Berry crops in the southwestern Yukon were quantified from 1997 to 2008 at 10 locations along 210 km of the Alaska and Haines highways. We tested the hypothesis that the size of berry crops could be predicted from spring and summer temperature and rainfall of years t, t-1 (1 year prior), and t-2 (2 years prior). Six common species were studied in the boreal forest of the Kluane region: Arctostaphylos rubra (Rehd. & Wils.) Fern., Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (L.) Spreng. s.l., Empetrum nigrum L., Vaccinium vitis-idaea L., Geocaulon lividum (Richards) Fern, and Shepherdia canadensis (L.) Nutt.. For the first five species we counted berries on fixed 40 cm � 40 cm quadrats to obtain an index of berry produc- tion for the Kluane region for each of the 12 years, and for S. canadensis we counted berries on two tagged branches of 10 bushes at each location. Stepwise multiple regressions were utilized to predict the size of berry crops for each species. For all species, predictive equations could explain statistically 80%-96% of the variation in berry crops. Different weather variables characterized each plant species, and there was no common weather regression that could explain the variation in berry crops in all species. Rainfall and temperature from years t-1 and t-2 were typically the significant predictors. There was no indication of a periodicity in berry production, and 43%-60% of the quadrats counted had large berry crops at one year intervals, while other quadrats never had a high crop during the study interval.


Global financial integration has substantially increased in recent decades. Initially, it manifested itself in growing capital flows between developed countries. In response to the removal of capital controls, financial innovation and technological progress, financial integration has subsequently spread to emerging market countries. Gross and net capital flows between developed and emerging economies have increased. Financial integration has also been evident in frequently high correlations between asset yields or prices, particularly for certain asset classes such as high-yield corporate bonds and sovereign bonds and equities in developed and emerging markets (Graph 1).


Abstract This work is aimed at developing relations between the pertinent variables that affect drilling process of stainless steel using artificial neural network. The experiments were conducted on vertical CNC machining centre. The parameters used were spindle speed and feed rate. The effect of machining parameters on entry burr height, exit burr height and surface roughness was experimentally evaluated for different spindle speeds and feed rates. A model was established between the drilling parameters and experimentally obtained data using ANN. The predicted values and measured values are fairly close, which indicates that the developed model can be effectively used to predict the burr height and surface roughness in drilling of stainless steel. Genetic algorithm (GA) technique was used in this work to identify the optimized drilling parameters. Confirmation test was conducted with the optimized parameters and it was found that confirmation test results were similar to that of GA-predicted output values.


An understanding of water needs in agriculture is a critical input in resolving the water resource issues that confront the state of Georgia. Unfortunately, how much water is required and how much water is actually being used for irrigation is unknown. The objective of this study was to estimate water demand for irrigation for the entire state of Georgia using a crop simulation model. The irrigation requirements for all the counties where irrigated cotton, corn, peanut and soybean were grown in 2000, 2001 and 2002 were estimated using the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model. These counties were distributed across seven regions; with three regions, i.e., Flint Basin, Central Coastal Plain and Coastal Zone, representing the major growing areas. The combined irrigation withdrawal in the Flint Basin, Central Coastal Plain and Coastal Zone accounted for about 98% and 99% of the statewide total irrigation withdrawal in 2000 and 2001, respectively, mainly due to large irrigated acreage in those regions. Statewide total irrigation withdrawal was estimated to be 199,125 Mgallons in 2000 and 114,101 Mgallons in 2001. These irrigation requirements will vary from year to year depending on the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall during the growing season. Total irrigated acreage also had a major impact on irrigation withdrawal. We will implement the model for other crops to determine the total irrigation withdrawals for agriculture in the state of Georgia.


Endometriosis is characterized by endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus, primarily on the pelvic peritoneum, ovaries, and rectovaginal septum, and, in rare cases, within the urinary tract (1–3%). Although endometriosis is a benign condition, malignant transformation of endometriosis is a well-described phenomenon. Malignancies arising in endometriosis are uncommon at extragonadal pelvic sites. A case of endometrioid adenocarcinoma in the native ureter of a postmenopausal renal transplant patient presented with painless gross hematuria and hydroureteronephrosis. The patient had a history of total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophrectomy 14 years prior for menorrhagia and had since been on unopposed estrogen replacement therapy. Workup revealed a filling defect in the native left mid-ureter secondary to a large 2.5-cm ureteral tumor. Endoscopic biopsies of the native left ureteral mass showed endometrioid adenocarcinoma, grade II-III. The patient ultimately underwent an open native left nephroureterectomy and temporary diverting colostomy. Final pathology confirmed endometrioid adenocarcinoma, grade II-III, arising in a background of endometriosis with negative perirectal lymph nodes. This case of ureteral endometrioid adenocarcinoma highlights the importance of obtaining a careful history and maintaining a high index of suspicion for malignant degeneration, especially in the context of hyperestrogenism.


In this paper, a novel biodegradable and fluorescent polymer: fluorescein-polylactide (FL-PLA) was synthesized by FL and lactide in the method of ring-opening polymerization with the catalysis of Sn(Oct)2 under 130°C . The structure and molecular weight of FL-PLA were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectroscopy, and gel permeation chromatography (GPC). The molecular weight of FL-PLA increased from 9.03×103 to 21.24×103 with decreasing the amount of FL and kept a narrow distribution. The result of differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) showed that Tg increased from 52 to 72°C with increasing the molecular weight of polymer. Moreover, the average number content of FL in each molecular chain decreased from 0.96 to 0.81 with decrement of the amount of FL. Furthermore, FL-PLA showed the fluorescence property, and the fluorescence intensity could be controlled by the amount of FL. The FL-PLA nanoparticles were prepared by mixing the good and poor solvent, and the diameter was about 3 μm with regular spherical morphology.


The paper compares the risk coping potential of insurances that are based on indices derived from weather (rainfall and temperature) data as well as from crop model and remote sensing analyses. Corresponding indices were computed for the case of wheat production in the Aleppo region of northern Syria, representative for agricultural production systems in many developing countries. The results demonstrate that weather derivatives such as the rainfall sum index (RSI) and the rainfall deficit index (RDI) have a very good potential for coping with risk in semiarid areas. Crop simulation model index (CSI) on the other hand could serve as an alternative to RSI and RDI when historical farm yield data is not available or not reliable. In such cases we simulated historical yields using the CropSyst cropping system simulation model. Remote sensing data could be used to establish index insurances where weather stations are sparsely located and (daily time step) weather data thus not available. The study analyzes two indexes estimated from the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI): (1.) the farm level NDVI (FNDVI) and (2.) the area level NDVI (ANDVI). FNDVI may have a very high potential for securing farm revenues, but may be prone to moral hazard since farm management changes and subsequent gains or losses in crop production are directly revealed by the NDVI when high resolution images are used. Therefore, we recommend ANDVI for developing countries since the index is estimated for the whole agricultural zone similar to traditional area-yield insurances.


The UN Conference on Disarmament's Group of Scientific Experts (GSE) was established in 1976 to consider international co operative measures to detect and identify seismic events. Over the years, the GSE has developed and tested several concepts for an International Seismic Monitoring System (ISMS) for the purpose of assisting in the verification of a potential comprehensive test ban treaty. The GSE is now planning its third global technical test. (GSETT 3) in order to test new and revisled concepts for an ISMS. GSETT 3 wili be an unprecedented global effort to conduct an operationally realistic test of rapid collection, distribution and processing of seismie data. A global network of seismograph stations will provide data to an International Data Center, where the data will be processed an results made available to participants. The full scaIe phase of GSETT 3 is scheduled to begin in January 1995.


The purpose of this guide is to assist students who are writing a legal research paper and need help selecting a topic and developing a thesis.


The use of link analysis and page popularity in search engines has grown recently to improve query result rankings. Since the number of such links contributes to the value of the document in such calculations, we wish to recognize and eliminate nepotistic links— links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit. This paper explores some of the issues surrounding the question of what links to keep, and we report high accuracy in initial experiments to show the potential for using a machine learning tool to automatically recognize such links.


This thesis investigates the relationship between Jarrow Secondary School and the socio-economic life of the district, between 1911 and 1944. In particular, it examines the effect the school had upon the social mobility of those people who passed through its system, and the influence their education had upon the welfare of the community. To study just what impact this secondary school had upon its community, it was necessary to look at the background of the area, along with the educational developments which led to the building of the school. Both documented evidence and text books provided this vital information. Personal interviews with ex-pupils who attended the school at that time, proved to be both an enlightening and enlivening source of evidence. These interviews not only corroborated documentation and shed light onto the internal mechanism of the school, but also gave tangible evidence as to what transpired once pupils were assimilated into the working environment of the district. The nature of the educational system operating in Jarrow, with graduated levels in the different educational establishments, mirrored the perceived needs of the district. This allows further research, not only covering the secondary school and its effects on the district but also encompassing the other forms of education available and the roles they fulfilled within the community.


Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) based sound source separation involves two phases: First, the signal spectrum is decomposed into components which, in a second step, are clustered in order to obtain estimates of the source signal spectra. The major challenge with this approach is the accuracy of the clustering algorithm in the second step, especially as most previously used clustering algorithms are focusing on the frequency part of NMF only and, hence, are missing the information of the time activation matrix. In this paper, we propose a novel clustering criterion which combines the frequency and time activation part of NMF. It is based on the linear predictive coding compression error and we show that it allows a good clustering of the NMF components while at the same time can be efficiently computed. Our new clustering criterion shows an overall improved performance compared with the current state-of-the-art clustering algorithms as we experiment on the TRIOS dataset.


