ABSTRACT This article examines the genesis of a new Lithuanian political unit, the Drasos kelias party, which was created in 2012 and successfully participated in the 2012 Lithuanian parliamentary elections, reconstructing it in three stages based on the analysis of news portals. Reconstruction of the first stage is based on the competing "conspiracy versions" (two different interpretations of the unsolved criminal story in the news media) in 2009- 2010. Two archetypal characters (criminal and/or hero) were sought in the interpretation of the two aforementioned versions. Agenda setting and media framing theories were used as explanatory theories. The second stage (2011-2012) is reconstructed through further analysis of the news portals as well as through the analysis of some additional research from the interviews and focus group discussions. This data allowed us to retrace the logic of collective thinking. This logic of collective thinking contributed to the formation of a continuous "single issue" protest community which was united by the slogan "do not hand the child to a paedophilia clan". This group of people constantly hindered the governmental institutions from the implementation of the court decision to hand the child to her mother, and over a long period of time its protest arguments expanded from "not handing the child to her mother" to protests against the entire Lithuanian legal system. Further, the third stage associated with formal institutionalization of political party and its rising of popularity among the voters in the 2012 Lithuanian parliamentary elections is analyzed. The analysis stresses the importance of social and personal networks for the regional dispersion of party election results.


Nurse Practitioner-Physician Co-management of Primary Care Patient Panels: Impact, Perspective, and Measurement toward a New Delivery Care Model Allison Andreno Norful The demands for high quality primary care have become strained by a deficit in the primary care physician supply and the complexity of delivering care to aging populations that are often living with complex co-morbidities. Provider co-management has emerged in practice to help alleviate some of the care delivery demands by having more than primary care provider (PCP) complete care management tasks for the same patient. There is extensive literature investigating two physicians co-managing patient care, and physician-physician assistant comanagement, yet limited studies have investigated nurse practitioner (NP)-physician comanagement. NPs currently are the fastest growing health care workforce in the United States. Several organizations support the expanded utilization of NPs in primary care. As more U.S. states are granting NPs independent scope of practice, which is free of physician oversight, the potential for NPs to co-manage patients with physicians, and alleviate some of the primary care strain, has increased. However, there are limited to no studies that have investigated NPphysician co-management in primary care. Further, there is a lack of evidence of PCP perspectives about co-managing care, its impact on patient and practice outcomes, or a tool to measure NP-physician co-management in practice or research. More evidence about NPphysician co-management is warranted and will be investigated in this dissertation. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate NP-physician co-management in primary care by synthesizing the existing evidence, gathering data from PCPs about NP-physician comanagement and to develop a valid and reliable tool to measure it. In Chapter 1, background of the current demands on primary care is presented and accompanied by a discussion about the need to expand the NP workforce in primary care to help meet the demand. Evidence about the history of provider co-management is presented and gaps in the literature are identified. Specific aims of the dissertation are introduced and tied to existing theoretical underpinnings. In Chapter 2, aim one of the dissertation is addressed by qualitatively obtaining data on the PCP perspective of NP-physician co-management. In Chapter 3, aim two of the dissertation is addressed. A systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the effects of NPphysician co-management compared to a single physician delivering care. In Chapter 4, aim three is addressed. Based on the collective findings of Aim 1 and Aim 2, a new tool is developed and psychometrically tested to measure NP-physician co-management. Content validity and reliability testing of the tool is conducted. In Chapter 5, the results of the dissertation are synthesized. Practice, policy, and research implications are discussed, and strengths and limitations of the dissertation are presented.


A vision of future wireless networks is the coexistence of multiple access network technologies. Different access networks will coexist and the Internet Protocol will be the glue. To fulfil this vision, one of the greatest challenges is to develop sophisticated policies for vertical handovers. When and in what way the handovers are performed, affects the performance of the mobile services. Traditional handover policies are based on received signal strength comparison. To be able to support vertical handover, policies have to consider parameters such as capacity, utilization cost, power consumption, security and QoS guarantees. This paper describes a proposal for a policy-based vertical handover model for heterogeneous networks. Analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of "SEMO", a policy-based vertical handover system, are presented.


The U.S. Tax Code has become so confusing and complex that tax professionals have gone from being a luxury to a necessity. Compound this complexity with the added layer of intricacy found at the state level and this already complex system becomes a labyrinth.  While society has favored technological advances, the tax system has not. In particular, telecommuters have found themselves in a sort of limbo – working from home while sometimes simultaneously "working" at their employer's location. This Note focuses on how this hypothetical of the 1980's is today a reality, and how the courts of select states have approached this new paradigm. Specifically, this Note elaborates on the positions taken by New York and New Jersey, both major commuting states who have issued relating decisions, as well as what these decisions mean for residents of neighboring states like Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Finally, this Note advocates for uniformity between states, praises existing state policies such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey's, among others, and hopes to revive proposed unifying legislation in light of recent cases.


Purpose: A guidelines for the management of retinal vein occlusion is presented. This is necessary because at this moment several therapeutic alternatives have been developed although their role is not yet sufficiently defined. Methods: Review of the literature for evidence published up to date. Relevant literature was identified and the level of evidence graded. Evidence was then assessed for consistency, applicability and clinical impact. The information was contrasted with those guides published in other countries. Results: Taking into account the different options of treatment that are currently used, several modes of action are suggested. The role of the various complementary examinations are discussed and it is recommended that criteria for the treatment are based on clinical, angiographic, and tomographic findings. Conclusions: Although there is no overall consensus, these guidelines promote a good standard of clinical practise and provide an update of the management of retinal vein


Conditions for in vitro unfolding and refolding of dimeric thymidylate synthase from Lactobacillus casei were found. Ultraviolet difference and circular dichroism spectra showed that the enzyme was completely unfolded at concentrations of urea over 5.5 M. As measured by restoration of enzyme activity, refolding was accomplished when 0.5 M potassium chloride was included in the refolding mixture. Recombination of subunits from catalytically inactive mutant homodimers to form an active hybrid dimer was chieved under these unfolding-refolding conditions, demonstrating a monomer to dimer association step.


Abstract : This bibliography was compiled from Soviet open sources published 1961-1964. It is the fourth in a series of reports reviewing Soviet developments in computer technology. Information not directly related to the assigned subject has been included because of its broad implications for study in this field. The 254 entries are arranged alphabetically by author within each of the years covered (46 for 1961, 59 for 1962, 59 for 1963, and 90 for 1964). A list of the journals scanned in preparation of the bibliography is included. Other information covered: transistorized amplifier, binary codes, magnetic tape, problem programming, algorithm coding and programming, wide-band thyrite multiplying and dividing device, ferromagnetic films, pneumatic circuits, parametric resonators with ferrite cores, magnetic drum storage unit, transistorized precision integrator, analog-digital converter, potentiometer, photoelectronic decoder, pulse divider, magnetic circuit, amplifiers, differentiating and integrating circuits, full-key relay computer, digital-to-analog converter, tunnel-diode detector, nonlinear programming, trigger circuit, flip-flops, functional converter, ferrite storage unit, memory unit, delay line, encoder, and printing device. (Author)


In the course of conducting case studies relating to inadvertent weather modification in the St. Louis metropolitan area under the auspices of Project METROMEX, it has been possible to obtain airborne aerosol measurements describing the plumes from the several fossil-fueled power plants operating in the area. The purpose of this paper is to provide some additional insight into inadvertent weather modification by examining the transport and detection of Aitken Condensation Nuclei (ACN) within these plumes; in addition, one case study illustrating the evolution of the aerosol spectra in the downwind plume from a 2400 MW plant will be shown.  It is anticipated that the general description of plume behavior rendered herein will find utility in the prediction and modeling of such meteorological phenomenon.


Hybridization has long been recognized as common in ferns, but the products of this arguably evolutionary important process have often been ignored in classifications. For example, the recently published Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification (PPG I) covered all hierarchical ranks from class to genus but did not include intergeneric hybrids (nothogenera). Here, we provide for the first time a comprehensive evaluation of previously proposed nothogenera in the context of a current phylogeny‐based pteridophyte classification (i.e., PPG I). We find that several nothogenera nested in the orders Osmundales and Polypodiales are supported in the framework of PPG I, but others are superfluous. Five new nothogenera are introduced here for the first time. We also explore the distribution of nothospecies across the pteridophyte phylogeny for the first time. We are unable to reject the hypothesis that species richness and nothospecies diversity are correlated, despite the finding that some temperate lineages contribute more nothospecies than expected whereas several tropical lineages lack them. This pattern could be the consequence of either fundamental differences in modes of speciation in temperate and tropical zones or unequal efforts to record nothospecies. In general, we emphasize the need to take nothogenera into account when proposing generic classifications, but the information provided by the existence of such hybrids needs to be carefully evaluated. Our results underscore the need to report and study hybrids in ferns and lycophytes, especially in biodiversity rich areas.


