On assignment by its owners, Fortum and TVO, Posiva will take care of the disposal of spent fuel from the nuclear power plants at Loviisa and Olkiluoto. The site (Olkiluoto) for the repository has been chosen on the basis of site investigation programme, which currently is focused on the construction of an underground rock characterisation and research facility (the ONKALO). The hydrogeological conditions at the site may constitute a significant factor with regard to the performance of the disposal facility. Of particular importance are the changes within the glacial cycles, during which major climatic changes are expected to occur. The glacial cycles consists of several periods ranging from temperate to glacial climate conditions, which affect the groundwater flow not only in the soil but also deep in the bedrock. This study comprises of the numerical modelling of the hydrogeological evolution at Olkiluoto over the next glacial cycle. Because of the high uncertainties relating to the prediction of the long-term climate changes (e.g., the future evolution of the atmospheric CO2 concentration is highly uncertain) and the associated climate-driven boundary conditions, the modelling was not striving for a detailed continuous simulation of the whole glacial cycle, but it was focused on assessing the impact of a range of the expected most relevant climatic conditions (temperate, permafrost, ice sheet retreat). The hydrogeological evolution for the three time windows were modelled using climate-related boundary conditions on the top surface, which for the temperate and permafrost time windows were derived from the separately conducted surface hydrological model, while the glacial simulations were based on an ice sheet model. Both the hydrogeological and the surface hydrological models used permafrost data from a separate permafrost evolution model. The Olkiluoto surface hydrological model was used to compute water fluxes in the overburden soils and in the shallow bedrock to provide proper treatment of the hydraulic connection in the geosphere-biosphere interface zone. In this study the main aim of the Olkiluoto surface hydrological model was to compute the hydraulic head boundary condition at level z = 0 m for deep groundwater flow model both in temperate and in permafrost conditions. All the spatial input data needed for the hydrological modeling were provided by the GIS-based UNTAMO toolbox. The future hydrological evolution of the Olkiluoto site from the present day condition to the year 52,000 AD is primarily driven by postglacial crustal uplift and the uncertainty in the crustal uplift model influences the accuracy of the results. Other uncertainties are related to overburden and bedrock hydraulic properties, the network of small streams, depth of small streams, and the climate scenarios used in the computations. During the operational period the open tunnels draw groundwater from all directions in the bedrock (e.g. fresh water from the surface and saline water below the tunnel system). After closure of the repository the hydrological disturbances cease and the flow conditions start to recover gradually back towards the natural state. The recovery lasts hundreds to thousands of years. During the next 50,000 years the continuous fresh water infiltration dilutes groundwater, resulting in a slowly decreasing trend of the average and minimum salinity in the repository rock volume. During the permafrost period the surface hydraulic conductivity decreases several orders of magnitude, resulting in a decrease in the hydraulic gradients and the fresh water infiltration at all depths. The flow rates in the repository rock volume follow the permafrost evolution and reduce significantly compared to the temperate period. Appearance of permafrost interrupts the groundwater dilution started during the temperate period and results in a slow, weakly increasing trend of the salinity values in the repository rock volume. However, essentially the salinity levels during the permafrost period will remain at the same level than those prevailing before the onset of the permafrost. During the ice sheet retreat period the flow conditions evolve with time as the icemargin moves across the site. The presence of the ice sheet and the location of the icemargin affect significantly the flow directions and flow rates in the repository rock volume. The flow rates were approximately three to five-fold compared to the corresponding values at the end of the temperate period and they remain high until the ice-margin approaches and passes the repository area. With a constant retreating rate the ice-margin stays over the site such a short time, that there is no major change in the salinity distribution at the repository rock volume. However, if the ice-margin stays immobile at the site the salinity in the repository rock volume starts to rise slowly after the margin stops. Upconing is strongest when the ice-margin is located above the repository area and the weakest when it has passed the area. The average salinity is at most approximately 15–20 % higher than in the initial state by the end of simulation period of 1000 years.


Tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have been the most actively employed targets in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of human carcinoma, such as PSA in the diagnosis of prostate cancer and NY-ESO-1 in the immunotherapy of melanoma and other cancers. However, identification of TAAs has often been hampered by the complicated and laborsome laboratory procedures. In order to accelerate the process of tumor antigen discovery, and thereby improve diagnosis and treatment of human carcinoma, we have made an effort to establish a publicly available Human Potential Tumor Associated Antigen database (HPtaa) with potential TAAs identified by in silico computing (). Tumor specificity was chosen as the core of tumor antigen evaluation, together with other relevant clues. Various platforms of gene expression, including microarray, expressed sequence tag and SAGE data, were processed and integrated by several penalty algorithms. A total of 3518 potential TAAs have been included in the database, which is freely available to academic users. As far as we know, this database is the first one addressing human potential TAAs, and the first one integrating various kinds of expression platforms for one purpose.


The twin prime conjecture - that there exist infinitely many pairs of "twin primes" p, p + 2 - is among the most famous problems in number theory. In 2005, Goldston, Pintz and Yildirim (GPY) made a major and unexpected breakthrough in this direction using a simple variant of the Selberg sieve. Namely, they proved that the gap between consecutive primes is infinitely often arbitrarily smaller than average.In this master's thesis we discuss some of the key concepts and ideas behind the GPY method and results on primes in tuples and prime gaps in general. In particular, we discuss the notion of the level of distribution of the primes, and in connection with this the celebrated Bombieri-Vinogradov theorem, which gives a result of the strength of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis in an average sense. As an application of the GPY method, we present a new result related to conjecture of Erdos-Mirsky concerning the divisor function at consecutive integers. This result is an improvement of Hildebrand's previous work..


Modern urbanization is demanding smarter technologies to improve a variety of applications in intelligent transportation systems to relieve the increasing amount of vehicular traffic congestion and incidents. Existing incident detection techniques are limited to the use of sensors in the transportation network and hang on human-inputs. Despite of its data abundance, social media is not well-exploited in such context. In this paper, we develop an automated traffic alert system based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) that filters this flood of information and extract important traffic-related bullets. To this end, we employ the fine-tuning Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) language embedding model to filter the related traffic information from social media. Then, we apply a question-answering model to extract necessary information characterizing the report event such as its exact location, occurrence time, and nature of the events. We demonstrate the adopted NLP approaches outperform other existing approach and, after effectively training them, we focus on real-world situation and show how the developed approach can, in real-time, extract traffic-related information and automatically convert them into alerts for navigation assistance applications such as navigation apps.


Background Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder in children and adults. Neuroanatomic heterogeneity limits our understanding of the etiology of ADHD. This study aimed to parse neuroanatomic heterogeneity of ADHD, and to determine whether subgroups could be discerned in patients based on subcortical volumes. Methods Using the dataset from the ENIGMA-ADHD Working Group, we applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to subcortical volumes of 993 boys with and without ADHD, and to subsamples of 653 adult men, 400 girls, and 447 women. Factor scores derived from the EFA were used to build networks. A community detection (CD) algorithm clustered participants into subgroups based on the networks. Results Three factors (basal ganglia, limbic system, and thalamus) were found in boys and men with and without ADHD. The factor structures for girls and women differed from those in males. Given sample size considerations, we concentrated subsequent analyses on males. Male participants could be separated into four communities, though Community 3 was absent in healthy men. Significantly case-control differences of subcortical volumes were observed within communities in boys with increased effect sizes, but not in men. While we found no significant differences in ADHD symptom severity between communities in boys or men; affected men in Community 1 and 4 presented comorbidities more frequently than those in other communities. Conclusion Our results indicate that neuroanatomic heterogeneity in subcortical volumes exists, irrespective of ADHD diagnosis. Effect sizes of case-control differences appear more pronounced at least in some of the subgroups.


Abstract Objective: Proteolytic enzymes are one of the well-known components of animal venom. The aim of this study was to identify protease from the venom gland of Scolopendra subspinipes dehaani. Methods: After total RNA extraction, a cDNA encoding a serine protease was identified by RT-PCR and was subsequently sequenced. The sequence was analysed by multiple alignment and homology modelling. Results: A cDNA encoding the precursor of a centipede venom serine protease was identified. The full-length cDNA was 1,014 nucleotides with 780 nucleotides of open reading frame. The precursor nucleotide sequence encoded a signal peptide of 19 residues and a mature protein of 260 residues. It belonged to clan PA of serine proteases in the MEROPS database classification. Catalytic residues were identified by multiple alignments, including an unusual hydrogen bond network in the catalytic site. Secondary structure prediction and homology modelling revealed a chymotrypsin-like fold, which is characteristic of PA clan proteases. Conclusion: The sequence of the identified serine protease showed unusual features, making this centipede venom serine protease an interesting candidate to investigate. A better understanding of the molecular mechanism of venom components will be useful for further applications and help to improve envenomation treatment.


Timelines are essential for visually communicating chronological narratives and reflecting on the personal and cultural significance of historical events. Existing visualization tools tend to support conventional linear representations, but fail to capture personal idiosyncratic conceptualizations of time. In response, we built TimeSplines, a visualization authoring tool that allows people to sketch multiple free-form temporal axes and populate them with heterogeneous, time-oriented data via incremental and lazy data binding. Authors can bend, compress, and expand temporal axes to emphasize or de-emphasize intervals based on their personal importance; they can also annotate the axes with text and figurative elements to convey contextual information. The results of two user studies show how people appropriate the concepts in TimeSplines to express their own conceptualization of time, while our curated gallery of images demonstrates the expressive potential of our approach.


