Two approaches are examined for finding the best stacking sequence of laminated composite wing structures with blending and manufacturing constraints: smeared stiffnessbased method and lamination parameter-based method. In the first method, the material volume is the objective function at the global level and the stack shuffling to satisfy blending and manufacturing constraints is performed at the local level. The other method introduced in this paper is to use lamination parameters and numbers of plies of the pre-defined angles (0, 90, 45 and -45 degrees) as design variables with buckling, strength and ply percentage constraints while minimizing the material volume in the top level optimization run. Given lamination parameters from the top level optimization as targets for the local level, optimal stacking sequence is determined to satisfy the global blending requirements. On a benchmark problem of an 18-panel wing box, the results from these two approaches are compared to published results to demonstrate their potential.


In this text, the effective thermal conductivity of different shape filler particles was investigated. The thermal insulation coatings were prepared using hollow glass beads and sepiolite as thermal insulation fillers and the thermal insulation effect was evaluated. The results show that the optimum ratio of sepiolite and hollow glass beads is 6:1, and the temperature difference of upper box and lower box is up to 18 °C. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the thermal conduction chain is difficult to form in the direction of heat flow, thus leading to the increase of thermal resistance and decrease of thermal conductivity.


The expression of class I and class II HLA antigens on preparations of human endothelial cells, isolated from umbilical cord veins, was investigated by immunofluorescence. While virtually all endothelial cells expressed class I antigens, less than 1% were positive for class II antigens, as detected with a panel of 10 different monoclonal antibodies. Antigen specific T cell lines proliferated in response to mumps antigen in the presence of endothelial cells or blood monocytes from HLA-DR matched donors. However, these T cell lines failed to respond in the absence of accessory cells or when accessory cells from HLA-D-region mismatched cord donors were used. The ability of both monocytes and endothelial cells to present antigen was abolished by treatment of the cells with monoclonal antibodies specific for either class I or class II HLA antigens plus complement. Similar treatment with monoclonal antibodies specific for monocytes greatly reduced antigen presentation by endothelial cells. These results indicate that preparations of endothelial cells contain a subpopulation of Ia positive cells, distinct from monocytes, which are required for antigen presentation.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa is capable of injecting protein toxins into other bacterial cells through one of its three type VI secretion systems (T6SSs). The activity of this T6SS is tightly regulated on the posttranslational level by phosphorylation-dependent and -independent pathways. The phosphorylation-dependent pathway consists of a Threonine kinase/phosphatase pair (PpkA/PppA) that acts on a forkhead domain-containing protein, Fha1, and a periplasmic protein, TagR, that positively regulates PpkA. In the present work, we biochemically and functionally characterize three additional proteins of the phosphorylation-dependent regulatory cascade that controls T6S activation: TagT, TagS and TagQ. We show that similar to TagR, these proteins act upstream of the PpkA/PppA checkpoint and influence phosphorylation of Fha1 and, apparatus assembly and effector export. Localization studies demonstrate that TagQ is an outer membrane lipoprotein and TagR is associated with the outer membrane. Consistent with their homology to lipoprotein outer membrane localization (Lol) components, TagT and TagS form a stable inner membrane complex with ATPase activity. However, we find that outer membrane association of T6SS lipoproteins TagQ and TssJ1, and TagR, is unaltered in a ΔtagTS background. Notably, we found that TagQ is indispensible for anchoring of TagR to the outer membrane fraction. As T6S-dependent fitness of P. aeruginosa requires TagT, S, R and Q, we conclude that these proteins likely participate in a trans-membrane signalling pathway that promotes H1-T6SS activity under optimal environmental conditions.


Supplemental feeding, whether intentional or accidental, alters wildlife foraging behaviors and may have consequences at the population and ecosystem levels. Wildlife feeding may also cause animals to develop aggressive behaviors toward conspecifics and people. The risks to humans is potentially accrued when the species is a native predator. Food-based attraction has been implicated in the development of human-directed aggression in the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) population on Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia. Management strategies such as education programs, prohibition of inappropriate human behaviors, and fencing of garbage dumps have been implemented to stop the (intentional or inadvertent) feeding of dingoes by people. Despite these efforts, dingoes continue to obtain human-sourced food, suggesting that other means of supplemental feeding are still available. One possible source of subsidized food is recreational fishing, which is a popular activity on the island. We conducted a quasi-experimental study during May–June 2014 of dingo foraging behaviors on the eastern beach of Fraser Island. We video-recorded the behaviors of lone and groups of dingoes when they were in the vicinity of anglers or by themselves. We hypothesized that if recreational fishing was a source of subsidies to dingoes, then there would be differences in dingo foraging behavior among the 2 groups. We found that in the absence of anglers, dingoes spent 81% of their time engaged in mobile food-related behaviors. When anglers were present, however, they spent 52% of their time sitting and resting. These results suggest that dingoes shifted from active searching to a sit and wait foraging mode upon detecting recreational anglers. We observed an event in which a dingo spent 2 hours resting near an angler, then dug up the fish remains buried by the man as soon as he had left the area. This and other anecdotal evidence support the view that the changes in dingo foraging activity detected in this study were related to increased opportunities to secure food from anglers. Recreational fishing may play an important role in the inadvertent subsidizing of dingoes on Fraser Island, although further investigations are needed before proposing and implementing additional conservation and management actions. © 2017 The Wildlife Society.


This paper describes the tracking of a vehicle by using a 3-dimensional positioning system, which is composed of two 2-dimensional Infrared (IR) signal source trackers. Once the 2D trackers detect the incident angles of the IR signal source, the 3D positioning system will locate the IR signal source. In the experiments, the detection on the longitudinal direction is concerned, and the IR signal source on the preceding vehicle is detected by the 3D positioning system implemented on the following vehicle. While GPS cannot tell two adjacent vehicles, the short-ranged positioning system is able to locate the nearby moving target.


ABSTRACT Sparsely Populated Areas are perceived as regions with the least human impact but the greatest potential for change. For some decades, the human geography of sparsely populated areas has attracted studies seeking to explain and differentiate their economic and demographic polarization in comparison to respective national averages. Evaluation of the economic, demographic and social progression of these sparsely populated areas is however obfuscated by the absence of globally agreed definitions on the qualifying criteria and, concurrently, inconsistent nomenclature to identify such regions internationally. Therefore, the aim of this study is to demonstrate the capacity for a globally consistent typology to identify the economic and demographic patterns in common, but within very different environmental constraints and institutional frameworks. To do so we focus on first-tier subnational geographical units with extremely low population densities and apply multivariable typology to understand and differentiate the key demographic and economic issues for sparsely populated areas. Using multivariable typology we identify three types of demographic and economic patterns as 'marginal', 'semi' and 'very remote' sparsely populated areas. The results emphasize the diversity of circumstances among these areas as a result of their past economic and demographic trajectories, but also as functions of institutional and political constraints.


The electric sail is an innovative propulsion concept which uses the solar wind dynamic pressure to produce a thrust without the need for propellant mass.The electric sail is consisted of many metal tethers which are connected to a solar-powered electron gun.The electron gun emits electrons to maintain the tethers at a high positive potential.The electric field generated by these metal tethers reflects the solar wind ions to generate a thrust.In this paper,the Gauss pseudospectral method is proposed for the trajectory optimization of electric sail.The Gauss pseudospectral method overcomes the shortcomings of the indirect method which is sensitive to the initial value of the costate variable.Considering the case of the characteristic acceleration changed under solar storms,the electric sail trajectory is generated online based on the Gauss pseudospectral method,thus improving the adaptability to the uncertainty of the solar wind.Finally,an outer solar system exploration mission is taken as a reference mission to compare the performance of electric sail and solar sail.The simulation results show that electric sail is faster than solar sail in the outer solar system exploration mission.


The recent effort by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Network has revealed that gastric cancer, which is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide with a 5-year survival rate less than 25%, is a much more heterogeneous disease than previously thought. And yet, conventional treatment approaches and clinical trials have assumed it is a single disease. Although it is well known that under the microscope, gastric cancer cells appear quite different, the current classification scheme recognizes two main categories of gastric cancer: diffuse and intestinal.

By integrating large-scale measurements of DNA, RNA, and proteins from 295 primary gastric tumors, the TCGA project found that there are four major subtypes of gastric cancer. The fact that these subtypes appear quite distinct on the molecular level suggests not only that the molecular processes driving tumorigenesis can vary among patients but also that the treatments may have to be tailored based on the subtype of tumor a patient has. This molecular stratification of patients, enabled by large-scale molecular characterization, is a significant step towards personalized therapy.

The data that are generated from tumors in the TCGA project are not only very large in terms of volume, but, perhaps even more importantly, highly heterogeneous. Six different molecular analysis technologies were used for the molecular characterization of gastric cancer. These technologies provided information on DNA mutations, amplifications or deletions of gene sequences, epigenetic modifications of DNA, and levels of mRNA, microRNA, and proteins. Additionally, coded clinical information on pathology, histology, tumor characteristics, and other relevant data on each patient was collected.

The computational challenge is how to integrate all this information not only to see broad differences among tumors but also to identify strong statistical associations among all these molecular and clinical data. Such associations may provide clues to how molecular systems in cancer cells are disrupted in different subtypes of gastric cancer and what treatment strategies may be most effective.

For example, one of the four subtypes is characterized by the presence of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Patients having tumors of this subtype tend to also have mutations in the PIK3CA pathway, extreme DNA hypermethylation, and extra copies of PD-L1 and PD-L2 genes, which are suppressors of immune response. These findings suggest that inhibitors of the PI3-K pathway may be of potential use for this subtype of gastric cancer. Further, PD-L1/2 antagonists may help promote immune destruction of the tumor.

