The methods for laboratory and commercial milling of dehulled barley grain are described. In the laboratory-scale barley at 10%, 12% and 14% moisture, was milled to produce three fine-products (flours) and two coarse-products (grits). The yield of flours and grits was about 40% and 60%, respectively. Increased products yield and the beta-glucan content in products with increasing moisture of ground grain were observed. Barley at 14% moisture was milled under commercial conditions to produce the following end-products: fine- and coarse-grained flours, middlings and fine grits. These products differed in their average contents of beta-glucans, total dietary fiber, ash and protein. The fine-grained grit from impact milling coarse grit had the highest contents of beta-glucans, total dietary fiber, ash and protein. This product, with a weight yield of 18.6%, contained 6.72% beta-glucans, 25.12% total dietary fiber, 2.19% ash, and 15.83% protein. All these values were at about 50%, 72%, 55% and 24%, respectively higher than in dehulled barley. Lowest contents of chemical components in fine-grained flours were found. Developed method of commercial milling of barley will allow to obtain new, nutritionally valuable barley products, which have potential for use in human foods.


Chemotherapy is one of the most conventionally used therapeutic interventions for treating various diseases. Chances of acquiring multidrug resistance in response to chemotherapeutic agents are exceedingly common among patients. Drug resistance arises mainly due to overexpression of efflux transporters such as P-glycoprotein and multidrug resistance-associated protein of the ATP-binding cassette superfamily of proteins, which significantly limits intracellular drug accumulation and drug activity. Although many approaches exist to overcome drug resistance, their uses are significantly limited in clinical practice. In this chapter, we demonstrate the superior functions of Pluronic-based technologies to overcome drug resistance. The present chapter highlights various aspects of Pluronic polymers, Pluronic conjugates, Pluronic nanotechnology, as well as their therapeutic implications for effective treatment strategies. We include the role of Pluronic polymers as a pharmaceutic excipient and drug delivery vehicle in this review. In addition, we highlight examples of Pluronic nanosystems that are currently in preclinical development, clinical trials, and clinically translatable formulations. Furthermore, a number of innovative Pluronic nano-designs of advanced therapeutics for future medicinal applications are presented. Collectively, the use of Pluronic-based nanoformulations discussed in this chapter suggests sensitization and prevention of drug resistance. Such an approach not only minimizes the dose required for treatment, but also minimizes the number of treatment cycles, which is useful in a clinical scenario.


A recent study finds that Olympic Games host countries experience significant positive, lasting effects on exports. They interpret their results as an indication that countries use the hosting of such events to signal openness and competitiveness. The authors challenge these empirical findings on the grounds that a comparison of structurally different and nonmatching groups of countries might suffer from a selection bias. The authors demonstrate that with an appropriate matching and treatment methodology, the significant Olympic effect disappears.


This paper seeks to evaluate the effects of expansionary monetary policy by the central bank on inflation, output and employment in a limited-participation model for different parameters value of inter-temporal elasticity of substitution and the Frisch (inverse of the labor supply) elasticity. To this end, a modified cash in advance model in line with Lucas (1990), Christiano (1991) and Fuerst (1992) is utilized to account for liquidity effect and anticipated inflation effect simultaneously. The utility function in this model has a CRRA specification in order to perform the sensitivity analysis of the key variables of the model. A range of parameter values for the economy of Iran is used to show the dependency of the results on the size of the coefficient of relative risk aversion and the Frisch elasticity. The simulation results, given the structure and limitation of our model, show that the injection of liquidity to the banking system is inflationary and is not a reliable policy to increase output. We obtained similar results with different parameter values, except for the risk aversion parameter below unity and Frisch elasticity below two. Consistent with prior research, when these parameters are higher, the liquidity effect on output and employment becomes weaker.


Curricular policies occupy a central place on the education debate. As a result of adopting these policies as propellers for change by federal, state, and municipal administration, such theme has been gaining momentum in Brazilian scholarly production. Educational changes and other aspects involved in such processes on the last decades have also generated a specific effect on curriculum. By investigating elementary education's curricular policy in Sao Paulo's municipal education network the present article weighs up which would be the possible influences on its constitution. Such investigation focuses on policies formulation between years 2005 and 2012, trying to evidence influences such as external evaluations, political-partisan and commercial issues.


Many organizations have in recent years experienced increased inadequacy of their management practices to deal with their complex and turbulent work-related challenges. Failing to recognize the complexity in their problems, organizations have persisted in applying inappropriate methods and tools to them. When the workrelated problems are ambiguous, complex, and constrained, business processes tuned for decision-making have begun to degrade providing a false sense of security based on unjustified numerical certainty. Examining these challenges in the light of complexity theory could potentially help organizations to deal with their challenges in a more effective way. For understanding complex and ambiguous issues, people must interact, discuss, and share their different perspectives and interpretations. Existing literature recognizes sensemaking as one way for group members to understand and talk about complexity. Unfortunately, little has yet been reported on exactly how the properties of sensemaking can be materialized in practice. This paper discusses sensemaking as a potential framework to deal with complexity. The paper (1) describes on a practical level interventions taken in one case company to support sensemaking, (2) illustrates the creation of different plausible interpretations of what essentially describes the case company's current environment, (3) describes how the creation of shared understanding is currently being shaped into a commitment towards action, and (4) reflects the findings and experiences with the existing knowledge on complexity and sensemaking.


Speaker recognition in applications of our daily lives is not yet in widespread use. In order for biometric technology to make sense for real-world authentication applications and be accepted by end users, convenience of use, robustness and accuracy of such a system are equally important. This paper defines these requirements for pass phrase based voice authentication embedded within a multi modal biometric system and describes methods and algorithms developed and optimized for the demands of such an application. Classification is based on dynamic time warping which can cope with limited training data. MFCC features which have been optimized for speaker specific properties are used. Robustness of the system is increased with speech enhancement and cepstral mean subtraction. Furthermore, vector quantization with speaker specific codebooks is applied in order to decrease storage requirements for the biometric template. On an appropriate data base, a verification EER of 2.7% is achieved with limited training and test material.


The sequential changes in the histological pattern of anterior pituitary cytodifferentiation of the rat are described. The first labeled cells were ACTH positive and were detected in the pars tuberalis on postconceptual day 13. On day 14 ACTH cells also appeared in the ventral periphery of the pars distalis. On fetal day 15 the pars tuberalis anlage was characterized by numerous well-stained ACTH cells and by some weakly labeled FSH-beta, LH-beta, TSH-beta, GH and PRL cells while the pars distalis showed only ACTH positivity. On day 16 of gestation the ACTH cells were equally distributed throughout the whole pars distalis, while LH-beta, FSH-beta, TSH-beta, PRL and GH immunoreactive cells were localized either in the ventral region of the pars distalis only or were evenly distributed throughout the pars distalis. The present immunocytochemical data suggest that in the pars distalis the hypophyseal cell differentiation follows a clear rostrocaudal, ventrodorsal direction and that the time sequence of the functional differentiation of the adenohypophysis is pars tuberalis, pars distalis and pars intermedia.


Because of the powerful computing and storage capability in cloud computing, machine learning as a service (MLaaS) has recently been valued by the organizations for machine learning training over some related representative datasets. When these datasets are collected from different organizations and have different distributions, multi-task learning (MTL) is usually used to improve the generalization performance by scheduling the related training tasks into the virtual machines in MLaaS and transferring the related knowledge between those tasks. However, because of concerns about privacy breaches (e.g., property inference attack and model inverse attack), organizations cannot directly outsource their training data to MLaaS or share their extracted knowledge in plaintext, especially the organizations in sensitive domains. In this article, we propose a novel privacy-preserving mechanism for distributed MTL, namely NOInfer, to allow several task nodes to train the model locally and transfer their shared knowledge privately. Specifically, we construct a single-server architecture to achieve the private MTL, which protects task nodes' local data even if n-1 out of n nodes colluded. Then, a new protocol for the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is designed to perform the privacy-preserving model training, which resists the inference attack through the intermediate results and ensures that the training efficiency is independent of the number of training samples. When releasing the trained model, we also design a differentially private model releasing mechanism to resist the membership inference attack. Furthermore, we analyze the privacy preservation and efficiency of NOInfer in theory. Finally, we evaluate our NOInfer over two testing datasets and evaluation results demonstrate that NOInfer efficiently and effectively achieves the distributed MTL.


PROJECT BACKGROUND
Part of the corporate responsibility of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) is to partner with other organs of state, thereby moving South Africa forward through the provision of road infrastructure. The uMuziwabantu Local Municipality (in Harding) falls under the Ugu District Municipality and is located adjacent to the N2 along the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal. Recently completed within the boundaries of the uMuziwabantu Local Municipality is a roads project resulting from a partnership between the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport (KZN DoT) and the uMuziwabantu Local Municipality. The project entailed the upgrade of a gravel road to an all-weather surfaced road, and included the construction of culverts on two stream flows which divide the community, and which generally left the road impassable in rainy conditions.


Optimum inspection maintenance decision problem is a multi-criteria problem which many researchers have viewed as a single criterion problem such as mainly using downtime or cost, as the basis for selecting interval for the task. However, a combination of a number of criteria can yield a more appropriate interval for inspection maintenance task for mechanical/service system. This paper proposes an integrated PROMETHEE technique and delay time concept for implementing optimum inspection interval for mechanical/service systems based on combination of conflicting decision criteria. While the delay time concept is used to model decision criteria, the PROMETHEE method is used to aggregate decision criteria and ranking of alternative inspection interval. The PROMETHEE technique had been enhanced in this paper by incorporating utility function concept into it, in order to embed maintenance practitioners risk perception into the decision making process. The applicability and suitability of this methodology is demonstrated with two case studies.


