Abstract:There is a distinct tendency within the field of psychological and psychiatric literature to cite illness memoirs as exemplary sources of insight into the subjective dimension of how illness is experienced. However, the epistemological reliability of such sources remains open to question: Do such sources indeed offer meaningful insights into the authentic experiences of patients and in doing so, provide effective coping and self-management strategies, or are they merely literary and/or popular constructs, the value and meaning of which are fundamentally indeterminate? In this contribution, I analyze three such memoirs: Floyd Skloot's (1996) The Night-side; Rik Carlson's (2004) We're Not in Kansas Anymore; and Julie Rehmeyer's (2017) Through the Shadowlands—all describing individual experiences of the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). As CFS remains a puzzling and contested illness, an analysis of these narratives offers the opportunity to explore the presupposed values as well as the limitations of illness life-writing. In this article, I map the academic debate on the epistemological value of illness narratives and chart the discussion on CFS since the early 1990s. Subsequently, I propose a double reading—a "medical" reading and a "literary" reading—of the memoirs considered. Finally, I suggest that the inherent indeterminacy of CFS life-writing is an important quality that contributes to a deeper understanding of living and coping with chronic, as yet medically unexplained illnesses. Reading illness memoirs, I conclude, reveals the rhetorical and cultural dimensions, as well as the ambiguities and uncertainties of such experiences.


The purpose of this research is to compare the performance of two text classifiers; support vector machine (SVM) and back-propagation neural network (BPNN) within categorize messages from an online discussion. SVM has been recognized as one of the best algorithm for text categorization. BPNN is also a popular categorization method that can handle linear and non linear problems and can achieve good result. However, using SVM and BPNN in online discussion is rare. In this research, several SVM data are trained in multi-class categorization to classify the same set with BPNN. The effectiveness of these two text classifiers are measured and then statistically compared based on error rate, precision, recall and F-measure. The experimental result shows that for text message categorization in online discussion, the performances of SVM outperform BPNN in term of error rate and precision; and falls behind BPNN in term of recall and F-measure.


An experiment was conducted during the rainy season of the year 2000 from July to October at the premises of the Faculty of Agriculture University of Maiduguri under tree shade, to study the effect of hot water pre-treatment duration. The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design which consisted of six (6) different times of exposure in hours: 0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 16, replicated three (3) times. The data collected include days to first emergence, days to 50 % emergence and final emergence. Data collected were subjected to Analysis of Variance. Time of pre-treatment duration significantly (P≤0.05) affected final emergence. In all the data collected, treatment subjected to hot water treatment for 2 hours appeared to be promising. Based on the result obtained, it may be recommended that gum Arabic seeds be subjected to 2 hours hot water pre-treatment. Key words: Germination response, pre-sowing treatment, gum Arabic, orthodox seeds.


Management of somatization in depression depends on understanding its mechanisms. This kind of somatization is the product of both specific and nonspecific factors which interact to create a chronic and hypocondriacal picture. Biological treatment looks like treatment of chronic depression. Antidepressants with anxiolytic properties have a place of choice. Psychotherapy is frequently used, particularly cognitive behavior therapy which allows the reattribution of somatic symptoms to psychological events. General practitioners need to be trained to these techniques as they are, more frequently than psychiatrists, involved in the management of these patients.


SUMMARY Objective: The objective of this study was to develop a practical questionnaire for multidimensional assessment of problems associated with alcohol and substance abuse that would also be useful for treatment planning. Materials and Methods: The Addiction Profile Index (API) is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 37 items and the following 5 subscales: characteristics of substance use; dependency diagnosis; the effects of substance use on the user; craving; motivation to quit using substances. The study included 345 alcohol and/or substance abusers from 2 addiction treatment clinics and a prison addiction service. The validity of the questionnaire was assessed using the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST), Readiness to Change Questionnaire (SOCRATES), Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS), Drug Craving Scale (DCS), Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I), and Addiction Severity Index (ASI). Results: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total API was 0.89 and for the subscales it ranged from 0.63 to 0.86. Item-total correlation coefficients ranged from 0.42 to 0.89. The Spearman Brown split-half method coefficient for the total API was 0.83. In all, 4 factors were obtained using explanatory factor analysis that represented 52.3% of the total variance. The API craving subscale was observed to be consistent with PACS and the API motivation subscale was consistent with SOCRATES. The API total score was strongly correlated with the mean MAST score, and the composite ASI medical status, substance use, legal status, and family social relations subscale scores. Based on ROC analyses, the area under curve was 0.90. With a total API cut-off score of 4, the scale's sensitivity and specificity 0.85 was 0.78, respectively. Conclusion: The findings show that the API is a valid and reliable questionnaire that can be used to measure the severity of different dimensions of substance dependency.


Dry beans come in a wide variety of seed coat patterns and colours and the quality and value of the bean crop is largely determined by appearance and condition of the seed, particularly colour uniformity and stability. In western Canada, black bean is a significant portion of the crop. For some black bean varieties, the seed coat colour does not fully develop until the pod is mature. This may be the result of genotype, or environment, or both. In these cases, harvesting at plant maturity rather than at seed maturity can lead to a non-uniform crop sample in which the black beans are mixed with beans that have a purple or gray tinge. Full expression of seed coat colour is economically important as variable colour development may result in a 2-4 cent per pound discount. Seed coat colour is determined by the presence of anthocyanins and condensed tannins. In this experiment, we examined the timing of pigment deposition in the seed coat in relation to pod maturity for 5 black bean varieties (CDC Expresso, CDC Nighthawk, CDC Jet, AC Black Diamond, and T39) to determine if there is genetic variation for timing of seed coat colour development. If it is under genetic control, we will be able to breed for earlier colour development to ensure full colour expression at plant maturity.


Spherically averaged potential energies of interaction between pairs of methane, carbon tetrafluoride and sulphur hexafluoride molecules have been determined as closely as possible using experimental gaseous viscosity data. Experimental second virial coefficients have then been used to estimate values of the first non zero multipole moment of these molecules. Third virial coefficients calculated with allowance for the triple dipole dispersion interaction agree well with experiment as do calculated self diffusion coefficients for methane.


Accounting for 20% (around 3,400 TWh) of global electricity production – even though its contribution to gross final energy consumption is only about 2% – hydropower plays a vital role. This is largely due to the fact that it can be readily regulated to meet fluctuations in demand and substantial reserves can be stored in reservoirs. Hydropower supplies around 56% of Switzerland's electricity needs. Worldwide, there are at least 47,655 large dams and an estimated 800,000 smaller ones. Since 2000, investments in hydropower projects have risen once again. The World Bank and the World Commission on Dams expect to see further strong growth in this sector. The key figures for Switzerland are as follows: • 576 large plants (>300 kW capacity), plus around 700 microhydropower plants (<300 kW). • About 1,400 withdrawal sites and 102 reservoirs >0.1 km 5 • Total electricity production (2010): 66.3 TWh/year; hydropower 37.5 TWh/year (56% share) • A notable feature of hydropower in Switzerland is the high proportion (57%) of production to meet peak demand from Alpine reservoirs; 43% comes from run-of-the-river plants. • Storage pump consumption (2010): 2.5 TWh/year


Malignant brain tumors are among the most aggressive human neoplasms. One of the most common and severe symptoms that patients with these malignancies experience is sleep disruption. Disrupted sleep is known to have significant systemic pro-tumor effects, both in patients with other types of cancer and those with malignant brain lesions. We therefore provide a review of the current knowledge on disrupted sleep in malignant diseases, with an emphasis on malignant brain tumors. More specifically, we review the known ways in which disrupted sleep enables further malignant progression. In the second part of the article, we also provide a theoretical framework of the reverse process. Namely, we argue that due to the several possible pathophysiological mechanisms, patients with malignant brain tumors are especially susceptible to their sleep being disrupted and compromised. Thus, we further argue that addressing the issue of disrupted sleep in patients with malignant brain tumors can, not just improve their quality of life, but also have at least some potential of actively suppressing the devastating disease, especially when other treatment modalities have been exhausted. Future research is therefore desperately needed.


In this paper, fracture behavior of ferroelectric ceramics under combined electromechanical loading was investigated using moiré interferometry. It is found that the influence of electric field on fracture toughness is not very larger in the case that the directions of the poling, electric field and crack extension are perpendicular to each other. When the poling direction is parallel to the crack extension direction and both are perpendicular to the electric field direction, the normal strain measured reduced faster than that calculated by FEM with and without electrical loading as the distance away from the crack tip increases. Fracture toughness decreases obviously as the electric-field intensity increases.


The TLX1 transcription factor oncogene is frequently activated by chromosomal translocations in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) and defines a distinct molecular group of tumors characterized by differentiation arrest at the early cortical stage of thymocyte differentiation and excellent response to therapy. Recent developments from the analysis of genomic data on TLX1-specific transcriptional targets and analysis of the molecular mechanisms of TLX1 transformation in human- and mouse-induced leukemias have shown novel insight into the activity of this transcription factor oncogene. Aberrant expression of TLX1 in T-cell progenitors disrupts normal T-cell development and triggers the development of aneuploidy during T-cell transformation. Importantly, the disruption of the mitotic checkpoint in TLX1-induced tumors may be linked not only to the acquisition of secondary genetic alterations in T-ALL but also to increased sensitivity of these tumors to chemotherapy with drugs targeting the formation of the mitotic spindle. Clin Cancer Res; 17(20); 6381–6. ©2011 AACR.