Another example of a statistical association that may have clinical use is the finding that frequent mutations in a gene called RHOA occur predominantly in the subtype of gastric cancer termed "genomically stable," which is characterized by the lack of high levels of aneuploidy and are predominantly diffuse-type tumors. These subtypes of tumors have a higher likelihood of metastasis and are more invasive. It is known that the gene product of RHOA interacts with other proteins to alter cellular shape and motility, which are important for tumor growth. This protein or pathway may be an important therapeutic target for the genomically stable subtype of gastric cancer.

The large-scale statistical analysis of the data revealed numerous other prevalent associations among factors, such as age at diagnosis, anatomic region of the stomach where the tumor occurs, gender, mutation status of genes such as TP53, and other tumor or patient characteristics. Although identifying such relationships in heterogeneous cancer data is important for the initial discovery process, much work lies ahead to functionally characterize the molecular aberrations in cancer and to develop and test effective targeted therapies.

The ever-increasing volume and complexity of molecular data from cancer, exemplified by the TCGA project, calls for more sophisticated analytical approaches that can detect multivariate relationships in heterogeneous data and map that information onto the existing body of knowledge of the structure of molecular networks that govern all cellular processes. Other large-scale molecular characterization projects, such as the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) and the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer, are producing highly complementary data that will allow scientists to paint a more complete picture of how molecular regulatory processes are disrupted in cancer cells and what drugs may be effective in targeting a cancer's weaknesses. This first large-scale molecular characterization and analysis of gastric cancer undertaken by the TCGA project takes us one step closer toward helping patients suffering from this deadly type of cancer.


This paper presents a spiking neuroevolutionary system which implements memristors as plastic connections, i.e., whose weights can vary during a trial. The evolutionary design process exploits parameter self-adaptation and variable topologies, allowing the number of neurons, connection weights, and interneural connectivity pattern to emerge. By comparing two phenomenological real-world memristor implementations with networks comprised of: 1) linear resistors, and 2) constant-valued connections, we demonstrate that this approach allows the evolution of networks of appropriate complexity to emerge whilst exploiting the memristive properties of the connections to reduce learning time. We extend this approach to allow for heterogeneous mixtures of memristors within the networks; our approach provides an in-depth analysis of network structure. Our networks are evaluated on simulated robotic navigation tasks; results demonstrate that memristive plasticity enables higher performance than constant-weighted connections in both static and dynamic reward scenarios, and that mixtures of memristive elements provide performance advantages when compared to homogeneous memristive networks.


In an object recognition task where an image is represented as a constellation of image patches, often many patches correspond to the cluttered background. If such patches are used for object class recognition, they will adversely affect the recognition rate. In this paper, we present a two stage method for selecting image patches which characterize the target object class and are capable of discriminating between the positive images containing the target objects and the complementary negative images. The first stage selection is done using a novel combinatorial optimization formulation on a weighted multipartite graph representing similarities between images patches across different instances of the target object. The following stage is a statistical method for selecting those images patches from the positive images which, when used individually, have the power of discriminating between the positive and negative images in the evaluation data. The individual methods have a performance competitive with the state of the art methods on a popular benchmark data set and their sequential combination consistently outperforms the individual methods and most of the other known methods while approaching the best known results.


Although wild birds are the recognized source and reservoir for all subtypes of avian influenza viruses (AIV), the complex interaction among these diverse host and virus populations has not received adequate attention. A general concept of AIV epidemiology in wild birds exists; however, the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses in wild birds has reinforced the need for a much more detailed understanding of AIV natural history. Worldwide, the wild avian reservoirs for AIV are incompletely defined, even within well-studied groups such as the Anseriformes and Charadriiformes. This lack of clarity applies not only to avian host species, but also to the various subtypes of AIV present within these populations. Even with the extensive number of AIV isolations previously reported from wild birds, the reservoir species and global distribution for many of these AIV subtypes are not completely understood. To date, studies related to AIV epidemiology in wild birds primarily focused on the agent. To move forward, we need to apply this same level of scrutiny and detailed understanding to the natural host populations and the environments they utilize. Research to date clearly demonstrates that species and population structure are important in AIV maintenance, transmission, and possibly long-distance movement. Species-related differences related to general behavior, spatial and temporal distribution, habitat utilization, migration behavior, population age structure, and individual species susceptibility all potentially influence a species' role in AIV epidemiology. The unprecedented mortality associated with HPAI H5N1 infection in wild birds provides a new window from which to view the potential for exchange of AIV between wild and domestic birds, and further demonstrates and expands the varied roles that wild birds may play in AIV epidemiology. These roles must be clearly defined if we are going understand the full implications of current HPAI H5N1 virus introduction into the wild bird populations and most importantly prevent the next one.


SUMMARY: The lipophilic cations butyltriphenylphosphonium (BTPP+), tetraphenylphosphonium (TPP+) and triphenylmethylphosphonium (TPMP+) were taken up into cells of Bacteroides amylophilus H18 under anaerobic conditions. Uptake was dependent on the presence of maltose together with both HCO-
3 and Na+; it was at a maximum at concentrations of ≥ 20 mM-HCO-
3 and ≤ 2 mM-Na+. The addition of 2-(n-heptyl)-hydroxyquinoline-N-oxide (HpHOQnO) or of an uncoupler of oxidative phosphorylation, or air, resulted in efflux of the lipophilic cations. From the binding behaviour and the physiological effects of the lipophilic cations, a membrane potential (δ ψ) of 140 mV was estimated. There was no detectable δpH at an external pH of 6.7. The cytoplasmic Na+concentration was estimated to be 0.2 mM, indicating that B. amylophilus can maintain a Na+concentration gradient equivalent to at least 150 mV. Variation in the external Na+concentration (2 to 180 mM) had little influence on δ ψ. High external concentrations of the fermentation products acetate, formate and succinate had little effect on the growth rate and the δ ψ. The cytoplasmic ATP concentration decreased rapidly on addition of HpHOQnO oxide or of an uncoupler. The maximum internal ATP concentration was only maintained at an external concentration≥2mM-Na+. The NADH: fumarate reductase activity of vesicles of B. amylophilus was associated with alkalization of the suspension medium. The amount of H+taken up was in excess of the expected amount of scalar H+and was partially sensitive to uncoupler. It is concluded that the δ ψ was generated via H+translocation driven primarily by the cytochrome-deficient NADH: fumarate reductase system. The transmembrane Na+gradient could be supported via the action of a Na+/2 H+antiporter.


I have studied nucleotide polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium using multilocus data from 77 fragments, with an average length of fragments of 550 bp, in the deciduous tree Populus tremula (Salicaceae). The frequency spectrum across loci showed a modest excess of mutations segregating at low frequency and a marked excess of high-frequency derived mutations at silent sites, relative to neutral expectations. These excesses were also seen at replacement sites, but were not so pronounced for high-frequency derived mutations. There was a marked excess of low-frequency mutations at replacement sites, likely indicating deleterious amino acid-changing mutations that segregate at low frequencies in P. tremula. I used approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) to evaluate a number of different demographic scenarios and to estimate parameters for the best-fitting model. The data were found to be consistent with a historical reduction in the effective population size of P. tremula through a bottleneck. The timing inferred for this bottleneck is largely consistent with geological data and with data from several other long-lived plant species. The results show that P. tremula harbors substantial levels of nucleotide polymorphism with the posterior mode of the scaled mutation rate, θ = 0.0177 across loci. The ABC analyses also provided an estimate of the scaled recombination rate that indicates that recombination rates in P. tremula are likely to be 2–10 times higher than the mutation rate. This study reinforces the notion that linkage disequilibrium is low and decays to negligible levels within a few hundred base pairs in P. tremula.


It is possibly easier to inform students the importance of knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC). It is, however, more difficult for students to make connections between what they have been taught in KM theory and what they need to practice. The application of KM and IC can lead to considerable improvements in organisational efficiency and effectiveness. Students, particularly online students, need to apply knowledge and skills in the KM contexts to demonstrate autonomy, well-developed judgement and responsibility that require self-directed work and learning. An online team exercise has been designed for an online course with a key focus on knowledge sharing, team skills, and resource management. In the exercise, online external students are divided into police and prisoner groups whereby they are required to use different resources (e.g. cars, buses and helicopters) to capture the prisoner groups or to escape from the police on a virtual map. The online capacity of the exercise allows online and distance education students
from domestic and international, metropolitan and regional areas to engage and interact and thus learn and share knowledge from each other. The team exercise helps to create an innovative online learning environment that is active, cooperative and engaging to enhance the quality of student experiences. Quantitative and qualitative data collected from a KM course suggested that the students' behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement, as compared to the previous years, improved significantly. The exercise is particularly useful for teaching KM and IC but is also ideal for innovation, teamwork, individual and team learning, people management, resource and time management, interpersonal and negotiation skills, and strategic planning. A reflective report is used as an assessment with the objective of helping students to learn from their
practical experience from the online team exercise.


BACKGROUND
The natural history and treatment results for spinal glomus (type II) arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) remain relatively obscure.

OBJECTIVE
To calculate spinal glomus (type II) AVM hemorrhages rates and amalgamate results of intervention.

METHODS
We performed a pooled analysis via the PubMed database through May 2012, including studies with at least 3 cases. Data on individual patients were extracted and analyzed using a Cox proportional hazards regression model to obtain hazard ratios for hemorrhage risk factors.

