1
The mammal fauna of the British Isles has seen major perturbations since the end of the last ice age, some natural and some anthropogenic. Today, 61 species of terrestrial mammals breed in the British Isles, but only 39 of them are native species, the rest have been introduced. Furthermore, 19 native species have disappeared from the fauna including all the large predators, lynx Lynx lynx, wolf Canis lupus and brown bear Ursus arctos.

2
Inevitably, these changes in species composition have been accompanied by major changes in community function including changes in patterns of energy flow through the mammalian community. For example, a high percentage of all the energy now flows through the introduced rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus population and red deer Cervus elaphus, which, in the absence of natural predators, are living at extremely high densities.

3
Could the reintroduction of species help to reverse such changes in community structure and function? The successful return to the wild of species such as the Arabian oryx Oryx leucoryx and beaver Castor fiber has shown that reintroductions are certainly possible. However, the impact on community function of returned species is more difficult to evaluate.

4
This question is addressed in relation to the consequences for deer populations of any possible reintroduction of the wolf to Scotland. Based on what we know of wolves elsewhere, predictions are made about the likely demography and patterns of killing behaviour of introduced wolves. These values are then used to parameterize a Leslie matrix simulation of the impact of wolves on contemporary populations of red deer in Scotland. The simulations suggest very strongly that wolves are very unlikely to have any significant impact on the high-density populations of deer now living in the Scottish landscape.


Coordination of the carbocyclic ring of hydroquinones to electrophilic transition-metal fragments such as Mn(CO)3+ and Rh(COD)+ produces stable pi-bonded eta6-complexes that are activated to facile reversible deprotonation of the -OH groups. The deprotonations are accompanied by electron transfer to the transition metal, which acts as an internal oxidizing agent or electron sink. With manganese as the metal, the resulting eta5-semiquinone and eta4-quinone complexes have been used to synthesize one- two- and three-dimensional polymeric metal-organometallic coordination networks. With rhodium as the metal, the pi-quinonoid complexes have been demonstrated to play a unique role in multifunctional C-C coupling catalysis and in the synthesis of new organolithium reagents. Both classes of pi-quinonoid complexes appear to have significant applications in nanochemistry by providing an excellent vehicle for templating the directed self-assembly of nanoparticles into functional materials.


In order to heighten the nickel content in mesoporous silica frameworks, a new direct
synthesis method, called modified DS method, has been developed instead of the
commonly used direct synthesis method. In addition, with the aim of incorporating a
high amount of titania into SBA-15 mesoporous silica without blocking its mesopores, a multistep impregnation method, called the MSI method, has also been developed. By using the two developed methods, high nickel- and high titania-containing mesoporous silicas obtained werc synthesized. The nickel- and titania-containing mesoporous silicas were characterised by various techniques, i.e. XRD, TEM, EDX, SENI, N2-sorption, XPS, FTIR, UV-Vis-DRS, UV-VIS, TPR, and Raman spectroscopy. For nickel-containing mesoporous silicas synthesized by the modified DS method,
satisfactory mesostructures were obtained and the nickel content was increased up to
14.7 wt.%. So far, no reports have been published on synthesis of mesoporous
MCM-41-type silica with higher nickel content than 3.6 wt.% using DS method. Via
our modified IDS method, high BET surface area (>840 rný/g) and pore volume (>-0.73
cm3/g were also achieved. Nickel was found to be incorporated into the silica
frameworks. Formation of nickel phyllosilicates was also confirmed. After activation, mesostructurcs were still intact. Small nickel clusters embedded in the silica walls were found. A high amount of titania (up to 24.4 wt.%) was incorporated into the mesoporous SBA-15 silica via the multistep impregnation method. No damage to the SBA-15 silica
mesostructures was caused. The existence of small titania nano-domins was confirmed to be present by Raman and UV-vis-DRS measurements. High dispersion of them was realized via this method according to the results of low-anglc XRD, TEM and N2-sorption measurements. Importantly, no blockage of mesopores was observed.
Photo-activity tests showed the superiority of the materials synthesized by the MSI
method to those by one-step impregnation method.


The increasing richness of exoplanet observations has motivated a variety of three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric circulation models of these planets. Under strongly irradiated conditions, models of tidally locked, short-period planets (both hot Jupiters and terrestrial planets) tend to exhibit a circulation dominated by a fast eastward, or "superrotating," jet stream at the equator. When the radiative and advection timescales are comparable, this phenomenon can cause the hottest regions to be displaced eastward from the substellar point by tens of degrees longitude. Such an offset has been subsequently observed on HD 189733b, supporting the possibility of equatorial jets on short-period exoplanets. Despite its relevance, however, the dynamical mechanisms responsible for generating the equatorial superrotation in such models have not been identified. Here, we show that the equatorial jet results from the interaction of the mean flow with standing Rossby waves induced by the day–night thermal forcing. The strong longitudinal variations in radiative heating—namely intense dayside heating and nightside cooling—trigger the formation of standing, planetary-scale equatorial Rossby and Kelvin waves. The Rossby waves develop phase tilts that pump eastward momentum from high latitudes to the equator, thereby inducing equatorial superrotation. We present an analytic theory demonstrating this mechanism and explore its properties in a hierarchy of one-layer (shallow-water) calculations and fully 3D models. The wave–mean-flow interaction produces an equatorial jet whose latitudinal width is comparable to that of the Rossby waves, namely the equatorial Rossby deformation radius modified by radiative and frictional effects. For conditions typical of synchronously rotating hot Jupiters, this length is comparable to a planetary radius, explaining the broad scale of the equatorial jet obtained in most hot-Jupiter models. Our theory illuminates the dependence of the equatorial jet speed on forcing amplitude, strength of friction, and other parameters, as well as the conditions under which jets can form at all.


Surface effects in atomically flat colloidal CdSe nanoplatelets (NLPs) are significantly and increasingly important with their thickness being reduced to subnanometer level, generating strong surface related deep trap photoluminescence emission alongside the bandedge emission. Herein, colloidal synthesis of highly luminescent two‐monolayer (2ML) CdSe NPLs and a systematic investigation of carrier dynamics in these NPLs exhibiting broad photoluminescence emission covering the visible region with quantum yields reaching 90% in solution and 85% in a polymer matrix is shown. The astonishingly efficient Stokes‐shifted broadband photoluminescence (PL) emission with a lifetime of ≈100 ns and the extremely short PL lifetime of around 0.16 ns at the bandedge signify the participation of radiative midgap surface centers in the recombination process associated with the underpassivated Se sites. Also, a proof‐of‐concept hybrid LED employing 2ML CdSe NPLs is developed as color converters, which exhibits luminous efficacy reaching 300 lm Wopt−1. The intrinsic absorption of the 2ML CdSe NPLs (≈2.15 × 106 cm−1) reported in this study is significantly larger than that of CdSe quantum dots (≈2.8 × 105 cm−1) at their first exciton signifying the presence of giant oscillator strength and hence making them favorable candidates for next‐generation light‐emitting and light‐harvesting applications.


Since sensor nodes have limited resources, cooperation may come at a significant expense; but, it gives also an intention to some nodes to act selfishly. This paper studies the application of game theory to wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In particular, the study of selfish behavior in coverage maintenance protocol (CMP). The first objective of this work is the detection and prevention of selfish decisions using game theory. The second objective is to propose a solution to cope with selfishness and thereafter optimize network coverage. The last objective is the performance evaluation of the proposed solution using the NS-2 simulator, patched with CMP features, and a set of performance metrics such as: additional packet control overhead, false positive nodes and missed convicted nodes.


Two- to three-week-old 'Sweet Charlie' strawberry (Fragaria ×ananassa Duch.) plug plants were conditioned [seven 9-hour short days without chilling (21 °C day/21 °C night) followed by seven 9-hour short days with chilling during the nyctoperiod (21 °C/12 °C night)] in September, then planted in a vertical hydroponic system for winter greenhouse production. Conditioned plugs produced significantly more fruit than did nonconditioned control plugs in January and February, but the difference was nonsignificant in March and April. Fruit yield increased linearly with height in the column (40 g/ plant for every 30-cm increase in column height), probably because of increasing light level. When productivity is considered on an area basis (kg.m -2 ) and the column height effect on yield is accounted for, productivity over a 4.5-month period was 4.8 kg.m -2 for controls and 7.8 kg.m -2 for conditioned plugs. Conditioned plug plants offer the potential for increasing strawberry productivity and therefore the profitability of a winter greenhouse production system.


In this study, emphasis was situated around pupils' expectations regarding body shape and physical proficiency among teachers within the subject of physical education. Additionally, possible outcomes of failure to uphold such demands were put in relation to aspects of legitimacy. To enable such study a qualitative study including semi-structured interviews was conducted and carried through, involving six pupils in the third grade of upper secondary education. The pupils were mainly selected through a convenience sample with. The applied theory did in the current case derive from the theoretical concepts of discourse, stigma and legitimacy. These concepts were then intertwined through the creation of a theoretical model, which was applied when analyzing the received material. The results showed that the pupils had – with a few exceptions – expectations on teachers in physical education to withhold a body shape that represents the subject. This meant that a fit body shape was preferred over an overweight body shape. Also, statements concluded that a teacher in physical education should be able to uphold a certain level of physical proficiency, to demonstrate in front of the pupils. Lastly, if a teacher in physical education fails to comply with the demands, the results showed a negative effect concerning aspects of legitimacy.


Agriculture may never have faced as many challenges as it does at the beginning of the 21st century. Food and feed production needs to approximately double until 2025 owing to (a) population growth, with 73 million being expected to be added to the world population annually, which is an increase of about 32 per cent between 1995 and 2020 to give a total of 7.5 billion, (b) increased food calories consumed and (c) higher-quality food being demanded, particularly as regards meat. Secondly, in the developing countries urbanization is gaining momentum, bringing additional food demand. By 2020, more than half of the population in developing countries will live in urban areas. The global village is becoming a global city. Thirdly, the land area available for food and feed production cannot be increased substantially: most fertile land is in use. Finally, water will increasingly become a scarce resource.