A case of symptomatic muscle hernia of the leg in a provincial cricketer caused by a cricket ball injury is presented. It was diagnosed clinically and treated with a limited fasciotomy. However, delay in the diagnosis and treatment ended the professional career of the player. An awareness of the condition and a high index of suspicion are required to treat this condition in time.


An automated, quantitative microhemagglutination assay for antibodies to Treponema pallidum was developed by using T. pallidum-sensitized erythrocytes and an automatic serial-dilution instrument. Reactivity was found in sera from 54 rabbits and 6 chimpanzees infected with T. pallidum. Reactivity was also found in sera from animals infected with T. pertenue, T. carateum, and T. cuniculi. No reactivity was found in sera from 75 normal rabbits or from 129 rabbits immunized with cultivatable treponemes or a variety of other bacteria. In approximately 3 min, 13 twofold serial dilutions of each of 8 preabsorbed sera and the addition of sensitized erythrocytes to each dilution were accomplished automatically. The automated assay can serve as a research tool in quantitating antibodies to pathogenic treponemes, and evaluation of its clinical usefulness seems warranted.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
The axillary brachial plexus block is a frequently performed anesthetic technique. Adding a variety of coadjuvant drugs has been shown to improve results. This study evaluated the addition of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and/or clonidine to mepivacaine for performing the block.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Sixty patients between 18 and 70 years old, ASA 1-3 in stable condition received axillary brachial plexus blocks in a randomized controlled study. Four groups of 15 patients each were formed: group I (control group) received 40 mL of 1% mepivacaine with adrenaline plus 5 mL of saline; group II, 40 mL of 1% mepivacaine with adrenaline plus 4 mL of NaHCO3 and 1 mL of saline; group III, 40 mL of 1% mepivacaine with 150 microg of clonidine plus 4mL of saline; and group IV, 40 mL of 1% mepivacaine with adrenaline plus 4 mL of NaHCO3 and 150 microg of clonidine.

RESULTS
The onset time was significantly shorter in groups 2 and 4. The duration of the block was longer in group 3 and the analgesic effect was significantly better.

CONCLUSIONS
Adding NaHCO3 to mepivacaine shortens the time of onset of an axillary brachial plexus block. Including clonidine prolongs the duration of anesthesia and analgesia. The addition of both NaHCO3 and clonidine shortens time to onset but does not prolong duration of anesthesia or analgesia.


Because novelists are particular about beginnings, we should notice that The Awakening opens with two things: sumptuous sensory images and an outpouring of babble--words that resemble ordinary speech, but which really have meaning for no one, not even the speaker. A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!" He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood. [1] Although an onlooker is able to enjoy this vivid scene, the parrot cannot; moreover, there is a sense of enigma (or fraud) about this bird who seems able to communicate, but is not. Indeed, the absolute discontinuity among the bird's "discourse," its exotic plumage, and its feelings (whatever they may be) is even more significant to the larger themes of the novel than the fact that he is caged. Or perhaps this very disconnectedness (and the bird's consequent isolation) defines the cage. Critics admire the "modernism" of Chopin's work, the strong spareness of the prose and the ';minimalism" of a narrative whose absences are at least as important as its action and whose narrator maintains strict emotional and moral neutrality. What we may not fully appreciate is the relationship between these elements and Edna Pontellier's personal tragedy, a relationship whose terms are announced by the apparent disarray of the novel's brilliant beginning. This is a tale about not speaking, about disjunction--about denials, oversights, prohibitions, exclusions, and absences. Not merely about things that are never named, but most significantly about stories that cannot be told and things that can be neither thought nor spoken because they do not have a name. After about 1849, the notion of a "woman's sexual awakening" became, by definition, an impossibility--a contradiction in terms--because the medical establishment in America began to promulgate the view that normal females possessed no erotic inclinations whatsoever (and one cannot awaken something that does not exist). William Acton, the acknowledged expert on the nature of women's sexuality and author of "one of the most widely quoted books on sexual problems and diseases in the English-speaking world," [2] wrote: I have taken pains to obtain and compare abundant evidence on this subject, and the result of my inquiries I may briefly epitomize as follows:--I should say that the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind. What men are habitually women are only exceptionally. It is too true, I admit, as the divorce courts show, that there are some few women who have sexual desires so strong that they surpass those of men, and shock public feeling by their consequences. [3] Acton's work elaborated a comprehensive system of women's "inequality" to men; and it was so universally respected that his sentiments can be taken to represent opinions that were held throughout much of America during the second half of the nineteenth century. Certainly they define the attitudes of that stem Presbyterian world in which Edna Pointellier grew to maturity. [4] In fact, Edna's particular religious background could not have been chosen casually by Chopin, for a woman reared in this faith during the 1870s and 1880s (the years of Edna's youth) would have been preternaturally susceptible to the most crippling elements of Acton's strictures. American Calvinism always preached that although the woman was to be "regarded as equal to man. in her title to grace," she was nonetheless "the weaker vessel," and was thus obliged to pursue all endeavors as a "subordinate to the husband." [5] During the later nineteenth century, Presbyterianism was generally regarded as a conservative bastion for such ideas, and many Presbyterians themselves construed their mission as one of upholding precisely these conservative-religious values. …


There is accumulating evidence to suggest that spawning stock biomass (SSB) may not be directly proportional to reproductive potential. The wide-ranging implications of this conclusion necessitate that it be tested for as many stocks as possible. Undertaking such tests is complicated by the fact that fish stocks vary in the amount and type of information that is available to estimate reproductive potential. In this review, nine stocks illustrate the range of approaches that are being taken to developing alternative indices of reproductive potential from existing data resources. Three stocks had sufficient data to reconstruct a time series of total egg production (TEP), whereas, the remaining stocks were limited to estimating proxies for stock reproductive potential. For some of the case studies the alternative indices explained a higher amount of recruitment variation than did SSB. Other case studies provided evidence that characteristics of the spawning stock, e.g. age diversity and female-only SSB, influence recruitment in ways that are not properly accounted for by using SSB as the sole index of reproductive potential. This is further evidence that the assumption of proportionality between SSB and TEP is invalid. The data-rich stocks showed the relationship between SSB and TEP to be variable and characterized by distinct time trends. This variability will impact the ability of biomass-based reference points to conserve reproductive potential. Consequently, management protocols should be adapted to incorporate the detailed information on reproductive potential that is increasingly becoming available rather than being restricted to approaches that have been designed for data-poor situations.


Non linear 1-D CFD time domain prediction codes are used for calculation of performance of the gas exchange process for IC-engines. These codes give time varying pressures and velocities in the exhaust and intake system. They could therefore in principle be used to predict radiated orifice noise. The accuracy is however not sufficient for using them as a virtual design tool. Using linear three dimensional frequency domain codes, more accurate results might be provided for complicated geometries. Radiated shell noise and frequency dependent damping could also be included in the frequency domain models. To calculate insertion loss of air-cleaner systems or the level of radiated intake orifice and shell noise, information about the engine as an acoustic source is needed. The source model used in the low frequency plane wave range for simulation of dominating engine harmonics is the linear time invariant 1-port model. The acoustic source data is usually obtained from experimental tests where the multi-load methods and especially the two-load method are most commonly used. These tests are time consuming, expensive and require physical hardware and can therefore not be used for early predictions. It would therefore be of interest to extract the acoustic source data from existing 1-D CFD gas exchange codes. This paper presents a comparison between results obtained applying the two-load technique to measurements on a six-cylinder personal car petrol engine and to 1-D simulations of identical intake systems on the same engine. The results show that it is possible to obtain reasonably accurate source strength as well as source impedance estimates for the intake side from 1-D gas exchange simulations.


The hot deformation behavior of a low carbon Nb-microalloyed steel is investigated by hot compression test in the ferrite phase region compared with a low carbon steel with similar compositions, and the effect of Nb on dynamic recrystallization of ferrite is analyzed. Results indicate that during hot deformation in the ferrite phase region, the effect of Nb solely depends on the size of NbC precipitates. Tiny particles which average size is about 7.5nm have a retarding effect on dynamic recrystallization process of ferrite, on the contrary, coarser particles which average size is about 30.6nm have a promoting effect and are of benefit to the refinement of recrystallized grains.


The Southern Hemisphere Westerlies (SHW) play a major role in the global climate system. The winds drive ocean circulation and affect the Southern Oceans' ability to take up atmospheric CO2. Recently, the SHW core belt has strengthened and shifted south, but there is an insufficient understanding of its long-term behaviour. Palaeoclimatic records are key for capturing long-term variability through the SHW's effect on surface temperature and moisture availability. However, terrestrial records are sparse in the Southern Hemisphere. We use a palynological record from Lake Diamond on sub-Antarctic South Georgia to provide reconstructions of vegetation and climate for the last ~10,000 years. Influx of long-distance transported pollen is used as a measure of surface wind strength. Changes in relative pollen abundance of native taxa occupying either upland (cold) or lowland (warm) environments indicate local climatic variability. On South Georgia, we find long-distance transported pollen from South American taxa, mainly Nothofagus and Ephedra. They show a general increase in abundance throughout the Holocene, with peak influxes between 5700–5400, 2800–1500 and 1000–500 cal yr BP. These intervals coincide with colder periods inferred from the palynological record, suggesting that SHW variation and temperature on South Georgia are highly connected. Agreement with palaeoecological records from eastern Patagonia show that climatic changes have been regionally consistent. The record from Lake Diamond further illustrates the importance of remote islands in contributing to a deeper understanding of atmospheric circulation and climatic variability in the sub-Antarctic.


