Abstract. The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model is a state-of-the-science air quality model that simulates the emission, transformation, transport, and fate of the many different air pollutant species that comprise particulate matter (PM), including dust (or soil). The CMAQ model version 5.0 (CMAQv5.0) has several enhancements over the previous version of the model for estimating the emission and transport of dust, including the ability to track the specific elemental constituents of dust and have the model-derived concentrations of those elements participate in chemistry. The latest version of the model also includes a parameterization to estimate emissions of dust due to wind action. The CMAQv5.0 modeling system was used to simulate the entire year 2006 for the continental United States, and the model estimates were evaluated against daily surface-based measurements from several air quality networks. The CMAQ modeling system overall did well replicating the observed soil concentrations in the western United States (mean bias generally around ±0.5 μg m−3); however, the model consistently overestimated the observed soil concentrations in the eastern United States (mean bias generally between 0.5–1.5 μg m−3), regardless of season. The performance of the individual trace metals was highly dependent on the network, species, and season, with relatively small biases for Fe, Al, Si, and Ti throughout the year at the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) sites, while Ca, K, and Mn were overestimated and Mg underestimated. For the urban Chemical Speciation Network (CSN) sites, Fe, Mg, and Mn, while overestimated, had comparatively better performance throughout the year than the other trace metals, which were consistently overestimated, including very large overestimations of Al (380%), Ti (370%) and Si (470%) in the fall. An underestimation of nighttime mixing in the urban areas appears to contribute to the overestimation of trace metals. Removing the anthropogenic fugitive dust (AFD) emissions and the effects of wind-blown dust (WBD) lowered the model soil concentrations. However, even with both AFD emissions and WBD effects removed, soil concentrations were still often overestimated, suggesting that there are other sources of errors in the modeling system that contribute to the overestimation of soil components. Efforts are underway to improve both the nighttime mixing in urban areas and the spatial and temporal distribution of dust-related emission sources in the emissions inventory.


Mathematical knowledge and skills are needed to find solutions to the problems encountered in daily life. Although individuals are given the opportunity to receive equal education, it is seen that there are differences in the achievement of individuals. Individual-based factors can affect the achievement of individuals. One of the most important of these individual-based factors is the gender factor. It is important to examine the reasons behind the items of mathematics test showing the Differential Item Functioning (DIF) by gender. In this research, the interaction of gender and intrinsic motivation, instrumental motivation, self-efficacy, and anxiety variables on mathematics test items was examined in terms of DIF to understand the reasons of gender differences in the mathematical achievement of students who participated in PISA 2012. The study group of this research constituted 1084 students who participated in the application in Turkey, who answered booklets 3, 5 and 11 in the PISA 2012 mathematics literacy test. The data was analyzed by Iterative Hybrid Ordinal Logistic Regression (IHOLR) in the Lordif package program and Rasch Tree Method (RTM) in Psychotree package program and items showing DIF according to gender were determined. According to the findings, some mathematics test items showed DIF according to gender. It was found that items also showed DIF according to gender and intrinsic motivation interaction, and gender and self-efficacy interaction. It was observed that status of items showing DIF changed according to a certain threshold value of the girls' intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy score. It was found that mathematics items did not show DIF according to gender and instrumental motivation interaction, and gender and anxiety interaction. As a result, it was observed that status of items showing DIF according to gender could change according to gender and affective characteristics interaction.


Pan-Africa convection-permitting regional climate model simulations have been performed to study the impact of high resolution and the explicit representation of atmospheric moist convection on the present and future climate of Africa. These unique simulations have allowed European and African climate scientists to understand the critical role that the representation of convection plays in the ability of a contemporary climate model to capture climate and climate change, including many impact-relevant aspects such as rainfall variability and extremes. There are significant improvements in not only the small-scale characteristics of rainfall such as its intensity and diurnal cycle, but also in the large-scale circulation. Similarly, effects of explicit convection affect not only projected changes in rainfall extremes, dry spells, and high winds, but also continental-scale circulation and regional rainfall accumulations. The physics underlying such differences are in many cases expected to be relevant to all models that use parameterized convection. In some cases physical understanding of small-scale change means that we can provide regional decision-makers with new scales of information across a range of sectors. We demonstrate the potential value of these simulations both as scientific tools to increase climate process understanding and, when used with other models, for direct user applications. We describe how these ground-breaking simulations have been achieved under the U.K. Government's Future Climate for Africa Programme. We anticipate a growing number of such simulations, which we advocate should become a routine component of climate projection, and encourage international coordination of such computationally and human-resource expensive simulations as effectively as possible.


BACKGROUND
The role of thrombolytic agents in the treatment of pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) remains a controversial issue. The objective of this study is to assess the efficacy and safety of thrombolytic therapy in the treatment of PTE by means of a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCT).

METHODS
A bibliographic search of the main biomedical bibliographic databases was carried out and eight randomized controlled trials that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were found. Two blinded and independent evaluators assessed the quality of RCT according to Jadad scale, and selected the necessary data to fulfill the objective of this study.

RESULTS
The selected trials were heterogeneous regarding the type of thrombolytic agent, the administration schedule, and the efficacy measures used. The methodological quality was 2 points in the Jadad scale as an average. No statistically significant differences in mortality nor in risk of PTE relapse were found between the group of patients receiving thrombolytic agents and the group not receiving them. Significant differences were found, however, between these two groups as regards the risk of bleeding events (OR = 2.62; CI 95%: 1.56-4.38).

CONCLUSION
The results of these meta-analyses do not suggest the use of thrombolytic therapy in PTE in everyday clinical practice since measurable risks overcome potential benefits.


There remains an unmet need for a simple microfluidic platform that can perform multi-step and multi-reagent biochemical assays in parallel for high-throughput detection and analysis of single molecules and single cells. In response, we report herein a PDMS-based vacuum-driven microfluidic array that is capable of multi-step sample loading and digitalization. The array features multi-level bifurcation microchannels connecting to 4096 dead-end microchambers for partitioning liquid reagents/samples. To realize multi-step repetitive liquid sample loading, we attach an external vacuum onto the chip to create internal negative pressure for a continuous liquid driving force. We demonstrated a high uniformity of our device for three sequential liquid loadings. To further improve its utility, we developed a thermosetting-oil covering method to prevent evaporation for assays that require high temperatures. We successfully performed digital PCR assays on our device, demonstrating the efficient multi-step reagent handling and the effective anti-evaporation design for thermal cycling. Furthermore, we performed a digital PCR detection for single-cell methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus using a three-step loading approach and achieved accurate single-cell quantification. Taken together, we have demonstrated that our vacuum-driven microfluidic array is capable of multi-step sample digitalization at high throughput for single-molecule and single-cell analyses.


Numerous health concerns such as obesity is increasingly prevalent among many urban dwellers followed by lack of physical exercise even walking. Limited space in urban settings to provide adequate open spaces, providing recreational facilities is a key issue experienced in urban areas in Sri Lanka. Thus, an ideal solution arises as 'walking paths,' where only a strip of land is required. Among the limited studies directly rely on the attributes in walking paths, there are studies on 'adults walking in open spaces' discussing some attributes should consider in developing the facility. However, no evidence to date on the attractive attributes or the adequacy of the attributes in the walking paths. Accordingly. the main aim of this study is to examine the public perception on attributes of walking avenues in urban areas of Sri Lanka. Data collected through a self-administered questionnaire on ten attributes from a convenience sample of 150 users selected from three separate settings. The descriptive statistics, univariate analysis, hoc multiple comparisons, and homogeneous subsets technique were used in the analysis. Results reveals, safety as the preferred attribute while shading and natural settings also significant. An income variation presents that the respondents with above the income level of LKR 65,000 preferred cafeterias providing herbal drinks while the users with below that income level are less interest with the attributes of changing rooms and street vendors. It is recommended to consider the preferred attributes in developing future walking paths to encourage the public to get the full benefits.


Atmospheric icing causes production losses to wind turbines, poses a risk of ice throw and increases dynamic loading of wind turbine which might reduce the lifetime of turbine components. These effects are qualitatively widely known but not quantitatively. In order to estimate effects of icing to power production of a typical 3 MW wind turbine, a simulation based study was made. Three rime ice cases were selected with the meteorological conditions typical for Finnish climate. Conditions were the same for each case. The lengths of the icing events were varied to represent different phases of an icing event; beginning of icing, short icing event and long lasted icing event. Thus, three different ice masses accreted on a wind turbine blade were simulated. Accretion simulations were performed with a VTT inhouse code TURBICE. The aerodynamical properties of the iced profiles were modelled using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with ANSYS FLUENT flow solver. As a result, lift and drag coefficients were drawn as a function of an angle of attack. Small-scale surface roughness effect on drag coefficient was determined analytically. Finally, the power curves were generated with FAST software for the clean wind turbine and for the same turbine with the different ice accretions. The results showed relatively large impact of small-scale surface roughness on power production. In the beginning of an icing event, where ice causes basically only increased surface roughness, power production was discovered to reduce by approximately 17 % below rated wind speeds compared to the no-ice case. As the ice mass was increased, production reduction was 18 % for short icing event and 24 % for long lasted icing event. However, the relative reduction was smaller than in the beginning of icing, mainly due to the small-scale surface roughness that remained at the same level. The results indicate that the surface roughness is crucial to take into account when defining the aerodynamic penalty caused by icing of wind turbine blades. The generated power curves for iced up wind turbine in this study estimate higher power production than can be expected from the observations in real life. This is caused by the less complex ice shapes resulting from simulating only rime ice conditions. The results of this study were used in the Finnish Icing Atlas (2012), where time dependent numerical weather simulations were carried out to calculate icing conditions and energy production losses. The results were also used in ICEWIND project for production loss estimation process.


