ABSTRACT Objectives: Social scientists have devoted much theoretical and empirical attention to studying the correlates of bullying perpetration and victimization. Much less attention has been devoted to studying race differences in the correlates of bullying behaviors despite the importance of these when designing effective and focused prevention and intervention programs. Methods: Utilizing data from the 2009 to 2010 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study in the United States, this study applies Bronfenbrenner's ecological model to bullying in order to examine how various interrelated systems are associated with bullying perpetration, victimization, and their concordance in a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Results: Findings shown important similarities, as well as some differences, across race in how key parental and peer relationships relate to aspects of involvement in bullying. Directions for future research are noted.


Thin-rim gears are often used in aircraft applications in order to reduce weight. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of rotational speed (centrifugal force) on bending fatigue crack initiation life of thin-rim gear manufactured from case carburized 14NiCrMo13-4 steel. Stresses in gear are determined from two-dimensional finite element model, assuming plane stress conditions. The fact that, in actual thin-rim gear operation, a significant reversed stress occurs at the root of the tooth adjacent to the loaded tooth is considered. Material is assumed to be homogenous, isotropic and linear elastic. Elastic strains are calculated from obtained stresses and corrected using Neuber's rule to account plasticity effects. The number of load cycles required to initiate bending fatigue crack is predicted using strain-life approach for variety of gear rotational speeds and rim thicknesses. Strain-controlled fatigue properties were approximated from material hardness, while the mean stress as well as residual stress effects are included through Morrow's mean stress correction. The proposed approach is validated by comparison with available experimental data from literature and used for parametric studies. Predicted numbers of load cycles required to initiate potential bending fatigue crack are presented for the variety of cases studied.


Mice bearing TEPC-183, an immunoglobulin M(kappa)-secreting plasmacytoma, exhibit severe suppression of their immune responses to both thymus-dependent and thymus-independent antigens, 2,4-dinitrophenyl, and the type 3 pneumococcal polysaccharide SSS-III. This immunosuppression is not lifted by splenectomy of the tumor-bearing mice or prevented by removal of the spleen prior to tumor injection. On the contrary, splenectomy either before or after tumor implantation further accentuates the immunosuppressed state of tumor bearers and even depresses the immune response of normal mice. A secondary immune response of normal mice 34 to 51 days after splenectomy is still reduced. Thus, spleen cells may play a dual role. While splenectomy may remove a source of suppressor cells in tumor-bearing mice, it also eliminates a major source of antibody-producing cells and results in reduced immune responses of normal and TEPC-183-bearing mice. These findings have clinical relevance since splenectomy is used as a therapeutic and diagnostic procedure in neoplastic lymphoproliferative disorders.


The Great Pacific Garbage Patch which characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic, chemical sludge, and other debris, has a variety of severe influence on the marine life and human beings. Therefore, cleaning up the patch immediately is a matter of great urgency. To solve the problem, three models which are based on different differential equations to predict the amount of waste plastic poured into the ocean are established. According to the basic model, in about next 20 years, the Pacific Ocean will be unable to hold more garbage. Based on the fact that salvaging the waste plastic in the ocean contributes to controlling marine pollution, in accordance with the better model, the Pacific Ocean still has the ability to accommodate garbage before 2060. By improving the better model, a series of results are obtained. Around 2060, the area of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch will reach relatively steady state; meanwhile, the annual emissions of the plastic will reach 32,397,273.47 tons. To keep a relatively stable state the area which should be cleaned up will reach about 3,601,672 square kilometers per year. To compare the effect of government increasing taxation and plastic salvaging, a conclusion is reached that the huge economic losses caused by taxes are far more than the amount of money spent in salvaging the plastic garbage.


Background and aims: Advances in modern medicine have led to improved outcomes after stroke, yet an increased treatment burden has been placed on patients. Treatment burden is the workload of health care for people with chronic illness and the impact that this has on functioning and well-being. Those with comorbidities are likely to be particularly burdened. Excessive treatment burden can negatively affect outcomes. Individuals are likely to differ in their ability to manage health problems and follow treatments, defined as patient capacity. The aim of this thesis was to explore the experience of treatment burden for people who have had a stroke and the factors that influence patient capacity.

Methods: There were four phases of research. 1) A systematic review of the qualitative literature that explored the experience of treatment burden for those with stroke. Data were analysed using framework synthesis, underpinned by Normalisation Process Theory (NPT). 2) A cross-sectional study of 1,424,378 participants >18 years, demographically representative of the Scottish population. Binary logistic regression was used to analyse the relationship between stroke and the presence of comorbidities and prescribed medications. 3) Interviews with twenty-nine individuals with stroke, fifteen analysed by framework analysis underpinned by NPT and fourteen by thematic analysis. The experience of treatment burden was explored in depth along with factors that influence patient capacity. 4) Integration of findings in order to create a conceptual model of treatment burden and patient capacity in stroke.

Results: Phase 1) A taxonomy of treatment burden in stroke was created. The following broad areas of treatment burden were identified: making sense of stroke management and planning care; interacting with others including health professionals, family and other stroke patients; enacting management strategies; and reflecting on management. Phase 2) 35,690 people (2.5%) had a diagnosis of stroke and of the 39 co-morbidities examined, 35 were significantly more common in those with stroke. The proportion of those with stroke that had >1 additional morbidities present (94.2%) was almost twice that of controls (48%) (odds ratio (OR) adjusted for age, gender and socioeconomic deprivation; 95% confidence interval: 5.18; 4.95-5.43) and 34.5% had 4-6 comorbidities compared to 7.2% of controls (8.59; 8.17-9.04). In the stroke group, 12.6% of people had a record of >11 repeat prescriptions compared to only 1.5% of the control group (OR adjusted for age, gender, deprivation and morbidity count: 15.84; 14.86-16.88). Phase 3) The taxonomy of treatment burden from Phase 1 was verified and expanded. Additionally, treatment burdens were identified as arising from either: the workload of healthcare; or the endurance of care deficiencies. A taxonomy of patient capacity was created. Six factors were identified that influence patient capacity: personal attributes and skills; physical and cognitive abilities; support network; financial status; life workload, and environment. A conceptual model of treatment burden was created. Healthcare workload and the presence of care deficiencies can influence and be influenced by patient capacity. The quality and configuration of health and social care services influences healthcare workload, care deficiencies and patient capacity.

Conclusions: This thesis provides important insights into the considerable treatment burden experienced by people who have had a stroke and the factors that affect their capacity to manage health. Multimorbidity and polypharmacy are common in those with stroke and levels of these are high. Findings have important implications for the design of clinical guidelines and healthcare delivery, for example co-ordination of care should be improved, shared decision-making enhanced, and patients better supported following discharge from hospital.


Self-supervised learning (SSL), which can automatically generate ground-truth samples from raw data, holds vast potential to improve recommender systems. Most existing SSL-based methods perturb the raw data graph with uniform node/edge dropout to generate new data views and then conduct the self-discrimination based contrastive learning over different views to learn generalizable representations. Under this scheme, only a bijective mapping is built between nodes in two different views, which means that the self-supervision signals from other nodes are being neglected. Due to the widely observed homophily in recommender systems, we argue that the supervisory signals from other nodes are also highly likely to benefit the representation learning for recommendation. To capture these signals, a general socially-aware SSL framework that integrates tri-training is proposed in this paper. Technically, our framework first augments the user data views with the user social information. And then under the regime of tri-training for multi-view encoding, the framework builds three graph encoders (one for recommendation) upon the augmented views and iteratively improves each encoder with self-supervision signals from other users, generated by the other two encoders. Since the tri-training operates on the augmented views of the same data sources for self-supervision signals, we name it self-supervised tri-training. Extensive experiments on multiple real-world datasets consistently validate the effectiveness of the self-supervised tri-training framework for improving recommendation. The code is released at https://github.com/Coder-Yu/QRec.


Aggressive fungal and insect attacks have reached an alarming level, threatening a variety of tree species, such as ash and oak trees, in the United Kingdom and beyond. In this context, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) has proven to be an effective non-invasive tool, capable of generating information about the inner structure of tree trunks in terms of existence, location, and geometry of defects. Nevertheless, it had been observed that the currently available and known GPR-related processing and data interpretation methods and tools are able to provide only limited information regarding the existence of defects and anomalies within the tree inner structure. In this study, we present a microwave tomographic approach for improved GPR data processing with the aim of detecting and characterising the geometry of decay and cavities in trees. The microwave tomographic approach is able to pinpoint explicitly the position of the measurement points on the tree surface and thus to consider the actual geometry of the sections beyond the classical (circular) ones. The robustness of the microwave tomographic approach with respect to noise and data uncertainty is tackled by exploiting a regularised scheme in the inversion process based on the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition (TSVD). A demonstration of the potential of the microwave tomography approach is provided for both simulated data and measurements collected in controlled conditions. First, the performance analysis was carried out by processing simulated data achieved by means of a Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) in three scenarios characterised by different geometric trunk shapes, internal trunk configurations and target dimensions. Finally, the method was validated on a real trunk by proving the viability of the proposed approach in identifying the position of cavities and decay in tree trunks.


