Donor-specific blood transfusion prolongs survival of fully allogeneic ACI (RT1a) renal grafts in PVG (RT1a) recipients from 6-8 days to greater than 100 days. To determine how DSBT alters effector cytotoxic cell responses, we tested freshly isolated peripheral blood lymphocytes, spleen cells, and graft infiltrating cells (GIC) from pairs of PVG recipients of ACI kidneys pretreated with DSBT or autologous blood transfusion (ABT) for cell-mediated lympholysis, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), and natural killer activity at the day of transplantation (day 0) and days 3 and 6 posttransplantation. PBL and GIC from the same pairs of animals were examined for their phenotypic profile (CD4, CD8, 3.2.3 NK cell marker, IL-2 receptor). CML, ADCC, and NK activity were higher in PBL than splenocytes of GIC of both ABT and DSBT groups at all time points examined. CML activity of PBL at day 3 was significantly higher in DSBT vs. ABT recipients (P less than 0.01), while at day 6 both groups were equally elevated. Splenocytes demonstrated significantly lower CML activity in DSBT vs. ABT recipients at day 6 (P less than 0.05). CML activity of GIC eluted from ABT and DSBT kidneys was not detected at day 3, but was significantly elevated and equivalent in both groups at day 6. ADCC and NK activities of PBL did not differ between ABT and DSBT groups, and were negligible in splenocytes. GIC demonstrated higher NK activity in DSBT vs. ABT recipients at day 3 (P less than 0.05), while ADCC activity was not detectable at any time in either group. Phenotypic analysis of PBL and GIC at day 3 showed no significant differences between ABT and DSBT groups in the percentage of CD4 or CD8 cells. However, in both ABT and DSBT groups the ratio of CD4:CD8 cells was markedly lower in GIC than PBL. By day 6, PBL from both ABT and DSBT groups showed equivalent and significant decreases in CD4+ cells and increases in CD8+ and 3.2.3+ (NK) cells. The percentage of IL-2R+ cells remained low (less than 5%) in both groups at day 3. In contrast, at day 6 there was a significant increase in IL-2R+ (and to a lesser extent CD4+) GIC in ABT- but not DSBT-treated recipients, while CD8+ cells were significantly increased in both groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


Trust is at the heart of ongoing relationships amongst people, but also with brands and
companies. It has become a hot topic (Connelly, 2017, Huffington, 2015), particularly given the
increasing media coverage of breakdowns in customer trust in well-known companies such as
VW, Tesco, BP and Google. But away from these headlines is a stronger, more underlying trend. A
move from transactions to longer term customer relationships. The risk of undermining that
relationship through not being transparent, not being fair, not having reliable products and
services is exacerbated as our world becomes increasingly technology focused. Relationships
with suppliers we don't know are built through trusted on-line third parties. Information about
products and services we are unfamiliar with is increasingly sought from others, on-line, and
subsequent feedback on customer experiences shared quickly and widely. Where companies are
not transparent, the exponential growth in speed and breadth of news spreading makes them
vulnerable. It is impossible to hide.
However, to assess our own approach to corporate and brand trust, it helps to go back to the key
academic theories to discover the concepts that underpin our understanding of trust, the
factors that build trust and the outputs that emerge. In addition, we need to understand our
performance on trust in the light of data from an industry and global context but also to support
the business case for ensuring it remains a business priority. Examining a few of the high-profile
failures in trust also helps us identify the range of areas where trust can be undermined. They
provide pieces of a jigsaw that, when seen together, help us understand a broader picture of
trust to inform our approach with our businesses and our customers now and in the future.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a recommendations guide about the preparation of sterile medicines in medical wards, and to figure out the current situation of different Spanish hospitals, regarding the preparation of sterile medicines outside the pharmacy.

METHODS
The authors reviewed the available international guidelines in order to summarize the main quality recommendations. To know about the current situation in Spanish hospitals, a 30 questions survey was designed and spread to 500 different hospitals. Answers were analysed with SurveyMonkey® platform in the period February-July 2012.

RESULTS
Based on the literature review, the authors agreed a recommendations list for the safe preparation of sterile medicines in medical wards, which was structured in 8 sections. Regarding the survey results, 8.4% of the hospitals answered, showing a great variability among centres in the quality requirements for sterile compounding outside the pharmacy. It should be pointed out the lack of assigned areas for drug preparation in wards, the lack of protocols to discern which kind of medicines can be compounded in wards as well as the poor recommendations about garment and aseptic technique.

CONCLUSIONS
The authors confirm the absence of qualified practice standards to be applied in the preparation of sterile medicines in medical wards, as well as the great variability of diary practice. The implementation of quality and safety recommendations in the preparation of sterile medicines in medical wards may contribute to improve patient safety.


3D gels are polymeric networks, able to absorb solvents. In this work, starch and PVA gels were developed to act removing oil from water. The oil absorbing capacity can be suitable along with their composition through the synthesis process. Starch and PVA gels were grafted with palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, eicosenoic acid, erucic acid and nervonic acid, showing ability to absob up to 50% of weight in oil. When dried or swollen, the gels presented a handling resistance, considered important for using and removal of oil in water. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14685/rebrapa.v3i1.81


Neolamarckia cadamba or commonly known as Kelampayan is one of the fast growing forest
tree species in Sarawak with high commercial value. The wood is used for producing different
products such as plywood, pulp, paper, and furniture. This study was carried out as a part of a
tree breeding and improvement programme for forest plantation. Since wood is composed of
cell walls, studies on cell wall formation and regulation are important. Single nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs) were chosen to determine the genetic variations of the xyloglucan
endotransglycosylase/hydrolase (XTH) and the cellulose synthase (CesA) genes in N.
cadamba. XTH and CesA are proteins that play an important role in regulating wood
formation. XTH enzymes regulate cell wall expansion while CesA acts as a central catalyst in
the generation of plant cell wall biomass (cellulose). Two full-length XTH cDNAs, namely
NcXTH1 (JX134619) and NcXTH2 (JX134620) were discovered. The nucleotide sequences
were 893 bp and 1,024 bp in length, respectively. The open reading frames for NcXTH1 and
NcXTH2 were 858 bp and 915 bp, respectively. Results predicted that NcXTH1 and NcXTH2
proteins carry out XET activity but they were from different XTH family members. The
hypothetical full-length CesA cDNA (NcCesA1; JX134621) was assembled by in silico
analysis using the selected CesA cDNA sequences from NcdbEST and the amplified 5'- and
3'-RACE sequences. The NcCesA1 cDNA has a length of 3,472 bp with 3,126 bp open
reading frame encoding 1,042 amino acids. Sequence analyses showed that NcCesA1 protein
is involved in glycosyltransferation of the secondary cell wall cellulose biosynthesis. Wood
properties (basic density) associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were
discovered in the NcXTH1 and NcCesA1 genes. A total of 34 SNPs with 2.65% occurrence
was found in 15 partial genomic DNA sequences of NcXTH1 with two SNPs significantly
associated with wood basic density (p<0.05). For the NcCesA1 gene, only three SNPs were
iv
found in 15 partial targeted regions of the NcCesA1 DNA sequences (~779 bp). The low
occurrence of SNPs (0.39%) in NcCesA1 showed no quantitatively significant association
with wood basic density. In the linkage disequilibrium (LD) study, a total of 496 pairwise
comparisons were estimated from the polymorphic sites (SNPs) detected in the NcXTH1 and
NcCesA1 genes of N. cadamba with a mean R
2
value of 0.000687. The LD graph plotted
decayed very slowly with distance of polymorphic sites in a consistent and linear pattern. In
conclusion, this study showed an association between NcXTH1 genes with wood basic density.


We investigated several factors which may affect the accuracy of fetal cardiac time intervals (CTI) determined in magnetocardiographic (MCG) recordings: observer differences, the number of available recording sites and the type of sensor used in acquisition. In 253 fetal MCG recordings, acquired using different biomagnetometer devices between the 15th and 42nd weeks of gestation, P-wave, QRS complex and T-wave onsets and ends were identified in signal averaged data sets independently by different observers. Using a defined procedure for setting signal events, interobserver reliability was high. Increasing the number of registration sites led to more accurate identification of the events. The differences in wave morphology between magnetometer and gradiometer configurations led to deviations in timing whereas the differences between low and high temperature devices seemed to be primarily due to noise. Signal-to-noise ratio played an important overall role in the accurate determination of CTI and changes in signal amplitude associated with fetal maturation may largely explain the effects of gestational age on reproducibility. As fetal CTI may be of value in the identification of pathologies such as intrauterine growth retardation or fetal cardiac hypertrophy, their reliable estimation will be enhanced by strategies which take these factors into account.


The objective was to investigate the effect of storage parameters on serum glucose in blood samples from four species. Blood specimens were divided into 7 no-additive tubes and serum separated from one sample after one hour (reference sample). Remaining samples were stored at 4°C and 25°C, then centrifuged and serum glucose measured at 2, 4, and 8 hours post-collection. Serum glucose declines for all samples stored at 4°C were not significantly different, except for the 8 hour samples from sturgeon and dogs. At 25°C, serum glucose was comparable to reference values at 2 hours in the horse, sturgeon, and alpaca, but significantly lower at 4 and 8 hours in those species and at all time points in dogs. Storage at 4°C limits serum glucose decline for at least 4 hours in all species tested. At 25°C, serum-clot contact time should not exceed 1 hour in dogs and 2 hours in horses, alpacas, and sturgeon. INDEX WORDS: metabolism, pre-analytical, erythrocytes, artifact, hypoglycemia THE EFFECT OF DELAYED SERUM SEPARATION AND STORAGE TEMPERATURE ON THE RATE OF SERUM GLUCOSE CONCENTRATION DECLINE IN ALPACAS, HORSES, DOGS, AND STURGEON


E-glass/polyamide laminates were fabricated using a hot press and the effects of temperature on static tensile behavior was studied both below and above the glass transition temperature of the material. The glass transition temperature was determined using DMA. Uniaxial tensile tests were conducted on [0]8, [90]8, [02/902]s and [04,904]s laminates at room temperature, as well as at multiple temperatures above and below the glass transition temperature. Finally, the Young's modulus and strength of the specimens were evaluated versus temperature, fractography was performed on the fractured [0]8 samples and the effect of temperature on failure modes was investigated. [0]8 and [90]8 laminates displayed three reduction stages in modulus and strength versus temperature where the largest reduction was in glass transition region. However, [02/902]s and [04/904]s laminates displayed the largest reduction before the glass transition temperature. These experimental findings were compared with the rule of mixtures and classical lamination theory.


