The routine employment and wide indications for ascending phlebography for evaluating the deep and superficial systems prior to specific therapy makes it desirable that the patient should feel as little pain as possible. By using suitable measures before and after the examination, optimal position of the patient and appropriate choice of instruments, as well as local anaesthesia with a Dermo-Jet pressure injector, it is possible to render the examination almost completely painless.


Empirically testable assumptions relate 3 psychophysical primitives: presentations of pairs of physical intensities (e.g., pure tones of the same frequency and phase to the 2 ears or 2 successive tones to both ears); a respondent's ordering of such signal pairs by perceived intensity (e.g., loudness); and judgments about 2 pairs of stimuli being related as some proportion (numerical factor, as in magnitude production). Explicit behavioral assumptions lead to 2 families of psychophysical functions, one corresponding to unbiased joint presentations and the other to biased ones. Under an invariance assumption, the psychophysical functions in the unbiased case are approximate power functions, and those in the biased case are exact power functions. A number of testable predictions are made. The mathematics involved draws from publications in utility theory and mathematics but with a reinterpretation of the primitives.


The live-attenuated TC-83 strain is the only licensed veterinary vaccine available to protect equids against Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) and to protect humans indirectly by preventing equine amplification. However, TC-83 is reactogenic due to its reliance on only two attenuating point mutations and has infected mosquitoes following equine vaccination. To increase its stability and safety, a recombinant TC-83 was previously engineered by placing the expression of the viral structural proteins under the control of the Internal Ribosome Entry Site (IRES) of encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV), which drives translation inefficiently in insect cells. However, this vaccine candidate was poorly immunogenic. Here we describe a second generation of the recombinant TC-83 in which the subgenomic promoter is maintained and only the capsid protein gene is translated from the IRES. This VEEV/IRES/C vaccine candidate did not infect mosquitoes, was stable in its attenuation phenotype after serial murine passages, and was more attenuated in newborn mice but still as protective as TC-83 against VEEV challenge. Thus, by using the IRES to modulate TC-83 capsid protein expression, we generated a vaccine candidate that combines efficient immunogenicity and efficacy with lower virulence and a reduced potential for spread in nature.


The frustrating stalemate on the western front with its unprecedented casualties provoked a furious debate in London between the civil and military authorities over the best way to defeat Germany. The passions aroused continued to the present day. The mercurial and dynamic David Lloyd George stood at the centre of this controversy throughout the war. His intervention in military questions and determination to redirect strategy put him at odds with the leading soldiers and admirals of his day. Professor Woodward, a student of the Great War for some four decades, explores the at times Byzantine atmosphere at Whitehall by exhaustive archival research in official and private papers. The focus is on Lloyd George and his adversaries such as Lord Kitchener, General Sir William Robertson, and Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig. The result is a fresh, compelling and detailed account of the interaction between civil and military authorities in total war.


Domestication is the process by which species adapt to, and are artificially selected for, human-made environments. Few studies have explored how the process of domestication has affected the connection between behavioral traits and cognitive abilities in animals. This study investigated the relationship between personality and cognitive traits in domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Fifteen individuals kept in a rabbit rescue facility were tested over a period of two months. We measured the linkage between behavioral traits (response to a novel object and exploration time) and cognitive performance. Our results suggest that there is no relationship between personality traits and problem solving abilities in domestic rabbits. In addition, our results suggest that exploration time is significantly repeatable at the individual level while latency to approach a novel object is not. Thus further research is needed to explore the relationship between cognitive and personality traits in domestic rabbits.


Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) are synthesized by isobutane decomposition at 700 °C over as-purchased and iron-loaded K10-montmorillonite catalysts. The results show that, upon reduction at 500 °C, K10 catalyzes isobutane decomposition. Few carbon fibers accompany the prevailing carbon flakes formation. Upon Na+ exchange or by increasing the reduction temperature, the activity of the clay decreases. Fe−K10 behaves as a bifunctional catalyst: on added metal sites, MWCNT preferentially form, while on the support, carbon flake formation mainly occurs. At a given metal load, the increase of the reduction temperature up to 700 °C or the use of Na+-exchanged K10 as a support generally leads to an enhancement of the selectivity to MWCNT, because of the diminishing of the support active sites. Under the present reaction conditions, Fe supported on Na+ exchanged K10 are the most active among the investigated catalysts. MWCNT copiously form, both at low and high metal load, and exhibit the highest structural ...


Porous media combustion is an area of current research aimed at improving the performances of combustion devices and thus its application to various systems is being widely explored. One of the potential applications of the porous media combustion is in the LPG cooking stoves. The present paper compares the efficiencies, emissions and energy cost for the conventional domestic LPG cooking stoves with and without the usage of various porous media like metal balls, pebbles and metal chips. With the usage of porous media, the maximum thermal efficiency of the stove was found to be 73% which for the conventional stoves was in the range of 67-69%. In the emission test, the % volume of CO 2 was found to increase from 0.6875 to 0.9375 and the ppm of CO was found to decrease from 225 to 118. Energy cost analysis showed a saving of about 10%. Assuming the average cooking time in an Indian family to be 8 hours per day, over a period of one month, this saving is thus 7.6% of the cost of a 14.5 kg LPG cylinder available to Indian domestic consumers. These results show a better prospect for the use of porous media in domestic LPG cooking stoves.


This paper hopes to contribute to inter-disciplinary literature by mapping out the ability of one community library's used bookshop volunteers to resolve a potential conflict, that of working in a Used Bookshop Program that both gives away books to institutional recipients deemed as eligible, with its overarching purpose: to maximize profitability on behalf of the library, for serving its programming to the urban City of Stamford, located in Stamford, Connecticut. The study encompasses visual sociological methods, and discusses multi-faceted concepts of community-building from a variety of social science perspectives, but mainly based in sociology.


Abstract How does teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) inform their instructional planning? How can this knowledge be enhanced? In an interpretivist study of experienced secondary social studies teachers' planning, we sought to discover clues to the nature and development of these teachers' TPACK-in-action as it was expressed in their planning processes. Comparisons of interview data and planning products before and after engaging in professional development that addressed content-focused, TPACK-based learning activity types (Harris & Hofer, 2009) revealed three primary findings, each supported by participating teachers' oral and written reflections upon their learning. The participating teachers' (a) selection and use of learning activities and technologies became more conscious, strategic, and varied; (b) instructional planning became more student-centered, focusing primarily upon students' intellectual, rather than affective, engagement; and (c) quality standards for technology integration were raised, resulting in deliberate decisions for more judicious educational technology use.


Optical sensing plays an important role in theranostics due to its capability to detect hint biochemical entities or molecular targets as well as to precisely monitor specific fundamental psychological processes. Rare-earth (RE) doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are promising for these endeavors due to their unique frequency converting capability; they emit efficient and sharp visible or ultraviolet (UV) luminescence via use of ladder-like energy levels of RE ions when excited at near infrared (NIR) light that are silent to tissues. These features allow not only a high penetration depth in biological tissues but also a high detection sensitivity. Indeed, the energy transfer between UCNPs and biomolecular or chemical indicators provide opportunities for high-sensitive bio- and chemical-sensing. A temperature-sensitive change of the intensity ratio between two close UC bands promises them for use in temperature mapping of a single living cell. In this work, we review recent investigations on using UCNPs for the detection of biomolecules (avidin, ATP, etc.), ions (cyanide, mecury, etc.), small gas molecules (oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, etc.), as well as for in vitro temperature sensing. We also briefly summarize chemical methods in synthesizing UCNPs of high efficiency that are important for the detection limit.


know the supervision of education. This article researchers used the literature study method by collecting literature (material materials) taken from book sources, journals, and other sources related to the science of Educational Administration. The method of literature relating to topics of interest can help make it easier to formulate research problems.


Lateral mode analysis of buried heterostructure-type index guided diode lasers is presented using the finite-element method. The vectorial and the approximate scalar finite-element methods based on a Galerkin's procedure are formulated for the analysis of the waveguides composed of active or lossy media. By using these methods, the accuracy of the effective refractive index method, which has been widely used, is investigated in detail and the limit of this approximate method is indicated. Furthermore, the modal gain and its difference between the fundamental and the higher order modes, which may be important for the design of diode lasers, are evaluated for GaInAsP/ InP buried heterostructure diode lasers. As a result, the finite-element method, especially the approximate scalar finite-element method, is found to be useful for the lateral mode analysis of diode lasers, and suggested the possibility as a means for device simulation techniques.


