During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, photooxidation of surface oil led to the formation of persistent photooxidized compounds, still found in shoreline sediments a decade later. Studies demonstrated that photooxidation modified both biodegradation rates of the surface oil and the effectiveness of aerial dispersant applications. Despite the significant consequences of this weathering pathway, the lack of measurements prevented photooxidation to be accounted for in the DWH oil budget calculations and in most predictive models. Here we develop a Lagrangian photooxidation module that estimates the dose of solar radiation individual oil droplets receive while moving in the ocean, quantifies the likelihood of photooxidative changes, and continues to track the transport of these persistent photooxidized compounds. We estimate and track the likelihood of photooxidation of Lagrangian oil droplets in the upper layers of the water column for the DWH case by coupling the net shortwave radiation from NOGAPS to the oil application of the Connectivity Modeling System (oil-CMS). The dose of solar radiation upon a droplet is computed with the intensity of the incoming irradiance at the ocean's surface, the light attenuation coefficient, and the depth of the oil droplets. Considering a range of DWH empirical irradiance thresholds, we find that photooxidation can happen at short time scales of hours to days, in agreement with the new paradigm of oil photooxidation. Furthermore, the oxidized compounds are likely to form in a 110 km radius around the response site, suggesting that the oil reaching the coastline was already photooxidized. This new dynamic coupling provides a powerful tool to test oil weathering hypotheses, refine the oil budget during the DWH, and ultimately inform rapid response in future oil spills.


An antikinetoplastid pharmacomodulation study was conducted at position 6 of the 8-nitroquinolin-2(1H)-one pharmacophore. Fifteen new derivatives were synthesized and evaluated in vitro against L. infantum, T. brucei brucei, and T. cruzi, in parallel with a cytotoxicity assay on the human HepG2 cell line. A potent and selective 6-bromo-substituted antitrypanosomal derivative 12 was revealed, presenting EC50 values of 12 and 500 nM on T. b. brucei trypomastigotes and T. cruzi amastigotes respectively, in comparison with four reference drugs (30 nM ≤ EC50 ≤ 13 μM). Moreover, compound 12 was not genotoxic in the comet assay and showed high in vitro microsomal stability (half life >40 min) as well as favorable pharmacokinetic behavior in the mouse after oral administration. Finally, molecule 12 (E° = −0.37 V/NHE) was shown to be bioactivated by type 1 nitroreductases, in both Leishmania and Trypanosoma, and appears to be a good candidate to search for novel antitrypanosomal lead compounds.


Power harvesting describes the process of acquiring the ambient energy surrounding a system and converting it into usable electrical energy. Much of the work over the past two decades has focused on the conversion of ambient vibration energy sources using piezoelectric, electromagnetic and electrostatic transduction. Attempts were made to obtain a general model that could be applied to any transduction mechanism. Of the most interest is an electromagnetic generator model that was used by many researchers to model piezoelectric power harvesters. Two major results from the model are the power limit expression and the equal relationship between the electrically induced damping and the mechanical damping to reach the power limit. However, piezoelectric power harvesters cannot be accurately modeled by this electromagnetic model due to the essential difference in physics. There have also been attempts to obtain the power limit expression based on piezoelectric relationships, but they either neglect the piezoelectric backward coupling to the structure, or assume the power limit occurs at the resonance of the system. This paper obtains the power limit expression based on the piezoelectric coupled equations without those assumptions. In addition, the relationship between the electrically induced damping and mechanical damping at the power limit is studied. Furthermore, a closed-form criterion is derived and proposed to define strongly and weakly coupling power harvesters, whose differences in power characteristics are explained through analytical and numerical analysis. While most of the discussion is focused on linear power harvesters connected to a resistive circuit, the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and deep understanding of this simple configuration, answers to important questions, and a starting point to develop a more general theory on power harvesters because similar system characteristics are observed in power harvesters with more complexities.


This is the first report of a severe case of Mycobacterium chelonae keratitis; it occurred in a 26-year-old man after he had undergone excimer laser photorefractive keratectomy for the correction of severe myopia, once the epithelium was already healed. The diagnosis was made by culture results and acid-fast staining of corneal scrapings. Topical ciprofloxacin sodium, 0.3 mg/mL, plus amikacin sodium, 10 mg/mL, and oral clarithromycin sodium led to remission of the ulceration after 3 months of therapy. Subsequent topical corticosteroid therapy led to complete visual recovery during 1 year of follow-up. There may be an increased risk of severe keratitis during the first postoperative months in eyes that have already undergone photorefractive keratectomy, due to the presence of some microepithelial defects symptomatically negative and not easily detectable by slit-lamp examination.


Abstract Background and aims Recovery is a challenge for individuals coping with a gambling disorder (GD). Recovery capital (RC) is a conceptual framework describing positive external and internal (e.g., human, social, community and financial) resources that promote recovery. Negative RC relates to external and internal obstacles to recovery. To date, no scale has captured both positive and negative RC items in the gambling field. Based on the RC framework, this pilot study aimed to develop The Holistic Recovery Capital in Gambling Disorder (HRC-GD) instrument, and to explore its associations with recovery status, measures of psychopathology and happiness. We hypothesized that higher HRC-GD scores will be positively related to recovery and subjective happiness, but negatively linked to depression, anxiety, and gambling severity. Method Recovered and non-recovered individuals with a lifetime DSM-5 GD (n = 164) completed the HRC-GD instrument, the DSM-5 GD diagnostic criteria, and measures of depression, anxiety, and subjective happiness. Results Through a process of item reduction, which included a principal components analysis, 19 items were retained. Since exploratory factor analysis (EFA) yielded uninterpretable findings, an index score reflecting human, financial, community, and social resources and obstacles was calculated. HRC-GD index scores were negatively correlated with anxiety, depression, and GD symptom severity, but positively related with subjective happiness. Index scores were significantly associated with recovery status. Conclusions The HRC-GD index holds promise as a new tool for measuring RC in GD. Additional research is needed to validate this index using larger and more ethnically and gender diverse clinical and community samples of individuals with GD.


This datasheet on Neobenedenia girellae infection covers Identity, Associated Diseases, Pests or Pathogens, Distribution, Hosts/Species Affected, Pathology, Prevention/Control, Further Information.


Seventeen pairs of racquetball eyewear were tested for distortion and loss of field. Four of the seventeen eyewear produced twenty five percent or greater loss of field. Two of the eyewears produced less than one percent loss of field. None produced measurable distortion utilized by our measurement techniques.


Institutes of higher education exist for the purpose of developing, fostering, nurturing, and stimulating the intellectual growth and development of students. The core values of a college education provide students conceptual and practical educational opportunities that focus on improving their skills and knowledge. These skills and knowledge translate into purposeful, reallife learning experiences. However, in the academic community, learning is not restricted to students. Faculty, too, must be supported and provided opportunities for personal and professional growth and development. Although professional development is not a novel concept in the education profession, schools often take up the gauntlet, but fall short of running with it. A commitment to share the collective skills, teaching strategies, and experiences of colleagues in the university community should be one of the institution's core values. The need today for academic rigor and the emphasis on accountability and evidence of professional development of teachers have become key components in faculty performance evaluations in both teaching and research higher educational institutional settings. This paper examines how a career university addresses professional development by embracing change in its faculty orientation process at the start of the academic year through the implementation of a faculty development program and sustainable model for building a teaching and learning showcase of faculty talent. The orientation program - F.A.C.E.S. (Faculty Academic Community Education Showcase) - provides a series of interactive seminars conducted by and for full-time faculty at the Johnson & Wales University (JWU) Providence, Rhode Island, campus that mirrors their professional expertise, educational best practices, and career experiences within and beyond the JWU academic community. It examines the program goals and objectives, evidence of its evaluation by participants and administration, and the follow-up programs in place to provide further opportunities throughout the academic year that meet faculty needs to learn and engage in a learning environment that translates into and enhances the learning experiences of their students.


Abstract Workers can be exposed to solid airborne particles in some occupational environments, and they might be required to wear chemical protective clothing to prevent skin exposure. Dedicated standards exist to certify the protective value of such clothing, but they are not informative enough to identify the main pathways of entry for solid particles nor to compare performances between different chemical protective clothing. In this work, 20 non-woven fabrics used to make chemical protective clothing for solid particle protection were selected to be examined for both filtration and comfort performances. Nine were microporous fabrics (MP), 10 were multilayered nonwoven fibrous media (SMS) and one was a flash spun material (FS). To assess their filtration performances, fabrics were challenged in a benchtop wind tunnel with a 20–3,000 nm diameter sodium chloride aerosol at three low fabric face velocities (0.05, 0.15, 0.3 cm/sec). Airflow resistance and water vapor transmission rate were also measured to provide indications of comfort for the wearer. The penetration results led to the classification of the 20 fabrics into distinct groups of filtration efficiency. The data were analysed based on the porous media characteristics (thickness, fiber diameter, porosity, etc.). MPs were the most efficient fabrics, and SMSs showed a wide range of performances, mostly due to variations in the thickness of the filtering layer as well as to the fabric treatment. Measurements of airflow resistance and water vapor transmission rates revealed major differences between MPs and FSs and SMSs. This highlights the potential of some SMS fabrics to meet a compromise between protection and comfort.