Malaysia are enrich with lots of folktales story. With more than 366 recorded literatures that teach good morale. Unfortunately, these precious treasures are fading form the memory of Malaysian society. With the rapid modernization take place, Malaysian is more exposed to the western folktales. Previously, this folktales story are told verbally form one to another, but younger generation nowadays prefer screen based material. This study will research on the use of mobile games as a medium to promote local folktales. It is important to seek a better understanding on how mobile game can be used to educate parallel with the development of technology. The objective of this research is to identify the most suitable content in design and gameplay that can be developed into a mobile games story telling application and to measure the effectiveness of the mobile games regarding this issue. Mix method has been practice in this research which is qualitative and quantitative. A survey and interviews has been conducted in order to gather data. Researcher found that the use of mobile games can be used as a medium in promoting local folktales. The researcher also found that different game genre contributes to different feedbacks.


How to compensate people who provide relevant information to a decision-maker who faces uncertainty? This paper suggests some compensation rules. These are studied both in a cooperative and a noncooperative environment. JEL codes: C71, C72, D89.


Musical genius, polemicist, explosive personality--that was the nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner, who paid as much attention to his reputation as to his genius. Often maddening, and sometimes called mad, Wagner wrote with the same intensity that characterized his music. The letters and essays collected in Judaism in Music and Other Essays were published during the 1850s and 1860s, the period when he was chiefly occupied with the creation of The Ring of the Nibelung. Highlighting this collection is the notorious 1850 article "Judaism in Music," which caused such a firestorm that nearly twenty years later Wagner published an unapologetic appendix. Other prose pieces include "On the Performing of Tannhauser," written while he was in political exile; "On Musical Criticism," an appeal for a more vital approach to art undivorced from life; and "Music of the Future." This volume concludes with letters to friends about the intent and performance of his great operas; estimations of Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, Berlioz, and others; and suggestions for the reform of opera houses in Vienna, Paris, and Zurich. The Bison Book edition includes the full text of volume 3 of William Ashton Ellis's 1894 translation commissioned by the London Wagner Society.


ProFIT is an extension of Standard Prolog with Features, Inheritance and Templates. ProFIT allows the programmer or grammar developer to declare an inheritance hierarchy, features and templates. Sorted feature terms can be used in ProFIT programs together with Prolog terms to provide a clearer description language for linguistic structures. ProFIT compiles all sorted feature terms into a Prolog term representation, so that the built-in Prolog term unification can be used for the unification of sorted feature structures, and no special unification algorithm is needed. ProFIT programs are compiled into Prolog programs, so that no meta-interpreter is needed for their execution. ProFIT thus provides a direct step from grammars developed with sorted feature terms to Prolog programs usable for practical NLP systems.


Functional verification of modern digital designs is a crucial, time-consuming task impacting not only the correctness of the final product, but also its time to market. At the heart of most of today's verification efforts is logic simulation, used heavily to verify the functional correctness of a design for a broad range of abstraction levels. In mainstream industry verification methodologies, typical setups coordinate the validation effort of a complex digital system by distributing logic simulation tasks among vast server farms for months at a time. Yet, the performance of logic simulation is not sufficient to satisfy the demand, leading to incomplete validation processes, escaped functional bugs, and continuous pressure on the EDA industry to develop faster simulation solutions.
 In this work we propose GCS, a solution to boost the performance of logic simulation, gate-level simulation in particular, by more than a factor of 10 using recent hardware advances in Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) technology. Noting the vast available parallelism in the hardware of modern GPUs and the inherently parallel structures of gate-level netlists, we propose novel algorithms for the efficient mapping of complex designs to parallel hardware.
 Our novel simulation architecture maximizes the utilization of concurrent hardware resources while minimizing expensive communication overhead. The experimental results show that our GPU-based simulator is capable of handling the validation of industrial-size designs while delivering more than an order-of-magnitude performance improvements on average, over the fastest multithreaded simulators commercially available.


This dissertation focuses on structural and functional studies related to the interaction between proteins and nucleic acids and their applications. The work reported here includes two projects. The first part of the thesis is on the mutational and combinatorial analysis of HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein (NCp7). Sixteen mutants of NCp7 were constructed and over-expressed in E. coli. The dissociation constants (Kd) between the mutant proteins and the major packaging signal in HIV-1, SL3 RNA, were measured using tryptophan fluorescence titration assay and/or isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) assay. Most mutants show tolerance of the mutation but some mutants, including F16A, I24A and K14E-E21K, suffered moderate to significant loss of affinity for SL3 RNA, indicating the roles of the affected residues in the interaction between NCp7 and SL3. The second part focuses on the development of methods for aptamer discovery. Two prototype platforms were set up to imitate the two main-stream next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, bridge amplification based and emulsion PCR based NGS technologies. Proof-of-principle experiments were carried out and optimized to evaluate the practicality of these platforms in high-throughput and multiplexed aptamer discovery. Mutational Analysis of HIV-1 Nucleocapsid Protein and Methods Development for Aptamer Discovery By Wei Ouyang M.S. Nanjing University 2001 B.S. Nanjing University 1998


BACKGROUND
Hypertension is the most common condition of increased left ventricular afterload that affects the cardiovascular system.

OBJECTIVE
To review the effects of increased blood pressure on cardiac function.

SUMMARY
In early or borderline hypertension, cardiac output increases but intravascular volume remains normal. In uncomplicated established hypertension, left ventricular systolic function is generally normal at rest; however, the left ventricular filling rate is reduced in approximately 30% of hypertensive patients without associated alterations in systolic function. In the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy, overall left ventricular systolic performance remains within normal limits; however, left hypertrophy in hypertension is associated with a high morbidity rate, possibly due to increased collagen concentration leading to reduced left ventricular compliance, fewer adrenergic receptors, reduced responsiveness of the adenylate cyclase system, and reduced coronary flow reserve. Acute increases in blood pressure in a hypertensive patient may worsen cardiac function, particularly in the presence of medications that interfere with the adrenergic support of the heart. New, accurate, noninvasive techniques can assess cardiac structural and functional aspects of hypertension under precise circumstances.

CONCLUSIONS
Assessing both systolic and diastolic function is important in the follow-up of hypertensive patients and in the choice of therapy.


The author looks at the development of a novel microprocessor-based tachometer using an innovative method, referred to as the 'ramp-waveform sampling technique', to provide high accuracy and fast dynamic response while maintaining relative simplicity both in terms of the basic electronics and the computational algorithm. The ramp waveform is generated electronically by means of the 'analogue integration' of the time difference between consecutive encoder pulses. The speed measurement algorithm requires a small number (minimum of two) of sampling points on each ramp and employs linear regression methods to extrapolate backwards and hence determine the starting point of each pulse very accurately.<<ETX>>


The purpose of this report is to provide status of the ingest software used to process instrument data for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Climate Research Facility (ACRF). The report is divided into 4 sections: (1) for news about ingests currently under development, (2) for current production ingests, (3) for future ingest development plans, and (4) for information on retired ingests. Please note that datastreams beginning in "xxx" indicate cases where ingests run at multiple ACRF sites, which results in a datastream(s) for each location.


Allergen-induced inhibition of pulmonary surfactant in asthma may promote airway oedema and consequently potentiate the severity of the asthmatic response. A randomised, single-blind, cross-over study of an inhaled synthetic phospholipid dry-powder surfactant (Pumactant) was conducted in atopic, asthmatic subjects with previously documented early and late asthmatic responses (EAR and LAR) to an inhaled allergen. This was conducted to evaluate the role of exogenous surfactant administration on EAR and LAR. A total of seven subjects had complete evaluable data and received the full dose of Pumactant. Asthmatic subjects inhaled two separate doses of 400 mg Pumactant prior to an allergen exposure. The first dose was administered 8 h in advance and the second dose 30 min in advance. The dosage occurred through a purpose-built administration device. This was followed by a standard bronchial-provocation test, and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was measured at regular intervals over a 10-h period. Pumactant was well tolerated and, surprisingly, abolished the EAR but not the LAR in all seven subjects. The mean area under the curve between 0–2 h (EAR) following bronchial provocation test was 0.08 for the Pumactant treatment group (PT) and 13.29 for the no treatment (NT) group. The maximum drop in FEV1 for EAR was 4.19% and 23.98% in the PT and the NT group, respectively. The demonstration of inhibition of the early asthmatic response by exogenous surfactant, provides the first evidence that pulmonary surfactant dysfunction may also contribute to the very early asthmatic response to allergen. Exogenous surfactant administration could serve as a useful adjunct in controlling the early allergen-induced symptoms in patients with allergic asthma.


The comparison of networks with different orders strongly depends on the stability analysis of graph features in evolving systems. In this paper, we rigorously investigate the stability of the weighted spectral distribution (i.e., a spectral graph feature) as the network order increases. First, we use deterministic scale-free networks generated by a pseudo tree-like model to derive the precise formula of the spectral feature, and then analyze the stability of the spectral feature based on the precise formula. Except for the scale-free feature, the pseudo tree-like model exhibits the hierarchical and small-world structures of complex networks. The stability analysis is useful for the classification of networks with different orders and the similarity analysis of networks that may belong to the same evolving system.


Now that traditional approaches to legal education are under scrutiny, your law school may be open to curricular innovations in legal writing that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Let's take a cue from Rahm Emanuel's exhortation to never let a serious crisis go to waste. Let's think about experimenting with what we teach by erasing lines between legal writing, clinical, and pro bono programs. This very short piece argues that erasing lines between faculty can benefit law schools, students, and faculty. It summarizes just a few of the many current examples of how legal writing faculty are collaborating with non-profits, clinics, or government agencies, exposing students to real law practice, or exploring other ways to help our students become more "practice-ready."