Computer vision is driven by the many datasets available for training or evaluating novel methods. However, each dataset has a different set of class labels, visual definition of classes, images following a specific distribution, annotation protocols, etc. In this paper we explore the automatic discovery of visual-semantic relations between labels across datasets. We aim to understand how instances of a certain class in a dataset relate to the instances of another class in another dataset. Are they in an identity, parent/child, overlap relation? Or is there no link between them at all? To find relations between labels across datasets, we propose methods based on language, on vision, and on their combination. We show that we can effectively discover label relations across datasets, as well as their type. We apply our method to four applications: understand label relations, identify missing aspects, increase label specificity, and predict transfer learning gains. We conclude that label relations cannot be established by looking at the names of classes alone, as they depend strongly on how each of the datasets was constructed.


With the increased bandwidth in 3G terminals, the possibilities to make new exciting multimedia applications are enormous. Mobile devices generally uses small LCD:s with only a few gray-scales or colors. The goal for this master thesis will be to find ways to enhance and correct the images before they are shown on the LCD. Could this be done with algorithms who enhance the images automatically depending on which information the images have? It will also be necessary to consider the LCDs characteristic before enhancement of the images. In this master thesis work it was discovered that sharpened and enhanced images with histogram modifications clearly improves the quality when displayed on the LCD. But it is also important to enhance the colors in the image, not only with color correction but also with dithering and quantization technique. Combining techniques like sharpening, color saturation and histogram modification gave clearly an improvement to the quality of the image and the result from the survey also pointed in this direction, the survey is published in appendix A. Some of the algorithms in histogram modification were used in an automatic enhancement and one of the algorithms worked with satisfaction. This histogram modification algorithm has been the basis for a patent application and we suggest a new outstanding performance histogram-modification method. The method cannot be described in this master thesis because the patent process is not finished.


All life forms absorb minerals, which are generally
used in cellular metabolism. These minerals may
be secreted during normal metabolism or mineralized
after cellular death. The cycle can then be repeated.
Our studies of mineral cycling within the sagebrush
(Artemisia) ecosystem attempt to explain why the
productivity of one site is different from that of
another. We may also want to know if enough minerals
are available to support a shrub-to-grass conversion
project or if the site provides adequate nutrition to
herbivores. The mineral content of Artemisia, for
example, has been used as a means of detecting precious
metals in the subsoil. This procedure, known as
biogeochemical prospecting, is commonly used in north-central
Asia. The mineral enrichment studies comparing
Artemisia in areas downwind and upwind from
factories provide a base line for monitoring mineral
fallout (Conner et al. 1976, Gough and Severson 1976,
Severson and Gough 1976). Mineral cycling information
also helps us to interpret the effects of fire, grazing,
or erosion on the mineral status of a given site.


ABSTRACT Opportunity youth (OY; i.e., youth ages 16–24 who are neither working nor in school) are a population who is difficult to engage and retain in educational programs, particularly in community college career and technical education (CTE) programs. OY are an important population to community colleges, as CTE programs culminating in industry-recognized credentials and employment constitute an important on-ramp to the workforce for young adults. The Manufacturing Training Program is a vocational training program offered at a local community college in Phoenix, Arizona that was informed by input from youth and service providers to support OY in obtaining the necessary technical skills/credential for entry-level employment in manufacturing. Researchers conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with 32 program stakeholders and beneficiaries (i.e., 14 staff and 18 youth). Data were coded and analyzed using content analysis to identify major themes for each stakeholder and beneficiary group interviewed as well as working hypotheses to guide future CTE program development. Findings suggest that there are both challenges and successes related to recruiting, retaining and employing OY. Recruitment challenges include lack of information about and disinterest in manufacturing, whereas successes include leveraging family members in recruiting youth. Retention challenges include meeting OYs' basic needs, whereas successes include providing quality case management. Employment challenges include limited employer participation whereas successes include developing an effective process to connect employers with trained youth. Findings and lessons learned on recruitment, retention, and employment challenges and successes offer direction for community colleges to develop and strengthen CTE programs for OY.


Nowadays, optimization problems are large-scale and complicated, so heuristic optimization algorithms have become common for solving them. Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is one of the heuristic algorithms for solving optimization problems inspired by Newton's lows of gravity and motion. Definition and calculation of masses in GSA have an impact on the performance of the algorithm. Defining appropriate functions for mass calculation improves the exploitation and exploration power of the algorithm and prevents the algorithm from getting trapped in local optima. In this paper, Sigma scaling and Boltzmann selection functions are examined for mass calculation in GSA. The proposed functions are evaluated on some standard test functions including unimodal functions and multimodal functions. The obtained results are compared with the standard GSA, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm, gravitational particle swarm algorithm and clustered-GSA. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art optimization algorithms, despite the simplicity of implementation.


Since 1988, the states of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in conflict over the enclave of Nagorno Karabakh. The conflict has developed into one of the most intractable and complicated disputes in the international arena, with the main parties being the two rivalling sovereign states plus the 'unrecognised state' of Nagorno Karabakh. Despite the optimistic statements and claims by the OSCE and after many years of negotiations and talks, the peace process remains in stalemate. The research argues the virtues of Track Two diplomacy and highlights the successful instances where it has made important contributions to the 'official' or Track One diplomatic process. It also explores the potential of a 'no war no peace' situation by discerning the factors influencing the progress of the conflict. The research shows that a deeper understanding of the obstacles to peace is achieved by appreciating the significance of historical events as well as recognising the motives and interests of the different parties. The study reviews all major factors which have led to the failure of resolution efforts, particular the negative role played by Russia. It concludes that the scholars in the field of conflict resolution can bring about a lasting peace to this region, provided there is a fundamental change in the structure of the co-chairs of the OSCE.


The increasing capabilities of multimedia appliances demand arithmetic circuits with higher speed and reasonable power dissipation. A common technique to attain those goals is synchronous pipelining, which increases the throughput of a circuit at the expense of longer latency, and it is therefore suitable where throughput takes priority over latency. Two synchronous pipelining approaches, conventional pipelining and wave pipelining, are commonly employed. Conventional pipelining uses registers to divide the circuit into shorter paths and synchronize among sub-blocks, while wave pipelining uses the delay of combinational elements to perform those tasks. As wave pipelining does not introduce additional registers, in principle, it can attain a higher throughput and lower power consumption. However, its throughput is limited by delay variations, while delay balancing often leads to increased power dissipation. This dissertation proposes a hybrid pipelining method called HyPipe, which divides the circuit into sub-blocks using conventional pipelining, and applies wave pipelining to each subblock. Each sub-block is derived from a single base circuit, leading to a better delay balance and greater throughput than with heterogeneous circuits. Another requirement for wave pipelining to achieve high speed is short signal rise and fall times. Since CMOS wide-NAND and wide-NOR gates exhibit long rise and fall times and large delay variations, they should be decomposed. We show that the straightforward decomposition using alternating levels of NAND and NOR gates results in large delay variations. Therefore, we propose a new decomposition method using only one gate type. Our method reduces delay variations by up to 39%, and it is appropriate for wave pipelining based on standard-cells or sea-of-gates. We laid out a 4×4 HyPipe multiplier as a proof of concept and performed a post-layout SPICE simulation. The multiplier achieves a throughput of 4.17 billion multiplications per


Non-native trees profoundly alter the structure and resilience of native forest ecosystems through direct or indirect effects on ecosystem processes, e.g. by altering invertebrate communities, but such effects are poorly understood in New Zealand. We sampled adjacent stands of the non-native tree Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and native beech (Nothofagaceae) forests and tested whether the overall invertebrate communities varied across forest types. We then assessed whether natural enemies, both trophic-generalist predators and more trophic-specialist parasitoids, differed across forest types. We found a trend for lower overall invertebrate family diversity in Douglas fir plantations compared to native beech forests. Parasitoid abundance was lower in Douglas fir forests compared to native beech forests, although we could not tease apart whether these effects were due to differences in forest age, forest type, or a combination of these factors. Our findings suggest that there are subtle shifts in invertebrate community composition from native forests to non-native forests, and that trophic specialisation might play a key role in determining which natural enemies can inhabit non-native forests in New Zealand. Nevertheless, our small sample size calls for further exploration of these patterns.


We present an approach for identifying picturesque highlights from large amounts of egocentric video data. Given a set of egocentric videos captured over the course of a vacation, our method analyzes the videos and looks for images that have good picturesque and artistic properties. We introduce novel techniques to automatically determine aesthetic features such as composition, symmetry and color vibrancy in egocentric videos and rank the video frames based on their photographic qualities to generate highlights. Our approach also uses contextual information such as GPS, when available, to assess the relative importance of each geographic location where the vacation videos were shot. Furthermore, we specifically leverage the properties of egocentric videos to improve our highlight detection. We demonstrate results on a new egocentric vacation dataset which includes 26.5 hours of videos taken over a 14 day vacation that spans many famous tourist destinations and also provide results from a user-study to access our results.


