ABSTRACT Numerous laterally extensive, thin fresh-water lacustrine phosphatic horizons characterize nearshore facies of the Pliocene Glenns Ferry Formation in southwestern Idaho. These units are restricted to, and formed on, hiatal surfaces in coarse sandstone and oolite which now crop out in a narrow northwest-trending belt along 50 km of the southwestern shoreline of Pliocene Lake Idaho. These hiatal surfaces developed during periods of transgression when sites of nearshore deposition migrated landward. Phosphatization occurred through the replacement of calcareous ooid and oncoid cortices and through the precipitation of fibrous isopachous cements around both terrigenous and coated grains. Francolite, a carbonate fluorapatite, is the primary phosphate phase present. Phosphatization was a synsedimentary diagenetic event; it occurred just below the sediment-water interface as a consequence of high phosphate concentrations in interstitial waters which resulted from intergranular decay and dissolution of organics during periods of low terrigenous sedimentation.


FeCuNbSiB and FeZrBCu nanocrystalline ribbons can be obtained directly through the melt- spinning technique without additional annealing processes. The giant magnetoimpedance can be observed in FeCuNbSiB and FeZrBCu as quenched ribbons. The addition of Cu improves the nano-crystallization of a-Fe(Si) or a-Fe phase and reduces the grain size in FeCuNbSiB and FeZrBCu as quenched ribbons, which enhances the magnetoimpedance via increasing the variation of permeability under fields. The present experimental results reveal a novel route to fabricate the Fe based nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials with giant magnetoimpedance effect.


We introduce an approach for the detection of approximately rectangular structures in gray scale images. Our research is motivated by the Silvretta Historica project that aims at automated detection of remains of livestock enclosures in remotely sensed images of alpine regions. The approach allows detection of enclosures with linear sides of various sizes and proportions. It is robust to incomplete or fragmented rectangles and tolerates deviations from a perfect rectangular shape. Morphological operators are used to extract linear features. They are grouped into parameterized linear segments by means of a local Hough transform. To identify appropriate configurations of linear segments we define convexity and angle constraints. Configurations meeting these constraints are rated by a proposed rectangularity measure that discards overly fragmented configurations and configurations with more than one side completely missing. The search for appropriate configurations is efficiently performed on a graph. Its nodes represent linear segments and edges encode the above constraints. We tested our approach on a set of aerial and GeoEye-1 satellite images of 0.5m resolution that contain ruined livestock enclosures of approximately rectangular shape. The approach showed encouraging results in finding configurations of linear segments originating from the objects of our interest.


There are many types of pain, and accordingly therapeutic approach to pain should be done more or less specifically. Patient individuality (comorbidity, preferences, mental state, social support) is conditioning therapeutic decisions. Appropriate opioid use is one of the most delicate clinical practice issues. Multimodal analgesia is the optimal current practice in pain management.


Laminar mixed convection in the entrance region for horizontal semicircular ducts with the flat wall on top is investigated theoretically. The governing momentum and energy equations are solved numerically using a marching technique with the finite control volume approach following the SIMPLER algorithm. Results are obtained for the thermal boundary conditions of uniform heat input axially with uniform wall temperature circumferentially at any cross section (H1 boundary condition) with Pr=0.7 and a wide range of Grashof numbers. These results include the velocity and temperature distributions at different axial locations, axial distribution of local Nusselt number, and local average wall friction factor. It is found that Nusselt number values are close to the forced convection values near the entrance region and then decrease to a minimum as the distance from the entrance increases and then rise due to the effect of free convection before reaching constant value (fully developed). As the Grashof number increases the Nusselt number and the average wall friction factor increase in both developing and fully developed regions and the location of the onset of the secondary flow moves upstream. DOI: 10.1115/1.2739612


In the present study, sodium azide (SA) toxicity and the anti-mutagenic effects of different algal extracts at 0.1% and 0.2% concentrations were studied on the mitotic index (MI), chromosomal and nuclear aberrations using Allium cepa L. root assay. Moreover, phytochemical screening of photosynthetic pigments, antioxidants compounds, total antioxidant, DPPH scavenging activity, polysaccharides, and phenolic contents were done for two red seaweeds ( Laurencia obtusa (Hudson) Lamouroux and Polysiphonia morrowii Harvey) and for one brown seaweed ( Dictyopteris delicatula Lamouroux). Treatment with 300 μg/ml sodium azide (SA) induced the highest number of aberrations in A. cepa root. A highly significant decrease in the MI appeared after treatment with SA, whereas its value increased following different algal extracts treatments. The highest anti-mutagenic inhibition activity of Dictyopteris delicatula added at 0.2% concentration was 72.96%, 69.84%, 56.89% and 43.59% with the algal polyphenol, polysaccharide, aqueous and methanol extract treatments, respectively. The different algal extracts minimized the genotoxicity and exhibited anti-mutagenic potential against SA in a dose-dependent manner. Phytochemical studies showed that Dictyopteris delicatula contained the highest total phenol, chlorophyll- a and carotenoid quantity. Moreover it exhibited the highest total antioxidant and DPPH scavenging activities. Total polysaccharides and the weight percentage of sulphated polysaccharides were relatively higher in Polysiphonia morrowii followed by Laurencia obtusa . Hydroquinone and bromophenol were detected only in the studied brown and red seaweeds, respectively. Polysiphonia morrowii and Laurencia obtusa contained the highest quantity of galactose, rhmnose and xylose, while Dictyopteris delicatula contained fucose and mannitol as main monosaccharide units. In conclusion, the studied seaweeds may be considered as rich sources of natural antioxidants. Meanwhile the investigated different algal extracts can minimize the genotoxicity in a dose-dependent manner and exhibit anti-mutagenic potential against the mutagenic substance sodium azide.


This paper is an analysis of whooping-cough, one of Iranian pre-Islamic rituals that functions as a way of defending people against evil. The data collection derived from the three year anthropologic study of the researcher on drama done within 67 villages of Komeijan region in Markazi province, Iran. The methods and materials in this case were classic literature, Aristotelian dramatic pattern and anthropological approach to drama. The study showed that whooping-cough has done just in Komeijan and the present documents indicated that the last performance went back to 1970. The purpose of the study is the approval of the dramatic aspects of the ritual and clarifying the roots of drama originating from folklore rituals and beliefs. Moreover, the ritual, whooping-cough, had a key role in changing the way of life for inhabitants in Komeijan throughout past centuries.


The article presents, through the analysis of direct sources – some works, letters and speeches by Helen Keller – the development of metacognitive activity in the young years of the writer. It is presented how the lack of functioning of the sense organs, seen and heard, required in her the modification of communication skills and the acquisition of other languages, the manual alphabet, Braille and vocal development obtained with great exercise. These alternative languages have become Helen's vehicles for thought. At the same time, knowledge has acted as a vector of freedom and social empowerment, particularly for the advocacy of blind people.


This study attempts to analyze the impact of corruption on the economy by adopting the Keynesian Framework. Current studies show that corruption has adverse effects on GDP, GDP growth rate, and investment, among others. Such studies, however, used the "economic cost-corruption perception index" model. An alternative model is to adopt a Keynesian framework incorporating corruption as a factor in the model. Utilizing the concepts of investment and government multipliers, the comparative analysis between the "with"-and-"without" corruption is used in analyzing the economic cost of corruption. The results show that government multiplier is less than the investment multiplier when there is corruption. Based on the theses/arguments, this study concludes that (a) when there is corruption, the impact of government expenditure on the economy is less than the impact of investment expenditure on the economy, (b) the Keynesian model can enhance the explanatory power of the existing "economic cost-corruption perception index" model of analyzing the economic cost of corruption, and (c) the results of integrating corruption into the Keynesian model reveal that GDP and GDP growth rate are overestimated for countries with a certain proportion of government expenditure that go to corruption.


This year, 2020, has been an exceptionally tough year. There have been multiple incursions on our social, political, and economic lives—COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and presidential proclamations barring foreigners from entering the U.S. These situations have directly impacted the psychology of students, teachers, parents, and administrators throughout Georgia and beyond and have forced educators to rethink, reshape, and redesign the teaching/learning space. This special issue is a response to the current climate in the U.S. and includes articles that focus on the changes, challenges, innovation, and instructional strategies that have affected the way we think about language, multilingual identities, second language instruction, and language program administration.


Philanthropic foundations are influential policy entrepreneurs in higher education, advocating new ideas, engaging in collaborative activities, and seeding research to inform the decision-making process. Despite occupying this role, the higher education literature has yet to examine how philanthropic foundations promote ideas between entities or how shared granting relationships are used to distribute and exchange information. By utilizing several sources of data, including in-depth interviews and an original dataset of postsecondary grants, and by applying social network concepts, this study explores the strategies educational funders use to disseminate ideas and promote information exchange. This study found that major foundations are not only taking on an advocacy-oriented role within their communication strategies, but they are also facilitating information sharing among intermediaries based on mutual granting relationships and shared agendas. Furthermore, the most impactful grantees are those who cross sectoral boundaries, such as advocacy nonprofits, think tanks, membership associations, and government agencies.


Sequential latent variable models (SLVMs) are essential tools in statistics and machine learning, with applications ranging from healthcare to neuroscience. As their flexibility increases, analytic inference and model learning can become challenging, necessitating approximate methods. Here we introduce neural adaptive smoothing via twisting (NAS-X), a method that extends reweighted wake-sleep (RWS) to the sequential setting by using smoothing sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) to estimate intractable posterior expectations. Combining RWS and smoothing SMC allows NAS-X to provide low-bias and low-variance gradient estimates, and fit both discrete and continuous latent variable models. We illustrate the theoretical advantages of NAS-X over previous methods and explore these advantages empirically in a variety of tasks, including a challenging application to mechanistic models of neuronal dynamics. These experiments show that NAS-X substantially outperforms previous VI- and RWS-based methods in inference and model learning, achieving lower parameter error and tighter likelihood bounds.


