Background: Tasks constitute a crucial element of learning environments as they prompt students to engage with the learning content. Among others, doing science, particularly conducting experiments, includes very specific task formats and activities which focus strongly on writing, reading, mathematical, and fine-motoric skills. In order to enable all students to participate in science education, these task formats need to be re-designed, since they present barriers for many learners or even exclude some completely (Stinken-Rosner & Abels, 2021).
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate different approaches to design 'inclusive' tasks that allow all students to participate in investigating the 'Flaschentuten' phenomenon. Acoustics is an essential part of physics education, which is not only challenging for hearing-impaired students. Due to its complexity and high level of abstraction, acoustics is a barrier-loaden topic for many learners. We show how students can engage with the same context on different levels of abstraction, depending on their individual previous experiences and needs and how various scaffolding offers can support individual and mutual learning.
Sample/Setting: The 'Flaschentuten' context is used in the course of an introductory seminar on inquiry-based learning. Over the last three years, more than 100 pre-service teachers investigated the 'Flaschentuten' phenomenon. None of the participants were enrolled in physics study programs at university level. Some already had experience with the context, but none was able to explain the phenomenon scientifically.
Design and Methods: In order to enable participation for all learners, typical tasks connected to doing science were re-designed following the Framework for Inclusive Science Education (Brauns & Abels, 2021). We chose the context "Flaschentuten", since learners can engage practically with this phenomenon even with no to little knowledge about the underlying scientific content. Additionally, various scaffolding offers (e.g., material, linguistic, cognitive, and communicational) as well as different types of digital media were implemented. Following the design-based research approach, the learning environment was continuously further developed and tasks re-designed in accordance to our observations (and to allow distance learning during COVID-19).
Results: The observations on how learners engage with the context 'Flaschentuten' and the inclusively designed tasks are based on three years of experiences. The context 'Flaschentuten' proved to foster students' situational interest. Typically occurring research questions relate to the characteristics of the bottle, the filling level, the filling material and to the way the bottle is 'played'. The complexity of the corresponding experimental setup and the acquisition of measurements varied depending on students' previous experiences, knowledge and skills. Also, students made use of the re-designed tasks which allowed for new approaches. In particular, the digital media offers (measurement app and digital documentation in form of audios/pictures/videos) were very popular among learners.
Conclusions: In conclusion, the experiences made with the context 'Flaschentuten' show that re-thinking tasks from the perspective of inclusive science education can result in learning environments that enable participation for all learners. Applying frameworks, such as the Framework for Inclusive Science Education (Brauns & Abels, 2021), can help teachers to identify potential barriers of contexts, tasks and materials as well as to provide alternative approaches that are compatible with the requirements of inclusive science education.
Keywords: Inclusion, Inclusive Science Education, Participation, Task Design, Digital Media


For a safe operation of gas pipelines, the prevention of propagating brittle facture is one of the most important requirements. To evaluate the transition temperature of a propagating fracture, the Drop Weight Tear (DWT) Test was developed in the 60s. Fracture surfaces of DWT specimens have been shown to correspond well to the fracture surface of a pipe exposed to a propagating fracture at a certain temperature. Historically, there have always been observations of the fracture initiating in a ductile manner in the DWT test. Nevertheless, the most widely used test standard rules out such behavior, known as inverse or abnormal fracture. As an option to prevent ductile initiation, an alternative notch is proposed. While this might have served in the earlier days, high toughness steels of today are known to provide a high resistance against crack initiation and are therefore prone to inverse fracture, even when making use of the suggested alternative notch. Other, non-standard notch types have been investigated and discussed in literature, amongst these the static pre-crack and brittle weld notch.
 Observations of the DWT test, especially comparing material showing non-inverse and inverse behaviour, show delayed crack initiation resulting in large deflection when the specimens are inverse. This high degree of pre-deformation of the material will have an adverse influence on the material performance by the time the crack propagates into it. This implies that the appearance of inverse fracture is a test effect in the laboratory test, and not an inherent material property, leading to the question if such DWT test results still correspond to the behavior of pipes. If the correlation is shown to be valid, the brittle initiation requirement as such becomes questionable.
 This study summarises investigations of different notch types in DWT tests. West Jefferson tests that have been conducted to verify the correlation to shear area fraction in DWT tests. The investigation revealed that ductile initiation could not be reliably suppressed. While neither Chevron nor static pre-crack specimen lead to any reduction of the occurrence of inverse fracture, test series of brittle weld specimens did have a higher number of valid specimens. Interestingly, the results of valid, non-inverse specimens and invalid, inverse specimens showed no shift in transitional behavior. Correspondingly, both valid and invalid specimens showed a good representation of the pipe behaviour in the upper transition region.


Epidemiological studies show that cancer incidence is far more dependent on the conditions of life than previously supposed. Classically, cancers occurred with heavy exposure to a specific occupational hazard, or were associated with habits. In some instances, research shows, the incidence of cancer falls when the method of work or the associated habit is changed. In short, variation in incidence is now known to be the rule rather than the exception in cancer. No cancer that occurs with even moderate frequency, occurs everywhere and always to the same extent. Sometimes it is even epidemic, similar in scale to an epidemic of infectious disease, but modified by the fact that the induction period may be as much as thirty years.Prevention of cancer is now coming to be regarded as a practicable alternative to its cure. We remain almost totally ignorant of how cancer is produced at the cellular level and, until we know this, our methods of prevention are liable to be cumbersome and inefficient. Ethical considerations and the time scale of the disease make it impossible to obtain experimental evidence in man and what action to take has been determined from observing nature's experiments and by analogy from experiments in animals.The evidence from epidemiological studies is of particular interest. Such studies suggest relationships that would never be thought of in the ordinary course of laboratory work and results that are directly relevant to the problems of human disease. The large numbers at risk and the intensity of the medical care to which people with cancer are subjected, make it possible to recognize relatively small improvements. Such practical decisions, based on information thus obtained, have largely eliminated the risk of cancer due to occupational hazards in several industries.


The proto-machine-made sand is a new artificial material for environmental protection with grain size smaller than 5 mm made of water cleaned crushed stones or gravels broken and separated by machines, in which the stone powder maintains as prototype and certain content by improving the production technology. The paper introduces a series of test results of grade C50 concrete mixed by proto-machine-made sand with stone powder in mass content of 3 %, 7 % and 13 %. Based on the cubic compressive strength of concrete at different ages of 3 d, 4 d, 7 d, 14 d, 28 d, 56 d, 90 d, 120 d, 150 d and 180 d, the developing regularities of strength affected by the content of stone powder are analyzed, the formula for predicting the cubic compressive strength of concrete at any ages is proposed. It is proved that the effect of stone-powder in proto-machine-made sand on concrete strength is virtually different from that of the stone powder mixed with powdered mud in ordinary machine-made sand, and the limit value of stone powder content lower than 5 % is not suitable to proto-machine-made sand for mixing concrete with grade of C50.


NK cells provide a line of defense against tumors and virus-infected cells that have lost the expression of one or more MHC class I isoforms. Here, we investigate whether inhibitors of apoptosis can block the rejection of tumors mediated by NK cells, by introducing the long form of Fas-associated death domain-like IL-1β-converting enzyme-associated inhibitory protein (FLIPL) and poxvirus cytokine response modifier A (CrmA) into the MHC class I-deficient T lymphoma cell line RMA-S. RMA-S cells do not normally express Fas in vitro, and it was previously postulated that the rejection of these tumors by NK cells is strictly perforin dependent. We show that perforin-deficient NK cells directly mediate Fas up-regulation on RMA-S cells and thereafter kill the cells in a Fas-dependent manner, and that RMA-S FLIPL and RMA-S CrmA are protected from such killing. When injected in immunocompetent recipients, RMA-S cells up-regulate Fas, rendering in vivo-passed mock-transduced cells sensitive to Fas-mediated apoptosis. Moreover, RMA-S FLIPL and RMA-S CrmA cells establish aggressive tumors, in contrast to RMA-S mock cells that are rejected. These results demonstrate that FLIPL and CrmA function as tumor progression factors by protecting MHC class I-deficient tumors from rejection mediated by NK cells. Moreover, our data indicate that death receptor-mediated apoptosis has a more prominent role in the clearance of NK-sensitive tumors than previously suggested.


We present new sequential and parallel algorithms for wavelet tree construction based on a new bottom-up technique. This technique makes use of the structure of the wavelet trees—refining the characters represented in a node of the tree with increasing depth—in an opposite way, by first computing the leaves (most refined), and then propagating this information upwards to the root of the tree. We first describe new sequential algorithms, both in RAM and external memory. Based on these results, we adapt these algorithms to parallel computers, where we address both shared memory and distributed memory settings. In practice, all our algorithms outperform previous ones in both time and memory efficiency, because we can compute all auxiliary information solely based on the information we obtained from computing the leaves. Most of our algorithms are also adapted to the wavelet matrix, a variant that is particularly suited for large alphabets.


This study presents the development of a modular knee exoskeleton system that supports the knee joints of hemiplegic patients. The device is designed to realize the polycentric motion of real human knees using a four-bar linkage and to minimize its total weight. In order to determine the user's intention, force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) in the user's insole, a torque sensor on the robot knee joint, and an encoder in the motor are used. The control algorithm is based on a finite state machine (FSM), where the force control, position control and virtual damping control are applied in each state. The proposed hardware design and algorithm are verified by performing experiments on the standing walking and sitting motion controls while wearing the knee exoskeleton.


