Artificial neural networks in Neurosciences. This article shows that artificial neural networks are used for confirming the relationships between physiological and cognitive changes. Specifically, we explore the influence of a decrease of neurotransmitters on the behaviour of old people in recognition tasks. This artificial neural network recognizes learned patterns. When we change the threshold of activation in some units, the artificial neural network simulates the experimental results of old people in recognition tasks. However, the main contributions of this paper are the design of an artificial neural network and its operation inspired by the nervous system and the way the inputs are coded and the process of orthogonalization of patterns.


Hydrogen mixed natural gas for combustion can improve combustion characteristics and reduce carbon emission, which has important engineering application value. A casing swirl burner model is adopted to numerically simulate and research the natural gas hydrogen mixing technology for combustion in gas boilers in this paper. Under the condition of conventional air atmosphere and constant air excess coefficient, the six working conditions for hydrogen mixing proportion into natural gas are designed to explore the combustion characteristics and the laws of pollution emissions. The temperature distributions, composition, and emission of combustion flue gas under various working conditions are analyzed and compared. Further investigation is also conducted for the variation laws of NOx and soot generation. The results show that when the boiler heating power is constant, hydrogen mixing will increase the combustion temperature, accelerate the combustion rate, reduce flue gas and CO2 emission, increase the generation of water vapor, and inhibit the generation of NOx and soot. Under the premise of meeting the fuel interchangeability, it is concluded that the optimal hydrogen mixing volume fraction of gas boilers is 24.7%.


This research aims to explore the elements of next-generation digital collaborative platforms for Destination Management Organisations (DMO) from the perspective of both businesses and visitors, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of digital platforms. The research is conducted in partnership with Visit Surrey (regional DMO) and Minted Box (bespoke platform developer). Preliminary results from interviews and focus groups indicate the need for DMOs to play an active role in facilitating business collaboration and knowledge sharing on the supply side of the digital platform. This process will aspire to then provide a more personalised experience on the visitors' end.


The aim of this action research is to explore how far "using the palm technique" help preschoolers improve their mastery of the CVCV syllables. The study was conducted among preschoolers from the Sri Murni Preschool, IPG Tawau. The focus of the research is to observe the preschoolers using the palm technique in their reading skills of the CVCV syllables. Observation and interviews were used in this qualitative approach as tools to collect data. The findings show that preschool children were able to read the CVCV syllables faster. This technique is not only easy and fun to use but also help developed children's sensory abilities.  It is also simple and cost effective for preschool teachers to use.


The authors present three software tools that were developed together with an electromagnetic field computation program within the framework of finite and boundary element (possibly coupled) methods. The first tool consists of a two-dimensional or three-dimensional structure generator whose results are transmitted to a second tool: an interactive meshing program or an automatic surface generator. These three programs, written in FORTRAN and associated with the submission of a dynamic memory allocation module, are very simple to use and have proved to be extremely useful by allowing the submission of complicated real cases in a short time. Two examples are considered: a stepping motor and a hairpin transformer. >


A Tuned Liquid Damper belongs to the passive vibration control device family installed on the top of the structure which dissipates the external excitation energy through liquid sloshing. In order to design an efficient TLD, knowing optimum TLD parameters and liquid behaviour is of crucial importance. The main advantage of TLD when compared to other form of dampers is that they can be easily designed and implemented with low installation and maintenance cost. This study investigated the structure response when coupled with and without TLD under sinusoidal excitations. For our simplicity we can relate any multidegree of freedom framework to single level of degree framework by making out an identical equivalent structure of any given structure.

With the consideration of presence of properly designed TLD on structure for controlling the structural vibration, a markable decrement of about 45-55 percent in vibrations is observed for siusoidal floor load case thereby proving the effectiveness and efficiency of TLD in dampening vibrations. In this study the exactness of the current models which can correctly depict the fluid movement conduct is researched and is contrasted with other present model for sinusoidal floor load ,sinusoidal ground movement and earthquake ground motion case for different frequency content range depending upon Ap/Vp ratio categorised as High Frequency Content for PGA/PGV >1.2, Intermediate Frequency Content for 0.8<PGA/PGV<1.2 and Low frequency content for PGA/PGV<0.8.A parametric study of 15 different earthquakes for differernt mass ratio proposes that the mass ratio of 0.05 is most effective in reducing the structural response for high and intermediate frequency content earthquakes and for low frequency content earthquakes mass ratio of 0.02-0.05 is found out to be most effective.


Horticultural crops are highly nutritious and shared lion portion of our daily diet. These items are consumed in different ways according to their nature and processing processes. These days, a crucial concerning issue is arising globally to ensure nutrition security for huge population that leads to focus on production increase, quality improvement, food safety assurance, and processing strategies. Consequently, a large amount of waste generates in the processing industries, household kitchen, and supply chain of horticultural commodities that has led to a significant nutrition and economic loss, consequently creating environment pollution with extensive burden of landfills. However, these wastes showed magnificent potentiality of re-utilization in several industries owing to as rich source of different bioactive compounds and phytochemicals. Therefore, sustainable extraction methods and utilization strategies deserve the extensive investigations. This review paper extensively illustrates the horticultural waste generation options, sustainable recycling strategies, and potentiality of recycled products in different industries for betterment in population with the assurance of green environment and sustainable ecology.


The parameters of a laser which govern stone fragmentation are the pulse duration, wavelength and fibre diameter. The pulse duration is the most important parameter governing fibre transmission. The shorter the pulse duration the less tissue damage and the easier the plasma production at the stone surface but the greater the difficulty to transmit the laser energy through the fibre. At 1 microsecond pulse duration the laser wavelength is highly significant because it governs the degree of absorption at the stone surface necessary for plasma production. Transmission of this laser energy through 200 micron core fibres is straightforward. Fragmentation is achieved by placing the fibre in contact with the stone surface. There is negligible tissue injury. A miniaturised ureteroscope has been developed specifically for the laser. This appears to be easier to use and carries less risk of instrumentational injury to the ureter.


A genetic algorithm (GA) for variable selection in partial least squares (PLS) regression that incorporates adaptive boosting to identify informative wavelengths in near-infrared (NIR) spectra has been developed. Three studies demonstrating the advantages of incorporating an adaptive boosting routine into a GA that employs the root mean square error of calibration as its fitness function are highlighted: (1) prediction of hydroxyl number of terpolymers from NIR diffuse reflectance spectra; (2) calibration of acetone from NIR transmission spectra of mixtures of water, acetone, t-butyl alcohol and isopropyl alcohol; and (3) determination of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in drug tablets from NIR diffuse reflectance spectra. The performance of the GA with adaptive boosting to select wavelengths was compared with one without adaptive boosting. For all three NIR data sets, variable selected PLS models developed by a GA with adaptive boosting performed better. Analysis of the wavelengths selected by the GA with adaptive boosting also demonstrate that chemical information indicative of the analyte was captured by the selected wavelengths.


Artificial neural networks are an efficient tool for modelling production control processes using data from the actual production as well as simulated or design of experiments data. In this study two artificial neural networks were combined with the control process charts and it was checked whether the data obtained by the networks were valid for variable process control in particleboard manufacture. The networks made it possible to obtain the mean and standard deviation of the internal bond strength of the particleboard within acceptable margins using known data of thickness, density, moisture content, swelling and absorption. The networks obtained met the acceptance criteria for test values from non-standard test methods, as well as the criteria for using these values in statistical process control.


This protocol presents the all-in-one dual CRISPR-Cas12a (AIOD-CRISPR) assay to ultra-sensitively and visually detect SARS-CoV-2. The procedure of AIOD-CRISPR assay typically consists of three parts including sample preparation, AIOD-CRISPR reaction, and fluorescence detection. Sample preparation involves the synthetic RNA preparation and the nucleic acid extraction from SARS-CoV-2 samples. The prepared nucleic acids were then added into the AIOD-CRISPR reaction systems as templates, followed by incubation at 37°C for 20-40 min. After incubation, visual detection was immediately conducted by placing the tubes in a portable LED blue transilluminator (Maestrogen UltraSlim) or the ChemiDoc™ MP Imaging System (Bio-Rad) with its built-in UV channel. In addition to endpoint visual detection, real-time fluorescence detection was also available for AIOD-CRISPR assay. This protocol is helpful for applying AIOD-CRISPR assay to rapid, sensitive, one-pot point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 detection.


Background: Hardwood dust is a well-known human carcinogen and its use is common in several economic activities. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the extent of occupational exposure to hardwood dust in certain sectors of Italian industry. Methods: Information on occupational exposures was collected from enterprise exposure registers that must by law be reported to the National Workers' Compensation Authority, as at 31 December 2011. Data stored in the database included economic activity sector, work force size and exposed workers. The number of workers potentially exposed was estimated for some of the industrial sectors from national occupational statistics in Italy. Results: The economic sector with the highest number of potentially exposed workers to hardwood dust was that classified as the manufacture of other wooden furniture with 15,760 men and 2,771 women, while the highest percentage of enterprises that had sent data (according to the ISTAT 2001 census) was in building and repair of non-metallic ships (21%). Conclusions: The systematic recording of occupational exposures is a source of data that permits recognition of high risk situations and aids exposure assessment for epidemiological studies.


A study of 100 patients experiencing 144 episodes of bleeding from colonic diverticula was made. In 16, colonic bleeding was the first manifestation of diverticular disease. Surprisingly, 42 had only black, tarry stools while 58 had bright red rectal bleeding. Sixty bleeding episodes (41.5%) were massive and necessitated transfusion of more than 1,500 ml of blood. Fifty-three (37%) did not lead to transfusion. Only five were associated with signs of acute diverticulitis. Although only 19 patients, all initially treated with a medical regimen, required operation, they had often bled too much (average 5,260 ml), too long and too often before operative intervention. Frequently the wrong operation was performed. This study demonstrates that local resection is adequate only if disease is confined to a single area which is bleeding. When disease is extensive, total abdominal colectomy with ileoproctostomy is the procedure of choice.


