Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic, autoimmune disease caused by a T cell mediated attack on the insulin producing pancreatic s-cells. Even though reasonable quality of life can be acquired with modern insulin therapy, prevention of acute and late serious complications is facilitated by preservation of residual insulin secretion. Preventing β-cell destruction is therefore an important goal of T1D therapy. Characterisation of immunological changes in the course of T1D is essential for understanding the underlying pathogenic mechanisms and for evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic intervention. This thesis aimed to study the immune profile in individuals at increased risk of T1D and in patients diagnosed with the disease. In addition, the immunological effects of treatment with the B vitamin, Nicotinamide, and by antigen-specific immunotherapy using GAD65, have been studied in high-risk individuals and in T1D patients, respectively. We have found that individuals at high risk of T1D had an increased T helper (Th) 1 like immune profile, defined by high secretion of interferon (IFN) -γ. At the time of clinical onset of T1D, the Th1 dominance was diminished. We further demonstrate that children with newly diagnosed T1D had a suppressed Th1 like profile, detected by chemokine and chemokine receptor profile. This was accompanied by an induced population of CCR7+ and CD45RA+ naive, CD8+cytotoxic T (Tc) cells and a reduced CD45RO+ memory Tc cell pool. It has previously been shown that oral Nicotinamide had no clinical effect in prevention of T1D. However, we found that the treatment was associated with a decreased secretion of IFN-γ. We have previously shown that subcutaneous injections with GAD-alum in T1D children induced a better preservation of endogenous insulin secretion compared with placebo. Here, we demonstrate that the treatment induced an early antigen-specific Th2 and regulatory immune profile. After a few months, and still after more than two years, the recall response to GAD65 was characterised by a broader range of cytokines. GAD-alum treatment also induced a GAD65-specific CD4+CD25highFOXP3+ cell population and reduced the levels of CD4+CD25+ cells. In conclusion, a Th1 like immune profile in pre-diabetic individuals indicates an imbalance of the immune system. At time of clinical onset, and in the period afterwards, reduction of the Th1 associated immune response could be an effect of a suppressed destructive process, selective recruitment of effector T cells to the pancreas or a defective immune regulation. The protective effect of GAD-alum in T1D children seems to be mediated by an early skewing of GAD65-induced responses towards a Th2 phenotype. Further, induction of GAD65-specific T cells with regulatory characteristics might be able to suppress autoreactive responses and inflammation in the pancreas.


A microscopic approach is developed to compute the excitonic properties and the corresponding terahertz response for semiconductors characterized by anisotropic effective masses. The approach is illustrated for the example of germanium, where it is shown that the anisotropic electron mass in the L valley leads to two distinct terahertz absorption resonances separated by 0.8 meV. Thus, terahertz absorption spectroscopy can be applied to directly observe the mass anisotropy.


Excavation of the Wansdyke.—In September 1923 Mr. Albany Major, F.S.A., carried out a small excavation with the help of Mr. H. C. Brentnall of Marlborough College. Trial trenches were cut between the point where the dyke appeared to die out near New Buildings west of Savernake forest and the forest. It was not easy to distinguish between the original soil and disturbed ground, but in all the trenches; six in number, similar traces of a shallow ditch were found, which appeared to show that the dyke was actually continued, though on a very slight scale, at least as far as the present western edge of the forest.


The push for clean energy has caused a rapid growth of renewables in the electricity supply mix of the EU. Although one would assume that the impact of these technologies is entirely positive, recent research and experience indicate that there is reason for concern namely regarding the security of supply. In this context, the concern is how renewable energy sources (RES) affect the business case of conventional power generation. In response to this concern, capacity mechanisms are being considered or have already been implemented by various member states of the EU. However, in a highly interconnected electricity system, such as the one in Europe, there appears to be a risk that the uncoordinated implementation of capacity mechanisms may cause unintended cross-border effects. This research explored the performance of various capacity mechanisms in an electricity system with a strong growth in the portfolio share of variable renewable energy sources (RES). The cross-border effects of implementing various capacity mechanisms in an interconnected power system were also analyzed. In this research, two capacity mechanisms, namely a strategic reserve and a capacity market, were modeled as extensions to the EMLab-Generation agent-based model. Furthermore, two variations of a capacity market were analyzed. The first was a yearly capacity market design and the second was a forward capacity market with long term contracts. A survey of experts on the US capacity markets supplemented the modeling work with practical insights.


One of the methods to improve efficiency and torque performance of the single-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motor is to find out the optimum commutation angle at each different speed. We used the finite-element method (FEM) to simulate the back-EMF voltage and the coil current for the single-phase BLDC motor, and then adjust the conduction time of switches by detecting the waveform of coil current. The motor can improve its efficiency, noise, and vibration when it obtains the optimal shift angle of each speed. We used PSPICE to verify the exactness of FEM simulation results of the single-phase BLDC motor. We adopted Microchip's dsPIC30F4011 digital signal processor (DSP) to process the Hall signal and the driving signals of switches of the driving system prototype of the single-phase BLDC fan motor. Finally, we used the related experimental results to confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed driver.


This essay attempts to reconceptualize temporality as it relates to ethics, by interrupting dominant anthropological notions of time—most particularly the temporal coherence of narrative unity—which are homogeneous and empty. Eschewing the more commonly understood notion of anthropology as ethnographic thick description, this essay is a practice of anthropological hermeneutics by which I take a cue from my Muscovite interlocutors to disrupt dominant anthropological conceptions of temporal unity within which action is considered to take place, and in so doing, reveal temporalization as the process by which ethical action becomes possible.


Many reports claimed that thymic involution occurred in tumor bearing host, which led to a reduction of proliferation in T cells and an impaired immune system. In this study, murine sarcoma S180 tumor cells were used to establish tumor model. There was distinct apoptosis in thymus of the S180 tumor bearing host after 3-week tumor inoculation. High level reactive oxygen species generation was detected in thymocytes of S180 tumor bearers. Vitamin E, a potent antioxidant, was oral administrated to S180 tumor bearing mice in order to eliminate redundant ROS in the host and evaluate the effect against thymic apoptosis. Intact thymic structure and less apoptosis of thymocytes demonstrated that partial restoration of thymuses in S180 tumor bearing mice after 3—week VE treatment. Besides, VE treatment normalized ROS level, MDA level and SOD level of S180 tumor bearers. Thus, it could be concluded that thymic involution prevented by VE treatment in S180 tumor bearing mice was mainly due to inhibition of apoptosis in thymus and elimination of ROS over—production in the host.


The story of mass culture from 1900 to 1945 is the story of its growth and increasing centrality to American life. Sparked by the development of such new media as radios, phonographs, and cinema that required less literacy and formal education, and the commodification of leisure pursuits, mass culture extended its purview to nearly the entire nation by the end of the Second World War. In the process, it became one way in which immigrant and second-generation Americans could learn about the United States and stake a claim to participation in civic and social life. Mass culture characteristically consisted of artifacts that stressed pleasure, sensation, and glamor rather than, as previously been the case, eternal and ethereal beauty, moral propriety, and personal transcendence. It had the power to determine acceptable values and beliefs and define qualities and characteristics of social groups. The constant and graphic stimulation led many custodians of culture to worry about the kinds of stimulation that mass culture provided and about a breakdown in social morality that would surely follow. As a result, they formed regulatory agencies and watchdogs to monitor the mass culture available on the market. Other critics charged the regime of mass culture with inducing homogenization of belief and practice and contributing to passive acceptance of the status quo. The spread of mass culture did not terminate regional, class, or racial cultures; indeed, mass culture artifacts often borrowed them. Nor did marginalized groups accept stereotypical portrayals; rather, they worked to expand the possibilities of prevailing ones and to provide alternatives.


Background Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive disease. Effective treatment is not currently available and the prognosis is poor. The aim of our study was to identify clinical predictors of survival in patients with IPF. Methods By using medical record database of a university hospital, we reviewed the records of patients who had been diagnosed as having IPF from January 1996 through December 2007. Results Among 89 patients considered as having interstitial lung disease (ILD) on computed tomography (CT) of the chest, 22 were excluded because of the diagnosis of other ILDs or connective tissue disease, and finally, 67 met the criteria of IPF. The mean age at the diagnosis of IPF was 70 years (range, 41~87 years) and 43 (64%) were male. The mean survival time following the diagnosis of IPF was 40 months (range, 0~179 months). Among them, 28 cases were diagnosed as the progressive state of IPF on the follow-up CT examination, and the mean duration between diagnosis of IPF and progression was 31 months. Multivariate analysis using Cox regression model revealed that body mass index (BMI) less than 18.5 kg/m2 (p=0.030; hazard ratio [HR], 12.085; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.277~114.331) and CT progression before 36 months from the diagnosis of IPF (p=0.042; HR, 13.564; 95% CI, 1.101~167.166) were independently associated with mortality. Conclusion Since low BMI at the diagnosis of IPF and progression on follow-up CT were associated with poor prognosis, IPF patients with low BMI and/or progression before 36 months following the diagnosis should be closely monitored.


BACKGROUND The slow pace in the reduction of infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa has partially been attributed to the epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. To facilitate early interventions, antenatal and perinatal predictors of 1st year mortality were identified in a rural community in southern Malawi. METHODS A cohort of 733 live born infants was studied prospectively from approximately 24 gestation weeks onwards. Univariate analysis was used to determine relative risks for infant mortality after selected antenatal and perinatal exposures. Multivariate modelling was used to control for potential confounders. FINDINGS The infant mortality rate was 136 deaths/1000 live births. Among singleton newborns, the strongest antenatal and perinatal predictors of mortality were birth between May and July, maternal primiparity, birth before 38th gestation week, and maternal HIV infection. Theoretically, exposure to these variables accounted for 22%, 22%, 17%, and 15% of the population attributable risk for infant mortality, respectively. INTERPRETATION The HIV epidemic was an important but not the main determinant of infant mortality. Interventions targetting the offspring of primiparous women or infants born between May and July or prevention of prematurity would all have considerable impact on infant survival.


