Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and medics who made colonialism work day-to-day. Even as these workers maintained the colonial state, they dreamed of displacing imperial power. This book examines the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898-1956) and the Republic of Sudan that followed in order to understand how colonialism worked on the ground, affected local cultures, influenced the rise of nationalism, and shaped the postcolonial nation-state. Relying on a rich cache of Sudanese Arabic literary sources, including poetry, essays, and memoirs, as well as on colonial documents and photographs, this perceptive study examines colonialism from the viewpoint of those who lived and worked in its midst. By integrating the case of Sudan with material on other countries, particularly India, Sharkey gives her book broad comparative appeal. She shows that colonial legacies--such as inflexible borders, atomized multi-ethnic populations, and autocratic governing structures--have persisted, hobbling postcolonial nation-states. Thus countries like Sudan are still living with colonialism, struggling to achieve consensus and stability within borders that a fallen empire has left behind.


The purpose of this study was to compare the steps/d derived from the ActiGraph GT3X+ using the manufacturer's default filter (DF) and low-frequency-extension filter (LFX) with those from the NL-1000 pedometer in an older adult sample. Fifteen older adults (61–82 yr) wore a GT3X+ (24 hr/day) and an NL-1000 (waking hours) for 7 d. Day was the unit of analysis (n = 86 valid days) comparing (a) GT3X+ DF and NL-1000 steps/d and (b) GT3X+ LFX and NL-1000 steps/d. DF was highly correlated with NL-1000 (r = .80), but there was a significant mean difference (–769 steps/d). LFX and NL-1000 were highly correlated (r = .90), but there also was a significant mean difference (8,140 steps/d). Percent difference and absolute percent difference between DF and NL-1000 were –7.4% and 16.0%, respectively, and for LFX and NL-1000 both were 121.9%. Regardless of filter used, GT3X+ did not provide comparable pedometer estimates of steps/d in this older adult sample.


In this, the first collection of ecocritical essays devoted to Australian contexts and their writers, Australian and US scholars explore the transliteration of land and sea through the works of Australian authors and through their own experiences. The littoral zone is the starting point in this fresh approach to reading literature organised around the natural environment—rainforest, desert, mountains, coast, islands, Antarctica. There's the beach, where sexual and spiritual crises occur; the Western Australian wheatbelt; deserts, camel trekking, and the transformation of a salt flat into an inland island; New Age literature that 'appropriates' Aboriginal culture as the healing poultice for an ailing West; a re-examination of pastoralism; an inquiry into whether Judith Wright's work can "persuade us to rejoice" in the world; the Limestone Plains, home of the bush capital and the bogong moth; tropical North Queensland; national parks where "the mountains meet the sea"; temperate islands, with their history of sealing, Soldier Settlement, and sea country pastoral; and Antarctica, where a utopian vision gives way to an emphasis on its 'timeless' icescape as minimalist backdrop for human dramas. The author-terrain includes poets, playwrights, novelists, and non-fiction writers across the range of contexts constituting the littoral zone of 'Australia'.


Local government tourism represents the third tier of public sector tourism. While state and national tourism organizations are chiefly responsible for the design and implementation of tourism strategies and national and international marketing campaigns, it is the lesser-known local government authorities that shoulder the responsibility for promoting the regional tourism product. This article reports on a study of local government tourism officers conducted in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. The study raises a number of questions about the level of professionalism in the local government tourism field. Local government tourism officers generally lack formal educational qualifications in tourism or marketing and have little prior tourism industry or public sector tourism experience. This sector also records a high turnover rate of between 40% and 50% per annum. In addition, gender preferences were noted in hiring practices: men typically were appointed to manage larger, better-funded organizations, while women were appointed as either managers of tourist information centers or to support managerial positions in large organizations.


Rapid solidification route by melt spinning has been adopted for preparation of a Ni52.5Mn24.5Ga23 (at %) ferromagnetic shape memory alloy in the form of ribbons. In the as-spun state, the ribbon revealed a predominant austenitic L21 structure in combination with martensitic feature as observed from x-ray diffraction studies. Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) evaluation showed these features in the form of martensitic plates. At low temperature, martensite to austenite transformation was exhibited by an increase in magnetization during heating cycle. The reverse effect was observed during cooling cycle. Annealing temperature and magnetising field was also found to effect this transformation.


Calcium (Ca2+ ) is a second messenger for plant cell surface and intracellular receptors mediating pattern-triggered and effector-triggered immunity (respectively, PTI and ETI). Several CYCLIC NUCLEOTIDE-GATED CHANNELS (CNGCs) were shown to control transient cytosolic Ca2+ influx upon PTI activation. The contributions of specific CNGC members to PTI and ETI remain unclear. ENHANCED DISEASE SUSCEPTIBLITY1 (EDS1) regulates ETI signaling. In an Arabidopsis genetic screen for suppressors of eds1, we identify a recessive gain-of-function mutation in CNGC20, denoted cngc20-4, which partially restores disease resistance in eds1. cngc20-4 enhances PTI responses and ETI hypersensitive cell death. A cngc20-4 single mutant exhibits autoimmunity, which is dependent on genetically parallel EDS1 and salicylic acid (SA) pathways. CNGC20 self-associates, forms heteromeric complexes with CNGC19, and is phosphorylated and stabilized by BOTRYTIS INDUCED KINASE1 (BIK1). The cngc20-4 L371F exchange on a predicted transmembrane channel inward surface does not disrupt these interactions but leads to increased cytosolic Ca2+ accumulation, consistent with mis-regulation of CNGC20 Ca2+ -permeable channel activity. Our data show that ectopic Ca2+ influx caused by a mutant form of CNGC20 in cngc20-4 affects both PTI and ETI responses. We conclude that tight control of CNGC20 Ca2+ ion channel is important for regulated immunity.


Malware has posed a major threat to the Android ecosystem. Existing malware detection tools mainly rely on signature- or feature- based approaches, failing to provide detailed information beyond the mere detection. In this work, we propose a precise semantic model of Android malware based on Deterministic Symbolic Automaton (DSA) for the purpose of malware comprehension, detection and classification. It shows that DSA can capture the common malicious behaviors of a malware family, as well as the malware variants. Based on DSA, we develop an automatic analysis framework, named SMART, which learns DSA by detecting and summarizing semantic clones from malware families, and then extracts semantic features from the learned DSA to classify malware according to the attack patterns. We conduct the experiments in both malware benchmark and 223,170 real-world apps. The results show that SMART builds meaningful semantic models and outperforms both state-of-the-art approaches and anti-virus tools in malware detection. SMART identifies 4583 new malware in real-world apps that are missed by most anti-virus tools. The classification step further identifies new malware variants and unknown families.


List of figures. Contributors. Preface. 1. Introduction: The Challenge of the Sociology of Culture to Sociology as a Discipline: Diana Crane (University of Pennsylvania). 2. Culture and the Integration of National Societies: Michael Schudson (University of California, San Diego). 3. 'Cultural Pluralism' in Historical Sociology: Recent Theoretical Directions: Ewa Morawska and Willfried Spohn (University of Pennsylvania University of Washington). 4. Fissured Terrain: Methodological Approaches and Research Styles in Culture and Politics: Mabel Berezin (University of Pennsylvania). 5. Cultural Theories of Organizational Behavior: The Social Construction of Rational Organizing Principles: Frank R. Dobbin (Princeton University). 6. Toward a Sociology of Material Culture: Science Studies, Cultural Studies and the Meanings of Things: Chandra Mukerji (University of California, San Diego). 7. Culture Studies Through the Production Perspective: Progress and Prospects: Richard A. Peterson (Vanderbilt University). 8. Cultural Production as 'Society in the Making': Architecture as an Exemplar of the Social Construction of Cultural Artifacts: David Brain (New College of the University of South Florida). 9. The Sociology of Cultural Reception: Notes Toward an Emergin Paradigm: Andrea Press (University of Michigan). 10. Methodological Dilemmas in the Sociology of Art: Anne Bowler (University of Delaware). 11. Cultural Conceptions of Human Motivation and Their Significance for Culture Theory: Steve Derne (SUNY-Genesco). References. Index.


On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in a basement lounge of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls and injuring more than 20 others.


Recent research in extensions of Answer Set Programming has included a renewed interest in the language of Epistemic Specifications, which adds modal operators K ("known") and M ("may be true") to provide for more powerful introspective reasoning and enhanced capability, particularly when reasoning with incomplete information. An epistemic logic program is a set of rules in this language. Infused with the research has been the desire for an efficient solver to enable the practical use of such programs for problem solving. In this paper, we report on the current state of development of epistemic logic program solvers.


The study will investigate the absence of syllabic consonants in Pakistani English. The study pays attention to the phonological environment in which the absence of a syllabic consonant takes place. To  check this phenomenon, samples have been  collected from an educated community  which  has  enough background  knowledge  of  Linguistics. We  analyzed  this phenomenon in all those words which have "LE sound at the end. Spectrograms have been materialized in order to show the feature of vowel insertion in syllabic consonant and make it a regular syllable. The study proves that the Pakistani English speakers speak any word which has syllabic consonant in it, by converting it into a regular syllable. This study is useful because it proves this phenomenon scientifically that the feature of syllabic consonant is absent in Pakistani English. It boosts perception based opinion after the scientific results by using the PRAAT and thus validates last claims. The study is beneficial to set the standard of Pakistani English. The study will help those scholars to set the standard of Pakistani English. When they are going to introduce a new emerging variety of Pinglish, this phenomenon would be helpful in setting the spellings of all those words having syllabic consonant in it according to the need and accent of Pakistanis.


