The mortality of patients admitted to intensive care units with haematological malignancy is high. A humane approach to the management of the critically ill as well as efficient use of limited resources requires careful selection of those patients who are most likely to benefit from intensive care. To delineate more accurately the factors influencing outcome in these patients the records of 60 consecutive admissions to the intensive care unit (37 male, 23 female) with haematological malignancy were reviewed retrospectively. Fifty patients were in acute respiratory failure, most commonly (34 patients) with a combination of pneumonia and septicaemic shock. The severity of the acute illness was assessed by the APACHE II (acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II) score and number of organ systems affected. Thirteen patients survived to leave hospital. The mortality of patients with haematological malignancy was consistently higher than predicted from a large validation study of APACHE II in a mixed population of critically ill patients. Moreover, no patient with an APACHE II score of greater than 26 survived. Mortality among the 22 patients with relapsed malignancy (21 deaths), was significantly higher than among the 35 patients at first presentation (26 deaths). On discharge from the intensive care unit all survivors had responded well to chemotherapy and had normal or raised peripheral white cell counts. They included seven patients who had recovered from leucopenia (white cell count <0.5 × 109/1). In contrast, 36 of the 47 patients who died were leucopenic at the time of death. The overall mortality of critically ill patients with haematological malignancy is higher than equivalently ill patients without cancer. The dysfunction of an increasing number of organ systems, an APACHE II score of greater than 30, failure of the malignancy to respond to chemotherapy, and persistent leucopenia all point to a poor outcome.


Background: Patients concern about pain after total knee replacement is a matter of fact. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intraoperative soft tissue injection for pain management following Total Knee Arthroplasty. Method: We evaluated 60 patients prospectively, divided into two groups, i.e. thirty patients per group (10 men 20 momen each). Group A received an injection and group B did not. In each case, pain complaints and pain killers usage were addressed. Results: Patients' pain scores in the experimental group were lower than in the control group. They attained statistical significance in the first 96 hours after surgery. Reduction in the narcotics used was also significant in the first 4 hours. Conclusions: Lower pain rates and narcotics consumption after total knee replacement generate happier patients, which leads to an early start of physical therapy and earlier discharge from hospital. We believe this should be considered a strong tool against pain after TKR.


Human vision possesses a special type of visual processing systems called peripheral vision. Partitioning the entire visual field into multiple contour regions based on the distance to the center of our gaze, the peripheral vision provides us the ability to perceive various visual features at different regions. In this work, we take a biologically inspired approach and explore to model peripheral vision in deep neural networks for visual recognition. We propose to incorporate peripheral position encoding to the multi-head self-attention layers to let the network learn to partition the visual field into diverse peripheral regions given training data. We evaluate the proposed network, dubbed PerViT, on ImageNet-1K and systematically investigate the inner workings of the model for machine perception, showing that the network learns to perceive visual data similarly to the way that human vision does. The performance improvements in image classification over the baselines across different model sizes demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.


Assessment of impact can have at least three meanings: the evaluation, prior to impact, of the loss or alteration of a natural community; the prediction of impact; and the measurement of the extent of impact after it has occurred. Measurement of impact in environmental impact assessment (EIA) for aquatic biota is relatively rare. In most cases, scientists are required to predict impacts without testing whether these predictions hold following development. There are numerous study approaches in EIA that form the basis for predictions. These include a reliance on existing information, snapshot surveys, and surveys conducted over several sampling periods prior to impact. The latter two approaches can be divided into surveys of the impact site alone or surveys of the impact site plus control sites. There also is an issue-oriented approach in which the description of the environment is more closely linked to the predicted physical effects of the proposal. An example is given in which organisms at existing marinas are compared with those at natural sites in an area where a new marina is proposed. While there may be a sound scientific basis for the selection of a particular study approach, there are other considerations such as the cost of the proposal, the legislative framework for EIA, the scale of the proposal, and the attitude of the proponent. It is important that predictions of impact be stated as clearly as possible so that they can be evaluated readily and can facilitate monitoring if required. An area in which monitoring could be of value for improving the accuracy of EIA predictions is in small-scale developments, such as small marinas and maintenance dredging.


I would like to thank the following members of the editorial board who are rotating off the board for their service for the past several years: Heinrich Audebert, Antoni Dávalos, Agnes Flöel, Mikael Mazighi, Majaz Moonis, Patrik Michel, and J Mocco. I would also like to thank Scott Silverman for his contribution to the Illustrative Teaching Cases and Amytis Towfighi for her assistance with the Stroke Literature Synopses—Clinical Sciences section. The contributions of the many editorial board members and the members of the other masthead groups are invaluable for the efficient and effective functioning of Stroke. I would like to welcome the following new members to the editorial board: Lauren Beslow, Jonathan Coutinho, Gian Marco De Marchis, M. Edip Gurol, Miroslaw Janowski, Stefan Kiechl, Jennifer Majersik, Suzanne Muehlschlegel, William Whiteley, and Adrian Wong. They will provide a wide range of expertise and backgrounds to enhance the review of submitted manuscripts. In addition, I welcome Shadi Yaghi, who will assist with the Illustrative Teaching Cases, and Waleed Brinjikji, who is our new Social Media Editor. Perhaps, the most enjoyable part of my position as Editorin-Chief of Stroke is the opportunity to innovate and try new ideas to provide all types of information to our readership. As previously announced, a new section called InterSECT has begun under the leadership of Mitchell Elkind and will provide a wide range of useful articles for trainees and early career stroke physicians. In addition, a series of audio lectures with illustrative slides will be available primarily for this audience on the Stroke website. Focused Updates in Cerebrovascular Disease are another new feature under development, and the first topic will be reviews focused on various newer aspects of atrial fibrillation–related stroke. I anticipate that Stroke will publish several Focused Updates per year, so if you have suggestions for topics, please contact the Stroke office. The goal of these innovations is to enhance the utility and value of Stroke for the cerebrovascular community.


Thioredoxin-1 (Trx1) protects the heart from ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Given that the age at which the first episode of coronary disease takes place has considerably decreased, life at middle-aged (MA) emerges as a new field of study. The aim was determine whether infarct size, Trx1 expression and activity, Akt and GSK-3β were altered in young (Y) and MA mice overexpressing cardiac Trx1, and in a dominant negative (DN-Trx1) mutant of Trx1. Langendorff-perfused hearts were subjected to 30 minutes of ischemia and 120 minutes of reperfusion (R). We used 3 and 12 month-old male of wild type (WT), Trx1, and DN-Trx1. Trx1 overexpression reduced infarct size in young mice (WT-Y: 46.8±4.1% vs. Trx1-Y: 27.6±3.5%, p < 0.05). Trx1 activity was reduced by 52.3±3.2% (p < 0.05) in Trx1-MA, accompanied by an increase in nitration by 17.5±0.9%, although Trx1 expression in transgenic mice was similar between young and middle-aged. The expression of p-Akt and p-GSK-3β increased during reperfusion in Trx1-Y. DN-Trx1 mice showed neither reduction in infarct size nor Akt and GSK-3β phosphorylation. Our data suggest that the lack of protection in Trx1 middle-aged mice even with normal Trx1 expression may be associated to decreased Trx1 activity, increased nitration and inhibition of p-Akt and p-GSK-3β.


This paper looks at the usability of XML and the TEI Lite DTD for the electronic publication of grey literature by commercial archaeological
units. Grey literature is a valuable but underused resource within archaeology and XML would be a useful tool for the publication of field reports as it would allow a quicker response time and a rapid dissemination of information within the fast moving and changing environment of commercial archaeology. It would also allow practitioners to selectively download separate sections of field reports which are of particular importance to them and to improve the searchability of reports on the web.


Hypovitaminosis D and increased cardiometabolic risk have been well established in adults. This study aims to determine whether or not vitamin D also influences cardiometabolic risk in children and adolescents. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 186 boys (mean age 12.4 ± 3.7 years) and 114 girls (11.6 ± 3.7) in a cross-sectional observational study. Anthropometrics were obtained and morning fasting blood samples were collected. Serum glucose and lipid profile were determined using routine methods. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D was quantified using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In our population, approximately 10% of subjects had severe 25-hydroxyvitamin D deficiency (< 12.5 nmol/L), while 50% of the boys and 40% of the girls had mild vitamin D deficiency (12.5–24.9 nmol/L). Circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations were inversely correlated with age, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, waist and hip circumferences and serum triglyceride concentrations, and positively associated with HDL-cholesterol. Age and systolic blood pressure were significant predictors of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, explaining about 30% of the variance (p = 0.0005). In conclusion, significant associations between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and cardiometabolic parameters support promising cardioprotective benefits from vitamin D sufficiency at an early age. Follow-up with prospective clinical intervention studies are needed to validate this hypothesis.


ABSTRACT β-Catenin and plakoglobin are highly homologous components of cell-cell adherens junctions linking cadherin receptors to the actin cytoskeleton. β-Catenin, in addition, activates transcription by forming a complex with LEF/TCF family transcription factors in the nucleus. Plakoglobin can also bind to LEF-1 and, when overexpressed in mammalian cells, enhances LEF-1-directed transcription. Plakoglobin overexpression, however, results in the elevation and nuclear translocation of endogenous β-catenin. We show here, by DNA mobility shift analysis, that the formation of a plakoglobin-LEF/TCF-DNA complex in vitro is very inefficient compared to a complex containing β-catenin-LEF-DNA. Moreover, in plakoglobin-transfected cells plakoglobin-LEF/TCF-DNA complexes were not formed; rather, the endogenous β-catenin, whose level is elevated by plakoglobin transfection, formed a β-catenin–LEF–DNA complex. Removal of the N- and C-terminal domains of both β-catenin and plakoglobin (leaving the armadillo repeat domain intact) induced plakoglobin-LEF-DNA complex formation and also enhanced β-catenin–LEF–DNA complexing, both with in vitro-translated components and in transfected cells. Transfection with these truncated catenins increased endogenous β-catenin levels, but the truncated catenins acted as dominant-negative inhibitors of β-catenin-driven transcription by forming transcriptionally inactive complexes with LEF-1. When these catenin mutants were prevented from entering the nucleus, by their fusion to the connexin transmembrane domain, they indirectly activated transcription by increasing endogenous β-catenin levels. These results suggest that overexpression of plakoglobin does not directly activate transcription and that formation of catenin-LEF-DNA complexes is negatively regulated by the catenin N- and C-terminal domains.


