Background There has been no recent progress in the intra-articular treatment of joint inflammation. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovium hyperplasia is sustained by the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-17/TNF-α), synergistically contributing to chronicity. Since inflammation up-regulates trans-membrane Zinc (Zn) importers, the effects of its binding-competitor Cadmium (Cd) were tested on synoviocytes, synovium explants and in a rat arthritis model in order to reduce hyperplasia and inflammation. Materials and methods After exposure to IL-17/TNF-α and Cd, Cd-kinetics and Cd-cell content were measured by ICP-MS, while Zn/Cd-transporter gene expression (Zrt-Irt-like protein-8, ZIP-8, importer and metallothioneins-1, MT-1, metal homeostasis regulators) by q-RT-PCR. Synoviocyte viability and apoptosis were measured by neutral red and annexin-V staining. IL-6 levels in synoviocyte and biopsy supernatants were measured by ELISA. Adjuvant induced arthritis rat model was used for in vivo Cd-injection into hind ankle joints. Clinical scores were evaluated. Immune cell recruitment was quantified after H and E staining. Micro-tomography and safarin-O staining were used to measure bone/cartilage loss. The potential Cd-spread was measured in different body reservoirs. Results After synoviocyte exposure to IL-17/TNF-α combination, ZIP-8 and MT-1s gene expressions increased up to 5.3±3.1 fold and 5.0±0.9 fold respectively, compared to the untreated condition (p<0.05). Combined Cd-cytokine exposure further enhanced MT-1s expression up to 93.3±32.1 fold. Through the transporter enhanced expression, Cd content in inflammatory synoviocytes increased two-fold. RA synoviocytes were sensitised toward apoptosis by exposure to the Cd/cytokine combination with an 80% reduction of cell viability in comparison to control (p<0.01), after 5 days of culture. Moreover, Cd-cytokines association reduced IL-6 production in vitro (up to 83%, after 5 days, p<0.05) and ex-vivo (up to 94%, after 8 days, p<0.01). Intra-articular Cd injection improved arthritis, reducing clinical scores (arthritic score reduced from 4 to 2, p<0.01), inflammatory cell recruitment (up to 50%, p<0.01) and bone/cartilage destruction. The use of 1 ppm of Cd provided the best risk/benefit ratio, without toxic effects on other cell types and organs. Conclusion The anti-proliferative and anti-inflammatory properties of low-dose Cd may represent a new therapeutic approach for the local treatment of synovitis and hyperplasia in arthritis and other joint diseases.


SUMMARY At Hyderabad, India, stands of pearl millet were grown after the monsoon (a) with no irrigation after establishment and (b) with irrigation as needed to avoid stress. Increases of dry matter and leaf area were determined by regular harvesting. The interception of radiation by the foliage, uptake of water from the soil and stomatal conductance were monitored. Before anthesis at 42 days after sowing (DAS), the rate of dry matter production and the transpiration rate in the unirrigated stand were about 80% of the corresponding rates for the irrigated control, mainly because of a smaller stomatal conductance from 30 DAS. After anthesis, the unirrigated stand grew little and used only 10% of the water transpired by the control. This large difference was partitioned between loss of leaf area and smaller stomatal conductance in the ratio of approximately 2:1. Radiation intercepted by foliage in the irrigated stand produced 2.0 g of dry matter per MJ compared with 2.5 g MJ−1 for the same variety growing in the monsoon, a difference consistent with a smaller stomatal conductance in drier air.


Telemetry systems suffer from inter-system interference due to other technologies competing for the shared unlicensed ISM/SRD band. The resultant collisions could have a profound impact on the underlying BLER performance of telemetry systems. A telegram splitting approach has been recently proposed in the literature that suggests splitting transmitted telemetry blocks into multiple telegrams and transmitting them in a frequency hopping manner across multiple ISM/SRD channels. As a result, collisions probabilistically hit a subset of sent telegrams instead of destroying the whole block. In this paper, the BLER performance of convolutionally-coded telegram splitting is theoretically analyzed under different ISM/SRD collision behaviors. Particularly, ISM/SRD interference may exhibit deterministic, random and quasi-deterministic collision behaviors over transmitted telegrams. For each of the three collision modes, a binary erasure channel model accompanied by hard-decision decoding is presumed for collided bits. A Gaussian channel associated with soft-decision decoding is simulated and included for comparison. Numerical results suggest that by synchronizing the transmitted block and telegram sizes with the number of ISM/SRD channels to create either deterministic or quasi-deterministic collision scenarios, measurable BLER gains may be achieved. Furthermore, BLER performance could be significantly improved by deriving LLR information from collided bits in association with soft decision decoding.


Underwater robot or vehicle refers to an autonomous robot equipped with suitable equipment, sensors and actuators which enable it to navigate in the underwater environment. In the recent years, under water robots have played an important role in many under water operations and research. There is an increase in the research in this area because of the wide application of the autonomous under water robots in many issues like exploring underwater life, environment and resources, carrying out scientific as well as military tasks under water. Underwater Robots are important and substantial tools for achieving various actions and these have increasing applications in various discovering and observing underwater environments. Due to the various uncertainties in the underwater environment and the dynamic behavior, designing and fabrication of the underwater robot is difficult task. Various parameters are needed for monitoring and controlling during the implementation of a certain task with an underwater robot. Hence, research in this area of monitoring and designing of the underwater robots has become a challenge for engineers and has been also taken up by many researchers. The design is the most important step in manufacturing of an underwater robot, and its salient features play an important role whenever we have to choose an underwater robot for a specific mission or research purpose. These robots are continuously substituting the human divers for performing various tasks that over-risk our human life. This research focuses on the design and fabrication of an underwater robot having a PVC hull, a frame, motors and various sensors like depth sensor and sonar sensor have been incorporated as its main accessories. Fuzzy technique has been used for the control of thrusters and navigation purposes


[1] This paper examines the ability of ionospheric models to reproduce measured electron density, winds, and temperatures during the International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007. The models include the field line interhemispheric plasma (FLIP) model, the international reference ionosphere (IRI) model, and the empirical horizontal neutral wind models (HWM) (HWM93, HWM07). For Poker Flat, Alaska, there is exceptionally good agreement between the FLIP model and measured electron density, winds, and temperatures in equinox and winter. This research shows an interesting post sunset peak in Te from late fall through early spring that is reproduced by the FLIP model. In June and July the FLIP model underestimates the measured peak electron density by a factor of 2. Although both the data and model show evidence of an F 1 peak near 150 km in summer, the model F 1 peak electron density tends to be larger than the F 2 peak electron density and that is not seen in the data. The summer discrepancy is most likely due to incorrect atomic to molecular neutral density ratios. The FLIP model reproduces the Millstone Hill data well throughout 2007. The IRI model agrees well with the electron density data during the day but overestimates the peak electron density and the height of the peak at night. The equivalent winds from the FLIP model and the winds from the HWM93 model agree well with the measured winds. The HWM07 winds are different from the earlier HWM93 winds at Poker Flat and do not agree as well with the data.


The Earth's hum is the permanent free oscillations of the Earth recorded in the absence of earthquakes, at periods above 30 s. We present the first observations of its fundamental spheroidal eigenmodes on broadband ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs) in the Indian Ocean. At the ocean bottom, the effects of ocean infragravity waves (compliance) and seafloor currents (tilt) overshadow the hum. In our experiment, data are also affected by electronic glitches. We remove these signals from the seismic trace by subtracting average glitch signals; performing a linear regression; and using frequency‐dependent response functions between pressure, horizontal, and vertical seismic components. This reduces the long period noise on the OBS to the level of a good land station. Finally, by windowing the autocorrelation to include only the direct arrival, the first and second orbits around the Earth, and by calculating its Fourier transform, we clearly observe the eigenmodes at the ocean bottom.