In this startling new interpretation of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Bernard Wasserstein focuses on largely neglected forces--demographic, economic, and social--that have shaped the politics of the region but have also made the two societies so interdependent that they must make peace in order to survive. "Readers who care about the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict should not overlook Bernard Wasserstein's lucid attempt to look at it from some unusual angles. . . . A helpful and original introduction to the conflict."--Warren Bass, "Washington Post Book World ""Reasoned and balanced, [this book] makes a compelling case that demographic, socio-economic, environmental, and territorial imperatives must eventually bring Israelis and Palestinians to a peaceful resolution."--Eric Silver, "Jewish Chronicle""In this short and elegant essay, [Wasserstein] slips in a good deal of history. . . . The rationality of the arguments is impressive."--David Pryce-Jones, "Sunday Times" (London) "Wasserstein's readable text is a solid primer on Israelis and Palestinians for experts and neophytes, characterized by a hardheaded realism that is fair to both sides."--"Foreign Affairs"


This paper presents a quorum-based distributed algorithm for the extended group mutual exclusion problem. In the group mutual exclusion problem, multiple processes can enter a critical section simultaneously if they belong to the same group. Processes in different groups cannot enter a critical section at the same time. In the extended group mutual exclusion, each process is a member of multiple groups at the same time. Each process can select which group it belongs at making a request. The algorithm for the group mutual exclusion cannot be applied for this extended problem, since there can be a case that two processes are prevented from entering a critical section simultaneously even when they are capable of doing so. We call the above situation unnecessary blocking. We present a quorum-based algorithm that prevents unnecessary blocking and show its correctness proof.


Kecombrang ( Etlingera elatior ) is a well-known herb in Indonesia that is widely used in traditional medicine and as a flavour in local dishes. The aim of this study was to identify retention time of antibacterial components from kecombrang flower extract ( Etlingera elatior ) by HPLC-based metabolomics method. The antibacterial activity of ethanol extracts, chloroform, and water fractions was assessed by well-diffusion agar method against Staphylococcus aureus . Only chloroform fraction showed medium inhibition activity against Staphylococcus aureus . The HPLC chemical profiles of the fractions were then correlated to their antibacterial activity profile by means of Orthogonal Projection to Latent Sructure (OPLS) analysis. Peak area with retention time of 0.96 - 1.12 min present in chloroform fraction at UV 250 nm was found to significantly correlate to the antibacterial activity (Y related coefficient value 0.73).


BACKGROUND
Approximately 17.1 million adults report having a major depressive episode in 2004 which represents 8% of the adult population in the U.S. Of these, more than one-third did not seek treatment. In spite of the large and extensive literature on the cost of mental health, we know very little about the differences in out-of-pocket expenditures between adults with depression and adults with other major chronic disease and the sources of those expenditures.

AIMS
For persons under age 65, compare total and out-of-pocket expenditures of those with depression to non-depressed individuals who have another major chronic disease.

METHODS
This study uses two linked, nationally representative surveys, the 1999 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2000 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), to identify the population of interest. Depression was systematically assessed using a short form of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Composite International Diagnostic Interview--Short Form (CIDI-SF). To control for differences from potentially confounding factors, we matched depressed cases to controls using propensity score matching.

RESULTS
We estimate that persons with depression have about the same out-of-pocket expenditures while having 11.8% less total medical expenditures (not a statistically significant difference) compared to non-depressed individuals with at least one chronic disease.

DISCUSSION
High out-of-pocket expenditures are a concern for individuals with chronic diseases. Our study shows that those with depression have comparable out-of-pocket expenses to those with other chronic diseases, but given their lower income levels, this may result in a more substantial financial burden. IMPLICATION FOR POLICY: High out-of-pocket expenditures are a concern for individuals with depression and other chronic diseases. For both depressed individuals and non-depressed individuals with other chronic diseases, prescription drug expenditures contribute most to out-of-pocket expenses. Given the important role medications play in treatment of depression, high copayment rates are a concern for limiting compliance with appropriate treatment.


The impression one gathers eventually is that their model is in fact a considerably diluted version of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, telescoped into half a dozen sessions and that it is applicable to †̃¿ any kind ofemotional problem'. The section on clinical application brings us little closer to an understanding of brief psychotherapy. The chapter on †̃¿ the elderly patient' for instance focusses mainly on clinical symptoms with the application of brief psychotherapy to them barely discussed.


Many real-world problems require to optimise trajectories under constraints. Classical approaches are based on optimal control methods but require an exact knowledge of the underlying dynamics, which could be challenging or even out of reach. In this paper, we leverage data-driven approaches to design a new end-to-end framework which is dynamics-free for optimised and realistic trajectories.
We first decompose the trajectories on function basis, trading the initial infinite dimension problem on a multivariate functional space for a parameter optimisation problem. A maximum \emph{a posteriori} approach which incorporates information from data is used to obtain a new optimisation problem which is regularised. The penalised term focuses the search on a region centered on data and includes estimated linear constraints in the problem.
We apply our data-driven approach to two settings in aeronautics and sailing routes optimisation, yielding commanding results. The developed approach has been implemented in the Python library PyRotor.


Third-personal judgments of blame are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others' mental control, people self-project their own perceived mental control to anchor third-personal judgments about mental control and concomitant responsibility for negligent wrongdoing. In four experiments (N = 841), we tested whether perceptions of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that the ease with which people can counterfactually imagine an individual being non-negligent mediated the relationship between judgments of control and blame. Studies 2a and 2b indicated that perceived mental control has a strong effect on judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and that first-personal judgments of mental control are moderately correlated with third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Finally, we used an autobiographical memory manipulation in Study 3 to make personal episodes of forgetfulness salient. Participants for whom past personal episodes of forgetfulness were made salient judged negligent wrongdoers less harshly compared with a control group for whom past episodes of negligence were not salient. Collectively, these findings suggest that first-personal judgments of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and indicate a novel role for counterfactual thinking in the attribution of responsibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).


: The paper contains a new approach to calculate subsidence induced by mining. Its essence consists in combining reliable empirical data with rigorous accounting for compatibility conditions in 3D multi-layered media. The mathematical tool employed is the fast Fourier transform. It serves us for efficient solution of 3D elasticity equations for tens and even hundreds of layers. Stresses at the Earth surface are zero. At the mining levels, displacement discontinuities are considered to be proportional to the extracted thickness. Low- or no-friction contacts are presumed. Normal displacements at contacts may be continuous or include contact dilation. The layers are considered to be isotropic, homogeneous and elastic. Asymptotic formulae for high and low frequencies are used to increase accuracy and decrease the time of calculations. Layers being normally thin, the accepted presumptions do not distort the subsidence picture significantly given the boundary conditions at the mining level are prescribed in terms of displacements. This allows us to introduce necessary corrections accounting for strongly nonlinear effects discussed in the paper. The corrections are made automatically in the computer program Lay-Subsid developed by the authors. Numerical results and examples are given. They show flexibility and potential of the suggested approach for subsidence prediction and for further development of the code.


This series of works took individual tracks, or small groups of tracks, from my existing catalogue of recorded works and using narratives and themes within them, and often the found object sound sources utilized, developed large scale installations or environments within which I would inhabit and perform the related compositions. Depending on the nature of the installation and the duration of time spent in it, the manner in which I performed varied. For example, for the presentation of Moths Wings in 2011 I spent one day a week performing within the installation but for the presentation of The Incredible Adventures… in 2010 I lived and slept for the entire two week duration in the work itself. The musical performance elements were equally varied: performing within Moths Wings involved live manipulation and interaction of electronic software elements, found sounds on vinyl, harmonium and voice, but by comparison the performances in The Incredible Adventures… consisted of karaoke vocal performances to homemade karaoke VHS video tapes.

These works were concerned with expanding and redefining the possible performance spaces and contexts for popular song, removing the song from established 'gig' scenarios; and exploring a song's narratives and themes in the visual and physical environment in a way that challenged the constructed nature of music video. The multi-media works were also a forum to examine and reflect the increasingly autonomous and interdisciplinary creative skills and activities of the contemporary musician.

The installations allowed for participation of those who encountered them, visitors were invited to enter the spaces and perform or collaborate musically if they wished, challenging the traditional 'performer/audience' and 'star/fan' relationships prevalent in popular music. The design and execution of the work encouraged visitors to not simply be voyeurs, passively consuming the music and environments, and rather to engage and shape the works.


Despite continuous efforts, a conceptual perception on the origin of quasi-two-dimensional electron gas (q-2DEG) in oxide heterostructures remains far from any generalization. Along this perspective, a systematic study identifying systems that exhibit heterointerface conductivity (LaAlO3/SrTiO3) and that do not (LaCrO3/SrTiO3) is undertaken. High quality LaAl1-xCrxO3 (0 <= x <= 1) films were fabricated on TiO2 terminated SrTiO3 (001) substrates using a pulsed laser deposition technique and its growth was monitored by reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED). The transport and photoemission spectroscopy experiments reveal that the the origin of heterointerface q-2DEG is associated with Ti3+ states and that it ceases to exist with increasing Cr ion concentration in the overlayer films. Following experimental evidences of the Cr concentration dependent metal-insulator electronic phase transition at the heterointerface, explanation is sought within the realms of a polar catastrophe model. Based on our transport and spectroscopy measurements, we propose that an electronic reconstruction drives the formation of q-2DEG for pristine LAO/STO and Al rich samples due to the formation of Ti3+/Ti4+ mixed valent state, while for heavily doped Cr samples, the required electron count necessary to solve the polar catastrophe instability are trapped in the (LaAl1-xCrO3)-O-x overlayers in the Cr 3d states. These trapped electrons in the overlayers are manifested in the form of Cr2+ ions.