The notion that customers interact with one other in many services is increasingly recognised, as is the potential impact of such customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) on the customer experience. This is a conceptual paper, based on an initial narrative literature review, which explores CCI research through the lens of social diversity. This working paper looks back at several decades of CCI research and discusses a number of contributions which have contained a social diversity perspective. Building on this selection of literature, the paper also looks forward and identifies a number of research directions for CCI which could build on this social diversity tradition. The paper represents the preliminary stage of a much larger piece of research which will conduct a comprehensive narrative literature review on this topic. Given that some CCI research findings suggest that the social diversity of customers can contribute to CCI tensions, it seems important that service managers develop a sound understanding of this issue. They also need to find ways of embracing cultural diversity and of breaking down the CCI tensions originating from social diversity.


Open quantum systems are ubiquitous in the physical sciences, with widespread applications in the areas of chemistry, condensed matter physics, material science, optics, and many more. Not surprisingly, there is significant interest in their efficient simulation. However, direct classical simulation quickly becomes intractable with coupling to an environment whose effective dimension grows exponentially. This raises the question: can quantum computers help model these complex dynamics? A first step in answering this question requires understanding the computational complexity of this task. Here, we map the temporal complexity of a process to the spatial complexity of a many-body state using a computational model known as the process tensor framework. With this, we are able to explore the simulation complexity of an open quantum system as a dynamic sampling problem: a system coupled to an environment can be probed at successive points in time -- accessing multi-time correlations. The complexity of multi-time sampling, which is an important and interesting problem in its own right, contains the complexity of master equations and stochastic maps as a special case. Our results show how the complexity of the underlying quantum stochastic process corresponds to the complexity of the associated family of master equations for the dynamics. We present both analytical and numerical examples whose multi-time sampling is as complex as sampling from a many-body state that is classically hard. This also implies that the corresponding family of master equations are classically hard. Our results pave the way for studying open quantum systems from a complexity-theoretic perspective, highlighting the role quantum computers will play in our understanding of quantum dynamics.


We report unipolar resistive switching in polycrystalline, hexagonal yttrium manganite thin films grown on unpatterned Pt metal coated SiO2/Si substrates with circular Al top electrodes. Electroforming-free or electroforming-based resistive switching is observed, depending on the chemical composition (Y1Mn1O3, Y0.95Mn1.05O3, Y1Mn0.99Ti0.01O3, and Y0.94Mn1.05Ti0.01O3). The number of loading cycles measured at room temperature for samples with Y1Mn1O3 and Y0.95Mn1.05O3 composition is larger than 103. The dominant conduction mechanism of the metal–insulator–metal structures between 295 K and 373 K in the high resistance state is space charge limited conduction and in the low resistance state is ohmic conduction. Activation energies in Ohm's law region in the high resistance state are calculated from the Arrhenius equation and are evaluated to be 0.39 ± 0.01 eV (Y1Mn1O3), 0.43 ± 0.01 eV (Y0.95Mn1.05O3), 0.34 ± 0.01 eV (Y1Mn0.99Ti0.01O3), and 0.38 ± 0.02 eV (Y0.94Mn1.05Ti0.01O3).We report unipolar resistive switching in polycrystalline, hexagonal yttrium manganite thin films grown on unpatterned Pt metal coated SiO2/Si substrates with circular Al top electrodes. Electroforming-free or electroforming-based resistive switching is observed, depending on the chemical composition (Y1Mn1O3, Y0.95Mn1.05O3, Y1Mn0.99Ti0.01O3, and Y0.94Mn1.05Ti0.01O3). The number of loading cycles measured at room temperature for samples with Y1Mn1O3 and Y0.95Mn1.05O3 composition is larger than 103. The dominant conduction mechanism of the metal–insulator–metal structures between 295 K and 373 K in the high resistance state is space charge limited conduction and in the low resistance state is ohmic conduction. Activation energies in Ohm's law region in the high resistance state are calculated from the Arrhenius equation and are evaluated to be 0.39 ± 0.01 eV (Y1Mn1O3), 0.43 ± 0.01 eV (Y0.95Mn1.05O3), 0.34 ± 0.01 eV (Y1Mn0.99Ti0.01O3), and 0.38 ± 0.02 eV (Y0.94Mn1.05Ti0.01O3).


Abstract Bungener, P. & D. Jeanmonod (2019). The Brothers Soleirol, a centuries-long history of a confusion on a collector in Corsica. Candollea 74: 209–216. In French, English & French abstracts. Soleirol is a famous botanical collector well known for his plant collections in Corsica in the 1820's. Many scientific names of taxa have been dedicated to him. Although his herbarium specimens and letters have been signed by his surname alone and without his first name, the botanical tradition has given him the surname of Joseph-François (1781–1863). Our investigation shows that this botanist is in fact Henri-Augustin (1792–1860), the younger brother of Joseph-François. That conclusion is drawn on the analysis of his herbarium specimens, botanical literature, correspondence and biographical accounts. The Brothers Soleirol have followed a similar career in the French Army and had the same interests for art and botany. These similar ways of life have subsequently caused the confusion of their surnames. Our research shows that Henry-Augustin was the only one who collected plants in Corsica between 1820 and 1823 and visited about sixty localities from Cap Corse to Bonifacio through the large mountain ranges. As an important plant collector for Corsica, Soleirol has collected more than 5000 specimens that he has distributed or exchanged with other botanists. This paper highlights the activity of an amateur botanist at the beginning of the XIXth century. It honors Henry Augustin for his work after more than one century of confusion with his brother.


For a globalised supply chain to be responsive, the firm should have the ability to meet short lead times, respond to wide ranges of quantities demanded, handle a large variety of products, build highly innovative products and meet a very high service level. Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is one such supply chain practice where the vendor is given the sole responsibility to monitor and manage the inventory of the retailer. This paper attempts to analyse this supply chain practice and illustrate the key elements of this system and the role it plays in the overall supply chain. The benefits and risks of the VMI system are also analysed. The design and implementation steps for this supply chain practice are extensively reviewed. The analysis of industries which would benefit from implementing this system is also conducted. An investigation is attempted to see if any industries in the UAE are using VMI.


DubDubDub was an educational project conducted by staff at Egerton High School, Manchester Metropolitan University and UCan.tv. It introduced a new type of musical instrument to the classroom, the DubDubDub player, which developed pupils' musical performance and improvisation skills by using the sonic environment of the Internet. Users of DubDubDub remixed the sonic content of the Internet, arranged sounds and prioritised them in real time to form new musical works. The name DubDubDub references the three 'w's of internet URLs: http://www. The musical improvisations generated by DubDubDub can be combined with other instruments, as illustrated during DubDubDub's first performance at the Discourse, Power and Resistance conference (hosted by the University of Plymouth and Manchester Metropolitan University on 21 April 2006). This paper reflects on the development of DubDubDub and this first performance, providing an insight into how technologies can facilitate new models of musical performance and improvisation that may be beneficial for educational application.


Summary
We have studied several aspects of the inhibition of DNA synthesis in Mengovirus-infected cells. In mouse L-929 cells at 5 h after infection at a multiplicity of 200 p.f.u./cell, there was a decrease in DNA synthesis. However, the rate of DNA replication fork movement, measured by equilibrium sedimentation of DNA sequentially labelled with BrdUrd and 3H-thymidine, was not significantly reduced in infected cells despite an 84% inhibition of DNA synthesis. Enzymic assay of the total cellular dTTP pool size showed it to be increased 37% in infected cells compared to controls. This was not accounted for by enhanced entry of thymidine nucleotides into the pool from either exogenous or endogenous sources, since the buoyant density of DNA pulse-labelled with 3H-BrdUrd was the same in infected and uninfected cells and there was no evidence for breakdown of DNA in infected cells. There was also a moderate decrease in the uptake of exogenous thymidine into the cell, shown by a reduction in the Vmax for transport with little change in the K
m. By 6 h after infection, the dTTP pool size was slightly smaller in infected cells than in the controls and there was a marked inhibition in the rate of replication fork movement. These results show that Mengovirus infection blocks the entry of dTTP into DNA. At 5 h after infection, this block is manifested by an inhibition of initiation of new DNA chain synthesis. By 6 h, replication fork movement is also retarded and there is a more generalized derangement in DNA synthesis.