Abstract A study at Fairbanks, AK, was started in 1984 to determine soil seed longevity of 17 weed species. Seeds were buried in mesh bags 2 and 15 cm deep and were recovered 0.7, 1.7, 2.7, 3.7, 4.7, 6.7, 9.7, and 19.7 yr later. Viability was determined by germination and tetrazolium tests. Seed viability data were fit to an exponential model, separately for each depth, and the likelihood-ratio test was used to determine whether seed-viability decline was affected by burial depth. Depth of burial had a significant effect on viability decline of prostrate knotweed, marsh yellowcress, bluejoint reedgrass, and wild oat. By 19.7 years after burial (YAB), all seeds of common hempnettle, quackgrass, wild oat, foxtail barley, and bluejoint reedgrass were dead. Seeds of 12 other species were still viable: corn spurry (0.1%), prostrate knotweed (0.3% at 2 cm, 0.8% at 15 cm), flixweed (0.5%), pineapple-weed (0.6%), shepherd's-purse (1.3%), wild buckwheat (1.5%), common chickweed (1.6%), rough cinquefoil (1.8%), common lambsquarters (3.0%), Pennsylvania smartweed (3.3%), marsh yellowcress (8.5% at 2 cm, 0.3% at 15 cm), and American dragonhead (62.2%). Seed dormancy at 19.7 YAB was very low for all species (< 4%) except for American dragonhead, common lambsquarters, Pennsylvania smartweed, and shepherd's-purse, which had seed dormancies of 100, 27, 25, and 38%, respectively. Seed longevity was not increased by cold, subarctic temperatures. Nomenclature:  American dragonhead, Dracocephalum parviflorum Nutt. DRAPA; bluejoint reedgrass, Calamagrostis canadensis (Michx.) Beauv. CLMCD; common chickweed, Stellaria media (L.) Vill. STEME; Common hempnettle, Galeopsis tetrahit L. GAETE; common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album L. CHEAL; corn spurry, Spergula arvensis L. SPRAR; flixweed, Descurainia sophia (L.) Webb ex Prantl DESSO; foxtail barley, Hordeum jubatum L. HORJU; marsh yellowcress, Rorippa islandica (Oeder) Borbas RORIS; Pennsylvania smartweed, Polygonum pensylvanicum L. POLPY; pineapple-weed, Matricaria matricarioides (Less.) C.L. Porter MATMT; prostrate knotweed, Polygonum aviculare L. POLAV; quackgrass, Elytrigia repens (L.) Nevski AGRRE; rough cinquefoil, Potentilla norvegica L. PTLNO; shepherd's-purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medicus CAPBP; wild buckwheat, Polygonum convolvulus L. POLCO; wild oat, Avena fatua L. AVEFA.


Background Black men are three times more likely to develop prostate cancer (PCa) and often present with more aggressive disease. Nevertheless, black men are consistently underrepresented in research studies. We aimed to get more insight into the reasons for this reduced recruitment, as it is important for future research to include results that are also applicable to black men with PCa. Methods Two focus groups (n = 10 and n = 6) of black males currently under treatment for PCa at Guys Hospital, London, UK were held to gather information regarding the understanding of and exposure to research, as well as the barriers and facilitators for recruitment into research studies. Results Barriers to recruitment included; mistrust of researchers, lack of understanding of the research process and the mechanisms of PCa and a reliance on herbal medicine. Suggested facilitators for recruitment improvement included thorough explanations of the research process, media advertisement and word of mouth. Financial incentives were also discussed but received mixed reception. Conclusion We uncovered a number of barriers to recruitment of black men with PCa into research and accompanying strategies for improving involvement. Many are consistent with the literature, emphasising that current efforts have not been successful in ameliorating the concerns of the black community. Beliefs in herbal medicine and aversion to financial incentives appear to be novel themes, and so further insight into these issues could prove beneficial.


The effect of the quinone outside inhibitors (QoI) azoxystrobin and pyraclostrobin on yields of winter wheat where QoI resistant Mycosphaerella graminicola isolates were dominant was investigated in field trials in 2006 and 2007. Pyraclostrobin significantly increased yields by 1 Æ 57 t ha ) 1 in 2006 and 0 Æ 89 t ha ) 1 in 2007 when compared to the untreated controls, while azoxystrobin only provided a significant increase of 1 Æ 28 t ha ) 1 in 2006. These yield increases were associated with reduction in septoria tritici blotch (STB) development as determined by weekly disease assessments over a 7 week interval. The effect of pyraclostrobin on STB was studied in controlled environment experiments using wheat seedlings inoculated with individual M. graminicola isolates. Pyraclostrobin significantly reduced STB symptoms by up to 62%, whether applied 48 h pre- or post- inoculation with resistant M. graminicola isolates containing the cytochrome b mutation G143A. Extremely limited disease (<1%) was observed on similarly treated seedlings inoculated with an intermediately resistant isolate containing the cytochrome b mutation F129L, while no disease was observed on seedlings inoculated with a wild-type isolate. Germination studies of pycnidiospores of M. graminicola on water agar amended with azoxystrobin or pyraclostrobin showed that neither fungicide inhibited germination of spores of resistant isolates containing the mutation G143A. However, pyraclostrobin significantly reduced germ tube length by up to 46% when compared with the untreated controls. Although the QoIs can no longer be relied upon to provide effective M. graminicola control, this study provides an insight into why QoIs still provide limited STB disease control and yield increases even in situations of high QoI resistance.


This article describes the design of the Seattle University School of Law International Human Rights Clinic and the model the Clinic developed and used in preparing an international human rights report regarding the conditions of immigrant detention at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. The report continues to have a substantial impact on a very important human rights issue close to home-the treatment of both documented and undocumented immigrants. In addition, this article details why the project was chosen and how it was designed and developed. Finally, the article measures the project's pedagogical outcomes against accepted legal clinical pedagogi-cal principles.


In a three-way crossover trial, six healthy Finnish-Merino-Awassi ewes were given a single intravenous injection of norfloxacin nicotinate (in a dose equivalent to 25 mg of norfloxacin base per kg of body weight) during nursing, 1 day after weaning, and 1 month after weaning. Blood and milk samples were collected at different time intervals following dosing, and norfloxacin concentrations were determined by a high-performance liquid chromatography assay. The serum drug concentration versus time data were analyzed by a noncompartmental approach which was based on the statistical-moment theory. The total body clearance values were 4.2 +/- 1.3 (injection during nursing), 1.6 +/- 0.3 (injection 1 day after weaning), and 3.1 +/- 0.8 ml/min/kg (injection 1 month after weaning). The mean residence times were 335 +/- 83, 797 +/- 129, and 481 +/- 102 min and terminal half-lives were 266 +/- 51, 603 +/- 94, and 372 +/- 68 min for the respective treatments. The estimated volumes of distribution at steady state were 1.3 +/- 0.1, 1.2 +/- 0.1, and 1.4 +/- 0.2 liter/kg for the respective treatments. Milk norfloxacin concentrations were up to 40 times higher than the corresponding concentrations in serum during lactation. Accordingly, in ewes with 1.5 liter of milk in the udder more than half of the drug in the animal appeared to be in the milk. Therapeutic concentrations of norfloxacin could be detected in the sera of suckling lambs, implicating that fluoroquinolone therapy should be discouraged during breast feeding. In lactating ewes and in ewes with full udders, moment analysis calculations did not show a significant difference between the system moment mean residence time and the system matrix mean residence time values. Thus, the pharmacokinetics of norfloxacin in the three groups could be described by the classical two-compartment open-body model with input and output occurring from the central compartment. The results did not support the existence of a distinguishable milk compartment. Milk secretion seemed to act as one of the clearance processes of the drug when milk was continuously removed.


Several syndromes derived from the involvement of central and peripheral nervous system and meninges have been reported in the infection by Borrelia burgdorferi. The features of autonomic nervous system involvement have received a marginal attention. Reflex sympathetic dystrophy is an autonomic picture characterized by regional sympathetic hyperactivity which has not been associated with Lyme disease. We report a 16-year-old female with clinical, radiological and scintigraphic features consistent with reflex sympathetic dystrophy. The usual causes of this syndrome were ruled out and antibodies against Borrelia burgdorferi were detected by immunofluorescence, enzyme immunoassay and Western blotting. Specific IgG and IgM levels had a progressive increase during three months. In Lyme borreliosis causes of false positives were excluded. Antigen-antibody bands were detected in increasing number during the evolution, using sonicates of B. burgdorferi and patient's sera with the Western blotting technique. Our data suggest that reflex sympathetic dystrophy is another type of nervous system involvement in the multifaceted Lyme borreliosis.