The Circle of Sisters is a breast cancer education initiative that incorporates free mammography for American Indian women. In two separate but similar initiative-sponsored one-day events, 37 American Indian women underwent screening mammography and experienced a full day of culturally tailored educational activities. Women observed a cooking demonstration, participated in moderate exercise activity, strung beads to learn about the dimensions of breast tumors, and listened to an American Indian breast cancer survivor recount her story of diagnosis and treatment. Significant shifts in opinion included an increase in the understanding that a woman's chances of being diagnosed with breast cancer increase with age (p=.015) and with never bearing children (p <.001) and that breast cancer can be detected early (p=.043). The percentage of those expressing an intention to get a mammogram every year grew from 81.1% to 94.6%.


Abstract The experiment examined the possibility of rearing juvenile pikeperch, Sander lucioperca (L.) in polyculture with sterlet Acipenser ruthenus L. in a recirculating system. Three variants of pikeperch rearing were tested: monoculture (group S), with the addition of sterlet at 10% (group S10) and 20% (group S20) of the initial pikeperch biomass. After 56 days of rearing, no differences in the growth rates or survival of the pikeperch were noted. The value of the feed conversion ratio in the monoculture group was 1.19 and was significantly statistically higher than in the polyculture groups, the values of which were 0.84 (S10) and 0.74 (S20). The mean oxygen consumption and ammonia excretion values did not differ significantly statistically among the studied groups. Including the sterlet stock with the pikeperch permitted obtaining the additional value of the sterlet biomass using the same quantity of feed. Additionally, the inclusion of sterlet decreased the labor intensity of pikeperch rearing since the tanks did not need cleaning as frequently.


Demarest et al. concluded in their previous report that a ten times improvement in placement accuracy was required to enable automated transmission electron microscopy (TEM) sample preparation, and wafer alignment by GDS coordinates demonstrated a factor of two improvement in comparison to optical or scanning electron microscope based processes. This paper provides an additional update on this project. The study is about a GDS based process developed to simplify the complicated workflow for examining discrete electrical failures. The results of this study indicated that the recipe prototype developed on a test structure had a unique feature that consisted of an approximately 45nm by 200nm Cu line segment. Executing the prototype recipe on a wafer at the same process point fabricated 6 months after the original wafer yielded four identical successful samples of about 30nm sample thickness. This technique can thus be extended to large 2D arrays of small structures.


As the prevalence of diabetes mellitus is substantially increasing worldwide, associated diseases such as renal failure, cardiovascular diseases, fatty liver, and cancers have also increased. A number of cancers such as pancreatic, liver, breast, and female reproductive cancers have shown an increased prevalence and a higher mortality rate in diabetic patients compared to healthy subjects. Thus, this suggests an association between diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes and cancer incidence and progression. Recent studies have suggested that hyperinsulinemia, chronic inflammation and hyperglycemia, all frequently seen in diabetics, may lead to increased tumor growth; the underlying molecular mechanisms of this association are not fully understood. In particular, chronic hyperglycemic episodes could serve as a direct or indirect mediator of the increase in tumor cell growth. Here, we will discuss our current understanding how hyperglycemia and cancer risk may be linked, and what the implications are for the treatment of diabetic cancer patients.


The ability to foresee, anticipate, and plan for future desired outcomes is crucial for well-being, motivation, and behavior. However, theories in organizational psychology do not incorporate time-related constructs such as Future Time Perspective (FTP), and research on FTP remains disjointed and scattered, with different domains focusing on different aspects of the construct, using different measures, and assessing different antecedents and consequences. In this review and meta-analysis, we aim to clarify the FTP construct, advance its theoretical development, and demonstrate its importance by (a) integrating theory and empirical findings across different domains of research to identify major outcomes and antecedents of FTP, and (b) empirically examining whether and how these variables are moderated by FTP measures and dimensions. Results of a meta-analysis of k = 212 studies reveal significant relationships between FTP and major classes of consequences (i.e., those related to achievement, well-being, health behavior, risk behavior, and retirement planning), and between antecedents and FTP, as well as moderating effects of different FTP measures and dimensions. Highlighting the importance of FTP for organizational psychology theories, our findings demonstrate that FTP predicts these outcomes over and above the big five personality traits and mediates the associations between these personality traits and outcomes.


The (COVID-19) coronavirus disease 19 is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral infection that is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has recently emerged in Wuhan province of China and rapidly spread throughout the world. Though the intermediate source of origin and its transfer to humans is not very well known, but the fast human to human transfer has been confirmed widely. There is no clinically approved antiviral drug or vaccine developed so far to be used against COVID-19. In the current review, we summarize and comparatively analyse the deadly virus and how it poses a constant threat to sub continental nations especially India. A number of ecological interventions are also suggested to protect humans and keep the virus carrying bats at a distance.


Apple trees require a long exposure to chilling temperature during winter to acquire competency to flower and grow in the following spring. Climate change or adverse meteorological conditions can impair release of dormancy and delay bud break, hence jeopardizing fruit production and causing substantial economic losses. In order to characterize the molecular mechanisms controlling bud dormancy in apple we focused our work on the MADS-box transcription factor gene MdDAM1. We show that MdDAM1 silencing is required for the release of dormancy and bud break in spring. MdDAM1 transcript levels are drastically reduced in the low-chill varieties 'Anna' and 'Dorsett Golden' compared to 'Golden Delicious' corroborating its role as a key genetic factor controlling the release of bud dormancy in Malus species. The functional characterization of MdDAM1 using RNA silencing resulted in trees unable to cease growth in winter and that displayed an evergrowing, or evergreen, phenotype several years after transgenesis. These trees lost their capacity to enter in dormancy and produced leaves and shoots regardless of the season. A transcriptome study revealed that apple evergrowing lines are a genocopy of 'Golden Delicious' trees at the onset of the bud break with the significant gene repression of the related MADS-box gene MdDAM4 as a major feature. We provide the first functional evidence that MADS-box transcriptional factors are key regulators of bud dormancy in pome fruit trees and demonstrate that their silencing results in a defect of growth cessation in autumn. Our findings will help producing low-chill apple variants from the elite commercial cultivars that will withstand climate change.


Depression is a mental health condition that affects all aspects of human life. It is characterised by negative emotions, anhedonia or even physical discomfort. The precise mechanisms that underlie this disease remain elusive. Nevertheless, there exist several treatment options that help alleviate some of the symptoms that are affiliated with depression. Pharmacological treatments that target the dopaminergic and serotonergic pathways inside brain are often used to treat various forms of depression and can be effective in some cases. However these type of treatments are associated with unwanted side effects. Because to this day no ideal treatment method has been found, it is pivotal to explore alternative methods of treatment. Vitamin D is believed to play a key role for the synthesis of dopamine and serotonin and might therefore be an interesting key player in depression.

Low serum levels of vitamin D appear to be positively correlated with the occurrence of depression. However, not all people who are depressed also suffer from low levels of vitamin D. Although it can be difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship, most studies conclude that low levels of vitamin D are associated with depression. In conjunction with more traditional approaches, vitamin D treatment can therefore be worth considering as a viable treatment option.
In conclusion, hard evidence that vitamin D could be used to actually prevent or cure depression altogether is at this point unsubstantiated. Therefore recommending vitamin D as the sole treatment for depression is not founded in research. Future research is necessary to conclude on whether or not vitamin D should be advised to use for patients who are suffering from depression.


The authors propose a strategy that uses trading information of both short sellers and corporate insiders. They find that the strategy earns statistically significant and economically meaningful risk-adjusted returns for at least one year, stemming mainly from the information asymmetry between informed and uninformed investors. Based on this finding, they then show that the strategy works best in high-information-asymmetry environments and during economic expansion periods. The results have important implications for investment practitioners. Investors interested in high-information-asymmetry firms can refer to the information on short interest and insider demand when making investment decisions.


The majority of patients with penetrating thoracic trauma are managed non-operatively. Those requiring surgery usually go to theater with physiological instability. The critical condition of these patients coupled with the rarity of penetrating thoracic trauma in most European countries makes their surgical management challenging for the occasional trauma surgeon, who is usually trained as a general surgeon. Most general surgeons have a general knowledge of basic cardiothoracic operative surgery, knowledge originating from their training years and possibly enhanced by reading operative surgery textbooks. Unfortunately, the details included in most of these books are not extensive enough to provide him with enough armamentaria to tackle the difficult case. In this anatomical region, their operative dexterity and knowledge cannot be compared to that of their cardiothoracic colleagues, something that is taken for granted in their cardiothoracic trauma textbooks. Techniques that are considered basic and easy by the cardiothoracic surgeons can be unfamiliar and difficult to general surgeons. Knowing the danger points and the pitfalls that will be encountered in cardiothoracic trauma surgery will help them to avoid intraoperative errors and improve patient outcome. The purpose of this manuscript is to highlight the commonly encountered pitfalls by trauma surgeons operating on penetrating trauma to the chest.


This paper presents a radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) phase-locked loop (PLL) which utilizes a feedback voltage controlled oscillator (FBVCO) to mitigate a single event transient (SET) strike. Whenever the SET pulse attacks the input control voltage of VCO, VCO gives rise to a frequency disturbance and PLL produces a huge jitter at the output clock. The proposed FBVCO consists of an open loop VCO, an integrator and a switched-capacitor resistor. The input transfer function of the FBVCO has a low-pass characteristic so that the FBVCO can reduce any perturbation at the input control voltage. In addition, the proposed RHBD PLL reduces size by using one loop filter (LF) and charge pump (CP) compared to prior works. We simulate the proposed scheme in 130 nm low power CMOS technology at 1.5V supply. The output frequency variation of the proposed PLL from the SET strike is 75% smaller than that of previous PLL at 300 MHz. This RHBD PLL consumes 6.2 mW at 400 MHz output frequency.