Parsifal (1882), Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) final opera, emphasizes the value of compassion over the pursuit of power within a setting of Christian myth. Until WWII, producers of Parsifal tried to emulate Wagner's original vision with absolute fidelity. However, following the Nazi appropriation of Wagner's music, producers worldwide saw the need to reexamine the work. Beginning with Wieland Wagner's 1951 production, stage directors subjected the work to a variety of interpretations that differed vastly from the original, making the work abstract by removing overt Christian setting and props. During the 1970s and 1980s, directors took this rejection of the original stage directions a step further by implementing realistic settings to overtly criticize political conditions, sexism, and anti- Semitism. In recent years producers have continued to grapple with the original work in the light of contemporary issues. My research focuses on the producer's role in creating unique productions of contemporary significance from Wagner's original work. Considering the wide variance in artistic visions demonstrated by the producers of Parsifal , my study aims to show the connections between productions in different time periods and how they have resulted in Parsifal's overall growth as a work. By consulting scholarly literature and periodical reviews, a master list of over 200 productions was narrowed to a group of 40, which represent the most historically significant interpretations of their time. For this reduction, performances that were mentioned repeatedly across sources were used in this project as the most critically significant productions. By examining the changes to plot and setting in each of these productions, connections between each production and their contemporary social and artistic circumstances became clear. As a result of this study, the evidence shows that Parsifal remains an important artistic work with significance to modern audiences only through the constant reinterpretation of the work by producers.


The Role of Women and Youth in Policy-Focused Community-Based Participatory Research: A Multi-Case Study AnalysisByAnalilia Patino GarciaDoctor of Public HealthUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Meredith Minkler, ChairCommunities that are marginalized by unequal distribution of resources and power are at an increased risk of suffering an undue burden of illness and premature death. Staggering health disparities persist throughout the United States, a collective result of a lack of affordable, accessible and culturally relevant health care services, missed opportunities for preventive services, and public health interventions grounded in approaches that focus too narrowly on individual behavior change. Such approaches cease to capture the complexities of local social, economic and political environments, which contribute to the myriad of inequalities that unjustly perpetuate disenfranchised communities. The active engagement of low-income individuals and communities of color who are disproportionately affected by health inequities can serve as a powerful tool to advocate for policies that can contribute to reversing health disparities. Increasingly, Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), as an orientation to research, has garnered attention and respect from academics and community-based organizations alike, as an approach that equitably engages community residents as part of the research process-- making it accessible and relevant--with a focus on action-oriented solutions to community identified problems of greatest importance. This dissertation aims to illustrate the role of promotoras (lay health workers) and youth involvement in research and their subsequent contributions to policy change outcomes. Through a retrospective case study analysis of three CBPR partnerships in California, I describe their individual and collective contributions to the research process, and in leveraging research results to advocate for and bring about policy change. The first case is a partnership in Los Angeles' Skid Row with youth living in Single Occupancy Rooms (SROs), who were galvanized to action by violence in their community, discrimination they face at school, and their lack of access to the only park in their neighborhood. Their actions led to national media attention, which resulted in school district policy changes, and increased, albeit still limited, access to their local park. The second case involved youth in a Bakersfield community that worked collaboratively with adults from various city agencies and community organizations to achieve environmental changes that led to the creation of safe open spaces for families. The final case focused on a partnership in Old Town National City involving a group of women who were transformed into powerful advocates in the pursuit of environmental justice. Through culturally and linguistically appropriate trainings, the promotoras (lay health workers) who were also residents of National City, made significant contribution to the research process, that in turn contributed to subsequent policy wins. The various participatory methods employed by each of the three partnerships explored facilitated participation and empowered participants to have an active voice through numerous community engagement activities. CBPR is well positioned to effectively mobilize residents, including, in the case for this dissertation, women and youth, and to build capacity within communities that will outlast any funded intervention. Collectively, the three CBPR case studies offer exciting, innovative possibilities in the engagement of promotoras and youth as equitable partners in the research process. At the same time, the cases offer lessons learned and important implications for research, practice and policy. The voices of the women and youth involved in the partnerships are captured throughout the dissertation, a unique gift to this dissertation, on the insider perspectives they bring as they share their experiences, leadership development, and individual level outcomes as a result of their participation.


The fisheries sector is crucial to the Bangladeshi economy and wellbeing, accounting for 4.4% of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 22.8% of agriculture sector production, and supplying ca.60% of the national animal protein intake. Fish is vital to the 16 million Bangladeshis living near the coast, a number that has doubled since the 1980s. Here we develop and apply tools to project the long term productive capacity of Bangladesh marine fisheries under climate and fisheries management scenarios, based on downscaling a global climate model, using associated river flow and nutrient loading estimates, projecting high resolution changes in physical and biochemical ocean properties, and eventually projecting fish production and catch potential under different fishing mortality targets. We place particular interest on Hilsa shad (Tenualosa ilisha), which accounts for ca.11% of total catches, and Bombay duck (Harpadon nehereus), a low price fish that is the second highest catch in Bangladesh and is highly consumed by low income communities. It is concluded that the impacts of climate change, under greenhouse emissions scenario A1B, are likely to reduce the potential fish production in the Bangladesh Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by less than 10%. However, these impacts are larger for the two target species. Under sustainable management practices we expect Hilsa shad catches to show a minor decline in potential catch by 2030 but a significant (25%) decline by 2060. However, if overexploitation is allowed catches are projected to fall much further, by almost 95% by 2060, compared to the Business as Usual scenario for the start of the 21st century. For Bombay duck, potential catches by 2060 under sustainable scenarios will produce a decline of less than 20% compared to current catches. The results demonstrate that management can mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change on ecosystem productivity.


This paper describes the findings of a research project whose main objective is to compile a character frequency list based on a very large collection of Chinese texts collected from various online sources. As compared with several previous studies on Chinese character frequencies, this project uses a much larger corpus that not only covers more subject fields but also contains a better proportion of informative versus imaginative Modern Chinese texts. In addition, this project also computes two bigram frequency lists that can be used for compiling a list of most frequently used two-character words in Chinese.


A high gain aperture-coupled microstrip array antenna is presented in this paper. Its basic structure is a microstrip comprising of three layers. On the top layer, 2×4 patches are etched and act as radiation elements. The middle layer is a metal ground with rectangular slots, and the bottom layer consists of a microstrip feedline. After optimization by a FDTD algorithm, a prototype antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured results agree well with the simulated data, and show a high gain of 15.7 dBi at 5.8 GHz and an bandwidth of 300MHz for S11<;-10 dB is obtained.


Author(s): Way, Kristin Breanne Cornelius | Advisor(s): Drucker, Johanna | Abstract: Standard form consumer contracts (SFCCs) between consumers and businesses are recognized as 'standard form' so as to increase the efficiency of transactions and save costs, which are ostensibly passed on to consumers. Since one party is generally less powerful in terms of access to information and resources, these contracts are often acknowledged as imbalanced. SFCCs in various forms (e.g., terms of terms of service agreements, data policies, copyright policies, acceptable use policies) have been implicated in the wrongdoing of many widely-used service platforms and thus have been at the center of concern for consumer rights in recent years. While some have characterized these issues as a lack of understanding by claiming adherents have a 'duty to read,' or as drafters' responsibility for egregious terms and weak disclosures, this project suggests at least part of the issues exist from a lack of consideration of the document itself—and a performance (or de-performance) of its physical characteristics to some end in a digital environment. It suggests that standardizing aspects of the document form of SFCCs, rather than relying on notions of standard practice that work against user psychology, would have beneficial effects for consumers toward evening out the power imbalance. It makes use of the disciplines that specialize in these topics, including document theory, library and information science, diplomatics, standards of records management, textual criticism and bibliography, and evidence to offer a revised perspective on SFCC issues. Ultimately, it concludes that current governance is not adequate to address the issues of these agreements and suggests three principles, or shifts in concept, that reflect its findings: 1) standardization, not standard practice 2) explanation, not notification; and 3) documentation, not integration. Additionally, it provides a proposal to develop a new set of standards that would afford SFCCs the following characteristics: a) Classifiable/Organizable; b) Preservable/Scrapable; c) Trackable/Stable; d) Authentic/Reliable; e) Processable (machine-readable). This standard could not only help extract necessary information from these documents and produce an 'informed minority hypothesis,' but also help stabilize the document for evidentiary reasons (e.g., dispute and discovery, burden of proof) and work against unnoticed changes (from unilateral modification).


Electronic reverse auctions (ERAs) are a controversial sourcing tool. While it is said to have many advantages to buyers, and even some to suppliers as well, it is also heavily criticised for damaging cooperative buyer–supplier relationships. It is often suggested that suppliers experience more disadvantages than advantages from the use of this tool and therefore many, if not all suppliers dislike ERAs. In this paper, we investigate whether all suppliers indeed dislike ERAs and we explore the relationships between supplier characteristics and supplier opinions of ERAs. We find that a small group of suppliers is actually positive about ERAs and that by far the strongest predictor of ERA opinions of a supplier representative is the supplier country.