Objective: The term grief, from the French term grever, which means "to burden, to oppress", can be deined as the process through which a person must go due to the loss of a loved one. We present a case of grief elaboration in a patient and his family that face a terminal illness.
Clinical case: The patient is a 51-year-old man diagnosed with stage T4a N2b M1 colon adenocarcinoma. He came to the Department of Psycho-Oncology presenting depressive symptoms, marital and family issues associated with a medical condition, and work related issues. Conclusions: The patient was diagnosed with a secondary major depressive disorder episode in reaction to his medical condition. He was prescribed anti-depressive treatment, and family psychotherapy was recommended for grief elaboration.


Attention is a multidimensional construct with variations throughout development. In Brazil, there is a lack of instruments with adequate psychometric characteristics to evaluate such differences. This study analyzed the contributions of different papers that used attention by cancelling test (ACT and AC) to evaluate development of attention in a normative sample of children (n = 722) and its comparison to clinical sample with ADHD (n = 46). An ANOVA was performed to evaluate the effect of age on ACT, demonstrating a significant difference for correct numbers of responses and of errors. An ANOVA was performed in the ACT to compare data of 78 children, which also showed significantly higher scores based on age. The same pattern occurred in the comparison of 46 children with attention deficit and hyperactivity. The results show improvement on attentional performance with age progression, besides the possibility to use these instruments for characterization of groups with and without indicators compatible with ADHD. Keywords: attention; evaluation; development; cognitive abilities; psychometrics


The funding of global public goods, such as climate mitigation, presents a complex strategic problem. Potential recipients demand side payments for implementing projects that furnish global public goods, and donors can cooperate to provide the funding. We offer a game-theoretic analysis of this problem. In our model, a recipient demands project funding. Donors can form a multilateral program to jointly fund the project. If no program is formed, bilateral funding remains a possibility. We find that donors rely on multilateralism if their preferences are relatively symmetric and domestic political constraints on funding are lax. In this case, the recipient secures large rents from project implementation. Thus, even donors with strong interests in global public good provision have incentives to oppose institutional arrangements that promote multilateral funding. These incentives have played an important role in multilateral negotiations on climate finance, especially in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011).


Aberrant activation of the Notch receptor signaling pathway and overexpression of the Notch ligand JAG1 are associated with poor outcome in breast cancer. The plasminogen activator system, which includes urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA), has been validated as a marker of recurrence, high metastasis risk and death in breast malignancy. By using microarray profiling of breast cancer cell lines that had undergone siRNA-mediated abrogation of Notch signaling we uncovered a link between activated Notch signaling and uPA expression. An association between elevated expression of the Notch ligand JAG1, uPA, and the basal-like breast cancer subtype was confirmed in breast cancer cell lines. The association between JAG1 and uPA expression persisted in a survey of primary carcinomas of the breast. We found that Notch knockdown reduced transcription of uPA and phenocopied uPA knockdown in breast cancer cells. Through mutational analysis we identified a CBF-1 binding site in the uPA promoter that is required for direct transcriptional regulation by Notch. These data suggest that JAG1-induced Notch activation results in breast cancer progression through upregulation of the plasminogen activator system, directly linking these 2 important pathways of poor prognosis.


Background: Spironolactone (SPIRO) reduces BP in patients (pts) with resistant hypertension (RHTN); however, its use in pts with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) is often limited by hyperkalemia (HK). In AMBER, patiromer (PAT) enabled more persistent use of SPIRO in pts with RHTN and CKD. As SPIRO is recommended in RHTN and DM increases HK risk, we report results in prespecified subgroups with type 1 or 2 DM (DM+) and without (DM-). Methods: Randomized, double-blind, placebo (PBO)-controlled trial in adults with RHTN and eGFR 25 to ≤45 mL/min/1.73 m2. Pts were assigned (1:1) to PBO or PAT, and SPIRO 25 mg QD, with dose titrations permitted after 1 wk for PAT and 3 wks for SPIRO. Primary endpoint: between-group difference at Wk 12 in % of pts on SPIRO. Results: 295 pts were randomized, 145 (49%) DM+ and 150 (51%) DM-. Baseline mean (SD) serum K+ (mEq/L) was 4.76 (0.34) in DM+ and 4.67 (0.39) in DM-. Significantly more pts treated with PAT than with PBO remained on SPIRO at Wk 12 in both subgroups (Figure). LS Mean (SE) cumulative SPIRO dose was higher with PAT than PBO, by 438.7 (177.7) mg in DM+ and 317.8 (175.0) mg in DM-. Adverse events of hyperkalemia or blood K+ increased occurred in 7 (PBO) and 8 (PAT) DM+ patients and 7 (PBO) and 1 (PAT) DM- patients. Conclusions: PAT enabled more pts with advanced CKD and RHTN to continue treatment with SPIRO, regardless of DM status. Disclosure R. Agarwal: Other Relationship; Self; AbbVie Inc., Akebia Therapeutics, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer Inc., Bird Rock Bio, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Celgene, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline plc., Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, OPKO Health, Inc., Reata, Relypsa, Inc.,Sandoz, Sanofi, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, ZS Pharma. P. Rossignol: Advisory Panel; Self; AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Idorsia, Novartis France, Novo Nordisk Inc., Relypsa, Inc., Servier, Vifor Pharma Group. Stock/Shareholder; Self; CardioRenal: cofounder. S. Arthur: Employee; Self; Relypsa, Inc. A. Conrad: Employee; Self; Relypsa, Inc. Stock/Shareholder; Self; Vifor Pharma Group. W.B. White: Consultant; Self; Relypsa, Inc. B. Williams: Consultant; Self; Novartis AG, Relypsa, Inc., Vascular Dynamics Inc. Other Relationship; Self; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Daiichi Sankyo, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc., Servier. Funding Relypsa, Inc.


This study describes a hitherto unknown phenomenon in healthy humans: visual hallucinations evoked by caloric vestibular stimulation. The hallucinations are of elementary type. The following quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the hallucinatory images were measured: latency, duration, location in the visual field, relation to the provoked vertigo, colour of the hallucinatory image and the background, number, size, shape, distance from the eyes, and motion. Two mechanisms are proposed to explain the genesis of these hallucinations. One mechanism is direct: change in the spontaneous activity of the visual system in several levels; the other mechanism is indirect: transient haemodynamic disturbance in the visual system.


DOI: 10.15414/afz.2015.18.01.10–14 Received 18. November 2014 ǀ Accepted 16. March 2015 ǀ Available online 31. March 2015 The aim of the study was to analyze the effect of two different preparations against rabbit's coccidiosis - naturally based preparation Emanox and conventional preparation Sulfacox - on selected production indicators. Preparations against coccidiosis were administered in the form of a beverage from weaning (42 days old) until the 60 days old. In the period of 84 days of rabbit's age average body weight in the Emanox group reached 2673.40 g, while in the Sulfacox group live weight was 2704.73 g. In the Emanox group 4 cases of death was recorded during the fattening, which has occurred within 51 to 66 days of age. In the Sulfacox group only two cases of death were registered at age 53 and 57 days, both caused by rabbit's constipation. Total feed consumption over the fattening period in the Emanox group was 121.99 kg and the average consumption of the complete feed mixture per 1 kg of body weight gain was 3.52 kg. In the Sulfacox group the total consumption of 122.56 kg of feed during fattening period was recorded and average consumption of complete feed mixture per 1 kg of body weight gain was 3.21 kg. Preparation Emanox PMX is a suitable alternative to conventional chemical preparations. Keywords: Emanox PMX, rabbit's coccidiosis, coccidiostats, rabbits fattening


BACKGROUND
Gradual discontinuation of lithium may reduce high risk of early morbidity in bipolar disorder patients discontinuing successful long-term maintenance on lithium, but previous small samples have limited analyses of subgroups.

METHOD
DSM-IV bipolar disorder patients (N = 161) were pooled from similar samples maintained on lithium for 4.2 +/- 3.1 years. Effects of discontinuing treatment abruptly (1-14 days) or gradually (15-30 days) were compared by survival analysis in clinically closely similar groups.

RESULTS
After gradual versus rapid discontinuation, the overall median time to recurrence +/- SE differed by 5.0-fold (20.0 +/- 5.8 vs. 4.0 +/- 0.7 months; p < .0001). After rapid discontinuation, the median time in remission was 2.3 times shorter than the mean cycling interval before lithium (6.3 vs. 14.6 months; p < .0001). The proportion of subjects falling ill/month (recurrence rate) was much higher in the first year after rapid discontinuation (6.5% vs. 2.3%), but similar thereafter (0.4% vs. 0.6%); patients remained stable for 3 years when off lithium treatment 20 times more frequently after gradual than rapid discontinuation (37% vs. 1.8%; p < .0001). Ratios of median survival times after gradual/rapid lithium discontinuation were similar for a first recurrence of mania and depression (4.4 vs. 3.4-fold), insignificantly higher (34%) with rapid or continuous cycling before lithium, and greater in Type II than Type I disorder (9.8- vs. 4.0-fold). The polarity of first off-lithium and first lifetime episodes matched in 70% of cases.

CONCLUSION
These pooled results strengthen the concept or a pharmacodynamic stress factor in early relapse after stopping lithium maintenance and support the conclusion that early recurrence risk can be minimized by discontinuing maintenance treatment gradually in both Type I and II bipolar disorders.


We study the benthic ostracods from the vibro-core KP60Bis (39 ° 08'34 .8689'' S, 61 ° 46'10 .0278'') of the estuary of Bahia Blanca, province of Buenos Aires. In the upper area of the core (Z2) the ostracofauna this domain is diverse with Loxocythere variasculpta Whatley, Moguilevsky, Toy, Chadwick and Ramos Neocytherideis ruidis Whatley, Moguilevsky, Chadwick, Toy and Callistocythere litoralensis (Rossi de Garcia). Within fitales and parafitales ostracods recovered Paracytherois sp. and Pellucistoma elongata Whatley, Moguilevsky, Chadwick, Toy and Feijo. Towards the top of the core is recorded species of continental origin as Limnocythere sp., Ilyocypris gibba Ramdhor, 1808 and Cypridopsis vidua O.F. Muller, 1776. In the middle sector (Z1) were abundant specimens of ostracods valves assigned to Ambostracon (Ambostracon) tenuireticulata Kotzians, 1982, Cornucoquimba lutziana, Zabert, 1978 and Caudites ohmerti Coimbra and Ornellas, 1987. Micropalaeontological analysis shows that the studied sediments were deposited in intertidal estuarine, affected by changes in sea level during the late Holocene.


