The use of the competitive enzyme immunoassay (EIA) has made it possible to demonstrate that antiserum to the ribosomes of group A streptococcus, type 29 M, contains antibodies to homologous protein M and does not contain antibodies to group A polysaccharide, lipoteichoic acid and peptidoglycan. Ribosomal antiserum has been found to bind with the surface of heterologous type M streptococci in EIA, while forming no precipitation lines with heterologous proteins M in the double immunodiffusion test, which indicates that the binding of ribosomal antibodies with the surface of group A streptococcal cells is not type-specific. Antibodies to the ribosomes of group A streptococcus recognize some of the antigenic determinants of E. coli ribosomes.


The metabolism of acetoacetate via a proposed cytosolic pathway in brain of 1-week-old rats was investigated. (-)-Hydroxycitrate, an inhibitor of ATP citrate lyase, markedly inhibited the incorporation of carbon from labelled glucose and 3-hydroxybutyrate into cerebral lipids, but had no effect on the incorporation of labelled acetate and acetoacetate into brain lipids. Similarly, n-butylmalonate and benzene-1,2,3-tricarboxylate inhibited the incorporation of labelled 3-hydroxybutyrate but not of acetoacetate into cerebral lipids. These inhibitors had no effect on the oxidation to 14CO2 of the labelled substrates used. (-)-Hydroxycitrate decreased the incorporation of 3H from 3H2O into cerebral lipids by slices metabolizing either glucose or 3-hydroxybutyrate, but not in the presence of acetoacetate. (-)-Hydroxycitrate also differentially inhibited the incorporation of [2-14C]-leucine and [U-14C]leucine into cerebral lipids. The data show that, although the acetyl moiety of acetyl-CoA generated in brain mitochondria is largely translocated as citrate from these organelles to the cytosol, a cytosolic pathway exists by which acetoacetate is converted directly into acetyl-COA in this cellular compartment.


Recently developed labeling technologies have enabled new insights into cellular function and biomolecular interaction. While great advances have been made in encodable probes,[1] molecular labels,[2] ultrabright emitters,[3] and specific coupling chemistries,[4] the benefits of a single combined technology offering small size, bright emission, and potential genetic encodability has yet to be realized. Within the past few years, few-atom silver nanoclusters have offered promise to combine small size and potentially ultrabright emission in a variety of scaffolds, which stabilize silver nanocluster emission ranging in brightness from that of typical organic dyes[5] to that exceeding brightness of semiconductor quantum dots.[6,7] Based on a nucleolus-bound silver binding protein, we report a significant advance toward utilizing silver nanocluster emission within living cells and the potential for further optimization of small peptide scaffolds for improved nanocluster optical properties.

Frequently used by pathologists, silver nanoparticle-based staining has been utilized to detect nucleolus organizing regions within cells and thus partially reveal nucleolus location.[8,9] This method is thought to reflect cell proliferation activity of potentially cancerous cells.[10] The rather harsh, general protocol for nucleolar silver staining within fixed cells (>5.8 M silver nitrate, 60 °C) yields large metallic silver nanoparticles that appear as dark spots under brightfield microscopy or electron microscopy due to the interaction between argyrophilic proteins and silver.[11] Considering the specific nucleolar staining with large silver nanoparticles, we expected that fluorescent silver nanoclusters could be produced in vivo in the nucleoli of cells by ambient temperature photoactivation, and that one of the known silver-binding proteins, nucleolin, may serve as a guide for templating the high efficiency creation of fluorescent silver nanoclusters.

Although encountering problems with alteration of activity and autofluorescence, especially at low copy numbers, live cell imaging studies often employ GFP fusions, expensive fluorescent antibodies, or specifically designed dyes against certain subcellular components for visualization via fluorescence microscopy.[12] Circumventing background emission, novel long-lived europium complexes designed for nucleolar targeting can be temporally distinguished using time-gated microscopy.[13] While such long-lived emitters increase bulk S/N, their low emission rates preclude observation of low copy numbers. Recent instrumental developments now enable imaging of very short lifetime materials as well.[14] Such fast (∼100 ps) gating could enable fast emitters to be observed before standard (ns) dyes begin to emit. When combined with silver nanoclusters exhibiting picosecond lifetimes,[6,15] high S/N imaging of noble metal nanoclusters should be readily accomplished even in the presence of other dyes.

Contrary to the ordinary harsh silver staining conditions, fluorescent silver nanocluster formation can be initiated and used to stain the cells at much lower AgNO3 concentrations (20 mM, supplementary materials) via ambient temperature photoactivation. Such images (Fig. 1) always emphasize several bright regions reminiscent of nucleoli, on top of weak cytoplasmic and nuclear emission. The emission intensity of the 'bright regions' is about twice the intensity of that from the cytoplasm, and exhibits broad spectra between 500-700 nm under blue excitation (supplementary materials), likely resulting from multiple emissive species of 2-7 Ag atoms in the cells. The spectra differ somewhat among different cellular components, with the bright spots exhibiting slightly higher ratios of red to green emission than cytoplasm. The emission of the silver-stained cells is quite fast (220 ps (33%) and 1760 ps (67%)) and very stable, maintaining more than 50% intensity for 25 min of continuous illumination at 1 mW/cm2 (supplementary materials). To confirm fluorescent silver nucleolar staining, colocalization experiments were performed with SYTO® RNASelect green fluorescence stain (Invitrogen). As shown in Fig. 1, the merged image (D) of RNASelect fluorescence (B, BP 515 - 525; green channel) and fluorescent nanocluster silver staining (C, LP 665; red channel) confirms nucleolar staining.

Figure 1

Emission from formaldehyde-fixed NIH 3T3 cells loaded with 100 mM silver nitrate for 20 hrs. A) Fluorescence image; the inset is the intensity profile along the line drawn across the cell. Scale bar: 30 μm. B) to D) Colocalization of silver and ...

As the silver clusters exhibit short lifetimes, the silver stained cells can be monitored with picosecond-gated microscopy to minimize contributions from autofluorescence or other co-loaded dyes (Fig. 2). The 212-ps IRF-broadened emission centered at the nucleus increases to its maximum intensity within 320 ps and then fades to the autofluorescence level within a further 1500 ps. The variation in emission intensity of cellular images is in line with the lifetime decay of the silver clusters in cells. Not only is this the first report of silver fluorescence of cells, but to our knowledge, is also the first report collecting short-time emission to increase S/N by temporally rejecting slower emission from other co-loaded dyes or autofluorescence.

Figure 2

Time-gated images of NIH 3T3 cells stained with silver nitrate. A) Microscope setup integrated with ps-gated intensifier (LaVision Picostar HR) and CCD camera (Andor iXon). B) Time-slices of a cell stained with silver nitrate. C) Time profile of the time ...

Consisting of more than 700 amino acids, nucleolin was identified as one of the major proteins to bind silver atoms in silver staining,[16] and appears to nucleate the formation of fluorescent silver nanoclusters in our studies. Unfortunately, nucleolin is far too large to be useful as a label. Ligands which can protect the silver clusters are indispensable as the silver clusters are very vulnerable, with reduction potential decreasing from 0.799 V of the conventional silver electrode to -1.8 V of free silver atom.[17] This implies that the newly-formed silver clusters will be oxidized quickly if no protection is available. As the silver binding site is unknown, we designed a short peptide KECDKKECDKKECDK (P1), incorporating the specific amino acids most prevalent in nucleolin: glutamic acid (15.6%), lysine (12.7%), and aspartic acid (8.5%). We also incorporated several cystine groups based on the known strong silver affinity of thionein.[18] This nucleolin-inspired peptide (P1) forms and stabilizes fluorescent silver clusters directly in phosphate buffered saline (PBS), indicating a strong interaction between silver and ligand. However, the silver clusters protected with P1 (P1-Ag) in aqueous solution are only moderately stable at room temperature (chemical lifetime, 3 days). The short peptide length may limit nanocluster stability due to greater vulnerability to oxygen and chloride ion in aqueous solution. In separate ongoing studies of silver nanocluster creation in specifically designed dendrimers, we observed that hydrophobic regions facilitate the formation of silver clusters (unpublished), leading us to improve the peptide by incorporating several hydrophobic amino acids to yield HDCHLHLHDCHLHLHCDH (P2) and HDCNKDKHDCNKDKHDCN (P3). Silver clusters protected with P2 and P3 (P2-Ag and P3-Ag) are much more stable (chemical lifetime, 2 weeks in deionized water and 5 weeks in PBS, respectively). Nevertheless, all the peptide-protected silver clusters are stable at -20 °C for at least one month.

These silver clusters exhibit similar photophysics to those in the nucleolus, but with narrower emissions at 610 nm (P1-Ag), 615 nm (P2-Ag) or 630 nm (P3-Ag) (Fig. 3A and supplementary materials). The MALDI mass spectrometry confirms the presence of silver clusters, in which Ag2, Ag3, Ag4, or Ag5 are bound to a single peptide (Fig. 3B). The fluorescence decay of P1-Ag can be fit biexponentially, with a fast component of 260 ps (58%), and a slow component of 2300 ps (42%). Silver clusters prepared in P2 and P3 also exhibit similar lifetimes (P2-Ag: 73 ps (15%) and 1900 ps (85%); P3-Ag: 420 ps (36%) and 2900 ps (64%). The photophysical similarity between silver-stained cells and peptide-protected silver clusters also strongly supports the observation of fluorescent silver clusters in cells. This in turn indicates that nucleolin as well as other argyrophilic proteins can be very useful guides for biocompatible silver cluster preparation.

Figure 3

Photophysics of P3-Ag and its cell loading. A) Emission and excitation spectra of aqueous P3-Ag solution. Emission (solid) was excited at 400 nm, and excitation (dotted) was detected at 630 nm. B) MALDI mass spectrum of P3-Ag. C) Fluorescence images of ...

