PURPOSE
Topotecan is an active second-line treatment for advanced ovarian cancer. Its efficacy as consolidation treatment after first-line standard chemotherapy is unknown.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
To investigate whether topotecan (1.5 mg/m(2) on days 1 through 5, four cycles, every 3 weeks) prolonged progression-free survival (PFS) for patients responding to standard carboplatin (area under the curve 5) and paclitaxel (175 mg/m(2) administered as a 3-hour infusion in six cycles; CP), a multicenter phase III study was performed with an 80% power to detect a 50% prolongation of median PFS. Patients were registered at diagnosis and randomized after the end of CP.

RESULTS
Two hundred seventy-three patients were randomly assigned (topotecan, n = 137; observation, n = 136), with a median age of 56 years. Stage at diagnosis was advanced in three fourths of patients (stage III in 65% of patients; stage IV in 10%); after primary surgery, 46% had no residual disease and 20% were optimally debulked. After CP, 87% reached a clinical complete response, and 13% achieved a partial response. Neutropenia (grade 3/4 in 58% of the patients) and thrombocytopenia (grade 3 in 21%; grade 4 in 3%) were the most frequent toxicities attributed to topotecan. There was no statistically significant difference in PFS between the arms (P =.83; log-rank test): median PFS was 18.2 months in the topotecan arm and 28.4 in the control arm. Hazard ratio of progression for patients receiving topotecan was 1.18 (95% CI, 0.86 to 1.63) after adjustment for residual disease, interval debulking surgery, and response to CP.

CONCLUSION
The present analysis indicates that consolidation with topotecan does not improve PFS for patients with advanced ovarian cancer who respond to initial chemotherapy with carboplatin and paclitaxel.


Forestry poses a challenge to computable general equilibrium (CGE) modellers working with recursively dynamic models. This is because of the lag between its inputs and output, which do not correspond to the same time period as other sectors. Inputs are applied for a number of years before a forest is ready for harvest. As a result, attempts in the past to incorporate a well-specified forestry sector in a recursive CGE model have been only partly successful. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by presenting a consistent analytical framework which can be used to incorporate forestry into a recursively dynamic global CGE model. A key feature of the framework is that it splits the forestry activity into three parts—planting, holding and harvesting. Planting and harvesting are done by standard production sectors and holding is done by investors, whose behaviour is already modelled in these CGE models. In addition, global forests are classified into three groups—commercial plantation forests, environmental plantation forests and native forests. All harvested forest land is made available for competition for alternative agricultural uses and will be allocated to the activity it is best suited for, given productivity differences for different activities. This framework can be used in a CGE modelling framework to support implementation of the proposed reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) schemes as well as being applied to study land allocations, nationally and globally, across activities under alternative scenario assumptions. For example, the model can be used to project the effects on food production and prices of an increase in bio-fuel subsidies.


Background Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a specific type of chronic fibrosing interstitial pneumonia. Nintedanib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor which has been approved for the clinical treatment of IPF in adults. Purpose To evaluate the efficacy and adverse effects of nintedanib in a tertiary care hospital. Material and methods An observational retrospective study was conducted in patients receiving treatment with nintedanib from May 2015 to September 2016. Measured variables were: age, sex and smoking habits. Pulmonary function tests (PFT) such as forced expiratory volume (FEV), forced vital capacity (FVC) and diffusing capacity of the lungs for carbon monoxide (DLCO) were analysed before and after the treatment was initiated, as was the presence of non-obstructive pattern (FEV1/CVF >0.7). As FVC is the most relevant mortality predictor factor in IPF, the rate of decline in FVC (>10%) was measured to asses efficacy. The presence of adverse reactions and alterations in hepatic enzymes were reviewed to asses safety. Results 9 patients were receiving nintedanib 150 mg twice daily. 100% of patients were men with a mean age of 63 years. 83% had been smokers. All patients showed a non-obstructive respiratory pattern. 3 of 9 patients showed a decline in FVC >10%, 1 >5%, 3 remained stable and 2 an improvement in FVC (3–14%). 8 patients had deterioration in FEV with a mean of 2% compared with previously. DLCO also deteriorated in 7 patients, the mean compared with previously was 11%. All patients remained on a non-obstructive pattern during the study. 8 of 9 patients had adverse reactions. The most frequent was diarrhoea (38%) followed by vomiting (25%); others less frequent (≤ 12.5%) adverse effects were abdominal pain, pyrosis and hypotension. Only 1 patient suffered alterations in hepatic enzymes. 3 patients had to stop treatment due to adverse events. Conclusion Nintedanib has shown benefit in decreasing (not stopping) progression of IPF; only 33% of patients had deterioration >10% in FVC. The adverse drug reaction rate was high (89%), and 3 of 9 patient had to stop treatment. Studies with a broader population of patients should be carried out to assess whether the balance between efficacy and safety is appropriate. References and/or acknowledgements INFORME DE POSICIONAMIENTO TERAPÉUTICO PT-NINDETANIB-FIBR_PULM/V1/18122015 No conflict of interest


Due to the ever increasing need for sustainable development, the chemical and allied industries have been at the focus of much change. Decreasing tolerances on pollution via waste streams has resulted in a re-examination of many chemical processes. This has ushered in the era of 'green chemistry' which incorporates the synthesis of a process in both a sustainable and economically viable manner. In the petroleum and chemical industries, this has led to the search for alternatives to volatile organic compounds. Ionic liquids provide one such alternative. With a wide liquid phase and no measurable vapour pressure, ionic liquids have been found to be successful as a medium for reactions. Ionic liquids differ from high-temperature molten salts in that they have a significantly lower melting point. This work investigates the use of ionic liquids as solvents in separations. The work focuses on the separation of alpha-olefins from complex mixtures. The ionic liquids used in this study were: • l-methyl-3-octyl-imidazolium chloride • 4-methyl-N-butyl-pyridinium tetrafluoroborate • trihexyl-tetradecyl-phosphonium chloride Three experimental techniques used to evaluate ionic liquids were: • gas-liquid chromatography • liquid-liquid equilibria measurements • vapour-liquid equilibria measurements l-Methyl-3-octyl-imidazolium chloride ((MOIM)C1) was used as a stationary phase in gas-liquid chromatography. The solutes used were: • Alkanes: n-Pentane; n-Hexane; n-Heptane; n-Octane • Alkenes: 1-Hexene; 1-Heptene; l-Octene • Alkynes: l-Hexyne; l-Heptyne; 1-0ctyne • Cycloalkanes: Cyclopentane; Cyclohexane; Cycloheptane • Aromatics: Benzene; Toluene Activity coefficients at infinite dilution were measured at temperatures (298.15, 308.15 and 318.15) K. Values at 298.15 K ranged from 1.99 for benzene to 26.1 for n-octane. From the temperature dependence of the activity coefficients, the partial excess molar enthalpies at infinite dilution were calculated. These range from 2.0 kJ.mol'l for l-octyne to 7.3 kJ.mol· for n-pentane. (MOIM)C1 shows reasonable ability to separate 1-hexene from the longer n-alkanes and aromatics. 4-Methyl-N-butyl-pyridinium tetrafluoroborate (BuMePyBF) was used as a solvent in liquid-liquid equilibria measurements. The following systems were measured at 298.2 K: • LLE System 1: BuMePyBF4 + 1-Hexene + Toluene • LLE System 2: BuMePyBF4 + 1-Hexene + Ethanol • LLE System 3: BuMePyBF4 + 1-Hexene + 2-Butanone • LLE System 4: BuMePyBF4 + 1-0ctene + Ethanol LLE System 1 is a type 11 system and the other systems being type I. All systems exhibit a large two-phase region. LLE System 1 shows low distribution. LLE System 3 show almost equal distribution between phases resulting in a distribution ratio of close to 1. LLE Systems 2 and 4 show high distribution ratios at low concentrations of solute. LLE Systems 1 and 3 show low to moderate selectivity of the solvent towards the solute. LLE Systems 2 and 4 show high to moderate selectivity, but decrease exponentially with increasing solute concentration in the organic phase. For all systems investigated, the solvent shows no miscibility with feed solutions of low to medium solute concentration. The binodial curves were correlated to the Hlavaty equation, the beta function and the log gamma function. The correlations yielded acceptable results for LLE Systems 2, 3 and 4. The tie-lines were correlated to the NRTL model, with LLE systems 2 and 4 giving acceptable results and LLE systems 1 and 3 give excellent results. The following binary vapour-liquid equilibrium systems were measured: • Acetone + Methanol at 99,4 kPa • l-Hexene + 2-Butanone at 74.8 kPa The acetone + methanol system exhibits a minimum boiling azeotrope at 0.78 mole fraction acetone. The l-hexene + 2-butanone system exhibits a minimum boiling azeotrope at 0.83 mole fraction l-hexene. Trihexyl-tetradecyl-phosphonium chloride (CJ3C1PhCl was then added to the above systems in order to evaluate it as a solvent in extractive distillation. (CJ3C1PhCI shifts the azeotrope of the acetone + methanol system to a higher acetone concentration, but does not remove it altogether. (CJ3C1PhCI has a negative effect on the relative volatility of the l-hexene + 2-butanone, thus rendering it ineffective as an extractive distillation solvent for this system. Another aspect that was considered in this work was the production of an ionic liquid. Synthesis steps and experimental considerations were discussed. A major factor in the use of ionic liquids is the cost of the ionic liquid itself. The major problem associated with ionic liquids is the general lack of available information that is necessary for them to be implemented in a process. Ionic liquids show potential as solvents in liquid-liquid extraction for a number of systems. Their potential as solvents in extractive distillation is probably limited, due to their miscibility/immiscibility properties, to systems involving slightly polar to highly polar compounds.