In this paper, an innovative steel reticular system (named AJ), dismountable and reusable, is presented. It consists of modular spatial elements made of stainless steel connected by means of special spherical joints. The approach adopted in the design, based on the idea of "reusability", allows the environmental impact of the system to be reduced. The reuse strategy limits the production of waste from building demolition and reduces the environmental costs in terms of raw materials and energy consumption. Three different applications, developed at different scales, are presented. The first (small scale, related to conservation issues), is an anti-seismic structure in an historical building. The second (large scale, associated with energy issues), is a structure supporting a wind turbine. The third is an urban scale application and concerns sustainable mobility issues; it is a cycle lane designed for the sides of the Thames River in London.


Epigenetic mechanisms such as chromatin accessibility and histone modifications impact transcription factor binding to DNA and transcriptional specificity. The androgen receptor (AR), a master regulator of prostate cancer initiation and progression, acts primarily through ligand-activated transcription of target genes. By combining deep sequencing with DNase I hypersensitivity analysis (DNase-seq) and RNA analysis (mRNA-seq) we assessed genome-wide chromatin structure and transcription and combined this data with publicly available AR chromatin immunoprecipitation data (AR ChIP-seq). We find that 72% of DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHS) overlap each other before and after androgen in LNCaP cells. Interestingly, in regions of increased chromatin accessibility with androgen induction, the canonical AR DNA recognition motif is enriched. Comparing identified DHS to AR binding sites from three different data sets consistently reveals that 50% of AR binding overlaps a DHS in induced cells. Of those sites with both DHS and AR binding, approximately half are available prior to androgen induction (i.e., "primed") and half open in response to androgen stimulation. This contrasts with the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which was recently reported to bind to DNA primarily in regions that are accessible to nuclease cleavage prior to ligand activation. Our mRNA-seq analysis discovered 339 genes regulated by AR activation (FDR < 0.05), including 16 of the 19 most commonly identified AR-mediated genes in several other studies. Importantly, we find that regions of increased chromatin accessibility are significantly associated with genes identified as AR-regulated by mRNA-seq. Finally, base pair resolution of the DNase-seq signal reveals distinct footprinting patterns associated with the AR-DNA interaction. Analysis of chromatin structure, AR binding, and transcription prior to and following androgen induction demonstrates that AR activation by ligand induces genome-wide changes in chromatin accessibility, these changes correspond to AR binding to the genome, and they impact AR-mediated transcriptional response. These findings suggest that interaction between the AR and DNA alters chromatin structure and transcriptional specificity.

Citation Format: Alok Tewari, Galip Yardimci, Yoichiro Shibata, Nathan Sheffield, Lingyun Song, Barry Taylor, Gerhard Coetzee, Terrence Furey, Gregory Crawford, Phillip Febbo. Chromatin accessibility reveals insight into androgen receptor activation and transcriptional specificity [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Prostate Cancer Research; 2012 Feb 6-9; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(4 Suppl):Abstract nr A12.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To investigate the safety and efficacy of a propofol-remifentanil target controlled infusion (TCI) sedation technique for oral surgery. METHODS: This prospective study involved patient and registered nurse (RN) questionnaires to assess the efficacy of sedation during surgery. Outpatients having dental extractions in a private office-based practice with TCI sedation were monitored with a Sleep Apnoea Monitor (SAM) to measure the number of Oxygen Desaturation Events (ODEs), defined as a drop in blood oxygenation to below 94%. RESULTS: Patient- and RN-assessed questionnaires showed a high standard of perceived sedation efficacy, independent of patient BMI. The proportion of patients having one or more ODEs was greater in higher BMI categories: underweight (20.0%), normal (47.9%), overweight (68.2%) and obese (81.8%). The odds of at least one ODE was estimated to be 1.2 times greater for each unit increase in BMI (OR 1.2; 95% CI 1.1-1.3), and at a fixed BMI, the odds of at least one ODE was estimated to be 2.6 times as great for a male as a female (OR 2.6; 95% CI 1.2-5.52). Age, patient nervousness and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification were not associated with ODEs. CONCLUSIONS: The TCI technique had a high standard of efficacy, and there were no adverse safety outcomes. Higher BMI and male sex were found to be independently associated with predictors of ODEs during oral surgery under propofol-remifentanil TCI sedation.


: In order to study the pathogenic mechanisms of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the neutrophil aggregation activity, platelet aggregation rate and levels of thromboxane, prostacyclin, superoxide dismutase, lipoperoxides, neutrophil elastase, alpha 1-antitrypsin and angiotensin conversion enzyme were measured in 84 experimental dogs. Under the action of activated complement C5a, polymorphonuclear leukocyte aggregation with increased release of oxygen radicals play an important role in the pathogenesis of ARDS.


Vaccines targeting glycan structures at the surface of pathogenic microbes must overcome the inherent T cell–independent nature of immune responses against glycans. Carbohydrate conjugate vaccines achieve this by coupling bacterial polysaccharides to a carrier protein that recruits heterologous CD4 T cells to help B cell maturation. Yet they most often produce low- to medium-affinity immune responses of limited duration in immunologically fit individuals and disappointing results in the elderly and immunocompromised patients. Here, we hypothesized that these limitations result from suboptimal T cell help. To produce the next generation of more efficacious conjugate vaccines, we have explored a synthetic design aimed at focusing both B cell and T cell recognition to a single short glycan displayed at the surface of a virus-like particle. We tested and established the proof of concept of this approach for 2 serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae. In both cases, these vaccines elicited serotype-specific, protective, and long-lasting IgG antibodies of nanomolar affinity against the target glycans in mice. We further identified a requirement for CD4 T cells in the anti-glycan antibody response. Our findings establish the design principles for improved glycan conjugate vaccines. We surmise that the same approach can be used for any microbial glycan of interest.


Heat induces Hsp70.1 (HSPA1) and Hsc70 (HSPA8) to form complex detergent insoluble cytoplasmic and nuclear structures that are distinct from the cytoskeleton and internal cell membranes. These novel structures have not been observed by earlier immunofluorescence studies as they are obscured by the abundance of soluble Hsp70.1/Hsc70 present in cells. While resistant to detergents, these Hsp70 structures display complex intracellular dynamics and are efficiently disaggregated by ATP, indicating that this pool of Hsp70.1/Hsc70 retains native function and regulation. Hsp70.1 promotes the repair of proteotoxic damage and cell survival after stress. In heated fibroblasts expressing Hsp70.1, Hsp70.1 and Hsc70 complexes are efficiently disaggregated before the cells undergo-heat induced apoptosis. In the absence of Hsp70.1, fibroblasts have increased rates of heat-induced apoptosis and maintain stable insoluble Hsc70 structures. The differences in the intracellular distribution of Hsp70.1 and Hsc70, combined with the ability of Hsp70.1, but not Hsc70, to promote the disaggregation of insoluble Hsp70.1/Hsc70 complexes, indicate that these two closely related proteins perform distinctly different cellular functions in heated cells.


Abstract India and Iran have shared a rich history of civilisational ties for many centuries. The close historical relations were, however, ruined by the British rule and the subsequent loss of contiguity owing to the creation of Pakistan. Iran's alliance with the Western bloc and India's adherence to the principles of non-alignment, albeit with leanings towards the Soviet Union, were the major determinants of Indo-Iranian bilateral relations until 1979. Pakistan, and its impression on the successive Iranian regimes, also played a major role in this relationship. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 changed the situation dramatically, with Iran overnight becoming a staunch US foe. The ensuing Iran–Iraq war and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan then acted as further spoilers for the development of cordial ties between India and Iran. Extraneous factors continually prevented Indo-Iranian political relations from maturing. Economic relations, in turn, were held hostage and remained far from substantive.


A tuberculosis (TB) transmission model involving migrant workers is proposed and investigated. The basic reproduction number R0 is calculated, and is shown to be a threshold parameter for the disease to persist or become extinct in the population. The existence and global attractivity of an endemic equilibrium, if R0 > 1, is also established under some technical conditions. A case study, based on the TB epidemiological and other statistical data in China, indicates that the disease spread can be controlled if effective measures are taken to reduce the reactivation rate of exposed/latent migrant workers. Impact of the migration rate and direction, as well as the duration of home visit stay, on the control of disease spread is also examined numerically.


The two excerpts that follow are drawn from my Ph.D. research User Assemblages in Design: An Ethnographic Study. The thesis is an examination of the role of multiple users in user-centered design (UCD) processes and is based on a six-month ethnographic field study of designers employed to apply the principles and practices of UCD as part of the research and development efforts of a multinational microprocessor manufacturer. It is written from the perspective of science and technology studies, in particular developments in actor-network theory, and draws on the notion of the assemblage from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The central argument of this thesis is that multiple users are assembled along with the new technologies whose design they resource, as well as with new configurations of socio- cultural life that they bring into view. 'Excerpt One' forms part of an introduction into an empirical study of a health and fitness prototype being designed to address the increasing prevalence of obesity in North American and Western Europe. Excerpt two is drawn from the conclusion of my thesis and points to how prototyping, within user-centered and participatory design practices, can be understood as a material and formal method for managing the future.