Currently, complete recovery is unattainable for most individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). Instead, recovery is typically accompanied by persistent sensory and motor deficits. Restoration of preinjury function will likely depend on improving plasticity and integration of these impaired systems. Eccentric muscle actions require precise integration of sensorimotor signals and are predominant during the yield (E2) phase of locomotion. Motor neuron activation and control during eccentric contractions is impaired across a number of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, but remains unexamined after SCI. Therefore, we characterized locomotor recovery after contusive SCI using hindlimb (HL) kinematics and electromyographic (EMG) recordings with specific consideration of eccentric phases of treadmill (TM) walking. Deficits in E2 and a caudal shift of locomotor subphases persisted throughout the 3‐week recovery period. EMG records showed notable deficits in the semitendinosus (ST) during yield. Unlike other HL muscles, recruitment of ST changed with recovery. At 7 days, the typical dual‐burst pattern of ST was lost and the second burst (ST2) was indistinct. By 21 days, the dual‐burst pattern returned, but latencies remained impaired. We show that ST2 burst duration is highly predictive of open field Basso, Beattie, Bresnahan (BBB) scores. Moreover, we found that simple changes in locomotor specificity which enhance eccentric actions result in new motor patterns after SCI. Our findings identify a caudal shift in stepping kinematics, irregularities in E2, and aberrant ST2 bursting as markers of incomplete recovery. These residual impairments may provide opportunities for targeted rehabilitation.


Genome variations in the form of single nucleotide polymorphism, INDELs (insertions or deletions) and, duplications, inversions and copy number variations are more widely prevalent than initially predicted. Mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene maps on chromosome 8p, in which exon 4-specific deletion is associated with susceptibility towards breast and various other forms of cancer. In this study, 41 head and neck cancer, 15 breast cancer patients and 280 healthy control individuals were analyzed for mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene copy number variation. The frequencies of wt/wt (homozygous wild-type), wt/Del (heterozygous variant) and Del/Del (homozygous deletion variant) mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene genotypes were found to be 73.3%, 26.7%, and 0% in breast cancer patients, 41.5%, 58.5%, and 0% in head and neck cancer patients and 43%, 57%, and 0% in healthy individuals, respectively. A significant association of the deletion variant with breast cancer (odds ratio = 0.27, 95% confidence interval = 0.08–0.87, P = 0.0207) was found in our population. In addition, the allele and genotype frequency varied significantly (P<0.0001) among Indian and German populations, reflecting ethnic diversity. This pilot case-control study highlighted the indicative role of mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene deletion in protection from breast cancer in Indian population. However, the findings need to be investigated in larger patient sample size before any conclusive role of mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene copy number variation on cancer risk.


'The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com '. Copyright John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]


Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common types of cancer seen in the world. 5-Fluorouracil (5-Fu) plus Oxaliplatin (1-OHP) remains the backbone of CRC chemotherapeutics, but with limited success. Phenoxodiol (Pxd) is an isoflavone analog with antitumor activity against various types of cancers, and sensitizes chemoresistant cancer cells to chemotherapeutics including platinum and taxanes. This study was, therefore, undertaken to examine whether Pxd pre-treatment with conventional chemotherapeutic agent(s) 5-Fu and 1-OHP co-administration be a therapeutic strategy for CRC. Cell viability and cytotoxicity were evaluated using dimethyl-thiazolyl diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) and lactate dehydrogenase assays. The percentage of apoptotic and necrotic cells were determined by fluorescence microscopy analysis. Besides, active Caspase-3 levels by ELISA and relative mRNA levels of Caspase 3 (CASP3), CASP8 and CASP9 genes were determined by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) analysis. The pre-treatment of Pxd followed by 5-Fu and 1-OHP co-administration was more effective at inhibiting cell viability than either chemotherapeutic agents treatment alone. When compared to 5-Fu with 1-OHP alone treatment, Pxd pre-treatment overwhelmingly increased apoptotic Caspase-3 activity levels in CRC cells. Moreover, qPCR analyses showed that CASP3 and CASP9 mRNA levels significantly increased after pre-treatment with Pxd followed by 5-Fu and 1-OHP treatments, compared to 5-Fu with 1-OHP alone. Our results suggested that Pxd enhanced the in vitro antitumor activity of 5-Fu and 1-OHP. Our study also suggested that Pxd may be a potential candidate agent in advanced CRC and inclusion of Pxd to the conventional chemotherapeutic agent(s) could be an effective therapeutic strategy for CRC.


Autophagy is known to play a pivotal role in intracellular quality control through the degradation of subcellular damaged organelles and components. Whereas autophagy is essential for maintaining β-cell function in pancreatic islets, it remains unclear as to how the cellular autophagy affects the homeostasis and function of glucagon-secreting α cells. To analyze the role of autophagy in α cells, we generated a mutant mouse model lacking Atg7, a key molecule for autophagosome formation, specifically in α cells. Histological analysis demonstrated an increased number of glucagon-positive cells, with a multilayered structure, in the islets under Atg7 deficiency, although metabolic profiles, such as body weight, blood glucose and plasma glucagon levels, were comparable between Atg7-deficient mice and control littermates. Consistent with our previous findings that Atg7 deficiency suppressed β-cell proliferation, cellular proliferation was suppressed in Atg7-deficient α cells. These findings suggest that α-cell autophagy plays a role in maintaining α-cell mass and normal islet architecture, but appears to be dispensable for metabolic homeostasis. Disclosure M. Himuro: None. T. Miyatsuka: None. L. Suzuki: None. M. Miura: None. T. Katahira: None. H. Goto: None. Y. Nishida: None. S. Sasaki: None. Y. Fujitani: Research Support; Self; Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. H. Watada: Research Support; Self; Astellas Pharma Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited, Kissei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Novo Nordisk A/S, Pfizer Inc., Sanofi, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd., Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Teijin Pharma Limited. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Astellas Pharma Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Novo Nordisk A/S, Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Sanofi, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Terumo Medical Corporation. Other Relationship; Self; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Kowa Pharmaceutical Europe Co. Ltd., Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Sanwa Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. Funding Japan Society for the Promotion of Science


Risks, Reputations and Rewards posits that the best way to understand the work of contingency fee practitioners is to conceptualize it as managing a specialized type of investment portfolio involving unique types of risks. The investment is largely the lawyer's time and the return is the fee that the lawyer ultimately receives. The lawyer must confront and try to manage a variety of risks, reflecting the uncertainty the lawyer has regarding the size of the investment that will be necessary and the uncertainty regarding the amount of return, if any, that will be realized from that investment. The economic theory of portfolio management provide insights into the work of contingency fee practitioners, and moves beyond the traditional economic analyses which have looked at contingency fees from the perspective of individual cases rather than as a portfolio of cases. The resulting shift in perspective shows many of the agency problems emphasized in most analyses of the contingency fee are less significant than previously thought. The book considers a wide variety of specific questions related to contingency fee practice most of which are understandable within the portfolio perspective: What are the nature of contingency fees that lawyers charge, how do lawyers get and screen potential cases, what does the work of handling contingency fee cases involve, how do contingency fee lawyers interact with their clients and opponents, what is involved in settling contingency fee cases, what types of returns do contingency fee cases produce, and what roles do reputation place in contingency fee practice? The empirical analysis in the book draws upon a range of data, both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The original data analyzed by the author includes a mail survey of contingency fee practitioners in Wisconsin, a general population survey of Wisconsin residents, a survey of accident victims in Wisconsin targeted for direct mail solicitation, three months of observation of contingency fee practitioners in three different practices, and semi structured interviews with contingency fee practitioners and representatives of the opposing parties in contingency fee litigation. In addition to these data, the analyses draw on two national data sets collected by the RAND Corporation, which provide evidence of the generalizability of the findings.


Global minimum taxation under Pillar Two establishes a link to financial statements, in particular with regard to the revenue threshold, to the calculation of the effective tax rate (ETR), and to carve-outs. This article discusses in detail these links and possible incentives, adverse effects and opportunities for improvement. It suggests that Pillar Two incentivizes multinational enterprises (MNEs) to prepare their individual and consolidated financial statements for tax purposes by using the discretionary leeway inherent in accounting standards. In particular they may use such discretion to report lower revenues to avoid falling within the scope, to report profits at the lower margin and tax expense at the higher margin to show a sufficiently high ETR and to adapt their financial accounting measurement to keep the top-up tax low by using tangible asset carve-outs based on financial statements. In consequence, the quality of financial reporting and capital allocation may be impaired. In addition, the acceptance of almost all common accounting standards under Pillar Two incentivizes generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) competition between countries. The authors conclude that connecting Pillar Two to financial statements has adverse effects from both a tax and an accounting perspective. An improvement of existing tax rules to combat tax avoidance, as started with the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, seems preferable.
Pillar Two, GloBE, Minimum Taxation, Accounting Standards, IFRS, Financial Statements


The origin of macrophages in the degenerating optic nerve of rats after eye enucleation was investigated electron microscopically following intravenous labelling of mononuclear leucoytes with colloidal carbon. In the various post-operative periods studied carbon-labelled macrophages were seen at the site of lesion. At 4 and 7 days after enucleation carbon-labelled cells were seen at the site of Wallerian degeneration of the optic nerve over 4 mm distal to the site of the lesion. In the electron microscope these cells showed a flattened nucleus bearing coarse chromatin clumps, their cytoplasm contained a prominent Golgi complex and long isolate profiles of rough endoplasmic reticulum. Clusters of carbon particles in the cytoplasms were membrane-bound. Lysosomal bodies embedded with carbon particles were also observed. In relation to the blood vessels of the optic nerve, endothelial cells and pericytes with ingested carbon were seen. Macrophages in the meninges covering the optic nerve were also labelled. The results suggest that some macrophages in the region of Wallerian degeneration in the optic nerve, as well as those at the actual site of the lesion, were transformed blood leucocytes.