CONTEXT
In Italy, the surveillance of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is performed by the Italian National Registry of Infants with CH (INRICH). Up to now, about 3600 infants with CH are recorded in the INRICH, and a high number of twins are included.

OBJECTIVE
Our objective was to estimate the risk of CH in multiple and single deliveries and to compare neonatal features of CH twins with twins from the general population.

DESIGN
The Italian population of CH infants recorded in the INRICH from 1989-2000 was investigated.

RESULTS
A more than 3-fold higher frequency of twins was found in the CH population than in the general population, and for the first time, it was possible to estimate the CH incidence in multiple (10.1 in 10,000) and single deliveries (3.2 in 10,000 live births). Significantly higher frequencies of in situ gland as well as lower TSH mean level at screening were found in twin than in singleton CH babies. The concordance rate for permanent CH was very low (4.3%) and due to only three concordant couples. However, a high recurrence risk for CH was estimated in siblings of affected babies recorded in the INRICH, including twins considered as siblings.

CONCLUSIONS
The high CH incidence observed in twins is worthy of interest for the high number of induced pregnancies in Italy as well as in other Western countries. Moreover, the low concordance rate for CH among twins together with a high recurrence risk for the disease among siblings indicates that environmental risk factors may act as a trigger on a susceptible genetic background in the etiology of the disease.


Aspirated gastric contents can evoke multiorgan failure. We hypothesized that secondary intestinal epithelial dysfunction after lung damage would be mediated by xanthine oxidase (XO) and antagonized by endogenous gut nitric oxide (NO). Isosmotic saline or HCl solutions were instilled intratracheally in anesthetized rats, and intestinal injury was assessed 190 min later by measuring the blood-to-lumen clearance of 51Cr-labeled EDTA (51Cr-EDTA clearance) and gut wall neutrophil population density. Intratracheal HCl increased 51Cr-EDTA clearance, and this transepithelial leak was attenuated by either systemic L-arginine or intraluminal NO and by chronic dietary pretreatment with allopurinol or sodium tungstate. Conversely, lung damage-induced gut leak was exaggerated by NO synthase inhibition or intravenous XO administration. Intratracheal HCl also increased intestinal wall neutrophil density and myeloperoxide activity. We conclude that two enzymatic systems involved in remote gut barrier dysfunction after endobronchial acidification are XO as mediator and NO synthase as antagonist.


The first major monograph on Poltrona Frau, Italy's leading furniture designer and manufacturer, on the eve of its hundredth anniversary. Poltrona Frau is one of the leading furniture designers and manufacturers in Italy. Founded in 1912, Poltrona Frau has been refining its sophisticated expertise in handcrafted workmanship for more than a century. This prestigious illustrated monograph highlights the entire corpus of design work by this iconic brand, including all types of seating (armchairs, sofas, chairs), interior furnishings, and seating for public spaces as well as interiors for cars, yachts, and airplanes. The defining ethos and sensibility of Poltrona Frau is a story of comfort, taste, and handmade products that combine tradition with innovation. It is a journey through time via classic and iconic pieces such as the Vanity Fair armchair or the Chester couch. Included are projects by Renzo Piano, Frank O. Gehry, Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Jean Nouvel, Richard Meier, Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Jean-Marie Massaud, and many others who have collaborated with Poltrona Frau in creating unique pieces that rely on Poltrona Frau's knowledge of materials and techniques.


Presenting a model for evaluating governmental websites (Information, Interaction and Transaction), the article has compared Iranian governmental websites in two time periods (February 2006 and February and March 2011). The research has applied longitudinal study to observe the development process of Iran's electronic government. In the research, websites has been considered as representation of the electronic government for Iranian citizens in the cyberspace. The three-stage evolutionary model in the research was inspired from the UNESCO electronic government analysis. In the research model, electronic government has been defined as "applying information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the government and created changes in the government structure, nature and performance". Sixteen criteria and 61 sub-criteria have been used to evaluate 51 governmental websites in the first period and 41 websites in the second period. Based on the research results, the Iranian governmental websites, especially in the first evaluation, has been in the primary stage of the E-Gov. Few evidences have been observed to show a development toward stages beyond the information publication in the websites. Based on the quantitative data, after more than five years no dramatic changes have been observed in the Iran's electronic government. Then as before, few websites in the second evaluation has applied interactive capabilities of the ICTs.


The sports swimming pools of Volgograd were examined for the levels of urea. All the study swimming pools were found to have a level of urea in the range of 28-80 micromol/l; which is about 10-15 times higher that its background level in the natural water reservoirs. Analysis of urea in the water of a swimming pool is proposed as a sensitive and simple test for fresh man-made water pollution.


Idiomatic expressions (IEs) play an essential role in natural language. In this paper, we study the task of idiomatic sentence paraphrasing (ISP), which aims to paraphrase a sentence with an IE by replacing the IE with its literal paraphrase. The lack of large-scale corpora with idiomatic-literal parallel sentences is a primary challenge for this task, for which we consider two separate solutions. First, we propose an unsupervised approach to ISP, which leverages an IE's contextual information and definition and does not require a parallel sentence training set. Second, we propose a weakly supervised approach using back-translation to jointly perform paraphrasing and generation of sentences with IEs to enlarge the small-scale parallel sentence training dataset. Other significant derivatives of the study include a model that replaces a literal phrase in a sentence with an IE to generate an idiomatic expression and a large scale parallel dataset with idiomatic/literal sentence pairs. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions compared to competitive baselines is seen in the relative gains of over 5.16 points in BLEU, over 8.75 points in METEOR, and over 19.57 points in SARI when the generated sentences are empirically validated on a parallel dataset using automatic and manual evaluations. We demonstrate the practical utility of ISP as a preprocessing step in En-De machine translation.


Given an infinite word over the alphabet $\{0,1,2,3\}$, we define a class of bipartite hereditary graphs $\mathcal{G}^\alpha$, and show that $\mathcal{G}^\alpha$ has unbounded clique-width unless $\alpha$ contains at most finitely many non-zero letters.
We also show that $\mathcal{G}^\alpha$ is minimal of unbounded clique-width if and only if $\alpha$ belongs to a precisely defined collection of words $\Gamma$. The set $\Gamma$ includes all almost periodic words containing at least one non-zero letter, which both enables us to exhibit uncountably many pairwise distinct minimal classes of unbounded clique width, and also proves one direction of a conjecture due to Collins, Foniok, Korpelainen, Lozin and Zamaraev. Finally, we show that the other direction of the conjecture is false, since $\Gamma$ also contains words that are not almost periodic.


ABSTRACT Small-scale enterprises (SSEs) are important for ensuring growth, innovation, job creation, and social integration in working life. Research shows that SSEs pay little attention to and have insufficient competence in workplace health management. From the perspective of managers, this study explores how external factors influence the development of this management. The article refers to a case study among eight Norwegian and ten Swedish managers of SSEs in the middle part of Norway and Sweden. We used a stepwise qualitative approach to analyse data, using an interpretive indexing of main categories. Two main categories were found to have an influence on the development of workplace health management: (1) restricted leeway and (2) commitments. Concerning the first main category, areas that managers highlight as important comprise the legal framework and regulations; workforce and market situation, production, economy; and occupational safety and health issues. Areas related to the second main category were advice from the board, guidance from mentors, work-related networks, and family and friends as buffers. One conclusion is that despite limited scope for developing workplace health management, managers find supportive guidance and inspiration from environments that are committed to helping them and their enterprise.


Background:SARS-CoV-2 is a virus affecting different organs and causing a wide variety and severity of symptoms. Headache as well as loss of smell and taste are the most frequently reported neurological manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 induced coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19). Case Presentation:Here we report on a 57-year old male patient with chronic migraine and medication overuse headache who fell ill with COVID-19. For many years prior to his Sars-Cov2 infection he suffered from very frequent migraine attacks and for control of headache he had been taking triptans almost daily. In the 16-month period before outbreak of COVID-19 on 98% of the days triptans were taken with only a 21-day prednisolone-supported triptan holiday, which, however, had no longer-lasting consequences on migraine frequency. Upon Sars-Cov2 infection, the patient developed only mild symptoms including fever, fatigue and headache. Directly following recovery from COVID-19 the patient surprisingly experienced a period with largely reduced frequency and severity of migraine attacks. Indeed, during 80 days following COVID-19, migraine as well as triptan usage were restricted to only 25% of the days no more fulfilling criteria of chronic migraine and medication overuse headache.Conclusion:SARS-CoV-2 infection might be capable of triggering mitigation of migraine.


For the first time, the bolometric correction of $\alpha$ Cir was determined. Two values, both based on an estimation of the total integrated flux, were obtained. For that purpose spectroscopic and photometric data of $\alpha$ Cir available in the literature was used. The values derived were then used to place $\alpha$ Cir in the HR diagram.


Motivated by proposals to compensate CO2‐induced warming with a decrease in solar radiation, this study investigates how single‐forcing simulations should be combined to best represent the spatial patterns of surface temperature and precipitation of idealized geoengineering scenarios. Using instantaneous and transient simulations with changing CO2 and solar forcings, we show that a geoengineering scenario, i.e., a scenario where the solar constant is reduced as CO2 concentrations are increased, is better represented by subtracting the response pattern of a solar forcing increase simulation from the response pattern of a CO2 forcing increase simulation, than by adding the response pattern of a solar forcing decrease simulation to a CO2 forcing increase simulation. The reason is a asymmetric response of the climate system to a forcing increase or decrease between both hemispheres. In particular, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation responds faster to a solar forcing decrease compared to a solar forcing increase. Further, the climate feedbacks are state and region dependent, which is particularly apparent in the polar regions due to the sea ice‐albedo feedback. The importance of understanding the local response of the climate system to geoengineering and single‐forcing scenarios is highlighted, since these aspects are hardly discernible when only global mean values are considered.


