Shreds of biopsied adult human jaw bones were divided into four groups that were each incubated together with borosilicate glass chips in one of four variants of DMEM expansion medium (i.e., with a high or low calcium complement and with or without sodium ascorbate added). The outgrown bone cells were propagated in secondary cultures kept in the same DMEM expansion medium variants prior to being transferred to a beta-glycerophosphate-enriched high-Ca2+ and ascorbate-containing DMEM mineralisation medium. In this latter medium the proliferation rates and the simultaneous expression of alkaline phosphatase by the four distinct groups of osteoblasts were assessed during 7 days of staying in vitro via biochemical methods. Human osteoblasts previously expanded in high-Ca2+ ascorbate-added DMEM medium were found to initially express a quite high alkaline phosphatase activity that subsequently declined, while their proliferative activity remained rather low. Conversely, osteoblasts formerly expanded in low-Ca2+ ascorbate-devoid DMEM medium exhibited minimal levels of alkaline phosphatase activity while simultaneously maximally proliferating in the mineralisation medium. Moreover, a mixture (1:1 v/v) of the DMEM mineralisation medium with Ham's medium (in which the aminoacid proline abounds) was found to accelerate, in comparison to DMEM alone, the intracellular type I procollagen synthesis, the extracellular assembly of type I collagen fibrils, and the calcification of the extracellular matrix by the human osteoblasts. Hence, the presence or absence of calcium and/or ascorbate in the expansion medium and of proline in mineralisation medium can significantly modulate the progression of human jaw bone cells from an undifferentiated highly proliferating condition to the mature osteoblastic phenotype.


 Abstract — Nowadays, the mathematical/statistical applications are developed with more complexity and accuracy. However, these precisions and complexities have brought as result that applications need more computational power in order to be executed faster. In this sense, the multicore environments are playing an important role to improve and to optimize the execution time of these applications. These environments allow us the inclusion of more parallelism inside the node. However, to take advantage of this parallelism is not an easy task, because we have to deal with some problems such as: cores communications, data locality, memory sizes (cache and RAM), synchronizations, data dependencies on the model, etc. These issues are becoming more important when we wish to improve the application's performance and scalability. Hence, this paper describes an optimization method developed for Systemic Model of Banking Originated Losses (SYMBOL) tool developed by the European Commission, which is based on analyzing the application's weakness in order to exploit the advantages of the multicore. All these improvements are done in an automatic and transparent manner with the aim of improving the performance metrics of our tool. Finally, experimental evaluations show the effectiveness of our new optimized version, in which we have achieved a considerable improvement on the execution time. The time has been reduced around 96% for the best case tested, between the original serial version and the automatic parallel version.


Background End-stage kidney disease (ESKD) has considerable effects on the quality of life, impairing daily activities and leading to lifestyle changes. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore the experience of motherhood and taking care of children in women with ESKD. Methods A qualitative exploratory study was conducted based on an interpretive framework. Participants were recruited using non-probabilistic purposeful sampling. In total, 14 women with ESKD were included, who were treated at the dialysis unit of a Spanish hospital. In-depth interviews (unstructured and semi-structured interviews) and researchers' field notes were used to collect the data. A systematic text condensation analysis was performed. The techniques performed and application procedures used to control trustworthiness were credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Results Three themes emerged from the data. "Coping with being a mother" described how women are faced with the decision to become mothers and assess the risks of pregnancy. The second theme, called "Children and the experience of illness", highlighted the women's struggle to prevent the disease from affecting their children emotionally or disrupting their lives. The third theme, "Fear of genetic transmission", was based on the women's fear of passing the disease on to their children. Conclusions Deciding to become a mother and taking care of children represents a challenge for women with ESKD, coupled with the losses in their lives caused by the disease. These findings are only relevant to women on dialysis.


The study was undertaken with the prime objective of assessing the impacts brought out by investments in Hawassa City. As the study is basically both empirical and analytical in nature, field survey method was adopted. The study considered only the projects which are operational and at implementation stages. Among the nine investment streams, investors from six streams had given consent to cooperate in the data collection process. Thus the total population for the sample purpose from six streams is 288. Out of 288 projects, 40 sample investors were selected on disproportionate to size sampling basis. Both primary and secondary sources were sought for data collection. Semi structured questionnaire was prepared and distributed among the sample investors. Interviews were conducted with officials of Hawassa City Investment and Environmental Protection Bureau. Focus group discussion was conducted among the dwellers residing near to factories. Descriptive statistical tools such as percentages, average and compound growth rate were used for data analysis. The findings of the study reveal that there is an uneven growth in number of projects and employment creation in Hawassa City. Service rendering stream is found to be dominant in employment creation followed by manufacturing and agro industry. All the sample industries were found to have permanent employees except trade. Majority of the investors attempted for product/service diversification due to investment and the main area preferred for diversification is hotel and tourism. Naturally harvested products were found to be dominant resources heavily depended by the investors. Manufacturing industries were found to be negligent in adhering to environmental standards. Most of the investment streams failed to have pollution control mechanism. Although the investment streams of Hawassa City seem environmental orientation, a lot has to be done on Environmental audit and management so as to minimize pollution from investments. Based on the problems observed through the survey findings, certain recommendations of policy implications have been forwarded to maximizing the contributions of investments in Hawassa City.


Background: Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) defines a heterogeneous class of children exhibiting marked impairment in motor coordination as a general group of deficits in fine and gross motricity (subtype mixed group) common to all research studies, and with a variety of other motor disorders that have been little investigated. No consensus about symptoms and etiology has been established. Methods: Data from 58 children aged 6 to 13 years with DCD were collected on DSM-IV criteria, similar to DSM-5 criteria. They had no other medical condition and inclusion criteria were strict (born full-term, no medication, no occupational/physical therapy). Multivariate statistical methods were used to evidence relevant interactions between discriminant features in a general DCD subtype group and to highlight specific co-morbidities. The study examined age-calibrated standardized scores from completed assessments of psychological, neuropsychological, and neuropsychomotor functions, and more specifically the presence of minor neurological dysfunctions (MND) including neurological soft signs (NSS), without evidence of focal neurological brain involvement. These were not considered in most previous studies. Results: Findings show the salient DCD markers for the mixed subtype (imitation of gestures, digital perception, digital praxia, manual dexterity, upper, and lower limb coordination), vs. surprising co-morbidities, with 33% of MND with mild spasticity from phasic stretch reflex (PSR), not associated with the above impairments but rather with sitting tone (p = 0.004) and dysdiadochokinesia (p = 0.011). PSR was not specific to a DCD subtype but was related to increased impairment of coordination between upper and lower limbs and manual dexterity. Our results highlight the major contribution of an extensive neuro-developmental assessment (mental and physical). Discussion: The present study provides important new evidence in favor of a complete physical neuropsychomotor assessment, including neuromuscular tone examination, using appropriate standardized neurodevelopmental tools (common tasks across ages with age-related normative data) in order to distinguish motor impairments gathered under the umbrella term of developmental coordination disorders (subcortical vs. cortical). Mild spasticity in the gastrocnemius muscles, such as phasic stretch reflex (PSR), suggests disturbances of the motor pathway, increasing impairment of gross and fine motricity. These findings contribute to understanding the nature of motor disorders in DCD by taking account of possible co-morbidities (corticospinal tract disturbances) to improve diagnosis and adapt treatment programmes in clinical practice.


watched for periods of two years or more in which the serum reaction remains consistently positive though the primary tube reaction is more or less in the normal zone, and in these so far there has been no evidence of clinical recurrence. The observations of Lockhart-Mummery and others have given very strong evidence that the local development of cancer depends upon an intrinsic gene instability of the cells affected, producing those mutations which result in dedifferentiation. If surgical treatment has successfully removed all such cells, it is quite feasible that further local cancer will not recur or develop, although the serum reaction of the patient remains positive, and thereby demonstrates that the normal somatic cytolytic defence is still defective. Such an unsatisfactory condition, however, leaves the patient open to the redevelopment of cancer elsewhere should a further gene mutation occur in another group of cells. During the past two years three such cases have been observed. In each there had been clinical evidence of improvement after the removal of the primary local cancer-breast, stomach, and cervix uteri respectively. In each the blood reaction continued positive, in each a further primary cancer ultimately developed, and in each it happened to be of the colon and sigmoid. The modified Bendien reaction has been shown in other publications to depend upon certain serum biochemical alterations which are also associated with deficiency of normal enzymic content of the blood serum, and that this is accompanied by a deficiency of that cytolytic defence which presumably under normal conditions destroys, by a process of cytolysis, the abnormal type of cell that results from the particular gene mutation producing dedifferentiation; and, experimentally, it has been shown that the recovery of a normal and negative reaction has been associated with re-establishment of a normal blood slrum enzyme content and evidence of immunity from recurrence of cancer. Any therapeutic treatment which is followed consistently by such a result would appear wortl while pursuing, and the results to which Dr. HernamanJohnson refers from his particular method of applicatior of x-ray treatment are definitely encouraging. Somewhal similar results are being obtained by various forms of injection treatment which are being employed in my owr clinics, but they must be observed over a longer period of time before evidence can be gained as to whether botl the clinical and the serological improvement are main. tained. The observations emphasize what is, I think, a growing consensus of opinion-namely, that the effective preven. tion and control of cancer recurrence necessitates that, a. soon as the requisite local surgical or radiological treatment has been carried out, every case of cancer should be considered an urgent medical problem, and that the state of constitutional deficiency which precedes the clinica. development of cancer and usually continues after its surgical removal should be rectified and maintainec normal by whatever therapeutic means shows this to be possible.-I am, etc.,