A linear code, when used for error detection on a symmetric channel, is said to be proper if the corresponding undetected error probability increases monotonically in /spl epsiv/, the symbol error probability of the channel. Such codes are generally considered to perform well in error detection. A number of well-known classes of linear codes are proper, e.g., the perfect codes, MDS codes, MacDonald's codes, MMD codes, and some Near-MDS codes. The aim of this work is to show that also the duals of MMD codes are proper.


Electronic Government (e-Gov) has been seen as the competitive edge for modernizing public administrations over last few years. e-Government program has been initiated in Taiwan years ago. Taiwan government has engaged significant efforts in the operation of e-Government program. The researchers as well as the government per se also identify e-Gov Shared Service will be the critical element in the new stage of the e-Government program. The goal of this article is to present the development and evolution of e-Gov Shared Service. Internal data from 2005 and 2008 through several governmental agencies was gathered and analyzed with regard of the demand of e-Gov Shared Service. This paper clarifies further the e-Gov. reform process and discusses the development issues, in particular those centric to consolidation. Among others, GRID, core services and a case on National Archie are clarified. At last, the paper summarizes the potential needs for Grid computing technology in the e-Gov Shared Service and e-Gov development.


The high cost of pixel-level annotations makes it appealing to train saliency detection models with weak supervision. However, a single weak supervision source usually does not contain enough information to train a well-performing model. To this end, we propose a unified framework to train saliency detection models with diverse weak supervision sources. In this paper, we use category labels, captions, and unlabelled data for training, yet other supervision sources can also be plugged into this flexible framework. We design a classification network (CNet) and a caption generation network (PNet), which learn to predict object categories and generate captions, respectively, meanwhile highlight the most important regions for corresponding tasks. An attention transfer loss is designed to transmit supervision signal between networks, such that the network designed to be trained with one supervision source can benefit from another. An attention coherence loss is defined on unlabelled data to encourage the networks to detect generally salient regions instead of task-specific regions. We use CNet and PNet to generate pixel-level pseudo labels to train a saliency prediction network (SNet). During the testing phases, we only need SNet to predict saliency maps. Experiments demonstrate the performance of our method compares favourably against unsupervised and weakly supervised methods and even some supervised methods.


Introduction Lameness is an important issue wherever dairy production occurs. It is consistently placed after infertility and mastitis in the top three cow health issues for fanners both internationally and in New Zealand (NZ). Compared with northern hemisphere dairying, lower lameness levels are usually observed in pasture based systems like NZ (Chesterton, et al., 1989, Tranter and Morris, 1991). However, it has been a commonly held view in the South Island (Sn industry that there is more lameness here than in the North Island (Nn, and that the problem has been growing in recent years. There are strong opinions in the SI industry suggesting there are important local influences on lameness. This is often explained in reference to differences between the NI and SI climate, herds, and management. The current SI herd has a cluster of features linked to the recent history of dairying here. In the past 15 years there has been strong expansion of the NZ dairy industry into the SI, where cheaper land and the availability of extensive, dependable irrigation have enabled a sustained increase in the number of dairy farms and cows (Anonymous, 2006). Despite the obvious similarities of grass based dairying between the NI and SI, there are several observed differences. The average farm in the SI has a greater herd size and greater per cow and per hectare production, and this high production is particnlarly pronounced in some regions (eg. Canterbury). Over the period of expansion there has often been emphasis on increasing herd size, which can reduce options around culling of cows. Many SI farms are conversions and irrigation along with intensive, recent pasture refurbishment are common features. Pasture management is often a top tier priority, and very intensive systems, to increase utilisation and maintain high quality (high energy, low fibre) across the season are commonplace. In addition, the long daylight hours and cooler nights are thought to promote higher sugar content in the pastures. Against that background, the origins of the most common and longstanding explanations within the SI industry for high lameness particularly the role of nutrition can be better understood. In brief summary, the popular idea of the influence of nutrition, the high energy and low fibre pastures are thought to induce rumen dysfunction resulting in secondary weakness in the hooves.


This trial was conducted over a period of ten years on a sandy soil in a Sauvignon blanc/Ramsey vineyard in Lutzville (31°35'S, 18°52'E), situated in the semi-arid Olifants River Valley of the Western Cape. Twenty-three treatments were applied. Eight cover crop species that received the same amount of fertilizer were controlled chemically at the end of August or at the end of November. Two treatments were also applied in which Avena sativa L. v. Saia ('Saia' oats) and Vicia dasycarpa Ten. (grazing vetch) were controlled mechanically during bud break.  In addition to these eighteen treatments, two fertiliser application rates were applied to 'Saia' oats and grazing vetch. A mechanically cultivated control in which no cover crop was sown was included in the trial. Secale cereale L v. Henog and Ornithopus sativus L. v. Emena produced, on average, the highest amount of dry matter at the end of August (3.29 t/ha and 3.06 t/ha, respectively) after receiving on average 278 mm of water, of which 172 mm was supplied by means of a micro-sprinkler irrigation system. The average dry matter produced by Medicago truncatula Gaertn. v. Paraggio and 'Saia' oats at the end of August was not significantly lower than that of the firstmentioned two species. Under conditions of this experiment, it seemed that P and K at a concentration of 10 mg/kg and 78 mg/kg, respectively, in the top 300 mm soil layer supplied the needs of grazing vetch. Saia oats performed poorly unless 30 kg P, 30 kg K and 42 kg N were applied during establishment and the early growing phase. All the species, except M. truncatula Gaertn v. Parabinga, produced additional fibre from September to the end of November following a dry winter (rain and irrigation totaling 201 mm), while none produced additional fibre if the water supply was luxurious up to the end of August (rain and irrigation totaling 364 mm). The cover crops did not produce enough seeds to re-establish successfully over a period of five years. It will, however, be possible to reduce the seeding density of grazing vetch (40% after two seasons) and the two M. truncatula varieties (20% after five seasons) if the species were left to ripen their seeds.


The POS-DRU project "Continuous training by means of 'blended learning' for higher education teachers" implemented by University of Bucharest in partnership with University Babes-Bolyai from Cluj-Napoca, West University of Timisoara and Softwin company offers to higher education academic staff (HETs) the opportunity to develop a set of complex competencies in order to answer to the challenges addressed by contemporary society and the main beneficiaries of higher education – the students.
The general goal of the project aims at offering the opportunity and increasing the participation of HETs to continuous training programs in the following areas: quality assurance; higher education pedagogy (student-centred learning); students' professional practice, by means of an integrated training program articulated around a blended learning methodology.
Blended learning is on the rise in higher education area. Well-grounded researches clearly demonstrate how the blended learning approach embraces the traditional values of face-to-face teaching and integrates the best practices of online learning. Face to face time can be used to engage learners in advanced interactive experiences. Meanwhile, the online sequence of the course can provide learners with multimedia-rich content at any time of day, anywhere they have internet access. This allows for an increase in scheduling flexibility for learners.
In addition to flexibility and convenience for learners, studies show early evidence that a blended instructional approach can result in learning outcome gains and increased enrolment retention. Also, this approach has proven to both enhance and expand the effectiveness and efficiency of teaching and learning in higher education across disciplines.
These are just a few of the considerations taken into account by the promoters of the project when designing the program dedicated to higher education teachers. As such, the project aimed to answer to a set of clearly expressed needs by HETs that haven't been given a solution yet, while it develops flexible structures of learning which support lifelong learning and a modern, quality higher education.
From the logic of this project, there can be mentioned three major stages of development:
(1) analysis of the specific training needs of the persons belonging to the target groups;
(2) designing the training modules and courses;
(3) delivering / implementing the training activities with the beneficiaries.
Between January and April 2010 the training needs' analysis (TNA) was implemented unfolded by each of the three partner universities. It was based on a complex methodological set of tools consisting of investigation using questionnaires and focus-groups. To this investigation participated more than 700 HETs belonging to the target groups established in the project (managers, internal auditors and members of quality assurance committees, novice HETs and senior HETs, respectively coordinators of professional practice) and covered three regions of economic development (Bucharest, North-Western region and Western region).
In the present paper we will focus on the second specific goal Analysis of HETs' perception regarding the participation to training programs and regarding the desirable strategies for training and/or development and the subsequent items in order to demonstrate the role and value of blended learning for higher education training programs. The questionnaires contained two specific questions relevant to our present interest:
Q4. Which of the training methods presented below do you consider to be best suited to your objectives related to the continuous professional training?
Q5. How do you appreciate your expertise as a higher education teacher in the field of: a) e-learning; b) blended learning.
These two questions and the subsequent answers were considered relevant as they proved that blended learning is perceived as an effective way to design specific programs for the development of higher education teachers, while their expertise in the field is still scarce. These ideas were truly relevant for the proponents in order to build both the content of training as well as the manner of its delivery, while acknowledging the fact that besides the specific competencies aimed by the program at its core, there will be developed the IT competences as well as the lifelong learning competences in enhanced technological environments.
The second stage in the project development (May 2010 – October 2011) consisted in the development of the training content and the learning platform. We relied on the rich expertise of our technical partner in developing educational tools for supporting learning in technology enhanced learning environments as well as on the analysis of some other learning platform developed in Romania and dedicated to the continuous training of different professional categories. In the paper we will present some of the main features of the learning platform which promote it as a professional instrument of competence development.
Since November 2011 the training courses have started using a face to face approach, also a videoconference system which allows direct communications with trainers from the other university centres and an effective use of resources, while the platform is being used by more than 350 professional both trainers and learners. In the paper we will present some of the opinions of the participants to the training regarding the impact of this particular learning environment.