This dissertation aims to assess the importance of tradition and origality in Lucretius»s didactic technique, including the part played by "poetry" in its success? by following the Greco-Roman didactic tradition up to and past Lucretius as far as the Georgics; and by examining the consistency with which Lucretius uses these techniques. The first chapter distinguishes two branches of the tradition: maqnis de rebus beginning with the Theogony ancestor of De Rerum Nature, and in tenui beginning with the works and Days, ancestor of the Georgics. The didactic techniques used in the Works and Days, which resembles a Homeric persuasion speech, are considered more successful than those of the Theoqony. The Monists' prose tradition is seen as the successor of the Theoqony; verse is reintroduced to the tradition by Xenophanes. Parmenides and Empedocles then adapt the didactic techniques of the Works and Days. Empedocles is recognised as a model for Lucretius. The second chapter considers the Alexandrian in tenui tradition, successor to the Works and Days, by reference to Aratus's Phaenomsna. Difficulties caused by the poem's lack of argument are seen, but the Weather Signs are found to be distinguished by a new subjectivity and sympathy with nature. Translations of an Aratean passage by Cicero and Varro of Atax are seen to enhance this quality. Cicero is shown to be a model for Lucretius, and both translators for Vergil, whose further development of the subjective style is noted. Using it Lucretius and Vergil are found to give their poems a previously unknown unity. The third chapter considers Lucretius's influence on the Georgics. More consistency but less grandiloquence are seen in Vergil. The last chapter tests assertions of subjectivity, consistency and grandiloquence. Three passages of Lucretius's poem and one from the Georqics are compared. The assertions are found to be broadly true.


Geometrization of the description of vortex hydrodynamic systems can be made on the basis of the introduction of the Monge –Clebsch potentials, which leads to the Hamiltonian form of the original Euler equations. For this, we construct the kinetic Lagrange potential with the help of the flow velocity field, which is preliminarily determined through a set of scalar Monge potentials, and thermodynamic relations. The next step is to transform the resulting Lagrangian by means of the Legendre transformation to the Hamiltonian function and correctly introduce the generalized impulses canonically conjugate to the configuration variables in the new phase space of the dynamical system. Next, using the Hamiltonian function obtained, we define the Hamiltonian space on the cotangent bundle over the Monge potential manifold. Calculating the Hessian of the Hamiltonian, we obtain the coefficients of the fundamental tensor of the Hamiltonian space defining its metric. Next, we determine analogs of the Christoffel coefficients for the N -linear connection. Considering the Euler –Lagrange equations with the connectivity coefficients obtained, we arrive at the geodesic equations in the form of horizontal and vertical paths in the Hamiltonian space. In the case under study, nontrivial solutions can have only differential equations for vertical paths. Analyzing the resulting system of equations of geodesic motion from the point of view of the stability of solutions, it is possible to obtain important physical conclusions regarding the initial hydrodynamic system. To do this, we investigate a possible increase or decrease in the infinitesimal distance between the geodesic vertical paths (solutions of the corresponding system of Jacobi – Cartan equations). As a result, we can formulate very general criterions for the decay and collapse of a vortex continual system.


The final stage of any criminological research project is writing up and presenting findings. However, writing up, which follows a number of phases through formulation, data collection and analysis, is not just a technical exercise but also a space for the further development of the research. It is the opportunity to bring the distinct elements of the research together, to re-read the notes, literature review and data sets, to further analyse and theorize, and to begin to make a clear and sophisticated argument. Successfully writing up and presenting your research can be a very rewarding experience that brings with it a great feeling of accomplishment. It can also be a demanding, frustrating, nerve-wracking and, at times, tedious task.

Forms of reporting available to social researchers today include conventional and alternative possibilities, all of which involve particular processes requiring careful consideration and planning in terms of structure and style (Thody, 2006). Written and oral presentation remain the most common forms of dissemination in the social sciences, both of which comprise of conventional and unconventional styles. In recent years, however, new methods of dissemination have begun to appear. In criminology, for instance, the recent 'visual turn' has paved the way for an increased use of images in criminological research, with photographs (see Carrabine, 2012), illustrations (e.g. Stephens Griffin, 2015) and documentary film (e.g. Redmon, 2005) growing in popularity.

This chapter focuses on writing up and presenting criminological research. While the primary focus is on writing up, the chapter also explores various other dissemination techniques. The chapter begins with writing up, outlining the traditional method and structure that can be followed by university students writing up a dissertation/thesis or research report. This is followed by discussions of oral presentations and emerging visual and virtual forms of presentation. It finishes by offering some 'top tips' that might be of help during the process.


Abstract Sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene have been used for DNA barcoding and determining the genetic diversity of mammal species. In the current study, our intention was to test the validity of COI barcodes for detecting genetic divergence and to reveal whether or not there is a genetic variation at this marker within canids. Three species (Canis aureus, Canis lupus and Vulpes vulpes) from the family Canidae were selected for DNA barcoding using samples collected from Iran and Turkey. All three species had unique barcoding sequences and none of the sequences were shared among these species. The mean sequence divergences within and among the species were 0.61% and 12.32%, respectively, which fell into the mean divergence ranges found in some mammal groups. The genetic diversity of these three canid species was relatively higher than that found in previously reported studies.


Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most prevalent types of malignancies. Betulinic acid (BA) is a natural pentacyclic triterpene with a lupine structure. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no research study on the anti‐tumour and anti‐metastasis effect of BA on GC. In this study, we assessed the anti‐cancer effect of BA on human GC cells in vitro and in vivo. We first investigated the cytotoxicity and anti‐proliferation effect of BA on GC cells of SNU‐16 and NCI‐N87. The results indicated that BA had significant cytotoxic and inhibitory effects on GC cells in a dose‐ and time‐dependent manner. To further study the cytotoxic action of BA on GC cells, we assessed the apoptotic induction effect of BA on SNU‐16 cells and found that BA distinctly induced apoptosis in SNU‐16 cells. In addition, BA inhibited the migratory and invasive abilities of SNU‐16 cells. Western‐blot analysis revealed that BA suppressed the migration and invasion of GC cells by impairing epithelial‐mesenchymal transition progression. Furthermore, in vivo experiments showed that BA could delay tumour growth and inhibit pulmonary metastasis, which is consistent with the results of in vitro studies. Overall, we evaluated the anti‐cancer effect of BA on human GC cells in vivo and in vitro, and the present study provides new evidence on the use of BA as a potential anti‐cancer drug for GC treatment. Significance of the study BA significantly suppressed proliferation and triggered apoptosis in GC cells. Additionally, BA remarkably inhibited migration and invasion of GC cells by impairing the epithelial‐mesenchymal transition signalling pathway. It is worth noting that BA drastically retarded tumour growth in the xenograft mouse model of GC. Our results indicated that BA can be considered a candidate drug for GC therapy.


Air pollution exposure is among the most prevalent reasons for environmentally-induced oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which are implicated in the central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The CNS has emerged as an important target for adverse health effects of exposure to air pollutants, where it can cause neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders. Air pollution includes various components of gases, particulate matter (PM), ultrafine particulate (UFPs), metals, and organic compounds. An important source of PM and UFPM in the ambient air is associated with air pollution-related trafficking, and primarily diesel exhaust particles (DEPs). Controlled animal studies and epidemiological studies show that exposure to air pollution, and in particular urban air pollution or DEPs, may lead to neurotoxicity. In specific, exposure to air pollutants as an important factor may be in neurodevelopmental disorders (eg Autism) and neurological disorders (eg.., Alzheimer's Disease (AD)). The most noticeable effects of exposure to air pollutants in animals and humans are oxidative stress and neurodegeneration. Studies in rats exposed to DEPs showed microglial activity, increased lipid peroxidation, and neuronal accumulation in various areas of the brain, especially the olfactory bulb (OB) and the hippocampus (HI). Disorders of adult neurogenesis were also found. In most cases, the effects of DEP are more pronounced in male mice, probably due to lower antioxidant capacity due to less expression of paraoxonase 2.


Background: With the development of technology, human beings are increasingly under the exposure of Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR) (due to wireless technologies, mobile phones, base stations etc). The aim was to investigate the possible effects of Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR) on blood, aorta and heart tissue in hypertensive and non-hypertensive rats with various parameters. Materials and Methods: Male Wistar Albino rats were divided into 4 groups: 1.Control (C), 2.Hypertension (H), 3.RFR, 4.RFR+Hypertension (RFR+H). 60 mg/kg L-Nitroarginine Methyl Ester (L-NAME) was administered for 1 month by oral gavage to induce hypertension. The rats were exposed to 2100 MHz RFR for 60 minutes/day, 5 days/ week for 8 weeks. Blood hematocrit, blood and plasma viscosity, malondialdehyde (MDA), total nitric oxide (NOX), and Total sulphydril groups (RSH) / glutathione (GSH) levels in plasma and heart tissue were determined. Histological examination of the aortic wall and left ventricular muscle was performed. Results: RFR exposure resulted in a marked increase in cardiac and plasma MDA and NOX levels and a decrease in RSH/GSH levels (p<0.05). Blood viscosity increased in the hypertensive group with RFR exposure (p<0.05). There was an increase in left ventricular weight and number of muscle cells in hypertensive groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: According Our study suggests that exposure to RFR causes more negative effects on hypertension in terms of oxidative stress and antioxidants in the heart and plasma. Also, RFR exposure showed more prominent left ventricular fibrosis and aortic degenerative effects in hypertensive groups.