Abstract. Variations in the carbon isotopic composition of soil organic matter (SOM) in bulk and fractionated samples were used to assess the influence of C3 and C4 vegetation on SOM dynamics in semi-natural tropical ecosystems sampled along a precipitation gradient in West Africa. Differential patterns in SOM dynamics in C3/C4 mixed ecosystems occurred at various spatial scales. Relative changes in C / N ratios between two contrasting SOM fractions were used to evaluate potential site-scale differences in SOM dynamics between C3- and C4-dominated locations. These differences were strongly controlled by soil texture across the precipitation gradient, with a function driven by bulk δ13C and sand content explaining 0.63 of the observed variability. The variation of δ13C with soil depth indicated a greater accumulation of C3-derived carbon with increasing precipitation, with this trend also being strongly dependant on soil characteristics. The influence of vegetation thickening on SOM dynamics was also assessed in two adjacent, but structurally contrasting, transitional ecosystems occurring on comparable soils to minimise the confounding effects posed by climatic and edaphic factors. Radiocarbon analyses of sand-size aggregates yielded relatively short mean residence times (τ) even in deep soil layers, while the most stable SOM fraction associated with silt and clay exhibited shorter τ in the savanna woodland than in the neighbouring forest stand. These results, together with the vertical variation observed in δ13C values, strongly suggest that both ecosystems are undergoing a rapid transition towards denser closed canopy formations. However, vegetation thickening varied in intensity at each site and exerted contrasting effects on SOM dynamics. This study shows that the interdependence between biotic and abiotic factors ultimately determine whether SOM dynamics of C3- and C4-derived vegetation are at variance in ecosystems where both vegetation types coexist. The results highlight the far-reaching implications that vegetation thickening may have for the stability of deep SOM.


The hepatic uptake rate for certain albumin- bound drugs and metabolites correlates poorly with their equi- librium unbound concentration in the plasma, suggesting that binding equilibrium may not always exist within the hepatic sinusoids. Currently available models for the uptake process assume binding equilibrium and, thus, cannot be used to in- vestigate this possibility. This report presents a more general model that treats plasma-bound and free concentrations sepa- rately. A solution is provided that specifies the hepatic uptake rate as a function of the total plasma concentrations of the transported substance and of binding protein and the rate con- stants for influx, efflux, elimination, association, dissociation, and flow. Analysis of this solution indicates that hepatic up- take may be limited by the rate of plasma flow, dissociation from the binding protein, influx into the liver, cellular elimi- nation, or any combination of these processes. The affinity and concentration of the binding protein strongly influence which of these steps are rate-limiting in any given case, and binding equilibrium exists within the hepatic sinusoids only for binding protein concentrations greater than a specified value (the ratio of the uptake and association rate constants). The precise conditions under which each step is rate-limiting and the kinetic behavior expected when two or more steps mutually limit uptake are provided. The results are compatible with previously reported data for the uptake of certain albumin- bound ligands such as bilirubin, and they offer an alternative to attributing these kinetics to the presence of an albumin re- ceptor.


This work analyzes the efficiency and economic performance of different configurations of a coal-fed Integrated Gasification Fuel Cell (IGFC) plant with CO2 capture. Our analysis evaluates novel configurations, providing a detailed economic assessment for each case. The plants studied here are based on a pressurized Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) based power cycle integrated with a Shell coal gasifier. The design variations focus on syngas cleaning and pre-processing upstream of the SOFC power island. In particular, we have designed, simulated and optimized three main system configurations; two with a partial methanation process upstream of the SOFC ('TREMP' and 'HICOM' cases, respectively) and one without ('DIRECT' case). Depending on the specific plant layout, carbon capture is accomplished either before or after the SOFC power island, or both. The best performance, both thermodynamic and economic, was achieved by the 'HICOM' case, whose coal-to-electricity conversion efficiency is 50.1% (lower heating value basis). In addition to outperforming the other IGFC configurations analysed, compared to a conventional IGCC-CCS plant, the 'HICOM' case produced almost 30% reduction in the levelizedcost-of-electricity (LCOE) delivered by the power plant.


OBJECTIVE
To examine in children the influence of maltreatment and associated psychiatric sequelae on behavioral responses to reward stimuli.

METHOD
A computerized two-choice decision-making task involving probabilistic monetary gains was used to probe elemental processes of goal-directed actions. Using different risk contingencies, the authors examined decision-making, expectations of outcomes, and affective responses to rewards in 38 maltreated children and 21 demographically matched controls (8-14 years old).

RESULTS
Maltreated children selected risk options faster than controls; however, whereas controls responded more quickly as the chance of winning increased, maltreated children did not vary in response speed as a function of the likelihood of winning. When choosing between high- and low-risk options, maltreated children with depressive disorders more frequently selected safe over risky choices than did controls. No group differences emerged in self-report ratings of positive or negative reactions to winning or not winning, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
This initial experimental study of responses to reward lays the groundwork for subsequent research on neurodevelopmental aspects of reward processes in relationship to maltreatment and psychopathology. Clinical applications of these data may be relevant for developing treatment plans for maltreated children, particularly those with depression.


Anthracene derivatives are one of the most promising blue emitters employed in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) because of their electrochemical and thermal stabilities. However, their high crystallinity owing to their large π-planar structures severely impedes the progress in the development of solution-based systems. In this work, we developed two types of highly soluble multifunctional anthracene derivatives terminated with ortho-biphenyl and triphenylamine moieties and showed high solubility in general organic solvents such as toluene, tetrahydrofuran, and cyclohexanone at high concentrations (>10 mg mL-1 ), and showed blue emission with a peak wavelength of ∼465 nm and a high photoluminescence quantum yield that ranges up to 81 %. Notably, these emitters are suitable for fabricating both evaporation- and solution-based systems. The evaporation-based system OLED achieved a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 5.4 %. While the solution-processed system realized 4.8 %, exhibiting the best performance among the anthracene-based solution-processed OLEDs so far.


A high-efficiency hybrid Brillouin/ytterbium fiber laser (BYFL) is demonstrated using a 41.5-cm-long highly ytterbium-doped fiber and a 10-m-long single-mode optical fiber. The BYFL operates at 1 052.92 nm, and the difference between it and the Brillouin pump (BP) wavelength matches the expected stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) Stokes shift. Its output power reaches 70.1 mW, which is more than seven times higher than the seeded BP power. The BYFL has an optical signal-to-noise ratio that is greater than 65 dB and has many potential applications, such as in controllable optical delay lines, sensing, and RF photonics.


In this paper, we empirically investigate and discuss the effects of jumps in data on causation pattern both in mean and variance. Our data consist of daily stock returns of four countries: France, Sweden, the UK and Finland. A test proposed by Cheung and Ng (1996) and Hong (2001) is applied for testing volatility spillover. We find significant evidence of jump spillover. It is shown that the presence of jump affects the transmission of information between two sets of series. Moreover, it is found that the choice of an appropriate model is essential for understanding the real pattern of transmission.


Medium chain fatty acids (MCFA), have been researched extensively to reduce the likelihood of animal feed being contaminated by biological pathogens, including bacteria and viruses. Medium chain fatty acids have shown to be bactericidal and bacteriostatic by incorporating themselves into the lipid membrane of bacteria, which alters the cell membrane permeability leading to cell death. However, the effectiveness can be dependent upon the MCFA chain length and species of bacteria. Most research completed prior to 2013 focused on the antimicrobial properties of MCFA. However, with the emergence of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV), MCFA began to gain more attention for their potential uses in feed safety and swine nutrition as a potential antiviral additive. Medium chain fatty acids have shown repeated success against PEDV in vivo and in vitro. Notably, 2% MCFA [1:1:1 blend of caproic, caprylic, and capric] was equally successful at mitigating PEDV as commercially-available formaldehyde products in complete swine feed (P>0.05). However, the effectiveness varies within feed matrix, as MCFA was not as effective as formaldehyde at mitigation in spray dried animal plasma and meat and bone meal (P<0.05). A lower concentration of the MCFA blend (1%), as well as the individual addition of 0.66% caproic, 0.66% caprylic, or 0.66% capric acids also enhanced the RNA degradation of PEDV in complete swine feed (P<0.05). Other research has evaluated the same 2% MCFA blend in a transboundary based study, replicating the time and environmental condition that feed ingredients undertake during a trip from China to the United States. Again, the MCFA treated ingredients were deemed to be negative throughout the simulated transboundary trip (P<0.05). Medium chain fatty acids have also been evaluated as a surface decontaminate and as a potential feed mill flush step. However, the overall effectiveness was not as substantial as the results observed in the feed ingredient studies. Currently, it is not known what the exact mode of action of the MCFA is against PEDV, but it is hypothesize that the MCFA are interacting with the lipid bilayer envelope of the virus and altering the envelope in a way in which it cannot bind with the host receptors. This mode of action would be similar to that of the bacteria as both outer membranes consist of a lipid bilayer. Future research is now focused on the use of MCFA against other enveloped and non-enveloped swine viruses as well as an antibiotic alternative in swine production.


Abstract Amphiphilic block copolymers have the ability to assemble into multiple morphologies in solution. Depending on the length of the hydrophilic block, the morphology can vary from spherical micelles, rods, and vesicles to large compound micelles (LCMs). Vesicle formation is favored upon an increase in total molecular weight of the block copolymer, that is, an increasing bending modulus (K). Owing to the polymeric character of this type of vesicle (also called polymersomes), they possess remarkable properties. The diffusion of (polymeric) amphiphiles in these vesicles is very low compared to liposomes and for high-molecular-weight chain entanglements even lead to reptation-type motions, which make it possible to trap near-equilibrium and metastable morphologies. Additionally, in contrast to liposomes, membrane thicknesses can exceed 200 nm. As a consequence, this increased membrane thickness, in combination with the conformational freedom of the polymer chains, leads to a much lower permeability for water of block copolymer vesicles compared to liposomes. The enhanced toughness and reduced permeability of polymersomes makes them, therefore, very suitable as stable nanocontainers, which can be used, for example, as reactors or drug delivery vehicles.