The high demand for computational and storage resources severely impedes the deployment of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in limited resource devices. Recent CNN architectures have proposed reduced complexity versions (e.g,. SuffleNet and MobileNet) but at the cost of modest decreases in accuracy. This paper proposes pSConv, a pre-defined sparse 2D kernel based convolution, which promises significant improvements in the trade-off between complexity and accuracy for both CNN training and inference. To explore the potential of this approach, we have experimented with two widely accepted datasets, CIFAR-10 and Tiny ImageNet, in sparse variants of both the ResNet18 and VGG16 architectures. Our approach shows a parameter count reduction of up to 4.24× with modest degradation in classification accuracy relative to that of standard CNNs. Our approach outperforms a popular variant of ShuffleNet using a variant of ResNet18 with pSConv having 3 × 3 kernels with only four of nine elements not fixed at zero. In particular, the parameter count is reduced by 1.7× for CIFAR-10 and 2.29× for Tiny ImageNet with an increased accuracy of ∼ 4%.


Different management techniques need to be used to solve the special problems and challenges faced in emergency departments (EDs). These include SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, lean management, process management, change management, and syntegration. A successful leader of an ED needs to use elements from industrial management techniques, especially those involving work that takes place in a constant flow and does not stop. A process of strategic reorganization may be needed.


Noise and vibration refinement and energy efficiency are the key drivers in powertrain development. The final drive (the differential) is a source of vibration concern and also contributes to the powertrain inefficiency. To optimise differential characteristics for the key objectives of refinement and efficiency, detailed models of the gear interactions as well as the support bearing dynamics are required. This study reports the integrated lubricated bearing and gear contacts with an eight-degree-of-freedom dynamic analysis (a tribo-dynamic model). Non-Newtonian shear behaviour of thin lubricant-film conjunctions is taken into account in the integrated tribo-dynamic analysis, which has not hitherto been reported in the literature. The results show that the transmitted vibration spectra from the system onto the differential casing are dominated by the bearing frequencies rather than by those due to the meshing of gears. It is also shown that a sufficiently high bearing preload improves the vibration refinement but can lead to a marginally reduced transmission efficiency.


Acoustic tomography uses integrating measurements which require inverse methods to resolve the averages into estimates of spatial structure. Statistical inverse methods have been extensively used to solve the reconstruction problem over different tomographic ranges and configurations. These inverses become very difficult to apply in frontal regions like the Gulf Stream (GS) system, where the statistics are acutely inhomogeneous and anisotropic and the mean is not a likely representation of the GS front at any time. In this paper we propose an alternative inverse which asks for the solution which gives a front instead of asking for the smoothest solution. The inverse solution minimizes the errors in the fit to the data while simultaneously maximizing the sum of the squares of the gradients observed in the reconstructed section and minimizing the absolute value norm for stability. The inverse is aimed at detecting changes in the GS front, thus the data are used to estimate the perturbations to a previous estimate of the frontal structure, instead of reconstructing the entire front as a perturbation from some average state. This approach is intended to merge well with eventual dynamic updating schemes and can be used with various types of data, given a proper model. Several examples have been run intercomparing the traditional linear least squares (LLSI) with the maximum gradient inverse (MGI), from very idealized cases to a real Gulf Stream section reconstructed from hydrographic data. Different transceiver configurations were also compared and mid-depth instruments were found to be superior to bottom mounted instruments. The simplest cases show a significant improvement in the estimate of the Gulf Stream front by the MGI compared to the weighted least squares inverse (LLSI). As the cases became more complicated (and more realistic), the differences between inverse methods become less pronounced, although the strength and location of the perturbation maxima were always determined more accurately by the MGI. The decline is at least partially due to the numerical algorithm which lumps data misfits and external constraints (the maximum gradient) into a single penalty criterion which is minimized. The most immediate way to overcome this limitation is to break up the problem into a two-step procedure, first a least squares inverse to fit the data and second an iterative, nonlinear optimization maximizing the gradient and minimizing the absolute value norm.


Several studies regarding indoor environmental quality assessments based on computational human models have been reported. Recently, various computer-simulated persons for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that reproduce a detailed human body geometry has been developed. However, clothing is usually treated with simplification as a resistance to heat/contaminant transfer, and detailed hygro-thermo-chemical transfer phenomena in clothing-centred area with complex geometry have not been fully discussed. It is also important to investigate the ventilation characteristics inside the air gap between the clothing and the human body. Thus, this study aimed to develop an analytical method of three-dimensional clothing model that can be applied to a computer-simulated person (CSP) for indoor computational fluid dynamics analysis. To identify the impact of the clothing model on the human and the microclimate around the body, hygro-thermo-chemical transfer analyses were conducted in a virtual simplified model room. By reproducing the detailed clothing geometry, ventilation inside the air gap and clothing-centred hygro-thermo-chemical transfer characteristics were quantitatively investigated. The data analysis technique established in this study could contribute to preparing foundational data for simplification of numerical modelling of clothing.


A disruption of the vitamin A signaling pathway has been involved in age-related memory decline and hippocampal plasticity alterations. Using vitamin A deficiency (VAD), a nutritional model leading to a hyposignaling of the retinoid pathway, we have recently demonstrated that retinoic acid (RA), the active metabolite of vitamin A, is efficient to reverse VAD-induced spatial memory deficits and adult hippocampal neurogenesis alterations. Besides, excess of glucocorticoids (GCs) occurring with aging is known to strongly inhibit hippocampal plasticity and functions and few studies report on the counteracting effects of RA signaling pathway on GCs action. Here, we have addressed whether the modulation of brain GCs availability could be one of the biological mechanisms involved in the effects of vitamin A status on hippocampal plasticity and functions. Thus, we have studied the effects of a vitamin A-free diet for 14 weeks and a 4-week vitamin A supplementation on plasma and hippocampal corticosterone (CORT) levels in Wistar rats. We have also investigated corticosteroid binding globulin (CBG) binding capacity and 11beta-Hydrosteroid Dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) activity, both important modulators of CORT availability at the peripheral and hippocampal levels respectively. Interestingly, we show that the vitamin A status regulates levels of free plasma CORT and hippocampal CORT levels, by acting through a regulation of CBG binding capacity and 11β-HSD1 activity. Moreover, our results suggest that increased CORT levels in VAD rats could have some deleterious consequences on spatial memory, anxiety-like behavior and adult hippocampal neurogenesis whereas these effects could be corrected by a vitamin A supplementation. Thus, the modulation of GCs availability by vitamin A status is an important biological mechanism that should be taken into account in order to prevent age-related cognitive decline and hippocampal plasticity alterations.


Severe thoracic trauma is a common cause of admission in Intensive Care Units; then heart injury is not a rare finding. We present a case of post-traumatic interventricular dissection and ventricular aneurysm secondary to thoracic trauma caused by traffic accident. We think that ventricular septum injury is a rare finding after chest trauma. Two-dimensional echo-cardiography is an essential procedure in the diagnosis of traumatic heart injury.


Fc receptors transport maternal antibodies across epithelial cell barriers to passively immunize newborns. FcRY, the functional counterpart of mammalian FcRn (a major histocompatibility complex homolog), transfers IgY across the avian yolk sac, and represents a new class of Fc receptor related to the mammalian mannose receptor family. FcRY and FcRn bind immunoglobulins at pH ≤6.5, but not pH ≥7, allowing receptor–ligand association inside intracellular vesicles and release at the pH of blood. We obtained structures of monomeric and dimeric FcRY and an FcRY–IgY complex and explored FcRY's pH-dependent binding mechanism using electron cryomicroscopy (cryoEM) and small-angle X-ray scattering. The cryoEM structure of FcRY at pH 6 revealed a compact double-ring "head," in which the N-terminal cysteine-rich and fibronectin II domains were folded back to contact C-type lectin-like domains 1–6, and a "tail" comprising C-type lectin-like domains 7–8. Conformational changes at pH 8 created a more elongated structure that cannot bind IgY. CryoEM reconstruction of FcRY dimers at pH 6 and small-angle X-ray scattering analysis at both pH values confirmed both structures. The cryoEM structure of the FcRY–IgY revealed symmetric binding of two FcRY heads to the dimeric FcY, each head contacting the CH4 domain of one FcY chain. FcRY shares structural properties with mannose receptor family members, including a head and tail domain organization, multimerization that may regulate ligand binding, and pH-dependent conformational changes. Our results facilitate understanding of immune recognition by the structurally related mannose receptor family and comparison of diverse methods of Ig transport across evolution.


This study performed high‐resolution numerical simulation on a convective line that occurred roughly 10–30 km offshore of southeastern Taiwan overnight of 14–15 May 1998. Three experiments at successively higher resolution (10, 2, and 0.5 km) but smaller domain were carried out, and the narrow line is eventually reproduced. It is found that shallow (offshore) return flow along the coast appeared since daytime due to topographic blocking on the weak prevailing (onshore) south‐southeasterly wind, producing convergence at their interface near shore. During the night, mountain breeze further strengthened the offshore flow and convergence, and the line initiated. Once developed, downdrafts and outflow boundaries from old clouds triggered new clouds, and this was more active along the (eastern) boundaries against the undisturbed environmental flow. Thus, repeated new cloud formation took place throughout the night and into the next morning.