Background: Colistin resistance is a major breach in our last line of defense and without urgent action, we are heading for a postantibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill. To the best of our knowledge, the use of the bibliometric analytical technique for examining colistin resistancerelated research does not exist in the literature. Methods: Here, we analyze and present bibliometric indicators of the global literature in colistin resistance research. The Scopus database was searched for articles on colistin resistance. The articles retrieved were analyzed using the bibliometrix R-package. Results: A total of 1105 publications were retrieved. There was a noticeable increase in the number of publications on colistin resistance research in the past decade. Six journals made up the core zone in colistin research and produced 35.83% of the published articles. The analysis across time-intervals revealed several keywords that had increased or decreased in usage when comparing the interval between 1973-2009 and 2010-2019. Authors' keywords "Acinetobacter baumanii", and "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" were the most frequent encountered during the period of 1973-2009, while " mcr-1", "Enterobacteriaceae", "Escherichia coli", and "Klebsiella pneumoniae" emerged in the past decade. Conclusions: There has been a significant growth in publications on colistin resistance in the past decade, suggesting an urgent need for action by different stakeholders to contain this threat of colistin resistance. Keyword analysis revealed temporal changes in the types of keywords used across time-intervals. These findings summarize a general vision on colistin resistance research and will serve as baseline data for future comparative purposes.


It has recently been reported that the exchange bias (EB) phenomenon in double‐perovskite Y2CoMnO6 ceramic arises from additional antiferromagnetic (AFM) clusters formed by the anti‐sites of ionic disorders in the dominant ferromagnetic (FM) phase. To extensively examine the role of ionic orders and versatile magnetic interactions, we measure the magnetic properties of Y2Co2 − xMnxO6 (x = 1.0–1.9) compounds with different relative ratios of the magnetic ions. Upon increasing the ratio of Mn ions, the FM transition temperature is gradually lowered with a greatly enhanced EB effect for x ≥ 1.4. The measurement of heat capacity and AC magnetic susceptibility in the compound with x = 1.5 suggests the formation of magnetic cluster‐glass state from short‐range FM order with comparable AFM clusters generated by the formation of Mn3+–O2−–Mn3+ bonds. The dependence of the EB effect on the cooling field reveals the maximum EB field at 2 K to be HEB = 3.19 kOe. The large EB effect originates from the adjusted proportions of FM and AFM phases and the improved interfacial pinning of exchange coupling in the cluster‐glass state. Our results, based on intricate magnetic correlations and phases, provide essential clues for exploring suitable ceramic compounds for magnetic functional applications.


The aortic coarctation (CoA) is the most frequently omitted ductal-dependent cardiac deffect on neonatal screening and also one of the most difficult diagnosis to establish before birth. It is estimated that 60-80% from the newborns with isolated CoA are discharged at home from neonatal departament as healthy babies, later developing hemodynamic complications, that appear suddenly or gradually as a consequence of closing the arterial ductus. So, it is absolutely necessary to make the cardiac screening for every newborn before discharging. It consists of pre- and postductal pulsoximetry and measuring the blood pressure to all four limbs. Also, it is necessary to confirm this diagnosis by the fetal cardiologist in all cases of CoA suspected and the pregnant women to be oriented for delivery in a specialized centre in cardiac intensive neonatal care. At fetal ultrasound, the suspicion of CoA is increased by ventricular and large vessels disproportion signs and in 4-chambers view and/or 3-vessels and trachea especially in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. However, the prenatal screening registers a high rate of fals-positive and false-negative results. The prenatal diagnosis improves and reduces the morbidity by allowing to plan the delivery in a tertiary center and to establish the treatment with PGE to prevent the constriction of arterial duct. We present the case of a term newborn (38 weeks) born by caesarian section performed in the Obstetrics and Ginecology Clinic of the "Elias" Hospital, antenatal suspicioned with CoA, following two ultrasounds performed at 34 and 35 weeks of gestation.The newborn is treated with PGE medication from the first hour of life. After two days of life, the pediatric cardiologist excluded this diagnosis by echocardiography in "M.S. Curie" Hospital. The treatment with PGE was slowly interrupted and the neonatal evolution was favorable.


Akt/protein kinase B is a major cell survival pathway through phosphorylation of proapoptotic proteins Bad and Bax and of additional apoptotic pathways linked to Forkhead proteins glycogen synthase kinase-3β and ASK1. To further explore the mechanism by which Akt regulates cell survival, we identified an Akt interaction protein by yeast two-hybrid screening. It is highly homologous to ARG-binding protein 2 (ArgBP2) with splicing exon 8 of the coding region of the ArgBP2. As two splicing isoforms (ArgBP2α and -β) of ArgBP2 have been identified (Wang, B., Golemis, E. A., and Kruh, G. D. (1997) J. Biol. Chem. 272, 17542–17550), it was named ArgBP2γ. ArgBP2γ contains four Akt phosphorylation consensus sites, a SoHo motif, and three Src homology (SH) 3 domains and binds to C-terminal proline-rich motifs of Akt through its first and second SH3 domains. It also interacts with p21-activated protein kinase (PAK1) via its first and third SH3 domains, indicating the SH3 domains of ArgBP2γ as docking sites for Akt and PAK1. Akt phosphorylates ArgBP2γ in vitro and in vivo. Expression of ArgBP2γ induces PAK1 activity and overrides apoptosis induced by ectopic expression of Bad or DNA damage. Nonphosphorylatable ArgBP2γ-4A and SH3 domain-truncated mutant ArgBP2γ inhibit Akt-induced PAK1 activation and reduce Akt and PAK1 phosphorylation of Bad and antiapoptotic function. These data indicate that ArgBP2γ is a physiological substrate of Akt, functions as an adaptor for Akt and PAK1, and plays a role in Akt/PAK1 cell survival pathway.


: Protamine-sulfate blocked non-enzymatic fibrinolysis not only in vitro but also in vivo through binding of heparin and dissociation of its complexes, which are of great importance as humoral components of the anticoagulation system. Almost complete blocking of humoral agents of the anticoagulation system, caused either by a single intravenous administration of protamine-sulfate at large doses or by repeated administration of the substance at moderate doses within 14 days, led to death of the animals as a result of thrombotic complications related to appearance of additional thrombin in blood circulation. In these cases thrombosis occurred into coronary blood vessels. The non-enzymatic fibrinolytic effect was not observed in extracts from lungs, auricula atrii and liver tissue of experimental animals, treated with protamine-sulfate, as compared with the controls, administered with physiologic solution.


Activated carbon (AC) is currently being used to treat polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated field sediment. In the presence of sediment, the sorption capacity of AC for PCBs can be reduced. In this study, sorption attenuation of AC is investigated using previously published data from 5 sampling sites where reductions in aqueous concentrations caused by AC amendment have been reported. AC-water partitioning coefficients (KAC_clean_water) were determined at a relevant PCB concentration in clean water using polyoxymethylene (POM) passive samplers. Logarithmic ACwater partitioning coefficient values ranged from 7.39 to 9.59 for trichlorinated to pentachlorinated congeners. These AC-water partitioning coefficients were used in a numerical model to predict expected reductions in aqueous concentrations. Results reveal an overprediction of actual reductions by a median factor ranging from 2.5 to 5.6. To obtain an estimate of AC sorption attenuation, an AC-water partitioning coefficient more representative of sediment conditions (KAC_apparent) was fitted via the model based on the observed reductions in aqueous concentrations. On average, median KAC_apparent values of individual PCB congeners were smaller than KAC_clean_water values by 1.08 log units, or a factor of 12, with corrections ranging from 0.1 to 2.3 log units. The main controls on the reduction in sorption of PCBs to AC are PCB physico-chemical properties and AC amendment variables. Generally AC sorption attenuation increased with PCB hydrophobicity and decreased with increasing AC-sediment contact time and AC dose.


The increase in the large number of distressed reinforced concrete structure
underscores the importance of developing acceptable retrofitting techniques.
This study investigates the structural behaviour of full scale reinforced concrete
beams strengthened by two different techniques. The first technique used is
the strengthening of the beam by CFRP, while the second technique used is the
external pre-stressing. The specimens were initially loaded to two-thirds of their
predicted ultimate flexural capacity. They were then unloaded and strengthened
with either CFRP or external prestressing. The beams were subsequently
subjected to incremental loads until failure. The structural response of the
tested specimens had been found in terms of their cracking behaviour, loaddeflection
relationship, ductility, strain, distribution, ultimate load and failure
mechanism. The results indicate similar structural response in both retrofitting
techniques at the ultimate range. Hence the concept of elastic design used in
prestressed concrete members may be used for reinforced concrete members
strengthened with CFRP.


The genus Guyruita gen. gen. gen. gen.nov. two new species from Brazil are described. Holothele waikoshiemi (Bertani & Araujo, 2005) from Venezuela is transferred here to the new genus. Guyruita gen.nov.from the remaining Ischnocolinae by the following features: labium densely occupied by a lot of cuspules (more than 100), intercheliceral intumescence absent, posterior sternal sigilla remote from margin, tarsal claws without teeth, tarsal scopula I-II undivided (tarsus II with a line of sparse setae, which does not divide the scopula), III-IV divided.


Taking stock of the experience of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, this CEPS Task Force report analyses its purposes and potential for improving the cost-effectiveness of mitigation actions by expanding its scope to new sectors, linking with future flexible mechanisms and enhancing the long-term price signal. The performance of the ETS sector in mitigation is important for the EU's ability to meet its current target of 20% GHG emissions reductions by 2020 compared with a 1990 baseline and will be instrumental in meeting any increased level of reductions. The report also addresses carbon finance along with innovation and low-carbon technology deployment as possible achievements that may be expected from the ETS. It has been suggested that the ETS has made some positive impacts on abatement activities but not enough on innovation and technology deployment at the levels required for the EU's long-term goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The report proposes a set of recommendations on the purposes and outcomes of carbon markets, the making of future carbon markets and the way forward for the EU ETS.


