In order to use the residue from the beneficiation of Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa HBK) as substrate in solid-sate fermentation (SSF), in this work, the production of cellulase and xylanase by the fungus Trametes sp. was investigated, using the residue as a carbon source. Employing a 24-1 fractional experimental design, the influence of substrate moisture, nutrient addition and inoculum quantity on enzymatic activities was verified. Moisture was detected to be statistically significant for the production of both enzymes, and increasing the moisture leads to the improvement of cellulase and xylanase activities. Nitrogen and phosphate were also important for enzymes production by the Amazon Trametes sp. The use of this Amazon strain to obtain cellulase and xylanase via SSF of Brazil nut residue appears to be feasible when maintaining substrate moisture at 80%, nitrogen source at 0.9% and low inoculum concentrations.

 Key words: Cellulolytic activity, xylanolytic activity, Trametes sp., experimental design.


Robust estimates of population size of wildlife are a fundamental requirement in ecological studies and to design and implement strategies for conservation. However, in some cases these estimates lack exactitude, precision, and are neither representative nor comparable. This has brought difficulty to make generalizations and has limited the applicability of the information produced from species populations. This is the case of the Horned Guan, Oreophasis derbianus , a Mesoamerican endemic and endangered bird species. Here, we propose a standardized protocol of field and analytical methods for the study of this species populations. This proposal is based on our experience in the species monitoring and in the use of the distance sampling theory. The aim of this standardized protocol is to produce high quality field data to have robust estimates of the population abundance of the Horned Guan. We developed and assessed this protocol mainly in El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, but it was also replicated in three other localities in Mexico and Guatemala. Its development and assessment included monthly gathering of field data for about 10 years and training workshops to field personnel for the appropriate implementation of this protocol. Based on this experience, we defined some basic and feasible guidelines that we propose to be regarded as standard sampling and analytical methods for the study of the Horned Guan populations to assure quality and comparability of the field data gathered. Finally, we give estimates of the population density of the Horned Guan in the four localities we studied and discuss the meaning of their spatial and temporal variation within the context of this proposal.


The following is an abstract of my notes made during the sessions of the Section for Nomenclature at the 7th International Botanical Congress at Stockholm. The Congress lasted, officially, from 12 till 20 July, 1950. The Section for Nomenclature, however, began to meet on July 7. I wish to state that this review has no authority or official capacity. I made notes for private use and because it seemed useful, on further consideration, to inform the Staff and collaborators of the Flora Nalesiana.. of the changes in the Rules adopted by the last Congress, it was thought best to publish a review here, pending the official publication of the new Rules as a whole. I am told that an official note or communication dealing with the results obtained by the Section for Nomenclature is being prepared and will appear in the first Nuntius Phytotaxonomicus, the new periodical to be issued by the International Bureau of Plant Taxonomy, Secretary Prof. Dr J. Lanjouw at Utrecht.


We say that a real-valued function $f$ defined on a positive Borel measure space $(X,\mu)$ is nowhere $q$-integrable if, for each nonvoid open subset $U$ of $X$, the restriction $f|_U$ is not in $L^q(U)$. When $(X,\mu)$ satisfies some natural properties, we show that certain sets of functions defined in $X$ which are $p$-integrable for some $p$'s but nowhere $q$-integrable for some other $q$'s ($0<p,q<\infty$) admit a variety of large linear and algebraic structures within them. The presented results answer a question from Bernal-Gonz\'alez, improve and complement recent spaceability and algebrability results from several authors and motivates new research directions in the field of spaceability.


Abstract Objective To establish the frequency of occurrence of peripheral vestibular dysfunction in adults who have sustained non-blast-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) as measured through the standard audiological vestibular test battery. Design A systematic search of English language literature using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, hand-searching of reference lists and SCOPUS author search was conducted from January 1, 1990 to May 14, 2019. Study samples Twenty-three out of 417 originally identified articles were retained. TBI and peripheral vestibular findings were extracted and synthesised. Results Quality appraisal using the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (OCEBM) revealed Level 2b as the highest level of evidence. None of the primary studies explored vestibular deficits in acute settings, with data collected from tertiary institutions and in 20 of 23 studies retrospectively. Although retrospective studies provided important data, they fail to control for numerous threats to internal validity. BPPV was the most frequently identified peripheral vestibular deficit following TBI, diagnosed in 39.7% of 239 participants across six of 23 studies. Conclusions Further prospective longitudinal research into comparative recovery trajectories in patients across TBI severity levels would provide additional information to guide clinical diagnosis, prognosis and management of this patient population.


The design of the expert system to support solving problems connected with using 3D printing technology has been presented. The system has been created with typical modules such as knowledge base, user interface and inference engine. Actual publications (books, reports, research papers) have mostly been used to create the knowledge base. Methods of knowledge engineering have been applied to make the analysis of data included in actual publications where the emphasis has been put on the type, quality and reliability of the data as well as on the way of the knowledge record. The data has been recorded in the form acceptable by the expert system inference engine. The main attention has been paid to the possibility of modification and supplementation of the data included in the knowledge base. The system operation has been shown on the basis of the selection of a 3D printer for the machine part production. The selection has included: technical parameters of a 3D printer, 3D printer operating parameters, materials, geometry, dimensions and mechanical requirements for the manufactured part. It has been shown that, on the basis of actual publications the knowledge base for the expert system concerning 3D printing technology can be created.


by a six-volt lantern battery and will continue to operate until the battery voltage drops to about four volts. The quiescent current drain is about 1 milliampere, so that should the unit inadvertently be left on with the pad disconnected it would take several weeks to flatten the battery. The unit may be built into a polythene "lunch-box " leaving room to store the pad leads (Fig. 2). Any 3-41 volt buzzer may be used provided that its maximum drain current is not much above 1 amp. Buzzers by Lyvia, Gents, and Friedland have all been found satisfactory.


People construct moral identities for being a supportive affiliate of stigmatized groups. To extend past research that focused on such identities within formal organizations, this study seeks to identify the process of moral identity construction in a personal setting—friendships between gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) people and straight people. Analyzing data from in-depth interviews with college students, we show that straight students claim moral worth by emphasizing their deliberate decisions to develop and sustain friendships with GLB people and by highlighting how the friendships led them to personal enlightenment and political engagement. GLB students, as a stigmatized group, also claim moral worth by emphasizing their ability to transcend the community boundary and to be accepted in the larger society. Students make such claims as they strategically link these aspects of cross-orientation friendships to existing moral discourses in the larger society and draw on resources available in the organizational and life course contexts.


A suppression of humoral and cell mechanisms of natural nonspecific resistance was found in patients with diffuse peritonitis. A considerable degranulation of basophilic leucocytes was indicated by the direct Shelley reaction, that evidences alterations in the functional state of these cells. Postoperatively, there is a break in restoration of the activity of properdine and its cofactors, and a considerable suppression of the phagocytic capacity of microphages is noted, that leads inevitably to a reduction of immune reactivity.


We studied granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) binding sites on neutrophils from patients with severe congenital neutropenia (SCN; Kostmann-syndrome) and cyclic neutropenia (CN) during treatment with recombinant human (rh) G-CSF. G-CSF receptor expression was measured by scatchard analysis. Neutrophils from six healthy controls expressed between 480 and 1,210 binding sites per cell, whereas neutrophils from five SCN patients expressed increased numbers of G-CSF binding sites ranging between 2,100 and 3,900 per cell. Neutrophils from four patients with CN expressed 350 to 1,600 binding sites per cell. The affinity of rhG-CSF to its receptor was similar in patients and controls. These data suggest that SCN patients and CN patients are not defective in G-CSF receptor expression as judged by the numbers of G-CSF binding sites and binding affinity; however, we cannot exclude defects in parts of the G-CSF receptor that may be involved in the signal transduction pathway.


Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is one of the most challenging diseases for the clinician. It is a specific form of chronic, progressive fibrous interstitial pneumopathy, which generally affects the adult population in the fifth and sixth decade of life, the challenge being its unknown etiology, respectively the uncertainty of the therapeutic approach despite the complexity of the clinical picture, unfortunately not specific, which may be present in several pathologies in the pulmonary sphere. Being a debilitating, fatal disease, with short survival, it requires an early diagnosis. At the basis of the diagnosis of certainty is a well-trained multidisciplinary team. The family doctor plays a vital role in this process, being the first to contact the patient and he may raise the suspicion of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. In order to avoid late diagnosis, it is very important that the patient presenting with respiratory symptoms, completed by a suggestive clinical picture, be considered suspicious at the first visit to the family doctor and then approached by a multidisciplinary medical team. Early diagnosis is the most important factor in the prognosis of this disease.


We examined the effects of vegetation composition and structure on bird species diversity and richness of foraging guilds in the highland agricultural landscape of Nyandarua, Kenya. Bird point counts and vegetation surveys were undertaken during four sampling periods. Linear mixed models were used to examine the effects of vegetation variables on bird species diversity and richness of respective foraging guilds, and logistic generalised linear models used to examine vegetation effects on the presence/absence of the 17 most common bird species. Bird species diversity increased with increasing density of woody plant species and vegetation structural heterogeneity. Two gradients of increasing vegetation structural heterogeneity were most important in influencing bird community composition and had positive effects on species diversity and the presence of most of the species assessed: (1) increasing closed cover due to woody plant density, which also had positive effects on species richness of frugivores and nectarivores, but negative effects on carnivores, and (2) increasing fallow and cultivation versus decreasing grassland/pasture cover, which also had a positive effect on species richness of granivores and omnivores. This study reaffirms the need to maintain a structurally rich agricultural landscape for it to support agrobiodiversity.


Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) is an additive manufacturing technology used to melt metal powder by high laser power to produce customised parts, light-weight structures, or other complex objects. During DMLS, powder is melted and solidified track-by-track and layer-by-layer; thus, building direction can influence the mechanical properties of DMLS parts. The mechanical properties and microstructure of material produced by DMLS can depend on the powder properties, process parameters, scanning strategy, and building geometry. In this study, the microstructure, tensile properties, and porosity of DMLS Ti6Al4V (ELI) horizontal samples were analysed. Defect analysis by CT scans in pre-strained samples was used to detect the crack formation mechanism during tensile testing of as-built and heat-treated samples. The mechanical properties of the samples before and after stress relieving are discussed.


This paper presents the first in a series of experiments to study the behavior of a hybrid technique for model discovery in multivariate time series using similarity based neurofuzzy neural networks and genetic algorithms. This method discovers dependency patterns relating future values of a target series with past values of all examined series, and then constructs a prediction function. It accepts a mixture of numeric and non-numeric variables, fuzzy information, and missing values. Experiments were made changing parameters controlling the algorithm from the point of view of: i) the neuro-fuzzy network, ii) the genetic algorithm, and iii) the parallel implementation. Experimental results show that the method is fast, robust and effectively discovers relevant interdependencies.


This paper is to integrate information technology and medical-related technologies to develop a healthcare information system for comprehensive geriatric assessment. This system not only can process geriatric consultation services and ensure that all patient's information are stored in standardized format , but also provide medical personnel for statistical analysis and processing purposes. This paper uses the Apriori algorithm of data mining for helping doctors to find out the relationship of geriatric syndrome. The systems of this paper can improve increase the timeliness and accuracy of patient care and administration information, increase service capacity, reduce personnel costs, and improve the quality of patient care in geriatric medicine. Furthermore, making the theories and applications of medical informatics will be more extensive and convenient for researcher and healthcare-related industry.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) affects 5 million women in the United States. Current surgical and pharmacological management options are often unsuccessful, forcing many sufferers to rely on bulky and uncomfortable sanitary protection. This study evaluated the safety, efficacy, and acceptability of a small, disposable adhesive patch designed to seal the urethral opening and prevent urine leakage. METHODS: Thirty-seven women with mild-to-moderate SUI were recruited from a suburban community. Each volunteer participated in a 21-week protocol that included a 1-week qualifying period, 4-week (pretest) control period, 12-week patch-use period, and 4-week (posttest) control period. Patch efficacy was evaluated with quantitative (leakage into sanitary napkin) and qualitative (voiding diary) measures of urine leakage. Symptom questionnaires were also completed. RESULTS: Overall leakage was reduced by 60%, from 1.1 +/- .3 standard error of the mean (SEM) to .44 +/- .11 (SEM) grams of urine per hour. Perception of dryness, measured by voiding diaries, improved 67%, from 13.3 +/- 1.9 (SEM) to 4.3 +/- 0.9 (SEM) leakage episodes per week. Safety evaluation included peri-urethral cytology, urinalysis and urine culture, and vaginal cultures. All measures were unaffected by 3 months of patch use. Acceptability was assessed with questionnaires that measured the impact of patch use on activities of daily living and overall quality of life. Women reported a significant improvement in both measures. All but one volunteer found that the patch was comfortable and were able to place it correctly between the inner labia with written instructions only. CONCLUSIONS: The disposable patch significantly reduced urine leakage resulting from SUI in community-based women. Dryness improved significantly, both by measurement of actual leakage and by the subject's perception of dryness. The maturation index of the vestibular tissues showed an increase in the number of superficial cells during patch use. Otherwise, there were no significant changes in vulvar tissues, urine composition, or microbial flora (in vaginal and urine samples). Volunteers reported that the patch improved their overall quality of life.


In this paper, we study the problem of how to design a medical-grade wireless local area network (WLAN) for healthcare facilities. First, unlike the IEEE 802.11e MAC, which categorizes traffic primarily by their delay constraints, we prioritize medical applications according to their medical urgency. Second, we propose a mechanism that can guarantee absolute priority to each traffic category, which is critical for medical-grade quality of service (QoS), while the conventional 802.11e MAC only provides relative priority to each traffic category. Based on absolute priority, we focus on the performance of real-time patient monitoring applications, and derive the optimal contention window size that can significantly improve the throughput performance. Finally, for proper performance evaluation from a medical viewpoint, we introduce the weighted diagnostic distortion (WDD) as a medical QoS metric to effectively measure the medical diagnosability by extracting the main diagnostic features of medical signal. Our simulation result shows that the proposed mechanism, together with medical categorization using absolute priority, can significantly improve the medical-grade QoS performance over the conventional IEEE 802.11e MAC.


The Medicis and Borgias were probably the most eminent families of the Italian Renaissance—known for their enthusiastic support of emerging arts and science. In popular history they have also gone down as ruthless rulers and infamous poisoners. Our assessment of the extent and nature of their poisoning showed that they were indeed products of an era characterized by intrigue, violence and assassination—but that their roles as poisoners have probably been exaggerated. Knowledge of poisons had improved little since Roman times and there was still a close association between witchcraft, sorcery and poisoning—but arsenic had become the most popular poison. An absolute inability to detect human poisoning chemically before the eighteenth century added to uncertainty, suspicion and common accusations of suspected poisoning, which could subsequently not be proved or disproved in the majority of cases. There is limited evidence of Medici involvement in poisoning, with the possible exception of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, who collected poisons, frequented astrologers, wizards, and known poisoners, and could well have poisoned a limited number of her enemies. One prominent Medici, Ipolito, died of poisoning. The Borgias were involved more directly, although even here their legendary prowess with 'cantarell' powders (probably arsenical compounds) is probably much overstated. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) had a reputation of inter alia poisoning five of his cardinals for their wealth; there may be truth in some of these allegations. His illegitimate son, Cesare Borgia, was ruthlessly ambitious, but his many victims died of strangling and stabbing rather than poisoning. The 'infamous' Lucrezia Borgia (sister of Cesare) was a pawn in the power of her father and brother, and not a significant poisoner.


Objectives: This study was designed to verify the prognostic impact of occult tumor cells in the bone marrow of stage I and II non-small-cell lung cancer patients using cytokeratin as a micrometastatic marker. Methods: One hundred and fifty-two patients with stage I and II non-small-cell lung cancer, who underwent radical surgery by pulmonary lobectomy, were entered into the study. Bone marrow from fragments of resected ribs, and primary tumors were stained by anti-cytokeratin 18 antibody. Fourteen bone marrow specimens from patients without malignancy were used as a control group. Cancer recurrence was the study end point. Results: All the primary tumors were positive for cytokeratin; occult tumor cells were detected in 38 bone marrow specimens (25%). The prevalence of the occult tumor cells was not related to age, gender, tumor stage, histological differentiation or grade. The mean follow-up time was 35.3 months; 68 patients developed recurrence; the mean time for recurrence was 21.2 months. The general disease-free interval was not related to the presence of occult tumor cells in the bone marrow. This result did not change when grouping the patients by tumor stage. The stage was the best predictor of cancer recurrence (Cox proportional hazards model ratio: 2.09; p = 0.0026). Conclusions: This study confirms that immunocytochemical analysis detects occult tumor cells in the bone marrow of at least 25% of patients surgically treated for stage I and II non-small-cell lung cancer. These occult tumor cells do not have any impact on the disease-free interval.


The progress in understanding the phenomenon of molecular melting (helix -- coil transition) of DNA is considered. It is shown that the theory of DNA melting has reached such a stage of development when it is capable to compute melting profiles and denaturation maps for DNA with any given nucleotide sequence, on the base of a rather simple but adequate model of DNA. The effect of fine structure of the DNA melting profiles, its origin and possible applications are considered in greater detail. It is demonstrated that a direct comparison between experimental and theoretical melting profiles for the open replicative form of the upsilon X-174 phage DNA for which the complete nucleotide sequence has been published recently, confirms the theory and opens new possibilities for further investigation of equilibrium and kinetic properties of DNA molecules.


Drug development in the past used to be initiated after the identification of most active molecule. However, this approach leads to a number of drawbacks with the problems being that many molecules which are put into development had poor physicochemical such as solubility and stability and biopharmaceutical such as permeability and enzymatic stability properties, as a consequence of which about 40% of new chemical entities fail to reach the market place. At present, a number of technologies are available to deal with the poor solubility, dissolution rate, and bioavailability of insoluble drugs. However, much attention has been focused on lipid-based formulations, with particular emphasis on self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDSs). SEDDSs are defined as isotropic mixtures of natural or synthetic oils, solid or liquid surfactants, or one or more hydrophilic solvents and cosolvents/surfactants. On mild agitation followed by dilution in aqueous media, these systems can form fine oil-in-water emulsions or microemulsions (self-micro-EDDS [SMEDDS]). Self-emulsifying formulations spread readily in the gastrointestinal tract, the digestive motility of the stomach and intestine provides the agitation necessary for self-emulsification. SEDDSs produce emulsification with a droplet size between 100 and 300 nm, while SMEDDSs form transparent microemulsions with a droplet size of <50 nm. SEDDSs are physically stable formulations that are easy to manufacture. Thus, for lipophilic drug compounds that exhibit dissolution rate-limited absorption, these systems may offer an improvement in the rate and the extent of absorption.