The established theory for the collection efficiency of an ionisation chamber irradiated by a series of uniform short pulses is extended to the more complex case of irradiation in a pulsed and electromagnetically swept electron beam. The radial variation of exposure rate is assumed to be Gaussian with scale constant equal to a, and the pulses are assumed to be uniformly distributed over the area swept out. A formula for the collection efficiency is derived and the influence of varying some of the parameters is studied. The collection efficiency, phi 1, at voltage V1 can be calculated if the two dosemeter readings, Q1 and Q2, at two widely different chamber voltages, V1 and V2, are known, phi 1 depends primarily upon the ratios Q1/Q2 and V1/V2 and to a much lesser extent upon the geometry of the chamber or the ratio of Gaussian scale constant to a typical linear dimension of the field scanned. Charts for calculating phi 1 are provided.


We aimed to study the erythropoietin influence on oxygen transport function of blood and prooxidant/antioxidant balance in rabbits under lipopolysaccharide injection. Recombinant human erythropoietin-alpha was administered intraperitoneally in the dose 1000 U/kg 30 minutes before intravenous injection of 500 mkg/kg lipopolysaccharide from E. coli. After 12 hours, blood samples were collected for the assessment of oxygen transport function of blood; nitrate/nitrite levels and tissue samples were collected for measurement of conjugated dienes, malondialdehyde, alpha-tocopherol and catalase. Erythropoietin improves parameters of oxygen transport function of blood, increases hemoglobin-oxygen affinity through the NO-dependent mechanism, reduces activity of free radical processes, and increases antioxidant protection under lipopolysaccharide injection.


This work uses the EU-SILC data to examine the early stages of young people's employment (or non employment) career trajectories, in the phase following educational achievements or completion. In particular, we examine the extent to which young people's family background and household characteristics impact on young individuals' transitions from school to work and their probability of experiencing successful or failure paths. We propose a twofold definition of successful paths. Firstly, through the classification of employment trajectories and, secondly, through the dimensions of skills and wage for those who are employed. We provide new comparative empirical evidence, both crosssectional and longitudinal, on the following effects:
• the effect of the family employment structure on young people's probability to follow certain school-to-work transition trajectories, for those still living with parents
• how the experience in unemployment at the early stage of employment career reflects on the occupational conditions (pay & skill level) reached by young individuals, net of individual and country characteristics
• whether experiencing unemployment, (dis)continuity in employment or the type of entry job after leaving education affects, for those employed, the characteristics of their occupation three years later
• which employment strategies are more likely to lead to a successful employment condition
• how family social influences the strategies outcomes achieved by young people.
We devise and describe two typologies (of school-to-work trajectories and of success-failure in occupational positioning) and test the influence of several individuals' and familial characteristics. The research results suggest that the employment structure of the family of origin plays a strong and decisive influence on the employment trajectories and likelihood of occupational success for young people. Our results support the idea that families of origin strongly stratify young people's educational and occupational achievements, opportunities, strategies and prospects in the labour market. Their influence looms large, both when living within and outside the parental household. In terms of school-leavers' routes to the labour market the results suggest that the employment conditions of the household members can increase the likelihood of speedy trajectories. The study also indicates that, despite a clear but weak advantage of a continuous employment attachment and an early start, short-term unemployment does not impair subsequent outcomes. Results suggest that a slightly longer initial wait before first entry (instead of entering employment immediately after completing education), or a turbulent beginning (instead of continuous employment), might respond to a strategic move to securing an initially skilled positioning, often at the trade-off of a lower salary. The pursuit of 'higher profile' career paths is made easier for youth from higher social class, while for children from other social backgrounds staying longer in the parental home may be the most viable option to achieve better employment prospects. Net of the country differences in the proportion of young people employed and experiencing the measured outcomes, we find no country specific differences in mediating the effects of either of the outcomes analysed.


Background: Exposure to particulate matter (PM) pollution has direct impacts on the respiratory organs, yet the molecular alterations underlying PM-induced pulmonary injury remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the effect of PM on lung tissues from our previously reported rat model with whole-body exposure to traffic-related PM1 pollutants and compared it with rats exposed to high-efficiency particulate air-filtered gaseous pollutants and clean air control for 3 and 6 months. Lung function and histological examinations as well as quantitative proteomics analysis and functional validation were performed. Results: The rats in 6-month PM1-exposed group showed significant decline in lung function by decreased forced expiratory flow and forced expiratory volume, but the histological analysis revealed an earlier lung damage evidenced by increased congestion and macrophage infiltration in 3-month PM1-exposed rat lungs. The lung tissue proteomics analysis identified 2,673 proteins which highlighted dysregulations on proteins involved in oxidative stress, cellular metabolisms, calcium signaling, inflammatory responses, and actin dynamics. The presence of fine particles specifically enhanced the oxidative stress and inflammatory reactions under sub-chronic exposure of traffic-related PM1 and suppressed the glucose metabolism and actin cytoskeleton signaling which might lead to repair failure and thus lung function decline after chronic exposure of traffic-related PM1. A detailed pathogenic mechanism was proposed to depict the temporal and dynamic molecular regulations associated with PM1-induced lung injury.Conclusion: Our study explored the earlier lung injury prior to lung function decline and proposed several proteins as potential molecular features for traffic-related PM1-induced lung injury.


BACKGROUND
Several previous studies have shown that diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) can provide additional information for focal pancreatic lesions by demonstrating more restricted diffusion in solid malignant tumors than in chronic pancreatitis, which can be indicated by a decreased apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). However, these studies have a modest sample size and convey inconclusive results. The aim of this study was to determine, in a meta-analysis, the diagnostic performance of quantitative diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging in distinguishing pancreatic carcinoma from mass-forming chronic pancreatitis.

METHODS
We determined the sensitivities and specificities across studies. A summary receiver operator characteristic (sROC) curve was constructed to calculate the area under the curve (AUC).

RESULTS
The pooled sensitivity of DWI was 0.86 (95% CI: 0.80-0.91) and the pooled specificity was 0.82 (95% CI: 0.72-0.89). The AUC of the sROC was 0.91 (95% CI: 0.88-0.93).

CONCLUSIONS
DWI may be a potentially technically feasible tool for differentiating pancreatic carcinoma from mass-forming chronic pancreatitis. However, large-scale randomized control trials are necessary to assess its clinical value.


The availability of drugs for use as antidepressants has expanded greatly in the past 2 decades. Not only has the number of drugs increased but so has the diversity in associated pharmacologic effects. Drug development for central nervous system agents is proceeding at an accelerated pace. The coming decades hold the promise for the introduction of newer antidepressants that have novel mechanisms of action, improved adverse event profiles, and expanded indications. Unfortunately, the ideal antidepressant is yet to be formulated. Pharmacologic characteristics for desirable improvements are discussed relative to the currently available drugs.


Crowdfunding is changing how, why, and which ideas are brought into existence. With the increasing number of crowdfunded projects, it is important to understand what drives people to either create or fund these projects. To shed light on this new social phenomenon, we present a grounded theory of motivation informed by the first cross-platform qualitative study of the crowdfunding community. By performing 83 semistructured interviews, we uncover creator motivations, which include the desire to raise funds, expand awareness of work, connect with others, gain approval, maintain control, and learn; and supporter motivations, which include the desire to collect rewards, help others, support causes, and be part of a community. We also explore deterrents to crowdfunding participation, including, among creators, fear of failure, and, for supporters, lack of trust. Based on these findings, we provide three emergent design principles to inform the design of effective crowdfunding platforms and support tools.


Phytoliths are an important marker for past human activities related to the exploitation and use of plant re source for consumption and other reasons. The study of phytolith is a relatively new approach within archaeobotany in comparison with macro-remain or charcoal analysis. However, they constitute our only source of information on plant-related activities in all those instances where macro-fossils (seeds, fruits, charcoal) are not preserved for physical, chemical or taphomonical reasons. The microscopic identification of phytoliths is a lengthy and time-consuming process, highly based on the specialist level of experience and knowledge. Indeed, the taxonomical classification of phytoliths is complicated by the biological nature of these inorganic particles that form inside plant cells. As so, phytoliths pertaining to the same category can in fact assume several slightly different forms, with particles that can converge into different categories. A proposal was made to develop a general framework to incorporate first-order logic (FOL) clauses, that are thought of as abstract and partial representations of the environment, into kernel machines that learn within a semi-supervised scheme. The framework relies on a multi-task learning scheme where each task is associated with a kind of unary predicate defined on the feature space, while higher level abstract representations consist of FOL clauses made of these predicates. The challenge is to demonstrate that, in presence of relatively small collection of supervised examples, the performances of the kernel machines are significantly improved by feeding them with a domain-specific knowledge base of logical clauses. Preliminary experimental analyses studied the effect of the introduction of the constraints in the learning process for different dimensionalities of the input space, showing that the accuracy gain is very significant for larger input spaces, corresponding to harder learning settings, where generalization using standard kernel machines is often difficult.  The main interest in the proposed approach is then twofold: From a purely computational perspective, it opens the doors to a new class of 'semantic-based regularization machines' in which it is possible to integrate prior knowledge using high level abstract representations, including logic formalisms. On the other hand, the  'phytoliths identification' problem in the Archaebotany context has characteristics that promisingly match the strengths of the present approach: (i) scarcity in the number of examples; (ii) high intra-category feature variability; (iii) intensive use of domain expert knowledge. Finally, phytoliths constitute, in this perspective, a case-study tool to develop a multidisciplinary approach that can be used for the automatic classification of different (organic and inorganic) types of objects as well. The classification system thus developed will be based on the analysis of images (in the present case, photographs of phytoliths taken with a microscope). We are looking for possible collaborations with image processing experts who can help us building a collection of supervised examples of phytolith morphotypes needed to test the system. The challenge is to develop a system that can, from a photograph that show several objects similar in colour and shape, to isolate phytoliths from the background noise. Any volunteers?