The purpose of this paper is to analyze the inadequacies of current business education in the tackling of the educational challenges inherent to the advent of a data-driven business world. It presents an analysis of the implications of digitization and more specifically big data analytics (BDA) and data science (DS) on organizations with a special emphasis on decision-making processes and the function of managers. It argues that business schools and other educational institutions have well responded to the need to train future data scientists but have rather disregarded the question of effectively preparing future managers for the new data-driven business era.,The approach involves analysis and review of the literature.,The development of analytics skills shall not pertain to data scientists only, it must rather become an organizational cultural component shared among all employees and more specifically among decision makers: managers. In the data-driven business era, managers turn into manager-scientists who shall possess skills at the crossroad of data management, analytical/modeling techniques and tools, and business. However, the multidisciplinary nature of big data analytics and data science (BDADS) seems to collide with the dominant "functional silo design" that characterizes business schools. The scope and breadth of the radical digitally enabled change, the author are facing, may necessitate a global questioning about the nature and structure of business education.,For the sake of transparency and clarity, academia and the industry must join forces to standardize the meaning of the terms surrounding big data. BDA/DS training programs, courses, and curricula shall be organized in such a way that students shall interact with an array of specialists providing them a broad enough picture of the big data landscape. The multidisciplinary nature of analytics and DS necessitates to revisit pedagogical models by developing experiential learning and implementing a spiral-shaped pedagogical approach. The attention of scholars is needed as there exists an array of unexplored research territories. This investigation will help bridge the gap between education and the industry.,The findings will help practitioners understand the educational challenges triggered by the advent of the data-driven business era. The implications will also help develop effective trainings and pedagogical strategies that are better suited to prepare future professionals for the new data-driven business world.,By demonstrating how the advent of a data-driven business era is impacting the function and role of managers, the paper initiates a debate revolving around the question about how business schools and higher education shall evolve to better tackle the educational challenges associated with BDADS training. Elements of response and recommendations are then provided.


INTRODUCTION Fat embolism is that condition which occurs when a liquid oil enters the circulating blood and is transported in globules large enough to obstruct the lumen of blood vessels in different parts of the body. It has been described frequently as an important complication of trauma in human beings, and occasionally may be severe enough to be a definite cause of death. Two well defined clinical and pathologic varieties of fat embolism are now recognized: (1) the pulmonary form, in which the emboli obstruct the smaller blood vessels of the lungs and produce symptoms of asphyxia, and (2) the cerebral form, in which the emboli gain entrance to the arterial circulation, block the arterioles in the different organs, especially the brain, and produce symptoms referable to the central nervous system. Fat embolism of a less serious nature has been found at necropsy not only in persons who have suffered


The development of fibers and adhesive systems with high durability has recently led to the creation of a new repair method of metallic structures, by the use of reinforcing patches made of composite materials. This technique is generally reported as "Composite patch repair" and provides very important advantages compared to the conventional methods of repairs. On the other hand, the technology of induction heating constitutes an innovative approach to achieve the supply of energy for the curing of resins or for the manufacturing of composite materials. In the case of resins, a ferromagnetic material must be imported into the resin, to produce the required heat. This may be achieved by importing a metallic grid in the resin. Moreover, this metallic grid, which remains inside the resin after the curing, may serve as sensor by analyzing its electrostatic properties, thus providing useful information about the structural integrity of the area (e.g. potential increase of the crack below a bonded composite repair). In this paper we present results concerning the strain sensing capabilities of amorphous magnetostrictive wires embedded in epoxy resin. The inverse magnetostrictive effect leads to a change of permeability of wires so that applied stress can change the impedance of the amorphous wires due to the skin effect with alternating current excitation. Two different types of sensing were used, contact sensing (attachment of the wire "gauge" to a sensing devise) and induction sensing (eddy current sensing probe).


The use of SiGe/Si heterostructures in the fabrication of electronic devices results in an improvement of the device performances with respect to bulk silicon. Ion implantation has been proposed as one of the possible technologies to produce these structures and, thus, the aim of this work is to develop an ion beam technology to fabricate strained SiGe heterostructures. The formation of extended defects in SiGe alloy layers formed by high dose Ge+ ion implantation followed by Solid Phase Epitaxial Growth (SPEG) has been investigated by transmission electron microscopy. Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy has also been used to determine the chemical composition and the crystalline quality of the synthesised structures. In addition, X-ray diffraction has been used to evaluate the strain level in selected samples. Two different structures have been studied in this project. The first consisted of "all-implanted" layers, where the Ge+ implants were followed in some cases by additional implants of Si+ and/or C+ ions, prior to SPEG, to investigate methods to inhibit defect formation. The second was achieved by capping the ion beam synthesised SiGe alloy layer by the deposition of a thin film of silicon, in order to realise structures compatible with device dimensions. Single crystal device worthy SiGe alloy layers have been achieved by implantation of Ge+ ions at energies ranging from 70 keV to 400 keV, where the only extended defects observed are EOR defects at a depth correspondent to the a/c interface formed during the Ge+ implant. In some cases, "hairpin" dislocations have also been observed in the vicinity of the EOR defects and extending up to the surface. Both types of defects are annihilated after post-amorphisation with 500 keV Si+ and replaced with dislocation loops at a depth of about 1 fj,m. For each Ge+ implantation energy a critical value of the peak germanium concentration exists above which the structures relax through the formation of stacking faults or "hairpin" dislocations nucleated in the vicinity of the peak of the germanium concentration depth profile and extending up to the surface. A critical value of the elastic energy stored in the structures (~300 mJ/m2) has been determined above which ion beam synthesised SiGe alloys relax, independently of the implantation energy. This empirical approach has been found to successfully account for the results obtained in this work as well as in many other studies reported in the literature. "Hairpin" dislocations formed under different experimental conditions have been investigated by plan view TEM and have been found to have the same crystallographic orientation () and Burgers vector (b= a ). Their formation has been explained within a "strain relaxation model". For a regrowth temperature of 700° C, all samples investigated by XRD have been found to be almost fully strained, including samples containing relaxation-induced defects, indicating that, under these conditions, the energy transferred to the defects is very low. C+ co-implantation has been successfully used to reduce both relaxation-induced defects and EOR dislocation loops. It is noted that a mixed technology entailing both layer deposition and ion implantation to produce the Si/SiGe/Si device structures requires extra process steps to control surface contaminations, pre cleaning and/or native oxide formation, resulting in increased fabrication costs. In this work an " all-implanted" route to the synthesis of Si/SiGe/Si device structures is therefore described, which exploits all of the advantages given by ion implantation.


The exponential modality of linear logic associates to every formula A a commutative comonoid !A which can be duplicated in the course of reasoning. Here, we explain how to compute the free commutative comonoid !A as a sequential limit of equalizers in any symmetric monoidal category where this sequential limit exists and commutes with the tensor product. We apply this general recipe to a series of models of linear logic, typically based on coherence spaces, Conway games and finiteness spaces. This algebraic description unifies for the first time a number of apparently different constructions of the exponential modality in spaces and games. It also sheds light on the duplication policy of linear logic, and its interaction with classical duality and double negation completion.


This dissertation is the first to investigate the relationship between weight misperceptions and adolescent body mass index (BMI), the importance of weight misperceptions as determinants of racial/ethnic disparities in BMI, the differential effect of weight misperceptions across the adolescent BMI distribution, as well as the importance of different measures of weight as determinants of adolescent risky sex, using a nationally representative panel of adolescents. The results suggest that weight under-perceptions are significantly associated with adolescent BMI even after controlling for time constant individual-level unobservables. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis shows that accounting for weight misperceptions, in addition to individual and contextual factors, increases the total explained portion of the black-white BMI gap but only slightly increases the total explained portion of the Hispanic-white gap. Individual level fixed effects quantile regressions show that weight under-perceptions are significantly associated with adolescent BMI, particularly for adolescents about at or above the 75th quantile. Analyses stratified by race/ethnicity and SES show complex patterns of associations. Turning to the relationship between measures of weight and adolescent risky sex, results show that youth who have actual weight categories or perceived weight categories that are seen as unattractive by their cultural/social group (i.e., overweight white and underweight black and Hispanic adolescents) are more likely to postpone sexual debut. Among sexually active adolescents, actual weight or perceived weight that is seen as unattractive by one's cultural/social group is associated with increased number of sex partners and with decreased odds of contraceptive use. School programs aimed at teaching correct weight identification and interpretation may be an invaluable tool in addressing both the obesity crisis and risky behavior prevention.


A novel photo-switchable polymer P-PHT containing diarylethene (DAE) and tetraphenylethene (TPE) moieties and a triazole linker in the repeating unit was synthesized to study the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behaviour of TPE with both the open and closed forms of DAE in P-PHT with high water contents. The photo-switching phenomena of DAE (from open to closed forms under UV-irradiation) in P-PHT were prominent in organic solvent (THF), high water contents (at 90% H2O) and acidic conditions. Upon UV-irradiation of P-PHT at 90% water content, the AIE of TPE was completely quenched via an energy transfer event from TPE to cyclized DAE. Interestingly, the rare monomeric emission of TPE was first discovered by the photo-cyclization of DAE in P-PHT compared with the AIE behaviour of TPE with the open form of DAE in P-PHT with AIE favourable conditions of high water content (90% H2O) and acidic conditions.