Abstract  This review focuses on how smooth muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR), the major releasable Ca2+ store in these cells, performs its many functions by communicating with the plasma membrane (PM) and other organelles across cytoplasmic nanospaces, defined by membrane–membrane junctions less than 50 nm across. In spite of accumulating evidence in favour of the view that cytoplasmic nanospaces are a prerequisite for effective control of diverse cellular functions, our current understanding of how smooth muscle cells accomplish site‐ and function‐specific Ca2+ signalling remains in its infancy. We first present evidence in support of the view that effective Ca2+ signalling depends on the restricted diffusion of Ca2+ within cytoplasmic nanospaces. We then develop an evidence‐based model of the smooth muscle SR – the 'pan‐junctional SR' model – that incorporates a network of tubules and quilts that are capable of auto‐regulating their Ca2+ content and determining junctional [Ca2+]i through loading and unloading at membrane–membrane nanojunctions. Thereby, we provide a novel working hypothesis in order to inform future investigation into the control of a variety of cellular functions by local Ca2+ signals at junctional nanospaces, from contraction and energy metabolism to nuclear transcription. Based on the current literature, we discuss the molecular mechanisms whereby the SR mediates these multiple functions through the interaction of ion channels and pumps embedded in apposing membranes within inter‐organellar junctions. We finally highlight the fact that although most current hypotheses are qualitatively supported by experimental data, solid quantitative simulations are seriously lacking. Considering that at physiological concentrations the number of calcium ions in a typical junctional nanospace between the PM and SR is of the order of 1, ion concentration variability plays a major role as the currency of information transfer and stochastic quantitative modelling will be required to both test and develop working hypotheses.


Capacity building is now one of the most frequently invoked of current development concepts and yet it continues to defy a shared definition of what it means in practice. Is it possible that capacity building demands such a radically new form of practice, such a radically new form of thinking, that our current approaches are doomed to failure, not because we lack adequate models or 'technologies', but because our very approach to the issue is inadequate? Arguing that conventional capacity-building initiatives have tended to focus on the material and tangible aspects of the capacity of an organisation and its people to be critically self-aware, the author outlines some fundamental shifts which would be both entailed and generated by concentrating on the practice of the development practitioner in relation to organisational development, rather than focusing on external appearances or rushing to the training manuals.


A previous report explored the impact of a brief (four session) acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) intervention as compared with treatment as usual (TAU) on rehospitalization over 4 months in a sample of 80 inpatients with psychosis. The present study extended the follow-up period to 1 year and used a more sophisticated survival analysis to take previous hospitalization and length of the current hospitalization into account. Those in the ACT condition showed reduced hospitalization as compared to those in TAU at 4 months post discharge and again at 1 year post discharge. A test of proportionality of hazard showed that survival curves continued to diverge in the 5to 12-month postdischarge period after adjusting for differences in the 0 to 4 month period. Future directions are discussed.


To the Editor: Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, a gram-negative zoonotic bacterial pathogen, causes acute gastroenteritis and mesenteric lymphadenitis, which are often accompanied by fever and abdominal pain. Although Y. pseudotuberculosis infections are distributed worldwide, little is known about their incidence and epidemiology in the United States. Y. pseudotuberculosis was first reported in the United States in 1938 and has rarely been identified since then (1). No outbreaks have been reported, and only 14 cases were documented from 1938 through 1973 (2). Although not reportable nationally, yersiniosis is a notifiable disease in all Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) sites. We describe the Y. pseudotuberculosis infections reported through FoodNet surveillance sites and compare these infections with those caused by the more commonly identified Yersinia species, Y. enterocolitica.

During 1996–2007, FoodNet conducted active surveillance for laboratory-confirmed Yersinia spp. infections (excluding Y. pestis) in Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, and selected counties in California, Colorado, and New York. All clinical laboratories in these areas were routinely contacted to ascertain cases. Demographic and outcome (e.g., hospitalization and death) information was collected for all cases. On the basis of the source of specimen collection, infections were categorized as invasive (isolated from cerebrospinal fluid, blood, or another normally sterile site) or noninvasive (isolated from urine, stool, or other site). Data were analyzed by using SAS version 9.2 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA). Differences were evaluated by using χ2 and Fisher exact tests, and medians were compared by using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. A 2-tailed p value of <0.05 was considered significant.

During 1996–2007, 1,903 Yersinia infections were reported in FoodNet sites. Of these, 1,471 (77%) had species information available. Most of the isolates were Y. enterocolitica (1,355; 92%); 18 (1%) Y. pseudotuberculosis infections were identified. The average annual incidence of Y. pseudotuberculosis infections was 0.04 cases per 1,000,000 persons. Most Y. pseudotuberculosis cases were reported from the western FoodNet areas of California (5 cases) and Oregon (5 cases).

The median age of persons with Y. pseudotuberculosis infection was 47 years (range 16–86 years), and 67% were male (Table). Of the 13 Y. pseudotuberculosis cases for which race was reported, 10 (77%) were in whites. Eight (44%) Y. pseudotuberculosis cases occurred in the winter months (December–February). Thirteen (72%) persons with Y. pseudotuberculosis infection required hospitalization; the median hospital stay was 9 days (range 2–35 days). Two deaths were reported, yielding a case-fatality rate of 11%. Twelve (67%) of the Y. pseudotuberculosis isolates were recovered from blood specimens, and only 1 isolate was recovered from stool.

Table

Comparison of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica infections, FoodNet, 1996–2007*

In comparison, the average annual incidence of Y. enterocolitica infections in FoodNet was 3.5 cases per 1,000,000 persons, and many of the cases occurred in the southern FoodNet site of Georgia (443 cases, 33%) (Table). Persons with Y. enterocolitica infection were significantly younger than those with Y. pseudotuberculosis infection (median age 6 years, p = 0.0002), and unlike Y. pseudotuberculosis infections, Y. enterocolitica infections were evenly distributed among male and female patients and among whites and blacks. Compared with those with Y. enterocolitica infection, persons with Y. pseudotuberculosis infection were more likely to be hospitalized (p = 0.0003), have longer hospital stays (p = 0.0118), die (p = 0. 0248), and have an isolate recovered from an invasive site (p<0.0001).

Most of the Y. pseudotuberculosis infections reported in FoodNet sites appeared to be severe and invasive. The rarity of diagnosed Y. pseudotuberculosis infections is consistent with earlier reports from North America (3,4), but this rarity remains unexplained. This rarity contrasts with the observation that cases and outbreaks are more common in other parts of the developed world, particularly in northern climes (1,5,6–8). The recent appearance of epizootic Y. pseudotuberculosis in farmed deer in the southern United States suggests that this could change (9).

The high proportion of Y. pseudotuberculosis cases that were diagnosed by blood culture suggests that less invasive Y. pseudotuberculosis infections are underrecognized in the United States. Diagnosis of Yersinia infections is difficult without specific culture, Yersinia is not routinely tested for in the United States, and isolation of the organism by culture may be difficult with standard media (2,10). Clinical diagnosis of Y. pseudotuberculosis infections can be challenging because physicians are not aware that Y. pseudotuberculosis is a potential cause of gastroenteritis (10). In the syndrome of pseudoappendicitis, the distinctive findings found by surgical exploration of severe mesenteric lymphadenitis can be suggestive, but diagnosis would require confirmation by culture of nodes or feces (2,3).

Unless the physician is both aware of Y. pseudotuberculosis as a cause of gastroenteritis and knows which diagnostic test to order, Y. pseudotuberculosis infections will go undiagnosed. Clinicians should consider Y. pseudotuberculosis as a cause of gastroenteritis and pseudoappendicitis and request appropriate microbiologic testing for patients with suspected cases. If more cases are identified in the United States, another investigation of Y. pseudotuberculosis might clarify the epidemiology of this infection.


Background: Cysteamine bitartrate delayed-release (DR) capsule (Procysbi ® ) is approved for treatment of nephropathic cystinosis in the USA, Canada, and the EU. The capsules contain cysteamine bitartrate beads that are enteric coated with acid-resistant Eudragit L 30 D-55, preventing drug release in the acidic stomach environment while allowing dissolution of the beads in the more alkaline environment of the small intestine. Patients who have difficulty swallowing capsules can open capsules, sprinkle beads onto 4 ounces of a suitable food or liquid, gently mix, and consume the entire content within 30 minutes. Foods found to be suitable for administration, and described in the Procysbi US labeling, include fruit juices (except grapefruit juice), applesauce, and berry jelly; there are minor variations in the foods and liquids recommended by regulatory authorities in other countries. This study aimed to assess the stability of enteric-coated beads exposed to additional foods at different conditions to expand the list of suitable foods for drug administration. Methods: For each test condition, beads from eight opened 75 mg cysteamine bitartrate DR capsules were gently mixed with test food and maintained at a prespecified temperature and duration; remaining undissolved beads were then recovered from the food. The recovered beads were split into two portions: one assayed for remaining drug content and the other subjected to dissolution testing to assess the effect on the drug-release profile. Results: The results show that bead integrity was maintained when mixed with foods at pH values , 5.5 at all time points when refrigerated (2 ° C–8 ° C) and at room (20 ° C–22 ° C) and lukewarm (37 ° C–41 ° C) temperatures. Bead integrity was not maintained when mixed with foods at pH values of $ 5.5 at room temperature. Conclusion: The results from this in vitro dissolution study help in identifying additional foods that may be used for the administration of cysteamine bitartrate DR beads from opened capsules using the sprinkle method.


