SUMMARY: The rates at which two strains each of four species of cellulolytic rumen bacteria could grow on and solubilize ball-milled filter paper were compared in vitro. Strains of Ruminococcus albus solubilized it most rapidly, followed by R. flavefaciens. Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens showed consistently low rates of solubilization while strains of Cillobacterium cellulosolvens maintained on cellobiose-containing medium gradually lost their ability to solubilize cellulose. Cellulolysis could not be restored by successive transfers to media each containing one of different cellulose oligosaccharides. Strains of R. albus and R. flavefaciens grew almost as rapidly in cellulose- as in cellobiose-containing media, while B. fibrisolvens strains grew better in medium with cellobiose. On this basis the ruminococci were termed true cellulolytic bacteria.


Melanoma is a common type of skin cancer with a high propensity to metastasize. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway and immune checkpoint blockade have recently revolutionized the management of unresectable and metastatic disease. However, acquired resistance and primary non-response to therapy require novel treatment strategies and combinations. The purpose of this review is to provide a brief and up-to-date overview on the clinical management and current trial landscape in melanoma. We summarize the most pertinent studies on BRAF/MEK inhibitors and blockade of cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). Although most agents show robust antitumor efficacy as single agents, further improvements have been achieved by the combination of both approved and developing drugs. We discuss ongoing trials and evaluate future approaches that may provide additional efficacy with less toxicity.


Background: Fullterm small-for-gestational-age children (SGAs) are known for their ability to catch up on growth. Nevertheless, increased risk of growth restriction remains. Evidence on preterm SGA children's growth is lacking. Objective: To determine absolute gains in height and weight, relative growth, and growth restriction in preterm SGAs from 0 to 4 years and how prematurity and SGA status affect these measures. Design/Methods: Community-based cohort study, n = 1,648 preterm-born (gestational age <36 weeks, 57 SGA) and 605 term-born (12 SGA). We defined SGA as a birth weight less than -2 SD (P 2.3) compared to counterparts matched for gestational age. Height, weight, and head circumference were obtained from medical records and translated to z-scores. We defined growth restriction as height or weight less than -2 SD compared to fullterm appropriate-for-gestational-age children (AGAs). Results: Absolute height and weight gains were similar, but the relative growth of preterms and fullterms differed. Preterm AGAs and fullterm SGAs, although not reaching it, caught up towards the fullterm AGA median (z-scores at 4 years: -0.3 to -1.0). By contrast, preterm SGA children's z-scores were still -1.4 to -1.7. Head circumference growth was less affected by prematurity and SGA birth (z-scores at 1 year: 0.1 to -0.7). Catch-up growth mainly took place during infancy. 30-39% of all preterm SGAs showed growth restriction at 4 years. Conclusions: Growth in preterm SGAs is affected considerably by the joint effects of preterm birth and SGA status, resulting in a high proportion of growth restriction.


Based on the research results of light environment and thermal environment model and the principle of mass balance, the dynamic forecasting model of Humidity in Chinese solar greenhouse in the north drought cold area was established. The influenced factors correlative with water vapor change such as crop transpiration, soil evaporation, covered material condensation and natural or winded of closed situation ventilation were included in the model. To validate the correctness of the model, an experiment was carried out in the Chinese solar greenhouse in the Inner Mongolia agriculture science and technology park. The results showed that the inner relative humidity forecasted agreed well with the measured data in the north drought cold area in winter, and the relative error is less than 10%.


Recent studies have suggested an increasingly important and therapeutically relevant role for CD4+ T cells as direct effectors in immunotherapy. It has also become clear that antigens can access the MHC-II pathway via non-classical endogenous routes such as autophagy. The aims of this project were to investigate endogenous MHC-II processing of tumour antigens and explore methods that, by enhancing such processing, could increase T cell recognition of tumour cells. The frequency and diversity of T cell responses to the tumour antigen WT1 in healthy individuals and cancer patients was investigated. T cell responses were rare and only one epitope-specificity was identified in these donors. The Epstein Barr Virus Nuclear Antigen 1 (EBNA1), a protein that becomes more efficiently processed by autophagy when relocalised from the nucleus into the cytoplasm, was also investigated. When EBNA1-positive cells were treated with the CDK inhibitor Roscovitine, previously reported to relocalise EBNA1 into the cytoplasm, presentation of an autophagy-dependent indicator epitope was decreased. Roscovitine did not affect autophagy activity but decreased cellular levels of several autophagy adaptor proteins. siRNA Knock down of each autophagy adaptor showed CALCOCO2, NBR1 and OPTN were involved in the generation of an autophagy-dependent epitope from EBNA1; a control epitope was unaffected. Finally, efforts were made to define fundamental rules determining why only a subset of potential MHC-II epitopes are generated from an antigen by autophagy. Resistance to degradation by lysosomal peptidases was shown to be an important factor determining whether an MHC-II epitope can be generated by autophagy.


This study uses simple upsetting processes of copper to investigate the effects of temperature and grain refinement on stress-strain behaviour. The equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) and heat treatment techniques were applied to refine and control the grain size of copper in a range between 4 m and 46 m. The coppers were then machined to prepare the billets with 2 mm diameter and 3 mm height. To conduct the upsetting processes at elevated temperature, a forming system equipped with a heating device was also developed. The experimental results show that the copper billets with refined grains have higher strength than those with coarse grains prepared by annealing treatments. The grain refinement and the increase in forming temperature can improve material flow behaviors and thus lead to a better edge quality of the deformed workpiece.


The main objective of this research is to demonstrate that information theory, and specifically the concept of mutual information (MI) can be used to predict the maximum target recognition performance for a given radar concept in combination with a given set of targets of interest. This approach also allows for the direct comparison of disparate approaches to designing a radar concept which is capable of target recognition without resorting to choosing specific feature extraction and classification algorithms. The main application area of the study is the recognition of fighter type aircraft using surface based radar systems, although the results are also applicable to airborne radars. Information theoretic concepts are developed mathematically for the analysis of the radar target recognition problem. The various forms of MI required for this application are derived in detail and are tested rigorously against results from digital communication theory. The results are also compared to Shannon's channel capacity bound, which is the fundamental limit on the amount of information which can be transmitted over a channel. Several sets of simulation based experiments were conducted to demonstrate the insights achievable by applying MI concepts to quantitatively predict the maximum achievable performance of disparate approaches to the radar target recognition problem. Asymptotic computational electromagnetic code was applied to calculate the target's response to the radar signal for freely available geometrical models of fighter aircraft. The calculated target responses were then used to quantify the amount of information which is transmitted back to the radar about the target as a function of signal to noise ratio (SNR). The information content of the F-14, F-15 and F-16 were evaluated for a 480 MHz bandwidth waveform at 10 GHz as a baseline. Several ultra-wideband (UWB) waveforms, spanning 2-10 GHz, 10- 18 GHz and 2-18 GHz, but which were highly range ambiguous, were evaluated and showed SNR gains of 0.5-2 dB relative to the baseline. The effect of sensing the full polarimetric response of an F-18 and F-35 was evaluated and SNR gains of 5-7 dB over a single linear polarisation were measured. A Boeing 707 scale model (1:25) was measured in the University of Pretoria's compact range spanning 2-18 GHz and gains of 2 dB were observed between single and dual linear polarisations. This required numerical integration in 8004 dimensions, demonstrating the stability of the MI estimation algorithm in high dimensional signal spaces. The information gained by including the difference channel signal of an X-band monopulse radar for the F-14 data set was approximately 3 dB at 50 km and increased to 4.5 dB at 2 km due to the increased target extent relative to the antenna pattern. This experiment necessitated the use of target profiles which were matched to the range of the target to achieve maximum information transfer. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the loss in information due to envelope processing. For the baseline data set, SNR losses in the region of 7 dB were measured. Linear pre-processing using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and principal component analysis (PCA), before envelope processing, were compared and the PCA algorithm outperformed the FFT by approximately 1 dB at high MI values. Finally, the expression for multi-target MI was applied in conjunction with Fano's inequality to predict the probability of incorrectly classifying a target. Probability of error is a critical parameter for a radar user. For the baseline data set, at P(error) = 0.001, maximum losses in the region of 0.6 to 0.9 dB were measured. This result shows that these targets are easily separable in the signal space. This study was only the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" and future research could extend the results and applications of the techniques developed. The types of targets and configurations of the individual targets could be increased and analysed. The analysis should also be extended to describe effects internal to the radar such as phase noise, spurious signals and analogue to digital converters and external effects such as clutter and multipath. The techniques could also be applied to quantify the gains in target recognition performance achievable for multistatic radar, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar and more exotic concepts, such as the fusion of data from multiple monostatic microwave radars with multi-receiver multi-band passive bistatic radar (PBR) data.


Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most deadly brain tumor, effective treatment options for which still remain elusive. The current treatment procedure of maximal resection followed by chemotherapy has proved to be grossly insufficient to prevent disease progression and death. Despite best efforts, the maximum survival post-diagnosis is a mere 1.5 years. Therefore, there is a huge unmet clinical need to find effective therapeutic procedures to prevent the pathogenesis and relapse of GBM. Small-molecule inhibitors of signaling pathways are an attractive option to prevent various types of tumors. However, no effective small-molecule inhibitors have been successful against GBM in clinical trials. Various signaling pathways are altered and an array of signaling molecules, transcription factors (TFs), and epigenetic modifying factors have been implicated in the pathogenesis of GBM. JAK-STAT pathway alteration is an important contributor to GBM pathogenesis and relapse. Many small-molecule inhibitors of JAKs, or STAT TFs, especially JAK2 and STAT3, have been assessed for their anti-tumor activity in GBM. However, no definitive success so far has been achieved. Herein, by using two small-molecule inhibitors of JAK3, we show that they are quite effective in inhibiting GBM cell proliferation and neurosphere formation, downregulating their stemness character, and inducing differentiation into neuronal origin cells. The effect of a single treatment with the drugs, both in a serum-containing differentiation medium and in a proliferation medium containing EGF and FGF, was really strong in limiting GBM cell growth, suggesting a potential therapeutic application for these JAK inhibitors in GBM therapy.


Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) type-I and type-II receptors form a ligand-dependent heteromeric signalling complexes, in which transforming growth factor-beta receptor type II (TbetaRII) trends to act as the primary receptor. In the present study, we used a chimeric soluble type-II receptor fused with the Fc regions of human immunoglobulin (TbetaRIIs-Fc) in order to obtain a putative TGF-beta antagonist. Biochemical studies revealed that TbetaRIIs-Fc shared the same properties as the wild-type receptor. The TbetaRIIs-Fc receptor displayed an affinity of 1370 +/- 363 pM which was similar to those of the wild-type TbetaRII when expressed alone in Cos-1 cells (1122 +/- 413 pM). Furthermore, the chimeric receptor showed the same selectivity for TGF-beta isoforms as the native receptor. Although both TGF-beta1 and TGF-beta3 were able to bind TbetaBRIIs-Fc, TGF-beta2 could not compete with the binding of TGF-beta1 to TbetaRIIs-Fc. It was noted that this type of fused Fc receptor could be used in FlashPlate screening for potent agonism and antagonism of TGFbeta. Moreover, biological activities of the chimeric receptor showed it to be a potent TGF-beta1-antiproliferative and TGF-beta1-extracellular matrix transcriptional inhibitor on responses in Mv1Lu cells. To conclude, our results clearly show that the TbetaRIIs-Fc chimeric receptor could be used as a potent TGF-beta antagonist. These data raised the possibility that this TbetaRIIs-Fc construct might act successfully as an antagonist of both TGF-beta1 and TGF-beta3 in vivo.


It is pretty obvious that language and human consciousness entertain tight relations. We
could not really be conscious of ourselves without the possibility to say "I" or "me". And language
is a key contributor in our capability to identify ourselves as conscious entities existing in the
environment. But the relations linking language and consciousness are complex and difficult to
analyze. Evolutionary origins of language are unknown as no fossil traces have been left by our
ancestors. Sciences of consciousness however begin to make available some possible evolutionary
scenarios about the nature of human consciousness. We want here to propose a link between language and consciousness by using such an
evolutionary scenario and also introduce the usage of a systemic approach to meaning generation.
In the first part of the presentation we will use an existing scenario about the evolutionary nature of
self-consciousness where the development of language has a role (1). We will highlight this role in
order to identify language and self-consciousness as inter-dependant in their nature through a
possible common evolutionary origin. Self-consciousness and language could then be considered as
tightly inter-dependant through a common build up of human nature during evolution. The scenario presents an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness as resulting of the
capability for pre-human primates to identify with their conspecifics (1, 2). The conspecifics are
represented as existing in the environment, and such identification brought our pre-human ancestors
to consider themselves as also existing in the environment. The scenario takes this event as being a
first step for a conscious self-representation within pre-human primates, which progressively
evolved toward our today human consciousness (3). But such identification with conspecifics was not for free at times of survival of the fittest.
Identifying with conspecifics meant for our pre-human ancestor to also identify with their sufferings
or encountered dangers. These came in addition to the dangers or sufferings naturally encountered
and created a significant anxiety increase (1). The resulting level of anxiety had to be limited. One possibility for that was to develop
psychological or physical tools that could have reduced the risks of occurrences and developments
of such dangers and sufferings. Among these tools is the performance of language which can
induces significant evolutionary advantages. We will propose a first scheme about how these
evolutionary advantages could have reduced the dangers and sufferings encountered by our pre-
human ancestors. We will also show how the development of language produced by itself a positive
feedback on the development of inter-subjectivity in the evolutionary scenario, and so participated
directly to the development of human consciousness. Other evolutionary advantages have existed like the development of imitation and synergy
through experience (4). Language played a role there also, and has to be taken into account. The
second part of the presentation will propose the usage of an existing systemic approach to meaning
generation in terms of constraints satisfaction (5, 6). Constraints for pre-human primates, ranging
from a basic "stay alive" to highly elaborated "limit anxiety", were source of multiple meaning
generations in which language has played (and still plays) a key role. Several continuations will be
proposed linked to the here above thread on a co-evolutions of language and human consciousness,
as based on the evolutionary scenario.


An entanglement-based quantum dialogue protocol [Phys. Lett. A 328 (2004) 6] is proven to be insecure: that is, in the protocol an eavesdropper can steal the secret messages without being detected provided that he/she adopts the intercept-and-resend attack strategy. We modify the protocol, i.e. in the control mode, by introducing and randomly choosing two sets of measuring basis: the intercept-and-resend attack can be accordingly detected. Hence, within the present version two users can securely and simultaneously exchange their secret messages.


In this study, we evaluated the frequency, clinical presentation, treatment protocols, prognostic factors, and outcome in children with diffuse proliferative lupus nephritis (DPLN). Between June 1990 and December 2004, 46 patients were diagnosed to have systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and 26 of them (56.5%) were found to have DPLN. Renal manifestations were present in 25 patients, and the majority of them presented with severe renal findings, such as nephrotic syndrome and renal failure. All patients were given a quadruple therapy protocol including 6–12 monthly courses of methyl prednisolone pulse therapy combined with oral prednisolone, oral cyclophosphamide, azathioprine, and dipyridamole. Nineteen of these patients were regularly followed up with a mean follow-up period of 5.9 years. Complete remission was achieved in 15 of 19 patients, and chronic renal failure developed in four patients. Renal survival rate was calculated to be 78.9% at the end of 5, 10, and 14 years. Although nephrotic range proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, renal failure, and activity index above 12/24 at presentation seemed to be associated with poor prognosis, no significant difference could be found. Hypertension and chronicity index greater than 6/12 were found to be bad prognostic predictors. We concluded that satisfactory results were achieved with our quadruple therapy protocol; thus, more aggressive and expensive therapies can be avoided and preserved for more serious and persistent diseases.


Hirschsprung's disease (HSCR) is a rare congenital disease caused by impaired proliferation and migration of neural crest cells. We investigated changes in expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) and the genes they regulate in tissues of patients with HSCR. Quantitative real-time PCR and immunoblot analyses were used to measure levels of miRNA, mRNAs, and proteins in colon tissues from 69 patients with HSCR and 49 individuals without HSCR (controls). Direct interactions between miRNAs and specific mRNAs were indentified in vitro, while the function role of miR218-1 was investigated by using miR-218 transgenic mice. An increased level of miR-218-1 correlated with increased levels of SLIT2 and decreased levels of RET and PLAG1 mRNA and protein. The reductions in RET and PLAG1 by miR-218-1 reduced proliferation and migration of SH-SY5Y cells. Overexpression of the secreted form of SLIT2 inhibited cell migration via binding to its receptor ROBO1. Bowel tissues from miR-218-1 transgenic mice had nerve fibre hyperplasia and reduced numbers of gangliocytes, compared with wild-type mice. Altered miR-2181 regulation of SLIT2, RET and PLAG1 might be involved in the pathogenesis of HSCR.


: The results of the immunological study of blood in 89 patients with severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) were analyzed. Immune reactions in SAP were characterized by the presence of moderate leukocytosis, an increase in the phagocytic and metabolic activity of neutrophils, relative lymphopenia, a decrease in the number of B-lymphocytes. The average values of the parameters of the immunogram of patients with the favorable course of the disease on days 2 - 3 were analogous to the average population values in 89 examinees. The direction and the degree of manifestation were slightly variable and could be registered within one standard quadratic deviation. Such heterogeneity in the character of immune reactions made it possible to regard the average values of the immunogram parameters of these patients as "the norm". For the objective evaluation of the immune status of SAP patients a scale for the evaluation, in points, of disturbances in immune reactions to the destructive process in the pancreas was developed. This scale for the evaluation, in points, of the severity of disturbances in the immune status of SAP patients made it possible to prognosticate the development of complications.


Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has become a popular solution for controlling non-player characters. Its use has repeatedly been shown to be capable of creating strong game playing opponents. However, the emergent playstyle of agents using MCTS is not necessarily human-like, believable or enjoyable. AI Factory Spades, currently the top rated Spades game in the Google Play store, uses a variant of MCTS to control non-player characters. In collaboration with the developers, we collected gameplay data from 27,592 games and showed in a previous study that the playstyle of human players significantly differed from that of the non-player characters. This paper presents a method of biasing MCTS using human gameplay data to create Spades playing agents that emulate human play whilst maintaining a strong, competitive performance. The methods of player modelling and biasing MCTS presented in this study are generally applicable to digital games with discrete actions.


Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is an emerging nonvolatile memory, which is widely studied for its high speed, high density, small cell size, and almost unlimited endurance. However, for deep-submicrometer process technologies, significant variation in the MRAM cells' operating condition results in write failures in cells and reduces the production yield. Memory designers have to characterize failed MRAM chips to find a suitable current level for reconfiguring their write current, which is time consuming. In this paper, we propose an efficient operating-current search method and the corresponding built-in circuit for toggle MRAM, which can rapidly find the minimal operating current. With the built-in search circuit, an MRAM chip can dynamically configure its write current through few tester channels. The resulting chip works correctly and consumes lower power. Production yield, thus, can be increased while the test cost is greatly reduced. We also present a generator of the circuit, which determines the circuit parameters according to the memory specifications and user requirements, and automatically generates the corresponding modules.