The Direct Pipe method enables to lay a prefabricated pipeline in one single, continuous working operation into the ground with the aid of the thrust unit "Pipe Thruster". As with Pipe Jacking, earth excavation is executed by means of a navigable microtunnelling machine, which is directly coupled with the pipeline The tunnel face is slurry supported and often uses a bentonite suspension for controlled excavation of the soil. Due to the success of the new method several other projects have been carried out. The magnitude of the thrust force generated by the Pipe Thruster is an important topic of the design of a Direct Pipe project. The thrust force is required to push the pipeline into the borehole and was investigated by means of Finite element calculations using the ABAQUS software package. The analysis of the Finite element calculation results shows several mechanisms, which contribute to the thrust force. The mechanisms have a strong interaction with each other. Formulas for the calculation of the Thrust Force were deduced per mechanism and per section of the drilling line. The measurement results of the thrust force from several projects, which have been carried out recently, were compared with the calculated thrust forces using the new set of formulas. The results are quite promising. The effect of a higher friction after a standstill period is currently still a research topic. Soon a decision will be made whether the time dependent standstill effect can be calculated based on physical processes in the bore hole, or whether a practical approach should be applied to estimate the time dependent standstill effects.


The manifold growth of malware in recent years has resulted in extensive research being conducted in the domain of malware analysis and detection, and theories from a wide variety of scientific knowledge domains have been applied to solve this problem. The algorithms from the machine learning paradigm have been particularly explored, and many feature extraction methods have been proposed in the literature for representing malware as feature vectors to be used in machine learning algorithms. In this paper we present a comparison of several feature extraction techniques by first applying them on system call logs of real malware, and then evaluating them using a random forest classifier. In our experiment the HMM-based feature extraction method outperformed the other methods by obtaining an F-measure of 0.87. We also explored the possibility of using ensembles of feature extraction methods, and discovered that combination of HMM-based features with bigram frequency features improved the F-measure by 1.7%.


Abstract. Cultural Heritage all over the world is at high risk. Natural and human activities endanger the current state of monuments and sites, whereas many of them have already been destroyed especially during the last years. Preventive actions are of utmost importance for the protection of human memory and the prevention of irreplaceable. These actions may be carried out either in situ or virtually. Very often in situ preventive, or protective or restoration actions are difficult or even impossible, as e.g. in cases of earthquakes, fires or war activity. Digital preservation of cultural heritage is a challenging task within photogrammetry and computer vision communities, as efforts are taken to collect digital data, especially of the monuments that are at high risk. Visit to the field and data acquisition is not always feasible. To overcome the missing data problem, crowdsourced imagery is used to create a visual representation of lost cultural heritage objects. Such digital representations may be 2D or 3D and definitely help preserve the memory and history of the lost heritage. Sometimes they also assist studies for their reconstruction. An initiative to collect imagery data from the public and create a visual 3D representation of a recently destroyed stone bridge almost 150 years old is being discussed in this study. To this end, a crowdsourcing platform has been designed and the first images collected have been processed with the use of SfM algorithms.


The results of the analysis of the electricity consumption and power quality indicators in two office buildings are presented. It comprises electricity consumption and power quality during work days and weekends. The consumption data analysed is from a one year period and the power quality analysis is based on a one week measuring period. The aim of this analysis is to determine the current situation in these buildings in order to study the possibilities and limitations to implement different energy efficiency measures. In addition to the energy efficiency point of view, the problem is also addressed together with the power quality aspects.


Once learning analytics have been successfully developed and tested, the next step is to implement them at a larger scale -- across a faculty, an institution or an educational system. This introduces a new set of challenges, because education is a stable system, resistant to change. Implementing learning analytics at scale involves working with the entire technological complex that exists around technology-enhanced learning (TEL). This includes the different groups of people involved -- learners, educators, administrators and support staff -- the practices of those groups, their understandings of how teaching and learning take place, the technologies they use and the specific environments within which they operate. Each element of the TEL Complex requires explicit and careful consideration during the process of implementation, in order to avoid failure and maximise the chances of success. In order for learning analytics to be implemented successfully at scale, it is crucial to provide not only the analytics and their associated tools but also appropriate forms of support, training and community building.


Study Design. We evaluated the influence of rabbit notochordal cells on the expression of inflammatory mediators by human annulus fibrosus (AF) cells cocultured with macrophage-like cells. Objective. To identify the protective effect of rabbit notochordal cells on AF during in vitro inflammation. Summary of Background Data. Discogenic pain, which is an important cause of intractable lower back pain, is associated with macrophage-mediated inflammation in the AF. Although rabbit notochordal cells prevent intervertebral disc degeneration, their effects on human AF inflammation remain unknown. Methods. Human AF pellets were cocultured for 48 hours with notochordal cell clusters from adult New Zealand White rabbits and phorbol myristate acetate (PMA)-stimulated human macrophage-like THP-1 cells. Conditioned media (CM) from the cocultures were assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The expression of inflammatory mediators in the AF pellets was evaluated by real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. Results. The levels of mRNA for interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in the AF pellets cocultured with notochordal cells and macrophages (hAF[rNC-M]) were significantly lower than those in the AF pellets cultured with macrophages alone (hAF[M]) (P < 0.05). The levels of IL-6 and IL-8 proteins in the CM of hAF(rNC-M) were significantly lower than those in the CM of hAF(M) (P < 0.05). Coculturing with notochordal cells significantly decreased the levels of mRNA for IL-6, IL-8, and iNOS in the macrophage-exposed AF pellets (P < 0.05). After 1 ng/mL IL-1&bgr; stimulation, the levels of IL-6 and IL-8 mRNA and the level of IL-8 protein production were significantly decreased in the AF pellets with notochordal cells compared with naïve AF pellets (P < 0.05). Conclusion. In an in vitro coculture system, rabbit notochordal cells reduced the levels of main inflammatory mediators and gene expression in the human AF during inflammation. Therefore, rabbit notochordal cells may constitute an important protective tool against symptomatic disc development.


The current and future spacecraft power system is described, covering its major subsystems consisting of energy generation, energy storage, energy management, energy conditioning, and energy control/distribution. The increasing power requirements for spacecraft are discussed. Efficient, autonomous, and environmentally protected power systems are addressed. Spacecraft power system modularization and standardization for the same class of spacecraft, such as communication and sensor spacecraft, are considered.<<ETX>>


Purpose of this paper This paper examines the differences in logistics system design depending on the legality of the supply chains. The legality of the goods/actors is a vital factor when taking the goods from point-of-origin to the end user. This paper uses different logistics theories to provide a likely theoretical explanation of how and in what way the legality of the supply chain affects logistics system setups. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes a macro-perspective on the differences between legal and illegal logistics activities depending on the legality of supply chains. The validation of this paper is based on three different structures: theoretical frame of reference, analysis of official reports and two different cases studies. This paper uses methodology triangulation and dual perspective to describe the interaction between illegal supply chains and the legal world's preventing efforts. The key analytical feature for this paper is the risk for detection element. Findings Several supply chains use the transport network services and therefore it is not always possible to separate legal from illegal supply chains. The illegal supply chains have a unique constraint in comparison to the legal setup: the risk for detection. The detection risk factor is one of the greatest logistics constraints on the illegal flow of goods and it is in this constraint that the professionalism of the actors is found. Research limitations/implications (if applicable) The research is based on secondary sources like official statistics and interviews with security and customs personnel. Practical implications (if applicable) The triad logistics setup provides a good theoretical foundation to understand how the legal transport network is abused by criminal businesses. This paper illustrates that a filtration of information regarding the shipped products is the primary tool to use to successfully abuse the legal transport network. What is original/value of paper This paper uses well known theories from logistics research to both describe and explain the illegal supply chains.


The shunting schedule of electric multiple units depot (SSED) is one of the essential plans for high-speed train maintenance activities. This paper presents a 0-1 programming model to address the problem of determining an optimal SSED through automatic computing. The objective of the model is to minimize the number of shunting movements and the constraints include track occupation conflicts, shunting routes conflicts, time durations of maintenance processes, and shunting running time. An enhanced particle swarm optimization (EPSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. Finally, an empirical study from Shanghai South EMU Depot is carried out to illustrate the model and EPSO algorithm. The optimization results indicate that the proposed method is valid for the SSED problem and that the EPSO algorithm outperforms the traditional PSO algorithm on the aspect of optimality.


Abstract The aim of our study is to enhance the awareness of blue rubber bleb nevus syndrome (BRBNS) through the patients in our hospital and introduced a new measure of endoscopic intervention. A retrospective review of 5 patients, who were diagnosed as BRBNS in our hospital from January 2013 to January 2017, was conducted. Data were collected with regard to demographics, clinical presentation, endoscopic and imaging findings, management, and follow-up data. In total of 5 patients, the mean age was 28.8 years, range 16 to 44 years (male/female, 1/4) with the average initial age of onset 15.4 years. No family history was identified in our group. Physical examination showed multiple cutaneous lesions in 2 patients (40%, 2/5). All the 5 patients had gastrointestinal tract vascular malformations; stomach involved in 2 cases, large intestine in 2 cases, and small intestine involved in 3 cases. Lesions in the visceral organs and tissue were found in 1 patient. Gastrointestinal bleeding was its main symptom (3/5, 60%). Laboratory investigations revealed anemia in 4 patients and abnormality of coagulopathy in 2 patients with severe anemia. Conservative approach was recommended in 3 cases that included iron supplementation, drug hemostasis, and/or blood transfusion. An innovatively therapeutic approach with endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) procedure was used successfully in 1 patient with 2 polypoid BRBNS lesions in rectum. BRBNS is a very rare vascular malformation syndrome with unclear etiopathogenesis and noncurative treatments. ESD procedure was a feasible approach to remove the partial gastrointestinal lesions.