Javanese house tradition grows and develops along time. In the modern era, the development of materials technology, both from the Javanese community and from the European experts, has influenced the way to build a house among the Javanese community. Visible changes are so radical in the use of materials and structural system of the building that they influence the look and shape of the house. The purpose of this research is to study the form transformation in the growth of modern Javanese houses at Kampung Batik Laweyan Surakarta. Laweyan is the traditional Javanese kampung already existing in the Kingdom Pajang long before the birth of Surakarta. Morphological analysis was used to understand deformation of modern Javanese homes developed by the generations of batik entrepreneurs in the 20th century. Indicators of 'the Javanese origin' in modern Javanese houses are seen from the consistency of the traditional house configuration, indicated by spatial structure of pendopo, dalem, and gandok. The conclusion is that some Javanese principles still remain in developing modern houses in Laweyan, namely: (1) a house should always be developed creatively to give comfort and protection; and (2) a house should always give benefit and wealth to the owner.


A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Post Graduate Diploma Degree in Public Health of Makerere University.


Throughout history, countries have transformed from imitators to innovators. Cases in point are Germany, the United States, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, all of which have crossed over from the pirating side of the intellectual property divide to its more promising side. Thus far, it has been unclear how much of that crossover can be attributed to the development of a well-functioning intellectual property system, as opposed to other factors, such as the improved quality of higher education and increased research-and-development expenditures.

As important as intellectual property rights have been, their levels of protection and enforcement have not always been a good proxy for a country's innovative capabilities. Innovation comes in many different forms. While the past two centuries have seen intellectual property rights providing a major boost to innovation, such innovation can also be driven by necessity, patronage, grants and prizes. In the past decade, the relationship between intellectual property and innovation has become even more complicated with the growing popularity of open source projects, crowd source arrangements and 'IP without IP' scholarship.

To interrogate this relationship, the present chapter draws on three decades of intellectual property developments in China. China was chosen for this study because it has recently transformed from the poster child of intellectual property piracy and counterfeiting to become one of the world's innovative powers. The chapter begins by recounting this dramatic transformation. The chapter then notes that the form of innovation found in today's China is different from the breakthrough innovation embraced by the United States and other leading innovative powers. This chapter concludes by identifying two distinct lessons on innovation, drawing on China's experience and innovation model.


Abstract In this article, we contribute to the discussion on factors affecting adult participation in organized sport. To this end, we examine whether explanations regarding sport expertise can also add to the understanding of non-elite-level sport participation in young adulthood. Results from questionnaires (n = 572) revealed that date of birth and early sport debut positively correlated to strong sport performance during childhood, which, in turn, were correlated to strong sport performance and being selected for talent groups during adolescence. Finally, strong sport performance during adolescence was positively correlated to sports club membership as young adults. As relative age effects seem to remain throughout childhood and adolescence, we conclude that the underlying variable that affects the selection process and sport participation in young adulthood is date of birth. The results indicate that being active in sport as young adults is contingent on sport-specific variables previously not investigated in research on sport participation.


In the present work, the effect of milling parameters on the morphology and microstructure of nanostructure Al2024–B4C composite powders obtained by mechanical alloying (MA) was studied. The effects of milling time and B4C content on the morphology, microstructure and particle size of nanostructure Al2024–B4C composite powders have been investigated. Different amounts of B4C particles (0, 5, 10 and 20 wt.%) were mixed with Al2024 powders and milled in a planetary ball mill for 30, 60, 120, 300, 420 and 600 min. Al 2024–B4C composite powders were characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), laser particle-size analyzer, X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and the Vickers microhardness test. The results showed that the nanostructure Al2024–B4C composite powders were produced when they were milled for 600 min. The size of composite powder in the milled powder mixture was affected by the milling time and content of B4C particles. Moreover, it was observed that when MA reached a steady state, the properties of composite powders were stabilized.


The structural and magnetic properties of the intermetallic compounds NdMn2−xTixSi2(x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3) have been studied by x-ray and high resolution neutron powder diffraction, specific heat, dc magnetization, and differential scanning calorimetry measurements over the temperature range 3–450 K. The Curie temperature and Néel temperature of NdMn2Si2 decrease from TC = 36 K and TN = 380 K to TC = 14 K and TN = 360 K, respectively, on substitution of Ti (x = 0.3) for Mn. The magnetocaloric effect at the first order ferromagnetic phase transition at TC, has been investigated in detail. Under a change of magnetic field of 0–5 T, the maximum value of the magnetic entropy change is 27 J kg−1 K−1 at x = 0, reducing to 15.3 J kg−1 K−1 at x = 0.1 and 10 J kg−1 K−1 at x = 0.3; importantly, no thermal or field hysteresis losses occur (eliminated from 0.3 K and 28.5 J kg−1 at x = 0 around TC) with increase in Ti concentration. Combined with the lack of any hysteresis effects, these findings indicate that NdMn1.9Ti0.1Si2 compound offers potential as a candidate for magnetic refrigerator applications in the temperature region below 35 K.


With cDNA fragments of CPS1, OCT and ACT as probes, dot and Northern blot analyses of poly(A)+-RNA from rat liver with different pathological lesions during carcinogenesis induced by diethylnitrosamine were conducted. It was shown that the level of mRNA of tissue-specific enzymes, CPSI and OCT decreased while that of the proliferating enzyme ACT mRNA increased, and the alteration was correlated with the degree of pathological changes in each case. The relative changes in the mRNA level of these enzymes during hepatocarcinogenesis were correlated with that of enzyme activities. Implication of these findings in the mechanism of carcinogenesis in terms of cell proliferation and differentiation was discussed.


An investigation team comprised of coastal researchers and engineers carried out field measurements of rip currents and experienced drift by the current on Sagara Sun Beach during August 23-24, 2007 with help of lifesavers and surfers. The waves and rip currents were observed near the breakwaters and the data were analyzed from the viewpoint of the safety of the beach users such as sea bathers and surfers. Various water safety problems related to the rip currents were discussed based on the field data, real experience of the drift and information of the lifesavers. A steady rip current around 0.25 m/s generated along a breakwater under calm sea condition yields dangerous situation to sea bathers and the degree of the dangerousness depends on the water depth as well as current velocity.


We introduce new methods for 1) accelerating and 2) stabilizing training for large language-vision models. 1) For acceleration, we introduce SwitchBack, a linear layer for int8 quantized training which provides a speed-up of 13-25% while matching the performance of bfloat16 training within 0.1 percentage points for the 1B parameter CLIP ViT-Huge -- the largest int8 training to date. Our main focus is int8 as GPU support for float8 is rare, though we also analyze float8 training through simulation. While SwitchBack proves effective for float8, we show that standard techniques are also successful if the network is trained and initialized so that large feature magnitudes are discouraged, which we accomplish via layer-scale initialized with zeros. 2) For stability, we analyze loss spikes and find they consistently occur 1-8 iterations after the squared gradients become under-estimated by their AdamW second moment estimator. As a result, we recommend an AdamW-Adafactor hybrid which avoids loss spikes when training a CLIP ViT-Huge model and outperforms gradient clipping at the scales we test.


ZrO2 nanotube carrier was obtained using a direct anodization method. Then SO42-/ZrO2 nanotube catalyst was developed in the sulfuric acid solution through ultrasonic dipping processing. The morphology, thermal stability and crystal forms of catalysts were analyzed, and the influence factors of catalytic activity were studied. The results presented in this work show that the catalyst activity was highest under the following conditions: the mass fraction of sulfuric acid solution was 50 %, the ultrasonic dipping time was 20 min, the suitable calcination temperature was 400 °C and the calcination time was 60 min.


Background. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are the most commonly used tobacco product among adolescents. We aimed to identify factors associated with e-cigarette susceptibility and curiosity among adolescents who are and are not susceptible to cigarette smoking. Method. Data were drawn from the 2018 U.S. National Youth Tobacco Survey. The study sample comprised 13,428 never cigarette or e-cigarette users. Four distinct weighted multivariable regression models were performed to assess associations between covariates and e-cigarette curiosity and susceptibility. Results. Among adolescents susceptible to smoking cigarettes, non-Hispanic (NH) Black participants were less likely to be susceptible to (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.42, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.26, 0.67]) and curious about (aOR = 0.61, 95% CI [0.39, 0.95]) e-cigarettes than NH Whites. Among adolescents nonsusceptible to smoking cigarettes, Hispanics were more susceptible to (aOR = 1.33, 95% CI [1.04, 1.71]) and curious about (aOR = 1.29, 95% CI [1.02, 1.62]) e-cigarettes than NH Whites. Among adolescents (both susceptible and nonsusceptible to smoking cigarettes), being female, exposure to e-cigarette aerosol in public places, exposure to e-cigarette ads at point-of-sale, and having low perceived harm and addictiveness of e-cigarettes versus cigarettes were associated with having greater odds of susceptibility toward and curiosity about e-cigarette use. Conclusions. Future regulatory policies and tobacco control prevention campaigns should focus on increasing health awareness (e.g., potential harm and addictiveness) of e-cigarettes among adolescents and restrict marketing and the use of e-cigarettes in public places.


