In isolated rat hearts which can or cannot utilize fatty acids (FA) as substrates the coronary responses to an increase in flow were studied under three different conditions: a) control, during perfusion with glucose-enriched Tyrode solution which allowed the hearts to utilize long-chain FA from the endogenous pool, b) during forced utilization of glucose obtained with oxfenicine, an inhibitor of long-chain FA oxidation, and c) during restored utilization of FA obtained with the addition of hexanoic acid which bypasses the blockade induced by oxfenicine. A step increase in coronary flow (50 %) induced an increase in coronary perfusion pressure whose initial slope (first 60-80 s) was similar in all the conditions of buffer perfusion, thereafter the pressure tended to further increase under control conditions (buffer a), but to decrease during oxfenicine (buffer b). The addition of hexanoic acid to the perfusion solution (buffer c) abolished the effect of oxfenicine. Steady-state conditions were reached after four minutes of increased flow, when perfusion pressure increased by about 70 and 65 % under control conditions and during hexanoate, respectively, but only by 45 % during oxfenicine. In isolated rat hearts during inhibition of FA utilization, an increase in flow elicited a reduced increase in perfusion pressure that resulted in delayed coronary dilation. It follows that the resulting shear stress is substrate-sensitive.


When Covid-19 broke out, many interpreted it as a crisis that would lead to fundamental changes in different areas of life. The article aims to assess whether this also applies to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). By analysing the websites of a sample of intergovernmental organizations, we ask: How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the behaviour of intergovernmental organizations? How can one explain this behaviour of intergovernmental organizations in response to such a major exogenous event as the Covid-19 pandemic? How can the Covid-19 pandemic be best conceptualized in terms of its impact on intergovernmental organizations? We show that the responses of intergovernmental organizations to the Covid-19 pandemic had two important features: (a) intergovernmental organizations responded in a synchronized way, and (b) the pandemic triggered wide-spread non-major adaptations to the changed environment, providing opportunities for legitimation work and minor repackaging of existing activities, but has not led to noticeable transformational change in organizations' activities. We argue that the observed intergovernmental organization's responses can be explained partly from rational-choice perspective and partly from sociological institutionalist perspective. Given our data, we argue that the pandemic can be conceptualized as an uncertainty shock, in terms of its impact on intergovernmental organizations.


In this paper, an improved Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition (BEMD) based speckle reduction technique for ultrasound images has been proposed. The noisy image has been decomposed into its Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) and a~residue. The noise component of the low order IMFs is removed with the pixel-wise Wiener filtering. The image is reconstructed with these filtered low order IMFs, high order IMFs and the residue. The performance of the proposed method has been tested on synthetic as well as real ultrasound images having noise components of different variance. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other existing methods for synthetic images as well as real ultrasound images in terms of various image quality matrices.


seminars "This last statement draws attention to one of the outstanding features of sensitivity group activity, namely, that the open expression of feeling is encouraged (the "unfreezing" referred to by Dr O'Brien), but this is not seen as the end-point; participants and leaders also involve themselves in critical and, if possible, exhaustive examination of content and process. Some of the differences commonly alleged to exist between sensitivity training and psychotherapy are unreal; most psychotherapists, for example, would deny that they are mainly concerned with the "there and then", and would state that they use personal historical reference only to illustrate apparent paradoxes in the here-and-now behaviour of their patients or clients. The main differences between psychotherapeutic groups and sensitivity groups can be set out as follows: 1. People who enter sensitivity groups are not, for the purposes of those groups, classified as "patients", either by themselves or by group leaders. 2. Participants in sensitivity groups-more particularly when they move beyond the "basic" group stageare encouraged to see themselves as important contributors to the evaluation and research processes. 3. Among the apparently more responsible organizations which use sensitivity groups as an important tool, there is great emphasis on the need for continuing communication between group leaders. "Trainer development" programmes are organized, examined and modified on the basis of experience. This type of activity should ensure both progre8s towards a general philosophy and plan, and avoidance of a too rigid and ultimately anachronistic set of principles and theoretical assumptions. The "sensitivity group" movement now rarely makes emotional demands for .unqualified acceptance-such demands stimulate furious rebuttal. Instead, responsible professionals, from a variety of backgrounds, are involved in a process whose aims are gradually being more clearly defined, in which the contributions of both participants and leaders are used for the examination and modification of the process, and in which they see the possibility of using several techniques and individual talents to improve their methods of studying human behaviour, in such a way that this knowledge may be used to help develop a society which can resolve its problems through confrontation and communication. Hopefully, self destruction and mutual destruction become less likely in such circumstances. Whether the word "sensitivity" is used or not, proof exists that the use of group techniques, which encourage self-examination of the group by itself for the delineation and resolution of problems, can be of value in medical organizations. Doctors are sensing the pressure from society to be more self-conscious (objective ) in their approach to their professional tasks, to their patients, and to social issues. Painful as self-examination can sometimes be, many believe that it is necessary, as a continuing process, and that the responsibly organized "sensitivity group" is one way towards achieving the goal of greater awareness of the nature of human interaction, and therefore greater expertise in the management of one's life and work.


Enhanced fucosyltransferase IV (FUT4) expression correlates with increased tumor malignancy in many carcinomas. However, little is known about the regulation of FUT4 expression, and whether FUT4 expression is influenced by the methylation status of the FUT4 promoter is unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that FUT4 expression is negatively correlated with the methylation degree of a CpG island in the FUT4 promoter, suggesting that the methylation status of FUT4 promoter regulates the expression of FUT4. The results indicate that manipulating the methylation status of the FUT4 promoter to regulate FUT4 expression may be a novel approach in the treatment of malignant tumors.


Many current challenges involve understanding the complex dynamical interplay between the constituents of systems. Typically, the number of such constituents is high, but only limited data sources on them are available. Conventional dynamical models of complex systems are rarely mathematically tractable and their numerical exploration suffers both from computational and data limitations. Here we review generalized modeling, an alternative approach for formulating dynamical models to gain insights into dynamics and bifurcations of uncertain systems. We argue that this approach deals elegantly with the uncertainties that exist in real world data and enables analytical insight or highly efficient numerical investigation. We provide a survey of recent successes of generalized modeling and a guide to the application of this modeling approach in future studies such as complex integrative ecological models.


SnO2/Al2O3 nanofibers have been fabricated from a suitable inorganic–organic composite solution via a simple electrospinning method and followed by calcination treatment of the electrospun polymer/inorganic composite fibers. The effect of voltage, tip-to-collector distance and calcining temperature on the morphology and crystal structure of nanofibres was investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The diameter and diameter distribution of nanofibers can be controlled by controlling the electrospinning parameters and the more ideal diameter is 200-350nm. The formation of phase identified by XRD indicated the existence of tetragonal rutile tin oxide crystals and amorphous alumina. This paper provides a new method for the preparation of the SnO2/Al2O3 catalysts for NOX reduction.


The measurement of the distribution of magnetic flux density in an electromagnetic (EM) flow meter is important in obtaining an accurate flow rate. In this paper, Helmholtz coils are used in the EM flow meter to generate a homogenous magnetic flux density across the cross section of flow pipe. The finite element method analysis software, COMSOL, was used to build a model of the magnetic flux density, which was then verified using experimental testing. A 2D magnetic camera system containing an 8 × 8 array of 64 Hall sensors is used to detect the magnetic flux density. The magnetic flux density data is then measured using a national instruments PCI 6255 data acquisition card. The results from the simulation model and experimental measurements are presented and compared in the paper. The study is useful in designing the electrode sensor arrays of an EM flow meter. In addition to this, the distribution of magnetic flux density is useful in improving the accurate flow rate measurement of the EM flow meter.


[1] The Phoenix Lander touched down on the northern distal flank of the shield volcano Alba Patera in a ∼150 km wide valley underlain by the Scandia region unit. The geomorphology and geology of the landing site is dominated by the ∼0.6 Ga, 11.5 km wide, bowl-shaped impact crater, Heimdal, and its areally extensive ejecta deposits. The Lander is located ∼20 km to the west of the crater and is sitting on a plains surface underlain by partially eroded Heimdal ejecta deposits. Heimdal was produced by a hypervelocity impact into fine-grained, ice-rich material and is inferred to have produced high velocity winds and a ground-hugging ejecta emplacement mode that destroyed or buried preexisting surfaces and rock fields out to ∼10 crater radii. Patterned ground is ubiquitous, with complex polygon patterns and rock rubble piles located on older plains (∼3.3 Ga) to the west of the ejecta deposits. Crater size frequency distributions are complex and represent equilibria between crater production and destruction processes (e.g., aeolian infill, cryoturbation, relaxation of icy substrate). Rock abundances increase near craters for the older plains and rocks with their dark shadows explain the reason for the few percent lower albedo for these plains as opposed to the Heimdal ejecta deposits. Many rocks at the landing site have been reworked by cryoturbation and moved to polygon troughs. The evidence for cryoturbation and the lack of aeolian features imply that the soils sampled by Phoenix are locally derived and mixed with a subordinate amount of windblown dust.


We develop a novel remote sensing technique for the observation of waves on the ocean surface. Our method infers the 3-D waveform and radiance of oceanic sea states via a variational stereo imagery formulation. In this setting, the shape and radiance of the wave surface are given by minimizers of a composite energy functional that combines a photometric matching term along with regularization terms involving the smoothness of the unknowns. The desired ocean surface shape and radiance are the solution of a system of coupled partial differential equations derived from the optimality conditions of the energy functional. The proposed method is naturally extended to study the spatiotemporal dynamics of ocean waves and applied to three sets of stereo video data. Statistical and spectral analysis are carried out. Our results provide evidence that the observed omnidirectional wavenumber spectrum S(k) decays as k-2.5 is in agreement with Zakharov's theory (1999). Furthermore, the 3-D spectrum of the reconstructed wave surface is exploited to estimate wave dispersion and currents.


