CONTEXT
Though prevention of adolescent tobacco use is a major public health goal, there is little information on the ability of pediatricians to identify adolescents experimenting with tobacco and regular tobacco users.

OBJECTIVES
To pilot use of a short questionnaire and analysis of urinary cotinine level to identify adolescent smokers in a pediatric practice, and to determine characteristics of tobacco users.

SETTING
Suburban pediatric practice.

METHOD
Consecutive high school students completed a short questionnaire and urine cotinine assessment. Three groups were defined: smokers (urine cotinine level >100 ng/mL), experimenters (smoked within the last year; urine continine level </=100 ng/mL), and nonsmokers. Logistic regression was used to examine characteristics of experimenters.

RESULTS
One hundred twenty-four adolescents were enrolled throughout 3 months: 83 nonsmokers (67%), 28 experimenters (23%), and 13 smokers (10%). The questionnaire alone identified 92% of regular smokers. Smoking frequency increased by grade level. Smoking initiation occurred with peers. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers and experimenters were more likely to be older and have a majority of friends who smoked. Smokers were more likely to have a family member who smoked. A majority of smokers and experimenters had tried to quit and understood the adverse health effects of tobacco use.

CONCLUSIONS
Adolescent smokers and experimenters were identified using a brief questionnaire. This method will allow pediatricians the opportunity to identify at-risk adolescents before they become regular smokers. Further studies at primary care offices are needed to examine identification of adolescents at highest risk and examine methods to initiate smoking cessation before addiction is established.


The purpose of this essay is to review the history of legal developments in the twentieth century that affected America's poor. The twentieth century was a period of both positive developments and unfulfilled promise in the legal rights of the poor. Although progress had been made, at the end of the century there remained obstacles to fulfilling America's commitment to equal justice under law. Section I details the important social programs enacted by Congress in the last century, and comments on their varying degrees of success. Section II delineates some of the important jurisprudential developments affecting the poor in the same period. Section III notes the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor in this country, highlighting the need for increased scrutiny on the programs and law detailed in the first two sections.


This work studies the impact of accounting for intrahousehold inequality in the distribution of resources for the measurement of poverty. For the estimation of intrahousehold distribution of resources the study relies on collective Engel curves. For the poverty analysis, we propose a fuzzy intrahousehold index which is less sensitive to small changes around the poverty line compared to standard FGT indices and produce more reliable results. This provides an interesting approach to address individual poverty in contexts where intrahousehold inequality is at work and there is a concentration of individuals near the poverty line. The proposed approach is applied to the analysis of individual poverty in Albania, finding an expected general increase in poverty rates. Besides, a previously unperceived issue –female poverty– emerges as a worryingly aspect to be accounted for in anti-poverty policies.


Dynamic querying is a technique which has been used successfully to enable novice users to gain access to and insight into data in databases. Some multimedia archives (such as archives of African art) contain data which have vague locations in time and space, that is, although there is some idea of when and where the entity originated, the precise information is unknown. This uncertainty creates problems with the display and querying of the data and so the data is generally not accessible to novice users. In this study we extend dynamic querying techniques to work with African art data with uncertain origins in time and space. We present methods for storing, visualising and querying such uncertain data within the framework of dynamic querying. Results of user tests indicate that our approach was clear to users and that users could successfully perform simple queries using the visual query tools. A similar approach of extending dynamic querying techniques could apply to other domains with any one-dimensional attribute data with probabilistic uncertainty. In this way we show how it is possible for novice users to query large databases with complex uncertain attributes.


Porous metals attract significant interest for use in diverse electrochemical catalytic applications. However the fabrication of scalable and controlled porous metal structures on the nanoscale, particularly with highly catalytic pure Pt, still remains a significant challenge. We demonstrate highly engineered nanoporous Pt thin films by the dealloying of a Pt‐Si binary alloy system with a predetermined alloy composition. Controlled pore dimensions and nanostructures are obtained by tailoring the Pt‐Si alloy composition followed by selective Si etching. As a result, isotropic open nanopores are formed in continuous Pt ligaments and the porosity becomes larger on increasing the Si/Pt atomic ratio, which leads to the formation of a higher surface area and active catalytic sites. The formed nanoporous Pt film shows a 32‐times‐higher catalytic activity than Pt/C catalysts, with a high current density and low charge‐transfer resistance during methanol electro‐oxidation. The results reported here open up possibilities to develop high‐performance and reliable catalytic electrodes in energy and environmental applications.


Description: The advance of trade unionism in the first part of the 20th century to a dominant place in the American economy brought with it a major change in the life of the nation. This phenomenal growth has not hitherto been adequately studied. This is the first book to deal with the actual process of unionization. Mr. Brody presents here a detailed study of one industry—meat packing and retailing—with implications that apply to unionization in general. Working almost entirely from primary sources, he has had access to the files of both the AFL and CIO unions in the industry. In this new approach to American labor history, Mr. Brody describes how and when the butcher workmen were organized, how their unions attained internal stability, and how genuine collective bargaining was finally achieved. In attempting to explain why the process developed as it did, he examines union tactics and employer opposition, industry characteristics and the effects of change in the industry. He also pays close attention to the alteration of the power balance brought about by the influence and legislation of the New Deal. Mr. Brody's story has two main strands. The more dramatic one concerns the meat–packing branch of the industry. Here the AFL union twice captured the great packing centers and twice lost them in climatic strikes in 1904 and 1921. It was not until World War II, after the advent of the CIO and the New Deal, that organization was finally secure. On the retail side unionization proceeded more quietly with comparatively little progress until the 1930s. The entry of the huge grocery chains such as A & P and Safeway, into the meat field then made this part of the industry accessible to organization. The study of this particular industry illuminates the larger process of unionization. The meat trade as a whole had the characteristics not only of mass–production industry but also those of small scale, local, skilled labor operations that attracted AFL unions of the old line. Also, the unions of the old line. Also, the unions actually involved provide excellent examples of the rival approaches if the AFL and the CIO to the challenge of unionization. What emerges from the book is the complexity of the phenomenon of unionization. The process covered much more than the recruitment of members, and the causes sprang from a variety of elements, changing in importance at different times and …


There are close links between the tourist gaze and the gaze of the television camera, and British television holiday programmes have conventionally privileged the scopic in their representations of the tourist destination. At the same time their engagement with tourism as a popular cultural activity was informed by a public service broadcasting ideology which privileged information and education over entertainment. In a world of deregulated broadcasting, and with a proliferation of available channels, the genre is developing new narrative forms in order to reflect the diversity of popular culture. It is also informed by television's current privileging of lifestyle, of personalization and first person narratives of both celebrities and of 'ordinary' people. This article uses three case studies which have been chosen to represent both the mainstream conventions of the holiday programme per se, plus the influences of lifestyle programming's emphasis on recreation, re-creation and makeover and the conventions of docusoap narratives, to argue that the genre is increasingly foregrounding the stories, however constructed, of performers-astourists/tourists-as-performers over representations of the tourist destination.


Fast and robust voice-activity detection is critical to efficiently process speech. While deep-learning based methods to detect voice have shown competitive accuracies, the best models in the literature incur over a 100 ms latency on commodity processors. Such delays are unacceptable for real-time speech processing. In this paper, we study the impact of lowering the representation precision of the neural-network weights and neurons on both the accuracy and delay of voice-activity detection. Based on a design-space exploration, we not only determine the optimal scaling strategy but also adjust the network structure to accommodate the new quantization levels. Through experiments conducted with real user data, we demonstrate that optimized deep neural networks with lower bit precisions outperform the state-of-the-art WebRTC voice-activity detector with 87x lower delay and 6.8% lower error rate.


Uncooled operation of long-reach high performance C-band 10 Gb/s of optical modulator modules is presented. Modules consisting of a distributed feedback laser and a chip with a monolithically integrated electroabsorption modulator and semiconductor optical amplifier based on multiquantum-well structures of both InGaAsP-InP and InGaAlAs-InP material systems are presented. Dispersion penalty of 1 dB over 94-km transmission, output power above 0 dBm, and low extinction ratio variation are demonstrated over an 80/spl deg/C temperature range. A simple analysis of the quantum confined Stark effect is employed to explain the temperature-dc bias voltage dependence.


This paper offers further evidence to "The Economist" index of economic power developed by Pujol (2002, 2003, and 2009). The original index is composite by construction and it gives information about year 2000, comparing the results with year 1990. Testing the robustness of the ranking of selected countries obtained by Pujol's index; this paper applies the same methodology to two specific years: 1995 and 2001. The research tries to ascertain if the evolution of the rank- ing of countries among years 1990 and 2000 is not merely a chance. The number of times each country appears in tables and graphs of the different "The Economist" issues for year 1995 confirms the evolution of the index between 1990 and 2000. Data for year 2001 gives continuity and support to the ranking developed in year 2000. The data analyzed from this magazine make sense, because at the end it gives the same information that the one obtained from other more tradi- tional and sophisticated ways. Empirical results tend to confirm that unconventional composite index can produce relevant data sets for scientists and practitioners.


