ABSTRACT: Associations between major psychologic stressors and immune function have been documented in previous research, but few studies have investigated immune changes attending minor, normative stressors. This study examined adrenocortical and behavioral predictors of immune responses to starting kindergarten in 39 five-year-old children, who completed laboratory visits for venipunctures 1 wk before (time 1) and 1 wk after (time 2) school entry. At time 1, children were also immunized with pneumococcal vaccine. Immune responses were measured as change scores for T (CD4+ and CD8+) cells, B (CD19+) cells, lymphoproliferative responses to pokeweed mitogen (PWM), and type-specific pneumococcal antibody responses (ABR). Adrenocortical response was assessed as the change in salivary cortisol level, and behavioral difficulty with school adjustment was scored using parental ratings of behavior problems, stress due to changes in routines, and degree of adaptive challenge. Salivary cortisol rose after kindergarten entry (means = 0.39 ± 0.28 to 0.49 ± 0.36 μg/dL, p = 0.03) and was unrelated to behavioral difficulties. CD4+ cells increased in number, whereas PWM declined, and CD19+ cells showed a borderline increase. Change in salivary cortisol was positively associated with change in CD19+ (ΔCD19+) and inversely related to ABR. Scores for behavioral difficulty were inversely associated with ΔCD4+ and ΔCD19+. These data suggest that: 1) school entry is a stressor capable of evoking elevations in cortisol and behavior problems, accompanied by shifts in functional and enumerative measures of immune status; and 2) children with greater adrenocortical reactivity have increases in B cell numbers and less effective B cell-mediated antibody production, whereas children with more behavioral difficulties show declines in all T and B cell subsets.


During the process of cultivation of salt-tolerant nitrifying bacteria, the increase in NaCl concentrations was carried out in two different manners. The NaCl concentration in reactor A was increased by increment of 5 g/L, while the NaCl concentration in reactor B was increased by increment of 2.5 g/L. The impacts of NaCl content on the fresh culture and two acclimated cultures were investigated, which focused upon the changes of the specific ammonium oxidation rate (SAOR) and specific nitrite oxidation rate (SNOR). The results indicated that fresh nitrifiers were severely inhibited by high salinity. At NaCl concentration of 25 g/L, ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) completely lost the nitrification capability. After 46 days of acclimation, the nitrifying bacteria could be adapted to the saline wastewater. The average SAOR and SNOR in reactor B were slightly higher than those in reactor A, which meant that low increment in salt concentration may be in favor of the development of salt-tolerant nitrifiers. But the two NaCl increasing approaches did not affect the SAOR and SNOR too much. Salt-tolerant nitrifiers could be well developed with the two acclimation manners.


Channel 5, Fridays at 8 30 pm, 11 to 25 January

Can the media do justice to mental health issues? Channel 4's recent series Psychos was strongly condemned by the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Public Education Committee and other interest groups for its inflammatory title and insensitive content. Media coverage of mental health topics is increasing, with particular focus on child and adolescent issues. But what constitutes abnormal behaviour?

At the extreme end of the spectrum, the "Bulger case" has raised debate about what levels of disturbance children are capable of. Milder, but much more common, hyperkinetic disorder (or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and its treatment options are also of concern. With this in mind, I was intrigued to see how this complex subject was tackled by Channel 5's recent documentary series Driving Mum Crazy .

I was struck by the explicitness of the violence shown. For example, …


Considerable evidence suggests that the scrapie prion protein (PrP) is a component of the infectious particle. We studied the biogenesis and transmembrane orientation of an integral-membrane form of PrP in a cell-free transcription-linked translation-coupled translocation system programmed with a full-length PrP cDNA cloned behind the SP6 promoter. Translation of SP6 transcripts of the cDNA or of native mRNA from either normal or infected hamster brain in the absence of dog pancreas membranes resulted in the synthesis of a single PrP immunoreactive polypeptide (each polypeptide was the same size; Mr, 28,000), as predicted from the known sequence of the coding region. In the cotranslational presence of membranes, two additional forms were observed. Using peptide antisera specific to sequences from the amino- or the carboxy-terminal domain of PrP together with proteinase K or endoglycosidase H digestion or both, we showed that one of these forms included an integrated and glycosylated form of PrP (Mr = 33,000) which spans the bilayer twice, with domains of both the amino and carboxy termini in the extracytoplasmic space. By these criteria, the other form appeared to be an unglycosylated intermediate of similar transmembrane orientation. The PrP cell-free translation products did not display resistance to proteinase K digestion in the presence of nondenaturing detergents. These results suggest that the PrP cell-free translation products most closely resemble the normal cellular isoform of the protein, since its homolog from infected brain was proteinase K resistant. The implications of these findings for PrP structure and function are discussed.


Background Obese patients with type two diabetes mellitus (T2DM) may have a better prognosis than patients of normal weight, but reports are limited by study size, duration and confounders. Methods We investigated the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and prognosis in 10,568 patients with T2DM without known CV disease followed for a median of 10.6 (IQR: 7.8–13.4) years. Hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), cerebrovascular accidents (CVA) and heart failure (HF) and all-cause mortality were recorded. Information on comorbidity (cancer, lung diseases and chronic renal failure) was also collected as confounder. Results Median age was 63 ± 19 years, 54% were men and median BMI was 28.8 (IQR: 25.2–32.4 kg.m2). Adjusting for differences in age and other variables, patients in the highest quartile of BMI had the greatest risk of hospitalisation for ACS or HF (HRs with 95% CI for highest versus lowest quartile were 1.39 1.14–1.70; p = 0.001 and 1.36 1.08–1.71; p = 0.01 respectively) but the risk of CVA was similar amongst BMI quartiles. However, patients in higher BMI quartiles had lower mortality rates, with the nadir of risk at BMI 25–30 kg/m2 (adjusted for confounders). Greater BMI was associated with lower mortality especially amongst older patients. Conclusions Patients with T2DM and moderately increased BMI, in the overweight range of 25–30 kg/m2, have a lower mortality than slimmer patients. Amongst older patients, even higher BMI may be associated with lower risk. However, obesity is associated with an increased risk of hospitalisation for cardiovascular events.


We compared psychophysical and electroretinographic test results of four patients with X-linked juvenile retinoschisis who had clinically apparent lesions isolated to the foveal area. The b-wave of the flash electroretinogram was selectively reduced, while the a-wave was within the normal range. Oscillatory potentials generated by either the rod or cone systems were markedly reduced. Absolute thresholds outside the fovea were either normal or only moderately elevated, indicating that the sensory neural pathways were, by and large, operating with limited dysfunction. Therefore, the oscillatory potentials do not directly reflect, to any appreciable extent, the function of bipolar or ganglion cells. Finally, a sequence of pathologic events is proposed for X-linked juvenile retinoschisis that initiates with Müller cell dysfunction.


BACKGROUND
Whilst research into the wide-ranging needs of family members following traumatic brain injury (TBI) is well established, investigation into the specific needs of families in relation to supporting cognitive-communication difficulties, relationships and social participation is limited.

AIMS
To identify the family needs for cognitive-communication difficulties following TBI and to explore whether current services are meeting these needs.

METHODS & PROCEDURES
Following a successful pilot, family members from the UK and Australia were invited via posters, social media and e-mail to take part in an anonymous, communication needs survey. Data arising from the thirty two closed questions (six eligibility, nine demographic and seventeen needs questions) were analysed using SPSS descriptive statistics. Data arising from one open question were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS
A total of 102 family members from the UK (n = 89, 87%) and Australia (n = 13, 13%) completed the survey. The majority of respondents were female (n = 76; 75%), between the ages of 30 and 69 (n = 88; 87%), and either a parent or a partner of the person following TBI (n = 78;76%). Respondents rated information about expected recovery from cognitive-communication difficulties and training in helpful strategies as their most important needs. The majority of respondents (more than 60%) were not satisfied that any of their cognitive-communication needs had been fully met and high levels of unmet need remained evident at three years or more post-injury. Written information, communication partner training and counselling were identified as key supports.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS
Families report high levels of unmet need for managing cognitive-communication difficulties following TBI. Access to written information and communication partner training should be available to families at various time points following TBI and not just in the early stages. What this paper adds What is already known on this subject Attempting to support a person who has cognitive-communication difficulties following TBI has been found to be highly burdensome for family members. However, few studies have asked how families perceive their needs in relation to cognitive-communication difficulties or measured how well current services are meeting their needs. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study demonstrates that current speech and language therapy services are not yet meeting the needs of the relatives of individuals with cognitive-communication difficulties following TBI. Important insights into the information, training and support families' rate as important are identified in addition to how these needs develop over time. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Speech and language therapy service design requires to reflect the ongoing nature of familial needs for cognitive-communication difficulties following TBI. Families require access to appropriate literature, speech and language therapy support, and communication partner training in the longer term, not just in the acute phase.