The authors analyze three approaches to scheduling mixed batch and interactive workloads on a supercomputer: (i) fixed partition, in which memory resources are statically allocated between the workloads: (ii) no partition, in which the interactive workload preempts resources as needed from the batch workload, and (iii) no partition with grouped admission, in which the interactive workload preempts resources only when the number of waiting interactive jobs reaches a threshold value. The authors also investigate the potential benefits of using virtual memory to perform the automatic overlay of jobs too large to fit in the amount of real memory instantaneously available to them. Using analytic tools, they compare the different policies according to the average speedup achieved by the batch workload given that a mean interactive job response time objective must be met by each. They show that, under a wide variety of conditions, fixed partition performs better than the other policies.<<ETX>>


. The purpose of the paper was to develop and validate a comprehensive tool for measuring workplace spirituality. On the basis of literature, feedback from academic and industry professionals, a heuristic framework along with a scale on work place spirituality was proposed and a questionnaire was developed. The instrument obtained empirical views from experts on its dimensions and statements. Content validity ratio (CVR) of the instrument was carried out and the retained items were taken for field survey. Three hundred and sixty one executive respondents employed in manufacturing and service organisations in Indian subcontinent responded to the 44 items scale assessing different facets of spirituality at workplace. This helped to validate the factors of workplace spirituality and optimize the contents of the proposed instrument with the help of structural equation modelling. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four distinct factors that constitute the new instrument of workplace spirituality: spiritual orientation, compassion, meaningful work, and alignment of values. Reliability analysis reported high level of internal consistency of the total scale ( α = .78) and the five subscales ( α 's ranging from .75 to .87). Finally, 30 items were retained with four important factors of Workplace Spirituality Scale.


Deafness-associated genes KCNQ1 (also associated with heart diseases) and KCNQ4 (only associated with hearing loss) encode the homotetrameric voltage-gated potassium ion channels Kv7.1 and Kv7.4, respectively. To date, over 700 KCNQ1 and over 70 KCNQ4 variants have been identified in patients. The vast majority of these variants are inherited dominantly, and their pathogenicity is often explained by dominant-negative inhibition or haploinsufficiency. Our recent study unexpectedly identified cell-death-inducing cytotoxicity in several Kv7.1 and Kv7.4 variants. Elucidation of this cytotoxicity mechanism and identification of its modifiers (drugs) have great potential for aiding the development of a novel pharmacological strategy against many pathogenic KCNQ variants. The purpose of this review is to disseminate this emerging pathological role of Kv7 variants and to underscore the importance of experimentally characterizing disease-associated variants.


This study explores the process of organizational change by examining localized social learning in organizational subunits. Specifically, we examine participation in university technology transfer, a new organizational initiative, by tracking 1,780 faculty members, examining their backgrounds and work environments, and following their engagement with academic entrepreneurship. We find that individual adoption of the new initiative may be either substantive or symbolic. Our results suggest that individual attributes, while important, are conditioned by the local work environment. In terms of personal attributes, individuals are more likely to participate if they trained at institutions that had accepted the new initiative and been active in technology transfer. In addition, we find that the longer the time that had elapsed since graduate training, the less likely the individual was to actively embrace the new commercialization norm. Considering the localized social environment, we find that when the chair of the department is active in technology transfer, other members of the department are also likely to participate, if only for symbolic reasons. We also find that technology transfer behavior is calibrated by the experience of those in the relevant cohort. If an individual can observe others with whom they identify engaging in the new initiative, then they are more likely to follow with substantive compliance. Finally, when individuals face dissonance, a situation where their individual training norms are not congruent with the localized social norms in their work environment, they will conform to the local norms, rather than adhering to the norms from their prior experience.


Abstract:Based on the Beatitudes of Jesus, as recorded by St. Matthew (5:1–12), the post Vatican II Church has through institutions and individuals made overt efforts to serve the poor to be a basic standard of ministry. Institutionalized as the "preferential option for the poor," this belief was the foundation upon which Humberto Medeiros, Bishop of Brownsville, Texas (1966–1970) and Cardinal Archbishop of Boston (1970–1983), based his ministry. His understanding of the concept of "the poor" was broad, including not only the economically disadvantaged, but also those who for various reasons found themselves on the periphery of American society. His work with migrant farmworkers in Texas helped them to achieve greater economic justice. In Boston his promotion of low-income housing and work to reform the penal system revealed the breadth with which he understood the poor in American society. His work to achieve greater recognition, dignity and justice for those less advantaged in our society is indeed noteworthy.


Purpose:Liquid crystal displays(LCDs) have a number of advantages over cathode ray tubes and conventional viewers based on film. However, it is nown that the performance of LCDs varies by viewing angle. The purpose of this study was to compare the angular performance and effects on observer performance in different types of LCDs, namely a general purpose LCD for personal computers and one especially designed for medical use. Method and Materials: Two types of LCDs were used in this study, an in‐plane switching (IPS) technology display especially designed for medical use and a general‐purpose twisted nematic (TN) technology display. We measured the luminance responses and contrast ratios for the two types of LCDs at different viewing angles (−60 degrees to 60 degrees). Furthermore, observer performance at various viewing angles in the horizontal direction for the medical display was also examined by eight observers based on contrast‐detail diagrams. Results: The two types of LCDs showed notable variations in luminance and contrast ratios as a function of the viewing angle. Results obtained in different directions (horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions) indicated different contrast ratios. Acceptable viewing angles in terms of the contrast ratio were much smaller in each direction than those for nominal viewing angles in the specifications provided by the manufacturers. Acceptable viewing angles of the medical‐grade display in the horizontal and vertical directions were broader than those of the general purpose display. There was no significant difference in observer performance between 0 and 40 degrees. On the other hand, our results showed a statistically significant difference in observer performance between 0 and 60 degrees. Conclusion: Contrast ratio and luminance response showed notable variations with different viewing angles and different types of LCD. More importantly, the detection of contrast‐detail materials of the LCD monitor was influenced by viewing angles.


Because of the broad jurisdiction American courts have asserted in cases arising under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, they have been called a Shangri-la for "foreign-cubed" class actions with little connection to the United States. Over the past forty years, the standards used by American courts to determine their jurisdiction in international securities disputes have evolved, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court's Morrison decision of 2010. The new transactional test promulgated in Morrison replaced all of its predecessor tests, from a test measuring whether the conduct in question took place in the United States to a test measuring whether the effects of the conduct were felt in the United States, to a combined conduct-effects test. This new transactional test is unsatisfactory, however, because depending on how it is interpreted, it is either too narrow to protect American investors as Congress intended in Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, or too broad to resolve the ambiguities that plagued the conduct-effects test. This Article proposes a new effects test that will resolve ambiguities, protect American investors, and refrain from asserting American judicial jurisdiction overseas contrary to principles of international comity. Though the effects test would not grant private parties a cause of action against violators operating in the United States but who exclusively defraud those overseas, Congress has already granted authority to federal agencies to pursue such bad actors. The effects test is also in accordance with principles of other important jurisdictions, such as the European Union, and could serve as a basis for an international agreement on jurisdiction in international securities cases.


This study has demonstrated the use of a type 2 tobit model to impute the incomes for nonresponding households. The imputed incomes generated from the type 2 tobit model for nonresponding households indicate that average incomes of nonresponding households are slightly higher than those of responding households. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that under the assumption that the predicted incomes derived from the type 2 tobit model are accurate, the deletion of nonresponsidng households would cause an overestimation of the impact of income on food expenditures for households with annual incomes of less than $20,000.


Plants exhibit an altered pattern of protein synthesis in response to pathogen invasion and abiotic stress. One of these ;pathogenesis-related' proteins has been identified as chitinase, which is capable of inhibiting fungal growth in vitro. This observation has led to the suggestion that the in vivo role of chitinases is to protect plants against fungal invasion. Here, we report the purification and characterization of a basic chitinase from Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. Columbia wild type. The purified enzyme has a molecular mass of approximately 32 kilodaltons as determined by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate, and an apparent pl of approximately 8.7 as determined by isoelectric focusing. The purified protein is an effective inhibitor of the growth of Trichoderma reesei in vitro but does not affect the growth of several other fungi. Amino acid composition analysis of the intact protein as well as amino acid composition analysis and automatic Edman degradation of isolated tryptic fragments of the enzyme indicate that it may be identical to the product of a chitinase gene isolated from an Arabidopsis genomic library (Samac DA, Hironaka CM, Yallaly PE, Shah DM [1990] Plant Physiol 93: 907-914).


ABSTRACT In the global nitrogen cycle, bacterial denitrification is recognized as the only quantitatively important process that converts fixed nitrogen to atmospheric nitrogen gas, N2, thereby influencing many aspects of ecosystem function and global biogeochemistry. However, we have found that a process novel to the marine nitrogen cycle, anaerobic oxidation of ammonium coupled to nitrate reduction, contributes substantially to N2 production in marine sediments. Incubations with 15N-labeled nitrate or ammonium demonstrated that during this process, N2 is formed through one-to-one pairing of nitrogen from nitrate and ammonium, which clearly separates the process from denitrification. Nitrite, which accumulated transiently, was likely the oxidant for ammonium, and the process is thus similar to the anammox process known from wastewater bioreactors. Anaerobic ammonium oxidation accounted for 24 and 67% of the total N2 production at two typical continental shelf sites, whereas it was detectable but insignificant relative to denitrification in a eutrophic coastal bay. However, rates of anaerobic ammonium oxidation were higher in the coastal sediment than at the deepest site and the variability in the relative contribution to N2 production between sites was related to large differences in rates of denitrification. Thus, the relative importance of anaerobic ammonium oxidation and denitrification in N2 production appears to be regulated by the availability of their reduced substrates. By shunting nitrogen directly from ammonium to N2, anaerobic ammonium oxidation promotes the removal of fixed nitrogen in the oceans. The process can explain ammonium deficiencies in anoxic waters and sediments, and it may contribute significantly to oceanic nitrogen budgets.


Describes a survey of the organization of library resources Delta State University Library, Abraka, Nigeria. Thirty-five professional and paraprofessional staffed completed a questionnaire and interviews. While the results of the study revealed adequate expertise among staff in areas such as cataloging, infrastructure such as computers and other equipment are severely lacking.


