: Typhoons are considered as the most destructive natural disaster in Vietnam. Typhoons that have the intensity scale greater than 10 or 11 (Beaufort scale) cause sever damages to houses and buildings on their paths. Typhoons associated with inundation can also create short- and long-term damages to national socio-economy and have negative impacts on the country's economic development. The typhoon affected area can be from hundreds to thousands of kilometres depending on the landfall of the typhoon. In Vietnam, the typhoon season is normally from June to October (occasionally to November or December), and is the most intense in September and October. This paper hence provides the information on typhoons in Vietnam. The paper also introduces the technical solutions recommended for existing and new houses located in the tropical cyclonic areas. The technical solutions presented in this paper are based on the Vietnamese tradi-tional constructions, the results of the research projects conducted by IBST and other Vietnamese institutions as well as the international construction experiences regarding to natural disasters prevention and mitigations.


While research suggests strong associations of self-compassion with mental health and well-being, gender norms may hinder the development of self-compassion by women on one hand, and men on the other. This study represents one of the first systematic analyses of potential gender differences in self-compassion using meta-analytic techniques, including whether such gender differences are moderated by age or ethnic minority status. Fixed-effects models were used to estimate the average effect size (ES) of gender differences in self-compassion scores across 71 journal articles and dissertations providing a total of 88 estimates. Results revealed that males had slightly higher levels of self-compassion than females, with a small ES observed (d = .18). This difference was larger in samples with a higher percentage of ethnic minorities. Researchers and practitioners should take these group differences into account in future studies and interventions focused on self-compassion, while not overemphasizing gender differences in self-compassion as being large in size.


Developed for studying long, periodic records of various measured quantities, time series analysis methods are inherently suited and offer interesting possibilities for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications. However, their use in SHM can still be regarded as an emerging application and deserves more studies. In this research, Autoregressive (AR) models were used to fit experimental acceleration time histories from two experimental structural systems, a 3- storey bookshelf-type laboratory structure and the ASCE Phase II SHM Benchmark Structure, in healthy and several damaged states. The coefficients of the AR models were chosen as damage sensitive features. Preliminary visual inspection of the large, multidimensional sets of AR coefficients to check the presence of clusters corresponding to different damage severities was achieved using Sammon mapping - an efficient nonlinear data compression technique. Systematic classification of damage into states based on the analysis of the AR coefficients was achieved using two supervised classification techniques: Nearest Neighbor Classification (NNC) and Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ), and one unsupervised technique: Self-organizing Maps (SOM). This paper discusses the performance of AR coefficients as damage sensitive features and compares the efficiency of the three classification techniques using experimental data.


By the use of SDS PAGE, the behavior of titin and MyBP-C in fast (m. psoas) as well as titin and MyBP-X in slow (m. soleus) muscles of ground squirrels (Citellus undulatus) during hibernation was compared with the behavior of titin and MyBP-X in rat m. soleus under conditions of simulated microgravity. A decrease in the amount of titin 1 and MyBP-C relative to that of myosin heavy chains by approximately 30% and approximately 40%, correspondingly, in muscles of hibernating and arousing ground squirrels was revealed in comparison with active animals. No differences in the relative amount of MyBP-X in m. soleus of hibernating, arousing and active ground squirrels were found. Under conditions of simulated microgravity, a decrease in the amount of titin 1 by approximately 2 times and MyBP-X by approximately1.5 times relative to that of myosin heavy chains in rat m. soleus was observed. By the method of SDS PAGE modified by us, an almost twofold decrease in the amount of short isovariants of the titin N2A isoform relative to that of myosin heavy chains was shown in muscles of hibernating and arousing ground squirrels, whereas no changes were found in the amount of long titin isovariants. The conditions of simulated microgravity resulted in a twofold decrease in the relative amount of both short and long titin isovariants in rat m. soleus. The results indicate that hibernating ground squirrels have an evolutionarily determined adaptive mechanism of selective degradation of fast muscle fibers and preservation or increase of slow fibers, as the most economic and energetically advantageous, with proteins typical of them. The microgravitation of nonhibernating animals (rats) leads to a non-selective degradation of MyBP-X and titin isovariants, which contributes to considerable atrophy of soleus fibers.


Sphingomyelin and product of its enzymatic hydrolysis, sphingosine, influence on the degree of DNA methylation by EcoRII cytosine DNA-methyltransferase. Sphingomyelin activates (up to 30%), whereas sphingosine inhibits this in vitro DNA methylation. A single intraperitoneal injection of the synthetic antioxidant, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT, 30 mg/kg body weight) results in DNA hypermethylation as well as increase in sphingomyelin content in rat liver nuclei and RNA-polymerase activity. Thus, phospholipids may control DNA methylation in cell, and by this way they seem to modulate replication and transcription.


We report the discovery of 15 s oscillations in ultraviolet observations of WZ Sagittae obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope approximately 1 month after the peak of the 2001 outburst. This is the earliest detection of oscillations in WZ Sge following an outburst and the first time that a signal near 15 s has been seen to be dominant. The oscillations are quite strong (amplitude ≃5%), but not particularly coherent. In one instance, the oscillation period changed by 0.7 s between successive observations separated by less than 1 hr. We have also found evidence for weaker signals with periods near 6.5 s in some of our data. We discuss the implications of our results for the models that have been proposed to account for the 28 s oscillations seen in quiescence. If the periods of the 15 s oscillations can be identified with the periods of revolution of material rotating about the white dwarf, the mass of the white dwarf must satisfy MWD > 0.71 M☉. The corresponding limit for the 6.5 s signals is MWD > 1.03 M☉.


In this paper two aspects of the issue will be discussed. First, there is the role of authorities, NGOs in forming the multicultural environment in the city with cultural diversity. Second, the city as social context, the images and myths of the city determine discourse on multiculturalism and influence the cross-cultural communication in the city. After describing historically shaped images of the city, employment of city's myths and symbols in discourse and policy of multiculturalism, and role of city's institutions in fostering inter-group communication, this paper will discuss the inclusive culture of the city, shaped by the networking interaction, which blurs the distinction between «insiders» and «outsiders». Here the trends of (post)modern inter/trans-national relations will be extrapolated on the trans-cultural interaction in the multicultural city, taking into consideration that network interactions build up not between the territories, but in the space, where logic of borders overcomes.


Probable homozygous beta thalassemia was detected in a Negro child. The criteria for this diagnosis included (1) a compatible clinical picture, (2) 60% hemoglobin F, 8.8% hemoglobin A 2 , and 31.2% hemoglobin A, and (3) peripheral blood smear compatible with homozygous beta thalassemia. The mild clinical course in this patient and in other Negroes with this disease reported, is suggestive of a fundamental difference between the defect in Negroes and other ethnic groups. A review of the literature shows the paucity of this disease in Negroes, with only eight other cases reported in America. The reasons for this are unknown. Patients with homozygous beta thalassemia who show a mild clinical course serve as an excellent example of how genetic modifiers are involved in the various forms of this entity.


Yellow fever virus (YFV) remains a significant public health threat in sub-Saharan Africa in which 90% of the estimated 200,000 cases occur annually. In East Africa, human cases of YFV are characterized by unpredictable focal periodicity, lengthy inter-epidemic periods, and a precarious potential for large epidemics. YFV had remained undetected in this region for nearly 40 years until emerging in Kenya in 1992-93 and more recently in Sudan during 2003 and 2005. From an ecological perspective the emergence and epidemiological outcomes associated with YFV, and related vector-borne diseases, are critically dependent upon the underlying vector ecology at a local scale. The study here was aimed at defining the dynamics of important vector interactions at two important sites in Kenya with previous YFV or related arbovirus activity. The temporal abundance, spatial distribution, and human host seeking behavior of diurnal man-landing mosquito species along sylvan interfaces were investigated. A number of YFV vectors were identified including their abundances for the duration of the main rainy season. Spatially, results indicated that the greatest human-mosquito interactions occurred within the forest and decreased across more domesticated biotopes. A discussion of significant differences, ecological associations, and epidemiological implications is included.


The therapeutic potential of soluble TRAIL (sTRAIL) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was studied. The expression of TRAIL receptors was detected in 60 HCC tissues, 20 normal liver samples and 2 HCC cell lines (HepG2 and SMMC-7721) by in situ hybridization. Before and after HepG2 and SMMC-7721 were treated with sTRAIL protein with various concentrations, the apoptosis rate was observed by using flow cytometry and in situ terminal deoxynucleotidyl tranferase (TdT) labeling. The results showed death receptor 4 (DR4) and DR5 were expressed in 60 HCC tissues and 20 normal liver samples, while the expression intensity of DR in HCC tissues was stronger than in normal liver samples. DcR1 and DcR2 were not detectable in 54 (90%) and 25 (41.%) HCC tissues, while in 20 normal liver samples, DcR was detectable. The high expression of DR and low expression of DcR in HCC tissues were significantly differed from the low expression and high expression in normal liver samples. The expression of DR5, DR4 and DcR2 in both HCC cell lines was detectable, but the expression of DcR1 was not detectable. The expression of DR in HCC tissues was related to the differentiation and grades of HCC. In the poor differentiated HCC, the expression of DR was decreased (P < 0.01). The expression of DR in Il/IV grades was significantly lower than that in I / 11 grades (P < 0.05). The expression of DR was not related to gender, age, HBsAg, AFP, tumor size and metastasis. The expression of DR in the HCC drugresistant lines was decreased. After treatment with TRAIL (100 ng/ml) for 24 h, the apoptosis rate of HCC cells, Jurkat cells and human cholangiocarcinoma cell line QBC939 was 10%, 70%, 50% respectively. It was suggested that the TRAILR expression is prevalent in HCC with different expression patterns of different receptor types. HCC is resistant to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis. The treatment of TRAIL alone has a limited effect on inducing apoptosis of HepG2 and SMMC7721.