The nucleoporin 98 gene (NUP98) has been reported to be fused to 13 partner genes in hematological malignancies with 11p15 translocations. Twelve of them have been identified in patients with myeloid neoplasias and only 1, RAP1GDS1 (4q21), is fused with NUP98 in five patients with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). Three of these patients coexpressed T and myeloid markers, suggesting the specific association of t(4;11)(q21;p15) with a subset of T-ALL originating from an early progenitor, which has the potential to express mature T-cell antigens as well as myeloid markers. We describe here a new NUP98 partner involved in a t(10;11)(q25;p15) in a patient with acute biphenotypic leukemia, showing coexpression of mature T and myeloid markers. The gene involved, located in 10q25, was identified as ADD3 using 3 -RACE. ADD3 codes for the ubiquitous expressed subunit of the adducin protein, and it seems to play an important role in the skeletal organization of the cell membrane. Both NUP98-ADD3 and ADD3-NUP98 fusion transcripts are expressed in the patient. This is the second partner of NUP98 described in T-ALL. Adducin shares with the product of RAP1GDS1, and with all of the nonhomeobox NUP98 partners, the presence of a region with significant probability of adopting a coiled-coil conformation. This region is always retained in the fusion transcript with the NH2 terminus FG repeats of NUP98, suggesting an important role in the mechanism of leukemogenesis.


Defect engineering of La1− xSr xMnO3 (LSMO)—a strongly correlated oxide displaying half metallicity and ferromagnetism above room temperature—has been the focus of a long-standing quest aimed at the exploitation of this material as a functional building block for memory storage and spintronic applications. Here, we discuss the correlation between structural defects and magnetism in La0.74Sr0.26MnO3/SrTiO3 (LSMO/STO) epitaxial heterostructures as a function of growth temperature and post-deposition annealing. Upon increasing the growth temperature from 500 to 700 °C at a fixed oxygen partial pressure of 0.007 mbar, the sputter-deposited epitaxial LSMO films experience a progressive increase in Curie temperature Tc from 110 to 270 K and saturation magnetization Ms from 1.4 to 3.3  μB/u.c. owing to a reduction in oxygen deficiencies. Concurrently, however, growth temperatures above 600 °C trigger the formation of off-stoichiometric, dendritic-like SrMoO x islands at the film/substrate interface as a possible aftermath of temperature-driven diffusion of impurities from the STO substrate. Notably, although the interfacial spurious islands cause an increase in sample surface roughness, the heterostructure still preserves high-quality epitaxy. In general, the best compromise in terms of both structural and magnetic properties, comprising high-quality epitaxy, atomically flat surface, and robust ferromagnetism above room temperature, is obtained for LSMO films grown at a relatively low temperature of about 500–540 °C followed by a post-deposition annealing treatment at 900 °C for 1 h in air. Our study compares effective routes based on temperature-controlled defect engineering to finely tailor the complex interplay between microstructure and magnetism in LSMO thin films.


The designer generates a variant product by applying several design suggestions that fulfilled a variety of customer requirements. These design suggestions rely on multiple domains of expert knowledge, which are unstructured and implicit. Moreover, these design suggestions have an impact on assembly joint information (liaison), which makes the variant design a complex problem. To effectively support the designers, this work presents a knowledge-based decision support system for assembly variant design using ontology. First, a knowledge base is built by the development of an ontology to formally represent the taxonomy, properties, and causal relationships of/among core concepts involved in the variant design. Second, a five-step sequential procedure is established to facilitate the utilization of this knowledge base for decision-making in variant design. The procedure takes the extracted liaison information from the CAD model of an existing product as the input and further used for generating a set of variant design decisions as the output through Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) rule-based reasoning. The inferred outputs by the process of reasoning are the design suggestions, the variant design type required for each design suggestion, and its effect on joint information. Based on the evaluation of the ontology, the precision, recall, and F-measure obtained are 79.3%, 82.1%, and 80.67%, respectively. Finally, the efficacy of the knowledge-based decision support system is evaluated using case studies from the aerospace and automotive domain.


Rear multi-link suspension is built according to hard point parameters of a car. After the inner rubber bushing stiffness of the lateral rod is changed, the suspension performance were analyzed under the simulation test of parallel wheel travel, loading brake force and discussed with multi-body dynamics and Suspension Kinematics theory. The conclusion is drawn that under the test of loading brake force and wheel travel, changing the axial and torsion stiffness of rubber bushing has no effect on the suspension performance, changing the radial stiffness has a little effect on the camber angle, total track and toe angle. But the change of the radial stiffness has significant effect on the ride rate and wheel rate.


What makes a distant oboe's wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdian's narrative to vivid life: "idiots savants" who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.What makes a distant oboes wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? How can music make sense to an ear and brain evolved for detecting the approaching lion or tracking the unsuspecting gazelle? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it.In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding--and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdians narrative to vivid life: idiots savants who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music--and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.


The shapes of light normal nuclei and Λ hypernuclei are investigated in the (β, γ) deformation plane by using a newly developed constrained relativistic mean field (RMF) model. As examples, the results of some C, Mg, and Si nuclei are presented and discussed in details. We found that for normal nuclei the present RMF calculations and previous Skyrme-Hartree-Fock models predict similar trends of the shape evolution with the neutron number increasing. But some quantitative aspects from these two approaches, such as the depth of the minimum and the softness in the γ direction, differ a lot for several nuclei. For Λ hypernuclei, in most cases, the addition of a Λ hyperon alters slightly the location of the ground state minimum towards the direction of smaller β and softer γ in the potential energy surface E ∼ (β, γ). There are three exceptions, namely, 13 Λ C, 23 Λ C, and 31 Λ Si in which the polarization effect of the additional Λ is so strong that the shapes of these three hypernuclei are drastically different from their corresponding core nuclei.


Active or passive immunization has been used repeatedly as a tool in studies on the role of the renin-angiotensin system in the control of blood pressure and kidney function. The results are not consistent among each other, and they are also at variance with other studies using different approaches. To evaluate the possible causes of these discrepancies, the biological characteristics of angiotensin antibodies were studied in rats. Following the intravenous injection of angiotensin II antibodies (purified by affinity chromatography), the plasma concentration of the antibodies declined in a two-exponential curve with half times of 11 hours and 7 days, which probably reflect distribution in the extracellular space and elimination, respectively. Plasma angiotensin II levels rose from preinjection levels of 100 pgsolml to 12,000 pg/ml within 10 minutes and then declined concomitantly with the decline in antibody concentration. We calculated that only a small fraction of the circulating antibody was occupied by angiotensin II. Plasma renin concentrations were initially elevated both in controls and in antibody-injected rats, but they returned to the control level after 30 minutes and remained at that level throughout the rest of the experiment (10 days). This fact indicates that feedback mechanisms which control renin secretion, such as free plasma angiotensin II concentrations, are in the normal range. We therefore concluded that the renin-angiotensin system in antibody-injected rats was regulated at a normal level. Similar conditions seemed to exist in rabbits actively immunized against angiotensin II; these animals exhibited high concentrations of total immunoreactive angiotensin II (up to 200,000 pg/ml) and a small increase in plasma aldosterone and corticosterone concentrations.


Malignant Mesothelioma, or mesothelioma, is a mesothelial-based malignancy that may occur in the pleura, pericardium and peritoneum. Mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer with limited treatment, and a median survival of about 1 year. At times, the diagnosis of mesothelioma may be problematic. The final diagnosis of mesothelioma relies on histology and often is dependent upon immunohistochemistry. It is generally assumed that mesotheliomas must stain positive for cytokeratin and calretinin and negative staining for these markers would rule out the diagnosis. We encountered a patient with a pleural-based, cytokeratinand calretininnegative sarcomatoid malignancy. These negative stainings would rule out the diagnosis of mesothelioma but, after careful consideration of the patient's clinical records, and additional histological and immunohistochemical studies, we conclude that this patient suffered from mesothelioma of the


The physico-chemical characteristics of the agricultural fields from Nanjangud near Mysore were analyzed to study the seasonal variations in agro ecosystems. Soil characteristics showed a high pattern of variability in some of the soil constituents. Seasonal variations of main soil chemical characteristics were studied in some representative sampling sites from agricultural lands of Najangud taluk. The soil samples were collected during rainy, winter and summer seasons from 15 different agricultural lands and were analyzed for different physico–chemical characteristics. From the study, it was concluded that, the application of chemical fertilizers has greater influence on soil quality. In all the soil samples, during all the seasons, urea and DAP residues were detected. The highest concentration was recorded during Rainy season followed by winter season. In case of cations and anions, concentrations were found to be higher during monsoon, post-monsoon, followed by summer seasons, which indicates that, the amount of fertilizers applied was not completely taken up by the crops. As the study area is having good irrigation facilities, throughout the year, the nitrate and phosphate entry into water resources through surface run-off and leaching was expected to be more.


Cytokine receptors of the hematopoietic receptor superfamily lack intrinsic tyrosine kinase domains for the intracellular transmission of their signals. Instead all members of this family associate with Jak family nonreceptor tyrosine kinases. Upon ligand stimulation of the receptors, Jaks are activated to phosphorylate target substrates. These include STAT (signal transducers and activators of transcription) proteins, which after phosphorylation translocate to the nucleus and modulate gene expression. The exact role of the Jak-STAT pathway in conveying growth and differentiation signals remains unclear. Here we describe a deletion mutant of the thrombopoietin receptor (c-mpl) that has completely lost the capacity to activate Jaks and STATs but retains its ability to induce proliferation. This mutant still mediates TPO-induced phosphorylation of Shc, Vav, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and Raf-1 as well as induction of c-fos and c-myc, although at somewhat reduced levels. Furthermore, we show that both wild-type and mutant receptors activate phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3-kinase upon thrombopoietin stimulation and that thrombopoietin-induced proliferation is inhibited in the presence of the PI 3-kinase inhibitor wortmannin. These results demonstrate that the Jak-STAT pathway is dispensable for the generation of mitogenic signals by a cytokine receptor.