For successful hatchery production of prawn seed a
steady supply of spawners of desired species of prawns at
the proper time is a necessary prerequisite. The uncertainity
of procuring spawners from the wild has stimulated worldwide
interest in the efforts to induce prawns to mature under
controlled conditions. A successful technology for inducing
maturity and spawning of penaeid prawns has been developed
at the Marine Prawn Hatchery Laboratory (MPHL) of Central
Marine Fisheries Research Institute by employing the method
of unilateral eyestalk ablation. Using this technique many
commercially important species of penaeid prawns (Penaeus
monodon, Pehaeus indicus, Penaeus semisulcatus, Metapenaeus
dobsoni, Metapenaeus monoceros and Parapenaeopsis stylifera)
have been induced to mature and spawn dn captivity (Muthu
and Laxminarayana, 1977, 1979, 1982; Laxminarayana and
Sasidharan, 1983).


statistics. Yesterday the alleged ignorance of these families made the advances in malarial prophylaxis seem like a mixed blessing. To-day, however, although much remains to be done, an ever-increasing proportion of the people are wide awake and will heed instructions given in matters pertaining to health. They should no longer be denicd the proved benefits of malarial chemoprophylaxis. Finally, I agree with Bruce-Chwatt and Horn that intramuscular mepacrine and chloroquine could be dangerous, but the danger is relatively small if attention is paid to dosages. For instance, the 100-150 mg. of mepacrine musonate given by the doctors cited by BruceChwatt and Horn to children uinder 3 is in my opinion an overdose. They should receive 50 mg., which may be repeated in 2-3 hours if necessary. The corresponding dose of chloroquine is 30 to 50 mg. of the base, which is repeatable in I to 2 hours.-I am, etc.,


We propose a visual-linguistic representation learning approach within a self-supervised learning framework by introducing a new operation, loss, and data augmentation strategy. First, we generate diverse features for the image-text matching (ITM) task via soft-masking the regions in an image, which are most relevant to a certain word in the cor-responding caption, instead of completely removing them. Since our framework relies only on image-caption pairs with no fine-grained annotations, we identify the relevant regions to each word by computing the word-conditional vi-sual attention using multi-modal encoder. Second, we encourage the model to focus more on hard but diverse examples by proposing a focal loss for the image-text contrastive learning (ITC) objective, which alleviates the inherent limitations of overfitting and bias issues. Last, we perform multi-modal data augmentations for self-supervised learning via mining various examples by masking texts and rendering distortions on images. We show that the combination of these three innovations is effective for learning a pretrained model, leading to outstanding performance on multiple vision-language downstream tasks.


Yttria and iron co-doped tetragonal zirconia polycrystals ((Y, Fe)-TZPs) were investigated to evaluate the feasibility for the ceramic bracket application. Presintered the (Y,Fe)-TZPs brackets were machined, abraded and coated with granule spray containing 10~50 wt% of flux. Finally, the base-coated brackets were sintered. Roughness of the coated surface was decreased to 13 um and 10 um when the flux content was 30 wt% and 50 wt%, respectively. It may be due to the fusion and the collapse of the granules as a result of the high amount of flux. Better adhesion to the base surface of the brackets and irregular shape were observed by raising the amount of flux in the slurries. Wetting angle of ethylene glycol droplet on the (Y,Fe)-TZP bare surface was determined to be 41.85°, however, the angle became 0° after the granule spraying treatments. The (Y,Fe)-TZP brackets exhibited uniform embossed base and good wetting. The newly developed base-coated bracket could be highly applicable to enhance retention and to reduce adhesive resin remnant during the bracket debonding.


Introduction: Little is known about the sero-prevalence of diphtheria anti-toxoid antibody levels among medical students in Malaysia. They too, just like other health care workers (HCWs) are at risk of contracting and transmitting diphtheria. Fortunately, this can be prevented by giving a specific vaccine: the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine. Nonetheless, data from local or regional
surveys are needed before any decision is made by the respective authorities. General objective: We studied the epidemiology of diphtheria anti-toxoid antibody levels and vaccination history amongst medical students and staff in Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia. Specific objectives: We determined the level of diphtheria anti-toxoid antibodies amongst pre-clinical
students and staff. Methodology: A total of 152 sera were collected from subjects aged 19 to 63, and diphtheria anti-toxoid levels were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: One hundred and fifty-two (94.4%) blood samples out of 161 participants were successfully withdrawn, which comprised 105 (69.1%) and 47 (30.9%) medical students and staff, respectively. A total of 77.6% and the other 22.4% of the subjects had full and basic protection, respectively. Higher levels were predominant amongst males and they were 1.3 times more protected than females in 20-29 year-old group (85.1% vs 66.2%; odd ratios 1.25 [95% CI 1.03-1.50]; P=0.03). No significant difference in the levels of immunity among subjects for ethnicity and academic position (P>0.05). Recommendations: Level of full protection against diphtheria toxin should be clearly defined by broad population based studies using several comparable detection methods. Medical students and staff with basic protection
should be closely monitored or should be given a booster dose for those who are at high risk of acquiring
the disease. Thus, a standard degree of coverage should be clearly determined for health workers to prevent a potential outbreak. Conclusion: Students and staff possess immunity towards diptheria toxin however the level of full protective antibody is yet to be determined in future.


Abstract This article contributes to the consolidation and synthesis of scholarship on collaborative governance by expanding our knowledge of how the term is used in the academic literature and policy documents in a range of European countries. It adds value to the existing reviews of the field by conducting a systematic literature review on a corpus of over 700 article abstracts and a traditional literature review identifying five key analytical dimensions. The article also provides an exploratory analysis of grey literature hitherto outside the purview of researchers and considers the linguistic and cultural connotations that alter the meaning of the term when translated into new contexts in ten EU/EFTA countries. Findings indicate heterogeneity and fuzziness in the way the concept is used. The article argues that explicit positions with respect to five main analytical dimensions and taking into account the national connotations that the term carries across political systems would inject more clarity into the academic discourse. This, in turn, will help policymakers to make informed use of the concept, especially in multi-national policy-making arenas.


The irreducible decomposition technique is applied to the study of classical models of metric-affine gravity (MAG). The dynamics of the gravitational field is described by a 12-parameter Lagrangian encompassing a Hilbert-Einstein term, torsion and nonmetricity square terms, and one quadratic curvature piece that is built up from Weyl's segmental curvature. Matter is represented by a hyperfluid, a continuous medium the elements of which possess classical momentum and hypermomentum. With the help of irreducible decomposi-tions, we are able to express torsion and traceless nonmetricity explicitly in terms of the spin and the shear current of the hyperfluid. Thereby the field equations reduce to an effective Einstein theory describing a metric coupled to the Weyl 1-form (a Proca-type vector field) and to a spin fluid. We demonstrate that a triplet of torsion and nonmetricity 1-forms describes the general and unique vacuum solution of the field equations of MAG. Finally, we study homogeneous cosmologies with an hyperfluid. We find that the hypermo-mentum affects significantly the cosmological evolution at very early stages. 1 However, unlike spin, shear does not prevent the formation of a cosmological singularity.


Introduction: Although prone to a higher degree of ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI), the use of extended criteria donor (ECD) organs has become reality in transplantation. We therefore postulated that peri-operative perfusion of renal transplants with anti-human T-lymphocyte globulin (ATLG) ameliorates IRI and results in improved graft function. Methods: We performed a randomized, single-blinded, placebo-controlled trial involving 50 kidneys (KTx). Prior to implantation organs were perfused and incubated with ATLG (AP) (n = 24 kidney). Control organs (CP) were perfused with saline only (n = 26 kidney). Primary endpoint was defined as graft function reflected by serum creatinine at day 7 post transplantation (post-tx). Results: AP-KTx recipients illustrated significantly better graft function at day 7 post-tx as reflected by lower creatinine levels, whereas no treatment effect was observed after 12 months surveillance. During the early hospitalization phase, 16 of the 26 CP-KTx patients required dialysis during the first 7 days post-tx, whereas only 10 of the 24 AP-KTx patients underwent dialysis. No treatment-specific differences were detected for various lymphocytes subsets in the peripheral blood of patients. Additionally, mRNA analysis of 0-h biopsies post incubation with ATLG revealed no changes of intragraft inflammatory expression patterns between AP and CP organs. Conclusion: We here present the first clinical study on peri-operative organ perfusion with ATLG illustrating improved graft function in the early period post kidney transplantation. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03377283


Survival of African Americans with endometrial cancer is significantly worse than that of whites. Mutation of the PTEN tumor suppressor gene and microsatellite instability occur in some endometrial cancers, and they are associated with favorable prognostic features. The aim of this study was to determine whether there is a racial disparity in the frequency of these molecular alterations that contributes to differences in outcome in advanced endometrial cancer. We screened 140 stage III/IV endometrial adenocarcinomas (78 Caucasian, 62 African American) for mutations in the PTEN gene. Paired DNA samples were available in 100 cases and were analyzed for microsatellite instability using three polymorphic markers. African-American women had cancers with significantly higher stage and grade that were more often nonendometrioid. In addition, median survival of African Americans (1.0 years) was worse than that of whites (2.5 years; P = 0.02). PTEN mutation was seen in 20 of 140 (14%) cancers and was associated with endometrioid histology and more favorable survival. The frequency of PTEN mutations was significantly higher in whites (17 of 78; 22%) than in African Americans (3 of 62; 5%; P = 0.006). Microsatellite instability was found in 15% of cancers, exclusively in endometrioid cases, and was associated with favorable survival (P = 0.01). There was no racial difference in the frequency of microsatellite instability. We conclude that mutation of the PTEN tumor suppressor gene is associated with favorable survival in advanced endometrial cancer and is 4-fold more frequent in Caucasians relative to African Americans. This suggests that differences in the frequency of PTEN mutations contribute to the racial disparity in endometrial cancer survival.


Modern laser range and optical scanners need rendering techniques that can handle millions of points with high resolution textures. This paper describes a point rendering and texture filtering technique called surface splatting which directly renders opaque and transparent surfaces from point clouds without connectivity. It is based on a novel screen space formulation of the Elliptical Weighted Average (EWA) filter. Our rigorous mathematical analysis extends the texture resampling framework of Heckbert to irregularly spaced point samples. To render the points, we develop a surface splat primitive that implements the screen space EWA filter. Moreover, we show how to optimally sample image and procedural textures to irregular point data during pre-processing. We also compare the optimal algorithm with a more efficient view-independent EWA pre-filter. Surface splatting makes the benefits of EWA texture filtering available to point-based rendering. It provides high quality anisotropic texture filtering, hidden surface removal, edge anti-aliasing, and order-independent transparency.