Collaborative Filtering (CF) is one of successful methods for generating recommendations. However, conventional CF method is not good at capturing sequential behaviors of users. Though it is obvious that users' preference must be affected by experiences of the users in the past. For example, if a user watched a movie and then liked the movie significantly, the user will be interested in movies whose actor/actress/director is the same. In other words, each user's preference towards items is evolving with time dynamically and these temporal dynamics should be noticed. In this paper, we treat users' rating histories as sequential purchasing behavior and utilize such sequential behavior for recommendation task. We use Deep Recurrent Neural Networks (DRNN) to model those purchasing sequences. Experiments on the MovieLens dataset show improvements over previous reported results and demonstrate that our method can utilize users' purchasing behavior data for collaborative filtering while capturing the evolving behaviors and tastes of users better by modeling temporal dynamics implicitly.


Multi-task optimization is an emerging research topic in computational intelligence community. In this paper, we propose a novel evolutionary framework, many-task evolutionary algorithm (MaTEA), for many-task optimization. In the proposed MaTEA, an adaptive selection mechanism is proposed to select suitable "assisted" task for a given task by considering the similarity between tasks and the accumulated rewards of knowledge transfer during the evolution. Besides, a knowledge transfer schema via crossover is adopted to exchange information among tasks to improve the search efficiency. In addition, to facilitate measuring similarity between tasks and transferring knowledge among tasks that arrive at different time instances, multiple archives are integrated with the proposed MaTEA. Experiments on both single-objective and multi-objective optimization problems have demonstrated that the proposed MaTEA can outperform the state-of-the-art multi-task evolutionary algorithms, in terms of search efficiency and solution accuracy. Besides, the proposed MaTEA is also capable of solving dynamic many-task optimization where tasks arrive at different time instances.


Solar power forecasting improvements are mainly evaluated by statistical and economic metrics, and the practical reliability benefits of these forecasting enhancements have not yet been well quantified. This paper aims to quantify reliability benefits from solar power forecasting improvements. To systematically analyze the relationship between solar power forecasting improvements and reliability performance in power system operations, an expected synthetic reliability (ESR) metric is proposed to integrate multiple state-of-the-art independent reliability metrics. The absolute value and standard deviation of area control errors (ACEs), and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Control Performance Standard 2 (CPS2) score are calculated through a multi-timescale scheduling simulation, including the day-ahead unit commitment, real-time unit commitment, real-time economic dispatch, and automatic generation control sub-models. The absolute ACE in energy, CPS2 violations, CPS2 score, and standard deviation of the raw ACE are all calculated and combined as the ESR metric. Numerical simulations show that the reliability benefits of multi-timescale power system operations are significantly increased due to the improved solar power forecasts.


Abstract Background Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide. Thanks to the modern oncological treatments, disease specific survival has improved throughout the last decades. The number of breast cancer survivors has been increasing, and more and more attention has been paid to the breast cancer treatment side effects. Whereas there are many data regarding ischemic heart disease after radiotherapy for breast cancer, there is not much data in the literature about the incidence and clinical meaning of pericardial disease after breast cancer radiotherapy. Conclusions Although radiation-induced pericarditis is the earliest form of radiation-induced cardiovascular disease after irradiation of the heart, it seems that in clinical practice, especially by using modern radiotherapy treatment techniques, it is underdiagnosed because patients are mostly asymptomatic. In some cases, especially in its late form and after multimodal systemic oncological treatment in combination with radiotherapy, it could be presented in severe form and life threatening. Treatment modalities for radiation-induced pericardial diseases are the same as in the non-irradiated population, but in the irradiated patients, surgery may be difficult.


Research on the transition of students with disabilities and their post-school outcomes continues to move the field of special education in the direction of evidence-based practices. As special education professionals work to better recognize the impact of instructional and environmental characteristics to prepare youth for their transition, so must postsecondary education professionals. There is a need for a unified research agenda in the field of higher education and disability to conduct rigorous studies on evidence-based practices in the college environment that support self-determination and to identify evidence-based predicators that correlate with improved outcomes in retention, graduation, and further education or employment.


This is the first report of antifungal activity of Iranian Actinomycetes isolates against Alternaria solani Sorauer, Alternaria alternata (Fr.) Keissler, Fusarium solani (Mart.) Sacc., Phytophthora megasperma Drechsler, Verticillium dahliae Klebahn and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Meyen ex Hansen. Biological control of plant diseases has received worldwide attention in recent years mainly as a response to public concern about the use of hazardous chemicals in the environment. Soil Actinomycetes particularly Streptomyces spp. enhance soil fertility and have antagonistic activity against wide range of soil-borne plant pathogens. In search for soil Actinomycetes having antifungal activity against plant fungal-pathogens, 110 isolates were screened from which 14 isolates were found active at least against one of the tested fungi. Streptomyces plicatus strain101, Frankia sp. strain 103 and Streptomyces sp. strain 44 had the widest antifungal spectra of activity. Antifungal genes from these strains may be proper candidates for genetic engineering of plants for increased tolerance against the tested cosmopolitan fungal pathogens.


In this paper, we present our autonomous mobile robotic system for surveillance of indoor environments. The robot is equipped with a monocular camera, a laser scanner, encoders, and an RFID device, connected to a multi-layer decision and control scheme. Two main functions are implemented: to build a map of the environment, identifying specific areas of interest, marked by RFID tags; to monitor the target zones to detect unexpected changes, such as object addition or removal, based on a vision scene change detector (V-SCD) and a laser scene change detector (L-SCD). Fuzzy logic is used to integrate information provided by the different sensors. Applications of the proposed system include surveillance of wide areas, such as airports and museums, and monitoring of safety equipment. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through experimental tests, performed in the ISSIA Mobile Robotics Laboratory of Ban, Italy. The results are promising, proving the method to be effective in detecting either new or removed objects in the surveyed scene, also in presence of relatively small viewpoint changes. It is shown that the proposed robotic surveillance system successfully addresses a number of specific problems related to environment mapping, autonomous navigation, and scene processing, and can be potentially employed in real world surveillance applications.


Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report contains reviews of joint recommendations from Member States regional groups for the implementation of the landing obligation in 2017.


: The authors studied psychophysiologic state of operators in coal industry and metallurgy, who were considered healthy and suitable for the work. Only 60% of the examined metallurgy operators and 21% of those engaged into coal industry appeared to meet the occupational medical requirements. By the end of the working shift 50% of the operators showed decrease of attention and 28-36%--depression of visual and hearing memory. Occupational overload induced compromised psychophysiologic parameters in 70% of the examinees. Heating combined with other hazards resulted in marked asymmetry of heating sensation, changed body heating, lower hearing sensation, worse attention, memory, decision making, emotional state.


Of the forty-six patients with disseminated sclerosis, 26 underwent electrostimulation (ES) of muscles, 20--transcutaneous electrostimulation during the period of subsidence of exacerbation of the demyelinating process. Polarography for determination of oxygen tension in muscles, water clearance, tetrapolar rheoplethysmography and rheovasography were all used to objectivize effectiveness of the treatments performed. Considerable improvement was recordable in 21, and improvement in 17 of the patients. No one of these exposed to the treatments above manifested aggravation of the relevant parameters of their pathology. ES was found to have a favourable effect on the restoration of functions of the brain and spinal cord. Estimators of patient-days showed decrease by 2 to 4 days compared with those cases on conventional treatment. Muscle ES and transcutaneous ES have been recommended for use in a multiple-modality treatment of patients during the period of subsidence of exacerbation of disseminated sclerosis.


Background The antiretroviral drug nevirapine and the antimalarial artemisinin-based combination therapy artemether-lumefantrine are commonly co-administered to treat malaria in the context of HIV. Nevirapine is a known inhibitor of cytochrome P450 3A4, which metabolizes artemether and lumefantrine. To address the concern that the antiretroviral nevirapine impacts the antimalarial artemether-lumefantrine pharmacokinetics, a prospective non-randomized controlled study in children presenting with uncomplicated malaria and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa was carried out. Methods Participants received artemether-lumefantrine (20/120 mg weight-based BID) for 3 days during nevirapine-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) co-administration (158–266 mg/m2 QD). HIV positive participants who were not yet on ART drugs were also enrolled as the control group. The target enrollment was children aged 3–12 years (n = 24 in each group). Intensive pharmacokinetics after the last artemether-lumefantrine dose was assessed for artemether, its active metabolite dihydroartemisinin, and lumefantrine. Pharmacokinetic parameters (area under the plasma concentration vs. time curve (AUC), maximum concentration and day 7 lumefantrine concentrations) were estimated using non-compartmental methods and compared to controls. Results Nineteen children (16 on nevirapine and three not on ART) enrolled. Fifteen of the 16 (aged 4 to 11 years) on nevirapine-based ART were included in the pharmacokinetic analysis. Due to evolving WHO HIV treatment guidelines, insufficient children were enrolled in the control group (n = 3), so the pharmacokinetic data were compared to a historical control group of 20 HIV-uninfected children 5–12 years of age who also presented with malaria and underwent identical study procedures. Decreases of pharmacokinetic exposure [as estimated by AUC (AUC0-8hr)] were marginally significant for artemether (by -46%, p = 0.08) and dihydroartemisinin (-22%, p = 0.06) in the children on nevirapine-based ART, compared to when artemether-lumefantrine was administered alone. Similarly, peak concentration was decreased by 50% (p = 0.07) for artemether and 36% (p = 0.01) for dihydroartemisinin. In contrast, exposure to lumefantrine increased significantly in the context of nevirapine [AUC0-120hr:123% (p<0.001); Cday7:116% (p<0.001), Cmax: 95% (p<0.001)]. Conclusions Nevirapine-based ART increases the exposure to lumefantrine in pre-pubescent children with a trend toward diminished artemether and dihydroartemisinin exposure. These findings contrast with other studies indicating NVP reduces or results in no change in exposure of antimalarial drugs, and may be specific to this age group (4–12 years). Considering the excellent safety profile of artemether-lumefantrine, the increase in lumefantrine is not of concern. However, the reduction in artemisinin exposure may warrant further study, and suggests that dosage adjustment of artemether-lumefantrine with nevirapine-based ART in children is likely warranted.