Each of the countries around the world has different ways of management and many of them depend on people to administrate their country. Thailand, for example, empowers the sovereignty of Thai people under constitution; however, our Thai voting system is not able to flow fast enough under the current Political management system. The sovereignty of Thai people is addressing this problem through representatives during current elections, in order to set a new policy for the countries ideology to change in the House and the Cabinet. This is particularly important in a democracy to be developed under our current political institution. The Organic Act on Political Parties 2007 is the establishment we have today that is causing confrontations within the establishment. There are many political parties that will soon be abolished. Many political parties have already been subsidized. This research study is to analyze the legal problems with the political party establishment under the Organic Act on Political Parties 2007. This will focus on the freedom of each political establishment compared to an effective political operation. Textbooks and academic papers will be referenced from studies home and abroad. The study revealed that Organic Act on Political Parties 2007 has strict provisions on the political structure over the number of members and the number of branches involved within political parties system. Such operations shall be completed within one year; but under the existing laws the small parties are not able to participate with the bigger parties. The cities are capable of fulfilling small political party requirements but fail to become coalesced because the current laws won't allow them to be united as one. It is important to allow all independent political parties to join our current political structure. Board members can't help the smaller parties to become a large organization under the existing Thai laws. Creating a new establishment that functions efficiently throughout all branches would be one solution to these legal problems between all political parties. With this new operation, individual political parties can participate with the bigger parties during elections. Until current political institutions change their system to accommodate public opinion, these current Thai laws will continue to be a problem with all political parties in Thailand. Keywords—Coalesced, Political Party, Sovereignty.


Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease caused by Monkeypox virus, which can cause the change of smallpox pattern in human. Monkeypox has been epidemic in central and west African countries, and infections outside the African continent are rare. Since May 2022, unprecedented outbreaks of human monkeypox and clusters of cases have occurred in non-epidemic countries such as Europe, the Americas and Australia, with multi-country outbreaks drawing global attention. The prevalence, transmission route and reoccurrence of monkeypox are still unknown. In view of the rapid increase of monkeypox cases, this paper reviewed the epidemiological changes, outbreak causes, clinical characteristics, and treatment methods of monkeypox, so as to clarify the epidemic background and transmission characteristics, improve the understanding of the disease, prevent the disease as soon as possible and formulate diagnosis and treatment measures.


"POWERSHELL" is Microsoft's first recognition of the value of administrative scripting and automation, providing Windows administrators with a consistent, powerful way to automate Windows and other Microsoft server products (such as Exchange Server). In this groundbreaking book, scripting gurus Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks teach you PowerShell from the ground up: You'll learn about its underlying technologies, its flexible scripting language, all the built-in "cmdlets" included with the new shell, and you'll learn enough of the .NET Framework to be effecive in PowerShell scripting. This is your opportunity to stay on the leading edge of Microsoft Windows administrative scripting, from the world's most recognized and popular scripting authors.


With the rapid development of electronic information technology, electronic products multiply and its demand is also bigger and bigger. Therefore electronic manufacturing industry has become the sunrise industry. And it has been a leader in industrial development since the 21st century, becoming a new growth point of China's economy. Based on the financial data from 2009 to 2012 of the listed electronic manufacturing companies, the study adopts Z-score model method to analyze the existed financial risks of China's flourishing electronic manufacturing and carry out the study of financial risk evaluation. Through using Z-model and the analysis of mass data, the findings are as follows: the financial situation of China's most electronic manufacturing enterprises is not very good with Z value between 1.81 and 2.675, and the international debt crisis of this industry is still spreading. This study aims to learn the financial situation and development potential of China's electronic manufacturing industry and warns the relevant enterprises to financial risk prevention.


Background & Objectives: Chemotherapeutics induce side effects in patients with cancer. In animal models the intake of ω3 fatty acids during chemotherapy can increase the impact of chemotherapy drugs and reduce their side effects. This study was aimed to determine the fish oil intake on side effects of chemotherapy drugs in patients with gastric cancer. Methods: A double blind clinical trial study on 30 adult volunteer patients (15 experiments and 15 controls) with gastric cancer was conducted during chemotherapy in Ardabil, Iran, during 2010-2011. Experimental and control groups were selected by randomized allocation. About 3 grams ω-3 fatty acid supplementation (1.8 g Eicosapentaenoic acid & 1.2 g Docosapentaenoic acid) and placebo were given to experimental and control groups for 6 weeks, respectively. Then, the results of data were collected at the beginning, 4 and 6 weeks after intervention of ω3/placebo in both groups and analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Chi-Square, Independent sample t-test and Cochrans Q test. Results: The results of this study showed that there were significant differences of nausea in both group of patients at the end of 6 weeks (p<0.05). Abdominal cramp and nausea significantly decreased in experimental group during the study (p<0.05). Hair loss, vomiting and diarrhea were reduced in experimental group during the study, but these differences were not statistically significant. There were no significant differences in vomiting, diarrhea and hair loss between two groups at the end of intervention. Conclusion: The present study showed that the intakes of fish oil strongly reduce side effects of chemotherapy drugs such as nausea and abdominal cramp. So, this oil supplementation appears to be harmless and useful in patients with gastric cancer during chemotherapy.


Relevant secondary mitral regurgitation occurs in 35–50% of patients with chronic heart failure and is associated with increased mortality. Surgical management of patients with mitral valve regurgitation and heart failure remains controversial. There are several questions which are not sufficiently clarified because of a lack of prospective randomised controlled trials: (1.) The indication for concomitant mitral valve surgery in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with moderate to severe mitral valve regurgitation; (2.) the management of functional mitral valve regurgitation; (3.) the appropriate surgical strategy: repair or chordal-sparing replacement.


The aim of our work is to develop an industrial bath of nickel alloy deposit on mild steel. The optimization of the operating parameters made it possible to obtain a stable Ni-P alloy deposition formulation. To understand the reaction mechanism of the deposition process, a kinetic study was performed by cyclic voltammetry and by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The coatings obtained have a very high corrosion resistance in a very aggressive acid medium which increases with the heat treatment. Keywords—Ni–P coating, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, heat treatment, cyclic voltammetry, potentiodynamic polarization.


The excerpt below is chapter 28 in Laura Meets Jeffrey (New Blue Books: 2012), an S&M romance the author slipped into after he fell in love in a brothel.--JM Other than fucking, my other great physical passion was boxing. From 1976 to 1984 when I moved to London England for a few years, I was part of a group that boxed about twenty-five fall, winter and spring Saturday mornings a year at the Gramercy Gym on 14th Street. The regulars were me, former Light Heavyweight Champion of the World Jose Torres, Norman Mailer, Norman's son Michael, and Norman's nephew Peter Alson. We were joined by a revolving group of artists, writers, actors, lawyers, TV directors, college students, stockbrokers and even a Kennedy for a while. Most had boxed before. Some came fresh to learn. We all wanted something more exciting than tennis. I was never blessed with much physical grace or more than normal coordination. What I brought into the ring was great stamina, fair size (just under six feet and 175 pounds), a low fear of punishment, and an aggressive willingness to mix it up. At my best I could be daring in attack and stubborn in defense. I was an awkward boxer without much poetry, which in boxing can be its own reward. Being awkward makes you harder to read sometimes, often harder to hit and less likely to telegraph your punches. Ken Norton and Joe Frazier are two famous boxers who are considered awkward in style. Mike Tyson is another obvious example. What he lacks in grace he makes up for in power and courage. And teeth. Saturday morning boxing protocol was simple. You'd fight a round or two, or rarely three. Sometimes Jose, our coach, would suggest a match between two of us. A pact between fighters would be made as to the level of contact. One might say, "Let's just practice for a round or two, I want to work on my jab," or "I want to work on my defense so come at me and I'll just defend." Or maybe we'd agree on light contact and sometimes full contact. We all wore mouthpieces and cups. Headgear was available. But I hated headgear. It interfered with my vision, was annoying to wear and the extra size made for a bigger target. Everyone wrapped his hands with long strips of cotton fabric to protect against injuries induced by punching. Wraps make it less likely you'll hurt your thumb and reduce the risk of a fracture to one of your wrist bones. They maintain the alignment of the joints and add strength to your punch. Mostly I just loved the ceremony of wrapping before a fight. It's always a tense scene in every boxing movie. In real life you are the warrior preparing for battle. For real. Not a video game. Low tech. You against him. May the best man win. The object of our fights wasn't to destroy our opponent, but to gain advantage. The main difference between us and most amateur or school boxers was that we hardly ever went for that fourth killer punch or combination after we had already stunned our opponent with a great two-or-three-punch attack. And we never went in for the cold-hearted fifth. Knowing you could have finished him off sufficed. He knew it. You knew it. The other boxers and friends watching knew it. That was enough. Nobody kept official score because we all knew the score. It was boxing's version of catch and release. Maybe you'd come in with a medium tap to exploit that second opening, or rarely, a third or fourth opening, but it was bad form to come back with a haymaker. Sometimes it happened when tempers flared, but losing your temper is more likely to harm you than help you in boxing, so tempers are tempered. It's part of the Zen of Boxing. Some trainers preach that a professional boxer needs to be having fun because boxing is a job, and nobody can do a great job if they don't like what they're doing. Losing your temper means you are not having any fun. More important, losing your temper takes you out of the fight, steals your energy, and wastes focus on emotions. …


Satellite surveying with the Global Positioning System (GPS) has shown several advantages over standard surveying techniques. However, because of some unmodeled systematic errors, the possibility of successful ambiguity resolution is poor in the processing of long baseline vectors. Therefore, the methods of modeling ionospheric errors and increasing measurement equations are proposed with multiple reference stations. There are two proposed method of estimating ionospheric delays; one is linear interpolation according to the positions of reference and rover stations, another is the least squares method considering a slant function.On the other hand, a network with several reference points can provide several known positions to form more baselines to rovers, so more degrees of freedom are available by increasing measurement equations of baselines. These baselines would be processed in a matrix system. Finally, for verification, three experiments were carried out. The results show that the proposal concept is helpful to ambiguity resolution and GPS surveying both with L1 frequency and dual-frequency data.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the help of multiple reference stations for GPS surveying.