Based on a two-year monitoring, we analysed the distribution of dice snake populations in the Canton of Ticino (Switzerland). Imperfect detection was taken into account in order to avoid underestimation of the distrub- tion range and hence overestimating the species threat status: we therefore used a model based on a mark-recapture- like approach to estimate detection probability, which was 61.2% (± 6.8%; standard error), and site occupancy, which was 78.0% (± 7.9%). Detection probability depended on habitat characteristics (tree cover and naturalness of the streams and lake shores) while occupancy was best predicted by the number of previous dice snake records at a site. We observed local decline or extinction of some small populations located on secondary streams, apparently because of habitat deterioration. However, populations located on lakes (Lugano, Maggiore) and main rivers (Ticino, Brenno, Maggia, Vedeggio and Tresa) showed no signs of decline and rather high densities. Therefore, the status of Natrix tes- sellata in Ticino should be considered as stable. The endangered status reported by the Swiss Red List for these spe- cies is adequate because of the small area occupied at national level (IUCN criteria B2a, B2b (iii, iv)) and vulnerability of freshwater ecosystems. A specific action plan in favour of the conservation of dice snakes populations in Ticino, Switzerland, will now be based on the collected data.


A case of traumatic extracranial vertebral arterial dissection leading to vertebrobasilar thrombosis and respiratory compromise requiring mechanical ventilation was managed with intraarterial thrombolysis and stenting of the vertebral intimal dissection. In contrast to similar, previously reported cases, this critically ill patient made a full recovery, returning to his job as a secondary school teacher.


An overriding value of European legislation on waste management is the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principle. For example, all economic operators placing packaging onto the EU market are responsible for its proper management and recovery. However, in general, the collection and treatment of urban waste is the responsibility of local authorities. It has therefore been necessary to establish a system of financial compensations between producers and waste management operators. Analysing the legal and institutional schemes of several member states and accounting for all the costs and benefits to their local authorities due to selective collection and sorting, this book provides an accurate illustration of how the EPR principle has be translated into practice. Firstly the authors examine whether the industry is paying for the net financial cost of 'preparation for recycling' activities or if the extra-costs of recycling are being recovered via the sale of sorted materials, by the consumer through higher prices or by citizens in general through higher taxes. Secondly, by monetizing the net environmental benefits attained with the recycling system, the book discusses the success and Value-for-Money (VfM) of the EU's recycling policy. In other words: what is the economic rate of return of the enhanced environmental protection achieved due to the fulfilment of recovery and recycling targets?


This book shows that scientific explanations fall short of providing an exhaustive explanation of the dynamics of erotic perception. It furnishes portraits from Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Irigaray that help us understand the ethical, ontological, and religious dimensions of the pleasure, pain, hostility, shame, immodesty, tenderness, caring, and playfulness that compose erotic perception. The final portrait in the book portrays erotic perception as a challenge to existence. This portrait shows that the discernment of the other as sexually significant gives rise to wonder, excitement, agitation, and trouble. The totality of existence is disturbed as we are faced with a decision about venturing to care for the other's existence.


This paper presents the first complete design to apply compressive sampling theory to sensor data gathering for large-scale wireless sensor networks. The successful scheme developed in this research is expected to offer fresh frame of mind for research in both compressive sampling applications and large-scale wireless sensor networks. We consider the scenario in which a large number of sensor nodes are densely deployed and sensor readings are spatially correlated. The proposed compressive data gathering is able to reduce global scale communication cost without introducing intensive computation or complicated transmission control. The load balancing characteristic is capable of extending the lifetime of the entire sensor network as well as individual sensors. Furthermore, the proposed scheme can cope with abnormal sensor readings gracefully. We also carry out the analysis of the network capacity of the proposed compressive data gathering and validate the analysis through ns-2 simulations. More importantly, this novel compressive data gathering has been tested on real sensor data and the results show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed scheme.


Background - Lipoprotein(a) is a variant form of Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) which comprises of an LDL like particle in which apo B-100 is firmly linked to apo-a glycoprotein. A large number of genetic and epidemiologic studies have identified Lipoprotein(a) as a risk factor for atherosclerotic diseases such as coronary heart disease and stroke. Based on our knowledge, this is the first study comparing Lipoprotein(a) with lipid profile and lipid ratios in Nepal. Aim & Objective - To compare the serum Lipoprotein(a) and Lipid panel concentrations in myocardial infarction patients and normal healthy control subjects. Materials & Methods - Study was carried out in 45 myocardial infarction patients as cases and 45 healthy subjects as controls. Lipoprotein(a) and Lipid profile tests were measured in serum using HumaStar 600 fully automated analyzer, Human, Germany. Results - Mean serum Lipoprotein(a) concentration in myocardial infarction group was significantly higher as compared to healthy controls. Lipid panel assays were not statistically significant among the groups. Conclusion - Our study revealed that myocardial infarction patients have elevated levels of serum Lipoprotein(a) as compared to healthy subjects. High concentration of serum Lipoprotein(a) is strongly associated with the risk of coronary heart disease. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijasbt.v1i3.8583 Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol. 1(3) 2013 : 106-109


"All the Pretty Mexican Girls: Whiteness and Racial Desire in Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and Cities of the Plain" uses a critical analysis of race and gender to argue that John Grady Cole's relationship with Alejandra and Magdalena invokes a larger and longer history of the commodification and sexualization of women's bodies in the contact zone of the US-Mexico borderlands. The critical concerns this article addresses seek to re-situate McCarthy's influential borderlands writing within a more nuanced series of border encounters that expose how transactions between regional, national, and international material realities on the US-Mexico border make available certain identities and modes of representation. Exposing the links between McCarthy's representations and real-world material realities are crucial to this analysis because they reveal how McCarthy both accounts for and disavows the operations of power and history on the US-Mexico border. McCarthy's border novels represent an in-between space where western history and the Western genre can be self-consciously invoked and revised, but only to a certain extent. John Grady Cole may be a more compassionate and "politically correct" John Wayne, yet the violence, sexual and otherwise, perpetrated on the bodies of brown women in the Border Trilogy reminds us how much McCarthy's white masculinities rely on such abject bodies in order to fashion their own ambivalent agency in the brutal world of McCarthy's borderlands.


Accumulation of metabolic CO2 can acidify marine waters above and beyond the ongoing acidification of the ocean by anthropogenic CO2. The impact of respiration on carbonate chemistry and pH is most acute in hypoxic and anoxic basins, where metabolic CO2 accumulates to high concentrations. The bottom waters of the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (LSLE), where persistently severe hypoxia has developed over the last 80 years, is one such case. We have reconstructed the evolution of pH in the bottom waters from historical and recent data, and from first principles relating the stoichiometry of CO2 produced to oxygen consumed during microbial degradation of organic matter. Based on the value of the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 that best reproduces the preformed dissolved inorganic carbon concentration in the bottom waters, we estimate the average ventilation age of the bottom waters to be 16 ± 3 years. The pH of the bottom waters has decreased by 0.2 to 0.3 over the last 75 years, which is four to six times greater than can be attributed to the uptake of anthropogenic CO2. The pH decrease is accompanied by a decline in the saturation state with respect to both calcite and aragonite. As of 2007, bottom waters in the LSLE are slightly supersaturated with respect to calcite (Ωc ≈ 1.06 ± 0.04) but are strongly undersaturated with respect to aragonite (Ωa ≈ 0.67 ± 0.03).


PurposeResearch in the supplier development domain is primarily based on studies from the buyer perspective. This supplier development study has a qualitative approach focusing on the supplier perspective. The study aims to identify critical factors for the supplier development program from the supplier perspective.Design / methodology / approachIn order to create understanding of factors critical for the supplier development program the Critical Incident Technique is applied, since it facilities in-depth explorative studies. The study involves three suppliers to one buyer in the Swedish heavy vehicle industry. FindingsThe study concludes different critical factors influencing supplier development, such as formal structure of communication and competence level of those employed by the buyer. Further, suppliers stress their own proactivity as a critical factor.Research limitations / implicationsThis explorative and primarily empirical study provides additional insights into the areas of critical factors for supplier development by focusing on the supplier perspective.Practical implicationsSupplier development is often enforced by the buyer and in order to succeed, knowledge and understanding of the critical factors from the supplier perspective are essential. This knowledge will allow the buyer to take these critical factors into consideration, will enhance the features and properties of the suppliers and increase the value creation for the end customer.What is original/value of paperThis explorative study complements previous studies, as it focuses the supplier perspective from an empirical viewpoint


In the United States, it is estimated that nearly 60% of non-recurrent freeway congestion is caused by incidents. This non-recurrent congestion negatively impacts safety and mobility, and results in unnecessary use of fuel and the emission of dangerous pollutants. Incident management programs, such as Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) programs, are employed nationwide to mitigate the impact of incidents. FSP programs are subject to public scrutiny and potential cancellation. Thus, numerous states seek to prove that the benefits of their FSP programs outweigh their costs. In this paper, a simulation-based methodology is employed to estimate the benefits of such a FSP program, the Highway Emergency Local Patrol (H.E.L.P.) program, operating within New York State. The average reduction in incident duration due to the execution of the H.E.L.P. program was estimated through a statistical comparison of incident durations resulting from response by troopers or H.E.L.P. vehicles. Hundreds of incidents that arose along a roadway segment were replicated and benefits in terms of reduced travel delay, fuel consumption, emissions, and secondary incidents were estimated. The monetary equivalent of these savings was computed to obtain an estimate of the benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio. A set of B/C ratios are provided for a range of average incident duration savings. Sufficient detail is given to permit comparable FSP programs operating on roadways with similar geometric characteristics to that considered in the study to complete such estimates for their own programs.