Stimulated Brillouin scattering is well-known for providing distributed measurements in the field of optical fiber sensing. For the conventional backward stimulated Brillouin scattering, the sensing capability is nevertheless limited to temperature and mechanical strain in the core of an optical fiber. Forward stimulated Brillouin scattering (FSBS), due to the participating transverse acoustic waves, can be used to directly measure the mechanical properties of the material that surrounds a standard telecom fiber. We review our work on harnessing FSBS to extract the acoustic impedances of different liquid materials. The acoustic impedance mismatch between silica optical fiber and its surroundings determines the decay rate or the corresponding resonance linewidth of the transverse acoustic modes. We address the measurement with both time and frequency domain techniques, demonstrating accuracy of measurements up to 95%. This work could be potentially extended to realize fiber based ultrasonic chemical analysis.


OBJECTIVE: In order to demonstrate the results of all available studies on cost-effectiveness and traffic safety, and report them in a comparable format, we conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject. Knowledge of cost-effective (CE) traffic safety programs that result in reduced motor vehicle crashes and fatalities is essential to city planners, managers, and police. METHOD: Using a systematic approach to literature review, the relevant literature has been identified through the use of electronic databases, hand searching of journals, scanning reference lists, and consultation with corresponding authors and experts. Target populations were drivers, passengers and pedestrians in urban and rural roads. Studies on passenger vehicles, busses, and light trucks are included in this review. Studies were included with outcome measure such as cost per year of life saved (LYS), and cost per quality-adjusted life-year saved (QALY), or enough data on cost and benefit to estimate these measures. We followed the recommendations of the Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine (PCEHM) in our recalculations. Interventions are categorized based on the Haddon matrix. RESULTS: We found that despite the specific framework recommended by the PCEHM, the methods used to derive CE measures vary considerably among studies. The CE for these interventions vary enormously, from those that cost more than $1 million per QALY saved i.e. lap/shoulder belts in rear-center occupant; to those that save money i.e. mandatory use of daytime running lights, painting lines on roads, and compulsory helmet use in motorcyclists. Cost saving interventions are compared according to the major components of crash causation as demonstrated in the Haddon matrix. CONCLUSION: The design of cost benefit evaluations in road safety needs to be improved so that more comparable evidence can be obtained. Literature reviews on CE should be updated regularly to ensure relevance. Many life saving traffic safety programs are cost saving and many are more CE than other interventions to prevent cancer, heart disease, and other causes of morbidity and mortality. Investment in traffic safety measures can have a greater impact on population health than investment in other chronic diseases.


The processing of exogenous Ags is an essential step for the generation of immunogenic peptides that will be presented to T cells. This processing relies on the efficient intracellular targeting of Ags, because it depends on the content of the compartments in which Ags are delivered in APCs. Opsonization of Ags by the complement component C3 strongly enhances their presentation by B cells and increases their immunogenicity in vivo. To investigate the role of C3 in the targeting of Ags, we compared the intracellular traffic of proteins internalized by complement receptor (CR) and B cell receptor (BCR) in B lymphocytes. Whereas both receptors are able to induce efficient Ag presentation, their intracellular pathways are different. CR ligand is delivered to compartments containing MHC class II molecules (MHC-II) but devoid of transferrin receptor and Lamp-2, whereas BCR rapidly targets its ligand toward Lamp-2-positive, late endosomal MHC-II-enriched compartments through intracellular vesicles containing transferrin receptor. CR and BCR are delivered to distinct endocytic pathways, and the kinetic evolution of the protein content of these pathways is very different. Both types of compartments contain MHC-II, but CR-targeted compartments receive less neosynthesized MHC-II than do BCR-targeted compartments. The targeting induced by CR toward compartments that are distinct from BCR-targeted compartments probably participates in C3 modulation of Ag presentation. The Journal of Immunology, 2004, 172: 3564–3572.


Streaking is a common problem on anodised extrusions of 6xxx series soft alloys. This paper presents various types of streaking defects on the basis of industry practice and experimental results. The streaking defects are classified according to their root causes. This provides a basis for developing effective methods for preventing the formation of these defects for the extrusion.


Aneurysms of the extracranial portions of the internal carotid artery are rare, and, of the 85 cases reported, in all but 2 the patients were less than 15 years old. We are adding to the reported cases that of a woman aged 50 years who made a complete recovery after surgical extirpation of the aneurysm. The patient, a Negro woman 50 years of age, had been seen in the Medical Clinic since 1949 because of epileptic seizures. She had been having these seizures since the age of 23 years, at which time she was involved in an accident and became unconscious. She had been taking medication regularly and her last seizure was Dec. 10, 1955. An electroencephalogram revealed an abnormal tracing suggesting epilepsy. On her visit to the clinic on Dec. 10 the patient complained of a lump in her throat, which she stated had been present for seven years.


The current study aims to investigate the cohesion and coherence strategies employed by Pakistani English Language Learners (PELLs) in expository argumentative essays.  For this purpose, the concept of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor premised upon Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory proposed by Devrim (2015) was applied to 50 expository essays drawn from International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE).  The deployment of IGM linguistic resources (i.e., lexically dense nominal groups) in the text generates lexically condensed clauses, text cohesion, and causal linkages within the clauses (Thompson, 2014).  The results reveal that most PELLs in this research contained an inadequate understanding of the cohesion and coherence realized by IGM linguistic resources in argumentative writing. The overuse of communicative conjunctions in the PELLs' texts common in spoken English primarily formed their expository essays into descriptive texts. Pedagogically, it is safe to assume that, through the research findings, English Language Teachers (ELTs) can systematically teach PELLs about the employment of IGMs to produce cohesion and coherence in their argumentative written texts.


Adolescents who are overweight or obese are reported to be less active than their peers. Motivation is a critical factor in sustaining physical activity and thereby positive health outcomes. This qualitative study explores how participation in a 12-week Internet-based intervention study, Young & Active, influenced the participants' short-term and long-term motivation to increase and sustain physical activity. The overall purpose of Young & Active was to design, test, and evaluate a health-promoting Internet-based program for use in the school health services in Norway. The program was informed by self-determination theory and motivational interviewing. Two postintervention qualitative research interviews were conducted with 21 adolescents, aged 13 to 14 years, with a 9- to 12-month interval. The adolescents were recruited from a total of 84 participants from the Young & Active study intervention group. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Self-determination theory was used as a theoretical and explanatory framework. Following the motivational continuum from self-determination theory, all adolescents showed changes in motivation, from extrinsic toward more intrinsic motivation, and for some, a reversal after completing the program. Analysis of the adolescents' utterances formed patterns that could be divided into four main categories: (a) reinforcement of a habit, (b) promotion of competence and enjoyment, (c) boost of temporary change, and (d) reinforcement of adverse habits. An Internet-based intervention may help adolescents increase and sustain physical activity if participation is based on self-choice and if they have sufficient support in their social environments. The intervention alone is not enough to support adolescents who are less motivated or have other challenges in life and may even provoke resistance and reinforce negative health behavior. Such a program may be used together with face-to-face counseling in school health services, provided that it is further refined on a larger scale and that the counseling is performed by qualified health service professionals.


Rocks that were once present in the deep continental crust can be found in surface exposure as xenoliths, as parts of high-grade metamorphic and plutonic terrains, and as obducted lower crustal cross sections. A review of magnetic and mineralogic studies of samples representing all such occurrences shows that magnetite is the only magnetic phase present in significant amounts in these rocks. Thermodynamic considerations indicate that Tipoor magnetite is the expected magnetic oxide under equilibrium conditions that exist in the lower crust, regardless of the primary magmatic composition of the spinel phase. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that serpentinites with metal alloys contribute significantly to the magnetization of the lower crust or mantle. Thus magnetite in the deep crust is the most likely candidate for the source of the long-wavelength magnetic anomalies observed in regional aeromagnetic and satellite magnetometer surveys. If so, the entire crust should be magnetic in most continental areas, including shields. In areas of high heat flow the bottom of the magnetic crust may lie considerably above the Moho.


The main goal of this paper was to disentangle encoding and retrieval interference effects in anaphor processing and thus to evaluate the hypothesis predicting that structurally inaccessible nouns (distractors) are not considered to be potential anaphor antecedents during language processing (Nicol and Swinney, 1989). Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted: one in German, comparing gender-unmarked reflexives and gender-marked pronouns, and two in Russian, comparing gender-marked and -unmarked reflexives. In the German experiment, no interference effects were found. In the first experiment in Russian, an unexpected reading times pattern emerged: in the condition where the distractor matched the gender of the reflexive's antecedent, reading of the gender-unmarked, but not the gender-marked reflexives was slowed down. The same reading times pattern was replicated in a second experiment in Russian where the order of the reflexive and the main verb was inverted. We conclude that the results of the two experiments in Russian are inconsistent with the retrieval interference account, but can be explained by encoding interference and additional semantic processing efforts associated with the processing of gender-marked reflexives. In sum, we found no evidence that would allow us to reject the syntax as an early filer account (Nicol and Swinney, 1989).


