Introduction: Inorganic iodide (Lugol solution) has been used for the preoperative management of patients with Graves' disease for many years. However, some new instruments have come into the surgeons reach that can accomplish bloodless operative field without the need of preoperative treatment. The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety in the application of two types of energy devices – SonoSurg® and Thunderbeat® in patients with and without preoperative preparation with Lugol solution.
Material and Methods: The study included 100 patients with Greaves' disease operated between January 2017 and December 2017. Patients were divided into four groups - 50 patients operated using SonoSurg® - 25 patients with preoperative preparation with Lugol solution and 25 without preoperative PI preparation, and 50 patients operated using Thunderbeat® - 25 patients with and 25 without preoperative Lugol preparation. We evaluated and compared the outcome between the four groups.
Results: The four groups had a similar distribution in the demographic features such as gender, age, and functional activity. When comparing the results, we found very similar results in the groups with preoperative preparation with PI solution. In contrasts we found significant differences in the duration of surgery, intraoperative and postoperative complications between the groups without preoperative PI preparation. Hospital stay of patients in four groups was similar - an average of 2 days stay into the clinic.
Conclusion: Our results showed that Lugol solution preparation has its place in the era of energy devices. Thunderbeat® can accomplish reliable hemostasis without preoperative Lugol preparation however we can achieve the same result with SonoSurg® and preoperative preparation at a much lower cost.


Crit Care Med 2016 • Volume 44 • Number 12 (Suppl.) aplastic changes. Other autoimmune work-up was negative. Cefepime and vancomycin were changed to Daptomycin/Ciprofloxacin combination. He also received high dose prednisone with significant improvement within a few days. He was discharged in stable condition. Results: DIIHA can be confused with warm antibody hemolytic anemia (WAIHA). In our patient, the severity of anemia, and lack of bone marrow response in the setting of sepsis and alcohol abuse was a confounder. Cephalosporins and other commonly prescribed antibiotics are well known to cause DIIHA. Like DIIHA, WAIHA is very responsive to high dose steroids, however strong clinical suspicion and discontinuation of the offending agent can save lives.


PURPOSE
To describe a minimally invasive surgical technique and its clinical outcomes with the use of acellular nerve allograft to re-establish corneal sensibility in patients with neurotrophic keratopathy.

METHODS
Acellular nerve allograft was coapted to an intact supraorbital, supratrochlear, or infraorbital nerve and transferred to the affected eye. Donor nerve pedicles were isolated through a transpalpebral or transconjunctival approach. Retrospective evaluation of preoperative and postoperative corneal sensibility, ocular surface, and best-corrected visual acuity was performed in all patients. Mean follow-up period was 6 months (range: 3-10 months).

RESULTS
Corneal neurotization with acellular nerve allograft was successfully performed in 7 patients with restoration of corneal sensibility and corneal epithelial integrity. In vivo confocal microscopy demonstrated increased nerve density in corneal stroma at 4 months after surgery.

CONCLUSIONS
The use of acellular nerve allograft allows for a minimally invasive approach to successful corneal neurotization.


Congestion management is one of the key functions of system operator in the restructured power industry during unexpected contingency. This paper proposes a method for generator contribution based congestion management using multiobjective genetic algorithm. In the algorithm, both real and reactive losses have been optimised using optimal power flow model and the contributions of the generators with those optimised losses are calculated. On second level, the congested lines are identified by the proposed overloading index (OI) during contingency and those lines are relieved with the new contribution of generators, which is the outcome of the developed algorithm. The planned method depicts the information related to congestion management to minimize the investment cost, without installing any external devices and to maximise the consumer welfare by avoiding any load curtailment without affecting the voltage profile of the system as well as the optimised total system loss. IEEE 30 bus system is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.


Abstract "Understanding nature's mute but elegant language of living cells is the quest of modern molecular biology. From an alphabet of only four letters representing the chemical subunits of DNA, emerges a syntax of life processes whose most complex expression is man. The unraveling and use of this 'alphabet' to form new 'words and phrases' is a central focus of the field of molecular biology. The staggering volume of molecular data and its cryptic and subtle patterns have led to an absolute requirement for computerized databases and analysis tools. The challenge is in finding new approaches to deal with the volume and complexity of data, and in providing researchers with better access to analysis and computing tools in order to advance understanding of our genetic legacy and its role in health and disease."


The object oriented and relational technologies are originated in distinct paradigms. The objectoriented technology is universally accepted approach for the development of business applications since it offers more appropriate methods and facilities for modelling of the real world objects. Meanwhile, relational database is still used to preserve the persistence of enterprise data. Connecting these two paradigms is not a straightforward task and necessitates a systematic mapping from one to another. Mapping from object model to relational database demands special attention because it would yield an object-relational impedance mismatch. One of the essential concepts in object technology is the idea of inheritance, and unfortunately relational database does not support this notion. This paper seeks to address various approaches in mapping from inheritance to tables and demonstrates how object-relational tool could be used to help software developers.


Which approaches to software development should be used in which situations? This fundamental question is explored based on experiences from nine comparable small-scale software projects using prototyping and specifying. An empirical interpretation suggests that mixed approaches to software development will benefit from the strengths of both specifying and prototyping. On functionality, robustness, ease of use, and ease of learning mixed approaches led to products of a quality that was at least comparable to the products of specialized approaches based on either specifying or prototyping. Moreover the Spiral Model was experienced as a useful framework for combining specifying and prototyping approaches to software development. A theoretical interpretation relates these practical lessons to The Principle of Limited Reduction. This principle suggests that effective software development must cope with both complexity and uncertainty. This requires a systematic effort combining analytical and experimental approaches, independently of whether specifications or prototypes are used.


Spanish and criollo soldiers in what is now Chile viewed colonial Mapuche and especially male shamans (machi weye) as perverse sodomites engaged in devil worship. I analyze the gender identities of male and female machi in the colonial period by considering ethnic, gender, and power dynamics. I contrast colonial Mapuche (Reche) perceptions of machi as co-gender specialists having alternative sexualities with the discourses of sodomy, sorcery, and effeminacy used by Spanish and criollo soldiers and Jesuit priests. I explore the process by which the categories of the two groups gradually merge and how they shape contemporary Mapuche and Chilean majority discourses about machi as well as machi perceptions about themselves.


Reinforcement learning (RL) can be impractical for many high dimensional problems because of the computational cost of doing stochastic search in large state spaces. We propose a new RL method, Boundary Localized Reinforcement Learning (BLRL), which maps RL into a mode switching problem where an agent deterministically chooses an action based on its state, and limits stochastic search to small areas around mode boundaries, drastically reducing computational cost. BLRL starts with an initial set of parameterized boundaries that partition the state space into distinct control modes. Reinforcement reward is used to update the boundary parameters using the policy gradient formulation of Sutton et al. (2000). We demonstrate that stochastic search can be limited to regions near mode boundaries, thus greatly reducing search, while still guaranteeing convergence to a locally optimal deterministic mode switching policy. Further, we give conditions under which the policy gradient can be arbitrarily well approximated without the use of any stochastic search. These theoretical results are supported experimentally via simulation.


Although transactions have been a valuable abstraction of atomicity, persistency, and recoverability, they have not been widely used in programming environments today, mostly because of their high overheads that have been driven by the low performance of magnetic disks. A major challenge in transaction-based systems is to remove the magnetic disk from the critical path of transaction management. We present PERSEAS, a transaction library for main memory databases that decouples the performance of transactions from the magnetic disk speed. Our system is based on a layer of reliable main memory that provides fast and recoverable storage of data. We have implemented our system as a user-level library on top of the Windows NT operating system in a network of workstations connected with the SCI interconnection network. Our experimental results suggest that PERSEAS achieves performance that is orders of magnitude better than traditional recoverable main memory systems.


Acquired resistance to therapy is a major obstacle in clinical oncology, and little is known about the contributing mechanisms of the host response to therapy. Here, we show that the proinflammatory cytokine IL1β is overexpressed in response to paclitaxel chemotherapy in macrophages, subsequently promoting the invasive properties of malignant cells. In accordance, blocking IL1β, or its receptor, using either genetic or pharmacologic approach, results in slight retardation of primary tumor growth; however, it accelerates metastasis spread. Tumors from mice treated with combined therapy of paclitaxel and the IL1 receptor antagonist anakinra exhibit increased number of M2 macrophages and vessel leakiness when compared with paclitaxel monotherapy-treated mice, indicating a prometastatic role of M2 macrophages in the IL1β-deprived microenvironment. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the dual effects of blocking the IL1 pathway on tumor growth. Accordingly, treatments using "add-on" drugs to conventional therapy should be investigated in appropriate tumor models consisting of primary tumors and their metastases. Mol Cancer Ther; 14(6); 1385–94. ©2015 AACR.


The aye-aye is considered the most widely distributed lemur in Madagascar; however, the effect of forest quality on aye-aye abundance is unknown. We compared aye-aye presence across degraded and non-degraded forest at Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. We used secondary signs (feeding sites, high activity sites) as indirect cues of aye-aye presence and Canarium trees as an indicator of resource availability. All 3 measured variables indicated higher aye-aye abundance within non-degraded forest; however, the differences across forest type were not significant. Both degraded and non-degraded forests showed a positive correlation between feeding sites and high activity sites. We found that Canarium, an important aye-aye food source, was rare and had limited dispersal, particularly across degraded forest. This preliminary study provides baseline data for aye-aye activity and resource utilization across degraded and non-degraded forests.