RESULTS
The annual hemorrhage rate before treatment was 4% (95% confidence interval [confidence interval]: 3%-6%), increasing to 10% (95% CI: 7%-16%) for AVMs with previous hemorrhage. The hazard ratio for hemorrhage after hemorrhagic presentation was 2.25 (95% CI: 0.71-7.07), increasing to 13.0 within the first 10 years (95% CI: 1.44-118). The overall rates of complete obliteration were 78% (95% CI: 72%-83%) for surgery and 33% (95% CI: 24%-43%) for endovascular treatment. Long-term clinical worsening occurred in 12% of patients after surgical treatment (95% CI: 8%-16%) and in 13% after endovascular treatment (95% CI: 7%-21%). No hemorrhages occurred after complete obliteration. After partial surgical treatment, the annual hemorrhage rate was 3% (95% CI: 1%-6%); no hemorrhages were reported over 196 patient-years after partial endovascular treatment.

CONCLUSION
Spinal glomus (type II) AVMs with previous hemorrhage, particularly within 10 years, demonstrated a greater risk of hemorrhage. Complete obliteration and even partial endovascular treatment significantly decreased their hemorrhage rate.


Copyright © 2019 Korean Continence Society This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A patient with a neurological ailment is faced with a wide spectrum of symptoms, through hidden and unclear paths that spark from the most closed-off of spaces in the body, the effects that begun from the brain inevitably finds its way affecting various organs. The pathophysiology of the nervous system affecting the urological system is not novel in itself. Urologists have always had to consider the changes become upon the bladder with regards to the nervous system. But there the understanding has always ended. Here, we see a glimpse of the damage done "up there." Not in complex neurological errors, but in the role of something we are more familiar with, inflammation. Through a series of reviews, the supplementary issue introduces the readers to inflammatory changes in brain that may explain the pathophysiologic origins of familiar diseases. We see how neuroinflammation alters Alzheimer disease [1,2], and depression [3]. In "Exercise and Neuroinflammation in Health and Disease," exercise, which clinicians have always recommended as a colloquial prescription for almost everything, has a specific role in combating neuroinflammation [4]. An exciting new article by Jeong et al. [5] describes the effect of the unfortunately all too familiar postoperative cognitive dysfunction and a potential treatment with polydeoxyribonucleotides, while Kim et al. [6] shows hyperlipidemia related memory impairment, and how to combat it with Berberine. The mission statement of the INJ has been to create a common ground, a place where the neurologist may converse with the urologist, where the scientist can convey her ideas to the clinician. Through the language of inflammation, we hope the readers will be able to approach these neurological maladies with more familiarity and confidence, understanding the farreaching hand of the nervous system, and how it may closely affect the bladder.


OBJECTIVE
There are potential benefits of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in improving swallowing functions after stroke; however, few studies have been performed in the chronic stroke population. This study aims to distil the key effects of rTMS on swallowing functions and swallowing-related quality of life.

METHODS
Twenty-two participants with chronic post-stroke dysphagia were randomly assigned into active or sham rTMS groups. Seven participants withdrew from the study, thus data from 15 participants (mean age 64.6 years) were analysed. Participants received 3,000 pulses of 5 Hz rTMS (active: n = 11; sham: n = 4) on the tongue area of the motor cortex for 10 days over a period of 2 weeks. All participants were assessed 1 week before, and 2 months, 6 months and 12 months after stimulation. Outcomes were measured by a videofluoroscopic swallowing study, swallowing-related quality-of-life questionnaire and Iowa Oral Performance Instrument.

RESULTS
No statistically significant effects were identified for any outcome measures.

CONCLUSION
This study indicates that 5 Hz rTMS applied over the tongue area of the motor cortex is not effective for improving swallowing function in individuals with chronic post-stroke dysphagia. Possible explanations for these non-significant results are dis cussed. Future studies should explore the potential of the current protocol in conjunction with conventional dysphagia therapy.


Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are considered a paradigm of adaptive evolution at the molecular level and as such are frequently investigated by evolutionary biologists and ecologists. Accurate genotyping is essential for understanding of the role that MHC variation plays in natural populations, but may be extremely challenging. Here, I discuss the DNA‐based methods currently used for genotyping MHC in non‐model vertebrates, as well as techniques likely to find widespread use in the future. I also highlight the aspects of MHC structure that are relevant for genotyping, and detail the challenges posed by the complex genomic organization and high sequence variation of MHC loci. Special emphasis is placed on designing appropriate PCR primers, accounting for artefacts and the problem of genotyping alleles from multiple, co‐amplifying loci, a strategy which is frequently necessary due to the structure of the MHC. The suitability of typing techniques is compared in various research situations, strategies for efficient genotyping are discussed and areas of likely progress in future are identified. This review addresses the well established typing methods such as the Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism (SSCP), Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE), Reference Strand Conformational Analysis (RSCA) and cloning of PCR products. In addition, it includes the intriguing possibility of direct amplicon sequencing followed by the computational inference of alleles and also next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies; the latter technique may, in the future, find widespread use in typing complex multilocus MHC systems.


A new method is described for the determination of optical purity of α-amino acid samples in protic media. No derivatization of the analyte or multistep synthesis is required, and high accuracy is obtained from the colorimetric output. Chiral discrimination is achieved through the use of an optically pure trans-1,2-diaminocyclohexane-derived Cu(II)-containing host that differentiates amino acid enantiomers by a factor of about 2. Enantioselective signaling arises from the implementation of an indicator displacement assay based on competitive Cu(II) coordination involving the chiral Cu(II)-containing host, the amino acid guest, and a metal ion indicator. The molecular structure of the host/guest complex was determined by X-ray analysis and exhibits chelation of the Cu(II) center by the amino acid to provide substrate organization.


This paper deals with the wavelet and correlation analysis of meteorological parameters for various meteorological stations of India. Discrete wavelet using Daubechies wavelet at level 5 (Db5) and Continuous wavelet using Mexican Hat wavelet of meteorological parameters have been discussed. Discrete wavelet decomposition of each parameter presented in seven parts namely s, a5, d1, d2, d3, d4 and d5. The first part "s" represents the signal or raw data and the second part "a5" corresponds to the amplitude of the signal. The next five parts d1, d2, d3, d4 and d5 represent details of the signal or raw data at five different levels. 1-D continuous wavelet decomposition of each parameter has four parts; first part on top represents the analyzed signal or raw data, second part contains the scalogram value. The third part shows the daily variation of coefficients. The fourth part depicts the local maximums of related parameters. It has been observed that maximum and minimum temperature have positive correlation for all the years and at all stations except for Shimla. All stations for all years have negative correlation between rainfall and maximum temperature; rainfall and minimum temperature.


The behavioural synthesis procedure aims to produce optimised register-transfer level datapath descriptions from an algorithmic problem definition, normally expressed in a high-level programming language. The procedure can be partitioned into a number of subtasks linked by a serial synthesis flow. Graph theoretic algorithms can be used to provide solutions to these subtasks. Many of these techniques, however, belong to a class of algorithm for which there is no exact solution computable in polynomial time. To overcome this problem, heuristics are used to constrain the solution space. The introduction of heuristics can cause the algorithm to terminate in a local cost minimum. This thesis supports a global formulation of the behavioural synthesis problem. An algorithm which can avoid local minima, simulated annealing, forms the basis of the synthesis system reported. A modular software system is presented in support of this approach. A novel data structure enables multiple degrees of optimisation freedom within the datapath solution space. Synthesis primitives, tightly coupled to a solution costing mechanism directed towards the prevalent datapath implementation technologies, form the core of the system. The software is exercised over small and large-scale synthesis benchmarks. The synthesis paradigm is extended by the provision of optimisation routines capable of supporting the generation of functional pipelines.


In her contribution to this volume and in a recent book, Melinda Gann Hall charges the opponents of judicial elections with being "antidemocratic" (Hall 2010, 1). Blinded by their "very unflattering view of voters" (ibid., 2) and in thrall to the Article III model of life-tenured executive appointment, these naysayers have, in her telling, ignored the empirical evidence. Hall's own work has shown that campaigns for state high court judgeships now feature significant amounts of spending and competition, as well as fairly robust forms of political speech and participation (e.g., Hall 2001). Yet at the same time as judicial elections have been going up and up on these standard legitimacy-conferring dimensions, the opposition has only doubled down, launching "a full-scale war" against the institution (Bonneau and Hall 2009, 1, 128). The legal community's advocacy in this regard, Hall says, "falls just short of zealotry in its condemnation of democratic politics" (2010, 3).By framing the debate over state judicial selection as one between those who would privilege democratic values and those who would privilege other (unnamed) values in the method they favor, Hall reprises a classic dichotomy that has defined this literature. On the one hand, it is assumed, choosing judges by election facilitates self-government by empowering the people to hold accountable these important officials. Whatever else they might be, elections are "democracy-enhancing institutions" (Bonneau and Hall 2009, 2). On the other hand, it is argued, choosing judges by election undermines their independence and therefore threatens values such as professionalism, legality, and impartiality. There is posited an inescapable tradeoff between the democratic benefits that judicial elections offer and the extrinsic costs they impose. Whether one supports or rejects their usage depends upon how one weighs this tradeoff.But is it so clear that judicial elections are, or could realistically ever be, democracy-enhancing institutions? As far as I can tell, none of the many fine scholars to have participated in the debate has taken care to explicate this presupposition or to subject it to critical scrutiny. This omission looks particularly odd in light of the prodigious body of work that seeks to reconcile judicial review by the unelected federal courts with democratic imperatives.Responding to Hall's charge, this essay aims, first, to put the conventional wisdom on firmer conceptual ground, and then to show how it might be upended. Even an efficacious, abuse-free system of judicial elections, I will argue, does not necessarily advance the cause of self-government -- at least, not unless one takes a highly controversial view of the judicial function and of democracy itself. The opponents of judicial elections need not cede the democratic high ground. Beyond any of the specific arguments that I make in the space I have here, my larger aim is to suggest how the "endless" debate over judicial selection (Geyh 2008) might be shifted onto more productive terrain.