Interpolation-based model checking (McMillan, 2003) is a formal-verification algorithm, which was originally devised to verify safety properties of finite-state transition systems. The algorithm is state-of-the-art in hardware model checking. It derives interpolants from unsatisfiable BMC queries, and collects them to construct an overapproximation of the set of reachable states. Unlike other formal-verification algorithms, such as k-induction or PDR, which have been extended to handle infinite-state systems and investigated for program analysis, McMillan's interpolation-based model checking algorithm from 2003 has not been used to verify programs so far. This paper closes this significant, 19 years old gap in knowledge by adopting the algorithm to software verification. We implemented it in the verification framework CPAchecker, and evaluated the implementation against other state-of-the-art software-verification techniques over the largest publicly available benchmark suite of C safety-verification tasks. The evaluation demonstrates that interpolation-based model checking is competitive among other algorithms in terms of both the number of solved verification tasks and the run-time efficiency. Our results might have important implications for software verification, because researchers and developers now have a richer set of approaches to choose from.


BACKGROUND
We have previously demonstrated that hypertonic saline (HS) resuscitation decreased inflammation and mucosal injury after mesenteric ischemia/reperfusion (I/R). In contrast to I/R cell necrosis, apoptosis provides controlled cell death that minimizes inflammation. We therefore hypothesized that HS resuscitation after mesenteric I/R would induce apoptosis and decrease mucosal injury.

METHODS
Rats underwent 60 minutes of superior mesenteric artery occlusion (SMAO) and then received no resuscitation or resuscitation with 4 mL/kg of HS, 4 mL/kg of lactated Ringer's (LR) solution (equal volume), or 32 mL/kg of LR solution (equal salt load). Rats were killed at 6 hours of reperfusion, and ileum was harvested for analysis. DNA fragmentation (apoptosis) was assessed by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end-labeling (TUNEL) and mucosal injury by histology (Chiu score 0-5). Caspase-3 (proapoptotic mediator) and Bcl-xL (antiapoptotic mediator) protein expression were analyzed by Western immunoblot.

RESULTS
SMAO with no resuscitation, SMAO with 4 mL/kg of LR, and SMAO with 32 mL/kg of LR increased apoptosis (quantitated by TUNEL) and I/R-induced mucosal injury (quantitated by Chiu score). This was associated with an increase to similar levels in both proapoptotic caspase-3 and antiapoptotic Bcl-xL protein expression. Moreover, SMAO with 4 mL/kg of HS further increased apoptosis but decreased mucosal injury. This was associated with a differential expression of proapoptotic caspase-3 over antiapoptotic Bcl-xL.

CONCLUSION
HS resuscitation after mesenteric I/R significantly increased ileal mucosal apoptosis while decreasing mucosal injury and may represent a novel mechanism by which HS resuscitation after mesenteric I/R reduces inflammation and imparts protection to the gut.


Writers challenge the governing traditions and values, beliefs, and interests, so they can take a stand against injustice. Academic writing plays a vital role in the discursive construction and maintenance of the hegemony of the dominant class. The paper purposed to explore the link between academic writing and politics. Thus, we explore how academic writing empowers authors to influence various aspects of their lives using library research method in this paper. Applying Gramsci's social theory, we discuss the relationship between academic writing and politics under four themes: writing in the global context, politics of academic language, writing and ideology, and the power of writing. The findings suggest that academic writing is connected with power, politics, and ideologies to influence and control others through intellectual and moral unity along with the accord of economic and political power. This paper also concludes that academic writing enhances people to organize the multitude of social beliefs about good or bad, or acceptable or unacceptable for them to bring change in their lives.


Particle-based simulation plays an important role in many different fields of science and engineering. Two common visualization approaches for the resulting data are glyph-based rendering and density sampling employing volume rendering. Fine geometric features are inherently captured by glyph-based methods. However, they might suffer from aliasing and the global structure is often poorly conveyed. Volume rendering preserves the global structure but is limited due to the sampling resolution. To avoid aliasing artifacts and large memory footprints, we propose a direct volume rendering technique with on-demand density sampling of the particle data, as combination of splatting, texture slicing, and ray casting. We optimized our system with a novel ray cast termination employing early-z-test culling and hardware occlusion queries utilizing inter-frame coherency. Our system contains a fully-featured volume renderer and captures all geometric features of the data set representable at the available display resolution. Since no pre-computation is required, the proposed method can be used easily to visualize time-dependent data sets. The effectiveness of our approach is shown with examples from different application fields.


Ferrite devices based on Faraday rotation remain of interest at both microwave and millimeter wavelengths. Although a complete mathematical description of ferrite cylinders in round waveguides is available, the experimental verification of rotation or differential phase shift in a round waveguide is not simple. The paper describes a resonant cavity procedure which permits the evaluation of the two propagation constants in such a magnetised waveguide. It is obtained by incorporating the Faraday rotator section into a resonator structure by closing both ends of the waveguide and separately tuning its length for each of the two split branches of the magnetised resonator to the frequency of the demagnetised one. The paper includes a lower bound on the length of the rotator bit (or an upper bound on the splitting between the phase constants) in terms of the directivity of the section.


Abstract Objective: People with a life-limiting physical illness experience high rates of significant psychological and psychiatric morbidity. Nevertheless, psychiatrists often report feeling ill-equipped to respond to the psychiatric needs of this population. Our aim was to explore psychiatry trainees' views and educational needs regarding the care of patients with a life-limiting physical illness. Method: Using semistructured interviews, participants' opinions were sought on the role of psychiatrists in the care of patients with a life-limiting illness and their caregivers, the challenges faced within the role, and the educational needs involved in providing care for these patients. Interviews were audiotaped, fully transcribed, and then subjected to thematic analysis. Results: A total of 17 psychiatry trainees were recruited through two large psychiatry training networks in New South Wales, Australia. There were contrasting views on the role of psychiatry in life-limiting illness. Some reported that a humanistic, supportive approach including elements of psychotherapy was helpful, even in the absence of a recognizable mental disorder. Those who reported a more biological and clinical stance (with a reliance on pharmacotherapy) tended to have a nihilistic view of psychiatric intervention in this setting. Trainees generally felt ill-prepared to talk to dying patients and felt there was an educational "famine" in this area of psychiatry. They expressed a desire for more training and thought that increased mentorship and case-based learning, including input from palliative care clinicians, would be most helpful. Significance of Results: Participants generally feel unprepared to care for patients with a life-limiting physical illness and have contrasting views on the role of psychiatry in this setting. Targeted education is required for psychiatry trainees in order to equip them to care for these patients.


Abstract Objectives Clinical practice guidelines recommend a focus on regional interdependence for the management of chronic low back pain (CLBP). This study investigated the additive effect of regional manual therapy (RMT) when combined with standard physical therapy (SPT) in a subgroup with CLBP. Methods Forty-six participants with CLBP and movement coordination impairments were randomly assigned to receive SPT consisting of a motor control exercise program and lumbar spine manual therapy, or SPT with the addition of RMT to the hips, pelvis, and thoracic spine. Outcome measures included disability level, pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, fear avoidance beliefs, and perceived effect of treatment. Appropriate parametric and non-parametric testing was used for analysis. Results Both groups demonstrated improvements in disability level, pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, and fear avoidance beliefs across time (P < 0.001). There was no difference between groups for any variable over 12 weeks, although a significantly greater proportion of participants in the RMT group exceeded the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for disability. The perceived effect of treatment also was significantly higher in the group receiving RMT at two weeks and four weeks, but not 12 weeks. Discussion SPT with or without RMT resulted in significant improvements in disability level, pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, and fear avoidance beliefs over 12 weeks in persons with CLBP and movement coordination impairments. RMT resulted in greater perceived effect of treatment, and a clinically meaningful improvement in disability, across four weeks compared to SPT alone. Level of Evidence: 1b Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov registration No. NCT02170753


The Alignment and Phasing System (APS) of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is responsible for positioning individual segments of the primary mirror, as well as the secondary and tertiary mirrors. Given its essential role, understanding the as-specified behavior and verifying related requirements is vital to the correct operation of the TMT. Analyzing the behavior of APS is challenging due to the variety of interactions with other subsystems. This paper presents results from developing an integrated system model that captures the structure, behavior, and requirements in a formal modeling language to enable automated verification using appropriate solvers. Specifically, demonstrated and discussed are the results of applying a Systems Modeling Language (SysML) based approach in which operational modes, behavior specifications and use case scenarios are used for the purpose of verifying requirements on timing, power, and pointing error through system-level simulation using a single, integrated model.


The particle density of ground-state chromium atoms within one cross section of an arc plasma was measured spatially resolved, and the spatial distribution of the line shape of the chromium resonance line at 427.48 nm was partly determined. The measurements were performed with a newly developed setup that combines the methods of resonance interferometry and refractive tomography. The wavelength of a dye laser was scanned over the investigated transition, and the refractive index was measured spatially and spectrally resolved by use of tomography. For each spatial point the particle density and the local line shape were calculated from the measured spectral refractivity distribution by the method of resonance interferometry. We describe the physical principles, the optical arrangement, and the numerical apparatus, and we discuss the results and further possibilities.