Vertical motions in clouds arise from a variety of thermodynamic processes, including latent heat release, evaporative cooling, melting, and cloud radiative heating. In the Tropics, the net upward vertical mass flux from convective systems should approximately balance subsidence in clear sky regions associated with radiative cooling, provided the exchange of mass with midlatitudes can be assumed small. Tropical climatologies of temperature, water vapor, and ozone are used to calculate the clear sky radiative mass flux, and the derivative of this mass flux with respect to potential temperature, d Mr(u)/du, is used as a proxy for net convective outflow. Convective outflow increases rapidly at 345 K ( ;11.3 km). This corresponds to the pseudoequivalent potential temperature ue at which air parcels near the surface first attain positive convective available potential energy (CAPE). The rate at which dMr(u)/du decreases above 345 K is similar to the rate at which the near surface ue probability distribution function (PDF) decreases. This behavior is referred to as ''scaling.'' It suggests that the timescale for removal of an air parcel from the convective boundary layer is independent of ue (once it has positive CAPE), and that the residual vertical mass flux from convective clouds can be described as if air parcels detrain near their level of neutral buoyancy (LNB). It is also suggested that the mean tropical temperature profile above 345 K is controlled, not by mixing, but by the need for the vertical variation in net convective outflow to be consistent with the near-surface ue PDF, and that this accounts for the fact that the mean temperature profile above 345 K increasingly deviates from a moist adiabat. It is also argued that there are sufficient high ue air parcels near the surface to sustain the Brewer‐Dobson circulation by detrainment at the LNB followed by radiative ascent into the stratosphere.


The microstructure and microwave dielectric properties of dielectric ceramics comprised of ZnNb2(1-x)TixO(6-3x) (x = 0 ~ 1) were investigated systematically using X-ray powder diffraction, SEM and a network analyzer in this study. The results showed that four phases were observed in this system. The dielectric properties at microwave frequencies exhibit a significant dependence on the composition and crystal structure of the ceramics. The dielectric constant ( er) of ZnNb2(1-x)TixO(6-3x)ceramics increases with increasing Ti content and the quality factors (Q ×f) significantly decreased. However, the temperature coefficient of resonant frequency ( t f ) changes from –59.08 ppm/oC at x = 0 to + 25.1 ppm/oC at x = 1, and a zero temperature coefficient of resonant frequency ( t f ) for this ceramics system was obtained at x = 0.84.


Two genera of extinct weevils, Sayrevilleus Gratshev & Zherikhin from Cretaceous New Jersey amber and Baltocar Kuschel from Eocene Baltic amber, are recognized as close relatives based on similarities revealed by the use of synchrotron tomography and the availability of new amber inclusions. The subfamily Sayrevilleinae Legalov stat. nov. is characterized by possessing mandibles with an external cutting edge and an inner blunt edge. The subfamily is placed in the family Attelabidae (s.l.), although some characters also suggest a possible relationship with the 'higher weevils' comprising Caridae, Brentidae, and Curculionidae. Sayrevilleus is transferred from the tribe Auletini of Rhynchitinae to Sayrevilleinae, and Sayrevilleus grimaldii Gratshev & Zherikhin is redescribed. Baltocar Kuschel is transferred from Caridae to Sayrevilleinae and revised, its type species, Baltocar succinicus (Voss), is redescribed and three new species, Baltocar groehni Riedel sp. nov., Baltocar hoffeinsorum Riedel sp. nov., and Baltocar subnudus Riedel sp. nov. are described based on eight well-preserved inclusions. The genera Orapauletes Legalov and Zherichiniletes Legalov previously assigned to Sayrevilleini are regarded as Curculionoidea incertae sedis. The Sayrevilleinae were distributed over areas of North America and Europe at least since the Late Cretaceous (c. 90 Mya) and were probably relatively diverse until the Eocene (c. 44 Mya). It is speculated that they became extinct through competition with Curculionidae, which used a similar oviposition strategy.

© 2012 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, 165, 773–794.


We address the task of indoor scene generation by generating a sequence of objects, along with their locations and orientations conditioned on a room layout. Large-scale indoor scene datasets allow us to extract patterns from user-designed indoor scenes, and generate new scenes based on these patterns. Existing methods rely on the 2D or 3D appearance of these scenes in addition to object positions, and make assumptions about the possible relations between objects. In contrast, we do not use any appearance information, and implicitly learn object relations using the self-attention mechanism of transformers. We show that our model design leads to faster scene generation with similar or improved levels of realism compared to previous methods. Our method is also flexible, as it can be conditioned not only on the room layout but also on text descriptions of the room, using only the cross-attention mechanism of transformers. Our user study shows that our generated scenes are preferred to the state-of-the-art FastSynth scenes 53.9% and 56.7% of the time for bedroom and living room scenes, respectively. At the same time, we generate a scene in 1.48 seconds on average, 20% faster than FastSynth.


The study on the hydraulic properties of coastal aquifers has significant implications both in hydrological sciences and environmental engineering. Although many analytical solutions are available, most of them are based on the same basic assumption that assumes aquifers extend landward semi‐infinitely, which does not necessarily reflect the reality. In this study, the general solutions for a leaky confined coastal aquifer have been developed that consider both finitely landward constant‐head and no‐flow boundaries. The newly developed solutions were then used to examine theoretically the joint effects of leakage and aquifer length on hydraulic head fluctuations within the leaky confined aquifer, and the validity of using the simplified solution, which assumes the aquifer is semi‐infinite. The results illustrated that the use of the simplified solution may cause significant errors, depending on joint effects of leakage and aquifer length. A dimensionless characteristic parameter was then proposed as an index for judging the applicability of the simplified solution. In addition, practical application of the general solution for the constant‐head inland boundary was used to characterize the hydraulic properties of a leaky confined aquifer using the data collected from a field site at the Seine River estuary, France, and the versatility of the general solution was further justified.


This study contributes the Adaptive Strategies for Sampling in Space and Time (ASSIST) framework for improving long‐term groundwater monitoring decisions across space and time while accounting for the influences of systematic model errors (or predictive bias). The new framework combines contaminant flow‐and‐transport modeling, bias‐aware ensemble Kalman filtering (EnKF), many‐objective evolutionary optimization, and visual analytics‐based decision support. The ASSIST framework allows decision makers to forecast the value of investments in new observations for many objectives simultaneously. Information tradeoffs are evaluated using an EnKF to forecast plume transport in space and time in the presence of uncertain and biased model predictions that are conditioned on uncertain measurement data. This study demonstrates the ASSIST framework using a laboratory‐based physical aquifer tracer experiment. In this initial demonstration, the position and frequency of tracer sampling was optimized to (1) minimize monitoring costs, (2) maximize the information provided to the EnKF, (3) minimize failures to detect the tracer, (4) maximize the detection of tracer fluxes, (5) minimize error in quantifying tracer mass, and (6) minimize error in quantifying the centroid of the tracer plume. Our results demonstrate that the forecasting, search, and visualization components of the ASSIST framework represent a significant advance for observation network design that has a strong potential to innovate our characterization, prediction, and management of groundwater systems.


In a study of all 4275 outpatient consultations over one month in a district general hospital it was found that the clinics in surgical specialties had the largest numbers of patients. In general surgery less than half of new patients and only one third of all patients attending the clinic were seen by a consultant. (Nine months later about a third of all new patients had still not seen a consultant in the clinic.) In the medical clinics just over a quarter of patients were seen by doctors who had less than six months' experience in their present specialty after registration. Overall, doctors had been on continuous duty for at least 24 hours before a third of consultations. Doctors in training had actually worked during the previous night before attending a quarter of the clinics. Much of the large volume of work is performed by tired, incompletely trained doctors. It is suggested that a greater proportion of the work should be performed by fully trained staff. The workload might be reduced by modifying the pattern of the consultation.


The international community has awoken to the reality that large transnational corporations (TNCs) do not only control more resources than a good number of states. They wield enormous influence in the corporate world which greatly impacts on local cultures and initiatives. Many of these TNCs, who operate in developing states, engage in activities which frequently result in human rights abuses. Several states rely on the resources extracted by these large corporations as the main stay of their economies. Consequently, they lack the economic capacity and political will to effectively regulate the activities of the TNCs, leaving these entities to perpetrate human rights abuses in the local communities with impunity. Major international regulatory initiatives, such as the UN Guiding Principles, ILO declaration, and the OECD Guidelines have been adopted to fill in the regulatory gaps. As is analysed and detailed in this thesis, these initiatives have however proven ineffective. They have been criticized as being mere political commitments which lack the necessary legal binding force to ensure their implementation and enforcement. Following several calls from civil society, the Human Rights Council at its 26th session in July 2014, established an open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIGWG) to elaborate on an international legally binding instrument on business and human rights to ensure that the activities of TNCs are effectively regulated. In July 2018, the OEIGWG published a zero draft of a legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The Zero Draft contains proposals for what could later be the provisions of the much-anticipated instrument that could fill in the regulatory gaps left by current business and human rights instruments and ensure corporate accountability for human rights abuse. Following an in-depth discussion on states' obligations to protect against human rights violations committed by business enterprises, the main thrust of this thesis is to examine the proposals on the content, scope and implementation for the binding instrument as contained in the current zero draft. This will be done in order to determine whether it holds any potential for the improvement of the current human rights regulatory system in relation to the activities of transnational corporations.


Evidence suggesting the existence of a state of relative adrenal insufficiency in patients with Sydenham's chorea has been presented. 1 Similarly, a state of relative adrenal insufficiency has been shown to exist in patients with active or inactive rheumatic fever.* Since corticotropin and cortisone have been reported to be efficacious in therapy of exudative rheumatic fever,† and since similar biochemical and physiological abnormalities occur in patients with both of these diseases, it seems logical that hormone therapy might be of value in chorea. In the past four years several case reports on the use of corticotropin and cortisone in the treatment of Sydenham's chorea have appeared in the literature.‡ Results reported by these investigators have been widely divergent, some reporting favorably on hormone therapy, whereas others report that this form of therapy does not alter the clinical course of the disease. The purpose of this communication is to report the


Following the implementation of the new Italian legislation on responsibility of healthcare workers, a multi-professional framework, involving representatives of the Italian public health professionals and legal professionals expert in the field, drafted a proposal of the actionable recommendations to be implemented in the management of civil and penal disputes arising from the practice of public health interventions. In order to prevent legal disputes concerning some public health fields such as vaccinations, cancer screening, environmental health surveillance, and hospital management, it should be primary taken into account to update guidelines in supporting decision-making processes, in accordance with the "best scientific evidence available." Furthermore, a multidisciplinary alliance between public health and legal area professionals should be encouraged and should be promoted both at national and European level.