In Zimbabwe medicinal plants play a critical role in the healthcare delivery system. Ethnobotanical surveys of five districts from the Matebeleland and Manicaland regions of Zimbabwe were done and most commonly used and endangered plant species used in traditional medical practice were selected. From twelve plants 20 extracts were prepared from the various plant parts and extracted by solvent extraction and freeze dried. The extracts were then screened for phytochemical constituents and biological activity using standard techniques.

Phytochemical screening was carried out using TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography) where UV detection was at 254 and 365nm followed by confirmatory tests. Three of the plant extracts contained alkaloids, five had anthraquinone derivatives, five had coumarins, eight had cardiac glycosides and flavonoids, fifteen had saponins and sixteen contained tannins. Saponins and tannins were the most abundant phytochemicals found. These phytochemical groups and isolated chemical compounds may be responsible for the various biological activities observed by traditional healers in ethnopharmacology.

Total phenolic contents were determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method and the antioxidant activity was evaluated by DPPH (2, 2-diphenyl picrylhydrazyl) using A¢-carotene as reference. A high total phenolic content was observed for P. africanum bark 0.438±0.00424 and lowest for V. infausta leaves with 0.0048±0.00255TAE. Some extracts had high antioxidant activity: P. africanum leaves, bark, and roots had 97.6±0.354%, 96.3±0.354% and 96.40±0.00% respectively. The lowest antioxidant value was recorded in V. infausta roots with 39.7 ± 0.212%. Most plants showed great potential for use as antioxidants.

Brine shrimp lethality tests were used to predict potential cytotoxic activity of the plant extracts. Most of the extracts were non-toxic with LC50 values ranging from 1000 to 4000 µg/ml compared to the known toxic plant Nerium oleander used as a positive control with LC50 value of 142±68.2 µg/ml. V. infausta leaves (338±23.4 µg/ml), root (416±28.3 µg/ml) and P. angolensis bark (478±29.7 µg/ml) were moderately safe and should be used with caution. Plants showing significant toxicity to Artemia salina may have potential use as anti-tumour drugs.

Antimicrobial activity was carried out on selected microorganisms and fungal strains by the agar well diffusion method. Antibacterial activity was assessed against Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus Group A (Gram positive bacteria) and Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Gram negative bacteria). The fungi used were Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger. Activity was measured as a radius in mm to give a zone of inhibition. In general, the gram positive bacteria were more sensitive to the plant extracts compared to the gram negative bacteria. Out of the runs done for all the bacterial strains; 28 plant extracts showed no activity against the strains at the different concentrations used. The root extracts of X. caffra, P. angolensis and P.africanum were highly active (about 10mm radius) against E. coli. P. africanum root extract was also highly active against P. aeruginosa. A. stenophylla leaves were inactive against S. aureus, E. coli and P. aeruginosa. 65% of the extracts did show activity against Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger. The highest zone of inhibition was shown by D. anomala tuber against C. albicans; reading of 5.5±0.58mm and P. africanum bark 4.0±0.82mm.The lowest values were recorded from C. anisata leaves and L. edulis leaves against A. niger; readings of 1.00±0mm and 1.00±0.58mm respectively.

The results from these studies indicated that most of the commonly used traditional medicinal plants have merit for use in traditional medical practice as they have shown zones of inhibition on various microorganisms tested, meaning they are potential antimicrobial agents and so should be preserved and harvested with care.


This new resource represents the first Canadian publication in the field of gerontological nursing. The author focuses on the healthy elderly in the community as well as primary health care, health promotion, and the role of the family. Current Canadian demographic data on the elderly along with relevant, up-to-date statistics make this book an invaluable source for the study of aging.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex and heterogenous brain disease that affects multiple inter-related biological processes. This complexity contributes, in part, to existing difficulties in the identification of successful disease-modifying therapeutic strategies. To address this, systems approaches are being used to characterize AD-related disruption in molecular state. To evaluate the consistency across these molecular models, a consensus atlas of the human brain transcriptome was developed through coexpression meta-analysis across the AMP-AD consortium. Consensus analysis was performed across five coexpression methods used to analyze RNA-seq data collected from 2114 samples across 7 brain regions and 3 research studies. From this analysis, five consensus clusters were identified that described the major sources of AD-related alterations in transcriptional state that were consistent across studies, methods, and samples. AD genetic associations, previously studied AD-related biological processes, and AD targets under active investigation were enriched in only three of these five clusters. The remaining two clusters demonstrated strong heterogeneity between males and females in AD-related expression that was consistently observed across studies. AD transcriptional modules identified by systems analysis of individual AMP-AD teams were all represented in one of these five consensus clusters except ROS/MAP-identified Module 109, which was specific for genes that showed the strongest association with changes in AD-related gene expression across consensus clusters. The other two AMP-AD transcriptional analyses reported modules that were enriched in one of the two sex-specific Consensus Clusters. The fifth cluster has not been previously identified and was enriched for genes related to proteostasis. This study provides an atlas to map across biological inquiries of AD with the goal of supporting an expansion in AD target discovery efforts.


Accurate determination methods for 234U/238U and 230Th/232Th using multiple collector (MC) ICP-MS with a single secondary electron multiplier through a retarding potential quadrupole filter (RPQ-SEM) have been developed. The RPQ-SEM yield and the instrumental mass discrimination were simultaneously corrected by the simple bracketing method which utilizes accurately determined standard solutions measured by TIMS. For the bracketing and as an evaluation of the precision of the method, four standard solutions, NBL-145 U and U-m for U, and Th-I and Th-II for Th, were prepared, and NBL-145 U and Th-I were used as bracketing standards. The U and Th amounts of 0.5–21 ng and 0.6–21 ng used in U-m and Th-II analyses gave intermediate precisions (2RSD) of 0.85–0.06 and 0.88–0.19%, respectively, and vary from TIMS measurements by <0.35 and <1.1%, respectively, which agrees with error values in TIMS analyses. To achieve similar intermediate precisions of 0.2 and 0.6% (2RSD) in the U and Th isotope analyses to that of TIMS, 3 and 2 ng of U and Th are sufficient. When only the isotope analysis is performed, the required amounts of U and Th can be reduced by half. The precision of the isotope analyses, as well as the concentration determinations, were further confirmed by analyses of U and Th separated from the GSJ standard basalt, JB-2.


Life-history traits such as offspring size, number and sex ratio are affected by maternal feeding rates in many kinds of animals, but the consequences of variation in maternal diet quality (rather than quantity) are poorly understood. We manipulated dietary quality of reproducing female lizards (Amphibolurus muricatus; Agamidae), a species with temperature-dependent sex determination, to examine strategies of reproductive allocation. Females maintained on a poor-quality diet produced fewer clutches but massively (twofold) larger eggs with lower concentrations of yolk testosterone than did conspecific females given a high-quality diet. Although all eggs were incubated at the same temperature, and yolk steroid hormone levels were not correlated with offspring sex, the nutrient-deprived females produced highly male-biased sex ratios among their offspring. These responses to maternal nutrition generate a link between sex and offspring size, in a direction likely to enhance maternal fitness if large body size enhances reproductive success more in sons than in daughters (as seems plausible, given the mating system of this species). Overall, our results show that sex determination in these animals is more complex, and responsive to a wider range of environmental cues, than that suggested by the classification of 'environmental sex determination'.


The present essay analyzes to what extent Gustave le Bon's theories on the dematerialization of matter influence Matila Ghyka's own way of treating his biography (actual life and virtual "lives") in both fictional and non-fictional works. What strikes the most in Matila Ghyka's style is a technique of extensive selfquotation, which is not mere egocentrism. Whereas le Bon does not discriminate between Force and Matter and states that Matter is an infinite reservoir of intra-atomic energy, in the particular case of Matila's writings, the degree in which textual matter (recollections, memories) dissociates or re-crystalizes indicates the actual force encapsulated in the point of departure (the object of recollection, experience as such). Textual series bring testimony to Ghyka's strive to burn out variants to invariant (Happiness, the Golden Ratio), to drive meaning to a state of transparency.


We report a computer-simulation study of the phase diagram of a system of hard spherocylinders with aspect ratio L/D between 0 and 5. For L/D≤3 only isotropic liquid and crystalline solid phases can occur. For L/D=3 a mechanically stable smectic phase occurs, but it is thermodynamically unstable. For larger L/D values, stable smectic and nematic phases are present.


This paper explores the consequences for quality of introducing yardstick competition in duopoly when a verifiable quality indicator is available. Yardstick competition can be implemented by a menu of transfers that are linear in the cost differential between the two firms and in quality. Cost- and quality incentives are stronger in larger firms when improvements are highly valued by consumers and firms can significantly influence quality. Expenditures on quality improvement can increase or decrease following the introduction of yardstick competition. The crucial factor is the likelihood ratio of productivity between the two firms, not productivity differences.


The working hypothesis of the studies described herein was that inhibition of proteasome-mediated IkappaB degradation would inhibit TNF-alpha-induced nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) activation, interleukin-8 (IL-8) gene transcription, and IL-8 protein release in A549 cells. Mutational analysis of the 5' flanking region of the IL-8 gene confirmed that an intact NF-kappaB site is necessary for TNF-alpha-induced IL-8 gene transcription. The addition of TNF-alpha to A549 cells resulted in rapid loss of IkappaB from the cytoplasm of cells, associated with a corresponding increase in NF-kappaB-binding activity in nuclear extracts from the cells. However, pretreatment of the cells with the proteasome inhibitor N-cbz-Leu-Leu-leucinal (MG-132, 10 microM) reversed the effects of TNF-alpha on IL-8 release from A549 cells (as determined with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA]) and on IL-8 gene transcription (as determined with reporter-gene assays). MG-132 reversed the effects of TNF-alpha on IkappaB degradation as determined by Western blot analysis. IkappaB phosphorylation and ubiquination were not altered by MG-132, which implies that the effects of MG-132 were secondary to proteasome inhibition. MG-132 also reversed the increase in NF-kappaB binding in nuclear extracts from TNF-alpha-treated cells. These studies show that inhibition of proteasome-mediated IkappaB degradation results in inhibition of TNF-alpha induced IL-8 production in A549 cells by limiting NF-kappaB-mediated gene transcription.