The neuropeptide head activator plays an important role for proliferation and determination of stem cells in hydra. By affinity chromatography a 200 kDa head-activator binding protein, HAB, was isolated from the multiheaded mutant of Chlorohydra viridissima. Partial amino acid sequences were used to clone the HAB cDNA which coded for a receptor with a unique alignment of extracellular modules, a transmembrane domain, and a short carboxy-terminal cytoplasmic tail. A mammalian HAB homologue with identical alignment of these modules is expressed early in brain development. Specific antibodies revealed the presence of HAB in hydra as a transmembrane receptor, but also as secreted protein, both capable of binding head activator. Secretion of HAB during regeneration and expression in regions of high determination potential hint at a role for HAB in regulating the concentration and range of action of head activator.


cDNA encoding Ca2+-ATPase was cloned from a chicken skeletal muscle library. The cDNA (termed FCa) comprised 3,239 base pairs, including an open reading frame encoding 994 amino acids which showed the highest degree of homology with the adult rabbit fast-twitch Ca2+-ATPase isoform (C. J. Brandl, S. de Leon, D. R. Martin, and D. H. MacLennan, J. Biol. Chem. 262:3768-3774, 1987). Radiolabeled FCa hybridized to a 3.2-kilobase transcript in chicken skeletal muscle RNA but not to cardiac muscle RNA, which confirmed its identity as encoding the fast Ca2+-ATPase isoenzyme. FCa was transfected into the mouse myogenic line C2C12, from which a protein of 100 kilodaltons was immunopurified by using a monoclonal antibody specific for the avian fast Ca2+-ATPase. Immunofluorescence microscopy of a line (designated C2FCa2) stably expressing the avian Ca2+-ATPase localized the protein to the nuclear envelope and a population of cytoplasmic vesicles. A similar pattern was observed when C2FCa2 cells were stained with DiOC6(3), a cyanine dye that labels endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria (M. Terasaki, J. Song, J. R. Wong, M. J. Weiss, and L. B. Chen, Cell 38:101-108, 1984). We conclude that the avian Ca2+-ATPase fast isoform is expressed and correctly targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum in mouse C2C12 cells.


Strains of nutritionally variant streptococci are usually isolated from patients with subacute bacterial endocarditis. Only recently have these strains been subdivided into three serotypes; however, no group-specific antigen has been described. To understand the immunochemical basis for the serology of these microorganisms as well as set the groundwork for adherence studies, quantitative analysis of the cell walls of nutritionally variant streptococci was undertaken. The bacteria were grown in semisynthetic medium or pyridoxal-supplemented Todd-Hewitt broth and harvested during the exponential or stationary phase. Cell walls were isolated and analyzed for amino sugars, sugars, polyalcohols, amino acids, and phosphorus by gas chromatography, high-pressure liquid chromatography, or colorimetric assays. The peptidoglycans of the cell walls of the prototype strains from the three serotypes were representative of other streptococcal cell walls, including the presence of alanine as the possible cross-bridge. The composition of the peptidoglycan was similar for all three strains and included a decreased concentration of peptidoglycan in their cell walls during the stationary phase. Glucosamine, glucose, galactose, ribitol, and a small amount of rhamnose were found in each of the cell wall polysaccharides. Galactosamine was only found in serotype II and III cell walls and might be responsible for the previously described cross-reaction between these strains. The concentration of the other sugars and amino sugars varied in each of the cell wall preparations, depending on the growth conditions. Finally, all three strains expressed both ribitol and phosphorus in their cell walls, characteristic of the presence of a ribitol teichoic acid. Therefore the cell wall composition of the nutritionally variant streptococci varies depending on the growth conditions, and their composition appears similar to that of strains of Streptococcus mitis.


This paper presents a new method of identifying and analysing stability boundaries in parametric systems using multiparameter spectral theory. Considering our driving application, the analysis of aeroelastic flutter instability, we identify methods by which the location of the stability boundary be expressed as a multiparameter eigenvalue problem and thus solved. This approach yields farreaching results, including direct solvers for arbitrarily large polynomial problems, iterative and approximate direct solvers for systems that are strongly nonlinear in the frequency domain, and a novel method of system visualisation. These solvers and methods are tested on two aeroelastic section models and the Goland wing benchmark model, and their advantages and limitations are explored.


In the last decade, failure of microelectronic devices has become a prominent field of research all across the world. The results of this of failure analysis allow an engineer to choose package geometries and materials which reduce the risk of failure. This paper is meant to relate the stress effect on material properties during Quad Flat No-Leads (QFN) stacked-die packages manufacturing processes. To achieve the study, the finite element technique was used to perform an extensive structural analysis on a QFN package design once it was verified by related experiments. A QFN unit was developed in three dimensional geometry with various materials be will simulated in order to determine the location of failure. The induced stress results were also measured in the maximum value, indicating the low modulus and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) in the packaging material were important for reducing high stress during the manufacturing stages. However, numerical simulation demonstrated that the stress developments increased exponentially when the die attach temperature increased. Therefore, the induced stress can be relieved by having high die attach process temperature with an adequate bonding force and time. It was vital to control the induced stress in package materials during die attachment process for ensuring the reliability level of QFN packages.


We develop and evaluate the new mini region station in Northern Sumatera for discrimination and feature extract seismic events form shallow and intermediate based on waveforms recorded. Machine learning approaches are employed to classification the waveforms and seismic features of the recoded signal in the time-frequency domain. The most issue of this study are the recurrence of the seismic tremors in January to April 2020 regularly happened, and exceptionally local in Northern Sumatra. This can be also in related to the establishment of modern sensors, for that it will be fundamental to create a high-performance technique for automated clustering of seismic tremors recorded of the modern smaller than expected locale sensors on a limited assortment of floor collectors based on their supply depths. We applied the technique to 25 earthquakes that started January to April 2020, with the depth are smaller than 100 km in the land. A selected set of features were then used to train the system to discriminate from events with a hypo-central depth between 10 to 100 km with 96.01 percent accuracy using the SVM model. The result shows that the spectral feature using wavelet-based with machine learning python (mlpy) package has the highest energy correlation. Wavelet spectral in the time-frequency domain is all-new mini region stations that are promising for seismic event classification. The used machine learning approaches have a good classification of low energy signals recorded at the new mini region station in Northern Sumatera.


We consider a two party network where each party wishes to compute a function of two correlated sources. Each source is observed by one of the parties. The true joint distribution of the sources is known to one party. The other party, on the other hand, assumes a distribution for which the set of source pairs that have a positive probability is only a subset of those that may appear in the true distribution. In that sense, this party has only partial information about the true distribution from which the sources are generated. We study the impact of this asymmetry on the worst-case message length for zero-error function computation, by identifying the conditions under which reconciling the missing information prior to communication is better than not reconciling it but instead using an interactive protocol that ensures zero-error communication without reconciliation. Accordingly, we provide upper and lower bounds on the minimum worst-case message length for the communication strategies with and without reconciliation. Through specializing the proposed model to certain distribution classes, we show that partially reconciling the true distribution by allowing a certain degree of ambiguity can perform better than the strategies with perfect reconciliation as well as strategies that do not start with an explicit reconciliation step. As such, our results demonstrate a tradeoff between the reconciliation and communication rates, and that the worst-case message length is a result of the interplay between the two factors.


Liposarcoma is a mesenchymal neoplasm of uncertain pathogenesis. It is the second most common soft tissue sarcoma, found uncommonly in the breast, and constitutes less than 1% of all malignant breast tumors. We report a case of a 50-year-old woman with a pleomorphic type liposarcoma of the breast.


"A proper recognition of our manhood": The African Civilization Society and the Freedmen's Aid Movement.Almost as soon as the Union took control of the Sea Islands of South Carolina in November 1861, Northern missionaries headed to the Islands to educate and uplift former slaves. The Port Royal experiment began what is known as the freedmen's aid movement. Although no African-American reformers were among the first missionaries in "Gideon's band," the missionaries were soon joined by Charlotte Forten and other black reformers, many of whom had been involved in the anti-slavery movement. Northern blacks recognized that they had a great stake in the outcome of any experiment with freedom.(2)Although historians have alluded to black participation in the freedmen's aid movement, none has studied it.(3) African-American reformers founded and sustained freedmen's aid societies that sought to make freedpeople independent. At the same time, these reformers asserted their own independence from whites. Free blacks fought negative images of freedpeople, and thus fought stereotypes of themselves. Yet black freedmen's aid reformers approached freedpeople with many of the same class and cultural biases that whites exhibited. They too sought to impose middle-class, Northern mores on former slaves. But Northern black reformers challenged whites' definition of independence during Reconstruction. Using gendered language, they combined black nationalism and domesticity to create the image of a new black manhood.In the Christian Recorder, organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African-Americans from all over the country could read about reform efforts in other cities, report on their own activities, and respond to calls for aid. One of the primary messages put forth by the Recorder during the Civil War was that African-Americans should take care of their own. As Elizabeth Keckley and James Wormeley wrote, "It has been asserted that we, as a people, do not sympathize with the oppressed portion of our race. Let us, my friends, by our benefactions, by words and by acts of kindness, disprove these assertions." The two then appealed for more contributions to Keckley's Contraband Relief Association in Washington, D.C.(4)As contraband aid societies formed around the country, correspondents wrote to the Recorder of the need for such societies "in every colored community." As J.C. Maxwell of Xenia, Ohio, wrote, "The colored citizens of Xenia have vowed not to be last in the race. A Contraband Aid Society has been formed here, and is under good headway, to which donations are daily given and monthly fees paid by the members.... Our efforts are only begun, and we hope that every colored community will follow in the wake."(5) The message from around the country was clear and strong. African-Americans should assert their independence and show their responsibility to those less fortunate among their race. Richard H. Cain, African Methodist Episcopal clergyman and later congressman from South Carolina, stated, "We know how to serve others, but have not learned how to serve ourselves. We have always been directed by others in all the affairs of life, they have furnished the thoughts while we have been passive instruments, acting as we were acted upon, mere automatons." This condition of dependence applied directly to freedmen's aid, Cain asserted: "In every association established for the amelioration of the condition of colored people of this country, there is not an office or profit, or trust, confined to a Negro gentlemen." Cain's solution to this problem was more involvement by educated, middle-class blacks.Negro gentlemen and ladies must become teachers, among them by example as well as precept, teach them that though they be black, they are as good as any other class whose skin is whiter than theirs; teach them that their complexions may differ but man is man for all that. Finally, colored men in the North have got to come to this doctrine, that black men must think for themselves -- act for themselves, and thus help our white friends to elevate us by a proper recognition of our manhood. …