This paper evaluates the positioning of Vietnam in international trade. It addresses the key question of how Vietnam uses its participation in international trade agreements as a tool to ensure and advance national interest and security through increased economic power. The paper first examines how Vietnam participates in the international integration of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), and then looks at the importance for Vietnam to be outward-looking; that is, to participate in trade agreements outside the South-East Asian region. Finally, I examine how reforms required under international trade agreements push Vietnam into domestic economic reforms. My conclusion is that the political elite of Vietnam has identified trade, export-oriented growth and international economic integration as international policy preferences and has used international trade integration as a strategic instrument to maximise these national priorities within the regional and international trade system. Therefore, Vietnam has a very strategic view on international trade integration and uses it as an instrument to ensure its national interest and security through increased economic power. Through careful selection of trade agreements, Vietnam aims to position itself in a strategically advantageous position vis-à-vis other economies of the AEC, to ensure continued economic growth through preferential access to key markets and to push through some of the more difficult and sensitive domestic economic reforms, using its commitments under external trade agreements as a lock-in mechanism.


Membrane materials and polymer sorbents, polymers with highly developed free volume and specific surface, are of great technical importance. Positron annihilation lifetime (PAL) studies of these materials and some additional experiments give a chance to learn about the character of size distributions of elementary free volumes (EFV) of these materials. Particularly to answer the question whether the distributions of o-Ps lifetimes are of Gaussian type, as it is suggested in a number of publications, or they have some asymmetry or even some multi-component character, also to check some ideas on the ways of o-Ps trapping. In this aspect, large scale of o-Ps lifetimes (pore sizes) in these materials is very important, since enables comparison with the results of auxiliary techniques.


Nanopositioners are mechanical devices that can accurately move with a resolution in the nanometer scale. Due to their mechanical construction and the piezoelectric actuators popularly employed in nanopositioners, these devices have severe performance limitations due to resonance, hysteresis and creep. A number of techniques to control nanopositioners, both in open-loop and closed-loop, have been reported in the literature. Closed-loop techniques clearly outperform open-loop techniques due to several desirable characteristics, such as robustness, high-bandwidth, absence of the need for tuning and high stability, along with others. The most popular closed-loop control technique reported is one where a damping controller is first employed in an inner loop to damp the mechanical resonance of the nanopositioner, thereby increasing achievable bandwidth. Consequently, a tracking controller, typically an Integral controller or a proportional–integral controller, is implemented in the outer loop to enforce tracking of the reference signal, thereby reducing the positioning errors due to hysteresis and creep dynamics of the employed actuator. The most popular trajectory a nanopositioner is forced to track is a raster scan, which is generated by making one axis of the nanopositioner follow a triangular trajectory and the other follow a slow ramp or staircase. It is quite clear that a triangle wave (a finite velocity, zero acceleration signal) cannot be perfectly tracked by a first-order integrator and a double integrator is necessary to deliver error-free tracking. However, due to the phase profile of the damped closed-loop system, implementing a double integrator is difficult. This paper proposes a method by which to implement two integrators focused on the tracking performance. Criteria for gain selection, stability analysis, error analysis, simulations, and experimental results are provided. These demonstrate a reduction in positioning error by 50%, when compared to the traditional damping plus first-order integral tracking approach.


OBJECTIVE
Diabetes and dementia are diseases of high health care burden worldwide, and studies have shown that diabetes is associated with an increased relative risk of dementia. We set out to examine whether type 2 diabetes-associated genetic variants were associated with dementia and whether they differed by race/ethnicity or clinical dementia diagnosis.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We evaluated associations of two type 2 diabetes genetic risk scores (GRS and GRS-nonAPOE: a score without rs429358, a variant associated with Alzheimer disease [AD]) with three classifications of clinical dementia diagnoses in the Million Veteran Program (MVP): all-cause dementia, vascular dementia (VaD), and AD. We conducted our analysis stratified by European (EUR), African (AFR), and Hispanic (HIS) races/ethnicities.

RESULTS
In EUR, we found associations of the GRS with all-cause dementia (odds ratio [OR] 1.06, P = 1.60e-07) and clinically diagnosed VaD (OR 1.12, P = 5.2e-05) but not with clinically diagnosed AD (OR 1.02, P = 0.43). The GRS was not associated with any dementia outcome in AFR or HIS. When testing with GRS-nonAPOE, we found that effect size estimates in EUR increased and P values decreased for all-cause dementia (OR 1.08, P = 2.6e-12), for VaD (OR 1.14, P = 7.2e-07), and for AD (OR 1.06, P = 0.018). For AFR, the association of GRS-nonAPOE and clinically diagnosed VaD (OR 1.15, P = 0.016) was statistically significant. There were no significant findings for HIS.

CONCLUSIONS
We found evidence suggesting shared genetic pathogenesis of diabetes with all-cause dementia and clinically diagnosed VaD.


Abstract This article discusses the energy balance of the hemp biomass from the autumn and spring harvest which was used for the production of briquettes. The hemp plant (Cannabis sativa L.) used in this work is the variety Bialobrzeskie that was harvested on a trial plot in Prague-Suchdol in 2009 - 2010. Moisture content (MC), gross calorific value (GCV) and other technical parameters were evaluated for samples from the harvest of both periods. The autumn harvest results led to the assumption that the gross energy yield of the culture per superficies was 186.3 GJ ha-1. As compared to the previous results the spring harvest gave a gross energetic output of 161.4 GJ ha-1. The autumn harvest required more energy inputs compared to the spring harvest with values of 22.2 GJ ha-1 and 16.9 GJ ha-1 respectively. The most energy-consuming aspects of the biomass production were fuels (autumn) and the energy linked to the chemicals used (spring). Regardless of the higher net energy yield in autumn it was found that a spring harvest should be preferred because of its Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) is 8.6. This is higher than for the autumn harvest (7.4).


This paper aims at empirically exploring the relationships between existing object-oriented coupling, cohesion, and inheritance measures and the probability of fault detection in system classes during testing. The underlying goal of such a study is to better understand the relationship between existing design measurement in OO systems and the quality of the software developed. Results show that many of the measures capture similar dimensions in the dataset, thus reflecting the fact that many of them are based on similar principles and hypotheses. However, it is shown that by using a subset of measures, accurate models can be built to predict in which classes most of the faults are likely to lie in. By inspecting an amount of code comparable to the one contained in faulty classes, it is possible to find between 90% and 95% of the faults, depending on the type of model validation considered. Besides the size of classes, the frequency of method invocations and the depth of inheritance hierarchies seem to be the main driving factors of fault proneness.


'Weak market cities' across European and America, or 'core cities' as they were in their heyday, went from being 'industrial giants' dominating their national, and eventually the global, economy, to being 'devastation zones'. In a single generation three quarters of all manufacturing jobs disappeared, leaving dislocated, impoverished communities, run down city centres and a massive population exodus.So how did Europeans react? And how different was their response from America's? This book looks closely at the recovery trajectories of seven European cities from very different regions of the EU. Their dramatic decline, intense recovery efforts and actual progress on the ground underline the significance of public underpinning in times of crisis. Innovative enterprises, new-style city leadership, special neighbourhood programmes and skills development are all explored. The American experience, where cities were largely left 'to their own devices', produced a slower, more uncertain recovery trajectory. This book will provide much that is original and promising to all those wanting to understand the ground-level realities of urban change and progress.


The result of the EU referendum of June 2016 sent a shockwave through Europe as Europeans found that the British voting public had narrowly rejected continued membership of the European Union. Well before campaigning for the referendum opened, as a journal focused on European research and one of the journals of the University Association of Contemporary Europe Studies (UACES), the editors of JCER felt a responsibility to ensure that a topical response to the results – whatever they might have been - were heard. In the first of a new initiative by JCER (to publish a special section on an issue of topicality for Europe and those who research it) this final issue of 2016 features a special section dedicated to delivering some understanding of the reasons for the EU referendum, the inherent processes, the politicking and the voting choices.


Ultralight axion-like particles are well-motivated dark matter candidates that are the target of numerous direct detection efforts. In the vicinity of the Solar System, such particles can be treated as oscillating scalar fields. The velocity dispersion of the Milky Way determines a coherence time of about 10 oscillations, beyond which the amplitude of the axion field fluctuates stochastically. Any analysis of data from an axion direct detection experiment must carefully account for this stochastic behavior to properly interpret the results. This is especially true for experiments sensitive to the gradient of the axion field that are unable to collect data for many coherence times. Indeed, the direction, in addition to the amplitude, of the axion field gradient fluctuates stochastically. We present the first complete stochastic treatment for the gradient of the axion field, including multiple computationally efficient methods for performing likelihood-based data analysis, which can be applied to any axion signal, regardless of coherence time. Additionally, we demonstrate that ignoring the stochastic behavior of the gradient of the axion field can potentially result in failure to discover a true axion signal.