Social security is a fundamental human right to which every individual has been entitled as a member of the society. It is the programs developed to reduce the vulnerability of an individual. The main objective of this paper is to examine on effectiveness of social security system in Nepal. This study follows to analyze the effectiveness Social Security Allowance among the beneficiaries especially for senior citizen, widowed, fully disabled and partially disabled. The implication of the study is to strengthen the social security programs in Nepal. This study is based on primary data collection in terms of use of the allowance and use of it to maintain the social status. This study reveals that social security allowance have been used for the fulfilment of basic personal needs.


A novel and versatile method of simulating a PWM vector-controlled drive is presented using a circuit analysis package. The difficulties of simulating a vector controller within a circuit analysis package with special reference to advanced PWM control techniques and the accurate placement of the switching edges are examined. Simulation results for a vector-controlled voltage-fed induction motor drive are presented to confirm and highlight the special features of the CAD circuit analysis approach.<<ETX>>


With the increasing concerns on energy consumption and operating cost in metro systems, energy saving on train operation attracts significant attentions. Previous studies have mainly focused on optimal control of a single train and energy-efficient train timetabling. The former does not consider the synchronization of motoring and braking trains, which cannot ensure the proper utilization of regenerative energy on the metro lines without energy storage systems. The latter includes scheduling train operations to synchronize motoring and braking trains for the better utilization of regenerative energy. However, the overlapping time of motoring and braking trains is usually as short as a few seconds and the energy reduction might be made impossible by train delays, which are common in practice. This paper presents a model framework, on the extents of motoring/braking of train acceleration and station stopping, as well as the locations of switching train operation modes, for real-time cooperative control of multiple metro trains. The objective is to minimize the net energy consumption with the consideration of utilizing regenerative energy. A cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm is developed to attain the solution of the proposed model. Case studies on a real-life metro line demonstrate the energy saving performance of the proposed approach compared with separate train control and timetable optimization, from no disturbance to a good range of delays. The results also indicate that the partial motoring in train acceleration and partial braking in station stopping achieve better net energy reduction, in comparison with full motoring/braking preferred in previous studies.


The use of technology in the courtroom is increasingly commonplace. While some research has explored how technology may influence jurors throughout the trial itself, there has been little focus on how it might influence jurors during the deliberation period, or whether it affects their verdicts. The current study assessed whether the form of evidence available during the decision-making period, along with the mock juror's level of motivation for the task, affects how trial information is processed and how verdict decisions are made. Mock-jurors (N = 243), half of whom were explicitly informed of the task's importance, watched a video of a murder trial. During the decision-making phase, some jurors were then given the opportunity to review the trial video, transcript, or both before rendering a final verdict. While there were no differences in verdicts as a function of review condition, the amount of content mock-jurors reviewed differed by review condition.


The relationship between international evidence, politics and policy is never straightforward. Politicians sometimes cite comparative findings from social science evidence collected and analysed by international organisations to support policy proposals without sufficient understanding of contextual factors. The media may exploit data from such studies to highlight national policy successes and failures. Academic literature on evidence-based policy is often more interested in identifying policies that work than in investigating the reasons why policy solutions might, or might not, be effective if transferred to other regions. This article explores some of the issues involved by examining the relationship between evidence producers and users in different institutional settings, drawing on case studies in health and social policy to illuminate the complexities of the policy process. In considering possible conditions for successful policy learning across time and space, the authors stress the critical need to take account of socioeconomic, political, cultural and disciplinary contexts.


The aim of this study was to determine the influence of film type and modified atmosphere on the sensory quality of roasted apple cv. Reineta. Roasted apples were packaged using two different films, LORE 90 COOK and CN 300, under two different modified atmosphere conditions, Extendapak 1 ® (100% N 2 ) and Extendapak 47 ® (7.0% CO 2 2.5% O 2 90.5% N 2 ). The Packaged apples were stored for 210 days at 3oC. Sensory analyses were performed every 14 days until the end of the storage period. Each sample was made up of 178 fruit for each type of packaging and for each storage time. No significant differences were found between the newly elaborated and the stored roasted apples according to the difference test until the 84 th day of storage. No significant differences were found in the visual attributes of the apples, except for colour, neither between types of packaging nor between storage times. Significant differences were found in olfactory-gustatory attributes, odour intensity, sweet taste and alcoholic taste between type of packaging whereas significant differences were found between storage times for all olfactory-gustatory attributes. Juiciness was the only textural attribute that was significantly different between type of packaging and between storage times. When the film was less permeable of the film, the better the original properties of roasted apple cv. Reineta were kept better. There were significant differences between modified atmospheres, so Extendapak 1 ® was more appropriate than Extendapak 47 ® to keep the original characteristics of roasted apple cv. Reineta for a longer time.


ABSTRACT Activating mutations in fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) have been identified in multiple types of human cancer and in congenital birth defects. In human lung cancer, fibroblast growth factor 9 (FGF9), a high-affinity ligand for FGFR3, is overexpressed in 10% of primary resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) specimens. Furthermore, in a mouse model where FGF9 can be induced in lung epithelial cells, epithelial proliferation and ensuing tumorigenesis is dependent on FGFR3. To develop new customized therapies for cancers that are dependent on FGFR3 activation, we have used this mouse model to evaluate a human monoclonal antibody (D11) with specificity for the extracellular ligand-binding domain of FGFR3, that recognizes both human and mouse forms of the receptor. Here, we show that D11 effectively inhibits signaling through FGFR3 in vitro, inhibits the growth of FGFR3-dependent FGF9-induced lung adenocarcinoma in mice, and reduces tumor-associated morbidity. Given the potency of FGF9 in this mouse model and the absolute requirement for signaling through FGFR3, this study validates the D11 antibody as a potentially useful and effective reagent for treating human cancers or other pathologies that are dependent on activation of FGFR3. Summary: This study validates the FGF9 lung adenocarcinoma mouse model as a tool to screen and evaluate potential therapeutics that are designed to inhibit FGF9 or its target receptor, FGFR3.


We present an isolated analytical model for the ohmic heating in the interior of hot jupiters, treating the wind zone as a parameterized boundary condition. Under a conserved estimation of the strength of induced field and the assumption of an isothermal-convective planet model, we conclude that the mechanism of ohmic heating may not explain the over-inflated radius of hot jupiters along. We also develop a new time dependent evolution model for hot jupiters with ohmic heating, further show that ohmic heating is important only when the planet mass is small or the planet is at late stage of evolution.


The objective of this degree project has been to apply different methods of analysis to evaluate a variety of feedstock. The application of different feedstock can increase the fuel flexibility of gasification reactors and therefore increase their profitability. The syngas produced through gasification is important for the production of electricity, different chemicals and biomass to liquid fuels. It has further been the aim to analyse potential correlations between the gas composition and tar yields of gasification and pyrolysis processes. The study is based on the experimental analysis of the properties of hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, spirolina, scenedesmus quadricauda, pine bark, peat, forest residues, straw, hemp, black liquor, sawdust and wood. These biomass feedstocks have been analysed by pyrolysis, proximate, thermogravi-metric, gas, partially ultimate and gasification analysis. The results of the fuel analysis of wood, sawdust, forest residue and pine bark indicate a good pyrolysis and gasification potential. Microalgae, may be more suitable for other chemical processes but could as well as peat be used as an additive for gasification. Black liquor is unsuitable for unpressur-ised gasification. The thermogravimetric analysis of varying fuel frac-tions of peat and forest residues indicates a predictability of the result-ing mass loss curves. The measured gas and tar yields of the gasification and pyrolysis experiments reveal that correlations between the two different processes partially exist. A possible correlation between me-thane and tar yields could be observed as well. It is recommended to conduct further experiments including ash analysis and construction of a drop tube reactor.


We present the experimental phase diagram of LiHoxEr1-xF4, a dilution series of dipolar-coupled model magnets. The phase diagram was determined using a combination of ac susceptibility and neutron scattering. Three unique phases in addition to the Ising ferromagnet LiHoF4 and the XY antiferromagnet LiErF4 have been identified. Below x=0.86, an embedded spin-glass phase is observed, where a spin glass exists within the ferromagnetic structure. Below x=0.57, an Ising spin glass is observed consisting of frozen needlelike clusters. For x∼0.3–0.1, an antiferromagnetically coupled spin glass occurs. A reduction of TC(x) for the ferromagnet is observed which disobeys the mean-field predictions that worked for LiHoxY1-xF4.