Nanomaterials offer an advantage over traditional biomaterials since cells naturally communicate via nanoscale interactions. The extracellular matrix, for example, modulates adhesion and cellular functions via nanoscale features. Thus incorporating nanofeatures into biomaterials may promote tissue regeneration, however in certain forms and doses nanomaterials can also cause harm. A thorough understanding of cell-nanomaterial interactions is therefore necessary to better design functional biomaterials. This thesis focuses on evaluating the effect of nanofeatures on inflammation using two different models: nanoporous alumina and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HANPs). The inflammatory response caused by in vitro exposure of macrophages to nanoporous alumina, with pore diameters of 20nm and 200nm, was investigated. In addition in vivo studies were performed by implantation of nanoporous membranes in mice. In both cases the 200nm pore diameter elicited a stronger inflammatory response. Nanoporous alumina with 20, 100 and 200nm pores were loaded with Trolox, a vitamin E analogue, in order to scavenge ROS produced by primary human polymorphonuclear (PMNC) and mononuclear (MNCs) leukocytes. Unloaded alumina membranes stimulated greater ROS production from PMNCs cultured on 20nm versus 100nm pores. This trend reversed when PMNCs were cultured on Trolox loaded membranes since Trolox eluted slower from 20nm than 100nm and 200nm pores. ROS produced from PMNCs was reduced between 8-30% when cultured on Trolox loaded membranes. For MNCs, ROS production was not affected by pore size. However when the alumina was loaded with Trolox ROS production was quenched by 95%. HANPs with distinct morphologies (long rods, sheets, dots, and fibers) were synthesized via hydrothermal and precipitation methods. The HANPs were then exposed to PMNCs, MNCs, and the human dermal fibroblast (hDF) cell line. Changes in cell viability, ROS, morphology, and apoptotic behavior were evaluated. PMNC and hDF viability decreased following exposure to fibers, while the dot particles reduced MNC viability. Fibers stimulated greater ROS production from PMNCs and MNCs, and caused apoptotic behavior in all cell types. Furthermore, they also stimulated greater capsule thickness in vivo, suggesting that nanoparticle morphology can significantly influence acute inflammation. The outcome of this thesis, confirms the importance of understanding how nanofeatures influence inflammation. " If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and which is more-you'll be a Man, my son.'' List of Papers This thesis is based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text by their …


Summary Spatial analysis is making an increasingly important contribution to surveillance measures due to its ability to enable immediate visualization of information on the phenomenon studied. The authors describe the spatial distribution of prevalence and incidence of brucellosis in small ruminants in Sicily between 2001 and 2005. The study was conducted by integrating geographic information systems (GIS) technology (MapInfo® Professional 7.0) with SaTScanTM software to perform an epidemiological analysis of the municipalities and to locate problem areas. A comparison between the thematic maps produced for brucellosis in small ruminants on the basis of prevalence and incidence data for each individual year has shown that in terms of prevalence, the area identified as the secondary cluster in 2001 became the primary cluster from 2002 onwards whereas, in terms of incidence, the distribution of the clusters was irregular throughout the entire region during the years studied.


Collective communication systems such as MPI offer high performance group communication primitives at the cost of application flexibility. Today, an increasing number of distributed applications (e.g, reinforcement learning) require flexibility in expressing dynamic and asynchronous communication patterns. To accommodate these applications, task-based distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Ray, Dask, Hydro) have become popular as they allow applications to dynamically specify communication by invoking tasks, or functions, at runtime. This design makes efficient collective communication challenging because (1) the group of communicating processes is chosen at runtime, and (2) processes may not all be ready at the same time.
We design and implement Hoplite, a communication layer for task-based distributed systems that achieves high performance collective communication without compromising application flexibility. The key idea of Hoplite is to use distributed protocols to compute a data transfer schedule on the fly. This enables the same optimizations used in traditional collective communication, but for applications that specify the communication incrementally. We show that Hoplite can achieve similar performance compared with a traditional collective communication library, MPICH. We port a popular distributed computing framework, Ray, on atop of Hoplite. We show that Hoplite can speed up asynchronous parameter server and distributed reinforcement learning workloads that are difficult to execute efficiently with traditional collective communication by up to 8.1x and 3.9x, respectively.


Background. The impact of selecting older donors for living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in the United States is incompletely studied, particularly in light of the recent expansion of LDLT nationally. Methods. Adult LDLTs from January 01, 2005 to December 31, 2019 were identified using the United Network for Organ Sharing database. Multivariable Cox models evaluated living donor (LD) age as a predictor of LDLT recipient and graft survival. The impact of increasing donor age on recipient outcomes was compared between LD and deceased donor recipients. Donor postoperative outcomes were evaluated. Results. There were 3539 LDLTs at 65 transplant centers during the study period. Despite the recent expansion of LDLT, the proportion of LDs aged ≥50 y was stable. There were no clinically significant differences in recipient or donor characteristics by LD age group. LD age ≥50 y was associated with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.49 (P = 0.012) for recipient survival and 1.61 (P < 0.001) for graft survival (vs LDs aged 18–29 y). The negative impact of increasing donor age on graft survival was more profound after LDLT than deceased donor liver transplantation (interaction P = 0.019). There was a possible increased rate of early donor biliary complications for donors >55 y (7.1% versus 3.1% for age <40 y; P = 0.156). Conclusions. Increasing LD age is associated with decreased recipient and graft survival, although older donors still largely yield acceptable outcomes. Donor outcomes were not clearly impacted by increasing age, though this warrants further study.


One of the key steps in Network-on-Chip (NoC) based design is spatial mapping of cores and routing of the communication between those cores. Known solutions to the mapping and routing problem first map cores onto a topology and then route communication, using separated and possibly conflicting objective functions. In this paper we present a unified single-objective algorithm, called Unified MApping, Routing and Slot allocation (UMARS). As the main contribution we show how to couple path selection, mapping of cores and TDMA time-slot allocation such that the network required to meet the constraints of the application is minimized. The time-complexity of UMARS is low and experimental results indicate a run-time only 20% higher than that of path selection alone. We apply the algorithm to an MPEG decoder System-on-Chip (SoC), reducing area by 33%, power by 35% and worst-case latency by a factor four over a traditional multi-step approach.


We report an aqueous lithium–sulfur battery based on aqueous dissolved Li2S4/Li2S redox couple as the cathode, metallic lithium as the anode and Li1.35Ti1.75Al0.25P2.7Si0.3O12 (LATP) as the separator. A reversible specific capacity of up to 1030 mA h g−1 is attained. Moreover, aqueous lithium–polysulfide batteries have a discharge potential of 2.53 V versus Li+/Li.


In R-parity conserving supersymmetric (SUSY) models the lightest SUSY particle (LSP) is stable and a candidate for dark matter. Depending on the coupling and mass of this particle the life time of the next-to-lightest SUSY particle (NLSP) may be large compared to experimental time scales. In particular, if the NLSP is a charged particle and its decay length is of the order of the Earth's diameter Cherenkov telescopes might observe parallel muon-like tracks of NLSP pairs produced in neutrino-nucleon interactions in the Earth's interior. We have investigated two SUSY scenarios with a long-lived NLSP and a gravitino LSP in view of the observability at the IceCube detector.


The paper has a two-fold purpose. The first purpose of the research is to clarify the concept of "readiness of teachers of higher education institutions to use distance learning technologies", to determine the components and indicators of teachers' readiness to use distance learning technologies. The other purpose is to announce the results of the conducted online survey on teachers' readiness for distance learning; understand how distance learning methods are being implemented, which need to be modified or improved, establish the depth of complications associated with transitioning to online teaching due to the introduction of COVID-19 quarantine and provide the information to stakeholders to further improve the process of distance learning. The article is based on the survey of scientific literature on teachers' readiness/preparedness to distance education and results of the authors' COVID-19 Teachers' Questionnaire with 485 faculty members of major higher education institutions of Cherkasy region (Ukraine). The author proves that the effectiveness of distance learning depends on subjective (teachers' and students' preparedness for distance education) and objective factors (material and technical base of higher education institutions). Components of teacher's readiness for distance learning and their indicators are summarized: motivational, cognitive, operational, technological, creative, personal. The outcomes of the questionnaire have identified that most respondents lack theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary for the implementation of distance learning and encounter difficulties in teaching during quarantine.


Cattle grazing can cause significant changes in quality and quantity of forage available to the wildlife. The effects of livestock on native ungulates are still unclear, and range from positive to negative depending on the season. The objectives of our study were to determine the impact of cattle grazing on the vegetation biomass and quality by comparing twenty-four livestock exclosures and corresponding grazed plots. Use of exclosures by bighorn sheep and elk were evaluated. Furthermore, we compared proportion of live vegetation and forbs from 1994-95 to 2005-06 to investigate long-term changes in the vegetation quality and biomass. As predicted, higher vegetation biomass and lower quality was found inside the exclosures during some of the months. The proportion of live vegetation found within an area was negatively correlated with acid detergent fiber (ADF) and positively correlated with crude protein indicating higher net energy and nutritional value. More forbs were found in the lightly grazed areas. Number of fecal groups did not differ significantly between exclosures and grazed plots. The number of sheep groups sighted was higher in grazed plots than exclosures during the summer, but not during the winter. The proportion of live vegetation and biomass did not change between 1994-95 and 2005-06, but more forbs were found in 2005-06 than before. Overall, most of our results corresponded well with previous studies. Care must be taken to ensure that nutritional requirements of native ungulates are met during the winter, as a decrease in vegetation biomass due to cattle grazing was more pronounced than the increase in quality during this time.


OBJECTIVES To investigate the relation between levels of cumulative exposure to wood dust and respiratory symptoms and the occurrence of bronchial hyperresponsiveness among beech and oak workers. METHODS 114 Male woodworkers from five furniture factories and 13 male unexposed controls were examined. The unexposed control group was supplemented by 200 male historical controls. Statistical analyses were performed excluding and including the historical controls. Dust concentration was measured by personal sampling methods. Cumulative exposure to dust was calculated for each woodworker by multiplying the duration of the work by the intensity of exposure (years.mg/m3). Bronchial hyperresponsiveness was assessed by the methacholine bronchial challenge test. Subjects were labelled methacholine bronchial challenge positive if forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) fell by ⩾20%. The linear dose-response slope was calculated as the last dose divided by the total dose given. RESULTS 443 Dust samples were collected. The median cumulative exposure to dust was 110 years.mg/m3 with lower and upper quartiles at 70 and 160 years.mg/m3 Overall, no declines in FEV1 and forced vital capacity (FVC) were found with increasing exposures. A dose-response relation was found between intensity of exposure on the one hand, and sore throat, increased prevalence of positive methacholine bronchial challenge tests, and steeper dose-response slope, on the other. CONCLUSION Exposure to oak and beech dust may lead to the development of sore throat and bronchial hyperresponsiveness.