This paper examines some aspects of physical-digital workspaces, focusing on multi-user, multi-touch technologies and how different workspaces impact collaboration. We introduce the concept of globally collaborative work. We chose to use case studies completed by groups of students in an engineering course to test different workspace modalities: the use of a large multi-touch table top in conjunction with a multi-touch board (vertical), the use of tablets with the multi-touch board, and finally the multi-touch board alone. The evaluation criteria are based on modes of interaction which emerge during globally collaborative work sessions: individual work, communication, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. We hypothesized that the workspaces would influence collaborative activity, expecting to see higher rates of collaboration in the table top environment than in the other two modalities studied. However, results showed less co-building and more cooperative work, as students divided their work and later attempted to negotiate a coherent product built on individual contributions. Lastly, we share a few design recommendations based on these results.


On April 20, 2007, the University of Colorado School of Law's Silicon Flatirons Program hosted a roundtable entitled, Rethinking Software Patents. This roundtable is the second in the Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Public Policy Roundtable Series, co-sponsored by local venture capitalist Brad Feld, Managing Director of Foundry Group.


This paper presents a new idea for designing a matching filter for processing timelapse seismic data in a surface-consistent manner. We extend the surface-consistent data model to the case of designing matching filters to equalize two seismic surveys in the leastsquares sense. The frequency-domain surface-consistent design equations are similar to those for surface-consistent deconvolution except that the data term is the spectral ratio of two surveys. Since taking spectral ratios poses a challenge, we design the matching filters in a least-squares sense in the time domain and Fourier transform the result. We decompose the result into four surface-consistent components: source, receiver, offset, and midpoint. Each of these components collects unique effects thus providing us with freedom on how to utilize them. We discuss two examples that demonstrate how the matching filters are constructed and implemented. In the first example, we apply all four-components to the first monitoring survey to match it to the baseline survey, whose subsurface (the reservoir) is unchanging but shows surface-consistent variability. In the operator window, the residual between the matched survey and the baseline survey is extremely small. The second example is between first monitoring survey and second monitoring survey where the reservoir is variable and shows surface-consistent variability as well. In this case, the residual is close to zero in the matching filter window.


The purpose of this research paper is to examine social Islamic mutual funds' financial performance. Since Islamic mutual funds have only been around for the past two decades, most of the research on this topic is fairly new. In this study we apply the single factor model of Schwert and Seguin (1990) to a sample of Islamic mutual funds. The Islamic mutual funds market is one of the fastest growing sectors within the Islamic financial system. Several studies have investigated the characteristics of individual Islamic mutual funds (see Elfakhani, et al (2006), Elfakhani ,et al (2005), and Hassan, et al (2005). We are not aware of any studies that have applied the Schwert and Seguin methodology to Islamic mutual funds. Such an application is important because it allows for studying the impact of market volatility on the time variation of monthly betas and the corresponding returns. Using the S&P 500 and the FTSE Global Islamic indices on sector structured Islamic mutual funds, our results suggest that the volatility of the market and that of the Islamic mutual funds portfolio behave differently with inter and intra market proxies. There is also evidence that the volatility persistence of each Islamic mutual fund portfolio and its systematic risk are significantly related. Hence, the systematic risks of different portfolios tend to move in a different direction during periods of increased market volatility. As a result, we gain an insight into the return dynamics and the process by which Islamic mutual funds prices are determined.


Although there has been a strong focus on adapting curricula to better prepare engineering students for the challenges of the future, few research studies have followed students though their undergraduate experiences and beyond to understand students' preparedness for professional work. This study explored what skills engineering students and graduates believe are important for their careers and how these beliefs change over time. This research is broadly situated in social cognitive career theory and draws from the NSF-funded Academic Pathways Study (APS) data. As part of APS, a group of engineering students were interviewed and surveyed during each of their undergraduate years. Approximately four years after graduation, a subset of APS participants were contacted to examine their perceptions of skills and abilities in math, science, business, communication, teamwork, and the application of math and science. Business skills were perceived as being of lower importance overall and as having the largest spread of data over time. Math and science skills were perceived of as being particularly important in students' first year. Over time, communication skills generally increased in importance while teamwork skills decreased. Understanding how students' perspectives of important skills change as alumni can inform how we prepare engineering students for future success.


The distinction between holding and dictum is often treated under a binary paradigm; either a proposition is binding holding, or unconstraining dictum. But the binary paradigm is too simplistic to adequately model our complex system of precedent. This article suggests an alternative spectrum paradigm where the constraining force of a precedent proposition is inversely correlated with its breadth. This article explains the spectrum approach, compares it with prevailing approaches, and evaluates some cases in light of the spectrum model. The spectrum framework has the potential to facilitate judicial candor and make the concepts of holding and dicta more consistently meaningful.


Using deprotonated forms of tridentate azo-containing pyridine-2-/pyrazine-2-carboxamide 2-[N-(2-phenylazo)carbamoyl]-pyridine/pyrazine, seven bis-ligand complexes of FeII/CoII and FeIII/CoIII have been synthesized. Molecular structures of six of them reveal that these six-coordinate complexes utilize all available donor sites of the ligands and assume MII/IIIN2(pyridine/pyrazine)N'2(amide)N''2(azo) coordination. Complexes of FeII and CoIII are diamagnetic and those of FeIII and CoII are paramagnetic (S = 1/2; room-temperature magnetic data and EPR spectra). Cyclic voltammetry experiments in CH2Cl2 reveal facile metal-centred FeIII/FeII and CoIII/CoII redox responses, and all complexes display quasireversible-to-irreversible ligand(azo)-centred redox processes. The E1/2 values of MIII/MII redox processes for Fe, Co and Ni (reported earlier) complexes of the pyridine amide ligand linearly correlate with those for six-coordinate [MIII(bpy)3]3+/[MII(bpy)3]2+, [MIII(terpy)2]3+/[MII(terpy)2]2+, [MIII(L)]+/[MII(L)]0 or [MIII(L')2]+/[MII(L')2]0 (bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine, terpy = 2,2':6',2''-terpyridine, hexadentate L(2-) = 1,4-bis[o-(pyridine-2-carboxamidophenyl)]-1,4-dithiobutane and tridentate L'(-) = {2-[2-(arylimino)phenylazo]-pyridine}) couples. Density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP level and time-dependent (TD)-DFT calculations rationalize the electronic structure of the present complexes and throw light on the origin of observed electronic transitions.


Lignite, a kind of low rank coal, has the characteristics of high moisture, high volatile, high ash and low heat value. The low-temperature pyrolysis technology is potential to improve the utilization efficiency of lignite. Therefore, a lignite-based energy system integrated with pre-drying and low-temperature pyrolysis was proposed in this paper. To assess the influence of pre-drying process, theoretical models were developed based on thermodynamics, and a case analysis was then performed to get the quantitative effect of pre-drying on efficiency of energy utilization. Results show that pre-drying on PPPS theoretical model can significantly improve the utilization of lignite by 1.46%.Keywords: Lignite; Pre-drying; Low-temperature pyrolysis; Energy efficiency; Case analysis.


This is a method to evaluate both specific sensitivity to allergens in the nasal mucosa, IgE-mediated hypersensitivity, and antiinflammatory and antiallergic drugs efficacy, whose objectives are for research in diagnosis and treatment. The method is based in allergen extracts delivery in the nasal mucosa and the post-challenge measurement of rhinitis symptoms, vasoactive mediators release quantification and nasal obstruction degree evaluated by rhinomanometry. Nasal allergen challenge is a procedure of diagnostic and therapeutic evaluation usefulness, that must be performed in selected patients, in adequate facilities, by experts physicians, with standardised allergen dosages, in an specific nasal area, with objective measurements (rhinomanometry, mediators and secretions of the allergic response) and symptoms scoring that allow get reliable results in patients with allergic rhinitis under study.


Testing rationality of decision-making and choice by evaluating the mathematical property of transitivity has a long tradition in biology, economics, psychology, and zoology. This paradigm is fraught with conceptual, mathematical, and statistical pitfalls. In this overview, we tackle five major obstacles. One challenge lies in spelling out what transitivity of latent preferences really says and what it actually implies about observable choice behavior. Most notably, this step is fraught with aggregation artifacts, in that aggregated behavior can be profoundly misleading about individual behavior. Another hurdle comes from hard mathematical problems associated with characterizing the properties of heterogeneous transitive populations. A third challenge is the prevalence of straw man hypotheses in this area of research. The fourth difficulty is associated with adopting appropriate statistical inference tools that correctly accommodate the idiosyncratic mathematical properties of order-constrained statistical hypotheses. The fifth hurdle arises with the role of scientific parsimony in rationality research. We walk readers through key concepts, mathematical models, and statistical techniques for testing rationality. Throughout, we provide examples using the methods and data of two prominent published papers on animal choice behavior as our case studies. We explain how these papers tackled the five hurdles to varying degrees of success.


In the Sulfur-Iodine (SI) water splitting cycle hydrogen is produced via the decomposition of Hydrogen-Iodide (HI) and sulfuric acid (H2 SO4 ). These reactions proceed at around 400 °C and 850 °C respectively. A high temperature heat source, such as nuclear reactor heat, is required for the SI cycle. Since both the nuclear plant and the SI cycle plant are coupled through heat exchangers, any transients for either plant will affect the entire system. For a nuclear reactor system, it is especially important to understand the transient behavior of the SI cycle during a reactor startup or an emergency shutdown. A simplified transient model of the SI cycle, which can be coupled to heat from a nuclear plant, has been developed. Preliminary results from both steady state and transient calculations are presented in this paper.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


Laboratory prepared and commercial Li-Mn spinels were studied. Making use of the dedicated XRD-impedance spectroscopy experimental set-up, direct correlations of the degree of phase transformation (expressed as change of the FWHM of the selected reflection) with electric conductivity was found. Independent XRD measurements and full pattern fitting allowed quantitative estimations of the phase composition of the spinels. It was found that commercial spinels were in fact multiphase, with the content of the additional phase of few weight percent.