In this article the figure of a brilliant surgeon Guillaume Dupuytren (1777-1835) is presented, taking into consideration his influence on surgery development. Guillaume Dupuytren was a man of genius, perfect specialist, charismatic lecturer. On the other hand, he was eccentric, despotic, difficult in cooperation, persecuted by obsession of power and applause "brigand of Hotel Dieu". His contribution to progress of operative treatment is invaluable: to start with hygienic rules and nutrition introduced to surgical ward through methods of classification and treatment of burns to end with many pioneer solutions in general and orthopedic surgery. Guillaume Dupuytren was an outstanding and colorful personality who rose from poverty and obscurity to wealth and international fame as a leading surgeon of Paris. Guillaume Dupuytren was born in 1777 in Pierre-Buffiere, a small village in France. Dupuytren's education in Paris was filled with lots of sacrifices, because of his poverty at this time. He started his adventure in science world when he was 17 and became supervising prosector in medical school. When he started working in Hotel Dieu hospital, his career gathered speed, so to say, and he became a chef of surgery 12 years later. From that point he reigned supreme at Hotel Dieu for almost 30 years. He induced primary rules to his ward: hygienic and dietetic. For saving Louis's XVIII nephew's life the king gave him the baron title. Dupuytren evolved in many different branches of medicine, from the treatment of cholera and vaginitis, ingrown toe nail to the management of war wounds. In Paris not only his surgical achievements were known, but also his maelstroms in personal life: he called off his wedding the night before it should have taken place. His disputes with other famous surgeons became a legend, eg.: battle of slanders with Lisfranc. Dupuytren's personalisty was so interesting that it became an inspiration for Balzac to describe it in his novel 'The Atheist's Mass'. The famous Parisian surgeon was depicted as a character called Desplein. In spite of being cold and ruthless to his co-workers and rivals, he was known for his charity to the poor. He run free clinic for all the destitude. The twilight of titan's work came when in 1833, while lecturing, he had a stroke. After the stroke he was forced to take a leave of absence (in 25 years he missed hardly a day). Dupuytren died on 8th February, 1835.


Snow algae inhabit most of the cold regions worldwide, where long-lasting snow fields are common. The ecophysiology of snow algae has been studied intensively in North America and occasionally in polar regions. In the European Alps, the systematics of snow algae have been studied mainly by light microscopy. We studied temperature and light-dependence of photosynthesis, and plastid and extraplastid red pigment composition of red snow algae (Chlamydomonas nivalis) from snow patches in the high Alps of Austria. Both photosynthetic and respiratory data support the cryophilic adaptation of snow algal cells, but C. nivalis produced oxygen without any inhibition at temperatures up to 20°C and maintained this for 1 h, at irradiances up to 1800 µmol m−2s−1. Chlorophyll and primary carotenoid pigment composition was similar to that found in most other Chlorophyta. Additionally, large amounts of free and esterified astaxanthin were located in cytoplasmic lipid globules. Light and electron microscopy showed that the cell walls were frequently covered with tightly bound inorganic particles. Occasionally fungus- or bacteria-like structures were attached to the wall. The typical adult cell contained a single central chloroplast. Cytoplasmic structures were often difficult to resolve optically, as densely packed peripheral lipid globules, containing secondary carotenoids, occupied most of the cell volume. These pigments may shield the chloroplast from high irradiation (thus reducing the risk of photoinhibition) and may also be a potential carbon source during unfavourable climate conditions or the formation of daughter cells.


Macroscale carbon nanotube (CNT) architectures such as films and fibers have superior properties and promising application prospects. We synthesize large-area transparent, highly conductive and strong single-walled carbon nanotube(SWNT) films through floating catalyst CVD method, and perform series researches to their physical properties. The correlation between the properties of films and fibers with that of individual carbon nanotubes is also explored. Based on the synthesized SWNT films, macroscale SWNT fibers are fabricated through a twisting process. We record the Raman spectra when the films and fibers are strained, and analyze the micromechanical process based on the change of G' Raman mode, propose the concept of strain transfer factor and its influence on the mechanical performance of macroscale SWNT architectures. By infiltrating polymer molecules into the interspace of the continuous carbon nanotube network, we fabricate novel high-strength composite fibers. Their mechanical properties are tested and correlated with the micromechanical process. We compare the microscale load-transfer manner of such continuous CNT network based composite with that of discrete CNT reinforced composites, and point out the invalidity of rule of mixture coming from traditional composite theory when it is used to predict the mechanical properties of CNT reinforced composites.


Aim: The aim of the present study is to examine the different malformations of Central Nervous System in perinatal autopsy and to study other associated lesions/syndromes if any.
Materials and Methods: This study includes perinatal autopsies carried out in the pathology department of a tertiary care centre over a period of two years from June 2016 to May 2018.Total 200 perinatal autopies were performed after taking informed consent of parents according to standard protocol.
Results: Out of 200 perinatal autopsies 14 cases showed rare CNS malformationin which 9 cases were associated with other anomalies. All the cases were of intrauterine death (induced or spontaneous). Gestational age ranged between 12-40 weeks. Weight of the foetuses ranged between 500g-2000g.
Conclusion: Even though the prenatal ultrasonogram reasonably predicts the malformations, autopsy at times provides additional information and to confirm the diagnosis or indicate a syndrome. Primary prevention of CNS malformations can be improved in our country by proper antenatal checkups, maternal nutrition (folic acid supplementations) and genetic counselling plays a vital role in reducing the congenital malformations (in particular CNS) and future recurrences.

Keywords: Central nervous system, Malformations, Perinatal autopsy.


As the climate is changing, large changes in vegetation distribution are already taking place and expected to happen in the future. Our goal is to explore the links between climate and vegetation, and build a predictive model mapping climatic conditions to vegetation cover, based on global remote sensing data. The main challenge is that many areas in the world are already significantly impacted by human activities, and natural mosaic of vegetation is altered, which makes natural vegetation data incomplete and increasingly inaccurate after fractions of agricultural and urban activity are removed. Here we employ multi-output feedforward neural networks for predicting natural vegetation cover from local climatic conditions. We conduct experiments to evaluate how accurate predictions of the vegetation fraction can be and how they are affected by human-altered observations. Results show that it is possible to make such predictions with high accuracy even if the training data are incomplete.


Professional scientific societies, such as the American Association for Agricultural Education (AAAE), have not been immune to struggles with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even as it has come to the forefront of national conversation. In response to the 2017-2020 AAAE Strategic Plan, specifically goal one to build a more inclusive culture within the society, this study describes members' perceptions of organizational climate regarding diversity and inclusion within the AAAE organization. This manuscript reports the quantitative survey findings from the AAAE membership to determine perceptions of opportunities and barriers for participation in AAAE, as well as perceptions of AAAE's progress toward diversity and inclusion. Data are provided as a benchmark to describe the membership demographics of the organization. Member perceptions of opportunities to share diverse perspectives, become involved in leadership, and to be awarded and recognized by AAAE are varied. Many barriers to engagement in AAAE seem to create a dichotomy between persons who feel fully included and those who do not in the organization. Over half of the respondents do not consider AAAE's membership to be diverse. Perceptions of progress toward diversity and inclusion across the dimensions of sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disciplinary focus, gender/gender identity, faculty rank, race/ethnicity, institution type, and religious representation reveal some areas of success and opportunities for growth in the organization. The profession should be challenged to examine how our practices and scholarship may perpetuate exclusivity as AAAE works toward meeting the goal of building a more diverse and inclusive culture within the society.


The Roma are both the largest 'minority' ethnic group in Central and South Eastern Europe and the one which suffered most from transition to the market. Still today, nearly forty years after the introduction of the EU's 1975 Discrimination Directive and with the end of the 'Roma Decade' (2005-15) in sight, people from the Roma minority have unemployment rates far above – and employment rates and wages far below – those of majority populations. One issue which has received relatively attention concerns the 'double' discrimination facing Roma women. Not only do Roma women face poorer employment and wage outcomes in the labour market than non-Roma women, in most CSEE countries the gender wage gap is significantly larger amongst Roma compared to non-Roma. This paper seeks to analyze and explain differences in the gender gap in the wages amongst Roma. The paper employs a non-parametric matching approach to identify the main factors underlying the gender wage gap. Educational attainment plays a relatively small role, explaining only around one-fifth of the gap. Industrial and occupational segregation appear to be playing a strong role as does the civil status of individuals, household socioeconomic status and whether individuals living in a predominantly Roma community.