The vast landscape of RNA-protein interactions at the heart of post-transcriptional regulation remains largely unexplored. Indeed it is likely that, even in yeast, a substantial fraction of the regulatory RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) remain to be discovered. Systematic experimental methods can play a key role in discovering these RBPs - most of the known yeast RBPs lack RNA-binding domains that might enable this activity to be predicted. We describe here a proteome-wide approach to identify RNA-protein interactions based on in vitro binding of RNA samples to yeast protein microarrays that represent over 80% of the yeast proteome. We used this procedure to screen for novel RBPs and RNA-protein interactions. A complementary mass spectrometry technique also identified proteins that associate with yeast mRNAs. Both the protein microarray and mass spectrometry methods successfully identify previously annotated RBPs, suggesting that other proteins identified in these assays might be novel RBPs. Of 35 putative novel RBPs identified by either or both of these methods, 12, including 75% of the eight most highly-ranked candidates, reproducibly associated with specific cellular RNAs. Surprisingly, most of the 12 newly discovered RBPs were enzymes. Functional characteristics of the RNA targets of some of the novel RBPs suggest coordinated post-transcriptional regulation of subunits of protein complexes and a possible link between mRNA trafficking and vesicle transport. Our results suggest that many more RBPs still remain to be identified and provide a set of candidates for further investigation.


The gene qnr (qnrA [G. A. Jacoby, K. Walsh, D. Mills, V. Walker, A. Robicsek, H. Oh, and D. C. Hooper, Abstr. 44th Intersci. Conf. Antimicrob. Agents Chemother., abstr. C2-1898a, 2004]; encoding QnrA) was first identified as a transferable quinolone resistance determinant on a multidrug-resistant plasmid in Klebsiella pneumoniae (6, 9) and has been detected in K. pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter spp., and Citrobacter freundii isolates in various countries (3, 4, 8, 10, 11). Furthermore, the qnrA homologues qnrB (encoding QnrB, 40% identity with QnrA [Jacoby et al., 44th ICAAC]) and qnrS (encoding QnrS, 59% identity with QnrA [2]) were discovered on plasmids in K. pneumoniae and Enterobacter spp. and in Shigella flexneri, respectively. Thus, several qnr genes have been found on enterobacterial plasmids, but their origin or ancestry is unknown. Hata et al. recently reported that QnrS exhibited significant identity with a Photobacterium profundum protein (CAG22829; 64%) and a Vibrio vulnificus protein (AAO07889; 53%) (2), which also showed 66 and 60% identity with QnrA, respectively. In addition, by a homology search using the DNA Data Bank of Japan (http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/search/blast-j.html), we had noticed that another P. profundum protein (CAG21998) and a Vibrio parahaemolyticus protein (BAC61438) both showed 58% identity with QnrA (52 and 56% with QnrS, respectively). Taken together, three species of the Vibrionaceae family were revealed to chromosomally possess putative qnr homologues, raising the hypothesis that qnr genes on enterobacterial plasmids had derived from one of them or their relatives. These chromosomal homologues are not associated with any integron-like structure. Meanwhile, qnrA is present in an integron (9, 11), but qnrS is not (2). To gain a functional insight, we examined the V. parahaemolyticus qnr homologue, VPA0095, for qnr-like potential. A DNA fragment corresponding to the gene (part of the sequence, BA000032) was amplified from V. parahaemolyticus strain 8611 (isolated at Tohoku University Hospital, Sendai, Japan) by PCR with the primers 5 -TTAAAAACCGATCTC ATTTTTGAACGAG and 5 -ACTTCCTCGTCGAcGTTAT TCGGTAAGTC (the small character indicates an introduced artificial base exchange; the SalI site was newly established as underlined). The fragment, 701 base pairs from the second codon to 53 bases downstream of the stop codon, was digested with SalI after blunting and kination using a TaKaRa BKL kit (Takara Bio Inc., Otsu, Japan). It was next ligated into a plasmid vector, pTV118N (pUC118 derivative; Takara Bio Inc.), which was previously treated with NcoI, KOD DNA polymerase (TOYOBO, Osaka, Japan) for blunting, and then SalI, followed by introduction into E. coli strain MC1061 (5). Plasmids were extracted from some transformants of the strain, and their partial sequences encompassing the ligated fragment were determined. We consequently obtained a plasmid, pVPQNR8, carrying VPA0095 connected to a start codon derived from lacZ following the lac promoter and Shine-Dalgarno sequence, and a plasmid, pVPQNR2, carrying a gene with a single mutation (TGT to TAT) at the 115th codon of VPA0095, which probably occurred as a PCR error and was accompanied by an amino acid change from cysteine to tyrosine (C115Y). E. coli strain KL16 (1) was transformed with each plasmid and, as a control, with pTV118N and its derivative carrying qnrA, pKPQNR (constructed with qnrA from a K. pneumoniae isolate in Japan: unpublished). The transformants were then subjected to drug susceptibility tests, in which MICs of ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, nalidixic acid (all synthesized at Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan), and minocycline (Wyeth Japan, Tokyo, Japan) were determined by the agar dilution method (7). The results are shown in Table 1. pVPQNR8, compared to the negative control, pTV118N, did not result in significant changes of the MICs. Interestingly, on the other hand, 8to 16-fold increases in quinolone MICs were provided by pVPQNR2 carrying a mutated gene, comparable to pKPQNR. The MIC of minocycline for strain KL16 was not changed by the plasmids, indicating the specific effect of introduced genes on quinolone susceptibility. To confirm the expression of qnr-like potential by a single mutation, we next performed site-directed mutagenesis experiments. Single base exchanges at the 115th codon of the gene on plasmids were induced using a QuikChange site-directed mutagenesis kit (Stratagene, La Jolla, Calif.) and primers 5 CACCATGTTTTTCTaTTCTGCTTTTATTACTGGC and 5 -GCCAGTAATAAAAGCAGAAtAGAAAAACATGGTG for the exchange in pVPQNR8 (TGT to TAT [resulting in pVPQNR8C115Y, the mutant type]) or 5 -CACCATGTTTT TCTgTTCTGCTTTTATTACTGGC and 5 -GCCAGTAATA AAAGCAGAAcAGAAAAACATGGTG for the exchange in pVPQNR2 (TAT to TGT [resulting in pVPQNR2Y115C, the native type]). Lowercase letters in the primer sequences indicate an introduced artificial base exchange. Acquired plasmids were introduced into E. coli strain KL16. As shown in Table 1, pVPQNR8C115Y clearly increased the quinolone MICs for the strain to the same level as pVPQNR2, while pVPQNR2Y115C was basically identical to pVPQNR8, indicating the verified effect of the mutation conferring C115Y in VPA0095. Thus, one of the Vibrionaceae chromosomal qnr homologues was experimentally confirmed to possess the potential to


Existing skeleton extraction methods, however, are often sensitive to noises and disconnected. This paper proposed a skeleton extraction method based on Poisson equation. It can approximate the topology structure of the input 3D model well, and avoid the broken lines. First, the proposed method extracts critical points of a 3D model by using Poisson equation and geodesic distance. Then the extracted critical points are connected and star skeleton of the 3D model is defined. Finally, the reverse force filed based Poisson energy distribution is used to push star skeleton into final result. Experiments show that the extracted skeleton is continuous and has no small branches affected model noises.


ABSTRACT Global scale land cover (LC) mapping has interested many researchers over the last two decades as it is an input data source for various applications. Current global land cover (GLC) maps often do not meet the accuracy and thematic requirements of specific users. This study aimed to create an improved GLC map by integrating available GLC maps and reference datasets. We also address the thematic requirements of multiple users by demonstrating a concept of producing GLC maps with user-specific legends. We used a regression kriging method to integrate Globcover-2009, LC-CCI-2010, MODIS-2010 and Globeland30 maps and several publicly available GLC reference datasets. Overall correspondence of the integrated GLC map with reference LC was 80% based on 10-fold cross-validation using 24,681 sample sites. This is globally 10% and regionally 6–13% higher than the input map correspondences. Based on LC class presence probability maps, expected LC proportion maps at coarser resolution were created and used for characterizing mosaic classes for land system modelling and biodiversity assessments. Since more reference datasets are becoming freely accessible, GLC mapping can be further improved by using the pool of all available reference datasets. LC proportion information allow tuning LC products to specific user needs.


We introduce a virtual machine approach to pro-gram FPGAs using a high-level programming language (with automatic memory management) while hardware-accelerating a subset of it. This offers an interesting trade-off between high-level synthesis tools and pure software approaches. We describe a preliminary implementation of this hybrid approach using the OCaml language on Intel FPGAs. The associated toolset fully automatizes the compilation process from the OCaml source program to the SoPC hardware and software configuration. First results are encouraging, both for programmability and efficiency.