Background: Lack of male partners' postpartum support can cause postpartum depression (PPD), a serious mood disorder, in women. Thus, to prevent PPD, it is important to clarify the factors influencing male partners' postpartum support. Methods: In total, 62 male partners of postpartum women at 1 week–6 months after delivery, living in South Jakarta, were invited by assistance from community volunteers. Focus group interviews were employed; participants were grouped depending on their residences and asked about their behaviors in supporting postpartum women. Interviews were documented using two voice recorders and two video recorders. The content analysis method and Bertalanffy's system theory of internal and external factors of health behaviors was utilized to develop units and codes. Results: The analysis identified five codes of individual-level factors: (1) knowledge; (2) belief; (3) social and life adaptation skills; (4) psychological disposition; and (5) physiological condition. Three codes of community-level factors included: (1) social support; (2) media; and (3) socio-cultural and economic. Two codes of social policy-level factors included (1) health care system and; (2) Indonesian societal laws and regulations. Conclusions: Various internal and external factors influence Indonesian male partners' postpartum support. Different interventions for these factors might be impactful in preventing PPD.


The purpose of this research is to determine whether disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) in China has been increasing more rapidly than total life expectancy (TLE). Such a scenario would be consistent with a compression of morbidity, a situation that is especially desirable in a country experiencing rapid population aging and gains in old-age longevity. Us-ing the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study, an exponential survival regression is used to calculate TLE. The Sullivan method is then employed for computing DFLE. Results for a 65 and older sample are compared across data collected during two periods, the first with a 2002 baseline and a 2005 follow-up (N=15,641) and the second with a 2008 baseline and a 2011 follow-up (N=15,622). The first comparison is by age and sex. The second comparison divides the sample further by rural/urban residence and education. The ratio of DFLE/TLE across periods provides evidence of whether older Chinese are living both longer and healthier lives. The findings are favorable for the total population aged 65+, but improvements are only statistically significant for females. Results also suggest heterogeneous compression occurring across residential status with the urban population experiencing more favorable changes than their rural counterparts. Results both portend a compression of morbidity and continuing dis-advantage for rural residents who may not be participating in population-wide improvements in health.


We present results on two related topics: (1) a discussion of high-redshift candidates (z > 4.5) and (2) a study of very small galaxies at intermediate redshifts, both sets being detected in the region of the northern Hubble Deep Field (HDF) covered by the deep NICMOS observations at 1.6 and 1.1 μm. The high-redshift candidates are just those with redshift z > 4.5 as given in the recent catalog of Thompson, Weymann, and Storrie-Lombardi, while the "small galaxy" sample is defined to be those objects with isophotal area ≤0.2 arcsec2 and with photometric redshift 1 ≤ z ≤ 4.5. Of the 19 possible high-redshift candidates listed in the Thompson et al. catalog, 11 have (nominal) photometric redshifts less than 5.0. Of these, however, only four are "robust" in the sense of yielding high redshifts when the fluxes are randomly perturbed with errors comparable to the estimated measuring error in each wave band. For the eight other objects with nominal photometric redshifts greater than 5.0, one (WFPC2 4-473) has a published spectroscopic redshift. Of the remaining seven, four are robust in the sense indicated above. Two of these form a close pair (NIC 586 and NIC 107). The redshift of the object having formally the highest redshift, at 6.56 (NIC 118 = WFPC2 4-601), is problematic, since F606W and F814W flux are clearly present, and the nature of this object poses a dilemma. Previous work by Colley et al. has suggested that compact sources in the WFPC2 HDF images are subgalactic components at redshifts z > 0.5 since they are correlated on scales less than 1'', corresponding to physical scales of less than 8 kpc (H0 = 65 km s-1 Mpc-1, q0 = 0.125). We confirm these correlations in the WFPC2 data. However, we do not detect the correlation of close pairs of galaxies on small scales in the ~0.65 arcmin2 region of the HDF that we surveyed with NICMOS. The smaller area surveyed and lower resolution will make any real correlation more difficult to measure in these data. We have examined averaged images of these faint (V606 ~ 27-29), compact objects to search for extended, surrounding flux from older, fainter populations of stars. We find no evidence from the averaged images that isolated, compact objects in the Hubble Deep Field are embedded in fainter, more extended galaxies. For three different assumptions about possible star formation histories in these objects we set limits on the total amount of stars that could have been formed in an annulus corresponding to radii between ~ 6 and 10 kpc, which is typically a few times 108 M☉. We suggest that some of these objects may be protogalactic fragments.


This research studies the relationship between utilitarian, ego defensive, value expressive and knowledge functions on consumer attitude and consequently on the selection of coffee parlor by consumers. Primary data has been collected by using a structured questionnaire designed on the Fishbein model. Regression model was used to test the effect of the four functions on the consumers' choice of coffee parlor. The subjects included in the sample consisted of males in various age groups. The hypotheses assumed that all four functions being stated carry a significant effect on attitude. The statistical test showed that significant valueF (9, 91) (p value)= 0.000, at p


Background: The expected and significant role of cytological diagnosis is to distinguish benign from malignant processes. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of the breast has two main goals. One is to confirm a radiological and clinical benign lesion and avoid unnecessary surgery and the other is to confirm a malignant diagnosis and allow definite treatment planning. Methods: In breast lesions, rapid diagnosis by aspiration cytology can be particularly useful for allaying the apprehension and anxiety of the patient whose apparent solid mass may turn to be a cyst, thus reducing the anguish and morbidity associated with unnecessary surgical procedures. If the lesions turn out to be malignant, the patient can be referred for immediate treatment on priority so that treatment is not unnecessarily delayed. Thus, aspiration cytology is used more and more in the diagnosis of benign and malignant lesions of the breast. It is a cost-effective and safe method that can differentiate benign and malignant lesions accurately. In advanced carcinoma or unwilling patients for surgery, it can form the basis of management. The objective of this study was to analyze cases of FNAC of breast lesions. Results: This study was a cross-sectional study including all the patients with breast lump who attended Dhaka Community Medical college Hospital for FNAC. A total 50 cases of all ages and both sexes were included in this study. Smears made from aspirated material were collected and examined. Most of the aspirates were from females. There were more benign lesions (43 cases) as compared to malignant cases (seven cases). Fibroadenomas were the most benign lesion of breast. The age of malignant cases ranged from 21 to 60 years with a majority of cases in the age group of 41 - 50 years (four cases, 57.1%). Conclusion: FNAC is less time-consuming, safe, useful and highly accurate technique for breast masses and can segregate benign and malignant lesions with accuracy. Triple assessment by clinical, radiological and pathological examination is a standard approach in the evaluation of breast lumps. The clinical and radiological presentations of both benign and malignant lesions can be similar - as a hypoechoic focal mass, occasionally inflammatory lesions may mimic mass-like lesions or appears as non-homogenous regions on radiographs. Here, FNAC can play a major decisive diagnostic role and minimizing the requirement of biopsy. J Curr Surg. 2018;8(3-4):27-31 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jcs366w


We propose a theoretical framework and dynamical model for the description of the natural optical activity and Faraday rotation in an individual chiral single-wall carbon nanotube (CNT) in the highly nonlinear coherent regime. The model is based on a discrete-level representation of the optically active states near the band edge. Chirality is modelled by a system Hamiltonian in a four-level basis corresponding to energy-level configurations, specific for each handedness, that are mirror reflections of each other. The axial magnetic field is introduced through the Aharonov–Bohm and Zeeman energy-level shifts. The time evolution of the quantum system, describing a single nanotube with defined chirality, under an ultrashort polarized pulse excitation is studied using the coupled coherent vector Maxwell-pseudospin equations (Slavcheva 2008 Phys. Rev. B 77 115347). We provide an estimate for the effective dielectric constant and the optical dipole matrix element for transitions excited by circularly polarized light in a single nanotube and calculate the magnitude of the circular dichroism and the specific rotatory power in the absence and in the presence of an axial magnetic field. Giant natural gyrotropy (polarization rotatory power ∼3000° mm−1 (B=0 T)), superior to that of the crystal birefringent materials, liquid crystals and comparable or exceeding that of the artificially made helical photonic structures, is numerically demonstrated for the specific case of a (5, 4) nanotube. A quantitative estimate of the coherent nonlinear magneto-chiral optical effect in an axial magnetic field is given (∼30 000° mm−1 at B=8 T). The model provides a framework for the investigation of the chirality and magnetic field dependence of the ultrafast nonlinear optical response of a single CNT.