More than US$ 27 billion is estimated to have been paid-out in farm support in USA alone since 1991 in response to climate change impacts on agriculture, with costs likely continuing to rise. With the wider adoption of precision agriculture - an agriculture management strategy that involves gathering, processing and analyzing temporal, spatial and individual data - in both developed and developing countries, there is an increasing opportunity to harness accumulating, shareable, big data using artificial intelligence (AI) methods, collected from weather stations, field sensor networks, Internet-of-Things devices, unmanned aerial vehicles, and earth observational satellites. This requires smart algorithms tailored to agricultural data types, integrated into digital solutions that are viable, flexible, and scalable for wide deployment for a wide variety of agricultural users and decision-makers. We discuss a novel AI approach that addresses the real-world problem of developing a viable solution for reliably, timely, and cost-effectively forecasting crop status across large agricultural regions using Earth observational information in near-real-time. Our approach is based on extracting time-conditioned topological features which characterize complex spatio-temporal dependencies between crop production regions and integrating such topological signatures into Long Short Term Memory (LSTM). We discuss utility and limitations of the resulting zigzag persistence-based LSTM (ZZTop-LSTM) as a new tool for developing more informed crop insurance rate-making and accurate tracking of changing risk exposures and vulnerabilities within insurance risk areas.


Metastable helium molecules generated in a discharge near a sharp tungsten tip immersed in superfluid He are imaged using a laser-induced-fluorescence technique. By pulsing the tip, a small cloud of He 2 molecules is produced. We can determine the normal-fluid velocity in a heat-induced counterflow by tracing the position of a single molecule cloud. As we run the tip in continuous field-emission mode, a normal-fluid jet from the tip is generated and molecules are entrained in the jet. A focused 910 nm pump laser pulse is used to drive a small group of molecules to the first excited vibrational level of the triplet ground state. Subsequent imaging of the tagged molecules with an expanded 925 nm probe laser pulse allows us to measure the flow velocity of the jet. The techniques we developed provide new tools in quantitatively studying the normal fluid flow in superfluid helium.


Breast milk is acknowledged and recommended as the best food for babies by the World Health Organization. However, globally the proportion of mothers who breastfeed is still low and this is particularly the case in Thailand. The aim of this study is to improve women's ability to breastfeed. A two phase study was designed. Phase I was to better understand women's experiences and breastfeeding support needs, which formed the development of the 'Breastfeeding Support Package'. The package, which consisted of the tool and leaflets, was to be administered by the nurses with the postpartum women. Phase II aimed to explore mother's and nurses' experiences following the use of the package. A pragmatic qualitative approach was used throughout. A government hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, was the setting for this research. Purposive sampling was used to recruit the participants for both phases of the study. In Phase I, semi-structured interviews of 17 mothers who visited the Family Planning Clinical, post-delivery, were undertaken. Thematic analysis was used to examine the data. For phase II, three groups of participants were involved: five participants from phase 1, five postpartum women and five nurses working on the postpartum ward. Telephone interviews were used to assess face validity to the tool while semi-structured interviews were used to investigate mothers' and nurses' experiences regarding the use of the package. Three themes that contributed to women's experience of breastfeeding were 'knowledge and attitude towards breastfeeding', 'practicality' and 'support'. Three themes that contributed to 'women's needs of breastfeeding support' were 'knowledge', 'attitude', and 'practice'. The use of the package could open a 'platform to communication' regarding women's needs and act as a 'platform to support' for nurses. The postpartum women were able to better communicate their needs regarding breastfeeding support with the nurses, as well as receiving the support they required. The packaged worked well with present conditions and environment at the postpartum ward of the hospital.


Acute experiments on cats were carried out during traumatic shock to study evoked potentials in the sensorimotor cortex and reticular formation (RF) of the midbrain in response to electrodermal irritation of the contralateral paw. The cortical function was judged by thresholds of convulsant reaction while function of RF by thresholds of activation reaction in the cortex of the course of high-frequency electrical stimulation of the structures under study. It was shown that in traumatic shock, initial and pronounced depression of the cortical function paralleled long enough stability of RF functional activity.


In the context of kernel methods, the similarity between data points is encoded by the kernel function which is often defined thanks to the Euclidean distance; the squared exponential kernel is a common example. Recently, other distances relying on optimal transport theory – such as the Wasserstein distance between probability distributions – have shown their practical relevance for different machine learning techniques. In this paper, we study the use of exponential kernels defined thanks to the regularized Wasserstein distance and discuss their positive definiteness. More specifically, we define Wasserstein feature maps and illustrate their interest for supervised learning problems involving shapes and images. Empirically, Wasserstein squared exponential kernels are shown to yield smaller classification errors on small training sets of shapes, compared to analogous classifiers using Euclidean distances.


Abstract Tourism networks are an increasingly important tool for economic development. At a local destination level, such networks have a potentially significant contribution to make towards sustainable tourism embracing community and commercial interests. This paper describes an instrumental case study that analyses the realities of a young local destination tourism network. It reflects upon tensions among the membership arising from community and commercial value systems, and how these affect aspects of its operation such as goals, plans, activities and relationships with support agencies. The network is understood in the context of its lifecycle and considers how it could be more effectively developed. Existing theory on tourism networks is developed in relation to their life cycle, benefits and contributions, support and management.


OBJECTIVES
To assess the quality of documentation by physicians in their evaluations for sexual abuse of children and to define factors that affect documentation.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey and blinded chart review.

SETTING
A statewide program for child abuse evaluations.

PARTICIPANTS
Physicians (n = 145) who performed evaluations during fiscal year 1992-1993 were surveyed. Up to five randomly chosen medical records (n = 548), obtained from each eligible physician, were reviewed.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
A survey of physicians who participated in the statewide program was made in summer 1993, with 78% participation. Knowledge scores were derived from the survey based on a comparison with the responses of a panel of five experts. Charts that were obtained from eligible physicians were assessed by two blinded reviewers. Documentation of the history and physical examination was evaluated as good or excellent by 30% and 23% of the physicians, respectively. Factors that were positively associated with better documentation of the history included a more structured format for the record, continuing medical education courses on sexual abuse of children, female gender, and a history of disclosure (P < .005 for all). Factors that were related to good documentation of the physical examination included structured records, continuing medical education courses, female gender, and knowledge scores. Factors that were not related to knowledge or documentation included the number of evaluations performed, practice group size or location, age of the physician, and a physician's reading of journal articles about sexual abuse of children.

CONCLUSION
Quality of evaluations for sexual abuse of children may be improved by the use of structured records and participation in continuing medical education courses with regard to sexual abuse of children.


This paper considers a firm whose potential employees have private information on both their productivity and the extent of their fairness concerns. Fairness is modelled as inequity aversion, where fair-minded workers suffer if their colleagues get more income net of production costs. Screening workers with equal productivity but different fairness concerns is shown to be impossible if both types are to be employed, thereby rendering the optimal employment contracts discontinuous in the fraction of fair-minded workers. As a result, fairness might influence the employment contracts of all workers although only some are fair-minded, and identical firms facing very similar pools of workers might employ very different remuneration schemes. JEL: C70, D21, D42, D63, D82, J31


Based on fatigue test results of corroded wires obtained from dissection of actual parallel wire cables which were used on a certain domestic cable-stayed bridge, the fatigue properties of corroded parallel wire cable are investigated by the method of Monte Carlo simulation in this paper. The results of fatigue life and corrosion degree of corroded wire are presented. Comparisons between the original design information and fatigue test results, it can be seen that corrosions make the fatigue lives of wires decreasing sharply. The fatigue life of individual wire is described by Weibull distribution considered some useful parameters such as, stress range, mean stress, mean static strength and length effects. The effects of percentage of broken wire, cable S-N curve parameter on cable fatigue life are discussed. It can be seen that the cable fatigue lives are controlled by a small fraction of the cable wires with the shortest fatigue lives. Finally, the S-N curves of cable are calculated by Monte Carlo simulations based on the results of individual wire fatigue test, and compared with the results of cable fatigue test.


This paper attempts to show the extent to which a faction of the Philippine technocracy during the martial law years utilized its social capital (used interchangeably with cultural capital) to become a potent economic bloc in society only to see it gradually depleted.Led by then Prime Minister and concurrent Finance Minister Cesar E.A. Virata, this bloc consisted of key senior economic officials who were closely associated with IMF-World Bank policies. Their social capital was founded on their family and educational backgrounds, paving the way for their acquisition of the technical expertise required by the business community and later, by government. What set them apart from the other pre-martial law technocrats was their support for an export-oriented and foreign investment-friendly industrialization policy shared by Marcos and the IMF-World Bank. The social capital of this bloc grew due to their ability to access foreign loans, gain international support, and function as a deterrent to corruption.Marcos, however, proceeded to undermine this bloc's capital by doing the following: 1) limiting the Virata faction to the economic sphere and making sure it was not "politically-threatening"; 2) "factionalizing" the technocracy resulting in non-Virata technocrats pursuing their own projects; and 3) and nurturing crony capitalism and corruption through Mrs. Marcos and his "chief cronies" to the detriment of the Virata faction's economic policies.But despite the opportunity provided by the political and economic crisis of the early 1980s and initial IMF-WB support,the Virata-led bloc's social capital rapidly deteriorated because of its inability to now access the needed loans and the withdrawal of US support for the Marcos dictatorship. This further highlighted the unsustainable and relative vulnerability of its social capital.