The study evaluated the effect of soaking time on some selected engineering properties of black-eye pea and brown beans cowpea variety with a view to providing the necessary data that will aid the design and development of some specific process equipment such as size reduction, cleaning, sorting and grading machines as well as storage components and facilities . Mature seeds procured from the market were manually cleaned and soaked in water at room temperature within the range of 27-31 0 C for 2minutes, 4minutes, 6minutes, 8minutes and 10minutes and the selected response parameters observed. The results showed that length, width, thickness, geometric mean diameter, mass, aspect ratio and surface area increased non-linearly from 8.10mm to 12.00mm, 5.28mm to 7.89mm, 5.23m to 6.91mm, 6.20mm to 8.05mm, 0.33g to 0.52g, 0.71 to 0.77, and 132.70mm 2 and 134.69mm 2 respectively as soaking time increased for black-eye pea; while for brown beans variety the results showed that length, width, thickness, geometric mean diameter, mass, aspect ratio and surface area increased non-linearly from 8.03mm to 11.60mm, 5.25mm to 7.78mm, 5.18m to 6.69mm, 6.17mm to 7.85mm, 0.34g to 0.58g, 0.66 to 0.74, and 131.65mm 2 and 134.51mm 2 respectively as soaking time increased. More so shape and bulk density decreased non-linearly from 0.86 to 0.78 and 0.77g/cm3 to 0.64g/cm3 with increased soaking time for black-eye pea while for brown beans, it decreased non-linearly from 0.80 to 0.73. The static coefficient of friction on three different material surfaces increased non-linearly from 0.3773 to 0.7089 on rubber, from 0.3772 to 0.6630 on stainless steel, and from 0.4177 to 0.6576 on galvanized steel as soaking time increases for both varieties; while angle of repose increased non-linearly also from 22.30 0 to 38.01 0 for both varieties when soaked. From the results, it is recommended to use materials of construction indicating value for angle of repose lower than 31.670 in the manufacture of process components requiring easy movement of products along its surface. Keywords: Black eye pea, Brown beans, Soaking time, Engineering properties.


Objective The purpose of this study was to determine the demographic correlates of schizophrenia and the use of Catha edulis. Results Results of the present study shows that variables like age ≤ 30 year ( OR=2.6; 95%CI=1.166,5.821; p=.020 ), single marital status ( OR=4.25; 95%CI=1.86,9.72; p=.001 ), unemployment ( OR=3.82; 95%CI=1.74,8.38; p=.001 ), lifetime Catha edulis (khat) use ( OR=3.89; 95%CI=1.75,8. 64) are significantly correlated with Schizophrenia. Knowledge of the association between demographic variables and the use of Catha edulis would assist in both societal education on the diagnosis and prognosis of schizophrenia.


Abstract : We present a new perspective on the subspace compensation techniques that currently dominate the field of speaker recognition using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). Rather than the traditional factor analysis approach, we use Gaussian modeling in the sufficient statistic supervector space combined with Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis (PPCA) within-class and shared across class covariance matrices to derive a family of training and testing algorithms. Key to this analysis is the use of two noise terms for each speech cut: a random channel offset and a length dependent observation noise. Using the Wiener filtering perspective, formulas for optimal train and test algorithms for Joint Factor Analysis (JFA) are simple to derive. In addition, we can show that an alternative form of Wiener filtering results in the i-vector approach. thus tying together these two disparate techniques.


Neurophysiological research has begun to uncover how therapy produces change in the brain. To examine this phenomenon, many studies have controlled for specific symptoms to identify where therapy has the greatest effect (Linden, 2006). In athletic performance, anxiety represents a significant struggle for college athletes (Mabweazara, Leach, & Andrews, 2017). The present study intended to examine the impact of brief therapy on brain activation and competition anxiety in college athletes. A sample of collegiate athletes (n = 17) participated in a pre-post intervention study. Preand post-intervention measures included electroencephalogram (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), self-report anxiety measures (SAS-2, GAD-7), and selfratings of performance. Each athlete completed 5 sessions of Solution-Focused Therapy to address symptoms of competition anxiety. Significant decreases in self-reported competition anxiety were found post-intervention. Significant increases in self-ratings of performance were also found post-intervention. Significant changes in EEG brainwave activity were also found, particularly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes which paralleled those found SOLUTION-FOCUSED THERAPY AND COLLEGIATE ATHLETES iv in previous studies on depression and anxiety (Grimm et al., 2008; Paquette et al., 2003). GSR readings were not found to be significantly different from preto post-intervention. The impact of therapy can be measured via client experience and brainwave activity. Limitations and future directions are discussed. Therapeutic outcomes appear to be just as present in the hardware of neurobiology as have been found in the software of self-report.


Dynamics of biomolecular assemblies offer invaluable insights into their functional mechanisms. For extremely large biomolecular systems, such as HIV-1 capsid that has nearly 5 millions atoms, obtaining its normal mode dynamics using even coarse-grained models can be a challenging task. In this work, we have successfully carried out a normal mode analysis of an entire HIV-1 capsid in full all-atom details. This is made possible through our newly developed BOSE (Block of Selected Elasticity) model that is founded on the principle of resonance discovered in our recent work. The resonance principle makes it possible to most efficiently compute the vibrations of a whole capsid at any given frequency by projecting the motions of component capsomeres into a narrow subspace. We have conducted also assessments of the quality of the BOSE modes by comparing them with benchmark modes obtained directly from the original Hessian matrix. Our all-atom normal mode dynamics study of the HIV-1 capsid reveals the dynamic role of the pentamers in stabilizing the capsid structure and is in agreement with experimental findings that suggest capsid disassembly and uncoating start when the pentamers become destabilized. Our results on the dynamics of hexamer pores suggest that nucleotide transport should take place mostly at hexamers near pentamers, especially at the larger hemispherical end.


Symbolic regression is the process of constructing mathematical expressions that best fit given data sets, where a target variable is expressed in terms of input variables. Unlike traditional regression methods, which optimise the parameters of pre-defined models, symbolic regression learns both the model structure and its parameters simultaneously.
Genetic programming (GP) is a biologically-inspired evolutionary algorithm, that automatically generates computer programs to solve a given task. The flexible representation of GP along with its ``white box" nature makes it a dominant method for symbolic regression. Moreover, GP has been successfully employed for different learning tasks such as feature selection and transfer learning.
Data incompleteness is a pervasive problem in symbolic regression, and machine learning in general, especially when dealing with real-world data sets. One common approach to handling data missingness is data imputation. Data imputation is the process of estimating missing values based on existing data. Another approach to deal with incomplete data is to build learning algorithms that directly work with missing values.
Although a number of methods have been proposed to tackle the data missingness issue in machine learning, most studies focus on classification tasks. Little attention has been paid to symbolic regression on incomplete data. The existing symbolic regression methods are only applicable when the given data set is complete.
The overall goal of the thesis is to improve the performance of symbolic regression on incomplete data by using GP for data imputation, instance selection, feature selection, and transfer learning.
This thesis develops an imputation method to handle missing values for symbolic regression. The method integrates the instance-based similarity of the k-nearest neighbour method with the feature-based predictability of GP to estimate the missing values. The results show that the proposed method outperforms existing popular imputation methods.
This thesis develops an instance selection method for improving imputation for symbolic regression on incomplete data. The proposed method has the ability to simultaneously build imputation and symbolic regression models such that the performance is improved. The results show that involving instance selection with imputation advances the performance of using the imputation alone.
High-dimensionality is a serious data challenge, which is even more difficult on incomplete data. To address this problem in symbolic regression tasks, this thesis develops a feature selection method that can select a good set of features directly from incomplete data. The method not only improves the regression accuracy, but also enhances the efficiency of symbolic regression on high-dimensional incomplete data.
Another challenging problem is data shortage. This issue is even more challenging when the data is incomplete. To handle this situation, this thesis develops transfer learning methods to improve symbolic regression in domains with incomplete and limited data. These methods utilise two powerful abilities of GP: feature construction and feature selection. The results show the ability of these methods to achieve positive transfer learning from domains with complete data to different (but related) domains with incomplete data.
In summary, the thesis develops a range of approaches to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of symbolic regression on incomplete data by developing a number of GP-based methods. The methods are evaluated using different types of data sets considering various missingness and learning scenarios.


Weldmar HospiceCare has growing numbers of patients being referred to the service who want to be supported in their own homes for as long as possible. Weldmar are working in partnership with Macmillan who are providing funding for an 18 month secondment post to set up and lead a Telehealth pilot. Therefore enhancing the service offered to Weldmar patients and giving clinicians another tool to support and monitor patients. Telehealth is already being used in the UK for patients with long term conditions such as COPD and Heart failure but there is limited numbers of palliative care patients using a Telehealth service. The pilot consists of a POD which has a protocol uploaded to it that has been written using recognised palliative care outcome measures these are the Barthel Index and the IPOS scoring system. Patients log on daily completing the pre-set questions this will monitor changes in symptoms and also level of need. The results are stored on the POD so clinicians visiting the home can access these or clinicians can access these remotely from their PC to review the data the patient has inputted. The PODS have the capability for video conferencing and allow clinicians to use this to discuss with patients the data they have inputted and also carry out assessments of patients face to face via Skype. Patients have embraced the pilot and use of the POD. They report the POD is quick and easy to use, they like that clinicians can monitor them remotely. Clinicians are adapting to having another tool to use to support patients and having access to a wealth of data about patients. Also having the ability to monitor changes in symptoms without being reliant on patients relaying to them how they have been over a set period of time.