The total porosity of the high performance concrete under cyclic loading was measured in this present paper. Results show that finite cycles of cyclic axial tensile load causes permanent damage to concrete, which can be measured after unloading. The higher the applied upper load level or the more the cycle number is, the more obvious will be the connection and development of micro cracks. Then the higher will be the total porosity. Especially, with the increase of cyclic load number, the total porosity of the concrete shows obvious stage characteristics. And there is a linear relationship between the total porosity and cyclic loading cycles in the second developing stage of fatigue strain.


This paper focuses on fabricated slurry by electromagnetic stirring (EMS) with A6061 and A7075 wrought aluminum alloys. For this EMS process, it is important to find the optimal electromagnetic stirring conditions such as pouring temperature, stirring current and stirring time. After electromagnetic stirring according to each condition, the billets fabricated by EMS were investigated, as was the microstructure and cooling temperature of molten alloy which was directly cooled from liquid state to the semi-solid state during EMS. In use of cooling time and temperature data, it is possible to determine the forming time and stirring time required, respectively.


With the large-scale complex and emergent nature of
airport systems, comprehensive and adaptive risk management is
necessary to address safety in a planning horizon of multiple
years. Factor based prioritization has been used to identify and
rank facilities with higher potential for incidents, allowing
stakeholders and officials to effectively allocate resources for
maximum effectiveness and learning. Past analytical approaches have
focused the physical characteristics of facilities, as well as the
rare-event frequencies of historical incident types and their
precursors. The US Federal Aviation Administration cites human
error as a significant future threat to aviation safety.
Nevertheless, little work has addressed the identification and
measurement of human and cultural safety factors at the airport
scale. This thesis explores how to include demographic factors of
the vicinities of the facilities in order to begin to account for
potential human, cultural, and organizational issues in the
prioritization of regulatory safety audits. The approach will
define several new factors, assess the factors from available
databases, test their uniqueness and relationships to other
factors, and integrate them to existing frameworks of prioritizing
safety audits. The methods to be adapted and integrated for this
purpose are exploratory data analysis, multivariate statistical
inference, expert elicitation and model building, hierarchical data
models, multicriteria analysis, and uncertainty analysis. The
results will be useful to regulators and airport managers in their
oversight of a range of current and future technologies, diverse
geographic locations, organizations, and time and spatial scales.
In addition, the results will be useful in other technology domains
seeking to use available and indirect evidence of human,
organizational, and cultural issues in systemic risk management of
large-scale complex systems.


Efficient acquisition and utilization of remotely sensed data require an extensive a priori evaluation of the performance of the basic data collection unit, the multispectral scanner. The objective of the research described in this paper is the development of a parametric model to analytically evaluate the response of a multispectral scanner in any operational environment and to provide the necessary information in selecting a set of optimum parameters. In this paper the multispectral scanner spatial characteristics are represented by a linear shift-invariant multiple-port system where the N spectral bands comprise the input processes. The scanner characteristic function, the relationship governing the transformation of the input spatial and hence spectral correlation matrices through the systems, is developed. Specific cases for Gaussian point spread functions are examined. The integration of the scanner spatial model and a parameter classification error estimator provides the necessary technique to evaluate the performance of a multispectral scanner. A set of test statistics is specified and the corresponding output quantities computed by the characteristic function. Two sets of classification accuracies, one at the input and one at the output, are estimated. The scanner's instantaneous field of view is changed and the variation of output classification performance computed.


OBJECTIVE: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization in NICUs increases the risk of nosocomial infection. Network analysis provides tools to examine the interactions among patients and staff members that put patients at risk of colonization. METHODS: Data from MRSA surveillance cultures were combined with patient room locations, nursing assignments, and sibship information to create patient- and unit-based networks. Multivariate models were constructed to quantify the risk of incident MRSA colonization as a function of exposure to MRSA-colonized infants in these networks. RESULTS: A MRSA-negative infant in the NICU simultaneously with a MRSA-positive infant had higher odds of becoming colonized when the colonized infant was a sibling, compared with an unrelated patient (odds ratio: 8.8 [95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.3–14.8]). Although knowing that a patient was MRSA-positive and was placed on contact precautions reduced the overall odds of another patient becoming colonized by 35% (95% CI: 20%–47%), having a nurse in common with that patient still increased the odds of colonization by 43% (95% CI: 14%–80%). Normalized group degree centrality, a unitwide network measure of connectedness between colonized and uncolonized patients, was a significant predictor of incident MRSA cases (odds ratio: 18.1 [95% CI: 3.6–90.0]). CONCLUSIONS: Despite current infection-control strategies, patients remain at significant risk of MRSA colonization from MRSA-positive siblings and from other patients with whom they share nursing care. Strategies that minimize the frequency of staff members caring for both colonized and uncolonized infants may be beneficial in reducing the spread of MRSA colonization.


Abstract
Objective – This paper analyzes the design process for a toolkit for appraising emerging and established bibliographic reference generators and managers for a particular student population. Others looking to adapt or draw from the toolkit to meet the needs of users at their own institutions will benefit from this exploration of how one team developed and streamlined the process of assessment.
Methods – The authors implemented an extensive initial evaluation using a checklist and comprehensive rubric to review and select reference tools. This work was guided by a matrix of categories from Marino (2012), Bates (2015), and other literature. As the tools were assessed using the toolkit, the components of the toolkit were evaluated and revised. Toolkit revisions were based on evaluators' feedback and lessons learned during the testing process.
Results – Fifty-three tools were screened using a checklist that reviewed features, including cost and referencing styles. Eighteen tools were thoroughly evaluated using the comprehensive rubric by multiple researchers to minimize bias. From this secondary testing, tools were recommended for use within this environment. Ultimately the process of creating an assessment toolkit allowed the researchers to develop a streamlined process for further testing. The toolkit includes a checklist to reduce the list of potential tools, a rubric for features, a rubric to evaluate qualitative criteria, and an instrument for scoring.
Conclusion – User needs and the campus environment are critical considerations for the selection of reference tools. For this project, researchers developed a comprehensive rubric and testing procedure to ensure consistency and validity of data. The streamlined process in turn enabled library staff to provide evidence based recommendations for the most suitable manager or generator to meet the needs of individual programs.


: The neoblast distribution in the prepharyngeal portion of the body remains unchanged during the asexual reproduction of planaria. During the first few days after fission, the number of neoblasts decreases in the portion of the body immediately adjoining the site of daughter zooid detachment and considerably increases in the regenerative bud. Starting with the fourth day after division, there is an increase in the number of neoblasts in the region of future fission, which can be regarded as one preparatory mechanism for the next fission. The mitosis distribution pattern is just the reverse: the regions of the body with the highest neoblast density are characterized by a low mitotic index or no dividing cells at all. The neoblast and mitosis distributions in the daughter zooid during its asexual reproduction cycle duplicate those observed in the maternal zooid.


One-to-one computing has lately become a frequently used buzzword in the discussions on e-learning in primary education. The main idea in one-to-one computing is to provide every student with a personal computer. This has often been combined with Internet access and the idea to share content but not to share the computers. Some examples of low-cost laptop brands produced for one-to-one computing are Intel Classmate, Asus Eee PC and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer. Different versions of one-to-one computing concept have recently been implemented in the developing world as well as in several developing countries. This study will focus on the Sri Lankan OLPC initiative and data has been gathered from three selected primary schools. In the Sri Lankan OLPC model there is no focus on Internet connectivity and the emphasis is on content development in local languages. Schools chosen in this first one year pilot project are to be classified as to be "the poorest of the poor" and located in rural areas. The research question in this paper is, if and why the introduction of one-to-one computing has had an impact on the formal learning outcomes. Our measurements of the impact on the formal education results are based on data from the selected schools' grading registries, but the general analysis and conclusions are also based on observations and interviews with teachers and school principals. There have also been interviews and discussions with people in charge at the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education. All the visited schools have had technical as well as pedagogical problems during the first year, but findings show that there has been an impact on formal learning in subjects like Mathematics and English. We believe that the Sri Lankan emphasis on content development is part of the explanation but also that the strong commitment amongst teachers and parents has contributed. Our recommendation is that this pilot project should be extended but that the focus should be kept on poor schools in non urban areas. We also give some suggestions on how to improve the content development and how to extend the support to staff and parents at the Sri Lankan OLPC schools.