Contrary to much larger semiconductor QDs which typically only enter cells via endocytosis and remain trapped in endosomes, live cells loaded with much smaller P3-Ag in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM) at 37 °C and 5% CO2 for 1 hr show the silver nanocluster emission to be distributed evenly (Fig. 3C, a). The P3-Ag also passes through the nuclear membrane, resulting in the weak nuclear staining. The methanol-fixed cells loaded with P3-Ag for 1 hr (Fig. 3C, c) show evenly distributed silver cluster emission in the cytoplasm and strong nuclear staining of some organelles. P3-Ag was also loaded into cells at 4 °C (Fig. 3C, b), suggesting that the peptide protected silver clusters do not enter by endocytosis – an important feature for further biological applications.


The geospatial data such as ocean in situ observing data, remotely sensed data, and model output are produced in a distributed geographical environment. These data have significant scientific value to construct Digital Ocean. However, given the relatively high temporal frequency and the intrinsic spatial nature of the data, the data set is relatively difficult to use directly by Digital Ocean system without pre-processing. In this paper, we report an effort to develop web service-based data processing system in a distributed web environment to facilitate the exploration, visualization, and analysis of the geospatial data especially ocean data. These automatic processing functions will enable the digital ocean system to examine and use different aspects of the data on-line. Various functions and utilities of the prototype system are reviewed in this paper. And the architecture and technical solutions proposed in this paper are verified by implementation of Digital Ocean Prototype System of China.


BACKGROUND
Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality in hospitalized adults.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to identify current practice patterns in the management of SAB, and to evaluate their association with clinical outcomes.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
A 1558-bed tertiary care teaching hospital.

PATIENTS
Adult patients hospitalized between January 1, 2012 through April 30, 2013, who had at least 1 positive blood culture with S aureus.

INTERVENTION
None

MEASUREMENTS
Electronic medical records were reviewed and the processes of care in the management of SAB were identified. The main outcome was clinical failure, defined as a composite endpoint of in-hospital mortality and persistent bacteremia.

RESULTS
Two hundred fifty episodes of SAB occurred in 241 patients, and 78 (32.4%) had clinical failure. Processes of care that impacted the risk of clinical failure included: timing of follow-up blood cultures (delays of >4 days had a relative risk [RR] of 6.6; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.1-20.5; P = 0.001), consultation with infectious diseases specialist within 6 days from diagnosis of SAB (RR: 0.3; 95% CI: 0.1-0.9; P = 0.03), and use of β-lactams in patients with methicillin-susceptible S aureus bacteremia (RR: 0.1; 95% CI: 0.04-0.5; P = 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS
The processes of care identified in our study could serve as quality and patient safety indicators for the management of SAB.


Braid groups are infinite non-abelian groups naturally arising from geometric braids that have been used in cryptography for the last two decades. In braid group cryptography public braids often contain secret braids as a factor and it is hoped that rewriting the product of braid words hides the individual factors. We provide experimental evidence that this is in general not the case and argue that under certain conditions parts of the Garside normal form of factors can be found in the Garside normal form of their product. This observation can be exploited to decompose products in braid groups of the form ABC when only B is known. Our decomposition algorithm yields a universal forgery attack on WalnutDSA, which is one of the 20 proposed signature schemes that are being considered by NIST for standardization of quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms. Our attack on WalnutDSA can universally forge signatures within seconds for both the 128-bit and 256-bit security level, given one random message-signature pair. The attack worked on 99.8% and 100% of signatures for the 128-bit and 256-bit security levels in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that the decomposition algorithm can be used to solve instances of the conjugacy search problem and decomposition search problem in braid groups. These problems are at the heart of other cryptographic schemes based on braid groups.


Diarrhea is a leading cause of death among children in the world. Majority of affected children's were in the school age group. It causes 2 million of children die in the world, and 420 thousands of children in West Java. Data of SD Negeri 1 Kertajaya during July-August 2017, 7 students were affected by diarrhea and 4 of them were fifth grade students. Several action has been implemented as a prevention strategic to reduce the number of diarrhea cases with a recent approach is using an educative game. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of snakes and ladders ameon the knowledge of diarrhea prevention.Apre-experiment alone group pretest-posttest design was conducted with simple random sampling technique. We used 20 students, which divided in 5 group, for each group consist of 4 students. We used prevention knowledge questioner as an instruments. The knowledge of students were measure before and after intervention by using t-paired test. The results of the study show that p value<0.05 that means snakes and ladders game is effective to increased knowledge of students about diarrhea prevention. It was concluded that the snakes and ladders media is effective to increase the knowledge of diarrhea prevention. Suggestion for the Community Health Centre to provide an educative game to give health education for the children population.


There are two important challenges in any system development life cycle, the first is to ensure the correctness of a model at the earliest stage possible and the second is to ensure its correctness once it evolves with respect to the emergence of new requirements, performance may need to be improve, business environment is changing. Usual verification techniques such as testing and simulation are used commonly for the verification of a model. The downsides of these techniques are that there is no guarantee of the absence of errors and they need to be repeated after every evolved version. Model checking is an automatic technique for verifying finite state system models. Although, model checking is proved to be a useful technique, the typical drawback of model checking is its limits with respect to the state space explosion problem. As system gets reasonably complex, completely enumerating their states demands increasing amount of resources. Various techniques like symbolic model checking, on the fly model checking and compositional reasoning partially overcome this problem. Petri net is a well-known low-level formalism for modeling and verifying concurrent and distributed systems. The modeling of systems by low-level Petri nets is tedious and therefore various advancements have been created to raise the level of abstraction of Petri nets. Among others, Algebraic Petri nets raise the level of abstraction of Petri nets by replacing black tokens with the elements of user defined data types i.e., algebraic abstract data types. The first contribution of this thesis is to develop an approach to tackle the state space explosion problem for model checking of Algebraic Petri nets by re-using, adapting and refining state of the art techniques. The proposed approach is based on slicing and the central idea is to perform verification only on those parts that may affect the property the Algebraic Petri net model is analyzed for. We propose several slicing algorithms for Algebraic Petri nets and can be applied to Petri nets by slight modifications. The proposed slicing algorithms can alleviate the state space even for certain strongly connected nets and are proved not to increase the state space. The second contribution is an approach to improving re-verification of structurally evolving Algebraic Petri nets. The idea is to classify evolutions and properties to identify which evolutions require re-verification. We argue that for the class of evolutions that require verification, instead of verifying the whole system, only a part that is concerned by the property can be sufficient. The third contribution is the development of a stand-alone tool i.e., SLAPn. The objective of this tool is to implement proposed slicing algorithms and to show the practical usability of slicing technique. An interesting exploitation of SLAPn is that it can be added to any existing model checker as a pre-processing step.


This study demonstrates the flexible white LED structure with high lumen efficiency and uniform optical performance for neutral white and warm white CCT. Flip-chip LEDs were attached on a polyimide substrate with copper strips as electrical and thermal conduction paths. Yellow phosphors are mixed with polydimenthysiloxane (PDMS) to provide mechanical support and flexibility. The light efficiency of this device can reach 120 lm/W and 85% of light output uniformity of the emission area can be achieved. Moreover, the optical simulation is employed to evaluate various designs of this flexible film in order to obtain uniform output. Both the pitch between the individual devices and the thickness of the phosphor film are calculated for optimization purpose. This flexible white LED with high lumen efficiency and good reliability is suitable for the large area fixture in the general lighting applications.


This paper numerically investigates a 3D mesh independency study of a straight blade horizontal axis tidal turbine modelled using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The solution was produced by employing two turbulence models, the standard k-e model and Shear Stress Transport (SST) in ANSYS CFX. Three parameters were investigated: mesh resolution, turbulence model, and power coefficient in the initial CFD, analysis. It was found that the mesh resolution and the turbulence model affect the power coefficient results. The power coefficients obtained from the standard k-e model are 15% to 20% lower than the accu racy of the SST model. It can also be demonstrated that the torque coefficient increases with the increasing Tip Speed Ratio (TSR), but drops drastically after TSR = 5 and k-e model failing to capture the non-linearity in the torque coefficient with the increasing TSR.


Wound-rotor induction generators have numerous advantages in wind power generation over other types of generators. One scheme is realized when a converter cascade is used between the slip-ring terminals and the utility grid to control the rotor power. This configuration is called the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG). In this paper, a vector control scheme is developed to control the rotor side voltage source converter that allows independent control of the generated active and reactive power as well as the rotor speed to track the maximum wind power point. A neuro-fuzzy gain tuner is proposed to control the DFIG. The input for each neuro-fuzzy system is the error value of generator speed, active or reactive power. The choice of only one input to the system simplifies the design. Experimental investigations have also been conducted on a laboratory DFIG to verify the calculated results.


Abstract. Accurate 3D data is of high importance for indoor modeling for various applications in construction, engineering and cultural heritage documentation. For the lack of GNSS signals hampers use of kinematic platforms indoors, TLS is currently the most accurate and precise method for collecting such a data. Due to its static single view point data collection, excessive time and data redundancy are needed for integrity and coverage of data. However, localization methods with affordable scanners are used for solving mobile platform pose problem. The aim of this study was to investigate what level of trajectory accuracies can be achieved with high quality sensors and freely available state of the art planar SLAM algorithms, and how well this trajectory translates to a point cloud collected with a secondary scanner. In this study high precision laser scanners were used with a novel way to combine the strengths of two SLAM algorithms into functional method for precise localization. We collected five datasets using Slammer platform with two laser scanners, and processed them with altogether 20 different parameter sets. The results were validated against TLS reference. The results show increasing scan frequency improves the trajectory, reaching 20 mm RMSE levels for the best performing parameter sets. Further analysis of the 3D point cloud showed good agreement with TLS reference with 17 mm positional RMSE. With precision scanners the obtained point cloud allows for high level of detail data for indoor modeling with accuracies close to TLS at best with vastly improved data collection efficiency.