Carotid artery atherosclerotic disease (CAAD) is a risk factor for stroke. We used a genome‐wide association (GWAS) approach to discover genetic variants associated with CAAD in participants in the electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. We identified adult CAAD cases with unilateral or bilateral carotid artery stenosis and controls without evidence of stenosis from electronic health records at eight eMERGE sites. We performed GWAS with a model adjusting for age, sex, study site, and genetic principal components of ancestry. In eMERGE we found 1793 CAAD cases and 17,958 controls. Two loci reached genome‐wide significance, on chr6 in LPA (rs10455872, odds ratio [OR] (95% confidence interval [CI]) = 1.50 (1.30–1.73), p = 2.1 × 10−8) and on chr7, an intergenic single nucleotide variant (SNV; rs6952610, OR (95% CI) = 1.25 (1.16–1.36), p = 4.3 × 10−8). The chr7 association remained significant in the presence of the LPA SNV as a covariate. The LPA SNV was also associated with coronary heart disease (CHD; 4199 cases and 11,679 controls) in this study (OR (95% CI) = 1.27 (1.13–1.43), p = 5 × 10−5) but the chr7 SNV was not (OR (95% CI) = 1.03 (0.97–1.09), p = .37). Both variants replicated in UK Biobank. Elevated lipoprotein(a) concentrations ([Lp(a)]) and LPA variants associated with elevated [Lp(a)] have previously been associated with CAAD and CHD, including rs10455872. With electronic health record phenotypes in eMERGE and UKB, we replicated a previously known association and identified a novel locus associated with CAAD.


Reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (ROBDDs) have traditionally been built in a bottom-up fashion, through the recursive use of Bryant''s apply procedure [4], or the ITE [2] procedure. With these methods, the intermediate peak memory utilization is often larger than the final ROBDD size. This peak memory requirement limits the complexity of the circuits which can be processed using ROBDDs. Recently it was shown in [9] that for a large number of applications, the peak memory requirement can be substantially reduced by a suitable combination of bottom-up (decomposition based) and top-down (composition based) approaches of building ROBDDs. This approach consists of selecting suitable decomposition points during the construction of the ROBDD using the apply procedure, followed by a symbolic composition to obtain the final ROBDD. In this paper, we focus on the composition process. We detail four heuristic algorithms for finding good composition orders, and compare their utility on a set of standard benchmark circuits. Our schemes offer a matrix of time-memory tradeoff points.


The topic of this thesis is the Early Archaean environment and hydrothermal systems in the Barberton Greenstone Belt (BGB) in South Africa, and the Coppin Gap Greenstone Belt (CGGB) in the Pilbara, Australia. Focus within these greenstone belts is on the ~3.45-3.42 Ga Buck Ridge volcano-sedimentary complex (BR-vsc) and the ~3.45 Ga Kittys Gap volcano-sedimentary complex (KG-vsc) respectively. Apart from their similar age, these complexes also have a very similar geological setting. Both complexes consist of a felsic to bimodal volcanic sequence that is capped by silicified sediments. The complexes were deposited in an extensional regime.
The extensional regime in the BR-vsc in the upper Hooggenoeg Formation, BGB is reflected by the presence of large, syndepositional normal faults. The BR-vsc is a bimodal volcanic complex, consisting mainly of massive and pillow basalts and felsic, quartz-plagioclase porphyritic rocks. The basalts and the felsic porphyritic rocks are capped by felsic volcaniclastic deposits and other, mostly pervasively silicified, sediments. The BR-vsc was intruded by broadly contemporaneous, shallow felsic porphyritic rocks, which obscure the traces of the normal faults.
The CGGB is also cut by numerous normal faults. They occur at the scale of the entire belt and, at a smaller scale, as arrays in several levels within the Warrawoona Group, which makes up the largest part of this belt. Part of these normal fault arrays was syndepositional. Syndepositional extension of Warrawoona Group deposits occurred throughout the East Pilbara, and extension is therefore interpreted to have been the dominant tectonic regime at that time. In the CGGB, the extension had a consistent orientation for a minimum period of 20 Ma. In the study area, the Warrawoona Group consists of slices of stratigraphy, bounded by deformation (mostly shear) zones. Despite the presence of such zones, new U-Pb zircon dating and geochemical analyses show that the chronostratigraphical succession in the CGGB has not been fundamentally disturbed. Precision of the U-Pb SHRIMP ages is insufficient, however, to rule out small hiatuses or duplications of stratigraphy on the order of a few million years.
The sedimentary sequences of the BR-vsc (BGB, South Africa) and the KG-vsc (CGGB, Australia) were both deposited in shallow water, near base-level. Despite the similarities in geological setting and timing of the two complexes, there are small differences in the sedimentary sequences. The sediments of the BR-vsc form a regressive-transgressive sequence, which was deposited close to base level and experienced occasional emersion. The sediments of the KG-vsc have mostly been reworked and were deposited entirely subaqueously, close to base level. Deposition of the sediments of the KG-vsc was possibly influenced by tidal activity.

In the top of the volcanic sequences, just below the sediments, metres-wide black chert veins occur in both the BR-vsc and the KG-vsc. They are interpreted to be remnants of early Archaean hydrothermal systems. The vein systems tend to occur preferentially in the hanging walls of the normal faults. The hydrothermal systems were active during or shortly after deposition of the sediments and caused early and multi-phase silicification, veining and brecciation of the sediments. The BR-vsc and KG-vsc hydrothermal systems are interpreted to have vented in shallow water, near base level. Fluid inclusion studies show that the hydrothermally deposited quartz in the BR-vsc contains relatively simple two-phase aqueous and mixed H2O-CO2 inclusions. The fluids are interpreted to be at least partly of magmatic hydrothermal origin. High-salinity aqueous inclusions and low-salinity mixed H2O-CO2 inclusions show unmixing. The hydrothermal fluids had a minimum temperature of ~250°C and were highly pressurised (~2.2 kb).


Stylized characters are highly used in movies and games. Furthermore, stylization is mostly preferred over realism for the design of toys and social robots. However, the design process remains highly subjective because the influence of possible design choices on character perception is not well understood. Investigating the high-dimensional space of character stylization by means of perception experiments is difficult because creating and animating compelling characters of different stylization levels remains a challenging task. In this context, computer graphics algorithms enable the creation of highly controllable stimuli, simplifying examination of specific features that can strongly influence the overall perception of a character. This thesis is separated into two parts. First, a pipeline is presented for creating virtual doubles of real people. In addition, algorithms are described suitable for the transfer of surface properties and animation between faces of different stylization levels. With ElastiFace, a simple and versatile method is introduced for establishing dense correspondences between textured face models. The method extends non-rigid registration techniques to allow for strongly varying input geometries. The technical part closes with an algorithm that addresses the problem of animation transfer between faces. Such facial retargeting frameworks consist of a pre-processing step, where blendshapes are transferred from one face to another. By exploring the similarities between an expressive training sequence of an actor and the blendshapes of a facial rig to be animated, the accuracy of transferring the blendshapes to actor's proportions is highly improved. Consequently, this step overall enhances the reliability and quality of facial retargeting. The second part covers two different perception studies with stimuli created by using the previously described pipeline and algorithms. Results of both studies improve the understanding of the crucial factors for creating appealing characters across different stylization levels. The first study analyzes the most influential factors that define a character's appearance by using rating scales in four different perceptual experiments. In particular, it focuses on shape and material but considers as well shading, lighting and albedo. The study reveals that shape is the dominant factor when rating expression intensity and realism, while material is crucial for appeal. Furthermore, the results show that realism alone is a bad predictor for appeal, eeriness, or attractiveness. The second study investigates how various degrees of stylization are processed by the brain using event-related potentials (ERPs). Specifically, it focuses on the N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late positive potential (LPP) event-related components. The face-specific N170 shows a u-shaped modulation, with stronger reactions towards both, most abstract and most realistic compared to medium-stylized faces. In addition, LPP increases linearly with face realism, reflecting activity increase in the visual and parietal cortex for more realistic faces. Results reveal differential effects of face stylization on distinct face processing stages and suggest a perceptual basis to the uncanny valley hypothesis.


The purpose of this study was to determine the early growth scheme and development stages of the red porgy, Pagrus pagrus larvae through the transition from endogenous and exogenous food sources using as main criterion the body length gained at each development stage. The initial period of the species´ larval life can be divided into three phases: a) an initial phase characterised by no motility (0-24 h time after hatching; TAH); b) a phase characterised by active movement and exploitation of the endogenous food reserves (24 h to 96 TAH); and c) a phase characterised by the transition from endogenous to exogenous food (96 to 168 TAH). It was observed that there does not exist an overlapping period between phases b and c and therefore, there exists a gap of 24-36 hours during which the larvae have exhausted their internal food reserves (oil globule and yolk sac) while the digestive tract is not ready to digest external food items (rotifers). We observed a massive larval mortality reaching almost 85% between days 3 and 7 after hatching.


