targeting of HER2 with the combination of T-DM1 and pertuzumab in cell culture and mouse xenograft models resulted in enhanced antitumor activity. In patients, this combination showed an encouraging safety and tolerability profile with preliminary evidence of efficacy. Clin Cancer Res; 20(2); 456–68. ©2013 AACR.


We analyze capital allocation in a conglomerate where divisional managers with uncertain abilities compete for promotion to CEO. A manager can sometimes gain by
unobservably adding variance to divisional performance. Capital rationing can limit this distortion, increase productive efficiency, and allow the owner to make more accurate promotion decisions. Firms for which CEO talent is more important for firm performance are more likely to ration capital. A rationed manager is more likely to be
promoted even though all managers are identical ex ante. When the tournament payoff is relatively small, offering an incentive wage can be more efficient than rationing capital; however, when tournament incentives are paramount, rationing is more efficient.


The aim of the present work is to investigate the effect of pulsation on improving the rate of the diffusion controlled cementation of cadmium ions using reciprocating fixed bed of zinc rings. The kinetics of the cementation reaction was investigated under different conditions of initial concentration of cadmium ions, frequency and amplitude of oscillation (vibration velocity), zinc ring diameter, bed diameter, bed height and temperature. The effect of temperature was found to fit the Arrhenius equation with an activation energy of 7.58 kcal/mole which confirms the diffusion controlled nature of the reaction. A dimensionless correlation in the form of Sh = 6.9 Re0.45 Sc0.33 (Bd/Bh)0.89 was deduced. The industrial application of the obtained results was discussed.


The influence of surface energies on line resolution in screen printing was studied in this paper. Ink wettability on surfaces is decreased by decreasing the surface energies of substrates-the reduction in wettability improves the line resolution. For such high surface-energy substrates as ceramics, the effective means to improve the line resolution is to use high thixotropic inks. On the other hand, for low surface energy polymer substrates, the line resolution can be heightened by increasing the surface energies of inks. If the critical surface tension of a substrate is lower than the surface energy of inks, good line resolution can be achieved even though low viscosity inks were used. The use of low viscosity inks has quite a lot of advantages.


NOT all groups that the United States government classifies as terrorist organizations are equally bad or dangerous, and not all information conveyed to them that is based on political, academic or scientific expertise risks harming our national security. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court, which last week upheld a law banning the provision of "material support" to foreign terrorist groups, doesn't seem to consider those facts relevant.... The two of us are social scientists who study and interact with violent groups in order to find ways out of intractable conflicts. In the course of this work and in our discussions with decision makers in the Middle East and elsewhere we have seen how informal meetings and exchanges of knowledge have borne fruit. It's not that religious, academic or scientific credentials automatically convey trust, but when combined with a personal commitment to peace, they often carry weight beyond mere opinion or desire.... In our own work on groups categorized as terrorist organizations, we have detected significant differences in their attitudes and actions. For example, in our recent interactions with the leader of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad Ramadan Shallah (which we immediately reported to the State Department, as he is on the F.B.I.'s "most wanted" list), we were faced with an adamant refusal to ever recognize Israel or move toward a two-state solution. Yet when we talked to Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas (considered a terrorist group by the State Department), he said that his movement could imagine a two-state "peace" (he used the term "salaam," not just the usual "hudna," which signifies only an armistice). In our time with Mr. Meshal's group, we were also able to confirm something that Saudi and Israeli intelligence officers had told us: Hamas has fought to keep Al Qaeda out of its field of influence, and has no demonstrated interest in global jihad. Whether or not the differences among Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other violent groups are fundamental, rather than temporary or tactical, is something only further exploration will reveal. But to assume that it is invariably wrong to engage any of these groups is a grave mistake....