Curcumin is the active ingredient present in the roots and rhizomes of the tropical plant known as Curcuma Longa (Turmeric). Scientific research has identified curcumin to possess various pharmacological properties including, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities. This novel research focused on investigating the advantageous properties of curcumin in combination with current therapeutic options for the treatment of conditions of an inflammatory nature such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and cancer, specifically, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).
Previous microarray results from our laboratory was able to identify a set of 74 genes which were differentially expressed in untreated human fibroblast-like synoviocytes isolated from RA patients (HFLS-RA), methotrexate (MTX) and curcumin treated cells, individually and in combination. From this list, 13 genes were selected for further qRT-PCR analysis due to the established role they play in the process of inflammation. The change in expression of these 13 candidate genes were monitored in order to investigate the efficacy of curcumin as a therapeutic agent whilst identifying potential therapeutic biomarkers for the treatment of these inflammatory conditions.
HFLS-RA cells were treated with curcumin and MTX, individually and in combination. The novel finding from this study highlighted that individual treatment with curcumin was the most effective since it lowered the expression of 11 out of the 13 candidate genes. The levels of CD248, HSPA6, MMP1, MMP13 and TNFSF10 were sharply downregulated across all treatment conditions, allowing the identification of potential therapeutic targets for intervention in RA. As normal synoviocytes (HFLS) were also studied alongside HFLS-RA cells, it was possible to also identify potential diagnostic biomarkers for RA. The expression of CD248, HSPA6, MMP1, MMP13 and TNFSF10 was significantly higher (p < 0.001) in HFLS-RA cells compared to normal synoviocytes (HFLS). This highlighted the use of these genes as potential diagnostic biomarkers as they were suggested to play a role in the pathogenesis of RA.
A549 lung carcinoma cells were treated with curcumin and cisplatin, individually and in combination. Curcumin treatment alone was the most effective and downregulated the expression of 11 inflammatory response genes studied, ANGPTL7, CD248, CH25H, COL14A1, CXCL12, HSPA6, IFITM1, IL-7, MMP1, MMP13 and TNFSF10. Cisplatin was only able to decrease the expression of 7 genes, however, in combination with curcumin, a total of 9 genes were downregulated. Curcumin was able to work in synergy with cisplatin in order to potentiate the effects of this cytotoxic agent and help to overcome cisplatin-resistance mechanisms. U87-MG glioblastoma cells were treated with curcumin and TMZ, individually and in combination. Curcumin lowered the expression of 10 candidate genes compared to TMZ which downregulated 8. Combination treatment was the most effective as it decreased the expression of ANGPTL7, CD248, CH25H, COL14A1, CXCL12, CYTL1, IFITM1, IL-6, IL-7, MMP1 and TNFSF10. The use of curcumin in combination with TMZ sensitises glioma cells to the activity of TMZ, thereby increasing the therapeutic potential of the drug.
Curcumin was able to specifically target mediators involved in the inflammatory pathway, and so the use of this natural compound for RA, NSCLC and GBM can improve the efficacy of current therapeutic options, limit undesirable side effects and help to overcome resistance mechanisms deployed by the cells.


Universities are trying to push forward the limits of the teaching process they offer, implementing an e-Learning solution is mandatory. Regarding the costs, e-Learning technologies are savings of approximately 30% and could be achieved by using standards (SCORM, AICC, IMS), content packages and course scenarios tailored on the specific matter. To have a complete success story we will have to mark all the key elements regarding; human side, machine, educational process and organizational management.
Teachers at firs find difficult to cope with the emerging technologies, but after a short training, following some good practice examples all the questions on "how to do it" or "where do I find it" are gone.
The infrastructure implemented is built on creating content in-house, courses developed by teachers in a reasonable and expeditious manner. The goal is to have a flexible and secure infrastructure capable of accommodating future technical changes to increase productivity, improve quality of the teaching/learning process and feeding students needs of knowing and achieving their goals.
Building on a good strategy, the outcomes are yet to come after some time. The present days students are more involved in online interaction with the teachers using the internet or the mobile technology, asking more and more content, now depends on teachers vision how to provide them good learning objects, a good lecture planing and assessments. The teaching materials could have different data format, but these days any device connected to the internet could display any document format.
The focus is on improving hardware performance regarding the new shape of the infrastructure.


The protein score reflects its amino acids (AA) content in comparison with the ideal protein. However, when there is a need to know the use of AA by the organism it is necessary to do a correction of the score value by protein digestibility (PDCAAS). Since this information is not available for usually consumed foods, the present work aimed at calculating the PDCAAS values of these foods. The score was calculated the limiting AA of 70 foods, taking as reference protein the AA pattern for children > 1 year old and adults proposed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for the year 2002. The PDCAAS value was obtained in each case by multiplying the score value by the digestibility index. For vegetable foods the obtained score values and PDCAAS were, respectively: vegetables 88.5% / 73.4%, tubercles 89.44% / 74.24%, fresh fruits 75.6% / 64.3%, dried fruits 65.6% / 48.1%, legumes in general 89.2% / 69.58%, chickpea and soybean 100% / 78%, cereals and derivatives 68.8% / 58.5%. Creation of table that contents the score values, digestibility values, and PDCAAS of foods is a useful tool when food selection for a dietary plan based on its protein quality is desirable.


The Palaeozoic Era is a particularly interesting period of Earth history, as it includes the formation and northward movement of a supercontinent (Pangea), dramatic climatic changes and global biotic catastrophes. Here, we analyse the palaeobiogeographical distribution of the discinid brachiopod genus Orbiculoidea and discuss its distributional patterns in light of the environmental changes that occurred throughout the Palaeozoic and the Triassic. Our results indicate that the distribution of the genus seems to have been controlled mainly by the palaeogeographical framework and by global climate change. Importantly, its spatial pattern appears to directly respond both to the formation and northward movement of Pangea and to global temperature fluctuations during the Palaeozoic. In conjunction with these two global parameters, it is likely that the distribution of Orbiculoidea was also affected by regional factors, including the presence of oceanic upwelling as well as the development and demise of continental shelves and seaways.


Distant supervision significantly reduces human efforts in building training data for many classification tasks. While promising, this technique often introduces noise to the generated training data, which can severely affect the model performance. In this paper, we take a deep look at the application of distant supervision in relation extraction. We show that the dynamic transition matrix can effectively characterize the noise in the training data built by distant supervision. The transition matrix can be effectively trained using a novel curriculum learning based method without any direct supervision about the noise. We thoroughly evaluate our approach under a wide range of extraction scenarios. Experimental results show that our approach consistently improves the extraction results and outperforms the state-of-the-art in various evaluation scenarios.


Although there is a strong consensus on the need to digitize the economy, countries face challenges of allocating limited resources. Therefore, each country needs to identify a focus area for the development of the digital economy and align its limited resources strategically on building related infrastructure and capacity. The objective of the article is to identify the focus of digital economy development for Vietnam. The article bases on the digital economy development framework proposed by Huawei and Arthur D Little to analyze the situation of Vietnam, determining the current digital economy archetype and the target archetype in the future for the country. The article also proposes overall policy-oriented solutions for Vietnam to continue to efficiently exploit the current digital economy archetype and gradually shift to an alternative archetype in the future.


High regard for the natural environment is a value which is widely accepted and declared by Polish society. However, this positive attitude toward nature does not fully correspond with actual choices of environmental values and environmentally friendly consumer behavior.
This article is an attempt to determine the environmental awareness of inhabitants of rural areas of the Chojniki powiat (county) located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. The study was conducted in the second quarter of 2014 using the diagnostic poll method, which included 224 rural inhabitants. The study shows that only a small percentage of inhabitants of rural areas make the type of environmentally-friendly choices in their everyday lives which would make them environmentally conscious consumers.


This PhD explores adult rape and sexual assault trials; investigating trial practices, examining how court contexts impact on those practices, and identifying potential ways to improve responses to victim/survivors. The research is important because criminal justice responses to rape and sexual assault have been critiqued for decades, both in England and internationally. Despite attempts to tackle these problems, Stern (2010) observes that victim/survivors still face many difficulties when engaging with the Criminal Justice System. This is especially true of courts, which have been slower to respond to policy and have been the focus of less research than the earlier criminal justice stages. The court research that does exist tends to rely on interviews and is largely outdated by recent policy initiatives. This PhD therefore uses trial observation methods, providing an insight into what is actually happening at court and addressing a gap in the literature. The main findings are: difficult practicalities, barristers focusing on rape myths and 'rational' ideals, and using manipulative questioning caused by various competing 'justice' priorities. These findings support my thesis that victim/survivors face many difficulties at trial; and that these difficulties often relate to the underlying context of the Criminal Justice System rather than being solely about sexist attitudes or misunderstandings about sexual violence. This research can therefore help create more effective policy recommendations by tackling the contextual barriers to implementation. Key examples of this include that while the research supports ongoing training about the realities behind rape myths for legal professionals, it argues that such training will be ineffective without also providing barristers with practical ways to tackle the rhetoric about 'rational' ideals. Similarly, the findings suggest that policy might be undermined by certain interpretations of the right to fair trial, so there is a need to clarify the discourses around victim/survivors' and defendants' rights.


We consider bargaining problems in which parties have access to outside options, the size of the pie is commonly known and each party privately knows the realization of her outside option. We allow for correlations in the distributions of outside options. Parties have a veto right, which allows them to obtain at least their outside option payoff in any event. Besides, agents can receive no subsidy ex post. We show that inefficiencies are inevitable whatever the exact form of correlation, as long as private information is dispersed. We also illustrate how veto constraints differ from ex post participation constraints.


Compliance issues impose significant management and reporting requirements upon organizations. We present an approach to enhance business process modeling notations with the capability to detect and resolve many broad compliance related issues. We provide a semantic characterization of a minimal revision strategy that helps us obtain compliant process models from models that might be initially non-compliant, in a manner that accommodates the structural and semantic dimensions of parsimoniously annotated process models. We also provide a heuristic approach to compliance resolution using a notion of compliance patterns. This allows us to partially automate compliance resolution, leading to reduced levels of analyst involvement and improved decision support.


Changes in the composition of gut microbiota, and their metabolic pathways, are important factors in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Many clinical trials have shown that taking probiotics based on Lactobacillus has a positive effect on patients with IBD. However, Lactobacillus should be used more carefully during the active phase of IBD, since some strains can negatively affect the pathogenesis of the disease1,2. The aim of this study was to assess the diversity of Lactobacillus species in the gut microbiome of IBD patients and healthy volunteers.