Serum amylase and lipase were measured in 32 healthy dogs and in 55 dogs with serum urea nitrogen values greater than 40 mg/dl, using a nephelometric analyzer (Coleman analyzer model 91). Mean serum amylase and lipase values in normal dogs were 1,085.48 units and 3.98 units, respectively. In dogs with azotemia, the mean serum amylase and lipase values were 1,822.79 units and 12.57 units, respectively. Serum urea nitrogen values could not be correlated with amylase or lipase values.


Abstract It is important to study how children and adolescents cope with stressors in sport because effective coping enhances sport experiences and prevents psychological and physiological problems that can lead to sport withdrawal. The purpose of this review was to summarize the existing child and adolescent coping research to establish how coping changes with development in the achievement context of sport. We reviewed and summarized relevant coping research published from 1980 to 2004 using a 'content analysis' approach to identify consistencies and limitations in this literature. Four content areas were examined: coping responses, gender differences, consistency of coping/coping style, and coping effectiveness. Ways in which coping changes with development from childhood to adolescence were examined within each of these content areas. Fundamental future research questions and implications for research design are presented.


Applied electric fields were used to promote axonal regeneration in spinal cords of adult guinea pigs. A propriospinal intersegmental reflex (the cutaneous trunci muscle reflex) was used to test lateral tract function after hemisection of the thoracic spinal cord. An electrical field (200 microvolts per millimeter, cathode rostral) applied across the lesion led to functional recovery of the cutaneous trunci muscle reflex in 25 percent of experimental animals, whereas the functional deficit remained in control animals, which were implanted with inactive stimulators.


The papers in this themed issue have investigated methods to make animations more effective. The purpose of this paper is to discuss each of the seven empirical papers. The discussion focuses on how they dealt with cognitive load during instruction and problem solving. Critical observations are made on each paper and avenues for future research are proposed. From the overall collection of papers a number of key results are identified and used as a basis for recommending principles for developing effective instructional animations. Lastly, a number of design issues are discussed in the context of enhancing future research in this field. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 made significant changes to the rules affecting Social Security benefits. Some people think that these rule changes made it relatively easy to determine when someone should claim their Social Security benefits. In this article, the authors explain the rule changes and provide 10 reasons why making an optimal Social Security claiming decision is still complicated, even if we knew how long the single claimant or each partner in a married couple will live. Deciding when to claim Social Security benefits remains a complex decision.


A volume in Issues in Career Development Book Series Edited by John Patrick and Grafton Eliason, California University of Pennsylvania The purpose of Career Development in Higher Education is to provide a broad and in-depth look at the field of career development as it applies to individuals involved in higher education activities, in a variety of educational and vocational training settings. The book will examine some of the field's major themes, approaches and assumptions using the writings of a variety of regional and international experts/ authors. Specific emphasis is spent examining issues reflective of today's challenges in developing and maintaining a workforce that is diverse, flexible and efficient. Readers will be provided with an action based framework built on the best available research information.


This study concentrates on gundrilling and the related feed force signal in time domain, and possibilities of using this signal in drill wear monitoring. The behavior of the feed force was studied in a normal gundrilling procedure, and also in a situation where the feed was stopped just before guidance feed was replaced by actual drilling feed. Stopping the feed caused a new kind of behavior in the pattern of the feed force curve, which could be used in monitoring the extent of drill wear. Regression models were created in order to estimate the mean flank wear in the cutting edges, flank wear in the drill tip, and longitudinal wear based on the pattern of the feed force curve when cutting conditions remain constant. Based on the test results, it was concluded that from the pattern of the feed force curve monitored in time domain and modified by stopping the feed, it is possible to predict the extent of the wear of the gun drill.


Due to the long tradition of the Braun-Blanquet approach, many relevés using this approach have been made. Recent developments in vegetation-plot databases provide an opportunity to effectively use these relevés to study ecological problems as well. Opinions differ, however, concerning the applicability of these datasets, often with their use being restricted to exploration and hypothesis generation only. We assert that preferential sampling, which is characteristic of the Braun-Blanquet approach, means using a special definition of statistical population rather than non-random sampling. We present a case study, where consequences of using a preferential and non-preferential definition of statistical population are studied. Although the traits of stands that are preferred or avoided by the phytosociologist during preferential sampling can be identified, there are no general rules that could predict the difference between the preferential and non-preferential datasets obtained for the same object.


In this paper, a low voltage, second order, switched capacitor Sigma Delta modulator with a novel fully differential amplifier is presented. The immunity to variations with process corners and temperature can easily be achieved, thus maintaining the effective number of bits throughout the entire input signal band. In order to validate the principle, in the ultra low voltage environment, the modulator was designed and tested for the voice band input signals. The circuit was designed using a triple well standard CMOS process, with typical threshold values, without any internal voltage boosting circuits and it is intended for speech applications.


Enterprise digital asset management (DAM) systems are beginning to be explored in higher education, but little information about their implementation issues is available. This article describes the University of Michigan's investigation of managing and retrieving rich media assets in an enterprise DAM system. It includes the background of the pilot project and descriptions of its infrastructure and metadata schema. Two case studies are summarized—one in healthcare education, and one in teacher education and research. Experiences with five significant issues are summarized: privacy, intellectual ownership, digital rights management, uncataloged materials backlog, and user interface and integration with other systems.


The phenomenon popularly referred to as helicopter parenting refers to an overinvolvement of parents in their children's lives. This concept has typically been used to describe parents of college-aged young adults. Despite much anecdotal evidence, little is known about its existence and consequences from an empirical perspective. Using a sample of college students at a university in the United States (N = 317), the exploration and measurement of this concept is examined. Results of factor analysis of helicopter parenting items constructed for this study support the use of the scale. Results suggest helicopter parenting is negatively related to psychological well-being and positively related to prescription medication use for anxiety/depression and the recreational consumption of pain pills.


Karl Rahner famously proclaimed that Vatican II marked the beginning of a new Christian epoch, that of the "world church" (Weltkirche). He also proposed that the Catholic Church develop a global pastoral-strategic plan for the world church. This recommendation needs updating. This can occur through conversation with theologians engaged with Christianity in the Global South: Lamin Sanneh and Gemma Tulud Cruz. They offer ideas regarding the translatability and emerging inclusivity involved in the concrete, localized performances of ecclesial life that constitute the world church. Combined with Rahner's rendering of the nexus between Christology and ecclesiology, these ideas can impel and guide attempts to think through and live out the church's catholicity today.


Recently, there has been much interest in anatomic double-bundle reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Double-bundle reconstruction of the ACL requires adequate footprint size to place two femoral tunnels. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between lateral intercondylar ridge length and gender and/ or height. We measured the femoral attachment of the ACL to determine if patient sex and/ or height could be used to predict ACL femoral footprint size. We measured the length of the lateral intercondylar ridge in 65 skeletally mature human femora. Gender and height was recorded for each individual. We used bivariate regression analysis to determine correlations between both height and gender and the length of the lateral intercondylar ridge. The principal findings of our study demonstrate that there is no correlation between ACL femoral footprint size and gender or footprint size and height. Our study demonstrates that patient height and gender cannot be used for preoperative planning when deciding whether a given patient has adequate footprint size to support double-bundle reconstruction of the ACL.


The behavior of the one-dimensional random-force-driven Burgers equation is investigated in the path integral formalism on a discrete space-time lattice. We show that by means of Monte Carlo methods one may evaluate observables, such as structure functions, as ensemble averages over different field realizations. The regularization of shock solutions to the zero-viscosity limit (Hopf-equation) eventually leads to constraints on lattice parameters required for the stability of the simulations. Insight into the formation of localized structures (shocks) and their dynamics is obtained.


Soil and subsoil pollution is not only significant in terms of environmental loss, but also a matter of environmental and public health. Solid, liquid and gaseous residues are the major soil contamination agents. They originate from urban conglomerates and industrial areas in which it is impossible to emphasize the chemical, petrochemical and textile industry; thermoelectric, mining, and ironmaster activities. The contamination process can thus be defined as a compound addition to soil, from what qualitative and or quantitative manners can modify soil's natural characteristics and use, producing baneful and deteriorative effects on human health. Studies have shown that human exposition to high concentration of some heavy metals found on soil can cause serious health problems, such as pulmonary or kidney complications, liver and nervous system harm, allergy, and the chronic exposition that leads to death. The present study searches for the correlation among soil contamination, done through a geochemical baseline survey of an industrial contamination area on the shoreline of Sao Paulo state. The study will be conducted by spatial analysis using Geographical Information Systems for mapping and regression analysis. The used data are 123 soil samples of percentage concentration of heavy metals. They were sampled and spatially distributed by geostatistics methods. To verify if there is a relation between heavy metals soil pollution and morbidity an executed correlation and regression analysis will be done using the pollution registers as the independent variables and morbidity as dependable variables. It is expected, by the end of the study, to identify the areas relation between heavy


Acute pancreatitis (AP) is a common acute abdomen disease of the digestive system. It has a potentially fatal risk because of its variable severity and various complications. With the widespread application of the Revised Atlanta Classification, new requirements for AP imaging reports are introduced. Experts in abdominal radiology and pancreatology in the United States published the first structured computed tomography reporting template for AP in 2020. However, there is no corresponding structured magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reporting template globally. Therefore, this article focuses on the structured MRI report of AP images from our pancreatitis imaging center, which is intended to improve the systematic understanding of this disease and standardize the writing of MRI structured reports. In the meantime, we aim to promote the clinical diagnosis and assessment of MRI efficacy for AP and its multiple complications. It is further intended to facilitate academic exchanges and scientific research between different medical centers.