Background Burn injury rates are especially high in Africa where exposure to unsafe cooking appliances and open fires pose significant dangers to children. While it has been suggested that the use of improved cookstoves (ICS) may mitigate a child's exposure to burn injuries more evidence is needed. The aim of this study is to explore factors which contribute to the incidence, cause and severity of paediatric burn injuries associated with cooking. Malawi was selected for this study as; children are at particularly high risk of burns because of the nature of the environments in which they live and the paucity of burn prevention programs. Methods Data was collected across four sample sites. Each site had previous exposure to an ICS technology. Hospital data and community surveys were used to elicit the incidence of burns. Household interviews, focus groups and observations obtained narrative experiences from families whose children have, and have not, experienced burn injuries in the home. Interviews were undertaken with stove organisations to better understand existing quality control and safety standards in relation to ICS. Results Results will include: hospital and community based data; parents attitudes towards to the causes of burn injuries; parents perception of hazards and safety within their compound; safety precautions practiced by parents in the home; barriers to preventing burns injuries; risk factors associated with the cooking process and the kitchen environment; existing measures used to determin the safety of ICS. Conclusions The findings will show the key factors associated with paediatric burn injuries accross rural and peri-urban areas of Malawi. This infromation would support the advancement of cultrually and contextually appropriate interventions and policy relating to ICS programmes. The study recommendations may also be applied to a wider number of countries, whose population rely on similar cooking processes.


Natural hazard such as tornado, volcano eruption, earthquake, flood, tsunami and landslide occurs without any notice. Many of these natural hazards are related e.g. earthquake can lead to tsunami and tornado can result in massive flood. So without emergency notice from authority, prevention cannot be done to resist the disasters which lead to increasing financial and human losses. The purpose of developing the Web-Based and SMS-Based Natural Disaster Monitoring System (Sistem Pemantauan Bencana Alam Berasaskan Teknologi Web dan SMS) is to apply the information technology facility utilization to facilitate and manage natural disasters with borderless digital world. Apart from that usage of wireless telecommunication technology is rapidly increasing and same goes with text messages or better-known as SMS (Short Message Service). This system will also use SMS as a telecommunication field between systems, consumers and the involved authorities. All information on natural disaster will be soon delivered by system to registered consumers. This system has been developed by using Microsoft Visual Studio software 2008 which possess internal ASP.Net. Microsoft SQL Server software used to build database for information storage needed by system. The result of the project is Web-Based and SMS Natural Disaster Monitoring System (Sistem Pemantauan Bencana Alam Berasaskan Teknologi Web dan SMS) as field or centre to send disaster information to registered users.


Abstract EFSA was requested by the European Commission to provide scientific assistance under Article 31 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 regarding the evaluation of data concerning the necessity of bromoxynil as a herbicide to control a serious danger to plant health which cannot be contained by other available means including non‐chemical methods, in accordance with Article 4(7) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009. In this context, EFSA organised a commenting phase with Member States in order to collect and validate the data submitted by the applicant. The current scientific report summarises the outcome of the evaluation of different uses (crops/crop groups) in 11 Member States. The evaluation demonstrated that in general a wide range of alternative herbicide active substances to bromoxynil are available to control broadleaved weeds; however, for some uses, no sufficient chemical alternatives are available. The evaluation included an assessment of non‐chemical alternatives for the presented uses. A wide range of non‐chemical methods are available; however, often these methods do not have the same efficacy as chemical methods or have economic limitations. A combination of both chemical and non‐chemical methods seems often possible.


Peripheral neuropathy is not uncommon in ovarian cancer. The incidence density of peripheral neuropathy was 21.5 per 1000 person-years in ovarian cancer, 15.3 per 1000 person-years in breast cancer and 18.3 per 1000 person-years in lung cancer for patients who received platinum-taxane combination chemotherapy (Nurgalieva et al., 2010). Carboplatin/paclitaxel is the chemotherapy of choice for advanced ovarian cancer, which has been reported to associate with chemotherapy induced neurotoxicity in as high as 54% of patients after their first-line 6 cycles of treatment and with 23% of patients with residual neuropathy after a median follow up of 18 months (Pignata et al., 2006 ). However, peripheral neuropathy in ovarian cancer is not always due to chemotherapeutic agents. Other etiologies of neuropathy in ovarian cancer patients are focal compression, nutritional deficiency, metabolic abnormalities, endocrine disorders, and paraneoplastic neurological syndromes. A detailed medical history is most important for the diagnosis of neuropathy including symptoms, distribution, duration and course of the neuropathy. The past medical and social history may reveal a possible cause such as diabetes, inflammation, or a toxic or nutritional etiology. A positive family history may suggest a hereditary neuropathy. A neurologic examination is required to confirm the presence of neuropathy. Electrodiagnostic studies, including nerve conduction study and electromyography, are used to reveal the severity and its distribution pattern; underlying process demyelination or axonal loss; sensory, motor or a combination. One limitation of nerve conduction study is that it assess the function of only the large diameter nerve fibers, and not small fibers. Quantitative sensory testing, epidermal nerve fiber density, or autonomic function testing are used to evaluate small fiber neuropathy. Blood tests may reveal the etiology of nutritional, metabolic, endocrine, inflammatory, paraneoplastic, infectious, toxic, or hereditary neuropathies.


The dynamics of leukocyte-platelet adhesion and platelet-platelet interaction in whole blood are not well understood. Using different platelet agonists, we have studied the whole blood kinetics of these heterotypic and homotypic interactions, the relative abilities of different leukocyte subsets to participate in platelet adhesion, and the ligands responsible for adhesion. When platelet aggregation was inhibited by the Arg-Gly-Asp-Ser (RGDS) peptide, thrombin stimulation of whole blood resulted in platelet expression of granule membrane protein 140 (GMP-140) and, simultaneously, a marked increase in the percentage of monocytes and neutrophils (PMN) binding platelets, as well as an increase in the number of platelets bound per monocyte and PMN. Lymphocytes were unaffected. Monocytes bound more platelets and at an initially faster rate than PMN. This increase in monocyte and PMN adhesion to platelets was completely inhibited by the blocking monoclonal antibody (MoAb), G1, to GMP-140. When the combination of epinephrine and adenosine diphosphate (epi/ADP) was used as a less potent agonist in the presence of RGDS, GMP-140 expression per platelet was less, and while monocyte-platelet conjugates formed, PMN-platelet conjugates did not. With epi/ADP in the absence of RGDS, there was an immediate, marked decrease in the percentage of all leukocytes with bound platelets, simultaneous with an increase in the percentage of unbound platelet aggregates. As these platelet aggregates dissociated, the percentage of monocytes and PMN with adherent platelets increased, with monocytes again binding at a faster initial rate than PMN. This recovery of monocyte and PMN adhesion to platelets was also inhibited by the G1 MoAb. We conclude that: (1) monocytes and PMN bind activated platelets in whole blood through GMP-140; (2) monocytes have a competitive advantage over PMN in binding activated platelets, particularly when less potent platelet agonists are used; and (3) platelet aggregate formation initially competes unactivated platelets off leukocytes; subsequent aggregate dissociation allows the now activated platelets to readhere to monocytes and PMN through GMP-140. These studies further elucidate the dynamic interaction of blood cells and possible links between coagulative and inflammatory processes.