The inverse function of a one-to-one correspondence is explained with a graph, a numerical formula or other useful expressions. The purpose of this paper is to know how low achieving students understand the learning contents needed reversible thinking about irrational functions. Low achieving students in this study took paper-pencil test and their written answers were collected. They made various mistakes in solving problems. Their error types were grouped into several classes and identified in this analysis. Most students did not connected concepts that they learned in the lower achieving students to think in reverse order in case of and to visualize concepts of functions. This paper implies that it is very important to take into account students' accommodation and reversible thinking activity.


PURPOSE
The purpose of our study was to detect circulating malignant cells (CMCs) in oversea-shipped blood samples of patients with uveal melanoma diagnosed in Brazil. METHODOS: Melan-A and tyrosinase were the two markers used for the detection of CMCs, using reverse transcriptase nested polymerase chain reaction (RT-nested-PCR) in 6 patients with uveal melanoma. The expression of beta-actin and GAPDH were used to assess the quality of the material.

RESULTS
Five patients (83.33%) tested positive for the presence of CMCs. The RT-nested-PCR was positive for melan-A in 4 patients (66.7%) and positive for tyrosinase in 4 (66.7%) of the 6 patients. Three (50%) patients were positive for both markers. One (16.7%) patient was negative for both markers. All negative controls were negative.

CONCLUSION
The quality of the blood samples shipped overseas, from patients with uveal melanoma, was preserved. The detection of CMCs using RT-nested-PCR was positive in the majority of the patients.


The aim was to further test the reliability and validity of a newly developed instrument designed to assess psychopathic personality traits in children, the Child Problematic Traits Inventory (CPTI). Data from the Preschool Twin Study in Sweden were used, a national general population study of 5-year-old twins (n = 1,188, 50.3% girls). Both preschool teachers and parents were used as informants. Confirmatory factor analysis replicated the intended three-factorial structure of the 28 items of the CPTI. Overall, our findings demonstrated good internal consistency and convergent validity, with all the teacher-rated CPTI scores being associated with teacher and parent ratings of externalizing psychopathology, aggressive behavior, fearlessness, and prosocial peer involvement. In conclusion, the CPTI hold promise as a teacher-rated tool for assessing psychopathic traits in childhood, though more research is needed to see if these findings can be generalized to other countries, settings, and older children.


Gonzalez et al1 have pointed out an interesting omission in the form of poor physical healthcare monitoring in routine psychiatric practice and there is evidence from various local and national audits2,3 that it is not restricted to just the out-patient settings. The authors have also rightly picked up on key barriers to the implementation of physical healthcare monitoring in psychiatric settings, namely unclear responsibilities, competing demands on limited resources and liability issues. We believe that, for a start, this can be addressed by having readable, succinct and unambiguous physical healthcare policies.

Tosh et al4 examined the physical healthcare policy documents of the three mental healthcare trusts in the north sector of the East Midlands Strategic Healthcare Authority in detail. We found significant disparities between the policies in terms of size, readability, external references and reading cost. All the policies incorporated vague language in their directives and none could be read swiftly. It is only fair to make a reasonable observation here that if a policy cannot be accessed or is unfocused or vague, then it will be ignored.

Multiple layers of guidance and variation between deaneries, trusts and teams also complicate the situation. This leads to confusion and lack of confidence between team members as to which policy to follow. The result is a huge wastage of money from duplication and undermining of the ability of the policy to deliver its objectives.

A collaborative effort at the national level could produce a simple, clear and succinct policy for physical healthcare of people with serious mental illness. We believe that the Royal College of Psychiatrists is in a unique position to take a lead on this very important aspect of patient health and well-being. There are already themes emerging from research that it is an area which is very important to the patients, carers and their families alike.5 A clear national policy statement from the College should dispel current confusion, policy fatigue and waste.


The regenerative potential of cardiosphere‐derived cells (CDCs) for ischaemic heart disease has been demonstrated in mice, rats, pigs and a recently completed clinical trial. The regenerative potential of CDCs from dog hearts has yet to be tested. Here, we show that canine CDCs can be produced from adult dog hearts. These cells display similar phenotypes in comparison to previously studied CDCs derived from rodents and human beings. Canine CDCs can differentiate into cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells in vitro. In addition, conditioned media from canine CDCs promote angiogenesis but inhibit cardiomyocyte death. In a doxorubicin‐induced mouse model of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), intravenous infusion of canine CDCs improves cardiac function and decreases cardiac fibrosis. Histology revealed that injected canine CDCs engraft in the mouse heart and increase capillary density. Out study demonstrates the regenerative potential of canine CDCs in a mouse model of DCM.


Abstract This paper describes the implementation of an educational intervention to enhance sexual health among homeless people by including sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as a part of social work provision with this group. Adult service users in different forms of temporary accommodation were provided with the opportunity to participate in three group sessions. Seventeen sessions, six with women and eleven with men, took place at six different housing facilities in Gothenburg. The intervention implementation process (which involved preparation, creation, realisation and evaluation) is described, and factors of importance are identified. Service users appreciated the opportunity to receive information and discuss sexual health, rights and norms. The success of the work may be related to the fact that the project was anchored both in social services and among service users, constantly adjusted, and delivered using a respectful approach. Social work organisations and professionals have an important role to play in acknowledging and promoting service users' sexual health and rights, especially among disadvantaged and socially excluded groups including homeless people.


Interfacial properties, crystallinity and flammability of short fiber reinforced and flame retarded polyamide 6 and polyamide 66 compounds are investigated, emphasizing the influence of flame retardant fillers on the resistance of fiber/matrix interface to shear. Interfacial shear strengths are derived through a micromechanical approach by determining the tensile properties and residual fiber length distributions. Validated by fracture morphologies, interfacial strengths are found to be governed by filler – induced apparent crystallinities and fractional occurrence of polyamide polymorphs, obtained via peak deconvolution of X-Ray diffraction patterns. Although flame retardant additives based on Br/Sb synergism are found to impart excellent flammability reductions regarding oxygen index and UL94 classifications (V-0 rating), degree of crystallinity; thus, interfacial properties are deteriorated due to lowered thermal expansion and increased cooling rates. Red phosphorus as a flame retardant also induces a UL94 V-0 and significant reduction in flammability together with the facts that crystallinity is not altered and a strong fiber/matrix interface is maintained. Use of melamine cyanurate in an unreinforced polyamide improves the limiting oxygen index considerably; however, the UL94 rating remains unchanged as V-2 as a consequence of increased level of melt dripping. Melamine cyanurate additionally increases the degree of crystallinity through promotion of heterogeneous nucleation.


For the efficient implementation of the corporate knowledge management sys-tems, common elements of their IT architecture, functional role as well as other specific features of their use are to be understood. The objective of the research is to identify common elements of IT architecture in the knowledge management systems in the corporate segment. To identify the common elements of the IT ar-chitecture in the knowledge management systems we have used the method of taxonomic classification of knowledge areas with a complex structure based on the example of a comparative analysis of various software products for corporate training, as well as case studies of this issue using the example of enterprises and organizations in China. We have used data from surveys of employees and com-panies as regards the development prospects of the corporate knowledge man-agement systems. The sample scope is 1000 managers of the companies from Eu-rope, the Middle East, Japan and China. For the taxonomic analysis 42 corporate knowledge management systems have been selected, which are used in training and represented in the world market. The integration of new technologies into business processes has caused the demand for new knowledge management sys-tems. Due to analysis results of 42 corporate knowledge management systems for learning, which are represented in the market, we can state that the majority of them have been developed on the grounds of the use of cloud technologies. In the total structure its share makes up almost 83 %, whereas 17 % refers to the rest of the corporate knowledge management systems for learning, as well as their com-bination. The use of obtained research results in practice is supposed if strategic approaches of the implementation of the corporate knowledge management sys-tems at enterprises of China and other countries are justified.