Post-hoc explanation methods for machine learning models have been widely used to support decision-making. One of the popular methods is Counterfactual Explanation (CE), also known as Actionable Recourse, which provides a user with a perturbation vector of features that alters the prediction result. Given a perturbation vector, a user can interpret it as an "action" for obtaining one's desired decision result. In practice, however, showing only a perturbation vector is often insufficient for users to execute the action. The reason is that if there is an asymmetric interaction among features, such as causality, the total cost of the action is expected to depend on the order of changing features. Therefore, practical CE methods are required to provide an appropriate order of changing features in addition to a perturbation vector. For this purpose, we propose a new framework called Ordered Counterfactual Explanation (OrdCE). We introduce a new objective function that evaluates a pair of an action and an order based on feature interaction. To extract an optimal pair, we propose a mixed-integer linear optimization approach with our objective function. Numerical experiments on real datasets demonstrated the effectiveness of our OrdCE in comparison with unordered CE methods.


Using the Republic of North Macedonia as a case study, this article analyzes the processes through which national sports teams' losing performance acquires a broad social and political significance. I explore claims to sporting victory as a direct product of political forces in countries located at the bottom of the global hierarchy that participate in a wider system of coercive rule, frequently referred to as empire. I also analyze how public celebrations of claimed sporting victories are intertwined with nation-building efforts, especially toward the global legitimization of a particular version of national history and heritage. The North Macedonia case provides a fruitful lens through which we can better understand unfolding sociopolitical developments, whereby imaginings of the global interlock with local interests and needs, in the Balkans and beyond.


Over the last five decades American cities have been transformed as profoundly and tumultuously as they were during the industrial revolution. In contrast to that earlier era, this contemporary transformation has been stimulated and guided by governmental intervention. John H. Mollenkopf analyzes the government programs and the supporting political coalitions that made this intervention possible. His book shows how the success of these programs, developed largely by urban liberal Democrats, led to new conflicts that ultimately undermined urban development policy. Using Boston and San Francisco as case studies, the author shows how urban development programs influenced and were influenced by big-city politics. He denies that the current impasse in national politics and urban development stems from technical inadequacies in existing policies. Instead, he argues, it results from failure to reconcile the conflicting interests of dominant urban economic institutions and the urban populace--a failure that led not only to the collapse of the postwar urban development consensus but to the disarray of the Democratic party itself. His suggestions as to how consensus can be restored will fascinate anyone concerned with the future of American politics and the American city.


Background Ovarian cancer (OC) affects about 22 000 women annually in the US and ranks 5th in cancer deaths, largely due to diagnosed with advanced stage. Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) accounts for approximately 90% of all ovarian cancer cases. Our study was to assess the prognostic meaningful of UBE2T expression in OC dependent on data acquired from TCGA and so as to increase further knowledge into the biological pathways involved in OC pathogenesis related to UBE2T. Methods Information on gene expression and comparing clinical data were recognized and downloaded from TCGA. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) created an arranged list of all genes s indicated by their connection with UBE2T expression. Results The scatter plot showed the difference of UBE2T expression between normal and tumor samples ( P <0.01). So as to decide the biological interaction network of UBE2T in OC, we used to tab Network in cBioPortal and the 50 most as often altered neighbor genes of UBE2T were demonstrated utilizing Network and the most frequent alterations were HES1. The GSEA results showed that cell cycle, DNA replication, RNA degradation, some cancers, spliceosome, Huntington's disease, oxidative phosphorylation are differentially enriched in UBE2T high expression phenotype. Cumulative survive showed that dendritic cell of immune infiltrates statistically significant ( P <0.05) of UBE2T in OC suggesting that dendritic cell significantly affecting the prognosis, it is worth more research and exploration. Conclusion Our study found that the expression of UBE2T was significantly increased in OC patients and associated with several clinical features. UBE2T may be a potentially useful prognostic molecular biomarker of bad survival in OC, while further experimental ought to be performed to demonstrate the biologic effect of UBE2T.


In this paper we revisit the cells-and-portals visibility methods, originally developed for the special case of architectural interiors. We define an effectiveness measure for a cells-and-portals partition, and introduce a two-pass algorithm that computes a cells-and-portals partition. The algorithm uses a simple heuristic that strives to create small portals as a means for generating an effective partition. The input to the algorithm is a set of half edges in 2D that can be extracted from a complex polygonal model. The first pass of the algorithm creates an initial partition, which is then refined by the second pass. We show that our method creates a partition that is more effective than the common BSP partition, even when the latter is further refined with the application of our second pass. Our cells-and-portals algorithm is designed to deal with arbitrarily oriented walls. The algorithm also supports outdoor scenes, where the vertical walls of the buildings serve as occluders and portals are extended above the buildings. We show that the extended portals allow an output-sensitive rendering of large urban scenes. While most visibility algorithms use graphics hardware in order to cull hidden regions of the model, we examine the usefulness of a hardware-assisted portal test as opposed to the conventional software test. Finally, since our two-pass method is fully automatic and local, it supports incremental changes of the model by locally recomputing and updating the partition. We call our method 'Breaking the Walls' since it breaks out of indoor scenes to outdoor scenes, and allows walls to be broken interactively, with an instant updating of the partition. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Carriage of ampicillin-resistant (Ampr) Haemophilus parainfluenzae has become frequent among children in our community, although carriage of Ampr Haemophilus influenzae remains uncommon. In this study we characterized the mechanism of ampicillin resistance in 27 representative isolates of H. parainfluenzae. As determined by isoelectric focusing, each isolate had a TEM-1 beta-lactamase; substrate profiles assessed for enzymes from 10 strains were also consistent with TEM-1 enzyme. Agarose gel electrophoresis revealed a plasmid of 23 to 34 megadaltons in each isolate and a small plasmid (less than or equal to 4 megadaltons) in 14 isolates. Transfer of ampicillin resistance to H. influenzae Rd was achieved during membrane mating with 14 of 15 donors. The transconjugants exhibited high-level ampicillin resistance (greater than or equal to 50 micrograms/ml), which was stable despite serial passage of isolates on antibiotic-free media. The transconjugants tested retained fertility. Cryptic plasmids were discovered in 7 of 25 antibiotic-susceptible H. parainfluenzae isolates. Our data suggest that H. parainfluenzae may play an important role in the exchange of Ampr genes among throat bacteria.


Convolutional decoders are very important in digital communication systems, especially in applications where very high noise levels are introduced on the information signal by wireless transmission. Examples of such systems are satellite communications, cellular telephony and digital audio broadcasting (DAB). The most commonly employed decoding method so far in convolutional codes has been the Viterbi algorithm (VA), mainly implemented in digital hardware to accommodate large memory requirements. In this thesis an introduction to convolutional codes and basic digital communication systems is given, followed by an in depth study of the VA and possible Viterbi decoder (VD) implementations. Advantages and limitations are identified in existing analogue VD designs. A recently proposed algorithm, known as the modified feedback decoding algorithm (MFDA), is then presented and clarified. The MFDA incorporates certain key features of the VA while it requires no digital memory and therefore lends itself to an entirely analogue implementation. This in turn improves performance characteristics, effectively trading complexity and power dissipation against operating speed. The first ever realisation of the novel MFDA is also presented here. Firstly, extensive system-level simulations model errors arising from the use of analogue circuits in practical convolutional decoders. Consequently, and based on these results, a mixed-signal hard-decision modified feedback decoder (MFD) is designed as a proof of principle, using the Austriamicrosystems (AMS) CMOS 0.6pm technology. The fabricated chips have 100% yield and measured results indicate that there is a negligible loss in coding performance compared with a VD. This work can potentially launch the advent of future miniaturised ultra low power analogue convolutional decoders.


During the past decade, intraperitoneal therapy of ovarian cancer has evolved from a pharmacologic model into an established treatment technique for women with this malignancy. Approximately 40% of patients with small-volume residual ovarian cancer (microscopic disease or macroscopic tumor, < or = 0.5 cm in maximum tumor diameter), after an objective response to initial organoplatinum-based systemic chemotherapy, may have a surgically documented complete response to platinum-based intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Patients who have not responded to systemic platinum administration rarely will respond to the drug given intraperitoneally, despite the presence of only small-volume residual disease when this regional treatment strategy is used. Other agents with antineoplastic activity after intraperitoneal administration in women with ovarian cancer include mitoxantrone, taxol, alpha-interferon and gamma-interferon, and interleukin-2. Although intraperitoneal therapy currently is being examined as a component of the initial chemotherapeutic program for patients with ovarian cancer, a precise role for regional drug delivery in this clinical setting remains to be defined.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Different information exists about the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori (Hp) in Germany, ranging from 35 to 40%. Several investigations have identified factors influencing the colonization of Hp in the stomach, but their significance is still being discussed. This study aimed at determining the prevalence of Hp in the metropolitan area of Hannover and defining the impact of education and lifestyle on Hp colonization. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The study was designed as a cross-sectional survey. Advertisements were placed in newspapers and on the radio. Of 829 who responded and were informed of the study 35 were excluded according to predefined criteria, the remainder sent questionnaires and containers for stool samples. 579 persons returned questionnaires and stool samples, but 16 were excluded because of borderline test results. The detection of Hp was done with a test for Hp-antigens in stool (Femto Lab H. pylori-Cnx-Test, R-Biopharm). RESULTS: Among the final 563 tested persons (322 women, 241 men; mean age 46.6 12.2 years) 21% were Hp-positive and 79% negative. Participants with Hp were older than those without. Neither gender nor the consumption of caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and particular eating behaviour were related to Hp-status. However, persons who had incomplete or lower-level schooling were infected more often than those who had graduated from with high school. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that Hp-prevalence among German adults may be lower than previously published. Known associations between Hp infection and age and education were confirmed.