INTRODUCTION On December 5, 1995, Senator John McCain introduced a bill in Congress to amend the Inspector General Act of 1978 and establish an Office of Inspector General in the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The bill did not pass; it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary but no further action was ever taken. Although the exact impetus behind Senator McCain's actions is unknown,1 congressional scrutiny of the administrative functions of the judiciary has increased in recent years and it is fair to say that creation of an Office of Inspector General (IG) is a logical, if somewhat provocative, step for Congress to take in its continuing efforts in this area. Congress maintains that administrative oversight of the judiciary is one of its constitutional responsibilities whereas the federal judiciary believes that it should have complete administrative independence. This has created considerable tension between the branches. COURT STRUCTURE AND ADMINISTRATION The federal judiciary is comprised of the Supreme Court, 12 geographic circuit courts of appeal, 94 district courts, 91 bankruptcy courts, the Court of International Trade, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the Court of Federal Claims. With a budget of $3.3 billion, it employs over 28,000 people. Unlike any executive agency, the administrative structure of the federal courts is highly decentralized. The federal court system is composed of independent judges governed largely by agreement and consensus with very little hierarchical structure. Each of the 94 district courts and 12 circuit courts of appeal is allowed considerable latitude in implementing policy (Lucianovic, 1996). Decisions regarding most day-to-day administrative functions in the courts are the responsibility of the local courts. This has been particularly true in the area of budget, information resource management, and personnel (Lucianovic, 1996). Under the guidance of the chief judge (who is the senior incumbent and serves a maximum of seven years), court executives, clerks of court, and their staffs perform day-to-day administrative functions such as management of cases, finances, space and facilities, and personnel systems. In 1939 Congress created the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO) to provide a wide range of administrative, legal, and program support services to the federal courts (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1996). The director of the AO employs approximately 900 employees and has a budget of $4.4 million. He is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Chief Justice and is charged with seeing that the policies of the Judicial Conference--the principal policy-making body of the federal judiciary--are carried out. The Judicial Conference of the United States is composed of 26 judges and the Chief Justice of the United States and oversees an extensive national network of committees that assist it in making policy recommendations for the federal courts. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT In overseeing the administration of the federal judiciary, Congress believes it is exercising its constitutional responsibility, whereas judges often claim that Congress attempts to "micro-manage" the judiciary. Senator McClain's bill is the latest event highlighting this tension. It was preceded by various actions causing disagreement such as The Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 (CJRA). The CJRA required each district court to develop an "expense and delay reduction plan" and to routinely publish the number of motions and bench trials each judge has pending for more than six months and the number of cases that have not been terminated within three years of filing."2 Almost unanimously, federal judges attacked this legislation, claiming "it interferes with both the integrity and the independence of our... courts ...[I]t is bad policy ... [federal judges] believe it will increase costs and delays rather than reduce [them]. …


A lossy high-impedance surface comprised of two layers of resistive frequency selective surfaces is employed to design a tunable electromagnetic absorber. The tunability is realized through changing the composite unit cell by moving the top layer mechanically. To explain the absorbing mechanism, an equivalent circuit model with an interacting coefficient is proposed. Then, simulations and measurements are carried out and agree well with each other. Results show that the complex structure with a thickness less than λ0/4 is able to achieve a wideband absorption in a frequency range from5.90 GHz to 19.73 GHz. Moreover, it is tunable in the operation frequency band.


Abstract. The International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely-piloted Aircraft (ISARRA) hosted a flight week in July 2018 to demonstrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems' (UAS) capabilities in sampling the atmospheric boundary layer. This week-long experiment was called the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign. Numerous remotely piloted aircrafts and ground-based instruments were deployed with the objective of capturing meso- and microscale phenomena in the atmospheric boundary layer. The University of Oklahoma deployed one Halo Streamline lidar and the University of Colorado Boulder deployed two Windcube lidars. In this paper, we use data collected from these Doppler lidars to estimate turbulence dissipation rate throughout the campaign. We observe large temporal variability of turbulence dissipation close to the surface with the Windcube lidars that is not detected by the Halo Streamline. However, the Halo lidar enables estimating dissipation rate within the whole boundary layer, where a diurnal variability emerges. We also find a higher correspondence in turbulence dissipation between the Windcube lidars, which are not co-located, compared to the Halo and Windcube lidar that are co-located, suggesting a significant influence of measurement volume on the retrieved values of dissipation rate. This dataset have been submitted to Zenodo (Sanchez Gomez and Lundquist, 2020) for free and open access (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4399967).


Hollow micro/nanostructures possess fascinating physicochemical properties that would generate great application potential in the fields of catalysis, sensing and energy conversion. In the past decades, much more efforts have been employed in the exploration and enrichment of copper-based binary oxides, CuxO (x = 2, 1); thus a number of CuxO micro/nanostructures with well-controlled ingredients and morphologies have been rationally synthesized and applied. However, a thorough summary on hollow CuxO materials has been lacking so far and it is urgently necessary to further promote the progress in novel function-directed CuxO-based micro/nanostructures. In this review, we will comprehensively summarize the important advances in hollow CuxO micro/nanostructures with tailored morphologies, including the universal synthesis strategies and formation mechanisms, the interfacial Cu–O atomic structures as well as the intrinsic properties, and their potential applications. Remarks on emerging issues and promising research directions are also discussed.


During the fifties, there was an apparent pause in activity in field experiments of diffusion in the ocean, except for research on large-scale mixing by measuring radioactivity in the ocean from fission products, mostly by Japanese oceanographers, and from natural radioisotopes by groups of geochemists of the Lamont Geological Observatory and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the late fifties, Pritchard and his co-workers at the Johns Hopkins University developed a tracer technique using harmless organic dye which can be traced with a ship borne fluorometer with concentration sensitivity comparable to the radioactive tracer. A group at Lamont Observatory has fully utilized this technique in various parts of the ocean other than estuaries for which the technique was originally developed, and it is now in the process of modifying the technique for use in the deep ocean. More recently, a national program for conservation of natural resources stimulated studies of pollution of the seas and fresh waters around the country and the dye technique has been extensively utilized in various areas by different organizations. The main purpose of the present symposium were to exchange information on field techniques for measuring diffusion developed mathematical models of diffusion in oceans, lakes and rivers, and to coordinate and promote further studies undertaken in various institutions.


Falling poses a significant risk of injury for older adults, thus decreasing quality of life. Major risk factors for falling include decrements in gait and balance, and adverse patient-reported health and well-being. Virtual Reality (VR) can be a cost-effective, resource-efficient, and highly engaging training tool, and previous research has utilized VR to reduce fall-risk factors in a variety of populations with aging and pathology. However, there are barriers to implementing VR as a training tool to improve functional mobility in older adults that include the manner in which healthy older adults perform in VR relative to younger adults, the effect of extended duration training, and the relation of fall-risk clinical metrics to performance in VR. The purpose of this dissertation is threefold: (1) to compare performance between older and younger adults in VR and in real-world gait and balance tests as a result of a single bout of VR training; (2) to compare performance in VR and gait and balance within younger adults as a result of extended training duration; and (3) to evaluate clinical tests as prerequisite measures for performance within the VR environment. Thirty-five healthy adults participated in this study and were placed into either the older adult training group (n=8; 67.0±4.4yrs), younger training (n=13; 22.1±2.5yrs), or younger control (n=13; 21.7±1.0yrs). All participants completed an online patient-reported survey of balance confidence and health and well-being, as well as a pre-test of clinical assessments and walking and balance tests. The training groups then completed 15 trials of a VR obstacle course, while the controls walked overground for 15 minutes. The VR obstacle course included a series of gait and dynamic balance tasks, such as stepping on irregularly placed virtual stepping stones and walking a virtual balance beam. All participants repeated the walking and balance tests at post-test. The younger training group also completed 3 weeks of training in the same VR obstacle course and a second post-test. Analyses of variance were completed to determine the extent to which participants improved within VR and the walking and balance tests both as a result of a single bout of training, and for the younger adults – three weeks of extended training. Multiple regressions were run to determine the extent to which patient-reports and clinical assessments may predict performance within VR. The results reported in Manuscript I show that although younger adults completed the VR course quicker, their learning rate was not different from older adults; and as a result of extended training, younger adults continued to improve their time to complete the course. For gait and balance tests, age related differences were observed. Both groups showed better performance on some post-tests, indicating that VR training may have had a positive effect on neuromotor control. The results reported in Manuscript II suggest the RAND-1 pain subscale and simple reaction time (SRT) may predict time to complete the VR course, and SRT and BBS Q14 may additionally predict obstacle contact. These data suggest a VR obstacle course may be effective in improving gait and balance in both younger and older adults. It is recommended that future work enroll older adults in the extended training portion of the study and to increase the VR obstacle course difficulty when benchmarks are met.


This article arose in response to the recent impetus for embedding inquiry-based approaches in higher education. It draws upon the perceptions of students and faculty members regarding inquiry-based education in Academic English (AE) programmes at universities in Bangladesh within an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Research-informed teaching (RIT), an intellectually stimulating and inquiry-based learning approach, is the conceptual base of the study. Data were collected from four Bangladeshi universities using a learning experience survey with students (n = 319) and semi-structured interviews with six EFL faculty members. The findings provide four guiding principles on the design and implementation of RIT-based AE programmes: (1) addressing wider educational objectives in AE education, (2) incorporating applied features in the learning activities, (3) building faculty members' research literacy and practice, and (4) establishing academic collaboration across disciplines. While the findings are derived from Bangladesh higher education, the guiding principles and strategies have resonance internationally.