Considering a sample of 20 eclipsing binary systems with δ Scuti type primaries, we discovered that there is a possible relation among the pulsation periods of the primaries and the orbital periods of the systems. According to this empirical relation, the longer the orbital period of a binary, the longer the pulsation period of its pulsating primary. Among the sample, the masses of the secondaries and the separations between the components are known for eight systems for which a log P puls versus log F (the gravitational pull exerted per gram of the matter on the surface of the primaries by the secondaries) diagram also verifies such an interrelation between the periods. So, as the gravitational force applied by the secondary component onto the pulsating primary increases, its pulsation period decreases. The detailed physics underlying this empirical relation between the periods needs further confirmation, especially theoretically. However, one must also consider the fact that the present sample does not contain a sufficiently large sample of longer period (P > 5 d) binaries.


__Abstract__

Survey data are often used for comparison purposes, such as comparisons
across nations or comparisons over time. Ideally, this would require
equivalent questions and equivalent responses options to these questions.
Yet there is a lot of variation in the response scales used, which, for
example, differ in the number of response options used and the labelling of
these options. This difference in items is no problem when surveys are
analysed separately, but it limits the comparability of findings gathered in
different surveys that used different items for the same topic. This reduces
our accumulation of knowledge and calls for methods to transform ratings
on different scales to attain comparable results and to correct for effects of
changes in measurements and other influencing factors.
Conventional methods to transform ratings on different response
scales to a common one, such as the commonly used Linear Stretch
Method, fall short to overcome the comparability problem caused by the
non-uniformity of survey items. The weaknesses of these early
transformation methods also appear when the transformed scores are
compared to average ratings on 0-10 numerical scales in the same country
in the same year. The shortcomings of conventional methods instigated the
development of new techniques, which will be discussed in this thesis.
This thesis is divided into four parts. In the first part we give a
comprehensive description of the comparability problem and why
conventional methods fall short to solve this problem. Each of the three
parts that follow focuses on a successive innovation to improve the
comparability of survey findings with different survey items.


School libraries in rural Thailand have faced a serious long-term problem in developing effective libraries, and could not achieve a minimum criteria of school library standard. Key people who influences in supporting and contributing an effective library are school principals because they have authorities in directing and administration the facilitation of change in the schools. Therefore, school principals require to understand the values and impacts of school library on students' academic achievement. The principals' perceptions about the impact of school library on students' academic achievement not only present their awareness of the value of school library on student's academic achievement, but also reflect their attention on contributing effective libraries. This paper presents the principals' perceptions of small public primary school in rural Thailand and the factors that drive their perceptions about the impact of school library on students' academic achievement, which is one part of the study of school libraries and their roles in rural Thailand. These perceptions meaningfully presented the understanding and awareness of school principals about the library values on increasing students' academic achievement, and revealed the factors influencing those principals' perceptions. This information was further integrated with rural school libraries' characteristics and situations to clarify their scenarios and local context, which is important to understand the causes making these libraries struggle to be effective, how to manage with school library issues and develop effective school libraries in rural Thailand.


The 178,000-acre Grassland Ecological Area in California's San Joaquin Valley is managed to provide overwintering habitat to waterfowl on the Pacific Flyway. The major management activity is the fall flooding and spring drawdown of wetlands, timed to optimize the availability of forage vegetation and invertebrates for ducks and shorebirds. Wetland drainage contains salt, boron, and trace elements that are largely derived from imported surface water but concentrate during storage in the wetland impoundments and contribute to occasional water quality violations in the San Joaquin River (SJR) during dry years. Compliance with water quality objectives may be improved by timing wetland drawdown to coincide with high SJR salt assimilative capacity during mid-March to mid-April when reservoir releases are increased to aid salmon migration. The experimental sites chosen were three pairs of matched wetland basins (20-100 acres each) that are part of the larger Modified Hydrology Study. For each wetland pair, one was managed with a traditional March drawdown; while the drawdown was delayed up to one month for the other to coincide with the period of high SJR assimilative capacity. Two additional drainage sites were added to the second year of sampling to better characterize drainage flowing to the SJR. Soil and water column samples were collected during the flooded periods at the inlets, outlets, and along transects within the wetlands. Water quality analyses included total/volatile suspended solids, conductivity, nitrogen (NH4+, NO2-+NO3-, organic), phosphorus (total, PO43-), total organic carbon, alkalinity, turbidity, temperature, and pH. Planktonic and benthic invertebrates were identified and enumerated. Data were collected between February and April in 2007 and again in 2008. Identified phytoplankton were predominantly chlorophytes and diatoms. Zooplankton that feed on phytoplankton were found in abundance and consisted mostly of Cladocera. Benthic invertebrate densities were also measured to help explain the differences in algal concentrations between ponds. Benthic invertebrates were found to be predominantly Chironomidae. Seasonal loads of volatile suspended solids, total dissolved solids, and total organic carbon were estimated at the two aggregate drainage sites and at one delayed drawdown wetland during the 2008 season. For volatile suspended solids, the discharged load was 1500 lbs at the Buttonwillow drainage site, 2500 lbs at the Los Banos 38 drainage site, and upstream of those sites, 770 lbs were discharged from the Mud Slough 4b wetland. For total dissolved solids, the discharged load was 293 tons, 524 tons, and 26 tons, respectively, for the same locations. Of the factors potentially limiting phytoplankton concentrations, invertebrate grazing was likely the most important. Nutrients were not limiting in either the traditional or modified wetlands, as indicated by sufficient N and P content in the algae biomass. Likewise, inorganic C was not limiting, as indicated by pH (most <9.0 pH). Sunlight intensity was not significantly attenuated by water depth or turbidity, and thus light limitation was not indicated.


The 3.2 Ga Dixon Island Formation in the Cleaverville Group of the coastal Pilbara terrane, Australia, is one of the most complete and best-preserved examples of middle Archean oceanic stratigraphy and contains possible microbial material. Field observations and geochemical evidence suggest that this formation contains a low-temperature hydrothermal vent system with a biogenic microbial colony from the Archean ocean. The Dixon Island Formation is ∼350 m thick and consists of the Rhyolite Tuff, Black Chert, and Varicolored Chert Members, in ascending order. The Rhyolite Tuff Member contains many vein swarms, such as quartz and black chert veins, and highly altered rhyolite tuff layers, which are identified as an underground bypass zone for circulating hydrothermal fluid. Many black chert vein swarms in the Rhyolite Tuff Member imply intensive low-temperature hydrothermal activity during deposition of the Black Chert Member, which is 10–15 m thick. The Black Chert Member is composed of massive black chert, laminated black chert, dark-greenish siliceous shale and tuffaceous laminated chert, which are mainly composed of very fine quartz. Abundant pseudomorphs of silica after aragonite, barite, and gypsum, and a distinctly continuous, stromatolite-like biomat layer (10–20 cm thick), are preserved within the laminated black chert bed. The stromatolite-like biomat bed is formed of fine iron or iron-coated quartz pisolite within fine-grained silica. The absence of detrital sediment of continental origin and the many vein injections imply that this sedimentary facies represents a pelagic hydrothermal environment at ∼500–2000 m paleodepth, and may have been on the slope of an immature island arc. Microbial material has been preserved well in the lower part of Black Chert Member. The massive black chert has carbonaceous peloids (0.3–2.0 mm in diameter), which are similar to those in the black chert veins. The massive black chert contains spiral-, rod, and dendrite-shaped bacterial material. The total organic carbon (TOC) value of massive black chert in the lower part of the Black Chert Member is higher (TOC = 0.15–0.45%) than that of the overlying laminated chert section (TOC = 0.02–0.15%) and the black chert vein (TOC = 0.1–0.13%), and the carbon isotope (δ 13 C) values of this lithology (−33‰ to ∼−27‰) are also lighter than for the black chert veins (−29‰ to ∼−26‰) and the laminated black chert in the upper part of the Black Chert Member and the Varicolored Chert Member (−27‰ to ∼−13‰). This evidence suggests that the carbonaceous grains and bacteria-shaped material in the lower part of the Black Chert Member are of bio-genic origin and were formed close to a low-temperature hydrothermal vent system. The microbial colony may have been rapidly fossilized by silicification related to hydrothermal activity. Laminated black chert in the upper part of the Black Chert and the Varicolored Chert Members may have formed by cyanobacterial sedimentation from the ocean surface.