Regular exposure to uninterrupted prolonged sitting and the consumption of high glycemic meals (HGI) is independently associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk. Sitting for as little as 1-hour can impair the health of both peripheral and central arteries. However, it is currently unknown whether combined acute exposure to uninterrupted prolonged sitting and a HGI meal is more detrimental to global (peripheral and central) vascular health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of prolonged sitting (3 hours), following the consumption of a HGI or low glycemic index (LGI) meal, on global pulse wave velocity (G-PWV).

METHODS
Eighteen healthy participants (70% female, mean standard deviation [SD] age: 22.6 [3.1] years old, BMI: 25.5 [6.1] kg/m2) sat for 3 hours after consuming a HGI or LGI meal. G-PWV was assessed by incorporating three PWV measures (carotid-femoral, brachial-femoral, femoral-ankle). The effects of time (PRE vs. POST) and condition (LGI vs. HGI) were analyzed using linear mixed models.

RESULTS
Following prolonged sitting, G-PWV increased by 0.29 m/s (i.e., PRE vs. POST). However, the condition (P=0.987) and time x condition (P=0.954) effects were non-significant.

DISCUSSION
The current findings support previous research showing an increase in arterial stiffness with prolonged sitting. However, in young and healthy adults, the arterial stiffness response was not worsened through HGI consumption.


Abstract. Among the processes governing the energy balance in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT), the quenching of CO 2 (ν 2 ) vibrational levels by collisions with O atoms plays an important role. However, there is a factor of 3–4 discrepancy between the laboratory measurements of the CO 2 -O quenching rate coefficient, k VT , and its value estimated from the atmospheric observations. In this study, we retrieve k VT in the altitude region 85–105 km from the coincident SABER/TIMED and Fort Collins sodium lidar observations by minimizing the difference between measured and simulated broadband limb 15 μm radiation. The averaged k VT value obtained in this work is 6.5 ± 1.5 × 10 −12 cm 3 s −1 that is close to other estimates of this coefficient from the atmospheric observations. However, the retrieved k VT also shows altitude dependence and varies from 5.5 ± 1.1 × 10 −12 cm 3 s −1 at 90 km to 7.9 ± 1.2 × 10 −12 cm 3 s −1 at 105 km. Obtained results demonstrate the deficiency in current non-LTE modeling of the atmospheric 15 μm radiation, based on the application of the CO 2 -O quenching and excitation rates, which are linked by the detailed balance relation. We discuss the possible model improvements, among them accounting for the interaction of the "non-thermal" oxygen atoms with CO 2 molecules.


Herein, we report the highest BET surface area (1312 m2 g−1) and the highest total pore volume (1.41 cm3 g−1) reported for Fe–BTC to date. More importantly, a CO2 adsorption capacity of 27.5 wt% (6.24 mmol g−1) is achieved at 8.5 bar and 298 K, which is the highest reported value for Fe–BTC to date. A perturbation-assisted nanofusion mechanism is used to synthesize Fe–BTCs, which form hierarchical pores. The synthesis parameters are optimized to enhance the amount of CO2 adsorbed. The highest CO2 adsorption capacity is achieved by Fe–BTC, which has ultramicropores (pore diameter <0.7 nm) in its pore structure. This measured CO2 uptake capacity (1 bar and 298 K) is higher than those of the MOFs (MOF-177, UMCM-1, MIL-101(Cr), ZIF-8, and MOF-5) reported in the literature. Herein, we experimentally prove the significant contribution of ultramicropores and narrow micropores for the adsorbed CO2 amount. In conclusion, this study i) reports a strategy that increases the BET surface area (1.6 times), total pore volume (3.1 times) and CO2 adsorption capacity (1.66 times) and ii) shows the critical role of ultramicropores and the volume and distribution of narrow micropores on the adsorbed CO2 amount. The reported synthesis strategy can lead the way for the synthesis of highly porous sorbents with an enhanced BET surface area, total pore volume and CO2 sorption capacity, which should be further examined for other porous sorbents to achieve CO2 sorption goals.


International migration has continued to increase over the years. As people relocate to seek opportunities, their hopes and aspirations for a better life become a driving force. The extent to which their expectations are achieved is not documented in South Africa. This paper examines the expectations versus experiences of international immigrants in South Africa using Cameroonian and Democratic Republic of Congo immigrants residing in Cape Town. A qualitative approach with snowball sampling selected key informants from Cameroonian and Congolese nationalities in Cape Town. Results suggest that most immigrants did not meet their expectations for migrating, due to migration policy limitations of the host country exempting them from opportunities. The results align with both the Capability Approach theory and Lee's model of migration. Most of the immigrants showed despondency but do not prefer the option of returning to their home country. This is because they have not attained their goals for migration. The paper recommends that policy discussion between the South African government and stakeholders has become imperative to obtain an informed perspective on the dynamics of migration.


BACKGROUND
Corrected QT (QTc) interval prolongation can induce fatal arrhythmias such as torsade de pointes.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
To assess the characteristics of QTc intervals and arrhythmias in women with early breast cancer who received FEC100 adjuvant chemotherapy, electrocardiograms (ECGs) were recorded before and after each chemotherapy. Associations between QTc interval prolongation and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of potassium channel genes were also investigated.

RESULTS
A total of 131 ECG records were obtained in 34 patients who received 153 cycles of FEC100. QTc intervals could be measured in 127 records. There was a significant trend toward QTc interval prolongation after each treatment, persisting through four cycles of chemotherapy (P < 0.001). Median QTc interval prolongations were 13, 11, 18, and 14 ms in the first through fourth cycles of chemotherapy, respectively. QTc intervals differed significantly between cycles 1 and 4 before treatment as well as after treatment (P < 0.05). A single supraventricular premature contraction was noted in 3 (2.3%) of the 131 cycles in 2 (5.9%) of the 34 patients. There was no significant association between QTc interval prolongation and SNPs of potassium channel genes.

CONCLUSION
This prospective study confirmed that FEC100 is associated with significant QTc interval prolongation in women with early breast cancer.


The search for new peptides to be used as analgesics in place of morphine has been mainly directed to develop peptide analogues or peptidomimetics having higher biological stability and receptor selectivity. Indeed, most of the alkaloid opioid counterindications are due to the scarce stability and the contemporary activation of different receptor types. However, the development of several extremely stable and selective peptide ligands for the different opioid receptors, and the recent discovery of the micro-receptor selective endomorphins, rendered this search less fundamental. In recent years, other opioid peptide properties have been investigated in the search for new pharmacological tools. The utility of a drug depends on its ability to reach appropriate receptors at the target tissue and to remain metabolically stable in order to produce the desired effect. This review deals with the recent investigations on peptide bioavailability, in particular barrier penetration and resistance against enzymatic degradation; with the development of peptides having activity at different receptors; with chimeric peptides, with propeptides, and with non-conventional peptides, lacking basic pharmacophoric features.


Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent important post-transcriptional regulators with a dynamic expression profile during health and disease. Objectives: We explored the miRNA profile of human mast cells (MCs) during sensitization with IgE, during activation through IgE, and relat ed it to prostaglandin D2 synthesis and histamine release. Method: We investigated the expression pattern of 762 miRNAs during the IgE-mediated sensitization and activation of MCs cultured from CD133+ stem cells that were isolated from allergic asthmatic patients and nonatopic controls. Results: IgE-mediated sensitization increased the expression of miRNA-210 eight-fold. This increase was sustained during IgE-mediated MC activation. Furthermore, we confirmed the increase of the miRNA-132/212 cluster after MC activation. Predicted target genes of miRNA-210/132/212 were enriched in several pathways known to be involved in MC activation. Histamine release was significantly higher in MCs from allergic patients when compared to controls, and a number of miRNAs correlated with histamine release and prostaglandin D2 synthesis during MC activation. Conclusion: The miRNAs and analysis presented here can help to elucidate the role of miRNAs in mediator release during MC activation. We speculate that miRNA-210 could be important in MC sensitization that leads to allergic symptoms.


Developing countries are facing the Covid-19 epidemic with particular challenges, such as their economic and labor force composition. In this research I will extend the so-called SIR-macro model with demand and supply effects to study how the size of the informal sector impact the ability of these countries to respond to the epidemic. Lockdown policies are useful to control the health crisis but these are less effective in informal markets. As a result, infection and death rates will not decrease as expected, and since informal activities are not counted in the calculation of the GDP, this would exacerbate the size of the recession. Finally, in order to generate similar results to an economy with only formal markets, the economy with informal markets has to implement more severe containment policies.


Thymic presentation of self-antigens is critical for establishing a functional yet self-tolerant T cell population. Hybrid peptides formed through transpeptidation within pancreatic beta cell lysosomes have been proposed as a new class of autoantigens in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). While the production of hybrid peptides in the thymus has not been explored, due to the nature of their generation, it is thought to be highly unlikely. Therefore, hybrid peptide-reactive thymocytes may preferentially escape thymic selection and contribute significantly to T1D progression. Using an antibody-peptide conjugation system, we targeted the 2.5HIP hybrid peptide towards thymic resident Langerin+ dendritic cells to enhance thymic presentation during the early neonatal period. Our results indicated that anti-Langerin-2.5HIP delivery can enhance T cell central tolerance toward cognate thymocytes in NOD.BDC2.5 mice. Strikingly, a single dose treatment with anti-Langerin-2.5HIP during neonatal period delayed diabetes onset in NOD mice, indicating the potential of antibody-mediated delivery of autoimmune neo-antigens during early stages of life as a therapeutic option in the prevention of autoimmune diseases.