Voice conversion is a method used to transform one speaker's voice into another Speaker's voice. New modification approach for voice conversion is proposed in this paper. We take Mel-trequency Discrete Wavelet coefficients (MFDWC) as the basic feature. This feature copes well with small training sets of high dimension, which is a problem often eneountered in voice conversion. The proposed voice conversion system consists of both off-line (training) and online (transformation-synthesis) procedures and assumes parallel training data from source and target speakers and uses the theory of wavelets in order to extract speaker feature information. The satisfactory performance of the voice conversion system can be confirmed through ABX listening test and MOS grade.


The aim of this thesis is to explore the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Sweden and how the design may contribute to realize central democratic goods. The study records the different PB experiences in Sweden and focuses on one particular case, which is the only case that successfully qualifies as a genuine PB-process according to international standards and definitions. To examine this, the following questions are asked: which municipalities in Sweden have implemented Participatory Budgeting? How can the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting be described and to what extent does it enable the realization of central democratic goods? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the democratic goods inclusion, popular control, considered judgment and transparency? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the institutional goods of efficiency and transferability?The study is based on an institutional theory of democracy. The method used is a mixed method ideal type analysis that combines document analysis, surveys and interviews. The results of the study indicates that the PB-institutions has multiple flaws regarding the way it enables the realization of numerous of the democratic goods analyzed. The institutional design does not pay enough attention to inclusion of different social groups including marginalized groups, popular control is restricted to issues of low political salience and the PB process does not live up to the transparency level expected from a democratic institution. On the other hand, the institutional design of the PB process does take into account some aspects of inclusion among the youth inhabitants and the process has been effective in the sense that it has delivered physical results quickly.


We present a new approach for solving the hardware-software partitioning problem in embedded system design. Our approach is based on transforming an instance of the hardware-software partitioning problem into an instance of a deterministic scheduling with rejection problem that minimizes a function of the completion times of the tasks. A solution to this real-time scheduling problem yields a partition of the system functionality and provides valuable feedback to the system designer. Experimental results indicate that the simplicity and effective solution techniques of our approach make it ideally suited as an automated design analysis tool in embedded system design.


This work examined cell composition gradients in maturing tillers of switchgrass (Panicum virgatuln L.) with the aim of developing baseline information on this important forage and biomass crop. Flowering tillers were collected from plants raised from seeds in a greenhouse and field, harvested at soil level and separated into internodes beginning with the node subtending the peduncle. Internodes were analyzed using microscopy, by fiber digestion, high-performance liquid chromatography and by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to obtain anatomical and compositional data. Microscopy demonstrated the development and maturation of cortical fibers which eventu-ally became confluent with the fiber sheath surrounding vascular bundles in the lower internodes. Detergent fiber analysis indicated increasing cellulose and lignin contents and decreases in cell solubles and hemicelluloses with increasing distance of the internodes from the top of the plant. Soluble phenolics were greatest in amounts and complexity in top internodes. The lower internodes contained greater levels of wall-bound phenolic acids, principally as 4-coumarate and ferulate. and wall-bound phenolics


This thesis describes the problem of facial expression recognition in the field of computer vision. Firstly, the psychological background of a problem is presented. Then, the idea of facial expression recognition system (FERS) is outlined and the requirements of such system are specified. The FER system consists of 3 stages: face detection, feature extraction and expression recognition. Methods proposed in literature are reviewed for each stage of a system. Finally, the design and implementation of my system are explained. The face detection algorithm used in the system is based on work by Viola and Jones [13]. The expressions are described by appearance features obtained from texture encoded with Local Binary Patterns [32]. The Support Vector Machine with RBF kernel function is used for classification. Databases that were used are: The Facial Expressions and Emotion Database [34], which contains spontaneous emotions and CohnKanade Database [35] with posed emotions. The system was trained on two databases separately and achieves accuracy of 71% for spontaneous emotions recognition and 77% for posed actions recognition.


Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) is the most severe form of
 nausea and vomiting during pregnancy and is characterized
 by severe intractable nausea and vomiting that lead to
 many maternal and fetal consequences. HG is mainly
 diagnosed clinically; most of the physicians diagnose it by its
 typical clinical picture and exclusion of other causes of
 nausea and vomiting in the pregnant woman. Nausea and
 vomiting are a disease of high prevalence among pregnant
 women and it is a common experience affecting 50-90% of
 all women. It is the most common indication for
 hospitalization during the first half of pregnancy. HG occurs
 in only about 0.5-2% of cases but actually, when it occurs it
 may be associated with morbidity of both mother and fetus.
 Adequate replacement therapy and weight gain may
 prevent most of the maternal and fetal consequences.
 Pregnant women with HG may suffer marked psychosocial
 burden. Moreover, the condition may be complicated by
 electrolyte imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and
 Wernicke's encephalopathy. Other complications include
 thrombosis, esophageal trauma, cerebral vascular spasm,
 others are related to TPN and central venous lines. Besides,
 recurrence of HG in subsequent pregnancies may occur.
Offspring of pregnant women with HG may suffer long-term
 conditions which include high serum cortisol, decreasing
 insulin sensitivity, high risk of mood and psychiatric
 problems. Studies showed no significant increase in the
 incidence of congenital anomalies among these neonates
 versus the control group. Regarding cancer, the large
 Scandinavian study found no association between HG and
 incidence of 12 types of childhood malignancies, only
 increased the incidence of lymphoma and testicular tumor
 was found which need further studies to confirm this causal
 relation. Besides, higher incidence of preterm labor,
 placental abruption, preeclampsia and small for gestational
 age were found in these patients. Further studies are
 needed to determine long-term maternal complications and
 to study long-term effect of HG on the mental and
 physiological status of offspring of HG mothers during
 adulthood.


Economic development agencies at national and regional levels have recognised the importance of design and creativity as a driver toward growth, wealth creation and potentially company and job creation. Many regions employ a strategy of promoting the crucial nature of design and then proceed onto promoting a number of design companies either locally or internationally, this activity although important is only part of the answer. There are a number of projects that have actively developed a strategy of firstly supporting design activity, the outcomes of which can then be promoted to wider audience. The project developed in Glasgow, United Kingdom (UK), as an experimental project for a celebratory motive has successfully supported the development of new products, facilitated new company start-ups and created wealth. This increased design activity in the region managed by a public body allowed design academia unprecedented access to live design projects. Access was in the form observance, academic engagement and student projects being realised with access to funds. The project has also been agile enough to be transported to other locations in the UK and internationally resulting in the same high level of success. Ian all regions there has been a similar outcome of economic development programmes giving active engagement opportunities to the local design education institutions.


The power efficiency of an HMCP heavily depends on the architecture of its processor cores. It is thus very important to choose it carefully. When comparing processing architectures for their use in a many-core platform, one must evaluate its IPC, but also its power and area. Precise power and area evaluations can only be done with real implementations. However, comparing processor implementations is a difficult task since the implementation specifities introduce interferences on the performances. This paper proposes a methodology that allows to realize precise comparisons of performance for different processor architectures. Using this methodology, it is possible to choose the best architecture for an HMCP targeting DSP applications. The methodology is based on the use of a common architural template to build the cores, and on the application of specific optimizations when relevant. In order to validate the methodology, three RISC cores are implemented: a single-issue core, and two VLIW processors with respectively 3 and 5 issues. The implemented cores are precisely compared on a set of DSP kernels.


This conceptual article presents microeconomic approaches to analyzing the shifts in universities' expenses and the saving effects of the scale and scope of HEI's activities. The authors provide an overview of econometric studies which assess the effects considered for universities in some countries. As a result, there comes to be questioned the economic feasibility of consolidating and expanding the universities' activities, the reasonability of combining research with educational activities. The discussion concerns the transformation of the universities' economy in the context of education digitalization, the prospects of the «economy of scale» and the «economy of scope» to be compared. The conclusions are drawn on the possible benefit for large universities, on its consequences for competition in higher education, and on the partnership benefits for all market players.


A small and landlocked country in the Himalayas, the size of Switzerland, Bhutan or Druk Yul, Land of the Thunder Dragon, had for centuries been isolated from the outside world. Finally, its tradition-bound people are beginning to pick up new trades and vocations. Penjore Timber Industries & Exports Ltd. is one of the 1st modern wood-processing complexes in Bhutan still with a predominantly subsistence and barter agriculture economy. The company, set up with the financial support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is producing broomsticks, handles for tools, wooden doors, and window frames mainly for export. The industrial sector is small and accounts for only 4% of GDP. Most of the 125 private enterprises in the country are small. A development bank, the Bhutan Development Finance Corporation (BDFC), was established in 1988 with ADB support for the development of private industry. A general education system was established and schools were opened only in the early 1960s. The government had given the development of trained manpower high priority in its 5th Economic and Social Development Plan (FY 1981/82-FY 1986/87). The Royal Institute of Management (RIM) was established in 1986. About 40 trainees each in secretarial, accounting, and basic management training programs and 150 managerial personnel from public and private agencies are trained each year by RIM which the ADB supports under the Second Multiproject Loan to Bhutan with cofinancing by the Norwegian Development Agency. So far RIM has designed 12 different training courses, 92 students graduated in 1989, and by 1995 about 30 training courses are envisioned. According to 1987 data in a recent UN report Bhutan is the only one of the world's 42 least-developed countries with a more than 10% agricultural production growth rate where real GDP growth has outspaced population growth.