The Akaike information criterion (AIC) is one of the best known information criteria that can be used to evaluate hypotheses containing only equality restrictions on model parameters. The GORIC is a generalization of the AIC that can be utilized to evaluate hypotheses containing equality and/or inequality restrictions on model parameters, but only for normal linear models. This dissertation proposes a new information criterion, the GORICA, that mimics the performance of the GORIC on selecting the best hypothesis in a set of competing hypotheses for normal linear models. The GORICA can be used to evaluate (in)equality constrained hypotheses under a broad range of statistical models: generalized linear models, generalized linear mixed models, structural equation models, and contingency tables. The GORICA is an useful method in evaluating (in)equality constrained hypotheses, because the hypotheses under evaluation can contain either linear restrictions on model parameters or non-linear restrictions on model parameters. For example, the GORICA can be used to evaluate hypotheses containing (in)equality restrictions on odds ratios, which are formulated using non-linear functions of cell probabilities in the context of contingency tables. The GORICA evaluation of (in)equality constrained hypotheses is flexible in the sense that it only requires the estimates of model parameters used in the specification of the hypotheses under evaluation and their covariance matrix as input. These inputs can be obtained using a suitable estimation method such as maximum likelihood estimation, nonparametric bootstrapping, and Gibbs sampling. Three main features of the GORICA evaluation of (in)equality constrained hypotheses need further investigation. First of all, although a simulation study shows that the GORICA mimics the GORIC on selecting the best hypothesis in a set of competing hypotheses, there is no normal proof that ensures this empirical evidence inside or outside of normal linear models. Secondly, the performance of the GORICA on selecting the best hypothesis depends on the technique used in estimating model parameters and their covariance matrix. Thus, future studies are required to compare the performance of the GORICA using these estimation techniques under different sets of conditions. Thirdly, the GORICA is a method that needs large sample sizes in evaluating hypotheses. Thus, researchers should be careful when using the GORICA to evaluate hypotheses for small samples, because its performance for small samples has not been fully investigated yet. In sum, although the GORICA is a flexible and useful method that can be used to evaluate very complicated hypotheses under a broad range of statistical models, its limitations should be taken into account when using it to evaluate these hypotheses.


Over the last couple of decades, as part of the rise of positive psychology, psychologists have given increasing amounts of attention to so-called subjective measures of well-being. These measures, which are supposed to represent the well-being of individuals and groups, are often presented as alternatives to more traditional economic ones for purposes of the articulation, implementation and evaluation of public policy. Unlike economic measures, which are typically based on data about income, market transactions and the like, subjective measures are based on answers to questions like: "Taking things all together, how would you say things are these days - would you say you're very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy these days?" The aim of this dissertation is to explore issues in the philosophical foundations of subjective measures of well-being, with special emphasis on the manner in which the philosophical foundations of subjective measures differ from those of traditional economic measures. Moreover, the goal is to examine some arguments for and against these measures, and, in particular, arguments that purport to demonstrate the superiority of economic measures for purposes of public policy. My main thesis is that the claim that subjective measures of well-being cannot be shown to be inferior to economic measures quite as easily as some have suggested, but that they nevertheless are associated with serious problems, and that questions about the relative advantage of subjective and economic measures for purposes of public policy will depend on some fundamentally philosophical judgments, e.g. about the nature of well-being and the legitimate goals for public policy.


Empirical knowledge gap on short-term assignments and their outcomes encourage us to investigate the relationship between post-assignment behavioural performances and given pre-assignment HRM support as the main objective of this paper. Individual HRM functional level analysis, moderation effects of purpose of assignments, and the synergy effects of HRM practices were included for testing three specific objectives with the theoretical perspectives of high performance work practices, contingencies and system approaches. The results partially confirm that the relationship between individual HRM practices and behavioural performance. Among six HRM practices recruitment, training and compensation were positively significant. Synergistic effects of such practices were not confirmed while the purpose of assignments also did not moderate this HRM-performance relationship.


In order to reduce dosing frequency, a sustained release dosage form of betahistine dihydrochloride was developed as a twice daily controlled release tablet formulation that could be used to decrease vertigo resulted in Meniere's disease for a prolonged time. Six formulations were developed by using Methocel K4M CR, Methocel K15M CR and Methocel K 100 LVCR as single and combinations in different percentage. The tablets were prepared by wet granulation method. Physical properties of betahistine dihydrochloride granules and betahistine dihydrochloride matrix tablets were evaluated. The tablets were characterized for Betahistine Dihydrochloride release in both gastric simulated fluid (0.1 N HCl, pH 1.3) and simulated intestinal fluid (buffer solution pH 6.8). The data     were subjected to different models in order to evaluate their release kinetics and mechanisms. The results of the in vitro dissolution study indicate that most of the formulations showed above 80% of drug release in 12 hours but formulations (F-2 and F-4) met the official specification of release profile. Dissolution data were fitted to zero order equation, Higuchi square root law, Korsmeyer-Peppas model and Hixson-Crowell cube root law as these plots showed the highest value of linearity to evaluate kinetic data. The release of betahistine dihydrochloride was prolonged for 12 hours indicating the usefulness of the formulations for twice daily dosage forms, leading to improve efficacy, controlling the release and better patient compliance. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/dujps.v10i2.11786 Dhaka Univ. J. Pharm. Sci. 10 (2): 93-100, 2011 (December)


This study explored how the Knowing and Reasoning Inventory (KARI)— a tool for profiling students' epistemic beliefs —might be used by learning designers to promote students' conceptual development. The Threshold Concepts Framework (TCF), developed by Meyer and Land (2003), provides a way of considering how students assimilate new knowledge through a process of reworking their existing conceptual frameworks. The liminal space between conceptual thresholds can be uncomfortable when the new concepts are troublesome for learners to incorporate into their meaning frames. A complexity for educators is that a student's journey through the liminal space will be influenced by his or her beliefs about knowing and reasoning. The KARI is a quantitative web survey that draws on Baxter Magolda's (1992) "ways of knowing" interview protocol and Kuhn's (1991) argumentative reasoning interview protocol. KARI data were collected from 77 students at the University of Northampton in May 2014. Visualisations of these data were used during a structured workshop of university staff, where they were asked to: 1) identify a threshold concept from their discipline or area of interest, 2) list a set of activities or experiences to develop students' understanding of the concept and 3) to consider how a student's KARI profile may influence the design of these activities. While all participants were able to complete these three activities, findings from this study suggested that "threshold concept" is a threshold concept for some learning designers. Findings also suggested that some learning designers may not conceptualise learning activities as needing to be personalised for students. Finally, participants, at times, struggled to interpret the visualisations of the KARI data, making it difficult to consider the meaning of these analytics.


We prove the following nonholonomic version of the classical Moser theorem: given a bracket-generating distribution on a connected compact manifold (possibly with boundary), two volume forms of equal total volume can be isotoped by the flow of a vector field tangent to this distribution. We describe formal solutions of the corresponding nonholonomic mass transport problem and present the Hamiltonian framework for both the Otto calculus and its nonholonomic counterpart as infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian reductions on diffeomorphism groups. Finally, we define a nonholonomic analog of the Wasserstein (or, Kantorovich) metric on the space of densities and prove that the subriemannian heat equation defines a gradient flow on the nonholonomic Wasserstein space with the potential given by the Boltzmann relative entropy functional.


Inconel 738 (IN 738), like other precipitation-hardened nickel-base superalloys that contain a substantial amount of Al and Ti, is very difficult to weld due to its high susceptibility to heat-affected zone (HAZ) cracking during conventional fusion welding processes. The cause of this cracking, which is usually intergranular in nature, has been attributed to the liquation of various phases in the alloy, subsequent wetting of the grain boundaries by the liquid and decohesion across one of the solid-liquid interfaces due to on-cooling tensile stresses. In the present work, crack-free welding of the alloy was obtained by linear friction welding (LFW), notwithstanding the high susceptibility of the material to HAZ cracking. Gleeble thermomechanical simulation of the LFW process was carefully performed to study the microstructural response of IN 738 to the welding thermal cycle. Correlation between the simulated microstructure and that of the weldments was obtained, in that, a significant grain boundary liquation was observed in both the simulated specimens and actual weldments due to non-equilibrium reaction of second phase particles, including the strengthening gamma prime phase. These results show that in contrast to the general assumption of LFW being an exclusively solid-state joining process, intergranular liquation is possible during LFW. However, despite a significant occurrence of liquation in the alloy, no HAZ cracking was observed, which can be partly related to the nature of the imposed stress during LFW


This paper proposes a control strategy for a three-phase three-wire thyristor-controlled LC -coupling hybrid active power filter (TCLC-HAPF), which can balance active power and compensate reactive power and harmonic currents under unbalanced loading. Compared with TCLC-HAPF with conventional control strategy, active power filters and hybrid active power filters which either fail to perform satisfactory compensation or require high-rating active inverter part for unbalanced compensation, a control strategy was proposed for TCLC-HAPF to operate with a small rating active inverter part for a variety of loads with satisfactory performance. The control idea is to provide different firing angles for each phase of the thyristor-controlled LC-coupling part (TCLC) to balance active power and compensate reactive power, while the active inverter part aims to compensate harmonic currents. First, the required different TCLC impedances are deduced. Then, independent firing angles referenced to the phase angle of voltage across TCLC are calculated. After angle transformations, final firing angles referenced to phase angle of load voltages are obtained. In this paper, a novel controller for TCLC-HAPF under unbalanced loading is proposed. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller in comparison with a state-of-the-art controller.


Manipulation and assembly tasks require non-trivial planning of actions depending on the environment and the final goal. Previous work in this domain often assembles particular instances of objects from known sets of primitives. In contrast, we aim to handle varying sets of primitives and to construct different objects of a shape category. Given a single object instance of a category, e.g. an arch, and a binary shape classifier, we learn a visual policy to assemble other instances of the same category. In particular, we propose a disassembly procedure and learn a state policy that discovers new object instances and their assembly plans in state space. We then render simulated states in the observation space and learn a heatmap representation to predict alternative actions from a given input image. To validate our approach, we first demonstrate its efficiency for building object categories in state space. We then show the success of our visual policies for building arches from different primitives. Moreover, we demonstrate (i) the reactive ability of our method to re-assemble objects using additional primitives and (ii) the robust performance of our policy for unseen primitives resembling building blocks used during training. Our visual assembly policies are trained with no real images and reach up to 95% success rate when evaluated on a real robot.