This report describes part of the signaling pathway and some of the molecules involved in the auxin-induced adventitious root formation in cucumber (Cucumis sativus). Previous results showed that nitric oxide (NO) mediates the auxin response during adventitious root formation (Pagnussat et al., 2002). To determine the order of action of indole acetic acid (IAA) and NO within the signal transduction pathway and to elucidate the target molecules that are downstream of NO action, cucumber hypocotyl cuttings were submitted to a pretreatment leading to endogenous auxin depletion. The auxin depletion treatment provoked a 3-fold reduction of the root number in comparison to the nondepleted explants. The NO-donor sodium nitroprusside was able to promote adventitious rooting in auxin-depleted explants, whereas the specific NO scavenger cPTIO prevented the effect of sodium nitroprusside. The endogenous NO level was monitored in both control and auxin-depleted explants using a NO-specific fluorescent probe. The NO level was 3.5-fold higher in control (nondepleted) explants than in auxin-depleted ones. The exogenous application of IAA restored the NO concentration to the level found in nondepleted explants. Because NO activates the enzyme guanylate cyclase (GC), we analyzed the involvement of the messenger cGMP in the adventitious root development mediated by IAA and NO. The GC inhibitor LY83583 reduced root development induced by IAA and NO, whereas the cell-permeable cGMP derivative 8-Br-cGMP reversed this effect. The endogenous level of cGMP is regulated by both the synthesis via GC and its degradation by the phosphodiesterase activity. When assayed, the phosphodiesterase inhibitor sildenafil citrate was able to induce adventitious rooting in both nondepleted and auxin-depleted explants. Results indicate that NO operates downstream of IAA promoting adventitious root development through the GC-catalyzed synthesis of cGMP.


The characteristics of the spatially averaged (SA) turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rate are studied experimentally in flows over water-worked gravel beds (WGBs) and a screeded gravel bed (SGB) measuring the instantaneous velocity field by the Particle Image Velocimetry system. To study the response of water work roughness to the TKE related parameters, the flow Froude numbers in both the WGB and SGB were maintained identical in the experiments. Owing to the action of water work, the surface gravels in the WGB are more spatially organized than those of the SGB, where they are randomly oriented, resulting in a higher roughness in the WGB than in the SGB. Examination of the second- and the third-order velocity structure functions reveals the evidence of an inertial subrange in both the WGB and SGB. Kolmogorov's two-thirds and four-fifths laws are preserved within the inertial subrange, providing an accurate estimation of the TKE dissipation rate in both the beds. However, owing to the higher roughness in the WGB than in the SGB, the TKE and the scaling law parameters are greater in the former than in the latter case. Furthermore, to examine the effects of the shear Reynolds number on the TKE dissipation rate and the scaling law parameters, two additional experiments with different shear Reynolds numbers were conducted with the WGBs. The comparative results suggest that the SA TKE dissipation rates estimated from Kolmogorov's two-thirds and four-fifths laws increase with an increase in the shear Reynolds number in the WGBs.The characteristics of the spatially averaged (SA) turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rate are studied experimentally in flows over water-worked gravel beds (WGBs) and a screeded gravel bed (SGB) measuring the instantaneous velocity field by the Particle Image Velocimetry system. To study the response of water work roughness to the TKE related parameters, the flow Froude numbers in both the WGB and SGB were maintained identical in the experiments. Owing to the action of water work, the surface gravels in the WGB are more spatially organized than those of the SGB, where they are randomly oriented, resulting in a higher roughness in the WGB than in the SGB. Examination of the second- and the third-order velocity structure functions reveals the evidence of an inertial subrange in both the WGB and SGB. Kolmogorov's two-thirds and four-fifths laws are preserved within the inertial subrange, providing an accurate estimation of the TKE dissipation rate in both the beds. However, owing to the higher rough...


Objective: It was our aim to study the role of sediment cytology in a diagnostic evaluation of ovarian neoplasm. Methods: The present study was conducted in the Department of Pathology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AMU, Aligarh, India, over a span of 22 months. Cytological smears were prepared by centrifuging the sediment of fluid from the bottom of a container in which surgical specimens were received. Smears were fixed in 95% ethyl alcohol and then stained using hematoxylin-eosin and Papanicolaou stains. The cytological results were compared with histological diagnosis, taking the latter as gold standard. Results: Out of 54 lesions studied by sediment cytology, 22 lesions were labeled as benign, 26 lesions as malignant and 6 lesions were inconclusive. Final histological diagnoses labeled 24 lesions as benign and 30 lesions as malignant. Comparing the diagnosis of the cytology smear with the histological section, 44 out of 54 cases were concordant. A sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of 90.3, 92.3 and 90.3% was achieved, respectively. Conclusion: Biopsy sediment cytology is a good complementary method to histopathology in the study of ovarian biopsy material. In developing countries like ours, where the facility of frozen section is not available at many centers, this simple and cheap technique can be of much help in rapid diagnosis.


Orang Asli women usually just wear the sarong, tied at the waist or below the armpits. Contact with Malays had led many of them to wear the baju as well. When a large consignment of sewing kits from a US charity arrived at the hospital it was decided to classes in sewing. A couple of wives of Malay hospital staff helped me to make a paper pattern of a baju and so we were able to teach the women how to make a baju from start to finish. They started by choosing their material and progressed to cutting out the baju using the pattern. They then sewed the garment and fitted it. They learned very quickly and were very pleased to be given a sewing kit to take back to their kampongs. Later on, a couple of very ancient sewing machines were donated to the hospital and they proved to be popular too.


Multilingual transformers (XLM, mT5) have been shown to have remarkable transfer skills in zero-shot settings. Most transfer studies, however, rely on automatically translated resources (XNLI, XQuAD), making it hard to discern the particular linguistic knowledge that is being transferred, and the role of expert annotated monolingual datasets when developing task-specific models. We investigate the cross-lingual transfer abilities of XLM-R for Chinese and English natural language inference (NLI), with a focus on the recent large-scale Chinese dataset OCNLI. To better understand linguistic transfer, we created 4 categories of challenge and adversarial tasks (totaling 17 new datasets) for Chinese that build on several well-known resources for English (e.g., HANS, NLI stress-tests). We find that cross-lingual models trained on English NLI do transfer well across our Chinese tasks (e.g., in 3/4 of our challenge categories, they perform as well/better than the best monolingual models, even on 3/5 uniquely Chinese linguistic phenomena such as idioms, pro drop). These results, however, come with important caveats: cross-lingual models often perform best when trained on a mixture of English and high-quality monolingual NLI data (OCNLI), and are often hindered by automatically translated resources (XNLI-zh). For many phenomena, all models continue to struggle, highlighting the need for our new diagnostics to help benchmark Chinese and cross-lingual models. All new datasets/code are released at https://github.com/huhailinguist/ChineseNLIProbing.


Self-supervised learning is a powerful paradigm for representation learning on unlabelled images. A wealth of effective new methods based on instance matching rely on data-augmentation to drive learning, and these have reached a rough agreement on an augmentation scheme that optimises popular recognition benchmarks. However, there is strong reason to suspect that different tasks in computer vision require features to encode different (in)variances, and therefore likely require different augmentation strategies. In this paper, we measure the invariances learned by contrastive methods and confirm that they do learn invariance to the augmentations used and further show that this invariance largely transfers to related real-world changes in pose and lighting. We show that learned invariances strongly affect downstream task performance and confirm that different downstream tasks benefit from polar opposite (in)variances, leading to performance loss when the standard augmentation strategy is used. Finally, we demonstrate that a simple fusion of representations with complementary invariances ensures wide transferability to all the diverse downstream tasks considered.


The aim of the study was to determine serum levels of matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) and high sensitivity C reactive protein (hsCRP) in patients with diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The study included 150 patients divided in three groups: patients with significant coronary artery disease (CAD), patients without significant coronary artery disease and patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI). Method used for determination of coronary artery disease significance is coronary angiography, and CAD is determined as significant if level of stenosis is > 50%. The group without significant CAD had lower MMP-9 serum concentrations than group with significant CAD, which has lower MMP-9 than group with acute MI. Difference in levels of MMP-9 serum concentration between groups with and without CAD is statistically significant. Level of serum hsCRP in group with MI is significantly higher than in other two groups. There is no significant difference in hsCRP serum level between group of patients with significant CAD and without significant CAD. Our results demonstrate the significance of MMP-9 and hsCRP level determination in assessment of acute coronary syndrome patients in the future as a biomarker of plaque instability.


In this paper, a new methodology is presented for detecting anomalies from radiographic images. This methodology exploits a statistical model adapted to the content of radiographic images together with the hypothesis testing theory. The main contributions are the following. First, by using a generic model of radiographies based on the acquisition pipeline, the whole non-destructive testing process is entirely automated and does not require any prior information on the inspected object. Second, by casting the problem of defects detection within the framework of testing theory, the statistical properties of the proposed test are analytically established. This particularly permits the guaranteeing of a prescribed false-alarm probability and allows us to show that the proposed test has a bounded loss of power compared to the optimal test which knows the content of inspected object. Experimental results show the sharpness of the established results and the relevance of the proposed approach.


Digital audio class D amplifiers require a digital process to convert the sampled audio signal into a pulse width modulated (PWM) signal. The present methods of generating PWM are either analogue (natural sampling) and are unsuitable for digital systems or use a digital process (uniform sampling) which introduces excessive distortion. An alternative sampling process is described which is suitable for digital implementation yet introduces the low levels of distortion usually associated with natural sampling.