Abstract After the 1981 Chilean pension system reform, which shifted from a government run pay-as-you-go system to a private, fully funded one, many countries in Latin America have implemented or are considering reforms with an important funded component. We develop a simple model to assess the magnitude of the implicit government debt that needs to be made explicit by this policy, as well as the transitional fiscal costs that such a reform implies. We show that the liabilities and the associated fiscal costs are affected by the population age structure, old-age mortality, labour-market and pension system variables. By use of data from Latin American countries, we find that in several countries, especially those with more aged populations and high coverage systems, the pension debt is very high, and that a switch from unfunded to fully funded systems implies substantial fiscal costs, that may even turn out to be economically and politically unviable in some cases. The effect of some partial funding options are discussed in selected national contexts.


Net-neutrality on the Internet is the set of policies that prevents a paid or unpaid discrimination by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) among different types of transmitted data. The recent moves to change the net neutrality rules and the growing demand for data have driven the ISPs to provide differential treatment of traffic to generate additional revenue streams from Content Providers (CPs). In this thesis, we consider economic frameworks to investigate different questions about the departure toward a non-neutral regime and its possible consequences. In particular, we i) assess whether different entities of the market have the incentive to adopt a non-neutral pricing scheme; and if yes ii) what are the pricing strategies they choose; and iii) how these changes affect the Internet market. First, we investigate the incentives of different entities of the Internet market for migrating to a non-neutral regime. Thus, we consider early stages of a non-neutral Internet. We consider a diverse set of parameters for the market, e.g. market powers of ISPs, sensitivity of EUs and CPs to the quality of the content. The goal is to obtain founded insights on whether there exists a market equilibrium, the structure of the equilibria, and how they depend on different parameters of the market when the current equilibrium (neutral regime) is disrupted and some ISPs have switched to a non-neutral regime. Then, we seek to investigate frameworks using which ISPs and CPs select appropriate incentives for each other, and investigate the implications of these new schemes on the entities of the Internet market. We analyze two nonneutral frameworks. In the first framework, we focus on the price competition between ISPs in the presence of uncertainty in competition and demand when CPs, i.e. demand, is merely price taker, i.e. passive in equilibrium selection. Then, in the second framework, we consider the case in which CPs have an active role in the market, and decide on the number of resources they want to reserve/buy from ISPs based on the price ISPs quote. In this case, we also consider the coupling between limited resources and the quality of the content delivered to end-users and subsequently the strategies of the decision makers. We obtain strategies for ISPs and CPs under a variety of market dynamics. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Electrical & Systems Engineering First Advisor Saswati Sarkar


BACKGROUND
Protein-energy wasting is a frequent and debilitating condition in maintenance dialysis. We randomly tested if an energy-dense, phosphate-restricted, renal-specific oral supplement could maintain adequate nutritional intake and prevent malnutrition in maintenance haemodialysis patients with insufficient intake.

METHODS
Eighty-six patients were assigned to a standard care (CTRL) group or were prescribed two 125-ml packs of Renilon 7.5(R) daily for 3 months (SUPP). Dietary intake, serum (S) albumin, prealbumin, protein nitrogen appearance (nPNA), C-reactive protein, subjective global assessment (SGA) and quality of life (QOL) were recorded at baseline and after 3 months.

RESULTS
While intention to treat analysis (ITT) did not reveal strong statistically significant changes in dietary intake between groups, per protocol (PP) analysis showed that the SUPP group increased protein (P < 0.01) and energy (P < 0.01) intakes. In contrast, protein and energy intakes further deteriorated in the CTRL group (PP). Although there was no difference in serum albumin and prealbumin changes between groups, in the total population serum albumin and prealbumin changes were positively associated with the increment in protein intake (r = 0.29, P = 0.01 and r = 0.27, P = 0.02, respectively). The SUPP group did not increase phosphate intake, phosphataemia remained unaffected, and the use of phosphate binders remained stable or decreased. The SUPP group exhibited improved SGA and QOL (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
This study shows that providing maintenance haemodialysis patients with insufficient intake with a renal-specific oral supplement may prevent deterioration in nutritional indices and QOL without increasing the need for phosphate binders.


The effect of changes in pH produced by changing NaHCO2 at constant pCO2 and by changing pCO2 at constant NaHCO2 concentration was studied in the spontaneous beating rat atrium. Alkalosis produced either by changes in pCO2 or in NaHCO2 concentration increased basal heart rate shifting dose-response curves to norepinephrine upwards. When these dose-response curves were analysed for a horizontal shift, it was found that the necessary dose to produce a given effect was lesser in alkalosis than in acidosis. This shift was significant at the ED10 and at ED30 when the pCO2 was lowered and at ED30, ED50 and ED70 when the NaHCO2 concentration was increased. Beta-adrenergic blockade did not prevent the rate increasing effect of alkalosis. Our results suggest that there is a sensitizing effect to norepinephrine in alkalosis superimposed to a direct effect of pH upon heart rate.


In recent years, the research cluster of objective interestingness measures has rapidly developed in order to assist users to choose the appropriate measure for their application. Researchers in this field mainly focus on three main directions: clustering based on the properties of the measures, clustering based on the behavior of measures and clustering tendency of variation in statistical implications. In this paper we propose a new approach to cluster the objective interestingness measures based on tendency of variation in statistical implications. In this proposal, we built the statistical implication data of 31 objective interestingness measures based on the examination of the partial derivatives on four parameters. From this data, two distance matrices of interestingness measures are established based on Euclidean and Manhattan distance. The similarity trees are built based on distance matrix that gave results of 31 measures clustering with two different clustering thresholds.


BeU Photography and Videography is a photography and videography business that provides services for pre-wedding, wedding, company profile, music video, and live event. The company is established by Rheza Fernando in 2012. The company is currently facing profit decline which is caused by a low market price in Surabaya and the business needs to renew the marketing strategy to increase the sale. From the two reasons stated before, the researcher is now focused to decide the marketing strategy using 7P for the business. The purpose of this research is to fully understand and acquire information to make a marketing strategy using 7P. The research uses qualitative method and in-depth interview & documentation as its data collection method. Research result as follows, deep understanding about 7P in service industry and decides what the marketing strategy for photography industry in East Java. Research result is 7P in photography industry is important except place component. And the marketing strategy to face price problem in East Java is written in this research.


Provides major resources and methods for research in U.S. history. Some of the key resources discussed in this guide are America: History and Life, Making of America, and Early American Imprints (Evans).


This economic analysis by policy experts from CSIRO, The Climate Institute, Monash University and McLennan Magasanik Associates examined a range of scenarios to explore the relative costs of Australia free riding and following other industrialised countries in the global efforts to avoid dangerous climate change versus Australia taking a leadership position. It concludes that making very substantial reductions in Australia's net greenhouse emissions is affordable, and compatible with continuing growth in incomes, employment and living standards.


The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to describe the impact of the South Carolina U.S. History End of Course Exam (EOCE) on teachers' perceptions of autonomy and self-efficacy for high school U.S. History teachers in the Midlands region of South Carolina. The theory guiding this study was Bandura's (1994) theory of self-efficacy as it explained the relationship between self-efficacy and effectiveness. There were 12 participants in this study who shared the lived experience of the U.S. History EOCE and related policies. Data were collected through individual interviews, focus group interviews, and relevant documents. The data were analyzed through categorical aggregation and the coding of data into general themes and patterns. Themes were identified that demonstrated participants' perceptions of the impact of the EOCE and related policies on their autonomy and self-efficacy. Eleven of the participants shared concerns about the incorporation of student test scores into the teacher evaluation process. An unanticipated theme was that of the additional burden of data teams. The most notable finding of the study was that participants realigned their understandings and perceptions of selfefficacy in order to feel efficacious in meeting objectives and goals set by the state and the district rather than themselves. Recommendations for future research include teachers' changing understanding and application of self-efficacy and the actual effects of data teams on student learning and development.


In contrast to classical human histocompatibility antigen (HLA) class I molecules, HLA-G has been discovered quite recently, in 1990. Since its discovery several efforts have been made to define HLA-G biology and its role in regulating immune responses. The main distinctive characteristics of HLA-G are the limited protein variability, alternative mRNA splicing that generates seven different isoforms(both soluble and membrane-bound) with the ability to form multiple structures via disulfide bounds, and restricted expression to certain tissues (1). Moreover, the discovery that HLA-G binds different inhibitory receptors (i.e., ILT2 and ILT4, and KIR2DL4) led to the classification of HLA-G as a tolerogenic molecule (2).


Neural machine translation (NMT) heavily relies on parallel bilingual data for training. Since large-scale, high-quality parallel corpora are usually costly to collect, it is appealing to exploit monolingual corpora to improve NMT. Inspired by the law of total probability, which connects the probability of a given target-side monolingual sentence to the conditional probability of translating from a source sentence to the target one, we propose to explicitly exploit this connection to learn from and regularize the training of NMT models using monolingual data. The key technical challenge of this approach is that there are exponentially many source sentences for a target monolingual sentence while computing the sum of the conditional probability given each possible source sentence. We address this challenge by leveraging the dual translation model (target-to-source translation) to sample several mostly likely source-side sentences and avoid enumerating all possible candidate source sentences. That is, we transfer the knowledge contained in the dual model to boost the training of the primal model (source-to-target translation), and we call such an approach dual transfer learning. Experiment results on English-French and German-English tasks demonstrate that dual transfer learning achieves significant improvement over several strong baselines and obtains new state-of-the-art results.