Packrat parsing is a linear-time implementation method of recursive descent parsers. The trick is a memoization mechanism, where all parsing results are memorized to avoid redundant parsing in cases of backtracking. An arising problem is extremely huge heap consumption in memoization, resulting in the fact that the cost of memoization is likely to outweigh its benefits. In many cases, developers need to make a difficult choice to abandon packrat parsing despite the possible exponential time parsing. Elastic packrat parsing is developed in order to avoid such a difficult choice. The heap consumption is upper-bounded since memorized results are stored on a sliding window buffer. In addition, the buffer capacity is adjusted by tracing each of nonterminal backtracking activities at runtime. Elastic packrat parsing is implemented in a part of our Nez parser. We demonstrate that the elastic packrat parsing achieves stable and robust performance against a variety of inputs with different backtracking activities.


This paper describes the implementation and use of the Plan 9 distributed resource protocol 9P under the Linux 2.6 operating system. The use of the 9P protocol along with the recent addition of private name spaces to the 2.6 kernel creates a foundation for seamless distributed computing using Linux. We review the design principles and benefits of Plan 9 distributed systems, go over the basics of the 9P protocol, describe 9P extensions to better support UNIX® file systems, and show some example Linux distributed applications using 9P to provide system and application services. We conclude by providing a performance analysis of the protocol versus NFS for sharing a static file system.


TECHNICAL COLLEGE SYSTEM OF GEORGIA by AMY L. HOLLOWAY (Under the Direction of J. Douglas Toma) ABSTRACT The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the first-year experiences of eleven new career faculty members in the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) who transitioned into higher education from business and industry. Primary findings suggested that these new career faculty members experienced a developmental process of enculturation into the academic work environment that included negotiating an unfamiliar culture, confronting challenges in learning their new work role, relationship building, and reflecting on their evolving professional identities. The data revealed that these new technical college faculty members" emerging professional identities were rooted in their roles as classroom instructors and in the career preparation of their students. The results of this study suggest that technical colleges can better facilitate the work role transition of new career faculty through improved orientation and more comprehensive faculty development programs to include mentoring and pedagogical training. This study also recommends further research to examine the socialization experiences of new faculty across institution types and populations.


The purpose of the researcher was to investigate the differences in attitudes, academic achievement, and self-esteem among graduating seniors, high school dropouts, and those who dropped out of high school and enrolled in an alternative school. The subjects were selected from a Midwestern high school of 1,089 students. The subjects consisted of 36 graduating seniors, 34 dropouts and 33 alternative school students. Of those 103 subjects, 52 we r e female and 51 were male; 49 were Hispanic and 54 were Anglo. The Demos D. Scale was used as the technique to assess the school related attitudes of the subjects. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory Adult Form was used to measure the subject's self- esteem. Each subject's grade point average for the ninth grade was employed as a measure of academic achievement. A three group status survey design was employed. The independent variables investigated were gender, race, and graduation status. The dependent variables were academic achievement, school related attitudes, and self-esteem of the subjects. Data analysis consisted of testing six null hypotheses. Each null hypothesis was tested employing a three-way analysis of variance. Forty-three comparisons were made; of those comparisons, eight were found to be statistically significant. The results of this study appeared to support the following generalizations: 1. graduating seniors have a higher G.P.A. than dropouts and alternative school students, 2. Angloes have a higher G.P.A. than Hispanics, 3. graduating seniors place a higher value on the importance of education than high school dropouts and alternative school students. 4. Females place a higher value on the importance of education than males, 5. Angloes have a more favorable attitude toward school personnel than Hispanics, 6. Graduating seniors place more importance on school behavior than dropouts and alternative school students, 7. Angloes have a higher self-esteem than Hispanics, 8. Anglo females have a higher self-esteem than Hispanic females.


The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of a national program of consumption of fortified milk "Liconsa" on the nutritional status of iron and zinc in pre-school children (3-5 y). The study was conducted in 77 healthy children of both genders. 54 of them consumed Liconsa fortified milk (GCLFL) and 23 consumed no fortified milk (GR). Iron status was determined by measuring hemoglobin and ferritin and zinc status by serum zinc. The consumption of milk was on free demand and it was estimated at baseline and 6 mo after. Through 24-h recall of measured consumption of iron and zinc in the total diet. Descriptive statistics, Student's t test for independent samples and chi-square test for differences in proportions. Children who consumed fortified milk showed an increase of hemoglobin and ferritin levels [1.13 g/dL (p < 0.05) and 5.83 μg/L (p < 0.05) respectively]. Additionally, a decrease was found of the prevalence of low iron stores from 20.4 to 4.1% (p < 0.05). The serum zinc level showed an increase of 45.2 μg/dL (p < 0.05). At the end of the study no child showed a micronutrient deficiency. Children who did not consume fortified milk Liconsa showed no significant change in their serum iron and zinc values. The average consumption of milk powder Liconsa was 22.7 ± 14.5 g, providing 2.5 mg of daily iron and zinc. Supplied diet 9.2 ± 3.4 mg of iron and 6.9 ± 3 mg of zinc. The consumption of fortified milk had a beneficial effect on the serum levels of iron and zinc in children's social welfare program Liconsa.


Hoffman Square, Driehoek Neighbourhood Park and Old Regional Park are public spaces in Mangaung. Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space and Elements of Rhythmanalysis are explored in the analysis of these public spaces' organised representations, representational uses and rhythmic spatial practices. This article found that: (1) public spaces in Mangaung are lived spaces that are regularly appropriated by inhabitants whose unpoliced social practices of vandalism and littering—along with the harsh regional climate—deteriorate the physical quality of the public spaces, secreting environmental incivility in the public spaces; (2) cyclical rhythms of night and day times have a practical impact on the spatial practices of each public space in spite of their design and location. For example, day-time entails high and rapid levels of public space uses while night-time diffuses these dynamics significantly; and (3) Mangaung's spatial plans encourage the liberal uses of its public spaces however, it fails to enforce its by-laws to curb experienced physical decay of, and environmental incivility in, the public spaces. This increases the vulnerability of its public spaces to external shocks—emanating from nature and society—thus depriving the public spaces of an opportunity to be perceived as alternatives for urban regeneration and local economic revitalisation.


INTRODUCTION
Arthroscopic repair of the rotator cuff have shown have shown encouraging clinical results. However, few authors have assessed integrity of repair with ultrasound. The presence of re-rupture by ultrasonography in a rotator cuff repair may not relate to the patient's functional status.

OBJECTIVE
We used ultrasonography to assess the prevalence of re-rupture in rotator cuff repairs and its clinical relevance with minimum 1 year postoperatively.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Evidence level IV (Case series). We evaluated 27 shoulders that underwent arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. Clinical evaluation was performed using UCLA functional scale, visual analogue scale (UCLA, VAS). Post-operative ultrasound was performed at least 1 year postoperatively. Statistical analysis was done with the SPSS 11.0 software.

RESULTS
We examined 27 shoulders, mean age 56.4 (41-78), mean postoperative follow-up 19.6 (12 m-88 m). Clinical assessment with UCLA functional scale results were: good-excellent (77.4%); fair (22.2%). VAS results showed that 44.4% reported VAS of 0; in the range of 1-3 VAS was 55.5% of the patients. Ultrasound evaluation showed no injury in 37%; partial lesion 51.9%, and a total lesion 11.1%. Thirty-three % of the patients with VAS of 0 showed no injury when evaluated by ultrasonography, injury by ultrasound 33.3% with VAS (1-3) 22.2%. UCLA (good-excellent) without injury by ultrasound 33.3% with a 44.4% degree of injury, UCLA (Fair) without injury 3.7%, with some degree of lesion 18.5%. Results no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
In our series, we find that integrity of rotator cuff postoperative ultrasound, it has no effect on the functional status of patients with postoperative follow-up of at least 1 year, with UCLA and VAS.


Abstract A 3-year study was undertaken to examine the parity status, survival, and prevalence of West Nile virus (WNV) in overwintering populations of Culex pipiens pipiens collected from a hibernaculum located in a WNV endemic region in New York City. Nearly 6,000 females were collected from December through April. Parity rates were highest among females collected in December and January, ranging from 12.3% to 21.9%, depending on the year. In each year of the study, the proportion of parous females declined significantly during the course of the winter; the percentage of parous females found in April ranged from 0.9% to 10%. Results provide unequivocal evidence that parous Cx. p. pipiens females from this region of the northeastern US enter hibernacula in the fall in comparatively high proportions not previously recognized for this species, and while these females experience significant mortality during the winter, some survived to April to emerge in the spring. The absence of any detectible blood remnants in overwintering females reaffirms that blood feeding does not occur among diapausing females during the winter. The possibility that a portion of the diapausing population may be autogenous as a result of hybridization with sympatric belowground populations of Cx. p. pipiens "form molestus" is discussed. A single isolation of WNV was obtained in Vero cell culture from a pool of 50 females collected on January 11, 2007, representing an infection prevalence of 0.07% in the overwintering population in 2007 (n  =  1,370 mosquitoes, 33 pools). No isolations of WNV were made from mosquitoes collected in 2008 (n  =  1,870 mosquitoes, 190 pools) or 2009 (n  =  1,767 mosquitoes, 184 pools). Findings provide further evidence for local overwintering of WNV in diapausing Cx. p. pipiens, albeit at very low rates, consistent with the paucity of WNV-positive mosquitoes detected in June and early July despite the emergence of females from hibernacula in early May in this region.


We provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance (UI) weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of Missouri covering the period 2003-2013. Identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the quasi-experimental variation around the kink in the UI benefit schedule. We find that UI durations are more responsive to benefit levels during the recession and its aftermath, with an elasticity between 0.65 and 0.9 as compared to about 0.35 pre-recession.


Hemangiomas are the most common tumor of the head and neck in children, including intracranial neoplasms. Capillary hemangioma in turn is the commonest type of hemangioma. Our case establishes that its anatomic distribution may include the intracranial compartment. We were unable to distinguish capillary hemangioma from meningioma based on imaging findings alone.