In this paper, I invite you into some considerations of what autoethnography might do in research, what it might teach us as researchers. In doing so, I return to an autoethnographic study I engaged in a few years ago which was contoured through the question: How do teachers experience student voice pedagogies? In that study, I experienced autoethnography as a creative methodology that allowed me to go back to two experiences I had with youth, or student voice projects. The paper embodies a return to the autoethnographic study of my doctoral research, which itself was a return to the previously experienced student voice projects; a return that is being propelled by my new position as a professor, supervising students in the mappings of their research landscapes. Returning, thus, becomes a central motif that invites dwelling in the simultaneity of pastpresentfuture – wherein the present is the folding in of the past and the future through attuning to embodied ways of knowing, sensing, being, and doing -- disrupting colonial epistemological legacies of progress and linearity found in conventional and taken-for-granted research practices. I ask, what does it mean to go back, in efforts oriented towards a future (such as social justice)? What might it mean to conceptualize time differently within our research, teaching, and learning? I argue that autoethnography, when engaged through an active nomadism, opens space for learning about our research practices, ourselves as researchers and pedagogues, as well as deeper understandings of our research topics.


The preponderance of female stereotypes in various films has become intense. Regardless of film genre, its effect on media-saturated culture has become somehow profound. This has become a concern to many people especially to feminists. Hence, this film study is conducted to explore how the female lead characters are stereotyped in films particularly in select official James Bond 007 films. During the analysis, the researcher utilizes an adapted film analysis rubric. The results show that: 1) the leading female characters in the three films analyzed are portrayed mainly as objects of Bond's sexual desire while he establishes and maintains a chauvinistic role all throughout each film; 2) Bond engages in dualistic relationships with the lead female characters when he uses them to satisfy his own desires for a woman as a means to an end (as particularly exemplified and portrayed in the character of Countess Lisl in For Your Eyes Only); 3) the treatment of some female stereotypes in the three films analyzed is consistent, e.g. a particular stereotype of a lead female character as object of sexual desire is sustained all throughout the film. The study, therefore, concludes that the lead female characters in the select films are generally portrayed in oppressive stereotypes. Keywords: Mass Communication, lead female character, female stereotypes, James Bond007, descriptive design (qualitative film analysis), Philippines


Bureaucrats are important symbols of the governments that employ them. Contrary to popular stereotypes, they determine much about the way policy is ultimately enacted and experienced by citizens. While we know a great deal about bureaucrats and their actions, we know little about their development. Are particular types of people drawn to government work, or are government workers forged by the agencies they work in? Put simply, are bureaucrats born, or are they made? In Becoming Bureaucrats, Zachary W. Oberfield traces the paths of two sets of public servants-police officers and welfare caseworkers-from their first day on the job through the end of their second year. Examining original data derived from surveys and in-depth interviews, along with ethnographic observations from the author's year of training and work as a welfare caseworker, Becoming Bureaucrats charts how public-sector entrants develop their bureaucratic identities, motivations, and attitudes. Ranging from individual stories to population-wide statistical analysis, Oberfield's study complicates the long-standing cliche that bureaucracies churn out bureaucrats with mechanical efficiency. He demonstrates that entrants' bureaucratic personalities evolved but remained strongly tied to the views, identities, and motives that they articulated at the outset of their service. As such, he argues that who bureaucrats become and, as a result, how bureaucracies function, depends strongly on patterns of self-selection and recruitment. Becoming Bureaucrats not only enriches our theoretical understanding of bureaucratic behavior but also provides practical advice to elected officials and public managers on building responsive, accountable workforces.