This study aims to evaluate the partnership proportionality of e-transportation business based community. This study was conducted in Yogyakarta for a month (August 2018). The data were obtained through the interviews with ten informants of GoJek drivers and an informant of PT. GoJek Indonesia in Yogyakarta area, and also from documents about the partnership of Go-Jek transportation business and references on the partnerships of online transportation business. The collected data were analyzed by a Musharakah Index (MI). MI was used to evaluating the partnership proportionality of Go-Jek transportation business. MI was prepared by the author himself. The result of study showed that the partnership proportionality level of Go-Jek transportation business is in the neutral category with a value of 14, namely in the third category with an interval of 10-14. This shows that the partnership of Go-Jek transportation business in Yogyakarta area is more profitable for GoJek than its partners. While its partners bear more risk. This finding can be proved that if a partner has entered Go-Jek application, the program will control him/her, from where he/she goes to what order he/she takes and the choice of work comes in just seconds.


Abstract reasoning ability is fundamental to human intelligence. It enables humans to uncover relations among abstract concepts and further deduce implicit rules from the relations. As a well-known abstract visual reasoning task, Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) are widely used in human IQ tests. Although extensive research has been conducted on RPM solvers with machine intelligence, few studies have considered further advancing the standard answer-selection (classification) problem to a more challenging answer-painting (generating) problem, which can verify whether the model has indeed understood the implicit rules. In this paper we aim to solve the latter one by proposing a deep latent variable model, in which multiple Gaussian processes are employed as priors of latent variables to separately learn underlying abstract concepts from RPMs; thus the proposed model is interpretable in terms of concept-specific latent variables. The latent Gaussian process also provides an effective way of extrapolation for answer painting based on the learned concept-changing rules. We evaluate the proposed model on RPM-like datasets with multiple continuously-changing visual concepts. Experimental results demonstrate that our model requires only few training samples to paint high-quality answers, generate novel RPM panels, and achieve interpretability through concept-specific latent variables.


Studies were carried out on the combination of Cimetidine (CMTD) with Cytoxan (CTX) in three murine tumors. While the combination significantly potentiated the anticancer effect of CTX in L1210 leukemia, the results with P388 leukemia were not significantly different. The results with Lewis Lung Carcinoma showed a consistent reduction in the number of metastases. However, there was no consistent concomitant prolongation in survival. The host strain, biology of the tumour and the drug used in combination with CMTD might be some of the factors responsible for the varied response.


The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was enacted in 1974 as (1) a consumer protection statute designed to provide accurate information to and about consumers involved in credit transactions, and (2) and antidiscrimination statute designed to shield protected classes of consumers from discrimination in the granting of credit. The Federal Reserve Board promulgated regulations to further these statutory goals. Congress intended that the Act would be enforced through both private litigation and public compliance programs. Few private lawsuits have been brought under the Act, however, and public enforcement efforts have neither checked credit discrimination nor halted perpetuation of prior discrimination. Professor Matheson believes that courts, government enforcement agencies, and consumers should focus on substantive (rather than procedural) violations of the Act and its implementing regulations. The Act should be amended to allow for a minimum damage recovery for successful plaintiffs. The definition of "adverse action" in the regulations should be amended to acknowledge that credit granted on different terms than those requested by an applicant may indicate illegal discrimination. Detailed statistical information must be kept by credit-granting institutions and made available to private litigants and government enforcement agencies to assist them in identifying and eliminating credit discrimination. Professor Matheson believes that these changes will help create a statutory and regulatory framework that will promote better compliance by creditors with the Act's provisions and enhance enforcement efforts by both private parties and public agencies.


The surface relaxations of the rutile TiO2(110)(1×1) clean surface have been determined by O 1 s and Ti 2p3/2 scanned-energy mode photoelectron diffraction. The results are in excellent agreement with recent low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and medium energy ion scattering (MEIS) results, but in conflict with the results of some earlier investigations including one by surface x-ray diffraction. In particular, the bridging O atoms at the surface are found to relax outward, rather than inward, relative to the underlying bulk. Combined with the recent LEED and MEIS results, a consistent picture of the structure of this surface is provided. While the results of the most recent theoretical total-energy calculations are qualitatively consistent with this experimental consensus, significant quantitative differences remain.


Background: Phosphorylation controls intracellular localization of lipin 1 and has been proposed to regulate activity. Results: Lipin 1 preferentially binds di-anionic phosphatidic acid, and this is eliminated by phosphorylation. Conclusion: Lipin 1 association with phosphatidic acid is regulated by phosphorylation and electrostatic charge of substrate. Significance: Phosphorylation and the local membrane environment both significantly contribute to the regulation of lipin 1 PAP activity. The lipin gene family encodes a class of Mg2+-dependent phosphatidic acid phosphatases involved in the de novo synthesis of phospholipids and triglycerides. Unlike other enzymes in the Kennedy pathway, lipins are not integral membrane proteins, and they need to translocate from the cytosol to intracellular membranes to participate in glycerolipid synthesis. The movement of lipin 1 within the cell is closely associated with its phosphorylation status. Although cellular analyses have demonstrated that highly phosphorylated lipin 1 is enriched in the cytosol and dephosphorylated lipin 1 is found on membranes, the effects of phosphorylation on lipin 1 activity and binding to membranes has not been recapitulated in vitro. Herein we describe a new biochemical assay for lipin 1 using mixtures of phosphatidic acid (PA) and phosphatidylethanolamine that reflects its physiological activity and membrane interaction. This depends on our observation that lipin 1 binding to PA in membranes is highly responsive to the electrostatic charge of PA. The studies presented here demonstrate that phosphorylation regulates the ability of the polybasic domain of lipin 1 to recognize di-anionic PA and identify mTOR as a crucial upstream signaling component regulating lipin 1 phosphorylation. These results demonstrate how phosphorylation of lipin 1 together with pH and membrane phospholipid composition play important roles in the membrane association of lipin 1 and thus the regulation of its enzymatic activity.


Flow equalization is one of the key technologies in the parallel control of inversion module. This paper presents the multi-inversion module parallel flow equalization system with TMS320LF2407A as the main control chip, which adopts the control strategy of "synchronous control of seizure and coincidence", gains the data communication in the multi-module parallel connection and the multi-inversion module parallel flow equalization control with CAN controller embedded in TMS320LF2407A. It can be seen from the experimental data and experimental wave that it can effectively restrain the ring current and achieve the equipartition of load in the condition of resistive load and inductive load or capacitive load to achieve the data communication among the parallel inversion modules.


The subject of the present paper concerns the issue of a very significant, current and inspiring deep social interest value, especially in the field of scientific creativity. The notion of autoplagiarism appeared there in the 90's of the last century and at once it became amazingly popular, achieved enormous "power of effectiveness", evoking at the same time strong emotions – anxiety, disquiet or even fear. The term of autoplagiarism is a compound verb and this is the second of its component – expression "plagiarism" – that has contributed to this fast career and extraordinary effectiveness, becoming a carrier of a strong pejorative, stigmatizing and disqualifying evaluation. 2. The notion of plagiarism has its origin in the language of ancient Rome – Latin, where gradually as a "plagiatus" it was explicitly associated with a theft. The term "plagiarism" is used by Polish copyright juristic doctrine and judicial decisions in reference to the offence consisting in appropriation of the authorship of the whole or a part of a third person's work – presenting himself as the author of such a work. On the one hand, the act of plagiarism as an offence brings to civil liability based on the ground of art. 78 Polish Copyright Act of 1994, on the other hand, as a crime brings to criminal liability based on the ground of art. 115 P.C.A. The crime of plagiarism derives from the offence of appropriation of a third person's property, generally called a theft. This is the reason why plagiarism is commonly identified as a theft and as such is evaluated from the ethical and moral point of view. However, it is necessary to notice and stress a question of a fundamental importance and decisive for final conclusion that plagiarism consists in appropriation of the authorship of a third person's work – you can neither steal your own property nor your own work. 3. The notion of autoplagiarism is not a normative expression. In the field of academic creativity it has been connected with evaluating of scientific achievements of the representatives of these circles in the context of academic career. That means achieving academic degree of doctor, doctor habilitatus and academic title of professor as well as posts and profits connected with them – prestige, awards, grants, incomes. The task of defining the notion of autoplagiarismis is not easy. It may be accepted that the phenomenon of autoplagiarism is understood as a special form of the author's repeated distribution of his former publications, however, without providing any proper information about it. The aim of the autoplagiarist's acting is to enlarge a quantity of his publications and thereby mislead as to the volume of his scientific achievements. 4. The analysis of proper provisions justifies the statement that from the point of view of the normative requirements to grant an academic degree or title, a matter of indifference – featureful however, for plagiarism – is a candidates' intention to mislead as to the quantity or quality of his scientific achievements. 5. Answering the question asked in the title of the present article – whether autoplagiarism is a plagiarism in the field of scientific creativity – it should be stated that obviously autoplagiarism is not a plagiarism. It is also necessary to notice that the word "autoplagiarism" is an oxymoron from the linguistic point of view and thereby there are a lot of problems to define this notion. The introduction of an expression of autoplagiarism to the sphere of legal language should be in my opinion recognized as useless and even harmful. An acting named by this term may find its place only in the sphere of ethics considerations as an infringement of good academic customs. Therefore, it seems reasonable that the resignation of using the notion of autoplagiarism as hitherto in the mentioned context might be the best solution. However, if it appeared impossible there should be made an effort to redefine this notion, but in my opinion this undertaking has a little chance to be successful.