Finding ways to reduce poverty is a priority of the governments of Albania and in close collaboration with international donors, a concerted effort is being made to focus on those areas that experience a high incidence of poverty, namely the remote rural areas. These areas also coincide largely with the 50% of Albanian land area that is covered by forests and pastures and it is no coincidence that the government has, with the financial assistance of the World Bank and Governments of Italy and Switzerland, and with the technical Assistance of FAO, implemented a comprehensive forestry project that among other objectives also has poverty reduction as one of its expected outcomes. The collaboration of the World Food Program through its provision of food packages to the forestry workers has been the most direct benefit for the poor. The Albania Forestry Project has funded a range of activities to strengthen the overall forest and pasture administration, improve forest management practices, support the transfer of forests and pastures to the communes and to improve the management of Albania's protected areas. These activities are still ongoing and after completion of the Forestry Project at the end of 2003, important progress towards better resource management and positive economic prospects for many communes will hopefully have been achieved. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p668


Most of the commenly adotped interpolation algorithems are for the curve machining on CNC machine tools with Cartesian coordinates configuration. For a CNC machine tool with non-Cartesian configuration, new trajectory interpolation algorithem must be developed to machine complex part sueface. Based on the analysis of the geometric characteristics and the CNC grinding principle of indexable inserts, this paper proposes two interpolation algorithems to grind the nose surface of indexable inserts with constant or variable back angle. The algorithm precision analysis is also made in this paper.


Welding is widely used for construction of many structures. It is well known that residual stress is measured on welded joint. In this paper, a new method for reduction of residual stress using ultrasonic vibration during welding is proposed. Two thin plates are butt-welded. When ultrasonic vibration is used on one plate, tensile residual stress is reduced at center of the bead. Second, ultrasonic vibrations with different frequencies are applied on both plates. In this case, reduction rate of residual stress increases. Next, reduction of tensile residual stress is demonstrated by simulation method using an analytical model with dynamic characteristics of welded joint.


Multi-agent research often borrows from biology, where remarkable examples of collective intelligence may be found. One interesting example is ant colonies¿ use of pheromones as a joint communication mechanism. In this paper we propose two pheromone-based algorithms for artificial agent foraging, trail-creation, and other tasks. Whereas practically all previous work in this area has focused on biologically-plausible but ad-hoc single pheromone models, we have developed a formalism which uses multiple pheromones to guide cooperative tasks. This model bears some similarity to reinforcement learning. However, our model takes advantage of symmetries common to foraging environments which enables it to achieve much faster reward propagation than reinforcement learning does. Using this approach we demonstrate cooperative behaviors well beyond the previous ant-foraging work, including the ability to create optimal foraging paths in the presence of obstacles, to cope with dynamic environments, and to follow tours with multiple waypoints.We believe that this model may be used for more complex problems still.


Introduction/ Background In hematology, actual diagnosis of B chronic lymphocyte-leukemia (CLL) is based on the microscopic analysis of cell morphology from patient blood smear. However, new photonic technologies appear promising to facilitate and improve the early diagnosis, prognostic and monitoring of personalized therapy. The development of automated diagnostic approaches could assist clinicians in improving the efficiency and quality of health services, but also reduce medical costs. Aims The M3S project aims at improving the diagnosis and prognosis of the CLL pathology by developing a multimodal microscopy platform, including Raman spectrometry, dedicated to the automatic analysis of lymphocytes. Methods Blood smears were prepared on glass slides commonly used in pathology laboratories for microscopy. Two types of sample per patient were prepared: a conventional blood smear and a deposit of "pure" lymphocyte subtypes (i.e. normal B, CLL B, T and NK), sorted out in flow cytometry by using the negative double labelling technique. The second sample is used for the construction of a database of spectral markers specific of these different cell types. The preparations were analyzed with the multimodal machine which combines i) a Raman micro-spectrometer, equipped with a 532nm diode laser excitation source; ii) a micro- scope equipped with 40x and 150x lenses and a high precision xyz motorized stage for scanning the blood smear, and localizing x-y coordinates of representative series (~100 for each patient) of lymphocyte cells before registering three Raman spectra; these cells of interest being previously localized by an original method based on the morphology analysis. After the Raman acquisitions, the conventional blood smears were submitted immunolabelling using specific antibodies. For the establishment of the Raman classifiers, this post-acquisition treatment was used as reference to distinguish the different lymphocyte sub-populations. Raman data were then analyzed using chemometric processing and supervised statistical classifiers in order to construct a spectral library of markers highly specific of the lymphocyte type and status (normal or pathological). Results Currently, a total of 60 patients (CLL and healthy) were in- cluded in the study. Various classification methods such as LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis), PLS-DA (Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis), RF (RandomForest) and SVM (Support Vector Machine), were tested in the purpose to distinguish tumoral B lymphocytes from other cell types. These classification algorithms were combined with feature selection approaches. The best performances were around 70% of correct identification when a three-class model (B-CLL vs B-normal vs T and NK lymphocytes) was considered, and 80% in case of a two-class model (B-CLL vs B-normal lymphocytes). These encouraging results demonstrate the potential of Raman micro-spectroscopy coupled to supervised classification algorithms for leukemic cell classification. The approach can find interest more generally in the field of cyto-hematology. Further developments will concern the integration of additional modality such as Quantitative Phase Imaging on one hand to speed the exploration process of cells of interest to be probed, and on the other hand to extract additional characteristics likely to be informative for CLL diagnosis. In addition, the identification of prognostic markers will be investigated by confronting  the photonic data  to clinical patient information.


Research has shown that a learner's cognitive load is manipulable via the design of instruction. When the extraneous and germane loads are too high, or if other non-instructional cognitive demands are placed on the learner, learners can become frustrated, anxious and lose confidence in their ability to complete the course. This sense of frustration increases the likelihood that learners, especially novice learners, will become overwhelmed and unable to transfer the knowledge or skills acquired. Learners must adapt to the online environment before meaningful learning can occur. Therefore, understanding the cognitive load imposed by each task including the learner's perception of their ability to complete the course, will be valuable for the creation of improved instructional strategies, designs and participant selection procedures. The topic of this study was an analysis of the effects of cognitive load experienced by e-learners as they negotiate the tasks required for successful participation within an asynchronous course room, specifically examining the relationship between measured cognitive load and the learners' confidence in completing their course.


Designing a curriculum which will match the needs of the learners and help them meet the goals of a language course can best be achieved by starting with a comprehensive needs analysis. This study is an attempt to discover English language needs of physics students and graduates in Iran. A mixed method design including questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used in the study. Two versions of questionnaires were administered at University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) branch to 206 randomly selected MA students and 17 related university instructors from faculty of physics in order to determine which of the four English language skills were most essential to the academic needs of students. In addition, the study looked at what academic sub-skills students are expected to need in order to complete their studies successfully. The results revealed that reading skill has been rated as the most important skill. The importance of English skills according to the priorities for the students was as follows: Reading, Technical words, General vocabulary, Writing, Speaking, Listening, Pronunciation, and Grammar. Furthermore, graduate students indicated a greater need for writing abstracts and, giving presentations in seminars. Generally, the study indicated that the present practice of EAP in the curriculum is not consistent with the perceived needs of students. It is hoped that the findings of this study would shed light on syllabus design and curriculum development for university programs in Iran.


Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell) holds great potential for applications in regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and disease modeling. We describe here a practical method to generate human iPS cells from urine-derived cells (UCs) under feeder-free, virus-free, serum-free condition and without oncogene c-MYC. We showed that this approach could be applied in a large population with different genetic backgrounds. UCs are easily accessible and exhibit high reprogramming efficiency, offering advantages over other cell types used for the purpose of iPS generation. Using the approach described in this study, we have generated 93 iPS cell lines from 20 donors with diverse genetic backgrounds. The non-viral iPS cell bank with these cell lines provides a valuable resource for iPS cells research, facilitating future applications of human iPS cells.


The Marine Network for Integrated Data Access (MaNIDA) builds a sustainable e-Infrastructure to support discovery and re-use of data from distinct marine and earth science data providers in Germany (see ESSI1.2 and
ESSI2.2). Thereby we implement the "Data Portal of German Marine Research" for coherent discovery, view, download and dissemination of aggregated content.

MaNIDA receives a unique momentum from the cooperation and financial partnership between main German marine research institutes (AWI, MARUM, HZG, GEOMAR, Uni Hamburg, Uni Kiel, Uni Bremen)and the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency as well as active participation in international and major EU-initiatives (ICSU, GEOSS, SeaDataNet, EMODNET, ODIP). Together with a coherent management strategy coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, sustainability will be achieved via the long-term commitment of framework funding by the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific research organization for large-scale facilities and scientific infrastructure.