Background Improving and preserving patient (pt) physical function is an important goal for psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Objectives To evaluate apremilast's (APR) effects on physical function/functional status for up to 3 yrs in DMARD/biologic-experienced (PALACE 1–3 [PAL1–3] pooled data) and DMARD-naive (PALACE 4 [PAL4]) pts with active PsA. Methods Pts were randomized (1:1:1) to placebo (PBO), APR 30 mg BID (APR30), or 20 mg BID (APR20) at baseline (BL). The primary endpoint was at Wk16; a long-term extension is ongoing. A detailed study design has been previously presented. Assessed were mean change from BL HAQ-DI scores and proportions of pts reaching HAQ-DI MCID and reaching scores ≤1.0 (below clinically significant disability), ≤0.5 (minimal disability), and ≤0.25 (general population). Wk16 data were analyzed by LOCF. Wk156 data are as observed. Mean change and MCID outcomes are for all pts receiving APR30 at any time during the study; disability level data are for pts randomized to APR30 at BL. Results PAL1–3 (biologic/DMARD-experienced) and PAL4 (DMARD-naïve) pts had similar BL SJC/TJC and DAS-28 (CRP), indicating active PsA. PAL1–3 pts had longer mean duration of PsA and psoriasis, higher PASI scores, and greater corticosteroid use at BL. Despite differences, BL physical disability was clinically significant in both populations (mean HAQ-DI, PAL1–3: 1.2; PAL4: 1.1). Marked disability at BL was seen in some pts randomized to APR30, with HAQ-DI scores up to 2.63–2.88. More PAL1–3 vs PAL4 APR30 pts had BL HAQ-DI >1.0 (60% vs 54%), >1.5 (marked difficulty/need for assistive devices, 31%vs 21%), and >1.75 (major disability, 19% vs 10%), highlighting need for early, effective treatment (tx). Few APR30 pts had BL scores ≤0.5 (18–22%) or ≤0.25 (10–14%). At Wk16, physical function significantly improved with APR30 vs PBO (mean HAQ-DI change, PAL1–3: −0.23 vs −0.08; PAL4: −0.21 vs 0.03; both P<0.0001) and more APR30 vs PBO pts reached HAQ-DI MCID ≥0.30 and ≥0.35. As early as Wk16, overall disability levels also shifted; more APR30 vs PBO pts achieved HAQ-DI ≤1.0 (PAL1–3: 56% vs 48%; PAL4: 60% vs 52%). At Wk156, marked achievement of HAQ-DI ≤1.0, ≤0.5, and ≤0.25 was observed in both populations (Table). LOCF analyses confirmed Wk156 results. Conclusions With APR30 tx, physical disability improved early; functionality was maintained for up to 3 yrs. Most pts achieved HAQ-DI ≤1.0; many attained minimal/mild physical impairment. Over 40% of pts receiving APR30 earlier in the tx paradigm had functional ability similar to population norms after 3 yrs; shorter disease duration and no prior DMARD/biologics use in this population suggests that earlier APR tx may increase the likelihood of maximal functionality for some pts. Disclosure of Interest P. Mease Grant/research support from: Abbott, Amgen, Biogen Idec, BMS, Celgene Corporation, Genentech, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, UCB, Consultant for: Abbott, Amgen, Biogen Idec, BMS, Celgene Corporation, Genentech, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, UCB, Speakers bureau: Abbott, Amgen, Biogen Idec, BMS, Genentech, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, UCB, A. Wells Grant/research support from: Celgene Corporation, J. Wollenhaupt Grant/research support from: Abbott, BMS, MSD, Pfizer, UCB, Consultant for: Abbott, BMS, MSD, Pfizer, UCB, S. Hall Consultant for: Boehringer Ingelheim, MSD, Roche, Schering-Plough, Servier, Wyeth, Paid instructor for: Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor, GSK, MSD, Pfizer, Sanofi Aventis, Sanofi Pasteur, Schering-Plough, Serono, Wyeth, Speakers bureau: Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, MSD, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi Aventis, Schering-Plough, Wyeth, F. Van den Bosch Consultant for: AbbVie, Celgene Corporation, Merck, Pfizer, UCB, Janssen, E. Lespessailles Grant/research support from: Amgen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Servier, Speakers bureau: Amgen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Servier, M. McIlraith Employee of: Celgene Corporation, D. Nguyen Employee of: Celgene Corporation, L. Teng Employee of: Celgene Corporation, C. Edwards Grant/research support from: Celgene Corporation, Pfizer, Roche, Samsung, Consultant for: Celgene Corporation, Pfizer, Roche, Samsung, Speakers bureau: Abbott, GSK, Pfizer, Roche


Background Multiple techniques are used for understanding, determining the real pathophysiological process, and treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The aim of this study was to assess cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) as well as P300 in children with ADHD, and its correlation with neurocognitive tests [Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), digit span (DS), and Stroop test (ST)]. Patients and methods A prospective cross-sectional study was performed on 103 children, who were divided into two groups: 53 children newly diagnosed with ADHD (according to Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th ed.), who were drug naïve, and 50 normal control matched for age, sex, educational and social level, and intelligence quotient. All participants had detailed psychiatric history, intelligence quotient Wechsler intelligence scale for children (WICS), Conners' parent/teacher rating scale abbreviated form for ADHD, neuropsychological tests (WCST and Stroop), pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry using GSI 61 audiometer, immittance test using interacoustic, and sustained attention test using auditory continuous performance test (ACPT) P300. Results Children with ADHD had more perseverative responses, more preservative errors, and more failure to maintain set (FMS) than controls in WCST, with a significant difference among study groups. ADHD group was impaired in digit span backward and ST than control group. P300 amplitude and latency were significantly different between the study groups. In comparison with the control group, statistical delayed latencies of significance were observed in ADHD between all CAEP components. A significant difference for P1-N1 amplitude was observed among different components of CAEP, and no significance was observed regarding P2-N2 amplitude. ACPT showed a significant difference between both groups, with higher percentage in control group. Positive correlations were observed between P300 amplitude and WCST (perseverative error), P300 amplitude and ST results, and N2 latency and DS backward. Conclusion Assessment of CAEPs and P300 in children with ADHD, as well as their correlation with neurocognitive tests (WCST, DS, and ST), is crucial in diagnosis and management.


Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) cell lines are heterogenous with regard to phenotype, growth characteristics, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) latent gene and BCL-2 expression. Previously we have demonstrated that transfection with the EBV genes LMP or EBNA-2 upregulates BCL-2 in B-cell lines. In order to test the functional relevance of these findings, cell lines were examined with regard to their sensitivity towards different apoptosis-inducing agents. BL cell lines transfected with LMP expressed high levels of BCL-2, and were compared with the parental cell line expressing little or no BCL-2. We also studied EBV immortalized lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) with high BCL-2 expression and strong resistance towards low serum concentrations. Hydrocortisone (HC) and 2-chlorodeoxyadenosine (2-CDA) were used alone or in different combinations. Cell growth and apoptosis were studied morphologically and by determination of viability and DNA fragmentation. BL cell lines showed different sensitivity towards HC-induced apoptosis, and sensitive cell lines became more resistant towards HC after infection with EBV or transfection with LMP and subsequent upregulation of BCL-2 expression. BL cell lines and LCL were relatively insensitive towards 2-CDA-induced apoptosis, and high concentrations of 2-CDA were necessary, independently of the levels of BCL-2 expression. In contrast to low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, 2-CDA does not appear to be a valuable drug for the treatment of Burkitt's lymphoma. LMP expression provides resistance towards hydrocortisone-induced apoptosis in vitro, possible through upregulation of BCL-2.


Neuromuscular synaptic transmission in the ectothermal crab Carcinus maenas was used to assess the extent to which photoperiod affected the attainment of temperature acclimation. A separate series of experiments were carried out to determine thermotolerance to high temperature (CTMax) and its dependence on prior heat shock and heat shock proteins. Dactylopodite closer muscle resting potentials and the characteristics of evoked excitatory junction potentials in response to stimulation of the excitatory tonic axon were recorded with intracellular microelectrodes and the extent of acclimation to temperature under different photoperiodic regimes was measured. Animals were acclimated for at least two week to either 8 C or 25 C with short day (8hr: 16hr, L/D) or long day (16hr: 8hr, L/D) photoperiods. Photoperiod differences had a marked effect on acclimation to temperature as measured by muscle resting potential and excitatory junction potential amplitude and facilitation. In short day photoperiods there was an acclimatory shift of muscle resting potential in crabs acclimated to 25 C compared with those acclimated to 8 C. Such an acclimatory shift of muscle resting potential was not seen in animals from long day photoperiods. By contrast facilitation showed acclimatory changes to temperature in long day but not in short day photoperiods. Excitatory junction potential amplitudes were increased in cold acclimation; this increase was larger from long day acclimated groups compared with short day groups. Furthermore photoperiod had a large effect on closer muscle tension in animals acclimated at low temperatures but little effect on animals acclimated at high temperatures. Heat shock reduced the amplitude of EJPs recorded in the closer muscle but enabled the EJP to be maintained for much higher temperatures. Heat shock also resulted in an increase in thermotolerance as measured by an elevation of CTMax from 33.04 C to 34.17 C.