 In the study, 62 stool samples from healthy people, 31 from patients with Crohn's disease (CD), and 34 - ulcerative colitis (UC) in active phase were analyzed. DNA was isolated using the QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit (Qiagen, USA) following with shotgun metagenomic sequencing the NextSeq 500 (project #0671-2020-0058). Bioinformatic analysis was performed with the MetaPhlAn2 package.

 An increased relative abundance of Lactobacillus was found in patients with IBD (3.2% ± 6.6% in CD and 1.6% ± 2.8 in UC) compared to healthy individuals (0.3% ± 1.2%, p<0.05).
 In the control group, Lactobacillus were absent in 41% of samples and 1–5 species were found in 58% of samples. Most CD and UC patients are characterized by the presence of 3 to 5 species of Lactobacillus (38% and 31%, respectively). For 23% of CD patients and 26% of UC patients, 6 to 9 types of Lactobacillus were found. Some patients with IBD have more than 10 different types of Lactobacillus in the gut microbiota (Fig.1).
 The intestinal microbiota in IBD patients is characterized by an increased abundance of several species: L. salivarius, L. gasseri, L. mucosae, as well as L. casei paracasei in patients with CD and L. vaginalis in patients with UC (Fig.2).

 The composition of the intestinal microbiota of IBD patients differs significantly in terms of Lactobacillus proportion and species diversity. Overabundance of five Lactobacillus species could be associated with the active phase of IBD.


A variety of next-generation energy processes utilize the electrochemical interconversions of dioxygen and water as the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Reported here are the first estimates of the standard reduction potential of the O2 + 4e(-) + 4H(+) ⇋ 2H2O couple in organic solvents. The values are +1.21 V in acetonitrile (MeCN) and +0.60 V in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), each versus the ferrocenium/ferrocene couple (Fc(+/0)) in the respective solvent (as are all of the potentials reported here). The potentials have been determined using a thermochemical cycle that combines the free energy for transferring water from aqueous solution to organic solvent, -0.43 kcal mol(-1) for MeCN and -1.47 kcal mol(-1) for DMF, and the potential of the H(+)/H2 couple, - 0.028 V in MeCN and -0.662 V in DMF. The H(+)/H2 couple in DMF has been directly measured electrochemically using the previously reported procedure for the MeCN value. The thermochemical approach used for the O2/H2O couple has been extended to the CO2/CO and CO2/CH4 couples to give values of -0.12 and +0.15 V in MeCN and -0.73 and -0.48 V in DMF, respectively. Extensions to other reduction potentials are discussed. Additionally, the free energy for transfer of protons from water to organic solvent is estimated as +14 kcal mol(-1) for acetonitrile and +0.6 kcal mol(-1) for DMF.


The objectives of this article are to understand the effects of stressors (nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug, exercise, and pregnancy) and components in the diet, specifically prebiotics and probiotics, on intestinal barrier function. Stressors generally reduce barrier function, and these effects can be reversed by supplements such as zinc or glutamine that are among the substances that enhance the barrier. Other dietary factors in the diet that improve the barrier are vitamins A and D, tryptophan, cysteine, and fiber; by contrast, ethanol, fructose, and dietary emulsifiers increase permeability. Effects of prebiotics on barrier function are modest; on the other hand, probiotics exert direct and indirect antagonism of pathogens, and there are documented effects of diverse probiotic species, especially combination agents, on barrier function in vitro, in vivo in animal studies, and in human randomized controlled trials conducted in response to stress or disease. Clinical observations of benefits with combination probiotics in inflammatory diseases have simultaneously not appraised effects on intestinal permeability. In summary, probiotics and synbiotics enhance intestinal barrier function in response to stressor or disease states. Future studies should address the changes in barrier function and microbiota concomitant with assessment of clinical outcomes.


Two rationally designed β-carboline–imidazopyridine hybrid chromofluorescent sensors S1 and S2 have been successfully synthesized and evaluated for the selective sensing of metal ions and anions. The synthesized sensors selectively sense copper ions through a significant color change from colorless to yellow along with a shift in their absorption spectra and enhancement in their emission intensities to 'turn on' the fluorescence mode in preference to other metal ions. Moreover, sensors S1 and S2 also recognize fluoride ions via H-bond interaction and subsequent deprotonation to elicit a color change from colorless to yellow conspicuous to the naked eye. Detailed UV-visible analyses revealed that the sensors interact with copper ions in a 1 : 1 binding stoichiometry with a detection range of 10−7 M. In addition, competing binding studies by UV-visible analyses revealed that the sensors exhibit more selectivity toward copper ions in comparison to fluoride ions. These experimental results were further corroborated by DFT (Density Functional Theory) calculations.


The present study is aimed to carry out the impact of early cleavage over late cleavage in assessing the pregnancy outcome using of Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) in assisted reproductive technologies. Materials and Methods A total of 154 patients enrolled for Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) fulfilling the selection criteria were recruited for the study at a tertiary care assisted reproductive centre. ICSI was performed 3–5 h after oocyte aspiration with the prepared sperm. All embryos were checked for early cleavage at 27 hours post intra cytoplasmic sperm injection. They were divided into two groups. Group IEmbryos which cleaved before 27 hours after Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). Group II- Embryos which cleaved after 27 hours. The pregnancy rates were compared between the two groups. Results: All the 154 patients were analysed. There was no difference in the mean age, duration of ovarian stimulation, number of oocytes retrieved, fertilization, cleavage rates and embryo quality between the two groups. Early cleavage was observed in 98 patients (63.64 %). Late cleavage was observed in 56 patients (36.36%). The clinical pregnancy was confirmed in 59 patients (60.20%) in Group I and 20 patients (35.71%) in Group II which was statistically significant P <0.001. Conclusion: Early cleavage is a strong predictor of embryo quality and can predict ICSI outcome.


The implementation of new curriculum at Keele University Medical School, UK has made heavy use of general practice as a locus for learning. This has necessitated a substantial expansion in the School's teaching network. The School's hinterland includes a large rural area with a number of excellent general practices and associated community hospitals that, to date, have been unable to teach undergraduates because of their inaccessibility. This article describes how the School and its partners articulated a vision to establish a rural campus with an associated rural accommodation hub, and the challenges involved in establishing and sustaining the campus.


A template-based lamination technique for the manufacture of ferroelectrets from uniform electret films was recently reported. In the present work, this technique is used to prepare similar ferroelectret structures from low-density polyethylene (LDPE) films and from fluoro-ethylene-propylene (FEP) copolymer films. A comparative analysis of the pressure-, temperature-, and frequency-dependent piezoelectric properties has been performed on the two ferroelectret systems. It is observed that the FEP ferroelectrets exhibit better piezoelectric responses and are thermally more stable. The difference between the piezoelectric d33 coefficients of the two ferroelectret systems is partially explained here by their different elastic moduli. The anti-resonance peaks of both structures have been investigated by means of dielectric resonance spectroscopy and electroacoustic sound-pressure measurements. A difference of more than 10 kHz is observed between the anti-resonance frequencies of the two ferroelectret systems.


The influence of exchange interaction on the transport properties of a two-dimensional diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum ring with finite width has been investigated in the presence of a uniform perpendicular magnetic field. The dependence of magnetoresistance on the magnetic field, Mn concentration, and quantum ring width are investigated. In the absence of exchange interaction, a typical beating pattern with well-defined node-positions in the oscillating magnetoresistance is observed. It was shown that in the present exchange interactions the beating pattern is destroyed.The influence of exchange interaction on the transport properties of a two-dimensional diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum ring with finite width has been investigated in the presence of a uniform perpendicular magnetic field. The dependence of magnetoresistance on the magnetic field, Mn concentration, and quantum ring width are investigated. In the absence of exchange interaction, a typical beating pattern with well-defined node-positions in the oscillating magnetoresistance is observed. It was shown that in the present exchange interactions the beating pattern is destroyed.


Media pressure on government and public administration has intensified radically in recent years. This article analyzes the behind-the-scenes processes of a strategic government pitch that aims to push the success and core values of Norwegian immigration policies in the media. The study brings attention to the complex and often conflicting demands on government officials engaged in proactive media strategies. It examines how the officials adapt to the news media logic, perceive the competition with other strategic actors, and simultaneously pay regard to the constraints inherent in a bureaucratic ethos. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article illuminates how bureaucrats legitimize proactive strategies; the risks involved; and how these strategies modify the distinctive roles of political leaders and civil servants, challenging traditional bureaucratic values such as impartiality, neutrality, and loyalty.


This report covers the fifth of a series of systematic investigations in which lateral control devices are compared with particular reference to their effectiveness at high angles of attack. The present report deals with tests of spoilers and ordinary ailerons on rectangular Clark y wing models. In an effort to obtain satisfactory control throughout the entire angle-of-attack range that can be maintained in flight, various spoilers were tested in combination with two sizes of previously tested ordinary ailerons - one of average proportions and the other short and wide. In addition, one large spoiler was tested alone. It was found that when ailerons and spoilers are used together the full effect of both is not obtained if the spoilers are located directly in front of the ailerons. With the proper combination of spoiler and aileron, however, it is possible to obtain satisfactory rolling control up to high angles of attack (15 degrees to 20 degrees), together with favorable yawing moments and small control forces. A moderate amount of rolling control with favorable yawing moments and small control forces was obtained with the large spoiler alone.