In phoniatrics the differential diagnosis of functional voice disorders is mainly based on the medical history of the patient, laryngoscopic and stroboscopic findings. On the one hand the typical laryngoscopic picture must be stressed, on the other hand the central significance of stroboscopy for the functional diagnosis of the larynx has to be mentioned. Only the detailed assessment of the stroboscopic signs and symptoms described by Schönhärl allows a therapy-relevant differentiation between cause-related diagnosis and compensatory secondary symptoms with a necessary distinction of psychosomatic disorders.


Water in confinement exhibits properties significantly different from bulk water due to
frustration in the hydrogen-bond network induced by interactions with the substrate. Here, we
combine infrared spectroscopy and advanced molecular dynamics simulations to probe the
structure of confined water as a function of relative humidity within a metal-organic framework
containing cylindrical pores lined with an ordered array of cobalt open coordination sites.
Building upon the quantitative agreement between experimental and theoretical spectra, we
demonstrate that water at low relative humidity initially binds to the open metal sites and
subsequently forms disconnected one-dimensional chains of hydrogen-bonded water molecules
bridging between the cobalt sites. Upon further increase in relative humidity, these water chains
nucleate pore filling, with water molecules occupying the entire pore interior before the relative
humidity reaches 30%. Systematic analysis of the rotational and translational dynamics indicates
heterogeneity in this pore-confined water, with water molecules displaying distinct levels of
mobility as a function of the distance from the pore surface.


We re-examined the age and depositional environment of the Ebishima Limestone in the northernmost Tsushima Islands, which had previously been interpreted as Pliocene shallow-marine deposits. Limestone that overlies Miocene siliciclastics consists mainly of well-sorted marine bioclasts and calcite cement. The occurrence of high-angle planar cross-stratification and fossil land snails indicates deposition in a coastal sand-dune environment. The cement was meteoric, as indicated by the low values of carbon and oxygen isotopes (-5.7 and -4.5 per mil PDB, respectively) and the absence of sulfides. Radiocarbon analyses of bulk inorganic carbon yield an age of 41,497±574 cal. BP., which is possibly influenced by the meteoric calcite cement. Therefore, the carbonate dunes were deposited prior to 40 ka. Considering the environment of subsidence at the Tsushima Islands, the coastal dunes represented by the Ebishima Limestone were probably deposited during a period of high sea level in the Middle-Late Pleistocene.


This paper focuses on two Buenos Aires neighborhoods that face displacement pressures. Building on research about urban mobilization in a range of cities, this paper highlights how collaboration can vary in its configuration and orientation at the neighborhood level, despite similar circumstances. Data include ethnographic excerpts from the experiences of residents who fight to remain in their homes but ultimately leave, which trace out distinct neighborhood trajectories—moving onward and moving away. These accounts indicate divergence in how residents respond to displacement threats due to the differently situated, networked nature of the two sites as political spaces. Moreover, distinct logics of collaboration inflect ongoing displacement politics in the threatened neighborhoods as well as in the destinations of displaced residents.


"The aging of the industrialized countries will dramatically strain their social security systems. In Germany, for example, 100 employed persons now support about 40 elderly, but 85 elderly will have to be sustained by the same number of employed persons in the year 2030. This pressure is exacerbated by the observed trend towards earlier retirement ages. This paper presents cross-national evidence and an option value analysis of the retirement decision to argue that the distortions created by the actuarially unfair design of the social security systems in the United States and particularly in Germany have significantly contributed in this trend." (SUMMARY IN GER)


The concept of entropy constitutes, together with energy, a cornerstone of contemporary physics and related areas. It was originally introduced by Clausius in 1865 along abstract lines focusing on thermodynamical irreversibility of macroscopic physical processes. In the next decade, Boltzmann made the genius connection—further developed by Gibbs—of the entropy with the microscopic world, which led to the formulation of a new and impressively successful physical theory, thereafter named statistical mechanics. The extension to quantum mechanical systems was formalized by von Neumann in 1927, and the connections with the theory of communications and, more widely, with the theory of information were respectively introduced by Shannon in 1948 and Jaynes in 1957. Since then, over fifty new entropic functionals emerged in the scientific and technological literature. The most popular among them are the additive Renyi one introduced in 1961, and the nonadditive one introduced in 1988 as a basis for the generalization of the Boltzmann–Gibbs and related equilibrium and nonequilibrium theories, focusing on natural, artificial and social complex systems. Along such lines, theoretical, experimental, observational and computational efforts, and their connections to nonlinear dynamical systems and the theory of probabilities, are currently under progress. Illustrative applications, in physics and elsewhere, of these recent developments are briefly described in the present synopsis.


Subject
 Central-East European economies' resilience in an adverse global climate.

 Significance
 The economies of the eleven newer EU member states (EU-11) from Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) are projected to maintain momentum despite modest average growth rates in the euro-area of 1.2% in 2019 and 1.4% in 2020, and in the EU-28 of 1.4% this year and 1.6% next, according to the European Commission's mid-year economic forecast. Poland, Hungary and Romania in particular are expected to grow by 4% or more this year, while projections for all the other CEE economies are over 2-3%. Although most of this growth is due to domestic demand, positive net exports remain important for some countries.

 Impacts
 Monetary policy across the EU is expected to be accommodative.
 Low interest rates and readiness to deploy such policy instruments as quantitative easing should support confidence.
 The example of inflation-tolerant growth in CEE could suggest a revaluation of inflation targets across the EU.


Horse welfare is a multi-dimensional concept involving both mental and physical aspects. In the present thesis a holistic approach to assessing welfare is used through the Welfare Quality® (WQ) principles and criteria. The aim of this thesis was to develop a protocol in line the WQ® system for assessing horse welfare in Sweden and to develop a system for delivering feedback from assessments to horse owners.

In the first study an extensive literature review and discussions with national and international experts resulted in the horse welfare assessment protocol (HWAP). A pilot study showed that HWAP provided a firm basis for monitoring welfare, with high repeatability and feasibility for field use.

The second study compared an updated version of the HWAP to the official protocol (OP) used in Swedish official controls of horse welfare. Results indicated that the added level of detail and more animal based measures in the HWAP provided a more thorough welfare assessment of the individual animal than the OP methodology.

The third study used a questionnaire to investigate Swedish horse owners' decision making on the welfare of their horses and what preferences they had regarding feedback from welfare assessments. The results indicated a demand for systematic welfare assessments to provide solid information and scientifically based advice. The results were used to develop a database allowing the horse owners online access to the feedback related to the welfare assessments of their horses.

The fourth and final study evaluated how the amount of feedback from assessments (using HWAP) affected changes in horse welfare. The results showed no clear differences between the two groups and it was suggested that a six month interval between assessments is inadequate to observe significant changes. The study indicated that the educational level of the stable managers does not appear to affect the change in actual horse welfare status.

The thesis can be used as a basis for assessing horse welfare and providing horse owners with feedback. It provides an insight into the complicated subject of changing horse owners' behaviour, which is indirectly measured through horse welfare assessments.


Carbon nanodots (CNDs) hold great potential in imaging and drug delivery applications. In this study, nitrogen-doped CNDs (NCNDs) were coupled to the anticancer agent paclitaxel (PTX) through a labile ester bond. NCNDs showed excellent cell viability and endowed the NCND-PTX conjugate with good water solubility. The hybrid integrates the optical properties of the nanodots with the anticancer function of the drug into a single unit. Cytotoxicity was evaluated in breast, cervix, lung, and prostate cancer cell lines by the MTT assay while the cellular uptake was monitored using confocal microscopy. NCND-PTX induced apoptosis in cancer cells exhibiting slightly better anticancer activity compared to the drug alone. Moreover, the course of the NCND-PTX interaction with cancer cells was monitored using an xCELLigence system. The NCND-based conjugate represents a promising platform for bioimaging and drug delivery.


ted again to determine the plasma propofol concentration. After prone positioning, CO decreased from 5.20 ± 0.80 to 4.30 ± 1.00 l.min. The plasma propofol concentration increased from 2.05 ± 0.20 to 2.38 ± 0.28 lg.ml. Myburgh et al. [2] and Kurita et al. [3] have investigated the influence of CO on propofol concentrations during continuous infusion, demonstrating an inverse relationship between CO and propofol concentrations. In this study, we demonstrated that propofol concentrations were greater than predicted as a result of the decrease of CO in the prone position. This study suggests the possibility of propofol overdosage in the prone position.


