For sustainable Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems, the solar power prediction is an essential element to optimize performance, allowing devices to schedule energy-intensive tasks in periods with excess energy. In regions with volatile weather, this requires taking the weather forecast into account. The problem is how to provide such solar energy predictions with high accuracy for large-scale IoT systems with various devices in an autonomous way, without manual adaptation effort. We present a detailed study on machine-learning approaches for the prediction of solar power intake for large-scale IoT systems. We examine which machine learning models, feature sets, and sampling rates gain the best results for a medium-term forecasting horizon. We also explore an operational setting in which devices are deployed without prior data and machine learning models are retrained for each sensor continuously as a form of online learning. Our results show that prediction errors can be reduced by 20 % compared to the state of the art, despite strong weather volatility.


The article by Yang et al (2005) is provocative, thoughtful and intriguing and provided much food for thought. Participants were divided into three groups: liars, normal controls and antisocial controls. Half of those in the liars group were malingerers and the others displayed conning/manipulative behaviour on the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL–R), deceitfulness criteria for DSM–IV antisocial personality disorders or pathological lying as defined in the PCL–R. Yang et al referred to pathological liars specifically in the title of their paper but we are concerned that the definition of liars was so broad and wondered whether the article would not have been better entitled 'Prefrontal white matter in liars'. The authors included individuals with different lying characteristics in a group of pathological liars and this is problematic. Our recent review (Dike et al, 2005) showed that the term 'pathological lying' has been used differently in the literature from how it was used by Yang et al. Pathological lying is distinct from malingering or the other forms of lying exhibited by those included by Yang et al in the liars group. We defined pathological lying as 'falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, may be extensive and very complicated, and may manifest over a period of years or even a lifetime'. Pathological lying is a repetitive pattern of lying for which an external reason (such as financial gain) often appears absent, and the psychological basis is often unclear. This definition has not been accepted by the psychiatric community but summarises the elements of pathological lying. Interestingly, we found that pathological lying can also be found among successful individuals without a history of criminal behaviour. We commend Yang et al for investigating the neurobiological basis of lying. Whether the prefrontal white matter changes indicate a causal relationship with lying or just an association is unknown. However, pathological lying per se was not specifically investigated, as suggested.


Economic analyses on the viability of corn (Zea mays, L.) stover harvest for bioenergy production have largely been based on simulation modeling. While some studies have utilized field research data, most field-based analyses have included a limited number of sites and a narrow geographic distribution. An Iowa case study is developed illustrating the use of data extracted from a database of geographically distributed field studies for a region-specific economic analysis. The analysis utilizes grain and residue yield and associated management information from two Iowa field research sites that are Sun Grant Regional Partnership locations associated with the Corn Stover Regional Partnership Team and the Renewable Energy Assessment Project (REAP). This information is used with the Biomass Logistics Model, to quantify costs for delivery of corn stover to a biorefinery for three stover harvest strategies. Results show that economics tends to drive residue harvest toward higher removal rates. However, higher removal rates can degrade soil resources. Limiting harvest quantities to leave sufficient residues to protect against excessive erosion and maintain soil organic carbon levels may provide economic incentives for producers to adopt cropping practices, such as no-till and cover cropping, allowing for higher harvest rates and reducing biomass costs to the biorefinery.


Competitive sport is a global phenomenon with a common language, but at the same time locally embedded in the national culture. The global character gives competitive sport an attraction, which can create an important arena for integration when people arrive to a new country. Problems can rise when diverse expectations and images meet. To create understanding and facilitate integration for children and youth from different countries it is important to understand which images of sport that is present. The competitive sport is high valued in Sweden and sport for children is central in the Swedish youth politics. Swedish sport relies on voluntary commitment. Approximately 650 000 people (of 9 million inhabitants) are voluntary engaged as leaders in sport in Sweden and 70% of children between 7 and 14 years compete in sports clubs. The purpose of this study is to give an understanding of the images that newly arrived children and youth to Sweden have on sport and sports activities. We will conduct the study by letting the children make drawings and talk to them about what their thoughts were when they created the drawings. This will be analysed through a phenomenological perspective. We will discuss the results in correspondence with which implications they can have on the efforts of integration of other cultures in Sweden.


We investigated the implications of foliar hydration and terpene content on leaf flammability in two widely distributed forest species of the Mediterranean basin, Quercus ilex, which does not store terpenes, and Pinus halepensis, a terpene-storing species. The experiments were carried out in plants grown under different water regimes that generated a wide range of foliar hydration and terpene contents. We monitored the temperatures and time elapsed to reach the smoke, pyrolysis and flame phases. Smoke appeared much earlier (37 versus 101 s) and at lower temperatures (96 versus 139 degrees C) in Quercus ilex than in Pinus halepensis. Quercus ilex reached pyrolysis earlier than Pinus halepensis (278 versus 338 s) but at the same temperature (365-371 degrees C). There were no significant differences in time elapsed nor in temperature for flammability (386-422 s; 505-487 degrees C in both species). Quercus ilex had lower water hydration than Pinus halepensis (41 versus 100%) and the leaf content of terpenes in Quercus was three orders of magnitude lower. The results of this study show no differences in the flame phase between the two species and the absence of a significant relationship between temperature and elapsed time of the different flammability phases in relation to monoterpene content; thus indicating that the role of monoterpenes in flammability phases is smaller than that of the water content. This, however, does not exclude the effects of terpene content on plant combustibility and fire propagation once fires start.


Purpose Despite a paucity of evidence, prevention guidelines typically advise avoidance of heavy lifting in an effort to protect against breast cancer–related lymphedema. This study compared acute responses in arm swelling and related symptoms after low- and heavy-load resistance exercise among women at risk for lymphedema while receiving adjuvant taxane-based chemotherapy. Methods This is a randomized, crossover equivalence trial. Women receiving adjuvant taxane-based chemotherapy for breast cancer who had undergone axillary lymph node dissection (n = 21) participated in low-load (60%–65% 1-repetition maximum, two sets of 15–20 repetitions) and heavy-load (85%–90% 1-repetition maximum, three sets of 5–8 repetitions) upper-extremity resistance exercise separated by a 1-wk wash-out period. Swelling was determined by bioimpedance spectroscopy and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, with breast cancer–related lymphedema symptoms (heaviness, swelling, pain, tightness) reported using a numeric rating scale (0–10). Order of low- versus heavy-load was randomized. All outcomes were assessed before, immediately after, and 24 and 72 h after exercise. Generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate changes over time between groups, with equivalence between resistance exercise loads determined using the principle of confidence interval inclusion. Results The acute response to resistance exercise was equivalent for all outcomes at all time points irrespective of loads lifted, with the exception of extracellular fluid at 72 h after exercise with less swelling after heavy loads (estimated mean difference, −1.00; 95% confidence interval, −3.17 to 1.17). Conclusions Low- and heavy-load resistance exercise elicited similar acute responses in arm swelling and breast cancer–related lymphedema symptoms in women at risk for lymphedema receiving adjuvant taxane-based chemotherapy. These represent important preliminary findings, which can be used to inform future prospective evaluation of the long-term effects of repeated exposure to heavy-load resistance exercise.


Palmitic Acid esters of Hydroxy Stearic Acids (PAHSAs), bioactive lipids with potent anti-inflammatory and antidiabetic effects, reduce ambient glycemia and improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in insulin resistant HFD-fed mice. We aimed to determine the mechanisms by which PAHSAs improve insulin sensitivity. We treated chow- and HFD-fed mice with 5-PAHSA (0.1 mg/day) and 9-PAHSA (0.4 mg/day) by SQ osmotic minipumps for 13 weeks. Serum 5-PAHSA levels increased 3.5 fold and 9-PAHSA 2.5 fold in chow-fed mice, while 5-PAHSA levels increased 17 fold and 9-PAHSA 6 fold in HFD-fed mice. PAHSAs had no effect on weight gain or fat mass. We performed hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamps (2.5 mU/Kg/min insulin infusion rate). PAHSA treatment increased systemic insulin sensitivity in both chow- [glucose infusion rate (GIR): vehicle 13±2 vs. PAHSA 27±4 mg/kg/min] and HFD-fed mice (GIR: vehicle 2±0.5 vs. PAHSA 10±3 mg/kg/min). Endogenous glucose production (EGP) was suppressed 28% by insulin in vehicle-treated mice and 55% in PAHSA-treated mice on chow diet. Remarkably, while insulin failed to suppress EGP in vehicle-treated HFD-fed mice, PAHSA treatment led to a 37% reduction in EGP. PAHSAs also decreased glycemia during a pyruvate tolerance test, indicating that suppression of hepatic gluconeogenesis contributes to the EGP improvement. Mechanistic studies showed that PAHSAs inhibit basal and glucagon-stimulated EGP and reduce cAMP in isolated hepatocytes. This effect is blocked by pertussis toxin indicating it is mediated by Gα/i protein-coupled receptors. PAHSAs also reduce G6pase activity and phosphorylation of CREB in liver. Sum: PAHSAs are systemic insulin sensitizers and augment insulin action on EGP in vivo. In vitro, PAHSAs reduce EGP through a cAMP dependent pathway involving Gα/i protein-coupled receptors. Thus, PAHSAs could be effective antidiabetic agents and the pathways they engage could provide novel drug targets for type 2 diabetes. Disclosure A. Santoro: None. P. Zhou: None. O.D. Peroni: None. I. Syed: None. A.T. Nelson: None. D. Siegel: None. A. Saghatelian: None. B. Kahn: Advisory Panel; Self; Janssen Research & Development. Research Support; Self; Janssen Research & Development. Advisory Panel; Self; Alterna Biotech.