SNAM operates more than 29,000 km of gas transmission pipelines in Italy. The pipelines have diameters up to 56″, with different MAOP up to 75 bar. The oldest ones were built in the 40s and new ones are nowadays under construction.
 Italy, like most of the European countries, is characterized by a high level of anthropic presence on the territory; moreover, many pipelines cross the country from south to north, passing through the Appennini mountains, where there are many areas with geological instabilities (landslides).
 Different pipelines can have different features, issues and challenges, but, for all of them, the TSO must guarantee a high level of safety in terms of structural integrity.
 In such a scenario, a TSO must tackle many questions in order to properly manage the integrity of its pipelines that compose the complex asset that is the whole network: where do I need to do local actions? Is there any pipeline that is convenient to totally replace? Which ones of the existing unpiggable pipelines should I invest to make piggable? Is there a way to establish the priorities for all these actions?
 SNAM built two tools to prioritize such actions on all its pipelines: the first tool is a model able to produce a ranking of all the pipelines as a function of the technical convenience for their replacement, the second tool is a model that produce a ranking of all the pipelines as a function of the technical convenience to make them piggable. Both the models provide numerical and objective tools, based on technical local data of the pipelines and of the territorial context, that can be applied at once to the whole network and that help the TSO in the strategical decision making oriented to the best management of the integrity of the ageing asset.


Calcium (Ca2+) is a versatile and ubiquitous second messenger in all eukaryotes including plants. In response to various stimuli, cytosolic calcium concentration ([Ca2+]cyt) is increased, leading to activation of Ca2+ sensors including Arabidopsis calcineurin B-like proteins (CBLs). CBLs interact with CBL-interacting protein kinases (CIPKs) to form CBL-CIPK complexes and transduce the signal downstream in the signalling pathway. Although there are many reports on the regulation of downstream targets by CBL-CIPK module, knowledge about the regulation of upstream components by individual CIPKs is inadequate. In the present study, we have carried out a detailed biochemical characterization of CIPK9, a known regulator of K+ deficiency in Arabidopsis, with its interacting CBLs. The present study suggests that CIPK9 specifically interacts with four CBLs, i.e. CBL1, CBL2, CBL3 and CBL9, in yeast two-hybrid assays. Out of these four CBLs, CBL2 and CBL3, specifically enhance the kinase activity of CIPK9, while the CBL1 and CBL9 decrease it as examined by in vitro kinase assays. In contrast, truncated CIPK9 (CIPK9ΔR), without the CBL-interacting regulatory C-terminal region, is not differentially activated by interacting CBLs. The protein phosphorylation assay revealed that CBL2 and CBL3 serve as preferred substrates of CIPK9. CBL2- and CBL3-CIPK9 complexes show altered requirement for metal cofactors when compared with CIPK9 alone. Moreover, the autophosphorylation of constitutively active CIPK9 (CIPK9T178D) and less active CIPK9 (CIPK9T178A) in the presence of CBL2 and CBL3 was further enhanced. Our study suggests that CIPK9 differentially phosphorylates interacting CBLs, and furthermore, the kinase activity of CIPK9 is also differentially regulated by specific interacting CBLs.


objective: To identify and quantify the most frequent prescription errors in inpatients' medical prescriptions. Methods: A survey of prescription errors was performed in the inpatients' medical prescriptions, from July 2008 to May 2009 for eight hours a day. results: At total of 3,931 prescriptions was analyzed and 362 (9.2%) prescription errors were found, which involved the healthcare team as a whole. Among the 16 types of errors detected in prescription, the most frequent occurrences were lack of information, such as dose (66 cases, 18.2%) and administration route (26 cases, 7.2%); 45 cases (12.4%) of wrong transcriptions to the information system; 30 cases (8.3%) of duplicate drugs; doses higher than recommended (24 events, 6.6%) and 29 cases (8.0%) of prescriptions with indication but not specifying allergy. Conclusion: Medication errors are a reality at hospitals. All healthcare professionals are responsible for the identification and prevention of these errors, each one in his/her own area. The pharmacist is an essential professional in the drug therapy process. All hospital organizations need a pharmacist team responsible for medical prescription analyses before preparation, dispensation and administration of drugs to inpatients. This study showed that the pharmacist improves the inpatient's safety and success of prescribed therapy.


As an important transmission component, the spur gearbox may cause great losses if it fails, so fault diagnosis is the key to ensure the normal operation of the equipment. In this paper, a multilayer gated recurrent unit (MGRU) method is proposed, which uses a three-layer gated recurrent unit (GRU) to deal with the fault diagnosis of the spur gear. Due to the complexity of the spur gearbox fault, vibration measurement is carried out separately at first. Then the vibration signals are extracted from the time domain and time-frequency domain. Finally, MGRU is used to learn representation and classification. By using this model, fault features can be deeply learned layer by layer, and feature types can be identified with higher accuracy. The proposed method was applied to two spur gears (number of teeth Gear1= 53, and Gear2= 80), which were installed on the input and the output shafts of the gearbox, and there are 10 state modes in total. To evaluate the method's performance, four methods were applied to compare, which are (GRU, multilayer long short-term memory (MLSTM), long short-term memory (LSTM) and support vector machine (SVM)) respectively. The classification result of MGRU model shows that it is effective for spur gear fault diagnosis.


BACKGROUND
Age related changes in the number of Brunner's Glands (BG) in four anatomical parts of human duodenum were studied. The few studies done on this topic were conducted mainly in men. Studies involving a much larger age group, from foetuses to elderly individuals up to 85years of age including both sexes were not done earlier and were evaluated.

AIM
To find out whether the number of (BG) differs with increasing age in the four anatomical parts of duodenum.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study was carried out on the basis of 74 specimens taken from still-born foetuses. The patients were divided into four groups as <1-25 years, 26-50 years, 51-75 years and 76-85 years. Duodenal biopsies without gastrointestinal disorders were included in the study group. Sections were prepared and stained with haematoxylin-eosin. Ten microscopic fields of vision (FOV) were examined under high power on every representative slide from each duodenal portion and average was calculated. The (BGs) were analyzed quantitatively. The final result was expressed as the number of glands per high power field. The average number of (BG) in field of vision per high power field for each of the age groups was tabulated for subsequent statistical study. The documented data was calculated by the SPSS, version 16.0 software.

RESULT
The decrease in (BG) is significant (p-value < 0.001) in the superior (first) and ascending (fourth) part of duodenum in all the age groups.

CONCLUSION
It suggests that the number of glands can differ according to variations in age in duodenum.


Today the algorithmic moves off the white- board and into the world, producing subjectivities, articulating relationships, and shaping behaviours. Yet to obtain its objectives, the algorithmic must draw upon bodies, flows, and materials — matter which is contentious and agents which have their own intentionalities. Efficacy cannot simply be assumed, but must be incessantly negotiated via a set of procedures. What are the operations needed to incorporate subjects and spaces into regimes of algorithmic coordination? By examining the ride-sharing platform Uber as a case-study, three operations are identified as critical: encapsulation, enlistment and enchantment. When these operations are incomplete, algorithmic traction on a subject slips away, producing an array of undesired and unanticipated effects.


OBJECTIVES
Imipenem and cefoxitin are used to treat Mycobacterium abscessus infections and have moderate activity against this fast-growing mycobacterium (MIC₅₀ of 16 and 32 mg/L, respectively). M. abscessus is highly resistant to most other β-lactams, although the underlying mechanisms have not been explored. Here, we characterized M. abscessus class A β-lactamase (Bla(Mab)) and investigated its role in β-lactam resistance.

METHODS
Hydrolysis kinetic parameters of purified Bla(Mab) were determined by spectrophotometry for various β-lactams and compared with those of related BlaC from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. MICs of β-lactams were determined for M. abscessus CIP104536 and for Escherichia coli producing Bla(Mab) and BlaC.

RESULTS
Bla(Mab) had a broad hydrolysis spectrum, similar to that of BlaC, but with overall higher catalytic efficiencies, except for cefoxitin. As expected from its in vivo efficacy, cefoxitin was very slowly hydrolysed by Bla(Mab) (k(cat)/K(m) = 6.7 M(-1) s(-1)). Bla(Mab) hydrolysed imipenem more efficiently (k(cat)/K(m) = 3.0 × 10(4) M(-1) s(-1)), indicating that the in vivo activity of this drug might be improved by combination with a β-lactamase inhibitor. β-Lactamase inhibitors clavulanate, tazobactam and sulbactam did not inhibit Bla(Mab). This enzyme efficiently hydrolysed clavulanate, in contrast to BlaC, which is irreversibly acylated by this inhibitor. Bla(Mab) and BlaC were functional in E. coli and the resistance profiles mediated by these enzymes were in agreement with the kinetic parameters.

CONCLUSIONS
M. abscessus produces a clavulanate-insensitive broad-spectrum β-lactamase that limits the in vivo efficacy of β-lactams.


Franz Sikora found the first specimen and type of the recently extinct Hadropithecus stenognathus in Madagascar in 1899 and sent it to Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau of the Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences. Later, he sent several more specimens including a subadult skull that was described by Lorenz von Liburnau in 1902. In 2003, some of us excavated at the locality and found more specimens belonging to this species, including much of a subadult skeleton. Two frontal fragments were found, and these, together with most of the postcranial bones, belong to the skull. CT scans of the skull and other jaw fragments were made in Vienna and those of the frontal fragments at Penn State University. The two fragments have been reunited with the skull in silico, and broken parts from one side of the skull have been replaced virtually by mirror-imaged complete parts from the other side. The parts of the jaw of another individual of a slightly younger dental age have also been reconstructed virtually from CT scans with mirror imaging and by using the maxillary teeth and temporomandibular joints as a guide to finish the reconstruction. Apart from forming a virtual skull for biomechanical and systematic analysis, we were also able to make a virtual endocast. Missing anterior pieces were reconstructed by using part of an endocast of the related Archaeolemur majori. The volume is 115 ml. Hadropithecus and Archaeolemur seem to have had relatively large brains compared with the other large-bodied subfossil lemurs.