Individual brain nuclei and regions of the central nervous system of adult male roughskin newts (Taricha granulosa) were microdissected and the concentrations of norepinephrine, epinephrine, 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, dopamine, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, and serotonin were determined using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with electrochemical detection. The pattern of distribution of these catecholamines and indoleamines revealed many similarities between this urodele and other vertebrates. The highest concentrations of biogenic amines were observed in brainstem, hypothalamic, and basal forebrain structures; the lowest concentrations were observed in the internal granule layer of the olfactory bulb and pallial structures of the telencephalon. High concentrations of catecholamines and indoleamines were found in hypothalamic periventricular regions that are known to include cerebrospinal fluid-contacting, monoamine-containing neuronal cell bodies. The rostral diencephalon, which included the preoptic recess organ, had high concentrations of the primary catecholamines, norepinephrine and dopamine, and extremely high concentrations of the secondary catecholamine epinephrine. The dorsomedial infundibular hypothalamic region, which included the paraventricular organ, had high concentrations of dopamine and serotonin. The lateral infundibular hypothalamic region, which included the nucleus infundibularis dorsalis, had high concentrations of each of the biogenic amines. The results revealed unique patterns of distribution for each of the catecholamines and indoleamines studied, and provided evidence that regions of the hypothalamus that include cerebrospinal fluid-contacting, monoamine-containing neuronal cell bodies are focal regions for the metabolism of multiple biogenic amines.


As the population ages, there are greater demands for housing and communities that support independent living for the high-needs elderly. This research qualitatively examines the meaningful activities and relationships of 30 residents requiring assistance in senior housing complexes in New Zealand. Using semi-structured interviews and direct observation, data was gathered on both the perceptions and spatial use of those activities which are significant contributors to quality of life (QoL) and are also greatly influenced by the design of living environments. Emergent themes for meaningful activities and relationships included a desire for: a variety of activities motivated by familiarity; keeping active/able; privacy; maintaining relationships with family friends, other residents and staff; and a connection with, and contribution to, the wider community and nature. Factors such as safety, support availability, connection and privacy, as well as the influence of impairments and personal preferences have relevance for design. The research finds that the design of personal dwellings has a significant impact on the ability of the high needs elderly to maintain their QoL. In the design of individual dwellings, spatial solutions are required to provide greater control for personal activities as well as increased flexibility for social activities within limited interior spaces. As a decline in mobility is commonplace for those with high needs, greater attention is needed to resident walkability. Improvements in QoL can be achieved both through a reorganisation of the home and through bridging the home with the wider community and in doing so, facilitating meaningful activities and relationships.


: Benign fibrous lesions of the digits can present a considerable diagnostic challenge. Some lesions may resemble sarcomas, resulting in needless amputation. One such benign entity resembles myositis ossificans histologically but presents as an aggressive hand lesions. Unfortunately, this lesion has been given multiple names. It is most appropriately termed florid reactive periostitis. This paper reports a case of florid reactive periostitis in a 12-year-old girl.


Tumor-derived exosomes, which contain RNA, DNA, and proteins, are a potentially rich non-invasive source of biomarkers. However, no efficient isolation or detection methods are yet available. Here, we developed a microfluidic Raman biochip designed to isolate and analyze exosomes in situ. Anti-CD63 magnetic nanoparticles were used to enrich exosomes through mixing channels of a staggered triangular pillar array. EpCAM-functionalized Raman-active polymeric nanomaterials (Raman beads) allow rapid analysis of exosome samples within 1 h, with a quantitative signal at 2230 cm-1. The limit of detection of this biochip approaches 1.6 × 102 particles per mL with 20 μL samples. The newly developed biochip assay was successfully applied in the determination of exosomes from clinical serum samples. Thus, this novel device may have potential as a clinical exosome analysis tool for prostate cancer.


Robust resource demand prediction is crucial for efficient allocation of resources to service requests in a distributed service delivery system. There are two problems in resource demand prediction: firstly to estimate the volume of service requests that come in at different time points and at different geo-locations, secondly to estimate the resource demand given the estimated volume of service requests. While a lot of literature exists to address the first problem, in this work, we have proposed a data-driven statistical method for robust resource demand prediction to address the second problem. The method automates the identification of various system operational characteristics and contributing factors that influence the system behavior to generate an adaptive low variance resource demand prediction model. Factors can be either continuous or categorical in nature. The method assumes that each service request resolution involves multiple tasks. Each task is composed of multiple activities. Each task belongs to a task type, based on the type of the resource it requires to resolve that task. Our method supports configurable tasks per service request, and configurable activities per task. The demand prediction model produces an aggregated resource demand required to resolve all the activities under a task by activity sequence modeling; and aggregated resource demand by resource type, required to resolve all the activities under a service request by task sequence modeling.


As information technology is rapidly progressing, an enormous amount of media can be easily exchanged through Internet and other communication networks. Increasing amounts of digital image, video, and music have created numerous information security issues and is now taken as one of the top research and development agendas for researchers, organizations, and governments worldwide. Multimedia Forensics and Security provides an in-depth treatment of advancements in the emerging field of multimedia forensics and security by tackling challenging issues such as digital watermarking for copyright protection, digital fingerprinting for transaction tracking, and digital camera source identification.


Extensive simulations of cytochrome c in solution are performed to address the apparent contradiction between large reorganization energies of protein electron transfer typically reported by atomistic simulations and much smaller values produced by protein electrochemistry. The two sets of data are reconciled by deriving the activation barrier for electrochemical reaction in terms of an effective reorganization energy composed of half the Stokes shift (characterizing the medium polarization in response to electron transfer) and the variance reorganization energy (characterizing the breadth of electrostatic fluctuations). This effective reorganization energy is much smaller than each of the two components contributing to it and is fully consistent with electrochemical measurements. Calculations in the range of temperatures between 280 and 360 K combine long, classical molecular dynamics simulations with quantum calculations of the protein active site. The results agree with the Arrhenius plots for the reaction rates and with cyclic voltammetry of cytochrome c immobilized on self-assembled monolayers. Small effective reorganization energy, and the resulting small activation barrier, is a general phenomenology of protein electron transfer allowing fast electron transport within biological energy chains.


Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is on the way to substitute traditional
bar codes in many fields of application. Especially the availability of passive ultra-high
frequency (UHF) RFID transponders (or tags) in the frequency band between 860 MHz
and 960 MHz has fostered the global application in supply chain management. However,
the full potential of these systems will only be exploited if the identification of objects
is complemented by accurate and robust localization.
Passive UHF RFID tags are cost-effective, very small, extremely lightweight, maintenancefree,
rugged and can be produced as adhesive labels that can be attached to almost any
object. Worldwide standards and frequency regulations have been established and a
wide infrastructure of identification systems is operated today. However, the passive
nature of the technology requires a simple communication protocol which results in
two major limitations with respect to its use for localization purposes: the small signal
bandwidth and the small allocated frequency bandwidth. In the presence of multipath
reflections, these limitations reduce the achievable localization accuracy and reliability.
Thus, new methods have to be found to realize passive UHF RFID localization systems
which provide sufficient performance in typical multipath situations.
In this thesis, an enhanced transmission channel model for passive UHF RFID localization
systems has been proposed which allows an accurate estimation of the channel
behaviour to multipath. It has been used to design a novel simulation environment and
to identify three solutions to minimize multipath interference: a) by varying the channel
interface parameters, b) by applying diversity techniques, c) by installation of UHF
absorbers. Based on the enhanced channel model, a new method for tag readability
prediction with high reliability has been introduced. Furthermore, a novel way to rate
the magnitude of multipath interference has been proposed. A digital receiver beamforming
localization method has been presented which uses the Root MUSIC algorithm
for angulation of a target tag and multipath reducing techniques for an optimum localization
performance. A new multiangulation algorithm has been proposed to enable
the application of diversity techniques. A novel transmitter beamforming localization
approach has been presented which exploits the precisely defined response threshold
of passive tags in order to achieve high robustness against multipath. The basic technique
has been improved significantly with respect to angular accuracy and processing
times. Novel experimental testbeds for receiver and transmitter beamforming have been
designed, built and used for verification of the localization performance in real-world
measurements. All the improvements achieved contribute to an enhancement of the accuracy and especially
the robustness of passive UHF RFID localization systems in multipath environments
which is the main focus of this research


X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy are used to study Si nanocrystal formation in Si-implanted SiO2 films as a function of thermal annealing. Analysis of the XPS Si 2p peaks shows the existence of five chemical structures corresponding to the Si oxidation states Sin+ (n = 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4) in the SiO2 films, and the concentration of each oxidation state is determined quantitatively. The XPS results show a clear picture of the evolution of the chemical structures and the formation of Si nanocrystals as functions of annealing temperature and annealing time. The evolution of the concentrations of the five oxidation states with annealing is explained in terms of the thermal decompositions of the suboxides corresponding to the three oxidation states Sin+ (n = 1, 2, and 3) and the thermal oxidation of the implanted Si.