Rhetorical structure is helpful in improving how the writers maintain cohesion in their writings. This study examines how the Iraqi writers maintain cohesion in the text by analyzing the various rhetorical moves in Azzaman, an online Iraqi newspaper. To this purpose, twelve opinion articles from Azzaman Iraqi newspaper, published from January 2013 to June 2013 were analyzed. The findings revealed a common rhetorical pattern: the introduction section, the intermediate section, and the coda section (conclusion stage). All these were frequently used, but the use of intermediate section (solution stage) and coda section (moral stage) were less frequently-used in comparison with the introduction section. The findings of this study reflect the way Iraqis write opinion articles in English newspapers, and generally show that the use of similar patterns in the rhetorical structure mirrors the writing of second language writers' writing to convey information to second language readers.


The authors introduce a texture descriptor that utilises circular neighbourhoods and 1-D discrete Fourier transforms to obtain rotation-invariant features. Since rotating an image does not change the intensities of its pixels but shifts them circularly, rotation-invariant features can be realised if the relationship between circular motion and spatial shift is established. For each individual circular neighbourhood centred at every pixel, a number of input sequences are formed by the intensities of pixels on concentric rings of various radii measured from the centre of each neighbourhood. Fourier transforming the sequences would generate coefficients whose magnitudes are invariant to rotation. Features extracted from these magnitudes were used in various classification and segmentation experiments. These features outperformed those of the circular simultaneous autoregressive model in classifying rotated images and those of the wavelet transform and the Gaussian Markov random field in classifying unrotated images of 30 classes. They also showed superior performance to those of the CSAR in several rotation-invariant segmentation experiments.


The Tamm–Dancoff approximation (TDA) can be applied to the computation of excitation energies using time-dependent Hartree–Fock (TD-HF) and time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT). In addition to simplifying the resulting response equations, the TDA has been shown to significantly improve the calculation of triplet excitation energies in these theories, largely overcoming issues associated with triplet instabilities of the underlying reference wave functions. Here, we examine the application of the TDA to the calculation of another response property involving triplet perturbations, namely the indirect nuclear spin–spin coupling constant. Particular attention is paid to the accuracy of the triplet spin–dipole and Fermi-contact components. The application of the TDA in HF calculations leads to vastly improved results. For DFT calculations, the TDA delivers improved stability with respect to geometrical variations but does not deliver higher accuracy close to equilibrium geometries. These observations are rationalised in terms of the ground- and excited-state potential energy surfaces and, in particular, the severity of the triplet instabilities associated with each method. A notable feature of the DFT results within the TDA is their similarity across a wide range of different functionals. The uniformity of the TDA results suggests that some conventional evaluations may exploit error cancellations between approximations in the functional forms and those arising from triplet instabilities. The importance of an accurate treatment of correlation for evaluating spin–spin coupling constants is highlighted by this comparison.


This study aimed to experimentally investigate the spray cooling characteristics for active two-phase cooling of automotive power electronics. Tests were conducted on a small-scale, closed loop spray cooling system featuring a pressure atomized spray nozzle. Two types of refrigerants, HFC-134a (R-134a) and HFO-1234yf, were selected as the working fluids. The test section (heater), made out of oxygen-free copper, had a 1-cm2 plain, smooth surface prepared following a consistent procedure, and served as a baseline case. Matching size thick film resistors, attached onto the copper heaters, generated heat and simulated high heat flux power electronics devices. The experiments were performed with saturated working fluids at room temperature level (22°C) by controlling the heat flux in increasing steps, and recording the corresponding steady-state temperatures to obtain cooling curves. Performance comparisons were made based on heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and critical heat flux (CHF) values. Effects of spray characteristics and liquid flow rates on the cooling performance were determined with three types of commercially available nozzles that generate full-cone sprays with fine droplets, and with varying flow rates between 1.6 to 5.4 ml/cm2.s. The experimental data showed that HFC-134a provided better performance compared to HFO-1234yf, in terms of HTC and CHF, which is believed to be dictated by the thermophysical properties that affect both the spray characteristics and heat acquisition ability. Overall, this study provided a framework for spray cooling performance with the current and next-generation refrigerants aimed for advanced thermal management of automotive power electronics.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


In this paper, we address two key trends in the synthesis of implementations for embedded multiprocessors — (1) the increasing importance of managing interprocessor communication (IPC) in an efficient manner, and (2) the acceptance of significantly longer compilation time by embedded system designers. The former aspect is evident in the increasing interest among embedded system architects in innovative communication architectures, such as those involving optical interconnection technologies, and hybrid electro-optical structures [7]. The latter aspect results because embedded multiprocessor systems are typically designed as final implementations for dedicated functions. While multiprocessor mapping strategies for general-purpose systems are usually designed with low to moderate complexity as a constraint, embedded system design tools are allowed to employ more thorough and time-consuming optimization techniques.


The bullwhip effect leads to considerable inefficiencies along the food supply chain such as missed production schedules, poor customer service, excessive inventory, and misguided capacity plans. To tackle this problem, it is necessary, apart from other interventions, to continuously monitor the performance of food suppliers so that the demand information flow, order batching, transportation planning, and inventory management can be substantially improved. Therefore, supplier assessment has then become critical decision‐making support for identifying and addressing inefficiencies of food providers, which ends up reducing the variation of several key logistics parameters for upstream members of the food supply chain. In addition, such assessment is of multicriteria nature given the presence of several criteria from different domains and various food suppliers. With these considerations in mind, this paper proposes a hybrid approach integrating the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for evaluating the performance of pork suppliers. Thereby, the economic and operational burden caused by the bullwhip effect throughout the pork supply chain can be alleviated. AHP was first used to determine the criteria and subcriteria weights. Then DEMATEL was applied to assess the interdependence and feedback between the decision elements. Finally, TOPSIS was implemented to discriminate between high‐performance and low‐performance pork suppliers. A case study from the Colombian pork supply chain is presented to validate the proposed approach. The results of this study evidenced that the most important criterion was the "service level" and the most influencing factor was the "financial profile." In addition, based on the supplier assessment results, improvement plans, and new negotiation, strategies were established for each supplier in order to diminish the bullwhip effect along the pork supply chain.


Abstract. This paper explores the potential of virtual representations of the built heritage integrated in immersive web-based platform to support the work of experts in collecting, formalizing, and communicating data about its Cultural Significance (CS) in a participatory, multi-actor and multi-disciplinary processes. The suitability of the proposed framework is evaluated through a case study approach with the observatory of Cointe, located in Liege, Belgium. A survey was conducted in an existing web application to conduct this research with real data about values associated to the place by different groups and individuals. The taxonomy proposed in (Jouan and Hallot, 2022) is implemented to formalize the exported data. The ability of this formalism to move towards the quantification of qualitative data about cultural values is further evaluated. To do so, the potential of the data model to generate multiple meaningful representations of CS data while giving experts the necessary flexibility to focus on different aspects of interest is explored through traditional spatial analysis tools in GIS environment. The article also proposes an iterative method that supports the elaboration and progressive refinement of strategies for the recording of heritage places according to the evolving state of knowledge about its cultural significance.


Acute elevation of left atrial pressure could be precisely controlled at any desired level up to a mean of 60 mm. Hg in dogs with an intact thorax. The following observations were made in a series of 15 dogs. Right lymphatic duct flow did not increase at acutely elevated left atrial mean pressure below 25 mm. Hg, whereas flow increased 3- to 4-fold at mean pressure above 25 mm. Hg. The total amount of lymph at maximum flow, however, was only 0.3 ml./min. Lymph flow remained elevated for as long as 1 hour after left atrial pressure was restored to normal. Elevation of left atrial pressure did not affect lymph flow in the thoracic duct. Pulmonary edema did not occur readily at left atrial mean pressure elevated only slightly above plasma oncotic pressure. The production of pulmonary edema was observed only after a considerable elevation of left atrial pressure above plasma oncotic pressure was maintained for a period of one half hour or more in an otherwise normal dog. The hematocrit increased significantly after a 10-minute period of high left atrial pressure. Pulmonary vascular resistance decreased sharply as left atrial mean pressure was raised from 0 to 15 mm. Hg. The resistance gradually rose as left atrial pressure was raised to between 15 and 30 mm. Hg. Pulmonary arterial pressure uniformly rose and cardiac output uniformly declined with increasing left atrial pressure. Chronic elevation of left atrial pressure was achieved in 15 dogs. Left atrial mean pressure varied from 10 to 23 mm. Hg. These dogs were followed up to 10 months and the following observations were made. Right lymphatic duct flow did not increase at chronically elevated left atrial mean pressure below 25 mm. Hg. Flow was not studied at higher pressures since we were unable to sustain left atrial mean pressure above 25 mm. Hg in any dog in our chronic group. The animals that were brought to left atrial mean pressure between 30 and 40 mm. Hg and in whom these high levels were presumably maintained were found dead in their cages with pulmonary edema 1 to 2 days after tightening the snare. Many of the usual functional and structural changes often found in lungs of patients with mitral stenosis, except for hemosiderosis, were not observed in our experimental animals although the extent of the supravalvular stenosis produced was marked. Pulmonary arterial pressure rose slightly and cardiac output declined slightly. No change was noted in pulmonary vascular resistance. Ascites and other signs of right sided failure were not encountered.


Chen et al. (2020) claim to have found a positive causal effect of the send-down movement on rural education during China's Cultural Revolution. The paper also infers that the movement made the contribution of human capital accumulation in rural areas to China's subsequent economic growth in reform era. We demonstrate that the claimed finding and its inference can be challenged on both factual and methodological grounds. In particular, once the educational attainment is coded by actual schooling-year requirements set during the Cultural Revolution, the estimated effects of send-down youths on rural education become negative and statistically insignificant. We also question the authors' choice to only consider marginal gains in rural schooling without assessing the trade-off of the much larger losses in human capital and social economic costs of the movement.