Significant numbers of bacteria have been found in recent sediments wherever critical tests have been made for their presence. Total numbers as well as the kinds of microorganisms decrease with core depth. Several physiological types of bacteria together with fewer yeasts, molds and actinomyces have been found, some at depths exceeding 15 feet. The demonstrated ability of the microorganisms to function in sedimentary materials in the laboratory under conditions simulating those in nature indicates that they could be active in situ , and changes in certain properties of sediments suggest that the microorganisms have been active. Bacteria consume oxygen, and there are enough bacteria in sediments to account for the depletion of the dissolved oxygen. Similarly bacteria are probably responsible for the oxidation-reduction potential of sediments which ranges from Eh 0 to -0.5 volts whereas the overlying water is oxidizing in character. There are several ways in which the biochemical activities of microorganisms influence the hydrogen-ion concentration of sediments. Most types of organic matter are attacked by bacteria. The organic content and microorganisms influence the aggregation of particles. By altering the environmental conditions and by serving as a source of food, bacteria have a pronounced effect on the animal population of sediments. It is still indeterminate if bacterial activity plays a role in the genesis of petroleum, but there are several ways in which it might. The changes in the calcium, iron, manganese, sulfur, phosphate and carbonate content of sediments attributable to microorganisms are mentioned.


This text provides a one stop shop of accessible and relevant information for all early years students to help them succeed in their degree, increase their employability skills and develop as ethical and critically reflective practitioners. Part one gives guidance for students about learning in HE specifically in the context of early childhood education and care, including course requirements, academic skills and core knowledge. Chapters cover students' roles and responsibilities, safeguarding, understanding policy, and professionalism and ethical practice. The second part of the book looks explicitly at applying this knowledge and understanding in the workplace before tackling the final research project.


In this paper, we propose a new efficient entropy coding scheme, namely context-based binary arithmetic coding for bit-plane coding (CBACBP), for the enhancement layer of fine granular scalable (FGS) video coding. The basic structure of proposed CBACBP is based on the traditional bit-plane coding of MPEG-4 FGS. However, in order to enhance the coding efficiency of bit-plane coding, a newly designed context-based binary arithmetic coding scheme is used. In CBACBP, we apply three types of probability estimation techniques. The first type relies on local information of a given symbol to code, such as bit-plane level, data level and frequency component. In the second type, the preceding symbols in the same and/or higher bit-planes are used. In the third type, we consider complexity of a block including the symbol based on the number of coded nonzero coefficients in the block. Experimental results show that the proposed CBACBP improves the PSNR up to 1.2 and 0.5 dB compared with MPEG-4 FGS and JSVM, respectively.


The excessive use of images in social networks, government databases, and industrial applications has posed great privacy risks and raised serious concerns from the public. Even though differential privacy (DP) is a widely accepted criterion that can provide a provable privacy guarantee, the application of DP on unstructured data such as images is not trivial due to the lack of a clear qualification on the meaningful difference between any two images. In this paper, for the first time, we introduce a novel notion of image-aware differential privacy, referred to as DP-image, that can protect user's personal information in images, from both human and AI adversaries. The DP-Image definition is formulated as an extended version of traditional differential privacy, considering the distance measurements between feature space vectors of images. Then we propose a mechanism to achieve DP-Image by adding noise to an image feature vector. Finally, we conduct experiments with a case study on face image privacy. Our results show that the proposed DP-Image method provides excellent DP protection on images, with a controllable distortion to faces.


Reef fish are organisms that live in reef area. Their life depend on coral reef condition the purpose of the research are to know diversity and abundance of reef fish, to know coral lifeform percentage, to describe the association of coral reef fish and to know chemical. The research was done in June 2015. The method used is Belt Transect. Data analysis includes diversity index, uniformity, dominance, species composition, species abundance, relative density, frequency of attendance, lifeform percentage and association of reef fish with coral reef. Diversity index of Karang Rulak is 2,329 and Karang Kering is 1,711. Uniformity index of Karang Rulak is 0,908 and Karang Kering 0,879. Dominance index of Karang Rulak 0,113 and Karang Kering is 0,209. Reef fish that found in Karang Rulak are 13 species and Karang Kering are 7 species. The highest of Reef fish abundance in Karang Rulak is Cephalopholis boenak that 55 individual/300m2 and the lowest is Acanturidae that 2 individual/300m2. The highest of Reef fish abundance in Karang Kering is Pentapodus sp that 45 individual/300m2 and the lowest is Abudefduf sexfasciatus that 4 individual/300m2. The cover lifeform percentage in Karang Rulak is 69,91% and Karang Kering is 24,57%.


This paper presents a new algorithm (INNOV) capable of generating a mesh of three-dimensional objects containing multiple phases. This mesh can later be imported into commercial or open-source software to perform multiphysics-based simulations based on partial differential equations. While the range of application is large, this algorithm is designed as a post-processing tool of micro/nanotomography images and electrode mesostructures predicted from CGMD (coarse-grained molecular dynamics) simulations of the electrode fabrication process carried out in LAMMPS software. With INNOV, it becomes possible to import the predicted multiparticle electrode mesostructures into COMSOL Multiphysics in order to simulate electrochemistry and transport in operating lithium-ion batteries.


The Digital Legacy Association (DLA) was launched at last year's Hospice UK conference. Their work is focused on raising awareness and improving processes in areas relating to death and the internet. Over the last 12 months the DLA have published a free framework, developed training workshops, launched a free hospice inpatient resource, run 'pop-up' events, organised a Digital Legacy conference, carried out different forms of research and campaigned highlighting that end of life and bereavement in relation to the internet and electronic devices is an area requiring thought, governance and change. The DLA spend a lot of time working with hospices, CCGs, charities and trusts. The outcome is improved knowledge and skillsets applied at an organisational and/or at an individual level. The diffusion of the DLAs information occurs by supporting professionals through a variety of different channels. In turn this helps professionals to better support patients and their families. The DLA's work often revolves around conversations and campaigning. Their recent work for Velindre NHS Trust, Aneurin Bevan UHB & Byw Nawr included building a TalkCPR awareness website. The goal of the TalkCPR campaign is to help increase dialogue around CPR and DNACPR within Wales. The TalkCPR campaign was recently nominated for a NHS Wales award. This paper will document the DLA's journey over the last year, explain how they use creativity to address end-of-life and document how they plan to support every UK hospice over the course of 2017.


Abstract The objectives of this study were to determine predictors of consistent condom use in heterosexual relationships of young adults who use hard drugs in a neigbourhood with widespread drug-use-connected HIV. We interviewed 196 18–24 year olds who injected drugs or used heroin, cocaine or crack in the prior year and lived in the Bushwick neighbourhood of New York City.Interviews covered sociodemographics, substance use and sexual networks. The unit of analysis is the relationship; the dependent variable measures consistent condom use over the prior 30 days in a given relationship. Consistent condom use was reported in 26% of 377 non-commercial relationships and in all of 22 commercial relationships. Using multiple logistic regression, consistent condom use in non-commercial relationships was more likely in relationships that are not 'very close'; for men (but not women) with peers whose norms are more favourable to condom use; and for subjects who had concurrent sex partners in the last 12 months. In conclusion, we found that: (1) the lack of relationship between the peer norms of drug-using women and their condom use suggests they may have little control over condom use in their relationships—programmes should attempt to empower young women drug users and to develop ways for their peers to influence the men in their lives; (2) epidemiologically, the positive association of concurrency to consistent condom use suggests that condom use may be restricting HIV spread through the community—the presence of consistent condom use in all of the commercial sexual relationships also may restrict HIVspread; (3) prevention efforts should attempt to change peer cultures as a way to develop self-sustaining risk reduction. These changes should include changes in gender roles and power relations.


A protein secreted by cultured rat heart cells can direct the choice of neurotransmitter phenotype made by cultured rat sympathetic neurons. Structural analysis and biological assays demonstrated that this protein is identical to a protein that regulates the growth and differentiation of embryonic stem cells and myeloid cells, and that stimulates bone remodeling and acute-phase protein synthesis in hepatocytes. This protein has been termed D factor, DIA, DIF, DRF, HSFIII, and LIF. Thus, this cytokine, like IL-6 and TGF beta, regulates growth and differentiation in the embryo and in the adult in many tissues, now including the nervous system.


In the field of clinical classifications, such as ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease, version 10), there is a transition from paper-based books towards digital systems to have an open process, powered by collaboration. Most clinical classification systems contain massive volume of terms that are hierarchically organised. There are variety of approaches to visualise hierarchical data, in digital systems. In this paper, a selected set of technologies, such as tree views, tree view diagrams, force-directed graphs are investigated to evaluate the suitability of those to accommodate a large clinical classification data sets. Our findings suggest that tree view diagram is the most appropriate technique, due to its ability to accommodate the multi-parent structure of some clinical classifications, and represent large amounts of data in a visually appealing manner.