ABSTRACT The outermost layer of Mycobacterium tuberculosiscontains two major polysaccharides, arabinomannan (AM) and glucan (GC). We studied the in vitro and in vivo expression of anM. tuberculosis AM antigen using monoclonal antibody (MAb) 9d8 (2a), an isotype-switched variant of the immunoglobulin G3 (IgG3) MAb 9d8. MAb 9d8 had been previously shown to bind M. tuberculosis AM and the M. tuberculosis surface. Our in vitro experiments showed that MAb 9d8(2a) bound strongly to whole-cell M. tuberculosis Erdman but not to the CDC 1551 strain grown in medium for an extended period. However, AM antigen was detected in the culture supernatant of both strains, and its concentration increased in a time-dependent manner. The detection of AM antigen from both strains was decreased in the presence of Tween 80. In mice infected with M. tuberculosis Erdman, AM antigen accumulated in organ homogenates concomitant to an increase in bacterial organ burden and an increase in IgG and IgM titer to AM. These results (i) indicate that the surface expression of AM during in vitro growth changes with culture age, is strain dependent, and is affected by the presence of Tween 80 in the culture media; (ii) show that AM is produced by bacteria growth in vivo; and (iii) demonstrate that the amount of in vivo-detected AM can be dependent on the number of bacteria in the infected organ.


Despite great progress in Vietnam's general investment environment, barriers exist which impede U.S. investment in Vietnam's real estate market. While Vietnam remains a socialist country, drastic liberalization of its market structure and investment laws have made Vietnam a more attractive environment for most U.S. investors. However, barriers remain for U.S. investors seeking to invest in Vietnam's real estate, specifically property developers wishing to build tourism complexes. These barriers include weak transportation infrastructure, financial and humanitarian issues posed by site clearance, and lack of accountability in the real estate licensing system. To facilitate U.S. investment in Vietnam's real estate, Vietnam should strategically target transportation infrastructure projects and improve infrastructure financing schemes; decrease the issues posed by site clearance through increased government participation; and increase accountability in its licensing system by reconciling the conflicting ideologies of the local and national governments and by reducing corruption. With implementation of such changes, Vietnam may attract greater U.S. investment in its real estate market.


We present a theoretical study of server-side optimization in federated learning. Our results are the first to show that the widely popular heuristic of scaling the client updates with an extra parameter is very useful in the context of Federated Averaging (FedAvg) with local passes over the client data. Each local pass is performed without replacement using Random Reshuffling, which is a key reason we can show improved complexities. In particular, we prove that whenever the local stepsizes are small, and the update direction is given by FedAvg in conjunction with Random Reshuffling over all clients, one can take a big leap in the obtained direction and improve rates for convex, strongly convex, and non-convex objectives. In particular, in non-convex regime we get an enhancement of the rate of convergence from $\mathcal{O}\left(\varepsilon^{-3}\right)$ to $\mathcal{O}\left(\varepsilon^{-2}\right)$. This result is new even for Random Reshuffling performed on a single node. In contrast, if the local stepsizes are large, we prove that the noise of client sampling can be controlled by using a small server-side stepsize. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that local steps provably help to overcome the communication bottleneck. Together, our results on the advantage of large and small server-side stepsizes give a formal justification for the practice of adaptive server-side optimization in federated learning. Moreover, we consider a variant of our algorithm that supports partial client participation, which makes the method more practical.


We present new results obtained from the modeling of a tulip-like variable curvature mirror (VCM) in the case of a central force that reacts to its contour. From Nastran finite element analysis, we shows that 3-D optimizations, using non-linear static flexural option, with an appropriate solution sequence, provide an accurate tulip-like VCM thickness distribution. This allows us to take into account boundary conditions, including the thin outer collarette and its link to a rigid ring. Modeling with a quenched stainless steel chromium substrate provides diffraction-limited optical surfaces. Rayleigh's quarter-wave criterion is performed over a zoom range from flat up to f/3.5 convexity over a 13 mm clear aperture and 10 daN central force. The optical testing results of a prototype tulip-like VCM elaborated from the previous analytic theory, show quasi-diffraction-limited figures for a zoom range up to f/5. The present modeling results should significantly help in the future construction of such VCMs with a zoom range extended up to f/3.5.


Success in calculus undoubtedly requires the ability to coordinate multiple representations (CMR; i.e., coordinate among graphs, equations, tables representing the same function). This presentation will describe a study in which calculus and pre-calculus high school students are presented with CMR activities involving graphs and equations, first in their standard format, and then in an enhanced format designed to facilitate coordination between the order/sign of the function and the shape/direction of the graph. Students will also be tested on their visuospatial working memory, conceptual knowledge of calculus, spatial skills, and their knowledge of strategies for completing CMR problems. We will investigate whether individual or group-level differences in these background measures and their class placement lead to different levels of responsiveness to the enhanced presentation format. Both success vs. failure on the CMR problems and the particular strategies students use to solve the problems will be evaluated.


In this paper, we extend the work of Ozyoruk and Long, for predicting farfield noise from ducted fans using a higher order coupled Euler/Navier-Stokes solver along with a Kirchhoff formulation, to full engine configurations on distributed parallel computers. Incorporating the exhaust along with the inlet raises many issues relating to appropriate grid topologies, multigrid acceleration and the unsteady numerics. These issues are addressed in this paper and simulations pertaining to a realistic engine geometry are presented. Qualitative comparisons are in good agreement with results from a frequency domain code, pertaining to radiation from a dipole in a cylinder. Simulations relating to radiation from an engine geometry, and with and without the centerbody, with and without mass flow are also shown.


In this paper, we consider the problem of optimizing the revenue a web publisher gets through real-time bidding (i.e. from ads sold in real-time auctions) and direct (i.e. from ads sold through contracts agreed in advance). We consider a setting where the publisher is able to bid in the real-time bidding auction for each impression. If it wins the auction, it chooses a direct campaign to deliver and displays the corresponding ad. This paper presents an algorithm to build an optimal strategy for the publisher to deliver its direct campaigns while maximizing its real-time bidding revenue. The optimal strategy gives a formula to determine the publisher bid as well as a way to choose the direct campaign being delivered if the publisher bidder wins the auction, depending on the impression characteristics. The optimal strategy can be estimated on past auctions data. The algorithm scales with the number of campaigns and the size of the dataset. This is a very important feature, as in practice a publisher may have thousands of active direct campaigns at the same time and would like to estimate an optimal strategy on billions of auctions. The algorithm is a key component of a system which is being developed, and which will be deployed on thousands of web publishers worldwide, helping them to serve efficiently billions of ads a day to hundreds of millions of visitors.


South China is rich in vein-type hydrothermal uranium deposits hosted in granitic, volcanic, and carbonaceous and siliceous pelitic sedimentary rocks. The uranium deposits are spatially associated with extensional structures and/or mantle-derived mafic dikes. Both the uranium deposits and mafic dikes are Cretaceous to Tertiary in age, temporally coincident with the crustal extension. Carbon isotope analyses of calcite deposited in the main-stage mineralization in the veins from 12 representative uranium deposits yield δ13C values of ore-forming fluids mainly from −4 to −8 per mil, which are permissive of a mantle origin for the CO2 in the ore-forming fluids. A mantle origin is consistent with the association of the deposits with mafic dikes and the 3He/4He ratios of ore-forming fluids (e.g., 0.10–2.02 Ra for the volcanic-hosted Xiangshan uranium deposit). Isotopic compositions of H and O demonstrate that water in the ore-forming fluids is predominantly meteoric in origin. Ore-forming temperatures ranged approximately from 150° to 250°C.

Uranium-rich crustal rocks in South China may have been the sources for the uranium. Crustal extension and associated mafic magmatism are considered to have heated the rocks and allowed CO2 (possibly from mantle sources) to migrate upward and to mix with CO2-poor meteoric water. The CO2-rich hydrothermal fluids mobilized uranium from the source rocks and then the uranium was deposited in various host rocks to form the uranium deposits.


WindSat is the first space-based polarimetric microwave radiometer. It is designed to evaluate the capability of polarimetric microwave radiometry to measure ocean surface wind vectors from space. The sensor provides risk reduction for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Conical Scanning Microwave Imager/Sounder, which is planned to provide wind vector data operationally starting in 2010. The channel set also enables retrieval of sea surface temperature, and columnar water vapor and cloud liquid water over the oceans. We describe statistical algorithms for retrieval of these parameters, and a combined statistical/maximum-likelihood estimator algorithm for retrieval of wind vectors. We present a quantitative analysis of the initial wind vector retrievals relative to QuikSCAT wind vectors.


Reduction of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in drinking water treatment lines is today a priority of drinking water producers. A nanofiltration (NF) treatment was introduced with this objective during autumn 1999 in the Mery-sur-Oise treatment plant which feeds the northern Parisian suburbs distribution system. This study compares the water quality in the distribution system, first fed by a biological treatment line and then by the line including NF. Data confirmed the capability of NF treatment to produce drinking water with a low DOC content (average 0.5 mgC l−1) from surface water. The reduction of DOC concentration in water treated by NF, in comparison with the DOC content of water produced by the biological treatment line, increased chlorine stability during distribution and thus allowed a decrease in the chlorination level (chlorine residual at the outlet of the plant: 0.2 mgCl2 l−1). This resulted in a more than 50% reduction of trihalomethanes (THMs) formation. By reducing the biodegradable fraction of DOC (BDOC), NF also increased biological stability of the water and the microbiological water quality during distribution. In addition, the NF treatment allowed an increase in the physico-chemical water quality: reduction of the alkalinity, turbidity, aluminium and atrazine concentration. A survey comparing the opinions of consumers on their tap water indicated a better global appreciation after introduction of the NF treatment.