We address how value relevance of accounting information evolved as the new economy developed. Prior research concludes accounting information—primarily earnings—has lost relevance. We consider more accounting items and find no decline in combined value relevance from 1962 to 2018. We assess evolution in each item's value relevance and find increases, most notably for items related to intangible assets, growth opportunities, and alternative performance measures, which are important in the new economy. The number of relevant items also increases. We also consider separately new economy, old economy profit, and old economy loss firms. The trends are more pronounced for, but extend beyond, new economy firms. We base inferences on a non-parametric approach that does not require specifying the valuation relation. Taken together, our findings reveal an evolution to a more nuanced, but not declining, relation between accounting information and share price.


Introduction Game theory is the study of how people behave in strategic situations. It is concerned with "how rational individuals make decisions when they are mutually interdependent" (Romp, 1997). "Game" in this context means "sport of any kind," and therefore implies two or more players and a set of rules. The outcome of a game depends on the player him or herself, as well as other players. The root of game theory can be traced to philosophical and political works such as Plato's Republic, in which Socrates worries that "a soldier is better off running away regardless of who is going to win the battle" and "if all of the soldiers reason this way--then this will certainly bring about the outcome in which the battle is lost" (Ross, 2006). The development of game theory is well summarized as "a conjunction of indirections: ideas, both in mathematics and in economics whose implications and fruitfulness were not understood, dramatizations of concepts for the wrong reasons, and fruits in applications not originally considered" (Arrow, 2003). Von Neumann is considered the founder of game theory (Von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944), including the "minimax" theorem, which is a way of " minimizing the maximum possible loss" (Minimax 2008). It was John Nash's definition and proof of existence for the equilibrium point, however, that exerts the direct impact of game theory on economics. Strategic games commonly involve three important aspects: players, strategies, and payoffs. The players are "the individuals who make the relevant decisions"; strategies refer to "a complete description of how a player could play a game"; and the pay-offs are "what a player will receive at the end of the game, contingent upon the actions of all the players in the game" (Romp, 1997). As a result, the player will choose a strategy that yields the maximum payoff. Several assumptions are required to understand game theory: individualism, rationality, and mutual interdependence. The simplest form of game theory is a two-person game. Since each player can choose one of two strategies, the two players will reach four possible decisions as a joint effort. There are three prototypes of two-person game: Prisoner's dilemma, Chicken, and Assurance. Prisoner's dilemma is also known as a game of cooperation, because each player needs to cooperate with the other in order to yield the "dominant" strategy (i.e., the efficient outcome). The following is an explanation of prisoner's dilemma. Prisoner's dilemma: Two suspects, say Bonnie and Clyde, are arrested for a crime. Lacking sufficient evidence to charge both, the police need at least one of the suspects to confess. To facilitate questioning and possibly get a confession, the police separate the suspects. Each of them is given two choices: confess or not confess. Both are made aware of the consequences of the two choices. Consequences for each prisoner depend on what the other does (confess or not). Consequences are displayed in Table 1. If Bonnie and Clyde both confess, then each is sentenced to 10 months in prison (the first number in brackets is Bonnie's sentence while the second number is that of Clyde). If one confesses and the other does not, the confessor is released while the non-confessor receives the maximum sentence (20 months). If neither Bonnie nor Clyde confess, then they are held on a technicality for one month and later released. This cell (Do Not Confess, Do Not Confess) is an efficient outcome since it leads to a situation where the two suspects have the lowest combined sentence. If, however, Bonnie confesses and Clyde is made aware of it, then it is in Clyde's best interest also to confess, because he would only get 10 months instead of 20. In fact, regardless of what Bonnie chooses to do, it is in Clyde 's best interest to confess. "Confess" is a dominant strategy for Clyde. …


Purpose
Using the National Football League (NFL) concussion crisis context, the purpose of this paper is to provide sports marketers with a strategic approach to sports crisis management through consideration of crisis media coverage and organizational reputation.

Design/methodology/approach
An online experiment assessed the impact of two crisis response strategies, fan involvement and exposure to crisis media coverage on emotional response, corporate message credibility, crisis perception and perceived corporate reputation.

Findings
The accident response strategy was associated with more favorable perceptions of the NFL and corporate message credibility. Sports fan involvement facilitated more favorable perceptions of the NFL's reputation, while exposure to media coverage of the NFL's crisis created negative perceptions of the NFL's reputation. Exposure to media coverage of the NFL concussion crisis increased feelings of anger, which in turn decreased perceptions of corporate message credibility.

Research limitations/implications
A limitation for this study is the specific crisis scenario that was used. The NFL concussion crisis is different from other crisis types in that it does not directly impact the audience's well-being, but instead affects their perceptions of an iconic institution.

Practical implications
In light of study findings, it is suggested that sports marketers consider the following when dealing with crises: carefully determine proper framing methods when crafting a crisis response as different response types affect consumers in different ways; leverage public relations (PR) practices by engaging in media monitoring to inform an appropriate crisis response to control the narrative; and examine forces exernal of the organization that influence consumer emotions, paying special attention to feelings of anger as anger negatively impacts consumer perceptions of corporate credibility.

Originality/value
This paper addresses sports crisis strategy from both marketing and public relations perspectives. It describes how strategic efforts protect a sports organization's reputation, thus increasing marketing effectiveness.


ABSTRACT The double-averaging methodology is used in this paper for deriving equations for the second-order velocity moments (i.e. turbulent and dispersive stresses) that emerge in the double-averaged momentum equation for incompressible Newtonian flows over mobile boundaries. The starting point in the derivation is the mass and momentum conservation equations for local (at a point) instantaneous variables that are up-scaled by employing temporal and spatial averaging. First, time-averaged conservation equations for mass, momentum, and turbulent stresses for mobile bed conditions are derived. Then, the double-averaged hydrodynamic equations obtained by spatial averaging the time-averaged equations are proposed. The derived second-order equations can serve as a basis for the construction of simplified mathematical and numerical models and for interpretation of experimental and simulation data when bed mobility is present. Potential applications include complex flow situations such as free-surface flows over vegetated or mobile sedimentary beds and flows through tidal and wind turbine arrays.


OBJECTIVE
Research examining changes in eating disorder symptoms across adolescence suggests an increase in disordered eating from early to late adolescence. However, relevant studies have largely been cross-sectional in nature and most have not examined the changes in the attitudinal symptoms of eating disorders (e.g., weight concerns). This longitudinal study aimed to address gaps in the available data by examining the developmental trajectories of disordered eating in females from preadolescence into young adulthood.

METHOD
Participants were 745 same-sex female twins from the Minnesota Twin Family Study. Disordered eating was assessed using the Total Score, Body Dissatisfaction subscale, Weight Preoccupation subscale, and a combined Binge Eating and Compensatory Behavior subscale from the Minnesota Eating Behavior Survey assessed at the ages of 11, 14, 18, 21, and 25. Several latent growth models were fit to the data to identify the trajectory that most accurately captures the changes in disordered eating symptoms from 11 to 25 years.

RESULTS
The best-fitting models for overall levels of disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and weight preoccupation showed an increase in from 11 through 25 years. In contrast, bulimic behaviors increased to age of 18 and then stabilized to age of 25.

DISCUSSION
The findings expanded upon extant research by investigating longitudinal, symptom specific, within-person changes and showing an increase in cognitive symptoms into young adulthood and the stability of disordered eating behaviors past late adolescence.


Nanos RNA-binding proteins are required for germline development in metazoans, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We have profiled the transcriptome of primordial germ cells (PGCs) lacking the nanos homologs nos-1 and nos-2 in C. elegans. nos-1nos-2 PGCs fail to silence hundreds of transcripts normally expressed in oocytes. We find that this misregulation is due to both delayed turnover of maternal transcripts and inappropriate transcriptional activation. The latter appears to be an indirect consequence of delayed turnover of the maternally-inherited transcription factor LIN-15B, a synMuvB class transcription factor known to antagonize PRC2 activity. PRC2 is required for chromatin reprogramming in the germline, and the transcriptome of PGCs lacking PRC2 resembles that of nos-1nos-2 PGCs. Loss of maternal LIN-15B restores fertility to nos-1nos-2 mutants. These findings suggest that Nanos promotes germ cell fate by downregulating maternal RNAs and proteins that would otherwise interfere with PRC2-dependent reprogramming of PGC chromatin.


Monitoring sulfur corrosion in insulation oils is essential since sulfur corrosion can result in catastrophic transformer failure when left unchecked. The objective of this study is to analyze the performance of an interdigitated capacitive sensor (IDC) utilizing printed circuit board technology as a potential tool to detect and monitor the progression of sulfur corrosion in mineral insulation oils. The sulfur corrosion is simulated by adding dibenzyl disulfide into 20 ml vials containing 15 ml of vacuum dried and degassed insulation oils at three concentrations: (1) 100, (2) 200, and (3) 300 ppm. Bare copper samples are then added into the oil samples and aged in a forced convection laboratory oven at 150°C for three days. The IDC sensor developed in this study is used to determine the variation in the oil capacitance due to the presence of dibenzyl disulfide. The surface of the bare copper samples is analyzed using scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy equipped with AZtecEnergy software in order to quantify the variations of the copper and sulfur content. Based on the results, there is a strong positive correlation between the electrical capacitance of the insulation oil and DBDS concentration, whereby the coefficient of determination is within a range of 0.9643–0.9868. In conclusion, the IDC sensor is a simple and inexpensive way of characterizing the quality of insulation oils due to sulfur corrosion and therefore, it has great potential for industrial applications.