Via vast exchanges of energy, water, carbon, and nutrients, tropical forests are a major driving force in the regulation of Earth's biogeochemical, hydrological, and climatic cycles. Given the critical role of rhizosphere processes in nutrient cycling, it is likely that rhizosphere processes in tropical rainforests form a major component of the biome's interactions with global cycles. Little is known, however, about rhizospheric processes in rainforest soils. In order to investigate the influence of rhizosphere processes upon rainforest nutrient cycling, we compared the nutrient status and microbial activity of rhizospheric soil from Australian lowland tropical rainforest with that of the surrounding bulk soil. We found a marked difference in the biological and chemical nature of the rhizosphere and bulk soils. Total carbon, microbial biomass carbon, total nitrogen, soluble nitrogen, and a suite of trace element concentrations, alongside microbial respiration and the rate and diversity of carbon substrate use, were all significantly higher in the rhizosphere soil than the bulk soil. Rhizosphere soil δ15N was significantly lower than that of the bulk soil. Ratios of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur differed significantly between the rhizosphere and bulk soil. These clear differences suggest that rhizosphere processes strongly influence nutrient cycling in lowland tropical rainforest, and are likely to play an important role in its interaction with global cycles. This role may be under-represented with composite sampling of rhizosphere and bulk soil. Further research is required regarding the mechanisms of rainforest rhizospheric processes and their relationship with ecosystem productivity, stability, and environmental change.


Statistically sound crystallographic symmetry classifications are obtained with information theory based methods in the presence of approximately Gaussian distributed noise. A set of three synthetic patterns with strong Fedorov type pseudosymmetries and varying amounts of noise serve as examples. The correct distinctions between genuine symmetries and their Fedorov type pseudosymmetry counterparts failed only for the noisiest image of the series where an inconsistent combination of plane symmetry group and projected Laue class was obtained. Contrary to traditional crystallographic symmetry classifications with an image processing program such as CRISP, the classification process does not need to be supervised by a human being and is free of any subjectively set threshold in the geometric model selection process. This enables crystallographic symmetry classification of digital images that are more or less periodic in two dimensions (2D) as recorded with sufficient structural resolution from a wide range of crystalline samples with different types of scanning probe microscopes. Alternatives to the employed objective classification methods as proposed by members of the computational symmetry community and machine learning proponents are briefly discussed in an appendix and are found to be wanting because they ignore Fedorov type pseudosymmetries completely. For sufficiently complex crystal patterns in 2D, the information theory based methods are more accurate than visual classifications by human experts.


This study examines the spatial and temporal distribution of the Asian pre-monsoon (AMJ) and monsoon (JAS) seasons in Pakistan over the intense flood year of 2010. This is completed using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3-hourly data with a spatial resolution of 0.25° x 0.25° and comparing the rain rates from 2010 with those from 2005-2009. For better examination, the rainfall data was divided into four categories: the pre-monsoon seasons of 2005-2009, the pre-monsoon season of 2010, the monsoon seasons of 2005-2009, and the monsoon season of 2010. Both the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons of 2010 showed an increase in rain rates associated with anomalous atmospheric conditions. The only spatial difference exhibited in 2010 was an increase in the intensity of rainfall at slightly higher elevations than normal, which can be attributed to the increase of moisture content in the atmosphere. Otherwise, a majority of the precipitation occurred along the Himalayan foothills in the northeastern region of Pakistan. The temporal shift between pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons was enhanced in 2010, showing the shift from the deep convection associated with severe storms to the strong, wide convection associated the Mesoscale Convective Systems.


Betatherapy is a radiotherapy modality that uses beta radiation applicators used in the treatment of superficial injuries. With the advancement of therapeutic techniques, new clinical protocols of veterinary medicine will be established and betatherapy emerges as an important option for performing radiotherapy procedures, and further studies for the definition of oncological clinical protocols become necessary. This study reports some procedures in animals involving intraoperative betatherapy with a strontium-90 applicator (90Sr). Five procedures were performed, including 1 lioness (Panthera leo), 2 rats (Rattus norvegicus), 1 equine female (Equidae) and 1 rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), all with a confirmed diagnosis of neoplasm. The TDF (Time-Dose-Fraction) radiographic model was used to determine the radiological equivalent of the clinical cases. It was observed that the neoplasms in each case (1 to 5) partially differed from those found in the literature on intraoperative betatherapy in veterinary medicine. We observed that the radiologic effectiveness of the treatment was directly related to the value of TDF. Cases 1, 3 and 4 presented TDF values greater than 175, which implies a greater probability of injury control. As observed in the follow-up of the patients, case 5 (lower TDF) presented tumor recurrence only one month after the betatherapy procedure. Betatherapy with Sr90 applicators has proven to be feasible and easy to handle for the clinical cases analyzed in this study, especially during intraoperative procedures.


Different variants of minimally invasive lung resection have been described during the last decades including uniportal, non-intubated video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), as well as, more recently, the subxiphoid VATS lobectomy. Robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) is a relatively recent evolution of manual videoendoscopic surgery, born with the idea to make minimally invasive techniques an option even for complex procedures with the help of computer and micromechanics. Thus, after a period to gain confidence with the new system, robotic surgery found a great consensus among surgeons. With its development and diffusion in many surgical disciplines, including thoracic surgery, studies on its efficacy, safety and feasibility compared to conventional techniques have been performed. This has produced a healthy competition between VATS and RATS, even if these studies gave controversial results in terms of perioperative outcome and complications. A definitive conclusion is not available about a real benefit for the patients in the field of lung cancer treatment. Despite that, many aspects of robotic surgical platforms foreshadow that robotic systems will become an essential reality in the surgeon's armamentarium of the future. We expose the main features of robotic surgery to demonstrate that RATS is better than VATS to treat lung cancer patients.


The study is aimed to investigate and shed light on some of the challenges encountered by local interpreters and language assistants working for UN peace-keeping missions, operating in conflict zones, namely in Darfur region, western Sudan. The study addresses the following research questions: what are the linguistic, social-cultural, mistrust and communication-related barriers that are encountered by interpreters and language assistants in conflict zones, how do they cope with these challenges, and what could be done to train them to handle such challenges and difficulties. The study adopted a qualitative methodology with semi-structured interviews being the main method of data collection. Twenty participants agreed to voluntarily take part in the investigation by allowing face-to-face interviews. Interview data was transcribed, coded and analyzed thematically. The results of data analysis showed that participants faced a range of challenges that negatively affected their job. They reported difficulties understanding and dealing with some social and cultural issues specific to the region. They also reported some serious life-threatening incidents ranging from physical and verbal attacks. For example, interpreters encountered hostilities from their fellow citizens accusing them of siding with enemy parties involved in the conflicts. Additionally, communication barriers were reported by participants as being the most salient challenge they experienced even when they interpreted accurately, as they would still encounter communication breakdowns caused by the inherent differences in the indigenous languages and varieties in addition to some cultural barriers. The paper offers some insights and implications for the conflict zones' interpreters' training and professional development.


Effective method of modeling 1-dimensional photonic crystals structures is presented. As an illustration of the method a concept of widely tunable narrow band drop filter is described. As an active electro-optic material a liquid crystal is used. Very good parameters are obtained so the presented structure is suitable for fast packet switched wavelength division multiplexing networks (WDM).


We investigate the two-dimensional (2-D) nature of the coherence between Bouguer gravity anomalies and topography on the Australian continent. The coherence function or isostatic response is commonly assumed to be isotropic. However, the fossilized strain field recorded by gravity anomalies and their relation to topography is manifest in a degree of isostatic compensation or coherence which does depend on direction. We have developed a method that enables a robust and unbiased estimation of spatially, directionally, and wavelength-dependent coherence functions between two 2-D fields in a computationally efficient way. Our new multispectrogram method uses orthonormalized Hermite functions as data tapers, which are optimal for spectral localization of nonstationary, spatially dependent processes, and do not require solving an eigenvalue problem. We discuss the properties and advantages of this method with respect to other techniques. We identify regions on the continent marked by preferential directions of isostatic compensation in two wavelength regimes. With few exceptions, the short-wavelength coherence anisotropy is nearly perpendicular to the major trends of the suture zones between stable continental domains, supporting the geological observation that such zones are mechanically weak. Mechanical anisotropy reflects lithospheric strain accumulation, and its presence must be related to the deformational processes affecting the lithosphere integrated over time. Three-dimensional models of seismic anisotropy obtained from surface wave inversions provide an independent estimate of the lithospheric fossil strain field, and simple models have been proposed to relate seismic anisotropy to continental deformation. We compare our measurements of mechanical anisotropy with our own model of the azimuthally anisotropic seismic wave speed structure of the Australian lithosphere. The correlation of isostatic anisotropy with directions of fast wave propagation gleaned from the azimuthal anisotropy of surface waves decays with depth. This may support claims that above ?200 km, internally coherent deformation of the entire lithosphere is responsible for the anisotropy present in surface wave speeds or split shear waves.