Strategic Aims
The installation of the "Data Portal of German Marine Research" will address the urgent demands of the German research community for reliable and easy access to marine research data at one single point of access and truth. Primary focus will be given to data derived from nationally operated research and monitoring facilities
(vessels, observatories, alert systems, etc), whereby related contextual content and publications will become an integral part of the aggregation effort. For the scientific community we define responsibilities and commitments across partners while complementing existing data repositories and the new portal with well-articulated workflows from the instrument to the data product. Necessary level of quality assurance and user support will be implemented to achieve substantial enhancements in the whole lifecycle management of marine scientific data. The creation of a data curation and customer support centre holds a significant role in that course as well as the intense exchange of ideas/wishes with stakeholders and scientists.

Research & Development
• In terms of integration, harmonization and aggregation – data from three national large-scale data repositories and national publication e-infrastructures will be aggregated into a central metadata catalogue.
• Dynamic procedures for harmonization and integration of content are under development using common vocabulary, terms (ontology) according to international initiatives (SDN, GEOSS, ICSU).
• Concerning automation we will improve the standardization of sensor networks (e.g., OGC/SWE standards)and revise and adapt a future version of DSHIP (ship information system), a de-facto standard for research vessels, to repository and portal solutions.
• We are developing a series of content-specific discovery, view, download and dissemination services to enable coherent discovery and visualization (search/browse and mapping services) as well as provider based dissemination of content at European and International levels.

Finally the "Data Portal of German Marine Research" will enhance data mining in various disciplines as well as improve planning of future expeditions. It will also provide means for combining various data types (e.g.
underway data, post cruise data, satellite data, oceanographic and interdisciplinary marine data) into enhanced data products to comply with our data-intensive marine science.


In this study, it was examined a strength characteristic of organic acid material that is eco-friendly and low energy as a soil improving material. The object of this study is to analysis of strength changes with observing the clay mixed organic acid material through the unconfined compression strength test and triaxial compression test during 28 days. As a result of the tests, the strength of clay mixed organic acid material is increased when the more ages are prolonged, the more organic acid material mixture ratio growed. Therefore, in grasping the strength improvement effects of clay by organic acid material mixing, it confirmed that organic acid material as soil improving material is effective through unconfined compression strength test and triaxial compression test. Through this test, the definite strength increase is confirmed according to the mixture of the organic acid material and the possibility of soil improvement is also confirmed based on this result. From now on, detailed examination and field test will help closely to definite strength characteristics.


Abstract Minerals are the building blocks of clastic sediments and play an important role with respect to the physico-chemical properties of the sediment and the lithostratigraphy of sediments. This paper aims to provide an overview of the mineralogy (including solid organic matter) of sediments as well as suspended matter as found in the Netherlands (and some parts of Belgium). The work is based on a review of the scientific literature published over more than 100 years. Cenozoic sediments are addressed together with suspended matter and recent sediments of the surface water systems because they form a geoscientific continuum from material subject to transport via recently settled to aged material. Most attention is paid to heavy minerals, clay minerals, feldspars, Ca carbonates, reactive Fe minerals (oxides, siderite, sulphides, glauconite) and solid organic matter because they represent the dominant minerals and their properties form a main issue in subsurface and water management. When possible and relevant, the amounts, provenance, relationship with grain size distribution, early diagenesis and palaeohydrological evolution are described. Tables with statistical data about the mineral contents and isotopic composition of carbonates and organic matter are presented as overviews. The review on the mineralogy of Dutch fluvial and marine environments is more extensive than that for the other sedimentary environments because the first two have been studied much more intensively than the others and they also form the larger part of the Dutch deposits. The focus is on the natural background mineralogy of Dutch sediments, but this is hard for recent sediments, largely because the massive hydraulic infrastructure present in the Netherlands has probably also affected the mineralogy and geochemistry of sediments deposited in recent centuries. Many findings are summarised, several of which lead to more general insights for the Dutch situation. Ca carbonates in sediments often have several provenances and thus must be considered as mixtures. Dolomite is commonly present in addition to calcite. The importance of biotite as weatherable mica is unclear. Weathering of heavy minerals plays some role but it is unclear in which way it affects the heavy mineral associations. Clays are usually dominated by illite, smectite and their interstratified variant, while kaolinite is usually below 20% and chlorite below 5%. Vermiculite is a minor constituent in fluvial clays and its illitisation presumably happens during early diagenesis in the marine environment. Opaque Fe hydroxides can be present in addition to Fe oxyhydroxide coatings and both will play a role in redox chemistry as reactive Fe minerals. Feldspars in marine sediments must be present but they have not been properly studied. The genesis of rattle stones and carbonate concretions has not been completely elucidated. The fraction of terrigeneous organic matter in estuarine and coastal marine sediments is substantial. The available data and information are spread irregularly over the country and the reviewed information discussed in this paper is derived from relatively small-scale studies dealing with a limited amount of analysed samples. Much information is available from the Scheldt estuaries in the southwestern part of the Netherlands partly due to the severe contamination of the Western Scheldt in recent decades.


Anti-adhesive and low-fouling properties have a particular interest in some biomedical applications to avoid non-specific cell attachments. In this work, copolymers of carboxymethyl dextran (CMD) and poly(butyl methacrylate) (PBMA) are successfully obtained by free radical copolymerization. The effects of CMD substitution degrees and CMD/BMA ratio on the copolymerization yields are investigated. Copolymers compositions are determined by carbon solid state nuclear magnetic resonance(13C-NMR), Attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectra (ATR-FTIR) and by high performance size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC). Results indicate that copolymers are composed of CMD and a majority of PBMA, and PBMA chains are 10-fold longer than CMD ones. Solubility is investigated, and films obtained, in THF/water (90:10), are characterized by X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Stress relaxation assays evidence flexible and ductile properties. Cell adhesion and proliferation studies with human endothelial cells and 3T3 fibroblasts confirm the absence of toxicity and low adhesion properties. In conclusion, these copolymers show a potential for different applications including coatings for medical devices and biomaterials for which low adhesion properties are required.


Bifurcation lesion whether it is left main (LM) stem disease with left main to left anterior descending artery (LM-LAD) or left main to left circumflex (LM-LCX), LAD-Diagonal or LCX-Obtuse marginal or right coronary artery- posterior descending artery (RCA-PDA); are not uncommon lesion type that needs to be revascularized either by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) to establish the coronary flow and relieved patient anginal symptoms. Even though, many of the literature maintained non-inferiority of bifurcation lesion PCI over CABG and is Class IIb indication for PCI by coronary stent. In literature, bifurcation lesions commonly encountered in PCI and are regarded as most technically challenging lesions to treat, in up to 20% of PCI cases. With the advent of interventional procedures and the availability of cardiac catheterization laboratory facilities, skilled interventionist, many of the Bangladeshi patients are being treated for coronary artery diseases (CAD). With the advent of drug eluting stents, availability of IVUS (Intravascular Ultrasound), FFR (Fractional Flow Reserve) and individual expertise, treating bifurcation lesion may not be difficult task. Interventionist must be expert enough in doing PCI, before to proceed for bifurcation lesion PCI. We need to work together to develop common consensus in developing updated skill in treating bifurcation lesion which will prove bifurcation PCI in our population.
Cardiovasc j 2022; 14(2): 168-175


With the pressing need for quality improvement and with a view to adopting Lean as a systematic management approach in a crisis-ridden health care sector in South Africa, it was an opportune time to investigate the baseline level of knowledge and experience of Lean amongst senior health care managers in public hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. The research was centered on a positivist paradigm (involving quantitative methods) and took the form of an observational, descriptive study in KZN. This article presents the results of one of several key objectives of a seminal PhD study conducted in KZN. A total of 218 senior managers located in 73 hospitals participated in the research. A self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire was used. Most managers indicated that they have not heard of Lean before and had no prior practical experience thereof. All participants indicated that they were interested in learning more about Lean, that there was an opportunity for adopting Lean practices and that Lean could possibly improve the operational performance in their hospitals.

JEL Classification: I19, L23, M19


We argue that models of oligopsony or monopsonistic competition provide insights and explanation for many empirical phenomena in labor markets. Using a simple model with job differentiation and preference heterogeneity, we illustrate how such models can be employed to explain the existence of wage dispersion, the persistence of labor market discrimination, market failures in the provision of training and the anomalous employment effects of minimum wages.


Purpose
Blockchain technologies have pervaded modern crowdfunding and capital sourcing through a variety of financial instruments implemented as smart contracts. Smart contracts provide a unique mechanism not only to create a unique one-of-a-type financial instrument, but also to enable unique innovations atop existing financial instruments due to underlying efficiencies. The smartness comes from the flexibility that programs provide which can create extremely unique financial instruments that are often complex to implement, yet easy to create, maintain through versioning, trade and destroy. The purpose of this paper is to describe the security token architecture as an application of smart contracts. Further, the author illustrates the implementation and design of a commonly used financial instrument known as Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) using the security token architecture proposed and smart contract functionality. The author then models the transaction using relational algebra, and, models the utility maximization. The author shows how on account of reduced information asymmetry between the investors and SAFE users (i.e. startups) utility is positive when smart contract-based security tokens are deployed for each state in the SAFE contract.