A common feeling among the Industrial Relations community is that the field faces a
crisis that challenges both its ability to address the phenomena it studies and its
institutional structures. However, the literature is not clear on the reasons for this
development. Some argue, predominantly in Britain, that the cause of this crisis is the
penetration of Human Resource Management (HRM) or, as this trend is also known,
of the New Industrial Relations (NIR) theory, in the intellectual and institutional edifice
of the field. Others, however, especially from the US, believe that the reason for the
inability of the field to deal with the external environment is its adherence to an oldfashioned
paradigm that does not take into consideration the changing nature of
industrial relations realities. For them, the solution is to incorporate the teachings of
the NIR theory in the intellectual corpus of Industrial Relations. Thus, one is faced
with two contradictory positions that have the same bases, namely that the field is in
a critical condition and that, somehow, a theory is involved (or should be involved) in
the picture. However, the discrepancy between the two theses poses important
conceptual problems for the future of the field for it is not as yet clear who is to blame
(if anyone) for its current situation.
It is, therefore, the aim of this Thesis to clarify the above picture. To achieve this,
both the above theses will be evaluated. To do so, it is imperative to study the
epistemological implications of the NIR theory for the field of Industrial Relations, and
then to examine the place the NIR theory occupies in the intellectual structures of the
field in Britain. Once this is achieved, the issue of crisis will be tackled in more detail
to determine whether British Industrial Relations actually face the crisis that the
various voices in the literature ascribe it with.
In the Introduction the general problem and the Research Questions of the Thesis
will be discussed. Then, the First Chapter will set the theoretical context upon which
the analysis will be based. Chapter Two will present the intellectual and institutional
development of the field of Industrial Relations, while Chapter Three will be devoted
to an analysis of the NIR theory. Chapter Four will examine the epistemic value of the
theory for the field of Industrial Relations and Chapter Five will investigate the
position that the NIR theory occupies in the British Industrial Relations fora of
knowledge development. Chapter Six will complement the above discussion by
examining the evolutionary dynamics of the NIR theory. In Chapter Seven the
intellectual status of Industrial Relations will be examined to see whether the field
faces an intellectual crisis. Then, Chapter Eight will analyse the dynamics of the field
in Britain to evaluate the condition of the field's institutions. Finally, in Chapter Nine,
the institutional status of the field, together with some ideas about the field's future
will be further discussed, and some promising avenues for future research will be
presented.


The nucleate pool is a useful technique of heat dissipation in a variety of thermal applications. This study investigates the effect of the gridded metal surface (GMS) with and without protrusions on the heat transfer from a surface maintained at a temperature above the saturation temperature of water. The experimental data have been collected pertaining to boiling heat transfer at atmospheric pressure by varying the grid size of gridded metal surface with protrusions from 6 mm to 22.5 mm placed over a boiling surface having microporous coating. The mean particle diameter of coating is varied as 11, 24, and 66 μm during the experimentation. It is observed that the increase in the boiling heat transfer coefficient of the aluminum disk with GMS with protrusions of grid size 11.5 mm compared to that of the smooth boiling surface is found to be 10.7%. Furthermore, the effect of GMS having protrusions with coated surface on the heat transfer is studied. The results showed that by using GMS having protrusions and with coated surface, the heat transfer is further enhanced. The boiling heat transfer coefficient obtained in case of GMS with protrusions (grid size = 11.5 mm) and microporous-coated surface (dm = 66 μm) shows the maximum enhancement of 39.93% in comparison to the smooth surface.


Quality assurance (QA) is a topic of major concern in the field of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The standard of practice for IMRT is to perform QA testing for individual patients to verify that the dose distribution will be delivered to the patient. The purpose of this study was to develop a new technique that could eventually be used to automatically evaluate helical tomotherapy treatments during delivery using exit detector data. This technique uses an autoassociative kernel regression (AAKR) model to detect errors in tomotherapy delivery. AAKR is a novel nonparametric model that is known to predict a group of correct sensor values when supplied a group of sensor values that is usually corrupted or contains faults such as machine failure. This modeling scheme is especially suited for the problem of monitoring the fluence values found in the exit detector data because it is able to learn the complex detector data relationships. This scheme still applies when detector data are summed over many frames with a low temporal resolution and a variable beam attenuation resulting from patient movement. Delivery sequences from three archived patients (prostate, lung, and head and neck) were used in this study. Each delivery sequence was modified by reducing the opening time for random individual multileaf collimator (MLC) leaves by random amounts. The error and error-free treatments were delivered with different phantoms in the path of the beam. Multiple autoassociative kernel regression (AAKR) models were developed and tested by the investigators using combinations of the stored exit detector data sets from each delivery. The models proved robust and were able to predict the correct or error-free values for a projection, which had a single MLC leaf decrease its opening time by less than 10msec. The model also was able to determine machine output errors. The average uncertainty value for the unfaulted projections ranged from 0.4% to 1.8% of the detector signal. The low model uncertainty indicates that the AAKR model is extremely accurate in its predictions and also suggests that the model may be able to detect errors that cause the fluence to change by less than 2%. However, additional evaluation of the AAKR technique is needed to determine the minimum detectable error threshold from the compressed helical tomotherapy detector data. Further research also needs to explore applying this technique to electronic portal imaging detector data.


Sequential recommendation is a task in which one models and uses sequential information about user behavior for recommendation purposes. We study sequential recommendation in a context in which multiple individual users share a single account (i.e., they have a shared account) and in which user behavior is available in multiple domains (i.e., recommendations are cross-domain). These two characteristics bring new challenges on top of those of the traditional sequential recommendation task. First, we need to identify the behavior associated with different users and different user roles under the same account in order to recommend the right item to the right user role at the right time. Second, we need to identify behavior in one domain that might be helpful to improve recommendations in other domains. We study shared account cross-domain sequential recommendation and propose a parallel split-join Network (Parallel Split-Join Network (PSJNet)), a parallel modeling network to address the two challenges above. We use "split" to address the challenge raised by shared accounts; PSJNet learns role-specific representations and uses a gating mechanism to filter out, from mixed user behavior, information of user roles that might be useful for another domain. In addition, "join" is used to address the challenge raised by the cross-domain setting; PSJNet learns cross-domain representations by combining the information from "split" and then transforms it to another domain. We present two variants of PSJNet: PSJNet-I and PSJNet-II. PSJNet-I is a "split-by-join" framework that splits the mixed representations to get role-specific representations and joins them to obtain cross-domain representations at each timestamp simultaneously. PSJNet-II is a "split-and-join" framework that first splits role-specific representations at each timestamp, and then the representations from all timestamps and all roles are joined to obtain cross-domain representations. We concatenate the in-domain and cross-domain representations to compute a recommendation score for each item. Both PSJNet-I and PSJNet-II can simultaneously generate recommendations for two domains where user behavior in two domains is synchronously shared at each timestamp. We use two datasets to assess the effectiveness of PSJNet. The first dataset is a simulated shared account cross-domain sequential recommendation dataset obtained by randomly merging the Amazon logs from different users in the movie and book domains. The second dataset is a real-world shared account cross-domain sequential recommendation dataset built from smart TV watching logs of a commercial organization. Our experimental results demonstrate that PSJNet outperforms state-of-the-art sequential recommendation baselines in terms of MRR and Recall.


Cascaded on-load tap changers (OLTCs) are widely used for coarse control of voltages in largely interconnected electric power systems. There could be interactions between load dynamics and OLTC control under certain system operating conditions which may lead to the OLTC limit cycle phenomena, thereby resulting into long-term voltage oscillations in the system. In recent years, renewable and nonrenewable local generation (LG) units have been getting interconnected in modern power systems. The existence of OLTC limit cycles in the presence of LG has not been addressed in the literature in greater details. In this paper, the OLTC limit cycle phenomenon, which can occur due to interactions among load dynamics, OLTC controls, and LG operation in electricity networks, has been investigated. Also, a novel strategy is explored for mitigating the power system oscillations introduced by OLTC limit cycles, especially for a network embedded with LG. The proposed mitigation strategy including detailed investigations and analyses has been verified for a two-bus test system and successfully tested on a multibus system using MATLAB.


: The efficacy and safety of nabumetone were evaluated in short term (up to 6 months), double blind, comparative trials and a longterm (up to 8 years), open label, noncomparative trial. In the short term trials, nabumetone was determined to be significantly more effective than placebo and as effective as naproxen and aspirin. The most common adverse effects that occurred were related to the gastrointestinal tract, nervous system, skin, and special senses. In the longterm trial, nabumetone was effective in 62% of patients, without complicating effects, for at least 1 year. This beneficial response was maintained in a fair percentage of patients for up to 5 years or more. The average treatment duration before withdrawal was at least 1.1 years. Therefore, most patients in the longterm trials experienced a beneficial response for a significant duration of therapy.


Optimal resource allocation and application consolidation on modern multicore systems that host multiple applications is not easy. Striking a balance among conflicting targets such as maximizing system throughput and system utilization while minimizing application response times is a quandary for system administrators. The purpose of this work is to offer a methodology that can automate the difficult process of identifying how to best consolidate workloads in a multicore environment. We develop a simple approach that treats the hardware and the operating system as a black box and uses measurements to profile the application resource demands. The demands become input to a queueing network model that successfully predicts application scalability and that captures the performance impact of consolidated applications on shared on-chip and off-chip resources. Extensive analysis with the widely used DaCapo Java benchmarks on an IBM Power 7 system illustrates the model's ability to accurately predict the system's optimal application mix.


Introduction Healthy lifestyle choices, such as weight control through a balanced diet and regular physical activity, play a key role in chronic disease prevention. Underlying socioeconomic factors may mediate disease risk, but are often neglected. We aimed to investigate whether either educational level or occupational social class influences the incidence of diabetes, myocardial infarction, stroke and cancer, independently from a healthy lifestyle. Methods We prospectively examined the associations of both indicators with incident chronic diseases in 23 453 participants, aged 35–65 of the EPIC-Potsdam Study. Age- and multivariate adjusted HRs (HR, 95% CI) were calculated. An additional systematic literature search aimed to identify how different socioeconomic indicators were related to the selected diseases. Results Although inequalities in a healthy lifestyle were found among men and women for both indicators, variations in their direction and magnitude for incident disease risks occurred. Diabetes incidence was inversely associated with both indicators in multivariate models, but adjustment for Body mass index substantially attenuated the associations. Middle-educated women had a lower risk for myocardial infarction (HR 0.39, 018–0.84), but a higher risk for stroke (HR 2.03, 1.07–3.83), in fully-adjusted models. Protective effects against cancer were shown for semiprofessional men and unskilled women, but not for education. Also the results of the literature search showed that different socioeconomic indicators appeared to vary in their associations to chronic disease risk. Conclusions Educational level and occupational social class varied in their influence on incident chronic diseases, but are less important predictors for disease risk in the EPIC-Potsdam study.