IZA DP No. 16021 MARCH 2023 Non-compete Agreements in a Rigid Labour Market: The Case of Italy* Non-compete clauses (NCCs) limiting the mobility of workers have been found to be rather widespread in the US, a flexible labour market with large turnover rates and a limited coverage of collective bargaining. This paper explores the presence of such arrangements in a rigid labour market, with strict employment protection regulations by OECD standards and where all employees are, at least on paper, subject to collective bargaining. Based on a representative survey of employees in the private sector, an exam of collective agreements and case law, we find that in Italy i) collective agreements play no role in regulating the use of NCCs while the law specifies only the formal requirements, ii) about 16% of private sector employees are currently bound by a NCC, iii) NCCs are relatively frequent among low educated employees in manual and elementary low paid occupations having no access to any type of confidential information, and iv) in addition to NCCs, a number of other arrangements limit the post-employment activity of workers. Many of the NCCs do not comply with the minimum requirements established by law and yet workers do not consider them as unenforceable and appear to behave as they were effective. Even when NCCs are unenforceable they appear to negatively affect wages when they are introduced without changing the tasks of the workers involved. Normative implications are discussed in the last section of the paper. JEL Classification: J31, J41, J42, L40


Purpose: To determine differences in key tear film cytokines between mild and severe cases of acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) and control contact lens (CL) wearers. Methods: This was a prospective study of CL wearers with AK attending Moorfields Eye Hospital and control CL wearers from the Institute of Optometry, London. Basal tear specimens were collected by 10-&mgr;L capillary tubes (BLAUBRAND intraMark, Wertheim, Germany), and tear protein levels were measured with a multiplex magnetic bead array (Luminex 100; Luminex Corporation, Austin, TX) for cytokines interleukin (IL)-1&bgr;, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-17A, IL-17E, IL-17F, IL-22, and interferon gamma and with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Abcam, Cambridge, United Kingdom) for CXCL2. Severe cases of AK were defined as having active infection for over 12 months and at least 1 severe inflammatory event. Results: One hundred and thirty-two tear samples were collected from a total of 61 cases (15 severe and 46 mild–moderate) and 22 controls. IL-8, part of the Toll-like receptor 4 cytokine cascade, was found to be expressed at a detectable level more often in cases of AK than in control CL wearers (P = 0.003) and in higher concentrations in severe cases than in milder forms of the disease (z = −2.35). IL-22, part of the IL-10 family, and a proinflammatory Th17 cytokine, was detected more often in severe cases than in milder forms of AK (P < 0.02). Conclusions: Profiling patients with AK during disease shows differences in cytokine levels between severe and milder disease that may inform clinical management. The Toll-like receptor 4 and IL-10/Th17 inflammatory pathways should be included in further investigations of this disease.


INTRODUCTION Verrill (1879: 199-200) described two specimens of Alcyonium collected on the Fishing Bank, east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 80 fathoms. According to him "they form low, thick, lobular masses", "the base is somewhat spreading" and "the division into rounded or flattened lobes takes place close to the base". He is of opinion that "if not identical with A. digitatum of Europe, it is at least very closely related". More than forty years later Verrill (1922: 20) returns to this question. This time he gives a drawing of one of these American colonies (his textfigure 3), and he has changed his mind regarding the relation to A. digitatum. He now thinks the species is "distinct from the common European species, A. digitatum, to which it is nearly allied". He named it A. siderium. It is a pity that Verrill omitted an exact study of the spicules and of other characters. Deichmann (1936: 48-49) described the species more fully on the basis of "twenty-five specimens from nine localities off the coast of New England at depths varying from 8-80 fms". But she also failed to give drawings of the spicules. She found that the differences between Verrill's A. siderium and Linne's A. digitatum were insignificant, and she therefore abandoned the name siderium. Recently Dr. Arthur G. Humes, Boston University, Massachusetts, sent to me three Alcyonium colonies collected by him in the same locality as Verrill's type specimens. A hasty survey of them led me to doubt the correctness of Deichmann's conclusion, and a closer examination and comparison of both species seemed necessary to me.


For the marketing practitioner a critical understanding of the psychology of the consumer is essential if individual and societal needs and wants are to be met. This is especially true in an international context. The normal approach to understanding the consumer is through market research. However, the high rate of product and service failures and short product life-cycles indicate traditional market research does not always supply the answers. Rapaille, originally a French psychiatrist working in linguistics, has adopted a radically new approach to understanding the consumer in a cultural context. He is a market researcher servicing 50 of the Fortune 100 companies. Rapaille's method differs from traditional market research which normally takes a survey approach reflecting reasoned, logical and conscious responses of users and potential consumers. By contrast Rapaille's approach discovers subconscious 'archetypal linguistic icons and codes'. These codes act as triggers and motivators to behaviour at below the level of the conscious mind. The theoretical foundations of his work can be seen against the theoretical disciplines of anthropology, sociology, neurology and is clearly identified with cognitive ethology. The later being a science derived through animal psychology in examining genetic behavioural blue prints. For the market researcher it is essential to discover the 'reptilian code'. Every marketable item for an individual in a cultural context can be identified with a 'code'. This is discovered through a series of regressive focus group interviews. This code once found becomes the foundation point for designing the product, segmenting, targeting, positioning and blending the elements of advertising. promotion, packaging and pricing. This paper explores the psychology literature which underpins the concept and critically evaluates Rapaille's approach. Further, the paper examines the implications for marketing researchers in the cross cultural context.


1D CuO/ZnO nanocomposites were grown on Si(100) substrates by means of an original two-step synthetic strategy. ZnO nanorod (NR) arrays were initially deposited by plasma enhanced-chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) from an Ar–O2 atmosphere. Subsequently, tailored amounts of CuO were dispersed over zinc oxide matrices by radio frequency (RF)-sputtering of Cu fromAr plasmas, followed by thermal treatment in air. A thorough characterization of the obtained systems was carried out by X-ray photoelectron and X-ray excited-Auger electron spectroscopies (XPS and XE-AES), glancing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction (ED) and energy filtered-TEM (EF-TEM). Pure and highly oriented CuO/ZnO NR arrays, free from ternary Zn–Cu–O phases and characterized by a copper(II) oxide content controllable as a function of the adopted RF-power, were successfully obtained. Interestingly, the structural relationships between the two oxides at the CuO/ZnO interface were found to depend on the overall CuO loading. The obtained nanocomposites displayed promising photocatalytic performances in H2 production by reforming of ethanol–water solutions under simulated solar illumination, paving the way to the sustainable conversion of solar light into chemical energy.


In this paper, we consider the implementation of the employment (age) regulations in the United Kingdom in both an historical and an international context, drawing on evidence from the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland. The workplace is not the only setting in which age-based discrimination makes itself felt, but research does indicate that employment provides the most common ground of age discrimination complaints and that age discriminatory practice affects older age groups more than younger age groups. Survey evidence does indicate that many employers regard older workers as equal to if not preferable to younger workers in a number of key employment and productivity areas, while other evidence suggests that age does have an influence on the recruitment decisionmaking process. Age is a factor in the recruitment process and few employers have mechanisms to encourage older workers to apply for jobs, even though many have a formal written policy on equal opportunities (also in respect of age). Older workers are also less likely to be offered job-related training and education. Thus, chronological age does figure in the workplace and in employers' policies and practices in relation to recruitment and promotion, access to training, retirement, and redundancy. These policies and practices influence the way in which older employees plan for withdrawal from the labour force. The implementation of the employment equality (age) regulations as of October 2006 indeed changes practice and policy in the workplace, but does not signal the end of retirement, and international evidence would indicate that only a small proportion of agerelated cases are taken to tribunal, with an even smaller proportion being upheld there.


This work offers a comprehensive historical framework of north-western Benin, West Africa, based on intensive survey work and controlled stratigraphic excavations. The study is divided into two parts. Part one is devoted to the environmental setting, the aims and the excavation and survey methodology, including some theoretical discussions. The second part provides a sequence in chronological order of sites and associated finds discovered in north-western Benin.


Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been successfully applied to many real-life problems. However, the huge memory cost of deep CNN models poses a great challenge of deploying them on memory-constrained devices (e.g., mobile phones). One popular way to reduce the memory cost of deep CNN model is to train binary CNN where the weights in convolution filters are either 1 or -1 and therefore each weight can be efficiently stored using a single bit. However, the compression ratio of existing binary CNN models is upper bounded by ∼ 32. To address this limitation, we propose a novel method to compress deep CNN model by stacking low-dimensional binary convolution filters. Our proposed method approximates a standard convolution filter by selecting and stacking filters from a set of low-dimensional binary convolution filters. This set of low-dimensional binary convolution filters is shared across all filters for a given convolution layer. Therefore, our method will achieve much larger compression ratio than binary CNN models. In order to train our proposed model, we have theoretically shown that our proposed model is equivalent to select and stack intermediate feature maps generated by low-dimensional binary filters. Therefore, our proposed model can be efficiently trained using the split-transform-merge strategy. We also provide detailed analysis of the memory and computation cost of our model in model inference. We compared the proposed method with other five popular model compression techniques on two benchmark datasets. Our experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed method achieves much higher compression ratio than existing methods while maintains comparable accuracy.


The demand for package delivery services is extremely huge every day, because of the rapid development on online retailers. This leads to huge traffic congestion, resource consumption and environmental pollution (e.g. carbon emission). However, the urban public transport system offers a large amount of under-utilized capacity outside the peak hours. In this paper, we present the City-wide Package Distribution problem using Crowdsourced Public Transportation Systems (CPTS). That is, packages are delivered by carefully utilizing the considerable amount of idle capacity of the CPTS. Specifically, given a number of packages and the timetable of available CPTS trips, we optimize the package delivering scheme by determining the four identified states of any package at any time slot (waiting, riding, re-waiting and being unloaded). The delivering scheme can be modeled as an instance of the multi-commodity flow problem, and formulated by the Mixed Integer Linear Programming techniques. We then propose an efficient heuristic solution for this NPhard problem. Finally, our work is validated via comprehensive emulations with a real bus transportation network.