Profound and durable responses are often observed in early stage clinical trials of novel cancer agents in only a small minority of patients. It has long been postulated that these responses have a definable genetic basis but until now it was not feasible to perform a comprehensive genomic analysis of such patients. Rather, at best a few candidate genes were examined. Technical feasibility thus ensured that oncology trials were designed to identify agents that have a statistically significant benefit in a genetically unselected population, a paradigm that has led to the development of many agents that have modest or no benefit in the vast majority of patients. Agents with profound activity in only a small number of patients were on the other had deemed inactive and abandoned. Our preliminary experience shows that next generation sequencing methodology can now be feasibly applied in the clinical setting to identify previously unrecognized biomarkers of response for agents that show profound responses in only a minority of patients. As an example, we explored the molecular basis of an outlier phenotype, an apparent disease cure of a 51-year old woman with recurrent metastatic small cell carcinoma. The patient was treated on a phase 1 clinical trial that combined topoisomerase I inhibition with an ATP-competitive inhibitor of checkpoint kinase 1 (Chk1). Whole genome sequencing revealed a complex but highly clonal tumor genome with a somatic, missense mutation in the Mre11 complex gene RAD50, which functions to initiate double stranded break (DSB) repair by homologous recombination or non- homologous end joining. Through modeling in yeast, we confirmed that this heterozygous RAD50 mutation, which affects a highly conserved residue and whose wild type copy was focally deleted, conferred sensitivity to topoisomerase I inhibition. Drug sensitivity was markedly enhanced upon genetic ablation of the DNA damage checkpoint pathway, suggesting a synthetic lethal interaction between checkpoint kinase inhibition and clastogenic chemotherapy. These results and additional examples to be presented demonstrate the feasibility of using whole-genome sequencing in the clinical setting to identify previously occult biomarkers of drug sensitivity that can aid in the identification of patients most likely to respond to targeted anticancer drugs. The use of novel clinical trial designs to confirm genotype-phenotype associations will also be discussed. Citation Format: David B. Solit. Clinical application of next-generation sequencing as a guide to treatment selection. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Precision Medicine Series: Integrating Clinical Genomics and Cancer Therapy; Jun 13-16, 2015; Salt Lake City, UT. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2016;22(1_Suppl):Abstract nr IA11.


In Britain since the 1960s television has been the most influential medium of popular culture. Television is also the site where the Western Front of popular culture clashes with the Western Front of history. This book examines the ways in which those involved in the production of historical documentaries for this most influential media have struggled to communicate the stories of the First World War to British audiences. Documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Berkshire, the Imperial War Museum, and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives all inform the analysis. Interviews and correspondence with television producers, scriptwriters and production crew, as well as two First World War veterans who appeared in several recent documentaries provide new insights for the reader. Emma Hanna takes the reader behind the scenes of the making of the most influential documentaries from the landmark epic series The Great War (BBC, 1964) up to more recent controversial productions such as The Trench (BBC, 2002) and Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (BBC, 2008). By examining the production, broadcast and reception of a number of British television documentaries this book examines the difficult relationship between the war's history and its popular memory.


Bioactive compounds derived from secondary metabolism in animals have refined selectivity and potency for certain biological targets. The superfamily Dendrobatoidea is adapted to the dietary sequestration and secretion of toxic alkaloids, which play a role in several biological activities, and thus serve as a potential source for pharmacological and biotechnological applications. This article constitutes a scoping review to understand the trends in experimental research involving bioactive alkaloids derived from Dendrobatoidea based upon scientometric approaches. Forty-eight (48) publications were found in 30 journals in the period of 60 years, between 1962 and 2022. More than 23 structural classes of alkaloids were cited, with 27.63% for batrachotoxins, 13.64% for pyridinics, with an emphasis on epibatidine, 16.36% for pumiliotoxins, and 11.82% for histrionicotoxins. These tests included in vivo (54.9%), in vitro (39.4%), and in silico simulations (5.6%). Most compounds (54.8%) were isolated from skin extracts, whereas the remainder were obtained through molecular synthesis. Thirteen main biological activities were identified, including acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (27.59%), sodium channel inhibitors (12.07%), cardiac (12.07%), analgesic (8.62%), and neuromuscular effects (8.62%). The substances were cited as being of natural origin in the "Dendrobatidae" family, genus "Phyllobates," "Dendrobates," and seven species: Epipedobates tricolor, Phyllobates aurotaenia, Oophaga histrionica, Oophaga pumilio, Phyllobates terribilis, Epipedobates anthonyi, and Ameerega flavopicta. To date, only a few biological activities have been experimentally tested; hence, further studies on the bioprospecting of animal compounds and ecological approaches are needed.


The action of anthrax toxin relies in part upon the ability of the protective antigen (PA) moiety to form a heptameric pore in the endosomal membrane, providing a portal for entry of the enzymic moieties of the toxin into the cytosol. Pore formation is dependent on a conformational change in the heptameric prepore that occurs in the neutral to mildly acidic pH range, and it has been hypothesized that protonation of one or more histidine residues triggers this transition. To test this hypothesis, we used biosynthetic methods to incorporate the unnatural amino acid analogue 2-fluorohistidine (2-FHis) into PA. 2-FHis is isosteric with histidine but resists protonation at physiological pH values due to a dramatically reduced side-chain pKa ( approximately 1). We found that 2-FHis-labeled PA was biologically inactive, as judged by its inability to deliver a model intracellular effector, LFN-DTA, to the cytosol of CHO-K1 cells. However, whereas 2-FHis blocked a conformational transition in the full-length PA83 protein in the pH 5-6 range, the pH dependence of prepore-to-pore conversion of (PA63)7 was unchanged from the wild-type protein, implying that this conversion is not dependent on His protonation. Consistent with this result, the labeled, trypsin-activated PA was able to permeabilize liposomes to K+ and retained pore-forming activity in planar phospholipid bilayers. The pores in planar bilayers were incapable, however, of translocating a model ligand in response to a transmembrane pH gradient or elevated voltage. The results indicate that protonation of residues other than His, presumably Glu and/or Asp side chains, triggers pore formation in vitro, but His residues are nonetheless important for PA functioning in vivo.


We design serial concatenated multi-input multi-output systems based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. We employ a receiver structure combining the demapper/detector and the decoder in an iterative fashion. We consider the a posteriori probability (APP) demapper, as well as a suboptimal demapper incorporating interference cancellation with linear filtering. Extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is applied to study the convergence behavior of the proposed schemes. We show that EXIT charts match very well with the simulated decoding trajectories, and they help explain the impact of different mappings and different demappers. It is observed that if the APP demapper transfer characteristics are almost flat, the LDPC codes optimized for binary-input channels are good enough to achieve performance close to the channel capacity. We also present a simple code-optimization method based on EXIT chart analysis, and we design a rate-1/2 LDPC code that achieves very low bit-error rates within 0.15 dB of the capacity of a two-input two-output Rayleigh fading channel with 4-pulse amplitude modulation. We next propose to use a space-time block code as an inner code of our serial concatenated coding scheme. By means of a simple example scheme, using an Alamouti inner code, we demonstrate that the design/optimization of the outer code (e.g., LDPC code) is greatly simplified.


Purpose
This study aims to address three important but under-researched questions in the trust and negotiation literature: What do negotiators do to determine the trustworthiness of a potential business partner? What trust criteria motivate their search and help them interpret the information their search reveals? Whether there are systematic cultural differences in search and criteria, and if different, why?

Design/methodology/approach
This study used qualitative methodology. The data are from interviews with 82 managers from 33 different national cultures in four regions of the world identified by cultural levels of trust in negotiation and tightness-looseness. Interviews focused on how negotiators determined the trustworthiness of potential business partners in intracultural negotiations.

Findings
Analyses revealed four search activities negotiators use to gather information about a potential business partner: due diligence, brokerage, good will building and testing; and five criteria for determining the trustworthiness of a new business partner: respect, mutual values, competence, openness and professionalism. Quotes illustrate how these search activities and criteria manifest in different cultures.

Research limitations/implications
This study used multiple cases to build a longitudinal picture of the process. It did not follow a single case in depth. The study focused on identifying cultural central tendencies at the same time recognizing that there is always variability within a culture.

Practical implications
Knowing what is culturally normative allows negotiators to anticipate, interpret and respect their counterpart's behavior. Such knowledge should facilitate trust development.

Originality/value
This study provides an in-depth understanding of cultural similarities and differences in the process of trust development in negotiating new business relationships.


In a cloud data center, servers are always over-provisioned in an active state to meet the peak demand of requests, wasting a large amount of energy as a result. One of the options to reduce the power consumption of data centers is to reduce the number of idle servers, or to switch idle servers into low-power sleep states. However, the servers cannot process the requests immediately when transiting to an active state. There are delays and extra power consumption during the transition. In this paper, we consider using state-of-the-art servers with multi-sleep modes. The sleep modes with smaller transition delays usually consume more power when sleeping. Given the arrival of incoming requests, our goal is to minimize the energy consumption of a cloud data center by the scheduling of servers with multi-sleep modes. We formulate this problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem during the whole period of time with millions of decision variables. To solve this problem, we divide it into sub-problems with smaller periods while ensuring the feasibility and transition continuity for each sub-problem through a Backtrack-and-Update technique. We also consider using DVFS to adjust the frequency of active servers, so that the requests can be processed with the least power. Our simulations are based on traces from real world. Experiments show that our method can significantly reduce the power consumption for a cloud data center.


This article comprehensively reviews the major components and dimensions of love that researchers operationalized in psychometric scales throughout recent decades. The Quadrangular Love Theory (QLT) synthesizes the achievements of psychometrics of love and demonstrates – theoretically and empirically - that they are grouped in four umbrella love dimensions: Compassion and Affection, which characterize the feelings toward a partner, and Closeness and Commitment, which characterize the feelings regarding a relationship. To test this theory, the authors developed the Quadrangular Love Scale (QLS) and explored its construct validity and psychometric properties in two studies utilizing various samples. Study 1 (N = 592) generally supported convergent and discriminant validities and internal reliability of the four dimensions. Study 2 (N = 584) provided additional support to the discriminant validity of QLS in terms of personality traits as predictors of major love feelings and love attitudes as typological differences of experiencing these feelings.