The effects of aeration strategies (one-directional airflow, one-directional airflow with recirculation, reversed-
direction airflow, and reversed-direction airflow with recirculation) on the composting process under intermittent aeration
with a 15 min on and a 45 min off cycle for all tests were experimentally investigated. Intermittent aeration was used in these
studies because it has been shown to have higher efficacy (more energy efficient and less odor emission) than continuous aeration
for the one-directional airflow case. Paper mill sludge and broiler litter were composted using four 208 L stainless steel
reactor vessels modified to allow studies on four different aeration strategies with a C:N ratio of 25:1. Compost mass was
divided into five layers by polypropylene screens. Detailed analysis of the experimental data showed that aeration strategies
yielded different temperature, moisture, CO2, O2, and decomposition profiles. One-directional airflow yielded the highest
temperature, moisture, and decomposition gradient across the composting bed. The experimental data for one-directional
airflow with recirculation showed that the compost temperature profiles were smaller than for the no-recirculation case and
were similar to what was reported in the literature. Reversed-direction airflow had the smallest moisture gradient and
maximum moisture retention. Reversed-direction airflow with recirculation showed temperature and moisture profiles that
were a superimposition of the results for the two independent aeration strategies. Oxygen levels, due to the on/off cycle pattern
and decomposition rates, limited performance and it was concluded that each system was not operated at the optimum point.
Results of these studies will be used to validate finite-difference computer models, which can then be used to find the optimum
operating points for each system.


It is noteworthy that the medications isolated directly or indirectly from phytogenic products until the recent time play a primary part in the discovery of drugs. The huge utilizations of antimicrobial agents in medicine have caused directly the development of antibiotics resistant pathogens in various infectious diseases areas, urging the detection for new and effective antimicrobial drugs. This study will be the first of its kind which is designed to evaluate antibacterial and antifungal activities and to estimate exhaustive extraction yields of the aqueous and organic extracts of Eryngium campestre L. plant. Extraction yields estimated by using serial exhaustive extraction non thermo-reactive procedures and well diffusion method were used to evaluate antibacterial and antifungal activities of aqueous and organic extracts of the Field Eryngo entire plant (E. campestre) while the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal-fungicidal concentration were determined by the serial dilution method. The aqueous extract showed antimicrobial activity by using well diffusion method against all gram-positive bacteria with the greatest activity against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis. In addition to that the results showed antibacterial activity against one of the gram-negative (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and against Candida albicans a fungi. The entire Eryngium campestre L. plant has antimicrobial activity, and we recommend exhaustive serial extraction method to get high concentration of the phytochemical yields with potential activity.


In recent years, the global economy has been going through a severe downturn, which has led to the failure of several banks and corporations as well as a wide range of other financial problems. During those difficult times, its financial reports received a great deal of attention in many nations. The greatest worry was over the quality of such reports as well as the volume of their reporting and to what extent do they impact the worth of a particular firm or organization. The reporting of financial information has a significant impact, not only on the global financial markets but also on the financial information of firms. This is where the audit committee comes in; it is the body that is responsible for the reporting of financial information. The data will be gathered during the distribution of the survey via the use of google forms with a sample size of three hundred and fifty respondents for the purpose of data collection. For the sake of statistical analysis and the validation of hypotheses, the data that was obtained will be evaluated using google forms. It was determined in this study how many different features of AC impact financial reporting made by Lebanon-based firms. A survey was administered to 350 people as part of this study in order to gather data. Statistical software was used to examine the relationship between the independent variables (size, experience, and independence of the AC) and their dependent variable (quality of financial reports of companies) on the one hand.


This chapter addresses reconfigurable heterogenous and homogeneous multicore system-on-chip (SoC) platforms for streaming digital signal processing applications, also called DSP applications. In streaming DSP applications, computations can be specified as a data flow graph with streams of data items (the edges) flowing between computation kernels (the nodes). Most signal processing applications can be naturally expressed in this modeling style. Typical examples of streaming DSP applications are wireless baseband processing, multimedia processing, medical image processing, sensor processing (e.g., for remote surveillance cameras), and phased array radars. In a heterogeneous multicore architecture, a core can either be a bitlevel reconfigurable unit (e.g., FPGA), a word-level reconfigurable unit, or a general-purpose programmable unit (digital signal processor (DSP) or general purpose processor (GPP)). We assume the cores of the SoC are interconnected by a reconfigurable network-on-chip (NoC). The programmability of the individual cores enables the system to be targeted at multiple application domains.

We take a holistic approach, which means that all aspects of systems design need to be addressed simultaneously in a systematic way. This is key for an efficient overall solution, because an interesting optimization in a small corner of the design might lead to inefficiencies in the overall design.

We introduce streaming applications and multi-core architectures We present key design criteria for streaming applications and give a multi-dimensional classification of architectures for streaming applications. For each category one or more sample architectures are presented.


This paper illustrates investigations regarding the infiltration process of the thixotropic cast-alloy AlSi7Mg0,3 into laminated fibre woven fabrics by Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis (FSI). As results of such FSI-Analysis on the one hand the kinematical behaviour of the reinforcement due to the infiltration process on the macroscopic and microscopic level on the other hand fluiddynamical effects of the regarded alloy are achieved. Thus in the run-up to timeconsuming and cost-intensive experiments, informative bases like fluidic optimizing of the cavity or the configuration and insertion of the reinforcement component can be numerically developed. Furthermore a reliable prediction of transient permeability of the fibre fabric is possible, which effects the infiltration process significantly. Numerical input data such as rheological parameters characterizing the behaviour of partial solidified alloys have been conducted. Therefor basic rheological tests of the aluminium cast-alloy AlSi7Mg0,3, like `HYSTERESIS TESTS´, `SHEAR RATE JUMP TESTS´ and detection of `STATIC´ and `DYNAMIC YIELD POINTS´ and the `DIFFERENTIAL STRUCTURAL PARAMETER´ have been conducted. Furthermore `EVOLUTION OF VISCOSITY´ has been correlated with thermodynamical calculations using ThermoCalc®. Finally the infiltration of a textile semi-finished part (carbon fibre fabric / canvas bonding) by A356 is discussed as an example to demonstrate the feasibility of FSI-Analysis, taking into account a two-way coupling between the interacting CSM- and CFD-Codes.


The high-density, low-cost triple-level-cell (TLC) flash memory has gradually dominated the flash storage market because of the fast-growing demand for storage capacity. However, the advances of manufacturing technologies also make TLC flash memory suffer serious performance degradation compared with the low-density, high-performance single-level-cell (SLC) flash memory. To address this issue, some vendors enable blocks of TLC flash memory to work as high-performance, low-density SLC blocks. In contrast to the past research that allocates a fixed number of TLC blocks as SLC blocks to improve the device performance to a certain degree, we propose a utilization-aware self-tuning design to trade more unused storage capacity for better system performance. The introduced design dynamically adjusts and maximizes the number of SLC blocks according to the amount of data stored in the storage device at runtime. With the self-tuning design, a flash storage device can not only achieve high access performance but also provide enough storage capacity. The performance and capability of proposed design were evaluated by a series of experiments, and the results are very encouraging.


Hot tearing and loss of dimensional stability are two key defects related to industrial aluminum alloy casting processes. In order to investigate their occurrence, a new semi-solid constitutive law [20] for AA5182 that takes into account cooling rate, grain size and porosity has been implemented into a Direct Chill casting process model for round billets. The semi-solid stressstrain predictions provided by this new constitutive law as well as the effects of processing parameters were then examined to demonstrate the relationships between defect formation, microstructure, and processing variables.


As a part of BC Hydro's Advanced Metering Initiative (AMI), a time of use rate pilot project involving some 2,000 residential customers was implemented for winter 2006/07 and winter 2007/08. Customers participating in the project had an advanced meter installed at their house, and they also received information on how they could save energy during the peak period and shift load from the peak period to the off peak period. The goal of the project was to determine whether customers respond to pricing signals and information on energy use and to determine the magnitude of the responses. This study used a variety of evaluation methods including random assignment of customers to different treatment groups and control groups, interviews with project staff, documents review, focus groups, pre and post customer surveys, and econometric analysis in order to assess and understand customers' pricing preferences and their responses to pricing signals.


Immunologic function was evaluated in 12 patients with Hodgkin's disease and 5 patients with lymphocytic lymphoma who had been successfully treated with either chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or both of these modalities 3-42 mo previously. Only two of the patients were found to have total anergy to a battery of six recall skin test antigens and all were responsive to skin testing with phytohemagglutinin. However, 10 of 16 patients were unable to develop delayed cutaneous hypersensitivity to either of the neoantigens dinitrochlorobenzene or keyhole limpet hemocyanin. Four other patients developed reactivity to only one of these neoantigens for a total of 14 of 16 (88%) of the patients demonstrating some impairment in neoantigen response. Total lymphocyte, T-lymphocyte, B-lymphocyte, and null cell numbers, as well as serum immunoglobulins were quantitatively normal. Monocyte numbers, chemotaxis, and Fc receptor activity were normal. Monocyte staphylocidal activity at 60 min was modestly depressed and candidacidal activity was depressed in those receiving both chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Spontaneous (unstimulated) lymphocyte [3H]thymidine incorporation was low in the patients as a group and lymphoblastic transformation to specific antigens was impaired in 11 of 17 patients who had positive skin test reactions to the same antigen. Highly significant suppression of lymphoblastic transformation was noted after stimulation by the mitogens phytohemagglutinin, pokeweed, and concanavalin-A. The greatest impairment of mitogen response was seen in those patients receiving both chemotherapy and radiation therapy. These data demonstrate specific impairments of neoantigen processing, lymphocyte function, and to a lesser extent monocyte function in successfully treated patients with lymphoma. These impairments may contribute to the increased incidence of infections and second primary malignancies in these patients.