The integrity of any original evidence is fundamental to a forensic examination. Preserving the integrity of digital evidence is vitally important as changing just one bit among perhaps gigabits of data, will irrevocably alter that data and cast doubt on any evidence extracted. In traditional digital forensics write-blockers are used to preserve the integrity of that evidence and prevent changes from occurring, but virtual machine forensics presents more difficult challenges to address. Access to the digital storage device will probably not be possible, typically the only accessible storage will be a virtual hard disk drive. This will have the same integrity issues as those of a real device, but with the added complication that it is not possible to use a hardware write-blocker to prevent changes to those data. For this reason it is important to explore how to implement write-blocking mechanisms on a virtual device. In this paper we present an implementation of a software write-blocker and show how we can use it to be compliant with the 2nd ACPO principle on digital evidence.


3-amino-2H-azirines undergo a number of ring opening reactions. The cleavage of the azirine-N(1), C(3) double bond leads thereby to synthons which can be considered as amino acid equivalents. The reaction of 3-amino-2H-azirines with carboxylic acids yields N-acyl amino acid amides, which can be converted by a selective amide cleavage to the corresponding N-acyl amino acids. 2-Oxazolin-5-ones are intermediates of this amide cleavage. This reaction sequence has been used for the extension of peptide chains as well as for a number of heterocycle syntheses. Likewise, the described synthesis of cyclic depsipeptides and lactones by direct amide cyclization proceeds via 2-oxazolin-5-one intermediates. The selective amide cleavage was also applied to a novel method for the resolution of enantiomeric amino acid derivatives.


In this paper, we explore the way in which virtual reality (VR) systems are being broadened to encompass a wide array of virtual worlds, many of which have immediate applicability to understanding urban issues through geocomputation. Wesketch distinctions between immersive, semi-immersive and remote environments in which single and multiple users interact in a variety of ways. We show how suchenvironments might be modelled in terms of ways of navigating within, processes of decision-making which link users to one another, analytic functions that users have to make sense of the environment, and functions through which users can manipulate, change, or design their world. We illustrate these ideas using four exemplars that we have under construction: a multi-user internet GIS for Londonwith extensive links to 3-d, video, text and related media, an exploration of optimal retail location using a semi-immersive visualisation in which experts can explore such problems, a virtual urban world in which remote users as avatars can manipulate urban designs, and an approach to simulating such virtual worlds through morphological modelling based on the digital record of the entire decision-making process through which such worlds are built.


Retinal vein occlusion (RVO) ranks as the second most prevalent retinal vascular disease, following diabetic retinopathy. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) play an important role in vascular diseases. This study aimed to elucidate the relationship between NETs and RVO, and to discern the potential role of deoxyribonuclease I (DNase I) in the prevention and treatment of RVO through the modulation of NETs. We analyzed circulating NETs biomarkers, namely cell-free DNA (cf-DNA), myeloperoxidase (MPO)-DNA, and neutrophil elastase (NE), in 30 RVO patients and 30 healthy individuals. We established an RVO mouse model using a retinal laser, and the mice were categorized into two groups: the DNase I group and the control group. Retinal images were taken at predetermined time points, and the state of the retinal vessels was assessed. Both tissue and blood samples were harvested for analysis of NETs expression through methods such as western blotting, immunofluorescence staining, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Our finding indicate an increase in circulating NETs biomarkers in human and mouse RVO cases, while also verifying the presence of NETs in the retinal thrombus of the RVO model. Both in vitro and in vivo tests revealed that DNase I attenuated NETs formation. Moreover, DNase I injections led to diminished NETs biomarker levels and a reduced duration of the thrombus after the RVO model establishment. Consequently, DNase I, a well-established modulator of NETs formation, might exhibit protective properties in the prevention and treatment of RVO.


Accident generally occurs due to the activities which is done in unsafe conditions or even unsafe behavior. These conditions can influence workers productivity. In batik industries, those workers use toxic material and work in non ergonomic atmosphere. Moreover, they also do not take care of the environment and do not use personal protective equipments (PPE). Workers at Madura batik SMEs have not fully realized the significance of occupational health and safety (OHS) in their working areas. The aims of this research is to evaluate OHS performance based on the indicators of safety performance index (SPI), which is multicriteria, in that industri. The safety performance attributes were obtained from factor analysis from the previous study. The index is calculated based on the weighted evaluation results of critical behavior checklist (CBC), integrated with analytical hierarchy process (AHP). As the results, we should give priority to improve the knowledge and experience toward OHS of the workers and also improve the working environment of the Madura's batik industries. Additionally, the performance of OHS in coloring process is also on the threshold of unsafe condition, further development on the coloring process is needed.


Intelligent regulation of fluid mechanical properties is an enormous challenge. Here we report a photocontrolled thermogelling system that features switchable sol–gel transition in response to light. Such a system is composed of an amphiphilic copolymer appending with charged long alkyl stickers and α-cyclodextrin (α-CD) host units. Temperature can induce reversible threading/dethreading between the α-CD and the alkyl chain, leading to a sol–gel transition. With the introduction of a competitive photoresponsive azobenzene guest, one can remotely modulate the systemic gelation points in a broad temperature window via light irradiation. This class of responsive hydrogel systems would open up a new host–guest approach for the design of logical soft materials.


Fine blanking process with V-ring was simulated with FEM. The geometric parameters of the die, the punch, the serrated ring and the sheet are modeled. In this paper, some other assumptions are made for the analysis. The workpiece is considered as elastic-plastic material, while the tools are defined as rigid bodies. The damage model taking into account the influence of hydrostatic stress is used to simulate material fracture in blanking. The stress status and forming process are analyzed. Authors also investigated the effect of distance from tooth to die edge on roll-over high. The simulation can reflect the laws of fine blanking process.


Radioiodinated transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-beta 1) bound to the plasma proteinase inhibitor, alpha 2-macroglobulin (alpha 2M), as determined by chromatography on Superose-6 and native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. When alpha 2M conformational change was induced with methylamine, 125I-TGF-beta 1 binding significantly increased. Intravenously injected 125I-TGF-beta 1 cleared from the circulation of mice rapidly at first; however, intravascular radioactivity stabilized near 20% of the initial level. At necropsy, radioactivity was recovered predominantly in the liver (65%); however, the density of radioactivity (disintegrations per minute/g organ wt) was highest in the lungs. Markedly different results were obtained with purified 125I-TGF-beta 1-alpha 2M-methylamine complex. Clearance of the complex occurred as a first-order process with a t1/2 of 4 min. Greater than 90% of the radioactivity was recovered in the liver. The clearance and distribution of 125I-TGF-beta 1-alpha 2M-methylamine were equivalent to those observed with 125I-alpha 2M-methylamine and 125I-alpha 2M-trypsin. The latter two radioligands clear via specific alpha 2M receptors in the liver. Large molar excesses of alpha 2M-trypsin or alpha 2M-methylamine competed with 125I-TGF-beta 1-alpha 2M-methylamine for plasma clearance. Native alpha 2M, which does not bind to the alpha 2M receptor, did not compete. The receptor binding domain of alpha 2M-methylamine was blocked by chemical modification or enzyme treatment. The resulting alpha 2M preparations still bound 125I-TGF-beta 1; however, the complexes did not clear when injected intravenously in mice. The studies presented here demonstrate that alpha 2M can mediate the plasma clearance of a growth factor via the alpha 2M receptor system. We propose that alpha 2M, the alpha 2M receptor, and proteinases may function as a concerted system to regulate TGF-beta 1 activity and the activity of related factors in vivo.


The national project of the development technology of next generation applied electromagnetic machinery was founded in Oita as Oita Prefecture Innovative JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) Research Program. In this paper, outline of this project is introduced and the basic technolo gy which is based on vector magnetic property is described. Especially the vector magnetic properties in high flux density level of 1 .9 T are shown. As the example results, the dynamic vector magnetic characteristic is applied to the surface permanent magnet motor.


In 2013 the foundation stone of a new campus of Ural Federal University was laid in the area of the lakes Shartash and Malyi Shartash. In 2016 its first stage will be put in commission. Construction started despite all compelling comments from ecologists, sociologists, transport specialists and architects. The architecture of premises also triggers a lot of questions among specialists. Building of the new UrFU campus "from scratch" is the third attempt within 100 years to create a student campus in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) by examples from the West. The first attempt to build the Mining Institute was a failure because of the revolution of 1917. Realization of the Ural Polytechnic Institute campus took 20 years. The future of the new UrFU campus is uncertain, but the construction is going ahead at full speed.


Background
Fungal keratitis has a high incidence in China and its clinical treatment is very difficult, and its etiology diagnosis and appraisal is the premise to improve the prognosis of disease.With the changes of regional environment and climate in recent years, whether the spectrum of fungal keratitis change in South China is remarkable.

Objective
The purpose of this study was to investigate recent pathogenic distribution of fungal keratitis in South China area.

Methods
The consecutive fungal culture

results
of 3 350 purulent keratitis at Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center from January 2009 to December 2014 were retrospectively reviewed.The positive rate of fungal culture, genus or species distribution, seasonal distribution and different term distribution were analyzed. Results The culture-positive rate was 31.34% in this study (1 050/3 350), and the average culture-positive number was 175 strains per year.In the positive fungus, the highest positive rate was Fusarium SP (32.10%, 337/1 050), and followed by Aspergillus SP (25.71%, 270/1 050), Heminthosporium SP (14.29%, 150/1 050) and Mucor SP (9.14%, 96/1 050). The fungal culture-positive rate was 36.05% (367/1 018) in 2009 to 2010, 32.45% (324/1 014) in 2011 to 2012, and 26.86% (354/1 318) in 2013 to 2014, respectively, with a significant difference among the three periods (χ2=22.37, P<0.01), showing a decreasing tendency of incidence.Two hundreds and sixty-one strains were isolated from January to March (31.15%, 261/838), 182 strains from April to June (25.53%, 182/713), 237 strains from July to September (30.00%, 237/790), 370 strains from October to December (36.67%, 370/1 009), showing a statistically significant difference among them (χ2=25.19, P<0.01). The number of infectious strains was most during October to December and fewest during April to June.