Recent data show that accelerated radiotherapy (XRT) improves local-regional control (LRC) over standard-fractionation XRT. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy improves LRC and survival over XRT alone. This study assesses the feasibility, toxicity, and preliminary efficacy of concurrent 96-hour paclitaxel infusion with accelerated XRT. Eligible patients had stage IV squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, exclusive of nasopharynx cancer. Tumor had to be considered technically unresectable after evaluation by our multidisciplinary head/neck tumor board. XRT was given continuous course using an accelerated regimen with twice a day fractionation for the cone down (70–72 Gy/6 weeks). Chemotherapy consisted of 2 cycles of paclitaxel via 96-hour infusion during weeks 1 and 5 of XRT. The first 10 patients received doses of 40–120 mg/m2/cycle, and the subsequent 13 patients received 100 mg/m2/cycle. Twenty-three patients were studied. Median follow-up was 20.4 months (44.4 months for the 10 long-term survivors). Most (19/23) patients had reversible grade 3 acute mucositis. Median treatment time was 44 days, and all but 1 patient received both cycles of paclitaxel at their planned dose. The 3- and 4-year actuarial survival was 37%. Three- and 4-year LRC was 50%. Four patients (18%) developed distant metastases. Two patients (9%) developed severe esophageal strictures requiring permanent gastrostomy/tracheostomy, and 2 patients developed other late grade 3+ toxicities. Accelerated XRT plus concurrent 96-hour infusional paclitaxel as given in this study has intense but acceptable toxicity and is feasible. LRC and survival compare favorably with other aggressive regimens for this poor-prognosis population. Further study of accelerated XRT with concurrent chemotherapy is indicated.


Emerging technologies promise to expedite administrative rulemaking by analyzing public input through computerized natural language rather than clunky, old human brains. Moving far beyond software that keyword searches and deduplicates content, natural language processing (as a type of predictive coding) employs artificial intelligence that adapts and modulates depending on inputs, rendering it fluid and dynamic. With the current concerted push to streamline agencies, the question of how and when to use automation in rulemaking will likely be decided in the next year. Considering that recently, a single proposed rule garnered over 3.7 million public comments, mechanisms that can make comprehending those comments "10,000%" faster have intuitive and intoxicating appeal. Even though natural language processing software is in its infancy — its potential to impact the workings of the administrative state and with it, government policy and programs — is limitless.
But before embracing this high-tech panacea, it is incumbent on policymakers, scholars, and attorneys to consider how implementing such innovations could undermine or enhance existing legal systems. This Piece begins that inquiry by looking to the core of administrative policymaking. Part I will outline the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and specifically notice-and-comment rulemaking. Part II then proceeds to flag key ways that automation can support or hinder the legal exercise of agency action.
Such an analysis does not exist in a vacuum; legal-ethics scholars have grappled for some time with whether algorithms can approximate the work of lawyers. Often juxtaposing ethical considerations and substantive legal skills to the pragmatic needs of dealing with the explosion of e-discovery, the ethics scholarly community has engaged in a measured exploration of coding's virtues and vices that challenges the idea that predictive coding is an "unmitigated good." In practice, predictive coding has taken the legal-services market by storm. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, and the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct have hastened to respond to the changes brought by a digital age. These ongoing conversations over emerging uses of technology in different legal fields can inform some of the debates over whether computers can do the work of administrative policymakers.


Microelectrode mapping experiments indicate that the classical primary somatosensory cortex of monkeys consists of as many as four separate body representations rather than just one. Two complete body surface representations occupy cortical fields 3b and 1. In addition, area 2 contains an orderly representation of predominantly "deep" body tissues. Area 3a may constitute a fourth representation.


Abstract The effects of three bacterial pathogens on the villus architecture of small intestines and the role that bacterial virulence factors play in pathogenesis are described. Bacterial pathogens cause a spectrum of effects ranging from severe tissue damage to a lack of perceptible damage. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, which cause acute and severe diarrhea, does so by producing potent toxins, but these toxins act by altering the biological activity in epithelial cells. However, the cells are not damaged. Enteropathogenic E. coli and Salmonella, on the other hand cause various degrees of tissue damage. As part of their pathogenesis, they employ a type III protein secretion system to orchestrate internal changes in target cells. The expression of many virulence related genes is tightly regulated and appears to be turned on in response to cues found in the intestinal tract. The consequences of this level of regulation also is discussed.


Background Despite the significant number of Indonesian nurses joining the Japanese National Nursing Licensure Examination (JNNLE), only a few of those were successful. Indonesian nurses as one of active migration player to Japan's market remain a critical support in supporting human resources for health in Japan. However, the successful nurses' perspectives have yet to be understood entirely. This study aimed to explore the experiences of Indonesian nurses who successfully passed the JNNLE. Methods This study used a descriptive qualitative approach. The participants were twenty Indonesian nurses who have passed the licensure examination. This study was carried out by semi-structured interviews conducted virtually. The data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Results Five themes were discovered in this study: language ability as the key to succeeding in the exam, strategies to passing the exam, supporting resources as factors to increase the passing rate, understanding the nature of nursing exam, and internal motivation to be recognized as a professional nurse in a foreign country. Conclusion Indonesian nurses who passed the Japanese national nursing licensure examination tend to deploy planned strategies. Honing the language skills while working and living in Japan is very important, while structured support systems in the hospital, government, and social network are imperative to learning the new knowledge in the area of nursing care in Japan.


Learning English language and English literature seems to bring about considerable questions of the benefits and the importance of so doing. Why should students who learn English language require learning English literature at the same time? The ultimate matter remains the same-what is the very core of learning the subject? What are their relationships embrace? What, why, and how are we supposed to know that.


The problem of parameterizing the interactions of disparate scales in fluid flows is addressed by considering a property of two-dimensional incompressible turbulence. The property we consider is selective decay, in which a Casimir of the ideal formulation (enstrophy in 2D flows) decays in time, while the energy stays essentially constant. This paper introduces a mechanism that produces selective decay by enforcing Casimir dissipation in fluid dynamics. This mechanism turns out to be related in certain cases to the numerical method of anticipated vorticity discussed in \cite{SaBa1981,SaBa1985}. Several examples are given and a general theory of selective decay is developed that uses the Lie-Poisson structure of the ideal theory. A scale-selection operator allows the resulting modifications of the fluid motion equations to be interpreted in several examples as parameterizing the nonlinear, dynamical interactions between disparate scales. The type of modified fluid equation systems derived here may be useful in turbulent geophysical flows where it is computationally prohibitive to rely on the slower, indirect effects of a realistic viscosity, such as in large-scale, coherent, oceanic flows interacting with much smaller eddies.


The recent notion of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) emphasizes the ability to distribute the right information at the right time to maximize the combat effectiveness. Accordingly, in the modern combat system, the importance of non-physical elements, such as a communication system, is increasing. However, an NCW-support communication network system is expensive. Therefore, it is essential to develop a proper combat system evaluation method to establish an efficient NCW-support combat system. Traditionally, combat system effectiveness is measured in terms of physical elements such as men and fire power. Obviously, such method is hardly applicable to a modern combat system. To overcome this difficulty, we propose an evaluation model based on CA (Cellular Automata) simulation. A set of preliminary combat simulations show that CA simulation may be promising in evaluating non-physical element of a modern combat system.


We focus on collaborative activities that engage computer graphics designers and social scientists in systems design processes. Our conceptual symmetrical account of technology design and theory development is elaborated as a mode of mutual engagement occurring in an interdisciplinary trading zone, where neither discipline is placed at the service of the other and nor do disciplinary boundaries dissolve. To this end, we draw on analyses of mutual engagements between computer and social scientists stemming from the fields of computer-supported cooperative work, human−computer interaction, and science and technology studies (STS). We especially build on theoretical work in STS concerning information technology in health care and extend recent contributions from STS with respect to the modes of engagement and trading zones between computer and social sciences. We conceive participative digital systems design as a form of inquiry for the analysis of cooperative work settings, particularly when social science becomes part of design processes. We illustrate our conceptual approach using data from an interdisciplinary project involving computer graphics designers, sociologists, and neurosurgeons with the aim of developing patient-centered visualizations for clinical cooperation on a hospital ward.


In recent years, social networking systems have become quite popular, and have been established for a variety of purposes. However, it is still not well understood if sense of community (SOC) contributes to an individual user's continued usage of these systems. This paper presents a theoretical model combining key constructs from the SOC framework and the information systems usage/success models to evaluate social networking usage. We surveyed users from popular social networking sites to test the validity of the research model. Our results indicate that while user satisfaction is still the most salient determinant for system usage, SOC also plays a significant role in the user's online social interaction process. Besides its direct influence on usage, SOC also indirectly influences usage through user satisfaction. In addition, we show that SOC is a multidimensional construct that should be measured using several components. We also demonstrate that the quality of the information contained in the communities has a significant impact on SOC, but system quality does not seem to influence it. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.