Recent improvements in medical care have enabled women with cystic fibrosis (CF) to achieve a greater life expectancy and aspire to a greater expectation from life. Literature reporting pregnancy outcome in women with CF is sparse and focuses on women with mild disease. There remains a legacy of advising women with significant disease (FEV1<60%) to avoid pregnancy. Pregnancy data was reviewed from all women with CF receiving care at a tertiary centre between 2003–2011. Input into hospital antenatal care was provided by a CF respiratory physician, an obstetrician in maternal medicine, a CF dietician, a CF physiotherapist and an obstetric anaesthetist. Individualised multidisciplinary plans were made for antenatal, delivery and postpartum care in all women. CF was managed aggressively with optimisation of nutrition, prompt treatment of infection and inpatient admission if necessary. Results A total of 14 pregnancies in 12 women were identified. Mean age of pregnancy was 29.5(26–36). FEV1 at booking ranged from 27–80% (mean=62.8%). Diabetes was present in 9/14 women(three pre-pregnancy). The average gestation at delivery was 37+3(30–41). Vaginal delivery was advised in all cases (no obstetric contraindication), with elective epidural, oxygen support and passive management of the second stage. There was a 100% vaginal delivery rate (11 spontaneous vertex, 2 ventouse, 1 forceps). Average birth weight was 2.97 kg (2.2–3.83 kg). There were no postpartum complications. Conclusion With careful multidisciplinary management, successful outcomes with vaginal deliveries have been obtained in this small series of women with CF, with a mean FEV1 of just over 60%.


To the Editor. —In a previous issue of theArchives(1981;141:1152-1153), Sahasrabudhe and Parker described three patients with multiple myeloma in whom M spikes decreased while the tumor burden was increasing. A similar occurrence was observed in a patient with double paraproteinemia who was not receiving treatment. Report of a Case. —A 79-year-old woman was hospitalized in October 1978 for cardiac arrhythmia. Electrophoretic analysis of serum samples, which was prescribed because of an increased ESR (50 mm/hr), disclosed two M spikes in the γ-globulin area (Fig 1, left). The two paraproteins were found to be IgG-κ, with H and L chains of homogenous molecular weights of 55,000 and 25,000 daltons, respectively, as disclosed by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis on reduced purified paraprotein preparation (Fig 1, right). Levels of serum IgA and IgM were low (Fig 2), and no Bence Jones protein was found in serum or urine sam


The cashew sector forms the core of Guinea-Bissau's economy. Data from 2010 household survey show that cashew accounts for 26 percent of income (net of remittances) for female headed households and for 35 percent for male headed households. As such, cashew is the most important source of monetary income, and this is especially true for poor households. Although other crops are grown to an extent, they tend not to be exported. Rice is another important commodity in Guinea-Bissau, largely grown on a subsistence basis and increasingly imported. Cashew is traded for rice, with considerable reliance on a barter system. The cashew sector is thus at the core of both economic performance and poverty reduction. This note lays out some of the ways in which cashew matters for the Bissau-Guinean economy.


A staining reaction was developed to specifically detect arylsulfatase A activity in the presence of arylsulfatases B and C. Nitrocatechol, generated by all arylsulfatases from the substrate p-nitrocatechol sulfate, can be coupled to produce Hatchett 's brown which reacts with 3,3'-diaminobenzidine to yield an osmiophilic polymer visible under the electron microscope. The reaction was made specific for arylsulfatase A by inhibiting arylsulfatase C activity with low pH and arylsulfatase B activity with pyrophosphate. The specificity was confirmed both by electrophoretic analysis and by patient fibroblasts deficient only in arylsulfatase A activity. Under optimal conditions for preserving structural integrity and enzyme activity, enzyme reaction deposits were found mainly around vesicles. Some of these vesicles were large and heterogeneous (48-330 nm in diameter), distributed randomly within the cytoplasm, but most of the positive-reacting vesicles were uniform in size (86 +/- 18 nm in diameter) and distributed in a peripheral zone about 0.1-0.5 micron wide. These periplasmic vesicles might be partly fused with each other or with the plasma membrane. In conclusion, a specific stain for arylsulfatase A activity suitable for light and electron microscopy and the optimal conditions for structural and enzymatic preservations were developed. Although this enzyme has been considered to be lysosomal in origin, most of the activity was detected in periplasmic vesicles near the cell surface.


Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has a central role in brain plasticity by mediating changes in cortical thickness and synaptic density in response to physical activity and environmental enrichment. Previous studies suggest that physical exercise can augment BDNF levels, both in serum and the brain, but no other study has examined how different types of activities compare with physical exercise in their ability to affect BDNF levels. By using a balanced cross over experimental design, we exposed nineteen healthy older adults to 35-minute sessions of physical exercise, cognitive training, and mindfulness practice, and compared the resulting changes in mature BDNF levels between the three activities. We show that a single bout of physical exercise has significantly larger impact on serum BDNF levels than either cognitive training or mindfulness practice in the same persons. This is the first study on immediate BDNF effects of physical activity in older healthy humans and also the first study to demonstrate an association between serum BDNF responsivity to acute physical exercise and working memory function. We conclude that the BDNF increase we found after physical exercise more probably has a peripheral than a central origin, but that the association between post-intervention BDNF levels and cognitive function could have implications for BDNF responsivity in serum as a potential marker of cognitive health.


We here present two-dimensional, time-dependent radiatively cooling hydrodynamical simulations of the large and little Homunculus nebulae around η Carinae. We employ an alternative scenario to previous interacting stellar wind models which is supported by both theoretical and observational evidence, where a non-spherical outburst wind (with a latitudinal velocity dependence that matches the observations of the large Homunculus), which is expelled for 20 years, interacts with a pre-eruptive slow wind also with a toroidal density distribution, but with a much smaller equator-to-polar density contrast than that assumed in previous models. A second eruptive wind with spherical shape is ejected about 50 years after the first outburst, and causes the development of the little internal nebula. We find that, as a result of an appropriate combination of the parameters that control the degree of asymmetry of the interacting winds, we are able to produce not only the structure and kinematics of both Homunculus, but also the high-velocity equatorial ejecta. These arise from the impact between the non-spherical outburst and the pre-outburst winds in the equatorial plane.


PINK1 and Parkin mutations cause recessive Parkinson's disease (PD). In Drosophila and SH-SY5Y cells, Parkin is recruited by PINK1 to damaged mitochondria, where it ubiquitinates Mitofusins and consequently promotes mitochondrial fission and mitophagy. Here, we investigated the impact of mutations in endogenous PINK1 and Parkin on the ubiquitination of mitochondrial fusion and fission factors and the mitochondrial network structure. Treating control fibroblasts with mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψ) inhibitors or H2O2 resulted in ubiquitination of Mfn1/2 but not of OPA1 or Fis1. Ubiquitination of Mitofusins through the PINK1/Parkin pathway was observed within 1 h of treatment. Upon combined inhibition of Δψ and the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS), no ubiquitination of Mitofusins was detected. Regarding morphological changes, we observed a trend towards increased mitochondrial branching in PD patient cells upon mitochondrial stress. For the first time in PD patient-derived cells, we demonstrate that mutations in PINK1 and Parkin impair ubiquitination of Mitofusins. In the presence of UPS inhibitors, ubiquitinated Mitofusin is deubiquitinated by the UPS but not degraded, suggesting that the UPS is involved in Mitofusin degradation.


SIR,-The picture of casualty departments put forward by Mr. Keith Norcross in his Personal View (18 November, p. 421), cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. We are given a horrible picture of the casualty department in his own hospital. I can assure readers and Mr. Norcross that not all casualty departments are as horrible as that. The large numbers of applicants for the few senior house officers posts both in my time and now with my successor in Leeds are not all masochists, nor are forced into the work by the demands of the royal colleges. At a more senior level a registrar trained in another hospital worked for six months in Casualty as part of the registrar rotation. He wrote and told me after he left, that he had not had a more instructive or enjoyable time since he qualified. Mr. Norcross states that most of the work is that of a G.P. Such a statement suggests that Mr. Norcross has had little experience of Casualty and probably none at all of general practice. It is certainly contrary to the experience of my last twenty years and to the opinions of my G.P. clinical assistants. After retirement I moved to this small coastal resort. As holiday relief I have worked in the casualty department of the local hospital and also acted as assistant for my G.P. friends: I found little similarity in the types of patients. The patients in Casualty are made up of those at one extreme with the trivial lesions bemoaned by Mr. Norcross. Often these lesions are so trivial that they scarce need medical attention at all. I often thought that these patients used the hospital visit as an excuse for being late for or being off school or work. With the appointment system growing in general practice they will increasingly use the hospital. Even then they do not amount to more than 10%; this does mean that in a big hospital there may be 15-20 a day, and when several come together the burden becomes noticeable. At the other extreme, there are the seriously ill or injured, also amounting to no more than 10%, who need all the skills of modern medicine to preserve life or limb. But the vast bulk of the work lies in between with patients who are not in serious danger of losing life or limb, but have some lesion which they think is in need of urgent attention. Skilled treatment of this lesion can reduce the pain, distress, and disability toa small fraction of what it would be without this skill. This after all is what most of medicine is about, for very few doctors spend their days rushing about saving life or limb. The skills needed for the casualty patients have to be learned over a long period before they can be acquired and then taught to junior staff who are only present for a short while. This is a consultant's work and not that of a G.P. or an absentee orthopaedic landlord. Then there will be a happy department staffed by a proud and happy staff doing expeditious and expert work. Many hospitals are doing this already and with the present increase of consultants of this calibre, there will be more in the future.-I am, etc., M. ELLIS Heysham, Lancs.


. Although researchers are often concerned with the presence of participant demand, few have directly examined effects of demand on participant behavior. Before beginning the present study, a confederate informed participants ( N = 100) of the study's purported hypothesis. Participants then performed a laboratory task designed to evaluate the extent to which they would respond in ways that may confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis of the study. The authors found that participants tended to respond in ways that confirmed the hypothesis, yet this tendency depended on attitudes toward the experiment or experimenter and other individual differences. In addition, results suggested that suspicion probes may be ineffective in measuring participants' previous knowledge and suspicion. Findings indicate the need for more research and consideration of demand in the design of studies and analysis of data.