A spinning gas, heated adiabatically through axial compression, is known to exhibit a rotationdependent heat capacity. However, as equilibrium is approached, a new effect is identified here wherein the temperature does not grow homogeneously in the radial direction, but develops a temperature differential with the hottest region on axis, at the maximum of the centrifugal potential energy. This phenomenon, which we call a piezo-thermal effect, is shown to grow bilinearly with the compression rate and the amplitude of the potential. Numerical simulations confirm a simple model of this effect, which can be generalized to other forms of potential energy and methods of heating.


The Ministry of Education,in the end of 2009,proposed a policy intention of taking society demand as the orientation of pushing higher education reform.The proposal attracts hot debates in and out of academia.This group of articles discusses the following issues.Firstly,how to deal with the diversified society demands for those higher education institutions varied in types and tiers,what is the start point and what are the steps in the reform led by society demands? Secondly,facing serious survival condition,how those mass institutions accounted a major proportion in higher education institution system change their strategies to gain a new progress? Thirdly,in order to meet society demands,what kind of problems exist and need to be changed in setting disciplines and majors? Fourthly,what is the position of personal need in these society demands,and how to consider the function of individual demand in the reform? The last but not the least,what are the issues we should be paid special attention to in this higher education reform which is oriented by society demands because of the particularity of higher education market.


After implantation of a biomaterial, an inflammatory response involving macrophages is induced. The behavior of macrophages depends on their phenotype, and by directing macrophage polarization unwanted effects may be avoided. In this study, the possibility to modulate the behavior of macrophages activated by biomaterials was assessed in an in vitro model. Primary human monocytes were seeded on polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene and polylactic acid yarns, and treated with medications frequently used by patients: rapamycin, dexamethasone, celecoxib or pravastatin. Modulation of the adhering macrophages with rapamycin resulted in a generally pro-inflammatory effect. Dexamethasone caused an overall anti-inflammatory effect on the macrophages cultured on either material, while celecoxib only affected macrophages adhering to polyethylene terephthalate and polylactic acid. Pravastatin increased the pro-inflammatory genes of macrophages cultured on polypropylene and polylactic acid. Pairwise comparison revealed that macrophages adhering to polylactic acid seemed to be more susceptible to phenotype modulation than when adhering to polypropylene or polyethylene terephthalate. The data show that macrophages activated by the biomaterials can be modulated, yet the degree of the modulatory capacity depends on the type of material. Combined, this model provides insights into the possibility of using a medication in combination with a biomaterial to direct macrophage behavior and thereby possibly avoid unwanted effects after implantation.


Magnesium ion battery has gradually become a research hotspot because of a series of advantages of environmental protection and safety. Still, magnesium ion battery lacks cathode materials with high energy density and rate capacity, which influences the electrochemical properties of magnesium ion battery. This paper selects KMnO4 as an oxidant and the divalent salt of Mn2+ as a reducing agent. The α-MnO2/Ti3C2, β-MnO2/Ti3C2, and γ-MnO2/Ti3C2 were prepared by means of hydrothermal synthesis, at the same time, the ratio of MnO2 and Ti3C2 was adjusted. The effects of the different crystal structures of MnO2 on the microstructure and electrochemical properties of MnO2/Ti3C2 composites with different proportions were studied. The results show that the MnO2 crystal structure has a significant influence on the microstructure of the electrode material. The α-MnO2 is uniformly distributed in the composite, providing more transmission paths for magnesium ions. Besides, we found that when α-MnO2 and Ti3C2 are in the proportion of 1:2, the electrochemical performance is optimal, and its capacity can reach 125 mAh g−1, which is 140% of the γ-MnO2 crystal structure.


Land disposal of beef-feedlot manure was studied. Annually, beginning in the fall of 1969, feedlot waste was applied to a silty clay loam soil at rates that after 4 years ranged from 114 to 2,750 metric tons/ha of dry manure. Included were three single applications made in the fall of 1969 (residual) that ranged from 123 to 590 dry metric tons/ha. For 3 years, in the spring and fall, surface soil samples and soil cores were taken. Yields of furrow-irrigated corn (Zea mays L.) forage and plant contents of N, P, K, Ca, Mg, and Na were measured. Chemical composition of manure from a single feedlot varied greatly. Average composition (dry weight basis) of samples collected for 3 years was 20.5% H₂O, 0.92% N, 0.52% P, 1.14% K, 0.92% Ca, 0.41% Mg, and 0.26% Na. At all sampling dates electrical conductivities (EC) of extracts from saturated pastes of the surface soil samples from plots receiving yearly manure treatments were linearly related to cumulative tons of applied manure; EC values of more than 10 mmho/cm were recorded for the spring samplings. Both yearly and residual manure treatments caused Na and NO₃-N to move downward accumulating to depths of at least 1 m after 3 years; movement of K and P was restricted to 50 and 30 cm, respectively. Corn-forage yields were increased by improved soil fertility at the low and intermediate yearly rates, but depressed at the high rates, probably because of salt injury. After 4 years forage yields were still increased on plots that received residual treatments. Uptake of N and P was also depressed at high yearly rates and followed trends similar to those of yield. Yearly rates ranging from 29 to 68 dry metric tons ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ produced near maximum forage yields without causing excessive salt accumulation in the soil.


In an endeavor to study natural systems at multiple spatial and taxonomic resolutions, there is an urgent need for automated, high-throughput frameworks that can handle plethora of information. The coalescence of remote-sensing, computer-vision, and deep-learning elicits a new era in ecological research. However, in complex systems, such as marine-benthic habitats, key ecological processes still remain enigmatic due to the lack of cross-scale automated approaches (mms to kms) for community structure analysis. We address this gap by working towards scalable and comprehensive photogrammetric surveys, tackling the profound challenges of full semantic segmentation and 3D grid definition. Full semantic segmentation (where every pixel is classified) is extremely labour-intensive and difficult to achieve using manual labeling. We propose using label-augmentation, i.e., propagation of sparse manual labels, to accelerate the task of full segmentation of photomosaics. Photomosaics are synthetic images generated from a projected point-of-view of a 3D model. In the lack of navigation sensors (e.g., a diver-held camera), it is difficult to repeatably determine the slope-angle of a 3D map. We show this is especially important in complex topographical settings, prevalent in coral-reefs. Specifically, we evaluate our approach on benthic habitats, in three different environments in the challenging underwater domain. Our approach for label-augmentation shows human-level accuracy in full segmentation of photomosaics using labeling as sparse as 0.1%, evaluated on several ecological measures. Moreover, we found that grid definition using a leveler improves the consistency in community-metrics obtained due to occlusions and topology (angle and distance between objects), and that we were able to standardise the 3D transformation with two percent error in size measurements. By significantly easing the annotation process for full segmentation and standardizing the 3D grid definition we present a semantic mapping methodology enabling change-detection, which is practical, swift, and cost-effective. Our workflow enables repeatable surveys without permanent markers and specialized mapping gear, useful for research and monitoring, and our code is available online. Additionally, we release the Benthos data-set, fully manually labeled photomosaics from three oceanic environments with over 4500 segmented objects useful for research in computer-vision and marine ecology.


Social work has always been a contested activity and its status as an academic discipline remains uncertain. There is currently renewed interest in the theoretical and research dimensions of social work, at a time when significant changes in the broad social, political and economic context in which practice takes place require a re-evaluation of social work's role and a re-examination of its identity. This timely book brings together leading social work academics to examine the state of social work at the beginning of the 21st century. With their focus on the relationships between research, theory and practice, they reflect critically on the nature of social work as a discipline in higher education and the importance of this to the profession as a whole. The book represents an exploratory conversation among social work academics about the current state and future aspirations of the discipline and the profession. It aims to stimulate wider debate about the dominant constraints and opportunities for social work in the 21st century.


Smoking tobacco, including cigarettes, has been associated with an increased incidence and relative risk for cerebral infarction in both men and women. Recently, we have shown that nicotine and cotinine attenuate abluminal (brain facing) K+ uptake mediated by the Na,K,2Cl-cotransporter (NKCC) in bovine brain microvessel endothelial cells (BBMECs) after hypoxic/aglycemic exposure (stroke conditions). The purpose of the current study was to explore the effects of nicotine and tobacco smoke chemicals on K+ movement through the blood-brain barrier during both hypoxia/aglycemia and reoxygenation. BBMECs were exposed to nicotine/cotinine, nicotine-containing cigarette smoke extract (N-CSE), or nicotine-free cigarette smoke extract (NF-CSE) in quantities designed to mimic plasma concentrations of smokers. Stroke conditions were mimicked in vitro in BBMECs through 6 h of hypoxia/aglycemia with or without 12 h of reoxygenation, after which NKCC-mediated K+ uptake and paracellular integrity were measured with 86Rb and [14C]sucrose, respectively. In addition, K+ concentrations in brain extracellular fluid were estimated in 86Rb-injected rats that were administered nicotine, N-CSE, or NF-CSE and on whom global ischemia/reperfusion by in vivo four-vessel occlusion was performed. Both in vitro and in vivo paradigms showed nicotine, the major alkaloid present in tobacco smoke, to be the determining factor of an inhibited response of abluminal NKCC in BBMECs during and after stroke conditions. This was measured as a decrease in abluminal brain endothelial cell NKCC activity and as an increase in brain extracellular K+ concentration measured as the brain extracellular fluid 86Rb/plasma ratio after in vivo four-vessel occlusion with reperfusion.