Porous Li4Ti5O12 (LTO) microspheres consisting of a stack of primary nano-crystalline grains were prepared by adding dropwise LiOH solution into tetrabutyl titanate (TBT)/cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) glycol solution, followed by hydrothermal synthesis and further calcination. In order to understand the formation mechanism of LTO microspheres, the effects of cationic species and pH of solution on the hydrolysis of TBT in TBT/CTAB/LiOH solution were studied first by using NaOH, KOH and LiCl as substitutes for LiOH solution. Furthermore, in order to study the effect of CTAB, the morphology and microstructure of hydrothermal products and calcined products from TBT/CTAB/LiOH and TBT/LiOH solution were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results indicate that strong basicity of solution and existence of CTAB in TBT/CTAB/LiOH solution are two necessary factors for the formation of LTO microspheres. The spinel LTO microspheres obtained are porous because of the loose stacking of primary nano-crystalline grains. The structure is beneficial for the improvement of the contact surface area between the electrode and electrolyte, and the quick diffusion of electrons and ions. Therefore, LTO microspheres exhibit excellent electrochemical performance. The specific capacities at 10C, 20C, 30C, 40C, 50C and 60C are up to 177, 175, 170, 165, 158 and 157 mA h g−1, respectively. When the current density returns to 10C, the discharge capacity of LTO microspheres returns to the capacity at 10C; moreover, the capacity retention reaches 93% after 500 cycles.


Since the 1980s, activist archaeologists have used quantitative studies of journal authorship to show that the demographics of archaeological knowledge production are homogeneous. This literature, however, focuses almost exclusively on the gender of archaeologists, without deeply engaging with other forms of identity or adequately addressing the methodological limitations of assigning binary gender identifications based on first names. This paper rectifies these limitations through an intersectional study of inequities in academic archaeological publications by presenting the results of a survey of authors who published in 21 archaeology journals over a 10-year period (2007–2016). This survey asked them to provide their self-identifications in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The results demonstrate that although there has been an influx of women archaeologists in recent decades, we have not yet reached gender parity. They also show that because many women archaeologists are cisgender, white, and heterosexual, the discipline's knowledge producers remain relatively homogeneous. Furthermore, although there is demographic variation between journals, there is a strong correlation between journal prestige and the percentage of authors who are straight, white, cisgender men. This intersectional study of journal authorship demographics provides a comprehensive perspective on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the discipline of archaeology.


Given n values possessed by n agents, we study the problem of estimating the mean by truthfully eliciting agents' answers to multiple-choice questions about their values. We consider two natural candidates for estimation error: mean squared error (MSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). We design a randomized estimator which is asymptotically optimal for both measures in the worst case. In the case where prior distributions over the agents' values are known, we give an optimal, polynomial-time algorithm for MSE, and show that the task of computing an optimal estimate for MAE is #P-hard.


Much attention has been devoted to understanding the evolution of elaborate male ornaments and how they may signal male quality. However, the evolution of multicomponent sexual signals remains poorly understood, and past research on this type of signaling has been largely theoretical. Satin bowerbirds, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, are polygynous, are sexually dichromatic, and construct sexually selected display structures (bowers): a model system for investigating the evolution and signal function of multiple sexual signals. We studied the interrelationship between bower features, plumage coloration, and indicators of male quality in this species. To do this, we located the bowers of male satin bowerbirds in rainforest in Queensland, Australia, and quantified bower quality. We captured the male bower owners and used reflectance spectrometry to objectively measure the plumage coloration of several body regions. We measured various indicators of male health and condition, including the intensity of infection from ectoparasites and blood parasites. Bower quality and male ultraviolet plumage coloration were significantly correlated. By using multiple regression analyses, we show that bower quality predicts ectoparasite load and body size, whereas ultraviolet plumage coloration predicts the intensity of infection from blood parasites, feather growth rate, and body size. Our findings support the multiple messages hypothesis of multicomponent signals: Female satin bowerbirds should assess both male and bower features to choose the highest quality mates. Copyright 2003.


Abstract. The biotechnological use of bacterial cells and cell components for the
detection and accumulation of valuable substances, such as metals and rare
earth elements in aqueous systems, is possible by utilizing innate binding
characteristics of microorganisms. We have studied the bacteria cells of
Lysinibacillus sphaericus JG-B53 and Sporosarcina ureae
ATCC 13881 to assess their potential applicability for the detection of rare
earth elements, base metals or precious metals in water. First, we have
demonstrated the interactions of the cells with the metal complexes of Au, Ho
and Y by studying the color changes of the respective solutions, scanning
electron microscopy (SEM) imaging of the metal cluster decoration on the cell
surfaces and cell growth tolerance tests. Based on these results, we have
developed two potential sensor systems. A colorimetric sensor was established
by applying gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) functionalized with surface-layer
(S-layer) proteins SslA of S. ureae ATCC 13881 or Slp1 of
L. sphaericus JG-B53 for the selective detection of YCl3 up
to 1.67 × 10−5 mol L−1 in water. Additionally, a
regenerative sensor layer of S-layer proteins on a thin gold film was
developed for the detection of 1 × 10−4 mol L−1
YCl3 in water by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy.


High-resolution UCLES/AAT spectra are presented for nine B-type supergiants in the SMC, chosen on the basis that they may show varying amounts of nuclear-synthetically processed material mixed to their surface. These spectra have been analysed using a new grid of approximately 12 000 non-LTE line blanketed  model atmospheres to estimate at- mospheric parameters and chemical composition. The abundance estimates for O, Mg and Si are in excellent agreement with those deduced from other studies, whilst the low estimate for C may reflect the use of the C  doublet at 4267 A. The N es- timates are approximately an order of magnitude greater than those found in unevolved B-type stars or H  regions but are consistent with the other estimates in AB-type supergiants. These results have been combined with results from a unified model atmosphere analysis of UVES/VLT spectra of B-type supergiants (Trundle et al. 2004, A&A, 417, 217) to discuss the evolution- ary status of these objects. For two stars that are in common with those discussed by Trundle et al., we have undertaken a careful comparison in order to try to understand the relative importance of the different uncertainties present in such analyses, including observational errors and the use of static or unified models. We find that even for these relatively luminous supergiants,  models yield atmospheric parameters and chemical compositions similar to those deduced from the unified code .


A linear array of N mutually coupled single-mode lasers is investigated. It is shown that the intensities of N lasers are chaotically synchronized when the coupling between lasers is relatively strong. The chaotic synchronization of intensities depends on the location of the lasers in the array. The chaotic synchronization appears between two outmost lasers, the second two outmost lasers, etc. There is no synchronization between nearest neighbors of the lasers. If the number of N is odd, the middle laser is never synchronized between any lasers. The chaotic synchronization of phases between nearest lasers in the array is examined by using the analytic signal and the Gaussian filter methods based on the peak of the power spectrum of the intensity. It can be seen that the message of chaotic intensity synchronization is conveyed through the phase synchronization.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the efficacy and toxicity in patients with HER2 overexpressing metastatic breast cancer.

METHODS
Twenty-one patients with HER2 overexpressing metastatic breast cancer entered into the study. Trastuzumab (8 mg/kg day 1, then 6 mg/kg every 21 days or 4 mg/kg, then 2 mg/kg every week) and vinorelbine (25 mg/m(2)) was given on days 1 and 8 every 21 days.

RESULTS
Overall 56 cycles were given to the 21 patients enrolled into the study (mean 2, range 1-6). All can be evaluated. The response rate was 33.33% (7/21), one patient achieved complete response (CR), six patients achieved partial response (PR), four patients achieved stable disease (SD), ten patients achieved progressive disease (PD)]. The median time to progression was 3.5 months. One year overall survival was 33%. The major toxicity was myelosuppression and peripheral neuritis. A few patients were observed with fever and lower grade cardiac failure.

CONCLUSION
The combination of trastuzumab and vinorelbine is an effective and well tolerated therapy in patients with pretreated metastatic breast cancer.


Background Wildfire smoke is responsible for around 20% of all particulate emissions in the U.S. and affects millions of people worldwide. Children are especially vulnerable, as ambient air pollution exposure during early childhood is associated with reduced lung function. Most studies, however, have focused on the short-term impacts of wildfire smoke exposures. We aimed to identify long-term baseline epigenetic changes associated with early-life exposure to wildfire smoke. We collected nasal epithelium samples for whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) from two groups of adult female rhesus macaques: one group born just before the 2008 California wildfire season and exposed to wildfire smoke during early-life (n = 8), and the other group born in 2009 with no wildfire smoke exposure during early-life (n = 14). RNA-sequencing was also performed on a subset of these samples. Results We identified 3370 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) (difference in methylation ≥ 5% empirical p < 0.05) and 1 differentially expressed gene (FLOT2) (FDR< 0.05, fold of change ≥ 1.2). The DMRs were annotated to genes significantly enriched for synaptogenesis signaling, protein kinase A signaling, and a variety of immune processes, and some DMRs significantly correlated with gene expression differences. DMRs were also significantly enriched within regions of bivalent chromatin (top odds ratio = 1.46, q-value < 3 x 10-6) that often silence key developmental genes while keeping them poised for activation in pluripotent cells. Conclusions These data suggest that early-life exposure to wildfire smoke leads to long-term changes in the methylome over genes impacting the nervous and immune systems, but follow-up studies will be required to test whether these changes influence transcription following an immune/respiratory challenge.