Sacred personae of the officially recognized religious systems often appear in charms in order to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of the ritual. Their appearance is particularly common in Greek narrative charms where they often assume the role of the auxiliary agent who expels the malevolent factor and provides a cure to the afflicted person. In this context, the appearance of Christ, the Virgin Mary, Angels, Archangels, the Apostles, as well as various saints, is also quite frequent. There is, however, a peculiarity in terms of the role that the figure of the Virgin Mary (Panagia, Theotokos) assumes. This holy figure can not only assume the role of an auxiliary sacred agent who provides a cure to the afflicted person, but also the role of the afflicted, seeking healing treatment by another holy figure. Worth mentioning in the last case is that this affliction could have as its source another sacred figure such as the Apostles or even the Angels. In which particular charm-types does the Virgin Mary appear as the afflicted person? Which are the factors leading to the onset of this affliction and which are the symptoms experienced by the holy figure? How is this affliction cured and by whom? How could we, finally, explain this ambiguity of the Virgin Mary (Panagia) who appears to be standing in a liminal and transitional space between the sacred and the secular, divine and human, healer and afflicted? These are some of the questions that this article seeks to examine and answer.


With network slicing, physical networks are partitioned into multiple virtual networks tailored to serve different types of service with their specific requirements. In order to optimize the utilization of network resources for delay-critical applications, we propose a new multi-domain network virtualization framework based on a novel multipath multihop delay model. This framework encompasses a novel hierarchical orchestration mechanism for mapping network slices onto physical resources and a mechanism for dynamic slice resizing. The main idea is to locally redefine the delay requirements on each network domain depending on the conditions in the rest of the network. Delays larger than threshold (debt) are allowed in certain domains if there is a possibility to compensate such excessive delays in other segments of the network that can transmit the messages with less latency (credit). This tradeoff or delay threshold redefinition on different segments of the route is referred to as network latency equalization. For performance comparison, minimum cost routing with latency constraints is used as a baseline. We show that our approach enables significantly better utilization of the network resources measured in the number of slices with the same latency requirements that can be accommodated in the network.


Background: Tshwane District in Gauteng Province identifies malaria cases from endemic provinces and neighbouring countries as well as Odyssean malaria cases.
Objectives: To assess changes in malaria morbidity and mortality and to determine risk factors associated with malaria mortality in Tshwane District during 2011-2014.
Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using malaria surveillance data collected by the Communicable Disease Control Directorate in Tshwane district over a period of four years. Only laboratory confirmed cases were enrolled in the study. Secondary death audits were reviewed. Logistic regression determined risk factors associated with malaria mortality.
Results: During 2011-2014, 964 cases were identified. Of these, the median age was 28 years (range: 4 months to 79 years), 71.7% (n=691) were males. The majority of cases, 96.6% (n=931), had travelled to malaria endemic areas within South Africa and neighbouring countries. Of those who travelled to endemic malaria provinces in South Africa, 62.5% (40/64) went to Limpopo. Malaria cases decreased from 333 in 2011 to 229 in 2014. There were 20 deaths (2.1%) and 19 (2.0%) Odyssean malaria cases. Age, gender and malaria season were not associated with mortality. History of travel to a malaria endemic area was a protective factor for mortality (aOR 0.2, 95%CI: 0.36 to 0.78, p=0.021).
Conclusion: In this non-endemic district, a number of malaria cases have been reported. Public awareness regarding uptake of antimalarial prophylaxis before and during travel to endemic areas could lead to a reduction in mortality and morbidity in South Africa.


Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the expression of CK2 subunits and CK2 effects on NF-κB–mediated and TP53-mediated signal activation and gene expression, the malignant phenotype, and chemosensitivity in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) in vitro and in vivo. Experimental Design: Protein expression of CK2 subunits was investigated by Western blot and immunohistochemistry. CK2 subunits were knocked down by small interfering RNA, and NF-κB activation was examined using DNA binding, Western blot, and luciferase reporter assays. Gene expression was measured by quantitative reverse transcription–PCR. Cell growth, survival, motility, and sensitivity to cisplatin were measured by MTT, flow cytometry, and migration assays. In vivo targeting of CK2α/α′ in HNSCC xenograft models was achieved using anti-CK2α/α′ oligodeoxynucleotide encapsulated in sub–50-nm tenfibgen nanocapsules. Results: CK2 subunit proteins were overexpressed in HNSCC lines and tissues. Knockdown of CK2 subunits differentially inhibited IκBα degradation, NF-κB nuclear localization, phosphorylation, DNA binding, and reporter activity. CK2 subunits modulated gene expression and the malignant phenotype involved in cell cycle and migration, whereas CK2α is critical to promote proliferation, antiapoptosis, and cisplatin resistance in vitro. Furthermore, in vivo delivery of anti-CK2α/α′ oligodeoxynucleotide nanocapsules significantly suppressed tumor growth in HNSCC xenograft models, in association with modulation of CK2 and NF-κB regulated molecules, TP53 family proteins, and induction of apoptosis. Conclusions: Our study reveals a novel role of CK2 in coregulating NF-κB activation, TP53/p63 expression, and downstream gene expression. Downregulation of CK2 in HNSCC models in vitro and in vivo shows antitumor effects as well as sensitization to cisplatin. Clin Cancer Res; 16(8); 2295–307. ©2010 AACR.


INTRODUCTION: Suicide attempts in childhood and adolescence are a crucial issue that society should make every possible effort to solve. OBJECTIVE: The goal was to correlate the problem of suicide attempts by children and adolescents with epidemiologic data concerning the kind of toxic substance used, the gender of the patient, and the timing of the suicide attempts. METHODS: In a period of 6 months (May through October 2006), 3060 suicide attempts from all over the country were reported to the Poison Information Center at Panagiotis and Aglaia Kyriakou Children's Hospital, 513 (16.76%) of which concerned children. The epidemiologic data, the patient's clinical state, the amount of the toxic substance used, and the outcome were evaluated. RESULTS: Five hundred thirteen incidents were studied (89.1% girls, 10.9% boys). The children's ages ranged between 10 and 18 years. Two percent of the incidents concerned children aged 10 to 12, 32.8% concerned children aged 13 to 15, and 65.2% concerned children aged 16 to 18. The majority of the drugs consumed were those with no need for a doctor's prescription (paracetamol: 38.6%; nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs: 21.2%; salicylates: 19.1%), whereas psychotropic drugs were involved in 18.9% of the intentional intoxications. Of the 513 patients, 8.6% were under treatment with psychotropic medicines. In addition, 6.6% had at least 1 previous suicide attempt. Of the patients, 20.6% had taken a highly toxic dose of substances. No deaths were reported. CONCLUSIONS: Suicide attempts during childhood and adolescence remain a great problem. Immediate steps should be taken to decrease this number of attempts. Society, families, and the medical community should also make every possible effort to face this serious problem, which has an important social cost.