Background: The Department of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy (ISM&H) was established in the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in March, 1995 and it was re-named as AYUSH in November, 2003. Aim: To study about the work nature of AYUSH, the origin of Traditional Methodology and the Perception of Tamil Nadu people about AYUSH healthcare delivery systems. Methodology: A prefixed questionnaire has been given to 84 respondents of various income group, students and in all walks of life in both the gender. The study was conducted in December 2016 and January 2017 in Chennai and around. Result: It is observed that among the 84 respondents 76.2% of them aware of Ayurvedha and 71.4% of them are familiar with Yoga. 66.7% of them aware of Siddha and 61.9% of them are familiar with Homoeopathy. Only Unani is lesser to a percentage of 28.6. Moreover this research puts light on the opinion of the respondents about the Traditional Healing method is good for which department of healthcare system.


Preparations toward sustainability and energy efficiency in buildings begun about a decade ago with many aspects of tangible and intangible results such as the existence of a The Ministry of Energy, Green Technology & Water (MEGTW - Low Energy Office), The Malaysian Energy Center (Green Energy Office) and the forthcoming office building for the Energy Commission known as the Green Office. Other initiatives are the high efficient motor, the increase of the electricity tariffs, the introduction of the Renewable Energy as the 5th Fuel Policy with a national campaign known as the Suria 1000 where the use of solar electricity for the building industry is encouraged. At the same time there needs a parallel development for the critical mass otherwise initial noble efforts would be jeopardized due to lack of knowledge and skill support infrastructure. Training has been going on but only for specific tasks initiated either by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or government agencies. But as for the architecture profession, the efforts fully depended on individuals' interests and passion. This slows the process of assimilation and adaptation. There should be a thorough awareness throughout the practicing and academic architects as to the seriousness of having green buildings as the next future direction for Malaysian buildings. This paper does not attempt to set an agenda for education in architecture but rather to espouse the idea. It sets to show one way to accelerate the change in the mindsets of architects as a whole towards designing for architectural sustainability, is to revamp the architectural courses and curriculums in institutes of higher learning.


The amount of biological data available electronically is increasing at a rapid rate; for instance, over 16.500 specimens are available today in the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) collections. However, this data is not semantically categorized and stored and thus is difficult to search. To tackle this problem, we present a semantic search architecture, implemented using state of the art semantic web tools, and test it on a set of representative data about biodiversity from INPA. This paper describes how the mechanism of mapping is designed so that the semantic search can find information, based on ontologies. We show a series of SPARQL queries and explain how the mapping mechanism works. Our experiments, using a prototype of the proposed architecture, showed that the prototype had better precision and recall then traditional keyword based search engines.


A separation–preconcentration method utilising a mercapto-modified silica microcolumn was developed for the determination of trace amounts of Te(IV) and Te(VI) in waters by hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry. Bottled drinking water, tap water and sea-water samples were spiked with sub-ng ml−1 concentrations of Te(IV) and the spiked solutions were subjected to the mercapto-modified silica microcolumn separation and enrichment procedure. The spike recovery values varied between 86 and 114%. In addition to spike recovery experiments, accuracy was also verified via the analysis of a certified reference material. The limit of detection for Te(IV) in sea-water with a preconcentration factor of 50 was 0.037 ng ml−1. The capability of the microcolumn enrichment scheme for on-line sample processing via flow manifolds was demonstrated. A detailed interference study was performed.


The amount of shortwave radiation absorbed by dust has remained uncertain. We have developed a more accurate representation of dust absorption that is based on the observed dust mineralogical composition 10 and accounts for very large particles. We analyze the results from two fully-coupled climate simulations of 100 years in terms of their simulated precipitation patterns against observations. A striking benefit of the new dust optical and physical properties is that tropical precipitations over Sahel, tropical North Atlantic and West Indian Ocean are significantly improved compared to observations, without degrading precipitations elsewhere. This alleviates a persistent bias in earth system models that exhibit a summer African monsoon that does not reach far 15 enough North. We show that the improvement results from a thermodynamical and dynamical response to dust absorption is unrelated to natural variability. Aerosol absorption induces more water vapor advection from the ocean to the Sahel, thereby providing an added supply of moisture available for precipitation. This work thus provides a path towards improving precipitation patterns in these regions by more realistically accounting for both physical and optical properties of the aerosol. 20


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Concurrent usage of proton pump inhibitors and their effect on survival and medication termination has been found in individuals receiving protein kinase inhibitor chemotherapy. To investigate the drug-drug interaction mechanism between CDK inhibitors and proton pump inhibitors, the in-silico docking approach was designed by applying computer simulation modules to predict the binding and inhibitory potential.

METHOD
The interaction potential of proton pump inhibitors and CDK inhibitors was predicted utilising molecular docking techniques that employed Schrödinger algorithms to capture the dynamics of the CYP450 enzyme-inhibitor interaction between PPIs and CDK inhibitors. Additionally, the human liver microsomes assay was used to determine the in vitro half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of proton pump inhibitors and the inactivation of CDK inhibitors via CYP3A4.

RESULTS
Proton pump inhibitors alter the conformation of the CYP3A4 and CYP2C19 enzymes and interact with the heme prosthetic group, as determined by docking studies. It may result in the suppression of CDK inhibitors' metabolism via competitive inhibition at the binding site of an enzyme. Omeprazole and rabeprazole both significantly block midazolam's 1'-hydroxylation by CYP3A4 in vitro, with IC50 values of 9.86µM and 9.71µM, respectively. When omeprazole and rabeprazole are co-incubated in human liver microsomes at a 30µM concentration equivalent to the Cmax of omeprazole and rabeprazole, rabeprazole significantly prolongs the metabolic clearance of palbociclib, whereas omeprazole affects the ribociclib CYP3A4-mediated metabolism.

CONCLUSION
Using dynamic models, we determined that proton pump inhibitors such as rabeprazole and omeprazole indeed have the potential to cause clinically significant drug-drug interactions with CDK inhibitors in the treatment of estrogen receptor (ER) positive and HER2-positive breast cancer. As a result, it is suggested to use caution when prescribing proton pump inhibitors to these individuals.


The B phase of superfluid 3He can support regions of extremely long-lived coherent spin precession at ultralow temperatures, known as persistent precessing domains (PPD). The domains have been described in terms of a Bose-Einstein condensate of magnons and in terms of Q balls in field theory. The domains form in a magnetic field minimum along the vertical axis of a cylindrical cell. When far from the ends of the cell, the PPD lifetime grows exponentially on decreasing temperature. When the PPD is close to the horizontal end wall of the cell, an extra surface dissipation mechanism dominates at low temperatures. We present measurements of the PPD generated at various locations in the cell over a broad range of temperatures below 0.3 TC. We compare the measured properties with theoretical expectations for spin-wave modes. We present model calculations of different dissipation mechanisms and we compare these to the measured lifetimes.


Modern software systems are frequently characterized as systems of systems. Agentorientation as a software engineering paradigm exhibits a high degree of qualification for addressing many of the accompanying challenges. However, systems of systems demand for means of hierarchical/recursive decomposition that are not inherently rooted in the agent-oriented paradigm. We present a model that still relies on the actor metaphor, but shifts the focus to collective agency. We propose a universal model of a system unit that both embeds system actors and is itself embedded as a collective system actor in surrounding system units. Consequently, we can apply our model of a system unit at arbitrary levels of a system of systems and compose the overall system by means of nested actor hierarchies. (High Level) Petri nets as our modeling technique supply precise operational semantics for the functioning of these kind of systems. In addition, we offer abstraction mechanisms that allow for rather high-level or low-level views and smooth transitions between them.


Existing methods for unsupervised domain adaptation often rely on minimizing some statistical distance between the source and target samples in the latent space. To avoid the sampling variability, class imbalance, and data-privacy concerns that often plague these methods, we instead provide a memory and computation-efficient probabilistic framework to extract class prototypes and align the target features with them. We demonstrate the general applicability of our method on a wide range of scenarios, including single-source, multi-source, class-imbalance, and source-private domain adaptation. Requiring no additional model parameters and having a moderate increase in computation over the source model alone, the proposed method achieves competitive performance with state-of-the-art methods.