Diaphragmatic paresis or paralysis is not an uncommon problem in newborn infants. In infants with respiratory distress, abnormalities of the diaphragm should be considered after exclusion of common causes. We report on an infant with congenital myotonic dystrophy, who presented initially with respiratory distress due to diaphragmatic paresis detected by real-time two-dimensional ultrasonography. A male infant was born at 39-week gestation to a 29-yearold Chinese woman with thalassaemia trait and of gravida 2 para 1. Her marriage was non-consanguineous. Both her first pregnancy and her first child were normal. This second pregnancy was uneventful, apart from the presence of polyhydramnios during the third trimester. The infant, weighing 3720 g, was born by spontaneous vaginal delivery with Apgar scores of 8 and 9 at 1 and 5 min, respectively. Shortly after birth, he developed progressively severe respiratory distress requiring endotracheal intubation and ventilatory support at 2 h of age. He was subsequently transferred to our hospital where he continued to require conventional ventilatory support (Babylog 8000 plus; Drager, Lubeck, Germany) to maintain oxygenation and relief of respiratory distress. Apart from a right-sided undescended testis, no other abnormality was detected clinically. His chest X-ray performed on admission showed an elevated right hemidiaphragm and a dome-shaped left hemi-diaphragm. Real-time ultrasonography (Apogeee 800 plus; ATL, Bothell, USA) showed marked decrease in movement of his right hemidiaphragm when compared with his left. His cranial ultrasonograph showed presence of a left-sided subependymal haemorrhage and bilateral periventricular echodensity. His echocardiograph revealed a normal cardiac anatomy and ejection fraction. He was commenced on intravenous aminophylline. He was extubated after 7 days of ventilation, and was given oxygen via a headbox. However, he developed increasingly marked respiratory distress and hypoxemia requiring re-ventilation using the same conventional ventilator. A repeat abdominal ultrasonography revealed minimal movement of both his hemidiaphragms, with his left moving slightly more than his right. As the conventional ventilator failed to maintain his lung inflation adequately, he was commenced on high frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV) (Model 3100 A, SensorMedics Corp., Yorba Linda, CA, USA) with moderate settings: a mean airway pressure (MAP) of 12 cm H 2 O, a frequency of 10 Hz, a delta p of 47 and an inspiratory/expiratory ratio of 33%. With these ventilator settings, a repeat chest X-ray showed hyperinflation of his lungs. The MAP of the HFOV was subsequently weaned serially until a level of 6.5 cm H 2 O, when optimal lung inflation (based on the criteria of maintaining the position of his right hemi-diaphragm at the level of 8 1 / 2 ribs posteriorly) was achieved. He required HFOV at this level of MAP for 28 days before he could be weaned to nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). He tolerated nasal CPAP therapy well and was weaned from this support after 2 weeks. During the course of ventilatory support, he remained active with good muscle tone and power. However, he gradually developed a tented mouth, bilateral inguinal hernia and poor sucking reflex. He also continued to have mild respiratory distress (as indicated by mild subcostal recession) after being weaned from nasal CPAP. After 6 weeks of hospitalization, he was finally discharged home. Prior to discharge, a repeat real-time abdominal ultrasonography revealed persistence of poor movement of both his hemidiaphragms. At 2 months of age, a brain magnetic resonance imaging scan showed features suggestive of cerebral atrophy. Laboratory investigations showed no evidence suggestive of congenital infection, inborn error of metabolism and chromosomal disorders. His nerve conduction study, electromyograph (EMG) and electroencephalograph were normal. When his mother was examined clinically, she did not show any signs of myotonia. However, the EMG of her first dorsal interosseus muscle showed presence of typical 'dive-bomber' discharges upon insertion of the EMG needle; this led us to make the diagnosis of congenital myotonic dystrophy in this infant. Review of the literature, via Medline between 1966 to August 2002, showed that only one previous report has been published on infants with congenital myotonic dystrophy presenting with respiratory distress due to diaphragmatic paresis or paralysis. 1 Ghizzi et al . reported a newborn infant who presented with features of hypotonia, diaphragmatic paralysis, facial diplegia and arthrogryposis. Experience from our case suggests that in infants with persistent respiratory distress, particularly those with normal lung findings, a real-time ultrasonography of the diaphragm should be carried out to rule out abnormality of its structure or movement. Occasionally, a chest X-ray, carried out during the expiratory phase, may not reveal elevation of a paralysed hemi-diaphragm(s) with resultant misdiagnosis. Various imaging methods, such as fluoroscopy, computed tomography and radionuclide scanning, have been employed previously to confirm the presence of diaphragmatic paresis/paralysis in the presence of an elevated hemidiaphragm on chest X-ray. 2,3 However, there are several disadvantages associated with these other techniques. Shkolnik et al . 4 first described the application of real-time sector ultrasonography for evaluation of diaphragmatic motion. The advantages of using the real-time ultrasonography were that the patients did not have to be moved to the radiology department and serial scans could be done and recorded easily for comparison. We therefore, recommend that real-time ultrasonography, which is available in most neonatal intensive care units, could be used as the first-line imaging modality whenever abnormality of diaphragmatic motion or structure is suspected. This can then assist the clinician to investigate further to make the final diagnosis as in our case.


The fortress of Arquata del Tronto: symbol of rebirth for the Marche Region affected by the earthquakeThe Fortress of Arquata del Tronto in the Marche region is an imposing structure that rises on the crag to the north of the historic center. It represents a typical example of military architecture in the Apennines Area. Its foundation is between the eleventh and the twelfth century, an initial phase of embankment which undergoes a gradual and progressive increase in structures to enhance the functionality of the fortress. The city of Ascoli Piceno, worried about consolidating the defense outposts located at its borders, soon took possession of it. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the Rocca lived alternate events, clashing with nearby castles, especially with Norcia. At the end of the eighteenth century, Arquata will be absorbed in the territory of the Clitunno Department, in the ancient Duchy of Spoleto. During this period, it was partially restored, to house a stable military garrison, becoming the third fortress of the Trasimeno Department, until it returned under the Papal States. Continuous interventions make the structure suitable for military uses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Giuseppe Sacconi, as director of the Conservation Office in the Marche and Umbria Region, undertook an important restoration. The ruins of the fortress were reconfigured according to medieval forms, taken by analogy from the repertoire of fortifications in the Apennine area. A further conservative intervention was carried out in 1990 to allow a new use. Unfortunately, the seismic events in 2016-2017 have compromised the Rocca, with large collapses that currently make the complex unusable. The intention is to undertake new restoration work, setting up a school construction site; this could represent a virtuous example to favor the rebirth of Arquata del Tronto, so strongly hit by the earthquake, through a project for the enhancement of its architectural heritage.


This study examined the viability of prospective Jatropha based firms vis–a-vis employment opportunities in Nigeria, specifically the study identified the Jatropha bio-diesel and other allied products that were been researched into in Nigeria, estimated the costs and returns structure to Jatropha cultivation and the production of Jatropha based products. For the study, small scale Jatropha based firms were investigated. The results of the study revealed that Jatropha based products manufactured include bio-diesel, Jatropha kernel cake livestock feed, Jatropha ink pigment and dye, glycerine and Jatropha seeds-coat cement sheet and floor tiles. All the various parts of the Jatropha seeds are useful either for one or two of these products. Jatropha cultivation, was shown to be very profitable. Among Jatropha products, only the costs of the biodiesel Jatropha fuel is relative expensive when compared with the common fossil diesel. Based on the study findings, the study calls for the mobilisation of the Nigerian farmers to cultivate Jatropha, Alongside training to intimate the masses of the numerous products and benefits from Jatropha is necessary. They should be trained to manufacture simple Jatropha based necessities like those highlighted in the study. Market accessibility training to farmers and other stakeholders involved should also be embedded in the training. There is also the need to popularize the practicality of using Jatropha to produce these products via workshops and seminars. It is also necessary to step-up steps at introducing these products to the markets so as to enhance the marketability and competitiveness of the Jatropha based firms. Government and also other individuals and stake-holders need ensure the availability of supporting infrastructures for these small holder industries to thrive in the long-run.


These Chung-Hua Lectures, given at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan in December 2000, summarize work that has been done by myself and others on biases in medical care price indices. I begin by reviewing various uses of price indices and therefore why biases in the overall indices - and changes in those biases - matter. I then describe briefly the assumptions and theory underlying the official price indices. I next turn to the problems of measuring medical prices, assuming the basic applicability of the theory upon which the official indices are based. Finally I take up the potential inapplicability of the assumptions made by that theory and the resulting issues for measuring medical price changes. I describe an alternative theory and its implications for the measurement of medical prices. I conclude that the biases in the official medical care index, while substantially reduced by recent improvements, likely remain substantial enough to affect the overall official indices in the United States, especially the GDP deflator, where the weight of medical care is around 13 percent.