The LBG OIS Center established a new Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Implementation program aiming at 'active involving' public members in research across different phases of the research cycle – from setting the agenda to disseminating results – and its governance. The program offers funding and facilitation of these PPIE activities. The first PPIE pilot call was launched in Autumn 2020. It supports researchers in Austria with up to EUR 60.000 in order to implement their PPIE activities. In addition, the program offers support in the form of consultation, training, knowledge exchange and networking opportunities. One important characteristic of the selection process is the composition of the expert panel, bringing together transdisciplinary expertise from different areas (scientific experts, patients, and students). The expert panel recommended 11 out of 25 PPIE projects for funding (success rate 44%). 45% of the applicants participated in the support offers prior to the call and 52% in the continuing support offer after the call had been closed. Based on our online surveys, overall, participants were very satisfied with the support offers. Learnings of the first call address the eligibility of applicants. In the selection meeting, we found that different understandings of 'active involvement' were negotiated among experts. However, this was not a problem due to the open and collaborative atmosphere and mutual learning opportunity for experts. The panel suggested opening the call to non-research bodies, which indicates small changes in the application format – e.g. video and text-based applications in German and English. Despite of small adaptions in the second PPIE Pilot Call 2021, it seems that the funding instrument was appropriate and reflects a low-threshold offering for researchers introducing public involvement activities in their work.


On the Origin of Interictal Activity in Human Temporal Lobe Epilepsy In Vitro Cohen I, Navarro V, Clemenceau S, Baulac M, Miles R Science 2002;298(5597):1418–1421 The origin and mechanisms of human interictal epileptic discharges remain unclear. Here we describe a spontaneous, rhythmic activity initiated in the subiculum of slices from patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Synchronous events were similar to interictal discharges of patient electroencephalograms. They were suppressed by antagonists of either glutamatergic or γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic signaling. The network of neurons discharging during population events comprises both subicular interneurons and a subgroup of pyramidal cells. In these pyramidal cells, GABAergic synaptic events reversed at depolarized potentials. Depolarizing GABAergic responses in neurons downstream to the sclerotic CA1 region contribute to human interictal activity.


This paper assembles elements that are essential in forming an integral picture of the way a churning' economy functions and of the disruptions caused by transactional difficulties in labor and financial markets. We couch our analysis in a stochastic equilibrium model anchored with US evidence on gross factor flows and on rents in worker and firm income. We develop a social accounting framework to measure the costs of transactional impediments. We calculate the average social loss associated with structural unemployment and low productivity -- due to technological sclerosis' and a scrambling' of productivity rankings in entry and exit decisions. We also estimate the loss from a recession. An additional forty percent to the traditional unemployment cost is due to reduced productivity and is determined by the recession's cumulative effect on the economy's churn rate. Although a recessionary shock increases the economy's turbulence' at impact, semi-structural VAR evidence from US manufacturing indicates that, cumulatively, it results in a chill' -- which is costly in an economy that suffers from sclerosis.


The effect of postoperative hemosorption (HS) on the pulmonary functions in 55 patients with acute ileus was studied. The severity of the state of the patients was conditioned by intoxication leading to ++over-stress of the non-respiratory pulmonary functions and development of I-II stage acute respiratory failure. HS contributes to detoxication of an organism, but is accompanied by the mean 30-35% loss of the oxygen on the adsorbent resulting in development of arterial hypoxemia. Thus, HS should be added with spontaneous breathing with positive pressure at the end of expiration.


: Management of spinal cord compression from metastatic malignant disease remains unsatisfactory. Results of surgical decompression are at best less than those of radiation therapy alone. However, new surgical approaches now focus on removing the anterior-situated tumor tissue which produces neural compression in about 85% of the cases. The results of these procedures that allow removal of the ventrally compressing tumor show significant improvement in the management of patients with spinal epidural disease. We review the surgical strategy of these new approaches and the attendant results.


This paper extends the full convergence of the proximal point method with Riemannian, Semi-Bregman and Bregman distances to solve minimization problems on Hadamard manifolds. For the unconstrained problem, under the assumptions that the optimal set is nonempty and the objective function is continuous and either quasiconvex or satisfies a generalized Lojasiewicz property, we prove the full convergence of the sequence generated by the proximal point method with Riemannian distances to certain generalized critical point of the problem. For the constrained case, under the same assumption on the optimal set and the quasiconvexity or convexity of the objective function, we study two methods. One of them is the proximal method with semi-Bregman distance, obtaining that any cluster point of the sequence is an optimal solution. The other one, is the proximal method with Bregman distance where we obtain the global convergence of the method to an optimal solution of the problem. In particular, our work recovers some interesting optimization problems, for example, convex and quasiconvex minimization problems in IR, semidefinite problems (SDP), second order cone problems (SOCP), in the same way that, extends the applications of the proximal point methods for solving constrained minimization problems with nonconvex objective functions in Euclidian spaces when the objective function is convex or quasiconvex on the manifold.


In this paper, titanium alloy was used to prepare titanium foam using the slurry method. The compressive strength is the most important properties to be considered to produce a good sample. To achieve a high compressive strength of the titanium alloy foam, the effects of various parameters including temperature, time profile and composition have to be characterised and optimised. This paper reports the use of the Taguchi method in optimising the processing parameters of pure titanium foams. The effects of four sintering factors, namely, composition, sintering temperature, heating rate and soaking time on the compressive strength has been studied. The titanium slurry was prepared by mixing titanium alloy powder, polyethylene glycol (PEG), methylcellulose and water. Polyurethane (PU) foams were then impregnated into the slurry and later dried at room temperature. These were next sintered in a high temperature vacuum furnace. The various factors were assigned to an L9 orthogonal array. From the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), the composition of titanium has the highest percentage of contribution (64.64) to the compressive strength followed by the soaking time of sintering factor (6.01). The optimum compressive strength was found to be 38.03 MPa for this titanium alloy foam. It was achieved with a 750% composition of titanium, sintering temperature of 1250oC, a heating rate of 1.5oC/min and 120 minutes of soaking time.


The electroluminescence (EL) and photoluminescence (PL) spectra of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) with a prestrained InGaN interlayer in a laser diode structure are investigated. When the injection current increases from 5 mA to 50 mA, the blueshift of the EL emission peak is 1 meV for the prestrained sample and 23 meV for a control sample with the conventional structure. Also, the internal quantum efficiency and the EL intensity at the injection current of 20 mA are increased by 71% and 65% respectively by inserting the prestrained InGaN interlayer. The reduced blueshift and the enhanced emission are attributed mainly to the reduced quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE) in the prestrained sample. Such attributions are supported by the theoretical simulation results, which reveal the smaller piezoelectric field and the enhanced overlap of electron and hole wave functions in the prestrained sample. Therefore, the prestrained InGaN interlayer contributes to strain relaxation in the MQW layer and enhancement of light emission due to the reduction of QCSE.


The study contributes to the under-explored topic of international alumni and their professional activities back in the home countries, and especially the impact such activities may have on the alumni's communities. The study is based on interviews with six Pakistani Fulbright alumni, three males and three females, who had graduated from art and design institutes in the U.S. in the last seven years; the alumni discuss the influence of their U.S.A.  experience on their teaching and involvement in the community. The interviews sought the answers to the following two questions: 1. What was the impact of the Fulbright program on the alumni's teaching? and 2. What were the alumni's perceptions, informed by their Fulbright period, of the cross-national humanistic influence of art on human relations? The questions were informed by the recently acknowledged fact that art practice is an effective means of reaching out across groups of society. Educators' experience confirms that art helps students to interact with peers of different social backgrounds; practicing art allows students to communicate more deeply and has a harmonizing effect for all the participants. It was hypothesized that Fulbright experience may trigger off changes in the alumni's pedagogy towards a more student-oriented approach; it was also hypothesized that Fulbright alumni may see more clearly the link between student-oriented teaching and humanistic relations in society, especially between the less privileged and more privileged groups of population.  The results of the study included the following. All six interviewees pointed out that the Fulbright program had a positive impact on their teaching and academic experiences. Specifically, it enabled them to move from lecturing to more interactive student-centered teaching styles. Examples included taking students out of the classroom into real-life settings, giving more value to a "relational, interactive and collaborative space" rather than just a "speculative one," and practicing inclusive pedagogy (teaching autistic and deaf students). Likewise, all six interviewees indicated that there is a link between their innovative pedagogy and broader humanistic projects which they have launched since their return to Pakistan. The study concluded that when interacting with domestic students, the Fulbright graduates were transferring the skills they received abroad, thus becoming informal ambassadors of new ideas and practices. In this respect, Fulbright graduates have potential to influence Pakistan's academic and cultural development; therefore, it is important to establish closer contacts with them, as well as maintain these links for extended time.