Introduction:The aim of this study was determined the level of awareness among women regarding risk factors for cervical cancer and screening methods, their sources of information, and general attitudes toward Pap smear screening tests and human papilloma virus vaccination.Method:A cross-sectional interviewer administered an electronic questionnaire among women in Najran City during the period from March 1, 2019 to June 30, 2019. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.Result: A total of 3,387 women participated in this study and the response rate was 100%. Less than 10% of the participants had good awareness and 70% had poor awareness about the risk factors for cervical cancer. In terms of the major barriers to taking the Pap smear test among married women, 968 (56.7%) had no knowledge of the test and 338 (19.85%) considered it unnecessary. Significant predictors of the level of awareness about cervical cancer and Pap smear testing were identified as the age of women, occupation, family history of cancer, monthly income (P < 0.001) and education level (P = 0.003).Conclusion: we detected a lack of awareness about risk factors for cervical cancer and the benefits of early detection among women in this region. Healthcare providers should implement policies or programs for cervical cancer screening and vaccination throughout all primary healthcare centers.


The purpose of this paper is to recall the neuroanatomical bases of the motrice laryngeal innervation and the consequences of a lesion at that level. On the other hand, the type of management and effective therapy our service uses in those cases of unilateral of bilateral vocal cord paralysis. The management is principally based on the E.M.G., the objective phonatory measurements including the spectral voice analysis. The unilateral paralysis is usually treated by the speech pathologist reeducation and, if necessary, GAX collagen injection in the vocal cord. The bilateral paralysis, generally in adduction, is cured in the most cases with a CO2 laser arytenoidectomy.


As biologic products begin to come off-patent, a market is emerging for biosimilars (also known as biogenerics or follow-on biologics). Firms from emerging countries such as India and China have dominated the production of active ingredients in pharmaceutical industries all over the world and are now developing capabilities in biosimilar production. This emergence of a new market dynamic is disruptive to current key players as it has potential challenge their current dominant hold over the market, while for firms from developing countries it creates a sea of opportunities. This rise of biosimilars and capabilities for cheap production in developing country firms has potential to transform patient care in developing countries as well as advanced countries. This paper reviews study data collected at Innogen and the most recent literature to understand how the sector for biosimilars is evolving and the opportunities and challenges faced by emerging suppliers. The aim of the paper is to identify the gaps in the current literature and opportunities for further study in this area.


Research on the ecology of top predators – upper trophic level consumers that are relatively free from predation once they reach adult size – has provided regular contributions to general ecology and is a rapidly expanding and increasingly experimental, multidisciplinary and technological endeavour. Yet, an exponentially expanding literature coupled with rapid disintegration into specialized, disconnected subfields for study (e.g. vertebrate predators versus invertebrate predators, community ecology versus biological control etc.) increasingly means that we are losing a coherent, integrated understating of the role and importance of these species in ecosystems. This process of canalization is likely to hinder sharing of scientific discovery and continued progress, especially as there is a growing need to understand the generality of the top–down forcing, as demonstrated for some members of this group. Here, we propose ways to facilitate synthesis by promoting changes in mentality and awareness among specialists through increased debate and collaboration, conceptual reviews and a series of exemplary case studies. The strategy will rely on the collective contribution by all scientists in the field and will strive to consolidate and formalise top-order predation as a holistic, cohesive, cross-taxonomical field of research studying the ecology, evolution and behaviour of apex predators and their capability to exert top–down forcing on lower trophic levels.


ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv APPROVAL SHEET v SUBMISSION SHEET vi DECLARATION vii TABLE OF CONTENTS viii LIST OF TABLES xi LIST OF FIGURES xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiii


Urinary excretion of individual proteins has been examined in 30 patients suffering from arterial hypertension, subjected to renal biopsy. The findings indicate an increased excretion of the proteins associated with the localization of the morphologic shifts in the kidneys. Thus, glomerular abnormalities are characterized by a 10-30-fold increase of albumin and IgG excretion with the urine and normal values of beta-2-microglobulin (beta-2-MG); canalicular abnormalities are associated with normal urine albumin or microalbuminuria and 10-40-fold increased excretion of beta-2-MG, paralleled by increased urine N-acetyl-B-glucosaminidase activity, this latter shift indicating grave tubulointerstitial changes. Hypertensive changes of the vessels involve microalbuminuria. Quantitative and qualitative characteristics of proteinuria may become an additional test in the differential diagnosis of symptomatic arterial hypertension.


The Striga species are obligate root parasitic plants. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria could enhance Striga suicidal germination. In screen-house studies we quantified the effect of bacterial inoculation with increasing maize plant density on the parasitic weed Striga hermonthica . The design used was a randomized complete block with a factorial arrangement (4 plant density levels, 2 S. hermonthica infestation levels, artificial and natural, and 2 isolate levels, with and without isolate). Interactions between bacteria and Striga count varied significantly (p=0.05). Seed germination differed significantly among plant densities from 6 to 8 WAP in the absence of bacteria. In bacterial inoculated pots significant differences were observed among plant densities from 5 WAP. Maize planted on soil inoculated with Klebsiella oxytoca '10mkr7' had higher Striga counts at harvest for all plant densities. Significant variation was observed for interactions between bacteria and Striga . These findings suggest that Klebsiella oxytoca '10mkr7' is a plant growth
promoter and could stimulate Striga suicidal germination. Hence, there are good prospects for biological control of Striga using indigenous rhizosphere K. oxytoca '10mkr7' Keywords : Maize; plant density; Klebsiella oxytoca ; Striga hermonthica ; suicidal germination J. Trop. Microbiol. Biotechnol. Vol. 3 (2) 2007: pp. 13-19


This study provides a preliminary investigation into the relationship between urbanization and traffic collisions by analyzing the spatial patterns in Sacramento County, California, from 1998 to 2008 through use of urban land classifications and traffic collision data. The ArcGIS directional distribution tool was used to create standard deviational ellipses to investigate the distributional trend of urban land and traffic collisions over time. Statistical outputs representing changes of geographical centroids, elliptical areas, and standard distances (long and short axes) were then compared. Collisions were also divided into subsets by severity level to account for inherent differences in the spatial distribution of different types of collisions. The results provided insight into the macroscopic spatial patterns of urban land and traffic safety and their relationships. The limitations of the method and the need for further research were discussed. The approach in this study would be useful for other metropolitan areas with similarly changing development patterns and can be helpful in guiding future research that compares these two phenomena.


High temperature volcanic sublimates including so-called "molybdenum blue" sampled around the high-temperature fumaroles at Iwodake volcano, Satsuma-Iwojima, Kyushu, Southwestern Japan, were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray micro-diffraction, Raman micro-scattering, electron microprobe and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic analyses. The identified minerals are molybdenite, sphalerite, tugarinovite, molybdite, hematite, halite, sylvite, anglesite, wulfenite, quartz, tridymite, cristbalite and potassium alum. Occurrences of both tugarinovite and molybdite are observed in Kudriavy volcano, too, and the coexistence of their minerals is characteristic of high-temperature volcanic sublimates. The molybdenite and sphalerite from Iwodake are exceedingly rich in Re (up to 0.77 wt%) and In (up to 1.69 wt%), respectively, distinguished from those of a different origin by chemical composition. The molybdenite consists of both of 3R and 2H1 polytypes. Sublimates from Iwodake and Kudriavy volcanoes are similar in mineralogy. Although the difference in the host rock arises between the Iwodake (rhyolite) and the Kudriavy (basaltic andesite) volcanoes, their volcanic gases resemble each other in F and Cl contents. This resemblance might cause the similarity in sublimate mineralogy between these volcanoes.


This paper considers an institutional investor who is implementing a long-term portfolio allocation strategy using forecasts of financial returns. We compare the performance of two competing macro-finance models, an unrestricted Vector AutoRegression (VAR) and a fully structural Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, at forecasting financial returns. We show that the DSGE model outperforms the unrestricted VAR at forecasting financial returns in the long term and generates substantially higher Sharpe ratios for mean-variance allocations. Even if it contains fewer unknown parameters, the DSGE model benefits from economically grounded restrictions that help anchor financial returns in the long term.


This article analyzes the immediate impact on First Amendment jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court's "direct causal link" requirement adopted in 2011 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. In embracing an empirically focused proof-of-causation doctrine, Brown marked the first time in the Court's history it had used the phrase "direct causal link" in any free speech case. But just one year later, in a very different factual context in United States v. Alvarez, the Court struck down a federal law making it a crime to lie about earning military medals. In December 2012, a federal judge used Brown's "direct causal link" test to enjoin a California law that prohibits healthcare providers from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with gay minors. This article explores problems with adopting Brown's quantitative and empirical causation standard in cases like Alvarez where an intangible injury (reputational harm) to an inanimate object (a medal) is the alleged compelling interest. Bridging doctrine with theory, the article also examines how the direct causal link requirement comports with the marketplace of ideas theory upon which much of First Amendment jurisprudence is premised.


Studies about polypropylene thermal properties have been carried out towards 2-
cavities test mould of an integral hinge and tension band sample. This mould was fitted
with pressure /temperature transducer and adapted with a data acquisition system. By
using both injection moulding practical work and MoldFlow Plastic Insight (MPI)
simulation, the predictions and accuracy of in-mould temperature have been carried out
with different settings of processing parameters such as screw speed, shot size, mould
temperature and barrel temperature profile. These thermal properties analysis were very
important in order to produce optimum processing parameters and a better quality with
longer life span of hinges and tension band which are widely applied to product
packaging. The analysis of results showed that the measured in-mould temperature during
injection moulding practical produced the correct trend as referred to the rheological
theories of polypropylene. Through simulation process, MPI has predicted the same trend
and slightly similar in-mould temperatures as compared with data acquisition from
injection moulding practical work. For additional findings, the shot size of sample can be
minimised, with the elimination of second screw speed during packing time. This
reduction may helps to accelerate injection cycle time and reduced material consumption.
Finally, the optimum process parameter settings for hinge and tension band sample have
been rectified and verified by both simulation and practical work. It is proven that
simulation prediction able to produce beneficial results which may contribute to make
improvements in terms of numbers of trials and procedures, times / power / energy
consumption and type of materials which have been used during hinge and tension band
design and production.