Abstract The diploid checkered whiptail lizard, Aspidoscelis tesselata, is a parthenogenetic species that occupies semiarid habitats in the southwestern USA. It comprises several morphologically distinct pattern classes that occasionally coexist within the same geographical area. Two pattern classes, C and E, coexist on both sides of Sumner Lake and the Pecos River in Sumner Lake State Park, De Baca County, New Mexico. Individuals of pattern class C are larger than individuals of pattern class E (they also produce larger clutches and take longer to reach reproductive maturity). Herein we present analyses of the stomach contents of specimens collected at Sumner Lake to determine if these 2 pattern classes show differences in their diets. Termites made up over 70% of the prey items found in the stomachs of both pattern classes, but when analyzed by volume, the most important prey were cicadas, planthoppers, and short-horned grasshoppers for pattern class C, and short-horned grasshoppers, cicadas, long-horned grasshoppers, termites, and scarab beetles for pattern class E. Considering prey other than termites, pattern class C lizards tended to consume larger prey items than did pattern class E lizards. Aside from this size-related difference, the diet of the 2 pattern classes at Sumner Lake was similar. This lends support to the hypothesis that body size and reproductive differences between the 2 pattern classes are genetically based.


We present a facile approach that achieves four-point electrical characterization of silicon microwires fabricated using a bottom-up vapour–liquid–solid process. Tungsten probes are brought into direct contact with silicon microwires using piezoelectrically driven probe actuators. This technique can be applied to silicon microwires without the need for high-temperature lithographic preparation or the additional use of In/Ga to ensure reliable electrical contact between the probe and the wire. Comparison between two-point probe and four-point probe measurements demonstrates the robustness of the four-point approach. Significantly, the four-point characterization technique is not impacted by native oxides at the microwire/tungsten probe interface. The four-point technique can be applied to sense electrical responses in half-cell and full-cell representations of artificial photosynthesis systems, regardless of catalysts or functional groups attached to the microwire sidewalls.


In situ TEM straining experiments were performed for MgO ceramics in order to investigate the crack propagation behaviour. Using a micro-indenter driven accurately by a piezo actuator, cracks were introduced into MgO single crystals and polycrystals. In MgO single crystals, cleavage fracture along the (010) plane occurred, and the atomic structure of the crack walls were found to contain a number of square-shaped atomic steps. In contrast, cracks in polycrystalline MgO propagated along the grain boundaries, and crack deflection was observed at the triple grain junctions. It was found that a number of dislocations were generated around the triple junctions where the crack was deflected. The above results indicate that dislocation nucleation and/or emission play an important role in the crack propagation processes, even in brittle MgO.


Background: The efficacy of omalizumab on patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in severe allergic asthma has been reported in several randomised controlled trials. This systematic literature review aimed to summarise the effectiveness of omalizumab on PROs in real-world settings Methods: The literature search was performed using PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane databases. It included studies using Global Evaluation of Treatment Effectiveness (GETE), Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ), Asthma Control Test (ACT) and Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) comparing 16 weeks, 6 months, 12 months, and end of the study post-treatment outcomes with baseline observations in patients with severe allergic asthma Results: In total, 85 studies were included in this systematic review. GETE scores were consistently good or excellent in 53%–100% of patients receiving omalizumab across time points compared with baseline. Omalizumab treatment also improved health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and asthma control scores at all time points (Table). At the end of the studies, the proportion of participants who achieved minimal clinically important differences (MCID) for ACT (≥3), ACQ (≥0.5) and AQLQ (≥0.5) ranges from 50%–62%, 60%–95% and 72%–100%, respectively Conclusion: Omalizumab treatment consistently improves asthma-related HRQoL (AQLQ), asthma control (ACQ, ACT), physicians'/patients' GETE in real-world treatment of severe allergic asthma


The defect dipoles exist in ferroelectric thin films and they play a unique role in the domain structure. However, most of the previous studies of the ferroelectric domains involve the extrinsic field-induced polarization reverse. Herein, we report domain reorientation induced by the realignment of the defect dipoles at high temperatures in a (100)-oriented NdFeO3–PbTiO3 (NF–PT) thin film. The temperature-dependent XRD results exclude the reorientation of the lattice structures, and the macroscopic ferroelectric hysteresis loop at 150 °C shows greater conductivity, which is induced by the emergence of the out-of-plane defect dipoles. The present study provides a picture to understand the thermal activation of the defect dipoles, which will benefit novel ferroelectric devices.


Abstract. New particle formation, which greatly influences the number concentrations and size distributions of an atmospheric aerosol, is often followed by a rapid growth of freshly formed particles. The initial growth of newly formed aerosol is the crucial process determining the fraction of nucleated particles growing to cloud condensation nuclei sizes, which have a significant influence on climate. In this study, we report the laboratory observations of the growth of nanoparticles produced by nucleation of H 2 SO 4 and water in a laminar flow tube at temperatures of 283, 293 and 303 K, under dry (a relative humidity of 1%) and wet conditions (relative humidity of 30%) and residence times of 30, 45, 60 and 90 s. The initial H 2 SO 4 concentration spans the range from 2 × 10 8 to 1.4 × 10 10 molecule cm −3 and the calculated wall losses of H 2 SO 4 were assumed to be diffusion limited. The detected particle number concentrations, measured by the Ultrafine Condensation Particle Counter (UCPC) and Differential Mobility Particle Sizer (DMPS), were found to depend strongly on the residence time. Hygroscopic particle growth, presented by growth factors, was found to be in good agreement with the previously reported studies. The experimental growth rates ranged from 20 nm h −1 to 890 nm h −1 at relative humidity (RH) 1% and from 7 nm h −1 to 980 nm h −1 at RH 30% and were found to increase significantly with the increasing concentration of H 2 SO 4 . Increases in the nucleation temperature had a slight enhancing effect on the growth rates under dry conditions. The influence of relative humidity on growth was not consistent – at lower H 2 SO 4 concentrations, the growth rates were higher under dry conditions while at H 2 SO 4 concentrations greater than 1 × 10 10 molecule cm −3 , the growth rates were higher under wet conditions. The growth rates show only a weak dependence on the residence time. The experimental observations were compared with predictions made using a numerical model, which investigates the growth of particles with three different extents of neutralization by ammonia, NH 3 : (1) pure H 2 SO 4 – H 2 O particles; (2) particles formed by ammonium bisulphate, (NH 4 )HSO 4 ; (3) particles formed by ammonium sulphate, (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 . The highest growth rates were found for ammonium sulphate particles. Since the model accounting for the initial H 2 SO 4 concentration predicted the experimental growth rates correctly, our results suggest that the commonly presumed diffusional wall losses of H 2 SO 4 in case of long-lasting experiments are not so significant. We therefore assume that there are not only losses of H 2 SO 4 on the wall, but also a flux of H 2 SO 4 molecules from the wall into the flow tube, the effect being more profound under dry conditions and at higher temperatures of the tube wall. Based on a comparison with the atmospheric observations, our results indicate that sulphuric acid alone cannot explain the growth rates of particles formed in the atmosphere.


This paper is concerned with the sensitivity of invariant states in linear quantum stochastic systems with respect to nonlinear perturbations. The system variables are governed by a Markovian Hudson-Parthasarathy quantum stochastic differential equation (QSDE) driven by quantum Wiener processes of external bosonic fields in the vacuum state. The quadratic system Hamiltonian and the linear system-field coupling operators, corresponding to a nominal open quantum harmonic oscillator, are subject to perturbations represented in a Weyl quantization form. Assuming that the nominal linear QSDE has a Hurwitz dynamics matrix and using the Wigner-Moyal phase-space framework, we carry out an infinitesimal perturbation analysis of the quasi-characteristic function for the invariant quantum state of the nonlinear perturbed system. The resulting correction of the invariant states in the spatial frequency domain may find applications to their approximate computation, analysis of relaxation dynamics and non-Gaussian state generation in nonlinear quantum stochastic systems.


Objectives: To determine the proportionate distribution of different angiographic findings in patients referred for FFA in Jan 2012 to Dec 2012.  Methodology: This study was conducted on 1058 patients who underwent FFA in year 2012. Individuals of different age group including male and female with retinal vascular diseases were included Sample size include All the patients who underwent FFA .Sample design include Specially designed MS database for the purpose. Equipment used was Fundus camera.  Results: Leading cause of retinopathy is diabetes (n=471, 44.5%). Patients having mild NPDR were 111, moderate NPDR  137, severe NPDR  109,very severe NPDR  01, high risk PDR 48, low risk PDR 65,multifocal exudative maculopathy 319, diffuse exudative maculopathy 132. Other causes included CSCR 03, BRVO 51, CRVO 11,  PEWD 205, HR 03, Choroiditis 12, CNV's 21 and normal 361.  Conclusion: There is great need of patients' awareness about angiography for patients of diabetes and hypertension because majority of patients have retinopathy due to uncontrolled/ unknown diabetes and hypertension that can lead to blindness.


This paper proposes a computational approach for analysis of strokes in line drawings by artists. We aim at developing an AI methodology that facilitates attribution of drawings of unknown authors in a way that is not easy to be deceived by forged art. The methodology used is based on quantifying the characteristics of individual strokes in drawings. We propose a novel algorithm for segmenting individual strokes. We propose an approach that combines different hand-crafted and learned features for the task of quantifying stroke characteristics. We experimented with a dataset of 300 digitized drawings with over 80 thousands strokes. The collection mainly consisted of drawings of Pablo Picasso, Henry Matisse, and Egon Schiele, besides a small number of representative works of other artists. The experiments shows that the proposed methodology can classify individual strokes with accuracy 70%-90%, and aggregate over drawings with accuracy above 80%, while being robust to be deceived by fakes.