Purpose: To present a novel method for reconstructing the 3D pose (positions & orientations) of radio‐opaque objects of known but arbitrary shape from a small set of 2D x‐ray projections, in support of intraoperative brachytherapy planning. Methods and materials: IFPM finds the object pose by minimizing the sum‐of‐squared‐intensity‐differences (SSD) between the computed and experimentally‐acquired auto‐segmented object projections. Starting with an initial estimate of the applicator pose, IFPM iteratively refines the pose parameters (positions and 3 Euler angles) until the SSD converges. The applicator model is a mesh of discrete points derived from a complex combinatorial geometric model of the actual applicator. Three pairs of computed and measured projection images, with known imaging geometry, are used. Projection images of an intrauterine tandem were acquired from Acuity digital‐simulator. Image pre‐processing step was performed to create blurred binary applicator‐only images. To quantify IFPM accuracy, the reconstructed 3D pose of the applicator model was forward projected and overlaid with the measured images and the dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was computed for each image‐pair.Results: In the numerical simulations, the tandem and colpostats positions (x, y, z) and orientations (α, β, γ) were estimated with (0.28, 0.3, 0.37) mm and (0.9, 0.8, 1.0)° accuracies, respectively. For the measured tandem images, the DSC was better than 0.88 for each image‐pair.Discussion: We have developed a new, accurate, and completely automatic method to localize radio‐opaque applicators of arbitrary shape from x‐ray projections. Also, no lateral film is required. By localizing the applicator internal structure and the sources, the effect of intra/inter‐applicator attenuation can be included in the resultant dose distribution. Further development and validation tests with tandem and colpostats will be performed for the accurate and robust applicator/sources localization in ICB patients. Supported by Varian Medical Systems


Noise robustness remains a challenging problem in on-device keyword spotting. Using multiple-microphone algorithms like beamforming improves accuracy, but it inevitably pushes up computational complexity and tends to require more memory. In this paper, we propose a new neural-network based architecture which takes multiple microphone signals as inputs. It can achieve better accuracy and incurs just a minimum increase in model size. Compared with a single-channel baseline which runs in parallel on each channel, the proposed architecture reduces the false reject (FR) rate by 36.3% and 46.4% relative on dual-microphone clean and noisy test sets, respectively, at a fixed false accept rate.


The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association of electronic nicotine product (ENP) use and its respiratory manifestations in a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the US. Cross-sectional evidence from 9750 adolescents in wave 3 (October 2015–October 2016) of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) survey was used. Adjusting for demographics, lifetime number of cigarettes and cigars used, home rules about tobacco use, and tobacco used by other household members, we used logistic regression models to examine associations between ENP use and its respiratory manifestations in the past year. Among 9750 adolescents, 12% (n = 1105) used ENP in the past year. Compared to non-users, past-year ENP-users had 37% higher odds of wheezing in general (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) = 1.37, 95% Confidence interval (CI): 1.11–1.71, p = 0.005) and higher odds of wheezing 4–12 times or >12 times per year versus no wheezing (AOR = 1.57, 95% CI: 1.01–2.46, p = 0.05 and AOR = 2.58, 95% CI: 1.04–6.41, p = 0.04, respectively). Additionally, odds of dry cough at night were 23% higher among ENP-users than among non-users (AOR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.04–1.46, p = 0.02). There was no association between past-year ENP use and exercise-induced wheezing or asthma diagnosis. Among those with asthma, there was no evidence of an association between ENP use and long-acting inhaler or quick-relief inhaler use. ENP use among adolescents is associated with increased frequency of wheezing and dry cough. Early recognition of pulmonary clinical manifestations among young ENP users should be critical considerations in regulatory and prevention efforts to protect public health, and clinical efforts to prevent progression to serious pulmonary complications.


To stay competitive and sustain long-term profitability, Business Process Improvement (BPI) methodologies have become strategically important for financial institutions in recent years. These include well-known approaches such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Six Sigma and Lean. The customer-focused themes of BPI should be of particular interest to service practitioners, in order to achieve both process excellence and superlative customer service. The adoption of BPI in the financial services sector, however, still appears to be at an early stage. There is limited empirical research reported in the academic literature. This research therefore explored the existing phenomena of BPI adoption through case studies, carried out in leading Thai financial institutions.

The study was carried out in three main phases, following a literature review of BPI and service quality issues, which provided the initial theory context. First, three case companies were investigated to find out how the financial institutions introduced BPI, and conducted BPI projects. The resulting insights helped to develop a theory model that aimed to provide understanding of the outcomes of BPI initiatives, in this context. The second research phase refined and validated the proposed theory model, aiming to elevate the conceptual level of the findings. The empirical data was analysed, by iterating between observed evidence and the literature, also using experts' comments and suggestions. In the final phase, the key relationships in the evolving theory model were established and verified, employing further empirical evidence from revisiting the case studies, specifically focusing on four important areas of financial services. A final theory model was proposed, and in a further development aimed at practitioners, this model was used as the basis for a proposed BPI evaluation framework, taking account of current performance measurement approaches.

This research contributes to knowledge in the area of quality management, in particular to BPI methodology and service quality for the financial services sector, but potentially also in a broader context. The main contribution is the development of a theory model to explain how financial institutions adopt BPI methodology for improving service quality, providing a better understanding for managers in accurate targeting of the operations process to be improved, through BPI adoption. The model also provides a constructive foundation for further development of a practical BPI evaluation framework, at the project level. The proposed theory model is, therefore, considered a basis for further empirical work, both qualitative and quantitative, relating to the BPI in the services context.


E-Voting system is used in UiTM Melaka to ease and save the time for voting process among students. However, UiTM Melaka still using the conventional authentication process for e-voting system. This authentication process is insufficient due to the paper checklist can easily damage and difficult to monitor student attendance during voting process. Other than that, student have to queue in order to check their details in paper checklist. This situation will consume more time for authorizing the student. Therefore, iris recognition system are proposed to improve the authentication process in UiTM Melaka Campus Jasin because of iris uniqueness and stability. The purposed improves the process of identifying the student and confidentiality issues. The Hough transform has been used to segment the circular iris and pupil region. The unique pattern of the iris will be extract using Gabor filter. Lastly, the matching phase will use the Hamming distance for classification of iris templates. The system performed the recognition on a set of 30 eye images from student of semester 6 in program Computer Science (CS230). As the result of average overall performance of the prototype, 70.37% success rate for iris recognition.


Traffic congestion is caused due to an imbalance of transportation demand and supply. Traffic congestion is not only responsible for harming our health but also for not gaining full potential in our economic sector. Traffic congestion is an obstacle to the development of any country as it creates a huge amount of economic costs, discomfort cost, and alike. In the current scenario Indore city also prevails such a condition, some intersections of the city are badly affected by traffic congestion which causes potential hazard and delays so traffic congestion study is much needed at some potential road intersections. Several parameters like segmental delay, delay ratio, and relative delay ratio have been used to effectively measure traffic congestion at some potential sections taken for 6 locations. A model developed for segmental delay (Vehicle-second) , segmental delay (person-second) , delay rate, and relative delay Rate.


Background: Despite the recent progress of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, the clinical course of patients with ductal carcinoma (DC) of the pancreas remains dismal. Intraductal papillary-mucinous tumor of the pancreas (IPMT) is sometimes accompanied by malignant diseases of the other organs and pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Thus, IPMT may be a potential diagnostic clue to DC of the pancreas at early phase. Methods: Clinicopathologic findings of 7 Japanese patients with IPMT of the pancreas concomitant with independent DC were examined and compared with those of 69 patients with IPMT alone and of 70 with DC alone. Results: The seven patients corresponded to 9.2% of 76 patients with IPMT and 9.1% of 77 patients with DC. The seven male patients ranged from 55 to 75 years with a mean of 64.3. DC was synchronous with IPMT in five patients, metachronous to IPMT (4 years after IPMT) in one, and synchronous with IPMT and metachronous to IPMT and DC (7 years after IPMT) in the other. In 4 patients, the presence of IPMT led to the diagnosis of DC. All the 7 IPMTs were of branch type with a mean diameter of 3.0 cm. The IPMT was located in the head of the pancreas in 3, body in 2 and tail in the other 2. All the 7 IPMTs were adenoma with mild dysplasia. Two of the 7 patients with DC had in situ carcinoma, 1 minimally invasive carcinoma and the remaining 4 invasive carcinoma. The mean diameter of seven DCs (3.0 cm) with IPMT were smaller than that of 70 DCs (3.6 cm) (8P = 0.0295). Stage (stage I/II/III/IV = 3/0/3/1) of the seven DCs concomitant with IPMT were significantly earlier than that (stage I/II/III/IV = 5/6/28/31) of the other 70 (p = 0.0203). The survival curve of the 7 patients with IPMT and DC was significantly better than that of the 70 with DC alone (p = 0.0460). Conclusions: Clinicians should pay attention to the possible presence of DC of the pancreas in male patients with intraductal papillary-mucinous adenoma of the pancreas of branch type in their 6th to 8th decades.