Design/methodology/approach
Using an existing well-adopted instrument called a SAFE contract, the author illustrates the architecture of a smart contract-based security token system. The author illustrates how different components of a SAFE contract can be implemented as a smart contract and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of applying blockchain-based smart contracts to design SAFE instruments. The author deploys two methods: a state space diagram to explain state transitions and a utility model to explain the utilities.

Findings
The key findings of this research study are the design of a security token architecture, which can be used to convert any the physical or contract-based financial instrument to a smart contract that runs on the blockchain. However, there are limitations to the implementation of the same which can be overcome. The model illustrates the positive utilities derived for all economic actors, i.e. the contractors, the utility providers, etc., in the market.

Originality/value
This paper is an original paper. For the very first time, the author explored the architecture of a security token system. Using a well-known financial instrument, namely the SAFE, the author describes various components, e.g. the four contracts that form SAFE and then model the utilities for the system.


We investigated the interaction between human lung cancer cells, laminin, and several differentiating agents. When grown on laminin coated substrate eight out of 11 small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cell lines exhibited attachment to laminin and three had extensive outgrowth of long neurite-like processes. Of seven non-small cell lung cancer cell lines, selected for their in vitro anchorage-independent growth, attachment was observed in only three cell lines, and process formation was far less extensive than in SCLC cell lines. Among several differentiating agents, only dcAMP, which alone induced attachment and some process formation, increased laminin-mediated attachment and process formation of two SCLC cell lines, NCI-N417 a variant cell line, and NCI-H345, a classic cell line. The expression of several neuroendocrine and neuronal markers was investigated in these two SCLC cell lines. The expression of the light subunit of neurofilaments increased in NCI-N417 within 3 to 4 days of seeding, while NCI-H345 exhibited approximately 5 fold increase in expression of the GRP gene and a 3 fold increase expression of the P-actin gene. The expression of a number of other neuroendocrine and neuronal markers did not change following growth on laminin. The doubling times remained unchanged independent of the presence of and attachment to laminin while topoisomerase II gene expression levels in NCI-N417 cells decreased approximately 5 fold when cells were growing on laminin.


The large number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) at the physician's disposal provides not only a broad therapeutic potential in the treatment of epilepsy (EP), but creates difficulties in the adequate choice of AED. The sufficient experience in the management of patients with epilepsy has been gained so far in the world, based on which the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), updated classification, adopted the basic definition of efficiency, remission, resistance, evidence of research on the effectiveness of AED therapy, and introduced the concept of "resolved" epilepsy. In this article, a group of Russian experts suggest recommendations on the main steps in the choice of therapy in epilepsy. Possible drug interactions between different AEDs and other drugs as well as main characteristics of mono- and polytherapy of epilepsy are described. Some features of the use of AEDs in the elderly, characteristics of the "female" epilepsy related to the reproductive function and basic requirements for the therapy of epilepsy in children are presented.


Data mining and machine learning concepts play a significant role while dealing with large number of datasets. Various algorithms embedded within these concepts provide a wide array of mechanisms to classify the data into its specific classes. No matter what algorithm is applied, it is certain that the applied algorithm should provide better results. Least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) is a machine learning approach used to classify the data. Although it works better in comparison to other algorithms, the various changes sustained on each run of the program execution in its parametric values makes it quite resilient enough towards its performance. Hence, this paper focuses on the enhancement of the performance level of traditional LS-SVM. In order to so, traditional LS-SVM is integrated together with simplified particle swarm optimization technique (PSO). PSO, a swarm intelligence based, optimization approach is exploited to optimize the kernel parametric values of LS -SVM so that it not only improves its classification performance but significantly also improve the time execution of the program being run. The proposed method is exploited on the phishing dataset and experimental results are evaluated against the results of other algorithms. Keyword: Phishing dataset, Machine learning, Least Square Support Vector Machine, Simple Particle Swarm Optimization, Schaffer function


South African trade unions' criticisms in the 2010s of the institutional framework for minimum-wage-setting mark a dramatic departure from the central role they played in the design of these institutions in the 1990s. The four key features of the institutional framework – i.e. the emphasis on sectoral rather than national wagesetting, the primacy attached to collective bargaining, the role of technocrats in wage-setting in sectors where there was insufficient worker or employer organisation for effective collective bargaining, and the stipulation that employment effects be taken into account in setting minima in unorganised sectors – all reflected concerns raised by trade unions themselves. The trade unions' approach in the 1990s reflected their own sectoral organisational form, their strong shopfloor organisation and distrust of the state, and anxieties about job destruction (especially in unions in labour-intensive sectors and among allied intellectuals).


To examine clinical features and the prognostic factors for renal function in patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), a total of 118 patients (60 men and 58 women) were followed for 3 to 192 months (mean 77 months). The mean age of men at the diagnosis of ADPKD was younger than that of women. Main Symptoms were hematuria, hypertension and proteinuria. Forty-one % of the patients showed deterioration of renal function at the diagnosis. The rate of residual volume of renal parenchyma on CT findings was correlated well with renal function. Twenty-eight % of the patients preserved good and stable renal functions for over 5 years, while most of others had deterioration in their renal function. Thirty-four % of the patients started dialysis within 79 +/- 62 months from the diagnosis. The frequency of end stage renal failure was 7% at 40 years, 21% at 50 years, 36% at 60 years and 63% at 70 years old, respectively. Men needed hemodialysis at younger ages than women. Renal function of the patients with hypertension was worse than that of the patients without hypertension. The ratio of the value of P.S.P.120 to that of serum creatinine (PSP120/sCr), and the rate of residual volume of renal parenchyma revealed distinct prognostic factors for renal function.


The discovery of IL-10 more than 30 years ago marked the beginning of our understanding of how cytokines regulate immune responses, based on cross-regulation between Th1 and Th2 cytokines. Although multiple cell types were shown to produce IL-10, its identity as a Th2 cytokine remained strong because it was rigidly associated with Th2 clones in mice, whereas both Th1 and Th2 clones could secrete IL-10 in humans. However, as new Th1/Th2 cell functionalities emerged, anti-inflammatory action of IL-10 gained more attention than its inhibitory effect on Th1 cells, which may occur as an indirect consequence of suppression of APCs. This notion is also supported by the discovery of regulatory T cells, whose suppressor functions involve the mediation of IL-10, among other molecules. From this perspective, we discuss the functionalities of IL-10 by highlighting important differences between mice and humans with an emphasis on the Th1 and Th2 paradigm.


The tropical climate in Malaysia that is hot and humid with average temperatures between 23.7 o C to 31.3 o C throughout a day with the highest maximum recorded as 36.9 o C and the average relative humidity between 67% to 95% and this may have an adverse impact on occupant comfort indoor. With this kind of climate thermal comfort can become a problem to occupants of many residential buildings especially when they are not equipped with airconditioning system. With the cost living in the city increased higher, the needs to promote the energy saving are needed. This paper presents outcomes of an ongoing research work to investigate thermal comfort by using rainwater harvesting system on terraced houses. Temperature data as an ongoing research through the month and to be compare with cooling load temperature difference (CLTD) method that normally practice inthe design of the air conditioning system for a certain building. The data will be compared to prove the rainwater harvesting system cannot be neglected or overseeing that can help in reducing temperature closed to thermal comfort on the terraced houses.


African-American (AA) race/ethnicity, lower body mass index (BMI), and higher IGF1 levels are associated with premenopausal breast cancer risk. This cross-sectional analysis investigated whether BMI or BMI at age 21 years contributes to racial differences in IGF1, IGF2, IGF-binding protein 3 (IGFBP3), or free IGF1. Participants included 816 white and 821 AA women between ages 40 and 79 years across a wide BMI range (18.5-40 kg/m(2)). Compared with white women, AA women had higher mean IGF1 (146.3 vs 134.4 ng/ml) and free IGF1 (0.145 vs 0.127) levels, and lower IGF2 (1633.0 vs 1769.3 ng/ml) and IGFBP3 (3663.3 vs 3842.5 ng/ml) levels (all P<0.01; adjusted for age, height, BMI, BMI at age 21 years, and menopausal status). Regardless of race, IGF1 and free IGF1 levels rose sharply as BMI increased to 22-24 kg/m(2), and then declined thereafter, while IGF2 and IGFBP3 levels tended to rise with BMI. In contrast, BMI at age 21 years was inversely associated with all IGF levels, but only among white women (P-interaction=0.01). With the decline in IGF1 with BMI at age 21 years among whites, racial differences in IGF1 significantly increased among women who were obese in early adulthood. In summary, BMI was associated with IGF1 levels regardless of race/ethnicity, while obesity during childhood or young adulthood may have a greater impact on IGF1 levels among white women. The effects of obesity throughout life on the IGF axis and racial differences in breast cancer risk require study.


Credit for scientific research contributions must be clearly and appropriately assigned at the time of publication. This task has become increasingly complicated because of the number of different laboratories and coauthors involved in many studies. The good news is that academic institutions, funders, and publishers are exploring new ways to clarify attribution,* and many publishers now require disclosure of specific contributions for scientific authorship. As part of this effort, it is critical that the problem of honorary authorship be effectively addressed. According to a recent report, honorary authors were attached to 25% of research reports, 15% of review articles, and 11% of editorials published in six major medical journals in 2008.† It is time to end this practice.