ion 'Abstraction of a process will inevitably involve a reduction in model components and interactions, along with the reduction in behavioral complexity of the model when simulated' [Fishwick 1988, p.18] 'A concept a is more abstract than the members bi of a family B={b1, b2, ...} of concepts, where bi  a for all i, iff (A1) For a to apply it is necessary that at least one member of B applies.
 (A2) On any given occasion, the fact that bi, say, applies is what the applying of a at the same occasion consists in.' [Frigg 2003, p.52] 'First, a concept that is abstract relative to another more concrete set of descriptions never applies unless one of the more concrete descriptions also applies. These are the descriptions that can be used to 'fit out' the abstract description on any given occasion. Second, satisfying the associated concrete description that applies on a particular occasion is what satisfying the abstract description consists in on that occasion.' [Cartwright 1999, p.39] 'A level of abstraction (LoA) is a finite but non-empty set of observables. No order is assigned to the observables, which are expected to be the building blocks in a theory characterised by their very definition.' [Floridi 2008, p.309] More definitions of abstraction can be found in [Saitta and Zucker 2013] Accuracy 'The degree to which a parameter or variable or set of parameters or variables within a model or simulation conform exactly to reality or to some chosen standard or referent.' [Gross 1999, p.4] 'The accuracy of a model marks how closely the model's predictions match the world's behavior.' [Weld 1992, p.285] Aggregation 'aggregation refers to the conceptual task of processing a set of modeling artifacts/concepts at some level of abstraction and generating a set of "higher level" modeling artifacts/concepts that are useful for decision making. The aggregated model artifacts contain a smaller quantity of information and often manifest themselves as a summary of the information contained at the lower level of abstraction.' [Benjamin et al. 1998, p.392] 'Aggregation is performed by grouping together variables and relations into subsystems, and by redescribing the entire system in terms of these subsystems and their interactions.' [Iwasaki and Simon 1994] 'Aggregation implies that insignificant elements of a process model are aggregated with other elements. In contrast to elimination, aggregation allows preserving information about the abstracted element in the model.' [Polyvyanyy et al. 2008, p.330] 'Is-member-of-mapping' [Erens et al. 1994, p.23]. 'The term "aggregation" can conceptually be considered as a subset of "abstraction"' [Fishwick 1988, p.18] DESIGN PROCESSES 1329 Clustering 'The foremost objective [of clustering] is to maximize interactions between elements within clusters (chunks) while minimizing interactions between clusters.' [Browning 2001, p.294] 'Clustering produces modules, i.e., it produces an ordering such that elements or parameters that are coupled or have higher degree of interaction within them as compared with the rest are sorted out in groups.' [Alfaris et al. 2010, p.6] 'The objective of the clustering analysis is to detect subsets that possess many internal dependencies between nodes of a cluster subset and as few dependencies as possible to or from the external nodes of the structure.' [Maurer 2007] Complexity 'the overall complexity of the model is taken here to be a combination of three elements: the number of components, the pattern of the connections (which components are related), and the nature of the connections (the complexity of the calculations determining the relationships).' [Brooks and Tobias 1996, p.6] 'Complexity is that property of a model which makes it difficult to formulate its overall behaviour in a given language, even when given reasonably complete information about its atomic components and their inter-relations.' [Edmonds 1999, p.72] 'Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way.' 'complexity frequently takes the form of hierarchy' [Simon 1962, p.468] 'A complex system is literally one in which there are multiple interactions between many different components' [Rind 1999, p.105] Decomposition 'Decomposition or Dis-aggregation refers to the conceptual task of taking a model artifact/concept at some level of abstraction and developing a set of modeling artifacts/concepts that contain more information about the model.' [Benjamin et al. 1998, p.392] 'the act of breaking a large problem into a set of smaller problems or elements' [Alfaris et al. 2010, p.2] 'Has-member-mapping' [Erens et al. 1994, p.23]. 'granulation involves decomposition of whole into parts; organization involves integration of parts into whole' [Zadeh 1997, p.111]. Fidelity 'Fidelity of a simulation is the accuracy of the representation when compared to the real world system represented. A simulation is said to have fidelity if it accurately corresponds to or represents the item or experience it was created to emulate: How realistic does the simulation react?' [Tolk 2012, p.17] 'The degree to which a model or simulation reproduces the state and behavior of a real world object or the perception of a real world object, feature, condition, or chosen standard in a measurable or perceivable manner; a measure of the realism of a model or simulation; faithfulness. Fidelity should generally be described with respect to the measures, standards or perceptions used in assessing or stating it.' [Gross 1999, p.3] Granularity 'The term level of granularity [...] is used to describe the "grain size" i.e., the size and the detail of the system elements after system decomposition.' [Chiriac et al. 2011, p.1] 'The granularity of a subset of a universal set depends on its size. A subset should have a lower granularity than its supersets. The granularity of a partition depends on both the number of the blocks in the partition and the sizes of the blocks. A partition should have a lower granularity than its coarsening partitions.' [Yao and Zhao 2012, p.12] 'extent to which an object or model is broken down into smaller elements' [Hehenberger 2014, p.188] 'The depth of the architecture hierarchy of components, modules and subassemblies defines its level of detailed description or granularity' [AlGeddawy and ElMaraghy 2013, p.151] 'Node granularity is the number of undecomposable tasks in process model nodes. The bigger the node granularity is, the more abstract this node is, and there are more tasks in this node.' [Ding et al. 2012, p.492] 1330 DESIGN PROCESSES Granulation 'Granulation of a universe involves the decomposition of the universe into families of subsets, or the clustering of elements into groups. It leads to a collection of granules, with a granule being a clump of points (objects) drawn together by indistinguishability, similarity, proximity or functionality [Zadeh 1997]. Granulation may produce either a single-level flat structure or a multi-level hierarchical structure [Yao 2001a].' [Yao 2003, p.287] Hierarchy 'By a hierarchic system, or hierarchy, I mean a system that is composed of interrelated subsystems, each of the latter being, in turn, hierarchic in structure until we reach some lowest level of elementary subsystem' [Simon 1962, p.468] 'Every object is a hierarchy of components, the large ones specifiying the pattern of distribution of smaller ones, the small ones themselves, though at first sight more clearly piecelike, in fact again patterns specifying arrangement and distributions of still smaller components.' [Alexander 1964, p.130] 'our primary measure is "hierarchy," defined as the degree to which transactions in the network flow in one direction, from "upstream" to "downstream."' [Luo et al. 2012, p.2] Modularity 'A fully modular architecture is one with clear clusters of elements, and where the relationships between the elements within an assembly are hidden to the elements outside the assembly. This incorporates the notion that a module not only contains elements, but also contains a higher density of relationships between those elements than to elements outside the module.' [Yu et al. 2007, p.91] 'A module is tightly coupled within and loosely connected to the rest of the system.' [Chiriac et al. 2011, p.1] 'Modularity refers to products, processes, and resources that fulfill various functions through the combination of distinct building blocks.' [Kusiak 2002] Precision '1. The quality or state of being clearly depicted, definite, measured or calculated. 2. A quality associated with the spread of data obtained in repetitions of an experiment as measured by variance; the lower the variance, the higher the precision. 3. A measure of how meticulously or rigorously computational processes are described or performed by a model or simulation.' [Gross 1999, p.4] Resolution 'The resolution of a model or a simulation is the degree of detail and precision used in the representation of real world aspects in a model or simulation. Resolution means the fineness of detail that can be represented or distinguished in an image: How much detail do I observe?' [Tolk 2012, p.17] '1. The degree of detail used to represent aspects of the real world or a specified standard or referent by a model or simulation. 2. Separation or reduction of something into its constituent parts; granularity.' [Gross 1999, p.5] 'Resolution refers to the precision of the model's output, for example, a qualitative model has lower resolution than a quantitative description.' [Weld 1992, p.257] Scope 'By the scope of a model, we denote the range of phenomena that the model describes. A model has greater scope than another if it describes strictly more of the world.' [Weld 1992, p.284] 3.2 Relating model granularity to related concepts The term abstraction is mostly used in a more conceptual manner [Cartwright 1999], for instance when describing modelling activities or resulting


Background With increasing cannabis use, physicians need to know more about its respiratory effects. However, there are few long term studies of cannabis smoking, due to legality issues and confounding effects of tobacco. Aims We reviewed effect of chronic cannabis use on respiratory symptoms and lung function, particularly FEV1, FVC and FEV1/FVC ratio. Methods 19 out of 256 English-language publications, prior to June 2015, from MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, reporting lung function in chronic cannabis users, were examined. Results 11 cross-sectional studies and 8 observational cohort studies were included. All 9 studies (n = 11,848) examining respiratory symptoms reported an increase with cannabis smoking (odds ratio up to 3.0). 2 studies (n = 1,336) reported that quitting cannabis with/without tobacco reduced chronic bronchitis symptoms to those of never cannabis smokers. 8 studies (n = 9,939) reported no significant changes in FEV1/FVC; 6 (n = 3,722) found a significant decrease (0.5%−1.9%) in chronic marijuana only smokers compared to controls. While most reports omitted absolute FVC results, 3 large studies (n = 13,858) demonstrated increased FVC with marijuana smoking. 4 studies (n = 13, 674) found dose-related reductions in FEV1/FVC. 7 studies associated chronic cannabis smoking with other evidence of airflow obstruction [increased airway resistance in 3; (0.03 to 0.38 cm H2O/L/s), reduced specific airway conductance in 4; (0.007 to 0.07 mL/s/cm H2O/L)]. The larger studies (n = 13,858) suggested increased FVC may cause reduced FEV1/FVC chronically.1 This contrasts with airflow obstruction in tobacco smoking. Anti-inflammatory or acute bronchodilator effects of cannabis, on top of chronic effects, may partly explain these results. Conclusions Cannabis, like tobacco, smoking causes chronic bronchitis but increased FVC is more consistently found than reduced FEV1. No studies in marijuana smokers have found a linear decline in FEV1 with time. More work is needed to explain the differing effects on lung function and to examine effects on small airways, imaging and histology. Reference Hancox RJ, et al. Effect of cannabis smoking on lung function: a population-based cohort study. Eur Respir J 2010;35:42–7.


This paper focuses on the issue of how to design pedagogy and technology in order to overcome the much reported echo-chamber effect of the Internet and promote global dialogue. Some of the findings of a large scale evaluation of Generation Global—a project of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change—(previously called, 'Face to Faith') are presented in order to establish that this project is effective in promoting its aim of dialogic open mindedness. Some of the features of the programme are described and analysed, especially the latest version of the web-site which supports team-blogging for young people in schools around the world. We argue that this specific combination of technology and pedagogy offers one potential model for the induction of children globally into the effective use of the Internet where such an induction is understood as a necessary precondition for a potential future global democracy.


This paper aimed to problematise what is meant by 'difference' and consider what such a reinterpretation might mean for methodological interventions in sex education research. Our concern is the tendency for sex education research to treat difference as a set of categories to be 'added-on', such as religious difference, cultural difference and sexual plurality. The danger of this is that it leaves the normative unchallenged, confirming the hegemony of the heteronormative, unraced subject. Constructing difference as an 'add-on' fails to address how young people locate themselves in a world in which they negotiate their sexualities through complex 'glocal' routes in popular and youth culture. We argue that decentring methodological strategies are required which draw on critiques made by post-colonial and decolonising methodologies. In the first section of the paper, we review the problem of difference, and how it is considered within current debates in youth and sexualities research. This frames a reflection on rethinking our own methodological practices through a consideration of two research moments. In the conclusion, we propose a metaphorical framework to scaffold a reimagining of methodological approaches to ensure that the normative is always a question mark.


Borrowing some of Aby Warburg's methods from his Mnemosyne Atlas, this paper experiments with an anti-linear, non-teleological method of writing fashion history. It investigates fashion movement, gesture and pose, and their afterlife in images and objects. It thus looks at the intersection of time and the gesture, particularly in relation to the idea of the 'now', a central organising principle of fashion. To this end, it juxtaposes images of the body in motion from sources as varied as scientific photography, etiquette manuals and fashion magazines. Spanning three centuries, though not chronologically, the images show a range of activities: not only fashion posing, but also tennis-playing, duelling, dancing, military marching, social gestures, and going to the races. The paper proposes that each image is charged with some quality or attribute that is also immanent in one or more of the others, even though they have no causal or temporal relationship.