Although the UNFCCC sets a direction and defines a number of tools and mechanisms, it does not provide any clear strategy on how to solve the climate crisis. International climate negotiations do not formulate policies. Instead, they leave the international process up to national governments to decide on how to reduce emissions. International goals and pledges may provide policy makers with a direction, but they do not formulate recipes on how to generate energy and feed an increasing world population while protecting the global climate. The challenge is formidable, and time is running out. By the same token, climate finance and the institutional arrangements underpinning it are likely to remain decentralized and diverse. Although fragmentation poses the risk of inefficiencies and duplication of efforts, recent developments under the UNFCCC carry the promise that climate negotiations are able to adapt to changing realities and may provide a framework for country-driven and multistakeholder-driven climate policies.


We investigated whether biogenic amines alone, or a combination of NH3, amines and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) influenced grass-silage intake, intake behaviour and rumen liquid content in sheep. Three diets were studied: a grass silage preserved with formic acid (4 litres/tonne) (FAS), FAS with 4·9 g amines/kg DM added (FAS+A), and FAS supplemented with a combination of N-components at the following concentrations: 2·7 g amines, 3·0 g NH3and 5·0 g GABA/kg DM (FAS+C). The diets were offered ad libitum, once daily to six rumen-cannulated Texel wethers in a crossover design. Daily DM intake (DMI; g DM/d) tended to be influenced by diet (P = 0·08). The DMI of FAS+A was similar to that of FAS alone, whereas that of FAS+C tended to be higher. The mean rate of ingestion (g DM/min) over all feeding bouts tended to be the lowest for FAS+A (P = 0·06). No differences were found among the diets concerning intake behaviour during the principal meal. Average intake rate of the small meals tended to be the lowest for FAS+A (P = 0·06). Although rumen NH3 concentration was higher (P<0·05) after the principal meal, rumen pH, osmolality, rumen pool size and liquid content were not significantly altered by adding amines or the mixture of N-components to FAS. We conclude that biogenic amines or N-containing products of protein fermentation in concentrations normally found in poor-quality silages do not reduce the intake of well-preserved formic acid-treated silage. A direct effect on chemostatic regulation of intake was not observed, but a slight negative effect on silage palatability cannot be excluded.


SAR Polarimetry represents an active area of research in Active Earth Remote Sensing. This interest is clearly supported by the fact that nowadays there exists, or there will exist in a very next future, a non negligible quantity of launched Polarimetric SAR Spaceborne sensors. The ENVISAT satellite, developed by ESA, was launched on March 2002, and was the first Spaceborne sensor offering an innovative dualpolarization Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) system operating at C-band. The second Polarimetric Spaceborne sensor is ALOS, a Japanese Earth-Observation satellite, developed by JAXA and was launched in January 2006. This mission includes an active L-band polarimetric radar sensor (PALSAR) whose highresolution data may be used for environmental and hazard monitoring. The third Polarimetric Spaceborne sensor is TerraSAR-X, a new German radar satellite, developed by DLR, EADS-Astrium and Infoterra GmbH, was launched on June 2007. This sensor carries a dual-polarimetric and high frequency X-Band SAR sensor that can be operated in different modes and offers features that were not available from space before. At least, the Polarimetric Spaceborne sensor, developed by CSA and MDA, and named RADARSAT-2 was launched in December 2007 The Radarsat program was born out the need for effective monitoring of Canada's icy waters, and some Radarsat-2 capabilities that benefit sea- and river ice applications are the multi-polarization options that will improve ice-edge detection, ice-type discrimination and structure information. The many advances in these different Polarimetric Spaceborne platforms were developed to respond to specific needs for radar data in environmental monitoring applications around the world, like : sea- and river-ice monitoring, marine surveillance, disaster management, oil spill detection, snow monitoring, hydrology, mapping, geology, agriculture, soil characterisation, forestry applications (biomass, allometry, height…), urban mapping etc…. In order to promote the exploitation of Polarimetric Spaceborne data, as it is starting today to proliferate with the launch of these Polarimetric SAR sensors, the PolSARpro Software, developed under contract to ESA and that is a toolbox for the scientific exploitation of Polarimetric SAR and Polarimetric-Interferometric data and a tool for high-level education in radar polarimetry, has been expanded and refined to include all elements necessary for the demonstration of a number of key applications. The PolSARpro Software, that already was supporting an important range of airborne and spaceborne polarimetric data sources, supports now the following additional data sources: ALOS-PALSAR (Dual-Pol fine mode and Quad-Pol mode), TerraSAR-X (Dual-pol mode) and Radarsat-2 (Dual-Pol fine mode and Quad-Pol fine and standard modes), by offering a platform dedicated interface for E.O Scientific Investigator. A number of illustrations of key applications has been developed for the demonstration and the promotion of the Polarimetric Spaceborne missions, that are consistent with the activities incorporated in the GMES Services Element (GSE). The aim of this communication is to present the current state of the art in SAR Polarimetry ranging from theory to applications, with special emphasis in the analysis of data provided by the new Polarimetric Spaceborne SAR sensors, and samples of real polarimetric data will be presented for use in real-life examples of key applications.


INTRODUCTION
Coronary heart disease is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in current era. The roots of this epidemic have been traced to as early as foetal life by foetal origin hypothesis. There are a few studies which have compared the cord blood lipid profile of preterm and term babies and thereby leading a path to primordial prevention of chronic diseases.

AIM
To study cord blood lipid profile of preterm appropriate for gestational age and preterm small for gestational age neonates and compare atherogenic index of both groups.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This cross-sectional study was conducted in 109 preterm infants. Cord blood samples were collected from placental side of umbilical cord at birth and analyzed for lipid profile which includes serum cholesterol, triglycerides, Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL), High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) and apolipoproteins which include ApoA1, Apo B.

RESULTS
Preterm Small for Gestational Age (SGA) neonates had statistically significant higher values of triglycerides, Apo B and atherogenic index compared to preterm Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA) neonates. Other measured lipid levels were not statistically significant, though the values were higher than reference ranges for term babies.

CONCLUSION
Prematurity as a factor associated with a more atherogenic lipid profile is re-affirmed and SGA as an additional risk factor has been proven giving scope for future research and primordial prevention.


Background: Viral bronchiolitis caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common childhood disease accounting for many hospitalizations worldwide. Some infants may clinically deteriorate, requiring admission to an intensive care unit. We aimed to describe diagnostic and therapeutic measures of bronchiolitis in Israeli pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and evaluate intercenter variability of care. Methods: Medical records of all RSV-infected infants admitted to 5 Israeli PICUs over 4 RSV seasons were retrospectively reviewed. Results: Data on 276 infants with RSV-positive bronchiolitis, admitted to the participating PICUs were analyzed. Most of the infants were males with a mean admission age of 4.7 months. Approximately half of the infants had pre-existing conditions such as prematurity, cardiac disease or chronic lung disease. Respiratory distress was the most common symptom at presentation followed by hypoxemia and fever. There was significant variation in the methods used for RSV diagnosis, medical management and respiratory support of the infants. Furthermore, utilization of inhalational therapy and transfusion of blood products differed significantly between the centers. Although a bacterial pathogen was isolated in only 13.4% of the infants, 82.6% of the cohort was treated with antibiotics. Conclusions: Significant variation was found between the different PICUs regarding RSV bronchiolitis diagnosis, medical management and respiratory support, which may not be accounted for by the differences in baseline and clinical characteristics of the infants. Some of these differences may be explained by uneven resource allocations. This diversity and the documented routine use of medications with weak evidence of efficacy calls for national guidelines for bronchiolitis management.


The reciprocating compressor contains crank-rod mechanism whose unbalanced inertia force mainly accounts for mechanical noise and vibration during the working process. Through the analysis of fit between the diameter of the compressor piston and the crank eccentricity, influence of imbalance force on the compressor vibration and noise is obtained under no change in other parts. The tests of vibration and noise are followed for the purpose of verification. The results show that the vibration and noise control will be better if a small piston diameter and a big crank eccentricity are utilized.


The cortical regions dorsally adjacent to the posterior rhinal sulcus in the rat can be divided into a rostral region, the perirhinal cortex, which shares features of the monkey perirhinal cortex, and a caudal region, the postrhinal cortex, which has connectional attributes similar to the monkey parahippocampal cortex. We examined the connectivity among the rat perirhinal (areas 35 and 36), postrhinal, and entorhinal cortices by placing anterograde and retrograde tracers in all three regions. There is a dorsal‐to‐ventral cascade of connections in the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices. Dorsal area 36 projects strongly to ventral area 36, and ventral area 36 projects strongly to area 35. The return projections are substantially weaker. The cascade continues with the perirhinal to entorhinal connections. Area 35 is more strongly interconnected with the entorhinal cortex, ventral area 36 somewhat less strongly, and dorsal area 36 projects only weakly to the entorhinal cortex. The postrhinal‐to‐perirhinal connections also follow this general pattern. The postrhinal cortex is more heavily connected with dorsal area 36 than with ventral area 36 and is more heavily connected with area 36 than with area 35. The rostral portion of the postrhinal cortex has the strongest connections with the perirhinal cortex. Like in the monkey, the perirhinal and postrhinal cortices have different patterns of projections to the entorhinal cortex. The perirhinal cortex is preferentially connected with the rostrolateral portion of the entorhinal cortex. The postrhinal cortex projects to a part of this same region but is also connected to caudal and medial portions of the entorhinal cortex. The perirhinal and postrhinal projections to the entorhinal cortex originate in layers III and V and terminate preferentially in layers II and III. J. Comp. Neurol. 391:293–321, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This paper describes the development of a consistent sustainability education approach at the Bochum University of Applied Sciences by introducing sustainability content and practice into existing and new teaching approaches on six levels of education. Since 1999 the Problem Based Learning approach is used in the Mechatronic Teaching. The experiences gained there can be perfectly used to build up the sustainability education which is student centered, concentrating on the big transformation challenges our society is facing and searching for socio-technical solutions. Three examples of sustainability education practiced already at the Bochum University of Applied Sciences are discussed here together with their theoretical foundations.