Introduction: Metastatic cardiac tumors are relatively uncommon; we present a case of a patient with an embolic stroke secondary to a metastatic left ventricular mass from an undiagnosed adenocarcinoma of the lung. Case report: 69 year old female presented with acute onset right hemiparesis and slurring of speech. Head computed tomography angiogram reported multiple areas of infarction with no evidence of intracranial hemorrhage. On day 2 of admission she developed new neurologic deficits with brain magnetic resonance imaging showing multiple new small ischemic infarcts of the left basal ganglia and left anterior temporal lobe. An embolic source was suspected. Echocardiogram revealed a ~1x1x2cm pedunculated mass originating from the left ventricle. Furthermore, chest CT revealed occlusion of the left mainstem bronchus with complete opacification of the left hemithorax by a left-sided pleural effusion. Bronchoscopy was performed recording no visible endobronchial lesions. Cytology from pleural effusion showed malignant cells positive for Cytokeratin 7, TTF-1 and Moc-31 consistent with primary adenocarcinoma of the lung with left ventricle metastasis. Conclusion: Metastatic disease to the heart is a rare finding. Remarkably, these metastases are clinically silent, especially when obscured by the symptoms of the disseminated tumor disease.


In online social networks (OSNs), user connections can be represented as a network. The network formed has distinct properties that distinguish it from other network topologies. In this work, we consider an unstructured keyword based social network topology where each edge has a trust value associated with it to represent the mutual relationship between the corresponding nodes. Users have keywords as their profile attributes that have policies associated with them to define abstractly the flow of keyword information and the accessibility to other users in the network. We also address privacy concerns as outlined in works on future OSN architectures.This paper makes two key contributions. First, we develop an information flow model to disseminate keyword information when users add keywords as their profile attributes. Second, for keyword based queries, we design and develop a search algorithm to find users with the specified keywords in their profile attributes. It is based on a linear combination of topological distance and trust metrics. It is also dynamic in nature such that it adapts itself for each individual node during the search process. We observe an improvement in orders of magnitude when the search algorithm is compared to breadth first search.


Purpose

Brand prominence describes the conspicuousness of a brand on a product. The purpose of this research is to investigate the types of brand prominence variation.

Design/methodology/approach

Utilizing an exploratory approach, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted where respondents created five outfits for anticipated social scenarios. The prominence of brands on these outfits were photographed, catalogued and qualitatively analyzed for thematic variation. Then, the brand prominence data points were quantitatively content analyzed.

Findings

The results from the qualitative analysis is an organizing framework describing three major types of brand prominence variation: brand visibility, brand frequency and brand distribution. In addition, heat maps were generated to visually display the prominence of brands distributed on the individual's body. Subsequent results from the quantitative content analysis revealed that brands on shoes and pants were most likely to display significant levels of prominence in relation to frequency and visibility dimensions. Significant differences across participant demographic groups were also found in terms of the brand visibility.

Practical implications

This new information on brand prominence variation provides business brand managers with insight on how to measure and monitor their own levels of brand prominence displays. They, in turn, can engage in more strategic placement and prominence of their brands in the future production of fashionable clothes, shoes and accessories.

Originality/value

The conspicuous consumption literature has long been interested in studying how consumers display their brands. The current study demonstrates how consumer researchers can measure brand prominence variation and therefore gain better insight on the consumer who engages in conspicuous consumption via brand prominence variation.


—We introduce an analysis method for electroen- cephalography (EEG) data, focused on Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). Our approach is unsupervised and makes use of a fuzzy clustering algorithm based on the possibilistic framework, and includes a data-driven noise and artifact rejection phase. Our contribution provides a general analysis tool, applicable to any ERP data set, which can uncover the data set's internal structure. The fuzzy clustering algorithm is the core of our method, since its fine-grained membership grades how much a sample belongs to a given cluster, making the method applicable even when groups have a certain overlap. Prior to the clustering step, we apply weights to the feature vectors, optimizing them in order to enhance the variance within the dataset, and we extract time- window interval based features inspired by interval arithmetic. We apply the data processing workflow to the analysis a set of ERPs recorded during an emotional Go/NoGo task. We evaluate the performance of the unsupervised analysis by computing a measure based on the clusterization rate of trials in different experimental conditions. The results on the studied data set show that the proposed method obtains a difference of clusterization rate of 69% in Go vs. NoGo trials, when weights and interval- features are applied to the data, improving previous work not including weights and interval-features which had a rate of 31%. Furthermore, when compared with the standard Fuzzy c-means, our proposed possibilistic clustering algorithm outperforms it in terms of clusterization rate. We also examine the effect of pre-processing the data with Independent Component Analysis and removing noise-related components, and observe that this does not improve significantly the obtained results. These findings demonstrate that our proposed method provides a valuable data processing workflow robust to EEG artifacts and able to produce a clustering that is coherent with the experimental conditions represented in the ERP dataset.


Hot tear is the one of the biggest problems of cast products. There have been many researches in order to understand the formation mechanism of hot tear. However, it is still uncertain when a hot tear initiates and how it propagates. Thus, the preliminary research has been carried out to observe the vibration of permanent mold which correspond to the initiation or propagation of hot tear. Al-2.0 wt% Cu alloy was used for test alloy. The signals of acceleration sensor were recorded at an interval of 5 ms. After casting, the vibration, which lasted scores of milliseconds, was observed intermittently. This may indicate that hot tear initiates or propagates intermittently and the strain due to contraction of solidification or cooling is relaxed by hot tear.


A large data set of surface wave phase anomalies, body wave travel times, normal‐mode splitting functions, and long‐period waveforms is used to investigate the scaling between shear velocity, density, and compressional velocity in the Earth's mantle. We introduce a methodology that allows construction of joint models with various levels of scaling complexity (ϱ = d lnρ /d lnvS , ν = d lnvS /d lnvP ), in order to detect seismological signatures of chemical heterogeneity. We demonstrate that the data sets considered cannot be fit concurrently with a uniform ν or a positive and uniform ϱ throughout the mantle. The variance reductions to P wave travel times and vP‐sensitive modes are up to 40% higher with our preferred model of anisotropic shear and compressional velocity than the recent anisotropic shear velocity model S362ANI+M, which was constructed assuming a uniform ν throughout the mantle. Several features reported in earlier tomographic studies persist after the inclusion of new and larger data sets; anticorrelation between bulk sound and shear velocities in the lowermost mantle as well as an increase in ν with depth in the lower mantle are largely independent of the regularization scheme. When correlations between density and shear velocity variations are imposed in the lowermost mantle, variance reductions of several spheroidal and toroidal modes deteriorate by as much as 40%. Recent measurements of the splitting of 0S2, in particular, are largely incompatible with perfectly correlated shear velocity and density heterogeneity throughout the mantle. A way to significantly improve the fits to various data sets is by allowing independent density perturbations in the lowermost mantle. Our preferred joint model consists of denser‐than‐average anomalies (∼1% peak to peak) at the base of the mantle roughly coincident with the low‐velocity superplumes. The relative variation of shear velocity, density, and compressional velocity in our study disfavors a purely thermal contribution to heterogeneity in the lowermost mantle, with implications for the long‐term stability and evolution of superplumes.


The AZ61 magnesium alloy was subjected to the differential speed rolling at different rolling conditions including reduction per pass, rotation speed ratio and rolling temperature, and the influences of the rolling conditions on microstructure, texture, mechanical properties and formability of the as-rolled sheets were investigated. Increasing the reduction per pass results in a more homogeneous microstructure and a relatively weaker basal texture. With increasing the rotation speed ratio, the inclination angle of basal pole toward the rolling direction increases and the stretch formability enhances correspondingly. Increasing the rolling temperature has an effect on weakening the basal texture intensity and leads to the enhancement of stretch formability.


Coil embolization is the most common endovascular treatment for cerebral aneurysms at many centers [1]. Nevertheless, the coiling of wide-neck aneurysms is a challenge. Incomplete filling of the aneurysmal sac due to coil configuration challenges and aneurysmal growth can often lead to recurrence. To assist treatment with coils, clinicians may deploy a high porosity stent in a staged process to act as a supporting bridge for coils. The stent is first deployed across the aneurysmal neck, and multiple coils are then deployed into the aneurysmal sac 6–8 weeks later [2]. Under certain circumstances, coil deployment is not possible and high porosity stents alone are used for treatment [2–3].Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Aim: The present study aims to investigate the association between serum small dense low-density lipoprotein (sdLDL) cholesterol level and the development of coronary heart disease (CHD) in subjects at high cardiovascular risk. Methods: A total of 3,080 participants without prior cardiovascular disease (CVD), aged ≥ 40 years, were followed up for a median of 8.3 years, which were divided into two groups, those with serum sdLDL cholesterol levels of < 35 mg/dL or ≥ 35 mg/dL. Then, subjects were stratified by the status of diabetes, CVD-related comorbidities (defined as the presence of diabetes, chronic kidney disease, or peripheral artery disease), and the CVD risk assessment according to the Japan Atherosclerosis Society Guidelines. The hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed using a Cox proportional hazards model. Results: During the follow-up, 79 subjects developed CHD. The risk for incident CHD was higher in subjects with serum sdLDL cholesterol of ≥ 35 mg/dL than those with sdLDL cholesterol of < 35 mg/dL (HR 2.09, 95%CI 1.26–3.45) after adjusting for traditional risk factors. In the subgroup analyses, the multivariable-adjusted HR for incident CHD increased significantly in those with serum sdLDL cholesterol of ≥ 35 mg/dL among subjects with diabetes (HR 2.76, 95%CI 1.09–7.01), subjects with CVD-related comorbidities (HR 2.60, 95%CI 1.21–5.58), and high-risk category defined as the presence of CVD-related comorbidities or a Suita score of ≥ 56 points (HR 1.93, 95%CI 1.02–3.65). Conclusions: Elevated serum sdLDL cholesterol was associated with the development of CHD even in subjects at high cardiovascular risk.