Abstract This article details and dissects the promotion by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation of financial intermediaries – entities such as wholesale and retail micro-finance organisations and deposit-taking banks – as a key component within the push to establish and extend capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world. It argues that the approach must be seen as emanating not out of some (re)discovery of key methods that foster the substantive and sustainable improvement of material conditions but rather the material and ideological interests attending late capitalism. Focusing on financial intermediary support in the Asia-Pacific, this article begins by outlining the new politics of development driving financial intermediary support and the broader agenda to which it belongs. The second section of the article details some "working examples" of the International Finance Corporation's support of financial intermediaries in the Asia-Pacific, fleshing out the precise form that financial intermediary support takes. The article concludes by highlighting how the approach is further consolidating the death of development as a modern nationalist/internationalist project and deepening the distribution of late capitalism's contradictions.


This study aimed at adapting a measure of job-related affective well-being for the Brazilian milieu. Specifically, it was proposed to know evidences of factor validity and reliability of the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale (JAWS), assessing if its scores are influenced by participants' gender and age. The participants were 298 individuals employed in small or middle shopping malls in the city of Joao Pessoa, PB; most of them were female (76.8%), with a mean age of 26 years old (SD = 6.87). A main component analysis (with promax rotation) was performed, revealing two components that jointly accounted for 48.1% of the total variance. They were named as positive affect (α = .94; 14 items) and negative affect (α = .87; 13 items). A general factor of affective well-being was also identified (α = .95; 27 items). Participants' scores on these factors were not influenced by their gender or age. These findings are discussed based on literature that describes the psychometric parameters of the JAWS as well as the correlation of affects with demographic variables.


The paper attempts to identify indirectly vertical product differentiation in three industries of Polish manufacturing (manufacture of glass and glass products, manufacture of other general purpose machinery and manufacture of other special purpose machinery) by examining how focus on a given group of customers (segment) is related to company characteristics. Changes in companies' segment orientation between 2002 and 2005 are examined and the factors of these changes are discussed. The analysis is based on a survey of 77 companies. The data support the hypothesis that there exist segments in the consumer goods market, defined by the income level of customers. In the capital goods market, it is shown that domestic-owned customers are the low-end segment of the market, whereas foreign-owned customers constitute a higher segment. It seems that industries producing capital goods have shifted towards higher market segments between 2002 and 2005 and their principal motive was the pressure exerted by competitors, both domestic and foreign.


The fig and pollinator wasp obligate mutualism is diverse (~750 described species), ecologically important, and ancient (~80-90 Ma), providing model systems for generating and testing many questions in evolution and ecology. Once thought to be a prime example of strict one-to-one cospeciation, current thinking suggests that genera of pollinator wasps co-evolve with corresponding subsections of figs, but the degree to which cospeciation or other processes contributes to the association at finer scales is unclear. Here we use genome-wide sequence data from a community of Panamanian strangler figs (Ficus subgenus Urostigma, section Americana) and associated fig wasp pollinators (Pegoscapus spp.) to infer the process of coevolutionary diversification in this obligate mutualism. Using a model-based approach adapted from the study of gene family evolution, our results indicate pervasive and ongoing host switching of pollinator wasps at this fine phylogenetic and regional scale. Although the model estimates a modest amount of cospeciation, simulations reveal this signal to be consistent with levels of co-association expected under a model of free host switching. Our findings provide an outline for testing how ecological and evolutionary processes can be modeled to evaluate the history of association of interacting lineages in a phylogenetic framework.


Cellular spheroid is a complex aggregate of cells, and imaging is an important step in understanding how cell behavior operates and give references about possibilities according to the cells in the spheroid formation. Identifying structures in these images is manual and time-consuming and have a high rate of variability inter experts. An automated identification can solve these problems. The aim of this work is to present a study of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) applied to live cells identification in NIH-3T3 spheroid. Four different CNN architectures are exploited in this paper: AlexNet, ResNet18, GoogLeNet, and VGG 16 with batch normalization. Many experiments were performed to get the best architecture involving data augmentation, hyperparameter tuning, and transfer learning using ImageNet. The experiments identify up to five different structures in a spheroid image, where the AlexNet achieved the best performance considering the F1-score as the evaluation metric. The use of CNN for this kind of identification opens the possibility of following the spheroid's behaviour when cultured in more complex images.


Background: During early embryonic life, the aortic arch undergoes complex development and normally results in the formation of a left aortic arch from which three arteries arise: (1) the brachiocephalic artery, which divides into the right common carotid and right subclavian arteries, (2) the left common carotid artery and (3) the left subclavian artery. In the present study we found an aberrant right subclavian artery arising from the arch of aorta distal to the left common carotid artery.

Aims & Objective: Abnormalities of branches of arch of aorta are not uncommon and they have been identified more frequently with increasing use of imaging studies. However, the clinician should be aware of the wide range of anomalies that occur in the arch & the great vessels. This could help in adequately managing these variations in emergency approaches to the arch & the great vessels when imaging studies are not available. Our aim is to report the occurrence of the abnormal origin of right subclavian artery in a sample of western Indian population.

Material and Methods: Present study was conducted on embalmed cadavers in Anatomy Department at various medical colleges in Gujarat. Branches of arch of aorta were dissected & observed for any variation.

Results: A total of 70 cadavers were dissected. In one cadaver we found abnormal origin of right subclavian artery from the arch of aorta. The anomalous artery was passing behind the oesophagus. (1.43%, n = 70)

Conclusion: An aberrant right subclavian artery is a rare vascular anomaly & it is also an unusual cause of problems with the passage of solid food through the oesophagus. Recently it has been suggested that it occurs more frequently in patients with Down syndrome. Knowledge of this anomaly is important while evaluating feeding difficulties in patients with Down syndrome as well as in preventing vascular complications in patients with aberrant right subclavian artery.


Driven by the prominent thermal signature of humans and following the growing availability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more and more research efforts have been focusing on the detection and tracking of pedestrians using thermal infrared images recorded from UAVs. However, pedestrian detection and tracking from the thermal images obtained from UAVs pose many challenges due to the low-resolution of imagery, platform motion, image instability and the relatively small size of the objects. This research tackles these challenges by proposing a pedestrian detection and tracking system. A two-stage blob-based approach is first developed for pedestrian detection. This approach first extracts pedestrian blobs using the regional gradient feature and geometric constraints filtering and then classifies the detected blobs by using a linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) with a hybrid descriptor, which sophisticatedly combines Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) features in order to achieve accurate detection. This research further proposes an approach for pedestrian tracking. This approach employs the feature tracker with the update of detected pedestrian location to track pedestrian objects from the registered videos and extracts the motion trajectory data. The proposed detection and tracking approaches have been evaluated by multiple different datasets, and the results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. This research is expected to significantly benefit many transportation applications, such as the multimodal traffic performance measure, pedestrian behavior study and pedestrian-vehicle crash analysis. Future work will focus on using fused thermal and visual images to further improve the detection efficiency and effectiveness.


Based on the theoretical model, magnetic field distribution of rectangular teeth, two-sides dilated shape and one-side dilated shape teeth structure with common other conditions were calculated using finite element method when the sealing gap was 0.1mm and 0.12mm. The comparison of their results with the same sealing gap showed that rectangular teeth structure had the highest magnetic leakage. Moreover, the magnetic field distribution of sealing structures with rectangular stages on both the shaft and pole pieces under the same design and sealing gap were also calculated using the same method, whose result was compared with rectangular stages on pole pieces only. The comparison showed that the former did not have higher pressure capability obviously but led to higher magnetic leakage.


The current study aimed at investigating the effect of various coping mechanisms on the level of stress and psychological outcomes (depression and anxiety) among individuals with chronic pain. Ninety-four people with chronic pain completed a battery of tests regarding their perceived stress level, coping strategies of chronic pain, as well as psychological well-being in terms of depression and anxiety symptoms. Mediational analyses were conducted to test the mediating effect of various coping strategies on the relationship between stress and depression/anxiety. Results showed that among the four different groups of coping strategies, negative coping partially mediated between stress and depression, but not between stress and anxiety.


An increasing number of firms are attempting to host online communities for commercial purposes, such as building relationships with their customers, getting their feedback, and strengthening the brand. Because of such wide-ranging impacts, scholars have dedicated considerable efforts to understanding the processes of online community development and cultivation. This thesis, drawing on both marketing and information management literature, proposes an online community participation behaviour model that includes community-focused and member-focused factors as well as the psychological and social mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships between participation determinants and actual participation behaviour. Specifically, the thesis develops and tests two distinct but related research frameworks for empirical investigation in two joining phases. Framework 1, in the joining stage, delineates the temporary encounter when newcomers first visit a new or unfamiliar online community, focusing on the period of transition from attraction to member acquisition. Theoretically, the model draws on initial trust and signalling theory to examine the impact of initial trust on member recruitment in online communities. It was tested with 434 responses relating to nine Taiwanese online community platforms using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that, in online community contexts, initial trust is a significant mechanism for first-time visitors to make a joining decision. Moreover, the results reveal that personal innovativeness and susceptibility to normative influence respectively weakens and strengthens the linkages. Framework 2, in the post-joining stage, attempts to enhance understanding of members' proactive behaviour in online community settings. The conceptual model highlights the mediating roles of reciprocity norms and social identification in the impacts of participation factors on decisions about proactive participation. According to self-reported data from two time periods and objective behavioural data (526 participants), enjoyment plays a relatively important role than the other factors in triggering member participation behaviour. In addition, leader support, member receptivity, and community informativeness combine to determine members' participation behaviour through the norm of reciprocity and social identification with the online community. Overall, this thesis not only clarifies the theoretical relationship between participation determinants and participation behaviour but also improves the understanding of how different factors jointly explain both potential and exsiting members' participation decisions. The thesis concludes with the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings, as well as several important research issues and future research avenues.