In this report, the concept of a cloud connected smart mobility platform is investigated focusing on enabling easy application development and deployment without vendor lock-ins via an open and multi-vendor environment. A prototype of the platform along with a simple cloud application are developed to verify the feasibility of a first instantiation of the platform and evaluate its potential according to the aforementioned elements. In addition, a recommendation to the VIBe initiative is proposed containing the necessary steps from strategic and technical perspective for VIBe and the region of Eindhoven with respect to smart technologies and especially, smart mobility.


Results from classic queueing theory are shown to be useful for capacity planning of largescale multi-server systems. In the field of mainframe systems on-line monitoring and dynamic workload management care for the fulfilment of short-term performance goals with respect to service class specific execution velocity, wait time and wait time percentiles. The same performance measures are useful for long-term capacity management. On the basis of wellknown approximate results for G/G/m queueing models we derive analytical formulas for the calculation of (global) steady state performance measures. We illustrate the usage of these formulas and show their application in the field of mainframe capacity planning.


The concrete's performance depends on its behavior in the fresh and hardened states, since the workability corroborates for the transport and application processes of the material, while the mechanical strength guarantees structural effectiveness and functionality. Generally, studies of nanosilica (nS) are focused on performance analysis in the hardened state and they are founded on the use of the mineral admixture in dry grains. Thus, this article aims to evaluate the effects of superplasticizer admixture use with nanosilica in colloidal suspension in the consistency and mechanical strength of the concrete. Two concrete mixtures were produced with the same materials and identical proportions, however with different superplasticizes, one with nanosilica (CnS) and the other without nanosilica (CC) used as reference to analyse the effects of the presence of mineral admixture in the development of the consistency and the mechanical strength of the concrete. For evaluation of these properties were carried slump tests as a function of time and compressive strength at 28 days, according to ABNT NBR 10342 and NBR 5739, respectively. The results showed that the concrete without nanosilica presented longer time available for handling, achieving 135 minutes, extending its period of slump loss for fifteen minutes besides the concrete with nanosilica, which reached 120 minutes; and, also presented higher slump values throughout the test, reaching up to 60.0 mm above at 75 minutes after the beginning of test. However, the CnS presented better performance in the hardened state, achieving the C70 high performance concrete class with 70.92 MPa; while the CC reached 65.57 Mpa, fitting within the C60 class.


AlGaInP-AlInP multiple quantum-well (MQW) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with n-type modulation-doped (MD) structure were grown by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy. Their characteristics were then evaluated using current-voltage (I-V), electroluminescence and output power measurements. Experimental results indicated that the LEDs exhibited a higher output power, a lower dynamic resistance, and a smaller wavelength variation than conventional LEDs. The n-type MD-MQW LEDs exhibited a higher external quantum efficiency (7.19%) and a larger maximum output power (14.84 mW) under the dc operation as compared to those of 6.73% and 12.55 mW for the conventional LEDs, respectively. This could be tentatively attributed to the better junction heating effect resulting from the n-type MD-MQW structure in which the electron thermal velocity is suppressed, especially at a high-level injection. These positive results could also be explained by the MD-MQW LED supplying a higher electron concentration than in the conventional structure.


Plants are crucial to our lives because they provide us with building materials, oxygen, and food. A season's crop yield can be significantly affected by local environmental factors. In particular, improving fundamental understanding of plant root interactions with their local soil environment, or rhizosphere, will help improve crop yield. Studying such interactions is challenging because roots are underground, making it difficult to observe interactions and to manipulate the local soil environment. The goal of this study was to develop an automated mini-channel platform to investigate how plant roots respond to changes in their environment using corn as a model plant. Considering the size of corn seedling roots, mini-channel devices were fabricated in soft lithography using master molds produced with a 3D printer and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Our use of a 3D printer instead of photolithography allowed for a broader range of PDMS mold designs, such as including embedded rubber gaskets built into the mold. Then, corn seedlings were grown inside the transparent mini-channel devices, and they were found to consume an observable amount of nitrate over time. Image processing was employed to measure the contour length of the roots for quantitative characterization of root growth. Then, an automated platform was developed to measure the growth rate of the corn seedling roots and the consumed nitrate over time. The automated platform maintained the level of growth medium in the channel device, and was equipped with a digital camera to image the root growing in the channel, electrochemical sensors to measure changes in nitrate concentration in the channel, and sensors to measure temperature and humidity. Therefore, the platform could automatically measure root growth while simultaneously measuring root environment. The platform's adaptable design, simple fabrication, and low cost make it simple to replicate and use to study different plants and environmental stimuli.


While most people are not familiar with the details of how artificial intelligence (AI) works, the term itself is becoming more familiar to the non-scientific community, to the point that it ("AI") has almost become part of the regular vernacular of the ordinary person. AI has been with us for a long time-from first beginnings in ancient times in the form of automatons and other devices mimicking humans or other animals, through the middle of the last century when the term "artificial intelligence was actually coined, to the present times where it (the label rather than the actual technology) is entering the psyche of the general public. This article explores the notion that the technology we call artificial intelligence is not yet ripe, but is establishing itself as a science in its own right, and that by 2156-the 200 year anniversary of the coining of the term-the technology should be in a position to deliver on its promises.


Objectives: A short cervix in mid-trimester is associated with an increased risk of preterm labour and birth. Use of the Arabin pessary is known to reduce the risk of preterm birth in such women. Several theories have been proposed to explain mechanism of action of the pessary when put to this use but there remains uncertainty around this. The underlying mechanism of preterm labour is multifactorial. The panacea for preterm labour prevention will likely need to address a lot of these factors. Knowing how the pessary works would be useful in focussing on other aspects of the multifactorial process, as a combination of these is likely to be needed in this panacea for preterm birth prevention. We put to the test some common hypotheses regarding mode of action of the pessary. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted for all women who had an Arabin pessary placed for prevention of preterm birth at a tertiary teaching hospital in Sydney between June 2018 and February 2020, and who met inclusion criteria. 32 such women were identified. Longitudinal study of ultrasound images of the cervix was conducted in these pregnancies, wherein cervical length, anterior utero-cervical angle and cervical thickness were studied pre-placement of the pessary, and then again at 2 and 4-6 weeks post-placement of the pessary. Interobserver consistency in these measurements was also studied. Results: There was a clear statistically significant change in the anterior utero-cervical angle before and after placement of the pessary. The direction of change cannot be determined by ultrasound Likewise, the cervical thickness was noted to increase over time. There was good inter-observer consistency in these observations. Conclusions: The pessary likely angulates the cervix relative to the lower uterine segment. There is a significant component of cervical edema generated by use of the pessary, which likely mechanically narrows the cervical canal, and possibly changes the cervical stromal composition and thereby its mechanical properties.


Author(s): Berndsen, Zachary | Advisor(s): Smith, Douglas E | Abstract: The high-density packaging of DNA in many viruses is a process that requires the action of powerful molecular motor complexes that couple the energy of ATP hydrolysis to the movement of DNA into the viral prohead. Besides being a key step in viral assembly, DNA packaging is a general model for understanding the physics of tightly confined polymers. A fundamental question raised in the literature is whether packaging can be modeled as a quasistatic thermodynamic process, in which the DNA relaxes quickly to equilibrium, or whether it involves nonequilibrium dynamics. The nature of the DNA dynamics at high prohead fillings and its relationship to the precise mechanochemical cycle of the packaging motor remain an open question. This work is aimed at investigating that relationship via single molecule optical tweezers experiments. In Chapter II I report the results of experiments in which we directly measure the packaging of single DNA molecules in bacteriophage phi29 with optical tweezers. Using a new technique in which we stall the motor and restart it after increasing waiting periods, we show that the DNA undergoes nonequilibrium conformational dynamics during packaging. We show that the relaxation time of the confined DNA is g10 min, which is longer than the time to package the viral genome and 60,000 times longer than that of the unconfined DNA in solution. Thus, the confined DNA molecule becomes kinetically constrained on the timescale of packaging, exhibiting glassy dynamics, which slows the motor, causes significant heterogeneity in packaging rates of individual viruses, and explains the frequent pausing observed in DNA translocation. These results support several recent hypotheses proposed based on polymer dynamics simulations and show that packaging cannot be fully understood by quasistatic thermodynamic models.In Chapter III I report evidence for an unconventional type of allosteric regulation of a biomotor. We show that the genome-packaging motor of phage phi29 is regulated by a sensor that detects the density and conformation of the DNA packaged inside the viral prohead, and slows the motor by a mechanism distinct from the effect of a direct load force on the motor. Specifically, we show that motor-ATP interactions are regulated by a signal that is propagated allosterically from inside the viral shell to the motor mounted on the outside. This signal continuously regulates the motor speed and pausing in response to changes in either density or conformation of the packaged DNA, and slows the motor before the buildup of large forces resisting DNA confinement. Analysis of motor slipping reveals that the force resisting packaging remains low (l1 pN) until ∼70% and then rises sharply to ∼23 pN at high filling, which is a several-fold lower value than was previously estimated under the assumption that force alone slows the motor. These findings are consistent with recent studies of the stepping kinetics of the motor. The allosteric regulatory mechanism we report allows double-stranded DNA viruses to achieve rapid, high-density packing of their genomes by limiting the buildup of nonequilibrium load forces on the motor.In Chapter IV I attempt to synthesize the previous chapters into a more unified picture and reflect on what I learned and the implications of our findings. I also discuss a few of the numerous projects that can expand upon the work already completed here, focusing particularly on using DNA ejection measurements to study DNA relaxation on much longer timescale than would be possible with single molecule experiments.