A wide variety of applications have been developed based on source localization in areas like sonar, radar, global positioning system (GPS), wireless sensor networks, emergency response and human-computer interactions. Accurate source localization has gained much research interest in recent years, motivated by the rapidly increasing demand for services and systems that depends on accurate location estimations. We give a review of the basic techniques and positioning methods in the field of source localization. We introduce the Large Equal Radius (LER) scenario based on satellite geolocation problem. Here we propose a computationally friendly and efficient estimator based on TDOA measurements under LER scenario. The performance of the proposed estimator is analyzed, and it's shown theoretically that the position covariance matrices can approach the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) when the LER conditions are sufficiently satisfied. Simulation results are included and assessed by comparing with the CRLB. We also analyze the performance degradation due to the presence of sensor position error, and take them into account in the proposed estimator. The proposed estimator can eventually improve the source location estimate accuracy and reach the CRLB when sensor position errors are small. Theoretical developments are provided and simulations are included to evaluate its localization accuracy.


Newly-graduated veterinary practitioners are equipped with an impressive science education when they step into their first jobs. They're enthused about their new careers and eager to ply their skills. The post-graduate Real World is full of challenges; however, and not all of them were addressed in the veterinary curriculum. Consider the stresses of moving into a new community. Or trying to sort out the peculiarities, people and politics in the practice. There may be clients who are openly skeptical of the new graduate because they are inexperienced and/or unfamiliar to them. The shift to the working world can be daunting. The success-limiting species for veterinary practitioners walks on 2 legs, not 4. The power and practice of applying fundamental 'people skills' like listening, learning and leading will build credibility, relationships and serve as a foundation for success in practice.


The limitations of the rooms in the hospital may be reasonable, but it will be a problem if this happens at certain times when there is an over the quota of patients such as during an outbreak of Dengue Fever or in the event of a natural disaster. Generally, patients must be willing to sleep on the floor just because of the limitations of the inpatient room and also the bed.
To help overcome this problem, especially to help paramedic needs, a multipurpose wheelchair is designed so that in addition to being able to be used as patient transportation, it can also be used as an examination table. The method used to develop the wheelchair starts from an inventory of wheelchair needs, concept development, and selection. The reference used for concept development is a conventional wheelchair while the criteria set for the variety of concepts are the function, operational ease and convenience (wheelchair wear ergonomics).
As the central part of the wheelchair, the frame is made of stainless steel pipes. To keep the seating position stable, the swing arm is used as a place to hang the seat on the mainframe. The cross position in the middle of the frame functions to keep the wheelchair symmetrical and can be folded when not in use. Semicircular discs with seven keyholes, each of which is spaced 150, are used as a system for backrest mechanisms to allow them to lie down. The rack and pinion system is used as a mechanism for wheelchair lifting when it is functioned as an examination table. Ergonomics analysis with the help of Catia software using the RULA method, the grand score obtained is 3. So that the design of the wheelchair is quite safe
Keywords: Wheelchairs, multipurpose, stable, foldable, rack and pinion and ergonomic


This paper introduces CMCD, a Count Matrix based technique to detect clones in program code. The key concept behind CMCD is Count Matrix, which is created while counting the occurrence frequencies of every variable in situations specified by pre-determined counting conditions. Because the characteristics of the count matrix do not change due to variable name replacements or even switching of statements, CMCD works well on many hard-to-detect code clones, such as swapping statements or deleting a few lines, which are dfficult for other state-of-the-art detection techniques. We have obtained the following interesting results using CMCD: (1) we successfully detected all 16 clone scenarios proposed by C. Roy et al., (2) we discovered two clone clusters with three copies each from 29 student-submitted compiler lab projects, (3) we identified 174 code clone clusters and a potential bug from JDK 1.6 source files.


Purpose of reviewOver the last few decades, the survival rate in critically ill immunocompromised patients has substantially improved, mainly because of advances in oncohematological treatments and management of organ dysfunctions in the ICU. As a result, the number of patients admitted to the ICU has rapidly grown. Immunocompromised patients in whom acute respiratory failure (ARF) develops often require mechanical ventilatory support. In these patients, noninvasive ventilation (NIV) has the potential of avoiding endotracheal intubation and its complications. This review will discuss the recent findings on the role of NIV in immunocompromised patients with ARF. Recent findingsIn recent studies, NIV success was associated with shorter periods of ventilatory assistance and ICU stays, less infectious complications, and lower ICU and hospital mortality, compared with invasive mechanical ventilation. Failure of NIV occurred in half of the hematological patients with ARF. Major risk factors for NIV failure in these patients were illness severity at baseline and the presence of acute respiratory distress syndrome on admission. SummaryUse of NIV may not be appropriate for all immunocompromised patients. However, current evidence supports the use of NIV as the first-line approach for managing mild/moderate ARF in selected patients with immunosuppression of various origin.


Background : The etiologic role of Malassezia furfur in onychomycosis, because of its controversial keratinolytic ability, has not been proven. The most reported cases are distal subungual onychomycosis (DSO). In our knowledge no cases of proximal onychomycosis (PO) has been reported. For the first time we report proximal onychomycosis. This case report describes the isolation of Malassezia furfur from fingernails. Case presentation : An Iranian 56- year- old women had been referred to mycology lab with hyperkeratosis in proximal regions of right hand nails and clinical diagnosis of onychomycosis without paronychia in May 2012. She used several medicines for her cardiac disease, mental illness, severe stress and blood glucose fluctuation diseases. Scraping and sampling from nail lesions were done, budding yeast cells with broadband connections were observed in 15% KOH wet mounts. Also, other differentiation tests, consist of staining with methylen blue, cultures and biochemical tests were done. In order to rejecting the probable etiologic role of any dermatophytic or non-dermatophytic fungi in this case, samples were collected from other parts of the body by scotch tape and scraping with scalpel blade too, but the results of direct microscopy and culture were negative. Finally, Malassezia furfur was identified as the causative agent of onychomycosis. Conclusion : Despite failure to prove Malassezia furfur keratinolytic ability, it can be the etiologic agent of proximal onychomycosis that shows the aggressive properties of this species. Its clinical importance is the easier transmission to hospitalized patients and other people.


National data sets are often insufficient for priority setting by local public health systems and the communities they serve. We used marketing data to conduct an ecological analysis of hospital discharge rates in DeKalb County, Georgia, during 1996. Persons living in poorer areas had significantly higher discharge rates for the following conditions: hypertensive disease, blood-related conditions, pneumonia/influenza, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Local marketing data helped identify conditions associated with higher hospital utilization in poorer areas of this urban county. This identification of priority issues informs plans for behavior modification, access to primary care and a healthy environment.


Abstract. Melt ponds occupy a large part of the Arctic sea ice in summer and strongly affect the radiative budget of the atmosphere–ice–ocean system. In this study, the melt pond reflectance is considered in the framework of radiative transfer theory. The melt pond is modeled as a plane-parallel layer of pure water upon a layer of sea ice (the pond bottom). We consider pond reflection as comprising Fresnel reflection by the water surface and multiple reflections between the pond surface and its bottom, which is assumed to be Lambertian. In order to give a description of how to find the pond bottom albedo, we investigate the inherent optical properties of sea ice. Using the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation approach to light scattering by non-spherical particles (brine inclusions) and Mie solution for spherical particles (air bubbles), we conclude that the transport scattering coefficient in sea ice is a spectrally independent value. Then, within the two-stream approximation of the radiative transfer theory, we show that the under-pond ice spectral albedo is determined by two independent scalar values: the transport scattering coefficient and ice layer thickness. Given the pond depth and bottom albedo values, the bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) and albedo of a pond can be calculated with analytical formulas. Thus, the main reflective properties of the melt pond, including their spectral dependence, are determined by only three independent parameters: pond depth z, ice layer thickness H, and transport scattering coefficient of ice σt.The effects of the incident conditions and the atmosphere state are examined. It is clearly shown that atmospheric correction is necessary even for in situ measurements. The atmospheric correction procedure has been used in the model verification. The optical model developed is verified with data from in situ measurements made during three field campaigns performed on landfast and pack ice in the Arctic. The measured pond albedo spectra were fitted with the modeled spectra by varying the pond parameters (z, H, and σt). The coincidence of the measured and fitted spectra demonstrates good performance of the model: it is able to reproduce the albedo spectrum in the visible range with RMSD that does not exceed 1.5 % for a wide variety of melt pond types observed in the Arctic.


The class, check in, check
out influences of teachers were studied in three classroom modes, serious, friendly
and authoritative & dominating to assess effects of these on students self-assessed
classroom achievements. Class teachers of same grades in primary schools
exercised prescribed modes for one month. 180 students participated: 60 each in
the experimented three classes. Each participating student reported self-assessed
classroom achievements on a five point classroom achievement assessment scale.
It was assumed that modes would affect self-assessed classroom achievements.
Results achieved by SPSS ANOVA analysis indicated
significant difference in all modes on achievement ratings. Teachers' training
and policy implementations discussed.