Tuberculosis (TB) morbidity rate in Indonesia shows the number of population in Indonesia who suffer from TB. The TB morbidity rate can be used by insurance companies to predict a person's risk of TB so that insurance companies can determine the premiums that will be charged to insurance applicants based on the risks. Thus, the ability to estimate the TB morbidity rate accurately is essential for insurance companies to be able to determine the right premium amount while remaining competitive. This study compared two models that can be used to predict TB morbidity rate in Indonesia. The model was built using the temporal convolutional neural network (TCNN) and exponential smoothing methods. The data analyzed in this study are data obtained from the official website of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia. Before the model was built, the data used in this study were compiled into training and validation datasets. The model is built using a training dataset and validated using the validation dataset. The results of the model's validation are then evaluated and compared based on the value of the mean squared error (MSE). The result of this study shows that the TCNN model provides lower MSE compared to exponential smoothing.


Proteinuria has been shown to be strongly associated with the prevalence and incidence of cardiovascular disease. It has been difficult to determine if the link is causal and independent. The mortality follow-up for the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT) randomized cohort provides an opportunity to examine these relationships. Between 1973 and 1975, 361,662 men, ages 35 to 57, were screened for blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and cigarette smoking. Patients receiving medication for diabetes were excluded. Men in the upper 10 to 15% of coronary heart disease (CHD) risk (12,866) were randomized into the MRFIT trial. Standard casual urine dipstick determinations (Labstix) for protein were done at baseline and annually for six years. Post-trial cause-specific mortality was ascertained using the National Death Index. During the trial, 2326 (18.1%) of participants had + or higher proteinuria, and 593 (4.6%) had +2 or higher proteinuria. The presence of proteinuria during the six years of follow-up was consistently associated with higher all cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CHD mortality, even after adjusting for other risk factors. The higher and more persistent the proteinuria, the greater the risk. In this data set, proteinuria is a strong and independent risk factor for CVD mortality.


Author(s): Saphores, Jean-Daniel, PhD; Shah, Deep; Khatun, Farzana | Abstract: To gain a better understanding of the current use and performance of free and reduced-fare transit pass programs, researchers at UC Irvine surveyed California transit agencies with a focus on members of the California Transit Association (CTA) during November and December 2019. Fifty-nine agencies, representing a broad cross-section of California transit operators, responded. Three quarters of respondents offered one or more free or reduced-fare transit pass programs in fiscal year 2018-19. While most respondents stated that free or reduced-fare transit passes increase ridership, many had concerns about the effect on their agency's farebox recovery ratio, and to some extent on the fiscal health of their agency, though almost half of the respondents did not know the actual impacts. Those agencies offering student pass programs funded by student fees or employee programs funded by employers did not report any negative impact on ridership or on farebox recovery ratios. This confirms that free or reduced-fare transit pass programs structured like insurance programs (where a large group of potential transit riders—such as all students at a college or all employees in a large firm—periodically pays a lump sum to a transit agency while only a subset of that group actually uses transit) can be good for both riders and transit agencies. Free or reduced fare pass programs have an important role to play in transportation policy in California, but we should not ask too much from these programs. To achieve their full potential, they should be integrated into comprehensive policies to achieve California's social and environmental goals.


No feature of NAFTA is more often criticized than Chapter 11. It has proved to be a lightning rod for anti-NAFTA and anti-globalization critics. Environmentalists, labor organizers and human rights advocates all decry its secrecy, its potential disruptiveness to ordinary lawmaking and its placing of investors' interests before those of the broader public. Chapter 11 is portrayed as a great give-away - an elaborate ruse to evade checks on corporate activity in the three NAFTA countries. Nor do any of the three NAFTA Parties - the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico - seem particularly pleased with Chapter 11's operation. There is more than a little buyer's remorse evident. All three nations share a general discomfort with the extensive reach Chapter 11 has displayed. Through an unanticipated flow of decisions, Chapter 11 tribunals have entertained - if not endorsed - far more extravagant investment claims than were likely imagined by the three nations while negotiating Chapter 11's substantive terms. Such widespread unhappiness with Chapter 11 is somewhat unanticipated, as Chapter 11 attracted little attention during its negotiations. Indeed, it is now viewed as having been something of a Trojan Horse: seemingly benign upon first delivery, but later understood to have brought destruction to national democratic institutions. Many of the attacks on Chapter 11 are expressed in terms of a lack of legitimacy. The exercise of authority by Chapter 11 tribunals over public decisions seems wildly inconsistent with the understandings and expectations in all three countries of how legitimate political and judicial determinations should be made. There is a repeated and emphatic protest of unfair surprise advanced by critics of Chapter 11 - many, if not most, state/provincial and local public officials in the three NAFTA Parties claim to have been unaware of the establishment of an external mechanism that can impose monetary liability for legislative and judicial decision-making. The implication made here is that had Chapter 11 been better known and understood, it would never have been implemented. It is a sucker-punch, a hidden rider, the unnoticed fine print. Now in place, the potential of Chapter 11 to restrict lawmaking prerogatives chafes legislators throughout North America. Chapter 11, as part of NAFTA, is layered on top of the domestic legal regimes of the three NAFTA Parties. As such, questions of its legitimacy are perhaps best viewed from the specific legal traditions - and legal expectations - native to each Party. Thus, to answer whether Chapter 11 is legitimate, one can usefully draw on the structures, constitutional understandings and functional notions of legitimacy found within each NAFTA Party. To the extent Chapter 11 goes beyond the expected (even if this is exactly the intended point of its construction), legitimacy is tested. This essay presents a catalogue of defects, surprises, shortcomings and deliberate design associated with Chapter 11 - all of which have prompted attacks on its legitimacy.


The yeast GAL80 gene, encoding a negative regulatory protein of galactose-inducible genes, shows both constitutive and galactose-inducible expression. The inducible transcription is under the control of Gal4p, a common activator for the galactose-inducible genes, which binds to an upstream activation sequence, called UASG, spanning between -105 and -89 in the 5'-flanking region of GAL80. Here we demonstrate that the constitutive transcription started at +1, whereas the inducible transcription occurs from a set of downstream sites at +37, +47, +56, and +67. Both transcriptions were enhanced 10-fold by another UAS, whose 5' boundary is located between -195 and -185. Gal4p stimulated transcription, which depends on the TATA box located at -20, from all the downstream sites. By contrast, the constitutive transcription depended on a small region of less than 16 bp long encompassing the +1 site, which directed transcription even in the absence of both the TATA box and the UASs. When a fragment covering that region was inserted immediately upstream of the open reading frame of HIS3, the resulting gene fusion, if introduced into a his3 yeast strain, supported growth on histidine-lacking medium. We detected by gel retardation assay a protein specifically interacting with this fragment. All the transcriptions observed in the in vivo experiments were faithfully reproduced in a cell-free transcription system. From these results, we suggest that initiation of GAL80 transcription involves two alternative pathways; one is initiator dependent, and the other is Gal4p regulated and TATA dependent.


We present a deep reinforcement learning approach to optimizing the execution cost of computation graphs in a static compiler. The key idea is to combine a neural network policy with a genetic algorithm, the Biased Random-Key Genetic Algorithm (BRKGA). The policy is trained to predict, given an input graph to be optimized, the node-level probability distributions for sampling mutations and crossovers in BRKGA. Our approach, "REINFORCE-based Genetic Algorithm Learning" (REGAL), uses the policy's ability to transfer to new graphs to significantly improve the solution quality of the genetic algorithm for the same objective evaluation budget. As a concrete application, we show results for minimizing peak memory in TensorFlow graphs by jointly optimizing device placement and scheduling. REGAL achieves on average 3.56% lower peak memory than BRKGA on previously unseen graphs, outperforming all the algorithms we compare to, and giving 4.4× bigger improvement than the next best algorithm. We also evaluate REGAL on a production compiler team's performance benchmark of XLA graphs and achieve on average 3.74% lower peak memory than BRKGA, again outperforming all others. Our approach and analysis is made possible by collecting a dataset of 372 unique real-world TensorFlow graphs, more than an order of magnitude more data than previous work.


ABSTRACTThe amount of liquid water present on ambient aerosol particles influences its radiative properties, the partitioning of gas-phase organic and inorganic compounds to the condensed phase, and the assessment of particle health effects upon inhalation. An improved home-made Dry-Ambient Aerosol Size Spectrometer (DAASS) was implemented and deployed at a sampling site in Beijing to measure water content and volumetric growth factor of fine ambient aerosol during clean and polluted days. Aerosol chemical composition was characterized by an aerosol chemical speciation monitor (ACSM). Meteorological conditions were also assessed to trace origin of the air masses arriving at the site. A thermodynamic model, ISORROPIA II, was used to predict aerosol water content based on inorganic compositions measured by ACSM. It was then compared with the aerosol water content measured by DAASS. During the two-week sampling period, an aerosol efflorescence behavior was observed around 50% relative humidity (RH). Aerosol at the sample location was predominantly alkaline, with an average acidity ratio of 1.3 during the polluted days but very variable during the clean days. This fact coupled with generally low ambient RH resulted in low amounts of liquid water detected during the campaign. When RH reached its maximum of 87% and aerosol appeared to be more acidic, the maximum amount of aerosol water content measured was 1.3 µg m–3 (44.9% wt of DAASS measured ambient aerosol). Measured aerosol water content and model predictions seem to show a better agreement during the more polluted days, but during the clean days aerosol organic fraction appears to have an important contribution in the water content. We argue that the organic-associated water is comparable with that associated with inorganic compositions during the clean periods at low ambient RH conditions.