Through the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, the trains beneath our feet have moved us ever faster across the metropolis. They are the obvious machines we encounter along the way, but they represent only a part of the totally designed environment of the Underground. Whilst stylistic details of this environment have shifted conceptually and materially through the decades, in every element from the cardboard pocket map to the digital space modelling systems now used to plan services.

This paper examines the evolution of the transport network as a sophisticated organism, at once mechanical monster and 'soft machine', to consider how its design, and its industrial, graphic, spatial and information designers, have flourished as a result of our urge to move ever faster.


Time‐resolved reflectance and transmittance spectroscopy was applied to measure in vivo the absorption and transport scattering spectra of the female breast from 610 to 1010 nm. Three measurement configurations were used to probe different breast regions, and data were collected two or three times in each of the five phases of the menstrual cycle. The absorption spectra were best‐fitted with a linear combination of the spectra of the main tissue constituents (water, lipids, oxy‐ and deoxyhemoglobin). This allowed us to evaluate percentage contents of water and lipids, total hemoglobin content and hemoglobin oxygen saturation. The scattering spectra were interpreted with a function derived from Mie theory, providing information on the density and average size of the tissue scatterers. Significant changes in the estimated variables were observed with measurement geometry, reflecting the heterogeneous nature of the breast, and with time, in agreement with expected physiological changes over the menstrual cycle.


In last night's State of the Union message, President Clinton challenged the United States to sustain our role as the leader in the fight for freedom and peace. Three years of American leadership by President Clinton have already produced great benefits for the American people and for the world community. Through determination and the exercise of American leadership, we have repeatedly turned challenges into real gains for Americans. In the Office of Policy Planning, we often are torn between helping to coordinate day-to-day policy and longer-term planning. In our fast-forward world, long-term sometimes means next Monday, and history is what happened last Friday. That said, as the director of the office responsible for helping frame policy in a larger context, I would like to take a step back tonight, and talk about the broader principles and strategies that lie behind the President's remarkable foreign policy accomplishments.


Abstract Adaptive tracking of non-linear dynamic plants is currently an important area of research. The main difficulty being felt by the research community is the lack of a general modelling framework that can facilitate synthesis of a simplistic control law while being capable of providing accurate approximation of non-linear systems. In this study a novel technique based on the control-oriented U-model is proposed for the adaptive tracking of a wide range of stable non-linear dynamic plants using only past data. The basic scheme is based on the robust internal model control (IMC) structure. An adaptive version of the U-model is introduced for the modelling of the plant, and a simplistic control law based on polynomial root-solving is synthesized. The proposed scheme has a more general appeal than other adaptive schemes based on models such as the polynomial NARMAX (Non-linear AutoRegressive Moving Average with exogenous inputs) model. Additionally, the control law is much simpler in nature. The effectiveness of the proposed adaptive scheme is demonstrated through simulations and real-time implementation.


In this paper we present a new text line detection method for unconstrained handwritten documents. The proposed technique is based on a strategy that consists of three distinct steps. The first step includes image binarization and enhancement, connected component extraction and average character height estimation. In the second step, a block-based Hough transform is used for the detection of potential text lines while a third step is used to correct possible splitting, to detect text lines that the previous step did not reveal and, finally, to separate vertically connected characters and assign them to text lines. The performance evaluation of the proposed approach is based on a consistent and concrete evaluation methodology.


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly malignant tumor, and chronic infection with hepatitis B virus is one of its major risk factors. To identify the proteins involved in HCC carcinogenesis, we used two-dimensional fluorescence DIGE to study the differentially expressed proteins in tumor and adjacent nontumor tissue samples. Samples from 12 hepatitis B virus-associated HCC patients were analyzed. A total of 61 spots were significantly up-regulated (ratio ≥ 2, p ≤ 0.01) in tumor samples, whereas 158 spots were down-regulated (ratio ≤ −2, p ≤ 0.01). Seventy-one gene products were identified among these spots. Members of the heat shock protein 70 and 90 families were simultaneously up-regulated, whereas metabolism-associated proteins were decreased in HCC samples. The down-regulation of mitochondrial and peroxisomal proteins in these results suggested loss of special organelle functions during HCC carcinogenesis. Four metabolic enzymes involved in the methylation cycle in the liver were down-regulated in HCC tissues, indicating S-adenosylmethionine deficiency in HCC. Two gene products, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and formimidoyltransferase-cyclodeaminase, were identified from inversely altered spots, suggesting that different isoforms or post-translational modifications of these two proteins might play different roles in HCC. For the first time, the overexpression of Hcp70/Hsp90-organizing protein and heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins C1/C2 in HCC tissues was confirmed by Western blot and then by immunohistochemistry staining in 70 HCC samples, suggesting their potential as protein tumor markers. In summary, we profiled proteome alterations in HCC tissues, and these results may provide useful insights for understanding the mechanism involved in the process of HCC carcinogenesis.


The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) promulgates the HTML standards used on the Web, but it has no authority to enforce the adoption of one standard in favor of another. In this environment, developers have some incentive to ignore up-to-date W3C standards given that the transitional versions of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 offer most of the capabilities of the newer ones but are less stringent in their requirements. If most Web sites migrate to these "transitional" standards and remain there, future versions might be mere academic exercises for the W3C.


Multi-touch interactive tables are vast becoming "must-have" items for enhancing the collaborative learning experience. There is extensive amount of literature promoting and highlighting the impact of collaborative learning around interactive tables towards learning, communication and social interaction. In this paper we present several of our existing work investigating the communication impact that emerges during collaborative peer learning activities around tabletop. It is also worth noting that we present findings of collaborative outcomes from two countries. Finally we highlight our interests and ideas that we hope will be addressed and discussed during the workshop in the light of shaping the future of multi-touch multiple surfaces for learning.


Abstract This review examines the efficacy and safety of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) as a treatment for treatment-resistant depression in adolescents. A systematic review of six databases was conducted. Ten multi-subject trials, all uncontrolled, and five case reports met inclusion criteria. Twelve studies focused on treatment efficacy, whereas three studies focused exclusively on adverse events. All efficacy studies focused on adolescents only; 10 of these studies indicated that rTMS may demonstrate some benefit. Improvement within 2–8 weeks was reported in most studies, with a few studies indicating potential long-term benefits. A variety of adverse events occurred including scalp pain, which was the most common, as well as seizures. Controlled studies of rTMS are warranted to further examine whether this treatment is a potential option for adolescents with treatment-resistant depression.


Tropical agro-forest landscapes are global priority areas for biodiversity conservation. Little is known about the ability of these landscapes to sustain large late successional forest trees upon which much forest biodiversity depends. These landscapes are subject to fragmentation and additional habitat degradation which may limit tree recruitment and thus compromise numerous ecosystem services including carbon storage and timber production. Dysoxylum malabaricum is a large canopy tree species in the Meliaceae, a family including many important tropical timber trees. This species is found in highly fragmented forest patches within a complex agro-forest landscape of the Western Ghats biodiversity hot spot, South India. In this paper we combined a molecular assessment of inbreeding with ecological and demographic data to explore the multiple threats to recruitment of this tree species. An evaluation of inbreeding, using eleven microsatellite loci in 297 nursery-reared seedlings collected form low and high density forest patches embedded in an agro-forest matrix, shows that mating between related individuals in low density patches leads to reduced seedling performance. By quantifying habitat degradation and tree recruitment within these forest patches we show that increasing canopy openness and the increased abundance of pioneer tree species lead to a general decline in the suitability of forest patches for the recruitment of D. malabaricum. We conclude that elevated inbreeding due to reduced adult tree density coupled with increased degradation of forest patches, limit the recruitment of this rare late successional tree species. Management strategies which maintain canopy cover and enhance local densities of adult trees in agro-forest mosaics will be required to ensure D. malabaricum persists in these landscapes. Our study highlights the need for a holistic understanding of the incipient processes that threaten populations of many important and rare tropical tree species in human dominated agro-forest landscapes.


Geodetic surveys within the Yellowstone caldera have documented active uplift that is most likely caused by magmatic processes in the upper crust. Along the northeast shore of Yellowstone Lake, maximum relative uplift rates are 10 mm/yr for the period 1923-1975. However, information on deformation prior to historic instrumental records has been lacking. In this study, closely spaced data on elevations of postglacial shoreline terraces around the north end of Yellowstone Lake reveal complex tilting. Though most Holocene deformation is probably magma related, the pattern of shoreline tilting deviates significantly from the historic pattern of roughly symmetric inflation of the caldera. Along the northeast shore, where tilt directions of historic and shoreline deformation are similar, differential uplift of a > 2500-yr-old terrace is roughly 10 m; this gives a maximum uplift rate of 4 mm/yr. These unique Holocene terraces may exist due to episodic deformation because vertical movements affecting the lake outlet directly control lake level.