Abstract In accordance with Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 396/2005, the applicant Cheminova A/S submitted a request to the competent national authority in Spain to modify the existing maximum residue level (MRL) for the active substance acrinathrin in lettuce. The data submitted in support of the request were found to be sufficient to derive an MRL proposal for lettuce. Adequate analytical methods for enforcement are available to control the residues of acrinathrin on the commodity under consideration at the validated limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.01 mg/kg. Based on the risk assessment results, EFSA concluded that the short‐term and long‐term intake of residues resulting from the use of acrinathrin according to the reported agricultural practice and the current approval restrictions of acrinathrin is unlikely to present a risk to consumer health. However, uncertainties remain, particularly on the toxicological profile of the different isomers. Hence, the consumer risk assessment is considered tentative.


Infective endocarditis and vertebral osteomyelitis are rare infections, most commonly caused by methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA). The eustachian valve is an embryological remnant of the inferior vena cava that has the potential to harbor a nidus leading to infective endocarditis. Eustachian valve endocarditis has been documented in the literature on less than 50 occasions and has yet to be documented in the presence of concomitant vertebral osteomyelitis. In this case, we present a 43-year-old male presenting with vertebral osteomyelitis caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Persistent bacteremia prompted the identification of vegetative growth on a eustachian valve remnant. This case helps mend the gap in the literature by documenting the treatment considerations in a patient with eustachian valve endocarditis in the presence of osteomyelitis caused by MRSA.


ABSTRACT Urbanization can alter the organization of ant communities and affect populations of urban pest ants. In this study, we sampled ant communities in urban and suburban yards to understand the habitat factors that shape these communities and influence the abundance of a common pest species, Tapinoma sessile (Say). We used pitfall traps to sample ant communities and a combination of pitfall traps and baiting to collect T. sessile at 24 sites in Knoxville, TN. In total, we collected 46 ant species. Ant species richness ranged from seven to 24 species per yard. Ant species richness tended to be lowest near houses, whereas T. sessile abundance was highest near houses. The best predictors of ant species richness in yards were canopy cover and presence of leaf litter: ant species richness peaked at mid-levels of canopy cover and was negatively correlated with the presence of leaf litter. Tapinoma sessile abundance increased with presence of logs, boards, or landscaping timbers and leaf litter in yards. Our results indicate that ant communities and the abundance of particular pest species in these urban and suburban landscapes are shaped by many of the same factors that structure ant communities in less anthropogenically disturbed environments.


Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms in the private sector (where minimum wage legislation applies) and civil servants and self-employed workers (where it does not apply). The evidence suggests that minimum wages are effectively enforced only in medium and large-scale firms, where a 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase of 0.29% in the average wage and a reduction in employment of -0.46%. We find that increases in the private sector minimum wage are emulated in public sector wages, but there are no disemployment effects there. There is some evidence that a higher minimum wage may increase unemployment. There are no discernable effects of minimum wages on the wages of workers in small-firms or the self-employed. The positive impact of higher minimum wages on average wages is greatest for the primary educated in large private firms; but this group also suffers a very large disemployment effect. We conclude that, even in the sector where minimum wages are enforced and even under our upper bound estimate of the effect on the wages of workers, the welfare – the total earnings – of low-paid workers in the large-firm covered sector falls with higher minimum wages.


Background Hepatocellular adenomas (HCA) are benign liver tumors that may transform into hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the molecular drivers of this transformation remain ill-defined. This study evaluates the molecular changes in HCA and HCC and in comparison to their adjacent non-neoplastic liver. Methods 11 patients with HCA and 10 patients with HCC without underlying hepatitis or cirrhosis were included in this pilot study. Tumor and non-tumor liver tissues were selected for immunohistochemical staining, small RNA sequencing, and targeted gene sequencing. We compared microRNA expressions and mutations between HCA and HCC and non-neoplastic liver. Results HCA were classified as inflammatory (n = 6), steatotic (n = 4), or β-catenin activated (n = 1) subtypes. MicroRNA profile of all 3 HCA subtypes clustered between that of normal liver and HCC in principal component analysis. In both HCA and HCC, miR-200a, miR-429, and miR-490-3p were significantly downregulated compared to normal liver, whereas miR-452, miR-766, and miR-1180 were significantly upregulated. In addition, compared to HCA, HCC had significantly higher expression of members of the chromosome 19 miRNA cluster (C19MC), including miR-515-5p, miR-517a, miR-518b, and miR-520c-3p. Conclusions This study indicates that while there are significant differences in the molecular profile between HCA and HCC, several miRNAs are similarly deregulated in HCA and HCC compared to adjacent normal liver. These results may provide insights into the drivers of hepatocarcinogenesis and warrant further investigations.


Chronic infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes DNA damage. An arginine (Arg)-to-glutamine (Gln) polymorphism at codon 399 in the XRCC1 gene is putatively associated with DNA damage. In a case–control study of 577 HBV surface antigen carriers with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and 389 HBV carrier control subjects, we investigated the association between this polymorphism and the risk of HCC and assessed whether this association varied with glutathione S-transferase (GST) status; GSTs are involved in carcinogen metabolism. All statistical tests were two-sided. The XRCC1 Gln allele was associated with a dose-dependent increased risk of early-onset HCC (<50 years) but not with the risk of late-onset HCC (Ptrend = .01). The GSTT1-null genotype alone did not affect risk, but the GSTM1-null genotype was associated with a decreased risk for early-onset HCC. Various combinations of GSTM1 and GSTT1 genotypes differentially modified the association of XRCC1 with HCC (Pinteraction = .005); e.g., for individuals with the GSTT1-null/ GSTM1-present genotype, the risk of HCC was greater for those with the Gln/Gln genotype (odds ratio = 8.07, 95% confidence interval = 1.67 to 38.93) than for those with the Arg/Arg genotype. Thus, GST status appears to affect the risk of HCC associated with this XRCC1 polymorphism. [J Natl Cancer Inst 2003;95:1485–8]


Lymphocytic hypophysitis is a relatively uncommon autoimmune inflammatory disorder affecting the pituitary gland. It most frequently occurs in women of child-bearing age. The authors report on their experience with a patient who presented with diplopia and marked enlargement of the pituitary gland. She underwent transsphenoidal surgery, and histopathological analysis confirmed the diagnosis of lymphocytic hypophysitis. The disease proved refractory to resection, and any attempt at withdrawal of corticosteroid therapy resulted in a return of the patient's symptoms and enlargement of the sellar contents. The patient underwent Gamma Knife surgery (GKS) to the sella and both cavernous sinuses. After GKS, the patient was able to discontinue steroid therapy without return of her symptoms. Follow-up MR images demonstrated no evidence of recurrence of lymphocytic hypophysitis. For persistent lymphocytic hypophysitis, GKS is a reasonable treatment option.


Todays cloud deployed applications are mostly multi-tiered. Usually, the first tier consists of an Application Service Providers' (ASPs) web servers, the second tier has application servers and the third tier contains database servers. Tiered architectures are often difficult to evaluate in terms of performance. Existing performance models are very effective in finding the mean performance measures. However, metrics such as response-time percentiles are of greater importance to the end-users since it is more desirable to reduce the variability of a system's response time, rather than minimizing the mean response time. In this work, a multi-tier application is modeled as an open queuing network of 3-tiers and the response-time percentiles are estimated using discrete event simulation. Here, we assume that each tier is replicated into a number of copies and each copy runs on a separate Virtual Machine (VM). Although simulation models are computationally more expensive as compared to analytical models, they are much more general. The simulation model of this work can be used as decision support for ASPs in order to determine the optimal configuration of VMs for a given workload such that a required response-time percentile is within a given threshold. In this work, Simpy, a discrete event simulation framework, has been used. The results show that as the number of VMs are increased in a 3-tier open queueing network, the overall system performance (i.e. percentiles and mean response times) does not necessarily become better. The results further show that different system configurations containing the same number of VMs, yield different performance depending on the replication level in different tiers.


A method is described to recover the three-dimensional affine structure of a scene consisting of at least five points identified in two perspective views with a relative object-camera translation in between. When compared to the results for arbitrary stereo views, a more detailed reconstruction is possible using less information. The method presented only assumes that the two images are obtained by identical cameras, but no knowledge about the intrinsic parameters of the camera(s) or about the performed translation is assumed. By the same method, affine 3D reconstruction from a single view can be achieved for parallel structures. In that case, four points suffice for affine reconstruction.