We illustrate the application of a graph reduction method developed recently to analyze complex energy-integrated process networks. The method uses information on the energy flow structure of the network and the orders of magnitude of the different energy flows to generate, automatically, information on the time scales where the process units evolve, canonical forms of the reduced models in each time scale, and controlled variables and potential manipulated inputs available in each time scale. Representative examples of reactor-heat exchanger and distillation column networks are considered to illustrate the method and develop insights on effective control strategies for these processes. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 995–1012, 2014


Candida auris is a multidrug-resistant yeast pathogen causing outbreaks in health care facilities worldwide, and the emergence of echinocandin-resistant C. auris is a concern. Currently used Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and commercial antifungal susceptibility tests (AFST) are phenotype-based, slow, and not scalable, limiting their effectiveness in the surveillance of echinocandin-resistant C. auris. ABSTRACT Candida auris is a multidrug-resistant yeast pathogen causing outbreaks in health care facilities worldwide, and the emergence of echinocandin-resistant C. auris is a concern. Currently used Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and commercial antifungal susceptibility tests (AFST) are phenotype-based, slow, and not scalable, limiting their effectiveness in the surveillance of echinocandin-resistant C. auris. The urgent need for accurate and rapid methods of assessment of echinocandin resistance cannot be overstated, as this class of antifungal drugs is preferred for patient management. We report the development and validation of a TaqMan chemistry probe-based fluorescence melt curve analysis (FMCA) following asymmetric polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to assess mutations within the hot spot one (HS1) region of FKS1, the gene responsible for encoding 1,3-β-d-glucan synthase that is a target for echinocandins. The assay correctly identified F635C, F635Y, F635del, F635S, S639F or S639Y, S639P, and D642H/R645T mutations. Of these mutations, F635S and D642H/R645T were not involved in echinocandin resistance, while the rest were, as confirmed by AFST. Of 31 clinical cases, the predominant mutation conferring echinocandin resistance was S639F/Y (20 cases) followed by S639P (4 cases), F635del (4 cases), F635Y (2 cases), and F635C (1 case). The FMCA assay was highly specific and did not cross-react with closely and distantly related Candida and other yeast and mold species. Structural modeling of the Fks1 protein, its mutants, and docked conformations of three echinocandin drugs suggest a plausible Fks1 binding orientation for echinocandins. These findings lay the groundwork for future evaluations of additional FKS1 mutations and their impact on the development of drug resistance. The TaqMan chemistry probe-based FMCA would allow rapid, high throughput, and accurate detection of FKS1 mutations conferring echinocandin resistance in C. auris.


The authors examine the character of signals in a simulated wide band oscillator. It is shown how a continuously changing phase shift (a fixed frequency shift) in the feedback path produces a response which resembles mode locking. The phase insertion or frequency shifting prevents the continuity of waves and the dominance of a single frequency component. It stimulates the growth of noise into wave trains which are easily synchronized by nonlinearity or by gain saturation, which of itself is insufficient to lock. Long term periodicities and fixed spectrum components are observed. >


The features of the pathogenesis and course of type 2 diabetes mellitus and diseases of the cardiovascular system comorbid with it are considered in patients of elderly and old age – coronary artery disease, arterial hypertension, chronic heart failure. The leading role of insulin resistance, hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia in the development of metabolic, homeostatic disorders, the formation of oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction, which, together with age-related changes in the body, contribute to the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus and microvascular complications, primarily diabetic cardiomyopathy. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between cognitive impairment, type 2 diabetes mellitus and chronic heart failure. The main factors that worsen the course and prognosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus in elderly patients, in particular, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, diabetic polyneuropathy, nephropathy, and other concomitant diseases, have been identified. Lack of compensation for type 2 diabetes due to metabolic disorders leads to the development of diabetic cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy, diabetic cardiomyopathy along with the progression of atherosclerotic lesions of different localization. The course of type 2 diabetes in these patients is often complicated by geriatric syndrome, which contains a set of cognitive impairment, senile weakness, depression, functional disorders, polymorbidity. Cognitive disorders negatively affect the course of type 2 diabetes and its complications, significantly disrupting the process of teaching patients the methods of self-control, following the advice of a doctor. It is noted that the management of this category of patients should be individual and include adequate correction of hyperglycemia to prevent microvascular complications and hypoglycemic conditions, as well as reduce cardiovascular mortality and maintain quality of life. Rational selection of drugs, taking into account the factors that determine their impact on the body of elderly patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and possible adverse drug reactions, will increase the effectiveness and safety of drug therapy in such patients. Optimizing therapeutic approaches for elderly patients with type 2 diabetes requires effective changes in the health care system to provide them with comprehensive medical and social care according to their special needs


Background: The aim of the present study was to provide a systematic review on which self-efficacy scales are being used among back pain patients and to evaluate their psychometric properties.
Methods: A systematic search was executed in January 2019 and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta?Analyses 2009 checklist served as a guide for conducting the study. Electronic databases included CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, PSYNDEX, and Sport Discus. Publications in English or German language that focused on adult patient population suffering from back pain and provided validation or reliability measures on pain-related self?efficacy were included.
Results: A total of 1.306 records were identified resulting in 671 documents after duplicates were removed. 233 studies were screened full-text and a total of 52 studies addressing 23 different measures of pain-related self-efficacy were included in the quality analysis. The most commonly used instruments were the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire and the Chronic Pain Self-Efficacy Scale. All studies reported internal consistency but many studies lacked other aspects of reliability and validity.
Conclusion: Further research should focus on assessing validity and interpretability of these questionnaires, especially in pain-related target groups. Researchers should select questionnaires that are most appropriate for their study aims and back pain population and contribute to further validation of these scales to best predict future behavior and develop intervention programs.
Perspective: Many pain-related self-efficacy questionnaires do not fulfill all psychometric properties, especially for the practical use in clinical populations. This systematic review aids selection of pain-related assessment tools in back pain both in research and practice.Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Till Lothar Moller for his support in literature research.


Background:Falling levels of estrogen is the major provocative factor in migraine associated with menstruation. Objective:We assessed the efficacy of the combination of two phyto-oestrogens, as perimenstrual, prophylactic treatment of menstrual migraine and tested their effect on cerebral haemodynamic. Subjects and Methods:Women with a history of menstrual migraine (ie, attacks occurring exclusively on day 1 ± 2 days of menstruation and at no other time of the cycle) were included in the study. Eleven women fulfilling the inclusion criteria underwent to a 3-month cyclic treatment with 56 mg of genisteine and 20 mg of diadzeine per day. Transcranial doppler evaluation (TCD) was performed at baseline and after treatment. Results:Among the ten women who completed the study the average number of days with migraine during the baseline period decreased significantly after 3 months of therapy (P < 0.005). There were no major side-effects. Therapy did not affect cerebral blood flow velocities. Conclusions:Phytooestrogens appear to be an effective treatment in menstrual migraine prophylaxis. This effect seems to be unrelated to cerebral hemodynamic. Placebo-controlled trials on larger number of patients are necessary to confirm our findings.


BACKGROUND Caesarean delivery may cause serious complications; haemorrhage is one of them. MATERIAL AND METHODS By the use of information registered in a database in 1997-99 at Rogaland Central Hospital, 978 cesarean deliveries were investigated. RESULTS Mean bleeding was 460 ml. 203 (20.8%) women had a blood loss of more than 500 ml and 17 (1.7%) of more than 1,500 ml. Multiple pregnancies, acute caesarean, general anaesthesia, increasing age of mother, high birth-weight, low gestational age, placenta praevia, abruptio placentae and arrest of delivery progression were associated with increased bleeding. INTERPRETATION Several identifiable factors are associated with increased blood loss after caesarean delivery. Serious blood loss is rare.


BACKGROUND
To our knowledge, there is no study that has examined the effects of vitamin D supplementation on metabolic status in gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).

OBJECTIVE
This study was designed to assess the effects of vitamin D supplementation on metabolic profiles, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and biomarkers of oxidative stress in pregnant women with GDM.

DESIGN
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in 54 women with GDM. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive either vitamin D supplements or placebo. Individuals in the vitamin D group (n = 27) received capsules containing 50,000 IU vitamin D₃ 2 times during the study (at baseline and at day 21 of the intervention) and those in the placebo group (n = 27) received 2 placebos at the same times. Fasting blood samples were collected at baseline and after 6 wk of the intervention to quantify relevant variables.

RESULTS
Cholecalciferol supplementation resulted in increased serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations compared with placebo (+18.5 ± 20.4 compared with +0.5 ± 6.1 ng/mL; P < 0.001). Furthermore, intake of vitamin D supplements led to a significant decrease in concentrations of fasting plasma glucose (-17.1 ± 14.8 compared with -0.9 ± 16.6 mg/dL; P < 0.001) and serum insulin (-3.08 ± 6.62 compared with +1.34 ± 6.51 μIU/mL; P = 0.01) and homeostasis model of assessment-insulin resistance (-1.28 ± 1.41 compared with +0.34 ± 1.79; P < 0.001) and a significant increase in the Quantitative Insulin Sensitivity Check Index (+0.03 ± 0.03 compared with -0.001 ± 0.02; P = 0.003) compared with placebo. A significant reduction in concentrations of total (-11.0 ± 23.5 compared with +9.5 ± 36.5 mg/dL; P = 0.01) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (-10.8 ± 22.4 compared with +10.4 ± 28.0 mg/dL; P = 0.003) cholesterol was also seen after vitamin D supplementation.

CONCLUSIONS
Vitamin D supplementation in pregnant women with GDM had beneficial effects on glycemia and total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations but did not affect inflammation and oxidative stress. This trial was registered at www.irct.ir as IRCT201305115623N7.