The development of international environmental law is typically divided into three periods. The first demonstrates little genuine environmental awareness but rather views environmental benefits as incidental to largely economic concerns such as the exploitation of living natural resources. The second demonstrates a significant rise in the number of treaties directed to pollution abatement and to species and habitat conservation. Here an overt environmental focus is evident, yet the approach is still largely reactive and piecemeal. The final phase, which characterizes current international environmental law, demonstrates a precautionary approach to environmental problems of global magnitude such as biodiversity conservation and climate change. Concern transcends individual States, with certain global problems now considered the common concern of humankind. This chapter defines international environmental law, its key sources and actors, and difficulties of enforcement, before embarking on a sectoral examination of the extensive treaty law applicable in this field.


Accumulation of β-amyloid peptide (Aβ) in the brain is believed to trigger a complex and poorly understood pathologic reaction that results in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite intensive study, there is no consensus as to how Aβ accumulation causes neurodegeneration in AD. In this issue of the JCI, Tesseur et al. report that the expression of TGF-β type II receptor (TβRII) by neurons is reduced very early in the course of AD and that reduced TGF-β signaling increased Aβ deposition and neurodegeneration in a mouse model of AD (see the related article beginning on page 3060). Intriguingly, reduced TGF-β signaling in neuroblastoma cells resulted in neuritic dystrophy and increased levels of secreted Aβ. Collectively, these data suggest that dysfunction of the TGF-β/TβRII signaling axis in the AD brain may accelerate Aβ deposition and neurodegeneration.


This article presents an alternative argument that Mandarin distributor GE (GEDIS) is a pro-form to be merged as an appositive to a plural nominal, verb or adverbial. GEDIS performs a distributive function of matching a set of individuals to a set of predications, thus requiring the obligatory cooccurrence of a distributive host, i.e., an antecedent plural nominal, verbal or adverbial phrase, and a distributive target, i.e., a following syntactic constituent that helps to separate the predication. The canonical syntactic position of GEDIS is immediately to the right of the distributive host. An appositive analysis of GEDIS is proposed to the effect that GEDIS is merged as an appositive to the distributive host. This new analysis improves upon the existing adjunct analysis, which takes GEDIS as a quantificational adverb that adjoins to VP or vP. The appositive analysis is further supported by the convincing view that GEDIS is a pronoun rather than an adverb and can be extended to cover two new facts about GEDIS, where the distributive host is a plural verb phrase or a plural adverbial phrase. The conclusion reached is that GEDIS is a pro-form that is semantically associated with and syntactically apposed to a plural antecedent in the capacity of a nominal, a verb or an adverbial.


Clinical and psychoeducational data were analyzed for 119 children ages 8 to 16 years who were evaluated in a child diagnostic clinic. A learning disability (LD) was present in 70% of the children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with a learning disability in written expression two times more common (65%) than a learning disability in reading, math, or spelling. Children with LD and ADHD had more severe learning problems than children who had LD but no ADHD, and the former also had more severe attention problems than children who had ADHD but no LD. Further, children with ADHD but no LD had some degree of learning problem, and children with LD but no ADHD had some degree of attention problem. Results suggest that learning and attention problems are on a continuum, are interrelated, and usually coexist.


The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most commonly injured ligament of the knee with well over 200,000 injuries in the US annually. Surgical reconstruction is a widely used treatment option that involves replacing the ACL with a soft tissue graft. ACL reconstruction is often associated with problems such as pain and long-term follow-up studies have shown that up to 25% of patients have experienced unsatisfactory results that include prevalence of osteoarthritis.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in regenerating the ACL as an alternative treatment option. In our research center, an innovative approach was developed using an extracellular matrix (ECM) sheet and hydrogel along with a novel metallic implant made of magnesium (Mg) designed to connect the two ends of a torn ACL. The biological augmentation provided by the ECM scaffolds has been shown to incite and accelerate new tissue growth. The mechanical augmentation provided by the Mg ring can restore stability to the knee immediately post-operatively and load the healing ligament throughout the healing process preventing disuse atrophy of the insertion sites. Additionally, the repair construct can be resorbed by the body as the healing tissue begins to bear load.

The objective of this research was to continue the development of ECM + Mg ring repair. First, single crystal Mg was coated using micro-arc oxidation to engineer a degradation rate appropriate for the ACL healing application and the corrosion, coating, and surface properties of this novel material-coating combination were characterized. Then, a long-term study of ECM + Mg ring repair of a surgically transected ACL in a goat model was performed to examine if the advantages persist up to 26 weeks. The joint stability, ligament function and structural properties of the femur-ACL-tibia complex were measured. Finally, the Mg ring was redesigned for the human ACL and evaluated using finite element analysis and in human cadaveric knees.

This dissertation research has found exciting results that a goat ACL can heal successfully with a combined biological and mechanical augmentation approach and suggests further study of ACL healing in humans. In the end, such an approach could lead to an alternative treatment for ACL injuries.


Well-differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is the most common form of thyroid cancer (TC); however, with the exception of radiation exposure, its etiology remains largely unknown. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have previously been implicated in DTC risk. Nucleotide excision repair (NER) polymorphisms, despite having been associated with cancer risk at other locations, have received little attention in the context of thyroid carcinogenesis. In order to evaluate the role of NER pathway SNPs in DTC susceptibility, we performed a case-control study in 106 Caucasian Portuguese DTC patients and 212 matched controls. rs2230641 (CCNH), rs2972388 (CDK7), rs1805329 (RAD23B), rs3212986 (ERCC1), rs1800067 (ERCC4), rs17655, rs2227869 (ERCC5), rs4253211 and rs2228529 (ERCC6) were genotyped using TaqMan® methodology, while conventional PCR-RFLP was employed for rs2228000 and rs2228001 (XPC). When considering all DTC cases, only rs2230641 (CCNH) was associated with DTC risk; a consistent increase in overall DTC risk was observed for both the heterozygous genotype (OR=1.89, 95% CI=1.14-3.14) and the variant allele carriers (OR=1.79, 95% CI=1.09-2.93). Histological stratification analysis confirmed an identical effect on follicular TC (OR=2.72, 95% CI=1.19-6.22, for heterozygous; OR=2.44, 95% CI=1.07-5.55, for variant allele carriers). Considering papillary TC, the rs2228001 (XPC) variant genotype was associated with increased risk (OR=2.33, 95% CI=1.05-5.16), while a protective effect was observed for rs2227869 (ERCC5) (OR=0.26, 95% CI=0.08-0.90, for heterozygous; OR=0.25, 95% CI=0.07-0.86, for variant allele carriers). No further significant results were observed. Our results suggest that NER polymorphisms such as rs2230641 (CCNH) and, possibly, rs2227869 (ERCC5) and rs2228001 (XPC), may influence DTC susceptibility. However, larger studies are required to confirm these results.


Previously, we showed that migration of transformed renal epithelial cells (MDCK-F cells) is a K+ channel-dependent process [J Clin Invest 1994;93:1631]. In order to determine whether K+ channel activity is a general requirement for locomotion, we extended our observations to NIH3T3 fibroblasts and human melanoma cells. Migration of both cell types and its dependence on K+ channel activity was measured at the single cell level by time lapse photography in the absence and presence of the specific K+ channel blocker charybdotoxin (CTX). Locomotion of both cell types is inhibited by K+ channel blockade. CTX slows down migration of fibroblasts and of melanoma cells dose-dependently by up to 61 ± 11%. These findings suggest that K+ channel activity is a general prerequisite for migration. To determine whether CTX-induced inhibition of migration of fibroblasts and melanoma cells involves quantitative changes of actin filaments, we indirectly measured filamentous actin by quantitating binding of fluorescently labeled phalloidin. Whereas CTX elicits a decrease of bound phalloidin in fibroblasts there is an increase in melanoma cells. Since migration of tumor cells is required for invading surrounding tissue, we developed an assay to test whether CTX-induced inhibition of migration also impairs invasion of melanoma cells. Melanoma cells were seeded on a layer of high resistance renal epithelial cells (MDCK cells clone C7; transepithelial resistance Rte >3,000 Ωcm2) and Rte was measured daily. Rte starts to decrease 2 days after seeding of melanoma cells onto MDCK-C7 cells. By day 7, Rte has dropped to 24 ± 1.5% of control. K+ channel blockade with CTX (10 nmol/l) cannot prevent or delay this drop of Rte. Rte reaches the same level with or without CTX. These results indicate that the disruption of an epithelial layer, unlike migration of melanoma cells, cannot be modulated by K+ channel blockade.


Urban traffic problem was an important factor that affects the development and restricts the economic construction of cities. It's a complex system in a random way so it was necessary to optimize traffic control signals to cope with so much urban traffic problems. A simulated annealing-particle swarm optimization (Sa-PSO) algorithm was developed which bases on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and metropolwas rule. It effectively shows in dealing with the optimization of urban traffic signal timing. Simulation was carried out in a nine-intersection were a network and the result shows that the use of Sa-PSO method can reduce 41.0% of the average delay per vehicles, and 30.6% of the average stop rates comparing with fixed time plans.