We tested genetic and environmental effects and their interaction on the behaviour of 21 provenances of Pinus canariensis Chr. Sm. Ex DC from the Canary Islands and three seed sources from Israel at seven study sites covering a wide range of ecological conditions. Survival and growth traits (height, diameter and polycyclism) and their relationship with environmental parameters were assessed to evaluate their adaptive value and establish patterns of variation of the species inside and outside its natural distribution area. The results showed a high level of ecotypic differentiation for survival. As a general pattern, seed sources from favourable environments exhibited lower survival rates at dry sites than those from harsh environments (r =− 0.76, P < 0.05, between survival and site index at the seed source). By contrast, growth traits presented a high phenotypic plasticity, scarce differentiation among seed sources and a negligible genotype × environment interaction. With few exceptions, local provenances from the Canary Islands did not stand out for survival or growth when compared with the rest at each trial site, whereas local seed sources from Israel were among the best growing and survived better at the experimental sites in this country. Therefore, the possibility of a locally adapted land race in Israel is discussed. We also discuss the low geographic differentiation for growth in the Canary Islands pine in the light of the current knowledge of the species' life history and the potential use of this species in reforestation programs in semi-arid environments.


The stellar content of the intracluster light (ICL) provides unique insight into the hierarchical assembly process of galaxy clusters. We present optical spectra of three ICL regions (μg ≈ 25.3–26.2 mag arcsec−2) in the Coma cluster, located between 100 and 180 kpc from their nearest brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs): NGC 4889 and NGC 4874. Integral-field unit (IFU) spectroscopy with 13.5 hr on-source integration was acquired in an ancillary program within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV MaNGA survey. We stacked the 127 individual fiber spectra in each IFU to achieve a 1σ limiting surface brightness of 27.9 mag arcsec−2, corresponding to a mean signal-to-noise ratio in the optical of 21.7, 9.0, and 11.7 Å−1, for each ICL region. We apply stellar population models to the stacked spectra. Our results show that the velocity dispersions of ICL regions are very high (σ ∼ 630 km s−1), indicating the stars in these regions are tracing the gravitational potential of the cluster, instead of any individual galaxy. The line-of-sight velocities are different from each other by ∼700 km s−1, while the velocity of each region is similar to the closest BCG. This suggests that the ICL regions are associated with two distinct subclusters centered on NGC 4889 and NGC 4874. The stellar populations of these regions are old and metal-poor, with ages of , , and Gyr, and [Fe/H] of , , and . From the derived age and metallicity, the buildup of ICL in Coma is likely to be through the accretion of low-mass galaxies or the tidal stripping of the outskirts of massive galaxies that have ended their star formation early on, instead of directly from major mergers of massive galaxies.


The reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the entire life cycle of vehicles has become part of the strategic objectives in automotive industry. In this regard, the design of future body parts should be carried out based on information of life cycle GHG emissions. The substitution of steel towards lightweight materials is a major trend, with the industry undergoing a fundamental shift towards the introduction of electric vehicles (EV). The present research aims to support the conceptual design of body parts with a combined perspective on mechanical performance and life cycle GHG emissions. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the GHG impact of EV in the use phase depends on vehicle-specific factors that may not be specified at the conceptual design stage of components, such as the market-specific electricity mix used for vehicle charging. A methodology is proposed that combines a simplified numerical design of concept alternatives and an analytic approach estimating life cycle GHG emissions. It is applied to a case study in body part design based on a set of principal geometries and load cases, a range of materials (aluminum, glass and carbon fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP, CFRP) as substitution to a steel reference) and different use stage scenarios of EV. A new engineering chart was developed, which helps design engineers to compare life cycle GHG emissions of lightweight material concepts to the reference. For body shells, the replacement of the steel reference with aluminum or GFRP shows reduced lifecycle GHG emissions for most use phase scenarios. This holds as well for structural parts being designed on torsional stiffness. For structural parts designed on tension/compression or bending stiffness CFRP designs show lowest lifecycle GHG emissions. In all cases, a high share of renewable electricity mix and a short lifetime pose the steel reference in favor. It is argued that a further elaboration of the approach could substantially increase transparency between design choices and life cycle GHG emissions.


Once upon a time at Boston College Law School, I experimented with a new clinical model by involving some of the students in my Death Penalty class in appellate representation of a death row inmate. In particular, I offered a limited number of students in the class a clinical alternative for satisfying the course requirements. Instead of writing a research paper, they could write a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of a death row inmate seeking relief from an adverse decision by a state supreme court after a direct appeal. . . . By semester's end, I had vividly grasped how felicitous it would have been to co-teach the experimental course with one of my legal writing colleagues, if only one of them could have been sufficiently freed from other fulltime responsibilities to make such tandem teaching possible. . . . Collaboration between clinics and legal writing programs need not be a fairy tale that we construct against a backdrop of awareness that unfortunate realities will prevent it from ever happening. But turning the hope of such programmatic collaboration from a fairy tale to a proposal to a memoir requires consciousness of the threshold differences that can undermine the effectiveness of the project. Only by consciously addressing these differences can we devise suitable methods for facilitating the hard work of surmounting the challenges to create genuine collaborations.


Contraction in mammalian heart is initiated by a rapid rise in intracellular free calcium (Ca2+) triggered by excitation of the sarcolemma. Traditional views of cardiac excitation-contraction coupling have focused on the importance of Ca(2+)-induced Ca2+ release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum as a major source for this increase in Ca2+. Influx of Ca2+, primarily through L-type Ca2+ channels and the sodium-calcium (Na(+)-Ca2+) exchanger, is considered to be the main trigger for Ca(2+)-induced Ca2+ release. However, we recently have discovered a new trigger for excitation-contraction coupling in experiments on isolated ventricular myocytes under voltage clamp conditions. This trigger is a voltage-sensitive release mechanism that initiates release of Ca2+ from the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This article reviews the development of the concept of voltage-activated Ca2+ release in heart and discusses the importance of this discovery to the physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology of cardiac contraction.


We've shaped our tools and process to support design in a world of tangible interfaces and ubiquitous computing in which the keyboard, mouse, and monitor make way for granular, inexpensive devices that let people augment their daily life. Tangible interfaces can be more natural, intuitive, and efficient than the way we currently interact with digital devices and interfaces. The key to developing these innovations is the ability to use physical-computing materials early during sketching. The tools we create should let designers connect sensors and actuators to computers, to streams of information, and to personal and private networks. To innovate new methods of interaction between analog and digital interfaces, we must be able to not only imagine them but also explore, observe, and demonstrate them. Besides the advantages of observing an interaction in a physically real context, there's undeniable benefit in the ability to show tangible-interface concepts and technologies to others, rather than just describing them.


Two-hundred children with injuries caused by playground equipment were studied. Whereas only about 9% of the total casualty attendances are for fractures, 26-5% (53) of these children had fractures. The climbing frame and the slide seemed to be associated with more severe injuries than the swing or other equipment, but more cases need to be studied to confirm this. The youngest children were at particular risk on equipment such as the wooden rocking horse or roundabout, when the speed of operation could be controlled by older children. Many of the injuries to the very youngest children occurred when they were walking behind a moving swing. Faulty equipment did not seem to be a major factor in causing accidents, but the use by older children of apparatus designed for young ones led to accidents. There was supervision, either at home, in a school playground, or in a park, in 62% of the cases. Many of the accidents were the result of the normal desire of children for experimentation and adventure.


Source code coupling and change history are two important data sources for change coupling analysis. The popularity of public open source projects in recent years makes both sources available. Based on our previous research, in this paper, we inspect different dimensions of software changes including change significance or source code dependency levels, extract a set of features from the two sources and propose a Bayesian network-based approach for change coupling prediction. By combining the features from the co-changed entities and their dependency relation, the approach can model the underlying uncertainty. The empirical case study on two medium-sized open source projects demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach compared to previous work.


A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson offers a wealth of new insights on the era of Andrew Jackson. This collection of essays by leading scholars and historians considers various aspects of the life, times, and legacy of the seventh president of the United States. • Provides an overview of Andrew Jackson's life and legacy, grounded in the latest scholarship and including original research spread across a number of thematic areas • Features 30 essays contributed by leading scholars and historians • Synthesizes the most up-to-date scholarship on the political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the Age of Andrew Jackson


PURPOSE
This Phase I clinical trial explored the viability of webcam Internet delivery of the Camperdown Program for adolescents who stutter. Method and Procedure Participants were 3 adolescents ages 13, 15, and 16 years, with moderate-severe stuttering. Each was treated with the Camperdown Program delivered by webcam with no clinic attendance. Primary outcome measures were percentage of syllables stuttered and number of treatment sessions to maintenance. Secondary outcome measures were speech naturalness, situation avoidance, self-reported stuttering severity, and parent and adolescent satisfaction. Data were collected pre treatment and at 1 day, 6 months, and 12 months post entry to maintenance.

RESULTS
Participants entered maintenance after means of 18 sessions and 11 clinician hours. Group mean reduction of stuttering from pre treatment to entry to maintenance was 83%, from pre treatment to 6 months post entry to maintenance was 93%, and from pre treatment to 12 months post entry to maintenance was 74%. Self-reported stuttering severity ratings confirmed these results. Post entry to maintenance speech naturalness for participants fell within the range of that of 3 matched controls. However, avoidance of speech situations showed no corresponding improvements for 2 of the participants.

CONCLUSION
The service delivery model was efficacious and efficient. All of the participants and their parents also found it appealing. Results justify a Phase II trial of the delivery model.