Purpose: This study aims to develop a systematic search strategy and test its validity and reliability in terms of identifying projects published in peer-reviewed journals as reported by residency graduates through an online survey. Methods: This study was a prospective blind comparison to a reference standard. Pharmacy residency projects conducted at the study institution between 2001 and 2012 were included. A step-wise, systematic procedure containing up to 8 search strategies in PubMed and EMBASE for each project was created using the names of authors and abstract keywords. In order to further maximize sensitivity, complex phrases with multiple variations were truncated to the root word. Validity was assessed by obtaining information on publications from an online survey deployed to residency graduates. Results: The search strategy identified 13 publications (93% sensitivity, 100% specificity, and 99% accuracy). Both methods identified a similar proportion achieving publication (19.7% search strategy vs 21.2% survey, P = 1.00). Reliability of the search strategy was affirmed by the perfect agreement between 2 investigators (k = 1.00). Conclusion: This systematic search strategy demonstrated a high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for identifying publications resulting from pharmacy residency projects using information available in residency conference abstracts.


Purpose Following installation of a fluoroscopic digital flat panel detector (FPD) in the neuroangiography suite, three patients who underwent repeated angiographic studies for subarachnoid hemorrhage had complications with epilation, with one patient receiving an estimated radiation dose of 12 Gray over the course of 2 months following multiple angiographic studies, including two interventional procedures. A study was undertaken to evaluate radiation dose of the new FPD unit and implement changes to reduce exposure and potential patient complications. Methods Radiation dose measurements were made on two biplane fluoroscopic units, a FPD unit installed in 2008 and an image-intensifier unit (II) installed in 1997 with add-on filter on the frontal plane. The head of a soft tissue with internal skeleton phantom was used in conjunction with calibrated thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD) to measure the radiation absorbed dose at ten locations on and within the phantom. For both units, independent measurements were performed for fluoroscopy and digital subtraction (DSA) modes in both the frontal and lateral planes. Measurements from the II unit were taken with and without the filter. Measurements were also taken a second time from the FPD unit after dose reduction settings were made available from the company engineers. Single sample student's t tests were run to determine if the difference was different from zero. This was done separately for the full and 50% reduced Philips settings. Findings Initial study results demonstrated that there was a significantly higher dose rate for both fluoroscopy and DSA at each of the TLD positions when using the FPD unit at the initial factory setting compared to when using the II unit; this was true regardless of filter use in the II unit. In response to these higher radiation dosages and in collaboration with the company engineers, additional filtration was installed on the FPD unit and a palette of low dose protocols was provided: full dose, 50% and 25% reduced dose. Follow-up measurements revealed the 50% reduced dose setting to remain higher but more comparable to the II doses and with acceptable image quality for routine diagnostic angiography and the 25% reduced dose was found to be satisfactory for children and for interventions requiring prolonged fluoroscopy times or multiple repeat acquisitions. Conclusion Flat panel detector technology for fluoroscopy is becoming increasingly popular despite a higher cost compared to conventional II systems. Due to major differences in the image acquisition chain, the image quality of FPD technology is more uniform, lacking spatial distortion and less susceptible to artifact common to image intensifiers. Nevertheless, it has become evident that the factory default settings for FPD may not have the proper balance of patient dose with regards to clinically acceptable image quality, which is a problem not only for FPD, but is a theme common to all digital x-ray technology. Neurointerventional procedures are associated with substantial higher radiation exposure due to biplanar imaging, longer procedures and need for repeated studies. Adjusting factory settings to reduce radiation output can reduce exposure without loss of image quality. Competing interests None.


In recent years, the banking industry around the world has been undergoing a rapid transformation. The deepening of information technology has facilitated better tracking and fulfillment of commitments, multiple delivery channels for online customers and faster resolution of issues. In India too, the wave of deregulation in the early 1990s has created heightened competition and greater risks for banks and financial intermediaries. Today, customers expect highest quality services from banks which, if fulfilled, could result in significantly improved customer satisfaction levels. This empirical research study mainly focuses on investigating the major factors that influence online customers' satisfaction with the overall service quality of their banks. This study also helps in assessing the power of these factors in the context of Online (Internet) banking and would, therefore, help the bank management not only in improving the level of satisfaction but also strengthening the bond between the banks and their customers, thereby helping them to retain and/or expand their overall customer base.


Recent research indicates a definite positive impact on treatment outcomes when an integrative approach that focuses on symptom control and quality of life is provided along with the standard therapeutic regimens. However implementation or practice of this approach is not seen widely due to the culture of medical training and practice. This article presents the initial development of a program for incorporating integrative care principles into an ongoing comprehensive cancer care program at a tertiary centre. The key purpose of the program being to develop, facilitate, and establish comprehensive and holistic processes including palliative care principles, that would positively enhance the quantity and quality of life of the person with disease, as well as create an environment that reflects and sustains this approach. The vision, objectives, goals, strategies, activities and results within the 7 months of implementation are documented. The new learnings gained during the process have also been noted in the hope that the model described may be used to conceptualize similar care giving facilities in other centres.


Cyclooxygenase-2/Carbonic anhydrase-IX up-regulation promotes invasive potential and hypoxia survival in colorectal cancer cells
Purpose: Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is a major mediator of inflammation, playing a pivotal role in colorectal carcinogenesis. Hypoxia is an universal hallmark of solid tumour in vivo. This investigation was prompted by the observation that in colorectal cancer cells the expression of COX-2 protein is positively correlated with that of the hypoxia survival gene Carbonic Anhydrase-IX (CA-IX).
Experimental Design: Since COX-2 gene expression and activity is increased in hypoxia, and that CA-IX is expressed also in normoxia in colorectal cancer cells, we tested the hypothesis that COX-2 activity in normoxia, as well as in hypoxia may be functionally linked to that of CA-IX gene. We investigated the role of COX-2 and CA-IX in colorectal cancer cell lines. In this regard, we performed RNA interference to knockdown COX-2 gene in vitro and immunohistochemistry to evaluate the protein expression of COX-2 and CA-IX in human colon cancer tissue specimens ex vivo.
Results: We found that COX-2, by PGE2 production, controls CA-IX gene expression in an ERK dependent manner. In line with this finding, we also showed that the COX-2 inhibition by a specific short harpin COX-2 RNA (shCOX-2) or by a specific drug (SC-236), down-regulated CA-IX expression in colon cancer cells. We then exposed colon cancer cells to hypoxia stimuli and found that COX-2/CA-IX interplay promoted hypoxia survival. Moreover, we also report that COX-2/CA-IX interplay triggers Matrix Metalloproteinase 2/9 (MMP-2/9) activation and enhances the invasiveness of colorectal cancer cells. Thus given our above observations, we found that CA-IX and COX-2 protein expressions correlate with more aggressive stage colorectal cancer tissues ex vivo.
Conclusions: Taken together these data indicate that COX-2/CA-IX interplay promotes an aggressive phenotype (hypoxia survival and invasiveness) which can be modulated in vitro by COX-2 selective inhibition and which may play a role in determining the biological aggressiveness of colorectal tumours. Moreover, in vitro and ex vivo data also suggest that the signatures of inflammation (COX-2) and hypoxia (CA-IX) may be difficult to be disentangled in colon cancer, being both responsible for the up-regulation of the same pathways.


Sultan Agung Islamic Hospital (RSI-SA) Semarang is a fully accredited private
hospital. One of the services provided by RSI-SA is emergency service which is used as a
quality benchmarkof health services provided by the hospital. This study was entitled
"Hospital'sLegal Responsibility to the Patients' Safety Seen from the Preparedness
Aspect of the Fully Accredited Emergency Unit: A Case Study of Sultan Agung Islamic
Hospital Semarang" Its objective was to find out the preparedness of the Emergency Unit
of RSI-SA Semarang as a fully accredited hospital and to find out the hospital's legal
responsibility to the patients' safety.
This study applied socio-legal, had analytical-descriptive specification. It covered
the whole description of all systematically observed. The sampling technique was nonrandom
sampling that is purposive sampling meaning that the way of taking the samples
was based on specific objectives. The data were then qualitatively analyzed.
RSI-SA Semarang as a fully accredited hospital in providing emergency services
should be in accordance with the emergency service standards and patients'safety
standards as regulated bythe Act Nr. 29 of 2004 on Medical Practices, the Act Nr. 44 of
2009 on Hospitals, Minister of Health Regulation Nr. 71 of 2013 on Health Services on
National Health Insurance, and Minister of Health Regulation Nr. 012 of 2012 on
Hospital Accreditation. Of the results of the study there were some ER standards that had
not been fulfilled, namely the standards of human resources readiness particularly the
availability of the 4 main specialists (internists, child, surgery and gynecology
specialists). The existing ones were only "on call" beside there were still ATLS/ACLS
training certificates that were no longer valid. Besides, unaccomplished infrastructure
facilities cosisted of special rooms (HCU/intermediate rooms: general, cardiac, pediatric
and neonatal) and for the wounded.
In addition, there was still a KTD at the ER Unit of RSI-SA in 2014. However, in
the case of KTD the doctors could not be sued because their acts had been in accordance
with the standards of the medical profession, procedural standards, including service
standards. The patients of KTD at the ER of RSI-SA financially borne by BPJS of Health
so that the funding of treatment and care arising from the administration of 60 bolus of
heparin of uixKgBB to the patients would be borne by BPJS of Health. Since the heparin
giving was in accordance with the pharmaceutical service standards of 2014, RSI-SA
could not be demanded to be civilly accountable, namely to compensate the patients. Seen
from the administrative legal aspects the lack of human resources and infrastructure
readiness at the ER Unit of RSI-SA would be the RSI-SA management's responsibility
and sanctions could be given in the forms of reprimands, warning letters or fines as
regulated in the Article 29 paragraph (2) of the Act Nr. 44 of 2009 on Hospitals.
Keywords: ER Unit service standards, hospital's legal responsibility, human resources
readiness, infrastructure facilities


In this study, we compare the first and the last sessions from an online oral proficiency course aimed at doctoral students conducted in the virtual world Second Life. The study attempts to identify how supportive moves made by the teacher encourage learners to engage with language, and what type of linguistic behaviour in the learners leads to engagement in others. We compare overall differences in terms of floor space and turn-taking patterns, and also conduct a more in-depth discourse analysis of parts of the sessions focusing on supportive moves such as back-channelling and elicitors. There are indications that the supportive linguistic behaviour of teachers is important in increasing learner engagement. In our study we are also able to observe a change in student linguistic behaviour between the first and the last sessions with students becoming more active in signalling involvement as the course progresses. Finally, by illustrating some of the language awareness issues that arise in online environments, we hope to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of online communication.