Introduction: In December 2013, our institution changed the target temperature management (TTM) for the first 24 h in ventricular fibrillation out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (VF-OHCA) patients from 33 ◦ C to 36 ◦ C. This study aimed to examine the impact this change had on measured temperatures and patient outcomes. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of consecutive VF-OHCA patients admitted to a tertiary referral hospital in Melbourne (Australia) between January 2013 and August 2015. Outcomes were adjusted for age and duration of cardiac arrest. Results: Over the 30-month period, 76 VF-OHCA cases were admitted (24 before and 52 after the TTM change). Patient demographics, cardiac arrest features and hospital interventions were similar between the two periods. After the TTM change, less patients received active cooling (100% vs. 70%, p < 0.001), patients spent less time at target temperature (87% vs. 50%, p < 0.001), and fever rates increased (0% vs. 19%, p = 0.03). During the 36 ◦ C period, there was a decrease in the proportion of patients who were discharged: alive (71% vs. 58%, p = 0.31), home (58% vs. 40%, p = 0.08); and, with a favourable neurological outcome (cerebral performance category score 1-2: 71% vs. 56%, p = 0.22). Conclusion: After the change from a TTM target of 33 ◦ C to 36 ◦ C, we report low compliance with target temperature, higher rates of fever, and a trend towards clinical worsening in patient outcomes. Hospitals adopting a 36 ◦ C target temperature to need to be aware that this target may not be easy to achieve, and requires adequate sedation and muscle-relaxant to avoid fever.


Abstract Exceptionally large teeth attributable to the theropod genus Troodon are abundant in Upper Cretaceous rocks (Campanian–Maastrichtian) of northern Alaska. The dominance of low-angle light in this Cretaceous high-latitude environment seems to have selected for an abundance of Troodon. The population of these Alaskan specimens— morphologically the same as teeth attributable to this taxon in other regions—show a mean approximately twice the size of those found in such southern latitudes as southern Alberta and Montana. Microwear patterns on the teeth of this taxon in Alaska and Montana suggest that these animals were eating similar food items. There appears to be good correlation between tooth size and body size in theropods, thereby allowing the inference that the increase in the size of Alaskan Troodon teeth equates to an increase in body size. The increased body size for Alaskan Troodon is likely related to increased availability of food resources as a result of decreased numbers of other predatory dinosaurs, particularly tyrannosaurids, in the ecosystem.


We present a search for decays of B mesons to final states with a b_1 meson and a ρ or K^*(892) meson. The search is based on a data sample consisting of 465 million BB pairs collected by the BABAR detector at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. We do not observe any statistically significant signal. The upper limits we set on the branching fractions range from 1.4 to 8.0×10^(-6) at the 90% confidence level, including systematic uncertainties.


The no-tillage system can change the nitrogen dynamics in the soil, being necessary to adjust the nitrogen fertilization in order to provide this nutrient during critical phases of the common bean growth. This study aimed at evaluating the agronomic and qualitative traits of common bean grown under different straw types, as a function of the topdressing nitrogen fertilization splitting. A randomized block experimental design, in a split-plot arrangement, with four replications, was used. The plots consisted of three straw types (maize, maize intercropped with brachiaria and brachiaria), while the subplots comprised the combination of these straw materials with 8 topdressing nitrogen fertilization splitting arrangements. The common bean on brachiaria straw shows higher grain yields and crude protein contents. The nitrogen fertilization splitting, as topdressing, interacts with the straw types, increasing the number of pods per plant. The common bean plants growing on plots with single-maize straw had a shorter time for maximum hydration. The topdressing nitrogen fertilization splitting has no effect on the common bean qualitative traits.


Congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) are rare and heterogeneous genetic diseases characterized by compromised neuromuscular transmission and clinical features of fatigable weakness; age at onset, presenting symptoms, distribution of weakness, and response to treatment differ depending on the underlying molecular defect. Mutations in one of the multiple genes, encoding proteins expressed at the neuromuscular junction, are currently known to be associated with subtypes of CMS. The most common CMS syndrome identified is associated with mutation in the CHRNE gene, causing principally muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptor deficiency, that results in reduced receptor density on the postsynaptic membrane. We describe the clinical, neurophysiological and molecular features of two unrelated CMS Italian families with marked phenotypic variability, carrying the already reported p.T159P mutation in the CHRNE gene. Our report highlights clinical heterogeneity, intrafamily variability in spite of the same genotype and a possible gender effect; it confirms the efficacy and safety of salbutamol in patients who harbor mutations in the epsilon subunit of acetylcholine receptor.


Two broken ball-mill liners from a copper-mine ore operation were submitted for failure analysis. These liners failed prematurely, having reached less than 20% of their expected life. The chemical composition of the liners was within specifications for high-chromium white cast iron. The two broken liners were sand blasted for visual inspection and subsequent metallography and hardness testing. Many cracks were found externally and on the undersides. There were also signs of mechanical damage that occurred inside the mill before detection of the failures. The underside cracking is significant because the user advised that the liners were not backed in the installation. Cracking was present in the microstructures of both liners. These cracks tend to fracture the brittle carbide phase first; once nucleated, the sharp cracks can propagate and grow to critical dimensions, which eventually induces complete failure to the load-bearing section. The premature failure of these liners was caused by severe localized overstress conditions due to localized impact in service. Proper backing of shell liners should be ensured to reduce the effect of impact forces in the ball mill.


In the Amundsen Sea, warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) intrudes onto the continental shelf and flows into the ice shelf cavities of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), resulting in high basal melt rates. This affects the world ocean in two ways: First, melting of the ice sheets contributes to changes in the global sea level. Given that most of the Antarctic ice sheet drains into ice shelves, which serve as buttresses to the ice flow, variations of ice shelf basal melting are an important component in the southern hemisphere's contribution to sea level rise. Second, ice-shelf meltwater is a freshwater source which may cause freshening of the shelf water locally in the Amundsen Sea as well as remotely in the Ross Sea. This may lead to a change in the characteristics of the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) formed in the Ross Sea and thus may influence the global thermohaline circulation as suggested by previous studies. Thus, investigations on possible connections between the melting of small ice shelves in West Antarctica and the large-scale ocean circulation are crucial for understanding climate change in the Southern Ocean.

We study these regions using the Finite-Element Sea ice-ice shelf-Ocean Model (FESOM). Like other global models resolving all the ice shelves around Antarctica, FESOM has been unable to reproduce a realistic CDW flow onto the Amundsen Sea continental shelf. This caused large uncertainties for FESOM's present-day simulations and future projections of ice shelf basal melting. Based on an extensive suite of sensitivity studies, we have now identified the most important ingredients to a faithful representation of Amundsen Sea hydrography in ocean general circulation models. To simulate the CDW intrusion through submarine glacial troughs in a way that closely matches the observations and to obtain realistic basal melt rates for the ice shelves in West Antarctica, a horizontal resolution of about 5 km or smaller is required. The choice of atmospheric forcing data is shown to be important; a cold bias in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis prevents warm CDW from intruding onto the continental shelf. The effect of grounded icebergs located off Bear Peninsula is minor but they may act as buffers in anomalously cold years.

It has been suggested that an increased melting of continental ice in the Amundsen and Bellinghausen Seas is a likely source of the observed freshening of Ross Sea water. To test this hypothesis, we simulate the spreading of glacial melt water. Based on the spatial distribution of simulated passive meltwater tracers, most of the basal melt water from Amundsen Sea ice shelves flows towards the Ross Sea, with more than half of the meltwater originating from the Getz Ice Shelf. Sensitivity studies show that already a slight increase of the ice shelf basal mass loss can substantially intensify the transport of melt water into the Ross Sea due to a strengthening of the melt-driven shelf circulation and the westward flowing coastal current. This supports the idea that the basal melting of Amundsen/Bellingshausen Sea ice shelves contributes substantially to the observed Ross Sea freshening.


Objective To know the opinion of adolescent school smokers about smoking cessation counseling and treatment, and to investigate whether negative opinion was associated with lack of motivation to stop smoking. Methods This was a cross-sectional study carried out in Goiás state, Brazil, with an intentional sample of adolescent students, in 2018. Poisson regression was used. Results One hundred and thirty adolescents took part. Most of them expressed a positive opinion on the three smoking cessation interventions surveyed: medical counseling (76.2%), dental counseling (70.0%), and smoking cessation treatment (66.2%). Negative opinions were more frequent among adolescents who were not motivated to stop smoking (p<0.05). Regression analyses revealed that lack of motivation to quit smoking was associated with a negative opinion about each intervention. Conclusion The adolescents had a positive opinion about counseling and treatment for smoking cessation in health services. Negative opinion was associated with lack of motivation to quit smoking.


Communication is integral to organizations and yet field evidence on the relation between communication and worker productivity remains scarce. We argue that a core role of communication is to transmit information that helps co-workers do their job better. We build a simple model in which workers choose the amount of communication by trading off this benefit against the time cost incurred by the sender, and use it to derive a set of empirical predictions. We then exploit a natural experiment in an organization where problems arrive and must be sequentially dealt with by two workers. For exogenous reasons, the first worker can sometimes communicate face-to-face with their colleague. Consistently with the predictions of our model, we find that: (1) the second worker works faster (at the cost of the first worker having less time to deal with incoming problems) when face-to-face communication is possible, (2) this effect is stronger when the second worker is busier and for homogenous and closely located teams, and (3) the (career) incentives of workers determine how much they communicate with their colleagues. We also find that workers partially internalise social outcomes in their communication decisions. Our findings illustrate how workers in teams adjust the amount of mutual communication to its costs and benefits.