This paper offers a reassessment of the origins and derivation of many of Sir William Petty's economic ideas, based on an analysis of his unpublished papers. Petty's archive makes clear what a large part Ireland played in his writings, and it is suggested that this preoccupation is essential to an appreciation of him as an economist. It also demonstrates the point that Petty was not principally a theorist but rather a practical political economist whose schemes for the enrichment of the king's dominions were inspired by the underdevelopment which he experienced at first hand in Ireland.


Background Patient safety is an important component of healthcare quality. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) designed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is a validated tool used to assess the patient safety culture in hospitals. However, few studies have been performed exclusively in Pharmacy Departments. Purpose The aims of the study were to evaluate the patient safety culture of healthcare professionals in a Pharmacy Department, to analyse the strengths and opportunities for improvement and to compare with a multicentre study (n = 2,503) carried out in national hospitals by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality in 2008. Material and methods Descriptive and cross-sectional study. The national adaptation HSOPSC was delivered to all staff of the Pharmacy Department. It included 12 dimensions related to patient safety culture, the number of events reported during last year and professional profile of the responders. Results The response rate was 70.7% (n = 28), half of whom were pharmacists (14/15) and the other 50'0% included technicians, pharmacy assistants, nurses and administrative staff members (14/26). The global score of patient safety culture in our service was 7.5 (on a 10-point scale) and there were no significant differences among professional profiles. 47.8% of responders reported >2 events last year and there were significant differences between pharmacists (57.1%) and non-pharmacists (33.3%). The most highly-scoring dimension was 'Organisational learning and continuous improvement' (84.2%). The worst qualified was 'Staffing' (38.7%). In the comparative study, the global score of patient safety culture was 7 and the highest and the worst dimensions were the same (82% and 27.6%, respectively). Conclusion Patient safety culture in our department is notable and slightly higher than comparison national hospitals. The HSOPSC allowed us to detect the main strengths and opportunities for improvement in order to design patient safety strategies. References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.


The detailed study of the effects of spin recipe and GaAs substrate doping (i.e., semi-insulating, n-type, or p-type) on the structural and optical properties of spin-cast CdSe-CdS core-shell CQDs provides insight into the surface adsorption and charge transfer mechanisms that will influence any potential optoelectronic device. The hypotheses of this study are: i) it is possible to establish spin-casting recipes that yield a thin film of CQDs with large surface density and uniform size, and ii) it is possible to control the optical response of CQDs by varying the GaAs substrate doping to influence charge transfer processes. As a result of these measurements, we have been able to demonstrate a strong dependence of spin-cast CQD structural properties on the doping type of the GaAs substrate, as well as evidence from measured optical properties to support the idea that hot carriers photoexcited in the GaAs substrate are transferred either to the CQD surface states through organic surface ligands or directly to confined states within the CQD.


In the real-world ubiquitous computing systems, it is difficult to require a significant amount of data to obtain accurate information through pure data-driven methods. Performance of data-driven methods relies on the quantity and 'quality' of data. They perform well when sufficient amount of data is available, which is regarded as ideal conditions. However, in real-world systems, collecting data can be costly or impossible due to practical limitations. On the other hand, it is promising to utilize physical knowledge to alleviate these issues of data limitation. The physical knowledge includes domain knowledge from experts, heuristics from experiences, analytic models of the physical phenomena and etc. The goal of the workshop is to explore the intersection between (and the combination of) data and physical knowledge. The workshop aims to bring together domain experts that explore the physical understanding of the data, practitioners that develop systems and the researchers in traditional data-driven domains. The workshop welcomes papers, which focuses on addressing these issues in different applications/domains as well as algorithmic and systematic approaches to applying physical knowledge. Therefore, we further seek to develop a community that systematically analyzes the data quality regarding inference and evaluates the improvements from the physical knowledge. Preliminary and on-going work is welcomed.


Daily life of our societies is strongly linked with the usage of natural resources. However, the vital resources of our planet especially energy is a limited resource. The energy consumption in the manufacturing industry is increasing and becoming noticeable; moreover it is being consumed in ways that can't be sustained. There is great concern about minimizing the consumption of energy usage in the manufacturing industry and sustaining the natural carrying capacity of the ecosystem as well. This is one of the important challenges in today's industrial world.This research work looks into one of the energy intensive manufacturing processes i.e. the casting process in automotive industry. Here the casting process for cylinder head manufacturing at one of the manufacturing plant in Europe is studied for identifying the most energy intensive steps namely melting, holding and pouring. Parameters that influence these steps and the relationships for energy consumption and dissipation have also been identified through extensive literature survey. By applying system dynamics modeling and simulation approach the interaction between each parameter in the overall process is analyzed in regard to energy consumption. By varying values of the parameters that have the highest impact in the process, the breakthrough opportunities that might dramatically reduce energy consumption during melting and holding have been explored, and potentially energy-saving areas based on the findings have also been identified. The output from this research work enables the company to identify potential avenues to optimize energy usage in the production and hence sustain its manufacturing.


Falls can have severe consequences for elderly adults. In 2000, nearly 10,300 people aged 65 years or older died as a result of falls, and 2.6 million individuals were treated for non-fatal fall-related injuries. In order to reduce fall incidences, it is important to identify possible causes of falls, such as muscle weakness and imbalance. In this study, we examined balance control in the elderly during task transitions while performing the Timed Up and Go test (TUG). The TUG is a commonly used clinical balance test that includes transition phases between three daily activity tasks: sit-to-stand, walking and turning.

Our findings suggested that elderly adults, especially fallers, have reduced balance control ability while making transitions during TUG. During sit-to-walk (STW), when compared to young adults, elderly adults demonstrated a smaller forward center of mass (COM) velocity, a smaller anterior-posterior (A-P) COM-Ankle angle, and a larger upward kinetic energy ratio at seat-off. Additionally, the medial-lateral COM control in elderly fallers was also perturbed due to their significant reduction in forward COM velocity. The reduced initial hip extensor moment and increased ankle plantarflexor moment in elderly fallers was associated with their reduced generation of horizontal momentum during STW. Smaller A-P COM-Ankle angles and taking more steps when making a turn demonstrated a reduction in balance control ability in elderly adults. Our analyses suggest that balance control is an important factor contributing to longer STW and turning durations of TUG. Furthermore, lower extremity muscle strength at hip and knee joints demonstrated a stronger association with STW than turning duration.

To enhance the early detection of fall risk, we also assessed the ability of balance tests to predict future risk of falling in elderly adults. Our results indicated that biomechanical balance parameters measured during TUG were associated with future fall status. Among all biomechanical parameters investigated, frontal plane balance control parameters appear to be the most significant predictors for future falls.

This dissertation includes unpublished co-authored material.


Mining operations are an essential part of Industrial Heritage. They provide an important reference in order to understand changing past realities, relationships between groups and reconfiguration in the communication between regions whose consequences still remain reference. These realities and relationships have led to the current socio- economic and political framework, which is projected into the future. The documentation of physical vestiges and machinery, now obsolete, is a metaphor that serves to illustrate and understand the past from our present perspective. Threedimensional models from the fusion of different techniques and physical structures contextualization allow to simulatethe mechanisms to promote sustainable tourism as paradigms of a modernity that only serves the immediate appearances. Our approach for documentation and simulation of mechanisms for the extraction and the treatment of mineral is provided as graphical support to understand a reality that goes beyond the "ThematicPark" approach. Moreover, the visualization provides a metaphor for the destruction of natural, physical and human resources of entire areas doomed to depopulation and disappearance. This also opens the door to broader developments that can use multimedia resources to support an all-embracing narrative experience.


Authors discussed the effect of organic and inorganic dyes on the properties of wood fiber/HDPE (WF/HDPE) composite. Iron oxide red, iron oxide yellow, iron blue, everbright fast red, permanent yellow, and phthalocyanine were used. Test results indicated that organic dyes provided brighter color and higher flexible properties to WF/HDPE composite than inorganic dyes. However, when exposed to UV weathering, WF/HDPE composites with inorganic dyes were more durability than those with organic dyes.


Abstract The analysis of sediments from six wetlands (cienegas) in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, U.S.A., and Sonora, Mexico, document a marked expansion of wetland taxa—particularly woody plants—about 200 years ago at the beginning of the historic period, following a decrease in charcoal percentages and increased percentages of the dung fungus Sporormiella . The presence of charred seeds and fruits of wetland plants in prehistoric sediment establishes burning of the cienega itself. The charcoal decline ca . 250 years ago precedes the first occurrence of the pollen exotic plants at several sites, the change of cienega sediment from silt to peat, and the increase of percentages of the decay fungus Tetraploa . We conclude that prior to the historic period, burning was frequent enough to exclude most woody plants ( Celtis , Cephalanthus , Populus , Fraxinus , Salix ) from the wetlands and suppress the abundance of bulrush ( Scirpus ). The cienegas were probably burned seasonally as a management tool to harvest animals and promote agriculture. Prehistoric agricultural utilization of the cienegas is demonstrated by the presence of corn ( Zea ) and pre-Columbian weeds. This study also records post-settlement ( ca . 200 years ago) change of upland vegetation; i.e. an increase in the abundance of Juniperus , Quercus , Larrea , and Prosopis pollen. Historic fire suppression may have permitted the expansion of these non-wetland woody species.


The paper examines the empirical relationship between remittances and economic growth for a sample of 62 developing countries over the time period 1990–2014. Remittances seem to promote growth only in the 'more open' countries. That is because remittances are in themselves not sufficient for growth. The extent of the benefit depends on domestic institutions and macroeconomic environment in the receiving country. Unlike the 'less open' countries, 'more open' countries have better institutions and better financial markets to take advantage of the remittances income and channelise them into profitable investments which, in turn, accelerates the rate of economic growth in these countries.