With the increasing popularity of cloud computing, many notable quality of service (QoS)-aware service composition approaches have been incorporated in service-oriented cloud computing systems. However, these approaches are implemented without considering the energy and network resource consumption of the composite services. The increases in energy and network resource consumption resulting from these compositions can incur a high cost in data centers. In this paper, the trade-off among QoS performance, energy consumption, and network resource consumption in a service composition process is first analyzed. Then, a green service composition approach is proposed. It gives priority to those composite services that are hosted on the same virtual machine, physical server, or edge switch with end-to-end QoS guarantee. It fulfills the green service composition optimization by minimizing the energy and network resource consumption on physical servers and switches in cloud data centers. Experimental results indicate that, with comparisons to other approaches, our approach saves 20-50 percent of energy consumption and 10-50 percent of network resource consumption.


In order to investigate the mechanism of the formation of the high pressure region which is caused by the type IV interaction, and to develop an alternate control method, the two-dimensional RANS equations were solved to simulate the interaction under the condition of free stream Mach number 3.45 and oblique shock angle 30°. The configuration of type IV interaction is well illustrated, and the mechanism of the formation of high peak values of pressure is revealed. The prediction of surface pressure without energy deposition is found to be in good agreement with experiments. Continuous energy injection is used to control the flow field to decrease the peak values of pressure. The result shows that the peak value decreased by more than 70%, which suggests that there is a potential for continuous energy deposition control of type IV interaction to protect the blunt leading edge.


Spin polarized density functional theory computations were performed to elucidate electronic effects based on first-row transition metal doped Fe(100) and Fe5C2(100) surfaces for CO dissociation. Both Mn and Cr doped Fe(100) and Fe5C2(100) surfaces can enhance the dissociation of CO, while the Co, Ni and Cu doped ones are unfavorable for the dissociation of CO. Besides the BEP relationship, a linear relationship between activation energy and the electronegativity of the dopant atom is established. It can be deduced that the metals with lower electronegativity are favorable for the activation of CO. The reason has been analyzed by density of states and crystal orbital Hamilton population. The metals with lower electronegativity relative to Fe could donate electrons to doped sites and then activate CO with a more delocalized O 2p orbital. The electronic effects revealed herein are helpful for the understanding of the CO activation process and for the design of catalysts with desired activity.


Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) coating is known as a low friction material that is often used as a solid lubricant coating. However, due to its relatively weak mechanical strength, wear has been a critical issue which needs to be overcome. In the present work, a composite coating composed of PTFE and graphene oxide (GO) was investigated with the aim to significantly improve the wear resistance of PTFE, in both room and elevated temperature conditions. PTFE/GO (PG) composite coatings with varying amounts of GO in the PTFE matrix were successfully deposited on stainless steel (SS) substrates by the spin coating method. Both micro- and macro-scale tests were performed in order to assess the tribological properties of the coatings under a wide range of normal load. Results of the micro-scale tests showed that the coefficient of friction and the wear rate could be remarkably reduced to 0.1 and 0.65 × 10−9 mm3 N−1 m−1, respectively, with inclusion of 15 vol% of GO in the PTFE matrix. This coating also demonstrated low friction and wear properties up to 400 °C in the macro-scale tests. The superior tribological properties of the PG coating were attributed to the synergistic effects of PTFE and GO. Specifically, the existence of a rather homogeneous dispersion of high strength GO in the low friction PTFE matrix allowed for generation of a self-lubricating film along the wear track.


SUMMARY

S-wave velocity in the shallow crust is an important controlling parameter for ground motion amplification. It is a key parameter for prediction of ground motion and thus for earthquake hazard mitigation in general. Shallow S-wave velocity structure has often been obtained from phase velocity of microtremors and microseisms. We present a new approach which directly inverts the ratio of horizontal to vertical amplitudes of microseisms which is referred to as the HZ ratio in this paper. Our approach consists of (i) isolation of Rayleigh-wave dominant portions in seismograms by using the 90-degree phase shift between horizontal and vertical component, (ii) measurement of the HZ ratios as a function of frequency and (iii) iterative inversion for S-wave velocity structure in the crust. Depth sensitivity kernels of the HZ ratios for density, P-wave velocity and S-wave velocity are derived by a numerical method. Examples of the application of this method to data in southern California show that the HZ ratio data require modification of the standard seismic velocity model in this region (Southern California Earthquake Center Community Velocity Model 3.0 or SCEC CVM) in the upper 10–15 km. The derived models show amplification of incident SH waves by factors of 2–8, relative to the prediction by the SCEC CVM. The proposed approach has promise for applications to other regions in the world because microseisms are observed everywhere in the world. The method may become even more powerful if it is combined with phase velocity data.


Reliable multicast over wireless poses interesting challenges arising from the unreliable nature of the wireless medium. Recovering lost packets is particularly challenging in multicast scenarios since different receivers lose different packets. For this reason, simply retransmitting packets does not scale well with the number of receivers and particularly with the packet loss rate. A more efficient alternative is to use erasure codes to generate packets that can help many receivers at the same time. In this paper, we propose using online network coding to send coded packets that repair losses according to feedback reports sent by the clients. In particular, we propose using a recently developed scheduler for controlling feedback reports, which also allows differentiating the QoS provided to clients, and combine it with an online coding approach to provide novel stochastic guarantees of worst-case delay as required for QoS sensitive applications. We show preliminary simulation results that confirm the bounded decoding delay of our approach in a streaming application.


Abstract In mountainous regions, snow transport due to wind significantly influences snow distribution and, as a result, avalanche danger. A physically based numerical two-layer model is developed to simulate blowing and drifting snow in Alpine terrain. One layer describes the driving-wind field and the transport in suspension. The description is based on the atmospheric boundary-layer equations, using an e − ∊ model for the turbulent closure. The second layer describes the transport due to saltation, including erosion and deposition of snow. Here, conservation equations for mass and momentum are formulated for the mixture of snow and air. Particle trajectory calculations are used to parameterize quantities characterizing the saltation layer. Both layers are mutually coupled by boundary conditions. A two-way coupling between particles and airflow is taken into account. Comparisons between simulation results and field measurements around an Alpine crest show encouraging results.


Summary 1. The future of tropical forest species depends in part on their ability to survive in human-modified landscapes. Forest strips present a priority area for biodiversity research because they are a common feature of many managed landscapes, are often afforded a high level of legal protection, and can provide a cost-effective and politically acceptable conservation strategy. 2. Despite the potential conservation benefits that could be provided by forest strips, ecologists currently lack sufficient evidence to inform policy and guide their design and management. 3. We used a quasi-experimental landscape in the Brazilian Amazon to test the importance of four management-relevant variables (forest type, isolation distance, forest structure, and large mammal activity) on the potential biodiversity conservation value of narrow forest strips for dung beetles. 4. Information-theoretic model selection based on AICc revealed strong support for the influence of large mammal activity and forest type on dung beetle abundance; isolation distance on species richness; and forest structure on the relative abundance of matrix-tolerant species. Multi-dimensional scaling showed a strong influence of forest type and isolation on community composition and structure, with riparian and dry-land strips having complementary sets of species. 5. Synthesis and applications. To enhance the conservation value and ecological integrity of forest strips in human-modified landscapes we recommend that strip design considers both isolation distance and whether or not the strips encompass perennial streams. In addition, we identify the maintenance of forest structure and the protection of large mammal populations as being crucially important for conserving forest dung beetle communities.


Microinjection molding has been drawing more and more attention due to its great advantages such as cost effectiveness and mass production capability. In this work, an experimental study was carried out in order to investigate the effect of the mold surface roughness on the achieved filled length of the molded microfeatures. For this purpose, an aluminum mold insert with microchannels having different surface roughness values was designed and fabricated using ultraprecision diamond machining and micromilling method. The experimental results revealed that increasing surface roughness of the microchannel wall led to a decrease in the filled length of the molded microfeatures. It was also found that with increased melt temperature or injection velocity, the effect of surface roughness was weakened by high-pressure trapped air inside the microchannels during injection process. Finally, the influence mechanism of the mold surface roughness was discussed.


ABSTRACT Calcite phases with different amounts of ferrous iron (determined by microprobe analysis) are distinguishable by study of stained thin sections and stained acetate peels. We have defined four such phases, they are (a) non-ferroan calcite (0.0% FeO; red stain), (h) ferroan calcite I (0.5% to 1.5% FeO; red-purple stai,), (e) ferroan calcite II (1.5% to 2.5% FeO; purple stain), and (d) ferroan calcite III (2.5% to 3.5% FeO; purple-blue stain). Several factors, including acidity and temperature of staining solution, affect the color (hue) of the stain, indicating that a standard procedure must be followed if colorimetric techniques are to be used in the determination of ferrous iron content in calcite.


Background and Aims Manual control of oxygen delivery to premature infants is conducted mainly by NICU nurses. This involves FIO2 adjustments in order to keep the SPO2 within a specific target range (88–92%). Pulse oximeters have alarms set to alert the nurses when SPO2 values are outside the range (85–95%). Our aims were to study FIO2 alteration in terms of magnitude and time outside target immediately before the FIO2 change. Methods Infants receiving CPAP or ventilation on the Babylog 8000 ventilator (Dec 2010- Apr 2012) were studied. Signals were acquired from oximeters and ventilator using the PowerLab data acquisition system. The 9-minute epoch prior to each FIO2 change: FIO2 increase (ΔPOS) and FIO2 decrease (ΔNEG) were studied. Results Recordings were obtained from 7 (5 male) infants with mean (± SD) gestation of 26.9 (±1.9) weeks and birthweight 767 (±200) g. 253 FIO2 adjustments were recorded (130 ΔPOS and 123 ΔNEG) from 105 hours of total recording time. Mean (range) magnitude of ΔPOS and ΔNEG was 4.6% (0.5–19.5) and 4.5% (0.5–57.0), respectively. Proportion time spent with low alarm in the 9 minutes before ΔPOS was 50.8%, with 28.4% (±20.2) of time in 80–85%, 15.8%(±16.7) in 70–80% band and 6.6%(±11.3) less than 70% saturation. 22.5% of time was spent with high alarm (before ΔNEG) with 4.3% (±8.7) time SPO2 exceeding 98% and 7.7% (±11.4) in 96–98% band. Conclusion Nurses were more likely to tolerate low oxygen saturations than high saturations in preterm infants. Mild desaturation episodes (between 80–85%) were often managed conservatively.