The results of an ongoing evaluation process of EU subsidies of the European Rural Development Programme 2014-20 are presented (2nd intermediary report). By means of personal interviews of subsidised companies in the Austrian food and beverage sector, the impact of subsidies on profitability, competitiveness, and related variables are approximated. Data sources are, amongst others, conventional business data collected by personal face-to-face interviews, as well as financial statements of companies. The results show that subsidies in general have positive effects. In addition, two third of the sample would change their investments significantly or even refrain from investing at all without public support.


A recent rash of crippling worms and viruses, coupled with the continued threat of a serious cyberattack on the information infrastructure, has once again elevated the notion of USA Federally mandated security regulation to the forefront. Will regulation solve this problem? What has regulation done to help in the past? Why are technologists wary of regulation? These are some of the questions explored in this article.


The deployment of offshore wind turbines has focused primarily on shallow seas (such as the North Sea, Chinese coastal waters, and the New England coast) using bottom fixed foundations. However, much of the world's offshore wind resource lies in deeper waters where bottom-fixed foundations are not suitable, and floating platforms must be utilised. To date, the majority of floating concepts have been developed to support a single wind turbine. This leads to a high capital cost for each individual platform and consequently a high levelised cost of energy.
 The W2Power platform (developed by EnerOcean S.L, Spain) currently supports a pair of 6 MW wind turbines on outward-leaning towers. The design significantly reduces the cost per installed MW, increases the structure's natural period, added mass, and radiation damping. The platform, patented in 2009, was the world's first twin-turbine platform and the first to be demonstrated at sea (2019).
 This paper presents the hydrodynamics of a 1:40 scale model of the W2Power platform using the well-known OrcaFlex software. The analysis has been carried out under extreme and operational conditions, and the resulting hydrodynamic loads and motion response are presented.
 The mooring system was found to be sensitive to wave direction, particularly when propagating along the current direction. Furthermore, the results showed advantages in the hydrodynamic responses for the W2Power platform as an innovative floating system.


With the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003 came the deliberate destruction and blatant negligence of the occupying forces, having immediate ramifications for the nation's rich cultural and historical landscape. In addition, Iraqi civilians targeted the cultural history of their nation with wanton looting and arson, as well as systematic attacks on sites of archaeological or ethnoreligious significance. More recently, the Shia and Kurdish dominated Iraqi Government have organised the "Committee for Removing Symbols of the Saddam Era" and plan to purge the state of its Sunni dominated past. This paper argues that the destruction of Iraq's cultural history has played a part in eroding the national identity that many of these symbols and institutions were designed to promulgate. In turn, this has contributed to the rise of ethno/religious sectarianism in Iraq and has particular implications for the nation's fledgling democratic order.


While mandatory audit fee disclosure makes fee information transparent, there have been concerns about the impact of price adjustment on audit quality. Taking advantage of a regulatory change in Taiwan that required public companies to disclose audit fee but allowed two alternative disclosure forms (amount disclosure or range disclosure), this study investigates the impact of the fee disclosure form on price adjustment and the influence of such adjustment on audit quality. Using a dataset including audit fees under the two disclosure forms, we find that, for overcharged companies, the downward adjustment is larger for amount disclosure companies than range disclosure companies and such downward adjustment increase discretionary accruals in amount disclosure companies but not for range disclosure companies. Our study helps understand the impact of different fee disclosure forms on price adjustment and audit quality, which should be of interest to regulators and financial statement users in Taiwan and beyond.


Background Several cross-sectional studies have suggested an association between SUA and asthma. However, few studies have investigated this relationship longitudinally. Although SUA is an independent risk factor for chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular diseases, its contribution to incident asthma remains uncertain. Objective To determine whether a high SUA was a risk factor for adult incident asthma. Methods By using health care data from the Shandong multicenter health check-up, 76,369 participants, aged 20 to 79 years, were identified who had an SUA determination with a mean follow-up period of 3.73±2.21 years. Multivariate modeling employed Cox proportional hazards models to verify the association between SUA and incident asthma by adjusting age, BMI, smoking habits, drinking habits, and asthma-like diseases. Results A total of 51,389 individuals were included in the analysis. Cut-off values of SUA able to discriminate asthma status were identified by means of maximally selected rank statistics in the whole participants (≥376.80umol/L), women (≥314.45umol/L), and men (≥376.80umol/L). Multivariate Cox regression analyses adjusted for covariates (age, body mass index (BMI), smoking habit, drinking habit, and asthma-like disease) identified an independent association between SUA and incident asthma in the whole participants (hazard ratio (HR) 2.92, 95% confidence intervals (CI), 1.76–4.48, P=0.00) and men (HR 3.02, 95% CI 1.70–5.39, P=0.00), but not in women. Conclusion The results of the current study confirmed that high SUA was an independent risk factor for incident asthma after adjustment of potential covariates and suggested that a cut-off value related to incident asthma could be identified only in men.


His latest testimony in front of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee showed that James Murdoch is in an impossible situation. To Parliament he basically has to say he knew very little of the industrial scale illegal intrusions on privacy that we now know were going on at News International. To his shareholders however, he has to maintain that he and his executives were in control of the company. In his testimony he has now had to repeatedly claim that he forgot meetings, did not follow up on information given to him and in particular that he appears to have had a 'cavalier' approach to in signing off a number of out of court settlements that cost the company a total of several million pounds. The allegation is that the payments were knowingly made at such high levels in order to close down the story, but Murdoch has claimed throughout that he approved the astronomical payments without any knowledge of the wider implications of these cases to the company.


Aggressive encounters and injuries due to head pecking seriously threaten the welfare of domestic turkeys and also result in economic waste within the turkey industry. The aim of this study was to investigate whether domestic turkey toms distinguish group members from non-group members and if they preferably attack the latter. Two unfamiliar groups of four domestic turkey toms were brought into an experimental pen and the subsequent incidence of aggressive interactions and the spatial distribution of the birds were recorded for the duration of 1 h. There were significantly more fights towards non-group members than towards group members. The average duration of fights between group members and non-group members was the same, but showed large variances. Aggressive pecking was significantly more frequent between non-group members than between group members and turkey toms tended to leap more frequently at non-group members than at group members. The distance between the birds tended to be greater amongst non-group members than amongst group members. From our study, it may be concluded, that not only wild turkeys but also domesticated broad-breasted fattening turkeys do distinguish between conspecifics of the own group and conspecifics of an other group, and that they antagonise non-group members markedly more than group members. The results are discussed with respect to animal welfare and economic problems caused by the aggressive behaviour of domestic turkeys in commercial husbandry. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Phanagoria – the largest known ancient Greek settlement on the territory of Russia is situated on the Taman peninsula on the southern side of the Taman bay. The unique feature of the site is that about 1/3 of the settlement of Phanagoria is currently flooded by waters of the Taman bay due to the transgression of the Black sea level since antiquity. In 2012 in the course of underwater prospection of the Taman bay a wooden ship buried under the 1.5 m thick bottom sediments was discovered in situ . The unique feature of the ship is excellent preservation of its wooden parts, which makes it one of the few finds of this kind ever made on the territory of Russia. This paper presents a case-study of application of photogrammetry technique for archaeological field documentation record in course of underwater excavations of the Phanagorian shipwreck. The advantages and possible underwaterspecific constraints of automated point cloud extraction algorithm which was used in the research are discussed. The paper gives an overview of the practical aspects of the workflow of photgrammetry technique application at the excavation ground: photo capture procedure and measurement of control points. Finally a resulting 3-D model of the shipwreck is presented and high potential of automated point cloud extraction algorithms for archaeological documentation record is concluded.


Sensitive information are extensively stored and handled in users' mobile devices that sets challenges in terms of information security. One of the main targets of malicious mobile applications is to steal sensitive information. Mobile devices need tools and mechanisms to provide visibility how applications access sensitive system resources and handle information. Security assessment for a randomly selected application in a resource-constrained mobile environment requires an overall understanding of the target system and might involve a significant amount of work for selecting a suitable monitoring method. This thesis presents two extensions on top of general purpose instrumentation tools. The instrumentation tools and developed extensions are executed on a Linux-based mobile device in order to monitor the behavior of applications. An application monitor extension is used for providing an overview of system resource usage by monitored application. Network monitor extension is used for analyzing content of the network traffic in real-time for selected application layer protocols. Additionally application layer data is monitored from intercepted secure connections based on user defined keywords. Developed instrumentation extensions were successfully used in a Linux-based mobile device to monitor applications' resource access and sensitive information from outbound network traffic. The approach selected for real-time network traffic analysis provided promising results while not causing significant performance problems for the mobile device.