The design of the virtual prototyping frame construction, the work flow and its method of the realization on the air compressor are to be elaborated. Based on the analysis of the structure of air compressor operating mechanism, the 3-dimension model and virtual assembly of this product were done by CAXA solid design software. The assembly file of operating mechanism in CAXA was imported into ADAMS by parasolid transmission standard, kinematics simulation of operating mechanism of the reciprocating air compressor was realized.The design cost is reduced and the design cycle is shorten through this method. the research results have reference value to the design and simulation of similar parts.


OBJECTIVES
To compare six promising mania measures, the Parent Mood Disorder Questionnaire (P-MDQ), the Adolescent self-report MDQ, the 10-item short form of the Parent General Behavior Inventory (PGBI-SF10), the 28-item Adolescent General Behavior Inventory (AGBI), the Parent Young Mania Rating Scale (P-YMRS), and the adolescent YMRS, in a demographically diverse outpatient sample.

METHODS
Participants were 262 outpatients (including 164 males and 131 African-Americans) presenting to either an academic medical center (n = 153) or a community mental health center (n = 109). Diagnoses were based on semi-structured interviews with the parent and then youth sequentially.

RESULTS
Ninety youths (34%) met criteria for a bipolar spectrum disorder. Parent measures yielded Areas Under the Receiver Operating Curve (AUROC) values of 0.81 for the PGBI-SF10 to 0.66 for the P-YMRS. Adolescent report measures performed significantly less well, with AUROCs ranging from 0.65 to 0.50. There were no significant differences in the diagnostic performance of the measures across the sites or by racial groups, although the reliability of measures tended to be lower in the urban community mental health site. The PGBI-SF10 made a significant contribution to logistic regression models examining all combinations of the instruments. The P-MDQ added information in the younger age group, and no measure improved classification of bipolar cases after controlling for the PGBI-SF10 in the older age group.

DISCUSSION
Results replicate previous findings that, in decreasing order of efficiency, the PGBI-SF10, P-MDQ, and P-YMRS significantly discriminate bipolar from non-bipolar cases in youths aged 5-18; and they appear robust in a demographically diverse community setting. Adolescent self-report measures are significantly less efficient, sometimes performing no better than chance at detecting bipolar cases.


This study was carried out in Akure, the capital of Ondo State, Nigeria to assess the current practice of hospital wastes management, the magnitude and variety of wastes and the awareness of the stakeholders on the implications of their activities. The composition of wastes found in the 20 healthcare facilities visited included garbage,
syringes, swabs, gauze, pads, sharps, paper, glass materials, plastics and allied, clothing materials, wastewater with blood traces and the likes. The results revealed that there is no uniform practice of hospital waste management among the hospitals studied. The study
recommended that there should be source segregation of waste within each hospital as all wastes are often mixed in the same waste basket. It further recommended that government and the relevant agents should be at alert to their responsibilities of regulating the waste management practices among the hospitals in the city. Keywords : Diagnosis, Hospital, Infectious wastes, Generation, Segregation, Management, Pathogenic organisms. African Research Review Vol. 2 (3) 2008: pp. 292-305


Objective: While mental illness is a risk factor for suicidal behaviour and many suicide decedents receive mental health care prior to death, there is a comparative lack of research that explores their experiences of mental illness and care. Suicide notes offer unique insight into these subjective experiences. Our study explores the following questions: "How are mental illness and mental health care experienced by suicide decedents who leave suicide notes?" and "What role do these experiences play in their paths to suicide?" Method: We used a constructivist grounded theory framework to select a focus of qualitative analysis and engage in line-by-line open coding, axial coding, and theorizing of the data. Our sample is a set of 36 suicide notes that explicitly make mention of mental illness and/or mental health care, purposefully selected from a larger sample of 252 notes. Results: The primary themes from our sample were 1) negotiating personal agency in the context of mental illness, 2) conflict between self and illness, and 3) experiences of mental health treatment leading to hopelessness and self-blame. These experiences with mental illness and mental health care can give rise to exhaustion and a desire to exercise personal agency, contributing to suicidal behaviour. Conclusions and Relevance: This study highlights unique perspectives by suicide decedents, whose voices and experiences may not have been heard otherwise, addressing a critical deficit in existing literature. These insights can potentially enrich clinical care or strengthen existing suicide prevention programs.


Promotion of private investment is a necessity for capital formation in African countries. Foreign private investment in particular, is considered to be a source of the scarce capital resources, valuable technological know-how and corporate norms and practices. However, given the political unpredictability, lack of sufficient infrastructures, inadequate human capital and local technological capacities in these countries, attracting foreign investors outside of the natural resources sector, especially multinational corporations, has been a troubling concern to the policy makers in the region. Using Nigeria as our case study, we attempt to answer the following two questions: Are the small and medium multinational enterprises (SMMEs) an alternative to the traditional larger multinational corporations (MNCs) that have eluded African countries? What are the motivations and investment characteristics of the SMMEs? We evaluate these issues using primary data.


We investigate three types of amplification processes for light fields coupling to an atom near the end of a one-dimensional (1D) semi-infinite waveguide. We consider two setups where a drive creates population inversion in the bare or dressed basis of a three-level atom and one setup where the amplification is due to higher-order processes in a driven two-level atom. In all cases, the end of the waveguide acts as a mirror for the light. We find that this enhances the amplification in two ways compared to the same setups in an open waveguide. Firstly, the mirror forces all output from the atom to travel in one direction instead of being split up into two output channels. Secondly, interference due to the mirror enables tuning of the ratio of relaxation rates for different transitions in the atom to increase population inversion. We quantify the enhancement in amplification due to these factors and show that it can be demonstrated for standard parameters in experiments with superconducting quantum circuits.


Enhancing the positioning precision is the primary pursuit of global positioning system (GPS) users. To achieve this goal, most studies have focused on the relationship between GPS receiver clock errors and GPS positioning precision. This study utilizes undifferentiated phase data to calculate GPS clock errors and to compare with the frequency of cesium clock directly, to verify estimated clock errors by the method used in this paper. The frequency stability calculated from this paper (the indirect method) and measured from the National Standard Time and Frequency Laboratory (NSTFL) of Taiwan (the direct method) match to 1.5 × 10−12 (the value from this study was smaller than that from NSTFL), suggesting that the proposed technique has reached a certain level of quality. The built-in quartz clocks in the GPS receivers yield relative frequency offsets that are 3–4 orders higher than those of rubidium clocks. The frequency stability of the quartz clocks is on average two orders worse than that of the rubidium clock. Using the rubidium clock instead of the quartz clock, the horizontal and vertical positioning accuracies were improved by 26–78% (0.6–3.6 mm) and 20–34% (1.3–3.0 mm), respectively, for a short baseline. These improvements are 7–25% (0.3–1.7 mm) and 11% (1.7 mm) for a long baseline. Our experiments show that the frequency stability of the clock, rather than relative frequency offset, is the governing factor of positioning accuracy.


DNA polymerase gamma-1 (POLG)-related disorders have a varying age of onset, different modes of inheritance, and a wide array of symptoms. Alpers–Huttenlocher syndrome (AHS) is the most severe subtype, with an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance. It can be caused by either homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations of the POLG gene. Both sexes are apparently equally affected and early-onset cases present between 2 and 4 years of age. Diagnostic criteria include refractory seizures, hepatopathy, and psychomotor regression, with or without additional findings such as certain abnormal electroencephalogram (EEG) findings, elevated blood/ cerebrospinal fluid lactate levels, myopathy, and/or a sibling with a confirmed diagnosis of AHS. Diagnosis is confirmed via POLG sequencing, liver biopsy, or (rarely, today) autopsy. Here, we present a case of AHS with an unusual presentation of abnormal, repetitive, one-sided neck movement, abnormal hand movement, and rolling back of the eyes, in a 4-year-old boy. His EEG findings, routine blood tests, and metabolic profile were within normal limits. Diagnosis of AHS was confirmed by targeted DNA sequencing, revealing a homozygous variant of POLG (c.3286C>T; p.Arg1096Cys), the same as that found in his deceased elder sister.


Usually the computational cost of the quasi-P simulation depends on the complexity of the medium, and specifically the anisotropy. The effective-model method splits the anisotropic dispersion relation to an isotropic background and a correction factor that depends on the gradient of the wavefields. As a result, the computational cost is independent of the nature of anisotropy, which makes the extrapolation efficient. A dynamic implementation of this approach decomposes the original pseudo-differential operator into a Laplacian, handled using the low-rank approximation of the spectral operator, and an angular dependent correction factor applied in the space domain to correct for anisotropy. We analyze the role played by the correction factor and propose a new spherical decomposition. The proposed method provides accurate wavefields in phase and a more balanced amplitude. Also, it is free of SV-wave artifacts. Applications to a simple homogeneous VTI model and the revised Hess VTI model demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.


Introduction : The Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA ) is highly prevalent in the population and the "gold standard " for diagnosis is polysomnography (PSG ). This is not always available, so a validated alternative to find and to treat severe cases is the use of simplified studies at home. 1 Translational medicine is the transfer of basic science to the medical practice from the translation of scientific findings or developments made in laboratories to products or methodologies using everyday in medical practice. Objective: Develop a diagnostic home device that uses an automatic algorithm from the pulse oximetry signal (SaO2). Materials and methods : We designed a hardware, with an automatic algorithm that uses the SaO2 signal. We create an Oxygen Desaturation Index ( ODI) that estimated an apnea / hypopnea index (AHI ) was compared with AHI calculated by an expert in 25 studies PSG and then compared with the AHI calculated automatically in 80 records obtained with a validated polygraph, the ApneaLink ® ( AL). SaO2 signals were analyzed with the two detection techniques that we named M1 and M2. 2 We have begun to use the hardware with this algorithm in people. Results: The Area Under Curve (AUC) for ODI M1/IAH PSG was 0,97. The AUC for ODI M2/ IAH PSG: 0,94. The AUC for ODI (AL) /IAH (AL) was 0,92 (0,85 - 0,96). The AUC for ODI M1/IAH AL was 0,94 (0,87-0,97) and the AUC for IDH M2/ IAH AL was 0,95 (0,88 – 0,98). Conclusions: There is a good correlation between AHI estimated by the new hardware and algorithm compared to PSG and PR. The hardware works properly with this algorithm.This is an example of translational medicine in sleep medicine.