OBJECTIVE
High-resolution vessel wall imaging (HR-VWI) has emerged as a valuable tool in assessing unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs). There is no standardized method to quantify contrast enhancement of the aneurysm wall. Contrast enhancement can be objectively measured as signal intensity (SI) or subjectively adjudicated. In this study, the authors compared the different methods to quantify wall enhancement of UIAs and determined the sensitivity and specificity of each method as a surrogate of aneurysm instability. They also compared SI quantification between scanners from different manufacturers.

METHODS
The University of Iowa HR-VWI Project database was analyzed. This database compiles patients with UIAs who prospectively underwent HR-VWI using a 3T MRI scanner. The mean and maximal SI values of the aneurysm wall, pituitary stalk, and genu of the corpus callosum were used to compare 3 different measurement methods: 1) aneurysm enhancement ratio AER = (SIwall post - SIwall pre)/SIwall pre; 2) aneurysm-to-pituitary stalk contrast ratio CRstalk = SIwall post/SIstalk post; and 3) aneurysm enhancement index AEI = ([SIwall post/SIbrain post] - [SIwall pre/SIbrain pre])/(SIwall pre/SIbrain pre) (where "pre" indicates precontrast images and "post" indicates postcontrast images). Size ≥ 7 mm was used as a surrogate of aneurysm instability for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. To determine if the objective quantification of SI varies among scanners from different manufacturers, 9 UIAs underwent the same HR-VWI protocol using a 3T General Electric (GE) scanner and a 3T Siemens scanner. Three UIAs also underwent a third scanning procedure on a unit with a different magnet strength (7T GE).

RESULTS
Eighty patients with 102 UIAs were included in the study. The mean age was 64.5 ± 12.2 years, and 64 (80%) patients were women. UIAs ≥ 7 mm had significantly higher SIs than smaller UIAs (< 7 mm): AER = 0.82 vs 0.49, p < 0.001; CRstalk = 0.84 vs 0.61, p < 0.001; and AEI = 0.81 vs 0.48, p < 0.001. ROC curves demonstrated optimal sensitivity of 81.5% for CRstalk ≥ 0.60, 75.9% for AEI ≥ 0.50, and 74.1% for AER ≥ 0.49. Intermanufacturer correlation between 3T GE and 3T Siemens MRI scanners for CRstalk using mean and maximal SI values was excellent (Pearson coefficients > 0.80, p < 0.001). A similar correlation was identified among the 3 UIAs that underwent 7T imaging.

CONCLUSIONS
CRstalk using maximal SI values was the most reliable objective method to quantify enhancement of UIAs on HR-VWI. The same ratios were obtained between different manufacturers and on scans obtained using magnets of different strengths.


Understanding of the biology of threatened species is central to effective planning for sustainable management of wildlife. The Sanje mangabey, Cercocebus sanjei of Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Tanzania is under pressure from increasinghuman hunting, and habitat loss threatens its long-term survival. This thesis endeavoured to document the socio-biological and ecological aspects of this little-known species in a small habituated group of 62 individuals within the Mwanihana forest in Udzungwa Mountains National Park. I studied the social organisation, size and age-sex composition of one group by following and monitoring of the Sanje mangabeys over a six-month period. I also investigated the spatial-temporal interactions and associations between age and sex classes within a group. I assessed the Sanje mangabey's ranging and movementpatterns and monitored its reproductive behaviour by examining female sexual skin swellings and relationships between sexual swellings and sexual behaviour. Further, I investigated the species feeding habits and influences of seasonal parameters (rainfall and temperature) upon reproduction, feeding ecology and behaviour of this species. The Sanje mangabey social organisation is structured in a hierarchy characterised by dominance according to the sex and age of individuals. The study group was composed of individuals of all sexes and age classes; newborn babies, juveniles, sub adults and adults, males and females. Adult males were generally dominant overfemales and males of lower age. Males showed more agonistic behaviours to juveniles than did females and there were stable linear dominance hierarchies among individuals across the sexes (Landau's dominance index, h' =0.92, p =0.0281) and a high directional consistency index, DC =0.91) for both sexes. The linearity indices 'h' were 0.84, P= 0.041, DC = 0.94 and 0.93, P = 0.0382, DC = 0.94) for males and females, respectively. Individuals spent about 8% on average of day grooming each other and the rate of grooming differed across and within sexes and age classes. There was a significant relationship between duration of the initiator's first grooming episode and subsequent reciprocation by the receiver in all age classes (P < 0.05). The independent effects of total grooming duration of the initiator also showed a significant difference and predicted total grooming duration of the recipient (P =0.0001). However, there was no evidence for grooming to be directed towards higher ranking Sanje mangabeys. The Sanje mangabey's home range was 301 hectares and exhibited a mean daily range of 1760 metres within the Mwanihana forest. The rangeand movement patterns of this species differed significantly between seasons of the year. During the dry season (no rain) the group covered larger distances (P = 0.001) between forest patches and moved significantly faster (P = 0.001) than during wet (rain) season. The Sanje mangabey is omnivorous, feeding on plant material, invertebrates and vertebrates such as lizards. There were marked influences of temperature and rainfall on the feeding patterns. Mangabeys utilised the arboreal layer (>16m high) during cool and wet periods and were observed feeding mostly on the ground resources during hot and dry periods. The reproductive potential and social behaviour of theSanje mangabey, however, did not vary with the different seasons of the year. Sanje mangabeys have a mean swelling cycle length of 32.1 +/- 2.4 days. Individual females showed differences in swelling duration (F =12.43, P = 0.043) and noevidence of group variation in cycle length (H= 30.2, DF = 6, P < 0.05) was seen. Maximum swelling lasted for 4.4 +/- 0.9 days on average and detumescence was 14.7 +/- 3.9 days. The mean menses length was 3 +/- 0.2 days (n = 3). Most cycling females, showed days with regular swellings of both sizes. The gestation length averaged 173days and the interval between birth and resumption of the swelling cycle was observed to be 184 days. The sexual skin swellings appear to be sexually attractive signals of female reproductive condition. Although mating occurred in all stages of the female cycle, a peak was observed during maximum swelling size and breakdown. These findings illustrate the utility of sex swellings as signals used by males to determine reproductive condition.


Three centrifugal compressor vaneless diffuser configurations, varying in diffuser width, were studied experimentally. Each diffuser configuration was tested with four different tip clearances. The stage overall performance along with the diffuser flow fields were studied. The diffuser flow fields were studied with probe traverses for total temperature, total pressure, and flow angle, along with static pressure measurements. The diffuser flow fields were studied at the diffuser inlet and outlet at the compressor design rotational speed near the stall (1.04 · q m,stall ) and choke (0.96 · q m,chokel ) conditions. The increasing tip clearance is seen as a larger secondary flow region present at the diffuser inlet near the shroud. This causes additional losses which are seen as lower compressor stage efficiency. The effect is more profound at higher mass flows. The flow velocity distributions at different circumferential locations showed significant differences at off-design conditions. One particular circumferential location showed higher or lower velocities depending on whether the mass flow was higher or lower than the design flow, and the phenomenon is stronger at the low flow.


Studies of comparative classroom practice in the teaching of secondary English are limited, especially when it comes to exploration of the day-to-day practice of English teachers in the secondary classroom. This book presents a case study analysis of secondary classroom practice in three countries: Canada, England and Scotland. Each country has had different degrees of state involvement within the secondary English curriculum over the last twenty years. England has had the highest degree of state involvement in that it has had several statutory national curricula and a variety of assessment regimes. Scotland has had a non- statutory curriculum and no national tests and Canada has had no national curriculum at all, with education being determined at province level, and each province varying its policies.

The research adopts a case study approach involving both classroom observation and interviews with teachers. Through this, the authors explore the impact of state involvement on the reality of what happens in secondary English classrooms. The book invites readers to consider the applicability of the findings to their own contexts, to examine their own practice in the light of this and to consider the nature of the relationships between policy, personal belief and practice in the teaching of English.


Age progression and regression aim to synthesize photorealistic appearance of a given face image with aging and rejuvenation effects, respectively. Existing generative adversarial networks (GANs) based methods suffer from the following three major issues: 1) unstable training introducing strong ghost artifacts in the generated faces, 2) unpaired training leading to unexpected changes in facial attributes such as genders and races, and 3) non-bijective age mappings increasing the uncertainty in the face transformation. To overcome these issues, this paper proposes a novel framework, termed AgeFlow, to integrate the advantages of both flow-based models and GANs. The proposed AgeFlow contains three parts: an encoder that maps a given face to a latent space through an invertible neural network, a novel invertible conditional translation module (ICTM) that translates the source latent vector to target one, and a decoder that reconstructs the generated face from the target latent vector using the same encoder network; all parts are invertible achieving bijective age mappings. The novelties of ICTM are two-fold. First, we propose an attribute-aware knowledge distillation to learn the manipulation direction of age progression while keeping other unrelated attributes unchanged, alleviating unexpected changes in facial attributes. Second, we propose to use GANs in the latent space to ensure the learned latent vector indistinguishable from the real ones, which is much easier than traditional use of GANs in the image domain. Experimental results demonstrate superior performance over existing GANs-based methods on two benchmarked datasets. The source code is available at https://github.com/Hzzone/AgeFlow.