Harboring the behavioral and histopathological signatures of Alzheimer's disease (AD), senescence accelerated mouse-prone 8 (SAMP8) mice are currently considered a robust model for studying AD. However, the underlying mechanisms, prioritized pathways and genes in SAMP8 mice linked to AD remain unclear. In this study, we provide a biological interpretation of the molecular underpinnings of SAMP8 mice. Our results were derived from differentially expressed genes in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex of SAMP8 mice compared to age-matched SAMR1 mice at 2, 6, and 12 months of age using cDNA microarray analysis. On the basis of PPI, MetaCore and the co-expression network, we constructed a distinct genetic sub-network in the brains of SAMP8 mice. Next, we determined that the regulation of synaptic transmission and apoptosis were disrupted in the brains of SAMP8 mice. We found abnormal gene expression of RAF1, MAPT, PTGS2, CDKN2A, CAMK2A, NTRK2, AGER, ADRBK1, MCM3AP, and STUB1, which may have initiated the dysfunction of biological processes in the brains of SAMP8 mice. Specifically, we found microRNAs, including miR-20a, miR-17, miR-34a, miR-155, miR-18a, miR-22, miR-26a, miR-101, miR-106b, and miR-125b, that might regulate the expression of nodes in the sub-network. Taken together, these results provide new insights into the biological and genetic mechanisms of SAMP8 mice and add an important dimension to our understanding of the neuro-pathogenesis in SAMP8 mice from a systems perspective.


Family history of colorectal cancer is a well-established and consistently strong risk factor for this disease. However, simply counting the number of affected relatives is an imprecise measure of colorectal cancer risk. We have reviewed current colorectal cancer screening guidelines from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, and UK, and found that all, including the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council 2005 guidelines, assign people to risk categories largely based on age and rudimentary metrics of family history and recommend screening regimens. We claim that these guidelines are not sufficiently precise for a large proportion of people within these categories, as there is a substantial variation in colorectal cancer risk, even for people with the same family history, and even for people with a predisposing mutation in the same gene, or set of genes. If there was a tool to estimate individual colorectal cancer risk based on all known risk factors for the disease - personal and family history of cancer (including ages, ages at diagnoses, and genetic relationships across multiple generations), all known genetic factors (rare high-risk genetic mutations as well as common genetic variants), environmental factors and personal characteristics - then accurate prediction of future risk of colorectal cancer (personalised risk) may be possible. The development and utility of such a comprehensive risk prediction tool is important for appropriate personalised clinical management, including targeted colorectal cancer screening.


Weakly-Supervised Object Detection (WSOD) aims at training a model with limited and coarse annotations for precisely locating the regions of objects. Existing works solve the WSOD problem by using a two-stage framework, i.e., generating candidate bounding boxes with weak supervision information and then refining them by directly employing supervised object detection models. However, most of such works mainly focus on the performance boosting of the first stage, while ignoring the better usage of generated candidate bounding boxes. To address this issue, we propose a new two-stage framework for WSOD, named GradingNet, which can make good use of the generated candidate bounding boxes. Specifically, the proposed GradingNet consists of two modules: Boxes Grading Module (BGM) and Informative Boosting Module (IBM). BGM generates proposals of the bounding boxes by using standard one-stage weakly-supervised methods, then utilizes Inclusion Principle to pick out highly-reliable boxes and evaluate the grade of each box. With the above boxes and their grade information, an effective anchor generator and a grade-aware loss are carefully designed to train the IBM. Taking the advantages of the grade information, our GradingNet achieves state-of-the-art performance on COCO, VOC 2007 and VOC 2012 benchmarks.


The deep learning research is more and more focused on the development of specific application that are both effective and efficient, together with the software progress also the hardware research is starting to aim at building embedded devices able to run deep neural networks without using big servers. In this perspective this thesis, developed in Addfor, is aimed at building a software for people counting on an embedded device. The motivation for this choice is to obtain an autonomous and versatile software avoiding all the privacy issues. Regarding the hardware choice, two main edge devices has been considered, the Google Coral dev board and the NVIDIA Jetson nano, they are compared in terms of inference speed and flexibility using a lot of different neural networks. The results suggested the choice of the Jetson nano that is more powerful when it comes to perform inference with complex networks. In order to deploy neural networks on this device they also have to be optimized, so a specific optimization procedure has been carried out using the TensorRT library. The core of the project is the definition of a model that is able to detect and count a great number of people from a single high resolution image. The model is based on a convolutional neural network built to perform object detection, this means that the network is able to detect and localize multiple instances of specific objects in an image. Than it has been trained using a case-specific private dataset, provided by Addfor, consisting in indoor images of classrooms with an high average number of people. One of the main issues that has to be faced regards the number of people, it is way higher than the number of instances that a neural network is usually trained to detect, for this reason has been developed an algorithm than partitions the original images and reconstructs the final result merging the detection of partitioned images and eliminating the duplicates. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the project three computer vision problem are addressed: The computation of the vanishing point, that provides useful information on the room geometry enabling the use of contraints on the dimensions of the detected people. The computation of the optical flow, that is a technique used to find the zones where there is movement, in this way the useless part of the image are eliminated. The matching of multiple cameras, it is useful in case of rooms that needs the use of more than one camera, it aims at eliminating the part of the image that are seen from the other camera to improve the efficiency and avoid duplicates. The resulting software is able to detect people with a good accuracy of over 80% and considering only the people number it reaches an accuracy of more than 95%, the software is also able to perform an inference in less than 15 seconds and this value is lowered up to 10 seconds using the information provided by the optical flow and the matching.


Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) (MIM#162200) is a relatively frequent genetic condition that predisposes to tumor formation. The main types of tumors occurring in NF1 patients are cutaneous and subcutaneous neurofibromas, plexiform neurofibromas, optic pathway gliomas, and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors. To search for somatic mutations in cutaneous (dermal) neurofibromas, whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed on seven spatially separated tumors and two reference tissues (blood and unaffected skin) from a single NF1 patient. Validation of WES findings was done using routine Sanger sequencing or Sequenom IPlex SNP genotyping. Exome sequencing confirmed the existence of a known familial splice-site mutation NM_000267.3:c.3113+1G4A in exon 23 of NF1 gene (HGMD ID CS951480) in blood, unaffected skin, and all tumor samples. In five out of seven analyzed tumors, we additionally detected second-hit mutations in the NF1 gene. Four of them were novel and one was previously observed. Each mutation was distinct, demonstrating the independent origin of each tumor. Only in two of seven tumors we detected an additional somatic mutation that was not associated with NF1. Our study demonstrated that somatic mutations of NF1 are likely the main drivers of cutaneous tumor formation. The study provides evidence for the rareness of single base pair level alterations in the exomes of benign NF1 cutaneous tumors. European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication, 8 October 2014; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2014.210


Ultrafast relaxation dynamics of photogenerated carriers in nanostructure based saturable absorber (SA) are investigated using a degenerate cross-polarized pump–probe experiment at 1.55 µm operating wavelength. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) encased in micelles are studied and compared to bundled ones as well as to iron doped InGaAs/InP multiple quantum wells (MQW). SA parameters for all optical signal regeneration (AOSR) are extracted from the normalized differential transmission. Although all samples show the same order of recombination time, SWNT in micelles present a much higher contrast ratio associated to a lower level of saturation fluence as compared to their bundled and MQW counterparts.


Cattle generally ovulates single ova (monotocous) under most circumstances, with a successful pregnancy producing only one offspring per pregnancy. Occasionally, the reproductive process in cattle results in twin birth as with many other monotocous species. As twinning is increasing over the time, dairy industry must be prepared to cope up with the negative effects of twinning (Guerra-Martinez et al., 1990). Lack of basic and applied scientific data on twinning in dairy cattle made the dairy industries less prepared to make better management decisions to mitigate these negative effects. Better understanding of physiologic mechanisms associated with twinning will encourage adaptations of sound managemental practices which can minimize/mitigate the negative effects of twinning.


There is a pressing need for road authorities to take a proactive role in the deployment of automated vehicles on the existing road network. This requires a comprehensive understanding of the road infrastructure requirements that would lead to safe operation of automated vehicles. In this context, a field test with Lane Departure Warning and Lane Keeping Systems-enabled vehicles was conducted in the province of North Holland, The Netherlands. The performance of these automated systems was evaluated using performance indicators such as Mean Lateral Position and Standard Deviation of Lane Position. In this study, the Systems Theoretic Accident Modelling and Processes (STAMP) model was adopted to understand the relationships between the various components of the "Road System", which in this study include the road authority, the automated vehicle system, elements of the road infrastructure, and weather conditions. Empirical data from the experiment is used to estimate the relationships between the different components, followed by the assessment of their impact on the performance of the automated vehicles. It was found that visibility conditions have a significant effect on detection performance, which worsens in rainy conditions especially under streetlights. It has been also observed that there is a significant difference in Lane Position between Left Curves and Straight sections, and between lane widths less than 250 cms and those that have larger widths. These findings are combined with the results from the STAMP analysis to formulate a set of road infrastructure requirements that would lead to safe performance of Lane Assistance Systems.


The paper in hand is an attempt to apply deconstructionist approach to analyze the poetic eloquence with various post-structural elements. Post-structuralism is postmodem phenomena, which is applied and explored widely. As part of post-structuralism, 'Deconstruction' is innovative and distinctive technique of interpretation. By this way, new linguistic and thematic vistas can be explored very well. The paper is an analysis of Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by the application of deconstruction. The study explores qualitatively signifiers and signified as non-structural elements. Then the presence in absence as deconstructing element, is explored, whereas, the contradictions, metaphor, differance (temporal and spatial) are found as significant and peculiar features of post-structuralism, and finally intertextuality is investigated as the instance of the unstable meanings and de-centred structures. Therefore, it is found that the poem in theme, form and the structure is the tall talk of flexible aspects of language indeterminacy.