BY FARROKH HESABI Persepolis have won Iran Professional League (IPL) title for a fifth consecutive season. It's an unprecedented record of league dominance for Iran's top flight, however the team are still hungry to win more titles. In fact, Persepolis did what Persepolis do! This absolutely sounds perfect for the Reds as they have won seventh titles of IPL in total and fifth in a row. The Iranian giants club clinched their record-extending fifth consecutive title on Friday after beating Peykan 2-0. When considering some of the major factors that have helped Persepolis maintain their dominance in Iranian football, one name that immediately comes to mind is Branko Ivankovic. The Croatian tactician created the basis of success for the Tehran-based club when he took over in 2015 and won three out of the five consecutive league trophies for the Reds. Ivankovic raised the bar for next Persepolis' coaches. However, Yahya Golmohammadi, the current head coach, could handle the challenge in the best way possible and continued in the path that Branko had already started. Yahya now has forged a reputation as one of Iran's best new generation coaches. Another name for the Persepolis club is Jalal Hosseini. The Titan of Iranian football is now at the age of 39 and still playing for the Reds at the highest level, with the unparalleled power of team leadership on the pitch. In a sense, the veteran has become Persepolis' figurehead. The defender was a piece of power, quality, and technique in all the five successive titles for Persepolis. Solid defense was a key to Persepolis' winning factor. The team has a good goalkeeper, Hamed Lak. Still, the defenders such as Hossein Kananizadegan, Saeid Aghaei, Mehdi Shiri, Farshad Faraji, and even Vahid Amiri and Siamak Nemati, and the "team defense" in general, made a solid defending wall for the team this year. Persepolis was also one of the most attacking teams in the IPL, and with scoring 47 goals, they had the second top offensive line in the league. Sepahan were a strong and hard-working opponent for Persepolis in the title race until the last week of the league, but Golmohammadi's side were fully deserved to win the title. They are quite clearly head and shoulders above their rivals, and after a tough start to the season, they hit the top and looked unstoppable till the end of the league. Persepolis finished the 20th edition of the IPL with 67 points, two points above Sepahan. Esteghlal came third with 56 points. Transit of goods via Iran's land borders rises 95%


We perform micromagnetic simulations in MuMax3 on various magneticnanostructures to study their magnetic state and response to external fields. Theinteraction and ordering of nanomagnetic arrays is investigated by calculating themagnetostatic energies for various configurations. These energies are then used inMonte Carlo simulation to study the thermal behaviour of systems of nanomagneticarrays. We find that the magnetic state of the nanostructures are related to theirshape and size and furthermore affect the emergent properties of the system, givingrise to temperature dependent ordering among the individual structures. Results fromboth micromagnetic and statistical mechanic simulations agree well with availableexperimental data, although the Monte Carlo algorithm encounter problems at lowsimulation temperatures.


specifically represented at Park Crescent. Paediatrics (or, better, child health) is not. When it comes to health the child is father of the man; and research into the nature and origins of neonatal and childhood conditions is more likely to improve the healthofour nation than further exploration of what to do when it is already too late to mend. For too long medicine, surgery, and obstetrics, with the emphasis on the adult and his or her problems, have been allowed to dominate the university schools and the interests ofgrant-giving bodies; yet when these subjects were named by the GMC more than 100 years ago as the fundamental elements of medical practice they included paediatrics, which is now no longer the case. Paediatrics may once have been the study of diseases peculiar to children and therefore on a par with other minor specialties; but it is now the general medicine and surgery of childhood. Its basic science is growth and development. Just as general and special pathology embraces all the clinical disciplines, so does paediatrics. We ourselves heartily approve of the customer-cobntractor principle for a substantial proportion of nationally sponsored medical research. We do not identify the difficulties as you do. For us they derive from the frequent incapacity of the practising clinician to formulate projects from the problems he understands well enough; and the equally frequent incapacity of the basic researcher to comprehend the questions which only he has the skills to answer. Each is too often tragically and sometimes hilariously lost in the other's territory, and this is where the customercontractor idea goes aground. The old, oftenrehearsed wrangle about pure and applied science is comparatively irrelevant. It is surely not too banal to beg for a constructive approach to these fundamental matters. A few clinical fellowships to enable the clinician to try his hand are quite inadequate. Nothing short of a quite massive change of attitude towards the training of some young clinicians so that they can be good customers from a position of some experience as contractors can create this vital relationship. Let us all be far more active in promoting this new climate even in the face of accumulating clinical apathy. Let us also formally recognise child health as a primary area of contractual demand. And may you, sir, come to understand that the inadequacies of the customer-contractor principle lie not in the principle but in deficiencies in both customer and contractor which are accessible to improvement if we all make the effort. JOHN DAVIS JOHN DOBBING


To address the ever-increasing data traffic demand, there is a need for novel cost-efficient network deployment schemes. In this work, we investigate the joint optimization of base station (BS) location, its density, and transmit power allocation to minimize the overall network operational cost required to meet an underlying coverage constraint at each user equipment (UE), which is randomly deployed following the binomial point process. As the joint optimization problem is nonconvex and combinatorial in nature, we propose a non-trivial solution methodology that effectively decouples it into three individual optimization problems. Firstly, by using the distance distribution of the farthest UE from the BS, we present novel insights on optimal BS location for a given number of BSs and sectoring type. After that we provide a tight approximation for the optimal transmit power allocation to each BS. Lastly, using the latter two results, the optimal number of BSs that minimize the operational cost is obtained. Numerical results validate the analysis and provide practical insights on optimal BS deployment. We observe that the proposed joint optimization framework, that solves the coverage probability versus operational cost tradeoff, can yield a significant reduction of about 65% in the operational cost as compared to the benchmark fixed allocation scheme.


The hypervirulent K1 serotype Klebsiella pneumoniae is responsible for a new invasive syndrome, typically associated to hepatic abscesses with extra-hepatic complications. Initially described in Taiwan, it has significantly spread to several Asian countries and more recently to Europe and North America, thus constituting an emerging and global problem. The authors describe a case report of a 64-years-old portuguese caucasian woman without any previous diseases or epidemiological risk factors such as trips or contact with Asian products or population, diagnosed with a pyogenic liver abscess with pleural effusion caused by this hyper-virulent strain. A successful clinical cure was achieved after the etiological identification and treatment with antimicrobial therapy combined with catheter drainage. This is the first identification of hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumonia ST 23 clone in Portugal in the context of an invasive syndrome.


Details of two new small marine taxa of the genus Cocconeis Ehrenberg are described; C. pottercovei sp. nov. and C. pinnata var. matsii var. nov., which were observed as epipelic and epiphytic in Potter Cove, King George Island, Antarctica. Descriptions are based on both light and scanning electron microscope observations. C. pottercovei belongs to the group of Cocconeis taxa that bear very short and marginal striae on the rapheless valve while C. pinnata var. matsii belongs to the C. costata Gregory complex. They are mainly differentiated from the other similar taxa by stria number, stria arrangement and structure on both raphe and rapheless valves. A comparison with closely resembling taxa is given.


Managing Editor Sierra Williams presents a round up of popular stories from around the web on higher education, academic impact, and trends in scholarly communication.


Summary Brown rot fungus Monilinia laxa (Aderh. & Ruhl.) Honey is an important plant pathogen in stone and pome fruits in Europe. We applied a proteomic approach in a study of M. laxa isolates obtained from apples and apricots in order to show the host specifity of the isolates and to analyse differentially expressed proteins in terms of host specifity, fungal pathogenicity and identification of candidate proteins for diagnostic marker development. Extracted mycelium proteins were separated by 2-D electrophoresis (2-DE) and visualized by Coomassie staining in a non-linear pH range of 3–11 and Mr of 14–116 kDa. We set up a 2-DE reference map of M. laxa, resolving up to 800 protein spots, and used it for image analysis. The average technical coefficient of variance (13 %) demonstrated a high reproducibility of protein extraction and 2-D polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2-DE PAGE), and the average biological coefficient of variance (23 %) enabled differential proteomic analysis of the isolates. Multivariate statistical analysis (principal component analysis) discriminated isolates from two different hosts, providing new data that support the existence of a M. laxa specialized form f. sp. mali, which infects only apples. A total of 50 differentially expressed proteins were further analyzed by LC-MS/MS, yielding 41 positive identifications. The identified mycelial proteins were functionally classified into 6 groups: amino acid and protein metabolism, energy production, carbohydrate metabolism, stress response, fatty acid metabolism and other proteins. Some proteins expressed only in apple isolates have been described as virulence factors in other fungi. The acetolactate synthase was almost 11-fold more abundant in apple-specific isolates than in apricot isolates and it might be implicated in M. laxa host specificity. Ten proteins identified only in apple isolates are potential candidates for the development of M. laxa host-specific diagnostic markers.


The current institutional process for project-level environmental review, the government-required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), requires assessment of the proposed project, the no-build alternative, and alternatives to the proposed project. Despite growing academic research to compare the environmental impacts of air and high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure, there are few instances of multimodal alternatives analysis in airport and HSR EIS documents. In this paper, examples of EISs for air and HSR capacity-enhancement projects are chronicled to identify key challenges to completing modal alternative analysis in the EIS: the spatial heterogeneity of the physical infrastructure for air and HSR, the framing of EIS purpose and need statements, and the complicated interpretations of environmental impact significance thresholds. The paper concludes by proposing strategies to incentivize modal alternative assessments and highlight methods that are needed to perform high-quality comparative analysis to inform decision makers, whether in the context of the EIS or in upstream planning processes.


We compare the results of modal imaging [1], a method for measuring operational deflection mode shapes and frequencies in video, to the predictions of a finite element simulation, as well as accelerometer measurements, of a Portsmouth, New Hampshire bridge. The finite element simulation is based on schematics obtained from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. We also compare the results of modal imaging on the bridge to previous visual analysis from [2], and discuss some of the algorithmic differences that appear to improve results.


Background: IDegLira, a fixed-ratio combination of a basal insulin (BI), insulin degludec, and liraglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1), was approved by the FDA in Q4 2016 for the treatment of type 2 diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). This study describes characteristics of adult patients (pts) who initiated IDegLira in a real-world setting. Methods: Demographic and clinical data for pts prescribed IDegLira between May and November 2017 were extracted from the Practice Fusion ambulatory care database. Pt characteristics were described for the 6-months prior to initiation. Pts were grouped by most recent antidiabetic therapy regimen in the prior 6-months. Results: Pts prescribed IDegLira (n=388) received one of five prior therapy regimens: BI as only injectable (BI-INJ, N=88), GLP-1 as only injectable (GLP-INJ, N=47), GLP-1+insulin (GLP-INS, N=65), multiple daily insulin injections (MDI, N=35), and no injectable therapy (N-INJ, N=153). On average, IDegLira pts were 58 years old (SD 11.5); the majority (66%) between 40 and 64 years of age. Pts' mean BMI was 35 (7.6). Mean A1C was 9.0 (1.82), with 12% below 9%. The N-INJ group had the highest mean A1C prior to initiating IDegLira (9.6), BI-INJ and GLP-INJ had intermediate means (both 9.0), and the GLP-INS and MDI groups had the lowest (8.4, 8.3). IDegLira patients previously treated with GLP-INS, MDI, and N-INJ had higher Charlson Comorbidity and Diabetes Complication Severity scores compared to patients previously treated with BI-INJ or GLP-INJ. Most prescriptions were written by PCPs (53%). Conclusion: This analysis shows that initial use of IDegLira has been across a range of practices and clinical profiles. Most IDegLira prescribing occurred among pts on a previous injectable therapy, with those on single injectable therapy having higher A1Cs than those on multiple injectable therapies. Pts prescribed IDegLira with no injectable therapy in the prior 6 months had the highest A1C values. Disclosure M. Mocarski: Employee; Self; Novo Nordisk Inc.. Stock/Shareholder; Self; Novo Nordisk A/S. J. da Rocha Fernandes: Employee; Self; Novo Nordisk A/S, International Diabetes Federation. L. Kallenbach: None. J. Vasey: None. J. Ken: None. A.N. Bogdanov: None. M. Radin: Employee; Self; Novo Nordisk Inc. L.E. Egede: Research Support; Self; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Advisory Panel; Self; Novo Nordisk Inc..