On the first of june 2009, the General Council on Environmental Quality Assessment of the Ministry of Rural, Marine and Natural Environment of the Spanish Government, on the light of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) of the bimep project carried out by AZTI-Tecnalia, decided that the bimep project did not require to carry out the whole Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process. In any case, the Environmental Impact Statement (EISt) of the Ministry, taking into account the great uncertainties about some predicted environmental impacts, underlined the need to implement the proposed Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) of the EIS. Funded by the Basque Entity of Energy (or Ente Vasco de la Energía (EVE), www.eve.es) and carried out by the Marine Research Division of AZTI-Tecnalia (www.azti.es), the EMP in is preoperational phase started its activities in August 2011. This work review the expected environmental impacts of the bimep project and the methodology of the EMP for the monitoring of hydrodynamics, landscape, benthic communities, ichthyofauna, marine mammals, fishing activity and submarine archaeological and cultural resources.


Abstract This paper investigates forms and functions of narratives of illness and emotional distress in executive coaching. This relatively recent professional format has originated from the practical application of managerial and psychotherapeutic interventions and can be understood as a translation of the therapeutic habitus into the managerial realm. In this context, clients' emotional experiences take center stage, yet not for the sole purpose of clients' self-reflexivity and self-fulfillment, but for organizational purposes such as evoking peak-performance in the executive. It is claimed here that clients' narratives of emotional distress and their processing, not only fulfill an emancipatory function that allow for the verbalization of less-dominant discourses and the staging of less-dominant identities, but simultaneously serve as situated practices of functionalizing emotions for the organization.


With the introduction of new technologies such as cloud computing and big data, the security issues of industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) have become more complicated. Meanwhile, a lot of current security research lacks adaptation to industrial system upgrades. In this paper, an edge-cloud synergy framework for security decision-making is proposed, which takes advantage of the huge convenience and advantages brought by cloud computing and edge computing, and can make security decisions on a global perspective. Under this framework, a combination of Bayesian network-based risk assessment and stochastic game model-based security decision-making is proposed to generate an optimal defense strategy to minimize system losses. This method trains models in the clouds and infers at the edge computing nodes to achieve rapid defense strategy generation. Finally, a case study on the hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform proves the feasibility of the approach.


Background: Moderate racial differences have been documented for individuals screened for colorectal cancer (CRC). However, little is known about whether these disparities have changed over time. This study aimed to examine the trends in screening disparities by race from 1992 to 2002. Methods: The study population consisted of two cohorts: 50,186 Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed with CRC between 1992 and 2002 and 62,917 Medicare beneficiaries without cancer during the same time period. Both cohorts of subjects were 67 to 89 years of age and resided in 16 Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) regions of the United States. Screening procedures conducted between 6 months and 3 years prior to the date of diagnosis for CRC patients and prior to the index date for persons without cancer were identified from Medicare claims. Age‐gender‐adjusted percentages of persons receiving the fecal occult blood test (FOBT), sigmoidoscopy (SIG), or colonoscopy (COL) by year and race/ethnicity were reported. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between race/ethnicity and the odds of receiving CRC screening over time. Results: Overall screening rates were similar between patients with colorectal cancer and those without cancer for FOBT (19.8% vs. 23.1%), SIG (6.2% vs. 5.2%) and COL (1.8% vs. 1.7%). Furthermore, there were higher screening rates in 2002 than in 1992 for all screening modalities within both groups of subjects. In the cohort of patients with CRC, there were no significant racial disparities in receiving CRC screening prior to the date of diagnosis. For example, the odds ratio for receiving FOBT was 1.07 (95%CI: 0.98–1.17) for Blacks, 0.94 (95%CI: 0.82–1.08) for Asians and 0.83 (95%CI: 0.67–1.01) for Hispanics compared to Whites with CRC in 2000–2002. However, among those without cancer, there were racial/ethnic differences in the use of FOBT and SIG. From 1992 to 1995, Blacks and Hispanics were less likely than Whites to receive FOBT (OR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.65–0.87; OR=0.50, 95% CI: 0.34–0.72, respectively) but the racial gaps in screening slightly widened from 2000 to 2002 (OR=0.79, 95% CI: 0.72–0.85; OR=0.67, 95% CI: 0.54–0.75, respectively). In addition, Blacks and Hispanics were less likely than Whites to receive SIG from 1992 to 1995 (OR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.57–0.98; OR=0.29, 95% CI: 0.12–0.71, respectively), but the disparities also widened from 2000 to 2002 (OR=0.79, 95% CI: 0.68–0.93; OR=0.50, 95% CI: 0.35–0.72, respectively). Conclusions: Among Medicare beneficiaries without cancer, screening rates for FOBT and SIG differed between Blacks and Whites, and Hispanics and Whites. These disparities decreased in the later years, but were not eliminated. For patients with colorectal cancer, there were no statistically significant differences in screening prior to the diagnosis between racial groups. Future studies should incorporate information on physician recommendations and language/cultural barriers in these and younger populations. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2010;3(1 Suppl):B32.


BACKGROUND Acute burn excision results in at least 2% blood volume loss per percent excised; hence, massive blood loss (>50% total blood volume) occurs during major burn excisions. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess safety and prospectively compare the impact of a 4:1 versus a 1:1 packed red blood cell–fresh frozen plasma (PRBC/FFP) transfusion strategy on outcomes in children with burns greater than 20% total body surface area (TBSA). METHODS Children with greater than 20% TBSA burn were randomized to a 1:1 or 4:1 PRBC/FFP ratio during burn excision. Parameters measured on admission included demographics, burn size, and Pediatric Risk of Mortality scores. Laboratory values that were measured preoperatively, 1 hour, 12 hours, 24 hours, and 1 week included prothrombin time (PT), partial thromboplastin time (PTT), international normalized ratio (INR), fibrinogen, protein C, and antithrombin C (AIII). Total number of blood products transfused during operative interventions and during hospitalization were recorded. RESULTS Groups were similar in age, weight, TBSA, and Pediatric Risk of Mortality scores at admission. Preoperative fibrinogen, antithrombins III (AIII), protein C, hemoglobin, PT/PTT, INR, and platelets were similar between groups. The 1:1 group received more FFP (43.8 ± 0.03 U in 1:1 group vs. 15.7 ± 0.07 in the 4:1 group) and less PRBC (40.7 ± 0.02 U in 1:1 group vs. 73.1 ± 0.02 U in 4:1 group) than the 4:1 group. Approximately 50% blood volume was replaced with PRBC intraopaeratively. There was no difference in PT/PTT, INR, hemoglobin, or platelets between groups. Protein C and AIII were higher in the 1:1 group. Cost of FFP and PRBC were lower in the 1:1 group. CONCLUSION A 1:1 PRBC/FFP transfusion strategy increased FFP use, decreased overall PRBC use, and resulted in higher AIII and protein C postoperatively without a difference in INR or PT/PTT. This may represent compensatory changes in the 4:1 group in response to intraoperative blood loss. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Therapeutic, level II.


Determining the spatial distribution of different contaminants in soil is essential for the pollution assessment and risk control. Interpolation methods are widely used to estimate the concentrations of the heavy metals in the unstudied sites. In this study, the performances of interpolation methods (inverse distance weighting, local polynomials and ordinary Kriging and radial basis functions) were evaluated to estimate the topsoil contamination with copper and nickel in Golestan Province. 216 surface soil samples were collected from Golestan province, and their Cu and Ni concentrations were measured. Soil contamination was determined using different interpolation methods. Cross validation was applied to compare the methods and estimate their accuracy. The results showed that all the tested interpolation methods have an acceptable prediction accuracy of the mean content for soil heavy metals. RBF-IMQ and IDW1 methods had the lowest RMSE, whereas RBF-TPS method with the largest RMSE estimated a larger size for the polluted area. The greater the weighting power, the larger the polluted area estimated by IDW. Compared with the ''sample ratio over the pollution limits" method, the polluted areas of Cu and Ni were reduced by 8.38% and 6.14%, respectively.


The contrast mechanism of the scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM) to exhibit the ferroelectric domain structures is demonstrated. An image, developed by the mapping of differential capacitance in a virgin SrBi 2 Ta 2 O 9 (SBT) thin film, was observed and three sharp contrast states of white, black, and gray were revealed. A hysteresis loop depicting the opposing polarities at zero bias was obtained by local measurement and, subsequently, the hysteretic capacitance-voltage curves, as the characteristic of domain switching, were acquired by integrating the calibrated differentiation capacitance. It is concluded that the white and black contrast in SCM images are due to the antiparallel 180° domains whereas the gray contrast is due to the trivial differential capacitance variation. These results strongly suggest that the local capacitance variation can be correlated well with the polarities of polarizations in nanoscale domains.


A review. Studies on designed peptides that exhibit high tendencies for medium-induced conformational transitions have recently attracted much attention because structural changes are considered as mol. key processes in degenerative diseases. The exptl. access to these events has been limited so far mainly due to the intrinsic tendency of the involved polypeptides for self-assocn. and aggregation, e.g. amyloid beta plaque formation, thought to be at the origin of Alzheimer's disease. We have developed a new concept termed 'switch-peptides' which allows the controlled onset of polypeptide folding and misfolding in vitro and in vivo, starting from a sol., non-toxic precursor mol. As a major feature, the folding process is initiated by enzyme-triggered N,O-acyl migrations restoring the native peptide backbone in situ. As the folding is set off in the moment of creating the bioactive mol. ('in statu nascendi', ISN), our concept allows for the first time the investigation of the early steps of protein misfolding as relevant in degenerative diseases, opening new perspectives for the rational design of therapeutically relevant compds.