Today, the global market is a fast expanding environment. There are more and more companies that go abroad to compete with companies from all over the world. The barriers between countries have been lowered and trade is encouraged. Therefore, international expansion is an important factor for many companies. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the effect international expansion has on firm performance. Since there is limited previous research within the field of international expansion and performance done on Swedish companies this dissertation tries to fill that gap. The study is performed on listed Swedish companies. Several factors are used to measure the international expansion and performance of the companies. The relationships between international expansion and firm performance were positive when international expansion was measured as Number of Countries and Market Commitment. When international expansion was measured as Foreign Assets and as the GL-Index (Gerlofstig-Lindstrand Index), support was given to a positive relationship. The relationship between Foreign Board and firm performance as well as Foreign HR (Human Resources) and firm performance was to some extent supported. The remaining two measures of international expansion were Foreign Assets and International ownership. These measures showed no supported relationships between international expansion and firm performance. To conclude, the results of the study indicated that there are some support for a relationship between international expansion and firm performance for listed Swedish companies. This study contributes to the lack of research on the effect of international expansion on performance of Swedish companies. Swedish managers can use the conclusions drawn from the study as guidelines for international expansion.


Continental pawnbroking institutions, Monts-de-Piété, were introduced in Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s but did not establish a permanent status. Irish social reformers believed that a Mont-de-Piété system would reduce the cost of borrowing for the poor and also fund a social welfare network, thus negating the need for an Irish Poor Law. This article explores the introduction of the Mont-de-Piété charitable pawnbroker in Ireland and outlines some reasons for its failure. It uses the market incumbents, private pawnbrokers, as a base group in a comparative study and asks why the Monts-de-Piété were the unsuccessful ones of the two. The article finds that the public nature and monopoly status of Monts-de-Piété on the Continent realised economies of scale and gave preferential interest rates on capital, as well as enabling the Mont-de-Piété loan book to be cross-subsidised. These conditions were not replicated in Ireland, hence the failure of the Monts-de-Piété there.


Background: Factors associated for the development of   metabolic syndrome vary from region to region and race to   race. Objectives: The present study aimed to assess the   prevalence of metabolic syndrome and phenotype of newly   diagnosed IGT and DM subjects. Methods: In this cross   sectional study 100 DM and 44 IGT subjects recruited from   OPD BIRDEM hospital. BMI, Neck, and waist   circumference, WHR and blood pressure were collected by skilled trainer using modern equipments. Serum glucose   was measured by glucose-oxidase method and lipid profile was measured by enzymatic-colorimetric method. Results: Glycemic status was higher in diabetic subjects (12±5; ABF   18±6) than IGT subjects (FPG 6±0.84; ABF 9±2). About   39.6% subjects had metabolic syndrome according to the   definition of EGIR and 21.9 % were hypertensive in DM   subjects. Neck circumference was positively correlated with   BMI (r=0.4, p=0.02) and waist circumference   (r=0.25.p=0.003). Conclusions: Glycemic status affects at   the BMI 24 and neck circumference 33cm with age 40 years.   About 39.6 % MS present following EGIR but poor % MS   have found following ATP III and WHO criteria DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbcps.v30i2.11409 J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2012; 30: 85-90


The redox poise of the mitochondrial glutathione pool is central in the response of mitochondria to oxidative damage and redox signaling, but the mechanisms are uncertain. One possibility is that the oxidation of glutathione (GSH) to glutathione disulfide (GSSG) and the consequent change in the GSH/GSSG ratio causes protein thiols to change their redox state, enabling protein function to respond reversibly to redox signals and oxidative damage. However, little is known about the interplay between the mitochondrial glutathione pool and protein thiols. Therefore we investigated how physiological GSH/GSSG ratios affected the redox state of mitochondrial membrane protein thiols. Exposure to oxidized GSH/GSSG ratios led to the reversible oxidation of reactive protein thiols by thiol-disulfide exchange, the extent of which was dependent on the GSH/GSSG ratio. There was an initial rapid phase of protein thiol oxidation, followed by gradual oxidation over 30 min. A large number of mitochondrial proteins contain reactive thiols and most of these formed intraprotein disulfides upon oxidation by GSSG; however, a small number formed persistent mixed disulfides with glutathione. Both protein disulfide formation and glutathionylation were catalyzed by the mitochondrial thiol transferase glutaredoxin 2 (Grx2), as were protein deglutathionylation and the reduction of protein disulfides by GSH. Complex I was the most prominent protein that was persistently glutathionylated by GSSG in the presence of Grx2. Maintenance of complex I with an oxidized GSH/GSSG ratio led to a dramatic loss of activity, suggesting that oxidation of the mitochondrial glutathione pool may contribute to the selective complex I inactivation seen in Parkinson's disease. Most significantly, Grx2 catalyzed reversible protein glutathionylation/deglutathionylation over a wide range of GSH/GSSG ratios, from the reduced levels accessible under redox signaling to oxidized ratios only found under severe oxidative stress. Our findings indicate that Grx2 plays a central role in the response of mitochondria to both redox signals and oxidative stress by facilitating the interplay between the mitochondrial glutathione pool and protein thiols.


We consider optical wireless communication which can be utilized for illumination and communication by relying on lighting devices. Due to the limited bandwidth of optical sources, it is challenging to achieve high data rate in optical wireless systems. In order to obtain a multiplexing gain and high spectral efficiency, we design an optical multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system utilizing a singular value decomposition-based spatial multiplexing and adaptive modulation. We note that the conventional allocation method in radio frequency MIMO channels cannot be applied directly to the optical intensity channels. In this paper, we generalize the result of power allocation method in [1] for arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas in optical wireless MIMO systems. Based on three constraints, namely, the nonnegativity, the aggregate optical power, and the bit error rate requirement, we propose a novel method to allocate the optical power, the offset value, and the modulation size for maximum sum rate. From some selected simulation results, we show that our proposed allocation method gives a better spectral efficiency than the method that allocates the optical power equally for each data stream.


This thesis discusses simulations of earthquake ground motions using prescribed ruptures and dynamic failure. Introducing sliding degrees of freedom led to an innovative technique for numerical modeling of earthquake sources. This technique allows efficient implementation of both prescribed ruptures and dynamic failure on an arbitrarily oriented fault surface. Off the fault surface the solution of the three-dimensional, dynamic elasticity equation uses well known finite-element techniques. We employ parallel processing to efficiently compute the ground motions in domains containing millions of degrees of freedom. Using prescribed ruptures we study the sensitivity of long-period near-source ground motions to five earthquake source parameters for hypothetical events on a strike-slip fault (Mw 7.0 to 7.1) and a thrust fault (Mw 6.6 to 7.0). The directivity of the ruptures creates large displacement and
velocity pulses in the ground motions in the forward direction. We found a good match between the severity of the shaking and the shape of the near-source factor from the 1997 Uniform Building Code for strike-slip faults and thrust faults with surface rupture. However, for blind thrust faults the peak displacement and velocities occur up-dip from the region with the peak near-source factor. We assert that a simple modification to the formulation of the near-source factor improves the match between the severity of the ground motion and the shape of the near-source factor. For simulations with dynamic failure on a strike-slip fault or a thrust fault, we examine what constraints must be imposed on the coefficient of friction to produce realistic ruptures under the application of reasonable shear and normal stress distributions with depth. We found that variation of the coefficient of friction with the shear modulus and the depth produces realistic rupture behavior in both homogeneous and layered half-spaces. Furthermore, we observed a dependence of the rupture speed on the direction of propagation and fluctuations in the rupture speed and slip rate as the rupture encountered changes in the stress field. Including such behavior in prescribed ruptures would yield more realistic ground motions.


Human postural responses appeared to have stereotyped modality, such as ankle mode, knee mode, and hip mode in response to various levels of postural challenges. We examined whether human postural control gain of full-state feedback could be decoupled along with the eigenvectors. To verify the model, postural responses subjected to fast backward perturbation were used. Upright posture was modeled as 3-segment inverted pendulum incorporated with linear feedback control, and joint torques were calculated using inverse dynamics. Postural modalities, such as ankle, knee and hip mode, were obtained from eigenvectors of biomechanics model. As oppose to the full-state feedback control, independent modal control assumes that modal control input is determined by the linear combinations of corresponding modality. We used linear regression to obtain and compare the feedback gains for both eigenvector control gain and full-state feedback. As a result, we found that both feedback gains of two control models that fit the joint torque data are reasonably closed each other especially at the joint angle feedback gains. This implies that the simple parameterization using eigenvectors may be used to correlate the feedback gains of full-state feedback control.


Buoyancy control devices are essential to maneuver ROV effectively underwater. Many approaches have been used to tackle this problem such as compressed air ballast which can take in water and eject it using compressed air and the use of high-density foam plates that can be added or removed to increase or decrease the buoyancy. Presented in this paper is a novel approach for buoyancy control, which utilizes the electrolysis and reverse electrolysis capabilities of a reversible polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell to adjust the volume of a small vehicle, and change its depth. Making use of the two processes helps restore some of the energy consumed by the system through the process of reverse electrolysis and also for building a fully-closed system, that is, one that does not require any water or gas flow to the surrounding. Modeling of the device is explained and a proportional-derivative (PD) controller is designed to control it at a certain depth using a single sensor measurement. Experiments validate the controller performance.