Background The term triaditis designates the concurrent presence of idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), cholangitis, and pancreatitis in cats. Hypothesis/Objectives The histopathology of concurrent, but often subclinical, inflammatory processes in the small intestine, liver, and pancreas of cats is poorly described. We aimed to investigate the frequency of enteritis, cholangitis, pancreatitis, or some combination of these in symptomatic and asymptomatic cats, compare clinicopathological features, and correlate histopathological with laboratory findings. Animals Domestic cats (27 symptomatic, 20 asymptomatic, and 8 normal). Methods Prospective study. Physical examination, laboratory variables (CBC, serum biochemistry profile, serum thyroxine concentration, serum feline trypsin‐like immunoreactivity [fTLI], feline lipase immunoreactivity [fPLI, as measured by Spec fPL ®], urinalysis, and fecal analysis), imaging, and histopathological examinations were conducted. Feline liver, pancreas, and small intestine were biopsied during laparotomy. Results Inflammatory lesions were detected in 47 cats (27 symptomatic, 20 asymptomatic). In total, 20 cats had histopathologic lesions of IBD (13/47, 27.7%), cholangitis (6/47, 12.8%), or pancreatitis (1/47, 2.1%) alone, or inflammation involving >1 organ (27/47, 57.4%). More specifically, 16/47 cats (34.0%) had concurrent lesions of IBD and cholangitis, 3/47 (6.4%) of IBD and pancreatitis, and 8/47 cats (17%) of triaditis. Triaditis was identified only in symptomatic cats (8/27, 29.6%). A mild, positive correlation was detected between the severity (score) of IBD lesions and the number of comorbidities (rho = +0.367, P = .022). Conclusions and Clinical Importance Histopathological evidence of IBD or IBD with comorbidities was detected in both symptomatic and asymptomatic cats. The possibility of triaditis should be considered in symptomatic cats with severe IBD.


Background: The objective of this paper is to identify non-precipitating cirrus, cirrostratus, and cirrocumulus clouds by measuring the precipitable water vapor (PWV). Method: PWV is a measure of the liquid water that obtained if all the water vapor in the atmospheric column is condensed and precipitated which calculated from the water vapor channel data obtained from geostationary satellites. In this paper, places with particular non-precipitating clouds are selected and PWV value is calculated. The study is conducted over a period from 1 st January to 31 st December of 2014. Results: The range of PWV values measured is used to identify the high level, non-precipitating clouds. Application: PWV values obtained can be used along with more climatic data for cloud classification


Cilia are highly specialized microtubule-based organelles that have pivotal roles in numerous biological processes, including transducing sensory signals. Defects in cilia biogenesis and transport cause pleiotropic human ciliopathies. Mutations in over 30 different genes can lead to cilia defects, and complex interactions exist among ciliopathy-associated proteins. Mutations of the centrosomal protein 290 kDa (CEP290) lead to distinct clinical manifestations, including Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a hereditary cause of blindness due to photoreceptor degeneration. Mice homozygous for a mutant Cep290 allele (Cep290rd16 mice) exhibit LCA-like early-onset retinal degeneration that is caused by an in-frame deletion in the CEP290 protein. Here, we show that the domain deleted in the protein encoded by the Cep290rd16 allele directly interacts with another ciliopathy protein, MKKS. MKKS mutations identified in patients with the ciliopathy Bardet-Biedl syndrome disrupted this interaction. In zebrafish embryos, combined subminimal knockdown of mkks and cep290 produced sensory defects in the eye and inner ear. Intriguingly, combinations of Cep290rd16 and Mkksko alleles in mice led to improved ciliogenesis and sensory functions compared with those of either mutant alone. We propose that altered association of CEP290 and MKKS affects the integrity of multiprotein complexes at the cilia transition zone and basal body. Amelioration of the sensory phenotypes caused by specific mutations in one protein by removal of an interacting domain/protein suggests a possible novel approach for treating human ciliopathies.


With its reputation as a high-energy density fuel, aluminum hydride (AlH3) has received renewed attention as a material that is particularly suitable, not only for hydrogen storage but also for rocket propulsion. While the various phases of AlH3 have been investigated theoretically, there is a shortage of experimental studies corroborating the theoretical findings. In response to this, we present here an investigation of these compounds based primarily on two research areas in which there is the greatest scarcity of information in the literature, namely Raman and infrared (IR) absorption analysis. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of experimental far-IR absorption results on these compounds. Two different samples prepared by broadly similar ethereal reactions of AlCl3 with LiAlH4 were analyzed. Both Raman and IR absorption measurements indicate that one sample is purely γ -AlH3 and that the other is a mixture of α-, β-, and γ -AlH3 phases. X-ray diffraction confirms the spectroscopic findings, most notably for the β-AlH3 phase, for which optical spectroscopic data are reported here for the first time. Copyright c © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a rapidly developing wireless communication technology for electronically identifying, locating, and tracking products, assets, and personnel. RFID has become one of the primarily means to construct a real-time locating system (RTLS) that tracks and identifies the location of objects in real time using simple, inexpensive tags attached to or embedded in objects and readers that receive the wireless signals from these tags to determine their locations. Most RFID tag localization techniques heavily rely on precise estimation of the range between a reader and the tags. Traditionally, range information is obtained from the received signal strength indication (RSSI). Such approach is inaccurate, particularly in a complicated propagation environment. Recent development on phase difference of arrival (PDOA) allows coherent signal processing for improved range estimation performance. Exploiting multiple frequencies may further improve the range estimation performance. In this paper, we focus on multifrequency-based techniques to achieve several important advantages in the range estimation of passive or semi-passive RFID tags. The use of well designed multiple frequencies allows effective phase upwrapping and elimination of the range ambiguity problem which may be encountered in PDOA methods. In a complicated propagation environment, the mutifrequency-based techniques provide frequency diversity for robust range estimation when signals are highly faded at some frequencies. These advantages not only yield improved range estimation accuracy of RFID tags in various applications, but also enable robust range estimation in challenging scenarios.


ABSTRACT The broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity, oral bioavailability, extensive tissue distribution, and once-daily intravenous or oral dosing of gatifloxacin, an expanded-spectrum 8-methoxy fluoroquinolone, make it a potentially useful agent for the treatment of pediatric infections. A population pharmacokinetic model was developed to describe the pharmacokinetics of gatifloxacin in children. Data for analysis were obtained from a single-dose safety/pharmacokinetic study utilizing intensive blood sampling in patients aged 6 months to 16 years. Each subject received a single oral dose of gatifloxacin as a suspension, at doses of 5, 10, or 15 mg/kg of body weight. A total of 845 samples were obtained from 82 patients. A one-compartment model with first-order absorption and elimination was the most appropriate to describe the gatifloxacin concentrations. Covariate analysis using forward selection and backward elimination found that apparent clearance was related to body surface area, and apparent volume of distribution was related to body weight. No effect of age on drug clearance could be identified once clearance was corrected for body surface area. Based on pharmacokinetic simulations, the 10-mg/kg (maximum, 400 mg) once-daily dose of gatifloxacin is expected to provide drug exposure similar to that in healthy adults. The population pharmacokinetic model described herein will be used for Bayesian analyses of sparse pharmacokinetic sampling in phase II/III clinical trials and for Monte Carlo simulation experiments. The success of this strategy provides a model for future pediatric drug development programs.


This article is an introduction to the Russian translation of the first book of Thomas Aquinas' treatise De regimine principum. The author considers the place of the text within the framework of the European tradition of the Mirrors of Princes, while describing, in brief, the problems of the authorship and the dating of the treatise. Among the European Mirrors of the Princes, the work of Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship or On the Government of Princes, has a special place. Thanks to its author's reputation, this text became one of the most famous influences in both European Late Medieval Philosophy and Modern Political Philosophy. Additionally, this treatise has become a model for two famous works of the same name, On the Government of Princes, written by Ptolemy of Lucca, and Egidio Colonna. In the discussion of the dating of Aquinas' book, the author holds the opinion that this work was composed between 1271 and 1273, and was addressed to Hugh III Lusignan, the king of Cyprus. The special place in this article is occupied by a small terminological discussion of the Russian translation of the Latin word "princeps." The author affirms that the existing translation of this word as "Lord" (gosudar) is impossible and quite incorrect. In the author's opinion, the correct translation is "the ruler," or "the Prince."


Eimeria mivati was described as a new species of chicken coccidia in 1964 by Edgar and Seibold, but recently some British workers have relegated its status to that of a variety of Eimeria acervulina. Using strains supplied by Dr. Edgar, we have prepared lines of E. acervulina resistant to methyl benzoquate, sulfaquinoxaline and robenidine and a line of E. mivati resistant to methyl benzoquate. Genetic transfer of resistance between the various lines of E. acervulina to produce doubly-resistant coccidia has been demonstrated, but no such transfer could be obtained between E. mivati resistant to methyl benzoquate and the resistant lines of E. acervulina. Although some immunological relationship between E. acervulina and E. mivati has been demonstrated, we conclude that this failure of the 2 organisms to interbreed lends support to the status of E. mivati as a distinct species.