This paper examines the outcomes of the housing reform in China and the main challenges for public housing schemes. In the past 30+ years, the Chinese governments at various levels have introduced numerous housing reform measures and the meaning of public interventions in housing has shifted overtime. Despite of the improved urban housing conditions, until very recent, the role of public housing had been increasingly marginalised and urban housing inequality had increased dramatically. There has been a renewed interest in public housing provision from 2008. As far as housing with a public element goes, so far, the government intends to create a system in which public funds may reach different income groups and for different tenure types. The access to the funds or housing will be mean-tested. However, despite of these efforts, housing issues appear to be more at the centre of public attention these days. The paper tries to explore the main reasons behind this phenomenon.


Sepsis produces profound hypothyroidism. This hypothyroid state is associated with altered lung metabolism and structural integrity. We studied the respiratory function of rats during sepsis-induced hypothyroidism with or without T3 treatment. Forty-four male Holtzman rats underwent cecal ligation and puncture (CLP). Treatment was administered at six hours after surgery consisting of intraperitoneal injection of T3 (15 micrograms/kg, n = 19) or saline (n = 25). At 20 hours (Group A) or 30 hours (Group B) following CLP, respiratory drive was assessed by serial occlusion pressure technique (P0.1). The rats were killed and static elastance determined by serial air inflation to 10 cc. The lungs were excised for weight determination. The P0.1 values were significantly greater in T3-treated animals over controls in Group A (9.3 +/- 0.7 vs. 6.6 +/- 2.2, p less than 0.05 by t test); elastance was significantly improved by T3 treatment in Group B (p less than 0.05 by two-way ANOVA). Lung weight, pH, pO2, pCO2, respiratory rate (RR), and mortality were not significantly different between groups. Control animals were hypothyroid by 20 hours after CLP (T3 less than 12.5 ng/dL) whereas T3-treated animals were euthyroid (T3 = 145 +/- 43 ng/dL). Pulmonary dysfunction frequently accompanies sepsis; the euthyroid state appears protective. We found a significantly improved respiratory drive in septic animals with T3 treatment. Lung elastance was similarly improved in late sepsis with T3 treatment. The data suggest that T3 treatment preserves respiratory function in septic rats as evidenced by respiratory drive and compliance.


The fundamental concepts of sideways-looking radar are examined for both spatial processing with real apertures and temporal processing with synthetic apertures. The analogies between the different processing methods are identified in terms of the single target performance. Principal properties analysed are the resolution and signal/noise ratio. In addition, the effect of many scatterers is discussed for both co-operative and un-co-operative targets. The statistics and spectrum of the received signal are derived and the dependence on the scatterer properties is demonstrated. It is shown that the determining factor is the number of independent scattering regions per resolution cell. In each case the implications of the findings in terms of possible system design are discussed.


"Much of the early work on poverty was highly quantitative:... It became increasingly clear, however, that while numbers are essential for policy and monitoring purposes, it is also important to understand people's perception of poverty and their mechanisms for coping with poverty and other situations of extreme economic and social stress." Researchers have recognized over the past few years that quantitative analysis of the incidence and trends in poverty, while essential for national economic development planning, must be complemented by qualitative methods that help planners and managers understand the cultural, social, political, and institutional context within which projects are designed and implemented. This report is based on a two-day workshop held in June 1998, where outside research specialists and World Bank staff discussed the importance of integrating these research methods. The participants reviewed experiences in the use of mixed-method approaches in Bank research and project design. This report is a result of those discussions. The report examines the need for integrated research approaches in social and economic development, presents case studies of integrated approaches in practice, and talks about lessons learned. Part I describes the evolution of interest in, and the potential benefits of integrated research, and, Part II presents case studies on how integrated approaches have been used in poverty analysis, education, health, and water supply and sanitation, while Part III discusses lessons learned with respect to the use of integrated approaches, and assesses the benefits that can be achieved.


With the introduction of information and communication technologies into our homes and the different physical and communicative expressions this implies for our living spaces the concepts of being private and of beingpublic become crucial. In this paper, we introduce A Pattern Language, developed by Christopher Alexander in the 1970s, in order to handle these problems systematically. The presentation formally follows Alexander's structure in five cases all related to practical experiments on being private and public at home. We start with a number of concrete user situations related to human?computer interaction. Social and communicative phenomena or possibilities end up in novel design patterns at the interface between an architectural and a technological perspective. The novel patterns presented are primarily based on experiences from practical work on the development of a conceptual dwelling of the future, comHOME, designed and constructed as a full-scale model of a flat. By creating different zones for video-mediated communication, comZONES, the user can control the private and public digital areas varying in time and space. The novel patterns refer to two separate levels. On the first level a specific pattern, called "PRIVATE AND PUBLIC DIGITAL SPACES", is designed as a conceptual floor plan layout. This plan distributes private and public digital spaces for video-mediated communication over the flat. At a second level, four patterns show the integration of the specific comZONES aiming at solving four specific problems with video-mediated communication at home. Our intention is to describe the application of design patterns as a method for analysing and solving novel problems encountered with the introduction of information and communication technologies in our homes. The video-mediated set-ups are not dealt with in depth. They serve mainly as designs that make it possible to apply the design patterns.


Voltage scaling is one of the most effective and straightforward means for CMOS digital circuit's energy reduction. Aggressive voltage scaling to the near or sub-threshold region helps achieving ultra-low energy consumption. However, it brings along big challenges to reach the required throughput and to have good tolerance of process variations. This thesis presents our research work in designing robust near/sub-threshold CMOS digital circuit. Our work has two features. First, unlike the other research work that uses subthreshold operation only for low-frequency low-throughput applications, we use architectural-level parallelism to compensate throughput degradation, so a medium throughput of up to 100MB/s suitable for digital consumer electronic applications can be achieved. Second, several new techniques are proposed to mitigate the yield degradation due to process variations. These techniques include: (a) Configurable V T balancer to control the V T spread. When facing process corners in the sub-threshold, our balancer will balance the V T of p/nMOS transistors through bulk-biasing. (b) Transistor sizing to combat V T mismatch between transistors. This is needed if the circuit needs to be operated with very deep sub-threshold supply voltage, i.e., below 250mV for 65nm CMOS standard V T process. (c) Improving sub-threshold drivability by exploiting the V T mismatch between parallel transistors. While the V T mismatch between parallel transistors is always known as notorious, we proposed to utilize it to boost the driving current in the sub-threshold. This interesting approach also suggests using multiple-finger layout style, which helps reducing silicon area considerably. (d) Selection procedure of the standard cells and how they were modified for higher reliability in the sub-threshold regime. Standard library cells that are sensitive to process variations must be eliminated in the synthesis flow. We provided the basic guideline to select "safe" cells. (e) The method that turns dangerous ratioed logic such as latch and register into non-ratioed logic. SubJPEG, an ultra low-energy multi-standard JPEG encoder co-processor with a sub/near threshold power supply is designed and implemented to demonstrate all these ideas. This 8-bit resolution DMA based co-processor has multiple power domains and multiple clock domains. It uses 4 parallel DCTQuantization engines in the data path. Instruction-level parallelism is also used. All the parallelism is implemented in an efficient manner so as to minimize the associated area overhead. Details about this co-processor architecture and implementation issues are covered in this thesis. The prototype chip is fabricated in TSMC 65nm 7-layer Low-Power Standard V T CMOS process. The core area is 1.4×1.4mm2. Each engine has its own V T balancer. Each V T balancer is 25×30µm2. The measurement results show that our V T balancer has very good balancing effect. In the sub-threshold mode the engines can operate with 2.5MHz clock frequency at 0.4V supply, with 0.75pJ energy per cycle per single engine for DCT and Quantization processing, i.e. 0.75pJ/(engine·cycle). This leads to 8.3× energy/(engine·cycle) reduction when compared to using a 1.2V nominal supply. In the near-threshold regime the energy dissipation is about 1.1pJ/(engine·cycle) with a 0.45V supply voltage at 4.5MHz. The system throughput can meet 15fps 640×480 pixel VGA compression standard. By further increasing the supply, the test chip can satisfy multi-standard image encoding. Our methodology is largely applicable to designing other sound/graphic and streaming processors.


Graphene-based nanomaterials show great potential as tougheners for thermosetting resins because they offer effective toughening of resins at an extremely low loading level with minimal change in Tg or modulus. However, commercial resin formulations sometimes contain inorganic fillers that could affect the toughening behavior of graphene-based additives. In this study, the effects of combining modified graphene oxide (mGO) with several widely used filler materials (fumed silica, kaolin clay, and calcium carbonate) on toughening of vinyl ester resins was evaluated. The relative size of additional filler particles compared to mGO particles strongly influences the toughening effects. mGO can toughen the resin if the other filler particles are much smaller and well dispersed. In contrast, the addition of mGO to filler-containing vinyl ester resin may decrease the fracture toughness if it reduces the size of the filler inclusion. Therefore, it is important to know the behavior of a filler in a resin before app...


One explanation for the comparatively lower quality of movie sequels is selection bias, known in personnel economics as the Peter principle (Lazear, 2004). Only abnormally successful movies are selected for a sequel. Another explanation is a deterministic depreciation in quality due to the decline in the novelty of the sequel's characters and storyline. Both explanations predict that, relative to the original, the sequel's performance will revert towards the mean. We develop a structural model to decompose the two explanations, and estimate its parameters using detailed data on 306 franchise films and 2,823 non-franchise films between 1995 and 2014. Parameter estimates provide evidence of selection bias for action, adventure, and horror movies, and evidence of a deterministic decline in quality for comedies.