Background Considerable sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges have been reported among rural-to-urban migrants in China. Predictors thereof are urgently needed to develop targeted interventions. Study design A cross-sectional study assessed determinants of unmet need for contraception using semi-structured interviews in two cities in China: Guangzhou and Qingdao. Results Between July and September 2008, 4867 female rural-to-urban migrants aged 18–29 years participated in the study. Of these, 2264 were married or cohabiting. Among sexually-active women (n = 2513), unmet need for contraception was reported by 36.8% and 51.2% of respondents in Qingdao and Guangzhou, respectively; it was associated with being unmarried, having no children, less schooling, poor SRH knowledge, working in non-food industry, and not being covered by health insurance. A substantial proportion of unmarried migrants reported they had sexual intercourse (16.6 % in Qingdao and 21.4% in Guangzhou) contrary to current sexual standards in China. Conclusion The study emphasises the importance of improving the response to the needs of rural-to-urban migrants and recommends strategies to address the unmet need for contraception. These should enhance open communication on sexuality, increase the availability of condoms, and improve health insurance coverage.


There are different models based on the gauge symmetry SU(3)C⊗ SU(3)L ⊗ U(1)X (331) some of them includes exotic particles and others are constructed without any exotic charges assigned to the fermionic spectrum. Each model build up on 331 symmetry has its own interesting properties according to the representations of the gauge group used for the fermionic spectrum; that is the main reason to explore and identify the possible sources of flavor changing neutral currents and lepton flavor violation at tree level. firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com 1


162 patients with adrenal hypertension have been examined. 48 of them had Cushing's syndrome, 10--aldosteromas, 85 --icenko--Cushing disease. The examination of patients with endocrine hypertension included hormonal background study, computer and MR tomography thin-needle biopsy and made it possible to make valid clinical and topical diagnosis in all cases. Magnetic-resonance tomography appeared to be the most efficient diagnostic method in the syndrome of hypercorticoidism. Ultrasound examination is the most available and highly informative method of revealing hormonally active adrenal tumors when they are more than 1 cm in size. An adequate preoperative preparation equally with an optimal scope of surgery and efficient postoperative substitution hormonal therapy are key factors in treatment of endocrine adrenal hypertension.


Induction of general anaesthesia causes a rapid decrease in functional residual capacity, which can promote alveolar collapse (atelectasis) and airway closure in dependent lung regions. Mismatching of ventilation and perfusion (VA/Q) in the lungs is accompanied by impairment of pulmonary gas exchange. Inspired oxygen concentration and changes in diaphragmatic function and geometry may play a major role in the formation of alveolar collapse and pulmonary shunting. Epidural anaesthesia, in contrast to general anaesthesia, does not appear to influence FRC or airway closure and has minor effects on the VA/Q match.Using spiral computed tomography (CT), the lungs and the diaphragm were investigated either before or during anaesthesia in human adults (withoutpulmonary disease) scheduled for elective surgery. CT scans were analysed according to the following parameters: overaeration, normal aeration, reduced aeration, poor aeration, and atelectasis. Ventilation/perfusion (VA/Q) distribution was estimated using the multiple inert gas technique. General anaesthesia, in contrast to epidural anaesthesia, causes significant increases in poorly aerated lung regions and in `dependent densities. The perceived benefits of pre-anaesthetic oxygenation as well as intraoperative hyperoxygenation contrast with the recognised rapid development of atelectasis in dependent lung regions. In addition, our findings do not provideevidence for a simple direct relationship between the anaesthesia-induced, cranial displacement of the diaphragm and amount of lung collapse.In conclusion, no or little impairment of lung aeration and VA/Q matching is caused by the lithotomy position and/or epidural anaesthesia. Our findings do not provide evidence for a simple direct relationship between lung collapse and positioning. The minor movement of the diaphragm during anaesthesia may play an additional role in atelectasis formation. In addition, the findings call for a re-evaluation of the oxygenation technique during anaesthesia.


From 1932 until 1973, more than 400 black men with syphilis were followed up without treatment in the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study" of the Public Health Service. After this study was publicized in 1972, James H. Jones, a historian, began the study of its origins and evolution, which comprises Bad Blood . Jones begins in the 19th century with evidence, drawn from their writings, of the racial prejudice that white physicians shared with society at large. In particular, white physicians maintained that promiscuity led to allegedly more prevalent and more severe syphilis in blacks. As transmissible agents of disease came to be understood, physicians began instead to regard syphilis as a disease to which all infected were equally susceptible (although many physicians continued to hold that the disease was manifest differently in whites and blacks). In the early 1930s, a philanthropic organization, the Rosenwald Fund, cooperated with the PHS in several ventures


Objective: In this study, we evaluated zinc gluconate stabilized with glycine (GZ) and sulfate (SZ) in fermented milk as vehicle. Zinc bioavailability was evaluated in an animal model (Sprague Dawley rats) for both zinc sources in the vehicle with a probiotic (Lactobacillus casei DN114001). Results: For growth parameters, higher weight gain and femur weight values were observed when probiotic and zinc were provided together, independent of the source (weight gain: SZ 81.4g±4.0g; GZ 81.8g±4.0g and 70.2g±12.5g without the probiotic; femur weight: SZ 0.51g ±0.05g; GZ 0.52g±0.05g and 0.42g±0.03g without the probiotic). Femur zinc content was higher for zinc gluconate stabilized with glycine in the presence of the probiotic (97.04ppm±8.40ppm), and the results were similar for zinc sulfate with or without probiotic (84.51ppm±2.44ppm and 84.94ppm±2.28ppm, respectively). Serum antioxidant capacity and immune cellular response were also evaluated by using free radical scavenging assays and a T cell proliferation assay respectively. The free radical scavenging assay showed a tendency to increase with zinc provision, and the highest proliferation index was observed for glycine-stabilized zinc gluconate and the probiotic. Conclusion: The results indicate that the combination of zinc (as glycine-stabilized zinc gluconate) and a probiotic may be beneficial for the evaluated parameters.


An overview of the key topics faced by disability services providers with citations to noteworthy cases, statutes, regulations, and additional sources.


ABSTRACT In the end of the XIXth century French botanist A.R. Franchet has described near 60 taxa in the genus Primula L. In many cases, the original descriptions of Primula taxa were based on one or a few different gatherings, comprising several specimens which were sent to different herbaria. Consequently, a high number of isotypes and syntypes can be found for some names. The modern revision of various Primula taxa during the inspection of material in some important herbaria (BM, E, G, K, LE, MHA, MW, NS, NSK, P, W, WU) and using Databases of herbarium collections through internet, have revealed the need to restrict the typifications of several names. 16 taxa were discussed, 14 names of taxa were typified, 11 of them (P. amethystina, P. bella, P. cernua, P. dryadifolia, P. pinnatifida, P. secundiflora, P. septemloba, P. sonchifolia, P. spicata, P. yunnanensis and P. delavayi) were lectotypified here, also five isolectotypes and 51 syntypes were listed.


Distributed collaborations face significant dialogical challenges: sharing knowledge, questioning ideas, and developing new solutions. These challenges are often associated with collaborations' reliance on written communication such as emails and documents, which are not seen as conducive to the rich dialogues necessary for effective collaboration. However, numerous successful distributed collaborations exist despite their sometimes exclusive reliance on written communication. Based on a qualitative study of distributed collaboration in two contexts-an organization effectively coordinating work across two continents and a pair of scientists working together to develop a new theory-we examine how writing supports dialogue, and thus collaboration, among distant partners. Our analysis of the correspondences exchanged in these two historical distributed collaborations identifies four mechanisms of writing-objectifying, contextualizing, specifying, and reflecting-and shows how they support dialogue and so address the dialogical challenges involved in distributed collaboration. These findings are particularly relevant in our era of technology-mediated communication where even collaborations in colocated settings rely extensively on written communication. Our findings advance our understanding of fundamental aspects of distributed collaboration and propose to rethink the value of written communication in enacting dialogue and supporting collaboration at a distance.


Various programs are implemented in the context of waste management in Tarakan City. The program does not provide optimal impact if you see the amount of waste generation that continues to increase. Waste generation in 2011 amounted to 98.7 tons/day and in 2018 it increased 79.05% to 176.73 tons/day with the level of solid waste service reaching 68%. This study aims to determine the main problems in waste management in Tarakan City. This type of research is descriptive research. The respondents were five people from five different agencies. Data collection techniques in the form of interviews to find out waste management problems. The qualitative data from the interviews are then converted into quantitative data so that hierarchical analysis can be done. Analysis of the data using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method with Software Expert Choice 11. The main problem is obtained from the multiplication of indicator scores with priority aspect values. The results of the analysis show the main problem of solid waste management is the lack of a solid waste management budget (0.133); lack of garbage transport equipment (0,130); habit of residents in littering (0.118); sanctions in regulations are not implemented (0.114); and sanctions have less deterrent effect (0.107). The main problem of waste management in Tarakan City is related to the lack of solid waste management budget


The microcrack tip plastic zone sizes in austenitic steels are measured using REM and interference microscope. It is shown that the plastic zone size varies from 300µm to 350µm. The importance of determining this parameter is discussed. Based on the analysis of the conventional continuum equations of linear-elastic approach a simple formula is derived for calculation of plastic zone size, R=d E/2π σF, establishing relation between the plastic zone radius (R), microcrack width (d), elasticity modulus (E) and the yield strength of the material (σF). The measured values of plastic zone size are in a good agreement with those reported in literature, and calculated by the above formula.


Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is a global strategy for enhancing food productivity amidst climate change uncertainties in the 21st century. CSA improves farmers' incomes, reduces greenhouse emissions, and farming systems become resilient to climate change. Despite the vital role that CSA plays in the development of the agricultural industry and the economy, the extent to which CSA is related to sustainable agriculture (SA) is not well documented. Is CSA the same as SA? If they are the same, do CSA practices impose mitigation requirements for developing countries like Uganda? Studies or research on CSA and SA unfortunately have certain shortcomings. Lack of this knowledge makes it difficult to plan investments and develop policies that will increase farmers' resilience to climate change and variability to improve SA. This study is aimed at assessing how CSA links to SA and whether the two contribute to climate change mitigation requirements. It was found that CSA and SA are also related in a way that the latter leads to lowering greenhouse gas emissions hence mitigating climate change. CSA and SA share a common principal goal of achieving food security. It was concluded that developing countries are the worst affected by the negative impacts of climate change and don't have the adaptive capacity to respond to climate change effects.


A wide variety of fiber devices can be created by adding special coatings on tapered sections of optical fibers. In this work we present the fundamentals for the fabrication of tapered optical fibers coated with functional polymers. The required aspects of light propagation in tapered sections of optical fibers are introduced and the relevant parameters enabling light interaction with external media are discussed. A special case of interest is the addition of polymeric coatings with prescribed thicknesses in the tapered sections allowing for adjusting the light propagation features. We assess the use of liquid polymer coatings with varying thicknesses along the taper profile that can be tailored for tuning the transmission features of the devices. Hence, we introduce a methodology for obtaining coatings with predefined geometries whose optical properties will depend on the polymer functionality. As demonstrated with numerical simulations, the use of functional polymer coatings in tapered optical fibers allows for obtaining a wide variety of functionalities. Thus, controlled polymer coating deposition may provide a simple means to fabricate fiber devices with adjustable transmission characteristics.


This study aims to investigate the influence of success factors on strategic quality management costing (SQMC).This study proposes a conceptual framework with contingency theory. The ISO 9000 manufacturing firms in Thailand were selected as the sample. A questionnaire was used for collecting the data. There were 195 accounting executives returned the questionnaire and participated in the study. The results of the study showed that long-term vision and proactive accounting practice have a positive influence on strategic quality management costing. This study provides a better understanding of how the firm can encourage SQMC. Thus, the findings confirm and recommend that firms should focus on success factors which include long-term vision and proactive accounting practice in order to achieve effective implementation of the SQMC. Moreover, directions for future research are provided.


Rates of U(VI) release from individual dry‐sieved size fractions of a field‐aggregated, field‐contaminated composite sediment from the seasonally saturated lower vadose zone of the Hanford 300‐Area were examined in flow‐through reactors to maintain quasi‐constant chemical conditions. The principal source of variability in equilibrium U(VI) adsorption properties of the various size fractions was the impact of variable chemistry on adsorption. This source of variability was represented using surface complexation models (SCMs) with different stoichiometric coefficients with respect to hydrogen ion and carbonate concentrations for the different size fractions. A reactive transport model incorporating equilibrium expressions for cation exchange and calcite dissolution, along with rate expressions for aerobic respiration and silica dissolution, described the temporal evolution of solute concentrations observed during the flow‐through reactor experiments. Kinetic U(VI) desorption was well described using a multirate SCM with an assumed lognormal distribution for the mass‐transfer rate coefficients. The estimated mean and standard deviation of the rate coefficients were the same for all <2 mm size fractions but differed for the 2–8 mm size fraction. Micropore volumes, assessed using t‐plots to analyze N2 desorption data, were also the same for all dry‐sieved <2 mm size fractions, indicating a link between micropore volumes and mass‐transfer rate properties. Pore volumes for dry‐sieved size fractions exceeded values for the corresponding wet‐sieved fractions. We hypothesize that repeated field wetting and drying cycles lead to the formation of aggregates and/or coatings containing (micro)pore networks which provided an additional mass‐transfer resistance over that associated with individual particles. The 2–8 mm fraction exhibited a larger average and standard deviation in the distribution of mass‐transfer rate coefficients, possibly caused by the abundance of microporous basaltic rock fragments.


Thy28 protein is conserved among plants, bacteria, and mammalian cells. Nuclear Thy28 protein is substantially expressed in testis, liver, and immune cells such as lymphocytes. Lymphocyte apoptosis plays a crucial role in homeostasis and formation of a diverse lymphocyte repertoire. In this study, we examined whether Thy28 affects induction of apoptosis in WEHI-231 B lymphoma cells following engagement of membrane immunoglobulin (mIg). Once they were established, the Thy28-overexpressing WEHI-231 cells showed similar expression levels of IgM and class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule compared with controls. The Thy28-overexpressing cells were considerably resistant to loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm), caspase-3 activation, and increase in annexin-positive cells upon mIg engagement. These changes were concomitant with an increase in G1 phase associated with upregulation of p27Kip1. The anti-IgM-induced sustained activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), which was associated with late-phase hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production, was partially reduced in the Thy28-expressing cells relative to controls. Taken together, the data suggest that in WEHI-231 B lymphoma cells, Thy28 regulates mIg-mediated apoptotic events through the JNK-H2O2 activation pathway, concomitant with an accumulation of cells in G1 phase associated with upregulation of p27Kip1 in WEHI-231 B lymphoma cells.


Background: Baseline risk variables and visit-to-visit variability (VV) of systolic blood pressure (SBP) , HbA1c, serum creatinine, and uric acid (UA) are potential risk markers of kidney function decline in type 1 diabetes.
 Methods: Post-hoc analysis of the PERL study (NCT02017171) - a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial investigating allopurinol's effect on iohexol-derived glomerular filtration rate (iGFR) in type 1 diabetes with elevated UA. Primary outcome was iGFR change over three years. Linear regression with backwards selection of baseline clinical variables was performed to identify an optimized model forecasting iGFR change. VV of SBP, HbA1c, serum creatinine, and UA were calculated as standard deviations of the residuals in individual linear regression models (LV) and coefficients of variation (CV) using all available measurements in the run-in period; thereafter assessed by linear regression, with iGFR change as the dependent variable. Adjustment included sex, baseline age, diabetes duration, BMI, HbA1c, SBP, kidney function (iGFR or eGFR, as appropriate) , urine albumin excretion rate (UAER) , smoking, and renin-angiotensin system inhibitor use.
 Results: 422 participants completed the trial, 4were included in this analysis. In the optimized baseline risk marker model, race other (including but not limited to Hawaiian/Pacific Islander) than White, Black, or Asian, higher HbA1c, UAER, and heart rate, and lower iGFR were associated with faster iGFR decline; Hispanic/Latino ethnicity was not. Assessing VV, higher LV and CV of SBP was associated with faster iGFR decline (adjusted LV β: -0.79, p=0.01; CV β: -0.79, p=0.04) ; VVs of HbA1c, creatinine, and UA were not.
 Conclusions: We identified several risk markers of faster iGFR decline in a high-risk population of individuals with type 1 diabetes. In addition to previously described associations, higher SBP VV was a risk marker for faster kidney function decline.

 V.Rotbain curovic: None. S.Polsky: Advisory Panel; Medtronic, Other Relationship; diaTribe, Research Support; Dexcom, Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Medtronic, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Sanofi-Aventis U.S. R.Pop-busui: Advisory Panel; Averitas Pharma, Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Nevro Corp., Novo Nordisk, Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Regenacy Pharmaceuticals, Inc. R.J.Sigal: Advisory Panel; Novo Nordisk Canada Inc., Research Support; Novo Nordisk Canada Inc. K.R.Tuttle: Advisory Panel; Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Consultant; AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Company, Research Support; Bayer AG, Goldfinch Bio, Inc., Novo Nordisk, Travere. G.E.Umpierrez: Research Support; AstraZeneca, Dexcom, Inc., Novo Nordisk. A.Wallia: Advisory Panel; Eli Lilly and Company, Research Support; Novo Nordisk, UnitedHealth Group. S.Rosas: Advisory Panel; AstraZeneca, Teladoc Health, Other Relationship; Bayer AG, Research Support; AstraZeneca, Bayer AG. P.Rossing: Consultant; Astellas Pharma Inc., AstraZeneca, Bayer AG, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Novo Nordisk A/S, Sanofi, Speaker's Bureau; Eli Lilly and Company. The perl study group: n/a. N.Roy: None. T.W.Hansen: Stock/Shareholder; Novo Nordisk A/S. L.Caramori: Advisory Panel; Bayer AG, Consultant; AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Novo Nordisk, Research Support; Bayer AG, Novartis AG. D.Cherney: Other Relationship; AbbVie Inc., AstraZeneca, Bayer AG, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Janssen Research & Development, LLC, Lilly, Maze, BMS, CSL-Behring, Merck, Otsuka, Novartis and Novo-Nordisk , Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Sanofi, Research Support; Boehringer Ingelheim-Lilly, Merck, Janssen, Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Novo-Nordisk. I.De boer: Advisory Panel; AstraZeneca, Bayer AG, Cyclerion Therapeutics, Inc., George Clinical, Goldfinch Bio, Inc., Other Relationship; American Society of Nephrology, Research Support; Dexcom, Inc. I.B.Hirsch: Consultant; Abbott Diabetes, Bigfoot Biomedical, Inc., GWave, Roche Diabetes Care, Research Support; Beta Bionics, Inc., Insulet Corporation, Medtronic. I.Lingvay: Advisory Panel; AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Lilly, Mannkind, TARGET PharmaSolutions; Valeritas;; Altimmune; DataRevive; Click; Medscape Duke CRI; Janssen Pharma; Bayer; Intercept, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Zealand Pharma A/S, Consultant; Novo Nordisk, Research Support; NovoNordisk; Mylan; Merck, Sanofi. J.B.Mcgill: Advisory Panel; Gilead Sciences, Inc., Lilly Diabetes, MannKind Corporation, Novo Nordisk A/S, Provention Bio, Inc., Salix Pharmaceuticals, Consultant; Bayer AG, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Research Support; Dexcom, Inc., Novo Nordisk.