Component-based grid applications have complex deployment models. Performance-sensitive decisions should be taken by automatic tools. Such tools must match developer knowledge on component performance with QoS requirements on the applications, in order to find deployment plans that satisfy a service level agreement (SLA). This paper presents a steady state performance model that can be employed to reason about and automatically map stream-based component programs


Activation of the RET protooncogene through somatic rearrangements represents the most common genetic alteration in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Three main rearranged forms of RET have been described: RET/PTC1 and RET/PTC3, which arise from a paracentric inversion of the long arm of chromosome 10, and RET/PTC2, which originates from a 10;17 translocation. We have developed a dual-color FISH approach to detect RET/PTC rearrangements in interphase nuclei of thyroid lesions. By using a pool of three cosmids encompassing the RET chromosome region and a chromosome 10 centromeric probe, we could discriminate between the presence of an inversion (RET/PTC1 and RET/PTC3) or a translocation (RET/PTC2). We have investigated a series of thyroid tissue samples from Italian and French patients corresponding to a total of 69 PTCs and 22 benign lesions. Among PTCs, 13 (18.8%) showed a RET rearrangement, and 11 (15.9%) of these carried an inversion (RET/PTC1 or RET/PTC3) in more than 10% of the nuclei examined. Activated forms of RET were also observed in three adenomas. RT-PCR analysis on the same samples confirmed the presence and the type of rearrangement predicted using FISH analysis. An interesting difference in the frequency and type of RET rearrangements was detected between the Italian and the French patients. Furthermore, we identified a putative novel type of rearrangement in at least one PTC sample. Several PTCs carried a significant number of cells characterized by a trisomy or a tetrasomy of chromosome 10. Overall, the FISH approach in interphase nuclei represents a powerful tool for detecting, at the single cell level, RET/PTC rearrangements and other anomalies involving the RET chromosome region.


Recent pharmacological studies suggest that N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors play an important role in neuroadaptive processes in the development of tolerance to addictive drugs, such as opioids, amphetamine, and cocaine. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of the NMDA receptor to ethanol-induced hypnotic tolerance using NMDA receptor ϵ1 subunit knockout mice. Hypnotic sensitivity to a single injection of 3, 3.5, and 4 g/kg ethanol was not significantly different between wild-type mice and NMDA receptor ϵ1 subunit knockout mice. In contrast, although wild-type mice displayed hypnotic tolerance after repeated administration of 4 g/kg ethanol for 4 consecutive days, no change in the duration of hypnosis was observed in knockout mice. No significant differences were observed in blood ethanol clearance between wild-type and knockout mice on day 4. Our results indicate ϵ1 subunit containing the NMDA receptor might be involved in the development of ethanol-induced hypnotic tolerance.


A sensitive and specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol with nested primers was developed for simultaneous amplification of three independent human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) DNA sequences from clinical specimens. DNA samples were first amplified with gag, pol, and env outer primer pairs and then with the corresponding three inner primer pairs in the same two-step reaction. Detection of the different amplification products was readily accomplished by simple agarose gel electrophoresis of the reaction product, even when starting with a single copy of HIV-1 DNA. Equivalent amounts of the three PCR products were generated, provided that the relative concentrations of the inner primer pairs were optimized. In addition, a beta-globin control primer pair could be conveniently included in the internal amplification step to verify that the DNA sample was suitable for PCR analysis. One nested multiplex PCR test was sufficient to detect HIV-1 DNA in all of 80 HIV-1-seropositive individuals and none of 50 HIV-1-seronegative healthy blood donors. The nested multiplex PCR procedure provides an attractive means for simple, rapid, and cost-effective direct detection of HIV-1 DNA in patient samples.


Context Behavioural interventions are used to prevent, manage and treat a wide variety of conditions including obesity, diabetes, chronic pain, asthma and emotional difficulties. There has been inadequate attention to the delivery of behavioural interventions to younger children (5–11 years old). Objective Our objectives were to describe the characteristics of behavioural interventions for children aged 5–11 years. Data sources We searched five databases: CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Cochrane Library, from January 2005 to August 2019. Study selection The inclusion criteria were (1) children aged 5–11, (2) cognitive and/or behavioural interventions, (3) randomised controlled trials and (4) 2005 onward. Two researchers independently identified studies for inclusion. Data extraction Two researchers independently extracted data from eligible papers. Results The search identified 10 541 papers. We extracted information on 117 interventions (from 152 papers). Many of the interventions were categorised as complex. This was particularly true for clinical populations; 78.7% were delivered to both the child and parent, and 33.9% took place across multiple settings, typically health and school settings. Most (70.9%) were 'First Wave' (behavioural) interventions, and few (4.3%) were 'Third Wave' (characterised by metacognition, acceptance and mindfulness). Thirty-nine per cent used interactive techniques (play, arts, story and/or games). Purely digital and paper-based interventions were rare, but around a third used these tools as supplements to face–face delivery. There were differences in interventions for younger (5–7 years) and older (8–11 years) children. Conclusions Interventions designed and delivered to children should be developmentally sensitive. This review highlights characteristics of interventions delivered to children 5–11 years old: the involvement of the child's parent, using behavioural (rather than cognitive) modalities, using interactive techniques and some interventions were delivered across multiple settings.


Advances in droplet-based digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) have led to the emergence of biochips for automating laboratory procedures in biochemistry and molecular biology. These devices enable the precise control of microliter of nanoliter volumes of biochemical samples and reagents. They combine electronics with biology, and integrate various bioassay operations, such as sample preparation, analysis, separation, and detection. To meet the challenges of increasing design complexity, computer-aided-design (CAD) tools have been involved to build DMFBs efficiently. This paper provides an overview of DMFBs and describes emerging CAD tools for the automated synthesis and optimization of DMFB designs, from fluidic-level synthesis to chip-level design. Design automations are expected to relieve the design burden of manual optimization of bioassays, time-consuming chip designs, and costly testing and maintenance procedures. With the assistance of CAD tools, users can concentrate on the development and abstraction of nanoscale bioassays while leaving chip optimization and implementation details to CAD tools.


The use of the immunoradiometric assay made it possible to reveal a prolonged persistence of the antigen of viable cultures of S. typhi stable L-forms, as well as to study the dynamics of its spread in the body of experimental animals. After both subconjunctival and intraperitoneal infection of guinea pigs the antigen of S. typhi L-forms spread slowly in the body of experimental animals with its localization first in the lymphoid formations in the pharynx and the intestine and subsequent undulatory accumulation in the marrow, spleen and bile. The persistence of the antigen of live S. typhi L-forms lasted as long as 6 months (the term of observation); killed L-forms could be detected for not more than 17 days. Regular inoculations of samples from different organs into media for the cultivation of S. typhi bacterial and L-forms yielded no positive results, which showed the difficulty of obtaining stable L-forms and evidenced the absence of their reversion in the body of experimental animals.


In this paper, we describe how Masters students at a university studying Information Systems adapt to Enterprise Modelling. The paper describes an overview of the course and its design and the feedback from the students based on a questionnaire at the end of the course. The feedback indicates that the students found it helpful to be able to select their own cases for their modelling assignment, that they were able to relate their modelling assignment to the real world and the theory taught in the course and that their confidence in modelling improved during the course.


John Moullin Davies was born in London in 1925 but brought up mainly on the Sussex coast with his older brother, George. This was the period after the first world war and the time of the Great Depression. John was 13 at the outbreak of the second world war. He was a very bright boy but his parents were not in a position to fund his further education. However, a bequest of £500 from his grandmother made it possible for him to contemplate going to university, and he obtained a place at St Catherine's Hall, Oxford, which was not then a college, to study medicine going up at the very young age of 16 in 1942. Like other poor students, he could not have afforded college life and rented rooms in the poorer parts of town. His first year at Oxford was spent studying basic science subjects as, partly owing to the call-up of teachers, he had not done sciences at school. The wartime rationing probably helped him financially as this gave everyone, including poor students, access to subsistence before the days of welfare and student grants.

At Oxford he became part of a circle of friends including his wife to be, Elizabeth Ross, a fellow medical student. However, she left after one year to do secret work at the wartime code breaking centre of Bletchley Park and, following the end of the war, commenced an acting career. John just managed to eke out his £500 to cover the cost of four years at Oxford, including fees and all his living expenses. By the time he came to the clinical stage of his training, the new student grants had been introduced, which funded his two years at St George's Hospital Medical School, then at Hyde Park Corner. This was followed …


A number of countries around the world have embraced the open science agenda. However, in some cases, existing legislative frameworks in most countries typically do not allow much openness of data and science. Botswana is an example of such countries. The absence of legislative framework poses a challenge to librarians, researchers and policy makers with regard to data sharing. This has derailed the country's development in terms of innovation and creativity. This issue has prompted different stakeholders to come together to work towards changing the current systems and regulatory frameworks in relation to open science and data management.  The Botswana Open Data Open Science (ODOS) national committee was established in 2017 by different stakeholders being public bodies, business communities, information professionals and research communities to develop an open data open science policy that would enable data sharing and openness in science within the country. The purpose of this paper is to share the strategies used to establish inclusive interactions and engagement between stakeholders in facilitating the open data readiness implementation in Botswana. Moreover, the paper will highlight challenges encountered and achievement attained through this collaborative effort.


An industrial controller, specifically designed for two- and three-level converters, was adapted to work on an asymmetrical nine-level active power filter (APF). The controller is now able to make all required tasks for the correct operation of the APF, such as current-harmonic elimination and removal of high-frequency noise. The low switching-frequency operation of the nine-level converter was an important advantage in the application of the industrial controller. In addition, with the nine-level filter, switching losses were significantly reduced. The filter was designed to work as voltage source and operates as harmonic isolator, improving the filtering characteristics of the passive filter. The control strategy for detecting current harmonics is based on the " p-q theory " and the phase-tracking system in a synchronous reference frame phase-locked loop. The dc-link voltage control is analyzed together with the effect of controller gain and delay time in the system's stability. Simulations for this application are displayed and experiments in a 1-kVA prototype, using the aforementioned industrial controller, were tested, validating the effectiveness of this new application.