Background: According to the previous report immunonutrition leads to serum amyloid a decline in the cystic fibrosis patients with malnutrition. The goal of the current study was to evaluate the immunonutrition influence on nutrition parameters, plasma amino acid and lipid profiles in cystic fibrosis patients complicated with malnutrition.

Methods: The changes of nutrition parameters and lipid and plasma amino acids profiles induced by immunonutrition and standard nutrition sipping were evaluated in 30 patients with cystic fibrosis in comparison with 55 control healthy subjects.

Results: BMI, plasma prealbumin, transferrin were significantly deteriorated in patients with cystic fibrosis as well as plasma amino acids and lipid profiles in comparison with control subjects. Serum level of triacylgycerols significantly decreased in the cystic fibrosis patients after immunonutrion support. Immunonutrition lead to the elevation of glutamic acid, methionine, arginine and ornithine plasma concentration while the plasma concentration of glutamine, glycine, valine, threonine and tryptophan significantly decreased.

Conclusion: Immunonutrition leads to the significant decrease of serum triacylglycerols and to the changes in plasma amino acids profile in the cystic fibrosis patients with malnutrition that may reflect an activation of immune system.


This paper addresses the credit card debt puzzle using a generalization of the buffer‐stock consumption model with long‐term revolving debt contracts. Closely resembling actual US credit card law, we assume that card issuers can always deny their cardholders access to new debt, but that they cannot demand immediate repayment of the outstanding balance. Hereby, current debt can potentially soften a household's borrowing constraint in future periods, and thus provides extra liquidity. We show that for some intermediate values of liquid net worth it is indeed optimal for households to simultaneously hold positive gross debt and positive gross assets even though the interest rate on the debt is much higher than the return rate on the assets. Including a risk of being excluded from new borrowing which is positively correlated with unemployment, we are able to simultaneously explain a substantial share of the observed borrower‐saver group and match a broad range of percentiles from the empirical distributions of credit card debt and liquid assets.

Credit card debt puzzle precautionary saving consumption D14 D91 E21


Cryptosporidiosis is the chief AIDS-defining infection in no more than 2% of HIV reported cases. Aim of the Study: This was carried out to assess the efficacy of two diagnostic methods for the detection of Cryptosporidiosis among HIV individuals in Osogbo. Methodology: A total of 188 HIV seropositive patients attending Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria (IHVN) Clinics, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital (LAUTECH), Osogbo, Nigeria and 60 HIV negative individuals were selected for the study from January to December, 2016 by random sampling technique. Stool samples were collected and examined for oocyst and antigen of Cryptosporidium protozoan using Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) and Ensyme Link Immunoassay (ELISA) methods respectively. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 and P value < 0.05 was considered significant. Short Research Article Nassar et al.; JAMMR, 27(4): 1-7, 2018; Article no.JAMMR.40807 2 Result: Prevalence of 28.7% (54/188) and 35.1% (66/188) was obtained by ZN and ELISA respectively in HIV-positive subjects while that of HIV negative was 1.7% (1/60). There was a significant association between Cryptosporidium infections and diarrhoea for different age groups (P<0.05), but no significant association between Cryptosporidium infection and different sex (P> 0.05). Conclusion: Cryptosporidium infection was highly prevalent among HIV seropositive individuals in Osogbo, an indication of active infection that is likely to emerge as major human pathogen in a poor social economic setting. This study re-emphasized the need for inclusion of Cryptosporidium screening and treatment in HIV seropositive subjects since it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality.


High-performance phototransistors made from organic semiconductor single crystals (OSSCs) have attracted much attention due to the high responsivity and solution-processing capability of OSSCs. However, OSSC-based phototransistors capable of dual-band spectral response remain a difficult challenge to achieve because organic semiconductors usually possess only narrow single-band absorption. Here, we report the fabrication of high-performance, dual-band phototransistors from a hybrid structure of a 2,7-dioctyl[1]benzothieno[3,2- b][1]benzothiophene (C8-BTBT) single-crystal array coated with CH3NH3PbI3 nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by a simple, one-step solution method. In contrast to C8-BTBT and CH3NH3PbI3 NPs with respective absorption in the ultraviolet (UV) and visible (vis) region, their hybrid structure shows broad absorption covering the entire UV-vis range. The hybrid-based phototransistors exhibit an ultrahigh responsivity of >1.72 × 104 A/W in the 252-780 nm region, which represents the best performance for solution-processing, broadband photodetectors. Moreover, integrated phototransistor circuitries from the hybrid CH3NH3PbI3 NPs/C8-BTBT single-crystal array show applications for high-security communication.


This paper presents results of research related to preferences and attitudes of young consumers (at the age of 10-17 years) on the example of milk. It was shown, among other things, that milk is a product consumed often, mainly because of nutritive value, good taste and positive influence on health. Average consumption of milk – about 2.5 glasses a day is similar to average daily level recommended by food science. Younger children consume milk in lower quantities, usually to meals in different forms. For teenagers milk is mainly a beverage, and they drink it in higher quantities, usually impulsively without any special occasion.


Employees working in the creative industry are expected to have strong soft skills and be able to cope with high work pressure to be successful in their jobs. The industry operates at a rapid pace, requiring employees to adopt unconventional strategies and show initiative to keep up with developments. Failure to effectively manage these challenges may hinder career advancement in the future. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of proactive personality in relation to career adaptability among employees in the visual communication design sub-sector of the creative industries. A quantitative approach was adopted, and measurements were made using two scales: the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS), developed by Savickas and Porfeli, and the Proactive Personality Scale (PPS), developed by Bateman and Crant. The data analysis technique used in this study was simple linear regression analysis. Based on the results of the t-test table, it was found that the proactive personality variable had a significance level of 0.329 (p>0.05). In addition, the coefficient of determination (R Square) was found to be 0.009. These results indicated that the independent variable, proactive personality, has a limited ability to explain the variations in the dependent variable, career adaptability, accounting for only 0.9 percent. Thus, it can be concluded that Proactive Personality is not able to predict Career Adaptability.
Keywords: Career adaptability, Proactive personality, Early career employees


Abstract. Crops growing in the Iberian Peninsula may be subjected to damagingly high temperatures during the sensitive development periods of flowering and grain filling. Such episodes are considered important hazards and farmers may take insurance to offset their impact. Increases in value and frequency of maximum temperature have been observed in the Iberian Peninsula during the 20th century, and studies on climate change indicate the possibility of further increase by the end of the 21st century. Here, impacts of current and future high temperatures on cereal cropping systems of the Iberian Peninsula are evaluated, focusing on vulnerable development periods of winter and summer crops. Climate change scenarios obtained from an ensemble of ten Regional Climate Models (multimodel ensemble) combined with crop simulation models were used for this purpose and related uncertainty was estimated. Results reveal that higher extremes of maximum temperature represent a threat to summer-grown but not to winter-grown crops in the Iberian Peninsula. The study highlights the different vulnerability of crops in the two growing seasons and the need to account for changes in extreme temperatures in developing adaptations in cereal cropping systems. Finally, this work contributes to clarifying the causes of high-uncertainty impact projections from previous studies.


The melting of ice sheets in response to increasing temperatures is an important contribution to present day sea level rise. To predict the amount of sea level rise and to assess its impact on populated coastal regions, an increased understanding of the physical processes governing ice sheets is essential. This thesis discusses modelling of the dynamical interactions between ice sheets, climate and the solid earth. An ice sheet is a complex, dynamically active part of the earth's climate system. The response of an ice sheet to changes in the climate is highly nonlinear due to the nonlinear feedback between mas sbalance and elevation. Both precipitation in the form of snow and melt are strongly dependent on the geometry of the ice sheet. Hence, it is important to accurately model all processes affecting the elevation and geometry of an ice sheet. This not only includes temperature and precipitation, but also bedrock adjustment. Isostatic depression of the solid earth as a result of ice loading can reach amplitudes of about one third of the ice thickness. As such, crustal subsidence of up to one kilometer is common for large ice sheets as found on Antarctica and Greenland. Since precipitation and melt both depend on surface elevation, it is clear that an accurate treatment of the isostatic response of the earth is important when modelling the response of an ice sheets to climate changes. Both schematic experiments and applications to the Eurasian Ice Sheet for the last 120,000 years showed that modelled ice sheets are very sensitive to earth structure. The ice distribution as well as the ice volume are a function of the strength of the earth's layers. We showed that uplift data can constrain lateral changes in the earth structure as long as there are data on both sides of a transition and noise levels do not exceed twenty percent. Given this sensitivity of modelled ice sheets to earth structure, we also performed experiments that showed we need an accurate physical description of the earth response to ice loading. The commonly used earth model in glaciological applications is a simplified mechanical model which is computationally efficient. We showed that for the detailed modelling of an ice sheet, this earth model is not adequate, and that a more sophisticated spherical self-gravitating viscoelastic earth model should be used instead.