Abstract 2957

Background. Hematopoietic stem progenitor cells (HSPCs) are retained in bone marrow (BM) niches due to the stromal-derived growth factor-1 (SDF-1)–CXCR4 receptor axis and interactions between Very Late Antigen-4 (VLA-4 or a4b1 integrin) and its ligand, Vascular Adhesion Molecule-1 (VCAM-1 or CD106). While HSPCs express CXCR4 and VLA-4, their corresponding ligands, SDF-1 and VCAM-1, are expressed by cells in the BM microenvironment ( e.g. , osteoblasts and fibroblasts). While a role for the SDF-1–CXCR4 axis in the retention of HSPCs in BM under steady state conditions is undisputed, its role in stem cell homing needs further clarification. For many years, it has been proposed that concentration differences between the chemotactic SDF-1 gradient across the BM–peripheral blood (PB) barrier determines whether cells will home from PB into the BM microenvironment. However, this simple explanation has been challenged by several observations supporting the existence of SDF-1–CXCR4-independent homing mechanisms. For example, i) CXCR4−/– fetal liver HSPCs can home to BM in an SDF-1-independent manner, ii) homing of murine HSPCs made refractory to SDF-1 by preincubation and co-injection with a CXCR4 receptor antagonist (AMD3100) is normal or only mildly reduced, iii) HSPCs in which CXCR4 expression is reduced by a SDF-1 intrakine strategy remain able to engraft in lethally irradiated recipients, and as we recently reported, iv) myeloablative conditioning for transplantation induces a highly proteolytic microenvironment in BM that leads to proteolytic degradation of SDF-1 ( Leukemia 2011, doi: 10.1038/leu.2011.185 ). Aim of the study. Based on these observations that strongly suggest the involvement of other factors and/or supportive mechanisms in the SDF-1-mediated homing of HSPCs we become interested in a role of bioactive lipids (sphingosine-1 phosphate; S1P and ceramide-1 phosphate; C1P) as well as priming phenomenon of SDF-1-CXCR4 axis by cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) in HSPCs homing. Results. We present evidence that gradients of bioactive lipids, such as S1P and C1P, which are products of membrane lipid metabolism, are involved in stem cell lodgment into BM. In addition, we present another important mechanism that enhances stem cell response to an low SDF-1 concentration gradient, namely, the "priming effect". This mechanism is based on a phenomenon in which CAMPs such as complement cascade cleavage fragment C3a and stroma fibroblast- and granulocytes-derived antimicrobial peptide LL-37 significantly increase (up to 25 times) the chemotactic responsiveness of HSPCs to very low "tissue concentration-relevant" SDF-1 gradients (1–3 ng/ml). To support this further murine HSPCs primed ex vivo with CAMPs engrafted by 3–5 days faster in lethally irradiated littermates. At the molecular level, this sensitization of the responsiveness to SDF-1 after exposure to CAMPs depends on the incorporation of the CXCR4 receptor into membrane lipid rafts. This phenomenon is specific for SDF-CXCR4 axis as we did not observe that this phenomenon influences S1P- and C1P-mediated in vitro chemotaxis. Overall, these changes of SDF-1, S1P, and C1P chemotactic gradients and the appearance of priming factors in the BM microenvironment and PB plasma are triggered during conditioning for transplantation by radio-chemotherapy by the induction of a proteolytic microenvironment in BM and the activation of the complement cascade (CC). Conclusions. We provide in vivo evidence that C3a and LL-37, which have primarily antimicrobial functions and are harmless to mammalian cells, could be clinically applied to accelerate engraftment as ex vivo priming agent for transplanted human HSPCs. This novel approach based on a short ex vivo incubation of HSPCs in the graft before transplantation by CAMPs (C3a and LL-37) is of particular important in umbilical cord blood transplantations, where the number of available HSPCs in single unit for transplant is limited. This strategy is currently tested in the clinic.

Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Discoidal gypsum crystal cavities occur in quartzites that host varying amounts of strata-bound scheelite mineralization near Halls Creek in Western Australia. The host quartzites have been regionally metamorphosed to greenschist facies and are contained within a Middle Proterozoic sequence that includes pelites, mafic and felsic volcanics, and volcaniclastic rocks. Textural, fluid inclusion, and oxygen isotope data indicate that scheelite was present in the host quartzites prior to regional metamorphism. The presence of crystal cavities after gypsum in the quartzites implies an evaporitic origin for this sequence. The continental-sabkha playa basins of the Mojave Desert, California, are suggested to be possible modern analogs-e.g., Searles Lake, where the tungsten content is up to 70 ppm WO{sub 3} in brines and 118 ppm in muds, and exceeds the amount of tungsten in all known deposits in the United States. Metamorphism of a continental evaporitic sequence containing tungsten could produce an assemblage of rocks very similar to those reported from several stratabound tungsten deposits. Some of these, such as at Halls Creek, may be related to original accumulations of tungsten in nonmarine evaporitic environments.


Objective Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease resulting in demyelination of the central nervous system (CNS). T helper 17 (Th17) subset protects the human body against pathogens and induces neuroinflammation, which leads to neurodegeneration. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a specific class of small (~22 nt) non-coding RNAs that act as post-transcriptional regulators. The expression of the miR-326 is highly associated with the pathogenesis of MS disease in patients through the promotion of Th17 development. Recently, studies showed that disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) could balance the dysregulation of miRNAs in the immune cells of patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS). Interferon-beta (IFN-β) has emerged as one of the most common drugs for the treatment of RR-MS patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of the miR-326 in RRMS patients who were responders and non- responders to IFN-β treatment. Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, a total of 70 patients (35 responders and 35 non-responders) were enrolled. We analyzed the expression of the miR-326 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of RRMS patients at least one year after the initiation of IFN-β therapy. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was applied to measure the expression of the miR-326. Results The results showed no substantial change in the expression of the miR-326 between responders and non- responders concerning the treatment with IFN-β. Although the expression of the miR-326 was slightly reduced in IFN-β-responders compared with IFN-β-non-responders; however, the reduction of the miR-326 was not statistically significant. Conclusion Overall, since IFN-β doesn't normalize abnormal expression of miR-326, this might suggest that IFN-β affects Th17 development through epigenetic mechanisms other than miR-326 regulation.


This study attempts analysis of Income Inequality among Rural and Urban Households in Egba Division of Ogun State, Nigeria: The two Local Government Areas were purposively selected namely: Abeokuta South Local Government Area and Obafemi Owode Local Government Area Representing rural and urban households respectively. This study identifies the various income generating activities in both areas to determine the source of income inequality among these rural and urban households. A total number of 104 respondents were assessed, 50 from rural and 54 from urban. The socio-economic characteristics of both households contribution of each income source to the house income, level of income inequality within each household area and between the both household as well as the contribution of each source overall source income inequality in both area were analyzed The socio-economic characteristics of both households were determined using simple percentage method while the contribution of each income source to household income was determined using simple technique method. The Lorenz Curve and Gini coefficient were used to determine the level of income inequality among both areas while the assessment of the contribution of each income source to the income inequality was done using correlation analysis and decomposition based on co-efficient of variation. From findings individual start work earning money income early in rural area and they continue to work even they have passed retirement age of 65 years. Urban dwellers have higher education qualification than rural counterpart and such a higher percentage of rural dweller are self employed while a higher of urban dweller have paid employment that is white collar job. On the overall, urban dweller earn higher than rural dweller, with crop production, nonfarming activities and transfer payment affect overall house household income in both areas. However, crop production is the major source of household income in the rural area while non-farming activities contribute majorly to household income in the urban.


The main objective of the study is to investigate the information seeking behavior of the research scholars of Vidyasagar University (VU), West Bengal. Besides, the study also intended to identify their information needs and awareness regarding the library services rendered by the central library of the university. Required data was collected from 100 researchers of the university through a structured questionnaire. Findings indicate that guidance in the use of library resources and services is necessary to help researchers to meet some of their information requirements. Most of the researchers avail library weekly (30%) and monthly(45%) and spend maximum of 0-2 hours with the main intention for preparing research, study journals , up-to-date knowledge etc. Most of the researchers depend on VU central library (27%) for information seeking and also collect information from other sources.


Play to delete was a work commissioned by the Chicago Cultural Center, and developed at High Concept Labs, Chicago. It was made in response to Goat Island's We Got a Date (1989), a work of dissonant actions and sounds, layered chaos, difficult sexual encounters, and ending on the arresting image of eyes bleeding through a golden blindfold.
In Play to Delete, themes and materials from the video recording and archival remains of the Goat Island work are reframed and transformed: the result is a solo work, a kind of arrogant lounge lizard casually walking about the room, getting into 'poses' from the original work, offering snippets of wisdom, and ending with a strange Michael Jackson Billy Jean tribute dance.
Play to delete also featured Chicago pianist Paul Hamilton.


A conclusive fish tumour prevalence assessment has never been conducted in the lower part of the St. Clair River Area of Concern, despite possible re-contamination of the river and anecdotal evidence of fish abnormalities. This paper provides a study design for a comprehensive fish tumour prevalence assessment of the Lower St. Clair River with special focus on Walpole Island First Nation and surrounding waters. Study details such as area of focus, sentinel species, suggested sampling locations, sample size, field protocols and statistical methods are identified. A brief guide for histopathological examination and interpretation is provided. An alternate method of sampling location siting is suggested. This study design is intended to provide a guide and background reference for the implementation of a future full scale fish tumour assessment in the Lower St. Clair River.