The soil microbiome's role in regulating biogeochemical processing is critical to the cycling and storage of soil organic carbon (C). The function of the microbiome under different land management uses has become a focal area of research due to the interest in managing soil C to mitigate climate change. This study investigates the structural and functional response of soil microbiomes from annual monoculture (corn [Zea mays L.]) and perennial diversified (prairie) cropping systems, both under no-till management for bioenergy production. We used a full factorial soil incubation study to understand the influence of temperature and moisture on microbial C decomposition in these soils, with and without addition of cellulose as a model plant residue. Overall, perennial prairie soil supported distinct microbiomes with more diverse prokaryotic and fungal communities compared to annual corn soil. The less diverse corn microbiome was sensitive to the addition of C, resulting in significantly higher respiration compared to prairie, and this increased respiration was amplified under warmer temperatures. In contrast to C loss from the corn soil as carbon dioxide (CO2), prairie soil had significantly higher extracellular enzyme activities and small increases in microbial biomass, illustrating cropping system-specific tradeoffs between microbial C allocation. Specific community structure shifts occurred with added cellulose, where fast-growing, motile decomposers became more abundant under wet conditions, while a small subset of fungi dominated under dry conditions. These differential responses of fungi and bacteria reflect microbial traits important for accessing substrates like plant residues. These changes in community structure due to moisture and cellulose amendment were not necessarily reflected in community function, as potential enzyme activities of most hydrolases were insensitive to temperature and C amendment on this short time scale. Lower respiration occurred in prairie compared to corn soil in response to increased available C and temperature, indicating a more resistant prairie microbiome that may be beneficial when confronted with climate change. These findings support deploying perennial and diversified systems in place of annual monocultures as bioenergy feedstocks, cover crops, buffer strips, or urban greenspaces as part of a land management strategy and highlight the importance of microbial activity in developing sustainable agroecosystems.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Identifying patients who may develop acute kidney injury (AKI) remains challenging, as clinical determinants explain only a portion of individual risk. Another factor that likely affects risk is intrinsic genetic variability. Therefore, a systematic review of studies was performed that related the development or prognosis of AKI to genetic variation.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, AND MEASUREMENTS
MEDLINE, EMBASE, HuGEnet, SCOPUS, and Web of Science were searched for articles from 1950 to Dec 2007. Two independent researchers screened articles using predetermined criteria. Studies were assessed for methodological quality via an aggregate scoring system.

RESULTS
The 16 included studies were of cohort or case-cohort design and investigated 35 polymorphisms in 21 genes in association with AKI. Fifteen gene-gene interactions were also investigated in four separate studies. Study populations were primarily premature infants or adults who were critically ill or postcardiac bypass patients. Among the studies, five different definitions of AKI were used. Only one polymorphism, APO E e2/e3/e4, had greater than one study showing a significant impact (P < 0.05) on AKI incidence. The mean quality score of 5.8/10 (range four to nine), heterogeneity in the studies, and the dearth of studies precluded additional meta-analysis of the results.

CONCLUSIONS
Current association studies are unable to provide definitive evidence linking genetic variation to AKI. Future success will require a narrow consensus definition of AKI, rigorous epidemiologic techniques, and a shift from a priori hypothesis-driven to genome-wide association studies.


This paper focuses on the predictive validity of the upper secondary grade point average (GPA), when used as selection instrument to higher education. The purpose of the paper is to find out if the predictive strength of the GPA is affected by time, here measured as the time that has passed between when the grades were received (graduation) and university entrance. The data includes approximately 5 900 students admitted to a Business administration or an Economics programme in a Swedish university between the years 1993 to 1996. The predictive validity is studied by correlating the GPA from upper secondary school for the students from each age group with their academic performance, measured by university credits. The results show that there is a weak positive correlation between grades and university credits, but that the predictive strenght decreases with time, to be insignificant about three years after upper secondary school completion. Implications are discussed.


The optical properties of an electrostatic quadrupole doublet lens with two different electrode shapes were studied with the aid of computer simulation. The optimal electrode voltages of the electrostatic quadrupole lenses which give the stigmatic image in both planes simultaneously were found for both concave cylindrical electrode shape and plan electrode shape of the operation mode: parallel to point focusing. The effect of electrode shape on the image properties was investigated, and the aberration figures were studied. The results showed that under the same operation condition and the geometrical dimensions, the changing of the electrode shape of the electrostatic quadrupole doublet lenses lead to important differences in the optical properties of the lenses and the characteristics of the systems.


This retrospective observational study was carried out by searching the database of the laboratory information system for identifying all requests for alcohol testing placed from emergency departments and intensive care units of the University Hospital of Verona between June 29th, 2012 and December 31st, 2018. The study population consisted of 7488 patients. The number of alcohol tests was more than double in concomitance with New Year's Eve than in the rest of the year (7.6±6.1 vs 3.1±2.8 requests/day; P<0.001), whereas blood alcohol concentration was similar (1.55 vs 1.12 g/L; P=0.308). The risk of measuring alcohol concentrations >0.1 g/L and >1.0 g/L was 1.9-fold and 1.6-fold higher in concomitance with New Year's Eve. In multivariate analysis, younger age, female sex and alcohol testing during New Year's Eve remained significant predictors of alcohol concentrations >0.1 g/L and >1.0 g/L. The requests for alcohol testing were similar in concomitance with Christmas Eve and in other periods of the year, whilst number of requests (4.0±3.2 vs 2.8±2.5 requests/day; P<0.001) and concentration (1.37 vs 0.77 g/L; P<0.001) were higher during weekends than in other weekdays.


A large-area (1 /spl times/ 1 mm) vertical conductive GaN-mirror-Cu light-emitting diode (LED) fabricated using the laser liftoff and electroplating techniques is demonstrated. Selective p-GaN top area was first electroplated by the thick copper film, and then an excimer laser was employed to separate the GaN thin film from the sapphire substrate. The luminance intensity of the vertical conductive p-side-down GaN-mirror-Cu LED presented about 2.7 times in magnitude as compared with that of the original GaN-sapphire LED (at 20 mA). The light output power for the GaN-mirror-Cu LED was about twofold stronger (at 500 mA). A more stable peak wavelength shift under high current injection was also observed.


This thesis examines the self-assembly of metalloporphyrins on well-defined surfaces. Within this framework, distinct features of surface-confined synthesis are investigated. Characterisation of the surface-confined systems has been performed under ultra-high-vacuum conditions using complementary surface sensitive techniques; namely, scanning tunnelling microscopy, low energy electron diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
The templated self-assembly of (porphyrinato)nickel(II) (NiP) molecules has been investigated on the Ag/Si(111)-(3 × 3)R30o and Ag(111) surfaces. The NiP molecules self-assemble on both the Ag/Si(111)-(3 × 3)R30o and Ag(111) surfaces, growing epitaxially in a manner consistent with coincidence on the former, and point-on-line coincidence on the latter. While no transition from the lattice structure of the first layer is found on the Ag/Si(111)-(3 × 3)R30o surface, the formation of parallel molecular rows aligned along the primitive lattice vectors of the underlying layer is observed on Ag(111).
On-surface covalent coupling of (5,10,15,20-tetrabromothien-2-ylporphyrinato)zinc(II) (ZnTBrThP) molecules has been investigated on the Ag(111) and Au(111)-(22  √3) surfaces. When adsorbed on both surfaces, the ZnTBrThP molecules display a latent thermal lability, resulting in the fragmentation of the bromothienyl groups upon annealing. The di- and tetra- (thienyl)porphyrin derivatives are found to predominate on the Ag(111) surface, while the latter is exclusively observed on Au(111)-(22  √3). Subsequent on-surface covalent coupling follows a divergent linkage pattern.
Control of the axial coordination of chloro(5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato) manganese(III) (Cl-MnTPP) molecules been investigated on the Ag(111) surface. The thermally induced dissociation of the Cl ligand occurs through a heterolytic cleavage of the metal-ligand bond, without the demetallation of the porphyrin complex. Upon exposure of the MnTPP molecules to molecular oxygen, dioxygen axially coordinates to the central Mn atom in a symmetric egde-on geometry, consistent with a peroxo-like oxidation state. The oxygenation of the MnTPP molecules is reversible, with the molecular monolayer behaving as a so-called oxygen carrier.


ABSTRACT Bacillus anthracis, the etiological agent of anthrax, is a gram-positive spore-forming bacterium. It produces edema toxin (EdTx), a powerful adenylate cyclase that increases cyclic AMP (cAMP) levels in host cells. Because other cAMP-increasing agents inhibit key macrophage (MΦ) functions, such as phagocytosis, it was hypothesized that EdTx would exhibit similar suppressive activities. Our previous GeneChip data showed that EdTx downregulated MΦ genes involved in actin cytoskeleton remodeling, including protein kinase A (PKA). To further examine the role of EdTx during anthrax pathogenesis, we explored the hypothesis that EdTx treatment leads to deregulation of the cAMP-dependent PKA system, resulting in impaired cytoskeletal functions essential for MΦ activity. Our data revealed that EdTx significantly suppressed human MΦ phagocytosis of Ames spores. Cytoskeletal changes, such as decreased cell spreading and lowered F-actin content, were also observed for toxin-treated MΦs. Further, EdTx altered the protein levels and activity of PKA and exchange protein activated by cAMP (Epac), a recently identified cAMP-binding molecule. By using PKA- and Epac-selective cAMP analogs, we confirmed the involvement of both pathways in the inhibition of MΦ functions elicited by EdTx-generated cAMP. These results suggested that EdTx weakened the host immune response by increasing cAMP levels, which then signaled via PKA and Epac to cripple MΦ phagocytosis and interfered with cytoskeletal remodeling.