This paper discusses a four-year study that examined student evaluation of the integration of the Lego MindStorms RCX platform across a computing sciences curriculum at a mid-size liberal arts university. The study surveyed 178 students in introductory, intermediate, and advanced computer science courses on their experiences with a variety of Lego MindStorms lab modules. The study design takes into account earlier findings regarding deployment of MindStorms in laboratory projects. A feature of the study is that it examines student perception of the RCX's role as a general computing platform across the curriculum instead of as a robotics platform. The results indicate that students perceive the MindStorms platform as consistently relevant across the study of core computer science. The study also has implications for the integration of robotics within computing curricula.


The objective of this research is to examine the influence of several corporate governance mechanisms, namely managerial ownership and institutional ownership; information of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosed in the companies' annual reports, and the rate of corporate governance perception index (CGPI) on earnings quality (measured by earning response coefficient/ERC). The sample of this research is all private company listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) since 1993 which include the top ten and non-top ten of corporate governance perception index (CGPI) rate in 2002-2008, except 2007. The number of sample is 53 samples from 28 companies collected. By using regression analysis, the result of this research show that : (a) managerial ownership has no influence on earnings quality;(b) institutional ownership has no influence on earnings quality; (c) the level of CSR disclosure has influence on earnings quality; and (d) the corporate governance perception index (CGPI) rate has no influence on earnings quality in five percent level of significance,but it is significant in ten percent level of significance. This result indicates that investors asses the CSR information disclosed by the companies in their annual reports for their investment decision. Keywords : corporate governance mechanism, corporate social responsibility, earning quality


Abstract Net protein values and nitrogen retention were determined to evaluate feathers processed under different conditions. In addition, each feather meal sample was chemically analyzed for pepsin digestibility, available lysine, ether extract, ash, amino acids and protein content. The "standard" processed feather meal resulted in a lower net protein value than did any of the "new" further-processed feather meals. Feather meal processed for 50 p.s.i. with intermittent agitation (agitate 1 minute, stop 2 minute) resulted in the highest net protein value of all the feather meals. This same feather meal also contained the highest level of available lysine, methionine and histidine when compared with other feather meals. Nitrogen retention decreased linearly when feather meal protein was increased in the diet from 3 to 9%. Only with the 9% feather meal protein level, however, was a marked decrease in nitrogen retention observed. Feather meals did not differ greatly enough in pepsin digestibility to result in valid conclusions on this basis. Feather meals processed under more severe conditions, however, tended to have slightly higher pepsin digestibility values. Of the lysine present in the feather meals, on the average, 72.5% was "available lysine." The more severely processed feather meals contained more available lysine than did the feather meals processed under milder conditions.


Functional analysis and surface phenotyping using monoclonal antibodies have revealed that malignant T lymphocyte populations in the peripheral blood of patients with Sézary's syndrome resemble the T helper cell populations from normal individuals. In this article we have studied the effects of the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine A (CsA) on growth, interleukin-2 (IL-2) production, and the induction of IL-2 responsiveness of peripheral blood monocytes (PBMs) from five patients with Sézary's syndrome in vitro, using the lectin phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and the phorbol ester phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) as stimuli. The following results were obtained: PHA-induced cell proliferation was significantly more sensitive to inhibition by CsA than that induced by PMA or a combination of PMA and PHA (P less than .005). Sézary PBMs produced only small amounts of IL-2 in response to PHA. Stimulation with PMA, however, resulted in significant IL-2 production. PMA and PHA, when given in combination, acted synergistically. The low levels of IL-2 production induced by PHA or PMA were more sensitive to CsA-mediated suppression than those induced by a combination of PHA and PMA (75% and 55% suppression, respectively). CsA-mediated growth suppression could be overcome if the cultures were supplemented with appropriate amounts of exogenous IL-2. We conclude from our data, that CsA in Sézary PBMs inhibits T cell growth indirectly as a consequence of suppression of IL-2 growth indirectly as a consequence of suppression of IL-2 production. Moreover, like normal T lymphocytes, Sézary PBMs do not express the IL-2 receptor spontaneously, but can be induced to do so. CsA does not interfere with intracellular events leading to the expression and the biologic function of the IL-2 receptor.


In this paper, we introduce the the notions of MRK-algebra, and some fundamental to MRK-algebra are discussed. The concepts of G-part, p-radical, medial of a MRK-algebra are introduced and studied their properties. We proved that the variety of all medial MRK-algebras is congruence permutable and showed that every associative MRK-algebra is a group.


This chapter presents a selective review of a literature in marketing that analyzes diffusion and pricing over the product life-cycle. I primarily focus on empirical work, and on papers that deal with the dynamics of pricing over time. I discuss how recent empirical work has linked outcomes to microfoundations and accommodated a role for forward-looking consumers and firms. I emphasize a more nuanced perspective of the product life-cycle that has emerged in the literature, as an endogenous outcome arising from the interaction of preferences, expectations, costs and competition in the market, rather than as an exogenously specified process against which marketing strategies should be optimized.


Deep neural network quantization with adaptive bitwidths has gained increasing attention due to the ease of model deployment on various platforms with different resource budgets. In this paper, we propose a meta-learning approach to achieve this goal. Specifically, we propose MEBQAT, a simple yet effective way of bitwidth-adaptive quantization aware training (QAT) where meta-learning is effectively combined with QAT by redefining meta-learning tasks to incorporate bitwidths. After being deployed on a platform, MEBQAT allows the (meta-)trained model to be quantized to any candidate bitwidth then helps to conduct inference without much accuracy drop from quantization. Moreover, with a few-shot learning scenario, MEBQAT can also adapt a model to any bitwidth as well as any unseen target classes by adding conventional optimization or metric-based meta-learning. We design variants of MEBQAT to support both (1) a bitwidth-adaptive quantization scenario and (2) a new few-shot learning scenario where both quantization bitwidths and target classes are jointly adapted. We experimentally demonstrate their validity in multiple QAT schemes. By comparing their performance to (bitwidth-dedicated) QAT, existing bitwidth adaptive QAT and vanilla meta-learning, we find that merging bitwidths into meta-learning tasks achieves a higher level of robustness.


Future broadband satellite access networks will provide user connectivity via a return channel from a centralized hub. The forward channel can be embedded into the broadcast channel yielding asymmetric bandwidth ratios of 10:1 or greater. To meet such a bandwidth asymmetry as well as the required quality of service, QoS, selection of multiple access and media access control protocols plays a significant role among other design issues. In most of the recent satellite access networks, the forward traffic is broadcasted to satellite interactive terminals (SITs) using the ETSI specified DVB-S protocol. For the return channel multiple access protocol, options based on multi-frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA) and random multiple access (RMA) are available. We present a comparative overview of connection- and contention-oriented multiple access and focus on the use of spread ALOHA by using one single long code.


treatment. There are discussions of changes of brain constituents, especially various lipids, during development. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the symposium is the considerable attention paid to structural-chemical relationships. This is first emphasized in the introduction. There is an excellent tutorial on the ultrastructural changes relating to synaptic organization that occur during development. There is a review of interesting work on the nuclear-ribosomal changes during early differentiation of the Purkinje cell. Changes in the gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) system during brain development are described, and the development of monoaminergic transmission networks in rat brain is traced. Factors influencing the development of autonomic neurons in vitro are considered. There are articles on the effects of hormones on brain development and on the effects of deafferentation upon the biochemical development of avian optic centers as measured by incorporation of "H-leucine. Methodological approaches and current work on myelinogenesis are described. The final section of the book is concerned with the now pressing problem of the relationship of nutrition to brain development. Evidence for the vulnerable-period hypothesis is summarized showing that if whole-body growth retardation is imposed at the time of the brain growth spurt, neither the whole body nor the brain can completely recover simply by restoration to a normal diet. In human beings, this brain growth spurt begins at the end of the second trimester and ends between 18 months and 2 vears of postnatal life, considerably later than had been previously estimated. Rats nutritionally deprived during their vulnerable period in the first 20 days of life show a reduction in RNA and ganglioside per cell in cerebral cortex as well as changes in myelin components. Deprivation of essential fatty acids has a marked effect upon the development of the central nervous system. Thus, there are useful and up-to-date reports dealing with changes in brain constituents during development and the development of specific cellular systenis in brain and in the peripheral autonomic system and discussions of the effects of nutritional deprivation upon brain. If the publisher were to lower the price significantly, this book could be highly recommended to neurologists, biochemists, pediatricians, and others interested in the chemistry of the developing nervous system.