Dietary intervention to prevent, mitigate, or cure disease stretches back over 5000 years for the Chinese. Chinese Nutrition, follows the basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is presently taught as a multidisciplinary system in China. This short article attempts to introduce the history, etiology, pathology and treatment principles of disease of TCM and linking its similar concept that ''understanding human health depends on the holistic description of human biology and environmental cues that constant exposed'' with the two recent emerged multi-disciplinary systems-systems biology and Nutrigenomics. The Chinese believe that 'food and medicine originates from the same source ' and diet therapy is a common practice in daily life. Chinese nutrition, follows the basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is established around the 11th century /771 B.C. and presently taught as a multidisciplinary system for the medical students in China (Zhang et al., 1990, Cai 1996). Chinese medicine views etiology, pathology and treatment of disease differently from western medicine. The occurrence and evolution of disease is believed to be a process of the loss of harmony between yin and yang a philosophical concept of the dichotomous nature of everything in the universe, e.g. day/night, man/woman, excess/deficient, summer/winter, hot/cold (Liu 1998, Wu and Zhongbao 2000). Yin and yang represent opposing aspects within a single object and applies the concept to the human body, there is yin and yang at all levels: from the body as a whole, down to the level of molecules and genes., i.e. arteries (yang ) and veins (yin ); glucagons and testosterone are yang ; insulin and estrogen are yin ; RNA is yang , and DNA is yin . In all situations, they are interdependent and in opposing each other, create unity. A preponderance of yin and yang would result in disease and treatment principle is to restore their balance. The application of antagonistic or allopathic therapy is emphasized by using medicine and food with the opposite nature to that of the illness. For instance, for severe cases of hot diseases, 'cold' remedies are given, while for mild diseases, 'cool' remedies are indicated (Liu 1995, Wu 2000, Cai 1996). In TCM and Chinese nutrition, herbs and foods are classified by their ''basic nature'', ''flavor'', and ''effect'' (Cai 1996, Zhang et al., 1990). Each food is considered to have a particular nature (cold, cool, warm and hot); a unique favor (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or pungent), a specific organ/ meridian target and dynamic force (i.e., cause energy to ascend, descend, to move inward or outward). Incorporating the yin and yang concept for classification, foods that are pungent, sweet, with ascending, floating and dispersing effects are yang ; and foods that are sour, bitter or salty whose effects are descending, condensing and astringent are yin . Among the common foods, for examples, coriander, walnut, lobster, mutton, wine, vinegar, peach, onion, pumpkin are 'warm'; pepper, chili, ginger are ''hot''; eggplant, soybean, lettuce, celery, apple, pear, tea, pear are ''cool'' and chrysanthemum, bitter melon, crab, salt, tomato, kelp, watermelon, banana, cucumber are ''cold'' in nature. Vegetables and fruits, with few exceptions, are cool and sour. According to TCM, eating chicken, pepper, dried ginger, (warm or hot nature), will worsen an illness of a ''hot'' nature (e.g. hypertension). For diseases of ''cold'' nature (e.g. winter flu, anemia, and hypoglycemia), the consumption of cold nature foods such as sugar cane, bitter melon, water chestnut, watermelon should be limited. Foods are also classified according to ''favor''. The five favors are sweet, sour, pungent, salty and bitter. Foods with sweet favor (e.g. milk, cream, mushroom, maize, soybean) are good for treatment of deficiency disease if to be consumed with limited amounts; sour foods (e.g. pears, vinegar, red bean, hawthorn, orange, tomato, grape) exhibit astringent action, help promote blood circulation and control excessive body fluid lost dues to diarrhea or excess sweating; bitter foods (e.g. bitter melon, wine, tea, liver) stimulate appetite and also antipyretic; and pungent foods (e.g. celery, ginger, onion, pepper, garlic) are capable of dispersing of vital energy thus often applied at the initial stage of the common cold. Each ''favor'' is associated with its own targeted organs/meridians. Foods with the sour, bitter, sweet and pungent favor are identified to be beneficial to the liver, heart; spleen and lungs, respectively. Whether the yin and yang concept of disease and the biologic functions of foods/herbs describes by TCM will be ultimately explained by science awaits further investigation. Nonetheless, the ''hot nature and pungent'' principles of some species (Kawada et al., 1988, McNamara et al., 2005) can be attributed to their ability to activate the adrenal medulla to secrete catecholamine (regulates heat production and pain sensation). The antioxidant, hypolipidemic, and hypoglycermic evidence on tea (Cooper et al., 2005), and hawthorn (Rigelsky 2002) helps in explaining their heartorgan target specificity (i.e. prevention of heart disease). To give just one clinical example, garlic's health benefits have been elevated from folklore to clinical study. The antiinflammatory mechanisms of garlic include suppression of TNF-alpha and interleukin-6 production, suppression of nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) activity, during bacterial infection (Makris et al., 2005). Nutrigenomics and Health / From Vision to Food


In many contemporary urban spaces, political information accrues to high status neighborhoods. This might exacerbate political inequality as the information-rich and information-poor each talk primarily with others like themselves. When information is specific and broadly diffused through the media, however, the convenience and low cognitive costs of everyday conversation could be especially helpful for the disadvantaged. This article shows how political conversations intensify or ameliorate spatial knowledge gaps, using a six-wave panel survey in fifty Brazilian neighborhoods between 2002 and 2006. Multilevel models demonstrate that conversation was more frequent in high education neighborhoods, but had a greater impact on specific, factual knowledge in low-education neighborhoods, leading to shrinking knowledge gaps. However, conversation slightly widened spatial gaps in socially perceived general knowledge.


In this work, we report on a comprehensive analysis of PKI resulting from Certificate Authorities' (CAs) behavior using over 1300 instances. We found several cases where CAs designed business models that favored the issuance of digital certificates over the guidelines of the CA Forum, root management programs, and other PKI requirements. Examining PKI from the perspective of business practices, we identify a taxonomy of failures and identify systemic vulnerabilities in the governance and practices in PKI. Notorious cases include the "backdating" of digital certificates, the issuance of these for MITM attempts, the lack of verification of a requester's identity, and the unscrupulous issuance of rogue certificates. We performed a detailed study of 379 of these 1300 incidents. Using this sample, we developed a taxonomy of the different types of incidents and their causes. For each incident, we determined if the incident was disclosed by the problematic CA. We also noted the Root CA and the year of the incident. We identify the failures in terms of business practices, geography, and outcomes from CAs. We analyzed the role of Root Program Owners (RPOs) and differentiated their policies. We identified serial and chronic offenders in the PKI trusted root programs. Some of these were distrusted by RPOs, while others remain being trusted despite failures. We also identified cases where the concentration of power of RPOs was arguably a contributing factor in the incident. We identify these cases where there is a risk of concentration of power and the resulting conflict of interests. Our research is the first comprehensive academic study addressing all verified reported incidents. We approach this not from a machine learning or statistical perspective but, rather, we identify each reported public incident with a focus on identifying patterns of individual lapses. Here we also have a specific focus on the role of CAs and RPOs. Building on this study, we identify the issues in incentive structures that are contributors to the problems.


Functional foods that contain significant amounts of bioactive components may provide desirable health benefits beyond basic nutrition and play important roles in the prevention of chronic diseases. Among the modifiable lifestyle-related factors, the main role is played by diet showing an inverse association between the intake of antioxidant-rich food and the risk of diseases. The present study explored the various phytochemical contents of the developed Functional Food Supplements (FFS) and thereby exhibited their combined effect on the total antioxidant activity. Among the different solvent media used to study the total antioxidant activity of the functional food supplements, aqueous ethanol showed the highest for supplement I (1.09 μg / g) while absolute ethanol extracted the maximum for supplement II (0.83 μg/g). The phytochemical content of the two supplements also showed significant variations due to the differences in their processing techniques. KeywordsPhytochemicals, Total Antioxidant Activity, Functional Food Supplements, oxidative stress


Forest structure of mangrove restoration sites (6 and 14 years old) at two locations (Henderson Creek [HC] and Windstar [WS]) in southwest Florida differed from that of mixed‐basin forests (>50 years old) with which they were once contiguous. However, the younger site (HC) was typical of natural, developing forests, whereas the older site (WS) was less well developed with low structural complexity. More stressful physicochemical conditions resulting from incomplete tidal flushing (elevated salinity) and variable topography (waterlogging) apparently affected plant survival and growth at the WS restoration site. Lower leaf fall and root production rates at the WS restoration site, compared with that at HC were partly attributable to differences in hydroedaphic conditions and structural development. However, leaf and root inputs at each restoration site were not significantly different from that in reference forests within the same physiographic setting. Macrofaunal consumption of tethered leaves also did not differ with site history, but was dramatically higher at HC compared with WS, reflecting local variation in leaf litter processing rates, primarily by snails (Melampus coffeus). Degradation of leaves and roots in mesh bags was slow overall at restoration sites, however, particularly at WS where aerobic decomposition may have been more limited. These findings indicate that local or regional factors such as salinity regime act together with site history to control primary production and turnover rates of organic matter in restoration sites. Species differences in senescent leaf nitrogen content and degradation rates further suggest that restoration sites dominated by Laguncularia racemosa and Rhizophora mangle should exhibit slower recycling of nutrients compared with natural basin forests where Avicennia germinans is more abundant. Structural development and biogeochemical functioning of restored mangrove forests thus depend on a number of factors, but site‐specific as well as regional or local differences in hydrology and concomitant factors such as salinity and soil waterlogging will have a strong influence over the outcome of restoration projects.


Nutrient management is a crucial factor and needs consideration for better growth and high yield of green pepper. An experiment was conducted in the experimental farm of Nangarhar University Faculty of Agriculture to evaluate the influence of different methods of biofertilizer on growth and yield performances of green pepper during 2017. The experiment was conducted with randomized complete block design in five treatments and four replications. The treatments were (1) control, (2) traditional method (TM), (3) root dipping (RD), (4) soil application (SA), and (5) root dipping and soil application (RDSA). Results showed that plant length, branch number, fruit number, and fruit weight were significantly different among treatments. RDSA increased branch and fruit numbers, as well as fruit length, compared to other treatments. RDSA had a greater yield which was 5.4 ton per hectare, followed by TM, SA, RD, and control which were 5.1, 4.7, 4.3, and 3.8 ton per hectare, respectively. Economic analysis of fertilizer's expenses revealed that TM, RDSA, SA, and RD used a huge amount of chemical and biofertilizers. However, RDSA enhanced net income followed by TM, SA, and RD. This research will encourage farmers to adopt with biofertilizers and decrease the use of chemical fertilizers for eco-friendly forming.