In contrast to human resources or physical capital, social capital refers to a  concept other than possessions an individual would have. It has the advantage of relations and settings in which interaction plays the main role and bears the most responsibility. One effect of social capital is to increase the productivity of human resources, especiallydealing withbig projects. In this respect, social capital in project-based organizations is considered as an important productivity resource so that actions would be done in a suitable way and teamwork could be more coherent than ever. Thus, the objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of social capital on productivity of human resources concerning project-based plans. In this respect, a general hypothesis along with three minor hypotheses were formed,which evaluated the effect of social capital and its three-fold aspects (trust, solidarity and cooperation) on productivity, respectively. The results of tests showed that increasing one unit of social capital and each of its three-fold aspects,  productivity might be increased by 0.91, 0.58, 0.79 and 0.91, respectively. SPSS 19 and lisrel 8/8 software were used to analyze data and the statistic universe of this study included the managers and employees of Bandar Abbas Gas Condensate Refinery. The number of the sample was 169 people using Morgan sample table. The results showed that social capital has a positive effect on productivity. Key words : productivity, trust, solidarity, cooperation, social capital.


textabstractIn the next section of this paper we will describe our view on what it is that we have to teach and what further ambitions we have with the part-time program. This is based on our insights about what we have to offer and on our ideas about what is needed and asked for. This constitutes a necessary starting point for our argument. But it may be desirable to redefine our agenda during the educational process as both our insights and those of our students develop.
Then we elaborate on why linking study with work practice and experience is neces-sary if our aims are to be realized. Our central thesis in this connection, however, is that sensible linking requires a preceding (and repeated) delinking. Therefore, we pro-ceed with presenting some strategies for 'delinking'. With most of these we already have some experience, and if so, we will report on it. We also discuss a number of strategies for 'relinking', which in practice are often interwoven with strategies for delinking.


With more than 250 million active users, Facebook (FB) is currently one of the most important online social networks. Our goal in this paper is to obtain a representative (unbiased) sample of Facebook users by crawling its social graph. In this quest, we consider and implement several candidate techniques. Two approaches that are found to perform well are the Metropolis-Hasting random walk (MHRW) and a re-weighted random walk (RWRW). Both have pros and cons, which we demonstrate through a comparison to each other as well as to the "ground-truth" (UNI - obtained through true uniform sampling of FB userIDs). In contrast, the traditional Breadth-First-Search (BFS) and Random Walk (RW) perform quite poorly, producing substantially biased results. In addition to offline performance assessment, we introduce online formal convergence diagnostics to assess sample quality during the data collection process. We show how these can be used to effectively determine when a random walk sample is of adequate size and quality for subsequent use (i.e., when it is safe to cease sampling). Using these methods, we collect the first, to the best of our knowledge, unbiased sample of Facebook. Finally, we use one of our representative datasets, collected through MHRW, to characterize several key properties of Facebook.


Assuming that inflation happened through a series of tunneling in the string theory landscape, it is argued that one can determine the structure of vacua using precise measurements of the scalar spectral index and tensor perturbations at large scales. It is shown that for a vacuum structure where the energy gap between the minima is constant, i.e. epsilon(i) = im(f)(4), one obtains the scalar spectral index, n(s), to be similar or equal to 0.9687, for the modes that exit the horizon 60 e-folds before the end of inflation. Alternatively, for a vacuum structure in which the energy gap increases linearly with the vacuum index, i.e. epsilon(i) = i(2)/2m(f)(4), n(s) turns out to be. 0.9614. Both these two models are motivated within the string theory landscape using flux-compactification and their predictions for scalar spectral index are compatible with WMAP results. For both these two models, the results for the scalar spectral index turn out to be independent of m(f). Nonetheless, assuming that inflation started at Planckian energies and that there had been successful thermalization at each step, one can constrain m(f) < 2.6069 x 10(-5)m(P) and m(f) < 6.5396 x 10(-7)m(P) in these two models, respectively. Violation of the single-field consistency relation between the tensor and scalar spectra is another prediction of chain inflation models. This corresponds to having a smaller tensor/scalar ratio at large scales in comparison with the slow-roll counterparts. Similar to slow-roll inflation, it is argued that one can reconstruct the vacuum structure using the CMB experiments.


A theoretical study on the effect of spontaneous polarization screening on the dielectric response of ferroelectric films with 180° domains going through the film thickness (through-domains) is presented. It has been shown by several researchers that the dielectric response of ferroelectrics is always deteriorated (e.g. due to electric field, mechanical stress, or lattice imperfections) in the thin electrode-adjacent passive regions. As a result, these regions behave as a low dielectric material reducing the total dielectric response of the ferroelectric capacitor. This "depolarizing" effect can be modeled by a low-dielectric layer between the ferroelectric and the electrode. The strong electric field in the dielectric layer can induce free charge injection from the electrode to the ferroelectric-dielectric layer interface. We study how these free charges affect the dielectric response of the ferroelectric capacitor with through-domains. We found that their presence strongly influences the domain wall contribution to permittivity of the ferroelectric. This effect is controlled to a great extent by the domain wall thickness.


ABSTRACT Petrographic and compositional attributes of limestone and dolostone in the Beck Spring Dolomite of eastern California indicate that late Proterozoic mineralogies, isotopic compositions, and diagenetic processes were similar to those inferred for younger Phanerozoic marine carbonate sequences. Allochems in limestones include strontium-rich ooids with well-preserved concentric banding and cortices of equant neomorphic calcite that commonly exhibit dissolution and compaction features; cements include microdolomite-rich columnar marine calcite and equant spar. Calcites are depleted relative to dolomites and become enriched with stratigraphic depth. Acicular and columnar marine cement and allochems in dolostones display fabrics identical to those in limestones but are isotopically distinct. Dolomite ooids, columnar and acicular cement, crystal silt, and early luminescent spar cement from four stratigraphic sections define overlapping positive oxygen-carbon covariant fields that trend toward depleted calcite compositions. Early luminescent dolomite spar cement is unconformably overlain by depleted ferroan dolospar. Fabric data suggest that marine cement and ooids were precipitated as magnesian calcite and aragonite. Isotopic data suggest that metastable components locally stabilized to calcite during subaerial exposure while laterally, dolomitization took place in mixed marine-meteoric waters. Early dolospar precipitation began during replacive dolomitization, and late ferroan dolospar precipitated during burial. Lack of evidence for hypersaline conditions suggests that late Proterozoic normal marine carbonate isotopic composition was -0.5 ± 2.018O and +5.3 ± 0.5913C.


We present necessary and sufficient conditions for blind equalization/deconvolution (without observing the input) of an unknown, possible non-minimum phase linear time invariant system (channel). Based on that, we propose a family of optimization criteria and prove that their solution correspond to the desired response. These criteria, and the associated gradient-search algorithms, involve the computation of high order cumulants. The proposed criteria are universal in the sense that they do not impose any restrictions on the probability distribution of the input symbols. We also addiess the problem of additive noise in the system and show that in several important cases, e.g. when the additive noise is Gaussian, the proposed criteria are unaffected.


Background: Consanguineous marriage is one of the most important etiology of morbidity and anomaly in neonates and children, for which annually thousands of neonates and children sacrifice. This study was performed in Shabihkhani hospital in Kashan to determine the prevalence of congenital anomalies among consanguineous marriages. Material and methods: All neonates born in Shabihkhani hospital in 2000-01 were included and initial data including sex, gestational age, type of delivery, prenatal care, drug history, special disease in mother, type of anomaly, history of still birth or anomaly in previous pregnancy were recorded. Type of anomaly in the first 24 hours was distinguished for further classification. Paraclinic tests and consultations were also used. Results: Of 3529 neonates, 768 (21/8) were born of a consanguineous marriage and the remaining 2761 (78.2) from non-consanguineous marriage. Totally, 109(3.08) deliveries were led to neonate�s anomaly, of these 7.03 were in the consanguineous marriage group (72.3 in first-cousin marriage and 27.7 in second-cousin marriage) and 2 in the other group. Conclusion: The prevalence of consanguineous marriage in our study was relatively high and the rate of neonate anomaly of consanguineous marriage was more than what expected. Obviously, in case of consanguineous marriage, the rate of anomaly clearly increased.


This paper challenges architects to consider a political economy that allows for social and ecological sustainability in the practice of architecture. At a time that bears witness to scores of radical proposals for re-shaping the field, we have the opportunity to reconsider the foundations of the field, and to pinpoint systemic injustices in which the building industries are complicit. In engaging a conversation about alternatives to a market-driven design field, this paper opens up a conversation about the ethics of sustainable design as it's been practiced under the prevailing growth-driven economic model, in comparison with how it might fortify the longevity of a community under an alternative framework. The paper will point to examples of existing practices that apply principles of degrowth in furthering sustainable build- ing and living practices in the context of their community. Using the framework of degrowth, this paper expands the notion of sustainable design to include the social dimension (ie, whether a project sustains a community or displaces it); provides an analysis of "green growth" and "green-washing," and equips architects with an understanding of ecology that considers the biosphere and the community where the proj- ect is sited as being inextricable from one another.