The primary objective of this study is to develop a simulation model for predicting nutrient fluxes from the land application of animal waste, resulting in the Land Application Nutrient Dynamics (LAND) model. The simulation model is being developed in STELLA® software focusing on the following processes: 1) microbial decomposition ofbiomass and organic waste constituents; 2) the plant uptake of nutrients, and 3) the volatilization, assimilation, runoff, and leaching of nitrogen compounds. Model structure is based on the PHOENIX model for carbon and nitrogen dynamics in grassland soils with modifications for hydrological processes. Model parameterization and calibration were based on lita-ature values and published data. This mcxlel could aidin a better understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that determine the fate and transport of nutrients, mainly carbon and nitrogen, upon application of animal waste to grassland field systems. This ~ should also aid in developing effective nutrient management strategies for confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Preliminary information is presented in this paper.


The paper is trying to present a post – realist approach in order to explain the essence of the Chinese foreign policy, its main strategic trends of thoughts, and its perception about the complex contemporary world. Daoist and Confucianism roots within the content of some keyconcepts of the Chinese strategic contemporary trends are also identified as an effort to better understand the Chinese strategic culture and the way it shapes the future of international relations. Accommodating interests of the main characters is not a kind "idealistic objective", but rather it reveals a new foundation for realizing a "harmonious global society", by connecting different perceptions of the main civilizations about the "global governance" and about manking as a "community of common destiny". Far from expressing some utopian views "such as analyzing some of the main Chinese key-concepts as being the "harmonious world", a "New Security Concept" or "New Type of Relations between Great Powers" it can represent the beginning of a new stage in implementing "global governance" paradigm.


For more than 50 years, it has been known that K+ is an essential activator of pyruvate kinase (Kachmar, J. F., and Boyer, P. D. (1953) J. Biol. Chem. 200, 669-683). However, the role of K+ in the catalysis by pyruvate kinase has not been totally understood. Previous studies without K+ showed that the affinity of ADP-Mg2+ depends on the concentration of phosphoenolpyruvate, although the kinetics of the enzyme at saturating K+ concentrations show independence in the binding of substrates (Reynard, A. M., Hass, L. F., Jacobsen, D. D. & Boyer, P. D. (1961) J. Biol. Chem. 236, 2277-2283). Here, we explored the kinetics of the enzyme with and without K+. The results show that without K+, the kinetic mechanism of pyruvate kinase changes from random to ordered with phosphoenol-pyruvate as first substrate. Vmax with K+ was about 400 higher than without K+. In the presence of K+, the affinities for phosphoenol-pyruvate, ADP-Mg2+, oxalate, and ADP-Cr2+ were 2-6-fold higher than in the absence of K+. This as well as fluorescence data also indicate that K+ is involved in the acquisition of the active conformation of the enzyme, allowing either phosphoenolpyruvate or ADP to bind independently (random mechanism). In the absence of K+, ADP cannot bind to the enzyme until phosphoenolpyruvate forms a competent active site (ordered mechanism). We propose that K+ induces the closure of the active site and the arrangement of the residues involved in the binding of the nucleotide.


This chapter takes stock of fifty years of research on mode dynamics—that is, the decisions to switch and add operation modes in a foreign country—as a central international business strategy phenomenon. Numerous studies have advanced knowledge about the various forms of mode dynamics and their underlying drivers, especially regarding mode switches. However, this review of the research also reveals that understanding of the phenomenon of mode additions needs further development. The chapter proposes a theoretical framework for understanding mode additions and provides the example of modularization as an illustration of a mechanism that may help improve the cost–benefit balance of mode switches and additions.


This guide outlines the library resources and services that we offer to all faculty including content that can be integrated into Canvas


Because of lacking ventilatory stimulation by sex hormones in postmenopausal women (PW), one might expect a lowered arterial oxygen saturation (S(O(2))) in hypoxia and therefore a stronger erythropoietic reaction than in young women (YW). Nine untrained (UTRPW) and 11 trained (TRPW) postmenopausal altitude residents (2600 m) were compared to 16 untrained (UTRYW) and 16 trained young women (TRYW) to check this hypothesis and to study the combined response to hypoxia and training. S(O(2)) was decreased in PW (89.2% +/- 2.2 vs. 93.6 +/- 0.7% in YW, p < 0.01). Hb mass, however, was similar in UT (UTRYW: 9.2 +/- 0.9 g/kg(1), UTRPW: 8.7 +/- 1.0 g/kg). But if body fat rise with age was excluded by relation to fat-free mass, Hb mass was increased in UTRPW (+1.2 g/kg, p < 0.05) compared to UTRYW. Training caused a similar rise of Hb mass in PW and YW (0.3 g/kg per mL/kg x min(1) rise in V(O(2peak))). There was no difference in erythropoietin among the groups. Ferritin was higher in PW than YW. The results show that female hormones and fitness level have to be considered in studies on erythropoiesis at altitude. The role of erythropoietin during chronic hypoxia still has to be clarified.


The use of a large‐aperture scintillometer to estimate sensible heat flux has been successfully tested by several investigators. Most of these investigations, however, have been confined to homogeneous or to sparse with single vegetation‐type surfaces. The use of the scintillometer over surfaces made up of contrasting vegetation types is problematic because it requires estimates of effective roughness length and effective displacement height in order to derive area‐average sensible heat from measurements of the refractive index. In this study an approach based on a combination of scintillometer measurements and an aggregation scheme has been used to derive area‐average sensible heat flux over a transect spanning two adjacent and contrasting vegetation patches: grass and mesquite. The performance of this approach has been assessed using data collected during the 1997 Semi‐Arid Land‐Surface‐Atmosphere field campaign. The results show that the combined approach performed remarkably well, and the correlation coefficient between measured and simulated area‐average sensible heat flux was ∼0.95. This is of interest because this approach offers a reliable means for validating remotely sensed estimates of surface fluxes at comparable spatial scales.


Native red squirrels Sciurus vulgaris in Great Britain and Ireland are threatened by alien grey squirrels S. carolinensis through exploitation competition and spillover of squirrelpox virus (SQPV). By accelerating the replacement of red squirrels by the invader, SQPV represents a fundamental factor to consider when planning management and conservation strategies. In mainland Europe, grey squirrels introduced to Italy threaten the survival of the whole continental red squirrel population, but no extensive surveys for SQPV presence have been carried out in the region. We therefore investigated SQPV infection in north Italian grey squirrel populations through a combination of serological and molecular methods. Firstly, we analysed sera from 285 individuals through an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect antibodies against SQPV. Secondly, a PCR designed to amplify a segment of the G8R SQPV gene was carried out on DNA extracted from swabs and skin tissue samples from a second set of 66 grey squirrels. ELISA tests identified four reactors (1.4%), but the subsequent PCR survey did not detect any SQPV DNA. Based on the low prevalence observed and on PCR results, we believe that the four suspected positives were the result of an ELISA cross‐reaction following exposure to another pox virus. Considering sample size and performances of the two methods, confidence of freedom from SQPV resulted above 99.9%. However, because of the severe impact of SQPV on red squirrels, we recommend the implementation of a passive surveillance plan for the early detection of an SQPV emergence in continental Europe.


Symbolic execution is an effective but expensive technique for automated test generation. Over the years, a large number of refined symbolic execution techniques have been proposed to improve its efficiency. However, the symbolic execution efficiency problem remains, and largely limits the application of symbolic execution in practice. Orthogonal to refined symbolic execution, in this paper we propose to accelerate symbolic execution through semantic-preserving code transformation on the target programs. During the initial stage of this direction, we adopt a particular code transformation, compiler optimization, which is initially proposed to accelerate program concrete execution by transforming the source program into another semantic-preserving target program with increased efficiency (e.g., faster or smaller). However, compiler optimizations are mostly designed to accelerate program concrete execution rather than symbolic execution. Recent work also reported that unified settings on compiler optimizations that can accelerate symbolic execution for any program do not exist at all. Therefore, in this work we propose a machine-learning based approach to tuning compiler optimizations to accelerate symbolic execution, whose results may also aid further design of specific code transformations for symbolic execution. In particular, the proposed approach LEO separates source-code functions and libraries through our program-splitter, and predicts individual compiler optimization (i.e., whether a type of code transformation is chosen) separately through analyzing the performance of existing symbolic execution. Finally, LEO applies symbolic execution on the code transformed by compiler optimization (through our local-optimizer). We conduct an empirical study on GNU Coreutils programs using the KLEE symbolic execution engine. The results show that LEO significantly accelerates symbolic execution, outperforming the default KLEE configurations (i.e., turning on/off all compiler optimizations) in various settings, e.g., with the default training/testing time, LEO achieves the highest line coverage in 50/68 programs, and its average improvement rate on all programs is 46.48%/88.92% in terms of line coverage compared with turning on/off all compiler optimizations.