One of the main focuses of recent Chinese urban development is the creation and retrofitting of public spaces driven by the market force and demand. However, researches concerning human and cultural influences on shaping public spaces have been scanty. There still exist many undefined ambiguous planning aspects institutionally and legislatively. This is an explanatory research to address interactions, incorporations and interrelationship between the lived environment and its peoples. It is knowledge-seeking and normative. Theoretically, public space in a Chinese context is conceptualized; empirically, a selected case is inquired. The research has unfolded a comparatively complete understanding of China's planning evolution and on-going practices. Data collection emphasizes the concept of 'people' and 'space'. First-hand data is derived from the intensive fieldwork and observatory and participatory documentations. The ample detailed authentic empirical data empowers space syntax as a strong analysis tool in decoding how human's activities influence the public space. Findings fall into two categories but interdependent. Firstly, it discloses the studied settlement as a generic, organic and incremental development model. Its growth and established environment is evolutionary and incremental, based on its intrinsic traditions, life values and available resources. As a self-sustaining settlement, it highlights certain vernacular traits of spatial development out of lifestyles and cultural practices. Its spatial articulation appears as a process parallel to socio-economic transitions. Secondly, crucial planning aspects are theoretically summarized to address the existing gap between current planning methodology and practicalities. It pinpoints several most significant and particular issues, namely, disintegrated land use system and urban planning; missing of urban design in the planning system, loss of a human-responsive environment resulted from standardized planning and under-estimation of heritage in urban development. The research challenges present Chinese planning laws and regulations through urban public space study; and pinpoints to yield certain growth leverage for planning and development. Thus, planning is able to empower inhabitants to make decisions along the process of shaping and sustaining their space. Therefore, it discusses not only legislative issues, concerning land use planning, urban design and heritage conservation. It leads to a pivotal proposal, i.e., the integration of human and their social spaces in formulating a new spatial strategy. It expects to inform policymakers of underpinning social values and cultural practices in reconfiguring postmodern Chinese spatiality. It propounds that social context endemic to communities shall be integrated as a crucial tool in spatial strategy design, hence to strengthen spatial attributes and improve life quality.


Common sense is essential for building intelligent machines. While some commonsense knowledge is explicitly stated in human-generated text and can be learnt by mining the web, much of it is unwritten. It is often unnecessary and even unnatural to write about commonsense facts. While unwritten, this commonsense knowledge is not unseen! The visual world around us is full of structure modeled by commonsense knowledge. Can machines learn common sense simply by observing our visual world? Unfortunately, this requires automatic and accurate detection of objects, their attributes, poses, and interactions between objects, which remain challenging problems. Our key insight is that while visual common sense is depicted in visual content, it is the semantic features that are relevant and not low-level pixel information. In other words, photorealism is not necessary to learn common sense. We explore the use of human-generated abstract scenes made from clipart for learning common sense. In particular, we reason about the plausibility of an interaction or relation between a pair of nouns by measuring the similarity of the relation and nouns with other relations and nouns we have seen in abstract scenes. We show that the commonsense knowledge we learn is complementary to what can be learnt from sources of text.


ExoMars has joined up with the American Max-C rover in a joint, two rover mission to Mars in 2018. The science objectives of ExoMars are to search for traces of past or present life and to document the water/geochemical environment as a function of depth in the shallow subsurface. Max-C seeks to determine the habitability of the surface of Mars with the aim of selecting and caching rocks potentially containing traces of life for the future Mars Sample Return mission. The ExoMars rover will embark a number of scientific instruments to investi-gate rock outcrops and subsurface materials: for observation a variety of cameras and a close up imager, for mineralogy Raman and IR spectrometry as well as an XRD, and GCMS and LDMS for chemical characterisation of the organics. A drill will provide subsurface access to hopefully preserved organics. Max-C will be distinguished by a suite of arm-based tools for observation and mineralogical/elemental mapping. These instruments provide good compara-tive information. In order to optimize the science return of the various instrument suites, it will be useful to test flight instrumentation with the same suite of Mars-analogue rocks. With this objective in mind, a rock library or lithoth'que of rocks that have been fully characterised by standard laboratory instrumentation is being prepared by the Observatoire de l'Univers de la region Centre (OSUC) at Orleans. The ultimate goal is to offer the scientific community a lithoth'que coupled to a database comprising the maximum information on rocks that are analogues of Mars and other planetary bodies. The data base will contain both reference (lab) data and results from experiments using the planetary instruments or models. Here we present a preliminary selection of ten samples for testing the ExoMars instruments. Other samples will become ready as our lithotheque expands. The samples chosen cover a range of lithologies found on Mars -a variety of basalts (plus cumulates), a Late Archaean stromatolitic carbonate (Pongola, South Africa), Early-Mid Archaean shallow-water volcanic sands (Barberton, South Africa; the Pilbara, Australia), an Early Archaean banded iron formation (Pilbara), and a clay (nontronite). The four types of basalts include an ultramafic basalt from Svalbard (Norway) containing dunite xenoliths; an altered basalt from Tenerife (Spain), a primitive basalt from Stromboli (Italy), and silicified altered basalts from Barberton. Apart from their compositional relevance, many of the rocks were formed at a time period equivalent to the Noachian of Mars, and some of them contain fossil (and sometimes recent) biosignatures. These samples have been analysed by optical microscopy, Raman, IR and Mussbauer o