This study addresses the writing of Jewish history as a form of national belonging in Israel and in the Diaspora. Simon Dubnow laid the foundation for Jewish national historiography in the beginning of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1920s, Zionist historians in Palestine emphasized the centrality of the Land of Israel in Jewish history, while Jewish historians in the Diaspora preferred an elliptical model, which recognized two national centres – 'Babylon and Jerusalem'. In the 1930s, a debate broke out between two principal Jewish historians, Salo Baron and Yitzhak Baer. While Baer stressed the Zionist conception of Jewish history, Baron emphasized the world dimensions of Jewish history. Similarly, during the 1950s a dispute arose between Jewish scholar Simon Rawidowicz and David Ben-Gurion. For Rawidowicz, a Jewish centre in the Diaspora was parallel in significance to the State of Israel. By contrast, for Ben-Gurion only a Jewish nation-state could provide true Jewish national belonging. In this article, I analyse both arguments and draw conclusions for the current relationship between Israeli historical awareness and the use of Jewish history in the Diaspora.


The Belgian law of 1990 concerning the protection of the mentally ill was the principal achievement of the last 25 years in the field of civil commitment of mentally ill patients in Flanders. Since that time there have been very few alterations in the criteria determining civil commitment. Very little legislation has been passed on this subject. The pragmatic and casuistic way in which the law is applied hinders any discussion of the principles on which these criteria are based. In spite of the large increase in the number of civil commitments, so far the law has remained unchanged.


Soybean meal (SBM) is the most widely and expensive protein source used in the formulation of poultry diets; however, when the price of SBM increases, poultry nutritionists seek alternative sources that are more economical in formulating least-cost rations. This research aimed to evaluate the effects of dietary air-classified sunflower meal (SFM) on some productive parameters and plasma steroid hormones in laying hens. In this trial, 20-week-old laying hens (ISA Brown strain) in the early phase of production were randomly assigned to two groups and fed wheat middlings-based diets containing soybean (135 g/kg; 48% CP) or air-classified SFM (160 g/kg; 41% CP) as the main protein source. Laying performance, egg size and feed conversion ratio were evaluated for 10 week. Plasma steroid hormones (progesterone and oestradiol) in the hens were quantified weekly. Substituting SBM with air-classified SFM did not change (p > 0.05) the hens' growth performance, whereas feed consumption and efficiency were positively influenced (p < 0.05) by SFM treatment. Egg production rate was improved in hens fed the SFM diet (p < 0.05), as well as the percentage of medium-size eggs that was higher for SFM treatment (p < 0.05). Steroid hormones levels were affected by dietary treatment (p < 0.01). From our findings, it could be effective to include air-classified SFM in early-phase laying hen diets as an alternative protein source substituting SBM, without negative influence on productive performance and egg traits, reducing also the production costs.


Introduction:
Stroke results in severe disability, with impacts that are sometimes socially,
emotionally or professionally dramatic and also dramatic for the cost
involved in care and treatment. Objective: Assessing the functional prognosis
after hospitalization and identifying associated factors. Method: It
consisted in a cross-sectional, prospective, descriptive and analytical study
that was conducted from April 1 to August 31, 2013 in the Neurology Department
of CNHU-HKM in Cotonou. It involved 100 patients who have known stroke for at least 6 months and were all admitted and
discharged later on. The disease survivors
were re-contacted and examined again at home or at hospital. Disability and
dependency were then measured respectively with the Rankin score and Barthel
index. The STATA/IC11.0 statistical software was used as the basis for data
analysis. Unvaried and multi-varied analyzes helped to identify associated
factors. Results: The overall disability and dependency rates were respectively
69% and 57.7%. And the highest rate of disability (38.8%) was observed between
50 and 60 years old. However, dependency prevalence was higher in subjects
above 70 years old (37.3%). Regarding gender, the prevalence of disability was
59.2% in men and rather 41.5% in women. Predictors of disability and dependency
were paralysis on admission (IC95% = 0.26 [0.77 - 0.92]; p = 0.036), obesity (IC95% = 0.26 [0.77 - 0.92]; p = 0.012) and
monthly income lower than 70$US (IC95% = 0.05 [0.01 - 0.56]; p = 0.015). Conclusion:
This study enabled us to assess the
functional outcome of patients once discharged. The significance of motor deficit
on stroke occurrence, obesity and the low monthly income were factors of poor
functional prognosis.


Severe damage to the jib of a dragline excavator resulted from failure of the shaft which carried the derricking sheaves at the apex of the "A" frame. Failure occurred within the hub of the center sheave of the group of three at the right-hand end of the shaft. The shaft was manufactured from a 0.5% carbon, 1% chromium steel heat treated to give a hardness value of 300 VDP. The material was in the hardened and tempered condition and showed no abnormalities which would predispose to early failure. The content of non-metallic matter was only of nominal amount. Failure of the shaft resulted from fatigue due to the cumulative action of the repeated stresses which it had been subjected to during service. The shaft had been subjected to repeated stress applications sufficient to result in the initiation and development of a fatigue crack at the radial hole. To prevent a repetition of the failure it was recommended that the stress-raising effect of the holes be reduced by chamfering or preferably rounding-off the edges. Furthermore, rotation of the shaft should be prevented so that the radial holes were positioned on the opposite side of the shaft.


We depart from the usual assumption in noncooperative game theory that games arise exogenously. We assume instead that games between agents are formed endogenously in the sense that agents choose their opponents through a costly search process. Since agents are aware in this situation that both parties have the option of rejecting a match, they have an incentive to make themselves as attractive a partner as they can. This is accomplished in a pregame in which agents consider all the potential strategies in a game but choose to learn only a subset. We assume that this choice is observable by their potential partners in the matching game. We motivate this as a proxy for subscribing to a code of ethics, accepting a set of social norms, or being a member of a religious, philosophical, or political group. We show that agents will sometimes choose to constrain their actions sets in the pregame in order to achieve better matches and higher payoffs. We suggest that this might provide at least a partial explanation for experimental observations that agents apparently choose strategies that do not maximize their payoffs.


PurposeRecent service studies suggest focusing on the service triad consisting of technology-customer-frontline employee (FLE). This study empirically investigates the role of service robots in this service triad, with the aim to understand the augmentation or substitution role of service robots in driving utilitarian and hedonic value and ultimately customer repatronage.Design/methodology/approachIn study 1, field data are collected from customers (n = 108) who interacted with a service robot and FLE in a fast casual dining restaurant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test hypotheses about the impact of service robots' anthropomorphism, social presence, value perceptions and augmentation opportunities in the service triad. In study 2, empirical data from a scenario-based experimental design (n = 361) complement the field study by further scrutinizing the interplay between the service robot and FLEs within the service triad.FindingsThe study provides three important contributions. First, the authors provide empirical evidence for the interplay between different actors in the "customer-FLE-technology" service triad resulting in customer repatronage. Second, the empirical findings advance the service management literature by unraveling the relationship between anthropomorphism and social presence and their effect on perceived value in the service triad. And third, the study identifies utilitarian value of service robots as a driver of customer repatronage in fast casual dining restaurants.Practical implicationsThe results help service managers, service robot engineers and designers, and policy makers to better understand the implications of anthropomorphism, and how the utilitarian value of service robots can offer the potential for augmentation or substitution roles in the service triad.Originality/valueBuilding on existing conceptual and laboratory studies on service robots, this is one of the first field studies on the service triad consisting of service robots – customers – frontline employees. The empirical study on service triads provides evidence for the potential of FLEs to augment service robots that exhibit lower levels of functional performance to achieve customer repatronage. FLEs can do this by demonstrating a high willingness to help and having excellent interactions with customers. This finding advocates the joint service delivery by FLE – service robot teams in situations where service robot technology is not fully optimized.


Broader contextual factors that take into account the social, built and physical environments experienced outside the workplace are important determinants to worker health. Furthermore non-work related psychosocial stressors are likely closely related to psychosocial stress at work, and may contribute an additional layer of health risk to the worker. These factors are important contributors to widening health disparities and incorporating them into studies of traditional occupational health exposures will provide a better understanding of "total worker health". In this presentation, we will focus on contextual and individual level stressors that may be important to occupation health outcomes but are less frequently incorporated. Specifically we will discuss how to conceptualise and measure these constructs and will provide some motivation for their relevance to occupation health. For example, individual and neighbourhood level stressors may be potential modifiers in the association between occupational exposures and outcomes, helping us identify vulnerable populations. Alternatively they may have a synergistic effect with occupational exposures suggesting potential mechanism of action. Specifically a discussion of important neighbourhood or other contextual level factors will focus on issues of measurement and conceptualization. We will draw on research from sociology and elsewhere to describe the state of the art in measuring neighbourhood social environments using existing data sources and primary data collection efforts such as systematic social observation. Furthermore, we will also address how to bring these factors into analytic structures (e.g. multi-level models). Individual level psychosocial stressor experienced outside the workplace (e.g. chronic stress, discrimination and social class) are more proximal to and possibly more powerful predictors of occupational health outcomes. We will discuss measurement strategies for these factors as well. The intent of this presentation is to lay the groundwork for a larger discussion of new challenges in occupational health.


BACKGROUND
Out of area placements for people with challenging behaviour represent an expensive and often ineffective strategy for meeting the needs of this service user group.