A total of 320 weanling pigs (10.7 lb and 14 ± 3 d of age, PIC) was used to determine the effects of antibiotics and an antibiotic alternative on nursery pig performance. Pigs were fed one of 5 experimental diets: 1) control with no antimicrobials; 2) carbadox (50 g/ton); 3) Denagard/CTC (35 g/ton DenagardTM, 400 g/ton Chlortetracycline); 4) NeoTerramycin (140 g/ton Neomycin Sulfate, 140 g/ton Oxytetracycline HCl); 5) Bio Mos (0.3%, mannanoligosaccharide). Overall (d 0 to 31 post-weaning), pigs fed the diet containing Denagard/CTC had the greatest (P<0.05) ADG and ADFI compared to pigs fed all other treatment diets. Pigs fed the diet containing Neo-Terramycin had greater (P<0.05) ADG compared to pigs fed the control diet or diets containing Carbadox or Bio Mos. In addition, pigs fed the diet containing Neo-Terramycin had greater (P<0.05) ADFI compared to pigs fed the control diet or the diet containing Bio Mos. In conclusion, the addition of carbadox and Bio Mos did not result in improved growth performance compared to pigs fed the control diet. However, improvements were seen in average daily gain and daily feed intake with the addition of Denagard/CTC and Neo-Terramycin. Commercial operations need to determine which feed additives improve nursery pig performance in their individual production systems.


Research in the area of future time perspective has suggested that academic motivation is associated with the perceived instrumentality of academic pursuits, and affective attitude toward personal future (Van Calster, Lens & Nuttin, 1987). Motivation tends to be higher when perceived instrumentality is high, but only when one has a positive attitude toward personal future. The present study tested these findings in regard to motivation toward mathematics in a sample of 119 13year-old high school girls. Main effects for affective attitude and perceived instrumentality on motivation were found. Students who had a positive affective attitude were more motivated than students who had a neutral or negative affective attitude. Students who had high perceived instrumentality were more motivated than students with low perceived instrumentality. The hypothesised interaction between the two independent variables on motivation was not supported. At the same time an experiment was conducted to test the effect of an increase in perceive instrumentality on motivation. The participants in an experimental group read a mock newspaper article and viewed a video, both of which emphasised the importance of mathematics for future career success. Using planned comparisons it was predicted that students with a positive affective attitude would be more motivated after the manipulation, while the students with a negative or Future Time Perspective 3 neutral affective attitude would report no change in motivation. It was also predicted that students in a control group would not experience a change in motivation. The hypothesised increase in motivation for the students in the experimental group with a positive affective attitude was not supported. Manipulation checks indicated that the experimental manipulation had not been successful in increasing perceived instrumentality. The main implication for educators from this study, is that students' affective attitude toward personal future is an important factor to consider when trying to increase high school girls' motivation toward mathematics. Directions for future research and other practical implications are discussed.


The aim of this work was to evaluate the kinetics of colour change for bananas and pears dried in hot air at different temperatures, and also to test different kinetic models to verify which describe best the experimental data. Banana fruits from Madeira island and Costa Rica were and pears from cultivar D. Joaquina were peeled, cut and dried with hot air at 0.5 m/s and temperatures ranging from 50 to 70 oC, until reaching a final moisture content lower than 10% (wet basis). Along drying colour measurements were done using a tristimulus colorimeter measuring the CIELab coordinates, L*, a* and b*. The experimental data was then fit to different kinetic models found in literature (first order, second order and exponential rise functional). The results obtained showed that bananas undergo a more intense color change than pears. It was further observed that the increase in drying temperature lead in general to an increase in the colour degradation, being this effect more pronounced in the pears. As to the kinetics of color change, the exponential rise function showed the best fitting, and the values of the kinetic constant found with this model varied from 5.7023x10 to 1.0086 h.


Intra-pelvic Protrusion of Acetabula.-E. J. DECK, L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. Mrs. M., aged 55, came to the London Clinic on the advice of her doctor for treatment for arthritis, April, 1930. Two years ago had begun to notice increasing stiffness and loss of movement in both legs; was easily fatigued. On examination: Abduction of legs impossible. Other movements slightly impaired; this latter condition was, she said, a recent disability, whereas she had first discovered the difficulty of abduction on getting married about eighteen years previously. Finding the marital act in the natural way impossible, she consulted her mother, who informed her that she had had the same disability all her life. It is regrettable that skiagrams of the grandmother's pelvis are not available or obtainable, but there can be no doubt that the peculiar condition shown in the skiagram of the pelves of both mother and daughter to-night has passed through three generations, which is strong proof that it is congenital. From other history obtained, an examination of the cervix was made and showed the presence of a small erosion and a small polypus, and it was thought that the rheumatic pains of which the patient complained were due to this seat of infection. Treatment by intra-pelvic diathermy was applied, and the patient has been greatly relieved. Seen November 5, 1930. No return of the rheumatism; very well in health.


CONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece is a song featured on Specifik's album Eighty3, commissioned in 2015 and since its release in the summer of 2016 has received airplay on The Pioneers Radio Show, Kane FM and widely across internet radio, and performed live in a range of different music contexts including Berlin's Cassiopeia and hardcore punk venue, K19.
The research question that 'Action Speaks Louder' addresses is the issue of practice trajectory vis-a-vis time and space in hip-hop. Exposing the lackadaisical and rejection of knowledge in favour of recreation and self-indulgence – the song's lyrics provide a concept of 'time-as-palimpsest', developed in these lyrics and expounded responds to Jeremy Till's concept of "thick time" (2000: 156-83) as a point of departure. This is further explained in the author's article 'The Futurism of Hip-Hop': "Time as palimpsest is also a form of cultural assemblage which requires continual revaluation depending on its components, which in turn are overlaid and tested through time, which simultaneously reveal suppressed ideas and new discoveries." (2018: 126), and reified in the lyrics "Verse two I serve in real time four dims / I fatten the thoughts and draw in other things".
The song is furiously paced as an ode to britcore and as a reminder of British hip-hop's formative hunger. The song also deals with concepts of lyrical eloquence achieved through astral travel: "Now I maintain scan horizons on the astral plane / Seven senses incense my sentences". Lastly, the song connects themes of regional-rural developed in the author's monograph PROVINCIAL HEADZ (2020), through lyrics such as: "My boom box still rocks sat in the window pane / As I track back through the dark lane / The endz bended, these streets ended, but I / Remain, Brexit unfazed and ended", reinstating hip-hop's provincial political position.
[295 words]


This study develops a theoretical and empirical framework for optimal conservation planning using satellite land cover data and economic data from a farm survey. A case study is presented for a region within the South-west Australia Biodiversity Hotspot (Nature 403, 853). This Biodiversity Hotspot is a focus for conservation investment as it combines a relatively high level of biodiversity with severe threat to the biodiversity from agriculture. The conservation planning model developed determines the optimal set of bush fragments for conservation. This model can also be used to assess the trade-off between the budget and a vegetation species metric. Results from the case study show that, without an effective conservation scheme that at least fences fragments, significant plant biodiversity losses will occur in the North East Wheatbelt Regional Organisation of Councils region of the WA wheatbelt over a 10-year period. A perfect price discriminating auction scheme could reduce the costs of conservation by around 17 per cent relative to a fixed-payment scheme; however, a fixed payment on outcome (measured as change in the species metric) scheme represents a viable second-best alternative, to a conservation auction, where conservation spending is spatially targeted.


Switching mode DC/DC converters are critical building blocks in portable devices and hence their power efficiency, accuracy and cost are a major issue. The primary focus of this thesis is to address these critical issues.This thesis focuses on the different methods of feedback control loop which are employed in the switching mode DC/DC converters such as voltage mode control and current mode control. It also discusses about the structure of buck converter and tries to find an efficient solution for stepping-down the DC voltage level in ultra-low power applications. Based on this analysis, a 20 MHz voltage mode DC/DC buck converter with an on-chip compensated error amplifier in 65 nm CMOS process is designed and implemented.The power efficiency has been improved by sizing the power switches to have a low parasitic output and gate capacitances to reduce the capacitive and gate-drive losses. Also the error amplifier biasing current is chosen a small value (12.5 μA) to reduce the power dissipations in the control loop of the system. The maximum 84% power efficiency is achieved at 1.1 V to 500 mV conversion, above 81% efficiency can be achieved at load current from 0.5 mA to 1.26 mA. Due to wide bandwidth error amplifier and proper compensation network the fast transient response with settling time around 45 μs is achieved.


CHARLES K. DAVENPORT. The role of graphical methods in the history of logic. Methodos, vol. 4 (1952), pp. 145-164. The author discusses Euler's diagrams and Venn's diagrams, and he points out the difficulties that the latter reveal concerning existential import in Aristotelian logic. In this connection, reference is made to Northrop (3751, 2). Venn's methods for constructing diagrams for as many as five classes are illustrated. He also presents Lewis Carroll's technique for diagramming immediate inferences and syllogisms. Finally Davenport gives graphical methods for analyzing the structures of relations with finite fields (e.g., the relation of class inclusion as among four classes) and for analyzing postulate sets which describe the structures of such relations.