Puerarin is a major effective ingredient extracted from the traditional Chinese medicine ge-gen (radix puerariae, RP). Recently, puerarin has been used to treat patients with coronary artery diseases (CAD). However, the mechanisms of puerarin on coronary artery diseases are still not very clear. In this study, we investigated the role of puerarin on angiogenesis in the non-ischemic and ischemic myocardium. We found that puerarin (120, 60 mg/kg, i.p.) could reduce infarct area in the heart of rat with myocardial infarction (MI). Puerarin (120 mg/kg) induced angiogenesis in the non-ischemic and ischemic myocardium, which was one of the mechanisms of curing coronary artery diseases. The gene expression or activation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), hypoxia-inducible factor 1alpha (HIF-1alpha) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) that correlated with angiogenesis were also induced by puerarin. From these results, we suggested that puerarin may induce therapeutic angiogenesis in myocardium of rat with MI. The mechanism may be that puerarin can induce VEGF and eNOS expression.


Background: Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) is among the important and popular interventions for the prevention of new HIV infections. The overall coverage of male circumcision is still low to some of the regions especially Katavi region The situation is worse among adults this is known due to high numberof young boysattending VMMC clinicsThis study assessed prevalence and factors affecting VMMC uptake among 20 years and older in Mpanda Municipal Council. Methods: Cross-sectional community based study was undertaken in Mpanda Municipal council in Katavi Region , from August 2017 toSeptember 2018.Multistage sampling was used to obtainvillages then households with study participants. A total of 570 men were interviewed. Quantitative data were analyzed using logistic regression. Results: Overall uptake of VMMC among men aged 20 years and older islow only (53.5%). Majority of respondents were knowledgeable on VMMC with 92.2% (525).However, more than half of the respondents393 (69%) know health benefits of VMMC andreported that HIV could be prevented through medical Male Circumcision. 508(88%) of the respondents reported that the service was accepted by the community. Regarding on the Factorsreportedto affect VMMCincludes servicesdiscourages men to take the services (P-value= 0.001), Services conducted in few days per week (special days) (P-value<0.001) and cultural beliefs of not taking circumcision(Pvalue=0.033.), services encourages other to go for the service (Pvalue <0.001). Regarding onhealth personnel negative behavior of not observing confidentiality(Pvalue 0.0250). Conclusion: In general, the Uptake of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision was found to be high as compared to the TACAIDS report of 2013. Few days of the service, Health workers behavior was among the factors showed significant association in VMMC service provision. Therefore, there is a need of addressingand strengthening VMMC in all health facilities and equip health facilities with adequate and competent health workers.


Simvastatin is one of the most widely used active pharmaceutical ingredients for the treatment of hyperlipidemias. Because the compound is employed as a solid in drug formulations, particular attention should be given to the characterization of different polymorphs, their stability domains, and the nature of the phase transitions that relate them. In this work, the phase transitions delimiting the stability domains of three previously reported simvastatin forms were investigated from structural, energetics, and dynamical points of view based on single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD), hot stage microscopy (HSM), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments (conventional scans and heat capacity measurements), complemented with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Previous assignments of the crystal forms were confirmed by SCXRD: forms I and II were found to be orthorhombic ( P212121, Z'/ Z = 1/4) and form III was monoclinic ( P21, Z'/ Z = 2/4). The obtained results further indicated that (i) the transitions between different forms are observed at 235.9 ± 0.1 K (form III → form II) and at 275.2 ± 0.2 K (form II → form I) in DSC runs carried out at 10 K min-1 and close to these values when other types of techniques are used (e.g., HSM). (ii) They are enantiotropic (i.e., there is a transition temperature relating the two phases before fusion at which the stability order is reversed), fast, reversible, with very little hysteresis between heating and cooling modes, and occur under single crystal to single crystal conditions. (iii) A nucleation and growth mechanism seems to be followed since HSM experiments on single crystals evidenced the propagation of an interface, accompanied by a change of birefringence and crystal contraction or expansion (more subtle in the case of form III → form II), when the phase transitions are triggered. (iv) Consistent with the reversible and small hysteresis nature of the phase transitions, the SCXRD results indicated that the molecular packing is very similar in all forms and the main structural differences are associated with conformational changes of the "ester tail". (v) The MD simulations further suggested that the tail is essentially "frozen" in two conformations below the III → II transition temperature, becomes progressively less hindered throughout the stability domain of form II, and acquires a large conformational freedom above the II → I transition. Finally, the fact that these transitions were found to be fast and reversible suggests that polymorphism is unlikely to be a problem for pharmaceutical formulations employing crystalline simvastatin because, if present, the III and II forms will readily convert to form I at ambient temperature.


Predictive dynamic simulation is a useful tool for analyzing human movement and optimizing performance. Such simulations do not require experimental data collection and provide the opportunity to analyze a variety of potential scenarios. This presents interesting possibilities for investigating the optimal technique in sports applications, such as cycling. Much of the previous research on modeling and simulation of cycling has focused on seated pedaling and models the bicycle or ergometer with an effective resistive torque and inertia. This study was focused on modeling standing starts, a component of certain track cycling events in which the cyclist starts from rest and attempts to accelerate to top speed as quickly as possible. A useful model would need to incorporate bicycle dynamics, including tire models, and complete cyclist dynamics, including the upper body. A ten degree-of-freedom, two-legged cyclist and bicycle model was developed using MapleSim and utilized for predictive simulations of standing starts. A joint torque model was incorporated to represent musculoskeletal dynamics, including scaling based on joint angle and angular velocity to represent the muscle force-length and force-velocity relationships. Tire slip for the bicycle model was represented by the Pacejka tire model for wheel-ground contact. GPOPS-II, a direct collocation optimal control software, was used to solve the optimal control problem for the predictive simulation. First, a modified version of this model was used to simulate ergometer pedaling. The model was validated by comparing simulated ergometer pedaling against ergometer pedaling performed by seven Olympic-level track cyclists from the Canadian team. A kinematic data tracking approach was used to assess the abilities of the model to match experimental data. Following the successful matching of experimental data, a purely predictive simulation was performed for seated maximal start-up ergometer pedaling with an objective function of maximizing the crank progress. These simulations produce joint angles, crank torque, and power similar to experimental results, indicating that the model was a reasonable representation of an Olympic cyclist. Subsequently, experimental data were collected for a single member of the Canadian team performing standing starts on the track. Data collected included crank torque, cadence, and joint kinematics. Predictive simulations of standing starts were performed using the combined cyclist and bicycle model. Key aspects of the standing start technique, including the drive and reset, were captured in the predictive simulations. The results show that optimal control can be used for predictive simulation with a combined cyclist and bicycle model. Future work to improve upon the current model is discussed.


In this paper, we propose a deep CNN to tackle the image restoration problem by learning the structured residual. Previous deep learning based methods directly learn the mapping from corrupted images to clean images, and may suffer from the gradient exploding/vanishing problems of deep neural networks. We propose to address the image restoration problem by learning the structured details and recovering the latent clean image together, from the shared information between the corrupted image and the latent image. In addition, instead of learning the pure difference (corruption), we propose to add a "residual formatting layer" to format the residual to structured information, which allows the network to converge faster and boosts the performance. Furthermore, we propose a cross-level loss net to ensure both pixel-level accuracy and semantic-level visual quality. Evaluations on public datasets show that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches quantitatively and qualitatively.


Objective—Our aim was to analyze the regulation of CC Chemokine ligand 20 (CCL20) by LDL in human vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). Methods and Results—In asymptomatic subjects, circulating CCL20 levels were higher in patients with hypercholesterolemia (18.5±3.2 versus 9.1±1.3 pg/mL; P<0.01). LDL induced the expression of CCL20 in VSMC in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Increased levels of CCL20 secreted by LDL-treated VSMC significantly induced human lymphocyte migration, an effect reduced by CCL20 silencing. The upregulation of CCL20 by LDL was dependent on the activation of kinase signaling pathways and NF-&kgr;B. By site-directed mutagenesis, electrophoretic mobility shift assay, and chromatin immunoprecipitation, we identified a NF-&kgr;B site (−80/−71) in CCL20 promoter critical for LDL responsiveness. Lysophosphatidic acid mimicked the upregulation of CCL20 induced by LDL, and minimal oxidation of LDL increased the ability of LDL to induce CCL20 through a mechanism that involves lysophosphatidic acid receptors. CCL20 was overexpressed in atherosclerotic lesions from coronary artery patients, colocalizing with VSMC. CCL20 was detected in conditioned media from healthy human aorta and its levels were significantly higher in secretomes from carotid endarterectomy specimens. Conclusion—This study identifies CCL20 in atherosclerotic lesions and recognizes this chemokine as a mediator highly sensitive to the inflammatory response elicited by LDL.


In this review we give an overview of the present status of research on carbon nanotube (CNT) field emitters and their applications. Several different construction principles of field–emission devices with CNTs are summarized. The emission mechanism is introduced and a detailed overview is given of the measured emission properties and related topics of CNT electron sources. We give also several examples of field–emission devices with CNT electron emitters that are presently being investigated in the academic world as well as in industry. Carbon nanotube electron sources clearly have interesting properties, such as low voltage operation, good stability, long lifetime and high brightness. The most promising applications are the field–emission display and high–resolution electron–beam instruments. But several hurdles remain, such as the manufacture of an electron source or an array of electron sources with exactly the desired properties in a reproducible manner.