Although affective factors have been regarded as important in reading development, these aspects have attracted relatively little attention from policy makers and researchers. Furthermore, adolescent boys have tended to demonstrate lower reading motivation and engagement than other pupil groups. This thesis investigates reading engagement and motivation amongst Key Stage 3 boys, through materials based on the principles of Motivational Interviewing (MI).The thesis comprises three interlinked studies. In Study One, a whole class, five-session intervention was designed. This was introduced to Year 8 boys attending a single sex school and a quasi-experimental design was developed to measure its efficacy. However, during the piloting and delivery of the sessions, it became evident that the boys??? responses to the activities were influenced by socio-cultural factors, group dynamics and classroom practices. Following an exploration of the outcomes in relation to MI theory, an alternative model of enquiry was proposed to further investigate boys??? views and perceptions of reading.Study Two involved working with staff in the Learning Support Department. Opportunities to use the materials with individual pupils proved to be limited, restricting further investigation into their usefulness. However, staff focus groups provided information about pupil views and perceptions of reading, offering insights into the boys??? educational and socio-cultural contexts and possible explanations for their responses in Study One. The activities, therefore, became a tool for investigating boys??? reading within the school, rather than an intervention per se. Once a clearer understanding of school-based literacy practices had been established, in Study Three, findings were presented to boys who had participated in Study One. Discussion groups were held to explore the boys??? views about these ideas and discuss possible explanations for the outcomes of the quasi-experimental research. Overall research findings indicated that the factors that facilitated or inhibited boys??? reading were the result of complex interactions between socio-cultural influences, peer pressures, gender perceptions and literacy preferences. MI was seen as a useful paradigm for schools to explore both the affective literacy needs of individual pupils and how school-based literacy practices might facilitate reading development opportunities.


Accurate geocoding of Earth observing (EO) satellite imagery is one major prerequisite to monitor the Earth's environment. The quality of the obtained geocoded images depends on the accuracy of the sensor model parameters and the accuracy of the used height information. As for monitoring applications automated image processing chains are desired this paper concentrates on the automatisation of the required measurement ground control points (GCPs). Moreover, several methods to make least squares adjustment a robust estimator are presented. To improve the performance of the robust estimation with respect to the reduction of computational effort and reduction of number of GCPs needed, the use of the median absolute deviation is introduced. The presented general geocoding workflow and the proposed enhancements are tested using an ENVISAT-ASAR scene of the highly active Neovolcanic Zone of Southern Iceland. This test site, prone to natural hazards like volcanic eruptions and massive glacial torrents is equipped with a network of artificial corner reflectors enabling a detailed verification of the proposed approach.


The use of ozone as a fungicide for barley storage was studied. The effects of ozone on the inactivation of natural and inoculated fungi on barley were evaluated at different water activities and temperatures. Results indicated that higher ozone doses were better at inactivating the natural fungi on barley than lower ozone doses. An ozone dose of 0.98mg/g • min was able to reduce the natural fungi counts on the barley at 0.98aw by over 97% after 45 minutes of ozone contact time. The inactivation of the natural fungi and Aspergillus flavus on the barley was favoured by higher temperatures. Ozone consumption of the barley was higher at higher temperatures. Tests on A. flavus spores inoculated on barley indicated that they were resistant to ozone doses up to 4.90mg/g while Penicillium, verrucosum spores showed no resistance to any ozone doses that were tested. Inactivation of A. flavus (vegetative state) and P. verrucosum spores were favoured by higher water activities. The effect of ozone on barley germination was also examined. By 15 minutes of treatment at an ozone dose of 0.98mg/g • min, all the fungi tested were inactivated by over 90%, while germination was only reduced by 6%. Different water activities had no effect on the germination of barley. The findings show that ozone may be applied as a fumigant against fungi attacking high moisture content barley and provide the possibility of using it as an alternative to current chemicals for preserving stored barley.


This study was carried out to provide a detailed description about the upper beak of turkey, regarding its gross anatomical, light and scanning electron microscopic morphology. The upper beak extends in a hook like infront of the lower beak. It measures 53.80 mm long. The height and width of the upper beak increase caudalwards. SEM shows that the tip and the lateral sides of the upper beak are covered with numerous flakes of keratin. At the free tip of the beak, these keratinized flakes have an irregular appearance which may be due to desquamation of the epithelium during manipulation of foods. Immediately in front of the angle of the mouth, the lateral edge of the upper beak is characterized by the presence of transverse furrows which giving it a serrated appearance. The upper beak of the turkey consists of a bony support covered by dermal and epidermal layers.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether the difference in aggregation of cerebrospinal fluid cells from patients with bacterial, viral, aseptic and partially treated meningitis can be used for diagnostic purposes.

METHODS
Cerebrospinal fluid samples of 100 patients with meningitis (15 bacterial, 13 partially treated, 10 viral and 62 aseptic) were compared on the basis of the predefined leukocyte aggregation score (LAS).

RESULTS
Mean LAS was 56% in the bacterial meningitis group (range, 15 to 90%), 5.8% in the partially treated meningitis group (range, 0 to 27%), 2% in the proven viral meningitis group (range, 0 to 5%) and 2% in the aseptic meningitis group (range, 0 to 15%). All patients with bacterial meningitis had a LAS of > 15%, whereas all those with viral or aseptic meningitis had a score of < 15%. Although most patients with partially treated meningitis had a low LAS, several had higher scores, which may indicate bacterial infection. There was no statistical correlation between number of cells, type of cells (mononuclear or polymorphonuclear) or cerebrospinal fluid protein and glucose concentration and degree of leukocyte aggregation for the different groups.

CONCLUSION
Measurement of the LAS may contribute to the immediate differential diagnosis of bacterial or viral meningitis, especially in patients with very high pleocytosis, as sometimes seen in enteroviral meningitis. It may also serve as a guide for the likelihood of bacterial infection in cases of partially treated meningitis. Additional studies are needed to confirm these observations.


This paper explores the concept of the 'Gold Effect' in relation to the use of serum cholesterol measurement as a screening test for cardiovascular disease. The Gold Effect explains the phenomenon of the process by which an idea comes to be held as a generally accepted truth. In this paper we argue that cholesterol screening is the product of the Gold Effect. Screening tests need to be sufficiently robust as an indicator of risk and thus their evidence base should be clear and uncontested. While there has been a long standing debate about the link between high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease and, in particular, the use of statins as the main approach to lowering cholesterol levels, serum cholesterol measurement and lowering levels of cholesterol are widely accepted as NHS interventions and are financially incentivised. We start by discussing what cholesterol is and how it is screened for in the UK. We then go on to examine the evidence for using cholesterol as a risk marker for cardiovascular disease. We then discuss the research on reducing cholesterol levels through diet and by using statins. We finish by discussing the implications of this analysis and questioning why cholesterol is routinely screened for and why so much emphasis is placed on cholesterol reduction arguing that at the root of this approach there is a misconception about the relationship between fat and cholesterol and about the role of cholesterol in cardiovascular disease.


The results are presented of a study conducted to determine reasons for and kinetics of the growth of thin aluminum whiskers from the bond pads of semiconductors. These whiskers were found to grow to lengths of up to 200 µm from thin-film aluminumsilicon on N-type silicon gate metal-oxide semiconductors (NMOS). Whisker growth was found to be due to the compressive stress generated in the metal during wire bonding. The problem is complicated by the presence of silicon grains in the Al-Si film and was found only on parts using gold ball bonds. The growth rate is temperature dependent with a thermal activation energy of 0.7 eV. Copper doping of the metallization as well as the use of aluminum ultrasonically bonded wires were both found to effectively prevent whisker growth.


The disastrous effects of climate change have progressively gained interest since the
1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Since emissions from fossil fuel
based power plants are a major contributor to anthropogenic green house gas
emissions, an important means of mitigation is by replacing traditional power
generation with new renewable alternatives. In fact, there are claims that there is a
need to completely de-carbonize all global electricity generation by 2050 to prevent
increased global temperatures that would have disastrous effects. This will demand a
transformation on a scale that has no precedents, and will require the participation of
all nations.
Solar energy has potential to be a very versatile source of energy as solar technologies
present many exciting opportunities. Due to past energy crises and protests against
nuclear, as well as the more recent pressures of climate change, national energy
security and scarcities, solar energy technologies have emerged and gained social
legitimacy. Despite their high comparative costs and current low contribution to the
worlds electricity generation (< 0.1%), trends show substantial growth, and
corresponding projections suggest that solar energy could provide as much as 25% of
the global electricity production by 2050. Cost reductions will undoubtedly be critical
for this diffusion.
Fundacion Chile, a non-profit organization that fosters the creation of businesses and
national economic growth in Chile by introducing innovations and developing human
capital in key sectors, has recognized that the cost of solar energy technologies will
soon become competitive and opportunities will emerge. As a result they, in
partnership with other actors, have created the Atacama Solar Platform initiative,
which aims to create a world-class solar cluster in the Atacama Desert. However, as
Chile is a small emerging country and has a resource-based economy, this will be an
enormous challenge.


The Social Information System (SIS) can be defined as a suitable database that uses primary statistics from ongoing household income surveys in member countries and from MECOVI. The primary objective of this study (RE-254) is to analyze the use of SIS by different Bank departments. The analysis draws on interviews and available information in order to determine the system's impact on the design of social projects that utilize such information, and to ascertain whether the SIS's present format has affected the way in which the Operations Departments plan their project preparation schedules. The principal issues examined in this short-term study are demand, relevance, comparative cost of obtaining similar information, and the complementarities of this information system with others supplying similar data.