Development has been on Africa?s agenda for a long time but progress has been both varied and limited, partly due to the diverse levelsof the discussions ont he challenges and the interventions for tackling them. Africa?s greatest challenge is the uneven development within and between its countries, and the pressing issues of extreme poverty in southern Africa, and the continent as a whole. Poverty causes its victims to suffer social exclusion and political repression. In addition, societies that experience poverty are also mostly under continuous threat of ecological disasters and diseases. All poor people are therefore plagued by loss of freedom and dignity, and are often unable to participate effectively in the political, economic, legal and social processes of their countries. This book focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of development dynamics and, in particular, the role of values in shaping development. Values are at the core of the hopes and aspirations of individuals, communities and societies. The book therefore explains the values that motivate and inform African communities and societies, with a view to facilitating a dialogue about sustainable development in Africa among academics, intellectuals, policy and decisionmakers, and the communities. It also investigates the social and cultural dynamics of development in Africa, as a better alternative to earlier studies that blame African culture for poverty and exclude the people of Africa in their definition of developments in the continent. The significance of this book lies in its provision of a theoretical argument, from empirical perspective, on the role of values in the development of Africa; an argument that is capable of facilitating a dialogue about African development, which obviously proves more useful than either the imposition of a technical process or the announcement of a normative framework.


Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy is considered one of the most promising approaches for treating different neurodegenerative disorders, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We previously characterized a subpopulation of human skeletal muscle-derived stem cells (SkmSCs) with MSC-like characteristics that differentiate into the neurogenic lineage in vitro. In the present study, we evaluated the SkmSC therapeutic effects in the most characterized model of spontaneous motor neuron degeneration, the Wobbler (Wr) mouse. Before evaluating the therapeutic efficacy in the Wr mouse, we followed the route of SkmSCs at different times after intracerebroventricular injection. Two exogenous tracers, superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles and Hoechst 33258, were used for the in vivo and ex vivo tracking of SkmSCs. We found that the loading of both Hoechst and SPIO was not toxic and efficiently labeled SkmSCs. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system 7 Tesla allowed us to localize transplanted SkmSCs along the whole ventricular system up to 18 wks after injection. The ex vivo Hoechst 33258 visualization confirmed the in vivo results obtained by MRI analyses. Behavioral observations revealed a fast and sustained improvement of motor efficacy in SkmSC-treated Wr mice associated with a relevant protection of functional neuromuscular junctions. Moreover, we found that in SkmSC-treated Wr mice, a significant increase of important human antiinflammatory cytokines occurred. This evidence is in accordance with previous findings showing the bystander effect of stem cell transplantation in neurodegenerative disorders and further strengthens the hypothesis of the possible link between inflammation, cytotoxicity and ALS.


We compute analytically the distributions of concurrence $\bm{\mathcal{C}}$ and squared norm $\bm{\mathcal{N}}$ for the production of electronic entanglement in a chaotic quantum dot. The dot is connected to the external world via one ideal and one partially transparent lead, characterized by the opacity $\gamma$. The average concurrence increases with $\gamma$ while the average squared norm of the entangled state decreases, making it less likely to be detected. When a minimal detectable norm $\bm{\mathcal{N}}_0$ is required, the average concurrence is maximal for an optimal value of the opacity $\gamma^\star(\bm{\mathcal{N}}_0)$ which is explicitly computed as a function of $\bm{\mathcal{N}}_0$. If $\bm{\mathcal{N}}_0$ is larger than the critical value $\bm{\mathcal{N}}_0^\star\simeq 0.3693\dots$, the average entanglement production is maximal for the completely ideal case, a direct consequence of an interesting bifurcation effect.


The modernization of governance and the marketization of the Danish public education sector since the 1980s, has resulted in changes both in the constitutive conditions and in the discursive understandings framing the purpose of the public education system for educational leaders, teachers, and social educators working in schools. We know less about how the neoliberal modernization processes affect the schools at a micro-processual sensemaking level and a relational power level. In this analytical perspective, there is a scientific need to understand how these organizing and sensemaking processes are conducted through the discursive construction of power relations in modernized, institutional settings, and how these processes affect the organizational understandings, professional identities and social relations of the members in a high-achieving Danish public school. I investigate leadership from a micro-analytical perspective, as interaction processes centered around the creation of common understanding and the enactment of policy, and mobilize a theoretical understanding of leadership processes as social sensemaking constructions that are constituted, framed and transformed in a given context of discursive and institutional power. I argue that the members of the organization holding both formal and informal leadership positions construct understandings through social power struggles in ambiguous and contradictory discursive orders. Further, these struggles create new power relations and democratic forms of leadership within a hidden power structure of a high-achieving Danish school owing to governance transitions in the Danish public education sector.


The plasma membrane of the sperm is a mosaic, with different moieties restricted to specific areas of the head or tail. Some of these heterogeneously distributed surface components are inserted into the membrane during spermatogenesis while others are acquired during post-testicular maturation, as the sperm passes through the epididymis. A variety of surface probes have been used to examine sperm, with lectins and antibodies proving to be effective at relating quantitative and qualitative changes to specific areas of the sperm surface. More recently, monoclonal antibodies have been used in conjunction with surface labeling procedures to study the distribution, time and site of origin and possible roles of sperm components. The use of such highly specific probes in conjunction with high resolution SEM instruments and new molecular labeling techniques offer considerable promise in addressing these problems.


'Modelling with Differential Equations in Chemical Engineering' covers the modelling of rate processes of engineering in terms of differential equations. While it includes the purely mathematical aspects of the solution of differential equations, the main emphasis is on the derivation and solution of major equations of engineering and applied science. Methods of solving differential equations by analytical and numerical means are presented in detail with many solved examples, and problems for solution by the reader. Emphasis is placed on numerical and computer methods of solution. A key chapter in the book is devoted to the principles of mathematical modelling. These principles are applied to the equations in important engineering areas. The major disciplines covered are thermodynamics, diffusion and mass transfer, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, chemical reactions, and automatic control. These topics are of particular value to chemical engineers, but also are of interest to mechanical, civil, and environmental engineers, as well as applied scientists. The material is also suitable for undergraduate and beginning graduate students, as well as for review by practising engineers.


Multimodality medical imaging takes advantage of the strengths of different imaging modalities to provide a more complete picture of the anatomy under investigation. Many complementary modalities have been combined to form such systems and some are gaining use clinically. One combination that has not been developed, in large part due to technical difficulties, is a combined magnetic resonance (MR) and ultrasound (US) imaging system. Such a system offers the potential to combine the strengths of these modalities in a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The goal of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of performing simultaneous multimodality US and MR imaging. An US imaging system capable of operation in a clinical MR imager was developed, and methods to perform simultaneous imaging were investigated. Simultaneous imaging was feasible without any mutual interference by either filtering the transmitted and received US signal, or by synchronizing data acquisition between the two imaging systems. Spatial registration between the two modalities was achieved by using a reference phantom with implanted glass beads in orthogonal planes. Excellent agreement was observed between spatial measurements of an object made with both modalities, and the feasibility of using this system in vivo was demonstrated in a rabbit model. Simultaneous US and MR imaging is achievable, and can provide complementary information about an object under investigation. This demonstration of technical feasibility and the development of a prototype system open up the potential to investigate the promising clinical applications of this combined technology.


This paper discusses how to develop and manage integration, coordination and cooperation in bio-energy supply chains. Farmers decisions on whether or not to participate in a contract farming scheme have been investigated, particularly assessing the trade-offs between the contract attributes and their impact on the likelihood to participate. A stated preference model was implemented where respondents were asked to choose between alternative contracts with varying attribute levels to start biomass cultivation. Results show that participation is mainly influenced by minimum price guaranteed, contract length, and re-negotiation before the end of a contract.


We disclose a catalytic, enantioselective dearomative reaction of non-functionalized 1-naphthols, which poses a synthetic challenge to organic chemists because of the relative ease of rearomatization via the elimination of a proton. In this work, the direct dearomatization of non-functionalized 1-naphthols was achieved through a chiral phosphoric acid (CPA) catalyzed enantioselective dearomative [4+2] cycloaddition reaction with in-situ generated ortho-quinone methides (o-QMs). The reported convergent method allows the use of readily available simple 1-naphthols without pre-functionalization, furnishing a variety of naphthopyran derivatives in good yields (up to 96%) and moderate to excellent enantioselectivities (up to >99% ee) under mild reaction conditions. The observed regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselectivities are the keys to the success of the current strategy utilizing o-QM as a diene surrogates, in combination with CPA catalysis.


Identifying molecular determinants of virulence attenuation in live attenuated canine parvovirus (CPV) vaccines is important for assuring their safety. To this end, we identified mutations in the attenuated CPV 9985-46 vaccine strain that arose during serial passage in Crandell-Rees feline kidney cells by comparison with the wild-type counterpart, as well as minimal determinants of the loss of virulence. Four amino acid substitutions (N93K, G300V, T389N and V562L) in VP2 of strain 9985-46 significantly restricted infection in canine A72 cells. Using an infectious molecular clone system, we constructed isogenic CPVs of the parental virulent 9985 strain carrying single or double mutations. We observed that only a single amino acid substitution in VP2, G300V or T389N, attenuated the virulent parental virus. Combinations of these mutations further attenuated CPV to a level comparable to that of 9985-46. Strains with G300V/T389N substitutions did not induce clinical symptoms in experimentally infected pups, and their ability to infect canine cells was highly restricted. We found that another G300V/V562L double mutation decreased affinity of the virus for canine cells, although its pathogenicity to dogs was maintained. These results indicate that mutation of residue 300, which plays a critical role in host tropism, is not sufficient for viral attenuation in vivo, and that attenuation of 9985-46 strain is defined by at least two mutations in residues 300 and 389 of the VP2 capsid protein. This finding is relevant for quality control of the vaccine and provides insight into the rational design of second-generation live attenuated vaccine candidates.