With the objective of determining the amount of vitamin "C" degraded during freezing storage of Malpighia glabra L. pulps, samples were semi-industrially processed, frozen and stored at –18 oC. Fifty percent of the processed pulp was stored without passing through a thermal process. The fifty percent left was heated up to 85 oC before freezing, in order to inactivate ascorbic acid oxidase, the degradative enzyme of ascorbic acid. The amount of ascorbic acid was established by volumetric method developed by Tillmans with endophenol. Analyses were carried out at zero time, weekly in the first month, biweekly in the second month, and monthly from third to twelfth month. Vitamin "C" amount of heated and no-heated pulps decreased from 2079.39 to 1165.64 mg of vitamin "C" /100 mL of pulp, and from 2079.39 to 1288.34 mg of vitamin "C" /100 mL of pulp, respectively.


The challenges of high quality water for domestic use and particularly for potability must be overcome in its entire ramification for health and ecological environment. The aim of this study is to identify the conditions of domestic water sources in Ado-Ekiti. One water sample was drawn from the two different sources of water, that is, shallow well and Ureje River at Ureje, and two samples from one water source, that is, borehole at Ilupeju and  ABUAD in Ado-Ekiti. Water samples were analyzed in the Laboratory. Parameters including turbidity, pH, jar, hardness, calcium hardness and alkalinity were determined. Results revealed that the water samples drawn from borehole were of good quality following WHO reference guidelines, whereas, for water from well in Ureje and from river in Ureje, the concentration of these parameters exceeded WHO reference guidelines. It can be concluded that water obtained from Ureje River and that from well in Ureje are unsuitable for drinking (based respectively on colour, turbidity, odour, jar and hardness as well as pH, jar, turbidity, colour, and odour). However, pH, calcium and alkalinity are good following WHO reference guidelines. Further, well in Ureje contained water which is suitable for drinking and domestic uses. Samples drawn from borehole were the most suitable following WHO reference guidelines. However, further improvement is required. Detailed studies revealing the underlying reason for drop in quality of deep groundwater in the study area are required.

 Key words: Ecological, potability, groundwater, borehole, parameters, wells.


CONTEXT
Currently most automated methods to identify patient safety occurrences rely on administrative data codes; however, free-text searches of electronic medical records could represent an additional surveillance approach.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate a natural language processing search-approach to identify postoperative surgical complications within a comprehensive electronic medical record.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Cross-sectional study involving 2974 patients undergoing inpatient surgical procedures at 6 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical centers from 1999 to 2006.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Postoperative occurrences of acute renal failure requiring dialysis, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, sepsis, pneumonia, or myocardial infarction identified through medical record review as part of the VA Surgical Quality Improvement Program. We determined the sensitivity and specificity of the natural language processing approach to identify these complications and compared its performance with patient safety indicators that use discharge coding information.

RESULTS
The proportion of postoperative events for each sample was 2% (39 of 1924) for acute renal failure requiring dialysis, 0.7% (18 of 2327) for pulmonary embolism, 1% (29 of 2327) for deep vein thrombosis, 7% (61 of 866) for sepsis, 16% (222 of 1405) for pneumonia, and 2% (35 of 1822) for myocardial infarction. Natural language processing correctly identified 82% (95% confidence interval [CI], 67%-91%) of acute renal failure cases compared with 38% (95% CI, 25%-54%) for patient safety indicators. Similar results were obtained for venous thromboembolism (59%, 95% CI, 44%-72% vs 46%, 95% CI, 32%-60%), pneumonia (64%, 95% CI, 58%-70% vs 5%, 95% CI, 3%-9%), sepsis (89%, 95% CI, 78%-94% vs 34%, 95% CI, 24%-47%), and postoperative myocardial infarction (91%, 95% CI, 78%-97%) vs 89%, 95% CI, 74%-96%). Both natural language processing and patient safety indicators were highly specific for these diagnoses.

CONCLUSION
Among patients undergoing inpatient surgical procedures at VA medical centers, natural language processing analysis of electronic medical records to identify postoperative complications had higher sensitivity and lower specificity compared with patient safety indicators based on discharge coding.


H. Thomas Rossby was awarded the 2009 Maurice Ewing Medal at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 16 December 2009 in San Francisco, Calif. The medal is for "significant original contributions to the scientific understanding of the processes in the ocean; for the advancement of oceanographic engineering, technology, and instrumentation; or outstanding service to marine science."


The preparation of two new families of hexanuclear rhenium cluster complexes containing benzonitrile and phenyl-substituted tetrazolate ligands is described. Specifically, we report the preparation of a series of cluster complexes with the formula [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)L](2+) where L = benzonitrile, p-aminobenzonitrile, p-methoxybenzonitrile, p-acetylbenzonitrile, or p-nitrobenzonitrile. All of these complexes undergo a [2 + 3] cycloaddition with N(3)(-) to generate the corresponding [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(5-(p-X-phenyl)tetrazol-2-yl)](+) (or [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(2,5-p-X-phenyltetrazolate)](+)) cluster complexes, where X = NH(2), OMe, H, COCH(3), or NO(2). Crystal structure data are reported for three compounds: [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(p-acetylbenzonitrile)](BF(4))(2)•MeCN, [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(2,5-phenyltetrazolate)](BF(4))•CH(2)Cl(2), and [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(2,5-p-aminophenyltetrazolate)](BF(4)). Treatment of [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(2,5-phenyltetrazolate)](BF(4)) with HBF(4) in CD(3)CN at 100 °C leads to protonation of the tetrazolate ring and formation of [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(CD(3)CN)](2+). Surprisingly, alkylation of the phenyl and methyl tetrazolate complexes ([Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(2,5-N(4)CPh)](BF(4)) and [Re(6)Se(8)(PEt(3))(5)(1,5-N(4)CMe)](BF(4))) with methyl iodide and benzyl bromide, leads to the formation of mixtures of 1,5- and 2,5-disubstituted tetrazoles.


The sun inputs huge amounts of heat to the ocean, heat that would stay near the ocean's surface if it were not mechanically mixed into the deep. Warm water is less dense than cold water, so that heated surface waters "float" on top of the cold deep waters. Only active mechanical turbulent mixing can pump the heat downward. Such mixing requires remarkably little energy, about one-thousandth of the heat stored, but it is crucial for ocean life and for nutrient and sediment transport. Several mechanisms for ocean mixing have been studied in the past. The dominant mixing mechanism seems to be breaking of internal waves above underwater topography. Here, we quantify the details of how internal waves transition to strong turbulent mixing by using high-sampling-rate temperature sensors. The sensors were moored above the sloping bottom of a large guyot (flat-topped submarine volcano) in the Canary Basin, North Atlantic Ocean. Over a tidal period, most mixing occurs in two periods of less than half an hour each. This "boundary mixing" dominates sediment resuspension and is 100 times more turbulent than open ocean mixing. Extrapolating, the mixing may be sufficiently effective to maintain the ocean's density stratification.


Author(s): Choo, Jennifer Myung Won | Advisor(s): Fligstein, Neil D; Gold, Thomas B | Abstract: This dissertation analyzes the political economy of the real estate sector in China since its post-1978 creation. During Mao's socialist era, the nation had no real estate sector. Only with economic reforms in 1978 and the production of commodity housing in the 1980's did a real estate sector come into being. This study asks two questions in particular: How did the major metropolitan centers on the eastern seaboards of China manage to accomplish monumental amounts of infrastructural and urban development in the short span of thirty years? Second, what was the role of the state--at the central level and at the local level--that enabled the construction of this industry, capital accumulation and development? The analytical construct of the developmental state is used as a useful starting point. As is widely known, critical resources in the form of land, large project opportunities, financing options and permits in Chinese real estate are in local state control. The presence of the state looms large in Chinese real estate. To finesse how this construct fits and does not fit the situation in Chinese real estate provides analytical leverage.Although the high levels of central and local state involvement in the real estate sector is undisputed, I argue instead that one of the core characteristics of the developmental state - i.e., an institutionally cohesive bureaucracy - was widely missing whether at the local level or at the central level. This was true despite the accepted wisdom that an effective and independent bureaucracy is critical for industrial transformation, let alone its creation.Instead, within the post-reform real estate sector, central policymakers planted and activated a new set of "game rules" that structured the delivery of urgently needed urban infrastructure and residential building construction. It did so by putting in place three critical reform elements: (i) commodifying urban land use rights (LURs), which had been administratively allocated for free and in perpetuity according to central economic plans prior to the constitutional amendment of 1988; (ii) valorizing the critical importance of economic and infrastructural growth by inserting such achievements into the professional criteria for political promotions of provincial, prefectural and municipal-level leaders; and (iii) allowing the revenues from land use rights (LUR) sales to go directly into the extrabudgetary reserves of local governments at a time when budget constraints were hardening. In other words, I argue that the new political economy of land usage and real estate development put in place an entrepreneurial local state structure. The incentive structures for local state agents is directly tied to promoting economic growth; and municipal governments have a direct financial stake in generating governmental income through urban LUR sales and commercial real estate development. Concomitantly, real estate developers increasingly populated the field throughout the 1990's, attracted by increasing profits. The entrepreneurial interdependence of local government leaders and property developers who are both looking to capitalize on real estate-generated profits centrally characterize the dynamics of this field.In the absence of full marketization of key resources such as land and capital, furthermore, which remain under local government control and influence, the real estate firms themselves work to stabilize their access to resource dependencies. Real estate firms manage, nurture, maintain and coddle their relationships with local government officials even as they try to compete in the marketplace and branch forth into larger operations. This relational "maintenance work" has been accomplished via three dominant mechanisms: (i) corruption and bribery at the individual level; (ii) quid-pro-quo behavior of building of infrastructure or public buildings and public works in return for land allocations, tax breaks and commercial opportunities; and (iii) founders' long-standing relationships with state officials who have access to profitable opportunities and/or land; or through their history as red capitalists entailing generative periods of state employment.This entrepreneurial state model of development provides an additional developmental path distinct from either the Anglo-Saxon "market-led" form or the East Asian developmental "state-led" form of economic development. In the entrepreneurial state model, the state is, in fact, a market actor driven to pursue its own profits as though it, too, were a business agent. In the developmental state typology, state officials plan and intercede in the market indirectly via the centralized administrative apparatus, coordinating projects, investing in hard and soft infrastructure, promoting business and creating an environment conducive to economic vitality. But it is the enterprises themselves that engage in the entrepreneurial activity. Direct profit goes to the entrepreneurs rather than to the developmental state; and the state plays a more coordinative and promotional role than in the case of the entrepreneurial state. In the entrepreneurial state model, state agents vie to generate profits that accrue to them either institutionally or personally. The positive incentives flowing from economic development accrue directly to the state actors in question.