METHODS
More than 800 agencies and service settings in a large area of South Wales were screened to identify children and adults with challenging behaviour against a number of defined operational criteria. Detailed data on identified individuals and the services they received were collected by interviewing key informants. Univariate and multivariate statistics were employed to identify predictors of out of area placement.

RESULTS
In total, 1458 people were identified. Full data were available for 901 participants, 97 of whom were placed out of area. Predictors of out of area placement included behaviours resulting in physical injury and exclusion from service settings, a history of formal detention under the mental health act, the presence of mental health problems, a diagnosis of autism and higher total score on the Adaptive Behaviour Scale. Out of area placements were typically of high cost, and associated with only limited evidence of improved service quality.

CONCLUSIONS
Identifying predictors for out of area placement can be used to highlight deficiencies in local services and individuals at increased risk of exclusion from local services.


A submerged transmission, fitted with a dynamic sealing system, in a wave energy converter (WEC) serves the purpose of transmitting the force, absorbed by a wave activated body, to an encapsulated power take-off (PTO) system, while preventing seawater from entering the capsule. Dry generator operation is generally a prerequisite for attaining long technical service life. Little attention seems to be devoted in publications to the study of dynamic sealing systems in WECs, and to test rigs for experimental verification and/or evaluation of the ability/performance of existing dynamic sealing systems in a controlled laboratory environment. This paper begins by presenting some of our earlier research within the focus area of dynamic sealing systems, incl. design considerations and typical operating conditions. This part also presents the 1st laboratory test rig, used for verifying the sealing ability of the piston rod mechanical lead-through design in the 1st and 2nd full-scale experimental WEC prototype from Uppsala University. In 2021 project DynSSWE (Dynamic Sealing Systems for Wave Energy) was initiated. Drawing from experience, the project includes development of a new test rig, representing a tool for further development of dynamic sealing systems. This paper introduces steps in the design and development process of that new test rig, enabling accelerated long-term test runs with a setup of multiple piston rod specimens. The test specimens' will be surface treated differently with the aim of improving the prospects of a long maintenance free service life. Since the new test rig is in the design stage, seal testing results are not yet reported. The presented work is funded by the Swedish energy agency with the aim of improving subsystem performance in wave energy devices.


In this paper, dynamic response of 1-inch hard disk drive (HDD) head arm assembly (HAA) against an impact load is obtained by means of a 3D non-linear finite element model in ANSYS/LS-DYNA and experiments using Optical method. A mass is modeled as a rigid body and is made to collide with the arm. The velocity, displacement, acceleration and the inertial force of the mass are obtained from the time- history of finite element analysis (FEA). In the experiment, a mass that is levitated with an aerostatic linear bearing, and hence encounters negligible friction, is made to collide with the HAA and the dynamic bending test for the arm is realized. During the collision the Doppler frequency shift of the laser beam reflecting from the mass is accurately measured using an optical interferometer. The velocity, the position, the acceleration and the inertial force of the mass are calculated from the measured time-varying Doppler frequency shift. A good correlation between the experimental data and FEA results is observed.


The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations between communicative competence and five dimensions of personality in 241 first and second language–learning children in The Netherlands. To determine the underlying communicative competence of the first and second language learners of Dutch, a broad array of linguistic measures and teacher judgments were collected. Observational scales referring to the Big Five personality factors were used to characterize the children's personalities. The results showed that three basic components underlie both the monolingual and bilingual children's communicative competence: organizational competence, involving lexical, syntactic, discourse, and functional abilities; pragmatic competence, involving sociocultural routines and illocutionary force; and strategic competence, involving the planning and monitoring of communicative behavior. The relations between the different dimensions of personality and the components of communicative competence revealed the following patterns to characterize first language learners: conscientiousness and emotional stability correlated with basic organizational skills; openness to experience correlated with pragmatic competence; and a broad range of personality characteristics with the acquisition of communicative strategies. In contrast, primarily openness to experience and, to a lesser extent, conscientiousness and extraversion were found to be related to the buildup of basic organizational skills, the acquisition of pragmatic skills, and the development of monitoring strategies in second language learners.


Most existing approaches to training object detectors rely on fully supervised learning, which requires the tedious manual annotation of object location in a training set. Recently there has been an increasing interest in developing weakly supervised approach to detector training where the object location is not manually annotated but automatically determined based on binary (weak) labels indicating if a training image contains the object. This is a challenging problem because each image can contain many candidate object locations which partially overlaps the object of interest. Existing approaches focus on how to best utilise the binary labels for object location annotation. In this paper we propose to solve this problem from a very different perspective by casting it as a transfer learning problem. Specifically, we formulate a novel transfer learning based on learning to rank, which effectively transfers a model for automatic annotation of object location from an auxiliary dataset to a target dataset with completely unrelated object categories. We show that our approach outperforms existing state-of-the-art weakly supervised approach to annotating objects in the challenging VOC dataset.


A dynamic analysis method has been developed to investigate and characterize the effect due to the presence of discrete single and multiple delaminations of composite laminated structures. The Fermi-Dirac distribution function is combined with an improved layerwise laminate theory to model a smooth transition in the displacement and the strain fields of the delaminated interfaces. In modeling piezoelectric composite plates, a coupled piezoelectric-mechanical formulation is used in the development of the constitutive equations. Based on the developed model, the effects of discrete delaminations are quantified by comparing transient responses of composite plates and piezoelectric sensor outputs.


When tetrathionate-grown Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 23270 cells were incubated with ferric ions and tetrathionate at pH 3.0, ferrous ions were produced enzymatically. Fe3+-reductase, which catalyzes Fe3+ reduction with tetrathionate, was purified to homogeneity not only from tetrathionate-grown, but also from sulfur- and iron-grown A. ferrooxidans ATCC 23270 cells. The results for apparent molecular weight measured by SDS–PAGE (52.3 kD) and the N-terminal amino acid sequences of the purified enzymes from iron-, sulfur, and tetrathionate-grown cells (AVAVPMDSTG) indicate that Fe3+-reductase corresponds to tetrathionate hydrolase. The evidence that tetrathionate-grown A. ferrooxidans ATCC 23270 cells have high iron-oxidizing activity at the early log phase, comparable to that of iron-grown ATCC 23270 cells, is supported by our finding that tetrathionate hydrolase produces Fe2+ from tetrathionate during growth on tetrathionate. This is the first report on ferric reductase activity associated with tetrathionate hydrolase.


AC electroosmosis is a convenient valveless method to pump liquids, whilst avoiding electrolysis and gas generation. Basic designs presented in the literature often have limited velocity or pressure capabilities. This paper reports a simple approach to the design and fabrication of AC electroosmotic (ACEO) micropumps with electrodes that completely surround the channel. We present a fabrication process with two lithographic steps and show that the new prototypes allow for a dramatic increase of the velocity generation - up to 360% compared to devices where electrodes are placed only on one side of the channel.


The Tactical Information Technologies for Assured Network Operations (TITAN) Program is a multi- year effort to develop information dissemination and management services spanning multiple echelons in support of military planning and operations. The services developed within this program aim not to replace, but rather augment existing applications and to utilize available data sources. A key program objective is to integrate intelligent agents, web services, and traditional data sources in a service- oriented architecture. The central information exchange objects in TITAN are digitized and contextualized with orders and plans products as articulated by doctrine. These provide the centerpiece structures that motivate a common, highly-structured machine readable human-compatible vocabulary for BC services involving both users and Intelligent Agents. The BC domain data provides the content, and the BC product structure (e.g. header, paragraphs and annexes and their underlying structures) provides much of the context. The TITAN BC ID&M services use a single but highly versatile XML schema compatible with the JC3IEDM and a message object library to represent instants of structured domain objects, facts, topics and products for BC. This greatly facilitates collaboration among intelligent agents and between intelligent agents and humans. BC application developers should be able to relate their work product (MDMP/BC/C2 product) semantically as well as contextually to the OPLANs, OPORDs, WARNOs and FRAGOs in effect. All TITAN BC ID&M services have critical synergistic responsibility for initiating, updating and providing feedback and finalizing certain work products, topics and/or facts. These capabilities (to initiate, update, feedback and finalize a BC work product, a topic or a fact) are critical to any information management and dissemination support capability on the battlefield since they greatly support the maintenance and tracking of provenance and pedigree of information. Similarly, since all of the TITAN services support commander and staff actions, TITAN services add significant value to all BC Essential Capabilities (BCEC) requirements.


Recent studies indicate that both CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes proliferate in vitro in response to Mls-1a-encoded determinants. Using both immunogenetic and antibody blocking approaches we show here that Mls-1a responses of both subsets require expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules (I-A and/or I-E) by the stimulator cells. Furthermore, CD8+ T cell responses to Mls- 1a/class II MHC do not require (and are in fact inhibited by) the presence of functional CD8 molecules. Taken together, our data underscore the dramatic differences between CD8+ T cell responses to conventional peptide antigens as opposed to "superantigens" such as Mls- 1a.


Background and Purpose: To investigate the correlates of life satisfaction among aboriginal adolescents in northern Taiwan. Methods: This study was a panel design follow-up survey. In total, 234 aboriginal adolescent participants from a preliminary survey (N=318) were recruited into this follow-up survey. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, using structured questionnaires. Results: Findings indicated five leading causes of subjects' daily life distress: poor academic performance (50.9%), economic difficulties (40.6%), relationships and/or emotional problems (26.9%), health problems (15.8%), and poor family communication (15.4%). Overall, 79.5% of the subjects perceived their health status as being good, and 66.2% were satisfied with their lives. Roughly 53.4% showed poor academic performance, yet 76.9% felt stressed about this. According to the multiple logistic regression analyses, subjects without economic problems (OR=2.08, 95% CI=1.06-4.08) and those willing to publicly reveal themselves as being aboriginal (OR=2.73, 95% CI=1.37-5.43) were more likely to be satisfied with their current lives than their counterparts. Conclusion: Economic factors and a willingness to reveal oneself as an aborigine were two of the strongest predictors for subjects' life satisfaction.