Background and Aim: Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer and the third leading cause of cancer death. Most often it is derived from an adenomatous polyp. Therefore, detection and treatment of these baseline polyps could potentially decrease the prevalence and incidence of colorectal cancers. One of these screening procedures is colonoscopy which is more precise than others like Barium enema, in detecting primitive and small polyps. In addition, colonoscopy has the added benefit that the lesion can be removed during the same procedure. Thus, this study was performed to determine the frequency of polyps and colorectal tumors among patients who underwent colonoscopy in Shariati hospital between November 2000 and November 2002. Patients and Methods: This retrospective, analytical cross-sectional study was performed on 993 patients who underwent colonoscopy in Shariati hospital from November 2000 to November 2002. Method of sampling was by census. All patients were evaluated for demographic variables, location and size of polyps and tumors by using a checklist. The data were collected, described and analyzed using SPSS V.11.5 sofware. Chi and Student t-tests were performed in the data analysis. Results: Among 993 patients who were studied, 529 (53.3%) were males and 464 (46.7%) were females. The frequency of polyps and tumors in this study was 15.4% (153 of 993) and 4.8% (48 of 993), respectively. There was a significant association between the frequency of polyps and its location (P<0.01). The most common location of polyps was sigmoid (76.5%). Also, a significant association was observed between the frequency of tumors and its location (P<0.01). The most common location of tumors was again recto-sigmoid colon (70.8%). Additionally, polyps and tumors were respectively 1.6 and 1.7 times more prevalent in men than women. Conclusion: Regarding the most prevalent location of polyps and tumors, the use of fexible sigmoidoscopy may lead to detection and even treatment of many accessible polyps and tumors which could result in prevention of many colorectal cancers. Also colonoscopy is useful to detect lesions which were not detected by sigmoidoscopy and these inaccessible polyps and tumors can be biopsied.


We discuss the rotational cooling of diatomic molecules in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultra-cold atoms by emission of phonons with orbital angular momentum. Despite the superfluidity of the BEC there is no frictionless rotation for typical molecules since the dominant cooling occurs via emission of particle-like phonons. Only for macro-dimers, whose size becomes comparable or larger than the condensate healing length, a Landau-like, critical angular momentum exists below which phonon emission is suppressed. We find that the rotational relaxation of typical molecules is in general faster than the cooling of the linear motion of impurities in a BEC. This also leads to a finite lifetime of angulons, quasi-particles of rotating molecules coupled to phonons with orbital angular-momentum. We analyze the dynamics of rotational cooling for homo-nuclear diatomic molecules based on a quantum Boltzmann equation including single- and two-phonon scattering and discuss the effect of thermal phonons.


The Islamic world has experienced extensive social changes in modern times - the rise of new social classes, the formation of massive bureaucratic and military states, and the incorporation of its economies into the world capitalist structure. Yet despite these changes, a national consensus on even the most important principles of social organization - the form of government, the status of women, national identity, and rule making - has yet to emerge. An ambitious comparative historical analysis of ideological production in the Islamic world from the mid-1800s to the present, Mansoor Moaddel's Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism provides a unique perspective for understanding the social conditions of these discourses. Moaddel characterizes these movements in terms of a sequence of cultural episodes characterized by ideological debates and religious disputations, each ending with a revolution or military coup. Understanding how the leaders of these movements formulated their discourses is, for Moaddel, the key to understanding Middle Eastern history. This premise allows him to unlock for readers the historical process that started with Islamic modernism and ended with fundamentalism.


Abstract Introduction: Hygiene of removable dental prostheses is equally important as oral hygiene. Statistical data from the World Health Organization show that people over 65 years of age constitute a larger percentage of the population than newly born children. The number of people using removable dental prostheses increases with age. Older people, often for financial reasons, generally opt for settling dentures. Due to its porous structure, acrylic favors the retention of food residue. As a consequence, the incidence of candidiasis and prosthetic stomatopathy increases in patients using removable acrylic dentures. The aim of the study is to assess the hygiene of the oral cavity and removable dental prostheses. Materials and methods: A physical examination was carried out to determine the condition of the teeth, oral hygiene, and number/location of missing teeth. Oral hygiene was assessed using the approximal dental plaque index (API). Patients were asked to complete a questionnaire about hygiene and nighttime storage methods for removable dental restorations and whether the doctor provided information on the correct use and storage of prostheses. A physical examination was then performed to determine the hygiene of the restorations. Prosthesis hygiene was evaluated using the hygiene scale of prostheses developed by Frączak et al. Results and conclusions: The level of oral hygiene in general and hygiene of prosthetic restorations are very low, despite the information obtained from physicians, which indicates that dentists should pay more attention to providing information on oral and prosthesis hygiene, preferably in the form of leaflets.


Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are commonly used for disease progression modeling when the true patient health state is not fully known. Since HMMs typically have multiple local optima, incorporating additional patient covariates can improve parameter estimation and predictive performance. To allow for this, we develop hidden Markov recurrent neural networks (HMRNNs), a special case of recurrent neural networks that combine neural networks' flexibility with HMMs' interpretability. The HMRNN can be reduced to a standard HMM, with an identical likelihood function and parameter interpretations, but it can also combine an HMM with other predictive neural networks that take patient information as input. The HMRNN estimates all parameters simultaneously via gradient descent. Using a dataset of Alzheimer's disease patients, we demonstrate how the HMRNN can combine an HMM with other predictive neural networks to improve disease forecasting and to offer a novel clinical interpretation compared with a standard HMM trained via expectation-maximization.


ThetaY (thetaY) is the phase angle between the admittance vector and the conductance component in an acoustical system. It is determined by the relative contributions of the system's conductance and susceptance. The magnitude of the admittance vector has received almost exclusive attention in clinical admittance measurements. The phase angle, providing information on the relative contribution of energy-dissipating and energy-storing components, has been largely overlooked. One hundred and ninety-five clinical records obtained over a five-year period were used to investigate the distribution of thetaY and its relationship to other tympanometric variables. The results show that thetaY has a reasonably symmetrical distribution and is not strongly related to other tympanometric variables. The data suggest that thetaY may account for a different subset of the total variance than more commonly measured variables. ThetaY appears to meet the criteria of independence and distribution, justifying further study to evaluate its clinical utility.


Background: Syrinxis described as a cavitary enlargement of the spinal cord. It is a common reason for neurosurgical referral. The aetiology of syrinx is multiple andit is associated with other brain and spinal cord conditions,while some are not associated with any other conditions. Subjects and Methods: We retrospectively collected data of cases diagnosed with syrinx in the department of radiodiagnosis in Rajarajeswari Medical college, Bangalore and studied the conditions associated with syrinx. Results: A total of 37 cases were analysed. The spinal cord levelsmost commonly associated with syrinx were C5, C6, T1 and L1 vertebral levels. Arnold Chiari malformation type 1 was the most common condition associated with syrinx. Conclusion: It was concluded from the present study that syrinx was more common in males than females with mean age of presentation of 36 years. The cervical spinal cord level was most commonly involved followed by thoracic and lumbar spinal cords. ACM type 1 was the most common associated condition. It becomes important for radiologist to look for syrinx in cases diagnosed with associated conditions, so that subtle and mild forms of syrinx are not missed and their growth or expansion in spinal cord be evaluated in follow up MRI studies.


BACKGROUND
Few studies have examined the association between obesity and markers of kidney injury in a chronic kidney disease population. We hypothesized that obesity is independently associated with proteinuria, a marker of chronic kidney disease progression.

STUDY DESIGN
Observational cross-sectional analysis.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
Post hoc analysis of baseline data for 652 participants in the African American Study of Kidney Disease (AASK).

PREDICTORS
Obesity, determined using body mass index (BMI).

MEASUREMENTS & OUTCOMES
Urine total protein-creatinine ratio and albumin-creatinine ratio measured in 24-hour urine collections.

RESULTS
AASK participants had a mean age of 60.2 ± 10.2 years and serum creatinine level of 2.3 ± 1.5 mg/dL; 61.3% were men. Mean BMI was 31.4 ± 7.0 kg/m(2). Approximately 70% of participants had a daily urine total protein excretion rate <300 mg/d. In linear regression analyses adjusted for sex, each 2-kg/m(2) increase in BMI was associated with a 6.7% (95% CI, 3.2-10.4) and 9.4% (95% CI, 4.9-14.1) increase in urine total protein-creatinine and urine albumin-creatinine ratios, respectively. In multivariable models adjusting for age, sex, systolic blood pressure, serum glucose level, uric acid level, and creatinine level, each 2-kg/m(2) increase in BMI was associated with a 3.5% (95% CI, 0.4-6.7) and 5.6% (95% CI, 1.5-9.9) increase in proteinuria and albuminuria, respectively. The interaction between older age and BMI was statistically significant, indicating that this relationship was driven by younger AASK participants.

LIMITATIONS
May not generalize to other populations; cross-sectional analysis precludes statements regarding causality.

CONCLUSIONS
BMI is associated independently with urine total protein and albumin excretion in African Americans with hypertensive nephrosclerosis, particularly in younger patients.


Earlier work predicted that the physiological effects of an acute stressor disrupt a neurological system underlying cognitive-map (CM) guided navigation, but leave intact systems underlying landmark (LM) guided navigation. This prediction has been only partially confirmed. Furthermore, no-one has investigated sex differences in the relations between acute stress and spatial navigation, even though stress affects verbal memory and decision-making performance of males and females differently. We administered the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a standardized laboratory procedure designed to induce mild psychosocial stress, to 15 healthy undergraduates to examine the effects of acute stress on CM- and LM-guided navigation in men and women. They, and a demographically matched control group of 14 undergraduates, completed a virtual environment navigation task. Exposure to the TSST disrupted CM-guided (but not LM-guided) navigation in women, but affected neither in men. The data partially support the previous work, and offer novel findings regarding the relative vulnerability to acute psychosocial stress of CM-based navigation in females.


Discovering highly efficient, environmentally friendly, and low-cost exfoliating media that can both disperse and protect black phosphorus (BP) remains a challenge. Herein, we demonstrate such a new molecule, N,N'-dimethylpropyleneurea (DMPU), for effective exfoliation and dispersion of two-dimensional BP nanosheets. A very high exfoliation efficiency of up to 16% was achieved in DMPU, significantly surpassing other good solvents. Exfoliated flakes are free from structural disorder or oxidation. Nanosheets retain high stability in DMPU even after addition of 25 vol% of common solvents. The solvation shell appears to protect the nanosheets from reacting with water and air, more remarkably than the best solvent N-cyclohexyl-2-pyrrolidone reported so far. Molecular dynamics simulations of the exfoliation process show that DMPU is among the effective solvents, although energetically it does not appear as favorable as some other amides. We also demonstrate that our exfoliated BP nanosheets exhibit excellent antimicrobial activities against both Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, outperforming other common two-dimensional materials of graphene and MoS2, suggesting promise in biomedical applications.