The microenvironment of a tumor can influence both the morphology and the behavior of cancer cells which, in turn, can rapidly adapt to environmental changes. Increasing evidence points to the involvement of amoeboid cell migration and thus of cell blebbing in the metastatic process; however, the cues that promote amoeboid cell behavior in physiological and pathological conditions have not yet been clearly identified. Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) is found in high amount in the microenvironment of aggressive tumors and is considered as an independent marker of bad prognosis. Here we show by immunoblotting, activity assay and immunofluorescence that, in SW620 human colorectal cancer cells, matrix-associated PAI-1 plays a role in the cell behavior needed for amoeboid migration by maintaining cell blebbing, localizing PDK1 and ROCK1 at the cell membrane and maintaining the RhoA/ROCK1/MLC-P pathway activation. The results obtained by modeling PAI-1 deposition around tumors indicate that matrix-bound PAI-1 is heterogeneously distributed at the tumor periphery and that, at certain spots, the elevated concentrations of matrix-bound PAI-1 needed for cancer cells to undergo the mesenchymal-amoeboid transition can be observed. Matrix-bound PAI-1, as a matricellular protein, could thus represent one of the physiopathological requirements to support metastatic formation.


Transfer learning, in which a network is trained on one task and re-purposed on another, is often used to produce neural network classifiers when data is scarce or full-scale training is too costly. When the goal is to produce a model that is not only accurate but also adversarially robust, data scarcity and computational limitations become even more cumbersome. We consider robust transfer learning, in which we transfer not only performance but also robustness from a source model to a target domain. We start by observing that robust networks contain robust feature extractors. By training classifiers on top of these feature extractors, we produce new models that inherit the robustness of their parent networks. We then consider the case of fine tuning a network by re-training end-to-end in the target domain. When using lifelong learning strategies, this process preserves the robustness of the source network while achieving high accuracy. By using such strategies, it is possible to produce accurate and robust models with little data, and without the cost of adversarial training. Additionally, we can improve the generalization of adversarially trained models, while maintaining their robustness.


The introduction of EUV lithography will happen at a critical feature pitch which corresponds to a k1 factor of roughly 0.45. While this number seems not very aggressive compared to recent ArF lithography nodes, the number is sufficiently low that the introduction of assist features has to be considered. While the small NA makes the k1 factor larger, the depth of focus still needs to be scaled down with wavelength. However the exposure tool's focus control is not greatly improved over the ArF tools, so other solutions to improve the depth of focus, e.g. SRAFs, are needed. On the other hand, sub-resolution assist features (SRAFs) require very small mask dimensions, which make masks more costly to write and inspect. Another disadvantage of SRAFs is the fact that they may cause pattern-dependent best focus shift due to thick mask effects. Those effects can be predicted, but the shift of best focus and the associated tilt of Bossung curves make the process more difficult to control. We investigate the impact of SRAFs on printing in EUV lithography and evaluate advantages and disadvantages. By using image quality parameters such as best focus (BF), and depth of focus (DOF), respectively with and without SRAFs, we will answer the question if we can gain a net benefit for 1D and 2D patterns by adding SRAFs. SRAFs will only be introduced if any net improvement in process variation (PV) outweighs the additional expense of assist patterning on the mask. In this paper, we investigate the difference in printing behavior of symmetric and asymmetric SRAF placement and whether through slit effect needs to be considered in SRAF placement for EUV lithography.


The boron modified TiO2 nanotube (B-TNTs) samples were prepared via a hydrothermal treatment and an impregnation method, using boric acid as the boron precursor. Characterization methods including XRD, XPS, SEM and TEM were carried out to elucidate the structural evolution of the samples on the introduction of boron. The samples retained their crystallographic phase as anatase TiO2 after the modification with boron. Rh/B-TNTs catalysts, for the catalytic hydroformylation of styrene, were systematically investigated. It is shown that the boron loading and the B-TNTs preparation method have great effect on the behavior of the catalyst. Experimental results showed that the Rh/B-TNTs-hydrothermal-10% catalyst exhibited the best catalytic performance, affording the highest TOF (up to 18 458 h−1). These findings showed that boron modified TNTs can be an important milestone in the search for efficient heterogeneous catalysts for olefins hydroformylation.


Piezoelectric laminated structure is widely used as actuator's drive part. The different position of PZT on a piezoelectric vibrator causes different incentive effects. Therefore, seeking an optimal PZT position is of great significance to improve actuator's drive forces and electromechanical conversion efficiency. In this research, the optimization of PZT position was studied using the approximate solution of piezoelectric vibrator mode shape with mutation sections. The vibration mode function was expressed as a linear superposition of the admissible function according to Rayleigh Ritz method. Then solving of functional variation was converted into the solving of the coefficient matrix of the admissible function by Hamilton's principle. Through analyzing the forms of admissible functions, the admissible functions that satisfied the boundary conditions of displacement were chosen. For a given vibrator, approximate function for natural frequency and vibration mode was calculated in given admissible functions. Calculated values and experimental results were compared. Results showed that the more items an admissible function sequence had the closer the calculated results were to the experimental values. The errors of calculations were analyzed based on the selection of admissible functions and electromechanical coupling effect. Optimization of PZT position was achieved by analyzing the mode forces of the piezoelectric laminated vibrator.


We consider the Hamiltonian dynamics and thermodynamics of the two-dimensional vacuum dilatonic black hole in the presence of a timelike boundary with a fixed value of the dilaton field. A canonical transformation, previ-ously developed by Varadarajan and Lau, allows a reduction of the classical dynamics into an unconstrained Hamiltonian system with one canonical pair of degrees of freedom. The reduced theory is quantized, and a partition function of a canonical ensemble is obtained as the trace of the analytically continued time evolution operator. The partition function exists for any values of the dilaton field and the temperature at the boundary, and the heat capacity is always positive. For temperatures higher than β − 1 c ), the partition function is dominated by a classical black hole solution, and the dominant contribution to the entropy is the two-dimensional Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. For temperatures lower than β − 1 c , the partition function remains well-behaved and the heat capacity is positive in the asymptotically flat space limit, in contrast to the corresponding limit in four-dimensional spherically symmetric Einstein gravity; however, in this limit, the partition function is not dominated by a classical black hole solution.


This thesis presents the design, controls, and testing of two systems: a novel colonoscope locomotion design for diagnostics, and a biosensor capsule that implants a sensor in the small intestine. Each system requires special design considerations for use in the gastrointestinal system. Colonoscopy procedures are recommended as a screening for colon cancer and related conditions after the age of 50. The need for an improved colonoscope that reduces the colonoscopy time and patient discomfort is apparent. The semi-autonomous device presented here could likely reduce the colonoscopy procedure time by allowing the physician to focus more on the diagnosis and less on the procedure itself. It greatly reduces shear forces experienced on the colon wall, reducing pain and discomfort experienced by the patient. The biosensor capsule presented in this thesis is also used for diagnostics. The device implants a sensor into the intestine wall, a sensor that could be used to track pH levels, temperature, or possibly even caloric intake. This thesis explores the transport capsule design and some of the electrical hardware used. The thesis is divided into two parts, exploring both devices. Part one focuses on the design and testing of the colonoscope device, while part two focuses on the biosensor capsule device. In each part, the motivation behind each of the devices and the related works being accomplished at other research institutions are described. Each part then explores the design of the respective device and the reasons behind some of the design choices presented. For both projects, a significant amount of bench-top testing was performed; an in-depth look at the test methods and setup used, followed by the results of each is given. Results for the colonoscopy robot show full capability of traversing a 5-foot porcine colon with four 90-degree turns and potential for full automation. Results for the biosensor capsule device demonstrate the capability of sensor plate implantation and attachment lasting more than 40 hours. Finally, the conclusion section describes the future work associated with the device as well as the possibilities and accomplishments achieved through the design of each device, respectively. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Groundwater contamination becomes a great concern in many countries. One of the most important pollutants is hydrocarbons. Sources of Hydrocarbons pollutants in Gazacan be a result of accidental spills of petroleum products on the surface and uncontrolled disposal of wastewater. One of the common technologies for groundwater aquifer remediation from hydrocarbons is known as air sparging. In this study, a120 cm×100 cm×80 cmlaboratory scale aquifer model was implemented in order to investigate the effectiveness of air sparging technology in removal of petroleum products from contaminated site. Four pilot scale wells were installed at different depths and different spatial distribution. The central well was used for injecting air and the surrounding three wells were used for monitoring. The contaminated water and soil were tested for total organic carbon, lead, dissolved Oxygen and pH; one time before the start of treatment and four times through the treatment process. Total organic carbon in water and soil before air injection were 980 ppm and 0.08775 ppm, respectively. After air injection for three weeks (six hours daily) at flow rate range from 15 to20 L/min and at pressure range from 300 to 400 kPa, the concentration of pollutant was decreased to 4.0 ppm and 0.0 ppm in water and soil, respectively. Based on the results, it was clearly demonstrated that air sparging is a simple, effective and affordable technology that can be applied forGazaaquifer remediation in case of gasoline spill accidents.