With the multiplication of attacks against computer networks, system administrators are required to monitor carefully the traffic exchanged by the networks they manage. However, that monitoring task is increasingly laborious because of the augmentation of the amount of data to analyze. And that trend is going to intensify with the explosion of the number of devices connected to computer networks along with the global rise of the available network bandwidth. So system administrators now heavily rely on automated tools to assist them and simplify the analysis of the data. Yet, these tools provide limited support and, most of the time, require highly skilled operators. Recently, some research teams have started to study the application of visualization techniques to the analysis of network traffic data. We believe that this original approach can also allow system administrators to deal with the large amount of data they have to process. In this paper, we introduce a tool for network traffic monitoring using visualization techniques that we developed in order to assist the system administrators of our corporate network. We explain how we designed the tool and some of the choices we made regarding the visualization techniques to use. The resulting tool proposes two linked representations of the network traffic and activity, one in 2D and the other in 3D. As 2D and 3D visualization techniques have different assets, we resulted in combining them in our tool to take advantage of their complementarity. We finally tested our tool in order to evaluate the accuracy of our approach.


In the present study, galactose dominated fucoidan was isolated through successive extraction method in alkaline, acid and neutral pH from the brown seaweed Sargassum wightii Greville ex J. Agardh collected along the Gulf of Mannar (Pamban, India) during March 2011. In this study, crude extracts obtained in chloroform: methanol (1:1 v/v) and 85 % ethanol (at 23°C and 70°C) showed antibacterial activity against Xanthomonas axonopodis pv . citri and  X. oryzae pv. oryzae which cause canker in citrus and blight of paddy, respectively. Low ( 3500 Da) fucoidans separated through DEAE cellulose 52 column were recorded same proportion of monosugars constituents dominating D-galactose over L-fucose. Spectroscopic studies (IR & NMR) of high molecular weight fucoidan (Fraction, A1H) with high sulphate showed higher anticoagulation activity than low molecular weight fucoidan under  in vitro APTT assay. This investigation concludes that successive extraction method yields galactofucoidan (3.62 %), alginate (11.2 %) and antibacterial substances (13.34 %) in the same biomass of brown seaweed  S. wightii .


Flexible multifunctional composite films in which opposing surfaces have two or more distinct physical properties are highly applicable for wearable electronic devices, electrical power systems and biomedical engineering. However, fabrication of such "Janus" films can be time consuming, complex or economically not feasible. In this work, Janus polyimide (PI) films were prepared by femtosecond laser direct writing technology, which generated a honeycomb porous structure (HPS) on one side and a lawn-like structure (LLS) on the other. Deposition of silver nanowires (AGNWs) by drop coating on the LLS side (AGNWs@LLS) resulted in a film in which each face possessed highly distinct triple properties. The HPS side was superhydrophobic with a water contact angle (WCA) of ∼153.3° and electrically non-conductive, while the AGNWs@LLS side was superhydrophilic (WCA ∼7.8°) and highly conductive (∼3.8 Ω). Moreover, the AGNWs@LLS face showed ultra-low thermal radiation performance, almost reaching saturation. On a heating table at ∼100 °C, the temperature of the AGNWs@LLS side remained at ∼44.5 °C, while the HPS side exhibited a temperature of ∼93.9 °C. This "triple Janus film" and lasing techniques developed might be useful for designing new materials for the integration and miniaturization of multifunctional electronic equipment.


The sequence tag-based peptide identification methods are a promising alternative to the traditional database search approach. However, a more comprehensive analysis, optimization, and comparison with established methods are necessary before these methods can gain widespread use in the proteomics community. Using the InsPecT open source code base ( Tanner et al., Anal. Chem. 2005, 77, 4626- 39 ), we present an improved sequence tag generation method that directly incorporates multicharged fragment ion peaks present in many tandem mass spectra of higher charge states. We also investigate the performance of sequence tagging under different settings using control data sets generated on five different types of mass spectrometers, as well as using a complex phosphopeptide-enriched sample. We also demonstrate that additional modeling of InsPecT search scores using a semiparametric approach incorporating the accuracy of the precursor ion mass measurement provides additional improvement in the ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect peptide identifications. The overall superior performance of the sequence tag-based peptide identification method is demonstrated by comparison with a commonly used SEQUEST/PeptideProphet approach.


Deficits in emotion regulation (ER) have been suggested as an underlying cause of persistent aggression problems in children. This study examined whether maternal emotion socialization (ES) strategies had differential impacts on aggression depending on children's physiological capacity for ER. A total of 61 children between the ages of 4 to 7 years and their mothers were included in this work. Children's regulatory physiology, as measured by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), was assessed while they engaged in relaxing activities, an anger induction task, and a delay of gratification task. Measures of maternal ES were gathered with questionnaires and observations of mother-child interactions during a clean-up task. Children's and mothers' reports of aggression were gathered with a newly designed Me Not Me task and the Child Behavior Checklist, respectively. The main goal of this study was to explore whether physiological regulation moderated links between ES and aggression; it was expected that there would be stronger links between ES and aggression for children with poorer physiological regulation. Findings supported previous works suggesting that adaptive physiological regulation is supported by RSA withdrawal in mild challenge situations. Children were more aggressive when they displayed low RSA withdrawal in affectively and behaviourally challenging situations. There was some indication that this was especially true for children who also experienced unsupportive ES from their mothers, suggesting that extrinsic influences may have more of an impact when internal regulatory resources are weaker. Supportive responses to children's emotions may therefore be crucial for those who have poorer physiological regulation


Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic in March 2020 and has the potential to overload health system, compromise hospital staffs and use up essential hospital supplies. Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) are classified as patient with disability and has increased morbidity from COVID-19 due to physiological changes from the nature of pathology, subsequently their clinical and social characteristics puts them in high risk of contracting COVID-19. Patients with SO might present different symptoms of COVID-19 than others. Weakness in thoraco-abdominal and diaphragm muscles might impair cough, reduce lung volumes, and reduce flow rates. Interrupted pathway between hypothalamus and efferent nerves (sympathetic and motoric) might results in temperature dysregulation (poikilothermia) and dysfunction of febrile response. Patients with injuries at higher levels would present with more severe symptoms. The pandemic of COVID-19 further complex the situation of delivering adequate and dignified treatment. Therefore, the main goal is for complete avoidance of infection in this specific population and should be considered with high index of suspicion when mild symptoms of COVID-19 are present. This vulnerable group of patients deserves more attention when presented with extraordinary situations such as pandemics or earthquakes. This overview summarizes the symptom and pathophysiology of SCI in COVID-19 pandemic.


Chromatin is a unique structure of DNA and histone proteins in the cell nucleus and the site of dynamic regulation of gene expression. Soluble factors are known to affect the chromatin structure and function via activating or inhibiting specific transcription factors. Forces on chromatin come from exogenous stresses on the cell surface and/or endogenous stresses, which are regulated by substrate mechanics, geometry, and topology. Forces on chromatin involve direct (via adhesion molecules, cytoskeleton, and the linker of nucleoskeleton and cytoskeleton complexes) and indirect (via diffusion and/or translocation processes) signaling pathways to modulate levels of chromatin folding and deformation to regulate transcription, which is controlled by histone modifications and depends on magnitude, direction, rate/frequency, duration, and modes of stresses. The rapid force transmission pathway activates multiple genes simultaneously, and the force may act like a "supertranscription factor." The indirect mechanotransduction pathways and the rapid force transmission pathway together exert sustained impacts on the chromatin, the nucleus, and cell functions.


This research seeks close pedagogical and professional gaps in the application and usage of the marketing metrics, by giving recommendations. There is much pessimism associated with the marketers when making corporate quantitative financial measurements through marketing metrics. The marketers' voice is left unheard and usually the financial management tasks are left in the hands of the accountants and financial analysts. Questions are raised as to whether these metrics are applicable and usable in organisations such as a bank to optimise its performance. Substantive domain in this study is to make contribution to marketing theory in that it identifies the need for the voice of marketers through appreciation by management through use of marketing metrics results. The interpretivist paradigm was used to guide the study. In this research top three managers (Finance, Marketing and Accounting) of a Zimbabwean commercial bank, were interviewed. The data collection instruments were the open ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, which permit the participants to say what they want about the phenomenon under study, permitting thorough expression of opinion. To further enrich the validity of the research results, document analysis was also undertaken, using a coding system to classify the results. The findings were that there was limited application of the marketing metrics including results adoption. The major recommendation was that management needed to recognise the value of the marketing metrics results in order to optimize the commercial bank's business performance.


This study analyzes the effect of the eight metal layer 90nm Cu/low-k flip chip devices through designed experiment using two relatively different underfill materials, standard terminal pad and novel passivation structures, and JEDEC Level-3 reliability stressings (TC, HAST, and HTS). Black diamond low-k and HiCTE ceramic substrate are employed for the large package form-factor. The active Si utilizes eutectic stencil-pasted SnPb bump and BGA balls with Ti/Ni-V/Al-Cu reflectory thin film deposited UBM. It is found that the double passivation pad structures are less susceptible to reliability damages for various types of underfills; although a single passivation with BCB coating combined with an optimal underfill can also yield similar favorable result. The metallurgical effect of delamination cracking, HiCTE flip chip and stress-relieving passivation structures, and underfill interfaces failure mode mechanism are examined by functional testing, chemical deprocesssings, SAM, and SEM/EDX.