OBJECTIVE
Ocular infections caused by human adenovirus are highly contagious and can cause outbreaks, especially in nursing homes. In this work, we describe the epidemiological and analytical research as well as the control measures carried out for a conjunctivitis outbreak.

METHODS
Descriptive epidemiological study. Cases with a symptom onset date prior to oficial communication were analyzed retrospectively. The rest was analyzed prospectively. Conjunctival smears were collected for microbiological study. Virological analysis was performed by detecting adenovirus by PCR and genotyping. A data questionnaire that collected clinical and epidemiological information was designed. Possible risk factors associated with infection were studied by calculating the Odds Ratio.

RESULTS
On June 11, 2019, the Epidemiological Surveillance Section of the Provincial Health Department of Albacete was notified of the existence of a large number of cases of conjunctivitis in a geriatric center. 54 cases were declared: 43 internal residents, 3 day center assistants and 8 workers. Attack rates were 35.8%, 12.5% and 8.4% respectively. Three risk factors were associated with the disease: patient´s lack of autonomy, being a resident at the nursing home and having their room assigned on the first floor. Human adenovirus serotype 8 was detected in the patients' samples.

CONCLUSIONS
A high attack rate was observed in internal residents and the disease was associated with patient´s lack of autonomy and having their room assigned on the first floor of the nursing home. The outbreak was caused by human adenovirus serotype 8.


Code injection attacks (CIAs) exploit security vulnerabilities and computer bugs that are caused by processing invalid codes. CIA is a problem which hackers attempt to introduce to any new method, their objective being to bypass the protection system. In this paper, we present a tool called GMSA, developed to detect a variety of CIAs, for example, cross-site scripting (XSS) attack, SQL injection attack, shell injection attack (command injection attack), and file inclusion attack. The latter consists of local file inclusion and remote file inclusion. Our empirical analysis reveals that compared with existing research, gathering multiple signatures approach (GMSA) executes a precision performance (accuracy of the proposed algorithm is 99.45%). The false positive rate (FPR) of GMSA is 0.59%, which is low compared with what other research has reported. The low FPR is the most important factor. Ideally, the defense algorithm should balance between the FPR and true positive rate (TPR) because with existing methodologies, security experts can defend against a broad range of CIAs with uncomplicated security software. Typical protection methods yield a high FPR. Our method results in high TPR while minimizing the resources needed to address the false positive. GMSA can detect four types of CIA. This is more comprehensive than other research techniques that are restricted to only two major types of CIA, namely, SQL injection and XSS attacks.


Livestock and grain market systems in Somalia's South West State, while vital to food security and household income, are affected by recurrent shocks, including insecurity, climate shocks, pests and livestock disease, desert locusts, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that markets continue to function indicates a substantial degree of resilience. Findings from a mixed-method assessment across eight domains of system resilience indicate that the grain market system is more resilient than the livestock market system in three key domains: business strategy, diversity, and connectivity. Results show that grain businesses recover more quickly and are more likely to take action to achieve recovery than livestock businesses. When confronted by thin markets, practitioners have tended to respond by strengthening existing market actors, with the goal of filling critical gaps in the market. However, our findings provide new types of information to address systemic issues and strengthen market system resilience.


Nigerians once trusted power cables to be safe and compliant with international standards. Today, however, the Nigerian market is rife with substandard cables, which may overheat, shoot out sparks, and cause fires. Power cables have been transformed from commodities with stable and precisely defined properties into entangled objects that can only be known through the actors accompanying them. Marketization scholarship has conventionally focused on efforts and investments to disentangle things from their networks of connections, affording less attention to the specifics of how entanglements are produced. This article examines the role of intermediation in creating entanglements and undermining market orders. The analysis first identifies intermediaries that endeavor to translate the market logic into concrete realities in Nigeria. The second and main part of the analysis draws upon data from ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria and China to assess how intermediaries destabilized the commodity of cables by forging new connections between traders and producers and by enabling inferior products to enter the market. The article proposes intermediation as a meso-level concept for connecting concrete and empirically observable events to theories of marketization. The approach moves marketization scholarship forward and away from its oft-vague operationalizations, while also suggesting new avenues for research on intermediation beyond the study of markets.


Understanding the response of leaf respiration (R) to changes in irradiance and temperature is a prerequisite for predicting the impacts of climate change on plant function and future atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Little is known, however, about the interactive effects of irradiance and temperature on leaf R. We investigated whether growth irradiance affects the temperature response of leaf R in darkness (Rdark) and in light (Rlight) in seedlings of a broad-leaved evergreen species, Quercus ilex. Two hypotheses concerning Rdark were tested: (1) the Q10 (i.e. the proportional increase in R per 10 degrees C rise in temperature) of leaf Rdark is lower in shaded plants than in high-light-grown plants, and (2) shade-grown plants exhibit a lower degree of thermal acclimation of Rdark than plants exposed to higher growth irradiance. We also assessed whether light inhibition of Rlight differs between leaves exposed to contrasting temperatures and growth irradiances, and whether the degree of thermal acclimation of Rlight is dependent on growth irradiance. We showed that while growth irradiance did impact on photosynthesis, it had no effect on the Q10 of leaf Rdark. Growth irradiance had little impact on thermal acclimation when fully expanded, pre-existing leaves were exposed to contrasting temperatures for several weeks. When Rlight was measured at a common irradiance, Rlight/Rdark ratios were higher in shaded plants due to homeostasis of Rlight between growth irradiance treatments and to the lower Rdark in shaded leaves. We also showed that Rlight does not acclimate to the same degree as Rdark, and that Rlight/Rdark decreases with increasing measuring and growth temperatures, irrespective of the growth irradiance. Collectively, we raised the possibility that predictive carbon cycle models can assume that growth irradiance and photosynthesis do not affect the temperature sensitivity of leaf Rdark of long-lived evergreen leaves, thus simplifying incorporation of leaf R into such models.


To mitigate environmental challenges and fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals, a broader and holistic ecological assessment is required. As a result, this research utilizes the load capacity factor, which is a distinct proxy of environmental deterioration that offers a detailed environmental evaluation measurement by comparing biocapacity and ecological footprint simultaneously. Moreover, the load capacity factor provides the combined attributes of the demand and supply-side of environmental quality. Therefore, this research scrutinized the effect of financial globalization, urbanization, economic growth, and renewable and nonrenewable energy usage on load capacity factor for the period stretching between 1970 and 2017 in Brazil. The bounds testing procedure for cointegration in combination with the critical approximation p-values of Kripfganz and Schneider (2018) disclosed a cointegrating association between load capacity and its regressors. The outcome of the ARDL method uncovered that economic growth, non-renewable and renewable energy reduce the load capacity factor, whereas urbanization has no impact on load capacity factor in Brazil. However, financial globalization has a positive effect on load capacity factor in Brazil. Finally, the study uses the spectral causality test to assess the causality interaction between the observed parameters. The policymakers should take advantage of the opportunity by developing policies that encourage the openness of the economy to foreign investors.


Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were widely used in numerous industrial and commercial applications in high quantities in the past. Based on their persistence in the environment, their tendency to accumulate in the organism and their specific health effects, PCBs have to be assessed as critical substances. Because the dietary intake was assumed to be the main intake route, the Integrated Exposure Assessment Survey (INES) aimed to measure the recent exposure to PCBs in Germany. The study consisted of 10 female and 10 male participants living in Munich and surroundings. The participants collected dietary duplicates of all food consumed and prepared as for consumption over 7 consecutive days. Altogether the 6 non-dioxin-like PCB congeners 28, 52, 101, 138, 153 and 180 ndl-PCB or, respectively, indicator PCB and furthermore the congener 118 were detected using a gas chromatographic method. Dietary intake was calculated using the amount of food eaten daily and the results from the duplicates. Using the sum of PCB 138, 153 and 180 multiplied by 4, the daily intake ranged from 4.0 to 24.1 ng/kg b.w. (median: 9.5 ng/kg b.w.). On the contrary, the daily intake was 2.9 to 20.6 ng/kg b.w. (median: 11.2 ng/kg b.w.) if the sum of the 6 indicator PCBs multiplied by factor 2 was used for quantification. No sex-related difference of the dietary intake was observable. Overall, it can be concluded that the dietary PCB intake has further decreased in the last years in Germany. At present, the toxicological database is not suitable to assess the risks coming solely from the non-dioxin-like PCBs because it is not possible to differentiate between non dioxin-like and dioxin-like effects in toxicological studies. Nevertheless, a further reduction of PCB exposure via food by searching for possible sources is needed.


Molecular dynamics computer simulations were used to study diffusion of calcium ions in calcium alumino-silicate (CAS) intergranular films (IGFs) connecting two differently oriented alumina crystals. Diffusion coefficients and the activation energy for Ca diffusion in different parts of the IGF were calculated over four different IGF systems. The simulation results show that the diffusion coefficients adjacent to the interfaces are smaller and the activation energies are much higher than those in the interior of the IGF and in bulk glasses. Ca diffusion is greatly affected by the ordered structures at the basal and prism interfaces, while it is only slightly affected in the interior of the IGF in comparison to bulk glass behavior. The activation energies for Ca diffusion in the bulk-simulated glasses are similar to that found experimentally and slightly lower in the interior of the same composition IGF. The results suggest that Ca transport is mainly though the interior of the IGF and implies that diffusion would be significantly inhibited by sufficiently thin IGFs.