Discouraged as he was about his ability to master the short-story form, Dreiser returned to it repeatedly because he wanted to create "pictures of life" of smaller scope than that afforded by the novel. He felt that, as well as a novel, a short story could suggest the finiteness of man in the midst of infinity, "a land, a people, a period, a mood," could dramatize the individual against his background of possibilities and limitations and present a full and satisfactory picture of life. In The Small Canvas, Joseph Griffin discusses Dreiser's artistry in the shorter form and shows mat the lack of popularity of Dreiser's short stories was because, like his novels, they questioned rather than glorified traditional values and even upset the moral and social code of the day. After an introduction describing Dreiser's early career as a writer of short fiction and the difficulties he encountered getting his stories accepted by magazine editors, Griffin analyses "Free" and Other Stories (1918) in Chapter Two, Chains (1927) in Chapter Three, and Dreiser's later stories (1929-1938) in Chapter Four. Chapter Five is devoted to tying together the various themes that run dirough the stories, and to evaluating Dreiser's skill and craftsmanship in the genre. Before discussing any story, Griffin provides information concerning its publication and composition, as well as relevant biographical data, and includes early reviewers' comments. In Part One of Sherwood Anderson, Claire Bruyà ̈re discusses Anderson's doubts concerning his ability to write, examining his feelings concerning artistic creation as a whole and his opinion of the work of others. In Part Two, she shows how his obsession widi disorder influenced his vision of American society and of Americans and dieir self-image, then examines how he attempted to solve the literary problems created by his awareness of disorder. Part Three is devoted to a discussion of immaturity: the normal immaturity of childhood and adolescence; the immaturity in particular of American men, who never mature psychologically and reach old age without having ever become emotional adults; and, finally, the immaturity of the blacks who remain emotionally young and who seem able to catalyze die white man's anxiety, thus helping him to mature. Part Four examines the themes of helplessness (impotence) and flight, linking them to social problems. She also shows how Anderson successfully reinvents the "grotesque." Both books are excellent, detailed studies. Although their approaches are radically different, they both cast a new and interesting light on the writers they study. Both books also assume that the reader is familiar with the works of the author under discussion and do not provide plot summaries. Both are highly readable and will be useful to scholars, teachers, and students alike. Finally, I should like to suggest that an English translation of Claire Bruyà ̈re's book would be a useful addition to the somewhat scanty body of critical work on Anderson.


These results seem to indicate that many bacteria may be utilized by tissue cells as food for growth or may contain a substance or substances stimulating cell growth or multiplication. This substance is stable and is not destroyed by heating to 100° C. or by long standing. With Micrococcus aureus this action is often neutralized or overcome by a substance inhibitory to growth. The nature of these substances has not yet been determined, though several attempts along this line were made by endeavoring to split the typhoid bacterial substance according to the method of Vaughan See PDF for Structure and testing the poisonous and non-poisonous residues separately. However, at the time too little bacterial substance was used to obtain enough end-products to be of much use, and the products so obtained prevented the plasma from coagulating. Even in the uncoagulated plasma there appeared to be an increase of cells in the cultures with the non-poisonous residue. The author hopes to be able to repeat these tests with split products at a later time when more bacterial substance is available, with the hope of obtaining more definite results.


Reliable seasonal forecasting of climate, particularly for the rainy season for South Africa, has the potential to be of great benefit to users. Foreknowledge of temperature and rainfall conditions can assist planning, management and mitigation decisions for users from many sectors of the economy. Pre-requisites of a useful seasonal forecast, however, would include ease of interpreta- tion, acceptable accuracy as well as efficient dissemination. This paper describes the process of the development, dissemination and use of seasonal climate forecasts in South Africa. We critically analyse the process and suggest proposals for further research and development. Also addressed are the needs of users, maximisation of potential forecast benefits and some proposals for more efficient distribution.


This paper describes the fully automatic creation of an environment's description using an image-based representation. This representation is a collection of cylindrical sample images combined into an "image-based virtual reality". The locations at which the environment will be sampled are chosen automatically using an operator inspired by models of human visual attention and saccadic motion. The image acquisition is performed by a mobile robot. The selection of vantage points is based on an analysis of the edge structure of sampled panoramic images. In order to trade off the optimality of the generated description of the navigation effort required in solving the online problem, a concept referred to as alpha-backtracking is introduced. The paper illustrates sample data acquired by the procedure.


Targeting of peptides, proteins, and other functional cargo into living cells is contingent upon efficient transport across the plasma membrane barrier. We have harnessed the signal sequence hydrophobic region (SSHR) to deliver functional cargoes to cultured cells and to experimental animals. We now report evidence that two chirally distinct forms of SSHR composed of all l or all d amino acids showed similar membrane-translocating activity as assessed by confocal microscopy, flow cytometry, and direct fluorescence measurement. An attached nuclear localization sequence ferried by the SSHR enantiomers displayed similar intracellular function by inhibiting inducible nuclear import of transcription factor nuclear factor κ B and suppressing nuclear factor κ B-dependent gene expression of cytokines. A nuclear localization sequence comprised of a positively charged cluster of amino acids was rapidly translocated by SSHR enantiomers to the interior of unilamellar phospholipid vesicles. These findings indicate that the SSHR translocates functional peptides directly through the plasma membrane phospholipid bilayer without involving chirally specific receptor/transporter mechanisms. This mechanism of SSHR translocation is suitable for facile delivery of biologically active peptides for cell-based and animal-based functional proteomic studies.


In this paper, we propose the use of simple KML files to increase student engagement when learning file I/O. We also report on our trial study where we had one group of students learn I/O functions using conventional exercises while we had another working with KML-based files that could trivially be viewed in Google Earth. Our assessment of student engagement indicated that students in the experiment group registered significantly higher in the usefulness and interest dimensions.


Pseudo-linear impulsive differential equations in a Banach space are considered. It is assumed that the conditions of a small change in the operator coefficients of the equation are satisfied. Using the method of "frozen" coefficients and the methods of commutator calculus, the problem of global asymptotic stability of a pseudo-linear impulsive differential equation is reduced to the problem of estimating the evolution operator for linear impulsive differential equation with constant operator coefficients. The obtained results are applied for stability study of a nonlinear system of ordinary impulsive differential equations. Lyapunov's direct method is used for estimating the fundamental matrix of the corresponding system of impulsive differential equations with constant coefficients. The stability conditions are formulated in terms of the solvability of certain linear matrix inequalities. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 34D23; 34G20; 34K45


Fashion styles are closely related to their social and cultural background. Clothing is a product of materials and ideas. Clothing satisfies people physically and psychologically. Androgynous style is not a recent development; it was, is and will continue to be popular, which is special in fashion history. Androgynous style is prevailing currently. Despite its appearance, androgynous style is closely connected to social and cultural influences, for example, mass media, lifestyles and improvements in production methods in the clothing industry. In this paper, there is a deep examination of androgynous style, the significance of and reasons for its popularity with societies from the past up to today.


An electric field is employed for the active tuning of the structural colour in photonic crystals, which acts as an effective external stimulus with an impact on light transmission manipulation. In this work, we demonstrate structural colour in a photonic crystal device comprised of alternating layers of silver nanoparticles and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, exhibiting spectral shifts of around 10 nm for an applied voltage of only 10 V. The accumulation of charge at the metal/dielectric interface with an applied electric field leads to an effective increase of the charges contributing to the plasma frequency in silver. This initiates a blue shift of the silver plasmon band with a simultaneous blue shift of the photonic band gap as a result of the change in the silver dielectric function (i.e. decrease of the effective refractive index). These results are the first demonstration of active colour tuning in silver/titanium dioxide nanoparticle-based photonic crystals and open the route to metal/dielectric-based photonic crystals as electro-optic switches.


Low power wide area (LPWA) wireless networks based on the LoRa physical layer have attracted huge attention in recent years, both from industry and from academic researchers. While this rising popularity is due to this technology's demonstrated effectiveness and low cost, unfortunately, due to their complexity, the timing and frequency synchronization algorithms required to detect LoRa-modulated frames, in the context of minimum sampling rate optimum receivers, have received little attention. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and describe how robust frame detection can be performed while focusing on minimal complexity implementations of the proposed algorithms. The ultimate goal is to propose frame detection techniques applicable to recently proposed ultra-low power software-defined receivers.


SUMMARY 1. To obtain additional information on the role of the ionic composition of the vascular wall in the pathogenesis of arterial hypertension, we studied the distribution of ions in aorta and tail arteries of rats with experimental renal hypertension. 2. The water content of rat aorta is markedly increased in hypertensive animals [I992 ml/kg-dry weight (DW) compared with 1688 ml/kg DW]. 3. Na, K, Ca, Mg and to a less extent CI content is increased in both aorta and tail arteries. 4. These modifications are not affected by incubation in vitro. 5. Compartmental analysis as well as pharmacological studies suggest that part of the water increase and most of the potassium excess are related to a hypertrophy of smooth-muscle cells in hypertensive arteries. 6. The sodium excess in the vessels of hypertensive rats is bound in the extracellular space on anionic sites. 7. From these observations, it seems unlikely that the ionic modification described could affect the membrane potential of smooth-muscle cells, since the ratio between extra- and intra-cellular concentration is not markedly affected. 8. The bound sodium could affect the viscoelastic properties of the arteries of hypertensive animals. Cell hypertrophy by itself could explain at least partly the modification of the ionic composition and the increased reactivity of hypertensive vessels.


This paper presents the Web version of the philological workstation BAMBI (Better Access to Manuscript and Browsing of Images) and its design. The BAMBI Web workstation allows historians, and more particularly philologists, to work on manuscripts (transcription, annotations, indexing, etc.) alongside the Internet network. Our approach for the Web implementation of the philological workstation is based on the reuse of the local BAMBI software. We have used the formalism of UML (Unified Modelling Language) for the distributed software design, and especially the concepts based on the diagrams of collaboration.The implementation is based on the ActiveX approach.