Abstract Previous research on the voting propensity of young Americans has largely treated the effects of state electoral laws as homogenous, despite today's youth belonging to the most racially and ethnically diverse age cohort to date. Research has documented differences in participatory resources across racial, ethnic, and age groups, with recent work also suggesting differences in racial and ethnic identity influences across age groups. These factors may lead to significant differences in voter turnout under different state electoral environments. Using the Current Population Survey (2000–2016), national voter rolls (2012), and the Cost of Voting Index, this study investigates how the intersectionality of age and racial/ethnic identification affect voting decisions across state electoral environments. Whether comparing young voters across racial/ethnic identifications or comparing young voters to their older racial/ethnic counterparts, results strongly support the assertion that young voters are affected to differing degrees by increased costs to vote along racial/ethnic lines.


Newly revised and updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend adoption of procedures to improve the microbiological quality of water used in dental treatment. These recommendations represent the consensus of experts from a wide range of scientific and clinical disciplines and are based on the best currently available evidence. Dentists and the manufacturers of dental equipment must consider the infection control, occupational health and risk-management implications of biofilm colonization in dental equipment, and take appropriate measures to provide water of appropriate microbiological quality clinical procedures.


PURPOSE: To evaluate partial or total ischemia, through ligature with an unabsorbed thread of vessels from the vermiform appendix of rabbits, as well as the mechanical obstruction, through ligature with an unabsorbed thread at the basis of the vermiform appendix, at 1 cm from the cecum, of the acute appendicitis disease. To evaluate the histology of the appendix ( normal and affected ). To study the bacterium flora resident in the vermiform appendix (normal and affected) and the exudates peritonitis. METHODS: Seventy- two male rabbits ( Oryctogalus cuniculus ), from New Zealand lineage were used, weighing approximately 3,000 grams. The animals were divided into: pilot ( A ), bacterium flora ( B ), control ( H ) and experimental ( C, D, E, F and G ) groups, and were observed in periods of 96 and 192 hours. It was done the ligature with an unabsorbed thread of vessels from the meso appendix, and the base of the appendix within 1 cm from the cecal. In the ( C ) experimental group, the mechanical obstruction was carried out. In the (D, E, F and G) experimental groups, the ischemic model was used, and in the ( H ) control group, only the surgical simulation was done. RESULTS: In the control group ( H ), the acute appendicitis didn't happen. In the experimental group ( C, D, E, F and G ) the acute appendicitis happened. CONCLUSION: The method used causes acute appendicitis with distinct anatomopathological alterations. The main bacteria found at the physiological flora of the enteric juice from the vermiform appendix and at the exudates peritonitis was the Escherichia coli.


Energy efficiency and environmental impact have become dominant topics in internal combustion engines development. Among many strategies to improve power and emissions outputs from diesel engines is the partial mix of hydrogen and air as fresh charge components to form extremely lean and homogenous mixture, which resist the spontaneous combustion, while diesel fuel is injected directly inside combustion chamber using the conventional fuel injection systems. This contribution presents an analytical and experimental investigation for the effects of adding hydrogen on diesel engines power output and the reduction of emissions. Parametric analysis is used based on lamped parameters modeling of intake manifold to estimate in cylinder trapped charge. The fuel energy flow to engine cylinders is compared for a range of loads and concentrations to simulate relevant case studies. Diesel fuel reduction for significant range of part-load operation can be achieved by introducing hydrogen, along with power improvement emission reductions are affected positively as well. This is achievable without compromising the engine maximum efficiency, given that most engines are operated at small and part-load during normal driving conditions, which allow for introducing more hydrogen instead of large quantities of excess air during such operation conditions that also can be further improved by charge boosting.


Abstract Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos' and Latinas' racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets – the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors' claims that Latinas' and Latinos' skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.


In an exceedingly planned methodology we tend to use the data encryption and steganography technique to secure the image arcanum generation to secure access on the info server's files, for additional security splitting technique wont to the stegno image for verification server aspect and consumer aspect user knowledge. This system provides robust knowledge security to storage on local cloud server and that we additionally offer the robust network communication security to registered users during knowledge uploads and downloads user knowledge. In this system coated the thought of generating associate economical algorithm for generates secure image primarily based arcanum Authentication system.


Stoeberl Marsha JC (Writer) (Last Name) (First) (Initials) Analysis of Immediate Comprehension When Breastfeeding Education is Offered in (Title) Either of Two Methods: Poster Display or Lecture Food Science and Nutrition Barbara Knous, PhD, RD December, 1999 149 (Graduate Major) (Research Advisor) (Month/Year) (No. of Pages) Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fourth Edition (Name of the Manual Used in this Study) The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has mandated nutrition education as an important part of its services. In the early years after WIC's inception, education was often by classes. In recent years, education by poster display has increased at WIC. Both WIC staff and WIC clients like the informality and less time consuming qualities of education by poster display. Breastfeeding education is one type of nutrition education offered by WIC nutritionists. Breastfeeding initiation is less likely to occur for women of lower socioeconomic status than the population in general. Breastfeeding education has been shown to increase the incidence and duration of breastfeeding. Breastfed infants, in general, are healthier with fewer illnesses and less severe illnesses than artificially fed infants. A large cost savings to society can be realized when babies are breastfed, not only in health care, but also in the cost of formula purchased by the USDA for WIC. The purpose of this research was to determine if a difference in immediate comprehension occurred when subjects were presented with breastfeeding education in either of two ways: a poster display or a classroom lecture with overhead transparencies. The main topic of the education was reasons why women stop breastfeeding early. Subtopics addressed returning to work or school, sore nipples and perceived milk insufficiency. A pilot study with WIC clients was carried out to determine useability of the materials and for experience with the logistics of the study. The actual study was conducted at four sites with a total of 73 subjects, 43 in the poster display method and 30 in the classroom method. Participants were from two WIC projects in Western Wisconsin, a childbirth class at a small medical center, and members of a high school Early Headstart Schoolage Parents group. Targeted were women of childbearing years, however, nine subjects were male. Demographic and breastfeeding experience and attitude questions were asked of the subjects through a demographic/consent form. Based on demographic data, the two WIC sites were found to be homogeneous, so were combined into one site for data analysis. Following the presentation of the breastfeeding education which was identical in every way except the method in which it was presented, subjects answered a short quiz on the evaluation instrument. Data were analyzed for overall scores by site of data collection and method of breastfeeding education as well as by individual questions. A significant difference in score was found by method of breastfeeding education, but not by site of data collection. Those who attended the class lecture had significantly higher scores, overall, than those who viewed the poster display. Although differences in scores were significant, the practical significance is questionable. Subjects who viewed the poster display method of breastfeeding education still did well on the quiz overall. Results of this research may indicate poster education to be effective in the WIC setting. Further research is needed to determine an effect on true learning and if behavior change occurs as a result of the education.


Many research efforts using anatomical image analysis have as their goal to identify biologically relevant objects present within the image data, to provide a means to quantitatively analyze these objects, to compare the distribution of those objects to other features, and finally to properly annotate the objects so as to be able share this analysis in an integrated informatics framework. The neuroinformatics tools designed to achieve these ends have been developed in a fragmented manner with each resource developing access to unique data sets and analytical capabilities, Their integration would enrich the neuroinformatic network enabling queries and analysis across a number of resources. A central objective of the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is to achieve this integration and we present here a demonstration of how two such tools - the NeuroTerrain Atlas/NetOStat client and the Smart Atlas - can expose their functionality via a re-usable interface, so as to promote interoperation of tools and data.


Clinical audit is the process by which clinicians are able to demonstrate to themselves, their patients, hospital administrators, and healthcare financial providers the outcome and safety of their clinical practice. It is a process by which the public can be assured of safety and outcomes. A fast-track surgery program was initiated in January 2008, and this paper represents a rolling clinical audit of the outcomes of that program until the end of June 2012. Three hundred and eighty-nine patients underwent fast track surgical management after having a laparotomy for suspected or confirmed gynaecological cancer. There were no exclusions and the data presented represents the practice and outcomes of all patients referred to a single gynaecological oncologist. The majority of patients were deemed to have complex surgical procedures performed usually through a vertical midline incision. One third of patients had a nonzero performance status, median weight was 68 kilograms, and median BMI was 26.5 with 31% being classified as obese. Median operating time was 2.25 hours, and the median estimated blood loss was 175 mL. Overall the median length of stay (LOS) was 3 days with 95% of patients tolerating early oral feeding. Four percent of patients required readmission, and 0.5% were required to return to the operating room. Whilst the wound infection rate was 2.6%, there were no ureteric, bowel or neurovascular injuries. Overall there were 2 bladder injuries (0.5%), and the incidence of venous thromboembolism was 1%. Subset analysis was also undertaken. Whilst a number of variables were associated with reduced LOS, on multivariate analysis, benign pathology, shorter operating time, and the ability to tolerate early oral feeding were found to be significant. The data and experience presented is the largest and most extensive reported in the literature relating to fast-track surgery in gynaecology and gynaecologic oncology. The public can be reassured of the safety and improved outcomes that can be achieved after the introduction of such a program.