Research has shown limited support for the notion that perceived effectiveness of collective action is a predictor of intentions to engage in collective action. One reason may be that effectiveness has been in terms of whether the action will influence key decision makers. We argue that the effectiveness of collective action might be judged by other criteria, such as whether it influences third parties, builds an oppositional movement, and expresses values. Two hundred and thirty one attendees at a rally rated the effectiveness of the rally and their intentions to engage in future collective action. For those participants who were not members of an organization, intentions were linked to the perceived effectiveness of the rally in expressing values and influencing the public. For those who were members of an organization, intentions were linked only to the effectiveness of the rally in building an oppositional movement.


Euroregion "Danube-Kris-Mures-Tisza" is formed both to stimulate local development and to serve as an example for cooperation to other areas in SEE. This project considers Banat as united region in three countries. Some differences which exist in separate parts of Banat (Hungary, Romania, Serbia) are less problem than this whole area that has advantages for favourable conditions for cooperation. In regard to some geographic characteristics this three parts of Banat are more similar to each other than to their own states. That fact contributes interregional cooperation in SEE.


Manuscript type: Research Paper Research aims: This study aims to examine the impacts of socialpolitical context and government control on the relationship between corporate philanthropy and firm performance using the listed firms' data on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX). Design/Methodology/Approach: This study uses multiple regression analysis to study the relationship between corporate philanthropy and firm performance using 2012-2018 Hong Kong listed firm data. Empirical results show a positive association between the current and lagged corporate philanthropy and financial performance. Subgroup analysis shows that the relationship is contingent on the socio-political and government control factors. Our subgroup analysis reveals that Hong Kong firms benefit more from corporate philanthropy than Mainland China firms, and non-government control mainland private firms have a stronger positive relationship than the state-owned enterprises. Our results support social impact theory and political connection theory. Theoretical contribution/Originality: Our study bridges the gap of prior studies on the philanthropy-corporate finance relationship by isolating the separate effect of socio-political context impact and government ownership. We believe we are the first study in this respect. Our findings validate the results of prior studies in general and suggest the empirical results based on transitional economy data is, to some extent, generalisable. Practitioner/Policy implication: Contemporary data provides empirical evidences that corporate philanthropy could elicit positive responses from stakeholders to bolster corporate financial performance, except firms under government control. The positive impact of donation was immediate with a lasting effect as suggested in the literature and the result would be relevant for regulators in formulating policies regarding corporate social performance. Research limitation/Implication: Similar to previous studies, corporate philanthropy is proxy by the monetary amount of donation in this study. However, the context of corporate philanthropy very often goes beyond monetary donations and the findings may not apply to firms making substantial non-monetary donations. Keywords: Corporate Philanthropy, Corporate Social Responsibility, Firm Performance, Socio-political Context, State-owned Enterprises. JEL Classification: M14


Several studies have quantified the spatial variability of snow stability and structure on specific slopes. One consequence of such spatial variability is that using individual point stability measurements to assess slope stability is questionable unless the variability exists in typical, and predictable, spatial patterns. This paper examines the spatial patterns of the penetration resistance of over one hundred unique snowpack layers using the method of universal kriging, a common geostatistical technique. This two-step process first analyzes the data for spatial trends at the slope scale, and then uses semivariograms to quantify the spatial patterns of the residuals. The data come from arrays of SnowMicroPen (SMP) measurements on small slopes in southwestern Montana and near Davos in eastern Switzerland. Our goal was to see if predictable spatial patterns exist for layers with certain types of grains or deposited under certain meteorological conditions. If such patterns exist, extrapolation and interpolation of layer characteristics will be more accurate. However, our preliminary analyses suggest that spatial patterns in penetration resistance do not depend on the layer grain type or on the conditions under which the layers were deposited. This is the case even for layers which form under relatively unique climatic conditions, such as surface hoar. In essence, the spatial pattern for each layer appears to be unique, and may change through time. These results emphasize the complexity of analyzing the spatial variability found on slopes, the difficulties in interpolating between point measurements, and the problems associated with scaling point measurements of snowpack parameters like stability up to the slope scale. Our results suggest that avalanche assessments will continue to be holistic, relying on expert human knowledge of specific slopes supplemented by a variety of additional data. Corresponding author address: Karl Birkeland U.S. Forest Service National Avalanche Center P.O. Box 130 Bozeman, Montana 59771 (406) 587-6954 email@example.com


Presents a framework for structured object composition for system modeling. We present a split level programming model for component modeling and design composition. In this model the component implementation details are part of the compiled C++ domain, and the composition, parameterization and structural details are part of the OTcl interpreted domain. We discuss the relative advantages of implementing design composition and structural details in the interpreted domain, over the compiled domain, and describe the framework with a small example.


A novel method of detecting mechanical movement of the heart, Mechanocardiography (MCG), with no connection to the subject's body is presented. This measurement is based on radar technology and it has been proven through this research work that the acquired signal is highly correlated to the phonocardiograph signal and acceleration-based ballistocardiograph signal (BCG) recorded directly from the sternum. The heart rate and respiration rate have been extracted from the acquired signal as two possible physiological monitoring applications of the radar-based MCG device.


Industrial experiments were conducted in ladle treatment at SSAB Oxelösund aiming at a reduction and even elimination of CaF2 as a component in synthetic slag formers. The effects of the presence of CaF2 on sulphur refining, lining wear as well as types and amount of inclusions were examined. The results of the plant trials indicated that the new slag without CaF2 had enough capacity for sulphur removal. On the other hand, the presence of CaF2 as a flux in the slag resulted in profound lining wear. It was also found that both the number and the types of non‐metallic inclusions were not affected by the elimination of CaF2 from synthetic slag. The origins of different types of inclusions were also analysed on the basis of the experimental results. The analysis supported the finding that the presence of CaF2 had little effect on inclusions.


Short-circuiting seizures In a randomized, doubleblind, multicenter trial, researchers are studying the effect of the Responsive Neurostimulator System (RNS) to help patients with uncontrolled epilepsy. Through electrodes implanted in the brain, the device detects seizure activity and delivers stimulation via a low-level electric current to stop it. The device is placed within the skull and connected by leads to two electrodes implanted in the brain where the main seizure activity occurs. The device continuously monitors the brain's electrical activity. When the device senses electrical activity that signals the start of a seizure, it sends electrical stimulation through the leads to the seizure focus to suppress the seizure. It delivers stimulation to the brain only after sensing seizure activity. An earlier study of the RNS in 65 adults with uncontrolled epilepsy indicated that the device is safe. The current trial aims to determine if the device is effective in adults with partial-onset seizures refractory to treatment with two or more antiepileptic drugs. Usually treated with antiepileptic drugs, epilepsy is poorly controlled in 30% to 40% of more than 2 million people in the United States with the condition. For more information on the device, visit the manufacturer's Web site at http:// www.neuropace.com/.


We examined 15 variably-sized gallstones, taken from an elderly male, by backscattered electron imaging and energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis to learn the structural and distribution patterns of gallstone calcium (Ca-) salts. Of the 13 cholesterol-rich stones, nine stones had peripheral concentric layers of Ca-carbonate, whereas 2 stones had peripheral layers of Ca-phosphate. No Ca-salts were detected from 2 cholesterol-rich stones. The 2 stones containing Ca-phosphate had no Ca-salt cores, whereas the stones containing Ca-carbonate were separated into 3 different types: two stones with a Ca-carbonate core, four stones with several Ca-bilirubinate cores of glass-like structure, and 3 stones lacking Ca-salt cores. A closer view of the Ca-salt layers, which may be occasionally coexistent with Ca-bilirubinate, mainly showed either laminate deposits or numerous globules with a few laminae. Of the 2 cholesterol-poor stones, one had dispersed particles mainly of Ca-phosphate, and the other had loosely dispersed particles with small amounts of Ca-phosphate, bilirubinate, and/or palmitate. Some relationship between the size and Ca-salt species of these gallstones was suggested. Gallstones collected from the same individual showed a considerable heterogeneity of Ca-salts.


The specification of biodiesel is related to factors associated with its quality as a fuel. The iodine value as one of those quality parameters measures the degree of unsaturation present in a biodiesel composition. The unsaturated fatty acids (existence of double bonds) are susceptible to the oxidation reactions that can lead to the formation of polymeric compounds by heating. Moreover, these polymeric compounds can produce gum formation, which is detrimental to the vehicle engine due to its corrosive actions. For determining the iodine value in biodiesel, the standardized procedures use volumetric titration—with starch as an indicator—as the main technique for iodine value measurement. Some of these procedures also mention potentiometric titration as an alternative technique. This work aims to show the results of the iodine value obtained from an experimental design based on 23 factorial designs at two levels. It was performed on a biodiesel matrix from palm oil in order to indicate major trends as well as a direction to choose the best alternative to determine the iodine value for developing certified reference materials by Inmetro, the Brazilian Metrology Institute. Three variables were studied: two qualitative variables—the titration techniques (volumetric and potentiometric) and the solvent used to dilute the biodiesel—and one quantitative variable, the temperature. There were no significant differences between the two techniques used, though it was not the case for variables such as solvent and temperature. Therefore, the potentiometric technique has shown better quality in the determination of the iodine value when compared to the volumetric technique. The relative standard deviations presented by the potentiometric titration were from 0.04 % to 0.32 %. On the other hand, the volumetric titration presented relative standard deviations ranging from 0.25 % to 1.03 %.