Each year the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation sends a report to the Office of State Budget that includes the agency's mission, goals and objectives to accomplish the mission, and performance measures regarding the goals and objectives.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
In advanced achalasia patients with sigmoid esophagus, peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) might be technically challenging and its outcomes are not well known in western population. Hence, our study aims were to assess and compare the safety and efficacy of POEM in achalasia patients with and without sigmoid esophagus.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Medical records of achalasia patients who had POEM at our institution between April 2014 and December 2019 were reviewed. Patients who underwent work-up comprising timed barium esophagram (TBE) and high-resolution esophageal manometry (HREM) before POEM along with 2-month post-POEM esophageal pH study, TBE and HREM were included in the final analysis. Patients were categorized as either sigmoid or no sigmoid esophagus based on the morphology of esophagus on TBE as per Japan Esophageal Society guidelines. Treatment success was defined as reduction of post-POEM Eckardt score to ≤3.

RESULTS
A total of 168 patients (sigmoid esophagus=20; no sigmoid esophagus=148) were included. Esophageal width on TBE at 1 minute was significantly higher in sigmoid esophagus group compared with no sigmoid esophagus group (4.9 vs. 3.0 cm, P<0.001). Procedural outcomes and complications were similar in both groups. At 2-month follow-up, both groups had significant improvement in Eckardt scores, TBE, and HREM parameters. Treatment success was high and similar in both sigmoid and no sigmoid groups (94.4% vs. 93.2%, P=0.84). The rates of gastroesophageal reflux disease were also similar in both groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study findings suggest that POEM is safe and highly effective treatment for achalasia patients with sigmoid esophagus similar to those without sigmoid esophagus in western population. POEM should be considered as the treatment of choice in advanced achalasia with sigmoid esophagus.


Firms have discretion over task allocations, which may dampen employees' career prospects and, hence, their motivation. Task assignments and worker motivation interact through the extent of labor market competition—that is, the possibility of moving to another firm. More competition enhances motivation but decreases firms' incentives to assign workers to informative tasks. One consequence is that competitive firms sometimes choose strategies that lead to intermediate competition. When the employee pool is heterogeneous, firms might choose different human resource practices that attract different kinds of workers and differentiate themselves through the career opportunities that they offer within and beyond the firm.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies used by highly experienced psychotherapists to explore client goals for psychotherapy during the first three sessions in treatments as usual. Transcripts from audio recordings of the initial three sessions of a sample of nine experienced therapists were analyzed using a modified constructivist grounded theory methodology. The transcripts revealed few therapist behaviors directed toward agreeing upon explicitly defined goals. Analysis of the data made it possible to identify two categories of goal-oriented activity: (1) ensuring that what happens in therapy is meaningful for the client and relevant to the attainment of the client's goals; and (2) being aware of complexity – the client's ambivalence and resistance to change. It is argued that the client–therapist dialogs examined in this study were characterized by processes regarding hope, motivation, and engagement rather than by explicit goal agreement. Implications for the concept of goal consensus and the working alliance are discussed.


Abstract Modern taphofacies analyses have been worked out for different mixed carbonate and siliciclastic sedimentary environments using molluscan faunas. Studies of how the combined effect of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the environment of deposition results in a particular taphonomic signature on fossilizable remains must be done on Recent assemblages to understand taphonomic signatures of ancient faunas. Studies have defined modern taphofacies by erecting broad damage categories to which each sample is assigned. Others graphically characterize environments based on individual taphonomic indices (e.g., fragmentation, abrasion), rely on presence-absence data, or construct ternary taphograms for each taphonomic characteristic. This study defines taphofacies based on a statistical treatment of the entire taphonomic signature of molluscs from several carbonate reef and lagoon systems in the northeastern Caribbean. The method uses non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination to test whether the combined taphonomic signature is recognizable across closely associated shallow carbonate environments. Results show that a statistical technique combining many taphonomic factors is a reliable method for deciphering taphonomic signature. It is most important, however, to test whether taphofacies defined using modern shells can be applied to the fossil record. Taphonomic traits from mollusc shells obtained from reef cores were added to the same statistical routine and assigned environments of deposition based on their taphonomic signature. Molluscs from within the cores suggest that the shelf and patch-reef environments on the SW coast of Puerto Rico have remained fairly stable up to at least 7,000 ybp. Shells were recovered that had distinct reef and open-shelf taphonomic signatures. Shells from cores from Buck Island, U.S. Virgin Islands had signatures that suggested migration of the reef over seagrass areas of the shelf, and/or landward into the lagoon behind Buck Island reef. Thus, not only does the total taphonomic signature mirror the environment of deposition, but the taphonomic signature is likely to be preserved well enough to be useful in making paleoenvironmental interpretations of fossil material.


This study investigates the effects of Experiential Learning in teaching writing from the perspective of students' self-efficacy by means of a comparative experiment concerning on the experimental group taught by Experiential Learning and the control group by using Direct Instruction. The sixty students of a senior high school in Central Java, Indonesia were chosen randomly and participated in this research. These participants are asked to compose a text in order to examine their writing skill after having eight-meeting treatments and fulfil the self-efficacy questionnaire. The results show that Experiential Learning guides the students to achieve significantly a greater writing skill than those using Direct Instruction and the high self-efficacious students perform better writing skill than those having low self-efficacy. Additionally, it was found that there is an interaction between those methods and students self-efficacy in writing skill. Therefore, Experiential Learning is suggested as an alternative teaching method in constructing students' writing skill and self-efficacy.


Local and general reactions have been studied after subjecting a rabbit eye to dispersed helium-neon laser radiation, 8 x 10(-6) wt/cm-2, 10 min daily for 10 days. There were recorded increase of blood filling of the uveal tract of the eye, changes in the indices of systemic hemodynamics, systolic and diastolic pressure, stroke and minute volume of blood volume, activation of separate links of antioxidant system connected both with oxidation-reduction of thiol disulfide system and the functioning of antiperoxide enzymes. The activation of antioxidant system has a local character, the changes in the retina of the eye and pigmented epithelium is expressed stronger than in the peripheral blood. The results obtained speak about relationship between the stimulating effect of helium-neon laser radiation on the rabbit eye and activation of antioxidant system.


Dehydroretronecine,an antimitotic and carcinogenic agent, reactedwith deoxyguanosineat pH 7.4 in vitro to yield in nearly equal quantities two major adducts, which were isolated by thin-layer and high-pressure liquid chromatography. The adducts were stable at pH 8.7 and 30°for at least 24 hr, showed pK.s at acidic and alkaline pHs, reacted with 4-(p-nitrobenzyl)pyridine, had a nonexchangeableguan-8-yl proton, and con tained equimolarquantities of the pyrrole and nucleosidemoie ties. From the above data and comparison of proton magnetic resonance spectra of dehydroretronecine, deoxyguanosine, and the adducts, both products were identified as derivatives with a bond between C-7 of dehydrosupinidine and N2 of deoxyguanosine. Mass spectral fragmentation patterns and infrared and ultraviolet absorbance spectra were also consist ent with A/2substitution. Circular dichroism spectra established the identities of each of the adducts as 7-(deoxyguanosin-/V2yl)dehydrosupinidine; they are enantiomeric at C-7. These re sults demonstrate that the reactive electrophile derived from protonated dehydroretronecine readily alkylates the N2 posi tion of deoxyguanosine at C-7 in an S,V1reaction to yield a racemic mixture of products.


The human gene that corrects the DNA repair defect of the CHO cell mutant EM9 is designated XRCC1 and is the first human gene to be cloned that has an established role in DNA strand-break repair. In this study, either an XRCC1 cosmid genomic fragment or synthetic oligonucleotldes were ligated to an incomplete XRCC1 cDNA to generate two full-length XRCC1 cDNA constructs. The ability of these mlnlgene constructs to restore normal levels of sister chromatid exchange (SCE) to EM9 upon transfection was demonstrated, and the transfectants grew at normal rates in selective medium that is fully toxic to EM9 cells. Constructs in which the XRCC1 open reading frame (ORF) was transcribed from the SV40 early promoter or the genomic XRCC1 native promoter were compared in their efficiency of correction. EM9 transfectants derived from the SV40 promoter displayed fewer SCEs and lower sensitivity to CldUrd than either AA8 wildtype cells or transfectants containing the ORF transcribed from the native promoter.


The formation of a calcified cartilaginous callus (CACC) is crucial during bone repair. CACC can stimulate the invasion of type H vessels into the callus to couple angiogenesis and osteogenesis, induce osteoclastogenesis to resorb the calcified matrix, and promote osteoclast secretion of factors to enhance osteogenesis, ultimately achieving the replacement of cartilage with bone. In this study, a porous polycaprolactone/hydroxyapatite‐iminodiacetic acid‐deferoxamine (PCL/HA‐SF‐DFO) 3D biomimetic CACC is developed using 3D printing. The porous structure can mimic the pores formed by the matrix metalloproteinase degradation of the cartilaginous matrix, HA‐containing PCL can mimic the calcified cartilaginous matrix, and SF anchors DFO onto HA for the slow release of DFO. The in vitro results show that the scaffold significantly enhances angiogenesis, promotes osteoclastogenesis and resorption by osteoclasts, and enhances the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow stromal stem cells by promoting collagen triple helix repeat‐containing 1 expression by osteoclasts. The in vivo results show that the scaffold significantly promotes type H vessels formation and the expression of coupling factors to promote osteogenesis, ultimately enhancing the regeneration of large‐segment bone defects in rats and preventing dislodging of the internal fixation screw. In conclusion, the scaffold inspired by biological bone repair processes effectively promotes bone regeneration.