This study brings a view on the effects of restoration of a formerly channelized small submontane stream situated in the Blanský Les Protected Landscape Area (South Bohemia, Czech Republic) on macroinvertebrate assemblages as an indicator group. The restoration project was carried out during two stages (1998 and 2000). It consisted of excavating a new channel to restore the historic meandering pattern. The evaluation of this project is primarily based on the comparison of composition between pre-restoration (1995) and post-restoration (2000–2003) macroinvertebrate samples focusing on species richness, species composition, and representation of rare Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera species. The analyses showed a substantial increase in species richness that was especially prominent shortly after the restoration intervention. This increase was not only due to the creation of lentic habitats, but was even observed at every single sampling site of the stream. The DCA ordination of species composition of the preand post-restoration sites indicated a considerable increase in the between-site diversity. This was apparently caused mainly by the establishing of lentic habitats, whereas diversity of lotic sites showed only a slight increase, which was most prominent during the last year of the sampling period. The shift in the species composition was profound for lotic sites as well. Although the restoration intervention considerably increased species richness and markedly changed species composition, there was no detectable increase of rare or vulnerable Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera species.


Abstract Hair transplant is becoming the most common cosmetic procedure across the world with demand for higher density and coverage of baldness. This needs more number of donor hair follicles. Scalp donor has limitations to fulfill the required number of follicles for Norwood Grade VI and VII baldness. The body hair follicles can be used to cover up the deficit. The objective of this study was to observe the use of body hair follicles to increase the visual density and for better coverage for higher grades of baldness as an adjuvant to scalp hair follicles. Materials and Methods: A total of 16 patients were evaluated for the availability of body donor hair, and consent for body hair harvesting was obtained from them. The beard was the first preference and then chest and abdomen hair follicles were used in combination with scalp hair follicles to cover bald area of Norwood grade IV and above baldness. Body hairs were harvested using follicular unit extraction (FUE) technique. Postoperative pictures were taken, and patient satisfaction, doctor's observation, and global photographic evaluation was carried out. Observations: The patient's photographs were taken after 4, 8, and 12 months of hair transplant. The results were analyzed on the basis of global photography. The use of body hair with scalp has enhanced the visual density, leaving to better coverage in even higher grades of baldness.


We report the properties of 67 members of a family of dispersed repetitive palindromic extragenic bacterial DNA sequences. These sequences, called palindromic units, appear to be present at least several hundred times outside structural genes on the Escherichia coli chromosome. They are found either in clusters ‐ as in a previously described intercistronic element ‐ or in single occurrences. They are not only found within an operon but also between different operons, including between convergent ones. The palindromic units could yield a stem and loop structure at the level of DNA or RNA. The base of the stem is made of eight remarkably conserved base pairs while the rest varies somewhat in length and sequence. We analyse the data available on the palindromic units and we speculate on their possible roles with emphasis on transcription and mRNA stability or processing, as well as on their possible relation to transposition elements and the modular evolution of the genome.


Abstract Purpose: The aim of this pilot study was to compare the vertical reaction forces (N) generated in three different Action 3 manual one-arm drive wheelchairs: dual handrim, a lever drive and a Neater Uni-wheelchair (NUW). A CONFORmat® Pressure measurement mat, placed on top of the users' prescribed cushion, measured vertical force at the buttock/seat interface on both hemiplegic and non-hemiplegic sides in each wheelchair. Methods: Fifteen hemiplegic users were randomly assigned each wheelchair to drive around an indoor obstacle course. During propulsion of a multiple sensor, continuous measurement of force was recorded. Time taken to complete the circuit was recorded. Mean force and confidence intervals for each buttock were calculated per user per wheelchair. Results: The dual handrim produced the highest vertical force during propulsion under the right buttock ( = 484.43; SD = 55.4; p < 0.001) and the lever drive produced the least force ( = 368.05; SD = 53.55; p < 0.01). The NUW completed the course quickest (p < 0.01). Conclusions: The dual-handrim wheelchair requires the greatest vertical force during propulsion. Since increases in this seat vertical reaction force may be related to the propulsive force. Further investigation is indicated as this may be a significant factor for clinicians when prescribing one-arm drive wheelchairs. Implications for Rehabilitation Review of clinical reasoning in prescribing wheelchairs. Addition of the Neater Uni-wheelchair to wheelchair services prescribing lists.


The paper is a survey of the literature analysing the development of income distribution in the less developed countries. First, a number of cross-section studies are reviewed. Then the results from a number of 'studies concerning the development of inequality in Latin American, Asia, and African countries are presented. It was found that income distribution had deteriorated in a number of countries. Finally, the factors which have been shown to determine the development of income distribution are summarized. These concern Institutions, structural change, functional distribution, asset distribution, financial markets, human capital, labour market, social stratification, market imperfections, trade policy, domestic policy, spatial factors, trade unions, and demographic factors.


There is evidence that heating of malignant tissue in the treatment of cancer may be beneficial and so the performance of different applicator designs needs to be established. A theoretical model of the dielectric loaded waveguide applicator is compared with models of two other applicators which depend on energy radiated from conductors carrying high frequency current. The latter are exemplified by the compact resonant patch applicator and the lightweight inductive current sheet applicator. It is shown that heating profiles and field penetration of each applicator are similar for equal radiating areas, and these results have been substantiated experimentally. Impedance match as a function of frequency and load is also compared for the three types of applicator.


Let G be a group and A a G -algebra. The subrepresentation semiring of A is the set of subrepresentations of A endowed with operations induced by the algebra operations. The introduction of these semirings was motivated by a problem in material science. Typically, physical properties of composite materials are strongly dependent on microstructure. However, in exceptional situations, exact relations exist which are microstructure-independent. Grabovsky has constructed an abstract theory of exact relations, reducing the search for exact relations to a purely algebraic problem involving the product of SU(2)-subrepresentations in certain endomorphism algebras. We have shown that the structure of the associated semirings can be described explicitly in terms of Racah coefficients. In this paper, we prove an analogous relationship between Racah coefficients for the quantum algebra Ŭq(sl2) and semirings for endomorphism algebras of representations of Ŭq(sl2). We generalize the construction of subrepresentation semirings to the Hopf algebra setting. For Ŭq(sl2), we compute these semirings for the endomorphism algebra of an arbitrary complex finite-dimensional representation. When the representation is irreducible, we show that the subrepresentation semiring can be described explicitly in terms of the vanishing of q -Racah coefficients. We further show that q -Racah coefficients can be defined entirely in terms of the multiplication of subrepresentations.


There is growing concern about the polarizing impact of citizens primarily choosing sources of political information consistent with their existing partisan perspective. Although research has begun providing answers about the consequences, questions remain about what factors drive such selective use of political media. This study conceptualizes partisanship as a social identity and the decision to selectively use like-minded political media as a method for maintenance of that identity. Using the logic of the reinforcing spirals model (Slater, 2007, 2015), we investigated partisan media selectivity as a response to identity threat. We argue the partisan composition of one's geographic locale and the presence of partisan difference in one's interpersonal network are common causes of identity threat, which we predict will be associated with compensatory use of partisan media. Results from national survey data generally provide support for the assertion that greater partisan media selectivity is associated with the presence of various forms of identity threat, especially for strong partisans.


Objective: To revise and explore the application of the student teacher professional identity scale in pre-service kindergarten teachers (STPIS-PK). Methods: 450 preservice kindergarten teachers were surveyed by the student teacher professional identity scale. Results: 1) The EFA supported that teacher professional identity consisted of four subscales: professional values, professional willingness, professional efficiency and professional volition. Also the CFA confirmed the hypothesized four-factor model (x2 = 133.277, x2/df = 2.777, CFI = 0.939, TLI = 0.901, RMSEA = 0.047). The Criteria-related validity was remarkable; 2) The internal consistency of teacher professional identity scale was 0.801 and the four subscales were from 0.628 to 0.789. For two weeks, the test-retest reliability was from 0.616 to 0.786. Conclusion: In sum, this study generated evidence that the STPIS-PK developed in the study is a psychometrically sound and valid instruments to measure pre-service kindergarten teachers' professional identity.


We present the analysis of Infrared Space Observatory long-wavelength spectrometer (LWS) observations of the two nearby late-type galaxies NGC 1313 and NGC 6946. Both galaxies have been fully mapped in the [C II] far-infrared fine-structure line at 158 μm, and some regions have been observed also in the [O I] 63 μm and [N II] 122 μm lines. We use these observations to derive the physical properties of the atomic interstellar medium, to establish how they relate to other interstellar medium components (gas and dust), and to establish how they vary with different galaxy components such as nucleus, spiral arms, and disk. The [C II] line is the main cooling line of the atomic medium. In NGC 6946 and NGC 1313, its emission represents 0.8% of the infrared emission. Moreover, the [C II] emission can be spatially associated with three components: the nucleus, the star-forming regions in spiral arms, and the diffuse galaxy disk. This last component contributes ≲40% in NGC 6946 and ∼30% in NGC 1313 to the total emission. We apply the photodissociation region (PDR) model by Kaufman et al. to derive PDR physical parameters responsible for the neutral atomic gas emission (G0, n, and Ts). The results do not significantly differ from what Malhotra et al. recently found by modeling the integrated emission of a sample of 60 normal galaxies. This suggests that the emission in each region under the LWS beam in NGC 6946 and NGC 1313 (corresponding to a linear size of ∼1.5 kpc) is likely to arise from a mixture of components similar to the mixture producing the integrated emission of normal galaxies. However, some regions in NGC 6946 have a G0/n ratio ∼2–3 times smaller than the mean value found for the normal galaxy sample (1.3), suggesting that the beam-averaged contribution of a less active component in these regions is higher than its contribution in the integrated emission of normal galaxies or, conversely, that the bulk of the integrated emission of the normal galaxies is dominated by a few active regions probably located in their nuclei. CO(1–0) and [C II] in NGC 6946 are well correlated, and the mean [C II]/CO ratio agrees with the mean integrated ratios of the normal galaxies sample. This value (∼500) is a factor of ∼2 less than the mean ratio found for a sample of normal galaxies observed with the Kupier Airborne Observatory (KAO) by Stacey et al. This difference is probably due to the fact that the KAO beam (55″) is smaller than the LWS beam (75″), such that the Stacey et al. KAO observations are likely to be more biased toward the nucleus of the galaxies and therefore toward more active regions. In NGC 1313 only four LWS regions have been observed in CO(1–0), and three of them were detected. The [C II]/CO(1–0) seems to systematically increase from the northeast to the south, along the S-shaped spiral arm, indicating that the interstellar medium conditions in NGC 1313 are much more inhomogeneous than the conditions in NGC 6946. H I and [C II] in NGC 6946 are completely uncorrelated, probably because they arise from different gas components: [C II] arises principally in dense and warm PDR and H I from diffuse (n ≲ 3 × 103 cm-3) gas. On the other hand, in NGC 1313 we successfully detect two distinct gas components: a cirrus-like component, for which H I and [C II] are weakly correlated as observed in our Galaxy, and a component associated with dense PDRs completely uncorrelated from H I as observed in NGC 6946. Finally, we find that the H I residing in dense gas surrounding the star-forming regions and presumably recently photodissociated constitutes a few percent of the total H I. In turn, this dense gas component produces most of the [C II] emission emitted by the atomic neutral medium, even if its contribution is lower in NGC 1313 than in NGC 6946. On the other hand, the [C II] emission arising from ionized gas is higher in NGC 1313 than in NGC 6946.