The era of Super-Earths has formally begun with the detection of transiting low-mass exoplanets CoRoT-7b and GJ 1214b. In the path of characterising super-Earths, the first step is to infer their composition. While the discovery data for CoRoT-7b, in combination with the high atmospheric mass loss rate inferred from the high insolation, suggested that it was a rocky planet, the new proposed mass values have widened the possibilities. The combined mass range 1−10 M ⊕ allows for a volatile-rich (and requires it if the mass is less than 4 M ⊕ ), an Earth-like or a super-Mercury-like composition. In contrast, the radius of GJ 1214b is too large to admit a solid composition, thus it necessarily to have a substantial gas layer. Some evidence suggests that within this gas layer H/He is a small but non-negligible component. These two planets are the first of many transiting low-mass exoplanets expected to be detected and they exemplify the limitations faced when inferring composition, which come from the degenerate character of the problem and the large error bars in the data.


Our efforts have focused on investigating the type of knowledge students use when making decisions in the process of developing design solutions. In particular, we document the type of evidence students provide when presenting various design alternatives, or when they suggest a particular design approach or solution. One major aim of our work is to investigate how flexible students are in applying disciplinary knowledge in the process of design. Specifically, our research seeks to explore the role that computational and analytical abilities play in innovation in the context of engineering design education. We apply the learning framework of adaptive expertise to focus our work and guide the research. Using the adaptive expertise framework, with a specific focus on computational/analytical knowledge, we document the type of evidence students do (or do not) use when selecting possible design alternatives, appropriate models or methods of analysis, and when interpreting the results to justify their decisions. We analyzed student design project reports from different academic years, and from different engineering disciplines. Specifically, our data consists of first-year and capstone design experiences. This comprehensive data set enables us to compare the nature of students' decision making and the type of analytical knowledge used across the undergraduate time span. Results from this research shed light on how students use disciplinary knowledge in the process of design, what students consider to be important technical information for design, and how students make design decisions, sometimes with and without appropriate evidence to support their decisions.


This study aims to investigate the relationships between citizens' populist attitudes, perceptions of public opinion, and perceptions of mainstream news media. Relying on social identity theory as an explanatory framework, this article argues that populist citizens assume that public opinion is congruent with their own opinion and that mainstream media reporting is hostile toward their own views. To date, only anecdotal evidence suggests that both assumptions are true. The relationships are investigated in a cross-sectional survey with samples drawn from four Western European countries (N = 3,354). Multigroup regression analysis supports our hypotheses: False consensus and hostile media perceptions can clearly be linked to populist attitudes in all four regions under investigation. Moreover, our findings show a gap between hostile media perceptions and congruent public opinion perceptions, which increases with increasing populist attitudes to the point that the persuasive press inference mechanism is annulled.


Effects of hard planar walls with a particle scale roughness on the spatial correlations of non-affine strain in amorphous solids are investigated via molecular dynamics simulations. When determined within layers parallel to the wall plane, normalized non-affine strain correlations are enhanced within layers closer to the wall. The amplitude of these correlations, on the other hand, is found to be suppressed by the wall. While the former is connected to the effects of a hard boundary on the continuum mechanics scale, the latter is attributed to molecular scale wall effects on the size of the region (nearest-neighbor cage), explored by particles on intermediate times scales.


This document comprises the final report on the IST Integrated Project XtreemOS - "Building and promoting
a Linux-based operating systems to support virtual organizations for next generation Grids".
The project started in June 2006 and ended in September 2010.
The XtreemOS operating system provides for Grids what a traditional operating system offers for
a single computer: abstraction from the hardware and secure resource sharing between different users.
It thus simplifies the work of users belonging to virtual organizations by giving them the illusion of
using a traditional computer while removing the burden of complex resource management issues of a
typical Grid environment.
We have developed a comprehensive set of cooperating system services. XtreemOS software
components range from Linux kernel modules to application-support libraries. The XtreemOS operating
system provides three major distributed services to users: application execution management
(providing scalable resource discovery and job scheduling for distributed interactive applications),
data management (accessing and storing data in XtreemFS, a POSIX-like file system spanning the
Grid) and virtual organization management (building and operating dynamic virtual organizations).
Three flavours of the system have been implemented for individual PC, clusters and mobile devices
(PDA, smartphone, notebook).
The XtreemOS software has been experimented and validated with a wide range of applications.
Various demonstrators were implemented, shown at different events and published on the web.
The project results are available as open source software. The consortium member organizations
plan to exploit some of the results in follow-up research projects and in future products.
1/


In this bachelor thesis, I first introduce the machine learning methodology of text classification with the goal to describe the functioning of neural networks. Then, I identify and discuss the current development of Convolutional Neural Networks and Recurrent Neural Networks from a text classification perspective and compare both models. Furthermore, I introduce different techniques used to translate textual information in a language comprehensible by the computer, which ultimately serve as inputs for the models previously discussed. From there, I propose a method for the models to cope with words absent from a training corpus. This first part has also the goal to facilitate the access to the machine learning world to a broader audience than computer science students and experts. To test the proposal, I implement and compare two state-of-the-art models and eight different word representations using pre-trained vectors on a dataset given by LogMeIn and on a common benchmark. I find that, with my configuration, Convolutional Neural Networks are easier to train and are also yielding better results. Nevertheless, I highlight that models that combine both architectures can potentially have a better performance, but need more work on identifying appropriate hyperparameters for training. Finally, I find that the efficacy of word embedding methods depends not only on the dataset but also on the model used to tackle the subsequent task. In my context, they can boost performance by up to 10.2% compared to a random initialization. However, further investigations are necessary to evaluate the value of my proposal with a corpus that contains a greater ratio of unknown relevant words.


More than 20,000 spinal operations are carried out in the UK each year. The decision when and whether to operate requires mature judgement. Spinal surgery is technically difficult, demanding a high level of surgical skill. It is learnt only by lengthy apprenticeship. The after-care is equally important. The personal supervision of the surgeon who leads a coordinated team of clinicians, nurses and physiotherapists will ensure the best results. It is inevitable and unfortunate that mistakes will occasionally be made and only careful attention to detail in the pre-operative assessment, meticulous surgical care and supervised post-operative management will ensure consistently good results. The spinal surgeon needs to remain up-to-date, be disciplined with a systematic and careful approach and lead a coordinated team to maintain the highest standards.


Most animals possess the ability to actuate a vast diversity of movements, ostensibly constrained only by morphology and physics. In practice, however, a frequent assumption in behavioral science is that most of an animal's activities can be described in terms of a small set of stereotyped motifs. Here we introduce a method for mapping the behavioral space of organisms, relying only upon the underlying structure of postural movement data to organize and classify behaviors. We find that six different drosophilid species each perform a mix of non-stereotyped actions and over one hundred hierarchically-organized, stereotyped behaviors. Moreover, we use this approach to compare these species' behavioral spaces, systematically identifying subtle behavioral differences between closely-related species.


Date Presented 04/07/19
 We describe a new approach for assessing executive functions in everyday life and its unique expression in adolescents with epilepsy, using the Weekly Calendar Planning Activity (WCPA). The WCPA provides functionally relevant information on task performance and strategy use that can guide intervention and measure outcomes. We recommend that OTs assess EF among adolescents with epilepsy using a performance-based assessment.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Sharon Zlotnik
 Contributing Authors: Aharon Schiff
 Sarit Ravid, Eli Shahar, Joan Toglia


The essay is about the farmworkers that worked within a system of payment. This consisted in one part of a small amount of salary as payment in money and the other two was for food and a place to live. This type of payment made it problematic to see how much a worker actually earned. It was especially hard to compare with an industrial worker when the houses where run down and the food had a bad quality. Focus for this essay is what was discussed in the union's weekly newspaper "Lantarbetaren" about the farmworkers between the years 1938-1942 when the debate was most intense, which it was in the last years, were the system of this type of payment was obsolete.The essay is focused in three areas, the buildings that the workers lived in and its living condition, the work condition and the workers right to organize.


The reported lack of transparency of the online advertising market may seriously affect the interests of advertisers. In this paper, we present a novel methodology that allows advertisers to independently assess the quality of display advertising campaigns. This methodology also serves to audit the accuracy and completeness of reports delivered by the vendor responsible for running a campaign. We have applied our methodology in 8 display ad campaigns configured in Google AdWords, which overall produced 160K ad impressions displayed in more than 7K publishers. Our results reveal that AdWords seems to provide incomplete information to advertisers. Specifically, we found that: (i) AdWords did not report 57% of publishers where ad impressions from our campaigns were delivered, (ii) AdWords reports a large fraction of contextually meaningful impressions based on (non-disclosed) criteria different from the publisher's theme, (iii) higher CPM investment does not lead to get impressions delivered to more popular publishers, (iv) AdWords does not offer default control of frequency cap, (v) around 10% ad impressions in two of our campaigns were delivered to IP's from Data Centers. The industry considers these IPs to be likely related to fraud. These findings should contribute to open a debate between advertisers and Ad Tech vendors to standardize the utilization of independent auditing methodologies as the one presented in this work.