It is generally agreed that the Last Interglacial (LIG; ∼130–115 ka) was a time when global average temperatures and global mean sea level were higher than they are today. However, the exact timing, magnitude and spatial pattern of ice melt is much debated. One difficulty in extracting past global mean sea level from local observations is that their elevations need to be corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which requires knowledge of Earth's internal viscoelastic structure. While this structure is generally assumed to be radially symmetric, evidence from seismology, geodynamics and mineral physics indicates that large lateral variations in viscosity exist within the mantle. In this study, we construct a new model of Earth's internal structure by converting shear wave speed into viscosity using parametrizations from mineral physics experiments and geodynamic constraints on Earth's thermal structure. We use this 3-D Earth structure, which includes both variations in lithospheric thickness and lateral variations in viscosity, to calculate the first 3-D GIA prediction for LIG sea level. We find that the difference between predictions with and without lateral Earth structure can be metres to 10s of metres in the near field of former ice sheets, and up to a few metres in their far field. We demonstrate how forebulge dynamics and continental levering are affected by laterally varying Earth structure, with a particular focus on those sites with prominent LIG sea level records. Results from four 3-D GIA calculations show that accounting for lateral structure can act to increase local sea level by up to ∼1.5 m at the Seychelles and minimally decrease it in Western Australia. We acknowledge that this result is only based on a few simulations, but if robust, this shift brings estimates of global mean sea level from these two sites into closer agreement with each other. We further demonstrate that simulations with a suitable radial viscosity profile can be used to locally approximate the 3-D GIA result, but that these radial profiles cannot be found by simply averaging viscosity below the sea level indicator site.


This study examined the social attitudes related to race, gender, age, and ability among senior level health education students at a mid-sized university in the southeast by means of a personally experienced critical incident involving a cross-cultural incident. A qualitative editing analysis protocol developed by Crabtree and Miller (1992) was used to analyze data and develop conceptual themes. Levels of awareness and empowerment emerged from the data indicating these students were moderately aware of diverse attitudes and perspective and were only minimally to moderately empowered to take responsibility or action. These data mirror the awareness element of Pedersen's (1988) multicultural training model and suggest the need to help students further examine their own and others attitudes, beliefs, and worldviews as well as develop a broad contextual knowledge base from various cultures. Specific approaches for expanding awareness are discussed. ********** National initiatives aimed at educational reform challenge schools, colleges, and universities to be centers of excellence in learning for all students. The increasing complexity and diversity of U.S. society has enhanced and complicated this challenge. As such, there has been an increase of one million English-language learners during the past 10 years and they now comprise 5.5 percent of the total school-aged population. (Clair & Adger, 1999). It is estimated that one in five children enrolled nationally in the Head Start program speak a language other than English. The number of English language learners will continue to grow along with the increasing diversification of the U.S. population resulting from immigration rates, aging trends, and higher birth rates for Asian and Latino cultural groups (Phillips & Cabrera, 1996; Kagan & Garcia, 1991). These individuals do not represent a homogeneous group. Instead, they enter U.S. culture at different ages and stages of development and represent a diversity of languages, cultural experiences, and economic and social power. The critical role of colleges and universities in adapting their instructional models and course content to better prepare health educators to handle increasing diversity in classroom settings must be recognized. Institutions must continually reassess their educational role in the context of a pluralist society. The purpose for this study was to examine the social attitudes related to race, gender, age, and ability among health education students at a mid-sized southeastern university. This research imperative is supported by Graft (1992) who states that rather than fostering political correctness, intellectual conflict should be part of the university's objective whereby students are actively engaged in exploring a diversity of ideas and worldviews. He asserts that fields of study thus far have handled cultural conflicts with a "separatist approach" which tends to downplay the role of students as active pursuers of ideas and instead teaches course subjects in an isolated fashion--without showing their connection to each other and the whole. Gallos, Ramsey, and Associates (1997) recommend that before teaching multicultural issues, educators should consider themselves as learners first and start with their own self-awareness. This idea of self-examination is also reinforced in the counselor education literature which indicates that the first step in successfully relating to culturally diverse populations is increasing self-awareness (Pedersen, 1988). Additionally, Ivey, Ivey, and Sinek-Morgan (1993) and Sue (1992) stated that for effective communication to occur, one must understand the worldview from which one's own responses emerge as well as understand the worldview of others. Not considering the diversity of worldviews displayed in the typical classroom retards a more comprehensive understanding of factors that lead to greater achievement and positive attitudes (Coburn, 1989). …


This work focuses on crustal interaction in magmatic systems, drawing on experimental petrology and elemental and isotope geochemistry. Various magma-chamber processes such as magma-mixing, fractional crystallisation and magma-crust interaction are explored throughout the papers comprising the thesis. Emphasis is placed on gaining insights into the extent of crustal contamination in ocean island magmas from the Canary Islands and the processes of magma-crust interaction observed both in nature and in experiments. This research underscores that the compositions of ocean island magmas, even primitive types which are classically used as probes of the mantle, are susceptible to modification by crustal contamination. The principal mechanisms of contamination identified from work on both Tenerife and Gran Canaria (Canary Islands) are assimilation and partial melting of the pre-existing island edifice and intercalated sediments by newly arriving magma (i.e. "island recycling"). The information that we can gain from studying solidified magma and entrained crustal xenoliths concerning the rates and mechanisms of crustal assimilation is, however, limited. To address this shortcoming, a series of time-variable crustal carbonate assimilation experiments were carried out at magmatic pressure and temperature using natural materials from Merapi volcano, Indonesia. A temporally constrained reaction series of carbonate assimilation in magma has hence been constructed. The experiments were analysed using in-situ techniques to observe the progressive textural, elemental, and isotopic evolution of magma-carbonate interaction. Crucially, carbonate assimilation was found to liberate voluminous crustally-derived CO2 on a timescale of only seconds to minutes in the experiments. This points to the role of rapid crustal degassing in volcanic volatile budgets, and, pertinently, in magnifying hazardous volcanic behaviour. This thesis, therefore, delivers detailed insights into the processes of magma-crust interaction from experiments and geochemistry. The outcomes confirm that crustal processes are significant factors in both, i) ocean island magma genesis, and ii) magma differentiation towards compositions with greater explosive potential which can, in turn, manifest as hazardous volcanism.


MATERIALS SCIENCE
Dislocations not only affect the mechanical properties of materials but also can affect the performance of semiconductor devices, especially in cases where islands or thin films can relieve strain through the movement of dislocations. Liu et al. used transmission electron microscopy to image the movement of dislocations in cobalt silicide (CoSi2) islands (about 1 micrometer in diameter) grown on the (111) surface of silicon. At elevated temperatures (850°C), they observed glide dislocations nucleating at the island edge and then moving along planes parallel to the (111) interface. They were able to reproduce the dynamics of these dislocation networks quite accurately in simulations: line tension forces and interactions between dislocations both were important factors while "image" forces, which take into account the particle shape and interaction with the substrate but add greatly to the complexity of the calculation, provided only a minor contribution.— PDS

Phys. Rev. Lett . 85 , 4088 (2000).


Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with balance deficits resulting in falls and impaired mobility. Although rehabilitation has been recommended to address these balance deficits, the extent to which people with MS can learn and retain improvements in postural responses is unknown. Aim: To determine the ability of people with MS to improve postural control with surface perturbation training. Methods: A total of 24 patients with mild MS and 14 age-matched controls underwent postural control training with a set pattern of continuous, forward-backward, sinusoidal, and surface translations provided by a force platform. Postural control was then tested the following day for retention. The primary outcome measures were the relative phase and center-of-mass (CoM) gain between the body CoM and the platform motion. Results: People with MS demonstrated similar improvements in acquiring and retaining changes in the temporal control of the CoM despite significant deficits in postural motor performance at the baseline. Both MS and control groups learned to anticipate the pattern of forward-backward perturbations, so body CoM shifted from a phase-lag (age-matched controls [CS] = −7.1 ± 1.3; MS = −12.9 ± 1.0) toward a phase-lead (CS = −0.7 ± 1.8; MS = −6.1 ± 1.4) relationship with the surface oscillations. However, MS patients were not able to retain the changes in the spatial control of the CoM acquired during training. Conclusions: People with MS have the capacity to improve use of a feed-forward postural strategy with practice and retain the learned behavior for temporal not spatial control of CoM, despite their significant postural response impairments.


Integrative oncology, including Qigong, is a relatively new concept in modern healthcare. Evidence of benefits of Qigong in cancer survivors is emerging. As such, several cancer centers, world-wide, have introduced Qigong as part of integrative medicine within supportive cancer care programming. Qigong exercise programming content and quality varies among institutions due to lack of standard guidelines and, at present, relies solely on the instructor's skills, knowledge, personal preferences and clinical experience. Development of consensus guidelines recommending the basic structure and delivery of Qigong programming in cancer care can potentiate quality assurance and reduce risk of harm. This applied qualitative research utilized a modified Delphi approach to formulate consensus guidelines. Guidelines were developed through discussions among an international expert panel (N = 13) with representation from Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. Panel communication was predominantly conducted by email and occurred from November 2016 through February 2017. Expert panel work resulted in the generation of a work product: Qigong in Cancer Care Guidelines: A Working Paper including: (a) Consensus Guidelines for structure and delivery of Qigong exercise for Cancer care programming; (b) Consensus guidelines for instructor competence for teaching Qigong exercise for cancer care classes; (c) Screening tool for safe participation in Qigong exercise; (d) Class participant instructions for maintaining safety during Qigong exercise; and (e) Advice from the field. Generation of these resources is the first step in establishing recommendations for 'best practice' in the area of Qigong for cancer care programming.