Noble metals, e.g. Pd, are often made into hybrid or composite catalysts (with less expensive materials) to oxidize industry-source emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at low temperatures. In general, the loadings of these metals should be optimized to reduce costs whilst maintaining activity. There exists the possibility to obtain highly active catalysts with low loadings of noble metals by properly tuning the valence state of the metal(s). However, the relationship between the valence state and its effect on catalyst performance is still a matter of debate. In this article, we used supercritical water (sc-H2O), in the presence of oxidizing or reducing gases, as a feasible reaction medium to synthesize Pd/NiO hybrid nano-catalysts and in situ modify the valence state of Pd. After subjecting the catalysts to a range of analytical techniques, including XRD, H2-TPR, DRIFT, TPSR, etc., we unveiled that Pd0 is more active than PdOx and metal oxides in the catalytic oxidation of toluene. This is mainly because the stabilized Pd0 is capable of activating gaseous oxygen (and toluene) at low temperatures and returning to the original state by toluene even with excess oxygen. Although PdOx could desorb active oxygen under a reducing atmosphere and might assist in the oxygen spillover from NiO, it is difficult to convert into Pd0 in an oxygen-rich environment. The developed Pd0-dominated catalyst was found to be robust and highly active after an ageing test with and without water vapour.


Basalt fiber is a novel high-performance inorganic material, recently has been well received as a reinforcement in China. However, the applications in civil engineering have been rather limited. The chemical compositions, the characteristics of basalt fibers, and the typical products of basalt, including chopped yarn of basalt fiber, basalt fiber geo-textiles and basalt fiber reinforced polymer, were introduced.The advantages of basalt fibers as a reinforcement of concrete were explored in comparison with the commonly used reinforcing fibers, which indicates that basalt fiber is the most promising reinforcement material for concrete and will significantly benefit civil construction industries in the future.


Background: Consumption of high-sugar foods stimulates insulin production, which has been associated with endometrial cancer. Although a relationship between sucrose, high-sugar food consumption, and endometrial cancer risk is biologically plausible, this hypothesis has previously been explored in very few studies. Methods: We used data from the Swedish Mammography Cohort, including 61,226 women aged 40 to 74 years. We examined the association between consumption of total sucrose, high-sugar foods (at baseline 1987–1990 and 1997) and endometrial cancer risk by using Cox proportional hazards models to estimate incidence rate ratios (RR) with 95% CI. Results: During 18.4 years of follow-up, 729 participants were diagnosed with incident endometrial cancer. Total sucrose intake and consumption of sweet buns and cookies was associated with increased risk of endometrial cancer. RRs (with 95% CIs) for consuming more than 35 grams of sucrose per day and consuming sweet buns and cookies more than 3 times per week were 1.36 (1.04–1.77) and 1.42 (1.15–1.75) as compared with less than 15 grams of sucrose per day and consuming sweet buns and cookies less than 0.5 times per week, respectively. RRs for consuming more than 15 grams of sucrose per day as compared with 15 grams or less were 1.97 (1.27–3.04) among obese women and 1.56 (1.20–2.04) among women with low fat intake. Conclusions: These data indicate that sucrose intake and consumption of sweet buns and cookies may be associated with increased risk of endometrial cancer. Impact: Given the high intake of sweetened foods, these results have public health implications in terms of prevention of endometrial cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(9); 1831–7. ©2011 AACR.


Cooperative decision making involves a continuous process, assessing the validity ofdata, information and knowledge acquired and inferred by the colleagues, that is, the shared knowledge space must be transparent. The ACCORD methodology provides aninterpretation framework for the mapping of domain facts - constituting the world model of the expert - onto conceptual models, which can be expressed in formalrepresentations. The ACCORD-BPM framework allows a stepwise and inarbitrary reconstruction of the problem solving competence of BPM experts as a prerequisite foran appropriate architecture of both BPM knowledge bases and the BPM-"reasoning device".


Cyber-physical systems are under constant and increasing attacks as components of the critical infrastructure. Additive manufacturing systems are a new class of cyber-physical systems that produce threedimensional objects layer by layer. Agencies and companies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, General Electric and SpaceX have explored a broad range of application areas for additive manufacturing, including creating functional parts of safety-critical systems such as jet engines. The range of application areas and dependence on computerization makes additive manufacturing an attractive target for attackers. This chapter focuses on attacks that seek to change the physical properties of additive-manufactured components. Such attacks can weaken, damage or destroy manufactured components and, in scenarios where weak or damaged components are used in safety-critical systems, potentially endanger human lives. Attacks intended to damage additive manufacturing equipment and additive manufacturing environments are


This research examines past coastal changes and the possible impacts of future changes in southern China and Hong Kong. It aims to both assess coastal changes at a number of defined sites, and to examine more general trends in sea-level during the Holocene This provides a context within which impacts of future sea-level changes and marine flooding are examined. The methods used in this work may be divided into two broad categories. Sedimentary analysis, together with an examination of fossil diatom remains has revealed changes in the sedimentary history of three coastal lowland sites, and has highlighted significant changes in the palaeogeography of these sites. Evidence of former sea-levels lower than present mean sea-level has been found. The methods for this work are based on research carried out along many coasts around the world, but particularly in northwest Europe. This detailed stratigraphic analysis has not been applied to sites in southern China before. This study suggests that it could be used very successfully in the future. A Geographical Information System has been used to integrate a wide range of data on wastal lowlands to assess the possible risks and impacts of sea-level changes and marine flooding in southern China. This builds on the work on past sea-level changes. The method of analysis using the Geographical Information System was developed for this study. An analysis of coastal changes at three sites has been carried out, and the results of this are evaluated and discussed. A database of radiocarbon dated sea-level index points from southern China has been created from information derived from many published and unpublished sources. Theses data suggest that sea-levels rose rapidly from between 8000 and 5000 years B.P., and have then fluctuated around present mean sea-level. It is still unclear whether sea-levels have risen significantly above present levels for any prolonged period of time during the late Holocene. The analysis of possible impacts of future sea-level rise has shown that a large part of the Zhujiang delta is already at risk from any rise in sea-level of more than a few centimetres. A small part of the eastern part of the Zhujiang delta has been analysed in detail. This has demonstrated the potential for using a Geographical Information System to examine larger coastal areas. This study highlights the deficiencies in the data currently available, particularly from China and shows the potential for future work in this field. Sea-level have changed dramatically over a variety of timescales in the past, and the risks and impacts of any future rise in sea- level are considerable.


The imprecision or uncertainty present in many engineering systems can be modeled using probabilistic, fuzzy or interval methods. This work presents the optimum design of uncertain mechanical systems using interval analysis for the prediction of system response. Each of the uncertain parameters is defined by a range of values. Since the interval ranges of response parameters is found to increase with an increase in the number and/or ranges of input interval parameters with the use of interval arithmetic operations, a truncation procedure is used to obtain approximate but reasonably accurate response of the system. This procedure is found to be simple, economical and fairly accurate. The optimum design of a brake is considered to illustrate the computational aspects of the methods. The procedures outlined in this work are quite general and can be used for the design of any uncertain mechanical system when either the probability distribution functions or the preference information of uncertain parameters are unknown.


Abstract As in other parts of the world, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America are important generators of employment while contributing to establishing certain social as well as regional 'equilibria' in the development process within the country. However, SMEs in Latin America are much less 'export-oriented'than their East Asian counterparts. SMEs in Latin America tend to produce import substitutes and non tradables while manufactured exports are still produced by large firms in relativelycapital-intensive ways. In contrast, many East Asian SMEs are vertically integrated and produce intermediate goods for large national firms or transnational companies (TNCs), which ultimately are the ones that export to the world markets. In Latin America, the term, 'e-commerce', has meant basically consumer-oriented on line retail commerce, in comparison to East Asia where it is increasingly involved in a broader range of ICT-enabled business transformations including intranets, extranets, 'Closed' and 'open' EDI, virtual private value-added network, and business applications of networked interactive multimedia. From this perspective, the longer term prosperity of E-commerce in Latin America will require a diversification in a number of directions, including the diffusionof E-commerce capability among SMEs in order to reduce the 'digital divide' among enterprises. SMEs should to be an integral part of local knowledge-intensive business networks with large national firms and TNCs and clusters among themselves,to promote web-based entrepreneurship, and to apply networking based on interactive ICTs. In doing so, SMEs can be key beneficiaries of the Internet and E-commerce. The expansion of ICT should facilitate the catching-up or even leap-frogging of Latin American SMEs in the area of export promotion, by easing the traditional constraints that they face in the area of market access, information, human resource development, venture capital and credit etc. ICTs should be business tools that not only strengthen SMEs'competitiveness in traditional sectors but also create new markets and develop new productive and management capacity. Therefore, ICTs should enable SMEs to be forward-looking and strategy-oriented rather than focusing on a static environment. To promote exports by way of ICTs, the governments should address the SME programs on E-commerce that cut across traditional support fields (market intelligence, finance, technical and human resources, etc.), in a global and integrated manner. Chapter I compares the 'export-orientation' of SMEs between Latin America and East Asia and calls for a new approach for SME policy making for Latin America, in light of new challenges and opportunities created by ICTs. The second chapter examines the 'e-readiness' of Latin American countries with that of East Asia, describes the use of ICT by SMEs, identifies the inhibiting factors for such use, and delineates E-commerce potentials for SME export promotion. The following chapter examines how a range of ICT-enabled business transformations including intranets, extranets, 'Closed' and 'open' EDI, and other business applications are changing the modes of inter-firm relations of SMEs with transnational companies, large national enterproses and among SMEs themselves. Chapter V provides policy actions, at three levels: the private, public and regional/multilateral.


The concept of spectral relative entropy rate is introduced for jointly stationary Gaussian processes. Using classical information-theoretic results, we establish a remarkable connection between time and spectral domain relative entropy rates. This naturally leads to a new spectral estimation technique where a multivariate version of the Itakura-Saito distance is employed. It may be viewed as an extension of the approach, called THREE, introduced by Byrnes, Georgiou, and Lindquist in 2000 which, in turn, followed in the footsteps of the Burg-Jaynes Maximum Entropy Method. Spectral estimation is here recast in the form of a constrained spectrum approximation problem where the distance is equal to the processes relative entropy rate. The corresponding solution entails a complexity upper bound which improves on the one so far available in the multichannel framework. Indeed, it is equal to the one featured by THREE in the scalar case. The solution is computed via a globally convergent matricial Newton-type algorithm. Simulations suggest the effectiveness of the new technique in tackling multivariate spectral estimation tasks, especially in the case of short data records.