In rotor-bearing systems, squeeze film dampers (SFDs) provide structural isolation, reduce amplitudes of rotor response to imbalance, and in some instances, increase the system threshold speed of instability. SFDs are typically installed at the bearing supports, either in series or in parallel. In multi-spool engines, SFDs are located in the interface between rotating shafts. These intershaft dampers must ameliorate complex rotor motions of various whirl frequencies arising from the low speed and the high speed rotors. The paper presents experiments to characterize the forced response of an open ends SFD subject to dynamic loads with multiple frequencies, as in a jet engine intershaft damper. The test rig comprises of a stationary journal and a flexibly supported housing that holds the test damper and instrumentation. The open ends SFD is 127 mm in diameter, 25.4 mm film land length, and radial clearance of 0.125 mm. The damper is lubricated with ISO VG 2 oil at room temperature (24 °C, feed pressure 31 kPa). In the experiments, two orthogonally positioned shakers deliver forces to the test damper that produce controlled amplitude motions with two whirl frequencies, one fixed and the other one varying over a specified range that includes the test system natural frequency. The test data collected, forces and motions versus time, are converted into the frequency domain for parameter identification. The identified viscous damping coefficients are strong functions of the amplitude of journal motion, lying within predictions from classical formulas for circular centered orbits and small amplitude motions about an eccentric journal position. The damper inertia coefficients agree well with predictions derived from a fluid flow model that includes the effect of the feed groove.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


We describe an empirical study of the formation of knots in open and closed self-avoiding walks (SAWs), based on a simple model involving randomly agitated cords. The results suggest that the probability of a closed SAW remaining knot-free follows a similar scaling law to that for open-ended SAWs. In particular, the process of closing a given SAW prior to random agitation substantially increases the probability that it will be knot-free following agitation. The results point to a remedy for the well-known problem of tangling of cord, rope, headphone cables etc. The simple act of connecting the two free ends to each other, thus creating a loop, greatly reduces the risk of such tangling. Other implications, in particular for DNA storage in cells, are briefly discussed.


The out-of-plane structural behaviour of the Taiwanese traditional complex bracket systems was studied to understand the joint resistance effects of the short vertical post (Guatong) and its adjoining complex brackets in the global frame. Cyclic horizontal loading test, with constant vertical force, was applied to three China Fir specimens. Preliminary results revealed that structural members, facing the out-of-plane direction, tend to be structurally weaker than its traverse counterparts when subjected to tension. When the joint connections of the horizontal members were subjected to compression, the global structure tends to behave like a brace. Likewise, when the structure is subjected to tension, the Gong and purlin members tend to be pulled out from their joints more easily. The counter resistance force observed from the tension side tends to be similar to the rotation of rigid body. This study also suggests that reinforcement design should be taken into consideration in future to increase to the global stiffness of the complex brackets along the out-of-plane direction.


The Precambrian Kalkkloof paleosol, South Africa, developed on an Archean ultramafic complex sometime before ∼2.3 billion years (Ga) ago. This weathering profile is of great interest because it formed during a time when many workers believe atmospheric oxygen levels were rising to near-present day concentrations, and cerium (Ce) anomalies have been measured in Kalkkloof paleosol samples (Watanabe et al., 2003), indicating formation under high-O₂ conditions. In this study, I applied the samarium-neodymium (Sm-Nd) and rubidium-strontium (Rb-Sr) isotope systems to samples of the Kalkkloof paleosol and parent material. The goals of this study are to constrain the age of pedogenesis of the Kalkkloof paleosol, and to determine the extent to which rare earth elements (REE, including Ce) and other elements were mobilized during and after pedogenesis. Titanium-normalized concentration patterns for Sm and Nd are consistent with accumulation of REE in the lower portions of the weathering profile during its formation. Isotopic analysis of eight whole-rock Kalkkloof samples, including the parent ultramafic material, indicates that the Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr systematics have been disturbed by at least two geological events subsequent to formation of the ultramafic parent, and no meaningful ages were obtained. These events are likely to include weathering and formation of the paleosol around 2.5 Ga ago, and later metamorphism associated with intrusion of the Bushveld igneous complex around 2 Ga ago. The four samples with the highest concentrations of Nd (>1 ppm) have ∈Nd(2.5 Ga) values that are consistent with REE fractionation during weathering around 2.5 Ga ago. These four samples also contain significant Ce anomalies. Preservation of REE systematics could result if the REE were concentrated in relatively resistant trace phases such as phosphates. Thus, the data are consistent with a high-O₂ atmosphere (leading to Ce oxidation) when the paleosol formed >2.3 Ga ago. To a first approximation the Rb-Sr data are consistent with the multi-stage history suggested by the Sm-Nd data. The Rb-Sr results further suggest that the Kalkkloof rocks were at least mildly affected by metamorphism and/or weathering events that ended no earlier than about 1.7 Ga ago.


The climate factor has become a focus of much historical and archaeological investigation, encouraged recently by improvements in palaeoclimatic techniques and interest in global climate change. This article examines correlations between climate and history in the Byzantine southern Levant (c. 4th–7th centuries AD). A proposed 5th century economic downturn attested to by numismatic trends is shown to coincide with palaeoclimatic evidence for drought. We suggest a climatic ultimate cause for the apparent economic decline. In addition, the relationship between the Dust Veil Index (DVI) and annual precipitation in Jerusalem suggests the likelihood of increased precipitation following the 536 AD volcanic dust veil. This prediction is borne out by high-resolution precipitation reconstructions from Soreq Cave speleothems and by sedimentation records of extreme flash flooding. These finds complement palaeoclimatic reconstructions from Europe showing a drop in precipitation after 536 AD. Drought in Europe and flooding in the Middle East are both expected outcomes of global cooling during volcanic winters, such as those described in historical accounts of the 530s AD.


A novel silicon-on-insulator microdosimeter for estimating the radiobiological effectiveness (RBE) of a mixed radiation field is presented. An ion beam induced charge collection study has confirmed the microdosimeter possesses well defined micron sized 3D cylindrical sensitive volumes. An array of these SVs has the capability of studying the track structure of high energy heavy ions typical of a deep space environment.


Besides exhibiting substantial heterogeneity across firms or products of different quality, markups can vary within a firm across products of the same type that are sold to different markets. This implies that part of the observed markup heterogeneity is driven by differences in market characteristics. Openness to international trade plays a crucial role in this heterogeneity by allowing firms to operate in multiple markets simultaneously. This paper aims to assess the variation in markups across export destinations of different characteristics, with a particular focus on country size. The markup variation is estimated through an export demand specification using product–firm–country matched data from Luxembourg, where prices and quantities are observed separately. The results show that markups for products exported to larger destinations are significantly lower. In addition to destination size, markups are found to vary with the export destination's productivity advantage, distance, strictness of tariffs, EU membership status and richness. Exporters' markups also vary significantly with firm age but not with firm size.


We address the problem of recovering signals from samples taken at their rate of innovation. Our only assumption is that the sampling system is such that the parameters defining the signal can be stably determined from the samples, a condition that lies at the heart of every sampling theorem. Consequently, our analysis subsumes previously studied nonlinear acquisition devices and nonlinear signal classes. In particular, we do not restrict attention to memoryless nonlinear distortions or to union-of-subspace models. This allows treatment of various finite-rate-of-innovation (FRI) signals that were not previously studied, including, for example, continuous phase modulation transmissions. Our strategy relies on minimizing the error between the measured samples and those corresponding to our signal estimate. This least-squares (LS) objective is generally nonconvex and might possess many local minima. Nevertheless, we prove that under the stability hypothesis, any optimization method designed to trap a stationary point of the LS criterion necessarily converges to the true solution. We demonstrate our approach in the context of recovering pulse streams in settings that were not previously treated. Furthermore, in situations for which other algorithms are applicable, we show that our method is often preferable in terms of noise robustness.


Navajo Infancy describes the major sources of change and continuity in Navajo infant development. It does so by combining concepts and methods of classical ethology with those of social-cultural anthropology. The goal is to establish the relationships between human nature and culture. Buy considering the nature of adaptation, and the evolution of human developmental patterns, and through analyses of the determinants of change and continuity in Navajo infant development, Navajo Infancy outlines how the process of development itself may bridge nature and culture. With its special focus on the effect of the cradleboard on Navajo mother-infant interaction, Navajo Infancy raises important developmental issues in its analyses of why the effects of the cradleboard do not last. Incorporating the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale into its ethological-anthropological methods, Navajo Infancy demonstrates significant Navajo-Anglo-American differences in newborn temperament. It finds a strong correlation between newborn behavior and prenatal environmental factors, arguing that racial and ethnic differences in behavior at birth go well beyond simple gene pool differences. Navajo Infancy also describes the individual and group differences in the development of Navajo and Anglo- American children's fear of strangers and patterns of mother-infant interaction. Aspects of attachment theory, transactional theories of development, and anthropological theories of socialization are related to this broad new evolutionary approach to the process of development and nature-culture interaction.


In this study, we tackle the problem of retrieving questions from a corpus archived in a Community Question Answering service that a consultant having distress can feel empathy with them. We hypothesize that the consultant feels empathy with the questions having a similar situation with that of the consultant's distress, and propose a method of retrieving similar sentences focusing on the situation of the distress. Specifically, we propose two approaches to fine-tuning the pre-trained BERT model so that the learned model better captures the similarity of the situation between distress. One tries to extract only the words representing the situation of the distress, the other tries to predict whether the two sentences show the same situation. The data for training the models are gathered by the crowdsourcing task where the workers are asked to gather the sentences whose situation is similar to the given sentence and to annotate the words in the sentences that represent the situation. The data is then used to fine-tune the BERT model. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is evaluated with the baselines such as TF-IDF, Okapi BM25, and the pre-trained BERT. The results of the experiment with 20 queries showed that one of our methods achieved the highest nDCG@5 while we could not observe any significant differences among the methods.