BACKGROUND
 The incidence of both type 1 diabetes (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in children and youth is increasing. However, the current approach for identifying pediatric diabetes and separating by type is costly, because it requires substantial manual efforts.

 OBJECTIVE
 The purpose of this study was to develop a computable phenotype for accurately and efficiently identifying diabetes and separating T1DM from T2DM in pediatric patients.

 METHODS
 This retrospective study utilized a data set from the University of Florida Health Integrated Data Repository to identify 300 patients aged 18 or younger with T1DM, T2DM, or that were healthy based on a developed computable phenotype. Three endocrinology residents/fellows manually reviewed medical records of all probable cases to validate diabetes status and type. This refined computable phenotype was then used to identify all cases of T1DM and T2DM in the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium.

 RESULTS
 A total of 295 electronic health records were manually reviewed; of these, 128 cases were found to have T1DM, 35 T2DM, and 132 no diagnosis. The positive predictive value was 94.7%, the sensitivity was 96.9%, specificity was 95.8%, and the negative predictive value was 97.6%. Overall, the computable phenotype was found to be an accurate and sensitive method to pinpoint pediatric patients with T1DM.

 CONCLUSIONS
 We developed a computable phenotype for identifying T1DM correctly and efficiently. The computable phenotype that was developed will enable researchers to identify a population accurately and cost-effectively. As such, this will vastly improve the ease of identifying patients for future intervention studies.


Five cases are being discussed here, where an apparently harmless Valsalva manoeuvre caused different clinical manifestations in the eyes: a large central preretinal hemorrhage, diffuse retinal hemorrhages, a Purtscher retinopathy and a blindness associated with a haematoma of the upper and lower lid of the right eye, probably caused by bleeding in the sheeths of the optic nerve. It is important to note that a Valsalva manoeuvre can cause different manifestations in the eye, apart from the known small premacular haemorrhage. Since the Valsalva manoeuvre is a common phenomenon, one should keep it in mind when observing unclear ocular findings.


Vision-and-Language (V+L) pre-training models have achieved tremendous success in recent years on various multi-modal benchmarks. However, the majority of existing models require pre-training on a large set of parallel imagetext data, which is costly to collect, compared to image-only or text-only data. In this paper, we explore unsupervised Vision-and-Language pre-training (UVLP) to learn the cross-modal representation from non-parallel image and text datasets. We found two key factors that lead to good unsupervised V + L pre-training without parallel data: (i) joint image-and-text input (ii) overall imagetext alignment (even for non-parallel data). Accordingly, we propose a novel unsupervised V + L pre-training curriculum for non-parallel texts and images. We first construct a weakly aligned imagetext corpus via a retrieval-based approach, then apply a set of multi-granular alignment pre-training tasks, including region-to-tag, region-to-phrase, and image-to-sentence alignment, to bridge the gap between the two modalities. A comprehensive ablation study shows each granularity is helpful to learn a stronger pre-trained model. We adapt our pre-trained model to a set of V+L downstream tasks, including VQA, NLVR2, Visual Entailment, and Ref-COCO+. Our model achieves the state-of-art performance in all these tasks under the unsupervised setting.


The tongue is as an organ of speech and articulation not as indispensable as the soft palate. The recovery of speech after extirpation of the tongue is usually satisfactory, and the intelligibility of patients with microglossia compares favourably with the speech of an untreated cleft palate patient. Hypernasality and nasal escape of air are typical also for the congenital short palate (in the absence of a cleft); syndromes with a congenital short palate are often misdiagnosed as suprabulbar paralysis. The function and involuntary usage of the tongue e.g. in swallowing, influence the growth and development of the surrounding bony structures and the teeth. A frontal open bite due to the tongue thrust habit is a popular example. A case if made for the notion that the mouth-breathing habit has grave consequences such as nasal obstruction, adenoids and glue ears. Mouth breathing should not be looked upon as a trivial accessory phenomenon, but as a behaviour that needs systematic reeducation treatment. Rehabilitative procedures are pointed out for patients with respiratory problems due to two-sides laryngeal nerve paralysis and patients with swallowing problems after partial extirpation of the base of the tongue.


Azoamides, previously established as bioactive intracellular GSH-depleting agents, were decorated with a terminal alkyne moiety to 4 and then were transformed, by copper(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC), into different ligand-arm functionalized azoamides 6. Azides 5 having ligand-arms amenable for binding to platinum(II) were selected for this study. Because, for the fragile azoamides 4, the typically employed reaction conditions for CuAAC failed, several alternative solvents and copper catalysts were tested. Excellent results were obtained with copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate/metallic copper and especially with heterogeneous catalysts, such as copper-in-charcoal, cupric oxide, and cuprous oxide. The heterogeneous catalysts were employed to obtain the desired products in almost quantitative yields by a simple three-step "stir-filter-evaporate" protocol with no or negligible contamination with copper impurities. This is of particular importance because compounds 6 have been designed for coordination.


A history of institutional oppression and genocide has shaped Native American communities across the United States today, reflected in large disparities of socioeconomic outcomes and infrastructure. Due to a lack of comprehensive data and macroeconomic research, alternative forms of spatial data and theories regarding human settlement are needed to develop an understanding of this stagnation. In our efforts to better understand growth on Native American reservations, we utilize nighttime lights data to proxy for economic output in these geographic areas, measuring the settlement characteristics of reservations themselves and against surrounding U.S. regions. Through a series of log-log regressions that focus on Zipf's scaling law and settlement scaling theory, we measure population and production variables to compare Native and non-Native populations in California. We find that both groups demonstrate scaling coefficients close to 1, consistent with settlement scaling theory. When measured with radiance, there is greater variation, but California demonstrates more increase in brightness as population grows. On reservations in California and throughout the country, increases in population shows no correlation with radiance increase and this measure of infrastructure is stagnated across all cross-sections. With these findings, we conclude our test of this methodology and theory to confirm that societies scale up in productivity with population and other economic growth variables. There are clear indicators of how growth has stagnated on Native American reservations, despite proximity to higher-growth regions, which calls for greater emphasis on improving economic and development outcomes for these communities.


It is proposed that goals can be activated outside of awareness and then operate nonconsciously to guide self-regulation effectively (J. A. Bargh, 1990). Five experiments are reported in which the goal either to perform well or to cooperate was activated, without the awareness of participants, through a priming manipulation. In Experiment 1 priming of the goal to perform well caused participants to perform comparatively better on an intellectual task. In Experiment 2 priming of the goal to cooperate caused participants to replenish a commonly held resource more readily. Experiment 3 used a dissociation paradigm to rule out perceptual-construal alternative explanations. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that action guided by nonconsciously activated goals manifests two classic content-free features of the pursuit of consciously held goals. Nonconsciously activated goals effectively guide action, enabling adaptation to ongoing situational demands.


A new method for comparing dew-point generators was developed at the Centre for Metrology and Accreditation. In this method, the generators participating in a comparison are compared with a transportable saturator unit using a dew-point comparator. The method was tested by constructing a test apparatus and by comparing it with the MIKES primary dew-point generator several times in the dew-point temperature range from -40 to +75 °C. The expanded uncertainty (k = 2) of the apparatus was estimated to be between 0.05 and 0.07 °C and the difference between the comparator system and the generator is well within these limits. In particular, all of the results obtained in the range below 0 °C are within ±0.03 °C. It is concluded that a new type of a transfer standard with characteristics most suitable for dew-point comparisons can be developed on the basis of the principles presented in this paper.


In this paper, we address the problem of driving a group of agents towards a consensus point when the agents have a discrete-time single- or double-integrator dynamics and the communication network is time-varying. We propose decentralized model predictive control schemes that take into account constraints on the agents' input and show that they guarantee consensus under mild assumptions. Since the global cost does not decrease monotonically, it cannot be used as a Lyapunov function for proving convergence to consensus. For this reason, our proofs exploit geometric properties of the optimal path followed by individual agents.


Female gametophyte of Angiosperms.-RUTGERS7 has made an extended analysis of the Angiosperm embryo sac, and has concluded that classifications based on the number of divisions between megaspore nucleus and egg, or on the number of nuclei in the fullgrown sac, are wholly artificial. He claims that the female gametophyte is not a morphological unit, but a complex. Any classification, therefore, must be based upon the following processes, which probably represent independent lines of development: chromatin reduction, megaspore formation, polarization, development of a micropylar group of nuclei, development of a chalazal group of nuclei. As a consequence, although the 8-nucleate sac seems to be the most characteristic type of the Angiosperm embryo sac, he was not able to throw any light on its origin.-J. M. C.


When Liddell Hart's Sherman was first published in 1929, it received encomiums such as these: "A masterly performance ...one of the most thorougly dignified, one of the most distinguished biographies of the year."--Henry Steele Commager, New York Herald Tribune "It is not often that one comes upon a biography that is so well done as this book. Nearly every page bears evidence of the fact that it is the product of painstaking and exhaustive research, mature thought, and an expert understanding of the subject in hand ..."--Saturday Review of Literature


BACKGROUND
Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is associated with Kaposi sarcoma (KS) in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and KS, classical KS, or endemic KS. Because human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections and HIV/AIDS are common in Thailand but KS is very rare (only 0.2% of reported patients with AIDS in Thailand had KS), we determined the HHV-8 seroprevalence among populations who were HIV positive or at risk of HIV infection.