This paper documents the reversal of pension privatization and the reforms that took place in the 1990s and 2000s in Hungary. The report analyses the political economy of different reform proposals, and the characteristics of the new pension system, including laws enacted, coverage, benefit adequacy, financing and contribution rates, governance and social security administration, social dialogue, positive impacts and other key issues of Hungary's pension system.


Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) is a cross-pollinated plant, therefore vegetative propagation is necessary to ensure identical traits with parents, such as tissue culture techniques through somatic embryo. The study aimed to find the effect of plant growth regulator 2.4-D and thidiazuron in inducing embryogenic callus, by adding incision area on leaf explant, and to evaluate addition of GA 3 in increasing somatic embryo conversion. The study was conducted from December 2014 to June 2016 in the Tissue Culture Laboratory, IAARD, Bogor. The research consisted of 2 stages. Stage 1 used a complete randomized design of 2 factors; the first factor was a combination of plant growth regulator 2.4-D (1.0 and 2.0 mg/l) and thidiazuron (1.0; 3.0; and 5.0 mg/l), the second factor was leaf incision (slashed and unslashed). Stage 2 used a complete randomized design, with GA 3 treatment at different concentrations (0.0; 0.5; and 1.0 mg/l). Observed variables were percentage of callus formation, fresh weight of callus, number of torpedoes, number of somatic embryos at cotyledon stage, and number of germinated embryo. The results showed growth regulatory treatments influenced the percentage of embryogenic callus formation and fresh weight of callus. Extra incision on leaf showed no effect in  embryogenic callus induction. Embryogenic callus inducted using 2.4-D 1.0 mg/l + thidiazuron 5.0 mg/l medium which  then regenerated in ½ MS medium added with kinetin 2 mg/l exhibited  the highest number of germination.  Adding GA 3 1.0 mg/l in regeneration medium is recommended to increase somatic embryos of Robusta coffee BP 308 clone.


When exposed to stress-provoking environmental conditions such as those of ground waters, many medically important bacteria have been shown to be capable of activating a survival strategy known as the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state. In this state bacteria are no longer culturable on conventional growth media, but the cells maintain their viability and pathogenicity genes/factors and can start dividing again, in a part of the cell population, upon restoration of favourable environmental conditions. Little is known about the genetic mechanisms underlying the VBNC state. In this study we show evidence of involvement of the rpoS gene in persistence of Escherichia coli in the VBNC state. The kinetics of entry into the non-culturable state and duration of cell viability were measured in two E. coli mutants carrying an inactivated rpoS gene and compared with those of the parents. For these experiments, laboratory microcosms consisting of an artificial oligotrophic medium incubated at 4 degrees C were used. The E. coli parental strains reached the non-culturable state in 33 days when the plate counts were evaluated on Luria-Bertani agar containing sodium pyruvate, whereas cells of the rpoS mutants lost their culturability in only 21 days. Upon reaching unculturability the parents yielded respiring cells and cells with intact membranes for at least the next three weeks and resuscitation was allowed during this time. In contrast, the RpoS- mutant cells demonstrated intact membranes for only two weeks and a very restricted (<7 days) resuscitation capability. Guanosine 3',5'-bispyrophosphate (ppGpp) acts as a positive regulator during the production and functioning of RpoS. A mutant deficient in ppGpp production behaved like the rpoS mutants, while overproducers of ppGpp displayed a vitality at least comparable to that of RpoS+ strains. These results suggest that the E. coli parental strains enter the VBNC state which lasts for, at least, three weeks, after which apparently all the cells die. The rpoS mutants do not activate this survival strategy and early die. This implies involvement of the rpoS gene in E. coli persistence in the VBNC state.


Nowadays, an increase on demands of aerospace components has led to implementation of high speed machining (HSM). The principal factors in the performance of aerospace materials are strength-to-weight ratio, fatigue life, fracture toughness, survivability and of course, reliability. However, when HSM is coupled with dry or near dry machining, it will present considerable technical challenges to the manufacturing sector especially when the integrity of the machined surface is concerned. In this investigation, the effect of high speed drilling (HSD) conditions on the performance and surface integrity of Inconel 718 were studied. Hole was drilled individually using TiAlN coated carbide insert drill (14 mm in diameter) under minimum quantity of lubrication (MQL) condition. Results showed that uniform flank wear and chipping were the dominant tool failure modes. Moreover, the results showed an increase in cutting temperature with increasing cutting speed and feed rate. Thrust force and torque decreased linearly with the increasing cutting speed but significantly increased when higher feed rate is employed. Cutting speed significantly influenced the distribution of surface roughness value. Variations of hardness readings were recorded beneath the machined surfaces, they were due to the hardening effects caused by concentration of high temperature and stresses on the workpiece.


Traditional parametric coding of speech facilitates low rate but provides poor reconstruction quality because of the inadequacy of the model used. We describe how a WaveNet generative speech model can be used to generate high quality speech from the bit stream of a standard parametric coder operating at 2.4 kb/s. We compare this parametric coder with a waveform coder based on the same generative model and show that approximating the signal waveform incurs a large rate penalty. Our experiments confirm the high performance of the WaveNet based coder and show that the speech produced by the system is able to additionally perform implicit bandwidth extension and does not significantly impair recognition of the original speaker for the human listener, even when that speaker has not been used during the training of the generative model.


Lignin have been blended with low density polyethylene (LDPE). Maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (PP-g-MAH) has been added as compatibilizing agent. The weight ratio of LDPE, ligin and PP-a-MAH were 75:25:5, 75:25:7.5 and 75:25:10, respectively. The mechanical properties of the blends were investigated according to Chinese standard GB/1447-2005 and compared with those of lignin/LDPE composites without compatibilizing agent. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the dispersion of the lignin and LDPE and the compatibilizing mechanism was analyzed. The results reveal that addition of compatibilizing agent increased the interfacial bonding strength of the composites, improved the mechanical properties and obtained the better dispersion of the lignin and LDPE.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami Dissertation supervised by Professor Joseph Signorile. No. of pages in text. (43) BACKGROUND: Exercise improves cognition, but the specific mechanisms underlying these changes are not clear. Two proposed mechanism are aerobic demand and cognitive demand inherent in varying degrees to specific exercise tasks. This study compared two kinds of dance that differed in instruction complexity and aerobic intensity, ballroom (BR) and aerobic dance (Aero). The primary aim of this study was to determine if the cognitive benefits of exercise are more responsive to the complexity or aerobic overload. METHODS: Fourteen subjects aged 40-80 were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of Aero or BR dance classes. Aero classes were designed to emphasize low instructional complexity and high aerobic intensity. BR classes were designed to emphasize high complexity and low aerobic intensity. Motor and cognitive functions were assessed before and after participation. The six-minute walk (6MW) and timed up-and-go (TUG )were used to measure aerobic function and agility, respectively. A computer-based cognitive battery (Neurotrax Tests) was used to evaluate global cognitive function, executive function, attention, and memory. The Walking Response Inhibition Test (WRIT) was used to evaluate cognition using whole-body movements through a physical environment. RESULTS: Significant main effects for time were observed for 6MW, TUG, memory, and WRIT. Performance for the 6MW, memory, and WRIT improved, whereas TUG performance worsened. Although neither group exhibited significant change in the 6MW; there was an interaction effect and subsequent pairwise analysis revealed that the change seen for Aero was higher than BR. CONCLUSION: We observed differences in aerobic demand between the groups, with greater, though non-significant, aerobic response by the Aero group. There were improvements in both memory and WRIT for both groups. Improvements in WRIT favored the BR group compared to the Aero group, although between group differences failed to reach significance. Our preliminary data suggest a role for both aerobic demand and movement complexity in driving cognitive adaptations. More research with larger sample sizes is needed to support these findings. Future research should control the complexity of the exercise conditions and assess the learning effects and cognitive demand of the subjects.


We consider models of xenophobic dark matter, in which isospin-violating dark matter-nucleon interactions significantly degrade the response of xenon direct detection experiments. For models of near-maximal xenophobia, with neutron-to-proton coupling ratio $f_n / f_p \approx -0.64$, and dark matter mass near 8 GeV, the regions of interest for CoGeNT and CDMS-Si and the region of interest identified by Collar and Fields in CDMS-Ge data can be brought into agreement. This model may be tested in future direct, indirect, and collider searches. Interestingly, because the natural isotope abundance of xenon implies that xenophobia has its limits, we find that this xenophobic model may be probed in the near future by xenon experiments. Near-future data from the LHC and Fermi-LAT may also provide interesting alternative probes of xenophobic dark matter.


A non-clonogenic assay using the redox dye Alamar Blue and primary human tumor cells (PHTC) from patients and human tumor cell lines (HTCL) was established for rapid screening and evaluation of anticancer drugs. PHTC cultures from chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and ovarian carcinoma (Ovca) were compared with renal carcinoma (ACHN) and lymphocytic (CCRF-CEM) HTLCs in response to 63 toxic or non-toxic compounds. Many of the clinically active drugs were detected by all cell systems. However, the sensitivity pattern differed considerably between the cell types and a higher proportion of clinically inactive drugs were scored as active by the cell lines compared with the primary cultures. Ovca showed the highest ratio of clinically solid tumoractive/clinically inactive agents followed by CLL. Differential drug response in the HTCL panel representing defined types of cytotoxic drug resistance was measured using the fluorometric microculture cytotoxicity assay (FMCA). Correlation analysis of drug activity pattern of 37 drugs showed a high degree of similarity between the drugs with similar mechanism of action. Classification of drugs into four different mechanistic categoriesusing a probabilistic neural network (PNN) analysis resulted in 91% correct predictions. Further studies also indicated that differential molecular function/expression patterns in the cell line panel may be used to identify drugs interacting with specific biochemical pathways. The presence of cell lines overexpressing drug efflux mechanisms in the panel did not significantly influence the mechanistic predictions. Application of the HTCL andPHTC based test systems to a series of sarcolysin oligopeptides identified one compound, P2, which showed high antitumor activity, favourable therapeutic index, retained activity against non-proliferative cell cultures and low levels of correlation with standard drugs. Similarly, suramin and some potentially interesting analoges were also tested. Like suramin, the analoges showed little sensitivity to common resistance mechanisms. However, in PHTCs all analogues were less potent than suramin except for FCE 26644 which also showed high degree of cross reactivity to suramin. The overall results indicates that the present approach may be well suited for discovery and initial pharmacologic evaluation of novel anticancer drugs.