Introduction: Bidirectional interactions between cells and fluidic surroundings regulate cellular functions and maintain tissue or organ architecture. Accordingly, the synovial fluid is the primary source of environmental signals and determines to a great extent the molecular interactions within the joint capsule, both in homeostasis and pathology. Areas covered: We provided an update on hyaluronic acid (HA) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) concepts necessary to build the rationale for creating a combined treatment. The information is based on a PubMed search using the terms 'platelet-rich plasma', 'hyaluronic acid', 'knee pathology', 'knee osteoarthritis' (OA). Expert opinion: In OA, a deleterious fluidic microenvironment is established, with presence of HA fragments, catabolic enzymes and inflammatory molecules. The central concept underlying intra-articular injection is to modify deleterious fluidic microenvironments. PRP administration has shown pain remission and function improvement, but less than half of the patients showed clinically significant improvement. PRP exceeds HA, the comparator used in PRP clinical trials, albeit both HA and PRP alleviate symptoms in mild-to-moderate OA patients. Combining PRP and HA may benefit from their dissimilar biological mechanisms and help in controlling delivery and presentation of signaling molecules. Three armed randomized studies, using both HA and PRP as comparators, will provide information about the impact of this approach.


This chapter examines the law on legal parenthood (including establishing paternity) and the allocation, acquisition, nature and scope of parental responsibility. The law has had to address a number of questions in light of medical advances and social change. Who is a child's mother when a woman gives birth to a child conceived as a result of egg donation by another woman? How is the law on surrogacy to be regulated? Can a female-to-male transsexual person become a child's father via assisted conception (or indeed a mother if he gives birth)? Is a mother's same-sex partner to be recognised as her child's parent too? If so, in what sense? As this last question suggests, the law's response is also complicated by the fact that the notion of 'being a parent' has several different facets.


Abstract Category 1 Continuing Medical Education credit for physicians is available to Wilderness Medical Society members for this article. Go to http://wms.org/cme/cme.asp?whatarticle=1842 to access the instructions and test questions. Objective.—Bouldering is a type of rock climbing in which the climber ascends small boulders with pads and spotters in lieu of ropes, with an emphasis on ascending the most difficult surface possible. We sought to investigate the prevalence and incidence of injuries, and we hypothesized boulderers who enlisted preventative measures and those who bouldered indoors would have fewer injuries. Methods.—This cross-sectional cohort study assessed incidence and pattern of injury among indoor and outdoor boulderers over 1 year. Results.—Spotting other boulderers resulted in few injuries, but both climbing and falling were associated with diffuse injuries. Finger and ankle injuries were common. Traditional preventative measures were ineffective, and there were few differences between indoor and outdoor boulderers. Conclusions.—Bouldering outdoors has an increased risk of injury to the fingers. Preventative measures appear largely ineffective in reducing the number of injuries in both cohorts.


Most of the countries in the Asian monsoon region are agricultural areas, and the impact of climate change on this region is very significant. Rainfed areas in particular are very vulnerable to extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. Moreover, the chage of the onset and period of the rainy season causes serious effects on yields and farming plans. We are developing an evaluation system for major crops in the Asian monsoon region affected by climate changes that can simulate the growth of major crops in this region. We selected Thailand as a target country. and DSSAT as a crop model. In 2012, we developed a prediction system to optimize the double cropping of rice and cassava in northeastern Thailand. We developed this system to identify and recommend bonus crops that can be grown during a dry season, and to simulate the effects of climate change in northeastern Thailand's rainfed farming areas. In 2014 to simulate the effects of climate changes in the mountainous area of Thailand, we expanded the target area of the system to the northern mountain area, and we increased the number of crops in the model. The system executes crop model 365 times, while the start date is moved by one day each time, to identify the best start date using meteorological data that take climate change into consideration. The best start date and yield are summarized and shown on a map of the area being studied. The system is flexible and can be applied to other areas, as users are able to select crop models such as SIMRIW and ORYZA2000. The current areas of concern for the model include the execution time of several days needed to simulate tens of thousands of grid points and handling of the huge number of files output by the crop model. We are trying to apply multi-thread, Hadoop, and other devices to address these issues.


BACKGROUND
This study examined the relations between students' expectancies for success and a physiological component of test anxiety, salivary cortisol, during an authentic testing setting.

AIMS
The aim of the study was to better understand the connection between shifts in students' control appraisals and changes in the physiological component of test anxiety.

SAMPLE
The study comprised 45 undergraduate engineering majors in the United States.

METHODS
Survey data concerning students' expectancy for success and saliva samples were taken before, during and after the practice midterm examination prior to their actual in-class examination.

RESULTS
Students' expectancy for success declined during the examination while cortisol levels declined from the beginning to middle of the examination and began to increase again as a function of time. Although students' initial levels of expectancy for success and cortisol were not correlated, there was a negative relation between change in cortisol and change in expectancy for success.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study demonstrates a relation between salivary cortisol, a physiological component of test anxiety and students' expectancy for success in an authentic testing context. Most students saw a decrease in cortisol during the examination, suggesting anticipatory anxiety prior to the test and a return to homeostasis as the examination progressed. Some students, however, did not see a declination in cortisol, suggesting they may not have recovered from pre-examination anxiety. The negative relation between change in cortisol and expectancy for success suggests that students who had the greatest decrease in expectancy for success saw the smallest recovery in cortisol.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the economic and cost considerations of mobile X-ray services (MXS) in residential aged care facilities (RACFs), according to stakeholders (involved in residents' healthcare), residents living in RACFs and informal carers (ICs) of residents.

METHODS
Semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 residents and 27 ICs recruited from six RACFs across metropolitan Adelaide (South Australia, Australia), and 22 stakeholders, on their perspectives of using MXS in RACFs. Data relating to economic and cost considerations were extracted and analysed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS
Residents' mean age was 85 years, 60% were women and 40% had experienced an MXS in the last 12 months. Most ICs were daughters (70%) and wives (11%) and 30% had a family member who had experienced an MXS in the last 12 months. Stakeholders included RACF staff, GPs, a hospital avoidance program clinician, paramedics, emergency department clinicians, MXS radiographers and manager, and a radiologist. Four themes were presented: (1) business considerations, where private providers found it necessary to charge residents a co-payment to deliver MXS; (2) cost and payment process as a potential barrier to using MXS, with varied willingness and ability to pay for an MXS co-payment, and equity concerns; (3) overcoming cost and payment barriers, with staff and consumers sometimes using strategies to overcome cost barriers; and (4) perceived cost benefits of MXS to the healthcare system, residents and ICs.

CONCLUSIONS
Mobile X-ray services providers charge residents an upfront co-payment for business viability, which can be a barrier to some residents wishing to access MXS.


Twenty untrained male volunteers were required to run downhill for 45 minutes on a motor driven treadmill to induce muscle soreness. The volunteers took diclofenac or placebo before and for 72 hours after two runs 10 weeks apart, in a randomised double blind crossover design. Subjective soreness was assessed before and at intervals up to 72 hours after each run; venous blood samples, collected at the same time intervals, were used to estimate serum activities of creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase and aspartate aminotransferase and serum concentrations of creatinine and urea. Subjective soreness and the biochemical parameters increased after both runs, although the serum enzyme response to the second run was reduced. Diclofenac had no influence on the serum biochemical response to downhill running. Although overall soreness was not affected by diclofenac, individual soreness measurements were reduced by diclofenac at the first period of the study. These results suggest that diclofenac does not influence muscle damage, but may slightly reduce the associated soreness.


Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety, Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia Background: Globally, waste management has been a major public health problem. Public knowledge, attitudes, practices (KAP) and participation are key elements of any waste management program. In Ethiopia, however, the level of KAP and associated factors regarding wastewater management (WWM) at the household level are not well studied and understood. This study was, therefore, conducted to assess the knowledge, attitude, practice and associated factors of wastewater management (WWM) among the residents in Gondar town, Ethiopia. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted during March and April, 2016. A total of 422 participants were selected using the systematic random sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was employed to collect data which were entered and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. A multivariable binary logistic regression analysis was used to ascertain the significance of associations at <0.05 p-value and the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Among 422 study participants included, 63.5%, 43.4%, and 48.6% of them had good knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported practices regarding WWM, respectively. Knowledge of participants was significantly associated with house rent (AOR 1.12, 95% CI (1.22, 3.69), civil servant (AOR 5.47, 95% CI (1.87, 8.02), and positive attitudes (AOR 2.69, 95% CI (1.68, 4.30), while space availability (AOR 1.84, 95% CI (1.23, 2.75), and good knowledge (AOR 2.46, 95% CI (1.61, 3.77) were associated factors of attitudes. Moreover, good knowledge (AOR 1.32, 95% CI (1.87, 2.02), and positive attitudes (AOR 1.03, 95% CI (1.01, 2.34) were significantly associated factors of self-reported practices. Conclusion: Limited knowledge, attitudes and practices were seen among study population. A great emphasis on improvement of knowledge, attitudes and practices towards WWM is necessary. Moreover, it would be better to qualitatively explore variables which explain the qualitative attributes of the community, like community Attitudes and knowledge.