The major uncertainties in studies of the multi-scale structure of the universe arise not from observational errors but from the variety of legitimate definitions and detection methods for individual structures. To facilitate the study of these methodological dependencies, we have carried out 12 different analyses defining structures in various ways. This has been done in a purely geometrical way by utilizing the HOP algorithm as a unique parameter-free method of assigning groups of galaxies to local density maxima or minima. From three density estimation techniques (smoothing kernels, Bayesian blocks, and self-organizing maps) applied to three data sets (the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, the Millennium simulation, and randomly distributed points) we tabulate information that can be used to construct catalogs of structures connected to local density maxima and minima. We also introduce a void finder that utilizes a method to assemble Delaunay tetrahedra into connected structures and characterizes regions empty of galaxies in the source catalog.


Background: Substance use-related disorders have become a major psychiatric issue globally. The energetic youth who contribute meaningfully to national development are the most affected population by this social menace. This study aimed to examine the knowledge and perception of the youth on substance use-related disorders and the perceived effects on their lives.Methods: The study used a qualitative approach to explore the perceptions of substance use-related disorders in the Kwabre-East Municipality of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The purposive technique was used to select 35 participants based on a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data were gathered through focus group discussions and interviews in the Twi language and audio-recorded. Data were transcribed from Twi to English in a written form. The data were categorized into themes based on similarities and differences. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The emerged themes have been presented as main findings, which are supported by quotations from the participants. Results: The study identified that substances commonly abused by the youth were alcohol, tramadol, gasoline product, glue, and marijuana. Again, it was found that peer influence, poor parental control, and loss of a job (poverty), perceived academic enhancement, and imitation of role models were factors that caused substance abuse among the youth. In addition, the following were identified in terms of the effects: mental illness, cardiovascular conditions, family exclusion, insecurity, and stigmatization.Conclusion: The initiation and implementation of drug preventive interventions by relevant stakeholders are crucial in preventing the commencement of any undesirable behaviour among the youth as far as substance abuse is concerned.


Abstract This study examined whether a three-month equine-assisted learning program improved measures of character skills in two independent cohorts of Year 1 youths, in a specialized secondary school for youths with difficulties coping with mainstream curriculum. In 2013, 75 students underwent intervention while 82 students did not. In 2014, 58 students underwent intervention and 59 students were waitlisted in semester 1; cross-over was performed in semester 2. The students were rated a week before, mid-way and a week post-intervention. Results from multi-level modeling indicated that the intervention led to progressive improvements in character skills over the school semester, in the majority of the constructs measured in both the 2013 and 2014 cohorts. The rate of change in measures of character skills over the semester correlated with the grade point average of the students at semester-end. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.


In this paper, we use an evolutionary computational approach based upon cultural algorithms to guide the incremental learning decision trees by ITI. The results are compared to those produced by ITI itself for a complex real-world database. The results suggest that ITI can indeed produce optimal trees in some cases, and can produce optimal trees using an evolutionary approach in others.


Like traffic jams and cell phones, particulate air pollution is a reality of modern living. Whether it's from cigarette smoking, industrial emissions, or the burning of wood and dung for fuel, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been strongly linked to cardiovascular disease, inflammation, lung cancer, and other lung diseases.1,2 As part of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2010 collaboration,3 an international team of environmental health scientists estimated the worldwide disease burden attributable to PM2.5 exposure.4 In this issue of EHP, they explain the underpinnings of how they did it.5

"This study is quite an important achievement," says Robert Brook, a physician at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the research. "Currently, scientists have no other way to estimate these risks."

The GBD 2010 team incorporated information about the health risks of PM2.5 from ambient air pollution, active smoking, secondhand smoke, and indoor burning of solid fuels into an integrated exposure–response model.

In the past, risk models for PM2.5 and other air pollutants have been derived from work done almost exclusively in North America and Europe. But air pollution levels around the world vary widely—by one estimate, annual average PM2.5 concentrations in the United States top out at 20–40 µg/m3 (in Texas), compared with 80–130 µg/m3 in parts of China and India.6

Estimating the health risks of PM2.5 in developing countries, where few primary epidemiological studies have been conducted, has therefore required extrapolation to higher concentrations of air pollutants.7 Further complicating matters is evidence that the relationship between mortality risk and PM2.5 exposure is not linear, meaning risk appears to increase more rapidly at lower exposures than at higher ones.8,9

The GBD 2010 team incorporated information about the health risks of PM2.5 from ambient air pollution, active smoking, secondhand smoke, and indoor burning of solid fuels into an integrated exposure–response model. The amounts of pollution caused by smoking, secondhand smoke, and indoor fuel use are well documented, as are the resulting health problems.10,8,11

The researchers combined this knowledge with what is known about different concentrations of ambient air pollution around the world to estimate relative risks of dying from a variety of illnesses, including ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease (stroke), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer over a range of ambient PM2.5 exposures from very low to very high. The model also estimates years of healthy life lost due to PM2.5-related acute lower respiratory illnesses in children under the age of 5 years.5

"We integrated as much information on exposure to particulate matter and mortality from as many different sources as we possibly could," says lead author Richard Burnett, an environmental scientist at Health Canada. "Because some of these exposures had very high concentrations, we could build a risk model over the entire global range of potential exposures."

The risk curves for different illnesses were not identical. Whereas the estimated risk of lung cancer and child acute lower respiratory illness appeared to continually increase along with increasing concentrations of PM2.5, the curves for heart disease and stroke rapidly increased at lower concentrations of PM2.5 before leveling off.5

One of the major advantages of the model is that it can be updated easily, yielding estimates of risk that reflect the latest knowledge. The major limitation of the study is that the researchers assumed the health risks of different types of PM2.5 were the same, says Michael Jerrett, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the study.

PM2.5 is a mixture of many constituents that can vary, depending on the source and the season.12 "There is considerable evidence that some elements of the mixture are less toxic than others," Jerrett says. "However, to try to untangle that and come up with definitive estimates for sulfate versus nitrate versus black carbon would go beyond the capacity of our current scientific evidence to determine accurately." He concludes, "It's a mathematically elegant model that is a major advance over what has been done in the past. It represents the best that we can do with the available information."


OBJECTIVES
Efforts to improve adherence by reducing co-payments through value-based insurance design are become more prevalent despite limited evidence of improved health outcomes. The objective of this study was to determine whether eliminating patient co-payments for blood pressure medications improves blood pressure control.

STUDY DESIGN
Randomized controlled trial.

METHODS
The Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension (CHORD) was a randomized controlled trial with 12 months' follow-up conducted among patients from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Veterans Administration Medical Centers. We enrolled 479 patients with poorly controlled systolic blood pressure. Participants were randomly assigned to: a) receive reductions in co-payments from $8 to $0 per medication per month for each antihypertensive prescription filled, b) a computerized behavioral intervention (CBI), c) both co-pay reduction and CBI, or d) usual care. Our main outcome measure was change in systolic blood pressure from enrollment to 12 months post enrollment. We also measured adherence using the medication possession ratio in a subset of participants.

RESULTS
There were no significant interactions between the co-payment interventions and the CBI interventions. There was no relative difference in the change in medication possession ratio between baseline and 12 months (0.05% and -.90% in control and incentive groups, respectively; P = .74) or in continuous medication gaps of 30, 60, or 90 days. Blood pressure decreased among all participants, but to a similar degree between the financial incentive and control groups. Systolic pressure within the incentive group dropped 13.2 mm Hg versus 15.2 mm Hg for the control group (difference = 2.0; 95% CI, -2.3 to 6.3; P = .36). The proportion of patients with blood pressure under control at 12 months was 29.5% in the incentive group versus 33.9 in the control group (odds ratio, 0.8; 95% CI, 0.5-1.3; P = .36).

CONCLUSIONS
Among patients with poorly controlled blood pressure, financial incentives--as implemented in this trial--that reduced patient cost sharing for blood pressure medications did not improve medication adherence or blood pressure control.


Foreword by Colin MacCabe. Author's Note. One: Literature 1. The Letter as Cutting Edge 2. Finding Feminist Readings: Dante-Yeats 3. Unmaking and Making in To the Lighthouse 4. Sex and History in The Prelude (1805): Books Nine to Thirteen 5. Feminism and Critical Theory Two: Into the World 6. Reading the Worlds: Literary Studies in the Eighties 7. Explanation and Culture: Marginalia 8. The Politics of Interpretations 9. French Feminism in an International Frame 10. Scattered Speculations on the Questions of Value Three: Entering the Third World 11. "Draupadi" by Mahasweta Devi 12. Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography 13. "Breast-Giver" by Mahasweta Devi 14. A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman's Text from the Third World. Notes


During the previous decades, the upcoming demand for security in the digital world, e.g., the Internet, lead to numerous groundbreaking research topics in the field of cryptography. This thesis focuses on the design and analysis of cryptographic primitives and schemes to be used for authentication of data and communication endpoints, i.e., users. It is structured into three parts, where we present the first freely scalable multi-block-length block-cipher-based compression function (Counter-bDM) in the first part. The presented design is accompanied by a thorough security analysis regarding its preimage and collision security. The second and major part is devoted to password hashing. It is motivated by the large amount of leaked password during the last years and our discovery of side-channel attacks on scrypt – the first modern password scrambler that allowed to parameterize the amount of memory required to compute a password hash. After summarizing which properties we expect from a modern password scrambler, we (1) describe a cache-timing attack on scrypt based on its password-dependent memory-access pattern and (2) outline an additional attack vector – garbage-collector attacks – that exploits optimization which may disregard to overwrite the internally used memory. Based on our observations, we introduce Catena – the first memory-demanding password-scrambling framework that allows a password-independent memory-access pattern for resistance to the aforementioned attacks. Catena was submitted to the Password Hashing Competition (PHC) and, after two years of rigorous analysis, ended up as a finalist gaining special recognition for its agile framework approach and side-channel resistance. We provide six instances of Catena suitable for a variety of applications. We close the second part of this thesis with an overview of modern password scramblers regarding their functional, security, and general properties; supported by a brief analysis of their resistance to garbage-collector attacks. The third part of this thesis is dedicated to the integrity (authenticity of data) of nonce-based authenticated encryption schemes (NAE). We introduce the so-called j-IV-Collision Attack, allowing to obtain an upper bound for an adversary that is provided with a first successful forgery and tries to efficiently compute j additional forgeries for a particular NAE scheme (in short: reforgeability). Additionally, we introduce the corresponding security notion j-INT-CTXT and provide a comparative analysis (regarding j-INT-CTXT security) of the third-round submission to the CAESAR competition and the four classical and widely used NAE schemes CWC, CCM, EAX, and GCM.