We present three dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) calculations of irradiation-driven warping of accretion discs. Initially unwarped planar discs are unstable to the radiation reaction when the disc is illuminated by a central radiation source. The disc warps and tilts and precesses slowly in a retrograde direction; its shape continuously flexes in response to the changing orientation of the Roche poten-tial. We simulate ten systems: eight X-ray binaries, one cataclysmic variable (CV), and a 'generic' low mass X-ray binary (LMXB). We adopt system parameters from observations and tune our model X-ray luminosity (LX) to reproduce the observed or inferred super-orbital periods. Without exception, across a wide range of parameter space, we find an astonishingly good match between the observed LX and the model LX. We conclude irradiation-driven warping is the mechanism underlying the long periods in X-ray binaries. Our HerX-1 simulation reproduces the observed "main-" and "short-high" X-ray states for realistic orbital inclinations. Our simulations of SS 433 give a maximum warp angle of 18.6◦, a good match to the cone traced by the jets, but this angle is reached only in the outer disc. In all cases, the overall disc tilt is less than 13◦ and the maximum disc warp is less than and or equal to 21◦. In particular, the disc warp in 4U1626-67 cannot explain the observed torque reversals. Taking our results at face value, ignoring the finite opening angle of the disc, we deduce orbital inclinations of approximately 77◦ for 4U1916-053 and approximately 69◦ for 4U1626- 67. We also simulate CygX-2, SMCX-1, CygX-1, and LMCX-3. For high mass X-ray binary (HMXB) parameters, the discs' maximum angular elevation is invariably at the outer edge. For LMXBs with extreme mass ratios a strong inner disc warp devel-ops, completely shadowing parts of the outer disc. This inner warped disc executes retrograde precession while the outer disc executes prograde apsidal precession. The remaining LMXBs develop a less extreme warp in the inner disc, with the entire disc tilting and precessing in a retrograde direction. For our CV, KRAur, we matched the inferred disc precession period by adopting LX = 1037 erg sec−1, which would require steady nuclear burning on the white dwarf surface.


Background Increasing evidence has uncovered the anticancer activity of lidocaine in many cancers. However, the role and the underlying molecular mechanism of lidocaine in colorectal cancer (CRC) remain poorly understood. Materials and Methods Cell viability and apoptosis were measured by cell counting kit-8 assay and flow cytometry. Western blot was used to detect the protein of p53, CyclinD1, Pro-caspase-3, Cleaved-caspase-3, Pro-caspase-9, Cleaved-caspase-9, and hes-related family bHLH transcription factor with YRPW motif 1 (HEY1). Glycolytic metabolism was calculated by measuring the glucose consumption, lactate production and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) contents. The expression of circRNA homer scaffold protein 1 (circHOMER1), microRNA (miR)-138-5p and HEY1 mRNA was detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The interaction between miR-138-5p and circHOMER1 or HEY1 was analyzed using the dual-luciferase reporter assay. In vivo experiments were performed using the murine xenograft model. Results Lidocaine suppressed CRC cell viability and aerobic glycolysis but promoted cell apoptosis in vitro as well as hindered tumor growth in vivo. CircHOMER1 was elevated in CRC tissues and cells, while lidocaine decreased circHOMER1 expression in CRC cells. Additionally, circHOMER1 overexpression reversed the anti-tumor activity of lidocaine in CRC cells. miR-138-5p was confirmed to interact with circHOMER1 and HEY1 in CRC cells directly, and circHOMER1 regulated HEY1 expression through repressing miR-138-5p expression. Besides, rescue assay indicated the anti-tumor activity mediated by lidocaine could be regulated by circHOMER1/miR-138-5p/HEY1 axis. Conclusion Lidocaine mediated CRC cell viability loss, apoptosis induction and aerobic glycolysis inhibition by regulating circHOMER1/miR-138-5p/HEY1 axis, providing a novel treatment option for lidocaine to prevent the progression of CRC.


The MPEG-7 standard defines a set of descriptors that extract low-level features such as color, texture and object shape from an image and generate metadata that represents the extracted information. In this paper we propose a new image retrieval technique for image indexing based on the MPEG-7 scalable color descriptor. We use some specifications of the scalable color descriptor (SCD) for the implementation of the color histograms. The MPEG-7 standard defines 1 l norm − based matching in the SCD. But in our approach, for distance measurement, we achieve a better result by using cosine similarity coefficient for color histograms. This approach has significantly increased the accuracy of obtaining results for image retrieval. Experiments based on scalable color descriptors are illustrated. We also present the color spaces supported by the different image and video coding standards such as JPEG-2000, MPEG-1, 2, 4 and MPEG-7. In addition, this paper outlines the broad details of MPEG-7 Color Descriptors.


This study compares the life events perceived as "rites of passage" from adolescence to adulthood by respondents between the ages of 14 and 23 in 3 countries and discusses the possible influences of culture and globalization on these perceptions. Participants include: (1) 250 adolescents from the US (125 males and 125 females); (2) 191 adolescents from southeastern Brazil (70 males and 121 females); and (3) 163 adolescents from Malaysia (76 males and 87 females). These adolescents ranked a variety of life events which may be perceived as indicative of adult status by completing a questionnaire about perceived rites of passage. Although there were similarities among the 3 groups, several differences also emerged. The most commonly noted indicator of adult status for Malaysian youth was physical maturity, followed by completing one's education. Participants from the US cited financial independence as the major indicator of adult status, while those from Brazil cited the ability to make important decisions independently from family and to take responsibility for others, such as children, aging parents or a spouse. Brazilian youth were significantly more likely to cite a love affair and voting in major elections as rites of passage than were participants from the other 2 countries. Participants from the US were significantly more likely to cite military service, and Malaysian youth were significantly more likely to consider completion of education and achieving physical maturity as rites of passage. Gender and age differences within groups were evident on some items, but these were not consistent across groups. Possible explanations for the differences between countries and implications for educators working with adolescents in rapidly changing societies are discussed.


Quasiparticle (QP) excitations are extremely important for understanding and predicting charge transfer and transport in molecules, nanostructures, and extended systems. Since density functional theory (DFT) within the Kohn-Sham (KS) formulation does not provide reliable QP energies, many-body perturbation techniques such as the GW approximation are essential. The main practical drawback of GW implementations is the high computational scaling with system size, prohibiting its use in extended, open boundary systems with many dozens of electrons or more. Recently, a stochastic formulation of GW (sGW) was presented (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2014, 113, 076402) with a near-linear-scaling complexity, illustrated for a series of silicon nanocrystals reaching systems of more than 3000 electrons. This advance provides a route for many-body calculations on very large systems that were impossible with previous approaches. While earlier we have shown the gentle scaling of sGW, its accuracy was not extensively demonstrated. Therefore, we show that this new sGW approach is very accurate by calculating the ionization energies of a group of sufficiently small molecules where a comparison to other GW codes is still possible. Using a set of 10 such molecules, we demonstrate that sGW provides reliable vertical ionization energies in close agreement with benchmark deterministic GW results (J. Chem. Theory Comput, 2015, 11, 5665), with mean (absolute) deviation of 0.05 and 0.09 eV. For completeness, we also provide a detailed review of the sGW theory and numerical implementation.


DNA methylation is one of the most studied epigenetic mechanisms, as it functions in transcriptional regulation, cell di erentiation, and genomic imprinting. Aberrant DNA methylation is shown to be one of the hallmarks of many complex diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and various cancers. Specifically, global loss of methylation patterns and promoter-specific gain of methylation patterns were found to shape the epigenetic landscape for carcinogenesis and adaptation of tumours. Although disease-associated di erential methylation regions are heavily studied in the literature, no attempt so far has been made to systematically examine the common characteristics of aberrant DNA methylation regions, and the mechanisms that may lead the formation of these regions. In this dissertation, we have developed a random forest-based approach using a set of liver hepatocellular carcinoma patients to identify common characteristics of significant di erential methylation events in a patient-specific manner. A variety of information, including features derived from region sequence, genomic selection and conservation, DNA shape, known regulatory features such as cis-regulatory elements, genome segmentation, histone modifications, and DNAse I hypersensitive sites, as well as, patient-specific mRNA and miRNA expression patterns, copy number variations, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and clinical variables were investigated. Lastly, protein-protein interaction networks were utilised to devise putative patient-specific and common mechanisms that may drive aberrant DNA methylation patterns.


Current research in automated disease detection focuses on making algorithms "slimmer" reducing the need for large training datasets and accelerating recalibration for new data while achieving high accuracy. The development of slimmer models has become a hot research topic in medical imaging. In this work, we develop a two-phase model for glaucoma detection, identifying and exploiting a redundancy in fundus image data relating particularly to the geometry. We propose a novel algorithm for the cup and disc segmentation "EffUnet" with an efficient convolution block and combine this with an extended spatial generative approach for geometry modelling and classification, termed "SpaGen" We demonstrate the high accuracy achievable by EffUnet in detecting the optic disc and cup boundaries and show how our algorithm can be quickly trained with new data by recalibrating the EffUnet layer only. Our resulting glaucoma detection algorithm, "EffUnet-SpaGen", is optimized to significantly reduce the computational burden while at the same time surpassing the current state-of-art in glaucoma detection algorithms with AUROC 0.997 and 0.969 in the benchmark online datasets ORIGA and DRISHTI, respectively. Our algorithm also allows deformed areas of the optic rim to be displayed and investigated, providing explainability, which is crucial to successful adoption and implementation in clinical settings.


We use a vulnerability framework to examine how residents of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, perceive the risks of aquatic activities in the context of adaptation to a changing climate. Our findings suggest that community members identify climate change as increasing the risk of many aquatic activities and have adapted some practices accordingly. However, further adaptation to these changing risks is impeded by three main barriers: (1) financial constraints, (2) Inuit resistance to adopting what some consider Euro-Canadian water safety practices, and (3) issues with the design of flotation devices. Participants suggested the following practical changes: (1) make personal flotation devices, lifejackets, and floater suits available to all residents at local stores at a subsidized rate, or provide them free of charge through the community; (2) create water safety promotional items that feature locally developed messages in both Inuktitut and English; (3) include traditional knowledge in water safety campaigns; and (4) use the local pool to train residents in water safety. These changes would not only help residents adapt to changing risks, but also help incorporate climate considerations into policies and programs.


AIM
Ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (USPIO-NPs) are under development for imaging and drug delivery; however, their interaction with human blood-brain barrier models is not known.

MATERIALS & METHODS
The uptake, reactive oxygen species production and transport of USPIO-NPs across human brain-derived endothelial cells as models of the blood-brain tumor barrier were evaluated for either uncoated, oleic acid-coated or polyvinylamine-coated USPIO-NPs.