Expansion of rubber tree plantations and agricultural mechanization caused a decline of swamp buffalo numbers in the Naban River National Nature Reserve (NRNNR), Yunnan Province, China. We analysed current use of buffaloes for field work and the recent development of the regional buffalo population, based on interviews with 184 farmers in 2007/2008 and discussions with 62 buffalo keepers in 2009. Three types of NRNNR farms were distinguished, differing mainly in altitude, area under rubber, and involvement in livestock husbandry. While pig based farms (PB; n=37) have abandoned buffalo keeping, 11% of the rubber based farms (RB; n=71) and 100% of the livestock-corn based farms (LB; n=76) kept buffaloes in 2008. Herd size was 2.5 ±1.80 (n=84) buffaloes in early 2008 and 2.2 ±1.69 (n=62) in 2009. Field work on own land was the main reason for keeping buffaloes (87.3%), but lending work buffaloes to neighbours (79.0%) was also important. Other purposes were transport of goods (16.1%), buffalo trade (11.3%) and meat consumption (6.4%). Buffalo care required 6.2 ±3.00 working hours daily, while annual working time of a buffalo was 294 ±216.6 hours. The area ploughed with buffaloes remained constant during the past 10 years despite an expansion of land cropped per farm. Although further replacement of buffaloes by tractors occurs rapidly, buffaloes still provide cheap work force and buffer risks on poor NRNNR farms. Appropriate advice is needed for improved breeding management to increase the efficiency of buffalo husbandry and provide better opportunities for buffalo meat sale in the region.


How can the EU's community of welfare states adapt their public policies to economic globalization? What happens when the economic and social aims of the EU come into conflict? This book examines the developing legal regimes and regulation of public services in the UK and other European countries. Public services are examined though a case-study of the complex area of public employment services. These are job-placement and vocational training services which aim to maximize employment and minimize unemployment within EU member States' Active Labour Market policies. Employment services are at the centre of a complex web of rules in both hard and soft forms of law deriving from the EU, national public law and from private, and at times contractual, agreements. They also lie at the crossroads of a series of trends in regulation, and priorities have been inspired by an array of conflicting policy rationales. These policy rationales include the establishment of an open and competitive European internal market, the establishment of an efficient welfare state, the scaling down of state administrative machinery, the fulfilment of core public service responsibilities, and the creation of public-private partnerships. Public employment services provide a highly informative and novel case study of the interaction and conflict between the economic and social aims of the EU and between regulation at national and supranational levels, and the changing forms which this regulation has taken.


I carried out ethnographic fieldwork among 153 married adolescent girls, aged 15-19, in a Dhaka slum from December 2001 to January 2003, including 50 in-depth interviews and eight case studies. I also held discussions with family and community members. In this article, I focus on popular understandings of vaginal discharge being caused by durbolota (weakness) and chinta rog (worry illness), as mentioned by young women. Eighty-eight young women reported that they had experienced white discharge, blaming it on a number of factors such as stress and financial hardships, tensions in the household, marital instability, hunger anxiety, and reproductive burdens. For married adolescent women in the urban slum, white discharge has many levels of meaning linked to the broader social, political, and material inequalities in their everyday lives.


Background: One of the most common complications during pregnancy is urinary tract infection (UTI) which can be either symptomatic or asymptomatic. Symptomatic bacteriuria occurs in 2%–7% of pregnant women in the first trimester and asymptomatic bacteriuria occurs in 5–10%; 20–30% of which progress to pyelonephritis if left untreated. There was a 50% increase in the risk of low birth weight and a significant increase in pre-term delivery, pre-eclampsia in pregnant women with bacteriuria. Safest antibiotics used in pregnancy are nitrofurantoin, cephalosporin, penicillin, and fosfomycin trometamol. With the emergence of drug resistance among the Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, the choice of drugs for the treatment of UTI is very limited. Objective: The purpose of our study was to find out the antibiotic resistance pattern in UTI during pregnancy with the common causative organism, their antimicrobial sensitivity and resistance pattern. This study will help in choosing the most effective antibiotic for the treatment of UTI in pregnancy. Materials and Methods: Urine samples were subjected to microscopy and those found positive of UTI were inoculated in nutrient agar to confirm the presence of microorganisms. This was followed by streaking in HI chrome and McConkey agar. Identification was done using Gram staining and biochemical tests. Antibiotic resistance was evaluated using Kirby–Bauer disk diffusion method. Results: The most common causative organism was found to be Escherichia coli. Nitrofurantoin showed the highest sensitivity toward all the organisms.


Background After the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee of a tertiary hospital had evaluated ranibizumab and bevacizumab for the treatment of macular oedema secondary to retinal vein occlusion (RVO) based on the available evidence, the two drugs were considered equivalent therapeutic alternatives and 'off label' bevacizumab use was approved (1.25 mg intravitreal prefilled syringe prepared by the Pharmacy department, administered every 6 weeks for four doses and subsequently as required). Purpose To quantify the financial impact of the use of bevacizumab as anti-VEGF of choice in the treatment of macular oedema secondary to RVO. Materials and methods Data were collected from patients diagnosed with macular oedema secondary to RVO from November 2012 to April 2013, and from the treatment given. In order to calculate the savings generated by using bevacizumab, rather than ranibizumab, during this period, the direct cost difference between the two alternatives was used. Results 18 patients with macular oedema secondary to RVO were treated, with a total of 46 doses. In all the cases, we used intravitreal bevacizumab as the antiangiogenic drug. The saving generated by using a dose of intravitreal bevacizumab rather than intravitreal ranibizumab was 1,291 €. The impact of cost savings for the hospital during the six months studied was 11,626 €. According to the established protocol, the incremental cost of one year's treatment is 7,767–15,534 € (depending on the number of injections). Therefore, the annual impact on the hospital budget (assuming 36 patients/year) would be around 280,000–560,000 €. Conclusions Selecting bevacizumab as the antiangiogenic drug in patients with macular oedema secondary to RVO generates significant cost savings for the healthcare system. No conflict of interest.


BACKGROUND
Bacterial infections occur in 43-59% of cirrhotic patients admitted to the intensive care unit with impact in morbidity and mortality. An increase in the frequency of multidrug-resistant (MDRO) and extensively drug-resistant (XDRO) organisms has been described in bacterial infections in cirrhotic patients with an adverse impact on survival.

OBJECTIVE
To characterize community-acquired (CA), healthcare-associated (HCA), and hospital-acquired (HA) infections in cirrhotic patients and their impact in the occurrence of adverse outcomes.

METHODS
This study included all cirrhotic patients admitted in an intensive care unit specialized in liver and gastrointestinal diseases in Brazil between January 2012 and June 2018. Frequency and topography of infections were retrospectively evaluated, as well as the frequency of MDRO and XDRO organisms, and their impact in occurrence of acute kidney injury, hepatorenal syndrome, acute-on-chronic liver failure, sepsis and mortality.

RESULTS
A total of 374 infections were observed and classified as CA (22%), HCA (34%) and hospital-acquired (44%). Eighty-nine (54%) episodes of hospital-acquired infections were second infections. Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (32%) and urinary tract infection (23%) were the most common infections. Culture-proven infections were positive in 61% of the cases, mainly gram-negative bacteria (73%). Acute kidney injury, hepatorenal syndrome and sepsis were observed, respectively, in 48%, 15% and 53% of the cases. MDRO and XDRO were seen, respectively, in 35% and 16%, mainly in HCA (48% vs 26% in CA infections, P=0.02) and hospital-acquired (58% vs 26% in CA infections, P=0.0009). Adverse outcomes were more frequently observed in subjects with hospital-acquired infections when compared to HCA and CA infections. Hospital-acquired, HCA and second infections were independently associated with in-hospital mortality.

CONCLUSION
Hospital-acquired, HCA and second infections are increasingly associated with either MDRO and/or XDRO and are independent predictors of in-hospital mortality. Their recognition and proper selection of appropriate empiric antibiotic regimens are important measures to reduce in-hospital mortality.