Ethanol production from sugarcane is a key renewable fuel industry in Brazil. Major drivers of this alcoholic fermentation are Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains that originally were contaminants to the system and yet prevail in the industrial process. Here we present newly sequenced genomes (using Illumina short-read and PacBio long-read data) of two monosporic isolates (H3 and H4) of the S. cerevisiae PE-2, a predominant bioethanol strain in Brazil. The assembled genomes of H3 and H4, together with 42 draft genomes of sugarcane-fermenting (fuel ethanol plus cachaça) strains, were compared against those of the reference S288c and diverse S. cerevisiae. All genomes of bioethanol yeasts have amplified SNO2(3)/SNZ2(3) gene clusters for vitamin B1/B6 biosynthesis, and display ubiquitous presence of SAM-dependent methyl transferases, a gene family rare in S. cerevisiae. Widespread amplifications of quinone oxidoreductases YCR102C/YLR460C/YNL134C, and the structural or punctual variations among aquaporins and components of the iron homeostasis system, likely represent adaptations to industrial fermentation. Interesting is the pervasive presence among the bioethanol/cachaça strains of a five-gene cluster (Region B) that is a known phylogenetic signature of European wine yeasts. Combining genomes of H3, H4, and 195 yeast strains, we comprehensively assessed whole-genome phylogeny of these taxa using an alignment-free approach. The 197-genome phylogeny substantiates that bioethanol yeasts are monophyletic and closely related to the cachaça and wine strains. Our results support the hypothesis that biofuel-producing yeasts in Brazil may have been co-opted from a pool of yeasts that were pre-adapted to alcoholic fermentation of sugarcane for the distillation of cachaça spirit, which historically is a much older industry than the large-scale fuel ethanol production.


In this work, we investigate models for bulk, bi- and multilayers containing half-metallic ferromagnets (HMFs), at zero and at finite temperature, in order to elucidate the effects of strong electronic correlations on the spectral properties (density of states). Our focus is on the evolution of the finite-temperature many-body induced tails in the half-metallic gap. To this end, the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is employed. For the bulk, a Bethe lattice model is solved using a matrix product states based impurity solver at zero temperature and a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) solver at finite temperature. We demonstrate numerically, in agreement with the analytical result, that the tails vanish at the Fermi level at zero temperature. In order to study multilayers, taken to be square lattices within the layers, we use the real-space DMFT extension with the CT-QMC impurity solver. For bilayers formed by the HMF with a band or correlated insulator, we find that charge fluctuations between the layers enhance the finite temperature tails. In addition, in the presence of inter-layer hopping, a coherent quasiparticle peak forms in the otherwise correlated insulator. In the multilayer heterostructure setup, we find that by suitably choosing the model parameters, the tails at the HMF/Mott insulator interface can be reduced significantly, and that a high spin polarization is conceivable, even in the presence of long-ranged electrostatic interactions.


BackgroundPharmaceutical administrative data can provide an alternative method to assess chronic disease prevalence. The data within prescription exchanges includes the specific nature of the medication dispensed which can be utilised for case definition by proxy of certain chronic diseases.
ObjectivesThis study examines the potential of Australian administrative pharmaceutical data to define chronic disease and provide population prevalence estimates. The utility of allocated World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) codes to the treatment supplied will be assessed and the validity of the results generated compared with other Australian sources of chronic disease prevalence.
Methods23 chronic conditions were defined by ATC codes within an Australian (administrative) Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) dataset. This enabled calculation of chronic disease prevalences for the period 2003 to 2014 using Australian census data as denominator values.
FindingsPrevalence estimates from PBS data when compared with questionnaire based studies demonstrated homogeneity overall (Mann-Whitney P>0.05). PBS prevalence estimates of diabetes, gout and asthma showed respective correlations of 0.999, 0.8385 and 0.58 to 0.82 with community surveys. In general, the prevalence of most chronic conditions rose. Cardiovascular disorders, iron deficiency treatment, HIV and prescription pain medication however demonstrated notable increases. Prevalence estimates were influenced by artefactual factors including new government regulation in 2012. For diabetes prevalence estimates this improved the correlation associated with community survey data.
ConclusionsAustralian pharmaceutical administrative data have potential utility for chronic disease prevalence estimates. Advantages include low costs, speed of analysis, high power and good representation. We consider the technique offers a complimentary perspective of chronic disease prevalence providing new insights into population health.


It is paradoxical that the one thing which most visual 3D representations of the human past lack is humans. The most obvious reason for this is that buildings, features and artefacts can be reconstructed (whether digitally or not) from empirical archaeological remains, whereas there is far less direct evidence for how people would have looked and moved. Through the AHRC funded, "Motion in Place Platform" project, a team of researchers from the Universities of Sussex, Bedfordshire, Reading, Kings College London, and others spent much of 2010-2011 exploring applications of motion capture to Arts and Humanities fields in order to develop quantitative methods for understanding how human beings move in different environments. Within this project, a number of experiments were conducted to look for quantitative differences in movement in virtual vs material environments. Actors were asked to enact a number of activities hypothesised to have occurred in a British Iron Age roundhouse while wearing inertial motion capture suits. These activities were recorded both in a "virtual" studio (re)construction as well as material (re)construction at Butser Ancient Farm. The data from these experiments was then analysed to look for differences in movement which could be attributed to artefacts and/or environments. This paper will explain the structure of the experiments, how the data was generated, how it has been analysed, and what conclusions have been drawn about how objects and environments may influence human movement and how a better understanding of movement many help understand empirical remains.


Detailed understanding of a possible decoupling between climatic drivers of plant productivity and the response of ecosystems vegetation is required. We compared trends in six NDVI metrics (1982–2010) derived from the GIMMS3g dataset with modelled biomass productivity and assessed uncertainty in trend estimates. Annual total biomass weight (TBW) was calculated with the LINPAC model. Trends were determined using a simple linear regression, a Thiel-Sen medium slope and a piecewise regression (PWR) with two segments. Values of NDVI metrics were related to Net Primary Production (MODIS-NPP) and TBW per biome and land-use type. The simple linear and Thiel-Sen trends did not differ much whereas PWR increased the fraction of explained variation, depending on the NDVI metric considered. A positive trend in TBW indicating more favorable climatic conditions was found for 24% of pixels on land, and for 5% a negative trend. A decoupled trend, indicating positive TBW trends and monotonic negative or segmented and negative NDVI trends, was observed for 17–36% of all productive areas depending on the NDVI metric used. For only 1–2% of all pixels in productive areas, a diverging and greening trend was found despite a strong negative trend in TBW. The choice of NDVI metric used strongly affected outcomes on regional scales and differences in the fraction of explained variation in MODIS-NPP between biomes were large, and a combination of NDVI metrics is recommended for global studies. We have found an increasing difference between trends in climatic drivers and observed NDVI for large parts of the globe. Our findings suggest that future scenarios must consider impacts of constraints on plant growth such as extremes in weather and nutrient availability to predict changes in NPP and CO2 sequestration capacity.


Analysis on the relationship between competitive position and efficiency with the focus on the Indonesian commercial banks is still very rare. On the other hand, the commercial banks contains banks have systemic impact when they have troubles. The objective of this analysis is to examine the direction of the relationship between competitive position and efficiency which has managerial and policy implications for the parties concerned. The relationship was evaluated using Granger-causality test, where previous studies for Indonesian banking sector did not use this test. The quarterly financial data of each bank sample, balanced sheet and profit/loss statement, were used to calculate the efficiency score and Lerner index. The data were taken from the website of Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK). Lerner index was used as an indicator for competitive position of banks, and higher index means a stronger competitive position. A score calculated by data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is a measure for bank efficiency. Dynamic model is estimated by generalized method of moment (GMM) to address endogeneity and heteroscedasticity issues. The study found that there is a significant one-way positive relationship between efficiency and competitive position, and the causality runs from efficiency to competitive position. The policy implication in this finding is that regulators should avoid implementing a regulation, which is counterproductive in strengthening bank's ability to compete in the market. Keywords: competitive position, DEA, efficiency, Granger-causality, pricing power


This study is a research programme on the implementation of quality management in the manufacturing industry culminating in an implementation framework detailing the order in which certain tools and techniques should be implemented. It is intended as a guideline to the industry in general and to the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular. Many companies, especially SMEs, are confused and unable to decide where to start, what and when to implement certain tools and techniques in their total quality journey. With a quality initiatives' implementation plan, the short and long term training needs are automatically identified and its implementation mechanisms designed. It is acknowledged that given the uniqueness of each potential organisation, there is a need for a customised implementation through the critical diagnosis of its present strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The study involved designing of a postal-survey questionnaire and mailing it to 1800 manufacturing companies in the Republic of Ireland. Questions were designed to capture information about the quality management practices and business results from supplier to manufacturing system to customer. Variables were categorised into seven items as used in the Malcolm Baldrige 1997 award criteria and scored using the scoring system practised by the award.

The key findings point to the existence of a linear relationship between practice and performance. From the perspective of competitive advantage, firms are better off being big rather than small and with foreign partnership. Competitive sectors and those with larger export markets have better quality management practices and resulting performance are above industry average. Accreditation to ISO 9000 shows immediate short-term tangible benefits.


Mining activity has been a significant driver of export growth as well as income and employment in parts of regional Australia. However, while income growth is an economic benefit, the high incomes associated with the mining sector may also lead to greater inequality. This paper describes an empirical analysis of mining activity and income inequality in regional Australia. The Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) for personal income is found to be significantly associated with levels of mining employment. However, this relationship is not linear. Rather, income inequality initially increases with mining activity, before decreasing at medium to high levels of mining employment, following a Kuznets curve pattern. Segregating data for men and women reveals very different patterns. Among men, inequality initially increases as mining employment in a region increases, but then sharply decreases; at high levels of mining activity, income inequality among men is lower than is typically observed in non-mining areas. Among women, income inequality increases with mining activity throughout its range. This suggests that income inequality is most likely to be a problem in locales with intermediate levels of mining activity and that it affects men and women quite differently.