The accidents such as explosion, leakage, poisoning and fire happened constantly in dangerous goods' transportation. The consequences of the accidents are serious. This article has statistically analyzed 485 transportation accidents of dangerous goods. It shows that the main reason causing dangerous goods accidents is road traffic accidents. The key to ensure the seasonable rescue is effective visual monitor using GPS, modern communication technology, GIS to dangerous goods transport vehicles. So we construct the transportation monitoring system. When the accident inevitably occurs, we propose the rescue mission and response program. Only effective monitoring and timely rescue, can we reduce the rate of accidents and ensure our safety.


The neural network model is employed to predict the vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) data for six different binary systems having different chemical structures and solution types (azeotrope-nonazeotrope) in various conditions (isothermal or isobaric). A model based on a feed-forward back-propagation neural network is proposed. Only half of the experimentally determined VLE data are assigned to the designed framework as training patterns in order to estimate the VLE data of the whole system in given conditions. The VLE data are also calculated by the UNIFAC model, a calculation method widely used in this field. The mean deviations from the experimental data are determined for both the models. It is observed that the data found by neural network model gives an excellent agreement with the experimental data, while the UNIFAC model shows deviations, particularly at low pressures. In fact the neural network model can be treated as a potent means for VLE data prediction in a fast and reliable way, compared to the conventional thermodynamical models.


Upon nanoparticles's (NPs) encounter with biological fluids, proteins shall be inevitably adsorbed on their surface to form a protein corona. Although its importance is widely accepted, information on the influence of the surface chirality of NPs on the protein corona and thereby cellular uptake is still missing. Herein, poly(acryloyl-L(D)-valine (L(D)-PAV) and poly(acryloyl-L(D)-valine)-b-poly(2-hydroxyethyl methylacrylate) (L(D)-PAV-b-PHEMA) chiral molecules were conjugated on a gold NP (AuNP) surface. Their interaction with serum proteins and A549 and HepG2 cancer cells in a medium containing concentrated serum was studied. The proteins in the serum-rich medium largely adsorbed onto PAV–AuNP NPs regardless of their optical activity, and shielded the chiral-selectivity in terms of cellular uptake. The introduction of a hydrophilic PHEMA block underneath the PAV block could significantly reduce the adsorption of serum proteins, and maintain the chiral-selective cellular uptake of PAV-b-PHEMA–AuNPs, indicating efficient performance by combining non-specific repelling and chiral-targeting effects.


VoIP systems have to face far tougher security threats than their underlying IP infrastructure. In fact, a security hole in a VoIP infrastructure could bring to a major security failure for the interconnected PSTN network(s), usually regarded as a reliable and secure domain. This is the reason why before connecting a private VoIP network to the carrier infrastructure, a great number of tests have to be carried out, to verify the security robustness of the VoIP network to common attacks. The paper presents the design and implementation of a reconfigurable test bed for real time measurements on VoIP systems, which provides the Telecommunication Engineer with means to plan the necessary changes in the network/VoIP platform, eventually reaching a higher level of security. At the same time, the test bed permits to take into account the right balance between security instruments and the required QoS/QoE for real time operations.


A comparative survey is presented of the responsiveness of crustacean mechanoreceptors to the neurohormones proctolin, octopamine and serotonin. Seven identifiable primary afferents were examined in the crayfish Cherax destructor and the lobster Homarus americanus : three from the oval organ (OO) of the second maxilla, two from the non-spiking stretch receptor (NSSR) of the swimmeret and two from the muscle receptor organ (MRO) of the abdomen. Proctolin modulation was observed in 10 of the 14 fibres tested and was invariably potentiating, resulting in enhanced receptor potential amplitudes and increased firing. Octopamine and serotonin each modulated 8 of the 14 fibres and their effects were excitatory or depressive depending upon the target fibre. In the latter case the receptor potentials became attenuated, often to subthreshold levels, with loss of spiking. A comparison of results from Cherax with those of Homarus shows that there is species specificity in the responses of homologous neurones. Neurohormones that are excitatory in one species may be ineffective or depressive in the other. The broad distribution of modulatory effects observed here suggests that sensitivity to biogenic amines and peptides is a general property of proprioceptors.


OBJECTIVES
Exposure-response relationships in the formation of specific antibodies to hexahydrophthalic anhydride (HHPA) was studied in exposed workers.

METHODS
The relation between exposure to HHPA and the levels of specific immunoglobin E [(radioallergosorbent test (RAST)] and immunoglobin G (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) antibodies was investigated in a cross-sectional study on 95 workers from two plants using epoxy resin with HHPA as a hardener; the mean time of exposure was 7 (range 0.1-25) years.

RESULTS
The specific immunoglobin E and immunoglobin G was significantly increased in exposed workers when they were compared with unexposed workers or external referents. There was no significant difference in the number of RAST positives [N = 23 (24%)] between the groups of workers exposed to < 10 micrograms.m-3, 10--< 50 micrograms.m-3, or > or = 50 micrograms.m-3. No effects were found of atopy or smoking habits on the prevalence of RAST positives. Five out of seven workers positive for immunoglobulin E in the group with the lowest exposures reported frequent short-time (minutes per day) exposures exceeding 50 micrograms.m-3. A correlation was seen between specific immunoglobulin E and G antibodies (rs = 0.5).

CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate that HHPA is a sensitizing compound even at low exposure levels and that short-time peak exposures may have an impact on immunoglobulin E sensitization.


Recently, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and Texas Heart Institute (SLEH/THI) in Houston evaluated its capital equipment strategy and chose to retrofit nine of its eleven cardiac catheterization laboratories with a digital upgrade for less than two-thirds the cost of a single laboratory replacement. In order to take advantage of budgeted funds, the selection and purchase had to be finished in a seven-month period. A multidisciplinary team was formed to do the technology assessment that led to the choice to upgrade rather than replace. A team consensus was reached on which vendors to trial. Written surveys filled in by physician and technician users who trialed the equipment were tallied to make the final equipment choice. Materiel management played a crucial role in cutting the necessary red tape to meet the purchase deadline.


To determine whether human recombinant superoxide dismutase (h-SOD) produces sustained reduction of infarct size, anesthetized dogs underwent a 2-h coronary occlusion followed by either 48 or 4 h of reperfusion. In the 48-h study, dogs were randomized to three intravenous treatments: 1) "low-dose" h-SOD (2 mg/kg bolus 2 min before reperfusion followed by 4 mg/kg over 45 min), 2) "high-dose" h-SOD (8 mg/kg bolus 2 min before reperfusion followed by 8 mg/kg over 45 min), or 3) equivalent volumes of saline. In the 4-h study, dogs were randomized to high-dose h-SOD or saline. Occluded bed size was measured by postmortem perfusion and infarct size by triphenyl tetrazolium chloride staining and planimetry. Investigators performing the study and measuring infarct size were blinded to the treatment given. High plasma concentrations of h-SOD were present in the arterial blood of treated dogs in the early phase of reperfusion (greater than 60 and greater than 180 micrograms/ml in low- and high-dose groups, respectively). In both studies, control and treated groups were similar with respect to occluded bed size, collateral blood flow, and rate-pressure product during ischemia. In the 48-h study, infarct size, expressed as percent of occluded bed size, was 41.3 +/- 7.6% (mean +/- SE) in the control group, 37.1 +/- 7.2% in the low-dose h-SOD group, and 48.0 +/- 7.1% in the high-dose h-SOD group. In the 4-h study, infarct size was 30.6 +/- 4.9% in the control group and 31.5 +/- 9.6% in the high-dose h-SOD group. Analysis of the flow-infarct relationships confirmed that h-SOD did not reduce infarct size at any level of collateral flow in either the 48- or 4-h study. Recovery of regional myocardial function after reperfusion was also unaffected by h-SOD in both studies. Thus in this randomized blinded study, large doses of h-SOD given at the time of reperfusion failed to limit infarct size or enhance recovery of function, both early (4 h) and late (48 h) after reperfusion following a 2-h coronary occlusion.


For pt. II see ibid., vol.SC14, no.2, p.247 (1979). Logic circuits were designed and fabricated in a 1 /spl mu/m silicon-gate MOSFET technology. First, conventional random logic chip images using the largely one-dimensional `Weinberger' layout are examined. The image is able to provide chips with an average circuit delay of 3 ns at the 8000 circuit level of integration. Second, two forms of PLA and PLA-based macros are discussed. A dynamic PLA, used in a microprocessor cross section and including 105 product terms, which achieves a 56 ns cycle time is described. A static PLA, designed for 21-ns delay and achieving measured delays from 13 to 21 ns, is also described. Extensions, particularly into low-temperature operation, are discussed.


We describe a class of systems theory based neural networks called "Network Of Recurrent neural networks" (NOR), which introduces a new structure level to RNN related models. In NOR, RNNs are viewed as the high-level neurons and are used to build the high-level layers. More specifically, we propose several methodologies to design different NOR topologies according to the theory of system evolution. Then we carry experiments on three different tasks to evaluate our implementations. Experimental results show our models outperform simple RNN remarkably under the same number of parameters, and sometimes achieve even better results than GRU and LSTM.


When Dianne Harris, first vice-president of the Society of Architectural Historians, invited me to deliver this plenary talk, she asked me not only to highlight the challenges that face historians of the built environment, but also to outline some of the innovative interdisciplinary methodologies that have been developed in recent years.1 My presentation this evening will thus focus on two questions: first, how do we——as historians, preservationists, critics, and scholars——gain access to evidence that can help us document and understand the poetics and the politics of architecture and spatial experience; and second, what methods of interpretation might we use, and what questions might we ask, as we try to make sense of the history and meaning of buildings, cities, landscapes, and built environments?