: Oxygen is one of the most widely used drugs. It is important to recognise that oxygen administration carries risks as well as benefits. While adequate oxygen saturation of arterial blood is an important factor in tissue oxygen delivery, oxygen administration to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can lead to decompensated type II respiratory failure. In this debate, Dr Lavery makes the case that high concentration oxygen should be given to all patients treated in an ambulance, while Professor Corris argues against this position.


Iodine is an essential micronutrient in the thyroid hormone synthesis, hence inadequate or excess iodine may result in thyroid dysfunction. Hence the dietary iodine intake has to be monitored regularly for the recommended levels.
With other confounding factors in dietary source, salt fortification with iodine was implemented by World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 1993. Inspite of Universal Salt Iodization (USI), Hypothyroidism is believed to be a common health issue in India and Worldwide.
Hence this study was done on a small scale primarily by estimating the salt iodine content of commercially available consumable salts. Salt packets were collected from the retail shops in and around Madhuranthagam. The iodine content in the salt samples was estimated and expressed in parts per mllion (p.p.m) based on the Titration method recommended by WHO. The results were analysed by the number of samples (in percentage) with adequate, less and excess iodine content as per the WHO recommendation.

Keywords: Consumable salt iodine, Iodine status, Thyroid dysfunction, Hypothyroidism, Universal salt iodization (USI).


Aims
This study aims to define an atrioventricular (AV) delay optimization method for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) with a quadripolar left ventricular (LV) lead based on intrinsic conduction intervals.

Methods and results
Heart failure patients with a left bundle branch block underwent CRT implantation with a quadripolar LV lead. Invasive LV pressure-volume loops were recorded during four biventricular and three multi-point pacing (MPP) settings, using four patient-specific paced AV delays. Haemodynamic response was defined as change in stroke work (Δ%SW) compared to intrinsic rhythm and was related to the following conduction intervals: right atrial pacing to right ventricular sensing interval (RAp-RVs), Q to LV sensing interval normalized to QRS duration (QLV/QRSd), PR-interval, and P-wave duration. In 44 patients, the largest Δ%SW (104 ± 76%) occurred at a paced AV delay of 128 ± 32 ms, at 47 ± 9% of RAp-RVs. Optimal AV delay of biventricular pacing (126 ± 26 ms) did not differ from MPP (126 ± 21 ms, P = 0.29). Intra-class correlation coefficient between optimal AV delays of different pacing configurations was 0.64 (0.45-0.78, P < 0.001). Although not statistically significant, Δ%SW at 50% of RAp-RVs (98 ± 74%) was closer to the maximal achievable Δ%SW increase than a fixed interval of 120 ms (96 ± 73%, P = 0.60). RAp-RVs, QLV/QRSd, PR interval, and P-wave duration were associated with the optimal AV delay in univariate analysis, but only RAp-RVs remained significantly associated in multivariate analysis (R = 0.69).

Conclusion
The AV delay that provides highest haemodynamic response is similar for various LV pacing configurations and for MPP. An AV delay ∼50% of RAp-RVs creates an acute haemodynamic response close to the maximal patient-specific response.


A camera based assistive text reading framework to help blind persons read text labels and product packaging from hand-held object in their daily resides is proposed. To isolate the object from cluttered backgrounds or other surroundings objects in the camera view, we propose an efficient and effective motion based method to define a region of interest (ROI) in the video by asking the user to shake the object. In the extracted ROI, text localization and recognition are conducted to acquire text information. To automatically localize the text regions from the object ROI, we propose a novel text localization algorithm by learning gradient features of stroke orientations and distributions of edge pixels in an Adaboost model. Text characters in the localized text regions are then binarized and recognized by off-the shelf optical character recognition software. The recognized text codes are output to blind users in speech.


This paper considers the nonlinearity of the multiplier in the phase-locked loop which is optimized for a frequency ramp input. The third-order system with this nonlinearity is analyzed for transient response. Equilibrium points and stability are considered from eigenvalues, and transient response is determined using norm in phase space vs phase-space variables. The technique of getting error, error derivative, etc., vs time curves is described in great detail. Comparative study is made for the exact linear model, practical linear model and practical nonlinear model.


This winter, a record ozone loss was observed over the Arctic resulting in an unprecedented ozone hole that earned a large social attention. As chlorofluorocarbons continue to decline due to the Montreal protocol, random ozone destructions still occur in the polar region when the circumpolar flow above 20 km ("stratospheric polar vortex") suddenly warms up and weakens. This unusual vortex event enhances downward intrusion of ozone-destroying chemical species from the upper atmosphere to the stratosphere. In this study, the behavior of polar ozone related to major sudden stratospheric warming events (SSW) was investigated. Specifically, air circulation and chemistry of ozone destroying species (NOx and CO) are examined during three realistic major SSWs and compared with a non- SSW winter. The simulated ozone during SSW showed anomalies in several regions. A "primary" ozone layer (near 40 km) experiences strong perturbation due to horizontal mixing. The "tertiary" maximum at 72 km displaces 5 km upward by intensified air movement above weakened vortex. The concentration of the "secondary" maximum (90- 110 km) increases by ~34% that appears to be related to the enhanced descent of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. Unusual downwelling of ozone destroying species extends to the "primary" maximum and potentially can greatly contribute to the spring time ozone destruction. The observed anomalies demonstrate significant natural impact on ozone chemistry and dynamics that occur in conjunction with anthropogenic influence. This information can be used to predict the occurrence of ozone loss in the future and to validate NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) model, widely used for atmospheric studies.


: Results of the examination of 207 patients with duodenal ulcer are presented. General parameters of secretory activity of the gastric glands, acid-peptic aggression of glycoproteins of the gastric mucosa were studied. It was established that in the complicated course of ulcer there was a tendency to the increase of acid-peptic aggression and inhibition of glycoprotein mucosa products. The correlation of production of hydrochloric acid and pepsin, on the one side, and mucosa glycoproteins, on the other side, may be used for prognosis of the course of the disease.


We perform stochastic microsimulations of the dynamics of England and Wales population after the British referendum on EU membership, considering different possible outcomes. Employing available survey data, we model the demographics of the region over the next generation, as shaped by births, deaths and international migration. The migration patterns between England and Wales and the remaining EU countries are modified according to the possible scenarios of their future relations. We find that Brexit will accelerate the overall population ageing and the deepening imbalance between workers and retirees but reduce the population growth and the fraction of women of reproductive age. In the alternative scenarios of remaining in the EU these effects will be partially forestalled by the influx of immigrants from current and prospective EU countries and their children. In all considered scenarios the native British population declines. Our study demonstrates that microsimulations can be a useful tool for designing and evaluating the country's policies in the advent of fundamental transformations.


We present optical light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for the archetypical dwarf active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the nearby galaxy NGC 4395 hosting a ∼105 M⊙ supermassive black hole (SMBH). Significant variability is detected on timescales from weeks to hours before reaching the background noise level. The ∼month-long, 30 minute-cadence, high-precision TESS light curve can be well fit by a simple damped random walk (DRW) model, with the damping timescale τDRW constrained to be days (1σ). NGC 4395 lies almost exactly on the extrapolation of the relation measured for AGNs with BH masses that are more than three orders of magnitude larger. The optical variability periodogram can be well fit by a broken power law with the high-frequency slope (−1.88 ± 0.15) and the characteristic timescale ( days) consistent with the DRW model within 1σ. This work demonstrates the power of TESS light curves in identifying low-mass accreting SMBHs with optical variability, and a potential global relation that can be used to estimate SMBH masses with optical variability measurements.


Globally, lakes are currently accumulating organic carbon (OC) at an estimated annual rate of about 42 Tgṁyr −1 . Most of the OC in all but the most oligotrophic of these lakes is autochthonous, produced by primary production in the lakes. The sediments of reservoirs accumulate an additional 160 Tg annually, and peatlands contribute 96 Tg annually. These three carbon pools collectively cover less than 2% of the Earth9s surface and constitute a carbon sink of about 300 Tgṁyr −1 . Although the oceans cover 71% of the Earth9s surface, they accumulate OC at a rate of only about 100 Tgṁyr −1 .