Bulk (RE)BCO, where RE is a rare-earth element or yttrium, superconductors fabricated in the form of rings are potentially useful for a variety of solenoidal-type applications, such as small, high field nuclear magnetic resonance and electromagnetic undulators. It is anticipated that the practical exploitation of these technologically important materials will involve pulse field magnetization (PFM) and, consequently, it is important to understand the behavior of ring-shaped samples subjected to the PFM process. Macroscopic flux jumps were observed in PFM experiments on ring-shaped bulk samples when the peak applied field reaches a threshold magnitude, similar to behavior reported previously in cylindrical samples. Magnetic flux jumps inward when the thermal instability is triggered, however it subsequently flows outwards from the sample, resulting in a relatively low trapped field. This behavior is attributed to a variety of effects, including the inhomogeneity of the material, which may lead to the formation of localized hot spots during the PFM process. In order to further elucidate this phenomena, the properties of a structure consisting of a bulk superconducting ring with a cylindrical superconductor core were studied. We observe that, although a flux jump occurs consistently in the ring, a critical state is established at the boundary of the ring-shaped sample and the core. We provide a detailed account of these experimental observations and provide an explanation in terms of the current understanding of the PFM process.


This thesis critically evaluates two developments which have both brought about major advances in the assessment of glycaemic control in diabetic patients. First is the measurement of glycated proteins in the form of glycated haemoglobin and serum fructosamine and the second is the use of portable test strips and meters for the self-monitoring of blood glucose. Both methods of assessment have gained widespread acceptance but there remains a number of clinical and methodological problems associated with their use. This thesis reviews the literature relating to the use of these tests and describes a number of studies demonstrating new benefits and difficulties which exist. The majority of clinicians now use glycated haemoglobin measurement as their principal objective indicator of glycaemic control in diabetic patients. We have performed several detailed studies elucidating clinically relevant aspects of glycated haemoglobin measurement which can affect the assessment of glycaemia in these patients. The setting of target values for glycated haemoglobin measurement is severely hindered by the lack of standardisation in methodology. In an attempt to account for this, European guidelines define categories of glycaemic control as an HbA1 or HbA1c concentration so many standard deviations from a particular method's non-diabetic population mean. Using these guidelines, we found that HbA1 could classify the same diabetic patients differently to HbA1c, even when using the same instrument and reference range individuals. This new finding led, in part, to a change in the European guidelines for glycated haemoglobin targets. Many commonly used glycated haemoglobin methods include both glycated and non-glycated fetal haemoglobin (HbF) in their result. This means patients with elevated HbF concentrations (>0.5%) can have spuriously high glycated haemoglobin values. We presented the first evidence that insulin treated adult patients had a significantly greater prevalence of elevated HbF concentrations than either non-insulin treated or non-diabetic controls, thereby compounding the problem in this group of patients. In addition, we found that HbF increased the apparent imprecision of these assays. Discrepancies exist when comparing glycated haemoglobin and serum fructosamine as indicators of glycaemic control. We found that in newly diagnosed Type II diabetes, fructosamine only showed a correlation with HbA1 after glucose control had stabilised and not during the period of changing glycaemia. However, because changes in fructosamine preceded those of HbA1, the ratio of fructosamine/ HbA1 was able to predict the change in HbA1 in the forthcoming month. Thus, parallel measurement of fructosamine with HbA1 provided additional information on the future trend of a HbA1concentration. A further reason for disparity between fructosamine and glycated haemoglobin was established when investigating the effects of ageing on glycation in non-diabetic subjects. Mean HbA1 values rose with increasing subject age while fructosamine and fasting plasma glucose values did not. Consequently, when Type II diabetic patient samples were classified according to European HbA1 guidelines, significantly fewer patients were in good control and more in poor control when a young reference population was used compared to an age matched one. Thus, age related reference intervals may be required for glycated haemoglobin measurement. Using test strips and meters to measure blood glucose has become widespread amongst diabetic patients in the community and in the monitoring of acutely ill hospital patients. We have documented studies which describe the effect on glucose measurement of variations in several physiological parameters. We also describe how new technology is improving glucose meter measurement. In vitro variations of sample haematocrit have been shown to be a source of error in several glucose meter systems. Red cell count and mean cell volume are intimately related to haematocrit, so it makes it impossible to distinguish if the test strip error is due to haematocrit variations per se or to changes in the number of red cells. We found that in groups of individuals with different mean cell volumes, meter error was still related to the haematocrit of the sample rather than its red cell count. Having established this, 10 patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass (whose haematocrits routinely fall to 20% intraoperatively) were investigated to determine the effect of in vivo variations in haematocrit. Changes in test strip glucose accuracy were found to be consistent with those shown previously in vitro. While the use of whole blood to measure glucose is convenient, it is not possible, unlike plasma or serum, to tell if a sample is in any way haemolysed. We showed that extreme sample haemolysis can affect several glucose meter systems, while even modest degrees of red cell lysis were found to give clinically inaccurate results when using the Accutrend instrument. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).


Rare T- or NK-cell lymphomas with cutaneous manifestation may display a highly aggressive clinical course and major diagnostic/therapeutic challenges. This report describes our experiences with different lymphomas of this rare category and the therapeutic options used. This retrospective, descriptive, monocentric, cross-sectional case study, identified 4 rare aggressive T-/NK-cell lymphomas with manifestation in the skin, which were diagnosed in a tertiary care centre over a period of 4 years. Two patients had an Epstein-Barr virus-associated extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma and 2 patients had a primary cutaneous CD8+ aggressive epidermotropic cytotoxic T-cell lymphoma. Concomitant extracutaneous involvement was observed in 2 of all 4 patients. Two patients had fulminant disease progression and resistance to chemotherapy. Two patients underwent allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation, which resulted in one complete remission and one partial remission. This report emphasizes the importance of an early diagnostic work-up and a prompt aggressive therapeutic approach.


Designing surgical procedural instruction is complicated. Instructional designers must recognize that designing for spatial locations in surgical acts are much more intricate and complicated than designing maps for mechanical systems or geographical boundaries. The complexity is owing to the need to create very accurate and precise spatial affordances for surgeons to operate or patients to understand the surgical process, the price of a mistake revolving around human life. This article has reported a design study where findings suggest that spatial affordance through text support is often insufficient and suggested several pre-design and design recommendations for medical illustrators and designers.


This paper tests the existence of precautionary savings using subjective or self-reported measures of income uncertainty drawn from Japanese household data (primarily from those in their 30s). Two subjective measures are tested: one concerning labor earnings and the other concerning public pension benefits. The results show that, among either nuclear family households or households that do not receive income transfers from parents, there exist precautionary savings due to uncertainty concerning public pension benefits. As the respondents are primarily in their 30s, we find that those households start to save based on precautionary motives early in their lives. The finding that the effect of public pension uncertainty concerning savings is manifested in nuclear family households suggests that intergenerational risk-sharing reduces risk and therefore wealth accumulation. Precautionary savings are found to take the form of relatively low-risk assets; no precautionary savings are found in securities. No evidence has been found for precautionary savings being motivated by uncertainty over labor earnings when economic prospects are utilized as the measure of labor income uncertainty.


Designing efficient investment strategies in innovative firms is a recurring public and private concern. Extensive research has been conducted on venture capital funds, known for being specialized in financing innovative firms. As a result, researchers identified criteria supporting portfolio strategies and valuation methods which do not explicitly take into innovation capabilities account due to the lack of historical perspective for young firms. When it comes to investing in larger ventures like middle-market companies, firm's historical capabilities should be valuable assets to assess its potential. The objective of this research is therefore to characterize the role of innovation capabilities in private equity investors' strategy and explore how investors can design strategies that help support innovative outputs. A multiple cases study conducted with a French investment fund shows that new valuation criteria are needed to fully explain investment decision. While usual valuation method are based on an extrapolation of past performance over the next few years covered by the investment deal, a new one can be modelled based on an assessment of transformation on the technological, market and ecosystem spaces of the financed companies. Adapting innovation management literature frameworks to middle-market companies should enrich descriptors on which investors can base their decision, help design investment strategies that generate new value spaces and secure these strategies beyond the selection stage.


Each year, I write letters of reference for undergraduate students applying to master's and Ph.D. programs; law school; and programs in social work, architecture, and medicine. I write letters to help them win awards, internships, and placements in study abroad programs. I write letters for graduate students trying to win fellowships, find postdoc appointments, and secure tenure-track positions. I write letters for faculty members submitting applications for prizes, as well as for those coming up for tenure and promotion appraisals. Suffice it to say, I spend a lot of time writing letters.

![Figure][1]

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

> "We need to write fewer letters."

Maybe I should feel good about this—after all, I am helping a lot of people achieve their dreams—but I don't. It isn't that I don't wish the people I am writing for well—I do. They often succeed in their applications, and I like to think that my letters play an important part in this. However, I am beginning to question the value of all this letter writing. I certainly don't mean to sound ungracious. Yes, many people have written letters on my behalf. Yes, without these letters I wouldn't be where I am today. But I became an academic to be a scholar and a teacher. I didn't sign up to be a letter writer.

Even as I am sometimes exasperated with my own letter-writing load, I was surprised to learn that, compared with other colleagues I have talked to, the 50 or so letters I am now writing each year is probably average. One colleague told me that he knows someone who routinely writes several hundred letters each year. Others probably write more. This is work we in the academy all feel obliged to do—but lately, as I serve on more of the hiring and award committees that request all these letters, I find myself wondering whether they are losing value.