The present thesis is an investigation into the relations between Great Britain and the Habsburg Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) in these years and how, in the words of Lord Rosebery in 1887 'the natural ally of Great Britain' became the enemy power of 1914 that had to be destroyed. Indeed, great emphasis is placed upon the key role that Britain played in the Monarchy's destruction. (one is reminded, en passant, of the poet William Cowper's admonition of 'love to hatred turned.')

The first chapter will examine the general views held of the Monarchy by British travellers and commentators in the 19th and early 20th centuries, while Chapter II will focus on the views of the two greatest commentators on the Monarchy in the English-speaking world- theSlavonic scholar, Robert Seton-Watson and The Times Vienna correspondent, Henry Wickham Steed. Chapter III will deal with a general survey of Anglo-Austrian relations from the 1880's to the crisis years of 1908-9, involving the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which the subsequent chapter (IV) will examine in detail. Chapter V will look at the following years leading up to the First Worls War with particular reference to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. Chapter VI (parts 1 and 2) will examine the July crisis and the actual outbreak of war and the attitude of people, press and parliament vis-a-vis the Monarchy when the two countries came to blows the following month in August, while the final Chapter VII will stress the important part that Britain subsequently played in Austria-Hungary's overthrow. In particular great significance will be attached to Sir Edward Grey's failure in the years preceding the First World War to act as an 'honest broker' between the two great rival alliance systems of France and Russia and Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy, and the willingness to accommodate Russia at Austria's expense. This led, it will be argued, to Germany effectively waging, initially, 'a preventve war' before her only real ally either disintegrated internally or was overthrown from without, hopelessly encircled as she was. (The very scenario that Grey claimed he feared the most actually happened largely through his failure to help Austria- the weakest link in the European alliance chain. The fact that the Foregn Office Memorandum of 1916 could argue 'that the Austro-Hungarian Empire must come to an end if the causes of war in the future are to be effectively removed' was, it is argued, merely putting a gloss on an anti-Austrian British Realpolitik formulated in the years before the war broke out, even if not openly acknowledged as such.


Antiplatelet therapy is a key component in the treatment of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The management of ACS has evolved considerably over recent years with the development of new and more potent antiplatelet agents. Clinical trials on ACS have demonstrated that potent antiplatelet agents can more effectively reduce cardiovascular events. However, there is a tipping point between safety and efficacy, beyond which the risk of bleeding and other adverse effects can outweigh the benefits of antiplatelet therapy. Striking a balance between safety and efficacy remains a major challenge. A consensus meeting of an expert panel composed of Taiwanese experts was held to provide recommendations for the management of adverse effects in patients with ACS receiving antiplatelet therapy. The common adverse effects of antiplatelet therapy include upper gastrointestinal bleeding, ecchymosis, hematuria, epistaxis and ticagrelor-related dyspnea. In this study, a literature review of these adverse events was performed and recommendations for the management were made.


Although an undifferentiated notion of "global art" in the 1990s and 2000s became the dominant reference point for the evaluation of artists' careers (Stallabrass 2004, Thornton 2008), it is striking how much a national reference still matters to the generation who emerged as the first wave of properly globalised Japanese contemporary art in the late 80s/early 90s. Even the most globally successful of all, Takashi Murakami, in the end apparently only really cares about securing his page in the Japanese art history textbooks. It is also striking how as yet undecided this struggle is from the point of view of Japanese art history and art criticism. With mention of six key mid-career male artists now at the height of their powers and each with a claim to this prize -- Murakami (b.1962), Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959), Masato Nakamura (b.1963), Yukinori Yanagi (b.1959), Makoto Aida (b.1965) and Tsuyoshi Ozawa (b.1965) -- I will compare and contrast the different role that internationalisation has played in their careers. Each of them has "gone home" in one way another, and each is creating his own "school". Will there continue to be the need, as Murakami has repeatedly argued in his writings, for the classic strategy of international mobility plus gaisen koen ("triumphant return performance"), to etch their name in history? Or will this prove in fact to be Murakami's biggest liability? Will market evaluation, curatorial discourse, critical prestige, academic influence, museum popularity, or social/community impact decide the contest? And how much of this art historical struggle is still contained within the internal national art system, and how much of it is truly global (or regional) in its dynamics?


AIM
To evaluate pH and antibacterial activity of pastes with calcium hydroxide [Ca(OH)2] and zinc oxide (ZnO) microparticles (micro) or nanoparticles (nano) and association with 0.4% chlorhexidine against Enterococcus faecalis.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The following pastes were analyzed: Ca(OH)2/ZnO micro, (2) Ca(OH)2/ZnO nano, (3) Ca(OH)2/ ZnO micro + 0.4% chlorhexidine, (4) Ca(OH)2/ZnO nano + 0.4% chlorhexidine. Antibacterial activity against E. faecalis was evaluated by agar diffusion test. The direct contact test on planktonic cells of E. faecalis was performed for 30 and 60 seconds. Root canals from bovine teeth were filled with the pastes and pH was evaluated after 1, 7, 14, 21, 30 and 60 days. The data obtained were submitted to the statistical tests analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey or Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn test, with a 5% significance level.

RESULTS
Calcium hydroxide and zinc oxide nano, and the pastes with 0.4% chlorhexidine were more effective in agar diffusion test. In the direct contact test, the pastes with chlorhexidine showed the highest effect after 30 seconds. All pastes eliminated E. faecalis after 60 seconds. All pastes promoted an increase in pH. The highest increase in pH was observed with nanoparticle medications after 1 and 7 days (p < 0.05). After this period, the pastes presented similar pH increase.

CONCLUSION
It was concluded that calcium hydroxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles promoted greater initial alkalinization. The antimicrobial activity of the pastes against E. faecalis is favored by the association with chlorhexidine.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Although nanoparticles of calcium hydroxide and zinc oxide promoted antibacterial effect, the activity against E. faecalis is favored by association with chlorhexidine.


Gravity mapping of Borneo is still incomplete. The largest single onshore data set was obtained in western and central Kalimantan by the Indonesian Geological Research and Development Centre in conjunction with the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources. Much additional work has been done in eastern Kalimantan by various oil companies but the results are either unpublished or available only in the form of very small scale maps. A rather similar situation exists in Sarawak, but Sabah has now been covered at a regional reconnaissance level. Shipborne surveys provide considerable detail in some offshore areas but are lacking or confidential in many others. Free-air gravity maps derived from measurements by radar satellites of sea surface elevations represent a major new resource. Although such maps have existed for more than a decade, it is only in the last 12 months, during which geodetic missions by the European ERS-l satellite were completed and the results of earlier geodetic missions by the American Geosat were released, that cross-track separations have become commensurate with along-track resolutions. Satellite-derived maps now provide resolution of anomalies with wavelengths of as little as 10 km, and good agreement with data from shipborne surveys. By placing Borneo in its regional context, they provide important new constraints on the evolution of the island. The Java Sea forms part of the continental Sunda Shelf. Subdued patterns of bathymetry and gravity anomaly link Java to Borneo along slightly arcuate NE-SW trends which may mark belts of strain and accretion along the Sundaland margin. Levels of free-air and Bouguer anomaly are generally positive, averaging about +35 mGal in very shallow water. Sedimentary basins do not give rise to obvious gravitational lows but basement ridges are marked by narrow elongated highs. The South China Sea is recognised as a major area of crustal extension which can be divided into three distinct provinces. In the south and close to the shorelines of Southeast Asia, the underlying crust has been moderately and variably extended with the development of deep rift basins. In the north and west, extension has continued to the point at which actual oceanic crust has been generated, isolating fragments of the former margin of southern China at the eastern margin of the sea. Between these two provinces lies a region, bounded by a distinctive arcuate belt of strong free-air anomaly, in which continental crust has been very drastically stretched and attenuated. Patterns of gravity anomaly suggest that isostatic equilibrium has been maintained, so that very thick accumulations of sediment produce only very subdued free-air lows. The gravitational patterns around Palawan and the Sulu and Celebes Seas are complex, reflecting the rapid changes in water depth and crustal composition and a history of volcanism, extension, collision and accretion. A particularly interesting feature is the gravity high which is more or less co-extensive with Darvel Bay, in eastern Sabah. The bay is noted as the site of an ophiolitic mass which is principally exposed on small islands within it. The precise correlation between the gravity high and the morphological depression points to subsidence directly due to loading by the dense oceanic rocks. Free-air gravity anomalies in the central Makassar Strait are generally close to zero but increase towards both coasts. The increase is particularly notable towards the west, where absolute values rise to almost +100 mGal in the Mahakan Delta region, despite the presence of very thick sediments in the Tertiary Kutai Basin. These high values indicate that the sediments were deposited on crust which is thinning appreciably towards the east, and point to an extensional origin for both the basin and the Makassar Strait. Isostatic effects thus dominate the gravity field in the Borneo region, with the crust showing ability to support loads for short periods only and even then only in relatively small areas such as Darvel Bay. Attempts to estimate total sediment thicknesses from gravity measurements are thus doomed to failure. The uses of gravity data in this area lie principally in defining small features within basins and in indicating variations in crustal thickness and tectonic setting which have implications for basin development and thermal history.


Lasing in the bad cavity regime has promising applications in precision metrology due to the reduced sensitivity to cavity noise originating from cavity length fluctuations. Here we investigate the spectral properties and phase behavior of pulsed lasing on the 1 S 0 - 3 P 1 line of 88 Sr in a mK thermal ensemble, as first described by S. A. Schäffer et al. [Phys. Rev. A 101 , 013819 (2020)]. The system operates in a regime where the Doppler-broadened atomic transition linewidth is several times larger than the cavity linewidth. We find that for some detunings of the cavity resonance, the influence of the cavity noise on the peak lasing frequency can be eliminated to first order despite the system not being deep in the bad cavity regime. Experimental results are compared to a model based on a Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian, which enables us to investigate the interplay between different thermal velocity classes as the underlying mechanism for the reduction in cavity noise. These velocity-dependent dynamics can occur in pulsed lasing and during the turn-on behavior of lasers in the superradiant crossover regime.