Abstract
This study contributes to a vibrant conversation in inclusive education in Saudi Arabia by focusing on the attitudes of primary school principals and teachers, and teacher perceived efficacy. In order to complete the research objectives, the following have been investigated: (1) the attitudes of principals and teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities with special emphasis on students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), (2) the relationship between their attitudes and the perceived efficacy level needed by teachers to teach students with disabilities including those diagnosed with ASD, (3) the influence of certain demographic variables on school principals and teachers' attitudes and teachers perceived efficacy towards the inclusion of students with disabilities including those diagnosed with ASD, and (4) the facilitators and barriers perceived by the school principals and teachers that would impact the successful implementation of inclusive education in Saudi Arabia.
Using an exploratory quantitative research approach, data was collected from 83 school principals and 1,529 teachers from inclusive primary schools in Al-Dammam and Al-Ahsa in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that school principals had moderately positive attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular primary schools but were least positive about including students with severe disabilities in a regular classroom. The findings further revealed that school principals were not very positive about including students diagnosed with ASD in regular primary schools. Importantly, lack of adequate professional education and knowledge in Autism Spectrum disorder and administrative challenges significantly influenced their attitudes towards the inclusion of students diagnosed with ASD. In addition, school principals who had experience teaching students with disabilities had more positive attitudes towards inclusion than those with no such experience. Although the school teachers were generally positive about inclusive education, they demonstrated the least positive attitudes on their willingness to adapt curriculum to meet the individual needs of students. Demographic variables such as gender, educational area, experience teaching students with disabilities, contact with a person with a disability, and training to teach students with disabilities have influenced the differences in attitudes; for example, male teachers reported more positive attitudes than female teachers towards student with disabilities. The school teachers of Saudi Arabia showed the most positive attitudes to manage the disruptive behaviours of students diagnosed with ASD. Teachers generally perceived high levels of efficacy to teach students with disabilities including those diagnosed with ASD. The findings also demonstrate a strong relationship between teachers' attitudes and perceived efficacy. Teachers' perceived efficacy was also influenced by several demographic variables, which were gender, age, educational area, years of teaching experience and contact with a person with a disability; for example, male teachers had higher levels of perceived efficacy towards the inclusion of students with disabilities than the female teachers.
These findings shed light on the complexity as well as opportunities for developing a robust and effective inclusive education in Saudi Arabia. In light of the findings several implications and recommendations were proposed for implementation to improve inclusive education in Saudi Arabia, the most important being targeted professional development programs for principals to develop their knowledge, and their administrative and instructional skills, and to apply those when running inclusive programs in their schools. This study will help policy makers, including the Education Ministry of Saudi Arabia, in developing pragmatic guidelines for inclusive practices in Saudi Arabia.


A method to tune the hues of neutral green conjugated electrochromic polymers (NG-ECP) via direct C–H arylation polymerization (DArP) was developed. We used 4,7-dibromo-2,1,3-benzothidiazole and 2,7-dibromofluorene to randomly copolymerize with ProDOT via DArP and successfully obtained a series of green polymers. On varying the ratio of 4,7-dibromo-2,1,3-benzothidiazole and 2,7-dibromofluorene, we can readily adjust the relative intensity of two absorption bands in the visible-light wavelength region, which leads to four green polymers with different hues being obtained. Specifically, increasing the ratio of 4,7-dibromo-2,1,3-benzothidiazole leads to the enhancement of the polymer absorption intensity in the long wavelength (∼550–700 nm) region, while increasing the ratio of 2,7-dibromofluorene will lead to the increase of the polymer absorption intensity in the short wavelength (∼400–500 nm) region. Via the random direct arylation polymerization of multi-component monomers in various ratios, we can precisely control the absorption spectra of neutral green conjugated electrochromic polymers (NG-ECPs) in the visible-light wavelength region. The electrochemical and optical properties, spectroelectrochemical behaviors, and electrochromic performance of these NG-ECPs were characterized and they showed great potential for electrochromic devices such as smart windows and transmissive displays.


Epidemiological observations report an association between intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and cardiovascular diseases. Systemic maternal inflammation is the most common stress during pregnancy, leading to IUGR. We hypothesized that perinatal inflammation and hyperoxygenation induce discernible alterations in cardiomyocyte contractility and calcium signaling, causing early cardiac dysfunction. Pregnant C3H/HeN mice were injected with LPS or saline on embryonic day 16. Newborn mice were placed in 85% O2 or room air (RA) for 14 days. Pups born to LPS-injected dams had reduced birth weight. Echocardiographic measurements revealed that in vivo LV function was compromised in LPS/O2 mice as early as 3 days of life. Isolated cardiomyocytes from LPS/O2 mice at day 14 exhibited decreased sarcomere fractional shortening, along with decreased time-to-90% peak shortening. Calcium transient amplitude was greatest in LPS/O2 mice. SERCA2a mRNA and protein levels were increased and phospholamban mRNA levels were decreased in LPS/O2 mice. Phosphorylation of phospholamban was increased, along with Sorcin mRNA levels in LPS/O2 mice. Combined exposure to perinatal inflammation and hyperoxia resulted in growth restriction, in vivo and in vitro cardiac dysfunction, coinciding with humans and animal models of cardiac dysfunction. Expression of calcium handling proteins during the neonatal period was similar to that observed during fetal stages of development. Our data suggest that perinatal inflammation and hyperoxia exposure alter fetal development, resulting in early cardiac dysfunction.


During the last ten years, Dhillon and Parlett devised a new algorithm (Multiple Relatively Robust Representations, MRRR) for computing numerically orthogonal eigenvectors of a symmetric tridiagonal matrix T with O(n2) cost. It has been incorporated into LAPACK version 3.0 as routine stegr. We have discovered that the MRRR algorithm can fail in extreme cases. Sometimes, eigenvalues agree to working accuracy and MRRR cannot compute orthogonal eigenvectors for them. In this paper, we describe and analyze these failures and various remedies.


The potential of using phase change materials (PCM) in cementitious materials to mitigate damage due to thermal loadings has been recently focus of intensive research. In the case of PCM with transition temperatures near to the freezing point of water, their potential to delay frost in a cementitious matrix has been largely investigated through the monitoring of internal temperature changes when exposed to repeated cycles of subzero and ambient temperature. Yet, the effect of these admixtures to prevent damage in cement-based materials has not been directly studied. In this paper,mortars cylinders of two different sizes and containing 0, 10 and 30%of PCM replacement by volume of aggregates were subjected to frost salt scaling during freeze and thaw cycles. Prior to the start of the weathering and after cycles 1, 3, 7 and 15 the cylindrical specimens were subjected to X-ray microtomography to monitor morphological changes due to frost action, such as chipping and cracks. Compressive and flexural strength, coefficient of thermal expansion and apparent porosity of the undamaged composites were also investigated. Results suggest that the improvement of frost scaling resistance of the mortars with incorporated PCM is a trade-off between resulting mechanical proper-ties, thermal volume stability and porosity of the composite, as evinced from the better performance of mortars with 10%of PCM replacement.


This review of empirical research focused on the preparation of writing teachers synthesizes findings from 82 articles published between 2000 and early 2018. The new understandings generated through this analysis are presented in two sections. First, we provide an overview of how the studies we reviewed draw from and circulate dominant discourses of writing, leading to a call for more transparency and clarity on the part of scholars who study writing and writing pedagogy. Then, we explore experiences in literacy teacher education that may shift the writing identities, beliefs, or teaching practices of prospective writing teachers. We position these shifts as being potentially disruptive to the often uninterrupted circulation of powerful discourses in important and generative ways, since the teaching of writing in the 21st century must break from inherited traditions to best prepare writers to use their voices actively and confidently in the world.


The purpose of this article is to review one new material and one new technique being used in restorative dentistry today. Compomers, new fluoride-releasing resin restorative materials, are compared to conventional glass ionomers in terms of classification, physical properties, and clinical usage. Compomers are not true glass ionomer materials since the acid/base setting reaction, charactheristic of conventional glass ionomers, does not occur. As a consequence, their physical properties of translucency, coefficient of thermal expansion, and strength more closely resemble composite resins than conventional glass ionomers. These differences in physical properties have clinical implications in their usage. In terms of new techniques, clinical and laboratory data now exist to support the method of reattachment of fractured tooth fragments using only dentin bonding agents, in cases where the tooth fragment is available. This method can restore up to 50 percent of the original strength of intact teeth. The technique advocates the use of acid etching and enamel and dentin bonding, without any tooth preparation. In vitro studies have achieved total (100 percent) restoration of intact teeth by bonding a porcelain veneer to the tooth after the reattachment.


Abstract In case of non-specific and relatively mild muscle symptoms, the diagnosis of an inborn error of metabolism could be easily missed. Muscle pain can be the first sign of a mitochondrial disorder, especially in combination with motor developmental delay or associated organ dysfunction. Here we report on six children with a distinctive pattern of symptoms in association with variable, suboptimal mitochondrial dysfunction. This pattern exists of early onset exercise intolerance, fatigue, feeding difficulties and concentration problems associated with recurrent episodes of nocturnal hypothermia, muscle pain and mild motor retardation. No endocrine, cardiac, immunologic, neurodegenerative or psychiatric causes were found to explain these complaints. Based on the presence of muscle pain, multisystem involvement and mild lactic acidemia a mitochondrial disorder was suspected. We found decreased oxidation capacity in muscle, confirming a suboptimal mitochondrial function in our patients. Four out of five patients benefited from high dose riboflavin therapy. We think pediatricians should be aware of the possibility of a mitochondrial dysfunction in children presenting with a combination of diverse but relatively mild, "aspecific" symptoms. We advise to use the Mitochondrial Disease Criteria to evaluate the possibility of mitochondrial disease in these children.


Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is prevalent worldwide, accounting for 90% of all esophageal cancer cases each year, and is the deadliest of all human squamous cell carcinomas. Despite recent progress in defining the molecular changes accompanying ESCC initiation and development, patient prognosis remains poor. The functional annotation of these molecular changes is the necessary next step and requires models that both capture the molecular features of ESCC and can be readily and inexpensively manipulated for functional annotation. Mice treated with the tobacco smoke mimetic 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO) predictably form ESCC and esophageal preneoplasia. Of note, 4NQO lesions also arise in the oral cavity, most commonly in the tongue, as well as the forestomach, which all share the stratified squamous epithelium. However, these mice cannot be simply manipulated for functional hypothesis testing, as generating isogenic mouse models is time- and resource-intensive. Herein, we overcome this limitation by generating single cell-derived three-dimensional (3D) organoids from mice treated with 4NQO to characterize murine ESCC or preneoplastic cells ex vivo. These organoids capture the salient features of ESCC and esophageal preneoplasia, can be cheaply and quickly leveraged to form isogenic models, and can be utilized for syngeneic transplantation experiments. We demonstrate how to generate 3D organoids from normal, preneoplastic, and SCC murine esophageal tissue and maintain and cryopreserve these organoids. The applications of these versatile organoids are broad and include the utilization of genetically engineered mice and further characterization by flow cytometry or immunohistochemistry, the generation of isogeneic organoid lines using CRISPR technologies, and drug screening or syngeneic transplantation. We believe that the widespread adoption of the techniques demonstrated in this protocol will accelerate progress in this field to combat the severe burden of ESCC.


The Miocene Kingston Range-Halloran Hills detachment fault system of the eastern Mojave Desert, California, delineates part of the eastern breakaway zone for a profoundly extended area between the Sierra Nevada and the Spring Mountains structural blocks. The shallow-dipping, west-rooting detachment fault cuts discordantly across Paleozoic and Precambrian units in the Mesozoic foreland fold-and-thrust belt, exhibits west- to southwest-trending corrugations with structural relief of up to 1.5 km, and underlies the terrestrial Shadow Valley basin. Middle Miocene fault displacement and syntectonic sedimentation in the northern basin were terminated at ∼12.4 Ma by intrusion of the large (∼130 km 2 ), shallow-level (≥4 km depth) Kingston Peak pluton across the detachment fault soon after faulting began. Basin sedimentation and fault displacement southeast of the pluton were not, however, disrupted by its emplacement and continued to evolve. Northern "pluton-pinned" and southern "pluton-free" domains were separated by the Blacksmith Hills fault, a northeast-striking, right-slip lateral ramp that accommodated more than 3 km of postpluton differential extension between pinned and nonpinned domains. In more western regions, late phases of detachment-fault-related extension beneath formerly pinned areas (including western and central parts of the pluton itself) are believed to have led to the development of two generations of east-striking left-slip faults. Collectively, these dextral and sinistral transfer faults illustrate the complex patterns of differential extension and accommodation that can characterize detachment-fault systems as adjacent areal domains of extension are generated and die.


Background: Research about prenatal exposure to electromagnetic fields from cell phones among expectant parents and reproductive outcome is limited. The aim of this article is to investigate the association between pregnancy outcome and parental cell phone exposure in a large prospective study. Methods: The study was based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted during the decade 1999–2009. In that study, pregnant women were recruited before a routine ultrasound examination during gestational week 15; they answered a questionnaire at that time and again around gestational week 30. The expectant father was invited to answer a questionnaire during gestational week 15 (2001–2009). The forms contained questions regarding cell phone use. The response rate was 38.7% and the cohort comprised 100,730 singleton births. Pregnancy outcomes were obtained by linkage to the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. Results: The risk of preeclampsia was slightly lower among women with medium and high cell phone exposure compared with low exposure after adjusting for potential confounders. Fathers with testis exposure when using cell phones had a borderline increased risk of perinatal mortality among offspring and a slightly decreased risk of partner developing preeclampsia during pregnancy compared with no cell phone exposure of head or testis. None of the other pregnancy outcomes was associated with cell phone exposure. Conclusions: We found no association between maternal prenatal or paternal preconceptional cell phone exposure and any of the studied pregnancy outcomes. The only risk estimate suggesting a potential increased risk was not consistent with other findings.


We propose a novel method for data reduction in gait recognition, called Subblock Complete Two Dimensional Principal Component Analysis (SbC2DPCA). GEIs were divided into smaller sub-images and redundant subblocks were adaptively removed. Complete Two Dimensional Principal Component Analysis (C2DPCA) was then applied to every sub-image directly, to acquire a set of projection sub-vectors for both row and column directions and these were synthesized into whole features for subsequent classification using nearest neighbor classifier. We evaluate the proposed gait recognition method on the CASIA gait database. The experimental results and analysis show the recognition accuracy of SbC2DPCA to be superior to C2DPCA, with C2DPCA being a special case of SbC2DPCA. The novelty of the proposed method lies in the adaptive removal of redundant data while extracting local features. This translates to data reduction with very minimal loss of information, as demonstrated by the remarkable recognition accuracy when subjects change clothing or have a backpack.


This article recommends teaching strategies aimed at helping students employ substantive re-vision techniques. Despite the time and attention legal writing professors devote to the rewrite phase of an assignment, first-year law students traditionally consider the assignment completed when they hand in the first draft. The rewrite, they assume, consists of making superficial changes - polishing grammar, refining word choice, and improving sentence structure. Although those tasks factor into the rewrite process, they are relatively incidental. As experienced legal writers know, the objectives of a rewrite are to revise and sharpen the analysis, deepen the sophistication of the reasoning, and communicate these insights in a more accessible way to the reader. But inexperienced or novice writers often lack the ability to substantively revise their own work. That is because to effectively revise a draft, the writer must abandon the traditional linear process of composing, and adopt an integrated recursive approach instead. The key is to let go of the subjective writer-based perspective and to substitute an impartial reader-based view. Only then can writers see the flaws in what they have written. Drawing from the literature on composition theory at the undergraduate level, the article suggests that most first-year law students treat the writing process as linear and thus never truly review their work from the reader's standpoint. Consequently, they are unable to see areas in their text that need to be omitted, clarified or expanded and instead make mainly superficial edits when they revise. The article explores methods that encourage students to move beyond such word-processing changes so that they produce improved rewrites that meet their readers' needs.


In Linguistic Polyphony Henning Nolke presents ScaPoLine, a formal linguistic theory developed in Scandinavia in the French linguistic tradition that specifies the linguistic instructions for the creation of polyphonic meaning. Linguistic and textual analyses illustrate how ScaPoLine can be used.


Structural flexibility of robotic manipulators becomes significant and limits the performance of a control system when manipulators are large structures, manipulating on large payloads, and/or operating at high speeds. The question of when a manipulator can be considered rigid or must be considered flexible is studied as a function of manipulator dynamics and task characteristics. Results are interpreted in simple quantitative forms which can be used as design and analysis tools to decide whether or not the manipulator flexibility will be a significant factor for a given task condition. The limitations imposed by the manipulator flexibility on the joint variable feedback control system performance is determined using linear and nonlinear methods. The closed loop eigenstructure behavior of finite dimensional models under joint variable feedback is studied and results are compared with the previously reported results.


The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the empirical literature on country interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships in the first 40 Italian, French and British Blue Chips as of December 2007 (Italy)/March 2008 (France and uk). The theoretical literature identify two possible explanations for interlocking directorships, on the one hand the collusion among players in the same market or in general among enterprises that have business relations among themselves; on the other hand the interest for enterprises to have on their boards bankers, suppliers, and clients so as to reduce information asymmetries. Our findings show two different national models, the French-Italian one and the British one. The first model seems to be characterised by a higher number of companies linked with each other through interlocking directorships; the second model by a more limited number of companies that share just one director at the time. The British system seems to correspond more to the theoretic model of relying creditor and debtors and suppliers and their clients rather than to the collusive model. As for France and Italy, the extent and the redundancy of links among the main listed companies seem to go beyond the need to rely debtors and creditors and suppliers and clients: because of the number of directors in common, their personal profile, the characteristics of the companies connected to each other, the higher degree of centralization of the network than the United Kingdom. While the Italian-French system seems to be closer to the collusive function indicated by the theoretic literature, the observation that it also connects companies which do not seem to operate in the same market seems to point also towards a comparison with centralised economic models.


Soft denture liners are used for edentulous patients to cushion functional forces. We hypothesized that the application of soft liners having viscoelastic properties would lead to the most marked improvement in masticatory function. The shear storage modulus (G9), shear loss modulus (G99), and loss tangent (tan d) were determined for 6 materials by means of a dynamic viscoelastometer. Masticatory function of ten subjects was evaluated by measurements of maximum bite forces and chewing times and frequencies for 2 food samples, and by the use of visual analogue scales. The acrylic materials exhibited viscoelastic behavior, while the silicones exhibited elastic behavior. The improvement in masticatory function compared with hard resin was found to be in the order: acrylic permanent materials > silicone > acrylic temporary materials. The results suggest that the use of materials with higher tan d and G9 provides the most optimum masticatory function for patients requiring the provision of soft liners on their dentures.


Oral manifestations related to HIV infection were evaluated in 184 children of both genders, aging 0-13 years. The oral exams were carried out at the Ambulatory of Pediatric AIDS, São Lucas Hospital and at the Clinics Hospital, both in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, and at the University Hospital and School of Dentistry, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY, USA, from January 1999 to May 2000. A high prevalence of oral manifestations was observed both in Brazilian (72.73%) and American (53.66%) children. The most frequent manifestations were cervical lymphadenopathy, swelling of the parotids, erythematous candidiasis, petechia, gingivitis, xerostomia and angular cheilitis. Children with oral manifestations had almost normal counts of CD4+ T lymphocytes and high viral load.