This article analyses the competition between cash and payment cards against the backdrop of the dual role of central banks as issuers of cash and as institutions with a mandate to foster the efficiency of payment systems in general. It is argued that this dual role results in a number of policy dilemmas, namely concerning pricing, traceability of banknotes and the choice of denominations of coins and banknotes. On a general level, the article argues that central banks should place greater emphasis on improving the efficiency of retail payments and less on protecting their self-interest. More concretely, the article repeats the suggestion originally put forward in VAN HOVE & VUCHELEN (1996) that the ECB should place the upper limit of its banknote series at EUR 50 instead of EUR 500. It is also argued that policy makers should explicitly foster the use of cost-based pricing and in particular create a legal environment that makes it possible for commercial banks to start using it.


The reaction-sintered alumina ceramics with low firing shrinkage were prepared from Al/Al2O3 powder mixture by attrition milling and the effect of milling characteristics of raw powders on reaction sintering was investigated. Powder mixtures of flaky shape Al with coarse alumina was much more effectively comminuted by the attrition milling than the mixtures of globular shape Al with coarse alumina powders. Furthermore the coarse alumina was much more useful in pulverizing and grinding the ductile Al particles than fine alumina. After attrition milling and isopressing at 400MPa, the Al/Al2O3 specimen was oxidized at 1200°C for 8 hours followed by sintering at 1550°C for 3 hours. Because mixed powder of coarse alumina with flaky Al was much more effectively comminuted than the globular Al, sintered body of more than 97% theoretical density was achieved, but low contents of Al leads to relatively higher shrinkage of about 8%. As the coarse alumina particles are much more useful in cutting and reducing the ductile Al particles, the use of the coarse alumina powder was much more effective in reaction-sintering.


Citation counts and more recently usage statistics provide valuable information about the attention and research impact associated with scholarly publications. The open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) has pioneered the concept of article-level metrics, where these metrics are collected on a per article and not a per journal basis and are complemented by real-time data from the social web or altmetrics: blog posts, social bookmarks, social media and other.


Abstract We adopted a statistical approach to identify environmental parameters which might be important in structuring the bacterial community in soils on the Antarctic Peninsula. An assessment of soil bacterial community composition at six environmentally distinct locations was made using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) profiling. All locations are near to Rothera Point, on Reptile Ridge and adjacent islands in Ryder Bay, off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, and were selected to maximize the range of environmental variability easily accessible from Rothera Station. A range of environmental variables was determined, and a Spearman rank correlation test was used to link the community structure and environmental variables. We demonstrated that the taxonomic distribution of the soil bacteria among the six study sites was relatively even, especially among the islands within Ryder Bay, although each location possessed a distinct community structure. Significant differences in the environmental conditions and soil chemical parameters allowed us to identify differences in location and soil pH as the environmental variables that could most probably explain the soil bacterial community patterns. This observation is consistent with an increasing number of studies from both Arctic and Antarctic locations, and will contribute to the design of future parameter-specific studies to test the potential functional significance of pH to the Antarctic soil bacterial community.


Male accessory gland inflammation may interfere with the reproductive potential and can result in the glands secretory dysfunction. Asymptomatic inflammations are difficult to diagnose. This study correlates the white blood cell count in semen to different biochemical markers of accessory gland function, e. g. zinc, citric acid, acid phosphatase, fructose, gamma-glutamyl, transferase to facilitate the diagnosis of asymptomatic inflammation. 230 patients were investigated using the WHO simplified protocol for the infertile couples (project N 84914). Basing on the semen leucocyte number, all the patients were divided into five groups. The semen and biochemical markers were analyzed according to the WHO guidelines including the regression analysis. The data obtained indicate that WBS in the semen correlates closely with reduced concentrations of seminal plasma citric acid and zinc.


From 1998 through 2002, commercial chives (Allium schoenoprasum) in coastal California (Monterey County) were damaged by an undescribed disease. Initial symptoms were chlorosis and tan-colored necrosis at the leaf tips; as the disease progressed, extensive tan-to-light brown discoloration extended down affected leaves, resulting in their death. The damage prevented growers from harvesting affected crops. Stems of the chive plants were unaffected. Diseased plants continued to grow new leaves that subsequently became infected. A fungus was consistently isolated from symptomatic leaves. Isolates grown on potato dextrose agar (PDA) in petri plates incubated at 24°C under fluorescent lights produced extensive mycelial growth without conidia. However, on onion leaf straw agar (2), the isolates produced abundantly sporulating colonies with conidiophores and conidia typical of a Botrytis species. Conidiophores rarely exceeded 1 mm long. Ellipsoidal conidia measured 11 to 17 × 5 to 8 μm. On green bean pod agar (4), the isolates produced a few, black, irregularly shaped sclerotia measuring 1 to 2 mm in diameter. Morphological comparisons were made on PDA between five chive isolates and isolates of the following Botrytis species known to infect Allium species (1): B. aclada BA5, B. allii BA3, B. byssoidea ATCC 60837, B. cinerea from an onion seed crop, B. porri 749, B. squamosa 392, and B. tulipae GC-1. B. elliptica strain MARLI-3 was also compared with the chive isolates. Chive isolates produced floccose, off white-to-light tan mycelium, lacked sporulation (except where mycelium contacted the edge of the plastic petri dish), and did not form sclerotia on PDA, thereby resembling B. byssoidea. Identification of the chive isolates as B. byssoidea was confirmed by ApoI restriction fragment length polymorphism digests of a 423-bp PCR amplicon obtained from each of the five chive isolates and the eight known Botrytis species (1,3). Pathogenicity of the chive isolates of B. byssoidea was confirmed by spraying a conidial suspension (1 × 105 conidia/ml) of each of 12 isolates onto chive (cv. Fine Leaved) and onion (A. cepa cv. Southport White) plants until runoff, incubating the plants in a humidity chamber at 24 to 26°C for 48 h and then maintaining the plants under ambient light in a greenhouse. After 6 to 8 days, inoculated chives and onions developed symptoms similar to those observed in the field and B. byssoidea was reisolated. Noninoculated control chives and onions sprayed with distilled water did not develop symptoms. The experiment was conducted three times and the results were the same. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a leaf blight of chive caused by B. byssoidea in North America. After 2002, the commercial chive plantings were placed on farms further east in Monterey County away from the coast. The disease has not been observed since this move to a drier climate. References: (1) M. I. Chilvers and L. J. du Toit. Online publication. doi:10.1094/PHP-2006-1127-01-DG. Plant Health Progress, 2006. (2) L. A. Ellerbrock and J. W. Lorbeer. Phytopathology 67:219, 1977. (3) K. Nielsen et al. Plant Dis. 86:682, 2002. (4) A. H. C. van Bruggen and P. A. Arneson. Plant Dis. 69:966, 1985.


MicroRNA-130b (miR-130b) is involved in several biologic processes; its role in colorectal tumorigenesis has not been addressed so far. Herein, we demonstrate that miR-130b up-regulation exhibits clinical relevance as it is linked to advanced colorectal cancers (CRCs), poor patients' prognosis, and molecular features of enhanced epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and angiogenesis. miR-130b high-expressing cells develop large, dedifferentiated, and vascularized tumors in mouse xenografts, features that are reverted by intratumor injection of a specific antisense RNA. In contrast, injection of the corresponding mimic in mouse xenografts from miR-130b low-expressing cells increases tumor growth and angiogenic potential while reduces the epithelial hallmarks. These biologic effects are reproduced in human CRC cell lines. We identify peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) as an miR-130b direct target in CRC in vitro and in vivo. Notably, the effects of PPARγ gain- and loss-of-function phenocopy those due to miR-130b down-regulation or up-regulation, respectively, underscoring their biologic relevance. Furthermore, we provide mechanistic evidences that most of the miR-130b-dependent effects are due to PPARγ suppression that in turn deregulates PTEN, E-cadherin, Snail, and vascular endothelial growth factor, key mediators of cell proliferation, EMT, and angiogenesis. Since higher levels of miR-130b are found in advanced tumor stages (III-IV), we propose a novel role of the miR-130b-PPARγ axis in fostering the progression toward more invasive CRCs. Detection of onco-miR-130b and its association with PPARγ may be useful as a prognostic biomarker. Its targeting in vivo should be evaluated as a novel effective therapeutic tool against CRC.


The paper presents the development and the simulation results of a GPS-based waypoints Fuzzy Guidance System (FGS). Waypoints are described in a 5-dimensional space: position in 3-dimensions plus desired crossing heading and velocity. The aircraft is assumed to be autopiloted in velocity, heading and flight path angle. The FGS is based on three standard Takagi-Sugeno1 fuzzy controllers that generate separately velocity, heading and flight path angle references for the autopilots. Simulation results show that, under the fuzzy guidance, the aircraft correctly crosses all waypoints in the specified sequential order. The FGS handles a non-flyable waypoints set as well, driving the aircraft on flyable trajectories that try to cross the waypoints at the prescribed altitude and with prescribed heading.


: The nature of regional zoning of the prevalence of dirofilariasis in Russia was first established and a map reflecting the structure of an area with the identification of three zones (low, moderate, and stable transmission risks) was drawn up. In Russia, natural and climatic conditions are favorable for the development of transmitting mosquitoes and larvae of Dirofilaria to the invasion stage in the body of the transmitter to the south of the latitude of 58 degrees north in the European part and Western Siberia and to the south of the latitude of 50 degrees north in the Far East. The region of dirofilariasis covers 53 subjects of the Russian Federation, in 39 subjects (including 29 in the European part and 10 in the Asian part) of which 564 cases of dirofilariasis were notified in 1915-2008. 68.44% of dirofilariasis cases were registered in the endemic area in 11 subjects of the Russian Federation in the stable transmission risk zone while in the moderate and low transmission risk zones these amounted to 31.55% in 28 subjects. Information on the area of dirofilariasis is needed to estimate its incidence in man in different regions of Russia, which will assist in diagnosing this zoogenous transmissible helminthiasis.