To enable investigation of nematode mitochondrial DNA evolution, methodology has been developed to amplify intact nematode mitochondrial genomes in preparative yields using a rolling circle replication strategy. Successful reactions were generated from whole cell template DNA prepared by alkaline lysis of the rhabditid nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and a mermithid nematode, Thaumamermis cosgrovei. These taxa, representing the two major nematode classes Chromodorea and Enoplea, maintain mitochondrial genomes of 13.8 kb and 20.0 kb, respectively. Efficient amplifications were conducted on template DNA isolated from individual or pooled nematodes that were alive or stored at -80 degrees C. Unexpectedly, these experiments revealed that multiple T. cosgrovei mitochondrial DNA haplotypes are maintained in our local population. Rolling circle amplification products can be used as templates for standard PCR reactions with specific primers that target mitochondrial genes or for direct DNA sequencing.


African jurisprudence, like African philosophy, continues to be hotly debated. This article contends that the debate straddles the uniqueness claim which either emphasises the existence or possibility of a peculiar legal framework on the continent, and a historical co-extensional position reiterating that African jurisprudence is a continuum of other legal traditions. The article argues that there is no uniquely African jurisprudence, and that what obtains within the structures of jurisprudence on the continent also exists within various legal traditions elsewhere, and as such can at best be described as 'jurisprudence in Africa' rather than 'African jurisprudence'. It defends this thesis through analytic and comparative explications of the content of natural law theory and legal positivism as experienced on the continent. It concedes that relics of the colonial legal experience create contestations that inform scholars' calls for a return to traditional legal systems. It concludes that a reconstructive jurisprudence in Africa must take cognisance of the continent's historical and evolutionary legal experiences, but that a unified or monolithic theory may not be sufficient to address the choice of functional jurisprudence.

Keywords
African jurisprudence, jurisprudence in Africa, African legal evolution, diffused legal theories


Stone disease is very common in urological practice in modern society. Holmium laser is the most versatile intracorporeal lithotripter available at present but there is no definite literature regarding the different settings to be used.
Materials and Methods: This study was done in 80 patients, having single ureteric calculus, undergoing ureteroscopy with holmium laser lithotripsy. The patients were randomized and allocated to one of the two groups, high frequency or low frequency group. Informed consent was taken from all patients. For ureteroscopy semi rigid ureteroscope of 6/7.5 Fr. Richard Wolf was used. For intracorporeal lithotripsy Lumenis Versa Pulse Power Suite, Holmium 100 watt laser was used. Patients in High frequency group underwent holmium laser lithotripsy at 40 Hz. and low frequency group at 20 Hz. Total power was 12 watts in both groups. Operating time, total energy used, lasing time, and requirement of additional instrumentation (forceps/basket) to achieve stone clearance were noted. Complications likeretropulsion, ureteric injury and postoperative hematuria were noted.
Results: Overall stone clearance rate was 95% in high frequency group and 92.5 % in low frequency group at 1 week of follow up. After the second procedure the overall stone clearance was 100% in both the groups. The mean stone size in both the groups were similar. The lasing time and total energy used in high frequency group was significantly higher but it did not increase the overall operative time. The complication rates were comparable to other studies but between the groups the low frequency group had significantly higher rates of ureteral mucosal injury that could be attributed to the increased use of intra operative additional procedures to attain complete stone clearance.
Conclusion: High frequency Ho: YAG laser lithotripsy is safe and effective method of achieving stone free status for ureteric calculus.

Keywords: Ureteric stones, Ureteroscopy, Urolithiasis, High frequency, Holmium laser lithotripsy, Ureteric calculus.


Rory's amazing amateur career saw him conquer Ireland and Europe before topping the World Amateur Rankings in 2007. But he really came to prominence with his superb opening three-under-par 68 in the 2007 Open Championship at Carnoustie. He went on to accpet the Silver Medal as leading amateur. Despite high expectations, Rory keeps a cool head on his young shoulders and lets his golf do the talking. In 2008 he entered the elite of the top 100 in the Official World Golf Rankings and his maiden victory came in the 2009 Dubai Desert Classic where he edured a nail-biting final hole. His final breakthrough came when in June 2011 he won his first major, the US Open. Rory finished on an amazing total of sixteen under par to seal his place among the golfing greats - a position confirmed when he was made an MBE in the 2012 New Year Honours. This is the fascinating story of one of golf's most exciting young talents.


This paper examines the relationship between trade (exports), growth, and inequality, using a panel of 100 countries over 30 years (1980 to 2010). As there is no clear theoretical relationship between trade (exports) and inequality, and as inequality can be considered a proxy for 'governance quality', the paper also tests for a threshold in inequality for the effect of trade (exports) on growth. The findings are that in general trade openness advances growth while inequality reduces growth. However, when we identify an inequality threshold, we find that inequality is positively associated with growth if below the threshold (low inequality) but negative above the threshold, whereas trade has a positive impact once the threshold is allowed for. Thus, trade generally promotes growth and relatively high inequality retards growth.


This letter presents an alternative approach for investigating the teleconnections of summer monsoon rainfall in the state of Kerala, India, with four prominent climatic oscillations in multiple time scales based on multivariate empirical mode decomposition (EMD) (MEMD) and time-dependent intrinsic correlation (TDIC). First, the multivariate data set constituting summer monsoon rainfall time series and the climate oscillations such as the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and Equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation are decomposed to several rotational modes by employing MEMD. To capture the associations in shorter time spells, the TDIC method is employed, in which the sliding window is adaptively fixed based on instantaneous periods obtained by the Hilbert transform of the obtained modes. From the analysis, it is found that the strength and nature of association between summer monsoon rainfall and the climate oscillations vary with time scales and time spells. The performance of MEMD-based TDIC analysis is compared with that of EMD-based TDIC, and it was found that the former one well captured the direct correlation between ENSO and summer monsoon rainfall in the 1997–1998 period and the opposing correlation in the 2002–2003 period, while the latter approach failed to capture such associations properly.


The proliferation of affordable and accessible Internet connectivity has changed the way video games are played by allowing individuals to connect worldwide in shared gaming spaces. These highly social environments allow players to connect, interact with, and learn from each other. However, there is a growing concern that these social environments also have the potential to displace real-world connections and interactions, contributing to a variety of losses in 'offline' sociability (Chiu, Lee, & Huang, 2004; Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Kim, Namkoong, Ku, & Kim, 2008; Peters & Malesky, 2008; Shen & Williams, 2010). While the association between online video game play and social incompetence remains widespread, so much so that it has evolved into a core component of the cultural perceptions of those who participate within online games (Kowert, Griffiths, & Oldmeadow, 2012; Kowert & Oldmeadow, 2012), empirical evidence illustrating this relationship has been conflicting and the potential mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. The work contained within this thesis aims to clarify the veracity of previously drawn conclusions, and evaluate social differences amongst adult video game players to uncover if, and how, online video game involvement supports, or undermines, the development and maintenance of traditional social skills. To this end, three, large-scale survey studies were conducted. While the results indicated that more involved online players display some variation in social outcomes as compared to other game playing groups, a general lack of unique or magnified relationships between Involvement and social outcomes within online players largely discredits the contention that increased online video game involvement inevitably coincides with severe social consequences. However, the emergence of inverse, linear relationships between video game involvement, the importance and likelihood of achieving offline social goals, and social expressivity, and a positive linear relationship with emotional sensitivity, both off- and online, does suggest that video game play may be a socially displacing activity and that users of this medium could be experiencing some social changes due to use. Taken together, it can be concluded that there are consistent links between video game involvement and social skills, which are likely attributable to social displacement effects. However, these relationships are not unique to, or substantially magnified within, online communities.


We introduce a new approach for specifying transaction management requirements for workflow applications. We propose independent models for the specification of workflow and transaction properties. Although we distinguish multiple transaction properties in our approach, we focus on atomicity. We propose an intuitive notation to specify atomicity and provide generic rules to integrate the workflow specification and the atomicity specification into one single model based on Petri nets. The integrated model can be checked for correctness. We call this correctness criterion relaxed soundness as a weaker notion of the existing soundness criterion. We can relax the correctness criterion because we rely on run-time transaction management. A real life example shows the applicability of the concepts.


Words, like genes, are replicators in competition to colonize our brains. Some, by luck or thanks to their intrinsic qualities, manage to spread in entire populations. In this paper we take the approach of cultural selectionism to study the emergence of communication systems in a population of agents. By studying simple models of word competition in noisy environments, we define the basic dynamics of such systems. We then argue for their generality and introduce the notion of semiotic schemata, generic replicators that account for the different competitions that are going on during lexicon formation. Eventually, we present a synthesis of the dynamics using this new formalism.