The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of placement of pelvic binders and to determine whether circumferential compression at the level of the greater trochanters is the best method of reducing a symphyseal diastasis. Patients were identified by a retrospective review of all pelvic radiographs performed at a military hospital over a period of 30 months. We analysed any pelvic radiograph on which the buckle of the pelvic binder was clearly visible. The patients were divided into groups according to the position of the buckle in relation to the greater trochanters: high, trochanteric or low. Reduction of the symphyseal diastasis was measured in a subgroup of patients with an open-book fracture, which consisted of an injury to the symphysis and disruption of the posterior pelvic arch (AO/OTA 61-B/C). We identified 172 radiographs with a visible pelvic binder. Five cases were excluded due to inadequate radiographs. In 83 (50%) the binder was positioned at the level of the greater trochanters. A high position was the most common site of inaccurate placement, occurring in 65 (39%). Seventeen patients were identified as a subgroup to assess the effect of the position of the binder on reduction of the diastasis. The mean gap was 2.8 times greater (mean difference 22 mm) in the high group compared with the trochanteric group (p < 0.01). Application of a pelvic binder above the level of the greater trochanters is common and is an inadequate method of reducing pelvic fractures and is likely to delay cardiovascular recovery in these seriously injured patients.


1 : 1 and 2 : 2 oligomeric piperazinophanes with an intraannular ester functionality have been synthesized via Mannich reaction of various aromatic esters with piperazine by a one-pot reaction under benign conditions through the multicomponent reaction methodology. The newly synthesized piperazinophanes were characterized using spectral and analytical methods. The ester based 1 : 1 oligomeric piperazinophanes exhibit good target binding ability in molecular docking studies and also show better antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria than the 2 : 2 oligomeric piperazinophanes.


Machine learning promises to revolutionize clinical decision making and diagnosis. In medical diagnosis a doctor aims to explain a patient's symptoms by determining the diseases \emph{causing} them. However, existing diagnostic algorithms are purely associative, identifying diseases that are strongly correlated with a patients symptoms and medical history. We show that this inability to disentangle correlation from causation can result in sub-optimal or dangerous diagnoses. To overcome this, we reformulate diagnosis as a counterfactual inference task and derive new counterfactual diagnostic algorithms. We show that this approach is closer to the diagnostic reasoning of clinicians and significantly improves the accuracy and safety of the resulting diagnoses. We compare our counterfactual algorithm to the standard Bayesian diagnostic algorithm and a cohort of 44 doctors using a test set of clinical vignettes. While the Bayesian algorithm achieves an accuracy comparable to the average doctor, placing in the top 48% of doctors in our cohort, our counterfactual algorithm places in the top 25% of doctors, achieving expert clinical accuracy. This improvement is achieved simply by changing how we query our model, without requiring any additional model improvements. Our results show that counterfactual reasoning is a vital missing ingredient for applying machine learning to medical diagnosis.


Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a strikingly heterogeneous group of disorders with a broad range of phenotypic variations. It is also one of the differential diagnoses in bent bone dysplasias along with campomelic dysplasia and thanatophoric dysplasia and can usually be distinguished by decreased bone mineralization and bone fractures. Bent bone dysplasias also include syndromes such as kyphomelic dysplasia (MIM:211350) and mesomelic dysplasia Kozlowski‐Reardon (MIM249710), both of which have been under debate regarding whether or not they are a real entity or simply a phenotypic manifestation of another dysplasia including OI. Bruck syndrome type 2 (BRKS2; MIM:609220) is a rare form of autosomal recessive OI caused by biallelic PLOD2 variants and is associated with congenital joint contractures with pterygia. In this report, we present six patients from four families with novel PLOD2 variants. All cases had multiple fractures. Other features ranged from prenatal lethal severe angulation of the long bones as in kyphomelic dysplasia and mesomelic dysplasia Kozlowski‐Reardon through classical Bruck syndrome to moderate OI with normal joints. Two siblings with a kyphomelic dysplasia‐like phenotype who were stillborn had compound heterozygous variants in PLOD2 (p.Asp585Val and p.Ser166*). One infant who succumbed at age 4 months had a bent bone phenotype phenotypically like skeletal dysplasia Kozlowski‐Reardon (with mesomelic shortening, camptodactyly, retrognathia, cleft palate, skin dimples, but also with fractures). He was homozygous for the nonsense variant (p.Trp561*). Two siblings had various degrees of Bruck syndrome caused by the homozygous missense variant, p.His687Arg. Furthermore a boy with a clinical presentation of moderate OI had a possibly pathogenic homozygous variant p.Trp588Cys. Our experience of six patients with biallelic pathogenic variants in PLOD2 expands the phenotypic spectrum in the PLOD2‐related phenotypes. © 2017 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.


Different Keggin-type polyoxometalates have been synthesized and characterized in order to identify optimized homogeneous catalysts for the selective oxidation of biomass to formic acid (FA) using oxygen as an oxidant and p-toluenesulfonic acid as an additive. Applying the optimized polyoxometalate catalyst system H8[PV5Mo7O40] (HPA-5), a total FA-yield (with respect to carbon in the biogenic feedstock) of 60% for glucose within 8 h reaction time and 28% for cellulose within 24 h reaction time could be achieved. The transformation is characterized by its mild reaction temperature, its excellent selectivity to FA in the liquid product phase and its applicability to a very wide range of biogenic raw materials including non-edible biopolymers and complex biogenic mixtures.


In this paper, we analyzed performance of secondary user networks based on interference temperature model. We compared the performance of the single channel of a secondary user and multiple access secondary user networks. A secondary user determines the maximum transmission power and select proper modulation scheme using adaptive transmission scheme for a single secondary user result in the high throughput of the secondary user. In case of multiple access secondary user networks, the number of available secondary users is increased when the average distance of the cluster of secondary user networks is increased. In addition, detection probability and throughput performance have been analyzed for distributed cooperative spectrum sensing for underlay cognitive radio networks.


Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs), that reduce the temperature in the underlying substrate material, are an essential requirement for the hot section components of industrial gas turbines. Recently, in order to take full advantage of the potential of the TBC systems, experimental and analytical investigations in TBC systems have been performed. However there is a little information on the deformation behavior of the top coating. In addition, the effects of the thermal exposure and the process parameters on the mechanical properties of the top coating have never been clarified. From these backgrounds, the effects of the process variables in APS and the thermal exposure on the mechanical properties were investigated in order to optimize the APS process of top coatings. The experimental results indicated that the mechanical properties of the APS-TBC, i.e. the tensile strength and the elastic modulus, were significantly changed by the process variables and the long term thermal exposure. The microstructural investigation was also carried out and the relationship between the mechanical properties and the porosity was discussed.


Laser materials processing has been widely applied in industrial processes due to unique precision and very localized thermal action furnished by the laser's high energy density and power controllability. With the inherent rapid heating and cooling rates to which this surface layer is subjected, this process provides an opportunity to produce different microstructures from that of the bulk metal leading to useful properties. The aim of this work is to develop a heat transfer mathematical model based on the finite difference method in order to simulate temperature fields in the laser surface remelting process. Convective heat transfer in the remelted pool is taken into account by using the effective thermal conductivity approach. Theoretical predictions furnished by previous models from the literature were used for validation of numerical simulations performed with the proposed model. Experiments of laser surface remelting of Al-9 wt pct Si samples was carried out in the present investigation, and numerical simulations was applied for the laser machine operating parameters. The work also encompasses the analysis of microstructural and microhardness variations throughout the resulting treated and unmolten zones.


The laboratory short encapsulation pull out test (LSEPT) has been widely accepted as the most efficient method to characterize the mechanical behaviour of cable bolts under axial loading. In this study, a number of LSEPTs was performed on conventional cable bolts including Plain SuperStrand and TG cable bolts using the improved pull out test design. The effects of several parameters including the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of confining medium and grout and the borehole diameter on the mechanical behaviour of both cable bolts were investigated. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to quantify the contribution of these parameters on the responses including peak and residual loads and initial stiffness. ANOVA revealed that UCS of confining medium and grout is the key contributing factor to the mechanical behaviour of Plain SuperStrand cable bolt. Also, it was demonstrated that the borehole diameter had a negligible impact on the overall behaviour of TG cable bolt while the peak load of SuperStrand cable bolt was increased due to an increase in the diameter of borehole. Finally, from a comparative analysis, it was confirmed that TG cable bolt exhibits a higher load carrying capacity than Plain SuperStrand cable bolt.


We extend Easton's (2007) review of the literature on accounting-based estimates of the expected rate of return on equity capital, which we refer to as the ERR. We begin by reiterating the reasons why accounting-based estimates are used. Next, we briefly review the recent literature that focuses on improving forecasts of expected earnings by either: (1) removing predictable errors from analysts' forecasts of earnings or (2) developing cross-sectional regression-based estimates of earnings using prior-period financial data. In the remainder of our review we discuss a recent debate on methods for evaluating estimates of the ERR. We highlight the key points in the debate so that the reader will find it easier to form an independent view of the relative merits of the proposed methods.


A two-dimensional ship propulsion model using the Weis-Fogh mechanism is analyzed by the potential flow theory and the conformal mapping. The purpose of this study is to clarify the most effective operating condition in which the loss is minimum. The opening and the closing stages are carefully studied. In both stages, a fixed point of the wing moves in the direction perpendicular to the flow direction. The condition to prevent the vortex shedding when the wing separates from the wall is to equalize the both sides pressure at the trailing edge of the wing, and the acceleration of the wing motion satisfying the condition is clarified. On the other hand, in the closing stage the condition to satisfy the so-called Kutta condition is applied at the wing edge. This condition means that the wing prevents the separation nor generation of the jet which produces high thrust but more loss. The unsteady forces and the moment on the wing are also shown.


An extensive critical evaluation of intruder state removal techniques (aka shift techniques) applicable to multireference perturbation theory (MRPT) shows that the magnitude of the shift parameter σ does not influence the spectroscopic parameters of diatomics to a significant degree, provided that the shift is chosen to be sufficiently large. In such case, typical variation of spectroscopic parameters over a wide range of shift parameters is smaller than 0.005 Å for equilibrium distances, 30 cm(-1) for harmonic vibrational frequencies, and 0.1 eV for dissociation energies. It is found that large values of σ not only remove intruder states but they also bring the MRPT energies and properties closer to experimental values. The presented analysis allows us to determine optimal values of the shift parameters to be used in conjunction with various versions of MRPT; these values are recommended to replace the ad hoc values of σ suggested in MRPT manuals in calculations for diatomics. Transferability of the optimal shift parameters to larger molecular systems and to other basis sets than aug-cc-pVTZ is anticipated but remains to be formally established.