Background: People with Alzheimer's disease (AD) report pain less frequently and receive less pain medication than people without AD. Recent studies have begun to elucidate how pain may be altered in those with AD. However, potential sex differences in pain responsiveness have never been explored in these patients. It is unclear whether sex differences found in prior studies of healthy young and older individuals extend to people with AD. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine sex differences in the psychophysical response to experimental thermal pain in people with AD. Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of 14 male and 14 female age-matched (≥65 years of age, median = 74) and AD severity-matched (Mini-Mental State Exam score <24, median = 16) communicative people who completed thermal psychophysics. Results: There was a statistically significant main effect of sex for both temperature and unpleasantness ratings that persisted after controlling for average and current pain (mixed-effects general liner model: temperature: p = 0.004, unpleasantness: p < 0.001). Females reported sensing mild pain and moderate pain percepts at markedly lower temperatures than did males (mild: Cohen's d = 0.72, p = 0.051, moderate: Cohen's d = 0.80, p = 0.036). By contrast, males rated mild and moderate thermal pain stimuli as more unpleasant than did females (mild: Cohen's d = 0.80, p = 0.072, moderate: Cohen's d = 1.32, p = 0.006). There were no statistically significant correlations of temperature with perceived unpleasantness for mild or moderate pain (rs = 0.29 and rs = 0.20 respectively, p > 0.05). Conclusions: Results suggest experimental pain-related sex differences persist in older adults with AD in a different manner than those previously demonstrated in cognitively intact older adults. These findings could potentially aid in developing targeted pain management approaches in this vulnerable population. Further studies are warranted to replicate the findings from this pilot work.


This paper proposes robust methods for processing EMG (electromyography) signals in the framework of audioEMG-based speech recognition. The EMG signals are captured when uttered and used as auxiliary information for recognizing speech. Two robust methods (Cepstral Mean Normalization and Spectral Subtraction) for EMG signal processing are investigated to improve the recognition performance. We also investigate the importance of stream weighting in audio-EMG-based multi-modal speech recognition. Experiments are carried out at various noise conditions and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods. A significant improvement in word accuracy over the audio-only recognition scheme is achieved by combining the methods.


Purpose - – This paper aims to examine the implications of exemptions to facilitate small businesses' access to crowdfunding (CF) schemes. The aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and even now witnessed many small profits and non-profits encountering significant difficulties in accessing funding from the conventional sources and on many occasions have to turn to the newly emerging Internet-enabled donation or product compensation CF schemes. Access to securities-based CF schemes has, however, been seriously difficult due to securities laws obstacles. Regulatory authorities in the USA and the UK have responded with exemptions to facilitate small businesses' access to CF. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper driven by the qualitative doctrinal approach would rely extensively on primary data from the applicable regulations and secondary data from industry sources and other publicly available commentaries. Findings - – Securities-based CF schemes hitherto heavily restricted in the USA and the UK are under current regulatory interventions-accorded exemption status, thereby enabling enhanced access for those small businesses seeking alternatives to conventional financing and enhanced investment opportunities for small investors. The paper's preliminary analysis suggests that the proposed new regulatory rules in the USA and the UK are generally well-balanced with adequate small investors' protection, while simultaneously not hampering the innovative growth of small businesses with excessive restrictions. Further, the preparedness of the regulators to fine-tune the proposed rules as the CF industry evolves would likely ensure its orderly growth, thereby helping to address various humanitarian and social challenges in these jurisdictions. Originality/value - – The added value of the analysis lies in its substantive evaluation of the proposed rules in both jurisdictions to ascertain the feasibility of securities-based CF schemes as alternatives for small businesses in relation to traditional financing and enhanced investment opportunities for small unsophisticated investors.


PURPOSE
Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) bioactivity has been implicated as a potential regulator of the transition from scarless healing to scar formation in fetal wounds. Decorin is an extracellular matrix proteoglycan that regulates TGF-beta bioactivity and assists in collagen fibrillogenesis. To determine its role in scarless repair, the authors examined decorin expression in fetal fibroblasts, skin, and wounds.

METHODS
A single, full-thickness, 2-mm open wound was created on the dorsal surface of fetal rats at 16.5 days (E16) and 18.5 days (E18) gestational age (term, 21.5 days [E21]). Wounds were harvested at 24 and 72 hours (n = 12 wounds per time-point). Nonwounded fetal skin at E17, E19, and E21 was harvested for analysis of decorin expression during skin development and as controls for wounds. In addition, fetal (E14, E18) and adult dermal fibroblasts were cultured for in vitro analysis. Reduced-cycle, specific primer, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction was performed to quantitate decorin expression.

RESULTS
Decorin expression increased rapidly with increasing gestational age in both fetal fibroblasts and skin. Expression was increased 22-fold in E18 fibroblasts (P <.002) and 300-fold in adult fibroblasts (P <.001) compared with E14 fibroblasts. In skin, expression increased 74% (P <.01) during the fetal wound healing transition period between E17 and E19. However, in E16 wounds (scarless), decorin expression decreased 59% (P <.006) at 24 hours and 45% (P <.02) at 72 hours. Decorin expression did not change in E18 (scar) wounds at 24 and 72 hours (P >.05).

CONCLUSIONS
Early gestation fetal fibroblasts and fetal skin express decorin at lower levels than late gestation fetal and adult fibroblasts and skin. Decorin expression is down-regulated in scarless (E16) compared with scar (E18) wounds. Thus, increased decorin expression is associated with both skin development and scar formation. Conversely, decreased decorin expression is associated with scarless repair.


The leakage current due to parasitic capacitance of the photovoltaic modules of the widely utilized transformerless photovoltaic inverters is confined by the standards to 300 mA-peak for safety reasons. This paper investigates the leakage current of the widely utilized zero vector isolating grid connected transformerless solar inverters (ZVI-GCTSI) by means of analytical modeling and simulations. The paper shows, in contrast to common knowledge, the source of leakage current in these topologies is not the inverter common-mode voltage variation but grid voltage variation during zero vector states, in particular near grid voltage zero crossings. It has been shown that the peak currents can exceed several hundred mA levels of standard limits (especially for large parasitic capacitor cases), thus leakage current suppression is required.


In this paper we provide a comprehensive summary about the practical results of the OTKA project K49604. 1. We calculated the consequences of incorrect positioning of the electrodes for various multielectrode systems. In practice these effects were found to be negligible. The only exception is the case of rocky surface, where it is impossible to put the electrodes in the desired positions. The errors can however be kept within an acceptable range, if the electrodes of the linear arrays are put off-set, at right angles from the measuring line. A five-six times larger off-set has less effect than a certain mis-position along the line, connecting the electrodes. 2. We carried out tensorial geoelectric measurements around the Cistercian Monastery at Pilisszentkereszt. Areal measurements provide much more detailed and unambiguous anomalies than 2D profile measurements, and the tensor invariant representation of apparent resistivity anomalies provides a realistic picture about the lateral variation of the subsurface resistivity, even in field circumstances. 3. We tested the applicability of 3D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) technique to detect landmines in different soil conditions and at various depths. Metallic and non-metallic landmines buried in wet and dry soils had been synthetically modeled. According to the inverted resistivity data using the dipole axial array in wet environment, it was possible to locate the metallic and non-metallic landmines as long as the noise level was about 5%. 4. We elaborated moreover a geoelectrical procedure which is able to map multidirectional fissure systems by combining geoelectrical profiling and geoelectrical azimuthal measurements. Results received by using both the so-called null-, and traditional arrays were jointly interpreted. The humidity of the fissures affects the measured results significantly, and in a meaningful way. 5. We presented the so-called standardized pricking probe (PP) surveying technique and demonstrated its usefulness in an archaeological study. The PP images proved to be definitely more close to the realistic shape of the buried chapel than the geoelectric and magnetic measurements, and they also revealed more details about the subsurface than the georadar. The optimum PP parameters: horizontal interval, pricking depth, observable quantity and its way of presentation were optimized through field experiments. For more details see the cited publications. The figures ever published in Hungarian journals are not reproduced here.


university professor and as a political consultant explains why he stresses the accurate predictions. The applications of the book range from medieval history, over current political affairs (North Korea and Iran for instance) to business conflicts. This embarrassment of riches might frustrate some readers who would like to see a more in-depth treatment of specific cases or a detailed presentation of the game-theoretic model. However, the smorgasbord approach also indicates that modelbased forecasts can be useful in many different settings. Gerald Schneider


Asynchronous programming models (APM) are gaining more and more traction, allowing applications to expose the available concurrency to a runtime system tasked with coordinating the execution. While MPI has long provided support for multi-threaded communication and non-blocking operations, it falls short of adequately supporting APMs as correctly and efficiently handling MPI communication in different models is still a challenge. Meanwhile, new low-level implementations of light-weight, cooperatively scheduled execution contexts (fibers, aka user-level threads (ULT)) are meant to serve as a basis for higher-level APMs and their integration in MPI implementations has been proposed as a replacement for traditional POSIX thread support to alleviate these challenges. In this paper, we first establish a taxonomy in an attempt to clearly distinguish different concepts in the parallel software stack. We argue that the proposed tight integration of fiber implementations with MPI is neither warranted nor beneficial and instead is detrimental to the goal of MPI being a portable communication abstraction. We propose MPI Continuations as an extension to the MPI standard to provide callback-based notifications on completed operations, leading to a clear separation of concerns by providing a loose coupling mechanism between MPI and APMs. We show that this interface is flexible and interacts well with different APMs, namely OpenMP detached tasks, OmpSs-2, and Argobots.