A review work is done for the electronic and optical properties of graphene nanoribbons in magnetic, electric, composite, and modulated fields. Effects due to the lateral confinement, curvature, stacking, non-uniform subsystems and hybrid structures are taken into account. The special electronic properties, induced by complex competitions between external fields and geometric structures, include many one-dimensional parabolic subbands, standing waves, peculiar edge-localized states, width- and field-dependent energy gaps, magnetic-quantized quasi-Landau levels, curvature-induced oscillating Landau subbands, crossings and anti-crossings of quasi-Landau levels, coexistence and combination of energy spectra in layered structures, and various peak structures in the density of states. There exist diverse absorption spectra and different selection rules, covering edge-dependent selection rules, magneto-optical selection rule, splitting of the Landau absorption peaks, intragroup and intergroup Landau transitions, as well as coexistence of monolayer-like and bilayer-like Landau absorption spectra. Detailed comparisons are made between the theoretical calculations and experimental measurements. The predicted results, the parabolic subbands, edge-localized states, gap opening and modulation, and spatial distribution of Landau subbands, have been identified by various experimental measurements.


Leaving year 2017 China's macroeconomy is continuously characterized by unbalanced and inadequate development. Whereas some aggregate indicators have shown improvement over the year, the cumulative growth rates in consumption and fixed asset investment have continued their 1 This article summarizes the main findings from a similarly titled annual report (2017–2018) released in December 2017 by China Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecast Team at Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) in Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE). Established in 2009, the research team has developed a quantitatively oriented, semi-structural framework (IAR-CMM) that combines unique Chinese characteristics with general international experiences to unify the analyses of prominent short-, medium-, and long-term issues facing the transitional Chinese economy in an internally coherent manner. Reports on the most critical results emanated from the analyses have been released on quarterly, semiannual, and annual basis and have attracted increasing attention from the private sector, policymaker, popular press and general public. Other members of this research team include (in alphabetical order of last names) Xudong Chen, Yuanyuan Chen, Jian Gong, Qian Li, Run Liang, Liguo Lin, Keqin Liu, Zixi Liu, Songcheng Sheng, Rongsheng Tang, Xiaowen Wang, Yuqin Wang, Howei Wu, Huabin Wu, Yibo Yang, Tongbin Zhang, Lin Zhao, and Mei Zhu. 148 Kevin X. D. Huang, Lei Ning, Guoqiang Tian downward trajectories. Worsening income inequality and resource misallocations, both between secondary and tertiary industries, and within the latter, pose serious challenges, let alone the systemic risk associated with the flourishing shadow banking system, rapid credit growth and debt overhang that weigh on the Chinese economy like the Sword of Damocles. This summary report highlights both the status quo and the consequences of the unbalanced and inadequate development embodied in China's persistently distorted economic structure, and the role of deepening reforms of the institutions and governance in resolving the problems. Our analyses based on IAR-CMM model provide a unified framework for addressing China's short-, medium-, and long-term issues in an internally coherent manner. Looking into year 2018, our benchmark projection of real GDP growth rate is 6.7% (6.41% using more reliable rather than the official data). Alternative scenario analyses and policy simulations are conducted to reflect various aspects of the economic challenges in the short to long runs. Through the lens of these analyses we conclude that rule-of-law based and market-oriented structural reforms should continue to hold a center stage in China's transition from a phase of high-speed but unbalanced growth, to a stage of balanced and adequate high-quality development.


Who bears the tax burden in the United States? How has the distribution of taxes changed in the past two decades? What changes have occurred in the distribution of income before and after taxes? This book reports the results of a long-term program of research on the distribution of tax burdens. The analysis is based on a unique series of microdata sets developed by merging the information from the annual consumer population surveys of the U.S. Census Bureau and the tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service. The first results of this research program were presented in Who Bears the Tax Burden? (Brookings, 1974), which presented estimates of the distribution of federal, state, and local taxes in 1966. In this sequel to the 1974 volume, Joseph A. Pechman presents estimates for 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1985. The study concludes that the tax system became less progressive between 1966 and 1985, primarily because the corporation income and property taxes declined in importance while heavier emphasis was being placed on the payroll tax.


Witnessing a sound installation in person offers an opportunity to experience the qualities and elements of a work first hand and in full, multisensory effect. A thorough documentation of an exhibition and the work that goes into it is at the essence of preserving important information for future generations. Though information can be gathered from archives, some works of sound art are only marginally presented in the literature, making it difficult to fully grasp aspects of an artist's technical, organisational and, most particularly, creative ways of working. Instead, already existing information is often reproduced. Previous documentation regarding Bill Fontana's Sound Sculpture Distant Trains, exhibited in Berlin in 1984, offers an example of the possible loss of key details. This article aims to present new research findings that will examine and illuminate the full scope of this artistic project.


In this thesis we study the thermodynamics of thin matter shells in the context of general relativity, as well as the implications of such study for the entropy of black holes. We follow the same work methodology in a variety of cases, which starts by using Israel's formalism to obtain the necessary pressure and energy of the thin shell in order for it to be static. Those quantities are then used to find the entropy of the shell which naturally possesses degrees of freedom that can be parametrized by phenomenological functions which contain free parameters. These last are then subject to an analysis which determines the interval of values for which the thermodynamic stability of the system is guaranteed. This process is repeated for 4 different situations: a shell in 2+1 dimensions; a shell in 2+1 dimensions with a non-null cosmological constant; a shell in d dimensions; and an electrically charged shell in 4 dimensions. Lastly, we use the results obtained for the shells in the limit where they are taken to their gravitational radius, where it is shown that they can behave like black holes. In particular, the case of a charged shell in the extremal limit suggests a solution for the ongoing debate concerning the value of the entropy of an extremal black hole.


Short-term variations in fertility and seasonal patterns of childbearing have been of interest to demographers for a long time. Presenting our detailed study of period fertility in Austria since 1984, we discuss the problems and advantages of constructing and analysing monthly series of various period fertility indicators that reflect real exposure and potentially minimise the distortions caused by changes in fertility timing. We correct monthly birth data for calendar and seasonal factors and show that seasonality of births in Austria varies by birth order. Our study suggests that most of the timing distortions can be eliminated when using an indicator derived from the period parity progression ratios based on birth interval distributions, termed the "period average parity" (PAP). We illustrate the insights gained with the PAP and compare this with the commonly used total fertility rates in an analysis of the recent upswing in period fertility, starting in the late 2001. This investigation will be useful in establishing a monitoring of monthly fertility rates in Austria.


Client participation in all Web-based services, e.g., shopping in online stores, creating service agreements as in buying a car insurance, currently demands browser based online operations with on-the-spot decision making. In contrast, organizational (business-to-business) procurement relies on complex decision making software at each end for comparison shopping and/or satisfying various organization specific goals. Supporting disconnected operations for business-to-consumer scenario can introduce some of the same benefits at the individual consumer level. We propose the concept of a downloadable service contract that specifies unambiguous rules of interaction between an end client and a service provider. The client initially negotiates with the service provider a contract, which is subsequently used to guide offline client operations and also for validating at the service provider the log of actions. A generic application program for browsing a downloaded contract and creating an order may be made available by the service providers. However, a client may have its own software with many value-added services. We describe a prototype system that extends the current Ariba cXML protocol for MRO procurement.


The BraTS 2021 challenge celebrates its 10th anniversary and is jointly organized by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR), and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) society. Since its inception, BraTS has been focusing on being a common benchmarking venue for brain glioma segmentation algorithms, with well-curated multi-institutional multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) data. Gliomas are the most common primary malignancies of the central nervous system, with varying degrees of aggressiveness and prognosis. The RSNA-ASNR-MICCAI BraTS 2021 challenge targets the evaluation of computational algorithms assessing the same tumor compartmentalization, as well as the underlying tumor's molecular characterization, in pre-operative baseline mpMRI data from 2,040 patients. Specifically, the two tasks that BraTS 2021 focuses on are: a) the segmentation of the histologically distinct brain tumor sub-regions, and b) the classification of the tumor's O[6]-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation status. The performance evaluation of all participating algorithms in BraTS 2021 will be conducted through the Sage Bionetworks Synapse platform (Task 1) and Kaggle (Task 2), concluding in distributing to the top ranked participants monetary awards of $60,000 collectively.


Acute liver failure is an atypical manifestation of dengue with a high mortality. We performed a retrospective cohort study at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Bangkok, Thailand. In total, 1,926 patients with serologically confirmed dengue were enrolled in the study from 2011 to 2015. Of these, six patients presented with acute liver failure, four died, and two survived. The incidence of dengue-associated acute liver failure was 0.31%. Dengue-associated acute liver failure was most common among young adults (median age, 29 years). The median duration from onset of fever to development of acute liver failure was 7.5 days. Patients with the severe stage of dengue had a higher risk of developing acute liver failure (P < 0.001). The baseline risk factors associated with the development of acute liver failure were an age of ≤ 40 years (odds ratio [OR] = 1.5, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1-2.0, P < 0.05), a > 10% ratio of atypical lymphocytes (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.8-3.0, P < 0.001), and a platelet count of < 50,000 mm3 (OR = 2.8, 95% CI = 2.2-3.6, P < 0.001). The incidence of acute liver failure in patients with dengue was quite low, but its impact on morbidity, mortality, and poor clinical outcomes was significant. In summary, this study indicates that various baseline risk factors are associated with acute liver failure in patients with dengue.