The paragenetic sequence of the minerals of the Barton garnet mine shows that the crystallization of the mine rock started with the formation of a hornblende-diorite matrix and ended essentially with the crystallization of the large garnet grains and/or crystals within the hornblende rims. These rims or envelopes, which were formerly considered "reaction rims," are paragenetically earlier than the enclosed minerais. The hornblende envelopes and the minerals within the envelopes developed from retained isolated pegmatitic or deuteric solutions having more-or-less spherical outlines en.losed within the hornblende diorite. The crystallization of these isoiated solutions produced first the hornblende envelopes foilowed by terminated crystals of hornblende and hypersthene, large grains of plagioclase, and intergrowths of hornblende and feldspar growing from the inside of the envelopes toward the center. The last mineral to form in any quantity was garnet, which covered the minerals attached to the interior of the envelopes and which also enclosed crystais of biotite, apatite, hypersthene, and rounded grains of pyrite which developed contemporaneously with the garnet There is no evidence of late introduction of material or of metasomatic action between any o[ the minerals present. The term deulerocrysl is proposed to apply to those crystals or large grains as hornblende, hypersthene, biotite, and garnet which developed from late pegmatitic or deuteric solutions retained within the parent rock. Such crystals are late in development in contrast to phenocrysts which appear early and are retained as conspicuous crystals or grains'


Interventional therapy is one of the most effective methods for diagnosing and treating vascular-related diseases at present. It relies on achieving precise and safe navigation of intravascular tools within a patient's vasculature. Vascular Interventional Surgical Robots (VISR) can reduce surgeons' exposure to operational hazards including radiation. However, the absence of apt position control and force feedback remains a challenge. This study presents an isomorphic master–slave VISR for precise navigation of endovascular tools viz. catheters and guidewires. The master console aids operators in issuing manipulation commands and logs feedback from the force, rotation, and translation data. The slave manipulator uses the commands received from the master platform for actual tool navigation. However, precise master–slave position control and force feedback are precursors for optimal patient outcomes. This study utilized a fuzzy-PID controller for precise tool navigation and a neural network model for resistance force modulation with 50 mN precision. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of using the learning-based models within our VISR and compared it with the performances from conventional methods. Results show that the models enhanced the proposed robotic system with better navigation precision, faster response speed, and improved force measurement capabilities.


Lexicon-free speech recognition naturally deals with the problem of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words. In this paper, we show that character-based language models (LM) can perform as well as word-based LMs for speech recognition, in word error rates (WER), even without restricting the decoding to a lexicon. We study character-based LMs and show that convolutional LMs can effectively leverage large (character) contexts, which is key for good speech recognition performance downstream. We specifically show that the lexicon-free decoding performance (WER) on utterances with OOV words using character-based LMs is better than lexicon-based decoding, both with character or word-based LMs.


Abstract Introduction A strong professional identity helps occupational therapists maintain professional values and thrive when facing work-related challenges and opportunities including generic, blurred or emerging roles, funding pressures and a push for outcome evidence. A scoping review will build understanding of professional identity and how to maintain it in such circumstances. Objectives To scope what is currently understood of professional identity in occupational therapy and factors which influence ability to maintain this and adapt in challenging work environments. Methods Using Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework three databases were searched using the terms 'occupational therap*' and 'professional identity'. Data extraction and thematic analysis highlighted the extent and nature of current literature and mapped key concepts. Results 89 papers were included. Professional identity was revealed as a multidimensional construction. Four themes emerged: developing a shared ontology, embracing the culture, enacting occupational therapy, and believing in occupational therapy. Factors which influenced development and maintenance of professional identity included occupation-centred practice, ontological reflexivity, linking theory to practice and professional socialization. Conclusions and significance The enhanced understanding of professional identity and factors which preserve or enhance it can help the profession identify how to position itself to remain resilient and adaptive in an ever-changing environment.


Firm-level idiosyncratic policy distortions misallocate resources between firms, lowering aggregate productivity. Many environmental policies create such distortions; in particular, output-based intensity standards (which limit firms' energy use or emissions per unit of output) are easier for high-productivity firms to achieve. We investigate the productivity effect of intensity standards using a tractable general-equilibrium model featuring multiple sectors and firm-level heterogeneity. Qualitatively, we demonstrate standards are always inferior to uniform taxes, as they misallocate both dirty and clean inputs across firms and sectors, which lowers productivity. Quantitatively, we calibrate the model to US data and show these productivity losses can be large. JEL Classification: Q4, Q5, H2, E6


IoT applications are becoming increasingly important. One of the most important requirements in this network is low energy consumption. In this study, a low energy consuming SoC for IoT applications was designed. For this purpose, open source softcore processors and operating systems were examined. LEON3 and OpenRISC are two important platforms that can be used in this field. Energy consumption analyzes of these two systems were obtained and compared. FreeRTOS operating system was installed and examined on the LEON3 processor. Thus, a technical analysis support was provided to the designers from this point of view.


PURPOSE The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of iliac artery stent placement under MR guidance with real-time MR radial scanning in an animal model. MATERIALS AND METHODS The experiments were performed on three pigs in a 1.5 T scanner. Radial scanning with a gradient echo technique (TR 8.4 ms, TE 3.6 ms, flip angle 10 degrees) was used. A dedicated backprojector performed the reconstruction of the raw data in real-time. The resulting MR-images were displayed on LCD screens beside the magnet. The sliding window reconstruction technique allowed image acquisition at a frame rate of 16 images per second. MR-compatible self-expanding stents with a diameter of 8 mm and a length of 3 cm were placed into the left iliac artery. Their positions were verified by digital subtraction angiography (DSA) and compared to MRI. RESULTS All stents were successfully placed. Stent positions as monitored by real-time MR were identical to those seen on DSA images. The time needed for exact positioning of the scan plane ranged from 15 to 30 minutes. Stent placement itself took 8 minutes on average. CONCLUSION Radial scanning applied together with the sliding window reconstruction technique allows placement of stents in iliac arteries under real-time MR control.


Background: The incidence of breast cancer has increased consistently in Vietnam over the past two decades. Data from 2012 indicates an increase from an age-standardized rate of 16.2 per 100,000 in 2002, to 23.0 per 100,000 in 2012. Despite this, and consistent studies indicating late diagnosis, there has been a lack of empirical studies on what breast cancer services exist and how they function across different levels of the Vietnamese health system. Aim: Our project sought to examine the accessibility, affordability, and appropriateness of breast cancer services in Vietnam with the objective of making recommendations to strengthen service delivery. Methods: The project used a mixed-methods approach, collecting data through self-administered questionnaires (n=69) and in-depth interviews (n=23) with health professionals working at facilities across all four levels of the Vietnamese health system (national, provincial, district, & commune). We completed in-depth interviews with women (n=12) diagnosed with breast cancer, focusing on their experiences of accessing and using services. Our study was located across three provinces, representing the northern, central, and southern regions of the country. Results: Our results show that screening activities for breast cancer in the community are not systematically organized or provided. There are no stand-alone screening campaigns for breast cancer and facility-based opportunistic screening is limited. There is scope for strengthening the primary and secondary levels of the Vietnamese health system to detect, diagnose and treat breast cancer. Increased autonomy and support for commune-level health stations to conduct screening activities, the systematic incorporation of opportunistic screening, and the extension of breast cancer-specific training for commune and district level health care staff are potential areas for strengthening. Conclusion: Our study suggests that there should be concerted efforts to implement the Ministry of Health's strategic objectives to decentralise and strengthen commune and district levels of the health system in relation to detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. No studies have been conducted that pilot interventions to provide systematic and comprehensive breast cancer services at the lower levels of the health system. Specific attention should be given to increasing autonomy and support for commune level health stations to conduct screening activities; for the systematic incorporation of opportunistic screening; and the extension of breast cancer-specific training for commune and district level health care staff.


Different adaptive applications are interested in the dynamic behavior of a resource over different fine- to coarse-grain time-scales. The resource's sensor runs at some fine-grain resource-appropriate sampling rate, producing a discrete-time resource signal. It can be very inefficient to to answer a coarse-grain application query by directly using the fine-grain resource signal. We address this gap between the sensor and its different client applications with a novel query model that explicitly incorporates time-scale as a parameter. The query model is implemented on top of an inherently multi-scale wavelet-based representation of the signal (which could be communicated over a set of multicast channels). A query uses only the wavelet coefficients necessary for its time-scale (and thus could listen to a subset of the channels), greatly reducing the data that need to be communicated. We present very promising initial results on host load signals, showing the tradeoff between compactness and query error. Finally, we describe some of the other operations that the wavelet representation enables.