 Supported by grants from the NIDDK (R03-DK-094484, R34-DK-097808, UC4-DK-101108, P30-DK-036836, and P30-DK-020572) , the JDRF (17-2012-377) , the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1-TR-002494, UL1-TR- 001422, UL1-TR-002556, UL1-TR-002319, and UL1-TR- 001105) , and the National Institute on Aging (Claude Pepper Center grant number, P30-AG-024824)


When companies go looking for top business talent, they hire a "headhunter"--an executive recruiter. Executive recruiters are experts at locating star job candidates, leaders and managers of a caliber rarely discovered by the usual recruitment sources. And because business is growing more competitive each day and becoming more demanding of top-flight leadership and decision-making skills, companies are increasingly turning to executive recruiters to help them find the talent they need to stay competitive. This comprehensive guide reveals the strategies used by the best executive search professionals in starting and running their own successful placement services. There are more tricks of the trade in this business than in many others--and we'll reveal what you really need to know: * How to network for both client and candidate leads * The difference between contingency and retainer fees * How to approach prospective candidates * Little known characteristics to look for in executive job candidates * The latest industry trends and fee information Learn how to find the best talent for hire--and make good money doing it.


ABSTRACT: Pan Hannian (1906-1977), Communist activist from 1925, former senior head of the CCP secret service and deputy mayor of Shanghai after the PRC's founding, was arrested in 1955 for treachery and counter-revolutionary crimes. He was condemned, with his wife Dong Hui, to imprisonment and to laogai campsfor the rest of his life. His posthumous rehabilitation in 1982 transformed him into a legendary national hero. Illustrative of the political struggles in 1953-1955, the Pan Hannian affair seems to reveal the methods Mao Zedong used from time to time in managing the Party internally so as to maintain his dominant position in the leadership.


This research aims at contextualizing the rising and complex relationship between political movements and democracy in the light of recent parliamentary and presidential elections in Egypt. The 'Arab Spring' in 2011 inaugurated new phase and new era not only in Egypt but also in the whole Arab World whereby it has been characterized by new waves of democratization, Islamization and conservative liberalization. After gaining majority seats in the Egyptian parliament and winning the presidency office, Muslim Brotherhood movement emerged as a cutting edge political force in the Egyptian political system as well as in the Egyptian society in general. In this regard, this paper is an attempt to shed lights on and to trace the legal, political and religious justifications and connotations given by the Muslim Brotherhood for their rule in Egypt internally and externally. After a brief description of the factors and reasons that stood behind the rise of contemporary Islamism, the article goes a step further to explore the adaptive nature of Muslim Brotherhood under the former authoritarian regime. The pragmatism of Muslim Brotherhood was further tested during Al-Tahrir Square revolution and later on their approval and consent to participate in the national election under the military rule.


Transdisciplinary engineering (TE) is gaining attention in academic literature and comes with the underlying assumption of being the next evolutionary step for incorporating engineering solutions in practice. We seek to answer the question of when TE is appropriate and what the conditions are for efficient applications of TE in practice. A framework for analysis is constructed integrating TE with theory of communication and strategic paradox. The framework is used as a lens in a single explorative case of an multi-university research project. The project brings together researchers from a diverse range of disciplines, working together to create a novel device that could have a transformative impact on specific cancer healthcare. Data is collected using structured interviews with project researchers. The main finding from the case study is that TE does not appear to be employed at all levels of abstraction. In this case TE is found to be employed at the strategic level, while tactical and operational levels adopt traditional approaches to working. Effective TE relies heavily on the relationship between specialisation and generalisation. We identify two main roles when it comes to people; specialists and generalists. Specialists (e.g. healthcare, pharmaceuticals & biotechnology) must be able to understand the general picture while the Generalists (e.g. business; operations) must be aware of the requirements and limitations of Specialists. Generalisations for practice and further research are discussed. The main contribution of the work is a framework for analysis of TE.


Precipitation effects in ultra fine grained (UFG) lightweight Mg-based alloys were studied in the present work by means of positron lifetime spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and microhardness. The UFG samples with grain size around 100 nm were fabricated by high pressure torsion (HPT). The UFG structure contains a significant volume fraction of grain boundaries and exhibits a high number of lattice defects (mainly dislocations) introduced by severe plastic deformation during the HPT processing. A high dislocation density and volume fraction of grain boundaries enhance the long range diffusion of solute elements. Moreover, dislocations and grain boundaries act as nucleation centers for precipitates. As a consequence, the precipitation effects are facilitated in the UFG alloys compared to the conventional coarse-grained samples. This phenomenon was examined in this work by comparison of the precipitation sequence in Mg alloys with UFG structure and solution treated coarse-grained alloys.


The presence of random refractive-index fluctuations in location and remote-sensing experiments and double passage of the scattered radiation through the same random inhomogeneities as the incident radiation results in new statistical effects not observed along one-directional paths. To account for the correlation of the forward-backward propagating events, there is a need for a measure in which the random information along the propagation path is preserved. For generation of the even statistical moments, the relevant measure defined in the recently formulated stochastic geometrical theory of diffraction is the two-point random function. We present approximate analytical solutions for the high-frequency propagators based on the multiscale expansion asymptotic procedure applied to the stochastic partial differential equation governing the propagation of the two-point random fluctuation. Analysis of the correlation properties of the retroreflected plane wave is presented for a random medium characterized by a Kolmogorovian refractive-index fluctuation spectrum.


We review some aspects of weak decays of hadrons containing one heavy quark. The main emphasis is on $B$ physics, in particular in the framework of the Heavy Quark Effective Theory.


We compare two possible implementations of a resource allocation service, one using a task server, the other using a protected object. Both make use of the requeue statement, the count attribute, and also the abort statement in order to satisfy requests, depending on the parameters passed in by the calling task and on the internal state of the service. Because the schema of requeue and entries has an execution semantic based on state and transition, it can be coupled easily with a proof in terms of colored Petri nets. We consider the dining philosophers problem, which is a good illustration of the need for a resource allocation service and for which deadlockand starvation-free implementations have already been given in Ada95, though not formally proven and sometimes unfair. We give an almost forgotten solution where the dining philosophers problem is safely implemented with protected objects, whereas its implementation with a server task leads to deadlock. We provide two implementations, one of which completes a solution presented by Brosgol in Ada Europe 96 and makes it really fair. Informal proofs are given and are confirmed by Petri nets proofs. Through these examples, we show that the eggshell semantics of protected objects are basic for attaining a reliable implementation.


Background: C. difficile (CD) is a common pathogen causing antibiotic-associated diarrhea in the US and Europe, but is a neglected enteric pathogen in India. During the last decade this organism has become the leading enteric pathogen causing antibiotic-associated diarrhea in Nosocomial and community populations. Laboratory confirmation is the only method of detecting C. difficile. Different laboratory test methods include enzyme immunoassays (EIAs), lateral flow tests, PCR assays, tissue culture cytotoxicity neutralization tests and toxigenic culture. Sensitivity, specificity, turnaround time and cost effectiveness of these tests differs grossly. The Tech lab C. difficile quik chek complete kit (USA) is the only commercial diagnostic lateral flow rapid kit detecting Glutamate deHydrogenase (GDH) and CD toxin simultaneously in a single test cassette. Comparative analysis of Techlab kit with cytotoxicity assay showed 88% predictive rate. The test is easy, rapid and has good specificity. Tech lab kit can be used for screening and any discrepant result may be confirmed with PCR. Laboratory tests detecting GTD alone or only Tox A are of no diagnostic use; because of poor positive predictive value Discrepant test samples which may be GDH pos/tox neg or vice- versa may be further confirmed by Xpert PCR.
Objective: The main objective was to identify the rate of C. difficile infection.
Methodology: Two hundred randomly selected gastroenteritis cases from hospitals and the community were included. In total, 145 met the inclusion criteria. C. difficile toxin and / or antigen was detected using the Techlab C.diff quik chek kit. CD antigen alone was detected in 18% (25) of cases, antigen with one of the toxin was found in 21% (30). Overall, the Nosocomial CDI rate in adults was 34% (17/50). The carriage rate in children was 31% (11/ 35).
Conclusion: C. difficile diarrhea is an emerging problem in India.


On the basis of the large, well-controlled, prospective study from the NICHD, it can be stated that midtrimester ammniocentesis is safe if properly performed. The details of performance, with emphasis on possible pitfalls, are presented in an effort to encourage more practicing obstetricians to begin performing the procedure in cooperation with their area genetics laboratories (11). Emphasis is also placed on performing this procedure in a manner most likely to produce success. This success is measured not only in obtaining the fluid, but more importantly in gaining useful information from the analysis of the fluid. Although the aspects of diagnosing and preventing genetic disease have been emphasized, perhaps the greatest value of midtrimester amniocentesis is the reassurance afforded the more than 95% of couples when the fluid analysis is normal (19). The consumer demand for amniocentesis is rapidly increasing. Although the medicolegal implications of the techniques are not fully understood at present, it is clear that failure on the part of a clinician to offer indicated diagnostic amniocentesis may make the clinician vulnerable to litigation if the pregnancy outcome is abnormal. The demand for amniocentesis and laboratory analysis of the fluid will soon overtax existing facilities. Until such time as new and expanded facilities are available, discretion must be used in offering the procedures. Governmental action may soon be forthcoming to provide facilities designed to make midtrimester diagnostic amniocentesis available to all for whom it is indicated.