RESULTS
Reactive oxygen species production was observed for oleic acid-coated and polyvinylamine-coated USPIO-NPs. The uptake and intracellular localization of the iron oxide core of the USPIO-NPs was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. However, while the uptake of these USPIO-NPs by cells was observed, they were neither released by nor transported across these cells even in the presence of an external dynamic magnetic field.

CONCLUSION
USPIO-NP-loaded filopodia were observed to invade the polyester membrane, suggesting that they can be transported by migrating angiogenic brain-derived endothelial cells.


PurposeThis study aims to explore the application of reflective pedagogy within a course-embedded library instruction session (as opposed to a semester-long credit bearing course) as a means to foster transfer learning of research practices.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual essay adapts theories of reflection for transfer learning as found in composition and rhetoric literature to the traditional course-embedded library instruction classroom.FindingsThe application of reflection as a structured learning construct may have the potential to transform the library instruction classroom into an environment where transfer learning is more likely to take place.Research limitations/implicationsMost models for transfer learning are based on semester-long courses and do not take into account the abbreviated context of the traditional library instruction event. This presents a challenge to any adaptation of theory, as library instruction is often an event isolated to one or a few sessions.Practical implicationsThis study provides a structure for reflective pedagogy for librarians who desire to engage students in practices that offer the potential of fostering transfer learning.Originality/valueLibrarians are practicing reflective pedagogies in semester-long information literacy courses, but few have used reflection in traditional instruction sessions beyond the documentation of student learning for assessment purposes. This essay provides a theory that extends reflective pedagogies into the traditional library instruction classroom with the hope of fostering transfer learning.


This paper describes an explorative study to evaluate a dynamic expressive mask associated to a remote robot-view used to control an assistive robot. The mask is generated by a graphical-user-interface platform displayed on a tablet used to control the robot in a smart home environment. The hypothesis of the study is that when robot's behaviour conforms to human social expectations, interactions are more likely to be found enjoyable and meaningful by people. Furthermore the expressivity of the mask is expected to result in empathic interactions with the robot and therefore to sustain rich and meaningful social exchanges. In this study we compared four scenarios of interaction between a robot and a person at home. The scenarios depicted scenes where the robot was asked to execute tasks. Each scenario was showed in two versions: with a static robot-view and with a dynamic, expressive robot-view. The results of a questionnaire administered to 60 persons showed a preference of people to interact with the dynamic expressive mask. Expressivity was a means to stimulate empathic concern and to facilitate perspective taking during the execution of the scenarios.


We assess the predictive power of two measures of competitiveness for education and labor market outcomes using a large, representative survey panel. The first is incentivized and is an online adaptation of the laboratory-based Niederle-Vesterlund measure. The second is an unincentivized survey question eliciting general competitiveness on an 11-point scale. Both measures are strong and consistent predictors of income, occupation, completed level of education and field of study. The predictive power of the new unincentivized measure for these outcomes is robust to controlling for other traits, including risk attitudes, confidence and the Big Five personality traits. For most outcomes, the predictive power of competitiveness exceeds that of the other traits. Gender differences in competitiveness can explain 5-10 percent of the observed gender differences in education and labor market outcomes.


Sex ratio, reproduction, body condition and morphology of banded (Lagostrophus fasciatus) and rufous (Lagorchestes hirsutus) hare-wallabies were assessed on Dorre and Bernier Islands. Data are derived from 236 banded hare-wallabies and 161 rufous hare-wallabies captured between 1959 and 1999. The sex ratio of captured banded hare-wallabies tended to be female-biased (0.79: 1 male: female) but was not a significant departure from parity. In contrast, pouch young tended towards a male bias at 1.35: 1. Females produced 1–2 young per year. They were capable of producing young at 1000 g, but the incidence of females carrying pouch young or lactating increased from 39% for females of 1000–1400 g to 80% for females of 1401–1800 g, then decreased slightly to 76% for females >1800 g. Births occurred throughout the year but there was some indication of a decline in the latter half of the year. Captured banded hare-wallabies ranged in weight from 850 to 2300 g. Animals on Dorre Island were in significantly better body condition than those on Bernier Island, although this could be an artefact of their shorter pes length. There was no evidence of sexual dimorphism and no differences in morphological measurements taken, other than pes length, between the two island populations. The sex ratio of captured rufous hare-wallabies was close to parity at 0.99: 1 and for pouch young tended to be male-biased at 2: 1. The smallest female with young weighed 1215 g, but the incidence of females carrying pouch young or lactating increased from 43% for females of 1215–1660 g to 61% for females of 1661–2015 g and 100% for females >2015 g. Females carried pouch young in all months sampled (March–September) and one incidence of twinning was noted. Captured rufous hare-wallabies weighed 600–2550 g. Body condition was similar for males and females and between islands, but smaller females of reproductive age were in poorer body condition than larger females. There was no evidence of sexual dimorphism but pes lengths of animals on Dorre Island were significantly shorter, head lengths longer and tail lengths shorter, than those on Bernier Island. Rufous hare-wallabies appear to show regional variation in body size, being smaller in the wetter and warmer Tanami/Alice Springs region and larger on the drier and cooler Shark Bay islands.


The volume of empirical research on positive psychology topics has grown substantially over the past two decades.  This review examines how constructs in positive psychology have been operationalized, measured, validated, cited, and applied to build the science. Based on an archive of 972 empirical articles linked to positive psychology, this review found that 762 articles used at least one measurement scale; 312 measures were created or adapted.  Findings reveal a wide range of scales being used to measure a variety of constructs, including scales on both life-enhancing and life-depleting constructs.  Key characteristics such as journals, constructs, and scale development and validation information are discussed.  There are some reliability analyses and validations occurring within the field, but the creation of new measures far outpaces the validation of existing measures.  Weaknesses such as multiple operationalizations may be rooted in inadequate discourse and synthesis.  We call for further cross-pollination for a more scientifically robust scholarship in positive psychology.


the study. The VCI-C method was used. Polynomial regressions with adjustments using the determination coefficient (R2) were used to assess the correlation between vertebral body area and gestational age (GA) and fetal parameters [biparietal diameter (BPD), head circumference (HC), abdominal circumference (AC), femur length (F) and estimated fetal weight (EFW)]. The mean, standard deviation, median, minimum and maximum values were calculated for each gestational age. Results: There was a high correlation between all VBA and GA. The linear regression was the model that best expressed the correlation between these variables: VBA L1 = −168.8106 + 10.0482 *GA, r2 = 0.8154 for the first lumbar vertebral body. The mean VBA L1 went from 33.55 ± 5.46 cm2 (28.09–39.02 cm2) to 181.36 ± 5.77 cm2 (175.59–187.13 cm2). There was a high correlation between all VBA and fetal biometric parameters (BPD, HC, AC, F and EFW), all P < 0.0001. Conclusions: There was a high correlation between GA and biometric parameters. Reference limits were generated for lumbar and sacral (S1 and S2) VBA between 20 and 34 weeks.


Texture mapping of plant leaf is a challenging task because of the shape diversity. Based on the barycentric mapping parameterization method, a novel algorithm is proposed. A suitable boundary mapping is computed by automatically extracting and matching the feature points on boundaries of the mesh and image. The matching process consists of two steps, which utilize the symmetry and curvature information respectively. Through iteratively minimizing a weighted energy, the inner constraints given by users in order to make the details clearer can be satisfied by the presented algorithm. Experiments show that this robust algorithm can produce plant leaves with fine texture details and increase the realism of the models.


A book which covers a subject that is on the fringe of aeronautical activity and as a result is of limited interest. Two chapters cover both transport aircraft and gliders and as a result only a shallow appraisal is possible. The book does however provide a good general background of much of the various items of airborne equipment used by the armed services of the major nations of the world since the mid-1930s. G. R. BOULD


Recent research suggests the need for robust theory building in the field of sport for development and peace (SDP). Recognising this, we argue for further attention to, and appreciation of, the historical context within which many SDP initiatives and research projects take place, with particular focus on the history of colonialism as it relates to sport. Drawing on the foundational work of C.L.R. James, we suggest that an historical approach, informed by insights from postcolonial theorising, encourages analyses of ambivalence, hybridity and even irony in the field of SDP. We use James' insights, and recent appraisals of his work, to offer specific theoretical insights for the study of SDP, with a particular focus on social actors in context.


Viterbi decoding algorithms for convolutional codes are being considered for a number of applications in cellular mobile radio systems. There are three classes of Viterbi decoders depending on the nature of the formatting of the data: continuous decoding with a finite path memory, blockwise decoding with a terminating tail (known to the decoder), and blockwise decoding without a known tail. The latter class is also known as decoding of tailbiting convolutional codes. In this case, a coded message begins and ends in the same state which is unknown to the receiver. The authors present a class of Viterbi algorithms for tailbiting convolutional codes. These algorithms are used in blockwise transmission to save the overhead of a known tail. They call the new algorithm the circular Viterbi algorithm (CVA). The basic ideas are: (1) continue conventional seamless continuous Viterbi decoding beyond the block boundary by recording and repeating the received block of (soft) symbols; (2) start the decoding process in all states; and (3) end the decoding process either adaptively or with a fixed length. Three robust adaptive stopping rules are constructed and evaluated. Simulation results and comparison to previously known algorithms as well as the optimum algorithm are presented. The amount of computation required for previously reported iterative algorithms tends to increase dramatically as the channel bit error rate (BER) increases. In one reported instance, computation increased by over 900% while decoded BER increased from 8/spl times/10/sup /spl minus/6/ to 8/spl times/10/sup /spl minus/3/. For the same example, the CVA increase in computation was 11.4% and the worst case decoded BER was 4/spl times/10/sup /spl minus/3/. The authors conclude that for noisy channels the CVA decodes in a much shorter time with better performance than previously published iterative algorithms. >