BACKGROUND
Increase in peritoneal membrane permeability (D/P) correlates with systemic and peritoneal markers of inflammation and neoangiogenesis. Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1, CCL2) is a potent chemoattractant and activator of monocytes/macrophages. We measured the serum (sMCP-1) and dialysate MCP-1 (dMCP-1) concentrations of stable peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients and studied various factors affecting MCP-1 production. We also looked at the correlation of dMCP-1 concentrations with change in D/P over 12 months.

METHODS
Forty-five stable prevalent and 6 new PD patients (22 CAPD, 29 APD) were studied. Median PD duration was 21 months (range 1-114). D/P was measured by standardized peritoneal equilibration test (PET). Patients with recent peritonitis within 3 months of the start of study were excluded. MCP-1 concentrations were measured in serum, overnight dialysate and post-PET dialysate, both at baseline and at 12 months by ELISA.

RESULTS
On univariate analysis, post-PET dMCP-1 concentrations positively correlated with sMCP-1 (p=0.0002), duration of PD (p=0.02), dialysate volume (p=0.001), peritoneal creatinine clearance (p=0.0002) and D/P (p=0.001). There was a negative correlation with residual renal function (p=0.001). dMCP-1 concentrations were higher in patients with past peritonitis (p=0.001). On multivariate analysis, factors independently associated with dMCP-1 were sMCP-1 (p=0.003) and past peritonitis (p=0.001). Thirty patients completed this study, and D/P rose by > 0.1 in 20% patients. dMCP-1 concentrations were higher in baseline and 12-month samples in patients with change in D/P >0.1.

CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that dMCP-1 concentrations are related to past peritonitis and serum MCP-1. It is difficult to interpret the relationship of dMCP-1 with change in D/P over time due to the small number of patients.


The Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics is well established and authoritative. It covers many topics of current research interest in both pure and applied statistics and probability theory. Written by leading statisticians and institutions, the titles span both state-of-the-art developments in the field and classical methods. Reflecting the wide range of current research in statistics, the series encompasses applied, methodological and theoretical statistics, ranging from applications and new techniques made possible by advances in computerized practice to rigorous treatment of theoretical approaches. This series provides essential and invaluable reading for all statisticians, whether in academia, industry, government, or research.


One of the most difficult challenges facing belief in the Christian God is the problem of evil. How can there be a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, who allows pain, suffering and death in the world? Various theodicies have been constructed to address this question, and historically theologians have pointed to the Fall to explain such pain and suffering. However, theology in a post-evolutionary context is faced with a new challenge; the problem of pain and suffering is amplified by the millions of years of suffering and pain that have occurred before the advent of human beings.  Today, the theologian must wrestle with the claim that pain, suffering, and death not only precedes human beings, but are in fact instruments in the very process of creation itself.


Eurycoma Iongifolia Jack (E. L), which is known as
Tongkat Ali is a plant which grows up to10 meters high and is found in primary and secondary evergreen and mixed deciduous forests in Burma, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines.It has become famous as a sexual enhancer since it has been proved by various studies to increase the serum testosterone levels in male rats and humans. Recently it has also been shown to
increase muscle mass in rats .That made us interested to find out if there is any change in the body fat content which is reflected through the serum leptin concentration. Leptin is a 16 kDa protein hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism. It is one of the most important adipose derived hormones.The Ob (Lep) gene is located on
chromosome 7 in humans. It is manufactured primarily in the
adipocytes of white adipose tissue, and the level of circulating leptin is directly proportional to the total amount of fat in the body.
Objectives: To study the effect of Eurycoma Longifolia jack (E. L.) extract on the serum leptin level of male rats.
Methodology: Mature male Albino Wistar rats where used in this study, we measured the rats' serum leptin and testosterone level before receiving treatment (control), the rats were divided into two groups ,group A received 5mg/kg body weight twice daily of pure 100:1 concentration E.L. extract, group B received 10mg/kg body weight twice daily of the same extract . The duration of treatment
was 6 weeks for both groups. At the end of the experiment, we analyzed the serum leptin and testosterone levels in both groups.
Results: The mean serum leptin and testosterone levels for the control group were 1.13ng/ml, 0.79ng/L, group A 1.08ng/ml, 0.98ng/L group B 0.89ng/ml,1.75ng/L respectively. Statistical analysis showed that serum leptin level of group B was significantly lower than that of control group (p<0.001) and group A(p<0.05). On
the other hand, no significant difference in serum leptin levels were observed between the control group and group A. The serum testosterone level was significantly higher in group B than control and group A.
Conclusion: According to our results we can see that E.L. extract can significantly decrease serum leptin levels however,the effect is dose dependant and maybe affected by the significant rise in serum testosterone level that occurs in group B only. This conclusion is based on previous studies that have reported the existence of a
negative correlation between serum testosterone and leptin
concentrations.


As computing power increases exponentially, vast amount of data is created by many scientific research activities. However, the bandwidth for storing the data to disks and reading the data from disks has been improving at a much slower pace. These two trends produce an ever-widening data access gap. Our work brings together two distinct technologies to address this data access issue: indexing and in situ processing. From decades of database research literature, we know that indexing is an effective way to address the data access issue, particularly for accessing relatively small fraction of data records. As data sets increase in sizes, more and more analysts need to use selective data access, which makes indexing an even more important for improving data access. The challenge is that most implementations of indexing technology are embedded in large database management systems (DBMS), but most scientific datasets are not managed by any DBMS. In this work, we choose to include indexes with the scientific data instead of requiring the data to be loaded into a DBMS.We use compressed bitmap indexes from the FastBit software which are known to be highly effective for query-intensive workloads common to scientific data analysis. To use the indexes, we need to build them first. The index building procedure needs to access the whole data set and may also require a significant amount of compute time. In this work, we adapt the in situ processing technology to generate the indexes, thus removing the need of reading data from disks and to build indexes in parallel. The in situ data processing system used is ADIOS, a middleware for high-performance I/O. Our experimental results show that the indexes can improve the data access time up to 200 times depending on the fraction of data selected, and using in situ data processing system can effectively reduce the time needed to create the indexes, up to 10 times with our in situ technique when using identical parallel settings.


Second-order many-body perturbation theory [MBPT(2)] is the lowest-ranked member of a systematic series of approximations convergent at the exact solutions of the Schrödinger equations. It has served and continues to serve as the testing ground for new approximations, algorithms, and even theories. This article introduces this basic theory from a variety of viewpoints including the Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory, the many-body Green's function theory based on the Dyson equation, and the related Feynman-Goldstone diagrams. It also explains the important properties of MBPT(2) such as size consistency, its ability to describe dispersion interactions, and divergence in metals. On this basis, this article surveys three major advances made recently by the authors to this theory. They are a finite-temperature extension of MBPT(2) and the resolution of the Kohn-Luttinger conundrum, a stochastic evaluation of the correlation and self-energies of MBPT(2) using the Monte Carlo integration of their Laplace-transformed expressions, and an extension to anharmonic vibrational zero-point energies and transition frequencies based on the Dyson equation.


A series of lithium silicates with improved CO2 sorption capacity were successfully synthesized using SBA-15 as the silicon precursor. The influence of Li/Si ratio, calcination temperature, and calcination duration on the chemical composition and CO2 capture capacity of obtained lithium silicates was systematically investigated. The correlation between CO2 sorption performance and crystalline phase abundance was determined using X-ray diffraction and a normalized reference intensity ratio method. Under the optimized condition, Li-SBA15-4 prepared using Li/Si = 4 that contains mainly Li4SiO4 achieved an extremely high CO2 capture capacity of 36.3 wt % (corresponding to 99% of the theoretical value of 36.7 wt % for Li4SiO4), which is much higher than the Li4SiO4 synthesized from conventional SiO2 sources. It also showed very high cycling stability with only 1.0 wt % capacity loss after 15 cycles. Li-SBA15-10 (Li/Si = 10) that mainly contains Li8SiO6 displayed an extremely high CO2 uptake of 62.0 wt %, but its regeneration capacity was poor, with only 10.5 wt % of reversible CO2 capture capacity. The influence of CO2 concentration on the CO2 capture performance of Li-SBA15-4 and Li-SBA15-10 samples was also studied. With the decrease in CO2 concentration, relatively lower temperatures are needed for its maximum CO2 capture capacity. The CO2 sorption kinetics and mechanism for Li-SBA15-4 and Li-SBA15-10 samples were explored. Overall, we have shown that the lithium silicates synthesized from SBA-15 possessed much improved CO2 sorption performance than that attained from conventional SiO2.


The change in refractive index that occurs at the interface between air and an ink-paper substrate causes effects such as refraction and total reflection. This report uses radiative transfer theory to account for these effects exactly, and for any measurement geometry, without approximations and without unknown constants. This is in contrast with Kubelka-Munk and the Saunderson correction, which is only an approximation and only for integrating sphere geometry, and which requires non-trivial determination of unknown constants. This report continues previous work, and extends the solution procedure of DORT2002 to handle a discontinuous change in refractive index at the interface between two perfectly flat layers. The result of a large number of consistency and accuracy tests are presented, and they are all positive. Some comments on planned and suggested future work are given regarding direct and inverse model development, but also for comparative studies. Comments are also given on the benefit of this work for the paper and printing industries. It is suggested that the Kubelka-Munk model should be replaced with DORT2002 in most applications.