Apart from the well established and ever evolving quantitative research methods, a relatively new method begins to gain momentum. Political sciences, and more generally macrocomparative sociological studies work with a small number of cases (usually countries), and that renders standard statistics as sometimes unsuitable. This new methodology, called QCA – Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Ragin, 1987, 2000, 2008) is able to detect configurational patterns even for these small-N scenarios, but perhaps more interestingly it is fundamentally different from conventional statistics due to its asymmetric nature, inherited from its set theoretical nature. Conventional correlations are symmetric (more x, more y, or less x, less y), and the same explanatory model is responsible with both ends of the dependent variable's continuum. By contrast, set theory is inherently asymmetric: a case belongs to a set or it does not, an outcome is either produced or it is not, and more importantly the configuration of causal factors that produce the outcome is most of the times different from the configuration responsible with the absence of the outcome. Both necessity and sufficiency can be determined by exploiting the set theoretic nature of the social science concepts, where their asymmetric nature becomes obvious: what is necessary for an outcome might not be necessary for its absence, and while necessary it might not always be sufficient. The other way round, what is sufficient for an outcome might not always be necessary, a fact that signals what is called "equifinality", which posits the same outcome can be produced by multiple configurational patterns.


[1] Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topography and gravity models from 5 years of Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft tracking provide a window into the structure of the Martian crust and upper mantle. We apply a finite-amplitude terrain correction assuming uniform crustal density and additional corrections for the anomalous densities of the polar caps, the major volcanos, and the hydrostatic flattening of the core. A nonlinear inversion for Moho relief yields a crustal thickness model that obeys a plausible power law and resolves features as small as 300 km wavelength. On the basis of petrological and geophysical constraints, we invoke a mantle density contrast of 600 kg m−3; with this assumption, the Isidis and Hellas gravity anomalies constrain the global mean crustal thickness to be >45 km. The crust is characterized by a degree 1 structure that is several times larger than any higher degree harmonic component, representing the geophysical manifestation of the planet's hemispheric dichotomy. It corresponds to a distinction between modal crustal thicknesses of 32 km and 58 km in the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. The Tharsis rise and Hellas annulus represent the strongest components in the degree 2 crustal thickness structure. A uniform highland crustal thickness suggests a single mechanism for its formation, with subsequent modification by the Hellas impact, erosion, and the volcanic construction of Tharsis. The largest surviving lowland impact, Utopia, postdated formation of the crustal dichotomy. Its crustal structure is preserved, making it unlikely that the northern crust was subsequently thinned by internal processes.


Taking into account that terrorism has grown in recent years, the EU institutions decided to update the legal framework which provides for fighting this phenomenon. Consequently, the Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA was replaced by the EU Directive 2017/541 of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating terrorism, which should be implemented by the Member States by 8 September 2018.

This new act contains a long list of terrorist offences, offences related to a terrorist group, and offences related to terrorist activities. It also stipulates penal sanctions for terrorist offences and provides measures of protection, support and assistance for terrorism victims. This article is a commentary on these groups of provisions and compares them to the previously binding ones. Thus, it indicates the legal changes introduced by the Directive which have to be taken into account by the Member States while implementing it. The comparison of these new provisions with the previously binding ones is also helpful in answering the question posed in the title: Can the Directive 2017/541 be treated as a new chapter in combating terrorism by the European Union?


Kapton polyimide films are one of the most commonly used flexible and robust sub - strates for flexible electronic devices due to their excellent thermal, chemical, mechanical, and electrical properties. However, such films feature an inert and highly hydrophobic surface that inhibits the deposition of functional materials with water-based fluids (solu tions, suspensions, inkjet inks, etc .), which raise the need for their surface modification to reduce their inherent surface inertness and/or hydrophobicity in order to allow for the fabrication of electronic devices on the substrates. Traditional Kapton surface modifica tion approaches use harsh conditions that not only cause environmental and safety prob - lems but also compromise the structural integrity and the properties of the substrates. This chapter focuses on two recently-developed mild and environmentally friendly wet chemical approaches for surface modification of Kapton HN films. Unlike the traditional methods that target the polyimide matrix of Kapton films, these two methods target the slip additive embedded in the polyimide matrix. The surface modified Kapton films resulted from these two methods allowed for not only great printability of both water- and organic solvent-based inks (thus facilitating the full-inkjet-printing of entire flexible electronic devices) but also strong adhesion between the inkjet-printed traces and the substrate films.


decades. The main aim of the paper is to examine whether it is ethically and morally appropriate for corporations which operate in socially unacceptable industries or have socially unacceptable business practices to also partake in philanthropy and claim to be socially responsible. After thoroughly examining the subject area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate philanthropy, it was concluded that the answer to the above question varies according to and is dependent upon a number of factors, namely: the industry a company operates in, the stigma or negativity surrounding a company, how socially unacceptable the industry is, how socially unacceptable the company is, how socially unacceptable the company's business practices are, what types of philanthropy or CSR program a company follows at whom or what the philanthropy is directed, the motivations a company has for being socially responsible and the individual's moral scale.


With increasing opportunities to learn online, the problem of positioning learners in an educational network of content offers new possibilities for the utilisation of geometry-based natural language processing techniques.

In this article, the adoption of latent semantic analysis (LSA) for guiding learners in their conceptual development is investigated. We propose five new algorithmic derivations of LSA and test their validity for positioning in an experiment in order to draw back conclusions on the suitability of machine learning from previously accredited evidence. Special attention is thereby directed towards the role of distractors and the calculation of thresholds when using similarities as a proxy for assessing conceptual closeness.

Results indicate that learning improves positioning. Distractors are of low value and seem to be replaceable by generic noise to improve threshold calculation. Furthermore, new ways to flexibly calculate thresholds could be identified.


After the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, and since the new wave of attacks in Europe in the recent past, urgency has motivated and justified some of the most important political decisions, even in countries that were not directly aggressed. The search for full security, which seems to have become a new utopia, explains certain extra-legal decisions and promotes the extension of the faculties of executive powers in a growing number of countries. Thus, urgency threatens today the basis of democracy: it undermines the guarantees for the exercise of freedom, it discourages citizens' participation in public affairs, it hinders debate and it stands in the way of thought and of autonomous judgment. Using Hannah Arendt's research on totalitarianism and Giorgio Agamben's analysis of Security States, this paper will show that the recurrent recourse to 'urgency' can generate, today, oppressive conditions. These conditions are different from those linked to the rise of totalitarian regimes in the past but they have some common points, which demand citizens' reflection, judgment and action.


Celiac disease (CD) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that affects the small intestine in genetically predisposed individuals. Previous studies have investigated the potential link between CD and cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, the findings have been inconsistent. We aimed to provide an updated review of the literature on the association between CD and CVD. PubMed was searched from inception to January 2023 using keywords including CD, cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, cardiac arrhythmia, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, and myocarditis. We summarized the results of the studies, including meta-analyses and original investigations, and presented them according to the different forms of CVD. Meta-analyses published in 2015 provided mixed results regarding the relationship between CD and CVD. However, subsequent original investigations have shed new light on this association. Recent studies indicate that individuals with CD are at a higher risk of developing overall CVD, including an increased risk of myocardial infarction and atrial fibrillation. However, the link between CD and stroke is less established. Further research is needed to determine the link between CD and other cardiac arrhythmias, such as ventricular arrhythmia. Moreover, the relationship between CD and cardiomyopathy or heart failure, as well as myopericarditis, remains ambiguous. CD patients have a lower prevalence of traditional cardiac risk factors, such as smoking, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity. Therefore, it is important to discover strategies to identify patients at risk and reduce the risk of CVD in CD populations. Lastly, it is unclear whether adherence to a gluten-free diet can diminish or increase the risk of CVD among individuals with CD, necessitating further research in this area. To fully comprehend the correlation between CD and CVD and to determine the optimal prevention strategies for CVD in individuals with CD, additional research is necessary.


This study suggests a multi-layer design called earth security tax (EST) under the earth security capital (ESC). The earth security tax (EST) system suggested by the study furthur expands the whole idea to automatically trade benefits between least developed countries (LDCs) and developed countries (DCs), it also helps to upgrade the export contens in the LDC. The EST system also helps economic development in the DC without changing forcefully their current trade conditions. As for the EST global governance suggested by this study links to market ingredients while dealing with the problem of global poverty. As this study may show, through the help of global governance, international associations such as IBRD are welcome invited to join the system without the necessity to impose any aid conditionality. After the project is accomplished, the system can be applied to dear with another highly homogeneous issue of subsidiaries.


Acute generalised exanthematous pustulosis (AGEP) is a rare skin reaction characterized by sterile, small pustules on the erythematous background. Drugs, especially antibiotics are major caustic factors in etiology. The diagnosis of disease is made by the scoring system which determined by "European Severe Cutaneous Adverse Reactions (EuroSCAR)"s' working group. The four-year-old patient applied with the complaint of numerous pustular skin eruptions on the erythematous background and had the history of amoxicillinclavulanic acid treatment which was given two days ago. The biopsy samples were taken from pustular lesions. The diagnosis of AGEP was made according to EuroSCAR score, evaluating clinical feature and the histopatological examination of the biopsy sample. In this presentation, we aimed to emphasize that AGEP can rarely be seen in childhood age and to review the clinical properties, diagnosis and treatment of disease.