This article responds to the call, long latent in queer theory, for more nuanced portrayals of vocality. As Andrew Anastasia writes in the introductory issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, accounts of vocality that consider only the voice's discursive or linguistic qualities "relegate the embodied voice to a service role of rendering audible the coherent thought." Similarly, for trans-gender individuals undergoing vocal change, media technologies of vocality like the telephone and the answering machine—the subject of this article—do more than render subjects audible. Through a sustained engagement with archives concerning Cher and her transgender son, Chaz Bono, including the documentary Becoming Chaz (dir. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, US, 2011) and memoirs and coming- out guides written by Chaz, and with a particular focus on an exchange concerning an answering machine that lodges Chaz's changing voice, this article examines how sonic archives are, for Cher and Chaz as for earlier listeners, contested sites of mourning and becoming. Through a reading of Chaz's voice on Cher's answering machine, one that considers the projects of phonography and telephony on which it is based, and which draws as well on the concurrent archival concerns of the television show Transparent (Amazon, 2014–19), the article demonstrates how the epistemic and affective stakes of transgender bodies are mediated through specific sonic technologies that give rise to forms of mournful archives. It seeks to show how the answering machine subtends histories that conflate literal death and gender transition; for Chaz, it also affords more radical possibilities than verbal practice alone. Attending to the answering machine complicates the association between voice and agency on which a slogan like "Silence = Death" relies and yields a rethinking of media history and sound studies as they relate to queer lives.


Background : Central and peripheral neural blockade techniques are popular for lower and upper limb surgeries respectively. Lower limb surgery is amenable to central neural blockade techniques, anatomical and physiological imperatives makes peripheral neural blockade more suited for upper limb surgeries. We looked at the utilization of this latter technique in our centre, over a 10-year period. Methods : Anaesthetic and the operating theatre medical records of patients who had upper limb surgery were retrieved. Information about patient demographic characteristics, surgical indication, type of anaesthesia and peripheral blockade were obtained. The data were analyzed and presented as simple nominal and frequency valves and tables. Results : Over the 10–year review period, 269 upper limb surgeries were done, whereby, 239(89%) were under general anaesthesia and 30 (11%) were with peripheral neural blockade. Axillary brachial plexus block accounted for 27 (90%) of the peripheral blocks, while 2 patients (6.7%) had wrist block and 1 patient (3.3%) had elbow block. Conclusion : The study showed low utilization of peripheral neural block techniques for upper limb surgeries over the review period. Upper limb neural blockades are easily performed with the aid of nerve stimulators and ultrasound-guided technique. Greater use should be made of them to avoid the risk of general anaesthesia and promote better postoperative pain management. Key words : upper limb surgery, peripheral neural blockade


BACKGROUND
Most of the previously published data suggest a role for oxidative or nitrosative stress in ethanol-induced nervous system damage. Moreover, ethanol is able to impair learning abilities in adult mammalian brain, a process suggested to be directly related to hippocampal neurogenesis. Ebselen, a synthetic compound with antioxidant properties, is able to prevent ethanol-induced impairment of neurogenesis in adult rats. The aim of the present work was to further demonstrate the ability of ebselen to prevent biochemical alterations, and preserve long-term potentiation (LTP) and learning abilities, in the hippocampus of chronic alcoholic adult rats.

METHODS
Biochemical markers of oxidative stress (glutathione and malondialdehyde) were assayed in hippocampi of control rats and animals fed a liquid alcoholic diet (Lieber-De Carli) supplemented or not with ebselen. Long-term potentiation and hippocampal-dependent tests were studied in all animal groups.

RESULTS
The hippocampal concentrations of glutathione and malondialdehyde were decreased and increased, respectively, in alcohol-treated animals, and did not differ from those of the control and the alcohol+ebselen groups. Long-term potentiation in hippocampal slices from ethanol-treated animals was prevented, when compared with controls, and occurred with a similar profile in control animals and in the alcohol+ebselen groups. Learning ability was tested with the Morris water maze test. Escape latencies were higher in ethanol-treated rats than in control animals or the ones treated with ethanol+ebselen.

CONCLUSIONS
The results herein strongly suggest that oxidative mechanisms may underlie the hippocampal effects of ethanol in adult rats, in view of the protective effect of ebselen.


The sparse synthesis signal model has enjoyed much success and popularity in the recent decade. Much progress ranging from clear theoretical foundations to appealing applications has been made in this field. Alongside the synthesis approach, an analysis counterpart has been used over the years. Despite the similarity, markedly different nature of the two approaches has been observed. In a recent work, the analysis model was formally formulated and the nature of the model was discussed extensively. Furthermore, a new greedy algorithm (GAP) for recovering the signals satisfying the model was proposed and its effectiveness was demonstrated. While the understanding of the analysis model and the new algorithm has been broadened, the stability and the robustness against noise of the model and the algorithm have been mostly left out. In this work, we adapt and propose a new GAP algorithm in order to deal with the presence of noise. Empirical evidence for the algorithm is also provided.


Surface oxide formation inhibiting the etch of a tantalum nitride (TaN) film was controlled through step pressure modulation and H2 addition in a Cl2/Ar based plasma-assisted cyclic etch process. Sources contributing to the oxidation of the film included the mask materials, specifically the silicon-containing antireflective coating, as measured by optical emission spectroscopy. Surface analysis of etched films by secondary ion mass spectroscopy showed the presence of a modified surface layer ∼2 nm thick with localized oxygen concentrations 0.02 and 0.003 that of the control sample (without and with H2 addition, respectively). Reduced Ta–O bonding observed via x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy as a result of H2 addition was found to enhance etch rate uniformity of both blanket and patterned films. Minimization of redeposited oxidized TaN on the mask sidewalls of patterned samples was achieved using this etch process and by controlling the lithographic stack composition.Surface oxide formation inhibiting the etch of a tantalum nitride (TaN) film was controlled through step pressure modulation and H2 addition in a Cl2/Ar based plasma-assisted cyclic etch process. Sources contributing to the oxidation of the film included the mask materials, specifically the silicon-containing antireflective coating, as measured by optical emission spectroscopy. Surface analysis of etched films by secondary ion mass spectroscopy showed the presence of a modified surface layer ∼2 nm thick with localized oxygen concentrations 0.02 and 0.003 that of the control sample (without and with H2 addition, respectively). Reduced Ta–O bonding observed via x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy as a result of H2 addition was found to enhance etch rate uniformity of both blanket and patterned films. Minimization of redeposited oxidized TaN on the mask sidewalls of patterned samples was achieved using this etch process and by controlling the lithographic stack composition.


Objectives This study aimed to assess how often overridden drug allergy alerts (ODAAs) lead to allergic adverse drug events (All-ADEs) and to evaluate the frequency with which drug allergy alerts (DAAs) were overridden and the reasons, as well as appropriateness of these overrides. Methods A retrospective observational study of DAA generated between 2014 and 2016 was conducted. The corresponding DAA records were reviewed to determine the frequency of alert overrides. A chart review was performed on a subset of 194 ODAA (the first of every 3 chronologically ordered ODAA) to identify All-ADEs and to evaluate the override reasons and the appropriateness of these overrides. Results A total of 2044 DAAs were overridden (override rate of 44.8%). Most were triggered by a nonexact match (93.81%), when ordering nervous system (21.1%) and cardiovascular system (19.6%) drugs and were generated by physicians (72.7%). The main override reason was that the patient was already taking the drug or had previously tolerated the drug. Only 9.28% of ODAAs were inappropriately overridden. Six All-ADEs (3.09%) were identified and were due to anti-infective (1), antineoplastic (1), and iodinated-contrast (4) drug administration. Most All-ADEs were cutaneous and were mild. None was life-threatening or fatal. The All-ADEs rate was higher among inappropriately ODAA (15.79%, P = 0.013). Conclusions Alert overrides are not exempt from clinical consequences, although few are associated with All-ADEs. It is necessary to identify the drugs involved in those reactions and to update allergy lists to generate only specific and important DAA and to avoid the negative consequences of overrides.


This paper concerns the business of law, a subject ignored by legal academia and sugarcoated by the organized bar. If law professors express little or no interest in this subject, their students most certainly do. Indeed, I have found that students are desperately hungry for information on the day-to-day realities of working in a law firm. Students are especially keen to learn about possible paths for career advancement within firms, across them, or across the organizations served by the firms.

Paths for career advancement do exist, but they are not easy to find or pursue. Law firms are hardly going to assist their younger lawyers in this endeavor, as the interests of senior lawyers do not align with the interests of the associates. In fact, senior lawyers are engaged in competition with each other. As a result, younger lawyers may experience significant uncertainty and frustration in determining how to promote their careers.
This paper is my attempt to shed light on the hidden law firm dynamics likely to shape the career success or failure of junior lawyers working in law firms. Such knowledge may empower associates to think strategically about their careers, as their senior colleagues already do. The ideas presented here are based on my fourteen years of teaching in a law school and my eleven years working as an associate attorney or foreign legal consultant at four law firms in three countries.


On February 11, 2016, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the detection of gravitational waves from two merging black holes. We at JCER celebrate Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and congratulate LIGO and all the people and agencies involved for this landmark discovery predicted by Einstein 100 years ago. Although it is unclear whether this discovery will impact consciousness research, there is no doubt that this discovery marks the beginning of a new era in astronomy, cosmology and even quantum gravity.


This research studies a brand new Magnesium Lithium Alloy, LAZ1151, with trace Sc additions. The mechanical properties and microstructures of the as-cast and alloys after three and six month aging were observed and analyzed. Microstructure and XRD confirms the existence of α phase precipitates (Mg rich) in both as-cast and aging specimens of the alloy. Grain growth was observed in the alloy after room temperature aging. The tensile strength of the as-cast LAZ1151 is 147 MPa; the value is decreased to 135 MPa after six month aging, showing typical room temperature softening. Strengthening via the use of cold rolling was tried; a maximum tensile strength of 180 MPa was achieved after 90% rolling reduction, which is mainly due to strain hardening.