The World Wide Web is widely considered a successful new media for communication of ideas, a hotbed for commerce, and, more quietly, a new research media that can bring hundreds of gigabytes of useful information to classrooms around the world. However, without a structuring mechanism that allows focus on specific learning domains, the usefulness of the WWW to students is questionable.
 The huge information "cyberspace" is, to our children, more like having 500 channels of TV. Surfing the WWW is largely a passive consumer activity, multimedia and java applets notwithstanding. We have found that the effectiveness of the WWW as a learning tool can be significantly increased by combining it with constructive tools. This paper presents WebQuest, a system combining the WWW with the notion of an interactive quest game. Using WebQuest, students not only read information on the WWW, but learn to think critically about it as they use it to construct educational simulation games about the themes of their research. They set up complex worlds containing interesting objects obtained by navigating tricky obstacles and landscapes. These objects are needed to solve a quest, or go on to a new level. This approach offers several learning opportunities to students using the World Wide Web. Students can be players or authors of quest games. As players, students learn by finding websites and forming answers to questions to acquire important objects needed to progress through and finish the game. Authors learn by creating the worlds, formulating challenging yet solvable questions, and providing (or not) helpful hints and clues to lead players to sites on the web that will answer the questions. Both players and authors use the quest game-either by constructing or by playing-to focus their research on the web.

 Used by multiple groups in the same classroom, a dialog is started between authors and players, which facilitates reflective learning. Players help authors to understand what works and what doesn't in a learning game; how much information should be given in a clue, which questions are good or bad, and perhaps provide new topic-related websites. In this paper, WebQuest is described, the roles of teachers and students in the classroom are outlined, and we present our initial classroom tests with middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. We conclude with a description of WebQuest's future development.


"Propagames," or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriously lacking compared to the voluminous scholarship on politically progressive, educational, and serious games. This study fills this research gap by analyzing the most popular propagame in China, Kangzhan Online (War of Resistance against Japan Online), and gamers' reception of it. We begin with theoretical explorations of how to define propagames, how to demarcate them from other games with political content, and what role they play in digital authoritarianism. We eclectically borrow from four frameworks to analyze Kangzhan Online: the dual-process perspective, imaginary world studies, the sociology of collective memory, and the sociology of emotions. Our data include participant observation in the game for 3 months, formal interviews of 30 gamers, informal interviews with dozens of gamers, and documentary data from the official forum and the Chinese game media. The data were collected in 2009, 2010, and 2019.


The regional accreditation process can be a valuable resource in bringing about changes in systems of faculty evaluation and rewards. Recent changes in the standards promulgated by the several regional accreditation associations have emphasized the importance of professional service as well as teaching. It is up to each college or university how much emphasis to give to these faculty activities within the context of its goals and objectives, but the accreditation standards mandate the existence of institutional policies and procedures regarding faculty work that are consistent with the institutions stated mission. The article describes what requirements this places on institutions.


A new biomimetic sensor for leucomalachite green host-guest interactions and potentiometric transduction is presented. The artificial host was imprinted in methacrylic acid or acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid-based polymers. Molecularly imprinted particles were dispersed in 2-nitrophenyloctyl ether and trapped in poly(vinyl chloride). The potentiometric sensors exhibited a near-Nernstian response in steady state evaluations, with slopes and detection limits ranging from 45.8 to 81.2 mV and 0.28 to 1.01 , respectively. They were independent from the pH of test solutions within 3 to 5. Good selectivity was observed towards drugs that may contaminate water near fish cultures, such as oxycycline, doxycycline, enrofloxacin, trimethoprim, creatinine, chloramphenicol, and dopamine. The sensors were successfully applied to field monitoring of leucomalachite green in river samples. The method offered the advantages of simplicity, accuracy, applicability to colored and turbid samples, and automation feasibility.


Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) based on choline chloride/ethylene glycol have been explored as synthetic media for recently introduced Cu–Sb–S based colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) decorated on NiO/fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) and TiO2/FTO photoelectrodes for unassisted solar water splitting for hydrogen generation. The feasibility of the use of an environmentally benign solvent-based synthetic process is demonstrated herein by preparing the earth-abundant Cu–Sb–S-based CQDs and utilizing them in a solar energy harvesting material for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting while avoiding the use of sacrificial agents. The band alignment between CQDs and NiO or TiO2 clearly suggests that the CQD-modified NiO and TiO2 electrodes act as a potential photocathode (NiO/Cu3SbS4/ZnS) and photoanode (TiO2/CuSbS2/ZnS) with faradaic efficiencies of up to 74 and 86%, respectively, which allows us to construct an efficient PEC cell to split water at an overall solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency of ∼0.28%. The tandem photoelectrode configuration in an unassisted mode of solar-driven water splitting based on a wire-linked system shows ∼0.97 mA cm−2 of current density, and can split water under zero-bias conditions. Enhancement of the PEC device by accelerating electron and hole transport and broadening the diffusion length using photosensitizer materials while avoiding typical recombination with a thin passivation layer was achieved. The charge transport mechanism through combining experimental results in half and overall water splitting reactions is proposed. The success of such efficient multi-layered heterojunction photoelectrodes is essential for the future development of green energy harvesting devices.


The first spectroscopic campaign on a PG 1716 variable (long-period pulsating subdwarf B star) has successfully detected low-level velocity variations due to g-mode pulsations in PG 1627+017, superimposed on the known orbital motion. The strongest velocity mode is barely detectable at 1.0-1.5 km s-1, although the target is one of the brightest (V = 12.9) and largest amplitude (~0.03 mag) stars in its class. Forty nights of observations on 2 m class telescopes in Arizona, South Africa, and Australia provided 84 hr of time-series spectroscopy over a time baseline of 53 days, with typical velocity errors of 5-6 km s-1. The derived radial velocity amplitude spectrum, after subtracting the orbital component, shows three potential pulsational modes 3-4 σ above the mean noise level of 0.365 km s-1, at 7201.0 s (138.87 μHz), 7014.6 s (142.56 μHz), and 7037.3 s (142.10 μHz). Only one feature is statistically likely to be real, but all three are tantalizingly close to, or a 1 day alias of, the three strongest periodicities found in the concurrent photometric campaign. The velocity spectrum also shows an unexpected component at twice the orbital frequency of PG 1627+017, possibly evidence of a slightly elliptical orbit, supporting Edelmann et al.'s recent results for other short-period sdB binaries. We further attempted to detect pulsational variations in the Balmer line amplitudes. The single detected periodicity of 7209 s, although weak, is consistent with theoretical expectations as a function of wavelength, and it rules out a degree index of l = 3 or 5 for that mode. Given the extreme weakness of g-mode pulsations in PG1716 stars, we conclude that future efforts will require larger telescopes, higher efficiency spectral monitoring over longer time baselines, improved longitude coverage, and increased radial velocity precision.


TerraSAR-X is a high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite launched in 2007. Its active phased array X-Band antenna hosts 384 transmit/receive modules (TRMs) controlling the beam shape and steering in azimuth and elevation. A mathematical antenna model approach is used for pattern optimisation and calculation of all possible operation beams. For keeping the excellent radiometric performance of the SAR system the front-end antenna must be monitored throughout mission life time and calibrated if necessary. A calibration network provides monitoring of the instrument behaviour by evaluating internal calibration pulses. Evaluation of these calibration pulses for every image acquisition guarantees high radiometric stability of all SAR products. This paper shows the latest in-orbit results of the antenna performance and TRM stability complementary to the traditional approach of external antenna measurements over calibration targets. For this purpose, the novel PN Gating method is applied in a spaceborne environment for the first time ever.


Physical, chemical and biological attributes of soil surface are significantly affected by tillage practices and crop rotation. The objective of this study was to determine the short-term (2006-2009) effects of conventional and conservational tillage practices on selected soil physical properties of a heavy clay soil under two wheat-corn and wheatlegume rotation in a semi-arid Mediterranean Region. Treatments included conventional tillage with residue incorporated in soil (CT1), conventional tillage with burned residue (CT2), reduced tillage with heavy tandem disc-harrow (RT1), reduced tillage with rotary tiller (RT2), reduced tillage with heavy tandem disc harrow fallowed by no-tillage (RNT) and no tillage (NT). Disturbed and undisturbed soil samples were collected to determine saturated hydraulic conductivity (HC), bulk density (BD), mean weight diameter (MWD), available water content (AWC) and total porosity at 0-10, 10-20 and 20-30 cm depths. The highest HC values of 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm depths were obtained with CT1 (9.70×10 -6 m s -1 , 8.74×10 -6 m s -1 ) and CT2 (9.39×10 -6 m s -1 , 8.58×10 -6 m s -1 ) applications. CT2 treatment destructed the soil aggregates and resulted in greater bulk density and low total porosity at 0-10 cm depth. The available water content at 0-10 cm depth was significantly reduced with the CT1 (P<0.01) and CT2 applications (P<0.05). Although three years of no-tillage application in clay rich soils caused higher bulk density and low porosity, increase in MWD is an indication of soil and water conservation. Therefore, no till and reduced till applications should be adapted to the farmers' conditions for sustainability in agriculture.