These original contributions by leading economists in the decision sciences - operations research, game theory, econometrics, and mathematical economics - show how the interactions between these disciplines can enrich them all. In Part I, "Game Theory and Mathematical Economics," Robert Aumann illuminates the ideas that underlie a series of major contributions in game theory during the last two decades, and Paul Champsaur provides a synthesis on information exchange, incentives, and general equilibrium. Werner Hildenbrand retraces the evolution of mathematical economies, Bernard Cornet discusses the existence of equilibria under increasing returns, Roger Guesnerie writes on first-best allocation in economies with nonconvex production sets, and John Roberts expands recent work on nonmarket-clearing equilibria. In Part II, "Operations Research," Thomas Magnanti surveys twenty years of mathematical programming. John Mitchell and Michael Todd deal with the new interior point-methods in linear programming; Michael Ball, Wei-guo Liu, and William Pulleyblank analyze two terminal Steiner tree polyhedra, and Olivier Janssens de Bisthoven and Etienne Loute describe an algorithm and implementation of large-scale linear programs with special structures. In Part III, "Econometrics," Adrian Pagan surveys and evaluates the evolution of the field from 1966 to 1986. David Hendry and Jean-Francois Richard describe recent developments in the theory of encompassing, while Anton Barten proposes a levels version of the Rotterdam and related demand systems. Jean-Pierre Florens and Michel Mouchart address Bayesian specification tests, and Peter Kooinian examines a cross section of business survey reports to estimate average excess supply on goods and labor markets. Pierre Malgrange concludes with a method for analyzing the underlying theoretical structure of dynamic macroeconomic models. Bernard Cornet and Henry Tulkens are each Professor of Economies at University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne and at the Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; where they both are on the staff of the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics.


Background: Frozen shoulder, one of the leading causes of shoulder pain with incidence of 2% in India is frequently treated by
physiotherapist. Very few studies have emphasized combination of modalities or comparison of combined treatments for frozen
shoulder till date. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of combined treatments for better implications in clinical
practice. This study was aimed at comparing the efficacy of end range mobilization (ERM) and interferential current therapy (IFT)
with moist heat and stretching on pain, range of motions and disability of shoulder in acute stage of frozen shoulder.
Methodology: This clinical trial includes 43 subjects in the acute stage of frozen shoulder with SPADI score > 30. Group 1
(n=22) received treatment including moist heat application and shoulder stretching exercises whereas group 2 (n=21) received
end range mobilisation with interferential current therapy. Follow up was taken at 6th day of treatment using SPADI, ROM and
VAS for pain.
Results: Between Group comparison showed no statistically significant improvement (p=0.41) on VAS Score. However, Abduction
(p=0.006), Flexion (p=0.03), and Internal Rotation (p=0.03) were statistically and clinically significant in group 2. Improvement
was not observed for external rotation (p=0.8) and SPADI scale (p=0.57).
Conclusion: The results demonstrated that the end range mobilization can be used for better improvement in ROM in acute
stage of frozen shoulder. Both the treatment strategies can be equally useful for pain management.


Evaluation of outcomes of weather modification has been a necessity and an evolving process. Early efforts were largely based on statistical techniques of surface weather variables, but over the past 20 years use of physical processes assessment has grown. Great progress has been made in learning how to effectively use physical and statistical approaches for the assessment of weather modification, both operational and experimental efforts.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
The transplantation of mobilised peripheral progenitor cells has resulted in shortening of neutrophil and platelet engrafment times following high-dose chemotherapy. Since reticulated platelet percentage (PR%) has been established as a measure of bone marrow platelet production, we performed this type of analysis on the thrombopoietic compartment during transplant-related chemotherapy.

DESIGN AND METHODS
Kinetics of thrombopoiesis of 19 patients with solid tumors undergoing a single or double autologous peripheral blood progenitor cell transplant was characterized by evaluating the level of RP. The correlation between CD34(+) cell subsets and the time of highest percentage of RP was also evaluated.

RESULTS
The percentage of RP increases since day +8 after single transplant reaching the peak (3.4%) at day +10. In the group of patients receiving double transplant, the RP value of peak observed after second transplant is not significantly different from that one observed after the first transplant (3 vs 3.7%). In a subgroup of patients both the number of CD34(+) cells/Kg infused and the percentage of CD34(+) CD61(+) cell subsets correlate with the day of RP peak.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that RP measurement is an early indicator of engraftment. Additionally, the observation that RP percentage is high at the time of platelet transfusion in 13 out of 20 cases of transfusions (the 7 cases with low RP value being transfused during the period of obligate thrombocytopenia) suggests that the evaluation of this parameter, together with the platelet count, can be used to monitor the need for platelet transfusion.


Considering the impact and the vibration that add to its driving system when high-speed MU running in the complex conditions, the rotor mechanical strength problems of a traction motor in MU power transmission system are studied, in this paper. The motor operating parameters when MU operating under different states, such as the starting process, the increasing voltage constant power process, and the constant voltage constant power process, are taken as the constraint boundary conditions in different situations. Considering the asymmetry of axial constraint, the distributions of both the Von Mises stress and the contact stress in rotor under different working states are analyzed, and the strength situation of rotor is evaluated. Then, the fatigue strength of rotor in a long duration rated operating is studied, and the fatigue weak position in rotor is found. The obtained results could provide a theoretical basis for the safety operation of traction motor in high-speed MU.


The overlap between production of humanitarian images and interventions in contexts of natural and man-made catastrophes is growing on a global scale. An increasingly close relationship exists between image production, news production and humanitarian industry. In this article, we argue that this process is transforming the meaning of the social, political and ethical act of bearing witness. We analyse the epistemic and political implications of visual humanitarian testimony through the documentary film Enjoy Poverty (2008), shot in Congo by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens. Examining some of the key scenes of the film, we undertake an analysis of the visual culture of humanitarianism within which the contemporary production of sensational images of strong emotional impact is inscribed and justified. We maintain that rethinking testimonial debt in light of contemporary visual humanitarianism fundamentally means to acknowledge and explore the hierarchical relationship that visual humanitarianism creates between the witnesses, the victims and the spectators. We conclude by arguing that Enjoy Poverty constitutes an attempt to generate a new visual, discursive and political horizon within which one can prevent the transformation of the testimonial relationship into a relationship of power.


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A video teleconferencing and multimedia presentation system is provided. The system is integrated and network-ready to facilitate ease of set-up and operation, and also utilizes IP and/or wireless networking to provide advanced features and functionality, such as remote access and control and the ability to perform secure archiving and retrieval of recorded video and audio data. The system further utilizes a unique peer-to-peer conference network solution in order to address the bandwidth limitations that plague conventional systems and allow enhanced viewing of high-bandwidth applications.


A wide range of learning tasks require human input in labeling massive data. The collected data though are usually low quality and contain inaccuracies and errors. As a result, modern science and business face the problem of learning from unreliable data sets.
In this work, we provide a generic approach that is based on \textit{verification} of only few records of the data set to guarantee high quality learning outcomes for various optimization objectives. Our method, identifies small sets of critical records and verifies their validity. We show that many problems only need $\text{poly}(1/\varepsilon)$ verifications, to ensure that the output of the computation is at most a factor of $(1 \pm \varepsilon)$ away from the truth. For any given instance, we provide an \textit{instance optimal} solution that verifies the minimum possible number of records to approximately certify correctness. Then using this instance optimal formulation of the problem we prove our main result: "every function that satisfies some Lipschitz continuity condition can be certified with a small number of verifications". We show that the required Lipschitz continuity condition is satisfied even by some NP-complete problems, which illustrates the generality and importance of this theorem.
In case this certification step fails, an invalid record will be identified. Removing these records and repeating until success, guarantees that the result will be accurate and will depend only on the verified records. Surprisingly, as we show, for several computation tasks more efficient methods are possible. These methods always guarantee that the produced result is not affected by the invalid records, since any invalid record that affects the output will be detected and verified.


This monograph presents the work on robust procedures when researchers faced with data that appear to violate the assumption of normality and the data with unbalanced design.A simulation method was conducted by the authors to compare the robustness (Type I error) of the method with respect to its counterpart from the parametric and non-parametric aspects namely ANOVA, t-test, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney respectively. The performance of the methods was further demonstrated on real education data.This monograph illustrates new alternative procedures to researchers (in various fields, especially the experimental sciences) which will not be constrained with all the assumptions such as normality and homogeneity of variances.They can instead work with the original data without having to worry about the shape of the distributions.


Photochemical techniques have recently been revitalized as they can readily be adapted to different polymerization modes to yield a wide range of complex macromolecular structures. However, the implementation of the photoinduced cationic methods in the polymerization of cyclic siloxane monomers has scarcely been investigated. Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) is an important monomer for the synthesis of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and its copolymers. In this study, the cationic ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of D4, initiated by diphenyl iodonium hexafluorophosphate (DPI), has been studied. Both direct and indirect initiating systems acting at broad wavelength using benzophenone and pyrene were investigated. In both systems, photochemically generated protonic acids and silylium cations are responsible for the polymerization. The kinetics of the polymerization are followed by viscosimetry and GPC analyses. The reported approach may overcome the problems associated with conventional methods and therefore represents industrial importance for the fabrication of polysiloxanes.