In the field of geophysics, huge volumes of information often need to be processed with complex and time-consuming algorithms to better understand the nature of the data at hand. A particularly useful instrument within a geophysicists toolbox is a set of decorrelating transforms. Such transforms play a key role in the acquisition and processing of satellite-gathered information, and notably in the processing of hyperspectral images. Satellite images have a substantial amount of redundancy that not only renders the true nature of certain events less perceivable to geophysicists but also poses an issue to satellite makers, who have to exploit this data redundancy in the design of compression algorithms due to the constraints of down-link channels. This issue is magnified for hyperspectral imaging sensors, which capture hundreds of visual representations of a given targeteach representation (called a component or a band) for a small range of the light spectrum. Although seldom alone, decorrelation transforms are often used to alleviate this situation by changing the original data space into a representation where redundancy is decreased and valuable information is more apparent.


Abstract Thin sections of shells from different species of mollusc have been analysed by X-ray synchrotron diffraction using the BM16 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France. A sequence of 2-D X-ray diffraction patterns were acquired in transmission mode at regular intervals across the shell thickness. From the 2D patterns, 2θ- and χ-scans were calculated and analysed. We studied the evolution of the shell microstructures by analysing several parameters from calculated scans: (1) the intensity of the most intense aragonite reflections in the calculated 2θ scans; (2) the crystallinity calculated from the full width at half maximum values of the main reflections in those scans; and(3 ) the degree of orientation of crystals, measured from the angular width (in angle) of the arches displayed in the Debye-Scherrer rings which appeared in the 2D diffraction patterns. The determined parameters displayed sharp changes at the transitions between microstructurally distinct shell layers indicating that the microstructural switch occurred very rapidly and was precisely controlled.


Renewal in hymnody : the new hymnal in Afrikaans (2001)
Renewal in hymnody and an "explosion" of hymns are taking place world-wide. Many new hymnals were published in the past decades. A new hymnal in Afrikaans, Liedboek van die Kerk, was also taken into use during 2001. In this article certain aspects of renewal reflected in this hymnal are discussed and related to world-wide tendencies. Aspects discussed are liturgical forms and hymns handed down from the early history of the church; forms promoting more active participation; ecumenicity; diversity and plurality to accommodate various groups and generations; the versification of the Psalter; the rubrication; and the formation of liturgists. It is shown which aspects were addressed successfully and which should receive more attention in future.


A methodology is presented for evaluating and redesigning digital circuit networks with signal integrity problems and a tool which implements this methodology. Evaluation consists of simulating the behavior of the circuit, analyzing the simulation results to reveal signal integrity problems, and diagnosing the causes of each problem. Redesign consists of finding an appropriate method to modify the structure of a faulty circuit based on the evaluation results, forming a plan out of the operators which are included in the method and applying the plan. Evaluation and redesign of the circuit are performed in two abstraction levels. Part of the work has gone into identifying and implementing the types of circuit knowledge that are necessary for the realization of the methodology. The tool which implements the methodology is called the transmission-line troubleshooting system (TLTS). TLTS executes the evaluation-redesign loop until a problem-free circuit is obtained. TLTS is implemented in the expert-system language ORBS. >


In recent years increasing importance has been given to knowledge of the marine environment, either to help detect and understand global climate change phenomena, or to protect and preserve those coastal areas where multiple interests converge (linked to tourism, recreational or productive activities) and that suffer greater impact from anthropogenic activities; this has in turn stimulated the start of research programs devoted to the monitoring and surveillance of these particular zones, coupling the needs for knowledge, sustainable development and the exploitation of natural resources. Modern instruments rely on an electronic heart; an integrated hardware-software system developed in Messina is presented here, which is used in various versions to control data acquisition and transmission on buoys or on ship-based instrumentation. The system was originally conceived to implement a PC-like architecture; basically, it comprises a Pentium family CPU, a variable number of RS-232 ports to connect measuring instruments and communication devices, an analog to digital converter, power outputs to drive the actuators and switch on and off the measuring systems, a satellite and/or cellular phone modem and GPS; the mass storage is supplied by Disk on Chip (DOC) devices. The software enables one to fully control the system and the connected instruments both in local and remote mode using a special set of macro commands. A "sequence manager" can be activated to run pre-programmed macro-command sequences. The macro-commands enable one to manage the data acquisition and transmission, the mission programming, the system hardware and the measuring instruments. The whole system can be connected to another computer (local laptop or remote desktop) using terminal software; however, to fully and easily use its capabilities, a remote control program has been written. Thanks to the hardware-software architecture, it is easy to upgrade the system to more powerful processors without the need to completely rewrite the software.


Sideroblastic erythropoiesis is a recognized complication of acute alcoholism1 and disturbances in porphyrin synthesis have been reported in sideroblastic anemia2. In order to investigate the mechanism of alcoholic-induced sideroblastic erythropoiesis coproporphyrin (C.P.) and protoporphyrin (P.P.) levels were measured in 26 patients admitted with acute alcoholism. Bone marrow examination showed that 11 patients had ring sideroblasts, while in 15 other patients there were adequate iron stores, but no ring sideroblasts. The red blood cell (C.P.) and (P.P.) levels were elevated in all of the 11 patients with ring sideroblasts, but in only three out of the 15 patients with no ring sideroblasts. These data clearly separate those patients with a disturbance of mitochondrial iron metabolism and increased erythrocyte porphyrins from other patients suffering from a comparable degree of alcoholism in whom neither abnormality appeared to exist. We conclude therefore that alcoholic sideroblastic erythropoiesis probably reflects ethanol-induced disturbance in the heme synthetic pathway.


The consistent finding of a nonlinearity in the human body apparent mass has gradually received more attention when modelling biodynamic responses of the human body. However, the factors causing the nonlinearity and the extent of the nonlinearity are not yet understood. Investigators have mainly speculated on causality of the nonlinearities rather than designed experiments to test hypothetical explanations for the nonlinearity. This paper aims to identify variables governing the nonlinear responses of the seated human body during vertical whole-body vibration. The apparent mass data and experimental conditions from six of the more relevant studies are compared. Explanations of the mechanisms controlling nonlinear behaviour are also compared. The dominant variables are classified as: posture, muscle tone, dynamics of buttocks tissue, and geometric nonlinearity.


In recent years, both academia and industry in cyber security have tried to develop innovative defense technologies, expecting that to change the rules of the game between attackers and defenders. The authors start by analysing the root causes of security problems in cyberspace: (i) vulnerabilities in cyber systems are universal; (ii) current cyber systems are static, predictable and monoculture which allows adversaries to plan and launch attacks effectively; (iii) existing techniques cannot detect and eliminates attacks employing unknown vulnerabilities. Based on their analysis, they develop a novel defense framework, mimic defense (MD), that employs 'dynamic, heterogeneity, redundancy (DHR)' mechanism to defense cyber attacks. The main ideas behind MD are: constructing diverse functional equivalent variants for the protected target; scheduling some variants to run in parallel dynamically; and adopting policy-based arbitration mechanism to decide whose results of current running variants are correct. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that DHR can significantly increase the difficulties for attackers and enhance the security of cyber systems, and the security enhancement can be more than ten times. They also present a proof-of-principle prototype that employ MD, mimic router, to examine its effectiveness. Finally, they conclude its limitations.


This paper proposes a novel Machine Learning-based approach to solve a Poisson problem with mixed boundary conditions. Leveraging Graph Neural Networks, we develop a model able to process unstructured grids with the advantage of enforcing boundary conditions by design. By directly minimizing the residual of the Poisson equation, the model attempts to learn the physics of the problem without the need for exact solutions, in contrast to most previous data-driven processes where the distance with the available solutions is minimized.


This paper discusses the findings of research exploring the conduct of portfolio-based performance appraisal within medicine. Portfolios are now used throughout medical school and junior doctor training, in later specialist training, as well as to support the implementation of annual NHS appraisal of doctors as part of their employment contract. They will also play a role in the new medical governance quality assurance process known as revalidation, when it is implemented in 2010. The paper discusses how the growth of portfolio-based performance appraisal within medicine is bound up with the growth of managerial systems of surveillance and control within western health care systems. Theoretically, it draws upon a Governmentality perspective to analyse doctor's accounts of the appraisal process. This views appraisal as an information panopticon that to better enable social control seeks to construct appraisees as calculable and administrable subjects. However, the paper highlights how the doctors interviewed used the tacit dimensions of their expertise to engage in creative game-playing toward appraisal, adopting a stance of paperwork compliance toward it. Paperwork compliance leaves a paper trail that makes it appear doctors have complied with the technical requirements of performance appraisal when in fact they have not. The paper concludes that current reforms to medical governance introduced to ensure the general public is protected from medical error and malpractice, provide sociologists with an invaluable opportunity to undertake a dedicated research program into the performance management of medical work.


Abstract We propose a first-order bias correction term for the Gini index to reduce the bias due to grouping. It depends on only the number of individuals in each group and is derived from a measurement error framework. We also provide a formula for the remaining second-order bias. Both Monte Carlo and EU and U.S. empirical evidence show that the first-order correction reduces a considerable share of the bias, but that some remaining second-order bias is increasing in the variance. We propose a procedure that addresses the remaining second-order bias by using additional information.