Aquatic and pulmonate snails were evaluated for their suitability as biomonitors of habitat recovery following an experimental oil spill in a freshwater marshland. The mystery snail, Viviparus georgianus, and the mimic pondsnail, Pseudosuccinea columella, were used as sediment quality biomonitors for a controlled oil-spill experiment at a wetland site along the St. Lawrence River (Ste. Croix, Quebec) to assess the impacts of crude oil, rates of natural recovery, and the efficacy of bioremediation treatments to enhance the bacterial degradation of residual oil in the sediments. Sediments from control sites and oiled sites with or without the application of fertilizers as bioremediation strategies, were evaluated both in situ and under controlled laboratory conditions at various time intervals. Snail survival, growth, and histopathological changes were monitored. While V. georgianus proved to be good biomonitors, P. columella appeared unaffected by the treatments. The differing sensitivity may depend on the gastropods' feeding habits. V. georgianus being a detritivore assimilated contaminants from the sediments, while P. columella, being an herbivore, did not directly assimilate contaminants. Nevertheless, snails show potential as important and ideal "tools" for testing environmental conditions because of their abundance, ease of collection, wide distribution, and relatively sedentary nature.


With the advent of low-carbon economy nowadays, the development of agriculture is necessary to adapt to the situation of global economic development, and transform the agricultural development models. This paper firstly gives an overview of low-carbon economy and low-carbon agriculture, and then points out the possibility of developing the low-carbon agricultural economy in China, and describes the ways to develop the low-carbon agricultural economy. Finally, this paper puts forth the corresponding recommendations for the development of the low-carbon agricultural economy.


This paper addresses the problem of dealing with term mismatch in web search using 'blending'. In blending, the input query as well as queries similar to it are used to retrieve documents, the ranking results of documents with respect to the queries are combined to generate a new ranking list. We propose a principled approach to blending, using a kernel method and click-through data. Our approach consists of three elements: a way of calculating query similarity using click-through data, a mixture model for combination of rankings using relevance, query similarity, and document similarity scores, and an algorithm for learning the weights of blending model based on the kernel method. Large scale experiments on web search and enterprise search data sets show that our approach can effectively solve term mismatch problem and significantly outperform the baseline methods of query expansion and heuristic blending.


Acamprosate and naltrexone are widely used in the treatment of alcoholism. However, numerous studies in rodents have shown differential effects of these compounds on alcohol consumption and/or relapse‐like behavior following acute versus repeated administration. In order to determine if these differential behavioral effects could be attributable to changes in extracellular levels of these compounds, we used in vivo microdialysis to monitor extracellular levels of acamprosate and naltrexone in the rat medial prefrontal cortex following acute and repeated intraperitoneal administration. For acute treatment, animals received a single administration of acamprosate (100 or 300 mg/kg) or naltrexone (1 or 3 mg/kg). For repeated treatment, animals received once daily treatment with saline, acamprosate (300 mg/kg) or naltrexone (3 mg/kg) for 10 days before a subsequent challenge with the compound according to their respective pretreatment group. Dialysate levels of acamprosate and naltrexone were analyzed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and high performance liquid chromatography, respectively. Following acute administration, peak dialysate concentrations of each compound were dose‐dependent, observed within 1 hour of administration, and were found to be in the low micromolar range for acamprosate and in the low to mid‐nanomolar range for naltrexone. Pretreatment with acamprosate, but not naltrexone, for 10 days resulted in higher dialysate concentrations of the compound relative to saline‐pretreated controls. Thus, repeated administration of acamprosate, but not naltrexone, results in augmented extracellular levels of the compound in the brain relative to saline‐pretreated controls, which may explain the need for repeated administration of acamprosate in order to observe effects on alcohol consumption and/or relapse.


The Patterson Lake corridor in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan, Canada, hosts a large-scale uranium system with two major deposits already delineated. The corridor developed in crystalline rocks of the SW Rae Province, which host all of the known uranium endowment. Orthogneisses along with voluminous pegmatites are the hosts of the uranium mineralization. These rocks, however, underwent significant open-system metasomatic–hydrothermal modification. Principal amongst these alterations is early and pervasive quartz flooding that resulted in the development of widespread secondary quartzites and associated rock types. These secondary quartzites and their altered host rocks suffered ductile deformation, typically focused at silicification fronts. Late carbonatite dykes exploited the associated shear zones. Semi-brittle deformation zones nucleated near the previously developed ductile high-strain zones. Graphite and associated iron-sulfides precipitated in a semi-brittle structural regime. These graphitized zones provided the necessary structural architecture to focus the uranium system, which exploited the conduit hundreds of millions of years later at c. 1.425 Ga. Host rocks of the Patterson Lake corridor prove that metasedimentary rocks are not a requirement for the development of giant Proterozoic unconformity uranium deposits. Crustal-scale fault zones with access to the mantle (i.e. carbonatites) should be considered a key parameter in the exploration model for Proterozoic unconformity uranium deposits. Given the similarity of the mineral assemblages in the crystalline basement rocks of the main exploration corridor in the eastern Athabasca Basin region, it is likely that a similar, cryptic geological boundary focused the giant uranium system in that region. Thematic collection: This article is part of the Uranium Fluid Pathways collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/uranium-fluid-pathways


This paper reports findings of an innovative teaching and learning tool which utilizes the weblogs or blogs to increase and widen the ESL learners' learning opportunities. It firstly reports on the implementation process of the online blogs community as a learning instrument in a tertiary-level ESL classroom. Secondly, it highlights the learners' feedback being a part of the online blogging community in order to help them enhance their mastery of the English language. The study which involved a select group of low proficiency learners in one Malaysian university utilized online blog discussion activities, interviews and reflection journals as data collection tools. An online blogging community was created and students participated in the group discussion for a duration of one semester. Qualitative analyses of the blog discussion content, interviews and students' reflection journals conclusively indicate that online blogging community activities, if done in an organized and structured manner, can widen students' learning opportunities beyond the physical classroom and provide a fresh and effective learning environment for the ESL learners to improve their command of the target language. Keywords: ICT; Blended Learning; Tertiary-level; Blogs Community; ESL Learner


There have been important advances in the treatment of severe forms of ulcerative colitis (UC). They include biologic therapy and immunomodulators such as cyclosporine. The primary end-point of these therapies is to avoid colectomy in patients with severe disease when intravenous steroids have failed. Cyclosporine has been successful for induction of remission in severe UC, but undesirable side effects present quickly after intravenous delivery. We report two cases with severe UC that were successfully treated with oral microemulsion form of cyclos-


This Precis entitled, Liberalizing trade and industry in Madagascar, complements the Bank's Operations and Evaluation Department (OED), Performance audit report, Madagascar : Industry and trade policy adjustment loan credit, Report No. 14774, dated June 30, 1995. The audit concluded that, had the Bank paid closer attention to the early warning signals that the government was not fully committed to some of the reforms, the results might have been different.


In Canada, access to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination is limited with an outcome of long patient waiting time. It is reported that the current median waiting time for MRI examination in Saskatoon is almost double the target for waiting time, which may aggravate the disease. This research is towards reducing the waiting time of patients for MRI examination in Canada by applying an improved management. As a first step of this effort, a comprehensive model of MRI booking and serving system is needed. The city of Saskatoon was taken as an example and the MRI booking and serving system in the city was studied. The common tools (queuing theory, system dynamics (SD) and discrete event dynamics simulation (DES)) were compared and it is found that DES is more suitable, in particular Petri nets (PNs), deemed to be the best choice for the purpose of this thesis. The model in this research was constructed on the basis of Hierarchical Coloured Petri nets (HCPNs), a combination of two extended PNs: Coloured PNs (CPNs) and Hierarchical PNs (HPNs). The model is able to simulate and predict patients' waiting times. Given that the structure of the model developed by HCPNs is still too complex, two extensions to CPNs, Ordered CPNs (OCPNs) and Prioritized HCPNs (PHCPNs), were proposed in this study to reduce the complexity of the model. Validation of the model was performed using the data of Saskatoon Health Region Royal University Hospital. The results have shown that the proposed model can effectively describe the real system. The model has potential applications in decision-making for the selection of an optimal booking strategy to shorten waiting time and in the prediction of possible waiting time of the system in the future, which may assist MRI administrators in the management of medical resources and may greatly improve the quality of MRI service.


Motivations. In recent studies, it has been argued that small noncoding microRNAs (miRNAs) can contribute to development and progression of cancer and show a differential expression between normal and neoplastic tissues. To date, it is still not completely clear the functional role of miRNAs in human solid tumors both in terms of changes of expression profiles and in terms of changes of their regulatory activities. Our analysis aims to enlighten the specific contributes of miRNAs in cancer by identifying miRNA-driven pathways deregulated in tumor onset and progression. Methods. We present a strategy to infer biological processes potentially altered in tumor development by analyzing the expression of multiple microRNAs as well as by evaluating the cooperative miRNA regulatory activities on them. Our scoring algorithm is based on the inference of pathways in terms of miRNAs determined by tissue-specific and condition-specific correlations evaluated on paired expression levels of human miRNAs and mRNAs. An enrichment analysis of the resulting miRNA pathways allows to identify pathways associated with differentially expressed miRNAs and pathways enriched for different miRNA regulatory activities by using tissue-specific and condition-specific measures, respectively. Results. Our novel approach integrates miRNA and mRNA expression data for the understanding of complex pathologies. The application of this approach to colorectal cancer highlights many biological pathways enriched of oncogenes and tumor suppressors that traditional mRNA pathway enrichment analyses were not able to reveal.