The biosynthesis of macrophage colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF-1) was examined in mouse NIH-3T3 fibroblasts transfected with a retroviral vector expressing the 554-amino-acid product of a human 4-kilobase (kb) CSF-1 cDNA. Similar to results previously obtained with a 1.6-kb human cDNA that codes for a 256-amino-acid CSF-1 precursor, the results of the present study showed that NIH-3T3 cells expressing the product of the 4-kb clone produced biologically active human CSF-1 and were transformed by an autocrine mechanism when cotransfected with a vector containing a human c-fms (CSF-1 receptor) cDNA. The 4-kb CSF-1 cDNA product was synthesized as an integral transmembrane glycoprotein that was assembled into disulfide-linked dimers and rapidly underwent proteolytic cleavage to generate a soluble growth factor. Although the smaller CSF-1 precursor specified by the 1.6-kb human cDNA was stably expressed as a membrane-bound glycoprotein at the cell surface and was slowly cleaved to release the extracellular growth factor, the cell-associated product of the 4-kb clone was efficiently processed to the secreted form and was not detected on the plasma membrane. Digestion with glycosidic enzymes indicated that soluble CSF-1 encoded by the 4-kb cDNA contained both asparagine(N)-linked and O-linked carbohydrate chains, whereas the product of the 1.6-kb clone had only N-linked oligosaccharides. Removal of the carbohydrate indicated that the polypeptide chain of the secreted 4-kb cDNA product was longer than that of the corresponding form encoded by the smaller clone. These differences in posttranslational processing may reflect diverse physiological roles for the products of the two CSF-1 precursors in vivo.


OBJECTIVES
The study aims to develop a continuing bonds scale, investigate the relationship between continuing bonds and adjustment after loss, and test the moderating role of meaning reconstruction in this relationship.

METHODS
Data were collected from two different samples of 306 (Study 1) and 271 (Study 2) bereaved adults.

RESULTS
The four factors structure of the Multidimensional Continuing Bonds Scale (MCBS) was explored and confirmed. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that continuing bonds showed a significant relationship with prolonged grief symptoms after controlling the risk factors such as gender, age of the deceased, time since loss, and cause of death. Meaning reconstruction moderated the relationship between continuing bonds and prolonged grief symptoms.

CONCLUSION
The results revealed that the MCBS can be used as a valid and reliable scale to assess the continuing bonds construct. The relationship between continuing bonds and prolonged grief symptoms varies according to the levels of meaning reconstruction.


Objective. In current, neonatal practice, clinical signs of intrauterine infection (IUI) are often non-specific. From a large panel of immune biomarkers, we seek to identify cord blood markers that are most strongly associated with the fetal inflammatory response (FIR), a specific placental lesion associated with serious neonatal complications. Methods. We used multiplex immunoassay to measure 27 biomarkers, selected as part of an NIH-funded study of preterm birth, according to gestational age (GA) and extent of placental inflammation: involvement of chorion, amnion, decidua (maternal inflammatory response, MIR); extension to umbilical cord or chorionic plate (FIR). We used false-discovery rate (FDR < 5%, P < 0.001) to account for multiple comparisons. Results. Among 506 births (GA 23–42 weeks), IL-1β increased with FIR among preterm subgroups (P = 0.0001 for <32 weeks; P = 0.0009 for 33–36 weeks). IL-6 and IL-8 increased with FIR among preterm and full-term infants (P < 0.0001). P-trend for IL-6 and IL-8 with MIR versus FIR was <0.0001. Comparison with respect to clinical IUI yielded persistent elevation with FIR even when clinical signs were absent. The remaining 24 markers were not significantly associated. Conclusion. We conclude that among 27 cord blood biomarkers, IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-8 are selectively associated with FIR. These markers may be clinically useful indicators of extensive IUI associated with poor neonatal outcome.


A number of researches on user innovation have demonstrated the importance of users in the innovation process. Even though it has been proved that users are a source of idea and can increase the probability of success for manufacturers; only a few of manufacturers actively realize the importance of users' product development. This research aims to investigate and visualize consumers' innovation. We conduct an online survey in two countries - United States, and Japan, then compare the result with the previous research in the United Kingdom. As a result, we found a significant number of consumers creating their own products or modifying existing products in all three countries, and that a substantial amount of money and time was invested in this. However, only an extremely small number of product innovations were adopted by enterprises as potential products. For manufacturers, we suggest that they should regard users' creative activities and collaborate more with users, especially in a community level; or they may take effort in working with creative consumers. For policymakers or organizations concerned, it is significant that similar surveys should be conducted in both developed and developing countries in order to understand consumers' activities and abilities better. We have attached the questionnaire used in the U.S. for reference.


This study aims to identify and analyze: 1) the effect of household consumption, private investment, and development spending revenue to the regional economy, 2) the effect of private investment, construction spending, employment and regional economy on local income. This study is an exploration studies conducted throughout the Kabupaten/Kota is as much as 19 districts / cities in West Sumatra province. Years of the study period was 2005 to 2009 (5 years). The study found that: 1) household consumption, private investment, and development spending revenue simultaneously or partially significant effect on the regional economy regencies / cities in West Sumatra province. The higher the level of household consumption of a region, the allocation of development spending is high, the amount of private investment that invested in the area and the higher revenues will be able to improve the condition of the local economy. 2) Private investment, construction spending, employment and regional economy simultaneously and partially significant effect on revenue Kabupaten/Kota in West Sumatra province. A growing number of private parties to invest in the area, the size of the allocation of development funds for various public sector facilities, the more labor is absorbed by the sector of the economy will be able to increase local income. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis: 1) Pengaruh konsumsi rumah tangga, investasi swasta, belanja pembangunan dan pendapatan asli daerah terhadap perekonomian daerah, 2) Pengaruh investasi swasta, belanja pembangunan, tenaga kerja dan perekonomian daerah terhadap pendapatan asli daerah.


Purpose To determine if achromatopsia associated F525N and T383fsX mutations in the CNGB3 subunit of cone photoreceptor cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels increases susceptibility to cell death in photoreceptor-derived cells. Methods Photoreceptor-derived 661W cells were transfected with cDNA encoding wild-type (WT) CNGA3 subunits plus WT or mutant CNGB3 subunits, and incubated with the membrane-permeable CNG channel activators 8-(4-chlorophenylthio) guanosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (CPT-cGMP) or CPT-adenosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (CPT-cAMP). Cell viability under these conditions was determined by measuring lactate dehydrogenase release. Channel ligand sensitivity was calibrated by patch-clamp recording after expression of WT or mutant channels in Xenopus oocytes. Results Coexpression of CNGA3 with CNGB3 subunits containing F525N or T383fsX mutations produced channels exhibiting increased apparent affinity for CPT-cGMP compared to WT channels. Consistent with these effects, cytotoxicity in the presence of 0.1 μM CPT-cGMP was enhanced relative to WT channels, and the increase in cell death was more pronounced for the mutation with the largest gain-of-function effect on channel gating, F525N. Increased susceptibility to cell death was prevented by application of the CNG channel blocker L-cis-diltiazem. Increased cytotoxicity was also found to be dependent on the presence of extracellular calcium. Conclusions These results indicate a connection between disease-associated mutations in cone CNG channel subunits, altered CNG channel-activation properties, and photoreceptor cytotoxicity. The rescue of cell viability via CNG channel block or removal of extracellular calcium suggests that cytotoxicity in this model depends on calcium entry through hyperactive CNG channels.


This paper highlights the features and functions of Systems Modeling Corporation's general purpose simulation system, Arena. Arena represents an advancement in simulation technology by enabling enterprise-wide simulation. It is a comprehensive system that addresses all phases of a simulation project from input data analysis to the analysis of simulation output data. Building on the capabilities of Systems Modeling's earlier products, SIMAN and Cinema, Arena uses a hierarchical approach to provide the user with the power of a simulation language and the flexibility of a simulator. The object-oriented approach that was central to Arena's development, coupled with the hierarchical architecture, enables the professional user to define the personality of the system for the end-user. The professional user can actually build his or her own simulation system by combining SIMAN and Arena constructs into modules for the end-user. Arena is focused on bringing the use of simulation to broad new classes of users. Its application focus addresses the needs of manufacturing as well as decision support for many other areas including, business process reengineering, medical systems, transportation, logistics, and data communications.


Abstract This essay is a critical response to Loren Lomasky's essay in this volume: "Is It Wrong to Eat Animals?" The essay argues that Lomasky both overestimates the value of eating meat and underestimates the harms to animals of practices surrounding meat eating. While Lomasky takes the fact that an animal would not have lived at all if it were not being raised for food to constitute a benefit for animals being so raised, this essay argues that it would be better for animals raised on factory farms to have never been born. It also contends that Lomasky overstates his case regarding the benefits of meat eating for human well-being. While gastronomic experiences can enrich our lives, it would be a mistake to think that meat eating is indispensable to the enrichment of our lives; one can experience the flourishing of eating well without eating animals.


Theoretical paper DeMarzo, Vayanos, and Zwiebel (2003) proposes a model of information aggregation in networks when individuals are subject to persuasion bias. The term "persuasion bias" refers to a particular form of boundedly rational behavior when individuals connected into a network do not account for repetition in the information they acquire. We argue that under the assumption that agents form their beliefs as a weighted average of all information available to them, the persuasion bias assumption is equivalent to a generalized version of the famous DeGroot model (DeGroot (1974)). We test the persuasion bias hypothesis against the (generalized) Bayesian updating model and find support for the persuasion bias hypothesis. We also found a positive correlation between how well a subject fits the generalized DeGroot model, compared to the alternative generalized Bayesian updating model, and their performance in the experiment. Data suggest that the generalized DeGroot model better accommodates other subjects' deviations from equilibrium, which explains the positive correlation.