Conclusions
The leading pathogenic fungi of fungal keratitis is Fusarium SP and followed by Aspergillus SP, Helminthosporium SP, Mucor SP in turn.Fungal keratitis is usually prevalent from October to December, and its incidence is still rising in Chinese mainland recently.However, the increasing tendency in South China has been prevented in recent six years.

Key words:
Cornea/microbiology; Corneal ulcer/microbiology; Eye infections, fungal/microbiology; Mycoses/microbiology; Humans; South China


Fertiliser inefficiencies have enormous environmental costs, globally and locally. Our iconic Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is degrading and nutrient pollution is a main contributor. The GBR lagoon receives 6-times more nitrogen (N) than natural backgrounds, approximately 80,000 tonnes annually, and N-pollution reduction targets remain unmet. This long-standing problem is caused by fertilisers in broad-acre agriculture that rapidly dissolve and are subject to loss from soil. Authorities and stakeholders agree that the nutrient problem demands disruptive and transformative innovation. Enhanced efficiency fertilisers (e.g. plastic-coated urea) can reduce N losses but release patterns remain difficult to control. NextGen fertilisers take a new approach to better synchronise nutrient supply and crop demand. Capitalising on innovation in material science and process engineering, they form part of a future circular nutrient economy without pollution and waste. Our multi-disciplinary consortium of scientists, engineers and industry partners aims to break new ground and address the constraints that are costly for farmers and environment and prevent many tropical crops from reaching their yield potential. With proof-of-concept well established, next-generation fertilisers achieve superior nutrient-release properties by binding nutrients to sorber-matrices (biopolymers, biosorbers, bio-hydrogels, engineered natural clays). Engineered bio-/geo-sorbers form the basis of the NextGen platform that is complemented by re-purposed wastes, biodegradable coatings, crop-beneficial microbes and biostimulants, combined with processing technology. We showcase how agriculture profits from understanding of the crop-soil-microbe interface, and paired with engineering innovation, contributes to a 2nd Green Revolution that does not cost the earth.


A study of three newspapers that primarily serve the New Madrid Fault area shows that the press and public officials probably share the blame for public panic surrounding the 1990 Iben Browning earthquake prediction. The press failed to report soon enough scientists' views that refuted Browning's prediction, and some public officials used mass media to promote earthquake awareness even though the tactics fed public misperceptions about the likelihood of Browning's prediction coming to pass.


The treatment of chronic cluster headache is based on a few proven drugs, namely lithium salts, corticosteroids, methysergide maleate, and verapamil hydrochloride. 1 However, some patients do not stop having attacks, despite treatment with 1 or more of these drugs. More recently, transdermal clonidine was proposed as a possible effective and safe treatment. 2 This drug may act by reducing the sharp fluctuations of the sympathetic nervous system occurring during the attacks, 3 by inhibiting the central sympathetic pathway. Tizanidine, an imidazoline derivative, usually used as a central muscle relaxant, is structurally similar to clonidine and seems to act through central α 2 -receptor agonistic activity. 4 We treated 5 consecutive patients with chronic cluster headache resistant to previous treatments with tizanidine as add-on therapy. Results are summarized in the Table . In 3 patients the attacks ceased and any other treatment was discontinued, in 1 there was a marked reduction


Pathologists' advocacy plays a central role in the establishment of continuously improving patient care quality and patient safety, and in the maintenance and progress of pathology as a profession. Pathology advocacy's primary goal is the betterment of patient safety and quality medical care; however, payment is a necessary and appropriate component to both, and has a central role in advocacy. Now is the time to become involved in pathology advocacy; the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) and the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA) are 2 of the most consequential pieces of legislation impacting the pathology and laboratory industry in the last 20 years. Another current issue of far-reaching impact for pathologists is balance billing, and yet many pathologists have little or no understanding of balance billing. Pathologists at all stages of their careers, and in every professional setting, need to participate. Academic pathologists have a special obligation to, if not become directly involved in advocacy, at least have a broad and current understanding of those issues, as well as the need and responsibility of pathologists to actively engage in advocacy efforts to address them, in order to teach residents the place of advocacy, and its value, as an inseparable and indispensable component of their professional responsibilities.


To survive, bacteria such as E. coli must rapidly respond to changing environmental conditions, including nutrient levels. A decrease in nutrient availability causes bacteria to stop rapid replication and enter stationary phase, where they perform limited to no cell division. The E. coli global regulatory protein Lrp has been previously implicated in modulating the expression of genes particularly important at this transition from rapid to slowed growth. Here, we monitor Lrp's DNA binding locations and effect on gene expression under three different nutrient conditions across three growth stages. We find that Lrp's role is even broader than previously suspected and that it appears to interact with many other bacterial regulators to perform its function in a condition-specific manner. ABSTRACT The global regulator Lrp plays a crucial role in regulating metabolism, virulence, and motility in response to environmental conditions. Lrp has previously been shown to activate or repress approximately 10% of the genes in Escherichia coli. However, the full spectrum of targets, and how Lrp acts to regulate them, have stymied earlier study. We have combined matched chromatin-immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) and RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) under nine physiological conditions to comprehensively map the binding and regulatory activity of Lrp as it directs responses to nutrient abundance. In addition to identifying hundreds of novel Lrp targets, we observe two new global trends, as follows: first, that Lrp will often bind to promoters in a poised position under conditions when it has no regulatory activity to enable combinatorial interactions with other regulators, and second, that nutrient levels induce a global shift in the equilibrium between less-sequence-specific and more-sequence-specific DNA binding. The overall regulatory behavior of Lrp, which as we now show extends to 38% of E. coli genes directly or indirectly under at least one condition, thus arises from the interaction between changes in Lrp binding specificity and cooperative action with other regulators. IMPORTANCE To survive, bacteria such as E. coli must rapidly respond to changing environmental conditions, including nutrient levels. A decrease in nutrient availability causes bacteria to stop rapid replication and enter stationary phase, where they perform limited to no cell division. The E. coli global regulatory protein Lrp has been previously implicated in modulating the expression of genes particularly important at this transition from rapid to slowed growth. Here, we monitor Lrp's DNA binding locations and effect on gene expression under three different nutrient conditions across three growth stages. We find that Lrp's role is even broader than previously suspected and that it appears to interact with many other bacterial regulators to perform its function in a condition-specific manner.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the patterns of care and direct medical costs of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) to test the hypothesis that the direct medical costs incurred by patients with PMR are higher than costs incurred by age- and sex-matched population-based controls from the same community.

METHODS
The study population comprised 193 Olmsted County, Minnesota residents who were first diagnosed with PMR between January 1, 1987 and December 31, 1999. Inclusion criteria were as follows: age > or = 50 years; bilateral aching and morning stiffness (lasting > or = 30 minutes) persisting for at least 1 month and involving the neck, shoulders, or hip girdle regions; and an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) > or = 40 mm/hour. In patients who fulfilled the first 2 criteria, but had a normal ESR, a rapid response to low-dose corticosteroids served as the third criterion. A total of 695 age- and sex-matched subjects without PMR served as control subjects. Billing data from the Olmsted County Healthcare Expenditure and Utilization Database (OCHEUD) were used to provide estimates of nationally representative unit costs in the year 2002 inflation-adjusted dollars. All subjects were followed using the OCHEUD records until December 31, 2002 to assess the total direct medical costs. Generalized quantile regression modeling was used to estimate the effect of PMR on direct medical costs, after adjusting for age, sex, Charlson comorbidity score, number of hospital days, and number of radiographs.

RESULTS
During the first year following diagnosis, subjects with PMR used a substantially higher number of outpatient services and laboratory tests compared with controls, but during the subsequent 4 years, there were no differences between the 2 groups. In age- and sex-adjusted analysis, PMR was associated with a significant incremental cost of 2,233 dollars at the 10th percentile of costs and 27,712 dollars at the 90th percentile of costs. However, further adjustments for comorbidities, number of hospital days, radiographs, and imaging eliminated the incremental cost difference between the subjects with PMR and control subjects. PMR subjects were significantly more likely to have a history of myocardial infarction (odds ratio [OR] 1.78, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.13, 2.82), peripheral vascular diseases (OR 2.21, 95% CI 1.37, 3.60), and cerebrovascular diseases (OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.08, 2.39) compared with the controls.

CONCLUSION
Incremental direct medical costs associated with the management of PMR can be substantial, especially early in the disease course. These incremental costs appear to originate mainly from comorbid cardiovascular conditions that were shown to be more prevalent among subjects with PMR.


- This work is a continuation of the one published at 8th International Conference on Advances in Civil, Structural and Mechanical Engineering – ACSM 2018 – Paris, and the International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering – IJCSE. The origin of water leaks, construction defects and deterioration of concrete processes that, over time, would affect the safety of the dam, is explained so it is strongly recommended its intervention to stop the flow of water. This paper presents an ordered set of tasks that are intended to reduce water leaks and interrupt the progressive processes of deterioration on the concrete. The tasks involve treatments on the Foundation and the body of the dam. To avoid water leaks of the dam body, a sequence of tasks is proposed to achieve the impermeability of the cracked wall. In order to evaluate the efficiency of each one of the tasks to be carried out, it is proposed that all works are executed with water-filled reservoir. Otherwise, with empty reservoir, there would be no way to control or to know whether the operation was satisfactory done until reservoir is refilled.