Abstract Prohexadione calcium is an experimental turfgrass growth regulator that selectively controls or suppresses annual bluegrass in desirable turfgrass such as creeping bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, and perennial ryegrass. To help explain interspecific differences in turfgrass and weed response to prohexadione calcium, two laboratory trials were conducted to measure 14C-prohexadione calcium absorption, translocation, and metabolism in these four species. Annual and Kentucky bluegrass absorbed more prohexadione calcium than creeping bentgrass and perennial ryegrass when averaged over harvest timing and trial. Radioactivity partitioning to other foliage did not differ between species but annual bluegrass and Kentucky bluegrass translocated more radioactivity to roots and evolved more radioactive CO2 than creeping bentgrass and perennial ryegrass. Thin-layer chromatographic separations indicate radioactivity was translocated predominately as prohexadione calcium. When averaged over species and trial, 25 and 16% of recovered prohexadione calcium was metabolized within 1 h after treatment in treated leaves and other foliage, respectively. The rate of metabolic degradation was 0.7% h−1 in treated leaves and 0.4% h−1 in other foliage. Previous research indicates that annual and Kentucky bluegrass growth is suppressed more by prohexadione calcium than is growth of creeping bentgrass and perennial ryegrass. Increased prohexadione calcium absorption partially explained these interspecific differences in growth suppression. Nomenclature: Prohexadione calcium, calcium salt of 3,5-dioxo-4 propionylcyclohexane-carboxylic acid; annual bluegrass, Poa annua L. POAAN; creeping bentgrass, Agrostis stolonifera L., 'Penncross'; Kentucky bluegrass, Poa pratensis L. 'Kelly'; perennial ryegrass, Lolium perenne L. 'Prosport'.


Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains a public health problem due to high rate of new infections, high disease prevalence, and the significant morbidity and mortality associated with the disease. Musculoskeletal system is commonly affected in HIV patients and rheumatic musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) often contributes to the burden of HIV disease by increasing morbidity and mortality. Early and effective initiation of combine antiretroviral therapy (cART) have been shown to significantly reduce burden of disease in HIV infected individuals, thereby improving outcome and survival of patients. This cross-sectional study aims to ascertain the effect of ART on the overall prevalence and pattern of RMDs in Nigeria patients with HIV infection. Two hundred HIV-seropositive subjects and 200 age and gender matched HIV negative controls were recruited for the study. HIV positive patients were further grouped into 2:cART naive (100 patients) and cART-experienced (100 patients). All participants were screened for the presence of rheumatic disease, using a validated interviewer administered structured questionnaire. Rheumatologic diseases were diagnosed using the ACR criteria or other well validated classification criteria. Data were analyzed using SPSS 17.0 Rheumatologic disease was diagnosed in 56 (28%) HIV positive patients compared to 15 (7.5%) HIV negative control. Of the 56 HIV-positive patients diagnosed with rheumatic disease, 21(37.5%) were cART experienced and 35(62.5%) were ART naive. The odds ratio for development of rheumatic disease was significantly less in patients on ART (OR=0.49, 95% CI= 0.26-0.93, P= 0.02) Point prevalence of rheumatic musculoskeletal diseases is lower in HIV patients on cART, and the usage of cART is associated with reduced odds of development of HIV associated rheumatic disease.


Abstract: In order to minimize maintenance cost and improve rural transit vehicles services, a Regional Maintenance Center (RMC) concept was conceived and utilized by the Illinois Department of Transportation (DOT) to maintain and repair rural transit vehicles within a geographical region. The key attributes of an RMC is the resource sharing between urban and rural transit during their respective idle time – the urban transit maintenance facility is utilized to provide vehicle maintenance and repair to rural transit vehicles. Benefits of RMC for rural transit providers include lower vehicle maintenance costs and better maintenance quality. Benefits of RMC for urban transit include lower maintenance operating costs and higher maintenance facility utilization rates. Previous studies show that RMC is a new concept, and research in creating and managing RMCs does not exist. In attempt to assist practitioners in creating and managing RMCs, this study examined existing literature and attempted to identify research, tools, and techniques that are relevant to RMCs. The foci of the literature review are rural and urban transit vehicle management, rural and urban transit vehicle maintenance, vehicle maintenance management, resource sharing, performance measurement on transit vehicle maintenance, and best practice in transit maintenance. A total of 169 publications were found. An analysis of the existing literature showed that research in public transportation management had increased significantly over the past 50 years, with 60% of the existing literature focused on urban transit and 32% focused on rural transit. This study provides an analysis of research relevant to creating and managing a RMC, and provides a compendium of publications in public transit vehicle maintenance and management.


Entity linking is a core task in textual document processing, which consists in identifying the entities of a knowledge base (KB) that are mentioned in a text. Approaches in the literature consider either independent linking of individual mentions or collective linking of all mentions. Regardless of this distinction, most approaches rely on the Wikipedia encyclopedic KB in order to improve the linking quality, by exploiting its entity descriptions (web pages) or its entity interconnections (hyperlink graph of web pages). In this paper, we devise a novel collective linking technique which departs from most approaches in the literature by relying on a structured RDF KB. This allows exploiting the semantics of the interrelationships that candidate entities may have at disambiguation time rather than relying on raw structural approximation based on Wikipedia's hyperlink graph. The few approaches that also use an RDF KB simply rely on the existence of a relation between the candidate entities to which mentions may be linked. Instead, we weight such relations based on the RDF KB structure and propose an efficient decoding strategy for collective linking. Experiments on standard benchmarks show significant improvement over the state of the art.


High population frequency with the prevalence of connective tissue dysplasia, the unique role of connective tissue in the exercise of various functions of organs and systems of the body significantly affects the clinical course of bronchopulmonary diseases in children. The relationship between the presence of tracheobronchial dyskinesia and other phenotypic signs of "weakness" of connective tissue is noted. The clinical significance of tracheobronchial dyskinesia is that it is one of the causes of bronchial obstruction and chronic cough. Through mechanisms of hyperventilation and local inflammation, bronchial obstruction can lead to the development of emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and pulmonary heart. The study included 72 inpatients (the 1 group comprised 41 children with acute obstructive bronchitis and the 2 group had 31 children with acute bronchitis simple). To assess the status of connective tissue metabolism, the daily excretion of the metabolite of connective tissue – oxyproline in the daily urine sample was determined. The metabolism of glycosaminoglycans was studied by the level of uronic acids in the urine. The level of blood glycosaminoglycans was determined. In establishing the presence of connective tissue dysplasia, the levels of stigmatization (a conditional index that includes the total number of connective tissue dysplasia points with the allocation of low, medium and high levels) were taken into account using the table "Indicators in the severity of connective tissue dysplasia". During the analysis of connective tissue metabolism in the serum of children with acute bronchitis complicated by broncho-obstructive syndrome with connective tissue dysplasia we observed phenotypic changes in the form of a decrease in the total level of the glycosaminoglycans, 2 and 3 fractions of the glycosaminoglycans, as well as an increase in the concentration of chondroitin sulfates of urine. Phenotypic portrait of children of the first group was characterized by dysplastic disorders of the skeleton, skin and its appendages, eyes, ears. From the list of external manifestations of dysmorphogenesis of children of this group, including 55 dysplastic signs, 24 (43.6%) were absent in children of the second group. The unfavorable factors of the formation of a syndrome of bronchial obstruction include the age of a mother older than 30 years and father's age older than 36 years, children born of the 3 or more pregnancies and childbirth, and burdened with an antenatal period of development of the fetus (anemia in pregnant women, manifestations of pregnancy gestosis, threat of premature abortion) and bad habits (including smoking) of mothers during this pregnancy. Connective tissue dysplasia causes prolongation of cough symptoms and physical changes (in the form of box shades of percussion sound, hard breathing, dry and damp mid-rash wheezing), which lead to the need of longer usage of mucolytic drugs.


Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) Gene has an important role in calcium and bone metabolism because is required in mineralization of normal bone, calcium absorption, organizing calcium and phosphate homeostasis, and regulating the secretion of parathyroid hormone. Genetics research found that BsmI polymorphism region in VDR gene relates to osteoporosis, other bone diseases, and cartilage metabolism in particular allele. The aim of this research is to analyze polymorphism of VDR (825G/T) gene in the eighth intron of beta thalassemia major on Sundanese population. In this case-control study, SNP 825G/T of 66 beta thalassemia major patients (case group) and 15 controls (control group) were evaluated using PCR-RFLP with restriction of enzyme BsmI. Vitamin D and calcium level were analyzed using ELISA. Genotype distributions and allele frequencies were analyzed chi-squared test. This study found that the vitamin D level was significantly lower on case group than on control group (vitamin D 56.1 pmol/L 80.30%; p8.5 mg/dL; p=0.025). Genotype frequency 825 VDR on case group was compared with control group, and there was no BB genotype in control group. There is only one case on case group (OR, 2.63; 95%CI, 0.73-9.64). B allele is significant in both case and control groups. There was no significant difference between case and control groups (OR, 2, 95%CI, 0.71-5.92). There was a significant difference in level of vitamin D and calcium, and also in allele frequency between on case and control groups.


This paper contributes to our understanding of the impact of institutions on incomes of workers in developing countries by rigorously addressing the question as to whether changes in minimum wages can change the inequality of the distribution of earnings. More specifically, we analyze whether changes in Costa Rica's complex institution of multiple minimum wages in the 1980s and 1990s acted as a countervailing force to the unequalizing effect of globalization. Using annual data on workers from the 1987-1997 household surveys, it is shown that changes in the legal minimum wages did indeed have an effect on wage inequality and that these changes would not have been captured using the simple interpretation of minimum wages found in much of the literature.


ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS. Carya illinoinensis, nitrate, total N, Kjeldahl, organic N ABSTRACT. Nitrogen was applied to mature pecan (Carya illinoinensis Wangenh. C. Koch.) trees annually as a single application at 125 kg·ha -1 N in March or as a split application with 60% (75 kg·ha -1 N) applied in March and the remaining 40% (50 kg·ha -1 N) applied during the first week of October. Nitrogen treatment did not affect yield, and had little effect on the amount of N absorbed. Nitrogen absorption was greater between budbreak and the end of shoot expansion than at other times of the year. Substantial amounts of N were also absorbed between leaf fall and budbreak. Little N was absorbed between the end of shoot expansion and leaf fall, or tree N losses met or exceeded N absorption. Pistillate flowers and fruit accounted for a small portion of the tree's N; ≈0.6% at anthesis and 4% at harvest. The leaves contained ≈25% of the tree's N in May and ≈17% when killed by freezing temperatures in November. Leaves appeared to contribute little to the tree's stored N reserves. Roots ≥1 cm diameter were the largest site of N storage during the winter. Stored N reserves in the perennial parts of the tree averaged 13% of the tree's total N over a three year period. Current year's N absorption was inversely related to the amount of stored N, but was not related to the current or previous year's crop load.


Foreword by Patrick D. Miller In this remarkable, acclaimed history of the development of monotheism, Mark S. Smith explains how Israel's religion evolved from a cult of Yahweh as a primary deity among many to a fully defined monotheistic faith with Yahweh as sole god. Repudiating the traditional view that Israel was fundamentally different in culture and religion from its Canaanite neighbors, this provocative book argues that Israelite religion developed, at least in part, from the religion of Canaan. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological sources, Smith cogently demonstrates that Israelite religion was not an outright rejection of foreign, pagan gods but, rather, was the result of the progressive establishment of a distinctly separate Israelite identity. This thoroughly revised second edition of"The Early History of God"includes a substantial new preface by the author and a foreword by Patrick D. Miller."


A commonly used typology in the cross-national study of gendered working time depicts variation in the strength of a 'male-breadwinner' model. Yet the question at the heart of these comparisons is actually con-cerned with why differences in women's bread winning exist cross-nationally. In addition, there is a growing awareness of the need to explore variation in gender contracts within societies too, and class is a fundamental indi-cator of heterogeneity in women's bread winning. In this context, this paper investi-gates two societies characterized by somewhat different strength male-breadwinner models: Britain and Denmark. It examines the extent to which women can be seen to be 'bread-winner' workers in the household, and what policies facilitate or impede their bread winning in the two societies. It is argued that although gender-based breadwinner models usefully depict broad differences in societal work patterns, their relative neglect of non-gendered dimensions of inequality - such as class - lead to their underestimating variety in women's experiences within societies and neglecting such non-gender-based factors which may unite women cross-nationally.


Uranium(VI) is very prominent in its complexation tendency, especially when it forms compounds exhibiting high coordination numbers. A metal acquires a high coordination number when (a) it is a small and highly charged ion with
suitable vacant orbital of right energy, (b) it can attain a noble gas structure (effective atomic rule), and (c) it can attaina symmetrical shape and high CFSE in complex. U(VI) ion has positive charge which is one of the essential conditionsfor high coordination, as it will not allow the negative charge donated by electrons from the ligands to accumulate on the central metal ion. U6+ successfully reveals high coordination numbers 6 to 10. The examples of different coordination numbers of UO2 2+ coordination compounds are available in literature, many of which have been reported from our laboratory. We have synthesized and reported a number of high coordinated complexes of UO2 2+ with Schiff bases. All the coordination compounds reported herein have been suitably characterized by various physico-chemical techniques. The present review summarizes mostly our work on the UO2 2+ complexes of Schiff bases 4-aminoantipyrine, including 4-aminoantipyrine derived semicarbazones, thiosemicarbazones and some mixed ligand complexes.


In ecosystems, predator-prey interactions exhibit complex patterns and are the vehicle of energy and material through the food web. Predator-prey dynamics are commonly analyzed through differential equations, since they give a suitable framework to handle properties such as persistence, stability and bifurcation. The functional response, defined as the rate of exploitation/consumption of preys by predators, is nonlinear whenever there are satiation conditions and sizable handling time (capturing and eating) [1]. Moreover, in a real food web, including generalist predators, functional responses depend on all prey densities leading to the use of multi-species functional responses (MSFR). In eastern France, the red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ) is a generalist predator with two rodents as main preys: the water vole ( Arvicola terrestris ) and the common vole ( Microtus arvalis ). The ecological niches of both preys may partially overlap while their density dynamics respond differently according to landscape patterns. As foxes are opportunistic and omnivorous predators, we hypothesized that they exhibit intense switching behavior. Many MSFR have been proposed with different assumptions such as (i) the presence of switching [2], (ii) optimal and complementary feeding [3], and (iii) dietary history [4]. We aim at studying several hypothesis underlying MSFR formulations in the fox-voles system of central Europe. Using a Bayesian approach, several theoretical functional responses built on different combinations of predation strategies were fitted to data previously collected [5]. We showed that the best MSFR models (according to DIC and WAIC) matched with previous estimations showing a preference for Microtus sp . over A. terrestris when both preys are at low densities followed by a switch to A. terrestris preference when both abundances are high. We also suggested that a synergism occurs (i.e.: over constant total biomass, the total ingestion is greater when prey densities are evenly distributed). Then, through mathematical models built on logistic growth functions and MSFR, we investigated the stabilizing effect of the best MSFR on voles populations. Simulations showed that switching and synergistic effects of predation may accentuate an observed phenomenon of decorrelation of voles populations [5]. This work has a direct application in the building of trophic transfer models able to accommodate parasite and pollutant transmissions between small-mammals and foxes. [1] Jeschke, J.M., Kopp, M. and Tollrian, R., 2004. Consumer-food systems: why type I functional responses are exclusive to filter feeders. Biological Reviews 79, 337–349. [2] Murdoch, W.W., 1969. Switching in general predators: experiments on predator specificity and stability of prey populations. Ecological Monographs 39, 335–354. [3] Gentleman, W., Leising, A., Frost, B., Strom, S., Murray, J., 2003. Functional responses for zooplankton feeding on multiple resources: a review of assumptions and biological dynamics. Deep-Sea Research II 50, 2847–2875. [4] van Leeuwen, E., Jansen, V.A.A., Bright, P.W., 2007. How population dynamics shape the functional response in a one-predator-two-prey system. Ecology 88, 1571–1581. [5] Raoul, F., Deplazes, P., Rieffel, D., Lambert, J.-C. and Giraudoux, P., 2010. Predator dietary response to prey density variation and consequences for cestode transmission. Oecologia 164,129–139.


Carbon is the basis for life, as we know it, but its origin is still largely unclear. Carbon-rich Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars (carbon stars) play an important role in the cosmic matter cycle and may contribute most of the carbon in the Galaxy. In this thesis it is explored how the dust-driven mass loss of these stars depends on the basic stellar parameters by computing a large grid of wind models. The existence of a critical wind regime and mass-loss thresholds for dust-driven winds are confirmed. Furthermore, a steep dependence of mass loss on carbon excess is found. Exploratory work on the effects of different stellar metallicities and the sizes of dust grains shows that strong dust-driven winds develop also at moderately low metallicities, and that typical sizes of dust grains affect the wind properties near a mass-loss threshold. It is demonstrated that the mass-loss rates obtained with the wind models have dramatic consequences when used in models of carbon-star evolution. A pronounced superwind develops soon after the star becomes carbon rich, and it therefore experiences only a few thermal pulses as a carbon star before the envelope is lost. The number of dredge-up events and the thermal pulses is limited by a self-regulating mechanism: each thermal pulse dredges up carbon, which increases the carbon excess and hence also the mass-loss rate. In turn, this limits the number of thermal pulses. The mass-loss evolution during a thermal pulse (He-shell flash) is considered as an explanation of the observations of so-called detached shells around carbon stars. By combining models of dust-driven winds with a stellar evolution model, and a simple hydrodynamic model of the circumstellar envelope, it is shown that wind properties change character during a He-shell flash such that a thin detached gas shell can form by wind-wind interaction. Finally, it is suggested that carbon stars are responsible for much of the carbon in the interstellar medium, but a scenario where high-mass stars are major carbon producers cannot be excluded. In either case, however, the carbon abundances of the outer Galactic disc are relatively low, and most of the carbon has been released quite recently. Thus, there may neither be enough carbon, nor enough time, for more advanced carbon-based life to emerge in the outer Galaxy. This lends some support to the idea that only the mid-part of the Galactic disc can be a "Galactic habitable zone", since the inner parts of the Galaxy are plagued by frequent supernova events that are presumably harmful to all forms of life.