Abstract. Lipid-soluble antioxidants can be more effective for chick development when
provided via in ovo (IO) injection than when supplemented to the maternal
diet. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of egg weight (EW) and
IO injection of α -tocopherol on chick development, hatching
performance and lipid-soluble antioxidant concentrations in residual yolk sac
(RYS), liver and brain tissues of quail chicks. Eggs were obtained from quail
breeders at days 72 and 128 of age and incubated at 37.8  ∘ C and 60 %
relative humidity. Each egg was numbered and weighed prior to
incubation, and the average EW of all eggs was 11.76  ±  0.05 g. The eggs
were divided into light (< 11.76 EW; EWL) and heavy
(> 11.76 EW; EWH) groups (148 eggs per EW). Each EW group was divided into two IO
groups: the control (non-injection) group and α -tocopherol group, in
which 3.75 mg of α -tocopherol per egg was injected into the yolk sac
followed by a 120 h incubation period. There were 64 eggs for each EW–IO
treatment combination (16 eggs per EW per tray). The chick and RYS weights were significantly lower in the EWL group than in the EWH
group. A significant EW by IO interaction suggested that IO increased the
eggshell temperature of light quail eggs. The non-injected light eggs had a
shorter hatching time due to the interaction of EW with IO. Hatchability,
embryonic mortalities, and the cumulative hatching rate were not affected by
EW or IO. The chick and middle toe lengths increased following IO
administration ( P  < 0.05), which indicated that IO administration had
positive effects on chick quality. However, shank length decreased following
IO administration with an unchanged relative asymmetry (RA). IO significantly
affected the absolute weights of the liver and heart and the relative weight
of the heart, which was lower in the α -tocopherol group than in the
control group. IO administration had no effect on total retinol and
carotenoid concentrations in the RYS, liver and brain. Vitamin E, α -tocopherol and δ -tocopherol concentrations in the RYS, liver and
brain were significantly higher in the α -tocopherol-treated chicks
than in the control chicks. The highest brain α -tocopherol
concentration was found in the α -tocopherol-treated chicks of the EWH
group, indicating a significant interaction between EW and IO. The highest
total lipid-soluble antioxidant concentrations were obtained following IO
 α -tocopherol treatment ( P  < 0.05), in the order brain < liver < RYS,
but this pattern was not observed with δ -tocopherol. In conclusion, IO injection of α -tocopherol into the
yolk sac affected the concentrations of tissue-specific lipid-soluble
antioxidants in the RYS and tissues of newly hatched quail chicks, and EW had
effects on various parameters.


The practical application requests both accuracy and efficiency on multi-person pose estimation algorithms. But the high accuracy and fast inference speed are dominated by top-down methods and bottom-up methods respectively. To make a better trade-off between accuracy and efficiency, we propose a novel multi-person pose estimation framework, SIngle-network with Mimicking and Point Learning for Bottom-up Human Pose Estimation (SIMPLE). Specifically, in the training process, we enable SIMPLE to mimic the pose knowledge from the high-performance top-down pipeline, which significantly promotes SIMPLE's accuracy while maintaining its high efficiency during inference. Besides, SIMPLE formulates human detection and pose estimation as a unified point learning framework to complement each other in single-network. This is quite different from previous works where the two tasks may interfere with each other. To the best of our knowledge, both mimicking strategy between different method types and unified point learning are firstly proposed in pose estimation. In experiments, our approach achieves the new state-of-the-art performance among bottom-up methods on the COCO, MPII and PoseTrack datasets. Compared with the top-down approaches, SIMPLE has comparable accuracy and faster inference speed.


A system for treating active virus infections with very small, precisely determined doses of specific killed-virus vaccine is described. Results indicate that the discomforts of influenza and herpes virus infections usually disappear within 30 minutes after injection of the vaccine. The relief occurs during testing and repeated subcutaneous injections produce rapid healing.


Mr. Odden provides data that can be used by readers to make judgments about which educational strategies and staffing positions are needed in their own locales and about how much additional money will be required to fund them. SUSTAINING fundamental educational change is difficult and complicated. Implementing and institutionalizing a curriculum reform, the focus of educational change in the 1970s and early 1980s, was difficult enough. Implementing and sustaining schoolwide change through a complete restructuring effort - what has come to be known as "comprehensive school reform" - is even more challenging. In this article, I discuss the costs of such a thoroughgoing and complex change effort. Comprehensive school reform is a growing phenomenon across the country. It began in the early 1990s with a few whole-school designs, such as Success for All, Accelerated Schools, and the Coalition of Essential Schools.1 It expanded with the scale-up of the comprehensive school designs developed by the New American Schools (formerly the New American Schools Development Corporation).2 It accelerated last year with the Obey-Porter legislation, which set aside nearly $50 million in federal funds to encourage states, districts, and schools to engage in comprehensive school reform. Comprehensive school reform seeks to have schools create, adopt, or adapt an educational approach that integrates all students and programs into a cohesive, schoolwide educational strategy. Comprehensive school reforms have a curriculum that sets high standards for all students and doesn't "water down" material for those in categorical programs, but makes use of appropriate instructional strategies that provide extra help for students who must struggle to master the regular curriculum. Comprehensive school reform also addresses the grouping of students for different subjects, the scheduling of instruction and planning time for teachers, pupil support and home outreach strategies, professional development, and the use of computer technologies. Implementing a comprehensive school reform model, such as Roots and Wings or the Modern Red Schoolhouse, requires substantial changes in program and staffing because these models tend to staff schools differently, group students differently, and approach curriculum and instruction differently. In short, implementing comprehensive school reform represents a major educational change effort. Cost Issues One of the most problematic issues raised in comprehensive school change has to do with cost. Most discussions of comprehensive school reform seem to assume that such reforms can be implemented with little if any new funds. Underlying the idea of comprehensive school reform is the notion of using existing resources differently. But it is not clear whether schools need additional money to implement comprehensive school changes or whether existing funds, if reallocated, could cover the costs. Those who have followed the New American Schools (NAS) designs are probably familiar with my cost analysis published in 1997.3 These cost data emerged from a series of conversations with NAS staff members and with several members of the design teams associated with each of the NAS models. In these conversations I sought to identify the "cost structure" of each design - to identify what staff and other resources would be required to fully implement the design and to determine what the total costs would be. I identified two types of costs: 1) ongoing operating costs, such as cost for teachers, tutors, and instructional facilitators; and 2) other costs that might be transitional, such as design-based assistance - the several years of training and professional development provided by the design team. The figures for final costs appeared in a widely disseminated paper. All the figures that made up the costs of the comprehensive reforms were in addition to "core" staffing of one teacher for every 25 students and one principal for a building with 500 students. …


1-Aryl-3,3-dialkyltriazenes have received considerable attention in the context of synthetic and medicinal chemistry. In contrast, the chemistry of other unsaturated triazenes is largely unexplored. The synthesis of 1-allenyltriazenes is described. This new class of compounds can be obtained by base-induced isomerization of 1-alkynyltriazenes. The latter are accessible by reaction of alkynyl Grignard reagents with lithium amides and nitrous oxide. 1-Allenyltriazenes were found to be thermally labile, but they can be stored without degradation at lower temperatures. In the presence of ZnCl2, 1-allenyltriazenes rearrange into N-aminopyrazoles.


It was hard to predict crack and wrinkle which are the main failure modes when drawing for the shallow tapered parts. In this paper crack and wrinkle can be avoided effectively by using the software DYNAFORM in combination with orthogonal design of experiment method. The influence of normal anisotropy coefficient, friction coefficient, drawbead resistance and blank holding force on deep drawing shallow tapered surface was analyzed by numerical simulation. The results show that the minimum-wall-thickness was the main criterion for the drawing process but not the only criterion. Crack and wrinkle can be moderately eliminated finally after optimization of the parameters and following trim process in the drawing for shallow tapered surface.


Nowadays, when the cities are even more crowded, the environmental planning and design is a big challenge. Due to outstanding features, like high oxygen production ability or small requirements, climbing plants can considerably improve city living conditions. What is more, they can partly solve the problem of shortage of public green spaces. This work is based on the research conducted in Cracow in cooperation with Dresden. It contains analysis of climbing plants location, comparison of their application methods and technical solutions, as well as public authorities attitude to this topic and inhabitants opinion about meaning of climbing plants in the urban circumstances. This paper considers climbing plants problem of ecological, aesthetic, psychological and economic aspects. The aim was to find the perfect solutions for using climbing plants in city structures and gain maximal benefits. The research shows the most popular climbing plants application methods and also the increasing popularity of unconventional uses. It compares methods used in Cracow and Dresden and shows the similarities and differences, giving the solutions for improving the quality of life in the cities generally. Moreover the longer tradition of using climbing plants in Dresden is a chance for Cracow and other cities to improve support technology and selection of sorts. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.3.4.4497


(3Z,3′Z)-3,3′-(Hydrazine-1,2-diylidene)bis(indolin-2-one) (HBI) containing an azine linkage is used as a novel amide-based π-conjugated electron-accepting building block for constructing donor–acceptor (D–A) π-polymer semiconductors. Copolymers of HBI and bithiophene are synthesized, which show small optical band gaps (∼1.6 eV) and quite low-lying highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels (EHOMO = −5.6 eV; ELUMO = −4.0 eV). The spin-coated polymer thin films are highly crystalline with a favoured edge-on lamellar chain packing motif, and exhibit high ambipolar charge transport performance with hole and electron mobilities up to 0.11 and 0.035 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively.


VR/AR applications, such as virtual training or coaching, often require a digital twin of a machine. Such a virtual twin must also include a kinematic model that defines its motion behavior. This behavior is usually expressed by constraints in a physics engine. In this paper, we present a system that automatically derives the kinematic model of a machine from RGB video with an optional depth channel. Our system records a live session while a user performs all typical machine movements. It then searches for trajectories and converts them into linear, circular and helical constraints. Our system can also detect kinematic chains and coupled constraints, for example, when a crank moves a toothed rod.