Despite the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and the field of MOOC research, we have a limited understanding of the specific needs of different learner groups and how MOOCs can successfully address those needs. Video lectures and demonstrations are a central learning component of MOOCs. This paper contributes to the research community by examining the use of MOOC videos for two groups of learners. In particular, we explore whether there is an observable difference between specialists' and non‐specialists' video‐watching activity. We analyse data collected from three MOOCs on the edX platform. Our findings indicate that while age and educational background impacts the level of video activity, there is no significant difference between specialists and non‐specialists. We conclude that the MOOC format may be suited to non‐specialist groups, allowing them to self‐direct their learning and utilise videos as educational resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


Increased expression of the peptide hormone retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) has been implicated in the development of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and visual dysfunction. Prior investigations of the mechanisms that influence RBP4 synthesis have focused solely on changes in mRNA abundance. Yet, the production of many secreted proteins is controlled at the level of mRNA translation, as it allows for a rapid and reversible change in expression. Herein, we evaluated Rbp4 mRNA translation using sucrose density gradient centrifugation. In the liver of fasted rodents, Rbp4 mRNA translation was low. In response to re-feeding, Rbp4 mRNA translation was enhanced and RBP4 levels in serum were increased. In H4IIE cells, refreshing culture medium promoted Rbp4 mRNA translation and expression of the protein. Rbp4 mRNA abundance was not increased by either experimental manipulation. Enhanced Rbp4 mRNA translation was associated with activation of the kinase mTORC1 and enhanced phosphorylation of the translational repressor 4E-BP1. In H4IIE cells, expression of a 4E-BP1 variant that is unable to be phosphorylated by mTORC1 or suppression of mTORC1 with rapamycin attenuated activity of a luciferase reporter encoding the Rbp4 mRNA 5'-untranslated region (UTR). Purine substitutions to disrupt a terminal oligopyrimidine (TOP)-like sequence in the Rbp4 5'-UTRprevented the suppressive effect of rapamycin on reporter activity. Rapamycin also prevented upregulation of Rbp4 mRNA translation in the liver, and reduced serum levels of RBP4 in response to feeding. Overall, the findings support a model in which nutrient-induced activation of mTORC1 up regulates Rbp4 mRNA translation to promote RBP4 synthesis.


Rapid economic growth of developing countries like India and China implies that these countries become important actors in the global energy system. Examples of this impact are the present day oil shortages and rapidly increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Global energy models are used explore possible future developments of the global energy system and identify policies to prevent potential problems. Such estimations of future energy use in developing countries are very uncertain. Crucial factors in the future energy use of these regions are electrification, urbanisation and income distribution, issues that are generally not included in present day global energy models. Model simulations in this thesis show that current insight in developments in low-income regions lead to a wide range of expected energy use in 2030 of the residential and transport sectors. This is mainly caused by many different model calibration options that result from the limited data availability for model development and calibration. We developed a method to identify the impact of model calibration uncertainty on future projections. We developed a new model for residential energy use in India, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. Experiments with this model show that the impact of electrification and income distribution is less univocal than often assumed. The use of fuelwood, with related health risks, can decrease rapidly if the income of poor groups increases. However, there is a trade off in terms of CO2 emissions because these groups gain access to electricity and the ownership of appliances increases. Another issue is the potential role of new technologies in developing countries: will they use the opportunities of leapfrogging? We explored the potential role of hydrogen, an energy carrier that might play a central role in a sustainable energy system. We found that hydrogen only plays a role before 2050 under very optimistic assumptions. Regional energy policies have an important role. For instance, low energy taxes and subsidies in developing countries limit the opportunities to promote alternative energy options. A final issue in this thesis is the impact of the changing development context – depletion of fossil fuels and climate change – on the economic development of low-income regions. We developed a stylized population-economy-energy-climate model (SUSCLIME) in which automated agents can take policy-decisions and develop strategies to cope with resource depletion and climate change. From preliminary model experiments it appears that developing countries are more vulnerable to both resource depletion and climate change. A co-benefit of a long-term focus on avoiding climate change is that it also slows down fossil resource depletion. A short-term focus to reduce impacts from depletion of endogenous fossil resources has probably not much synergy with climate policy because imported fossil energy (or coal) is more attractive than developing alternatives.


: Integration of R-factor RP4 with the chromosome of E. coli was studied with the use of replication thermosensitive mutant pEG1 of this factor. It was found that the frequency of integration of factor pEG1 containing the ampicillin transposone Tn1 with the chromosome of bacteria JC411 carrying transposone Tn1 previously inserted into it was very high and markedly exceeded that of its insertion into the same chromosome but not carrying this transposone. The frequency of factor pEG1 insertion into the chromosome of bacteria JC 1553 rec A defective with respect to genetic recombination was less than 2.10(-5) and did not depend on the presence of transposone Tn1 in it. Probably, insertion of factor RP4 into the bacterial chromosome may be realized through the rec A-dependent process of recombination between transposone Tn1 previously translocated into the chromosome and the same transposone contained in R-factor.


The muon anomalous magnetic moment is one of the most precisely measured quantities in particle physics. Recent high precision measurements (0.54ppm) at Brookhaven reveal a ``discrepancy'' by 3 standard deviations from the electroweak Standard Model which could be a hint for an unknown contribution from physics beyond the Standard Model. This triggered numerous speculations about the possible origin of the ``missing piece''. The remarkable 14-fold improvement of the previous CERN experiment, actually animated a multitude of new theoretical efforts which lead to a substantial improvement of the prediction of a_mu. The dominating uncertainty of the prediction, caused by strong interaction effects, could be reduced substantially, due to new hadronic cross section measurements in electron-positron annihilation at low energies. After an introduction and a brief description of the principle of the experiment, I present a major update and review the status of the theoretical prediction and discuss the role of the hadronic vacuum polarization effects and the hadronic light--by--light scattering contribution. Prospects for the future will be briefly discussed. As, in electroweak precision physics, the muon g-2 shows the largest established deviation between theory and experiment at present, it will remain one of the hot topics for further investigations.


Development education is an under-theorised aspect of international volunteering, yet it is implicit in the mission statements of many sending organisations when they promise a transformative experience. What does international volunteering offer, and can it make returned volunteers 'think global'? This paper suggests a tentative definition of development education, outlining key pedagogical concepts that can be applied to analysis of international volunteering projects. Case study research about Platform2, a pilot 'Global Learning' scheme funded by the UK government, explores components and challenges of delivery. Discussion highlights the importance of formal structuring of educational opportunities, how international volunteering can both perpetuate and disrupt stereotypes of the global South, the role of proximity in expanding volunteers' capacity to think critically about development, as well as the drawbacks of jumping scale to learn about citizenship.


The analysis of food service costs in this article provides an overview of the potential for cost containment of alternative food service systems for facilities ranging in capacity from 100 to 550 beds. This work was conducted mainly with U.S. Army hospital facilities in mind; however, the methodology and overall results are general and apply to any hospital that wishes to design an economical food service.


Mechanisms underlying the change in K excretion (UKV) during the first 6 days after uninephrectomy (UNX) were examined in unanesthetized rats. Arterial plasma K concentrations (PK) were 0.55 meq/l above control values at 12 and 24 h after UNX but were not significantly different 36-72 h after UNX. To determine if there was an increased sensitivity of the distal K secretory mechanism to increases in PK, an intragastric KCl infusion was given. The delta UKV/delta PK per kidney values were in the following order: 6-day UNX > 2-day UNX > control. In the normal rats, an acute increase of 0.5 meq/l in PK increased UKV by an amount approximating 25% of the increase in UKV observed 12-24 h after UNX. Amiloride, administered 48 h after UNX, increased Na excretion per kidney and decreased UKV per kidney approximately twice as much in UNX as in control groups. Thus an adaptive increase of amiloride-inhibitable K secretion occurred within 2 days of UNX and continued to increase thereafter. This K adaptation may have been induced by transient increases in PK.


This article analyzes the characteristics of antisocial behavior and interpersonal values of high school students (Compulsory Secondary Education) (CSE), the profile of students with high levels of antisocial behavior with regard to interpersonal values, and possible protection from antisocial behavior that interpersonal values could provide. The Interpersonal Values Questionnaire was used to assess interpersonal values, and the Antisocial-Delinquent Behaviors Questionnaire was employed to assess antisocial behaviors. The sample was made up of 885 CSE students aged 14–17. The results revealed a greater prevalence of antisocial behaviors among males and fourth-year CSE students. Moreover, antisocial behaviors were more frequent among participants with high scores in Stimulation, Recognition, Independence, and Leadership and low scores in Conformity and Benevolence. Lastly, logistic regression analyses showed that low scores in Conformity and Benevolence and high scores in Independence predicted high scores in antisocial behavior. The possibility of identifying certain interpersonal values which could positively or negatively affect the appearance of antisocial behavior during adolescence is discussed.


This study considers gender situation in Africa before the onset of contemporary occupational practices. It examines gender and occupation in African setting with particular reference to Ikot Effanga Mkpa Community in Nigeria. It was an ex-post factor review relying mainly on qualitative research method using Focus Group Discussion and Indepth Interview. The findings revealed predominant occupation in traditional Africa to include: farming, fishing, trading, hunting, brace work, etc. It shows that women participated in some of these occupations only under the guidance of men. The gains derived from women participation goes to the household head and women only benefited as members of household, and men were culturally accorded headship of household. Exception only occurred in religious vocation where women served as priest of goddesses in which they were not under men. Thus, the study reveals relative deprivation, male dominance, and subordination of female gender in African traditional occupational practices. The existence of cultural practices like "Iban Isong" help to prevent male verbal and other forms of violence against women. The study recommended among others public enlightenment and mass education on women right of access to occupation as a means of empowerment and emancipation in order to ensure development.