Re-establishing connectivity between protected areas isolated by habitat clearing is a key conservation goal in the humid tropics. In northeastern Costa Rica, payments for environmental services (PES) and a government ban on deforestation have subsidized forest protection and reforestation in the San Juan-La Selva Biological Corridor (SJLSBC), resulting in a decline in mature forest loss and the expansion of tree plantations. We use field studies and graph models to assess how conservation efforts have altered functional connectivity over the last 25 years for four species of insectivorous understory birds. Field playback studies assessed how reforestation habitat quality affected the willingness of Myrmeciza exsul, Henicorhina leucosticta, Thamnophilus atrinucha, and Glyphorynchus spirurus to travel outside forest habitat for territorial defense. Observed travel distances were greatest in nonnative and native tree plantations with high understory stem density, regardless of overstory composition. In contrast, tree plantations with low stem density had travel responses comparable to open pasture for three of the four bird species. We modeled landscape connectivity for each species using graph models based on varying possible travel distances in tree plantations, gallery forests, and pastures. From 1986 to 2011, connectivity for all species declined in the SJLSBC landscape (5825 km2 ) by 14% to 21% despite only a 4.9% net loss in forest area and the rapid expansion of tree plantations over 2% of the landscape. Plantation placement in the landscape limited their potential facilitation of connectivity because they were located either far from forest cover or within already contiguous forest areas. We mapped current connectivity bottlenecks and identified priority areas for future reforestation. We estimate that reforestation of priority areas could improve connectivity by 2% with only a 1% gain in forest cover, an impressive gain given the small area reforested. Results indicate key locations where spatial targeting of PES within the SJLSBC study region would protect existing forest connectivity and enhance the connectivity benefits of reforestation.


The research is devoted to determining conditions of Serbian development in the period of regency in 1889-1893 and the Russian society reaction to these events. Milan Obrenovich's renunciation of throne and the transition of power into the hands of radical party led by N. Pashich marked approach of a new stage in the Serbian kingdom foreign policy. In particular, in the speech read by Pashich at the meeting of Skupstina it was said that "new precious acquisitions" in the field of diplomatic relations, and the reciprocal address of Skupstina directly indicated renewal of friendship with Russia. In general, "peaceful coup d'etat" in Serbia, contrary to approvals of the Russian patriotic editions, which were laying great hopes on radicals, did not mean that the "younger of all of the European kingdoms" would turn towards Russia, and did not cause any sharp changes in position of Serbia, though in the Serbian-Russian relations a certain "thaw" was observed. Numerous Austro-Hungarian statements of respect for the independence of the Balkan states concerning Serbia almost immediately gave way to the traditional pressure applied in two directions: intervention into Serbian internal affairs and foreign policy


From 1975 to 1987, we have operated 20 cases with lung metastases. They were 12 females and 8 males with ages between 1,6 and 12 years old (average of 5 years). The histology of the primary neoplasia was: 13 cases with Wilms' Tumors, 3 cases with Ewing's Sarcoma and 1 case with Neuroblastoma, Rhabdomiosarcoma, Hepatoblastoma and Neuroectodermic Tumor of Askin. We found 38 metastases and there were performed through a Thoracotomy 28 wedge resection, 7 pulmonary lobectomies and 3 biopsies. The operative mortality was 0%. The most frequent location of the lesion were on medium and lower lobule of the right lung. The survival was 70% (14 cases) after 4 years of average of the follow up. The survival for Wilms Tumors was 61% (8 cases) and all patients with Ewing's Sarcoma, Rhabdomiosarcoma, Neuroblastoma and Neuroectodermic Tumor of Askin were alive. The Thoracotomy is a useful method for therapy of tumors in children with lung metastases associated to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.


Three surgically removed meningotheliomatous meningiomas with hyaline inclusions or pseudopsammoma bodies were studied. Ultrastructurally, the lumina seemed to be predominantly intracytoplasmic, defined by a systemic unit membrane; they displayed abundant microvilli and contained granular or filamentous material, vacuoles, vesicular bodies, and lamellar structure. The cytoplasm surrounding the intracytoplasmic lumina was electron-dense and contained tonofilaments and desmosomal junctions. All three meningiomas showed expression of carcinoembryonic antigen, cytokeratin, and epithelial membrane antigen in the cells surrounding the hyaline bodies. Keratin, alpha-1-antitrypsin, and immunoglobulin M showed weak positive staining. There was widespread vimentin except in the cells with hyaline inclusions. Glial fibrillary acidic protein and S100 were negative. These results provide additional confirmation of immunohistochemical data that can serve as evidence for epithelial and secretory differentiation in meningiomas.


This report is concerned with various opportunities, constraints and problems related to work placement. The study aims to describe and analyze how work placement is used as a way to increase employability among unemployed people with foreign background. The empirical material consists of data from two different labour market projects with funding from the European Social Fund (ESF). Within ESF-projecs, work placement is one of the most common measures to increase the labour supply. The results demonstrate that work placement can function as both opportunity and constraint for labour market integration. When the work emplacement is located in a communicative, Swedish-speaking environment, it is a potential arena for language development. An opportunity for meaningful work placement is also opened up when projects are organized as vocational training. The link between the purpose of the work placement and the work placement as such, becomes very clear – it´s about the opportunity to learn a trade. Here, however, a potential problem becomes prominent. If the projects participants are trained for occupations in industries which are already ethnically segregated – the project is at risk to enforce the already segregated labour market. The study also shows how employers may be "tired" of unemployed coming to their organization for work placement. This creates a competition for placements, which do not favor those considered less employable.


Abstract. In mining association rules, the evaluation of the rules is a highly important work because it directly affects the usability and applicability of the output results of mining. In this paper, the concept of reliability was imported into the association rule evaluation. The reliability of association rules was defined as the accordance degree that reflects the rules of the mining data set. Such degree contains three levels of measurement, namely, accuracy, completeness, and consistency of rules. To show its effectiveness, the "accuracy-completeness-consistency" reliability evaluation system was applied to two extremely different data sets, namely, a basket simulation data set and a multi-source lightning data fusion. Results show that the reliability evaluation system works well in both simulation data set and the actual problem. The three-dimensional reliability evaluation can effectively detect the useless rules to be screened out and add the missing rules thereby improving the reliability of mining results. Furthermore, the proposed reliability evaluation system is applicable to many research fields; using the system in the analysis can facilitate obtainment of more accurate, complete, and consistent association rules.


Machine learning (ML) models in production pipelines are frequently retrained on the latest partitions of large, continually-growing datasets. Due to engineering bugs, partitions in such datasets almost always have some corrupted features; thus, it's critical to detect data issues and block retraining before downstream ML model accuracy decreases. However, it's difficult to identify when a partition is corrupted enough to block retraining. Blocking too often yields stale model snapshots in production; blocking too little yields broken model snapshots in production. In this paper, we present an automatic data validation system for ML pipelines implemented at Meta. We employ what we call a Partition Summarization (PS) approach to data validation: each timestamp-based partition of data is summarized with data quality metrics, and summaries are compared to detect corrupted partitions. We describe how we can adapt PS for several data validation methods and compare their pros and cons. Since none of the methods by themselves met our requirements for high precision and recall in detecting corruptions, we devised GATE, our high-precision and recall data validation method. GATE gave a 2.1x average improvement in precision over the baseline on a case study with Instagram's data. Finally, we discuss lessons learned from implementing data validation for Meta's production ML pipelines.


Current clinical practice for immobilisation for patients undergoing brain or head and neck radiotherapy is normally achieved using Perspex or thermoplastic shells that are moulded to patient anatomy during a visit to the mould room. The shells are "made to measure" and the methods currently employed to make them require patients to visit the mould room. The mould room visit can be depressing and some patients find this process particularly unpleasant. In some cases, as treatment progresses, the tumour may shrink and therefore there may be a need for a further mould room visits. With modern manufacturing and rapid prototyping comes the possibility of determining the shape of the shells from the CT-scan of the patient directly, alleviating the need for making physical moulds from the patients' head. However, extracting such a surface model remains a challenge and is the focus of this thesis. The aim of the work in this thesis is to develop an automatic pipeline capable of creating physical models of immobilisation shells directly from CT scans. The work includes an investigation of a number of image segmentation techniques to segment the skin/air interface from CT images. To enable the developed pipeline to be quantitatively evaluated we compared the 3D model generated from the CT data to ground truth obtained by 3D laser scans of masks produced by the mould room in the frame of a clinical trial. This involved automatically removing image artefacts due to fixations from CT imagery, automatic alignment (registration) between two meshes, measuring the degree of similarity between two 3D volumes, and automatic approach to evaluate the accuracy of segmentation. This thesis has raised and addressed many challenges within this pipeline. We have examined and evaluated each stage of the pipeline separately. The outcomes of the pipeline as a whole are currently being evaluated by a clinical trial (IRAS ID:209119, REC Ref.:16/YH/0485). Early results from the trial indicate that the approach is viable.


Summary
The mean yield of NDV is about 0.1 p.f.u./cell in MKS-B mouse kidney cells, 100 p.f.u./cell in CV-1 monkey kidney cells and 70 p.f.u./cell in MK-CV111 clone 4, a hybrid line arising from the fusion of MKS-B and CV-1. The mean yield of herpes is about 2 p.f.u. in MKS-B, and 160 p.f.u. in both CV-1 and in MK-CV111 clone 4. The u.v. sensitivity of the capacity of cells to support NDV multiplication is the same for CV-1 and MK-CV111 clone 4 cells, but much lower for MKS-B cells, indicating that NDV replicates using at least some monkey functions of these hybrid cells.
NDV or Sindbis infected hybrids produce both mouse interferon (99%) and monkey interferon (1%), the molecular weights of which are the same as those of corresponding parental interferons.