A wide range of values reported in the literature has precluded the use of grain moisture (GM) as an estimate of physiological maturity (PM) in maize (Zea mays L.). The reason for this variability in GM values remains unclear. Previous evidence suggests that the source-sink ratio could affect the dynamics of kernel water relations during grain filling and thus, GM at PM. To test this possibility, treatments were applied to manipulate the reproductive sink capacity or the assimilate availability during grain filling. Kernel dry weight, water content, and the dry weight to water content (D-W) ratio, were monitored throughout grain filling. A bilinear model relating dry weight and GM was used to estimate GM at PM for each treatment. Severely restricting source capacity during grain filling increased GM at PM. When the source capacity per kernel during grain filling was increased, however, GM at PM was not affected. A single model (r 2 = 0.99, p < 0.001) described the relationship between relative dry weight and GM for all hybrids and treatments without source reduction during grain filling. The estimated value of GM at PM for this model was 34.9%. These results suggest that calculating GM late in grain filling can provide a reliable estimate of PM when the source capacity has not been severely restricted. A value of 35% moisture would be adequate in these situations. The D-W ratio of developing kernels was similar across all source-sink treatments until PM. Premature cessation of grain filling caused by defoliation increased the D-W ratio as the kernels continued to desiccate.


Larvae, pupae, and adult blackflies (Simuliidae) are capable of harbouring several groups of nematodes. Multiple parasitism involving nematodes of the same or different species, or various developmental stages of the same nematode may also occur. Thus, blackflies can serve as paratenic, intermediate, or definitive hosts of nematodes. The present study reviews the literature pertaining to the association between nematodes and Simuliidae and provides a key to various groups of nematodes found in blackflies. Emphasis is placed on the commoner filarial and mermithid nematodes, but several other unusual and rare roundworm parasites are also discussed.


Abstract. Observations of aerosol scattering and absorption offer valuable information about aerosol composition. We apply a simulation of the Ultraviolet Aerosol Index (UVAI), a method of detecting aerosol absorption from satellite observations, to interpret UVAI values observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) from 2005 to 2015 to understand global trends in aerosol composition. We conduct our simulation using the vector radiative transfer model VLIDORT with aerosol fields from the global chemical transport model GEOS-Chem. We examine the 2005–2015 trends in individual aerosol species from GEOS-Chem and apply these trends to the UVAI simulation to calculate the change in simulated UVAI due to the trends in individual aerosol species. We find that global trends in the UVAI are largely explained by trends in absorption by mineral dust, absorption by brown carbon, and scattering by secondary inorganic aerosol. Trends in absorption by mineral dust dominate the simulated UVAI trends over North Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and Australia. The UVAI simulation resolves observed negative UVAI trends well over Australia, but underestimates positive UVAI trends over North Africa and Central Asia near the Aral Sea and underestimates negative UVAI trends over East Asia. We find evidence of an increasing dust source from the desiccating Aral Sea that may not be well represented by the current generation of models. Trends in absorption by brown carbon dominate the simulated UVAI trends over biomass burning regions. The UVAI simulation reproduces observed negative trends over central South America and West Africa, but underestimates observed UVAI trends over boreal forests. Trends in scattering by secondary inorganic aerosol dominate the simulated UVAI trends over the eastern United States and eastern India. The UVAI simulation slightly overestimates the observed positive UVAI trends over the eastern United States and underestimates the observed negative UVAI trends over India. Quantitative simulation of the OMI UVAI offers new insight into global trends in aerosol composition.


The use of ultrasound to facilitate regional anesthesia is an evolving area of clinical, education, and research interests. As our community's experience grows, it has become evident that anesthesiologists performing "routine" ultrasound-guided blocks may very well be confronted with atypical or even pathologic anatomy. As an educational resource for anesthesiologists, the following articles present examples of common sonopathology that may be encountered during ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia. This present article describes sonopathology related to bone, viscera, and subcutaneous tissue.


Atrial fibrillation, NADPH oxidases, ryanodine receptor Background Gp91-containing NADPH oxidases (NOX2) are a significant source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the human atrial myocardium. An increase in NOX2 activity accompanies atrial fibrillation (AF) induction and electrical remodelling in animal models and predicts incident AF in humans; however, whether an increase in atrial NOX2 activity is necessary to create a substrate for AF remains to be demonstrated. The purpose of this study is to determine whether an increase in NOX2-derived ROS directly contributes to the development of AF and to identify the molecular changes that occur downstream of NOX2 activation in atrial myocytes. Methods and Results Mice with myocardial NOX2 overexpression (NOX2-Tg) showed a 2-fold increase in NADPH-stimulated superoxide production (2-hydroxyethidium by HPLC) in both the left and right atria, without any other electrophysiological or structural abnormalities (assessed by surface ECG and echocardiography); however, AF susceptibility assessed in vivo by transesophageal pacing was significantly higher in NOX2-Tg mice compared with their wild-type (WT) littermate controls (AF probability: 16.9±1.8% vs. 10.2±1.6% respectively, n=25–26/genotype, p<0.01). Moreover, oral supplementation with atorvastatin (30 mg/kg/day), an inhibitor of NOX2 activity, substantially reduced atrial NADPH-stimulated ROS and AF susceptibility in NOX2-Tg mice. Ex vivo high-resolution optical mapping of di-4-ANEPPS-stained atrial preparations revealed no differences in the action potential duration of left and right atria of NOX2-Tg mice compared to controls, suggesting that electrical arrhythmogenic remodelling does not occur with NOX2 overexpression. However, abnormalities in intracellular Ca2+ handling have also been linked to AF; intriguingly, western blot analyses of atrial tissues revealed a 28% reduction (n=11–23/genotype, p=0.0032 with un-paired students t-test) in the phosphorylation status of the ryanodine receptor (RyR) at Ser2814 in the right, but not the left atria of NOX2-Tg mice. Our ongoing experiments are now aimed at determining whether NOX2-derived ROS alters diastolic calcium leak from the sarcoplasmic reticulum in isolated atrial myocytes due to altered RyR gating. Conclusions Myocardial NOX2 overexpression and related increase in NADPH-stimulated ROS production are associated with increased AF susceptibility in vivo and reduced RyR phosphorylation at Ser2814. These findings suggest increased NOX2 ROS may promote arrhythmogenesis by modulating atrial calcium handling.


: A great number of Egyptian workers and farmers are seeking settlement in Iraq and some of them proved to have either Schistosoma Haematobium (S.h.) or Schistosoma mansoni (S.m) or even mixed infection. Besides, there is the possibility that some of the Iraqi fresh water snails may prove to be susceptible to infection by one or both of the Schistosoma Egyptian strains. The present study deals with investigations on the susceptibility of Iraqi B. truncatus, Gyranaulus ehrenbergi, Physa c.f. fontinalis, Lymnea lagetis, Melanoides tuberculata and Melanopsis nodes by these parasites. Egyptian S. haematobium but not Egyptian S. mansoni infect Iraqi B. truncatus and both proved to be unable to infect any of the other snails included in the study. Yet, the number of cercariae shedded by B. truncatus snails infected with the Egyptian S. haematobium strain, was much less that the number of cercariae shedded by these snails when infected with the Iraqi S. Haematobium strain.


The theoretical foundation of the subregion method for solving electrostatic and magnetostatic field problems is discussed, and several kinds of subregion methods, including the common combination method, are described. They can be used to solve nonlinear as well as linear field problems. The diakoptical technique is developed and implemented to make the subregion method more effective. Examples are given, showing that (1) more accurate calculations can be made; (2) larger, more complicated problems can be calculated owing to the relatively smaller size of the matrix; (3) the computation time is reduced, especially for nonlinear fields. >


An efficient node-deletion algorithm is introduced to find submatrices in expression data that have low mean squared residue scores and it is shown to perform well in finding co-regulation patterns in yeast and human. This introduces "biclustering", or simultaneous clustering of both genes and conditions, to knowledge discovery from expression data. This approach overcomes some problems associated with traditional clustering methods, by allowing automatic discovery of similarity based on a subset of attributes, simultaneous clustering of genes and conditions, and overlapped grouping that provides a better representation for genes with multiple functions or regulated by many factors.


Pearl is a bio-originated valuable natural gem and it is also cultivated or harvested for jewellery. In this paper, the material aspects of pearl have been investigated experimentally and it has been found that it has a very high static dielectric constant ~ 105. The functional nature of the material is also established in this work. The beautiful lustre of natural pearl is explained by nano-optics and the layered structure of the material. The origin of super-dielectric nature of pearl has been explained by lightning rod effect (LRE) that causes ultra-high polarization of the dielectric background. The LRE is due to the presence of very small sized nano-particles in the natural pearl. Its electrical conductivity is mostly ionic, only less than 10% of the total conductivity is electronic. The scope of tailoring of its electro-activity has been probed.


This paper presents a quantum-inspired immune algorithm (QIA) for Hybrid flow shop problems (HFSP) to minimize makespan. Since HFSP have been proved to be NP-hard in a strong sense when the objective is to minimize the makespan, an effective immune algorithm (IA) is used to solve the problems. IA is a kind of evolutional computation strategies, which is developed on the basis of a real immune mechanism in the human body, and has been employed to tackle complex scheduling problems and produce a reasonable manufacturing schedule. In order to achieve better results, the standard IA is combined with quantum algorithm (QA), which is based on Q-bit and uses quantum rotation gate to update. A real number representation is proposed to convert the Q-bit representation to job permutation for evaluating value of solutions. The proposed QIA can overcome the limitations of IA, quicken up convergence speed and improve the solution. Forty one benchmarks are examined to validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The computational experiments show that the proposed QIA can also obtain both better and more robust results than IA and QA.