A geophysical investigation was carried out after the failure of an important railway embankment in the south-east of Ireland. The embankment, which had a long-term history of stability problems, was studied using a combination of ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) and geotechnical testing. A significant thickening of the ballast layer around the failure location was observed using GPR, which confirmed the existence of an ongoing stability problem in the area. ERT profiles determined the presence and spatial extent of a significant layer of soft clay both beneath and to the east of the embankment, which could have a major impact on its long-term stability. ERT also detected steeply sloping bedrock close to the failure zone that is likely to have contributed to the long-term settlement of the embankment, which necessitated frequent re-ballasting. MASW confirmed the presence of the steeply sloping bedrock in addition to determining the low stiffness ( G max )
values of the embankment fill.
High quality sampling of the soft clay deposit was undertaken and strength and compressibility tests revealed the importance of this layer to both the on-going serviceability problems evident for the original embankment and the stability problems encountered by the remodelled section.


Repeals the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the rate of wages for workers employed on Federal public buildings by contractors and subcontractors to be based upon the prevailing wages for corresponding classes of workers employed on similar projects in the same area.


The aim of this study was to investigate the in vitro antioxidant and antimicrobial activities from stem bark of Beilschmiedia madang, and its major compound, a neolignan; (+)-kunstlerone. The antioxidant activity was done using the following assays: DPPH radical scavenging, β-carotene/linoleic acid bleaching and total phenolic content. The MeOH extract showed the highest inhibitory activity towards lipid peroxidation (89.6% ± 0.4), phenolic content (163.4 mg GA/g) and DPPH radical scavenging (IC50 of 63.2 μg/mL). The major compound, (+)-kunstlerone showed a potent antioxidant activity with IC50 of 25.5 μg/mL comparable to that of ascorbic acid (IC50 of 15.2 μg/mL). Evaluation of the antimicrobial activity was examined by using disc diffusion and micro dilution (MIC) method. The results revealed that the MeOH extract and (+)-kunstlerone exhibited moderate activity towards Stretococcus mutans and Aspergillus fumigatus with MIC values 250 μg/mL.


In this paper, a single-chip dual-mode 8-band 130nm CMOS transceiver including A/D/A converters and digital filters with 312MHz LVDS interface is presented. For a transmitter chain, linear direct quadrature modulation architecture is introduced for both W-CDMA/HSDPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) and for GSM/EDGE. Analog baseband LPFs and quadrature modulators are commonly used both for GSM and for EDGE. For a direct conversion receiver chain, ABB (Analog Base-Band) blocks, i.e., LPFs and VGAs, delta-sigma A/D converters, and FIR filters are commonly used for W-CDMA/HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and GSM/EDGE to reduce chip area. Their characteristics can be reconfigured by register-based control sequence. The receiver chain also includes high-speed DC offset cancellers both in analog and in digital stage, and the self-contained AGC controller, whose parameters such as time constant are programmable to be free from DBB (Digital Base-Band) control. The transceiver also includes wide-range VCOs and fractional PLLs, an LVDS driver and receiver for high-speed digital interface of 312MHz. Measured results reveal that the transceiver satisfies 3GPP specifications for W-CDMA/HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) and GSM/EDGE.


Oral cavity represents an ideal environment for the microbial cell growth, persistence, and dental plaque establishment. The presence of different microniches leads to the occurrence of different biofilm communities, formed on teeth surface, above gingival crevice or at subgingival level, on tongue, mucosa and dental prosthetics too. The healthy state is regulated by host immune system and interactions between microbial community members, maintaining the predominance of "good" microorganisms. When the complexity and volume of biofilms from the gingival crevice increase, chronic pathological conditions such as gingivitis and periodontitis can occur, predisposing to a wide range of complications. Bacteria growing in biofilms exhibit a different behavior compared with their counterpart, respectively planktonic or free cells. There have been described numerous mechanisms of differences in antibiotic susceptibility of biofilm embedded cells. Resistance to antibiotics, mediated by genetic factors or, phenotypical, due to biofilm formation, called also tolerance, is the most important cause of therapy failure of biofilm-associated infections, including periodontitis; the mechanisms of tolerance are different, the metabolic low rate and cell's dormancy being the major ones. The recent progress in science and technology has made possible a wide range of novel approaches and advanced therapies, aiming the efficient management of periodontal disease.


The heat transfer principle of power maximization in power plants with heat transfer irreversibilities was cleverly extended by Bejan [1] to fluid flow, by obtaining that the energy conversion efficiency at maximum power is ηmax = 1/2(1 − P2/P1). This result is analog to the efficiency at maximum power for power plants, ηmax = 1 − (T2/T1)1/2 which was deduced by Curzon and Ahlborn [2]. In this paper, the analysis to obtain maximum power output delivered from a piston between two pressure reservoir across linear flow resistance is generalized by considering the piston cylinder friction, by obtaining relations of maximum power output and optimal speed of the piston in terms of first law efficiency. Expressions to relate the power output, cross sectional area of the chamber and first law efficiency, were deduced in order to evaluate the influence of the overall size constraints and fluid regime in the performance of the piston cylinder system. Flow in circular ducts and developed laminar flow between parallel plates, are considered to demonstrate that when two pressure reservoirs oriented in counterflow, with different and arbitrary cross sectional area, must have the same area in order to maximize the power output of the system. These results introduce some modifications to the results obtained by Bejan [1] and Chen [3]. This paper extends the Bejan and Chen's work by estimating under turbulent regime the lost available work rate associated with the degree of irreversibilities caused by the flow resistances of the system. This analysis is equivalent to evaluate the irreversibilities in an endoirreversible Carnot heat engine model caused by the heat resistance loss between the engine and its surrounding heat reservoirs. This paper concludes with an application to illustrate the practical applications by estimating the lost available work of an actual steady-flow turbine and the layout pipes upstream and downstream of the same device.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


Background: Immunocytochemistry (ICC) is an established routine diagnostic adjunct to cytology and histology for tumor diagnosis but has received little attention for diagnosis of tuberculosis. Aims: To have an objective method of direct visualization of mycobacteria or their products in clinical extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) specimens, immunocytochemical localization of M. tuberculosis antigen by staining with species specific monoclonal antibody to 38-kDa antigen of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Materials and Methods: Immunostaining with specific monoclonal antibody to 38-kDa antigen of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex was done in fresh and archival fine needle aspirates and tissue granulomata of 302 cases of extrapulmonary tuberculosis and was compared with the molecular diagnostic i.e., nucleic amplification and conventional [Cytomorphology, Ziehl Neelsen (ZN) staining and culture] tests and 386 controls. Results: Diagnostic indices by Bayesian analysis for all types of archival and fresh material varied from 64 to 76% in nucleic acid amplification (NAA) and 96 to 98% in ICC. There was no significant difference in the diagnostic indices of ZN staining and/ or ICC in fresh or archival material whereas the sensitivity of NAA differed significantly in fresh versus archival material both in cytology (71.4% vs 52.1%) and histology (51.1% vs 38.8%). ICC can be easily used on archival smears and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections with almost equal sensitivity and specificity as with fresh material, in contrast to NAA which showed significant difference in test results on archival and fresh material. Conclusions: Low detection sensitivity of MTB DNA in archival material from known tuberculous cases showed the limitation of in-house NAA-based molecular diagnosis. ICC was found to be sensitive, specific and a better technique than NAA and can be used as an adjunct to conventional morphology and ZN staining for the diagnosis of EPTB in tissue granulomas.


Particle image velocimetry (PIV) algorithms aim at flow visualisation and dynamic flow measurement. All existing PIV techniques are computing intensive and are mainly used in critical conditions. For a given experimental environment, several parameters must be set so that PIV algorithm must be parameterised. A dedicated architecture is therefore unsuitable unless it is adaptive. The aim of this work is to prove that our generic and adaptive FPGA-based system for real-time PIV applications previously designed can easily be modified when some parameters vary. From a unique structure and library of resources, the designer adapts the architecture according to the parameters. Time and resource prediction models help the designer to find the most suitable structure before the implementation process and ensure only one implementation without feedback. As a result, the design flow is fast and reliable


Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach for developing agricultural strategies to secure sustainable food security under climate change. CSA has three inter-related objectives, where the first two objectives are emphasised in low-income situations: 1. Food security: sustainably increasing crop yields and productivity and improving farmer incomes; 2. Improving adaptation and building farmers' resilience to climate change; and 3. Improving mitigation (when and where possible): reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions. ESPA's goal is to ensure that ecosystems are conserved and managed more sustainably, in ways that alleviate poverty and enhance wellbeing. ESPA is concerned that CSA is developed in an equitable way that helps all people to move out of poverty. Comparing ten ESPA projects that focus on agriculture – of which two directly focus on CSA – provides some insight into the opportunities and challenges for scaling up CSA. This synthesis outlines the ESPA evidence from these ten projects, interpreting the findings and implications within the frame of CSA, as well as priorities of the Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA).


In this paper we present a synthesis on the Toarcian/Aalenian (Lias/Dogger) boundary in the Iberian Peninsula. We have selected in each domain the most representative areas and sections in which this boundary is represented: Fuentelsaz and Moyuela sections in the Iberian Cordillera, Sierra de Ricote and Cerro Mendez in the Betic Cordillera, and Sao Giao in the Lusitanian Basin. In these areas the succession across the Toarcian/Aalenian boundary is represented mainly by pelagic grey marl-marly limestone rhythmites, which contain abundant and characteristic ammonites. The standard ammonite zones of Aalensis (Mactra, Aalensis and Buckmani Subzones) for the uppermost Upper Toarcian, and Opalinum (Opalinum and Comptum Subzones) in the Lower Aalenian are recognised and characterised. Although the ammonite assemblages of the Betic Cordillera are typical of the Mediterranean province, and the Iberian and Lusitanian basins constitute a Sub-Mediterranean one, the ammonite assemblages are similar in the three basins, with the only significant difference being that phylloceratids and lytoceratids are abundant in the Betic domain and are scarcer in the other basins.