Abstract The most attractive structural feature of the three-dimensional (3D) angle-interlock woven structure is that the straight weft yarns are bundled by the undulated warp yarns, which induces the overall good structural stability and a stable fabric structure. Thus the 3-D angle-interlock woven composite (3DAWC) prepared by the vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) curing process has excellent mechanical properties by using the fabric and epoxy resin as the reinforcement and matrix, respectively. The low-velocity impact damage properties of the composites under different drop-weight energies (70, 80, and 100 J) were tested experimentally. The load–displacement curves, energy–time curves, and the ultimate failure modes were obtained to analyze the performance of resistance to low-velocity impact, as well as the impact energy absorption effect and failure mechanism, especially the structural damage characteristics of the 3DAWC subjected to the low-velocity impact of drop weight. By analyzing the obtained experimental results, it is found that the fabric reinforcement is the primary energy absorption component and the impact energy mainly propagates along the longitudinal direction of the yarns, especially the weft yarn system, which is arranged in a straight way. In addition, as the impact energy increases, the energy absorbed and dissipated by the composite increases simultaneously. This phenomenon is manifested in the severity of deformation and damage of the material, i.e., the amount of deformation and size of the damaged area.


Seventeen patients had severe nasal polyposis. Local treatment with beclomethasone dipropionate caused marked reduction in the size of polyps and the nasal obstruction, and the effect continued throughout the treatment period. In all cases roentgenographic examination showed clouding of the nasal cavity and the paranasal sinuses, especially of the maxillary and ethmoidal sinuses. After three months of treatment, no change in the opacity of the sinuses was found. In spite of that, the symptomatic effect of the treatment was successful.


Introduction: Knowledge and competencies regarding Pharmacology are found difficult to be taught by the traditional teaching methodologies alone. One minute preceptor (OMP) model is an innovative method of teaching and learning activity which is being used to improve reasoning skills in clinical settings but also can be used with modification to improve work place based learning in nonclinical subjects. We conducted OMP for the first time among undergraduate students with the aim of imparting better understanding of basic competencies in Pharmacology and better clinical application of concepts. Materials and Methods: This was a quasi experimental interventional study. Participants included 60 undergraduate second BBS students that were randomized to the OMP group (n = 30) or to the traditional group (n = 30) and 12 faculty members. Six competencies of Pharmacology were selected and validated by the content experts followed by development and validation of six case scenarios from the topics chemotherapy and cardiovascular system (CVS) with regards to the particular competency. One case scenario was developed for one competency. The selected topics had already been covered in didactic lecture. Validated pre/post-test questionnaire and feedback perception questionnaire were developed. Faculty and students were sensitized with the OMP method of teaching with short interactive lecture and role play. Immediate cognitive gain was assessed using pre- and post-tests for each intervention. Formative assessment after 2 months was done to assess long term impact using structured viva. All the questions were based on clinical application with regards to the competencies. Students' and faculty perceptions were analyzed using feedback questionnaire on a 5-point Likert's scale. Paired t- test was adopted to assess pre/post scores for immediate effect of learning. Unpaired t-test was conducted to compare viva scores between two groups to assess long term impact. Results: Analysis of results of the both group revealed that OMP group scoring was significantly higher than the traditional group .The average perception on Likert's scale was between 4(agree) and 5(strongly agree). The OMP model of teaching learning in pharmacology was well perceived by the students and faculty. Teaching skills of the faculty were also improved. Conclusion: Faculties and students rate OMP as more effective model of teaching than traditional model. Students feel confident in applying concepts in clinical settings. OMP promotes self directed learning .and encompasses all three domains- cognitive, psychomotor and affective. Keyword: OMP, Undergraduates, Competencies, Pharmacology