Interpretation of aerial images, produced on photographic emulsions by radiation in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, is a well known and important tool of the exploration geologist. Visible light, however, comprises an extremely small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Airborne systems have been developed that are capable of recording images produced by radiation in the infrared, radar, and other spectral regions. Most infrared systems, as well as those employed in conventional aerial photography, are passive. In this case, radiation emitted by the material itself and reflected or reradiated energy, originating in some natural source such as the sun, are recorded. Radar, on the other hand, is an active system, i.e., energy of known characteristic is artificially propagated and the reflected or reradiated energy recorded. Photographic emulsions are only sensitive to radiation having wavelengths of less than 1.35 microns (near infrared). The majority of infrared and radar systems, therefore, utilize various types of scanning devices which translate fluctuations in received energy into fluctuations in electrical currents. These electrical currents may be recorded directly or converted to light energy to produce images on photographic emulsions. Such images thus present the infrared or radar energy intensities of the viewed materials and differ from conventional visible-light aerial photographs. As in photogeology, identification of specific geologic conditions from infrared and radar images should be possible by analysis of such factors as image tone, texture, and pattern. Interpretation of infrared and adar strip maps holds great promise for complementing photogeologic investigations and increasing the amount of geologic data obtainable by airborne methods. End_of_Article - Last_Page 373------------


In recent years, the importance of trace metal mobile fractions rather than total contents in environmental matrices is increasing in risk assessment evaluation of contaminated sites. In this study different leaching/extraction tests, aimed at the measurements of mobile fractions of trace metals and standardized at European Committee for Standardization (CEN) for the characterization of waste, have been compared with those adopted by the Italian legislation for soils. All these procedures have been applied on Venice Lagoon sediments, in order to extend the appliance of these methods to sediments and to verify the consistency of the results when different leaching tests are applied on the same sample. The results show that these tests can be applied successfully to sediments and confirm that leaching/extraction methods based on the main parameters controlling the remobilisation of trace metals are useful tools for risk-assessment, because they can allow a "transparent" interpretation in the light of key environmental variables (such as pH and DOC) controlling metal mobility. Further the use of geochemical models in support to leaching allows the assessment of trace metals mobility in the long-term.


Anthony Leigh (d. 1692) built his career as a Restoration comedic actor by playing a combination of queer, lascivious, old, and/or disabled men to audiences' great delight. In this essay, I key in on two plays that frame Leigh's career: Thomas Durfey's The Fond Husband (1677) and Thomas Southerne's Sir Anthony Love (1690). In The Fond Husband, a younger Leigh plays a "superannuated," almost blind and almost deaf Old Fumble who, in the first act, kisses a man because he cannot navigate the heterosexual erotic economy of the play (as over-determined by able-bodiedness). Over a decade later, in Sir Anthony Love, Leigh plays an aging, queer Abbé who is so earnestly erotically invested in Love's masculinity (unaware that Love is a woman in drag) that he attempts to seduce Love with dancing. I bring the beginning and end of Leigh's stage life together to argue that Leigh's body, performing queerly, asks audiences to confront the limits of pleasure in sustaining fantasies of the abled, autonomous heterosexual self. Using these two Restoration comedies that bookend Leigh's career, I trace pleasures and queer structures of feeling experienced in the Restoration playhouse. While Durfey and Southerne's plays-as-texts seek to discipline unruly, disabled queer bodies by making Fumble and the Abbé the punchline, Leigh's performances open up alternative opportunities for queer pleasure. Pleasure becomes queer in its ability to undo orderings and fantasies based on autonomy (that nasty little myth). In his Apology, Colley Cibber reveals the ways that Leigh's queerly performing body engages the bodies of audience members. In reflecting on the reading versus spectating experience, Cibber remarks, "The easy Reader might, perhaps, have been pleas'd with the Author without discomposing a Feature; but the Spectator must have heartily held his sides, or the Actor would have heartily made them ache for it" (89). Spectatorship is not a passive role, but rather a carnal interplay with the actor, and this interplay has immediate, bodily implications. Audiences laugh. They ache. They touch. Whereas the reader of a play in private can maintain composure, audiences in the theatre are contrarily discomposed, non-autonomous, and holding onto their sides. Leigh's ability as a comedian energizes the text and produces pleasure on an immediate, corporeal level for audiences. And that pleasure is generated through stage business built on touching, feeling, and seducing male-presenting characters. Spectatorship may, in fact, be a queer experience as Leigh's queerly performing body exposes the limits of autonomy.


Modern CPU's pipeline stages can be roughly classified as front end and back end stages. Front end supplies ready (decoded, renamed) instructions and dispatches them to reservation stations where back end issues, executes and retires them. The lengthy front end stages, including instruction fetching, decoding, renaming and dispatching, play a key role in overall performance: only adequate ready instruction supply can make room for back end stages to fully exploit instruction level parallelism (ILP). The front end latency reduction is especially critical for recent deeply pipelined architecture where the front end is especially long: instruction cache access may take more than one cycle even for cache hit, let alone cache miss. In case of branch mis-prediction, the supply/demand equilibrium between front end and back end is suddenly disrupted, back end often under-utilizes available resources during the long waiting period until front end can supply new branch of instructions ready in reservation stations. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a new mechanism (called SuperCache) that aims to reduce the front end latency by enhancing the traditional reservation pool to a SuperCache and recycle retired reservation stations. With the employment of the proposed mechanism, we can see a significant performance improvement by up to 15% even 30% in our simulations


Computing the marginal likelihood or evidence is one of the core challenges in Bayesian analysis. While there are many established methods for estimating this quantity, they predominantly rely on using a large number of posterior samples obtained from a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. As the dimension of the parameter space increases, however, many of these methods become prohibitively slow and potentially inaccurate. In this paper, we propose a novel method in which we use the MCMC samples to learn a high probability partition of the parameter space and then form a deterministic approximation over each of these partition sets. This two-step procedure, which constitutes both a probabilistic and a deterministic component, is termed a Hybrid approximation to the marginal likelihood. We demonstrate its versatility in a plethora of examples with varying dimension and sample size, and we also highlight the Hybrid approximation's effectiveness in situations where there is either a limited number or only approximate MCMC samples available.


This article introduces byteSteady -- a fast model for classification using byte-level n-gram embeddings. byteSteady assumes that each input comes as a sequence of bytes. A representation vector is produced using the averaged embedding vectors of byte-level n-grams, with a pre-defined set of n. The hashing trick is used to reduce the number of embedding vectors. This input representation vector is then fed into a linear classifier. A straightforward application of byteSteady is text classification. We also apply byteSteady to one type of non-language data -- DNA sequences for gene classification. For both problems we achieved competitive classification results against strong baselines, suggesting that byteSteady can be applied to both language and non-language data. Furthermore, we find that simple compression using Huffman coding does not significantly impact the results, which offers an accuracy-speed trade-off previously unexplored in machine learning.


Baselines are often employed in shared water saving contracts for estimating water savings after some type of intervention by the water service company. An adjustment to the baseline may become necessary under certain conditions. Earlier work has described a number of relatively complex methods for baseline determination and adjustment, but application in regions faced with relatively limited data becomes problematic. If the adjustment were determined before finalising the contractual matters, it would be possible to gather the required data in order to determine the adjustment. However, in cases where no adjustment was fixed prior to the contract, a method is required to determine an adjustment mid-contract based on whatever data are available at the time. This paper presents a methodology for baseline adjustment in an existing shared water savings contract and explains how adjustment could be determined mid-contract, under conditions of limited data. The adjustment compensates for expected reduced water consumption due to external influences induced by serious water restrictions, typically introduced during periods of drought. The fundamental principle underpinning the baseline adjustment methodology presented in this paper involved segregating real water losses from the actual consumption of end-users, preferably by analysing the minimum night flow. In the absence of recorded night flows, an alternative procedure involving the minimum monthly consumption pre- and post-baseline was employed. The baseline adjustment method was subsequently applied in a South African case study, reported on separately. This technique is helpful because adjustments could be determined without adding unnecessary complexity or cost, and provides a means to resolve disputes in cases where unexpected savings occur mid-contract.