Current bussiness world move dynamically and require organization's effectiveness in implementation of policy changes as a form of company's efforts towards becoming a World Class Company. Organizations mostly have always introduced large or minor changes which are adaptive. Therefore, any changes in organization must be planned and managed at best. The process of changes must be managed skillfully in order to effectively implemented align with the interests of the organization. PT Pertamina (Persero) had implemented Single Grade policy as the organization effort in the implementation of changes. These studies describe the process of change that have occured in PT Pertamina (Persero) Marketing Operation Region V with 17 (seventeen) key element of diagnosing changes by using the model of Readiness for change by Stewart namely sponsorship, leadership, motivation, direction, measurements, organizational context, processes or functions, competitor benchmarking, customer focus, rewards, organizational structure, communication, organizational hierarchy, prior experience with change, morale, innovation, and decision making. These studies used qualitative research method with explanatory type research (explanatory). These studies use a holistic case study, using interviews, observation and see the company's internal documents to obtain the necessary data. The results show that there is a real effort of PT Pertamina (Persero) Marketing Operation Region V in making changes. The process of changes shown in seventeen key elements of diagnosing changes resulted in increased employee performance. The company's effort in implementing changes encouraged employees to improve their competence and self ability, and also to be fully responsible for the tasks given. The process of changes is still underway and requires continuous monitoring and evaluation, in order to understand the development of changes so it always evolving towards the better. Subsequent studies can be done with more evidence sources and different methods.


Variance in IQ is associated with a wide range of health outcomes, and 1% of the population are affected by intellectual disability. Despite a century of research, the fundamental neural underpinnings of intelligence remain unclear. We integrate results from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of intelligence with brain tissue and single cell gene expression data to identify tissues and cell types associated with intelligence. GWAS data for IQ (N = 78,308) were meta-analyzed with an extreme-trait cohort of 1,247 individuals with mean IQ ∼170 and 8,185 controls. Genes associated with intelligence implicate pyramidal neurons of the somatosensory cortex and CA1 region of the hippocampus, and midbrain embryonic GABAergic neurons. Tissue-specific analyses find the most significant enrichment for frontal cortex brain expressed genes. These results suggest specific neuronal cell types and genes may be involved in intelligence and provide new hypotheses for neuroscience experiments using model systems.


The development of education in Indonesia is currently faced with the moral problems of the nation's children. This study aims to provide constructive results for the national education system in terms of character education of the nation. This research uses descriptive method to collect actual information in detail that describe the existing symptoms, identify problems, make comparisons or evaluations. This study shows that any morality-related issues of education can not be solved using only one approach but require another approach depending on the conditions prevailing at the time.Indonesia's national education system developed from the struggle for independence and the renaissance of the nation. During its development, many influences, local or global, contributed to the changing nature of the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher professionalism. The author argues that education reform should entail a dialog involving the government, educators, and society to attain the goal of constructing an independent society of democracy and social justice.


quentially, the observed network-wide changes on LDHC silencing are predicted to negatively influence cellular growth and proliferation, cell migration and cell infiltration. The LDHC-associated network indicated a higher-level regulation by miR378a-3p (p=1.4e-7, z=-3.117), affecting the downstream mechanistic in LDHC-expressing cells. Interestingly, the miR378a causal network also indicated inhibition of the immune response in LDHC-positive cells. TIDE analysis indicated that high expression of LDHC in the METABRIC Her2 breast cancer cohort (TIDE score=1.97, p=0.049), and to a lesser extent in triple negative breast cancer (TIDE score=0.466, p=0.642), decreases the beneficial effect between CTLs and overall survival observed in LDHC Low tumors. Concurrently, LDHC-silenced cells displayed a proinflammatory gene expression and cytokine profile and down-regulated the expression of PD-L1 and Gal-9 immune checkpoints. Conclusions Our findings provide an indication of potential CTL dysfunction in breast tumors with high LDHC expression and suggests that therapeutic targeting of LDHC may inhibit tumor growth while releasing the anti-tumor immune response in breast cancer.


The name `bath salts', for an emerging class of synthetic cathinones, is derived from an attempt to evade prosecution and law enforcement. These are truly illicit drugs that have psychoactive CNS (central nervous system) stimulant effects and they have seen a rise in abuse as recreational drugs in the last few years since first having been seen in Japan in 2006. The ease of synthesis and modification of specific functional groups of the parent cathinone make these drugs particularly difficult to regulate. MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone) is commonly encountered as its hydrochloride salt (C16H21NO3·HCl), in either the hydrated or the anhydrous forms. This `bath salt' has various names in the US, e.g. `Super Coke', `Cloud Nine', and `Ivory Wave', to name just a few. We report here the structures of two forms of the HCl salt, one as a mixed bromide/chloride salt, C16H22NO3(+)·0.343Br(-)·0.657Cl(-) [systematic name: 1-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-2-(pyrrolidin-1-ium-1-yl)pentan-1-one bromide/chloride (0.343/0.657)], and the other with the H7O3(+) cation, as well as the HCl counter-ion [systematic name: hydroxonium 1-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-2-(pyrrolidin-1-ium-1-yl)pentan-1-one dichloride, H7O3(+)·C16H22NO3(+)·2Cl(-)]. This is one of a very few structures (11 to be exact) in which we have a new example of a precisely determined hydroxonium cation. During the course of researching the clandestine manufacture of MDPV, we were surprised by the fact that a common precursor of this illicit stimulant is known to be the fragrant species piperonal, which is present in the fragrances of orchids, most particularly in the case of the vanilla orchid. We found that MDPV can be made by a Grignard reaction of this heliotropin. This may also explain the unexpected appearance of the bromide counter-ion in some of the salts we encountered (C16H21NO3·HBr), one of which is presented here [systematic name: 1-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-2-(pyrrolidin-1-ium-1-yl)pentan-1-one bromide, C16H22NO3(+)·Br(-)]. Complexation of MDPV with a forensic crystallizing reagent, HAuCl4, yields the tetrachloridoaurate salt of this drug, (C16H22NO3)[AuCl4]. The heavy-metal complexing agent HAuCl4 has been used for over a century to identify common quarternary nitrogen-containing drugs via microscopic identification. Another street drug, called ethylone (3,4-methylenedioxyethylcathinone), is regularly sold and abused as its hydrochloride salt (C12H15NO3·HCl), and its structure is herein described (systematic name: N-{1-[(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)carbonyl]ethyl}ethanaminium chloride, C12H16NO3(+)·Cl(-)). Marketed and sold as a `bath salt', `plant feeder', or `cleaning product', this drug is nothing more than a slight chemical modification of the banned drug methylone (3,4-methylenedioxymethcathinone). As with previously popular synthetic cathinones, the abuse of ethylone has seen a recent increase due to regulatory efforts on previous generations of cathinones that are now banned.


Abstract Objective: The aim of this study was to review stress reducing interventions on group and organisational levels in organisations and analyse the studies according to quality of design, results and employee participation and learning. Methods: A literature review was carried out, with data search in the databases Current Contents, Embase, PsycINFO, Ovid MEDLINE®. Results: Nineteen interventions had a high quality design. An action research and participatory research design was the best design to reduce work related stress on group and organisational levels. The studies with the most effective results were based on a contract with the organisation, had supportive supervisors and managers and an individual and organisational stressor reduction process. They also identified work constraints and implemented an action plan using problem-based learning. There were six studies which met the criteria for the highest level of participation, which is official participation in problem solving and development activities. There were four studies which met the criteria for the highest level of learning, creative learning. Discussion: Researchers working with stress reducing interventions on group and organisational levels need to recommend high-quality design on each level. A successful group and organisational intervention needs to have a strategy that guarantees top management's commitment and methods that create effective participation, individual and organisational learning, social support, and empowerment of employees.


Our era, in contrast to the previous ones, has grown from a predominantly physical and agro-based society into a fully-fledged knowledge driven society.  This has been coupled by technological advancement and changes in the global market where there is heightened corporate competition, sliding meanings of everything and hence a need to harness knowledge as an invaluable asset. Employees are now hired on the merit of their skill, experience and knowledge depth against the strictly agricultural and industrial societies' criterion where physical strength was the economic commodity.  The acquisition of knowledge, the retention of knowledge and the meaning have all changed.  It is in view of this new era, this new phenomenon that this paper discusses the transformative aspect of open learning towards global equity and brain gain.  As the paper will show, open learning has become a penetrating tool for development.  There is a movement towards value creation, stakeholder satisfaction, social responsibility and integrative approaches to education against a primarily profit maximizing [capitalist] society. The author discusses the historical perspective, the conceptual framework as well as the proposed prescription for the current problem.


Abstract. Aiming at multi-class artificial object detection in remote sensing images, the detection framework based on deep learning is used to extract and localize the numerous targets existing in very high resolution remote sensing images. In order to realize rapid and efficient detection of the typical artificial targets on the remote sensing image, this paper proposes an end-to-end multi-category object detection method in remote sensing image based on the convolutional neural network to solve several challenges, including dense objects and objects with arbitrary direction and large aspect ratios. Specifically, in this paper, the feature extraction process is improved by utilizing a more advanced backbone network with deeper layers and combining multiple feature maps including the high-resolution features maps with more location details and low-resolution feature maps with highly-abstracted information. And a Rotating Regional Proposal Network is adopted into the Faster R-CNN network to generate candidate object-like regions with different orientations and to improve the sensitivity to dense and cluttered objects. The rotation factor is added into the regional proposal network to control the generation of anchor box's angle and to cover enough directions of typical man-made objects. Meanwhile, the misalignment caused by the two quantifications operations in the pooling process is eliminated and a convolution layer is appended before the fully connected layer of the final classification network to reduce the feature parameters and avoid overfitting. Compared with current generic object detection method, the proposed algorithm focus on the arbitrary oriented and dense artificial targets in remote sensing images. After comprehensive evaluation with several state-of-the-art object detection algorithms, our method is proved to be effective to detect multi-class artificial object in remote sensing image. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method combines the powerful features extracted by the improved convolutional neural networks with multi-scale features and rotating region network is more accurate in the public DOTA dataset.