The widespread use of virtualization technologies in telecommunication system resulted in series of benefits, as flexibility, agility and increased resource usage efficiency. Nevertheless, the use of Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) in virtualized modules (e.g., containers, virtual machines) also means that some legacy mechanisms that are crucial for a telco grade operation are no longer efficient. Specifically, the monitoring of the resource sets (e.g., CPU power, memory capacity) allocated to VNFs cannot rely anymore on the methods developed for earlier deployment scenarios. Even the recent monitoring solutions designed for cloud environments is rendered useless if the VNF vendor and the telco solution supplier has to deploy its product into a virtualized environment, since it does not have access to the host level monitoring tools. In this paper we propose a sidecar-based solution to evaluate the resources available for a virtualized process. We evaluated the accuracy of our proposal in a proof of concept deployment, using KVM, Docker and Kubernetes virtualization technologies, respectively. We show that our proposal can provide real monitoring data and discuss its applicability.


Background : fall-related hip fractures are one of the most common causes of disability and mortality in older age. The study aimed to quantify the relationship between lifestyle behaviours and the risk of fall-related hip fracture in community-dwelling older people. The purpose was to contribute evidence for the promotion of healthy ageing as a population-based intervention for falls injury prevention. Methods : a case–control study was conducted with 387 participants, with a case–control ratio of 1:2. Incident cases of fall-related hip fracture in people aged 65 and over were recruited from six hospital sites in Brisbane, Australia, in 2003–04. Community-based controls, matched by age, sex and postcode, were recruited via electoral roll sampling. A questionnaire designed to assess lifestyle risk factors, identified as determinants of healthy ageing, was administered at face-to-face interviews. Results : behavioural factors which had a significant independent protective effect on the risk of hip fracture included never smoking [adjusted odds ratio (AOR): 0.33 (0.12–0.88)], moderate alcohol consumption in mid- and older age [AOR: 0.49 (0.25–0.95)], not losing weight between mid- and older age [AOR: 0.36 (0.20–0.65)], playing sport in older age [AOR: 0.49 (0.29–0.83)] and practising a greater number of preventive medical care [AOR: 0.54 (0.32–0.94)] and self-health behaviours [AOR: 0.56 (0.33–0.94)]. Conclusion : with universal exposures, clear associations and modifiable behavioural factors, this study has contributed evidence to reduce the major public health burden of fall-related hip fractures using readily implemented population-based healthy ageing strategies. Abstract Background : the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) is the most widely used Parkinson's specific measure of health status. It is increasingly used in


As the number of favelas and poor residents of Rio de Janeiro grew quickly by the mid-20th century, they became the object of policymaking, social science research, real estate speculation, and grassroots mobilization. After a decade in which local authorities recognized the de facto presence of favelas but without legally ascertaining the right of permanence, the 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the era of mass eradication. Seemingly contradictory—but complementary—policies also included the development of massive low-income housing complexes and innovative community development and favela urbanization experiences empowered by community organizations with the assistance of experts committed to improving the lives of poor Cariocas (residents of Rio). Favelas in Rio were at the crossroads of a particular interplay of forces: the urgent need to modernize Rio's obsolete and inadequate urban infrastructure; the new administrative status of the city after the inauguration of Brasilia; and the redefinition of the balance of power between local, municipal, and federal forces in a time of radical politics and authoritarian and technocratic military regimes, Cold War diplomacy, and the transnational flows of expertise and capital.


As for stabilizing piles used to reinforce landslides, landslide thrust acts on their upslope sides but slope resistance acts on their downslope sides at the same time. In fact, the results that the former subtracts the latter are effective loads on piles, which can be called residual thrust on piles. The interaction between pile and rock or soil mass is simulated by elastoplastic finite element method in the paper. And the effect of slide mass and pile stiffness on residual thrust on stabilizing piles is analyzed. The results show that residual thrust on a stabilizing pile become more and more with elastic modulus of slide mass or the pile being increased. Meanwhile, action point of the resultant of residual thrust on the pile is lower and lower with elastic modulus of slide mass being increased but it is higher and higher to some extent with elastic modulus of the pile being increased. These results can be of theoretical reference for comparison and selection of various design plans of stabilizing piles.


The government of Suriname has prioritized development of sustainable agricultural production in Suriname, especially in the rural areas, and has integrated the millennium development goals in their strategies and policy vision (Van Eeckhout, 2008). Policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs (including farmers) are convinced that the agricultural sector in Commewijne has potential to assist Suriname in realization of the millennium goals in 2015 so that poverty will be reduced in communities in Commewijne, and sustainable agricultural activities must play an important role in the development of this district. To get an overall view of the farmers' perspective on the socio-economic problems, the quality of the Agricultural Extension service, and the bottlenecks with regard to all aspects of agricultural production, a base line agricultural survey was developed, modified and validated by a panel of experts. With this instrument one hundred farmers were interviewed in Commewijne and the data was analyzed using SPSS statistics. Findings revealed the following problems: (1) drinking water is a problem for many farmers in this district; (2) the standard of living is low; (3) shortage of water in the dry season; (4) excessive water on the agricultural soils in rainy periods; and (5) high price fluctuations for agricultural products. Findings also reveal that farmers are experiencing problems with: (1) pest and disease management; (2) farm bookkeeping; and (3) insufficient technical information about plant cultivation, and crop protection. Furthermore, farmers felt that the information from field extension staff was insufficient with regard to pesticide education, fertilization, good agricultural practices, integrated pest management (ΓΡΜ) and with irrigation and drainage aspects. Recommendations include training for farmers in: GAP, FFS, weed knowledge and weed control, farm bookkeeping and farm administration, pesticide education and pesticide control, fertilizer education and fertilizer deficiencies of crops, and use of sustainable cultivation systems (mulching, compost, ΓΡΜ, etc.). Furthermore, recommendations also include training of the field extension staff on technical aspects of agricultural production.


Objectives: To summarize the changes of outcomes and complications of terrible triad injury (TTI) in patients who were treated by current surgical strategies. Our hypothesis was that with the application of current surgical protocols, clinical results were improved and complications reducing. However, risks still persisted and new challenges came to affect the prognosis.

Methods: We performed a systemic review of PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Web of Science and Cochrane Library to identify all relevant studies. Studies of TTI patients treated based on current surgical protocols after 2004 were included. Outcomes evaluated were functional scores, the range of motion and complications.

Results: Eleven studies with 166 patients were included. With a mean follow-up of 14.8 to 41 months, average flexion arc was ranged from 99° to 127° with average forearm rotation of 80° to 156°. Mean Mayo Elbow Performance Score was 78 to 96. Mean Broberg- Morrey Score was 76 to 90. The most frequent complications were heterotopic ossification (0 to 31%) and posttraumatic osteoarthritis (0 to 38%), followed by nerve symptoms, dislocation or subluxation and stiffness.

Conclusions: Functional outcome after surgery for TTI indicates that current surgical protocols made TTI less terrible as it used to be. However, challenges still persisted and remained it a troublesome injury to treat. Clinicians should pay more attention to surgery unrelated factors and prosthesis-related complications to improve the outcomes.


Adapting traditional teaching techniques and adding the benefits of new technologies has been the aim of our ODL Department from the beginning. Our experience with distance learning students from different learning backgrounds and environments helped us in developing innovative teaching techniques used both in eLearning and blended learning classes. Since 1999, the Open Distance Learning Department of the University of Bucharest educated over 6.000 students. Distance learning system offered the opportunity for all people to study - bachelor degree, masteral and post graduated programs were created to meet the people's demand for education.

The aim of this paper is to emphases on the progress made by our department in creating procedures, management techniques and teaching best practices.

In the social web age and web 2.0 technology the professor becomes a tutor - coaching students, coordinating their learning paths, moderating online discussions and creating interactive course materials. Traditional teaching techniques based on face - to - face interaction are a useful source of information than constitutes the base of future innovation. Whatever the subject matter, the tutors identified common issues and situations specific to distance learning education systems and they were able to overcome all shortcomings with the help of course managers, pedagogues, webmasters and network administrators.

Pursuing the general trends of social interaction our students from the virtual class are now part of the learning network. Connected at all times with their pears and professors they used the benefits of technology in order to increase the added value of learning. The key words are collaboration, cooperation, interaction and interactivity.


The kinetics of norepinephrine (NE) metabolism in the heart was studied in genetically hypertensive and normotensive control Wistar rats. Concentrations of endogenous NE were similar in the two groups. However, rates of synthesis of NE were reduced in these hypertensive rats, whether calculated from the rate of decline (fractional turnover rate) of cardiac tritiated NE (3H-NE) after intravenous injection, or estimated from levels of 14C-NE in the heart after injection of the precursor14C-L-tyrosine. In experiments with 3H-NE the synthesis rate of NE was 30.2 ng/hour/g heart in control and 18.2 ng/hour/g heart in hypertensive rats. The levels of 14C-NE found in the heart of normotensive rats given 14C-tyrosine were up to 1.4 times those found in hypertensive rats. These findings indicate a reduced rate of release of NE in this form of hypertension and, rather than implicating NE as a primary factor, suggest a secondary, compensatory mechanism.


Treatment with oxalic acid against Varroa destructor in broodless colonies is very effective. The administration of this organic acid by trickling a solution onto the colony is up to now the easiest method of application. The formulation of this solution has however to be optimized to reach maximum efficacy without side effects on the bees. Results for central European conditions are presented in this article together with a small review of the subject.