As competitive bidding for large blocks of volume expands, the need for properly planning and monitoring pricing arrangements will become increasingly important. The strategies presented above have been designed to provide hospital managers with proper methodologies for developing competitive prices and monitoring how the pricing impacts profitability.


Abstract One method straightforwardly describing the creep degradation behavior of soft marine clay is proposed and applied to the embankment modeling. Based on the experimental phenomena, the evolution of creep coefficient of soft structured clay is identified comparing with reconstituted clay, and formulated using the creep coefficient of reconstituted clay and a creep-based structure parameter relating to the inter-particle bonding. The contributions of inter-particle bonding and debonding to creep coefficient are thus considered and the creep degradation behavior is then captured straightforwardly. The creep coefficient is extended to 3D and incorporated into a newly developed elasto-viscoplastic model to describe the creep degradation in a direct way. Based on the correlations, the liquid limit is adopted as the viscosity related input parameter. The model is derived using Newton–Raphson algorithm and implemented into a Finite Element code for coupled consolidation analysis. The general applicability on creep degradation of the model is validated by simulating 1D creep, 1D CRS (constant strain rate) and 3D undrained creep tests. Finally, the enhanced model considering creep degradation is applied and validated by simulating one test embankment and one test fill on marine deposited soft sensitive clays.


This paper presents a virtual learning environment for Mobile IP (Internet Protocol). The learning environment has been produced in a production circle of Virtual Polytechnic of Finland. Protocols and mechanisms for secure mobility in the Internet are surveyed. A detailed description of the development of the learning environment and the content of the Mobile IP animation is given. The chosen didactical approach and the graphical design of the learning platform are presented and motivated. The IT technology and the IT infrastructure needed to implement and use the learning platform are also described and assessed.


The objective of this study is to identify cooperation potentials between the Chinese and the Austrian Green Tech sector, focusing on R&D activities of both countries. The notion of 'Green Tech' in this study is defined to include all environment-related technological fields as outlined by the OECD (2011a). We use patents to measure R&D specialisation advantages at a detailed technological level, using the OECD (2011a) classification scheme on environment-related technological fields based on the International Patent Classification (IPC). Revealed Technological Advantage (RTA) indices are calculated to measure specialisation advantages in specific technologies, indicating potential collaboration fields. Furthermore, such fields are identified from a network perspective by characterising the embedding of Austria and China in the international Green Tech R&D network. The international R&D network is measured in terms of common co-patent applications. Using network visualisation techniques, the network position of China and Austria in certain fields is to be illustrated. The empirical findings show that the R&D activity in the Chinese Green Tech sector is mainly characterised by high growth rates whereas the Austrian Green Tech sector reveals specialisation advantages in various environmental technology fields. Four technology fields Energy Generation from renewable and non-fossil sources, Energy efficiency in building and lightning, Emissions abatement and fuel efficiency in transportation and General Environmental Management reveal particular cooperation potentials, characterised by positive growth rates in China and corresponding high RTA values in Austria. An extension of our investigation to selected subclasses identified the subclasses Energy storage and Wind energy, as technology fields with greatest cooperation potentials.


Coronary bifurcation disease (CBD) is frequently found in patients undergoing coronary interventions. Optimal management of CBD is technically demanding and therefore requires experience with different techniques, which should be tailored case-by-case. Provisional T-stenting is the recommended initial approach in most cases, however several two-stent techniques are described either as elective or as bailout strategy. This review describes the most common percutaneous techniques used to manage CBD, with advantages, drawbacks, and up-to-date medical evidence.


Stability Analysis of Gold Dinar and US Dollar in Rupiah Denomination . This study was aimed to (a) to know if there is a causality relation between Gold Dinar and U.S. Dolar, (b) to know that Gold Dinar more stabil than U.S. Dolar AS, (c) to know whether Gold Dinar can be alternative currency as a substitute for U.S. Dolar. The result is that the growth of Gold Dinar higher than U.S. Dolar, the result of Granger causality test shown that there was undirectional causality from Gold Dinar to U.S. Dolar. The result of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) shown that U.S. than Dinar Gold more stabil Dolar AS that measured by Rupiah. From all of result tests, it can conclude that Gold Dinar can be a alternative currency instead of U.S. Dolar. DOI: 10.15408/aiq.v6i2.1235


Abstract Widel, M., Jedrus, S., Lukaszczyk, B., Raczek-Zwierzycka, K. and Swierniak, A. Radiation-Induced Micronucleus Frequency in Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes is Correlated with Normal Tissue Damage in Patients with Cervical Carcinoma Undergoing Radiotherapy. Radiat. Res. 159, 713–721 (2003). In an effort to find a test to predict the response of normal tissue to radiotherapy, the lymphocyte micronucleus assay was used on blood samples from patients with cervical carcinoma. Peripheral blood samples from 55 patients with advanced-stage (II B–IV B) cervical carcinoma were obtained before radiotherapy. The patients were treated with external-beam radiotherapy followed by high-dose-rate brachytherapy. Acute and late normal tissue reactions were scored and correlated with the micronucleus frequency in lymphocytes after irradiation with 4 Gy in vitro. Great interindividual variability was observed in the radiation-induced lymphocyte micronucleus frequency, especially at 4 Gy. The mean number of micronuclei per 100 binucleated cells in cells irradiated with 4 Gy in vitro was significantly higher in samples from patients who suffered from acute and/or late normal tissue reactions than in those from patients with no reactions (51.0 ± 17.7 and 29.6 ± 10.1, respectively). A significant correlation was also found between the micronucleus frequency at 4 Gy and the severity of acute reactions and late reactions. However, the overlap between the micronucleus frequencies of patients with high-grade late normal tissue reactions and low-grade reactions is too great to recommend the micronucleus assay in its present form for routine clinical application.


Ancient images as much as texts attest to the worldviews and symbol systems of past societies. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the Swiss Society for Ancient Near Eastern Studies invited an international group of distinguished scholars to explore new approaches to the pictorial heritage of ancient civilizations. In an age concerned as never before by the global impact of visual media, archaeologists and art historians were asked to address ancient images as media and primary sources for the history of human civilization.
The symposium concentrated on the 1st millennium BCE, when ideas and objects originating in distant cultures entered a period of unprecedented interaction with the advent of early empires and large interregional trade networks. It highlighted ancient states and people in contact, exchanging and adapting concepts and beliefs alongside with their merchandise and skills.
The fifteen papers published here cover a large area from Thebes to Persepolis, paying particular attention to the zones of contact in the Levant. They establish dialogues between the autochtonous and the imported, the monumental and the minute: palace reliefs and statuary, metalwork and ivory carving, vase painting, seals and coinage. They do not consider images primarily as art but as media designed to convey messages, political or cultural, social or religious. Images are thus taken seriously, being addressed as documents involving human intellect and knowledge, tradition and creativity, economy and practical use, consumers' taste and craftsmen's competence.


Abstract. Drinking and wastewater infrastructure consists of both public and private usage. On each property parcel, drinking water can be privately provided by a well or publicly provided through a municipality. Wastewater can be a private septic tank or a public sewer. Property parcels can use all private, all public, or a combination of public and private solutions. It is important for planners and city officials to have knowledge of these systems, and it is also important to know the number of people using each type of infrastructure to prioritize resources and plan for future expansions. Visualizing the complexity of these data using separate univariate maps is aesthetically inferior involving back and forth comparisons. Further, the univariate maps represent land parcels only and do not capture the population that is using each type of water infrastructure. Our research develops a single bivariate map that facilitates the visualization of population using both public and private drinking and wastewater solutions simultaneously. The bivariate map is tended for use by planners, city officials, environmentalists, and others interested in the visualization of the spatial patterns of water infrastructure within one complete map.


Restoring peripheral nerve trauma is an important research field in regenerative medicine. One therapeutical approach is to use tissue engineered nerve conduits consisting of biodegradable polymers. These materials can be designed to include active agents to further stimulate or influence proliferation, maturation, differentiation or migration of specific neuronal cell in these nerve guides. We have developed a method to electrically deposit and immobilize neuronal cells and extracellular matrix proteins on self structured micro electrodes. These electrodes also present a feasible methodology to investigate electrical stimulation of nerve cells. In our approach, poly-D,L-lactide-co-glycolides (PLGA) were investigated as possible substrate for these electrodes, while further allowing for the integration of model substances in a drug release concept. In a first approach, caffeine was used due to its well known effect of both stimulating and inhibiting effects on certain neuronal cells, while also allowing easy incorporation into PLGA via chemical means. A Plackett-Burman experimental design was used to find the optimum composition among different parameters such as drug concentration, polymer concentration, type of solvent and film-drying condition. The optimized drug loaded polymer films were tested for their release and degradation profile, and their behavior in cell culture. Finally, we are currently establishing an integrated experimental setup, combining caffeine modified PLGA film substrates with the manufacturing of the electrode structures to investigate cell deposition via electrical means and stimulation/ inhibition via chemical release.