The focus of this self-study action research is the facilitation of teachers' engagement in
collaborative inquiry to improve practice. The purpose of the inquiry was two-fold:
primarily to improve the quality of teaching and learning of writing, within the English
curriculum, in a primary school in Ireland; secondly, it was to improve my
understanding of the issues and practices involved in leading school-based professional
learning.
In year one of the research, I worked with the school's staff to develop structures and
processes supporting participants' action learning about collaborative inquiry.
Following a multi-level model of intervention, teacher learning teams became the
foundation stone of the intervention. While pedagogical content knowledge was the
focus of much of the inquiry at base team level, critical examination of cultural norms of
practice through collective reflection typified the professional dialogue at whole school
level. The moral dimension of teacher professionalism anchored the intervention and
was mediated through an unwavering commitment to dialogic action and inquiry. Data
gathering and analysis served to assess the impact of the strategies on improving
professional as well as student learning. Findings highlighted the significance of
teacher-to-teacher discourse in shaping teacher learning; and teachers' commitment to
adopting an incremental approach to learning illustrated in a co-created model of staged
development.
In year two the teachers pushed out the boundaries of current norms, by observing peer
practice. The findings from data gathering in phase two, informed by discourse analysis
of videoed post-observation conferences, led to the creation of conceptual models of
practice for peer professional dialogue.
The findings emphasise the need to create system-wide structures in Ireland to support
embedded professional learning and suggest that teacher collaboration, rooted in
professional values and supported by purposeful capacity building has the potential to
replace autonomy as valued practice in Irish schools.


My objective is to provide a theory of truth that is both independently motivated and compatible with the requirement that semantic theories for truth should not demand a substantive distinction between the languages in which they are formulated and those to which they apply. I argue that if a semantic theory for truth does not satisfy this requirement, then it is unacceptable. The central claim of the theory I develop is that truth is an inconsistent concept: the rules for the proper use of truth are incompatible in the sense that they dictate that truth both applies and fails to apply to certain sentences (e.g., those that give rise to the liar and related paradoxes). The most significant challenge for a proponent of an inconsistency theory of truth is producing a plausible theory of inconsistent concepts. Accordingly, I first construct a theory of inconsistent concepts, and then I apply it to truth. On the account I provide, inconsistent concepts are confused concepts. A concept is confused if, in employing it, one is committed to applying it to two or more distinct types of entities without properly distinguishing between them; that is, an employer of a confused concept thinks that two or more distinct entities are identical. I propose a semantic theory for predicates that express confused concepts, and a new many-valued relevance logic on which the semantic theory depends. This semantic theory serves as the basis for my theory of inconsistent concepts. Given this account of inconsistent concepts and my claim that truth is inconsistent, I am committed to the view that truth is confused. I use the semantic theory for confused predicates as a semantic theory for truth. On the account I advance, a proper theory of truth requires a distinction between several different types of truth predicates. I propose an account of each truth predicate, and I advocate using them as consistent replacements for the concept of truth. The result is a team of concepts that does the work of the inconsistent concept of truth without giving rise to paradoxes.


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 Acute studies suggest that leptin has pressor and depressor actions, including stimulation of sympathetic activity as well as increased release of nitric oxide (NO)from the vascular endothelium. The goal of this study was to examine the role of NO in modulating the chronic blood pressure, heart rate, and renal responses to hyperleptinemia, comparable to that found in obesity hypertension. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were implanted with arterial and venous catheters and mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) were monitored continuously 24h/d. After a 4 day control period, rats were treated with vehicle (n=6) or L-NAME (n=7) for 7 days. After 7 days of vehicle or L-NAME (10 μg/kg/min) treatment to inhibit NO synthesis, rats received a low rate (0.5 μg/kg/min) leptin infusion for 7 days followed by a moderate rate (1.0 μg/kg/min) leptin infusion for 7 days, along with vehicle or L-NAME. A 21 day infusion of L-NAME alone (n=6) served as a control for the leptin+L-NAME rats. The low and moderate leptin infusions reduced food intake by 53±2%and 51±7%, respectively, but L-NAME did not alter the anorectic effect of leptin. Although the low dose of leptin alone did not significantly elevate MAP, it raised HR by 18±3 bpm. The moderate dose of leptin raised MAP from 96±3 to 104±3, but did not increase HR further. In rats pre-treated with L-NAME, the moderate dose of leptin raised MAP by 40±5 mmHg and HR by 73±17 bpm compared to pre-treatment levels. In control L-NAME rats, MAP increased by 31±4 mmHg, while HR was not altered significantly, compared to pre-treatment levels. Chronic leptin infusion alone did not alter glomerular filtration rate (GFR) or renal plasma flow (RPF). However, Leptin+L-NAME reduced GFR by 47±8% and RPF 58±7%; L-NAME alone decreased GFR by 36±11% and RPF 36±17%. Thus, NO does not appear to modulate the anorectic effect of leptin. However, impaired NO synthesis enhances the chronic renal hemodynamic and hypertensive effects of leptin, and greatly amplifies the tachycardia caused by hyperleptinemia, at levels comparable to those found in obesity hypertension.


To support the complex functionality expected of modern embedded systems, the trend is to supplement CPUs with Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), thus creating heterogeneous embedded systems. However, taking full advantage of GPUs increases the complexity of the development and requires dedicated support, and no such support exists in the component models currently available. The only solution today is to completely encapsulate all GPU-specific information and operations within the components, which increases the communication overhead and reduces component reusability, thus significantly limiting the applicability of component-based development to heterogeneous embedded systems. In this paper, we propose to extend Rubus, an industrial component model for embedded systems, with dedicated support for GPUs. We introduce new constructs, including GPU ports and automatically generated adapters to facilitate seamless component communication over the heterogeneous processing units, regardless of whether the components use the CPU, GPU, or both. A running example is used for the problem description, the proposed extension, and to evaluate our solution.


A recent paper by Souza, Oliveira and Sarthour (SOS) reports the experimental violation of a Leggett–Garg (LG) inequality (sometimes referred to as a temporal Bell inequality). The inequality tests for quantum mechanical superposition: if the inequality is violated, the dynamics cannot be explained by a large class of classical theories under the heading of macrorealism. Experimental tests of the LG inequality are beset by the difficulty of carrying out the necessary so-called 'non-invasive' measurements (which for the macrorealist will extract information from a system of interest without disturbing it). SOS argue that they nevertheless achieve this difficult goal by putting the system in a maximally mixed state. The system then allegedly undergoes no perturbation during their experiment. Unfortunately, the method is ultimately unconvincing to a skeptical macrorealist and so the conclusions drawn by SOS are unjustified.


Camellia changii Ye, a rare and endangered species, has a phenotype that sepals frequently transform into petals. We assumed that this change would cause single C. changii Ye turned double flowers and this was confirmed by the double flowers we found in grafted C. changii Ye. The microstructure of floral organs showed that: in perfect petals, the anthocyanin is distributed in the upper and lower epidermis; in petaloid sepals, anthocyaninin had both sepal and petal identities and sepals gradually transformed into petals; in spot-petaloid sepals, anthocyaninin is only distributed in upper epidermis. B-function gene GLOBOSA1 (GLO1) and GLOBOSA2 (GLO2) had high expression at the part with petal identity and had low or no expression at or near the part with sepal identity and these kinds of expression showed that gene played an important role in determining petal identity. B-function gene DEFICIENS (DEF) and TOMATO MADS BOX GENE6 (TM6) had high expression at the fused part of the stamens and this implied the importance of gene when stamen is transformed into petal. Thus, B-function gene is very important when C. changii Ye evolved into double flowers. Key words: Petaloid phenotype, double flowers, B-function gene, Camellia changii Ye, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR).


The aim of the article is to reveal negative impacts of globalization from the social perspective and to present the alternative of the New Governance in an attempt to solve the problem of social exclusion. The article analyses social risk and the syndrome of "speaking winners" and "silent losers," which result from the modern capitalism and affect and distort the social sphere.  The article questions the New Public Management as the means of increasing the efficiency of the administration in the social sphere and analyses the possibilities of the method of "Open Coordination" and the alternative of the New Governance in an attempt to solve social problems.


Elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers may experience considerable unease when teaching evolution in the context of the Earth or life sciences (Griffith and Brem, in press). Many factors may contribute to their discomfort, including personal conceptualizations of the evolutionary process - especially human evolution, the most controversial aspect of evolutionary theory. Knowing more about the mental representations of an evolutionary process could help researchers to understand the challenges educators face in addressing scientific principles. These insights could inform educators of alternative methods in providing support and assistance. In this study, we examined pre-service teachers' conceptual representations of an evolutionary process through their personal narratives of evolution for an imaginary humanoid species on a far-off planet. The imaginary creature participants described tended to resemble humans in both form and evolutionary history. The narratives had a tendency to link evolutionary changes with social and moral consequences. Those whose narratives closely paralleled human evolution also seemed to have difficulty envisioning evolutionary changes that would take the species past current human development and into their evolutionary future. The connection among social and moral issues, evolution, and difficulties envisioning the future may provide important clues into pre-service teachers' conceptualizations of human evolution. Addressing personal barriers and misunderstandings that might impede geoscience education may become an effective tool for teaching scientific principles.


The leukocyte blood composition was studied for seven years in dogs kept outdoors. The lymphocyte count proved to be higher from May to September than from November to March. Variations in the neutrophil and monocyte count were subject to reverse regularity. Changes in the total leukocyte count failed to coincide with the seasonal periodicity.