Summary Background The novel coronavirus (CoV) severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 outbreak started at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, and spread over 100 countries. SARS-CoV-2 uses the membrane protein Angiotensin I converting enzyme 2(ACE2) as a cell entry receptor. Indeed, it was reported that the balance of Renin-Angiotensin System (RAS), regulated by both ACE and ACE2, was altered in COVID-19 patients. It is controversial, however, whether commonly used anti-hypertensive drugs Angiotensin I converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) and Angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) shall be continued in the confirmed COVID-19 patients. This study was designed to investigate any difference in disease severity between COVID-19 patients with hypertension comorbidity. The included COVID-19 patients used ACEI, ARB, calcium channel blockers (CCB), beta blockers (BB), or thiazide to treat preexisting hypertension prior to the hospital were compared to patients who did not take any of those drugs. Methods In this multicentre retrospective study, clinical data of 511 COVID-19 patients were analyzed. Patients were categorized into six sub-groups of hypertension comorbidity based on treatment using one of anti-hypertension drugs (ACEI, ARB, CCB, BB, thiazide), or none. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the use of ACEI and ARB associated with pneumonia using published studies. Findings Among the elderly (age>65) COVID-19 patients with hypertension comorbidity, the risk of COVID-19-S (severe disease) was significantly decreased in patients who took ARB drugs prior to hospitalization compared to patients who took no drugs (OR=0.343, 95% CI 0.128-0.916, p=0.025). The meta-analysis showed that ARB use has positive effects associated with morbidity and mortality of pneumonia. Interpretation Elderly (age>65) COVID-19 patients with hypertension comorbidity who are taking ARB anti-hypertension drugs may be less likely to develop severe lung disease compared to patients who take no anti-hypertension drugs. Funding National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences


Significance High-risk tumors are genomically heterogeneous, harboring gene amplifications and mutations. The activation status of mutated proteins in cancer can profoundly impact disease progression, patient response, and drug sensitivity. Yet, outside of a few hotspot mutations, functional studies of clinically observed mutations are not commonly pursued. We report a combined experimental profiling and computational analysis of the effects of clinically observed and "test" mutations in the kinase domain of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a known oncogenic driver in pediatric neuroblastoma. We find that the activation status of the mutated protein is a good indicator of the transforming ability in NIH 3T3 cells. We also report biophysical as well as data-driven models with predictive power to profile these mutant kinases in silico. Kinases play important roles in diverse cellular processes, including signaling, differentiation, proliferation, and metabolism. They are frequently mutated in cancer and are the targets of a large number of specific inhibitors. Surveys of cancer genome atlases reveal that kinase domains, which consist of 300 amino acids, can harbor numerous (150 to 200) single-point mutations across different patients in the same disease. This preponderance of mutations—some activating, some silent—in a known target protein make clinical decisions for enrolling patients in drug trials challenging since the relevance of the target and its drug sensitivity often depend on the mutational status in a given patient. We show through computational studies using molecular dynamics (MD) as well as enhanced sampling simulations that the experimentally determined activation status of a mutated kinase can be predicted effectively by identifying a hydrogen bonding fingerprint in the activation loop and the αC-helix regions, despite the fact that mutations in cancer patients occur throughout the kinase domain. In our study, we find that the predictive power of MD is superior to a purely data-driven machine learning model involving biochemical features that we implemented, even though MD utilized far fewer features (in fact, just one) in an unsupervised setting. Moreover, the MD results provide key insights into convergent mechanisms of activation, primarily involving differential stabilization of a hydrogen bond network that engages residues of the activation loop and αC-helix in the active-like conformation (in >70% of the mutations studied, regardless of the location of the mutation).


Goals This large prospective study attempted to analyze the effect of various prior surgery on colonoscopy performance. Background It is generally presumed that colonoscopy in patients with a history of abdominal or pelvic surgery is difficult. This difficulty is apparently due to adhesions and anatomic alterations after surgery but the incidence, site, and severity of adhesions are different according to the types of surgery. Study We analyzed completion rate and insertion time in 4089 consecutive colonoscopies in patients with intact colon. Results The adjusted completion rate for colonoscopy was 96.7%. The mean insertion time was 6.2±4.0 minutes. Not only old age [odds ratio (OR) 1.46; 95% confidence interval (CI) [1.04, 2.04]] and inadequate bowel cleansing (OR 5.82; 95% CI [4.19, 8.09]) but also a surgical history (OR 1.71; 95% CI [1.18, 2.48]) were independent factors associated with procedural incompleteness. Of surgical history, gastrectomy and hysterectomy were significantly associated with procedural incompleteness (P<0.001 and P=0.001, respectively). Old age (OR 1.48; 95% CI [1.22, 1.79]), female sex (OR 1.22; 95% CI [1.01, 1.48]), constipation as an indication (OR 1.58; 95% CI [1.24, 2.02]), and inadequate bowel cleansing (OR 1.46; 95% CI [1.13, 1.88]) were independent factors associated with prolonged insertion time (>10 min), but a surgical history lost statistical power as a predictor for prolonged insertion time in multivariate analysis. Conclusions Although the difference in insertion time was not substantial, a history of abdominal or pelvic surgery is associated with difficulty in colonoscopy.


In 2004, the US Preventive Services Task Force called for an end to scoliosis screening in US public schools. However, screening endures, although most nations have ended their screening programs. Why? Explanations range from America's unique fee-for-service health care system and its encouragement of high-cost medical specialism to the nation's captivation with new surgeries and technologies. I highlight another, more historical, reason: the persistence of the belief that spinal curvature is a sign of a progressive disease or disability. Despite improved health and the mid-20th-century discovery of antibiotics and vaccines that all but eradicated the diseases historically associated with scoliosis (e.g., polio and tuberculosis), the health fears associated with spinal curvature never fully dissipated. Scoliosis is still seen as a "dangerous curve," although the exact nature of the health risk remains unclear.


Abstract The ecology of the Southern Scrub-robin was examined at a 55-ha study site on the eastern side of Peron Peninsula, Western Australia. The scrub-robin was a sedentary, ground-dwelling species occurring in pairs, and sometimes alone. Pairs maintained permanent, all-purpose territories throughout the year, and males regularly defended the boundaries of their territories by song and by chasing intruders. Territory sizes ranged from 2.8 to 7.1 ha, with a mean of 4.0 ha. The female alone was observed building the nest and incubating the one egg, but both adults were seen feeding young. The incubation period was estimated at 16 days and the nestling period at 9–12 days. Scrub-robins primarily gleaned prey from leaf litter and sand. Analysis of scats showed that ants comprised a major component of the diet in both spring and summer. Other dietary items in spring included beetles, lepidopteran larvae, termites, hemipterans, spiders and fruit of Enchylaena tomentosa. In summer there was a higher proportion of termites in scats than in spring. The ant fauna within scrub-robin scats was dominated by a species of Iridomyrmex and a species of Crematogaster, both 2–3 mm in length. The Crematogaster species was selected more frequently than it occurred in litter samples, while the Iridomyrmex species was eaten in a lower proportion than sampled in the litter. The scrub-robin's use of litter substrates for feeding and nesting, and its clutch size of one and potentially low reproductive rate, suggest that it may be vulnerable to changes in the quantity and quality of the litter layer in the Western Australian wheatbelt.


Investing in different futures is an existential challenge that much research within and adjacent to Ecological Economics engages with, yet organizations that recognize this social ecological imperative have few options for funding and implementing radical transformations to the needs and well-being provisioning systems that currently exist. Ecological macroeconomic ideas and EE principles of long term well being and justice on a livable planet will be explored in the context of the housing crisis in Canada, and a rural Ontario community organization attempting to find transformative solutions to the lived, local experience of this crisis. Provisioning systems for housing, when tied to real estate markets, debt money creation, land enclosures, and financialized supply chains, contribute to capital accumulation cycles; it is hardly possible to meet our housing needs, in aggregate, without also perpetuating the form of this provisioning system. The idea presented here, that of Capital Sequestration, proposes to remove capital from markets and 'invests' this capital in land trusts as an intentional transformation of financial capital into social and ecological values. Through land and housing trusts as well as non-market funding pathways, Capital Sequestration is a method of investing in the transformation of provisioning systems through the sustained and collective boundary management of financial markets and incommensurable values. This practice offers significant promise as it applies ecological macroeconomic theory work, is grounded in the normative goals of and emerges from empirical research of EE, and meets a pressing need within society for imagining alternative economies.


The paper describes a branch and bound scheme that uses heuristics generated mechanically by the mini-bucket approximation. This scheme is presented and evaluated for optimization tasks such as finding the Most Probable Explanation (MPE) in Bayesian networks. The mini-bucket scheme yields monotonic heuristics of varying strengths which cause different amounts of pruning, allowing a controlled tradeoff between preprocessing and search. The resulting Branch and Bound with Mini-Bucket heuristic (BBMB), is evaluated using random networks, probabilistic decoding and medical diagnosis networks. Results show that the BBMB scheme overcomes the memory explosion of bucket-elimination allowing a gradual tradeoff of space for time, and of time for accuracy.


HERWIG is a general-purpose Monte Carlo event generator, which includes the simulation of hard lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron scattering and soft hadron-hadron collisions in one package. It uses the parton-shower approach for initial- and final-state QCD radiation, including colour coherence effects and azimuthal correlations both within and between jets. This article updates the description of HERWIG published in 1992, emphasising the new features incorporated since then. These include, in particular, the matching of first-order matrix elements with parton showers, a more correct treatment of heavy quark decays, and a wide range of new processes, including many predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, with the option of R-parity violation. At the same time we offer a brief review of the physics underlying HERWIG, together with details of the input and control parameters and the output data, to provide a self-contained guide for prospective users of the program.


The Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) has continued to spread across the world leaving death and economic devastation in its wake. Although the number of confirmed cases in Uganda remain very low in comparison to other countries, the containment adopted to curb the spread of the virus have affected business operations. This report, based on a survey of firms using the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC)'s business climate index (BCI) methodology, examines the effect of the risk presented by COVID-19 pandemic on Uganda's businesses.


Shwachman-Diamond syndrome (SDS) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by pancreatic exocrine dysfunction, skeletal abnormalities, and bone marrow failure, which can evolve to leukemia. Mutations in SBDS have been shown to cause SDS. We and other investigators have suggested that SBDS orthologs in yeast play a role in biogenesis and function of the 60S ribosomal subunit. To clarify the unknown function of SBDS in hematopoiesis, human erythroleukemia TF-1 cells were transduced with lentiviral vectors expressing the green fluorescent protein (GFP), neomycin phosphotransferase, and small interfering RNA (siRNA) against SBDS. After transduction, cells were selected for neomycin resistance and then sorted by flow cytometry. To probe for SBDS, an antibody against the carboxyl-terminus of human SBDS was generated, and individual TF-1 cell clones expressing different siRNAs were confirmed to knock down SBDS expression by Western blot analysis. Our experiments were aimed at analyzing the cellular effects of SBDS knockdown. The growth and hematopoietic colony forming potential of TF-1 knockdown cells were markedly hindered when compared to cells stably transduced with siRNA against a scrambled SBDS sequence. Using propidium iodide staining and flow cytometric analysis, we found an increased percentage of knockdown cells retained at the G0/G1 cell cycle phase. To address whether TF-1 cells expressing siRNA against SBDS have a selective deficiency of 60S ribosomal subunits, cell extracts were prepared and polysome profiles examined after sucrose gradient centrifugation. In preliminary experiments, TF-1 cells expressing siRNA against SBDS appeared to show a reduction in free 60S subunits and 80S subunits with a shift toward smaller polysomes, compared to cells expressing the scrambled sequence siRNA. We conclude that depletion of SBDS results in a significant growth and clonogenic defect in TF-1 hematopoietic cells. Our preliminary results also suggest defects in ribosome function and cell cycle transit, which may provide an integrated molecular explanation for the hematopoietic defect in SDS since nucleolar stress has been linked to cell cycle arrest and p53 stabilization.


Securitisations usually involve creating multiple tranches of a single issue with different characteristics, placed on the market as separate securities. Various theoretical explanations have been advanced to explain such tranching. This paper provides the first systematic testing of such theories using a proprietary database of over 5000 separate tranches in European securitisations raising a total of $1 trillion. We find support for asymmetric information and market segmentation explanations for tranching and present evidence on how such different rationales influence the structuring process in practice. We also investigate the impact of tranching on the price of securities issued. For those issues where our model predicts a higher optimal number of tranches, we find that additional uniquely-rated tranches are associated with higher prices for the issue as a whole.


User interaction in a modern networked home can be unintuitive when utilizing a smartphone for control. Different layers of menus and the lack of a tangible real-world interaction metaphor complicates the everyday usage of those devices in a smartphone. We propose a solution focusing on mixed reality interaction, by combining computer vision and ubiquitous computing techniques, to allow the user to simply point to the device of interest, to be controlled, via the smartphone camera. This adds value to the consumer electronics ecosystem by improving networked home user interaction experiences.


We present car Multi-Axis (MAX-) DOAS observations of tropospheric NO 2 carried out on circles around the cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen (Germany) on 24 August 2006. Together with information on wind speed and direction, the total emissions of the encircled source(s) are quantified from these measurements. In contrast to recent similar studies based on zenith scattered sun light (elevation angle of 90), we use a MAX-DOAS instrument mounted on a car, which observes scattered sun light under different elevation angles (here 45 , and 90). Compared to simple zenith sky observations, MAX-DOAS observations have higher sensitivity and reduced uncertainty, and avoid systematic offsets in the determination of the vertically integrated trace gas concentration. The determination of the absolute value of the integrated tropospheric trace gas concentrations is especially important for the calculation of absolute trace gas fluxes through arbitrary transects. However, even if emission sources are completely surrounded, systematic offsets in the measured vertically integrated trace gas concentration can lead to errors in the determined total emissions, especially for observations around extended areas. In this study we discuss and quantify different error sources. In most cases, the largest error source is the variability and imperfect knowledge of the wind field. In addition – depending on the trace species observed also chemical transformations between the emission sources and the measurement location have to be considered. For that purpose we use local observations within the encircled area to quantify and/or correct these errors. From our observations we derive a total NOx emission from the Mannheim/Ludwigshafen Correspondence to: T. Wagner (firstname.lastname@example.com) area of (7.4±1.8) ×1024 molec/sec, which if assumed to be constant throughout the year would correspond to a total emission of 17 830 ±4340 t/yr (calculated with the mass of NO2) t/yr, consistent with existing emission estimates. From our observations it is also possible to separately determine the average influx into the Mannheim/Ludwigshafen area (5.4 ±0.9×1024 molec/sec or 13 010 ±2170 t/yr) and the average outflux (12.8±1.8×1024 molec/sec or 13 010 ±4340 t/yr).


Objective: To facilitate in vitro mechanistic studies in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and subsequent tubal factor infertility, as well as ovarian carcinogenesis, we sought to establish patient tissue derived fallopian tube (FT) organoids and to study their inflammatory response to acute vaginal bacterial infection. Design: Experimental study. Setting: Academic medical and research center. Patients: FT tissues were obtained from four patients after salpingectomy for benign gynecological diseases. Interventions: We introduced acute infection in the FT organoid culture system by inoculating the organoid culture media with two common vaginal bacterial species, Lactobacillus crispatus and Fannyhessea vaginae. Main Outcome Measures: The inflammatory response elicited in the organoids after acute bacterial infection was analyzed by the expression profile of 249 inflammatory genes. Results: Compared to the negative controls that were not cultured with any bacteria, the organoids cultured with either bacterial species showed multiple differentially expressed inflammatory genes. Marked differences were noted between the Lactobacillus crispatus infected organoids and those infected by Fannyhessea vaginae. Genes from the C-X-C motif chemokine ligand (CXCL) family were highly upregulated in F. vaginae infected organoids. Flow cytometry showed that immune cells quickly disappeared during the organoid culture, indicating the inflammatory response observed with bacterial culture was generated by the epithelial cells in the organoids. Conclusion: Patient tissue derived FT organoids respond to acute bacterial infection with upregulation of inflammatory genes specific to different vaginal bacterial species. FT organoids is a useful model system to study the host-pathogen interaction during bacterial infection which may facilitate mechanistic investigations in PID and its contribution to tubal factor infertility and ovarian carcinogenesis.


Prevocational rehabilitation is performed by members of the rehabilitation team to get a functional assessment of the psychosensomotor potential for employment purposes for people with disabilities (patients/clients). Standard methodologies were divided into basic, recommended and special methods for determining the psychosensomotor potential for empolyement. The functional basic methodologies include: Barthel Index, Instrumental routine daily activities test, Daily structure, Interest questionnaire, Self-assessment of pain, Sensory examination, Work curve by Emil Kraepelin and Richard Pauli, Jebsen-Taylor Test, PurduePegboard test - model 320 20, Jamar Dynamometer, Isernhagen Work System, Loewenstein Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment, Activity Matching Ability System, WHO DAS II. The recommended methodologies include examinations by experts that each facility is obliged to ensure, if necessary, for example, targeted and comprehensive assessment, spiroergometry, speech examination, psychological, psychiatric examination, hearing examination, visual examination. Special methodologies are according specialization of rehabilitation facilities. Our Department of Rehabilitation Medicine is focused on patients with brain damage, therefore we use Rivermead Behaviour Memory Test, Mini Mental State Examination , The Middlesex Elderly Assessment of Mental State, Prevocational assessment according to Jacobs, Canadian model of employment, General office test Functional, Independence Measure etc. The prevocational evaluation result is sending to Labour Offices and should not contain any confidential medical information. This report may contain recommendations for further education or retraining. Physician completes the discharge paper and he summarizes the evaluation of the rehabilitation team members. This report includes positive employment recommendations and work restrictions.


The field of human experience is like a magnetic field, it has two poles, with categories at one pole, and the unique at the opposite pole. Both are necessary to experience. These poles have the effect of framing and composing. Framing and composing are fundamental aesthetic descriptors. Thus defined, the domain of the aesthetic is necessary to all possibilities of experience. Thus defined, the aesthetic domain is necessary to all civic moral obligation, including environmental obligation. I choose to define the aesthetic domain thus in order to build a strong and useful cross-cultural bridge for doing environmental ethics. I thus find problematic those definitions of the aesthetic as autonomous developed in the far west since the late eighteenth century.


This paper discusses a study conducted on impact assessment of a Library Course at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India. Questionnaire method was used to obtain data from master's degree students registered under this course. 84 questionnaires were got filled out of a population of 210 students by random sampling technique thus making the sample size as 40% of the total population. The data was analysed using MS-excel 2010 for frequency, average, percentage and weighted index. The results of the course evaluation shows that this library course is effective in encouraging the students towards visiting the library more frequently, creating awareness about library services and resources and has improved their ability to search the information using catalogue. But, the students are lagging in framing appropriate keywords to refine their search, using advanced search options, ability to frame search preferences and evaluate e-resources for authenticity. This study recommends that the teachers need to put in more efforts through the library course to improve the ability of the students to use the library more efficiently.