ABSTRACT Hurricane Hugo was a category five storm in September of 1989 that significantly impacted natural areas along the Carolina coastal plain through wind damage and storm surge flooding. Francis Beidler Forest, an Audubon wildlife sanctuary in Four Holes Swamp, suffered severe damage to its forest canopy. In response to concerns that the rare spring ephemeral Trillium pusillum var. pusillum may be negatively impacted by the loss of the mixed hardwood canopy, we established permanent plots in the spring of 1990 with single leaf, triple leaf, and flowering individuals recorded by Ecology faculty and students at The Citadel. Disruption to the forest canopy would significantly alter forest floor microhabitat conditions negatively affecting T. pusillum var. pusillum population demography. There was no expected negative effect of Hurricane Hugo, and the loss of canopy cover on the population. Evidence suggests that the decrease in canopy cover and increased light was associated with increased flowering. The coefficient of variation, as a measure of cohort variability among years, increased from flowering, to triple leaf, to single leaf across the 29 years of population monitoring. There was a significant positive association between the number of named storms in the previous two and three years and the number of single leaf plants. There was no evidence that the population is decreasing, even though the number of flowering individuals has decreased. The results of this long-term demography suggest that even severe natural disturbances, like hurricanes and tropical storms, may have a positive effect on Trillium population dynamics.


Introduction Several studies have shown a correlation between air pollution and mortality from cancer and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in highly populated urban areas and in proximity to industrial settlements. Ultrafine particles in the aerodynamic diameter range of 1 nm - 10 µm have been suggested as the most relevant risk factor. Methods During March 2014 – September 2015, we conducted outdoor air monitoring at the entrance of elementary schools and kindergartens located in 4 highly populated Italian urban areas and 5 towns in close proximity to oil refinery plants. We used a Electric Low Pressure Impactor (ELPI+ Dekati, Tampere, Finland), which allows to measure absolute number, mass and surface area of particles, in 14 classes of aerodynamic diameter within the range 6 nm – 10 µm. Results Although within a broad range, median values of particle count were highest in two towns nearby large oil refineries in the wintertime (54,200/cm³) and in the summertime (53,502/cm³) compared with the other urban areas. Overall, the median ultrafine particle count in the towns nearby the oil refineries ranged 7,385–54,200/cm³, while it ranged 16,908–47,417/cm³ in the most populated urban areas, with top readings equal to 292,238 and 928,179/cm³, nearby the industrial settlements and in the urban areas respectively. Results were similar when considering mass units or surface area. Air concentrations were significantly affected by the weather conditions. Conclusions Our results show that airborne ultrafine particle levels overlap between residential areas nearby oil refineries, and populated urban areas. Apart from industrial emissions, urban traffic and traditional heating systems do appear to contribute, as suggested by significantly higher counts in the wintertime. Monitoring airborne ultrafine particles all year long in more numerous urban and industrial locations might allow to better characterise environmental exposure and its relation to the health status of the resident population.


Objectives: A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the level of knowledge, attitudes, and risk perceptions regarding human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunity deficiency syndrome (AIDS) among final year health sciences students in the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Kuantan, Malaysia. Methods: Students admitted in the schools of medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dentistry and allied health sciences at IIUM, Kuantan campus were targeted. Online questionnaire was completed by 236 of final students who volunteered to be a part of this study. Data were collected and analysed by using the Statistical Package for Social software (SPSS). Results: The vast majority of respondents were females (n=165, 70%). About 41.1% of participants were pharmacy students followed by medicine (n= 61, 25.8%), allied health sciences (n=40, 16.9%), nursing (n=20, 8.5%) and dentistry (n=18, 7.6%). Conclusion: The present study results showed moderate awareness about HIV/AIDS treatment, methods of HIV transmission, and educational knowledge of HIV/AIDS among students. The curriculum offered in different health professions should incorporate correct information about HIV/AIDS, thereby minimizing fear, misconceptions, and negatives attitudes that practising professionals hold about HIV/AIDS patients. Key words: Health science, Students, HIV/AIDS, Knowledge, Attitude, Understanding, Malaysia.


is paper compares and contrasts two of the most widely adopted Performance Management (PM) frameworks – Balanced Scorecard and Results-Based Management. It reviews the two frameworks' independent origins and separate evolutionary paths, and examines the resulting differences in practical application. Two case studies are presented, one examining ResultsBased Management implementation within a global UN agency, the other describing work to build a 3rd Generation Balanced Scorecard within a Middle Eastern government ministry. e authors propose that the two frameworks are converging in terms of the approaches used for framework design and implementation.


In 1856 James Clerk Maxwell 15 described a dark spot in the blue region of a prismatic spectrum. The spot moved with his eye but disappeared upon looking elsewhere in the spectrum. He concluded that the spot was entoptic, being produced by a localized reduction of retinal illuminance that resulted from absorption of blue light by the yellow macular pigment. In challenging Maxwell's explanation Gullstrand, 9 in 1905, offered a purely optical basis for the phenomenon, and Walls and Mathews, 23 in 1952, hypothesized that color receptors within the fovea were responsible for the entoptic image. Recent evidence on ocular pigments led Brindley 2 * in 1960 to favor Maxwell's theory. In the present paper we shall use the eponym "Maxwell's spot" and the abbreviation "MS" without implication regarding its cause. Most modern methods for eliciting MS employ a purple dichromic filter which transmits light from only the red and the


The diagnosis of trombiculiasis in a cat was based on the presence of an orange, crusting dermatosis, and identification of 6-legged larvae in skin scrapings. The prevalence of the disease may be higher than suggested by the number of reports in the literature, and due to the lack of pruritus, often may be overlooked.


One of the most pressing questions facing both corporate scholars and businesspeople today is the question of how corporate directors can be made accountable. Before addressing this issue, however, it seems important to consider two antecedent questions: To whom should directors be accountable? And for what? Contemporary corporate scholarship often starts from a "shareholder primacy" perspective that holds that directors of public corporations ought to be accountable only to the shareholders, and ought to be accountable only for maximizing the value of the shareholders' shares. This perspective rests on the conventional contractarian assumption that the shareholders are the sole residual claimants and risk bearers in a public firm. More recent work in economics suggests, however, that this assumption is false. In particular, options theory and the growing literature on the contracting difficulties associated with firm-specific investment both support the claim that a wide variety of groups are likely to bear significant residual risk and enjoy significant residual claims on firm earnings. These groups include not only shareholders, but also creditors, managers, and employees. Thus economic efficiency may be best served not by requiring corporate directors to focus solely on shareholders' interests, but by requiring them instead to maximize the sum of all the interests held by all the groups that bear residual risks and hold residual claims. In accord with this view, we argue that corporate directors ought to be viewed not as "agents" who serve only the shareholders, but as "mediating hierarchs" who enjoy ultimate control over the firm's assets and outputs and who are charged with the task of balancing the sometimes conflicting claims and interests of the many different groups that bear residual risk and have residual claims on the firm. This mediating model of the board's role offers to explain a variety of important doctrines in U.S. law that preserve director autonomy and insulate the board from the command and control of the shareholders or indeed any other group. At the same time, the mediating model raises the question of why directors who are largely insulated from outside pressures should be expected to do a good job of running the firm. We suggest that answers to this question are available, but only if we are willing to look beyond the homo economicus model of rationally selfish behavior commonly employed in economic analysis and to consider as well the extensive empirical evidence in the social sciences literature on the phenomenon of intrinsically trustworthy, other-regarding behavior. We briefly explore how this literature both supports the claim that directors may behave trustworthily even when they do not have explicit incentive to do so, and suggests some of the circumstances that are likely to promote accountable director behavior.


To exploit the potential of multicore architectures, recent dense linear algebra libraries have used tile algorithms, which consist in scheduling a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of tasks of fine granularity where nodes represent tasks, either panel factorization or update of a block-column, and edges represent dependencies among them. Although past approaches already achieve high performance on moderate and large square matrices, their way of processing a panel in sequence leads to limited performance when factorizing tall and skinny matrices or small square matrices. We present a new fully asynchronous method for computing a QR factorization on shared-memory multicore architectures that overcomes this bottleneck. Our contribution is to adapt an existing algorithm that performs a panel factorization in parallel (named Communication-A voiding QR and initially designed for distributed-memory machines), to the context of tile algorithms using asynchronous computations. An experimental study shows significant improvement (up to almost 10 times faster) compared to state-of-the-art approaches. We aim to eventually incorporate this work into the Parallel Linear Algebra for Scalable Multi-core Architectures (PLASMA) library.


Background English Abortions have increased to over 185,000 pa in 2013. Woman undergoing a termination are often unaware of any subsequent risk to a future pregnancy or birth as it is not currently mentioned on the consent form. In Scandinavia, abortion registers have been kept and cohort studies undertaken to establish side-effects of terminations. This is not possible England. The NHS no. is not required to be recorded for this procedure, thus data cannot easily be linked and few studies have been undertaken in the UK to establish this risk. This study summarises results from international papers, in settings comparable to the NHS, published on this issue since 1990, and a meta-analysis has been conducted to quantify the risk. Methods Data Sources, Searching and Eligibilty Criteria: Titles and Abstracts in Pubmed, Medline, Cochrane and DARE databases were searched. Jan 1990–Dec 2014 (all languages). Observational controlled studies were considered. Those which confused abortion and miscarriage were excluded. Medical and surgical abortions were distinguished where possible. Risk of bias was assessed using ACROBAT criteria and papers scored. Both reviewers collected data, and used the same eligibility criteria to abstract relevant studies independently. Expert authors were contacted for further data and hand searched references were reviewed. Inclusions: 3828 titles were identified leading to 369 abstracts screened for eligibility and 16 studies met the inclusion criteria for the final meta-analysis using adjusted odds rations allowing for confounders (age, smoking, and other obstetric risk) for the summary adjusted odds ratio. A meta-analysis was undertaken to measure the risk of preterm birth, including very preterm and extremely preterm birth after previous exposure to induced abortion, (medical and surgical distinguished) compared to mothers who had not had a termination Results An increased risk of pre-term birth following a termination was observed in 15 studies. An overall adjusted Odds ratios (OR) of 1.16 for risk of preterm birth was observed after one or more abortions in 14 studies. A dose-response effect was seen after two or more abortions (11 studies) with greater risk of extreme premature delivery (below 28 weeks gestation) associated with 3 or more abortions (recorded in 3 studies). Conclusion Women who have induced abortions are at increased risk of preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies. The risk is increased for extreme preterm birth with multiple abortions. This is an important public health issue and has implications for consent forms, research and commissioning in England.