METHODS
A total of 992 persons from 2 populations underwent testing for lytic antibodies to HHV-8 using an immunofluorescence assay involving a BCBL-1 cell line at serum dilutions of 1 : 50 and 1 : 100. Serum specimens with positive results were titered to end points. Subjects included approximately 400 married couples in which the husband was HIV positive and the wife was HIV positive (200 couples) or HIV negative (200 couples). In addition, 200 HIV-negative men from a sexually transmitted diseases (STD) clinic were studied.

RESULTS
The antibody prevalence was 24.2% in the total population. The prevalence was higher among HIV-negative men (13.0%) but was similar among HIV-positive women (27.9%) and HIV-negative women (23.8%). The HHV-8 seroprevalence among wives whose husbands were HIV-1 positive did not differ according to their husband's HHV-8 status. There was no association between HHV-8 seroprevalence and reported sexual behavior or STD history.

CONCLUSION
Despite the rarity of KS among patients with AIDS in Thailand, HHV-8 infections are common and do not appear to be frequently transmitted sexually in these populations.


The dissociation of the phospholipid, lipopolysaccharide, and protein components of the bacterial cell envelope results in loss of enzyme activities which are normally located in the cell envelope structure and which are involved in lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis. The activity of one of these enzymes, UDP-galactose:lipopolysaccharide α,3 galactosyl transferase, can be restored by the reassociation of purified phospholipid, lipopolysaccharide, and enzyme protein. Reconstitution of activity occurs in stepwise fashion: lipopolysaccharide + phospholipid → lipopolysaccharide·phospholipid See PDF for Equation enzyme·lipopolysaccharide·phospholipid. The intermediates in the reaction were isolated by gradient centrifugation. The final ternary complex behaves in a similar manner to the intact cell envelope in the enzyme reaction and appears to represent the reconstitution of a portion of the membranous portion of the cell envelope.


Wood-degrading fungi in the phylum Basidiomycota play a crucial role in nutrient recycling by breaking down all components of wood. Fungi have evolved transcriptional networks that regulate expression of wood-degrading enzymes, allowing them to prioritize one nutrient source over another. ABSTRACT Wood-decaying fungi of the class Agaricomycetes (phylum Basidiomycota) are saprotrophs that break down lignocellulose and play an important role in nutrient recycling. They secrete a wide range of extracellular plant cell wall degrading enzymes that break down cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, the main building blocks of plant biomass. Although the production of these enzymes is regulated mainly at the transcriptional level, no activating regulators have been identified in any wood-decaying fungus in the class Agaricomycetes. We studied the regulation of cellulase expression in the wood-decaying fungus Schizophyllum commune. Comparative genomics and transcriptomics on two wild isolates revealed a Zn2Cys6-type transcription factor gene (roc1) that was highly upregulated during growth on cellulose, compared to glucose. It is only conserved in the class Agaricomycetes. A roc1 knockout strain showed an inability to grow on medium with cellulose as sole carbon source, and growth on cellobiose and xylan (other components of wood) was inhibited. Growth on non-wood-related carbon sources was not inhibited. Cellulase gene expression and enzyme activity were reduced in the Δroc1 strain. ChIP-Seq identified 1474 binding sites of the Roc1 transcription factor. Promoters of genes involved in lignocellulose degradation were enriched with these binding sites, especially those of LPMO (lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase) CAZymes, indicating that Roc1 directly regulates these genes. A conserved motif was identified as the binding site of Roc1, which was confirmed by a functional promoter analysis. Together, Roc1 is a key regulator of cellulose degradation and the first identified in wood-decaying fungi in the phylum Basidiomycota. IMPORTANCE Wood-degrading fungi in the phylum Basidiomycota play a crucial role in nutrient recycling by breaking down all components of wood. Fungi have evolved transcriptional networks that regulate expression of wood-degrading enzymes, allowing them to prioritize one nutrient source over another. However, to date all these transcription factors have been identified in the phylum Ascomycota, which is only distantly related to the phylum Basidiomycota. Here, we identified the transcription factor Roc1 as a key regulator of cellulose degradation in the mushroom-forming and wood-degrading fungus Schizophyllum commune. Roc1 is highly conserved in the phylum Basidiomycota. Using comparative genomics, transcriptomics, ChIP-Seq and promoter analysis we have identified direct targets of Roc1, as well as other aspects of the transcriptional response to cellulose.


Purpose:-The use of academic profiling sites is becoming more common, and emerging technologies boost researchers' visibility and exchange of ideas. In this paper highlighted profiling sites. These sites are Research Gate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations, Researcher ID and ORCID, Scopus ID, Blogs, Personal Websites etc.
Design/methodology/approach:- The paper adopts the methodology of simple literature review and personal practical experience. The paper reveals a practical case of digital footprint management.
Findings:- Due to the need for librarians to embrace the unleashed steps in creating a digital footprint of themselves in the present dynamic information environment and emerging knowledge society, the various online avenues are revealed, which can lead the way for librarians in the journey of making a mark in the digital society. The concept of digital structural change is also raised, in connection with building a digital society. Some major points are raised in the paper which would immensely aid the contemporary librarian in building a lasting positive image, and reaching the apex in the library profession. Such major points as: personal branding of librarians, and managing your digital footprints.
Originality/value:- One of the first studies to report various digital footprint platform in the library science subject area.


Patients with malignant disease complicated by diffuse interstitial pneumonia due to proved or suspected Pneumocystis carinii were given pentamidine in the dosage schedule recommended for this infection. By means of a sensitive method of assay, the plasma levels and urinary excretion of pentamidine during therapy were studied in these patients. Following the intramuscular administration of pentamidine, plasma levels were low and urinary excretion prolonged. After a single intraperitoneal injection in mice, the tissue distribution levels and excretion pattern for pentamidine were determined at various time intervals. There was storage of the drug in tissues and excretion was delayed. The highest concentration of pentamidine was found in the kidney. In mice pentamidine is eliminated primarily intact with little, if any, altered. The available data in man also suggested that pentamidine is retained, bound to tissues, and excreted over an extended period. Although renal abnormalities followed pentamidine, it was not possible to implicate the drug in all cases because of the seriousness of the illness and the concomitant use of other drugs. Pentamidine is useful in preventing disease due to Trypanosoma gambiense as well as effective in the treatment of diffuse interstitial pneumonia due to Pneumocystis carinii. The frequency of this type of pneumonia in cancer patients and in patients undergoing organ transplantation suggests the need for studies in animals and man.


The present study aimed to analyze the genetic similarity between genomic profiles of thirteen Klebsiella oxytoca and seven Klebsiella pneumoniae samples isolated from two different collections carried out in different places of dental offices. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique and similarity coefficients (calculated by Sorensen-Dice and simple matching) were applied to determine their genetic profile of randomic DNA sequences. The majority of the isolates of K. pneumoniae and K. oxytoca presented similar coefficient values (e" 0.80). Thus, it was possible to identify that strain dissemination occurred mainly via the hands of the surgeon-dentists and, finally, to determine the genetic similarity of the strains from dental office environments.


Mexico City is situated on an elevated valley surrounded by a ring of mountains within an endhoreic basin. The urban area continues to steal land from an ancient lake and the surrounding foothills. Two of its most significant environmental issues, are the simultaneous lack and excess of water – the paradox of an increasingly thirsty metropolis, developing within a flood plain. Major infrastructure has been built over time to extract seasonal rainfall and sewage out of the valley, and even larger infrastructure has been introduced to import water from adjacent basins to complete the insufficient and overexploited aquifer extraction. However, the city is still unable to satisfy the needs of its over 20 million population. Rainwater falling on the surrounding hills infiltrates the soil, to refill the aquifers, and runs through streams that go into the sewage system when entering the urban area. Informal-settlements grow on these foothills, occupying former co-opted lands. They have gradually consolidated, progressively achieving basic urban infrastructure and legal ownership of the land, but they still face acute water scarcity and have a negative influence on water running downstream. This project conducts a study of one of these communities. It analyzes its water balance and its physical and socio-economical conditions in order to produce alternative solutions. First, one where water needs can be provided through rainwater harvesting and water reuse: Water Zero. A second one, where the negative influence on water running out reverts to become a clean water source for downstream communities: Water +. A non-governmental organization (Isla Urbana) working within the community has developed and installed appropriate rainwater harvesting systems. Through the evaluation of its vision, methods and performance, this


The premise of this article is that there is both a process that can be tailored to specific situations and outcomes that can be formatted to guide any managed care business. However, if neither are put together under the guise of strategic management, the managed care business (as we know it) will become both "futile" and "fatal" for many. It is understood that the managed care perspective for the provider can be much different than for the buyer/payor. In fact, the process for planning these outcomes (strategic management) remains the same. What changes is the perspective! This article presents a framework for that perspective.


This paper studies the implications of state-dependent pricing in a small open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for Indonesia. I show that variations in the timing and frequency of price adjustment inherent in a state-dependent pricing assumption could have important implications for DSGE model-based policy analysis in Indonesia. This extensive margin effect produces disparities in the conditional variance decompositions and the impulse responses to various shocks responsible for business cycle fluctuations. An investigation into the impact of COVID-19 pandemic shocks indicates that such variations non-trivially affect the analysis on the appropriate degree of monetary policy response to the shocks. A state-dependent pricing model would call for a greater degree of monetary easing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, than that prescribed by a traditional time-dependent pricing model. The broader implication is clear. For modelling and analyzing the Indonesian economy, in which the inflation rates have historically been moderate-to-high and highly variable, state-dependent pricing is an essential model feature.