To improve software reliability, many rule-based techniques have been proposed to infer programming rules and detect violations of these rules as bugs. These rule-based approaches often rely on the highly frequent appearances of certain patterns in a project to infer rules. It is known that if a pattern does not appear frequently enough, rules are not learned, thus missing many bugs. In this paper, we propose a new approach - Bugram - that leverages n-gram language models instead of rules to detect bugs. Bugram models program tokens sequentially, using the n-gram language model. Token sequences from the program are then assessed according to their probability in the learned model, and low probability sequences are marked as potential bugs. The assumption is that low probability token sequences in a program are unusual, which may indicate bugs, bad practices, or unusual/special uses of code of which developers may want to be aware. We evaluate Bugram in two ways. First, we apply Bugram on the latest versions of 16 open source Java projects. Results show that Bugram detects 59 bugs, 42 of which are manually verified as correct, 25 of which are true bugs and 17 are code snippets that should be refactored. Among the 25 true bugs, 23 cannot be detected by PR-Miner. We have reported these bugs to developers, 7 of which have already been confirmed by developers (4 of them have already been fixed), while the rest await confirmation. Second, we further compare Bugram with three additional graph- and rule-based bug detection tools, i.e., JADET, Tikanga, and GrouMiner. We apply Bugram on 14 Java projects evaluated in these three studies. Bugram detects 21 true bugs, at least 10 of which cannot be detected by these three tools. Our results suggest that Bugram is complementary to existing rule-based bug detection approaches.


The colonization of newly created sites by plants is determined by the characteristics of the species and their frequency in the surrounding landscape (mass effect). We used species frequencies from the Database of Successional Series of various disturbed sites across the Czech Republic (DaSS, 2817 phytosociological releves, 1013 species of vascular plants) to calculate two indices of species colonization ability. One index (index of colonization potential - ICP) was corrected using occurrence data in the Czech National Phytosociological Database (CNPD) and the other (index of colonization success - ICS) was used without correction. We also evaluated the participation of species in successional stages of different ages and assessed their maximum cover. Then we asked, species of which habitat types are the most successful in colonizing disturbed sites and how their participation changes over the course of succession. Species characteristic of the following habitat types were statistically over-represented in the successional series compared to in the CNPD: synanthropic habitats; cliffs, screes and walls; acidophilous grassland; dry grassland; and sandy grassland. Species characterizing particular types of habitat exhibited significant trends in their participation in different successional stages: those of dry grassland, heathland, scrub land and forest increased during succession whereas species of synanthropic acidophilous grassland, mesic grassland and wetland decreased. Species with high values of both indices are more likely to spread in landscapes continuously disturbed by human activity. Thus, these indices can help to predict future changes in vegetation in central-European landscapes and be used in ecological restoration projects.


The urgency of the research topic can be attributed to the acute need to study the literary heritage of A. Platonov and numerous problems related to the theory and practice of scientific interpretation of his works in the light of the latest publications, source discoveries and textual and biographical facts. Of particular importance for the teleology of the writer's style and the ultra-textual "poetics of revisiting" characteristic of his writing (the term coined by N. M. Malygina) are the works created in transition epochs. The strategies of A. Platonov's writing as an artist and publicist, realized in the late 1920s – early 1930s in an implicit and open polemic with aesthetic declarations and dogmatic propaganda aims, in modern science are interpreted in various ways, including analysis of the semantic resources inherent in the avantexts. The article deals with the specific features of actualization, selection, comprehension, and editing representation of creative and semantic resources of avantext on the example of the essay "Che-Che-O", published by A. Platonov in collaboration with B. Pilnyak in a "reassembled" edition, which significantly differed from the original one. The novelty of the article is determined by the proposed approach to the object of research. The study reveals the axiological role of autobiographical discourse for the formation of the avantext and the significance of the "Voronezh text" for the implementation of the final plan. It also discovers the lines of creative attraction, due to which writers with different understanding of the nature of essay writing and possessing personally specific composition techniques could cooperate. The study identifies the most important components of the creative idea, examines the sources reinterpreted by A. Platonov, including the works of A. Bogdanov, investigates the variety and multi-vector nature of discursive practices, compares the semantically significant episodes presented in the original manuscript and in the published text, and analyzes the intertextual connections and their role in different editions of the work.


The author describes a method of obtaining biologically-active 125I-labeled luteinzing hormone in iodation with chloramine T. The hormone and chloramine T concentration ratio of 1:2, and the reaction time of 20 sec was used. LH-125I with the specific activity of 27--30 microCi/microgram was bound with the receptor strictly specifically.


Author(s): Menicucci, Andrea Rivera | Advisor(s): Messaoudi, Ilhem; Wilson, Emma | Abstract: Ebolavirus (EBOV) is amongst the deadliest human viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever. The Zaire species (ZEBOV) is responsible for most outbreaks and highest mortality rates, with the newly identified variant, Makona (ZEBOV-Makona) responsible for the recent epidemic in West Africa. The high virulence of ZEBOV is attributed to its ability to subvert innate immune responses, notably type I interferon (IFN) production, and causes excessive inflammation. However, studies investigating how ZEBOV modulates innate immunity has mostly been extrapolated from in vitro experiments. Therefore, ZEBOV-host interactions in vivo are not fully understood. In this dissertation, I address this gap in knowledge by investigating longitudinal host responses in peripheral blood collected from cynomolgus macaques infected with ZEBOV using both immunological assays and transcriptomic analysis. We first comprehensively analyzed ZEBOV-Makona pathogenesis and discovered correlations between: increased IFNα and interferon stimulated genes (ISGs); higher inflammatory transcripts and non-classical monocytes; decreased expression of lymphocyte related genes and lymphopenia. This data also showed ZEBOV-Makona infection results in less severe and delayed appearance of clinical symptoms compared to previously identified variants. Second, transcriptomic analysis of purified immune cell subsets isolated from ZEBOV-Makona infected animals revealed that monocytes, but not T or B cells, support ZEBOV infection. Importantly, monocytes are one of the key players in mediating ZEBOV pathogenesis by initiating events that contribute to the characteristic symptoms of Ebola virus disease (EVD). Next, gene expression changes in animals infected with a recombinant ZEBOV containing mutations in VP35, which abrogate its ability to inhibit type I IFN, were indicative of a regulated innate immune response and successful development of adaptive immunity, which effectively immunized these animals against subsequent ZEBOV-Makona challenge. This data highlights the importance of type I IFN signaling and VP35 as a key virulence factor. Lastly, a promising vaccine candidate, rVSV-ZEBOV, has been shown to provide rapid protection to macaques against ZEBOV challenge. Transcriptomic analysis of animals vaccinated 7 or 3 days before challenge indicate that early expression of antiviral ISGs engendered by the vaccine can rapidly protect animals while paving the way for development of an adaptive immune response.


We present robust dynamic resource allocation mechanisms to allocate application resources meeting Service Level Objectives (SLOs) agreed between cloud providers and customers. In fact, two filter-based robust controllers, i.e., <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {H}_{\infty }$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="script">H</mml:mi><mml:mi>∞</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="makridis-ieq1-2966972.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> filter and Maximum Correntropy Criterion Kalman filter (MCC-KF), are proposed. The controllers are self-adaptive, with process noise variances and covariances calculated using previous measurements within a time window. In the allocation process, a bounded client mean response time (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathop {\mathrm{mRT}}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi> mRT </mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="makridis-ieq2-2966972.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>) is maintained. Both controllers are deployed and evaluated on an experimental testbed hosting the RUBiS (Rice University Bidding System) auction benchmark web site. The proposed controllers offer improved performance under abrupt workload changes, shown via rigorous comparison with current state-of-the-art. On our experimental setup, the Single-Input-Single-Output (SISO) controllers can operate on the same server where the resource allocation is performed; while Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) controllers are on a separate server where all the data are collected for decision making. SISO controllers take decisions not dependent to other system states (servers), albeit MIMO controllers are characterized by increased communication overhead and potential delays. While SISO controllers offer improved performance over MIMO ones, the latter enable a more informed decision making framework for resource allocation problem of multi-tier applications.


Targeting protein kinases with small organic molecules is a promising strategy to regulate unwanted kinase activity in both chemical biology and medicinal chemistry research. Traditionally, kinase inhibitors are identified in activity-based screening assays using enzymatically active kinase preparations to measure the perturbation of substrate phosphorylation, often resulting in the enrichment of classical ATP competitive (Type I) inhibitors. However, addressing enzymatically incompetent kinase conformations offers new opportunities for targeted therapies and is moving to the forefront of kinase inhibitor research. Here we report the development of a new FLiK (Fluorescent Labels in Kinases) binding assay to detect small molecules that induce changes in the conformation of the glycine-rich loop. Due to cross-talk between the glycine-rich loop and the activation loop in kinases, this alternative labeling approach can also detect ligands that stabilize inactive kinase conformations, including slow-binding Type II and Type III kinase inhibitors. Protein X-ray crystallography validated the assay results and identified a novel DFG-out binding mode for a quinazoline-based inhibitor in p38alpha kinase. We also detected the high-affinity binding of a clinically relevant and specific VEGFR2 inhibitor, and we provide structural details of its binding mode in p38alpha, in which it stabilizes the DFG-out conformation. Last, we demonstrate the power of this new FLiK labeling strategy to detect the binding of Type I ligands that induce conformational changes in the glycine-rich loop as a means of gaining affinity for the target kinase. This approach may be a useful alternative to develop direct binding assays for kinases that do not adopt the DFG-out conformation while also avoiding the use of expensive kits, detection reagents, or radioactivity frequently employed with activity-based assays.