We report a 25-year-old Malay man with Subutex-related endocarditis, complicated by protein-losing enteropathy from severe tricuspid regurgitation and congestive heart failure. The intestinal protein loss was reversed with surgical valvular intervention. This case highlights the importance of recognising the rare association between protein-losing enteropathy and congestive heart failure in the setting of endocarditis.


Abstract Among the invasive tree species identified in Polish forests, black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) appears to pose the greatest threat. The objective of this study was i), to determine the abundance of this species in the forests managed by the State Forests National Forest Holding (PGLLP) and ii), to characterise the ecological conditions that it is found in. The source data was obtained from the State Forests Information System (SILP) database. In Polish forests, black cherry mostly occurs as an understory plant and is present in a total area of 99,185 hectares, which is 1.4% of the forest area under the management of the PGLLP. Although Prunus serotina can be found within a wide range of habitats, it most commonly occurs on sites that can be considered average in terms of fertility (mixed coniferous and mixed deciduous types) developed primarily on rusty soils (podzols).


Post-irradiation changes in the linear attenuation coefficient, μ, of polymer gel dosimeters give rise to a change which can be measured with x-ray computed tomography. Polymer gel dosimeters were manufactured consisting of 3% (by weight) acrylamide and 3% N,N′-methylene-bis-acrylamide comonomers dissolved in aqueous gelatin (5% gelatin by total weight and 89% de-ionized distilled water). μ was measured in a collimated radiation beam of photons from an 241Am source. Density, ρ, of polymer gel dosimeters was measured using volumetric flasks with capillary stoppers. The measured post-irradiation data of μ was plotted against the data of ρ for different batches, and linear least squares fits gave r2 values of 0.99605 and 0.99953, with P values of less than 0.001. This confirms that the post-irradiation change in μ is proportional to that of ρ. The change in ρ implies a change in volume regardless of the evaluation modality of the polymer gel dosimeter.


Modern analytical methodology, especially radiotracer techniques, makes it possible to detect residues of a foreign compound in animal products at levels seemingly impossible just two decades ago. Unfortunately, the ability to detect "total radioactivity" in a substrate does not assure that the chemical nature of the residues will be elucidated or that their toxicological significance can be properly assessed. Detection without identification has created a number of problems for the residue chemist and toxicologist. Among these is the problem of classifying radioactive residues in a manner that is meaningful to other scientists and which inherently denotes certain characteristics of the residues involved. While such a system is as yet incomplete, a general classification scheme has evolved in recent years that provides a common ground for categorizing radioactive residues, be they known or unknown. The system consists basically of four categories of radioactive residues: (a) free metabolites (b) conjugate metabolites (c) bound pesticide residues and (d) natural constituents. For the most part, the terms are self-explanatory, but precise definitions remain a point of debate among scientists. This paper discusses th criteria for classifying radioactive residues as perceived by the author based upon works of residue and metabolism chemists, especially those dealing with pesticide residues. Utimately, classification is dependent on the identification of total radioactive residues, a situation which is virtually impossible with many xenobiotics. Sound scientific judgment must remain the key ingredient in determining just how far one must go in identifying radioactive residues of drugs, pesticides and other chemicals which may become a component of the human diet.


When developing an algorithm that uses news diversity as a key driver for personalized news recommendation it is crucial to focus on means to cluster news articles in a fine-grained manner, ideally by leveraging the content of the text. In this paper we investigate semantic classification of news articles in an unfiltered news stream. We first present an analysis of the EventDNA corpus: a collection of Dutch-language news articles annotated with event data according to a predefined typology. We found that the types assigned as features of events do not allow for such a semantic classification and investigate the IPTC News Media Topics standard as an alternative. By mapping event types with manually-assigned IPTC topics, we observe that a more diversified picture emerges, which leads us to conclude that the IPTC classification is a useful proxy. Based on a historical data sample of Dutch news articles covering the year 2018, we then perform a series of machine learning experiments in order to automatically predict the top two levels of the IPTC taxonomy. Various multi-label classification models are built with BERTje using a bottom-up and top-down approach. The results reveal that the top-down approach yields the best results, with an overall macro F-1 score of 86.4% and a Jaccard accuracy of 89.2% for the level-one topics and one of 83.7% and 87.5% for the level-two predictions.


General principles of NMR spectroscopy of oriented molecules are described. The use of the technique to problems of biological importance is discussed with emphasis on theoretical and experimental difficulties involved. Application of the technique to study the structure and the hindered rotation in N-methylimidazole and phenyl silane, to investigate interactions of small molecules with lyotropic liquid crystals, to determine covalent and van der Waals radii, and to estimate non planar distortions in amides are described.


This study examines the impact of a remittances shock on the main macroeconomic aggregates of a small open economy. It uses a stochastic limited participation model to generate dynamics that are consistent with the empirical literature, like the increase in inflation, consumption, and leisure. However, the remittances shock generates a prolonged decline in GDP, which only diminishes when remittances are a larger percentage of GDP, the fraction of remittances directed towards investment increases, or when the fraction of labor income that remittances represent is reduced and is overturned when the persistence of the remittances shocks is shortened.


Detection and analysis of small magnitude events is valuable for better characterization and understanding of reservoirs in addition to developing strategies for mitigating induced seismicity. Three-component (3C) receivers, which are now widely used, are commonly deployed in boreholes to provide continuous seismic data amenable to novel and powerful analysis. Using multicomponent continuous records of ground motion, we utilize two principal features of the direct P-wave arrival: (1) linearity and (2) polarization in the direction along the ray path to the source region to detect small magnitude events undetectable by conventional methods. We evaluate the linearity of polarization and direction of arrival in the time and frequency domains by introducing the spectral matrix analysis method and combine them into a scalar characteristic function that is thresholded for event detection purposes. We boost the signal-to-noise ratio by stacking characteristic functions obtained at different 3C receivers along an empirical moveout of a master event known to have occurred in an area of interest. This allows us to detect smaller events and spatially tie them to a relatively small area around the large event. We apply our method to field data recorded at the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands. Our method detects all catalog events as well as several previously undetected events.


BACKGROUND
Fitness could influence task performance in police officers. Limited research details relationships between different fitness characteristics and police-specific tasks.

OBJECTIVE
Determine relationships between anaerobic and aerobic capacity with police-specific task performance.

METHODS
Data for 308 recruits was analysed. Fitness tests included: push-ups, sit-ups, and mountain climbers (muscular endurance); pull-ups (strength); vertical jump (VJ) and 2 kg medicine ball throw (MBT; power); 75-yard pursuit run (75PR; change-of-direction speed); 201 m run (anaerobic capacity); 2.4 km run and multistage fitness test (aerobic capacity). Police tasks included: 99-yard obstacle course (99OC); 74.84 kg body drag (BD); chain link fence (CLF) and solid wall (SW) climbs; and 500-yard run (500R). Partial correlations controlling for sex and linear regression calculated relationships between fitness and job tasks.

RESULTS
99OC correlated with all assessments; BD only with 75PR. CLF related to the power and aerobic capacity tests, pull-ups, and 201 m run. SW related to VJ, 75PR, pull-ups, sit-ups, 201 m run, and aerobic capacity. 500R related to all except the MBT and 2.4 km run. 75PR and VJ predicted 4/5 tasks.

CONCLUSIONS
Police research has shown the importance of muscular endurance and aerobic capacity. Specific to this studies' correlations, the value of power and change-of-direction speed development for task performance was indicated.


Since the year 2002, the Uruguayan oil-producing sector has been growing at a steady peace, utilizing over 10,000 seeded hectares across the country. The aim of this study was to characterise both the chemical and sensory properties of the extra virgin olive oil variety known as Arbequina through two consecutive harvests. The work was carried out using olives with three different ripening indices; the oil was extracted using an Abencor system. The moisture of the olive, yield extraction, and yield on both a dry and wet basis were determined. The obtained oils were characterized by determining the free acidity, main antioxidant compounds (polyphenols and tocopherols), composition of fatty acids, and sensory profiles. Olive moisture was over 57%, which led to production of pomaces characterized as "difficult pastes", explaining the low yield obtained. The harvest year and ripening index affected different parameters such as Abencor yield and, on a dry basis, the free acidity, polyphenolic content, oleic acid, and linoleic acid contents and fruity, bitter, and pungent intensities. To determine the best time of harvest, it is important to consider the balance between yield (which is significantly greater in olives with a ripening index above 3) and oil quality, as a higher ripening index decreases positive sensory attributes such as pungency and bitterness intensities.