In the past, there were fewer universities than today, and networks were smaller. A letter of reference mattered because it was written by someone the letter reader knew. Now, we are reading hundreds of letters of reference, most by people we don't know. Maybe we have heard of the letter writer's research and have met once or twice at a conference, but still, we often have no sense of what a letter from that individual means. Is "good" high or faint praise? When is "brilliant" honest and when is it hyperbole? Is this a form letter? Does the fact that a letter was written by a big-name scholar employed at a big-name school indicate that the subject of the letter is doing quality work or merely that they are well connected? And should we discount a letter if there are typos or grammatical mistakes? In the end, a strong letter can simply mean a strong letter writer.

Indeed, now that I have served on committees faced with hundreds of letters, each describing said candidate as "outstanding" or some other superlative, I find myself paying less and less attention to them. Although we used to look to letters to get a sense of someone's scholarly promise, in today's competitive academic arena, promise is no longer enough. Instead, we end up relying on markers of achievement—CV, transcript, proposal, scholarly output—as do the writers of all those letters.

Last month, Roger Day wrote on this page that some academics need to stop using others to ghostwrite their letters. (You can read that story at .) But we don't just need more diligent letter writers or more honesty about who is doing the letter writing. We need to write fewer letters. I think it's time we consider retiring the letter of reference. Professors' labor isn't free; our time must be allocated and paid for, to say nothing of the time spent by contingent faculty members who are asked to write letters on their own dime. Although the price of a single letter may seem low, the cost of the time faculty members are spending reading and writing all these letters probably amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Yes, it would be nice to have highly insightful letters that provide valuable information about a candidate beyond what comes through from a CV or written work. But if you are on a committee that does admissions or any other form of adjudication and you request letters, ask yourself this: Will the decision you make be that much better?

 [1]: pending:yes


The performance index (P-index) is an interesting parameter to calculate the individual strength among the teaching hospitals. There is the determination of the Indian corporate Medical Institutions to establish themselves in both academic, patient care and research field. Healthcare, teaching and research are basic components of research activities in healthcare sector. This study highlights the research growth, comparative growth, collaboration of researchers and ranking of the teaching hospitals according to P-index.


In this letter, a simple method was applied to fabricate different morphologies of CuS particles. The ratio between CuSO4 and thiourea played an important role in preparing various CuS particles such as nest-like, cabbage-like and cauliflower-like structures. Further, the formation mechanism of CuS was proposed that the assembly process of CuS nanoflakes induced the various structures.


We have successfully developed integration friendly dual metal gate process utilizing a dual thickness metal inserted poly-Si stacks (DT-MIPS) structure; poly-Si/TaN/HfON stacks for nMOS and poly-Si/capping metal layer(c-ML)/AlOx/TaN/HfON stacks for pMOS. First, in spite of different metal thickness on n/pMOS, a high-selectivity gate etch process can completely remove metal and HfON layers from the S/D active regions with negligible Si recess in both n/pMOS. Consequently, in both short and long channel devices, n/pMOS Vth values of ~plusmn0.35 V are obtained without counter channel doping. Moreover, excellent drive currents (620/250 muA/um for n/pMOS at Ioff=20 pA/um and Vdd=1.2 V) are obtained without using any mobility enhancement technique. Finally, we confirm that the estimated operation voltages for 10 years lifetime for both nMOS PBTI and pMOS NBTI are well beyond the 1.2 V.


The protocol describes the step-by-step procedure of isolating and preparing human oocytes 1) oocytes donated in connection with IVF/ICSI treatment and 2) in vitro matured (IVM) oocytes from small antral follicles donated in connection to fertility preservation. It details how cumulus cells and the zona pellucida are enzymatically removed to ensure that only the oocyte is analyzed. We have successfully used this protocol in connection with SMART-Seq2 (Takara).This oocyte preparation has recently been used in Sankar et al. 2020 (Sankar et al. 2020).


BACKGROUND
Obsessive-compulsive (O-C) traits, and excessive food intake are well known behavioural manifestations among individuals with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Other unwanted behaviours are also frequently observed, but they need a more specific investigation, especially in the adult population.

METHODS
The behaviour of 31 PWS adults was investigated via the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale Symptom Checklist (Y-BOCS-SC), and the Prader-Willi Behavioural Checklist (PBC). The PBC is a quick screening questionnaire prompted specifically for the investigation on adults with PWS.

RESULTS
Statistical clustering revealed two patterns of unwanted behaviours from the PBC. Behaviours belonging to the first cluster (e.g., Excessive food intake, Skin picking) appear to be linked to the usual phenotypic manifestation of PWS. By contrast, many other behaviours (e.g., some O-C symptoms and aggressive actions) could show a relationship also to individual psychopathologies.

CONCLUSIONS
Both internal (Anxiety and Depression) and external (Hostility) difficulties in managing impulses should account for individually distinct behaviours in adults with PWS.


Consumer behaviour is determined by economic, psychological and sociological considerations. It is important to study non-economic buying motivations as these are present in the buying of industrial goods and services as well as in consumer purchases. The process of decision making may be long in duration, as is in the decisionmaking to buy a computer, or short as in the decisionmaking to buy a packet of sweets, but similar stages may be observed: • a general or a specific need is felt; • a period of pre-buying activity follows, i.e. an investigation of sources of supply which might satisfy the need; • a decision is taken (what to purchase, or even to make no purchase) based on the results of the pre-buying activity and the strength of the need. The basic need may be either general, e.g. need of a change of environment. The more specific need may arise spontaneously or it may be stimulated by creative marketing. The basic need is for a collection of utilities / providing a psychological or social satisfaction and not for a product. Consequently, it is important that marketing programmes should be designed to identify goods or services giving satisfaction of a need.


Developing the best care for clients and patients is a paramount aim of all health care practices, which therefore, should be based on best evidence. This is also crucial for care during the childbearing period here defined as pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy. However, due to dominance of the evidence-based medicine (EBM) model, health care practice has encountered problems especially regarding its relationship to qualitative research. In this article, we analyze and discuss how research based on a lifeworld perspective fits with evidence-based care (EBC), and how a circular model instead of a hierarchy is suitable when attributing value to knowledge for EBC. The article focuses on the history of EBM and EBC, the power of the evidence concept, and EBC from a narrow to a broad view. Further qualitative research and its use for developing EBC is discussed and examples are presented from the authors' own lifeworld research in the Nordic childbearing context. Finally, an alternative circular model of knowledge for EBC is presented. In order to develop evidence-based care, there is need for multiple types of scientific knowledge with equal strength of evidence, integrated with clinical experience, setting, circumstances and health care resources, and incorporating the experiences and clinical state of the childbearing woman and her family.


SSAYS in Musical Analysis, Volumes I and Il--Symphonies. Donald Francis Tovey [Oxford University Press, Carl Fischer, Inc., Sole Agents in U. S. A. Price $4.00 each.] In Great Britain, where one may sometimes hear that Professor Tovey is the nation's foremost musical scholar, these volumes have for months been eagerly awaited. Now that they are before us, the reasons for such glowing expectations are manifest. The books are a collection of the program notes written by Professor Tovey for his concerts with the Reid Orchestra of Edinburgh and earlier orchestras he conducted there and elsewhere. To think of them as routine program notes would be, however, to do them a great injustice. They are, rather, brilliant essays in musical analysis and criticism, made not alone from the background of the scholarly critic, but from the background of the conductor who knows every note about which he writes, and who has been obliged to weigh and balance the values of each and shape it to its proper significance. In short, the scholar and critic and the practical conductor are here combined; and that union of powers makes for a new strength and quality in analysis.


Aims
To determine the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) defined as the combined endpoint of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) among patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared with population controls.

Methods and results
A cohort study was conducted in a primary care medical record database in the UK with data from 1994-2014 among patients with PsA, RA, or psoriasis. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate the relative hazards for DVT, PE, and VTE. An interaction with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD) was hypothesized a priori and was significant. Patients with PsA (n = 12 084), RA (n = 51 762), psoriasis (n = 194 288) and controls (n = 1 225 571) matched on general practice and start date were identified. Patients with RA (with and without a DMARD prescription) and patients with mild psoriasis had significantly elevated risks of VTE (HR 1.35, 1.29, and 1.07, respectively) after adjusting for traditional risk factors. Severe psoriasis and PsA prescribed a DMARD had an elevated but not statistically significant risk for VTE. Findings were similar for DVT. The age-and-sex-adjusted risk of PE was elevated in RA, severe psoriasis and PsA patients prescribed a DMARD.

Conclusion
While systemic inflammation is a risk factor for VTE, the risk of VTE compared with controls is different among patients with three different inflammatory disorders: RA, PsA, and psoriasis.


For users to trust planning algorithms, they must be able to understand the planner's outputs and the reasons for each action selection. This output does not tend to be user-friendly, often consisting of sequences of parametrised actions or task networks. And these may not be practical for non-expert users who may find it easier to read natural language descriptions. In this paper, we propose PlanVerb, a domain and planner-independent method for the verbalization of task plans. It is based on semantic tagging of actions and predicates. Our method can generate natural language descriptions of plans including causal explanations. The verbalized plans can be summarized by compressing the actions that act on the same parameters. We further extend the concept of verbalization space, previously applied to robot navigation, and apply it to planning to generate different kinds of plan descriptions for different user requirements. Our method can deal with PDDL and RDDL domains, provided that they are tagged accordingly. Our user survey evaluation shows that users can read our automatically generated plan descriptions and that the explanations help them answer questions about the plan.