Diffusion models gain increasing popularity for their generative capabilities. Recently, there have been surging needs to generate customized images by inverting diffusion models from exemplar images. However, existing inversion methods mainly focus on capturing object appearances. How to invert object relations, another important pillar in the visual world, remains unexplored. In this work, we propose ReVersion for the Relation Inversion task, which aims to learn a specific relation (represented as"relation prompt") from exemplar images. Specifically, we learn a relation prompt from a frozen pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model. The learned relation prompt can then be applied to generate relation-specific images with new objects, backgrounds, and styles. Our key insight is the"preposition prior"- real-world relation prompts can be sparsely activated upon a set of basis prepositional words. Specifically, we propose a novel relation-steering contrastive learning scheme to impose two critical properties of the relation prompt: 1) The relation prompt should capture the interaction between objects, enforced by the preposition prior. 2) The relation prompt should be disentangled away from object appearances. We further devise relation-focal importance sampling to emphasize high-level interactions over low-level appearances (e.g., texture, color). To comprehensively evaluate this new task, we contribute ReVersion Benchmark, which provides various exemplar images with diverse relations. Extensive experiments validate the superiority of our approach over existing methods across a wide range of visual relations.


Considering the needs of Amelia, who has issues with her cerebellar, lower visual field impairment and dorsal stream dysfunction, and how, one day, she climbed higher than everyone else.


The aim of this study was to investigate the test–retest (TRT) repeatability of various parametric quantification methods for [18F]Flortaucipir positron emission tomography (PET). We included eight subjects with dementia or mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease and six cognitively normal subjects. All underwent two 130-min dynamic [18F]Flortaucipir PET scans within 3 ± 1 weeks. Data were analyzed using reference region models receptor parametric mapping (RPM), simplified reference tissue method 2 (SRTM2) and reference logan (RLogan), as well as standardized uptake value ratios (SUVr, time intervals 40–60, 80–100 and 110–130 min post-injection) with cerebellar gray matter as reference region. We obtained distribution volume ratio or SUVr, first for all brain regions and then in three tau-specific regions-of-interest (ROIs). TRT repeatability (%) was defined as |retest–test|/(average (test + retest)) × 100. For all methods and across ROIs, TRT repeatability ranged from (median (IQR)) 0.84% (0.68–2.15) to 6.84% (2.99–11.50). TRT repeatability was good for all reference methods used, although semi-quantitative models (i.e. SUVr) performed marginally worse than quantitative models, for instance TRT repeatability of RPM: 1.98% (0.78–3.58) vs. SUVr80–100: 3.05% (1.28–5.52), p < 0.001. Furthermore, for SUVr80–100 and SUVr110–130, with higher average SUVr, more variation was observed. In conclusion, while TRT repeatability was good for all models used, quantitative methods performed slightly better than semi-quantitative methods.


The abundant vascular structures that surround the shoulder joint are complex and variable, complicating arthroscopy approaches. The aim of this study is to determine safe and risky areas around standard posterior and standard anterior portals, and accounting for the distribution of neurovascular structures of small and medium diameters that can lead to intra-articular bleeding during surgery. The standard posterior portal, and standard anterior portal were placed as described in the literature, and punch dissection was performed 2.5 cm around the trocar in situ. The arrangement of each identified structure was photographically documented and digitalized for each anatomic plane; the distance to the trocar and the diameter of each structure were measured. Based on each digitalized anatomic plane, safe and risky tissue areas were determined, and a clock face coordinate system was used to represent these areas. The safe area
around the standard posterior portal was located between 11 and 1 o´clock for the left shoulder and 11 and 2 o´clock for the right shoulder. For the standard anterior portal, the safe area was located between 2 and 3 o´clock for the left shoulder and between 9 and 12 o´clock for the right shoulder. However, we did document a risk of injuring the cephalic vein 5 times, the axillary artery 3 times and the deltoid branch of the thoracoacromial artery once. This study reports quantitatively the total number of small diameter structures present in the two shoulder arthroscopic portals evaluated. The safe areas proposed in this study must be evaluated to propose new access points for performing arthroscopic procedures on the shoulder.


The Standard for Exchange of Nonclinical Data (SEND), introduced by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is a scheme for the computerization, electronic application, and screening of preclinical data. Since its establishment, related organizations have been working together to implement SEND. However, it is difficult for individual pharmaceutical companies that often outsource to achieve complete compliance with SEND; hence, the cooperation of contract research organizations (CROs) and SEND Registered Solution Providers (RSPs) is indispensable. In SEND, most data, including those on pathology findings, are converted into controlled terminology (CT), but it is not a simple process to convert findings or levels of severity in the field of pathology, which is a descriptive science. The authors have successfully completed an FDA trial submission for a toxicology test conducted at a CRO and in doing so acquired important knowledge. This article presents a clear picture of such important knowledge from a pathologist's viewpoint.


Abstract : A wet-microburst event on 16 August 1994 at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility alerted forecasters from the 45th Weather Squadron (45WS), the provider of weather support to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS), to the challenges of wet-microburst prediction. Although there was no operational impact, this event caused the 45WS to revise their severe thunderstorm forecasting procedures to specifically address microbursts, resulting in the locally developed Microburst-Day Potential Index (MDPI). MDPI provides a several-hour outlook of microburst potential based on the results of the Microburst and Severe Thunderstorm (MIST) project. The 45WS also conducted a preliminary evaluation of the Wind INDEX (WINDEX) for the KSC/CCAS microburst forecast problem. WINDEX provides an estimate of the maximum observed gust speed that can be expected should a microburst occur. This thesis presents an evaluation of MDPI and WINDEX based on microbursts identified by Sanger (1999) in his KSC/CCAS microburst climatology. A new index for assessing microburst potential is also introduced, incorporating both the MDPI and WINDEX parameters. Overall neither the MDPI nor the WINDEX performed particularly well in this application.


In 1991, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began to implement a full-scale National WaterQuality Assessment (NAWQA) program. The long-term goals of the NAWQA program are to describe the status and trends in the quality of a large, representative part of the Nation's surfacewater and ground-water resources and to provide a sound, scientific understanding of the primary natural and human factors affecting the quality of these resources. In meeting these goals, the program will produce a wealth of water-quality information that will be useful to policymakers and managers at the National, State, and local levels.


Olfactory associative learning in Drosophila is mediated by synaptic plasticity between the Kenyon cells of the mushroom body and their output neurons. Both Kenyon cells and their inputs are cholinergic, yet little is known about the physiological function of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors in learning in adult flies. Here we show that aversive olfactory learning in adult flies requires type A muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChR-A) specifically in the gamma subtype of Kenyon cells. Surprisingly, mAChR-A inhibits odor responses in both Kenyon cell dendrites and axons. Moreover, mAChR-A knockdown impairs the learning-associated depression of odor responses in a mushroom body output neuron. Our results suggest that mAChR-A is required at Kenyon cell presynaptic terminals to depress the synapses between Kenyon cells and their output neurons, and may suggest a role for the recently discovered axo-axonal synapses between Kenyon cells.


The competition for government funding for remediation of defense wastes (and for other legitimate government functions) is intensifying as the United States moves toward a balanced national budget. Determining waste remediation priorities for the use of available tax dollars will likely depend on established international agreements and on the real risks posed to human health. Remediation of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) high-level radioactive tank wastes has been described as the most important priority in the DOE system. The proposed tank waste remediation at three DOE sites will include retrieval of the wastes from the aging storage tanks, immobilization of the wastes, and safe disposal of the processed waste. Vitrification, the current immobilization technology chosen by DOE, is very costly. The U.S. Congress and the American people may not be aware that the present cost of preparing just 1 m3 of processed waste product at the Savannah River Site is ~$2 million! In a smaller waste remediation project at the West Valley Site, similar waste treatment is costing >$2 million/m3 of waste product. Privatization efforts at the Hanford Site are now estimated to cost >$4 million/m3 of waste product. Even at the lowest current cost of $2 million/m3 of HLW glass product, the total estimated costs for remediating the tank wastes at the three DOE sites of Savannah River, Hanford, and Idaho Falls is $75 billion. Whether our nation can afford treatment costs of this magnitude and whether Congress will be willing to appropriate these huge sums for waste vitrification when alternative technologies can provide safe disposal at considerably lower cost are questions that need to be addressed. The hazard levels posed by the DOE tank wastes do not warrant high priority in comparison to the hazards of other defense wastes. Unless DOE selects a lower-cost technology for tank waste remediation, such efforts are likely to continue in a holding pattern, with little actually accomplished. In many cases, selection of a lower-cost technology such as "dry and package" could safely accomplish the needed waste remediation while reducing both the time required and the remediation costs by as much as a factor of 10. Failure to implement realistic cost-saving waste disposal policies could result in congressional action to deny funding for the DOE's continued remediation of radioactive tank wastes.