Background Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic joint disease with the hip and knee being commonly affected lower limb sites. There is evidence supporting that aerobic and strength training is beneficial for reducing pain and improving physical function in older adults with mild-to-moderate knee and hip OA. Good physical function is crucial in preventing fall-induced injuries in OA patients. Methods The aim of this pilot study is to test the safety and feasibility of a tailored exercise program with particular emphasis on maintaining appropriate training intensity while minimising adverse events and injuries. The self-reported disease-specific pain and physical function will be assessed using the pain and functioning subscales of the WOMAC questionnaire (range 0–100 mm) at baseline and at 12 weeks. The maximal leg-extensor strength, dynamic balance, Timed-up and go (TUG), Short physical performance battery (SPPB; includes tests of balance, 4-metre walking speed and 5-time chair stand) will be used in assessing physical functioning objectively. In addition, hip range of motion and stair-climb-test (step height 20 cm) will be used. Thirteen women with diagnosed hip OA were recruited and received the exercise program 3 times a week. Main inclusion criteria were age ≥65 years, pain experienced in the hip region and living at home independently. Results The pilot study started in September 2015, and the end point measurements will be done in December 2015. Dimensions such as intensity progression, individual tailoring of exercises and suitability for varying pain levels and functional ability will be evaluated. In assessing the treatment outcomes, each participant will function as her own control. Conclusions Training intensity needs to be optimal to insure safety as well as progression in physical function and pain relief. The larger randomised controlled trial will be planned according to experience and feedback received from this pilot study.


Abstract. Accurate bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) models are essential for computer graphics and remote sensing performance. The popular microfacet class of BRDF models is geometric-optics-based and computationally inexpensive. Fitting microfacet models to scatterometry measurements is a common yet challenging requirement that can result in a model being fit as one of several unique local minima. Final model fit accuracy is therefore largely based on the quality of the initial parameter estimate. This makes for widely varying material parameter estimates and causes inconsistent performance comparisons across microfacet models, as will be shown with synthetic data. We proposed a recursive optimization method for accurate parameter determination. This method establishes an array of local minima best fits by initializing a fixed number of parameter conditions that span the parameter space. The identified solution associated with the best fit quality is extracted from the local array and stored as the relative global best fit. This method is first applied successfully to synthetic data, then it is applied to several materials and several illumination wavelengths. This method proves to reduce manual parameter adjustments, is equally weighted across incident angles, helps define parameter stability within a model, and consistently improves fit quality over the high-error local minimum best fit from lsqcurvefit by an average of 71%.


To investigate why responses of mast cells to antigen-induced IgE receptor (FcεRI) aggregation depend nonlinearly on antigen dose, we characterized a new artificial ligand, DF3, through complementary modeling and experimentation. This ligand is a stable trimer of peptides derived from bacteriophage T4 fibritin, each conjugated to a hapten (DNP). We found low and high doses of DF3 at which degranulation of mast cells sensitized with DNP-specific IgE is minimal, but ligand-induced receptor aggregation is comparable to aggregation at an intermediate dose, optimal for degranulation. This finding makes DF3 an ideal reagent for studying the balance of negative and positive signaling in the FcεRI pathway. We find that the lipid phosphatase SHIP and the protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP-1 negatively regulate mast cell degranulation over all doses considered. In contrast, SHP-2 promotes degranulation. With high DF3 doses, relatively rapid recruitment of SHIP to the plasma membrane may explain the reduced degranulation response. Our results demonstrate that optimal secretory responses of mast cells depend on the formation of receptor aggregates that promote sufficient positive signaling by Syk to override phosphatase-mediated negative regulatory signals.


ON THE STRAIN IN SILICON NANOCRYSTALS Dündar Yılmaz PhD in Physics Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Ceyhun Bulutay June 2009 In this Thesis we present our achievements towards an understanding of atomistic strain mechanisms and interface chemistry in silicon nanocrystals. The structural control of silicon nanocrystals embedded in amorphous oxide is currently an important technological problem. First, our initial attempt is described to simulate the structural behavior of silicon nanocrystals embedded in amorphous oxide matrix based on simple valence force fields as described by Keatingtype potentials. Next, the interface chemistry of silicon nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in amorphous oxide matrix is studied through molecular dynamics simulations with the chemical environment being governed by the reactive force field model. Our results indicate that the Si NC-oxide interface is more involved than the previously proposed schemes which were based on solely simple bridge or double bonds. We identify different types of three-coordinated oxygen complexes, previously not noted. The abundance and the charge distribution of each oxygen complex is determined as a function of the NC size as well as the transitions among them. Strain has a crucial effect on the optical and electronic properties of nanostructures. We calculate the atomistic strain distribution in silicon NCs iv up to a diameter of 3.2 nm embedded in an amorphous silicon dioxide matrix. A seemingly conflicting picture arises when the strain field is expressed in terms of bond lengths versus volumetric strain. The strain profile in either case shows uniform behavior in the core, however it becomes nonuniform within 23 Å distance to the NC surface: tensile for bond lengths whereas compressive for volumetric strain. We reconcile their coexistence by an atomistic strain analysis. Vibrational density of states (VDOS) affects the optical properties of Si-NCs. VDOS obtained by calculating velocity autocorrelation function (VACF) using velocities of the atoms is extracted from the molecular dynamics simulations. The information on bonding topology enables classification of atoms in the system with respect to their neighbor atoms. With help of this information we separate contributions of different type of atoms to the VDOS. Calculating VACF of different type of atoms such as surface atoms and core atoms of nanocrystal, to the system facilitates understanding of the effects of strain fields and interface chemistry to the VDOS.


The article presents the research that reveals the complexity of the patient hospital choice process and, in the context of the research data, enables the evaluation of the patient hospital choice factors influencing their decision. The problem of hospital choice is topical both in Lithuania and other EU and world countries. It is a complex process that requires the evaluation of the poly-functionality of the choice factors: the character of the patient disease and their state of health, the characteristics of the hospital, the interactive relationship between the hospital staff, the patient's relatives, and Internet access. The research sample consisted of 477 participants aged between 18 and 89, treated in various hospitals throughout the country. Based on the results of the research presented in the article, one can argue that the factors having the greatest impact on patients' choice of hospital include the advice of friends and significant others, personal experience, and the advice of their family doctor. The main prerequisites for choosing a hospital named by the patient respondents were the qualification of the medical staff, the quality of health care, communication between doctors and patients, the geographical location of the hospital, and its accessibility.


Parameter-Efficient Tuning (PETuning) methods have been deemed by many as the new paradigm for using pretrained language models (PLMs). By tuning just a fraction amount of parameters comparing to full model finetuning, PETuning methods claim to have achieved performance on par with or even better than finetuning. In this work, we take a step back and re-examine these PETuning methods by conducting the first comprehensive investigation into the training and evaluation of them. We found the problematic validation and testing practice in current studies, when accompanied by the instability nature of PETuning methods, has led to unreliable conclusions. When being compared under a truly fair evaluation protocol, PETuning cannot yield consistently competitive performance while finetuning remains to be the best-performing method in medium- and high-resource settings. We delve deeper into the cause of the instability and observed that the number of trainable parameters and training iterations are two main factors: reducing trainable parameters and prolonging training iterations may lead to higher stability in PETuning methods.


Abstract. High-resolution ultrasonic spectroscopy (HR-US) is an analytical technique for direct and non-destructive monitoring of molecular and micro-structural transformations in liquids and semi-solid materials. It is based on precision measurements of ultrasonic velocity and attenuation in analysed samples. The application areas of HR-US in research, product development, and quality and process control include analysis of conformational transitions of polymers, ligand binding, molecular self-assembly and aggregation, crystallisation, gelation, characterisation of phase transitions and phase diagrams, and monitoring of chemical and biochemical reactions. The technique does not require optical markers or optical transparency. The HR-US measurements can be performed in small sample volumes (down to droplet size), over broad temperature range, at ambient and elevated pressures, and in various measuring regimes such as automatic temperature ramps, titrations and measurements in flow.


We extend tree-based methods to the prediction of structured outputs using a kernelization of the algorithm that allows one to grow trees as soon as a kernel can be defined on the output space. The resulting algorithm, called output kernel trees (OK3), generalizes classification and regression trees as well as tree-based ensemble methods in a principled way. It inherits several features of these methods such as interpretability, robustness to irrelevant variables, and input scalability. When only the Gram matrix over the outputs of the learning sample is given, it learns the output kernel as a function of inputs. We show that the proposed algorithm works well on an image reconstruction task and on a biological network inference problem.


Fluorescent or metal halide lamps are widely used in therapeutic applications in dermatological diseases, with broadband or narrow band emission UVA/UVA1 (320–400 nm) obtained with suitable passive filters. Recently, it has been possible for us to use a new machine provided with solid state source emitting pulsed monochromatic UVA1 355 nm. In order to evaluate the effects of this emission on immunocells of the skin, human skin samples were irradiated with monochromatic 355 nm UVA1 with different energetic fluences and after irradiation Langerhans cells were labeled with CD1a antibodies. The immunohistochemical identification of these cells permitted evaluating their modifications in terms of density into the skin. Obtained results are promising for therapeutical applications, also considering that a monochromatic radiation minimizes thermic load and DNA damage in the skin tissues.