An adaptive perfectly matched layer (PML) technique for solving the time harmonic electromagnetic scattering problems is developed. The PML parameters such as the thickness of the layer and the fictitious medium property are determined through sharp a posteriori error estimates. Combined with the adaptive finite element method, the adaptive PML technique provides a complete numerical strategy to solve the scattering problem in the framework of FEM which produces automatically a coarse mesh size away from the fixed domain and thus makes the total computational costs insensitive to the thickness of the PML absorbing layer. Numerical experiments are included to illustrate the competitive behavior of the proposed adaptive method.


Abstract Over the past decade contemporary music has increasingly employed the sounds of the world as an alternative or adjunct to the extant repertoire of musical sounds. What this means for music is an expansion into a relatively new language domain; one with familiar associations, but distant from the notion of music. The underlying mode of this compositional process concerns the exploitation of meaning in the sounds of contemporary life, and its use is already wide spread throughout numerous contemporary styles and genres. The catalyst for this musical direction is technology. Without its diversity and dynamic growth such a direction in music would not be possible. The most challenging examples can be found where music technology is at its most experimental. The influence of technology is, however, by no means clear. Thus, compositions which use or re-interpret the sounds of the world are not necessarily in the process of defining a new aesthetic or style, rather they are continuing the cultural dynam...


Athletic training education program directors (PDs) are often tasked with setting the tone of their curriculum and prioritizing items of focus for students. Given the current attention on concussion, it is important to understand PDs' concussion knowledge and strategies for decision making. PDs personal strategies may influence educational content and student practices, implicating clinical practices for new athletic trainers (AT). PURPOSE: To determine whether educator-identified prioritized symptoms for removing an athlete from play align with common concussion-related symptoms experienced by athletes. METHODS: PDs from 32 professional-level athletic training education programs (n = 25 undergraduate; age = 43.8 ± 8.2; yrs experience = 21.1 ± 9.2) completed a validated survey examining concussion knowledge and the three symptoms most likely to cause them to remove an athlete from play. Participants responded to questions regarding symptoms and consequences of concussion on the scale of 1 (definitely not a symptom/consequence) to 4 (definitely is). Total knowledge was summed for a possible range of 25-100. RESULTS: PDs' concussion knowledge was moderate (81.1 ± 6.7), primarily due to lack of confidence ("probably" vs. "definitely" is a symptom/consequence) in some items as opposed to being incorrect. The primary symptom reported by PDs as indicating necessary removal from play was headache (n = 23/32) followed by a three-way tie (n = 14/32 each): 1) amnesia/trouble remembering, 2) trouble understanding/confusion, and 3) visual disturbances. Dizziness was the fifth most common symptom causing removal from play (n = 11/32). Previous literature supports headache as the most common symptom experienced by athletes, then dizziness and difficulty concentrating. Although after headache, most common symptoms may vary; however, memory problems, confusion, and visual disturbances are typically reported as some of the most common symptoms. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that in general, PDs are prioritizing the most common symptoms experienced for their removal from play decisions. This is encouraging as it suggests that PD's knowledge on key symptoms is appropriate. Future research should further investigate the role AT knowledge and symptom prioritization plays on content in educational programs.


To further illustrate the biological significance of variant NOR (including double NOR--dNOR and triple NOR--tNOR) and satellite association (SA) and the relationship to meiotic non-disjunction (NDJ), this study was carried out in the normal population and the parents of patients with Down Syndrome (DS). Of 800 individuals, 4 dNOR carriers, two of them from the control and two from the non-informative experiments were detected. SA data for 3 out of the 4 dNOR carriers showed no statistical significant increase in SA when dNOR was present in the cell even in case 4 where two dNOR were found in one cell. However, ease 3 demonstrated significant decrease in SA when dNOR was present, although it showed that the overall incidence of dNOR was higher in this carrier than that in the other three. It is concluded that dNOR can be detected on any acrocentric chromosome and not be related to NDJ of chromosome, which is a heritable variant that does not affect phenotype and that there are two kinds of dNOR variants, one being from the translocation of the short arm of acrocentric chromosome, the other from non-translocation.


A national random sample of 229 family physicians responded to a survey which included perceived barriers to patients' dietary change. Physicians perceived food taste preference (71%) as a deterrent to patients' dietary change followed by knowledge of what dietary changes to make (48%) and cost of food recommended (44%).


Reproductive stage determination of male gonads has received sparse attention in fish biology literature with few studies detailing the building of gross anatomical- and histologic scales. The meagre ( Argyrosomus regius ) is one of the world's largest sciaenids and supports a significant regional fishery in European and North African waters whose reproductive patterns are yet to be fully investigated. In the present study, we derive a macroscopic grading system for meagre testis using semi-quantitative graphs that feature the testis variability along the species size range and time of the year. We then describe the histological stages and reproductive phases of male testes and determine the extent to which they corroborate the anatomical scale. Our results indicate that gross anatomical analyses are accurate in assessments of the meagre spawning season but may not precisely distinguish the testes of well-mature fish and first spawning virgins. Furthermore, we show that milt expression varies widely with size and misclassifies as immature many smaller fish in spawning-capable condition. We discuss these findings in terms of their contribution to the understanding of testes development and the uncertainties involved in determining the size-at-maturity of male fish using gross anatomical scales.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the relationship between dentition and oral function.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A search of the English literature was undertaken using PubMed and appropriate keywords. Citations were identified and hand sorted to confirm their validity against our inclusion criteria. Four specific areas of oral function were addressed; (I) masticatory function, (II) aesthetics, satisfaction and psychosocial ability, (III) occlusal support and stability and (IV) other functionality including tactile perception, phonetics and taste.

RESULTS
From an initial pool of 1460 citations, 83 articles met the inclusion criteria. These were summarized and relevant data extracted for incorporation into the review. Masticatory efficiency (assessed as comminution efficiency) and masticatory ability (self-reported) are both linked to the number of teeth. A minimum of 20 teeth with nine to 10 pairs of contacting units (including anterior teeth) is associated with adequate efficiency and ability. Tooth numbers below that level yield impaired masticatory efficiency and are likely to result in reduction in reported masticatory ability. Aesthetics and satisfaction are markedly impaired with loss of anterior teeth. Satisfaction is most likely to be achieved in people who also retain a premolar dentition. Further, there is little increase in satisfaction seen in subjects who retained molar teeth. However, there are marked variations in subjective measures of aesthetics and psychosocial comfort between age groups, social classes, cultures, regions and countries. For most people, occlusal support and stability are obtained with three to four functional posterior units with a symmetrical pattern of tooth loss or five to six units with an asymmetrical pattern. There was no relationship between occlusal factors and symptoms of temporomandibular dysfunction. Phonetics may be maintained even with large anterior restorations. Patients generally attribute a low significance to phonetics, tactile perception and taste compared with mastication and appearance.

CONCLUSIONS
The World Health Organization goal for the year 2000, namely to maintain a natural dentition of not less than 20 teeth throughout life, is substantiated by the current literature review as this proposed dentition will assure an acceptable level of oral function.


One-third of older adults over 65 years of age fall each year. Falls are the main cause of injury and death among this population. Understanding the causes of falling is therefore a necessity for gerontologists. Gait accelerometry is an important approach for the quantitative assessment of human walking. It is an inexpensive, portable and reliable method to measure trunk accelerations. The latter may give indications on balance control even though there is no agreed measure of it. Accelerometry requires the measured accelerations to be preprocessed, but previous studies have not studied thoroughly its effects on signal features. We therefore constituted a set of features in the time, frequency and time-frequency domains and we evaluated the impact of tilt correction and wavelet denoising - two pre-processing operations - on these features.

Signals used in this thesis were collected on 35 participants aged 65-year-old and over: 14 were healthy controls (HC), 10 had Parkinson's disease (PD) and 11 had peripheral neuropathy (PN). They walked on a treadmill at preferred speed. We first applied tilt correction and wavelet denoising separately, then we applied operations one after another. Denoising had nearly no effect on features compared to the raw accelerations. Tilt correction led to better discrimination between groups. Joint pre-processing operations showed trends that were similar to the tilt correction alone.

Older adults also face increasing difficulties to perform an activity during walking and this threatens their stability. Thus, during another trial, the same groups of subjects were asked to press a button at hearing a tone. We observed the impact of dual-tasking on the features. Several features such as Lempel-Ziv complexity, bandwidth of accelerations and harmonic ratios remained unaffected by dual-task walking while the remaining features were affected. We also examined the impact of dual-tasking on each group. Task differences were almost the same for every group and revealed lower harmonic ratios during dual-task walking.


Domain ontology as an instrument for knowledge representation, sharing, reuse and interoperability takes an increasingly important role in the approaches for personalised intelligent e-learning architectures and systems. However, wider practical acceptance of domain ontology as an engineering product and as a part of web-based learning systems is still needed. We believe that one of the barriers for wider spreading of domain ontologies in different fields, including e-learning, is the problem of the design and maintenance of high quality ontologies. As the importance of the quality of learning resources is obvious, the quality of domain ontology for e-leaming is even more important, because ontology is intended to be re-used in design and implementation of various learning resources. In this paper, we analyse the quality-related characteristics of domain ontology. We propose a framework for evaluation of the quality of domain ontology for web-based learning. Further, we propose a model for ontology evaluation, based on its technical and complexity-related characteristics. We identify main conceptual (semantic) quality characteristics, and analyse the relationship between both types of ontology quality characteristics. Also we present an application of proposed framework to the evaluation of ontologies for web based learning.