ABSTRACT In the new millennium, newspapers in Brazil, France, and the United States have transformed their digital editions to facilitate reader participation and exchange. This research explores how these venues were used by readers to discuss 9/11/01. Over ten years have passed since September 11, 2001 in which the events have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time. Drawing data from 2001 and 2011, the analysis compares immediate understandings of the events with similar commentary on the anniversary a decade later. The data are drawn from three internationally recognized newspapers: O Estado de São Paulo, Le Monde, and The New York Times. This study examines differing interpretations of the events from both longitudinal and comparative cultural perspectives. Using a comparative case study approach, the research explores how Brazilian, French, and Americans congregate in digital spaces to debate September 11th in 2001 and again in 2011. In comparing the discourse in each forum, the study identifies commonalities and differences across the three case studies. The work explores how ideological discourse is used in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01 and ten years later in 2011. In so doing, the work sheds light on the stability and enduring nature of identity work and identity categories in digital discourse fora.


A popular approach to protein design is to combine a generative model with a discriminative model for conditional sampling. The generative model samples plausible sequences while the discriminative model guides a search for sequences with high fitness. Given its broad success in conditional sampling, classifier-guided diffusion modeling is a promising foundation for protein design, leading many to develop guided diffusion models for structure with inverse folding to recover sequences. In this work, we propose diffusioN Optimized Sampling (NOS), a guidance method for discrete diffusion models that follows gradients in the hidden states of the denoising network. NOS makes it possible to perform design directly in sequence space, circumventing significant limitations of structure-based methods, including scarce data and challenging inverse design. Moreover, we use NOS to generalize LaMBO, a Bayesian optimization procedure for sequence design that facilitates multiple objectives and edit-based constraints. The resulting method, LaMBO-2, enables discrete diffusions and stronger performance with limited edits through a novel application of saliency maps. We apply LaMBO-2 to a real-world protein design task, optimizing antibodies for higher expression yield and binding affinity to a therapeutic target under locality and liability constraints, with 97% expression rate and 25% binding rate in exploratory in vitro experiments.


NOAA's Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) is a physical space and research framework to foster collaboration and evaluate emerging tools, technology, and products for NWS operations. The HWT's Experimental Warning Program (EWP) focuses on research, technology, and communication that may improve severe and hazardous weather warnings and societal response. The EWP was established with three fundamental hypotheses: 1) collaboration with operational meteorologists increases the speed of the transition process and rate of adoption of beneficial applications and technology, 2) the transition of knowledge between research and operations benefits both the research and operational communities, and 3) including end-users in experiments generates outcomes that are more reliable and useful for society. The EWP is designed to mimic the operations of any NWS Forecast Office, providing the opportunity for experiments to leverage live and archived severe weather activity anywhere in the United States. During the first decade of activity in the EWP, 15 experiments covered topics including: new radar and satellite applications, storm-scale numerical models and data assimilation, total lightning use in severe weather forecasting, and multiple social science and end-user topics. The experiments range from exploratory and conceptual research to more controlled experimental design to establish statistical patterns and causal relationships. The EWP brought more than 400 NWS forecasters, 60 emergency managers, and 30 broadcast meteorologists to the HWT to participate in live demonstrations, archive events, and data-denial experiments influencing today's operational warning environment and shaping the future of warning research, technology, and communication for years to come.


The literature review sought to identify whether there are any differences and risk factors associated with individuals who present to health services with 'medically unexplained symptoms'. A number of relevant factors were identified, although they were not consistently found across all the studies examined. Issues relating to methodology, classification, terminology, and social context are also considered, as are directions for future research.
The empirical paper explored whether there might be differences between two groups of pi lots, both with a history of flying aircraft associated with 'contaminated air' or 'fume events'. (These can occur when unfiltered 'bleed air' used to pressurise the cabin becomes contaminated with heated (pyrolised) engine fuels, lubricants, and other toxic substances.) One pilot group, drawn from Mackenzie Ross' (2008) study, had sought out or had been referred to medical health professionals regarding symptoms of ill health, and attributed these to contaminated air, for which no causal link has yet been established. The other group ofpilots had not come forward reporting adverse health effects, nor had they been referred to medical experts, even though they continued to work in the same potentially hazardous environment. Differences between these two groups were explored by comparing pilots' cognitive function, symptoms of ill health, and symptom attribution. Although pilots not reporting symptoms of ill heath were found to perform significantly better on cognitive tasks than those who did, a closer inspection of the data revealed a number of interesting results that may be relevant for future research, such as a distinct
and unusual similarity in the pattern of the cognitive profiles of both pilot groups. No significant differences were found with regard to symptom reporting and attribution, although there seemed to be a small emerging trend towards cognitive decline over time (independent of age).
The critical appraisal discusses the methodological and other limitations of undertaking this study, draws attention to questions raised by the findings, and argues the case for more (larger scale) research to be undertaken in the future.
It should be noted that this study was undertaken under the umbrella of a larger research project that was seeking to examine the effects of contaminated air on cognitive function in commercial airline pilots. As such, the study will to a degree cover some similar ground with regard to the measures used, data gathering, and testing procedures as Mackenzie Ross (2008), from which the data for the self-selected group is drawn, and Madeley (2008)1, who constructed the health questionnaire and clinical interview protocol (see Appendices).


Background:
Wearable sensors and smart garments can be used for continual monitoring of a person's physiology or physical activities. These garments may be used to assess chronic conditions in the home setting and for rehabilitation by providing feedback and motivation to users and to identify effectiveness and adherence to therapists. This work focusses on the use of a sensor glove for home assessment of rheumatoid arthritis in assessing joint stiffness through range and velocity of movement.
Material & Methods:
A sensor glove has been developed using fabric stretch sensors integrated into an oedema glove. The stretch sensors are made of a knit fabric coated with conducting polymer, giving them piezoresistive properties. This means that when the fabric is stretched the resistance changes, which can be measured using straightforward circuitry and captured using a microprocessor platform. An arduino fio with integrated Xbee radio is used to collect and wirelessly transfer the data to a laptop.
Results:
Wooden blocks cut at various angles are used to calibrate the glove. To do this the user rests their hand on the block which maintains the joint position at a particular angle. A neural network is then used to calculate the joint position during dynamic movements. An animated hand on the computer gives immediate visual feedback to the user. The next stage will be to compare the glove performance to a motion capture system such as Vicon.
Conclusions:
The advantage of the glove is in the fit and comfort for the wearer, the sensors and the glove itself are made from a lycra spandex material. Conventional bend sensors and fibre optics are more rigid and while suitable for computer gaming and motion capture applications are not ideal for use in people with impaired dexterity and mobility. This work presents a low-cost solution for home assessment of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and a means user feedback to assist and motivate users with prescribed therapeutic exercises.


This paper introduces a new metric, to approximately lower-bound the error-variance in the estimation of an incident source's direction-of-arrival (DOA), for a sensor-array subject to random breakdown in its individual sensors. This new metric equals a weighted sum of Cramér-Rao bounds, each conditioned on a distinct event of sensors-breakdown. Those distinct events together describe the overall random phenomenon of the fallibility of the sensors that constitute the sensor-array. This new metric's tightness as an approximate lower bound is illustrated by Monte Carlo simulations of the maximum-likelihood estimator.


Abstract Histone modifiers regulate proper cellular activities in response to various environmental stress by modulating gene expression. In budding yeast, Rph1 transcriptionally represses many DNA damage or autophagy-related gene expression. However, little is known how Rph1 is regulated during these stress conditions. Here, we report that Rph1 is degraded upon DNA damage stress conditions. Notably, this degradation occurs via the autophagy pathway rather than through 26S proteasome proteolysis. Deletion of ATG genes or inhibition of vacuole protease activity compromises Rph1 turnover. We also determine that Rph1 and nuclear export protein Crm1 interact, which is required for Rph1 translocation from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. More importantly, Gcn5 directly acetylates Rph1 in vitro and in vivo, and Gcn5-containing complex, SAGA, is required for autophagic degradation of Rph1. Gcn5-mediated Rph1 acetylation is essential for the association of Rph1 with the nuclear pore protein Nup1. Finally, we show that sustaining high levels of Rph1 during DNA damage stress results in cell growth defects. Thus, we propose that Gcn5-mediated acetylation finely regulates Rph1 protein level and that autophagic degradation of Rph1 is important for cell homeostasis. Our findings may provide a general connection between DNA damage, protein acetylation and autophagy.


Over the last five to ten years an increasing number of public agencies have commenced strategic planning. However, results have often fallen short of what strategic planning is supposed to achieve. Drawing on experience of strategic planning systems in public bodies in a number of countries, offers the view that it is the motivation of the power‐holders in the system which determines the approach taken to strategic planning and, consequently, the type of outcomes which eventuate. The three most common approaches to strategic planning are to engage in it as an annual ritual, to see it as a technical goal‐setting and decision‐making process, or to approach it in a consensus‐seeking manner. Each of these approaches has potential negative outcomes. Identifies a fourth and much less common approach, namely, regarding strategic planning as an organizational learning process. Explores the benefits and impediments to this approach and offers some general guidelines for effective strategic planning.


Librarians are regularly working to understand how students make decisions around information use to inform the development of more relevant learning activities. The more relevant the activities when students are learning any new skill, the more likely they are to understand the task and incorporate the learning into future design decisions and writing. The need to build connections and understanding is critical in adoption of information literacy. In this study, the researcher analyzed the transcript from an end of semester focus group with students in a design class about their information use during the semester project. The transcript was analyzed using deductive thematic analysis while simultaneously staying open to emergent codes.