Before I begin, I would like to take note of the contributions of the many friends and colleagues I've worked with over the course of the many years that I've been a member of the SAH——and I want to say, at the outset, that the best part of working in this field is, for me, having the opportunity to collaborate, to talk, to visit buildings, and to share ideas and experiences with a group of like-minded women and men. Thinking back on the sessions I've heard at these annual meetings, and the ones I've participated in——sessions that focused on topics ranging from women architects, to gender, to what Eve Blau and I called "The Politics of the Plan," to "Gay Space," and, a few years back, to one on "Luxury"——I'm struck by the ways in which our thinking about architecture, and my own approach in particular, has evolved. When I first started out in this field as a graduate student, our battle cry clamored for more attention to the contributions of women, for more interdisciplinarity and …


Plug-and-play priors (PnP) is a methodology for regularized image reconstruction that specifies the prior through an image denoiser. While PnP algorithms are well understood for denoisers performing maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation, they have not been analyzed for the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) denoisers. This letter addresses this gap by establishing the first theoretical convergence result for the iterative shrinkage/thresholding algorithm (ISTA) variant of PnP for MMSE denoisers. We show that the iterates produced by PnP-ISTA with an MMSE denoiser converge to a stationary point of some global cost function. We validate our analysis on sparse signal recovery in compressive sensing by comparing two types of denoisers, namely the exact MMSE denoiser and the approximate MMSE denoiser obtained by training a deep neural net.


Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is a therapeutic procedure in which leukapheresed peripheral blood mononuclear cells are exposed to ultraviolet A in the presence of the photosensitizer 8‐methoxypsoralen and then reinfused. Several guidelines recommend ECP as a treatment of choice in erythrodermic primary cutaneous T‐cell lymphomas (E‐CTCL). However, the level of evidence is low due to the rarity of this disease and the lack of randomized controlled trials. We performed a review of the English literature, restricting our analysis to studies including erythrodermic patients and more than 10 cases. Based on these criteria, we identified 28 studies, with a total of 407 patients. The median response rate in erythrodermic patients was 63% (range 31–86%), with a complete response rate ranging between 0 and 62% (median 20%). In our experience, we treated 51 patients with E‐CTCL since 1992. A clinical response was obtained in 32 of 51 patients (63%), with a 16% complete response rate. The median time for response induction was eight months (range: 1–23). The median response duration was 22.4 months (range six months to 11 years). The treatment was generally well tolerated without systemic toxicities grade III–IV. The pretreatment parameters significantly associated with a higher likelihood to obtain a clinical response were the B‐score in the peripheral blood, CD4/CD8 ratio, and amount of circulating CD3+CD8+ cells. Literature data together with our personal experience clearly support the clinical activity and tolerability of ECP in patients with E‐CTCL. Prospective controlled clinical trials are strongly recommended to better document the evidence.


This Cambridge History of Medicine monograph illustrates the modern British social historian's approach to medicine. Based on a Ph.D. thesis, it examines the provisions for medical care in two West Yorkshire towns in the late eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. Both the institutional and the extramural facilities are explored in some detail and are set in the context of the communities in which they developed. Not the least interesting of the many findings is the importance of lay groups, self-help activities and fringe medical practices. A glance at the extensive bibliography demonstrates the pre-eminence of local sources of information and goes some way to support the author's contention that intensive local studies constitute a potentially rewarding but still neglected model of inquiry in this field.


Few analytical epidemiological studies have investigated family history (FH) of urinary tract cancers as a potential risk factor for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A population-based case-control study involving 550 non-Asian RCC patients 25 to 74 years of age and an equal number of sex-, age-, and race-matched neighborhood controls was conducted in Los Angeles, California. Detailed information on FH of cancer, medical and medication histories, and other life-style factors was obtained through in-person interviews. Having a first-degree relative with kidney cancer was associated with a significantly increased risk of RCC [odds ratio (OR), 2.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.04-5.9] after adjustment for potential confounding factors. Having a first and/or second-degree relative with kidney cancer was similarly associated with an increased risk of RCC (OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.4-6.3). Risk factors for RCC identified in the Los Angeles study include cigarette smoking, chronic obesity, history of hypertension, regular use of analgesics and amphetamines, intake of cruciferous vegetables (protective), and history of hysterectomy. None of the above risk factor-RCC associations differed significantly between RCC cases with and without a FH of kidney cancer. A FH of urinary tract cancers other than kidney cancer was not associated with RCC risk (OR, 0.7; 95% CI, 0.3-1.7). A FH of nonurinary tract cancers also was unrelated to RCC risk (OR, 1.1; 95% CI, 0.9-1.5).


Drawing on a variety of sources, this paper highlights the reality of diverse choices immigrants make as they come to terms with crises. Two theoretical domains are used to explain the disparate responses instead of simply identifying the options adopted by the immigrants and describing them. The first is 'modernity' understood here in its expanded sense, i.e.: it is not just an idea unique to the West but that it is 'variegated' or 'multiple'. The second is 'conversion', involving the idea of it being a dynamic process, especially for those dealing with crises. The immigrant responses converge around these ideas thus revealing how some of them find answers within Islam (through re-visioning) and others who find them outside Islam (through conversion). This illustrates how 'Muslim modernity' expresses itself in the heart of the West but also highlights the agency of some who seek change through a radical affiliation with Christianity and secular humanism. The underlying argument is that Muslim responses are far more diverse and varied than existing literature shows.


Primary atomization is the key element in spray flow simulations. We have, in our previous work, used and validated the integral form of the conservation equations, leading to the "quadratic formula" for determination of the drop size during spray atomization in various geometry. A computational protocol has been developed where this formulation is adapted to existing computational frameworks for continuous and dispersed (droplet) liquid phase, for simulations of pressure-atomized sprays with and without swirl. In principle, this protocol can be applied to any spray geometry, with appropriate modifications in the atomization criterion. The preatomization continuous liquid motion (e.g., liquid column or sheet) is computed using volume-of-fluid (VOF) or similar methods, then the velocity data from this computation is input to the quadratic formula for determination of the local drop size. This initial drop size, along with the local liquid velocities from VOF, is then used in a Lagrangian tracking algorithm for the postatomization dispersed droplet calculations. This protocol can be implemented on coarse-grid, time-averaged simulations of spray flows, and produces convincing results when compared with experimental data for pressure-atomized sprays with and without swirl. This approach is general, and can be adapted in any spray geometries for complete and efficient computations of spray flows.


The objective of this review is to present evidence that supports the central role of epigenetic regulation in the pathogenesis of SSc. SSc is a complex autoimmune disease characterized by immune activation, fibrosis of the skin and internal organs and obliterative vasculopathy affecting predominantly the micro-vessels. Remarkable progress has been made in the past few years emphasizing the importance of epigenetic modifications in the pathogenesis of many disorders, including SSc. Current evidence demon-strates alterations in DNA methylation, histone code modifications and changes in microRNA (miRNA) expression levels in SSc cells. Recent reports have described the differential expression of numerous regulatory miRNAs in SSc, mainly in SSc fibroblasts, a number of which are important in TGF- b pathways and downstream signalling cascades. While studies to date have revealed the significant role of epigenetic modifications in the pathogenesis of SSc, the causal nature of epigenetic alterations in SSc pathogenesis remains elusive. Additional longitudinal and comprehensive epigenetic studies designed to evaluate the effect of environmental epigenetic factors on disease pathogenesis are needed. of bone morphogenic protein receptor II ( BMPRII ) and NOS3 , and consequently underexpression of these genes in MVECs, leads to a cascade of events characterized by EC apoptosis, vasocon-striction, recruitment of inflammatory cells, oxidation injury and ultimately activation of fibroblasts. MVEC: microvascular endothelial cells.


In this paper, the generalized thermoelastic waves in a rotating ring shaped circular plate immersed in fluid are studied based on the Lord-Shulman (LS) and Green-Lindsay (GL) generalized two dimensional theory of thermoelasticity. Two displacement potential functions are introduced to uncouple the equations of motion. The frequency equations that include the interaction between the plate and fluid are obtained by the traction free boundary conditions using the Bessel function solutions. The numerical calculations are carried out for the material Zinc and the computed non-dimensional frequency, phase velocity, attenuation coefficient and relative frequency shift are plotted as the dispersion curves for the plate with thermally insulated and isothermal boundaries. The wave characteristics are found to be more dispersive and realistic in the presence of thermal relaxation time, fluid and the rotation parameter.


Local anesthetics are frequently used in fine-needle aspiration of thyroid lesions and locoregional control of persistent or recurrent thyroid cancer. Recent evidence suggests that local anesthetics have a broad spectrum of effects including inhibition of cell proliferation and induction of apoptosis in neuronal and other types of cells. In this study, we demonstrated that treatment with lidocaine and bupivacaine resulted in decreased cell viability and colony formation of both 8505C and K1 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Lidocaine and bupivacaine induced apoptosis, and necrosis in high concentrations, as determined by flow cytometry. Lidocaine and bupivacaine caused disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential and release of cytochrome c, accompanied by activation of caspase 3 and 7, PARP cleavage, and induction of a higher ratio of Bax/Bcl-2. Based on microarray and pathway analysis, apoptosis is the prominent transcriptional change common to lidocaine and bupivacaine treatment. Furthermore, lidocaine and bupivacaine attenuated extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) activity and induced activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and c-jun N-terminal kinase. Pharmacological inhibitors of MAPK/ERK kinase and p38 MAPK suppressed caspase 3 activation and PARP cleavage. Taken together, our results for the first time demonstrate the cytotoxic effects of local anesthetics on thyroid cancer cells and implicate the MAPK pathways as an important mechanism. Our findings have potential clinical relevance in that the use of local anesthetics may confer previously unrecognized benefits in the management of patients with thyroid cancer.