We investigate the mass loss of galaxies in groups and clusters with high-resolution DM simulations. We detect weak mass segregation in the inner regions of group/cluster haloes, consistent with observational findings. This applies to samples of galaxy analogues selected using either their present-day mass or past maximum (peak) mass. We find a strong radial trend in the fractional mass lost by the galaxies since peak, independent of their mass. This suggests that segregation is due to massive galaxies having formed closer to the halo centres and not the preferential destruction of smaller galaxies near halo centres. We divide our sample into galaxies that were accreted as a group vs. as a single, distinct halo. We find strong evidence for preprocessing -- the grouped galaxies lose $\sim 35-45\%$ of their peak mass before being accreted onto their final host haloes, compared to single galaxies which lose $\sim12\%$. After accretion, however, the single galaxies lose more mass compared to the grouped ones. These results are consistent with a scenario in which grouped galaxies are preprocessed in smaller haloes while single galaxies `catch up' in terms of total mass loss once they are accreted onto the final host halo. The fractional mass loss is mostly independent of the galaxy mass and host mass, and increases with amount of time spent in a dense environment.


This study examined age-related patterns in exposure and affective reactivity to daily stressors across a 20-year time span among adults who were between 22 and 77 years old at their baseline interview. Longitudinal data from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) consisted of three bursts of eight consecutive nightly interviews of stress and affect. Analyses made use of all available data from a U.S. National sample of respondents who participated in any of the three NSDE bursts (N = 2,845; number of daily assessments = 33,688). Findings revealed increasing age-related benefits. Younger adults (< 30 years) reported the highest levels of stressor exposure and reactivity, but their stress profile improved with age. Over time, adults averaged an 11% reduction in the occurrence of stressor days, and the younger adults exhibited an even steeper decline (a 47% reduction) in their levels of stressor reactivity. For people in midlife and old age, stressor occurrence continued to decrease over time, yet among adults aged 54 years or older at baseline, stress reactivity remained stable across time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).


We investigated the regulation of elastase activity in murine peritoneal macrophages by different cytokines and bacterial LPS. Thioglycolate-elicited mouse peritoneal exudate macrophages secrete a metalloproteinase that degrades elastin. Incubation of peritoneal exudate macrophages with LPS and IFN-gamma significantly inhibited the production of elastase by a mechanism independent of nitric oxide, superoxide, and hydrogen peroxide. The cytokines IL-1alpha, IL-1beta, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF, TGF-alpha and -beta, basic fibroblast growth factor, monocyte chemotactic factor-1, and granulocyte CSF (G-CSF) had no significant effect on the production of elastase by macrophages. In contrast, granulocyte-macrophage CSF (GM-CSF) increased the production of elastase in a dose-dependent manner, and with macrophage CSF (M-CSF) inhibited it. Elastin zymography demonstrated that the modulation of elastolytic activity in macrophages was associated with changes in the level of metalloelastase protein. The stimulation of elastase activity by GM-CSF and the inhibition of elastase activity by LPS, IFN-gamma, and M-CSF occurred at the level of transcription. LPS and M-CSF also augmented the expression level of tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase mRNA. The increased mRNA steady state level of murine macrophage elastase induced by GM-CSF resulted from both increased transcription and enhanced stability. The modulation of metalloelastase activity in macrophages by IFN-gamma, M-CSF, and GM-CSF suggests that these molecules may control the degradation of elastin fibers in lungs or blood vessels.


To understand the formation and evolution of solar-type stars in the solar neighborhood, we need to measure their stellar parameters to high accuracy. We present a catalogue of accurate stellar parameters for 451 stars that represent the HARPS Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) "high precision" sample. Spectroscopic stellar parameters were measured using high signal-to-noise ($S/N$) spectra acquired with the HARPS spectrograph. The spectroscopic analysis was completed assuming LTE with a grid of Kurucz atmosphere models and the recent ARES code for measuring line equivalent widths. We show that our results agree well with those ones presented in the literature (for stars in common). We present a useful calibration for the effective temperature as a function of the index color $B-V$ and [Fe/H]. We use our results to study the metallicity-planet correlation, namely for very low mass planets. The results presented here suggest that in contrast to their jovian couterparts, neptune-like planets do not form preferentially around metal-rich stars. The ratio of jupiter-to-neptunes is also an increasing function of stellar metallicity. These results are discussed in the context of the core-accretion model for planet formation.


Birefringence due to a uniform bending of an anisotropic optical fiber is studied. The analysis is perturbational and valid only for a large radius of curvature. First, the theory is applied to a general inhomogeneous weakly guiding anisotropic waveguide leading to second-order differential vector equations for the transversal fields and a formula for the change of the propagation constant. This is seen to be proportional to (a/R0)2, where a is the radius of the fiber and R0 is the radius of the curvature. Next, the concept of linearly polarized modes in the weakly guiding fiber is adopted, and the analysis is applied to isotropic step-index and parabolic-index fibers together with the corresponding anisotropic waveguides. Field solutions and expressions for the birefringence are discussed for each of the cases.


This study describes the outcome in terms of health-related quality of life (QL) five years after onset of symptoms in 397 patients with an initial suspicion of acute myocardial infarction (MI) but in whom the diagnosis was not confirmed. The patients were approached by means of a postal inquiry that comprised two questionnaires. The most pronounced impairment in health-related QL was expressed as decreased energy, whereas social life was the least affected area. The overall QL was very similar to that in patients who had a confirmed MI. Subsets of patients with impaired QL were those given the diagnosis of angina pectoris or possible infarction.


The prevalence of obesity in the UK is mirroring trends in the USA. There is a need for research to provide public health agencies with advice as to the most effective means of securing behavioural change. The work reported here is in its very early stages. The history of obesity modelling using system dynamics is reviewed. A model of the energy intake and expenditure by a population of children aged 2-15 years is then described. Both of these two influencing factors on the caloric balance are modelled in some detail. A specimen output graph is included before an exposition of the intended use of the model. Mention is made of soft variables and the role of social marketing in effecting behavioural change.


The effect of asymmetrical body-mass distribution on the stability and dynamics of two-degree-of-freedom quadruped bounding in place is investigated in this study. An analytical stability criterion for bounding of quadrupeds with asymmetrical mass distribution is developed. Bounding is found to be passively stable in the Hamiltonian sense when the dimensionless pitch moment of inertia of the body is less than 1-beta2, where beta is a dimensionless measure of the asymmetry. The criterion is derived under the assumptions of infinite leg stiffness and no energy loss. With energy dissipation modeled as linear damping in the legs, simulation results show that the criterion is independent of the value of leg stiffness and a conservative estimate of the critical inertia value. Body symmetry appears to be more favorable to stable bounding than asymmetry, but only slightly so in practicality. The results show that asymmetry offers some advantages when the dynamic characteristics of bounding are compared for symmetrical and asymmetrical models. Lower stride frequency, larger vertical displacement, and smaller duty factor are obtained with this more animal-like model


Bump mapping was introduced as a method of rendering realistic shading on bumpy surfaces, without actually rendering a full 3D model of the bumps. Bump mapping works well for parameterized surfaces. The authors interpret the 3D texture as a displacement function to be added to the surface position.<<ETX>>


Flow-induced vibration (FIV) energy harvesting has attracted extensive research interest in the past two decades. Remarkable research achievements and contributions from different aspects are briefly overviewed. Example applications of FIV energy harvesting techniques in the development of Internet of Things are mentioned. The challenges and difficulties in this field are summarized from two sides. First, the multi-physics coupling problem in FIV energy harvesting still cannot be well handled. There is a lack of system-level theoretical modeling that can accurately account for fluid–structure interaction, the electromechanical coupling, and complicated interface circuits. Second, the robustness of FIV energy harvesters needs to be further improved to adapt to the uncertainties in practical scenarios. To be more specific, the cut-in wind speed is expected to be further reduced and the power output to be increased. Finally, Perspectives on the future development in this direction are discussed. Machine-learning approaches, the versatility of metamaterials, and more advanced interface circuits should receive more attention from researchers, since these cutting-edge techniques may have the potential to address the multi-physics modeling problem of FIV energy harvesters and significantly improve the operation performance. In addition, in-depth collaborations between researchers from different disciplines are anticipated to promote the FIV energy harvesting technology to step out of the lab and into real applications.


The state of collection, storage and processing of some main waste in Bulgaria is under consideration. In accordance with the legislation in force in Bulgaria and the EU, separate collection of waste is increasingly necessary. Some examples of different types of waste show what the actual condition is and show good examples of work in this area.


Summary
Highly purified plasma membranes were isolated from chicken embryo fibroblasts infected with Marek's disease virus (MDV) or turkey herpes virus (HVT). The purification was monitored by the incorporation of fucose and marker enzymes specific for plasma membranes. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that the membrane preparations contained two new virus-induced proteins. When reacted in the double immunodiffusion test solubilized plasma membranes from MDV-infected cells formed two specific precipitation bands with Marek's disease immunoglobulins.
Antisera prepared against plasma membranes from MDV- or HVT-infected cells neutralized extracellular infectious HVT. After incubation of plasma membranes from MDV-infected cells with Marek's disease antibodies the buoyant density of the membranes increased from 1.05 g/ml to 1.08 g/ml due to the binding of immunoglobulins to the virus-induced membrane proteins. The Marek's disease mortality of chickens twice vaccinated with a plasma membrane preparation from HVT-infected cells was reduced by 94%.
From the results it was concluded that the plasma membranes acquire new immunologic specificities after infection with MDV or HVT.