Keywords: Library course, impact assessment, library user education, course evaluation, library services, library resources, library and information services


The thermal buckling analysis of curved continuous welded rail (CWR) is studied for the lateral buckling prevention. This study includes a thermal buckling theory which accounts for both thermal and vehicle loading effects in the evaluation of track stability. The parameters include rail size, track lateral resistance, track longitudinal and torsional stiffnesses, initial misalignment amplitude and wavelength, track curvature, tie-ballast friction coefficient and truck center spacing. Parametric studies are performed to evaluate the effects of the individual parameters on the upper and lower critical buckling temperatures. The results show that the upper critical buckling temperature is highly affected by the uplift due to vehicle loads. This study provides a guideline for the improvement of stability for dynamic buckling in curved CWR track.


For many years, CMOS-process scaling has allowed a steady increase in the operating frequency and integration density of integrated circuits. Only recently, however, have we reached a point where it takes several clock cycles for global signals to traverse a complex digital system such as a modern microprocessor. Thus, interconnect latency must be taken into account as a new design parameter in future synthesis and optimization tools at the architectural, as well as synthesis, level. To this purpose, this paper proposes a new latency-aware technique for the performance-driven concurrent insertion of flip-flops and repeaters in very large scale integration circuits, also taking clock skew into account. Pipelined interconnects are optimally designed for minimum latency or to meet latency constraints at the receivers. Given its generality, our methodology can be used to extend many existing techniques to the broader case of pipelined interconnects. An experimental scaling study showing overwhelming evidence of an exponential increase in the number of clocked repeaters every process generation, for high-performance microprocessors, as well as high-end application specific integrated circuits, is also presented. Such an increase indicates a radical change in current design methodologies to cope with this new emerging problem.


Twenty-four cases of coloanal sleeve anastomosis for the repair of rectovaginal post-irradiation fistula are described. All patients were previously irradiated because of carcinoma of the uterine cervix. Eleven patients had simultaneous repair of vesicovaginal fistula. One postoperative death was observed. Of the 23 surviving patients, functional results were good in 18. In 16 patients with difficult stripping of the rectal mucosa, surgical curettage was performed. The latter procedure is suggested as a useful method in relevant cases.


Vesicles containing the glucose transporter GLUT4 travel rapidly on a microtubule network that lies just under the plasma membrane in resting cells, according to results from Lizunov et al. (page 481). The vesicles occasionally touch the plasma membrane and, when stimulated by insulin, quickly fuse with it.

Figure

Vesicles with GLUT4 move along microtubules near the plasma membrane.

GLUT4 is sequestered in vesicles in resting cells. Insulin exposure induces the vesicles to fuse to the plasma membrane. But how these vesicles are stored in the resting cell was unclear.

To find out, the team used total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy on freshly isolated adipose cells transfected with GLUT4-GFP. Whereas confocal microscopy illuminated vesicles scattered throughout the cytoplasm, TIRF movies showed the vesicles just under the plasma membrane. These sub-membrane vesicles were moving on microtubules in unstimulated cells. Within ten minutes of insulin exposure, 50% of the GLUT4 had reached the surface—and most of the vesicles on the microtubule network were clustered at sites on the membrane.

The authors aim to find out what the vesicles are doing as they move around the resting cell, sampling the plasma membrane. They speculate that the moving vesicles might allow the cell to rapidly respond to a narrow area of insulin exposure.


It was hypothesized that neutrophil elastase released from activated neutrophils may play an important role in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. In the present study, we measured the neutrophil elastase:alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor complex (E-PI) in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) in 26 patients with pulmonary fibrosis and evaluated the correlation between E-PI levels and several parameters. E-PI levels in serum of patients with pulmonary fibrosis (635.8+/-112.0 ng.mL(-1)) were significantly elevated compared to normal nonsmokers (122.0+/-4.0 ng.mL(-1)) as well as normal smokers (132.8+/-8.4 ng.mL(-1)) (p<0.01). E-PI levels in serum significantly correlated with hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) levels in serum, C-reactive protein (CRP), and negatively correlated with arterial oxygen tension (Pa,O2), and arterial carbon dioxide tension (Pa,CO2). E-PI/albumin levels in BALF significantly correlated with HGF/albumin levels in BALF, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH)/albumin in BALF, total number of inflammatory cells (alveolar macrophages and neutrophils) in BALF, and several markers derived from epithelial cells in BALF. Our data demonstrated: 1) neutrophil elastase:alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor complex in serum increased in patients with pulmonary fibrosis; and 2) neutrophil elastase:alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor complex in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid correlated with clinical parameters in pulmonary fibrosis. These results suggest that neutrophil elastase may play a significant role in the process of lung injury in pulmonary fibrosis.


This study goes beyond the common micro-channel cooling system composed of uniform parallel straight micro-channels. Due to the highly non-uniform power dissipation on a multicore processor, the micro-channel cooling system is designed to fit with the heat load on the multicore processor. By applying effective strategies and arranging key design parameters, stronger cooling is provided under the high power core area, and less cooling is provided under the low power cache area to save the precious pumping power. The well designed thermal-aware micro-channel cooling systems could effectively lower the hot spot temperature and temperature gradients on chip.A three-stage approach to design thermal-aware micro-channel cooling system for multicore processor is developed. Two micro-channel cooling systems are specifically designed for a 2 core 150W Intel Tulsa processor and an 8 core 260W (doubled power) Intel Nehalem processor, to illustrate the design approach. The working fluid is single phase HFE7100. For the Tulsa processor, a strategy named strip-and-zone approach is used. The final design leads to 30kPa pressure drop and 0.094W pumping power while maintains the hot spot temperature to be 75 °C. For the Nehalem processor, a split flow micro-channel system and a widen-inlet strategy are applied. The final design takes 15kPa pressure drop and 0.0845W pumping power while maintains the hot spot temperature to be 82.8 °C. The design approach in this study provides the basic guide for the industrial applications of effective multicore processor cooling using micro-channels.© 2013 ASME


This paper introduces the minimum-time arbitrarily constrained distributed scheduling problem. The optimal distributed nonsequential backtracking algorithm is used by agents to schedule tasks where the tasks are related by constraints and where the assignment of tasks to agents may change during scheduling. The problem is distributed in that no agent has full knowledge either of the communication network or of the scheduling constraints. Each agent knows the assignments of the agents with which it can communicate and the scheduled times of the tasks assigned to those agents. The minimum-time arbitrarily constrained distributed scheduling problem is for the agents to use this local knowledge to find a schedule that satisfies all constraints and minimizes the time needed to complete all tasks. The optimal distributed nonsequential backtracking algorithm is able to find minimum-time schedules that satisfy all constraints. This algorithm is designed to work concurrently with a distributed assignment algorithm that satisfies certain communication requirements detailed in this paper. This paper presents proof of the algorithm's correctness, completeness, and optimality.


Geosocial Network data can be served as an asset for the authorities to make real-time decisions and future planning by analyzing geosocial media posts. However, there are millions of Geosocial Network users who are producing overwhelming of data, called "Big Data" that is challenging to be analyzed and make real-time decisions. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed an efficient system for exploring Geosocial Networks while harvesting data as well as user's location information. A system architecture is proposed that processes an abundant amount of various social networks' data to monitor Earth events, incidents, medical diseases, user trends, and views to make future real-time decisions and facilitate future planning. The proposed system consists of five layers, i.e., data collection, data processing, application, communication, and data storage. The system deploys Spark at the top of the Hadoop ecosystem in order to run real-time analyses. Twitter and Flickr are analyzed using the proposed architecture in order to identify current events or disasters, such as earthquakes, fires, Ebola virus, and snow. The system is evaluated with respect to efficiency while considering system throughput. We proved that the system has higher throughput and is capable of analyzing massive Geosocial Network data at real-time.


This study explores the relationship between environmental factors and the main essential oil components in the leaves of Crimean juniper (Juniperus excelsa M. Bieb.), which is commonly distributed in rocky and stony land with shallow soil conditions in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. After the leaf samples collected from 20 plots were dried, essential oil components were detected by GCMS method. α-Pinene (81.3%), myrcene (5.2%) and limonene (4.5%) were found to be the major components, respectively. Relations between these major components and environmental factors (physiographic, climatic and soil factors) were questioned by Pearson correlation analysis, cluster analysis and principal component analysis. According to statistical analysis results; α-pinene bio18, altitude and pH were found to have a negative relationship. The limonene component showed a negative relationship with latitude and clay, but showed a positive correlation with pH.


The practice of medicine today is beset with unprecedented challenges which include public distrust in medical profession, increasing market force and strengthened management. Recently medical professional societies in UK & USA are overcoming these challenges in the way that medical professionalism is modernized in a changing society. They set ``a physician charter`` and new definition of medical professionalism as a partnership. The principles of new medical professionalism are patient welfare, patient autonomy and social justice. It describes doctors`` commitment to integrity, compassion, altruism, continuous improvement, excellence, working in partnership, just distribution of finite resources, maintaining trust by managing conflicts of interest and others. New professionalism support improvement of health care system for the welfare of society and the collective human dignity. Experience of rebuilding medical professionalism in UK and USA will give a lesson to Korean medical profession when they seek for solution to restore public confidence and take the leadership in Korean healthcare system.


: The return breathing test (rerespiration) developed by the authors makes it possible to conduct testing on the efficiency of compensatory reactions and disclose the reserve capacities of cardiorespiratory system in pilots. 82 pilots were examined in the process of their professional activity. The major part can be subdivided into 3 groups with middle, good and high tolerance to rerespiration, having 1/3 of pilots under 30 years old a high tolerance to test. This test substantiates the expediency to subdivide the flight personnel into the groups of tolerance. The low tolerance can be explained by changes of functional state of organism under the influence of endogenic or exopathic factors.