The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate total sleep duration as a potential risk factor for the development of hypertension after a mean of 2.6 years of follow‐up. The study participants comprised 1715 Korean adults aged 40 to 70 years. The participants were without hypertension at baseline (2005–2008) and during follow‐up (2008–2011) to determine the incident cases of hypertension. Based on a self‐reported questionnaire, the individuals were stratified according to total sleep duration (<6 hours, 6–7.9 hours, 8–9.9 hours, ≥10 hours). Hypertension was defined according to the Eighth Joint National Committee (JNC 8) guidelines. After an average of 2.6 years of follow‐up, 164 (9.56%) participants developed hypertension. In multivariate adjusted models, the odds ratio for new‐onset hypertension was 1.71 (95% confidence interval, 1.01–2.89) in participants with a short sleep duration (<6 hours) compared with those who reported 6 to 7.9 hours of sleep. Long sleep duration (more than 8 hours) did not have any significant difference on incident hypertension. Among middle‐aged and elderly Korean adults, short sleepers were independently associated with a higher risk of developing hypertension.


The cloud manufacturing (CloudM) resource access solution of Internet of Things (IOT) application was discussed. According to resource access requirements, a kind of CloudM resource access architecture based on IOT was described, as well as several key technologies in the architecture. Several key issues such as classification of resource information accesses, access processes were studied. Related explanations about QoS information expanding, manufacturing capacity information constructing, EPC information collection were illustrated. With magnetic bearing as an example, its conceptual information model and QoS expanded information described by PML were given.


My research is interested in examining product perceptions and the importance of national identity on the marketability on a variety of foreign and domestic consumer products. I am also interested in determining whether the process of globalization has weakened an individual's sense of national identity and whether that changes their preference for purchasing a foreign and/or domestic product. Primarily, my research question asks whether nationalism influences a product's marketability. My hypothesis suggests that individual perceptions are heavily influenced by a sense of nationalism and ultimately affects an individual's decision whether or not to buy a foreign good. To test this hypothesis, I constructed two original surveys that were distributed to university students at two different universities in two separate countries, Wilfred Laurier University in Canada and Georgia Southern University in Georgia, US. From my surveys, I have found that despite the advance of globalization and the integration of markets, it appears that student consumers still tend to identify themselves with products and corporations that they perceived as domestic. When asked, they chose domestic products as a means for reaffirming their national identity. Thesis Mentor: ________________________ Dr. Darin Van Tassell Honors Director: _______________________ Dr. Steven Engel April 2015 Center for International Studies University Honors Program Georgia Southern University


Mycetoma is a chronic infection of the skin and underlying tissues caused by fungi or bacteria, it presents with multiple fistulous tracts, it is endemic in tropical and subtropical regions 15º to the south and 30º to the north of latitude, this region is known as the mycetoma belt. , the infection is inoculated after trauma, the objective of management is to eradicate the infection and prevent infiltrative cases (for example invasion of bone tissue), the case presented is a 29-year-old female, with secondary vertebral destruction syndrome a dorsal cervical thoracic mycetoma without microbiological isolation, this being a rare entity, which was managed in an interdisciplinary manner with empirical antimicrobials and posterior cervical decompressive surgery. Currently, the patient is five months postoperative with no cervical pain, and adequate neurological status to be able to carry out activities of daily living.


Crime scene staging refers to the deliberate alteration of physical evidence at the location where a crime has actually or allegedly occurred in an effort to simulate events or offences which did not occur. This is intended to mislead authorities or redirect an investigation [Berth, 2006; Chisum & Turvey, 2007; Ferguson, 2014]. This can be done in a variety of ways such as manipulation of the physical evidence, including a change of position of weapons or bodies; falsifying injuries or planting additional evidence. Crime scene staging is therefore different to other manipulations of a scene, such as when a family member, out of shame or embarrassment, may wish an accidental death, particularly of a sexual nature (such as auto erotic asphyxiation), to look like a suicide and remove sexual paraphernalia from the scene or dress the victim. Staging a crime scene also may involve actively deceiving investigators by lying during interviews, creating false alibis, filing false reports, or by circulating other falsities about the victim or the interviewee/s' own involvement in the case.


The effect of the mechanical and physical properties of an underfill material on thermal stress relief in a lead-free chip size package (CSP) solder joint has been investigated. Thin sheets of underfill materials for the CSP solder joint were prepared and the mechanical and physical properties of the sheets were investigated. Using these properties, thermal stress relief in an encapsulated CSP lead-free solder joint with the underfill material was examined by a finite element analysis method under thermal cycle conditions in the temperature range from 293K to 398K and 233K.


Response of three stable dwarf mutant lines, namely dwf1, dwf2 and dwf3 to 170mM NaCl treatment was studied in comparison with untreated dwarf lines (positive control or PC) and treated mother varieties (used as negative control or NC) from 20d old seedling stage to maturity in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.). The three mutants differed significantly from both controls and also, from each other by onset of flowering, flower and pod production, their abortion, pollen fertility, different seed yield components, leaf injury level, plant dry weight and seed neurotoxin (β-ODAP) contents under salt stress. Among the five types of genotypes, dwf1 and dwf2 showed tolerance, while dwf3 was considered as a salt-sensitive line. Among the five genotypes, NC plants were the least tolerance to NaCl treatment.


In the auditory system, tonotopy is the spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequencies are processed. Defined by the organization of neurons and their inputs, tonotopy emphasizes distinctions in neuronal structure and function across topographic gradients and is a common feature shared among vertebrates. In this study we characterized action potential firing patterns and ion channel properties from neurons located in the extremely low-frequency region of the chicken nucleus magnocellularis (NM), an auditory brainstem structure. We found that NM neurons responsible for encoding the lowest sound frequencies (termed NMc neurons) have enhanced excitability and fired bursts of action potentials to sinusoidal inputs ≤10 Hz; a distinct firing pattern compared to higher-frequency neurons. This response property was due to lower amounts of voltage dependent potassium (KV) conductances, unique combination of KV subunits and specialized sodium (NaV) channel properties. Particularly, NMc neurons had significantly lower KV1 and KV3 currents, but higher KV2 current. NMc neurons also showed larger and faster transient NaV current (INaT) with different voltage dependence of inactivation from higher-frequency neurons. In contrast, significantly smaller resurgent sodium current (INaR) was present in NMc with kinetics and voltage dependence that differed from higher-frequency neurons. Immunohistochemistry showed expression of NaV1.6 channel subtypes across the tonotopic axis. However, various immunoreactive patterns were observed between regions, likely underlying some tonotopic differences in INaT and INaR. Finally, using pharmacology and computational modeling, we concluded that KV3, KV2 channels and INaR work synergistically to regulate burst firing in NMc.


Soil water repellency (WR) is a widespread phenomenon caused by aggregated organic matter (OM) and layers of hydrophobic organic substances coating the surface of soil particles. These substances have a very low surface free energy, reducing a soil's water attraction. There is focus on WR due to its effects on germination, root growth, liquid–vapour dynamics, surface erosion and leaching of chemicals through fingered flow paths. However, common techniques for measuring WR are time-consuming and expensive. Meanwhile, it is well established that visible near infrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy is a reliable method for determining soil OM. Potentially it could therefore provide fast measurements of WR through autocorrelation with OM. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of vis-NIR spectroscopy for estimating the WR of soils with a small gradient in soil organic carbon (SOC) and texture, and to evaluate the effect of soil pretreatment on the predictive ability of WR models. A total of 87 soil samples from an agricultural coarse sandy field in Denmark were analysed for SOC, particle size fractions, water content and WR. Soil samples were scanned with a vis-NIR sensor (350–2500 nm) after air- and oven-drying at 60°C and 105°C. WR, expressed as liquid surface tension (mN m−1), was determined using the molarity of ethanol droplet test. Partial least squares regression models of SOC, texture and water content showed no predictive ability (r2 values between 0.10 and 0.51). However, successful models (r2 = 0.85) were generated for WR. The majority of bands important in the vis-NIR region of WR models were related to different components of OM indicating that, across the investigated field, WR was related to specific hydrophobic components of soil OM rather than to the total amount of carbon. A lower prediction error of the WR model for soils dried at 105°C (1.93 mN m−1) than at 60°C (2.52 mN m−1) can be explained by a lower range of WR values for the soils dried at 105°C. Moreover, a higher temperature reduced the number of absorption bands related to OM, indicating a degradation of hydrocarbon groups and a more hydrophobic character of the soil.


The present protocol describes transcriptome mapping, data normalization and analysis pipeline with detailed steps for each of these aspects for single cell/ low input RNASeq data from Right Atrial Ganglionated Plexus (RAGP) of pig heart. The protocol with minor modifications can be adapted for low input samples with short reads or samples with low quality input RNA. Single cell samples acquired using Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) were processed for RNA-Seq library preparation using Smart-3SEQ technique (Foley et al 2019). The data analysis workflow consists of (a) pre-processing- data trimming, read alignment and feature count and (b) downstream analysis- annotation, batch correction, filtering and normalization. The entire protocol is performed using freely available packages. Most of them are available within the R framework.


Shilliam approaches Adom Getachew's book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination as an intervention into political theory. The book provides three provocations to that field. Getachew helps recast the sources and materials by which political theory interrogates the prospect of global justice. Getachew's intervention is field-shaping and especially helpful to those who pursue political theory in the field of international relations (IR). In this article, Shilliam wants to orient Getachew's argument in a direction that she herself implicitly tacks toward. The question: to what degree should the conventional conceptual frameworks of political theory carry the weight of Getachew's challenge? Shilliam addresses this question by looking at a "little tradition" of worldmaking: Ethiopianism. He presents the challenge provided by Ethiopianism as an analytical one: its worldmaking requires no analytical or ethical scaling up.