Capture–recapture analysis, also called mark- or multiple-recapture, is aimed primarily at estimating the total size of a population. The population of interest may consist of animals, people, errors in complex software, the number of crimes committed by an oppressive political regime, coins struck by ancient dies, and so on. Statistical methods for population size estimation are well-developed, with many extensions and variations such as allowing for birth, death or migration in the population; incorporation of predictor variables or spatial location of captures; observation by different physical methods, and so on. Accordingly, many software programs have been written and disseminated to implement these analyses, and a survey of those programs is given here. We classify the programs based on three different perspectives: types of classical closed-population models, statistical foundations or philosophy, and extensions or variations of classical models. While the level of computing in this area has become quite sophisticated, especially for the extended models, none of the major statistical software packages has a 'native' capture–recapture sub-package or routine (although some workarounds are possible), and the large number of separately released programs, though effective within their domains, tend to lack standardization and interoperability at present. The applied scientist can be reasonably confident of finding a program to fit his/her needs, but some examination of the literature will be required.


Spring Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) is a simple, descriptive and accurate model to study dynamic legged locomotion. Critical design decisions to realize SLIP based legged robots with high energy efficiency and control accuracy are actuation topology and controller. Recent studies converge on series elastic actuation (SEA) and parallel elastic actuation (PEA) regarding actuation whereas, a recently introduced control method, virtual tuning of damping (VTD) have proven to be superior for SEA over other control techniques. However, actuation topology is still under discussion and it is a highly coupled problem with the control approach. In this study, vertical hoppers with PEA and SEA configurations are compared under VTD controller to determine the one results in better energy efficiency and accuracy. PEA and SEA models are extended with drive-train details to provide more realistic results. Models are simulated with various gearboxes and motors to understand their effects. Comparisons among optimum topologies showed that VTD-PEA achieves 0.02% percent apex error where VTD-SEA achieves 0.5% apex-to-apex accuracy (25 times). VTD-PEA also achieved 40% better energy efficiency and 38% higher cost of transport than VTD-SEA.


We present MonodiKit, a Python library for the analysis and processing of medieval chant documents. While MonodiKit was designed specifically for working with data in the monodi+ data format as edited by the Corpus Monodicum project, its comprehensive set of tools and classes offers a wide range of functionalities, such as parsing and processing of chant documents, exploring their hierarchical structure, managing metadata, generating musical notation, and extracting relevant information. The library thus enables researchers and scholars to conduct in-depth computational analyses of the chants, in particular by providing a basic interface to the more common MEI format. This paper introduces the key features of MonodiKit, presents its design and implementation, and presents a case study demonstrating its capabilities as an interface for corpus studies of medieval chant.


BACKGROUND
Sheepskin bedding might increase house dust mite exposure and so explain some of the increasing prevalence of severity of childhood asthma.

METHODS
Relationships between use of different types of bedding, and diagnoses of asthma, symptoms of wheezing, skin prick test evidence of house dust mite sensitivity, and airway responsiveness to methacholine, were examined retrospectively in a birth cohort of children followed longitudinally to age 15 years.

RESULTS
In the whole cohort, no associations were identified to suggest a causal relationship between use of any type of bedding and development of features of asthma. Although not an a priori hypothesis, we noted that among children with a family history of atopic disease, those who were house dust mite sensitive were more likely to have used an innerspring mattress (29.6% vs 10.2% who had not used an innerspring mattress, p = 0.005).

CONCLUSION
In this subgroup, increased airway responsiveness and mite sensitivity were significantly associated with use of innerspring mattresses, although whether this is a causal or secondary association is not certain. Use of a sheepskin in the bed in early childhood was not an additional risk factor for the development of asthma.