Anti-retroviral therapy (ART) is a lifesaving treatment for HIV positive people. Adherence to treatment protocol is extremely important to ensuring that drug efficacy does not fail with time. Research findings by other researchers in developed countries indicate that adherence to ART treatment protocol is a problem.. It implies that in developing countries like Kenya which have poor health infrastructure the problem is much bigger. The research was conducted in Homa-Bay District which is a typical rural district in Kenya where poverty is rampant among the rural population, the standard of education is not only low but 3}~ in the decline. The district ~l!'<Q h~ poor health infrastructure. This research investigated adherence to ART among teachers in HomaBay who form the bulk of the Government civil servants. Homa-Bay District is hard hit with HIV/ AIDS with prevalence rate of 28% this is threatening to underminethe standard of education in the district. Adherence to ART protocol among teachers on ART, will serve as a strong indicator of the extent of this problem on the general population. Research method-which was used was observational study, mainly by using cross sectional survey. Snow ball sampling was used, Methods of data collection were by using structured questionnaire, analyzed by statistical package fur social sciences (SPSS) Computer Software. The data collected was tested using a Chi square to test the hypothesis with confidence limit of p= 0.05. A sample size of 300 teachers was used. The findings of this research revealed that socio demographic factors such as age. marital status and drug and substance abuse do influence adherence to ART protocol only 10.8]&/0 of the sampled 300 teachers adhered to ART protocol These fmdings were significant. The outcome of this research will be used by stake holders In the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health to educate people on ARV adherence to treatment protocol.


The response of Windsnyer pigs to diets containing varying levels of potato hash silage in nutritionally related blood biochemistry, carcass traits and primal pork was estimated. Thirty-six growing clinically healthy male Windsnyer pigs with an initial weight of 36 kg ± 4.89 (mean ± standard deviation (SD)) were randomly assigned to six experimental diets containing 0, 80, 160, 240, 320, and 400 potato hash silage g/kg dry matter (DM). Experimental diets were derived from mixing a summit diet containing no potato hash silage and a dilution diet containing 400 g potato hash silage/kg in various proportions. Pigs were allowed ad libitum access to diets and water. There was no relationship between inclusion levels of potato hash silage and albumin: globulin ratio, total protein, and uric acid. As inclusion levels of potato hash silage varied, there was a positive linear relationship between silage and albumin concentration. Globulin concentration had a positive quadratic relationship with the inclusion of potato hash silage. Inclusion levels of potato hash silage resulted in a positive quadratic relationship in alkaline phosphatase. There was a negative linear response in warm carcass weight and cold carcass weight to inclusion levels of silage. A negative linear response was observed in dressing percentage. Different inclusion levels of potato hash silage caused a positive quadratic relationship in cooler shrink. There were negative linear relationships between inclusion of potato hash silage with shoulder fat, carcass length and backfat thickness. There was a negative linear relationship between eye muscle area and inclusion level of ensiled potato hash. There was a positive quadratic relationship between hindquarter length (HQL) and inclusion levels of silage. The observed linear relationship between hindquarter circumference (HQC) and inclusion levels of potato hash silage was negative. There is a need to predict the optimum inclusion level of potato hash silage without compromising the healthiness and carcass yield of pigs. Keywords : Alkaline phosphatase, backfat thickness, cold carcass weight, cooler shrink, dorsal fat thickness, eye muscle area, hindquarter circumference, total protein


Anxiety is a normal human phenomenon. It is fundamental to our survival as a species, allowing us to adjust and plan for the future and prompts us to seek help and security from others. High levels of anxiety during childbearing are associated with poor fetal development, behavioural/emotional problems in children and adolescents, prolonged labours, increased obstetric intervention, impaired lactogenesis and bonding problems.
Working with highly anxious childbearing women can be a challenging experience for independent lead maternity care midwives. This qualitative investigation guided by the principles of feminist research examined four independent midwives experiences of working with highly anxious childbearing women. Data were collected by interview, and thematic analysis found three themes that encapsulated the experience. The resultant themes were of: 1) challenging partnerships, 2) making a difference and 3) realising own limitations.
The midwives, while very committed to their highly anxious clients, experienced considerable stress while endeavouring to provide effective care. This stress is of concern to midwives and midwifery as it makes midwives vulnerable to burnout. Given the damage that high levels of unchecked anxiety have on childbearing women and their families, midwifery has to look for safe and effective ways to work with these women.
Recommendations for practice are based around negotiating boundaries to the midwife-client relationship, increased help and support for midwives, especially clinical supervision, better midwifery education, and continuous professional development in relation to maternal mental health, and properly resourced and funded maternal mental health services.


Computers have moved to desktops; now, the underlying software is itself evolving. The direction computing will take is clear, but the route it will take is a matter for some speculation. We examine several promising software ideas, especially distributed software and its underlying infrastructure called middleware. Industrial software is being driven by document-centric design, reusable component implementation based on industry standards, and end-user programming. >


ABSTRACT One of the many forms that modern policing takes is 'integrated offender management' (IOM). This involves the police working alongside staff from other agencies, including probation and prison officers and drugs workers, all in a bid to reduce offending by prolific offenders. Some of this work involves traditional policing methods of surveillance, catch and convict (the stick). The novelty for the police lies in the emphasis on drawing offenders away from crime through 'pathway support' such as helping them into employment and supporting them into stable housing arrangements (the carrot). In theory this changes the nature of the policing task considerably. Given the emphasis in the existing literature on how 'cop culture' derives from the nature of the job police officers perform, this raises interesting questions as to whether IOM officers exhibit different cultural traits from their mainstream colleagues. In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine whether the operation of IOM, as expressed through officers' talk and action, lives up to its rhetoric of a radical new approach to policing.


We discuss the possible searching for the oscillation by coherent $\Lambda\overline{\Lambda}$ production in $J/\psi \rightarrow \Lambda \overline{\Lambda}$ decay process. The sensitivity of measurement of $\Lambda - \overline{\Lambda}$ oscillation in the external field at BES-III experiment is considered. These considerations indicate an alternative way to probe the $\Delta B =2$ amplitude in addition to neutron oscillation experiments. Both coherent and time-dependent information can be used to extract $\Lambda -\overline{\Lambda}$ oscillation parameter. With one year's luminosity at BES-III, we can set an upper limit of $\delta m < 10^{-15}$ MeV at 90\% confidence level, corresponding to about $10^{-6}$ s of $\Lam-\Lamb$ oscillation time.


The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented surge in the emphasis given to the role of vocational education and training in Brazil. This has been characterized by an increasing flow of resources from the government to vocational education and training and a substantial increase in the number of enrollments. Particularly from 2011 onwards, with the launch of the PRONATEC program as one of the main flagship initiatives of President Dilma Roussef's government, VET has gained even more visibility.
The coverage of vocational education and training in Brazil is low, but it has an increasing trend. When compared to general education courses over time, the path is clear: VET education is gaining momentum, attracting more students that would otherwise follow a purely general track. Enrollment in VET courses still represents a small portion of total secondary education in Brazil but it has notably increased over the past years. The Federal government's spending on vocational education has risen from 0.04% of GDP in 2007 to around 0.2% of GDP in 2013. As a result, in 2007, 9% of total students enrolled in general secondary education were also enrolled in a VET program whereas in 2013, this number reached 17%.
Regarding VET provision, although private institutions still enroll less students than public ones, their importance is far from negligible. Such institutions play an important role in VET in Brazil, with special attention to the so-called S System, which is privately managed but receive public funds through taxes over firms' payrolls. The S System is responsible for the provision of approximately 43% of professional and technical education in Brazil.
Alongside of undeniable advancements pertaining to the recent surge of VET in Brazil, there are also several challenges. The challenges related to VET students and providers in Brazil are multidimensional and stretch over the entire student experience from a student's entry in a VET program, passing through school retention until the transition of students to the labor market. Among the main challenges pertaining VET in Brazil are the mismatch between supply and demand of professional skills, school evasion and lack of transparency by the government and VET providers.


Increasingly, scholars have sought to understand the role of collective action across property boundaries to address natural resource management challenges. Although the growing focus on collective action for natural resource management has led to many new and potentially useful insights for governance and outreach, we suggest that researchers and practitioners may benefit from taking a step back to think about the degree and type of collective action that is needed for each particular social-ecological context. We use the examples of invasive species management, fire management, and habitat conservation to argue that categorizing certain natural resource management challenges by the degree and type of public good collective action problem (i.e., continuous and step level) they create can provide insight into effective policy and management solutions for each problem. In so doing, we build on experimental psychology and economics research that suggests that outreach and governance solutions that work for one type of public good collective action problem may be less effective for addressing another type of problem that does not require collective action. We conclude by arguing for more studies examining: (1) how aspects of the social and ecological context determine the degree and type of public good collective action problem posed by natural resource management challenges, and (2) how the drivers of land manager decision making and the resulting effective governance solutions vary by the type and degree of public good collective action problem.


SUMMARY Background data: Barrett esophagus is a proximal displacement of the squamocolumnar junction relative to the gastroesophageal junction with intestinal metaplasia, it has been linked to gastroesophageal reflux disease. However, it has been observed in individuals without gastroesophageal reflux symptoms, with prevalence up to 25% in 50 years older men. Objective: Assess the association between symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux and Barrett's esophagus. Methods: Consecutive patients undergoing endoscopy at our center were studied. Before endoscopy, through a direct interview all subjects were asked to complete the CarlssonDent questionnaire for determining 2 groups (patients with and without gastroesophageal reflux symptoms). Those subjects with suggestive image of Barrett's esophagus, biopsy specimens were obtained from the distal esophageal mucosa with the intention of find intestinal metaplasia. We compared prevalence of Barrett's esophagus between groups. Results: One hundred and nine patients were studied. Prevalence of symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux disease was 37.6%. Barrett's esophagus was found in 9.7% of symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux disease patients and in 9.6% of subjects without symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (p = 0.87). Gender and age were similar between groups. Prevalence of hernia hiatal was bigger in patients with Barrett's esophagus (90 vs. 42%) (p = 0.004). Conclusion: Our study didn't show association between symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux detected by a questionnaire and Barrett's esophagus.