Event studies represent an increasingly popular method to evaluate (future) welfare effects of economic policy decisions. The basic idea is to hire the stock market as a referee, i.e. that stock market reactions to the announcement of policy decision are interpreted to contain superior information about the (future) welfare effects of these decisions. This paper investigates the degree of reliability of event studies as a policy programs evaluation method by critically reflecting upon two underlying assumptions. Since both the information superiority and efficiency of financial markets and, in particular, the conclusion from abnormal returns to (future) economic welfare effects consist of considerable interpretation problems, we issue a note of caution: scientists and policymakers should be very reluctant to rely on stock market reactions as a referee on economic policy decisions. Event studies cannot replace thorough theory-driven economic analysis.


A fully-integrated 60-GHz transceiver system with on-board antenna assembly is presented. Incorporating on-off keying (OOK) and low-cost antenna designs, this prototype demonstrates a low-power solution for multi-Gb/s wireless communication. The enhanced OOK modulator/demodulator obviates baseband and interface circuitry, revealing a compact solution. Two antenna structures, folded dipole and patch array, are employed to fully examine the performance. Designed and fabricated in 90-nm CMOS technology, the transmitter and the receiver consume 183 and 103 mW and occupy 0.43 and 0.68 mm2, respectively. With 4 × 3 patch antenna array, the transceiver achieves error-free operation (BER < 10-12 ) for 231 -1 PRBS of 1 Gb/s over a distance of 60 cm.


A major concern when shipping wine is whether the condition in which it is received at its destination is the same as when it left the winery. This study explored the effects of shipping conditions on six varietal wines. Four white wines and four red wines were exposed to four different storage conditions to create 32 treatments. Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Sauvignon blanc, and Chardonnay wines were from one producer and of the same vintage. One Merlot and three Cabernet Sauvignon wines were from different labels by the same producer. Storage conditions included 20°C, 40°C, 20/40°C (reflecting diurnal cycle in temperatures), and a sample that traveled in the trunk of a car for three weeks. The 32 wines were evaluated using sensory descriptive analysis. Trained panelists, 11 for white wine and 13 for red wine, rated the wines on 14 and 23 attributes, respectively. Volatiles were analyzed using a HS-SPME-GC-MS analysis. Both sensory and analytical results showed significant differences among the wines stored at the higher temperatures. Differences were noted for a number of compounds, including higher concentrations of vitispirane 1 and 2, TDN, and p-cymene and reductions in several esters and acetates, which are characteristic of aged wines. This is the first study that has assessed sensory changes in wines under conditions that would potentially be experienced by wine in transit.


This paper argues that there are essential features of capitalist modes of production, consumption, and waste dispersal in interaction with the environment and its built-in systemic features that contradict long-term sustainable development. These features include: (a) contradictions in the origin and meaning of sustainability; (b) the central role of the productivity ethic in capitalism and its reproduction in emergent green capitalism; (c) the commodification of nature and the continued promotion of expanding consumption; (d) globalism and the contradictions of continued Western-style development; and (e) the emergence of anthropogenic ecocrises and crises interaction. In light of these barriers to capitalist sustainability, an alternative social narrative is needed, one that embraces values, understandings, and relationships that promote ecological stability and justice.


The ability of businesses to gain a strong place in the sector in which they operate is directly related to the effective management of each member of the supply chain. In the globalizing world with increasing competitive conditions, businesses have to manage their supply chains efficiently to be successful in the market. Companies should improve their strategies by rapidly adapting to the new circumstances formed by various crises such as wars, climate change, or pandemics. The high performance of a business is greatly correlated with the performance of its suppliers. Therefore, supplier selection by evaluating supplier performance is a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) problem that simultaneously includes many qualitative and quantitative factors. In this article, the performances of the suppliers of a Turkish small-medium enterprise (SME) operating in the manufacturing sector during COVID-19 are evaluated using an integrated fuzzy MCDM technique. Despite its importance, supplier selection is less considered for SMEs. The purpose of including fuzzy logic in the study is to ensure that linguistic expressions are converted into fuzzy numbers to overcome uncertainty and subjectivity. Four supplier alternatives are evaluated by four main criteria, and in total by eleven sub-criteria determined by expert opinions. The weights of the performance criteria are obtained by the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), and the performance ranking of the suppliers is determined by the fuzzy VIKOR. The absence of a manufacturing sector-based study on SMEs operating in Turkey during the COVID-19 period constitutes the main motivation


Substitution of soy-based biodiesel fuels for petroleum diesel will alter life cycle emissions for construction vehicles. A life cycle inventory was used to estimate fuel cycle energy consumption and emissions of selected pollutants and greenhouse gases. Real-world measurements using a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) were made forfive backhoes, four front-end loaders, and six motor graders on both fuels from which fuel consumption and tailpipe emission factors of CO, HC, NO(x), and PM were estimated. Life cycle fossil energy reductions are estimated it 9% for B20 and 42% for B100 versus petroleum diesel based on the current national energy mix. Fuel cycle emissions will contribute a larger share of total life cycle emissions as new engines enter the in-use fleet. The average differences in life cycle emissions for B20 versus diesel are: 3.5% higher for NO(x); 11.8% lower for PM, 1.6% higher for HC, and 4.1% lower for CO. Local urban tailpipe emissions are estimated to be 24% lower for HC, 20% lower for CO, 17% lower for PM, and 0.9% lower for NO(x). Thus, there are environmental trade-offs such as for rural vs urban areas. The key sources of uncertainty in the B20 LCI are vehicle emission factors.


Foreland sedimentary rocks from the northern Fars region of Iran contain a record of deformation associated with the Cenozoic collision between Arabia and Eurasia that resulted in formation of the Zagros orogen. The timing of the deformation associated with this event is poorly known. To address this we conducted a study of Miocene foreland sedimentary rocks (19.7–14.8 Ma) of the Chahar–Makan syncline using clast composition, clay mineralogy and low-temperature fission-track dating. The results showed that most of the sedimentary rocks were sourced from ophiolitic rocks. Detrital apatite fission-track (AFT) age signatures of Miocene sedimentary rocks record exhumation in the hanging wall of the Main Zagros Thrust and confirm that the change from underthrusting of the stretched Arabian margin to widespread crustal thickening and deformation in the Zagros region is no younger than 19.7 Ma. A transition from Late Oligocene to Mesozoic–Eocene AFT detrital age signatures between 19.7–16.6 Ma and 16.6–13.8 Ma is interpreted to reflect a possible rearrangement of palaeodrainage distribution that resulted from folding and expansion–uplift of the Zagros–Iranian Plateau region. Supplementary material: Details of the succession of the study area, a complete presentation of sample preparation and fission-track age measurements of apatite grains, and examples of X-ray diffractograms are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18502.


In this review of the literature concerning the immunology of animal and human cysticercosis, emphasis is placed on whether previous exposure to the antigen confers protection to the host. Statistical analysis of the published data indicates that immunized animals have a lower risk than non-immunized animals of contracting cysticercosis, there being large variations within and between different host-cysticercus relationships. There is no indication as to which antigen is bestfor immunization but, although live parasites in all stages of development, or extracts, appear to give protection, embryos, eggs, and excretions are most frequently used. Antibodies appear to be the principal mediators of resistance, but the action seems to be only upon very young larvae, while fully grown cysticerci are unharmed. Several immunological methods are valuable in the diagnosis of cysticercosis, the choice depending more on thepurpose of the study than on differences in their ability to discriminate between healthy and sick. The presence of anticysticercus antibodies in the serum of up to 50% ofhuman patients indicates that human vaccination may be possible in high-risk areas; the remaining patients pose an interesting problem open to speculation and research on immunological evasion, immunodepression, and the existence of serotypes.


Dynamic planning, an approach to steadily put in motion some aspects of a strategic plan, even while the rest of the planning is in progress, has been used successfully over the past five years for implementing the IUPUI Academic Plan. The eleven major strategic initiatives that underlie the academic plan have enhanced the research, teaching, and service missions of the campus. They have generated several substantial new revenue streams, including an increase in state funding. These revenue streams have helped to cushion IUPUI from the current economic downturn and helped build a robust educational infrastructure which has stimulated multidisciplinary research productivity, improved student retention, and increased faculty diversity and enthusiasm. The educational experience has been enhanced via the development of innovative degree programs and the RISE (Research, International, Service and Experiential) initiative.


Considering importance of study on physics fields and computer simulation for aluminum reduction cells so as to optimize design on aluminum reduction cells and develop new type of cells, based on analyzing coupled relation of physics fields in aluminum reduction cells, the mathematics and physics models were established and a coupled computation method on distribution of electric current and magnetic field, temperature profile and metal velocity in cells was developed. The computational results in 82kA prebaked cells agree well with the measured results, and the errors of maxium value calculated for three main physics property fields are less than 10%, which proves that the model and arithmetic are available. So the software developed can be not only applied to optimization design on traditional aluminum reduction cells, but also to establishing better technology basis to develop new drained aluminum reduction cells.