Abstract Okazaki, R., Ootsuyama, A. and Norimura, T. Radioadaptive Response for Protection against Radiation-Induced Teratogenesis. Radiat. Res. 163, 266–270 (2005). To clarify the characteristics of the radioadaptive response in mice, we compared the incidence of radiation-induced malformations in ICR mice. Pregnant ICR mice were exposed to a priming dose of 2 cGy (667 μGy/min) on day 9.5 of gestation and to a challenging dose of 2 Gy (1.04 Gy/min) 4 h later and were killed on day 18.5 of gestation. The incidence of malformations and prenatal death and fetal body weights were studied. The incidence of external malformations was significantly lower (by approximately 10%) in the primed (2 cGy + 2 Gy) mice compared to the unprimed (2 Gy alone) mice. However, there were no differences in the incidence of prenatal death or the skeletal malformations or the body weights between primed and unprimed mice. These results suggest that primary conditioning with low doses of radiation suppresses radiation-induced teratogenesis.


Extraordinary Rendition and the Convention Against Torture examines the U.S. policy of abducting terror suspects abroad and transferring them to third countries where they are likely to be subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment. The article notes that extraordinary rendition has evolved from a process by which persons were brought to the U.S. to stand trial, into a means of incapacitating suspects while keeping them out of reach of the U.S. legal system. Part I of this Article describes the Convention Against Torture and its provisions, and then examines the scope of the prohibition on torture under U.S. law. Then Part I demonstrates that extraordinary rendition constitutes a criminal conspiracy to commit torture in violation of federal law and the Convention Against Torture. Part I also addresses the policy justifications for extraordinary rendition and the use of diplomatic assurances to evade criminal liability under the torture statute. Part II examines the domestic and international mechanisms available to address extraordinary rendition, primarily focusing on the use of habeas corpus under U.S. law to challenge extraordinary rendition. The Conclusion addresses the legal climate that led to justifications for extraordinary rendition, and the unintended consequences of the policy for U.S. officials and the global community.


Smartphone usage has evolved in people's lives from necessity to habit and in some cases leading to compulsive use and addiction. However, only a little research has been performed on the prevention of Problematic Smartphone Usage (PSU). Behavioral economics has been applied to investigate how smartphone users respond to nudges that try to lower their smartphone usage. Findings revealed that the Total Screen On Time (SOT) decreased when nudging smartphone users with information on their usage behaviors. Intermittent glancing, as well as the median session time increased, and the reduction in SOT was no longer statistically significant in the observation period after the nudges were no longer applied, suggesting relapse in smartphone usage behavior.


Given a set ${\cal D}=\{d_1, d_2,..., d_D\}$ of $D$strings of total length $n$, our task is to report the "most relevant"strings for a given query pattern $P$. This involves somewhat more advanced query functionality than the usual pattern matching, as some notion of "most relevant" is involved. In information retrieval literature, this task is best achieved by using inverted indexes. However, inverted indexes work only for some predefined set of patterns. In the pattern matching community, the most popular pattern-matching data structures are suffix trees and suffix arrays. However, a typical suffix tree search involves going through all the occurrences of the pattern over the entire string collection, which might be a lot more than the required relevant documents. The first formal framework to study such kind of retrieval problems was given by [Muthukrishnan, 2002]. He considered two metrics for relevance: frequency and proximity. He took a threshold-based approach on these metrics and gave data structures taking $O(n \logn)$ words of space. We study this problem in a slightly different framework of reporting the top $k$ most relevant documents (in sorted order) under similar and more general relevance metrics. Our framework gives linear space data structure with optimal query times for arbitrary score functions. As a corollary, it improves the space utilization for the problems in [Muthukrishnan, 2002] while maintaining optimal query performance. We also develop compressed variants of these data structures for several specific relevance metrics.


Within the Ganderian inlier of Penobscot Bay, coastal Maine, the Islesboro fault block occupies a central position between the St. Croix terrane of continental affinity and, to the east, the Ellsworth terrane of oceanic affinity. New field, petrographic, geochemical, and U–Pb LA-ICP-MS geochronological data on detrital and magmatic zircon grains constrain the provenance and transfer history of these terranes from Gondwana to the Appalachian margin of Laurentia. On North Islesboro, the Coombs Limestone and Hutchins Island Quartzite (new name), intruded by E-MORB amphibolite, constitute a newly recognized local inlier of Proterozoic basement. Together with the nearby Seven Hundred Acre Island Formation, these mature, carbonate-rich strata record deposition on a low-latitude passive margin. Abundant detrital zircon grains in the Hutchins Island Quartzite, all older than ca. 1.8 Ga, have a predominant population at ca. 2.0 Ga and a small peak between ca. 2.8 Ga and 2.4 Ga, an age spectrum strikingly similar to those of both the Paleoproterozoic Taghdout Quartzite in Morocco, on the West African craton, and basement rocks from Georges Bank, offshore Massachusetts. The overlying Neoproterozoic–Cambrian Islesboro Formation records a second period of extension (interstratified EMORB greenstone) synchronous with accumulation of interbedded siliciclastic and carbonate sediment, prior to recumbent folding. At the base of the moderately deformed Turtle Head Cove (new name) cover sequence, immature greywacke has a youngest zircon population of ca. 515 Ma, large late Neoproterozoic populations (ca. 624 Ma and 678 Ma), a small peak at 1.2 Ga, a moderate number of ca. 1.5 Ga to 2.0 Ga grains, and a few Late Archean grains. Compared with many similar Ganderian age spectra reported from Vermont to New Brunswick, which are all consistent with a source in either the Amazonian or West African cratons, this new age spectrum most closely resembles those from quartzites in the Grand Manaan and Brookville terranes of coastal New Brunswick. Significantly, exotic blocks lithologically indistinguishable from Proterozoic strata on Islesboro occur in the St. Croix terrane within a Lower Ordovician black shale mélange at the base of the Penobscot Formation, suggesting that the St. Croix terrane, Islesboro block, and Ellsworth terrane were initially juxtaposed by Penobscottian thrusting prior to the Middle Ordovician. Subsequently, the Islesboro block was isolated between the bounding post-Silurian, pre-Late Devonian Turtle Head and Penobscot Bay dextral strike-slip faults. Along the North Islesboro fault, a fault-bounded lens of foliated pyritic felsic volcanic and volcaniclastic rock, dated at ca. 372 Ma and containing Devonian to Archean detrital zircons, records late Paleozoic deformation recognized previously in coastal New Brunswick but not in Penobscot Bay.


Aims of the study: To evaluate the histological and histochemical changes induced by human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) on the adult prostate and to correlate the changes with the levels of testosterone. Materials and Methods: eighty adult male albino rats were divided into 4 groups; 3 treated and 1 control. The treated groups were received 10, 50 or 100 IU/kg BW of hCG, while the controls received normal saline. The doses were given twice weekly for 3 months via subcutaneous injections. Subsequently, on day 1, 30, 60 and 90 post therapy, blood samples and the prostate glands were obtained for evaluation. Results: All the doses of hCG caused accumulation of secretory products within the prostate, which resulted in dilatation of the acinar lumens, reduction of the mucosal folds, and non dose dependent diminution in height of the lining epithelial cells. Moreover, foci of hyperplasic cells were observed in the prostate. The therapy increased the collagen fibers of the gland. The general distribution of the Periodic Acid-Sciff (PAS) +ve material was not altered. Most of these changes were reversible within 3 months. Conclusions: Treatment with hCG causes accumulation of secretory products within the prostate and in turn affects the structure of the prostate.


Three-dimensional (3D) phospholipid monolayers at hydrophobic surfaces are ubiquitous and found in nature as adiposome organelles or in man-made materials such as drug delivery systems. However, the molecular level understanding of such monolayers remains elusive. Here, we investigate the molecular structure of phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipids forming 3D monolayers on the surface of hexadecane nanodroplets. The effects of acyl chain length, saturation, and number of acyl tails per lipid were studied with vibrational sum frequency and second harmonic scattering techniques. We find that 1,2-dihexadecanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) lipids form tightly packed monolayers. Upon shortening the tail length to 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) and 1,2-dilauroyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DLPC), more gauche defects are observed. Monolayers of unsaturated 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) and single acyl chained 1-palmitoyl-2-hydroxy-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (lyso-PC) contain more disorder. Despite these variations in the packing, the headgroup orientation remained approximately parallel to the nanodroplet interface. Remarkably, the lyso-PC uniquely forms more diluted and "patchy" 3D monolayers.


Abstract Despite the significant growth the Area of Freedom, Justice and Security (AFSJ) has seen recently, it is still comparatively under-researched. The main argument of the article is that norms have been constructed over recent years in such a way that the AFSJ has set a project in motion which aims to create a veritable 'European Public Order'. This change has not come overnight though, and it has been normatively constructed over the past decade. In agreement with Christiansen, it is argued that a constructivist institutionalist approach may be best suited to analyse these developments, representing one of the new 'high points' of European construction. Four different stages of development are examined, i.e. the pre- and post-Maastricht, the Amsterdam and Tampere, and the Constitutional Treaty phases. These developments have now significantly altered the norm of national sovereignty in EU internal security. As a consequence of this, some of the most spectacular changes in the EU can be expected in this area in the future with the new five-year ASFJ programme agreed in The Hague.