In previous papers we have proposed an elementary discipline of strong functional programming (ESFP), in which all computations terminate. A key feature of the discipline is that we introduce a type distinction between data which is known to be nite, and codata which is (potentially) in nite. To ensure termination, recursion over data must be well-founded, and corecursion (the de nition schema for codata) must be productive, and both of these restrictions must be enforced automatically by the compiler. In our previous work we used abstract interpretation to establish the productivity of corecursive de nitions in an elementary strong functional language. We show here that similar ideas can be applied in the dual case to check whether recursive function de nitions are strongly normalising. We thus exhibit a powerful termination analysis technique which we demonstrate can be extended to partial functions.


Story boundary detection is the foundation of content based news video retrieval. In this paper, Naive Bayes Model, which has been successfully used in multi-modal feature fusion, is implemented in news video story segmentation. Firstly, we get candidate boundaries through shot detection. Secondly, middle-level features such as visual features, audio type, motion and caption, are extracted from shots around these boundaries to generate input attribute set of the model. Thirdly, we use trained Naive Bayes Model to compute posterior probabilities that a candidate boundary is a real story or not, and get the result according to maximum posterior probability rule. Lastly, post-processing is conducted, removing the non-news stories. Experiment results show that this method is effective and achieves satisfactory precision and recall. The new method requires less computation and is applicable to different types of news programs.


This study explored retail location performance of cities by investigating relationships between changes in retail property stock (supply), changes in retail rental value (demand), and spatial accessibility (retail consumer movement) across three UK cities, namely, Leeds, Newcastle, and York. This is to understand how retail locations and assets can be managed sustainably. In this sense, sustainability was considered through a dual focus in this paper: (1) the efficient use of retail property assets for economic purposes and (2) the impact of these physical retail assets on the local environment in terms of carbon footprint. The study relied on space syntax ideology in computing spatial accessibility index and adopted business rate datasets in computing changes in retail rental value and stock. Findings showed that spatial accessibility across retail locations could predict the performance of retail rental value (but not stock) across the sampled cities. The study further showed that extent of city analysis (scale) is significant in estimating retail location performance and understanding the influence of accessibility. This evidence has the potential to facilitate better decision-making concerning the planning, design, and management of retail locations and spaces. The study is significant because it can serve as a reference for promoting an urban sustainability agenda, especially in ensuring that urban land and properties are used optimally to maximise their social, economic, and environmental values.


By taking advantage of the silicon-on-insulator technology and the in situ carbon nanotube (CNT) growth, new local silicon-gate carbon nanotube FETs (CNFETs) have been implemented in this paper. We propose an approach to integrate the CNFET onto the silicon CMOS platform for the first time. Individual device operation, batch fabrication, low parasitic capacitance, and better compatibility to the CMOS process were realized. The characteristics of the CNFETs are comparable to the state-of-the-art devices reported. The scaling effect, ambipolar conductance, Schottky barrier effect, and I-V characteristics noise were analyzed. The physical properties of the CNTs were also characterized.


Competition policy in the United States is formed at multiple levels, and the sovereigns that formulate this policy often clash with each other. A phalanx of state laws must be reconciled with federal policies designed to ensure a nationwide common market. The United States uses two bodies of law to reconcile federalism with a national policy favoring interstate competition. These two approaches - antitrust immunity and the dormant commerce clause - are antagonistic in practically every important detail. Whereas antitrust immunity protects state and local freedom to restrain trade, the dormant commerce clause adopts precisely the opposite solution of protecting a national interest in free trade. The tension between these bodies of law parallels the fundamental dilemma of international competition policy. The American experience in coordinating its conflicting sources of competition policy therefore informs comparable efforts in the European Union and on the world stage.


Rationale: Bezold–Jarisch reflex (BJR) occurs when the cardioinhibitory receptors in the walls of ventricles are activated by various stimuli, with typical features of bradycardia, vasorelaxation, and hypotension. This reflex usually happens in parturient intrathecal anesthesia, as a result of decreased venous return by compression of inferior vena cava, but it is only rarely reported during general anesthesia. Patient concerns: Severe bradycardia and hypotension, indicating BJR, occurred during the induction of general anesthesia in a 3-month-old female child with giant intra-abdominal teratoma. Diagnoses: A giant intra-abdominal teratoma was detected by computed tomography scanning. The decreased left ventricular ejection faction along with increased troponin I and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide indicated a preoperative mild cardiac dysfunction. BJR was diagnosed on the basis of the severe bradycardia and hypotension observed during the induction of general anesthesia, Interventions: Atropine failed to increase heart rate. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was initiated immediately and epinephrine was injected intravenously because of sudden circulatory collapse. Soon after the return of spontaneous circulation, a central venous line was placed and invasive blood pressure was monitored. Vital signs and homeostasis were kept stable during teratoma resection. Outcomes: The child was extubated after emergence from anesthesia in the operating room. Eleven days later, she had recovered without complications and was discharged. Lessons: General anesthesia should be induced with great care in patients with giant intra-abdominal masses, and the patient should be kept in the left-lateral table tilt position before induction.


PURPOSE
The current study was designed to answer the following questions: (a) What knowledge do school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have concerning autism? (b) What educational and clinical training do SLPs receive in autism? (c) Do SLPs have confidence in their ability to provide services to children with autism and their families?

METHOD
An original 52-item survey was designed to answer the research questions. Participants were recruited through e-mail and were asked to respond to a Web-based survey.

RESULTS
Sixty-seven school-based SLPs practicing in 33 states across the United States responded to the survey. Most participants had accurate knowledge about the characteristics of children with autism; however, they had mixed perceptions of diagnostic criteria for autism. Although most participants did address autism at some level of their educational training, little time was spent discussing the topic. Additionally, some SLPs lack confidence in their abilities to provide services to children with autism.

CONCLUSION
The return rate for participants was small, and it is difficult to generalize the results. However, the majority of respondents reported that they could have benefited from additional training in the area of autism. As a result, it may be necessary to consider strategies for providing this training.


Aims To describe health status outcomes at 4 years for a cohort of elderly patients with cardiac disease. Methods and results Using the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcomes Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease, an outcomes initiative capturing all patients undergoing cardiac catheterization in Alberta, Canada, health status was measured using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) and crude and risk-adjusted outcomes were determined and compared for patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) vs. medical therapy. Response rates among surviving, consenting patients were 64.8% for patients <70 years (n = 7883), 77.3% for patients aged 70-79 years (n=2940), and 77.7% for patients ≥80 years of age (n=439). For patients aged <70 years, and those aged 70-79 years, for all dimensions of the SAQ, scores were significantly better for patients treated with revascularization procedures than with medical therapy. For patients over the age of 80 years, scores for patients treated with CABG in particular were significantly better, with the exception of exertional capacity. At 3 years, all scores remained stable or improved, and continued to favour revascularization. Conclusion Elderly patients undergoing revascularization have better health status at 4 years than do those in the same age group who do not undergo revascularization. These findings suggest that age should not deter against revascularization given the combined survival and quality-of-life benefits.


Due process arguments come to the fore as the Botswana Competition Authority gears itself for enforcement* In September and October, the Botswana Competition Commission (Commission) took its…


The growth in cell phone–only households represents a challenge for the collection of survey data. Cell phone–only households have distinct sociodemographic characteristics, which may result in different travel behavior. To explore those differences, as well as to investigate the impact of including a cell phone component in active transportation research, a representative sample of New Jersey households was surveyed with a random digit dial survey that included 1,200 completed interviews (800 based on a statewide landline sample, 400 from a landline over sample of Jersey City) and 311 statewide cell phone interviews, of which 80 were cell phone–only respondents. The survey explored walking behavior and perceived characteristics of the pedestrian environment. Sociodemographic characteristics, the frequency of walking, and home location characteristics were compared with chisquare tests of significance between sample pairs as well as multivariate analysis (ordered probit). Cell phone–only respondents were typically younger and poorer, with a greater proportion of renters, carless households, and minorities. It was found that cell phone–only household members walked more frequently, but this finding was because of their distinct sociodemographic characteristics, not their cell phone use per se. The implication for any analysis of rates or trends in walking (and probably other travel behavior) is that cell phone–only households must be included through a cell phone sample supplementing a landline sample. However, in the absence of a cell phone supplement, multivariate analysis of the correlates of walking may not be overly biased if sociodemographics relevant to cell phone–only respondents are collected and included in the analysis.


Divalent metal transporter-1 (DMT1/DCT1/Nramp2) is the major Fe2+ transporter mediating cellular iron uptake in mammals. Phenotypic analyses of animals with spontaneous mutations in DMT1 indicate that it functions at two distinct sites, transporting dietary iron across the apical membrane of intestinal absorptive cells, and transporting endosomal iron released from transferrin into the cytoplasm of erythroid precursors. DMT1 also acts as a proton-dependent transporter for other heavy metal ions including Mn2+, Co2+, and Cu2, but not for Mg2+ or Ca2+. A unique mutation in DMT1, G185R, has occurred spontaneously on two occasions in microcytic (mk) mice and once in Belgrade (b) rats. This mutation severely impairs the iron transport capability of DMT1, leading to systemic iron deficiency and anemia. The repeated occurrence of the G185R mutation cannot readily be explained by hypermutability of the gene. Here we show that G185R mutant DMT1 exhibits a new, constitutive Ca2+ permeability, suggesting a gain of function that contributes to remutation and the mk and b phenotypes.