This paper presents a study on cost/benefit analysis regarding WiMAX in Europe. The first step is the engineering process (the cellular planning to be more accurately) in which the number of base stations needed to provide coverage and to ensure the quality of service in a given environment (rural, suburban or urban) is calculated through mathematical models. Following the engineering process, and with the appropriate financial variables (ARPU - Average Revenue Per User, desired return, OPEX, etc.) defined, the NPV (Net Present Value) is computed for a maximum of seven years and for four scenarios, thus providing the cost/benefit result of the study. To conclude, the economic feasibility of the telecommunication systems is compared for all the different spectrum possibilities.


This paper develops a simple approximation method for computing equilibrium portfolios in dynamic general equilibrium open economy macro models. The method is widely applicable, simple to implement, and gives analytical solutions for equilibrium portfolio positions in any combination or types of asset. It can be used in models with any number of assets, whether markets are complete or incomplete, and can be applied to stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models of any dimension, so long as the model is amenable to a solution using standard approximation methods. We first illustrate the approach using a simple twoasset endowment economy model, and then show how the results extend to the case of any number of assets and general economic structure.


This paper utilizes WASP, a state-of-the art computer model, to obtain optimal generation expansion plans for an electric utility in order to assess the impact of incorporating a wind energy conversion system into an electric utility generation expansion plan. The IEEE Reliability Test System is used in the evaluations. The optimal plans satisfy given levels of reliability, in terms of loss of load probability and capacity reserve margin, and minimize the present worth of capital and operating costs minus a salvage value at the end of the planning horizon. The analyses were carried out with a 75 MW and a 150 MW wind energy conversion systems as expansion candidates and evaluating their impact on optimal mix of capacity for displacement, fuel savings and capital and operating costs over the 1981-2010 planning period. In this paper the wind turbine generators are modelled as multi- state units whose derated capacity states are caused by wind variability and random mechanical failure. As the results show, the wind energy conversion system has a significant effect on optimal mix of generation and construction timing of conventional units as well as reliability and capital and operating requirements.


Noise has long been recognized as one of the priority occupational hazards in Australia. Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is probably the most prevalent occupational disease in Australian industries and it is the major cause of deafness in Australia. All six Australian States, the two Territories and the Commonwealth Government have their own legislation to manage occupational noise. Whilst these are not all the same they are similar and nearly all States and Territories have now adopted the Australian National Occupational Noise Standard into their legislation. The government structures and agencies that administer occupational noise legislation are also different in the different States and Territories. In this paper occupational noise legislation in the Commonwealth jurisdiction and in all Australian States and Territories will be summarized. Brief comparisons with legislation in American and European countries will be made. The government structure and relevant legislation and policies for occupational noise management in Western Australia will be explained. The role of WorkSafe Western Australia in enforcing the legislation and assisting workplaces to comply with it will be discussed.


Aim of the current research was to explore success and essence of coping with the fear of personal death. The study was conducted on a sample of University and college students aged 15 to 20 years (N= 177; 83 males and 94 females) using the Death Attitude Profile - Revisited (DAP-R) by P.T.P. Wong and co-authors and Coping with Death Reactions (CDR) questionnaire by T.A. Gavrilova and S.A. Popova. "Fear of Death" scale of DAP-R was used as a measure of the fear of personal death. Other DAP-R scales ("Death avoidance", "Neutral acceptance", "Approach acceptance" and "Escape acceptance") and the level of each of the coping with death reactions as measured by CDR were used as indicators of coping mechanisms. It has been shown that strategies of coping with the fear of personal death were gender specific and that females were more successful and adaptive in this regards. According to DAP-R, fear of personal death in males had moderate positive correlations with "Death avoidance" and "Approach acceptance" and was not correlated with "Neutral acceptance". In females, fear of personal death was negatively correlated with "Neutral acceptance of death" and positively correlated with "Death avoidance" and "Approach acceptance of death" and not correlated with "Escape acceptance of death". According to CDR, fear of personal death in males had moderate negative with the avoidance reaction; in females, fear of personal death had moderate negative correlations with the neutral acceptance reaction. Negative (suicidal) and positive (life-asserting) effects of the fear of personal death are discussed.


University College London has updated its mechanisms for safeguarding research participants and ensuring the quality and ethical standards of its research. In doing so it has taken account of lessons learnt from the case of Andrew Wakefield, whose research into a possible link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism led to him being struck off the UK medical register. But it says it will not investigate the Wakefield case further, despite calls from the BMJ to do so.

John Tooke, UCL's vice provost (health), described the university's updated research governance framework as "robust and fit for purpose."

However, the college stopped short of commissioning an independent investigation into the case, which articles in the BMJ suggested amounted to research fraud that warranted further scrutiny.

In a paper on the development of its new framework, UCL said that after taking advice from the UK Research Integrity Office and "a senior legal figure" it concluded that "the net result [from …


Site directed mutagenesis, based on the polymerase chain reaction, was carried out on a rat 12-lipoxygenase cDNA within a region that encodes several amino acids believed to be of importance for the positional specificity of 15- and 12-lipoxygenases. The following mutants were constructed to increase the 15-lipoxygenase activity of rat 12-lipoxygenase; [Leu397]12-lipoxygenase, [Ile389, Leu397]12-lipoxygenase, [Gln416]12-lipoxygenase, [Ile417]12-lipoxygenase, and [Gln416, Ile417]12-lipoxygenase. Each mutated cDNA was expressed in Escherichia coli and 12- and 15-lipoxygenase activity was assayed in the 10,000 x g supernatants of homogenized cells. When compared to wild type enzyme, none of the mutants exhibited significantly increased 15-lipoxygenase activity. Thus, considering the primary structure of wild type enzyme and our results of mutagenetic replacements, we have not found evidence indicating that amino acids in positions 416, 417, or 418 are critical for the positional specificity of rat 12-lipoxygenase.


AIMS
A new generation of physicians, millennials (also known as Generation Y), are entering residency programmes in internal medicine, and these young men and women learn and work in ways that are different from those of past generations. The aim of the present study was to investigate aspects contributing to the attractiveness to young residents of a career in general internal medicine (GIM) compared with medical subspecialties (SUB).

METHODS
In a cross-sectional online survey, we included residents working in residency facilities in GIM in German-speaking Switzerland. A total of 1818 junior residents were eligible. We looked for personal preferences, characteristics, and criteria influencing the choice of a career in GIM or SUB.

RESULTS
392 out of 1818 (22%) residents participated in the survey (66% females); they had been in clinical training for 35.5 months on average. 87% of the respondents aspired to a title in GIM, and 29% of these to a SUB title as well. 71% of the women chose GIM and not a SUB vs 58% of the men (p <0.019). GIM residents gave significantly higher ratings to "broad range of expertise," "flexible work hours" (p = 0.007), "work-life balance", and "reconciliation of work, family and private life" than residents aiming at a SUB. SUB residents evaluated career-related criteria as significantly more important (p <0.0001). With regard to career motivation, GIM residents and female residents rated extraprofessional concerns significantly higher than SUB residents did (p = 0.019). In contrast, SUB residents showed significantly higher intrinsic motivation than GIM residents (p = 0.025). Only 28.2% of GIM residents had a mentor, compared to 49.6% of SUB residents (p <0.0005). Concerning personal perceptions of the future within the next 5 years, GIM residents attached significantly more importance to part-time work (p = 0.001), whereas SUB residents attached more importance to getting a leading position as a main goal (p = 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS
There are considerable differences between GIM and SUB residents regarding career motivation and their views on working conditions and work-life balance. It is essential to understand the factors that motivate or deter the next generation in order to ensure the attractiveness of the profession of GIM.  .


A new approach is proposed to simulate splash erosion on local soil surfaces. Without the effect of wind and other raindrops, the impact of free‐falling raindrops was considered as an independent event from the stochastic viewpoint. The erosivity of a single raindrop depending on its kinetic energy was computed by an empirical relationship in which the kinetic energy was expressed as a power function of the equivalent diameter of the raindrop. An empirical linear function combining the kinetic energy and soil shear strength was used to estimate the impacted amount of soil particles by a single raindrop. Considering an ideal local soil surface with size of 1 m × 1 m, the expected number of received free‐falling raindrops with different diameters per unit time was described by the combination of the raindrop size distribution function and the terminal velocity of raindrops. The total splash amount was seen as the sum of the impact amount by all raindrops in the rainfall event. The total splash amount per unit time was subdivided into three different components, including net splash amount, single impact amount and re‐detachment amount. The re‐detachment amount was obtained by a spatial geometric probability derived using the Poisson function in which overlapped impacted areas were considered. The net splash amount was defined as the mass of soil particles collected outside the splash dish. It was estimated by another spatial geometric probability in which the average splashed distance related to the median grain size of soil and effects of other impacted soil particles and other free‐falling raindrops were considered. Splash experiments in artificial rainfall were carried out to validate the availability and accuracy of the model. Our simulated results suggested that the net splash amount and re‐detachment amount were small parts of the total splash amount. Their proportions were 0·15% and 2·6%, respectively. The comparison of simulated data with measured data showed that this model could be applied to simulate the soil‐splash process successfully and needed information of the rainfall intensity and original soil properties including initial bulk intensity, water content, median grain size and some empirical constants related to the soil surface shear strength, the raindrop size distribution function and the average splashed distance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.