This study aspires to identify determinants of pastoralists' choice of camel production and production systems in Korahay zone of Somali regional state, eastern Ethiopia. A cross sectional survey methods were applied to collect data from 158 sampled households in which 84 households were camel owners obtained through snowball sampling approach and remaining 74 households were non-camel owners obtained by using random sampling technique from three districts of Korahay zone in Somali regional state namely Kebridahar, Shelabo and Shekosh. The results of binary probit regression model revealed that socio-economic determinants including total livestock unit, farm income, non-farm income; herd size and distance from the nearest market were found to positively influence the likelihood of owning camels. Where, other determinants like age of the household head, household size and education level, dependent ratio, and distance from extension service were found to negatively influence the likelihood of owning camels. The overall regression model used indicated significant at 1% significance level (p=0.0013) which imply that all the supposed determinants jointly influenced the decision of pastoralists choice of camel production. In the study areas, majority of camel producer (77.8%) rear camels for income generation, milking production, social and cultural functions. The three main production systems in the study areas were transhumant (71.5%), sedentary system (19.6%), and pastoral nomadic (8.9%), which seems nomadism disappearing in the study areas. Feed shortage (30.4%), drought and water shortage (41.8%), disease prevalence (18.3%), and market problems (9.5%) are the major constraints of camel production in the study area. Majority of pastoralists in Korahay zone of Somali region (77.2%) use extensive camel management system, and they cover long distance of around 12 to 18 km every day for grazing and browsing activities. In general, policy makers and government bodies should take in to consideration these variables determining the choice of camel production, and the current more pressing problems for pastoral communities such as drought and water shortage, lack of veterinary services, market problems, lack of enough capital for investment, and low access to credit services. It is strongly believed that consideration of these problems can enhance the life and livelihood of pastoral communities.


FCC-1/HN strain of Plasmodium falciparum in culture was synchronized with 5% mannitol solution in particular stages to be tested. Each well of plastic plates was filled with 200 vI of culture medium containing 5 v1 of infected and uninfected rbc with or without drug and incubated at 36.5-37 。C by Trager's candle jar method. The whole test consisted of 6 groups (G): G1 and G2 were exposed to chloroquine (CQ) at ring stage (R). G3 and G4 at trophozoite stage (T). and G5 and G6 at schizont stage (S). The final concentrations of CQ were 8. 16. 32 and 64 ng base/ml. Each group had its own control and 4 replicates for each test. G1. G3. G5 and G2, G4. G6 were exposed to CQ for 8 and 48 h. respectively. Parasite count (including normal and abnormal appearances) per 5000 rbc was made on thin blood film at 48 h of culturing (calculated from the commencement of exposure to CQ). The ED60 0f Gl, G3. G5 and their abnormal parasite rate of the parasites after exposure to CQ 32 ng/ml for 8h were 16.9. 23.2. 37.7 ng/ml and 93.1%. 16.2%. 3.4%. respectively. The ED50 of G2. G4. G6, and their abnormal parasite rate after exposure to CQ 16 ng/ml for 48 h were 11.2, 16.4, 17.9 ng/ml and 81.8%, 3%. 0%. respectively. It is suggested that the efficacy of CQ is more remarkable at R stage than at T stage. which. in turn. is more remarkable than at S stage.


Background: A comprehensive evaluation of associations between the susceptibility to norovirus infections and histo–blood group antigens is not available in the Taiwanese population, in which the nonsecretor phenotype is absent. Methods: A 1:1 matched case–control study was conducted in northern Taiwan from February 2013 to December 2014 when an epidemic of norovirus infection occurred. Cases were children <18 years old who were hospitalized because of diarrhea and were found to have laboratory-confirmed norovirus infections. Controls were healthy children matched to the cases by age and gender. The norovirus genotype was determined by polymerase chain reaction sequencing of the VP1 gene. The secretor status, Lewis antigen and ABO type were determined by characterization of genetic polymorphisms in the FUT2, FUT3 and ABO genes, respectively. Results: A total of 147 case–control pairs were included. GII.4 Sydney strain was the major genotype and identified in 78.3% of the cases. The weak-secretor and Lewis-positive genotypes were less commonly identified in cases than in controls (5.4% vs. 23.1% and 79.6% vs. 89.8%, respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that the secretor and Lewis-negative genotypes were both independent factors associated with increased risk of norovirus infections [matched odds ratio: 6.766, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.649–17.285, P < 0.0001 and matched odds ratio: 3.071, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.322–7.084, P = 0.0085, respectively]. The ABO types were not significantly related to norovirus infections (P > 0.05). Conclusion: The weak-secretor genotype and the Lewis antigen–positive genotype were both protective factors against severe norovirus gastroenteritis during the GII.4 Sydney strain epidemic in Taiwan.


The main purpose of this research was to study the mechanism of drug release from solid dispersions of albendazole, giving special emphasis to particle size of the drug in solid dispersions. Solid dispersions were prepared using three different carriers, mixing ratios and methods in an attempt to improve the solubility and dissolution rate of albendazole. The mechanism of enhanced dissolution was investigated by a novel dissolution technique as an adjunct to phase solubility study, wettability test, differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffractometry, infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The solubility of albendazole was greater with albendazole-poloxamer 407 system, while polyethylene glycol dispersions showed predominant wettability. Physical mixtures showed enhanced dissolution compared with the pure drug, due to improved wetting and solubilization of drug in the diffusion layer offering carrier-rich microenvironment. Preparation of solid dispersion further improved the dissolution compared to the physical mixture, owing to increased surface area for mass transfer, thermodynamically enhanced dissolution of a higher energy amorphous form from the carrier, in addition to improved wetting and solubilization. All carriers showed comparable degree of drug particle size reduction, whereas mixing ratio and method of preparation substantially affected the particle size. Intermolecular association of drug with the carrier led to inhibition of drug recrystallization.


The structure made of alloying and coating layers of TiN was achieved on the surface of 20CrNiMo steel by the needle-shape cathode glow discharging. It is aimed to reduce the friction coefficient of the 20CrNiMo and to improve the property of the wear-resistance. The morphology of TiN modified layer at cross section was observed by the scanning electron microscope (SEM). The friction and wear behavior of the TiN layer under dry sliding against GCr15 steel was evaluated on a MFT-4000 high speed to-and-fro wear test rig. The results showed that it was feasible to prepare TiN modified layer of 40μm thickness by the needle-shape cathode glow plasma discharging. It has been found that the TiN modified layer has excellent friction and wear-resistant behaviors. The friction coefficient of the 20CrNiMo substrate was about 0.324 under dry sliding, while the TiN modified layer experienced much abated friction coefficient to 0.169 under the same testing condition.


The Warren Court's work is justly celebrated, for who would not support the right to counsel for indigent defendants or the requirement that an arrested person be informed of her right to counsel, including appointed counsel if she could not afford one? Nonetheless, it is useful to recall the regime replaced by selective incorporation, the method by which the Warren Court established its body of constitutional criminal procedure. In the early days of constitutional criminal procedure, the Supreme Court relied upon notions of fundamental fairness in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to review state court criminal judgments. While it is true that those early decisions were too weak to engineer widespread reform of the state criminal justice processes, it is also true that fundamental fairness jurisprudence had notably positive features. In particular, fundamental fairness jurisprudence was replete with references to what I call a "public-regarding" vision of fairness. This notion importantly includes the public, as well as the defendant, in the articulation of constitutional values relevant to the fair operation of criminal justice. Moreover, the decisions articulating these views considered racial injustice as part and parcel of constitutional review. While the Warren Court's approach led to reform of state criminal justice, that reform came at a cost. The Warren Court's selective incorporation approach did not admit of the candid evaluation of various aspects and practices of the states that fundamental fairness analysis did. The focus on fundamental fairness captured society's normative aspirations and provided a primer on fair treatment of citizens. To illustrate the potential of fundamental fairness analysis to address lingering vestiges of racial injustice in the criminal justice system, I focus on two problem areas that often implicate race-petit jury composition and selective prosecution claims.


An alternative approach for the nondestructive, rapid and selective detection of gunshot residue (GSR) was investigated. A cloth substrate containing GSR particles expelled during a firearm discharge was used as an analog for the clothing of a shooting victim or a suspect discharging a firearm. An established and efficient procedure for GSR collection (tape lifting) was utilized to recover GSR particles from the cloth substrate. Microscopic-attenuated total reflectance (ATR) Fourier transform (FT) infrared (IR) spectroscopic imaging rapidly and automatically scanned large areas of the tape collection substrate and detected varying morphologies (microscopic and macroscopic) and chemical compositions (organic and inorganic) of GSR. The "spectroscopic fingerprint" of each GSR type provided unique virbrational modes, which were not characteristic of the tape collection substrate or the cloth debris which was also recovered. ATR images (maps) targeted the detection of these unique chemical markers over the mapped area. The hues of the ATR images were determined by the intensity of the signal for the chemical marker of each analyte. The spatial resolution of the technique was determined to be 4.7 μm. Therefore, all GSR particles sized 4.7 μm or larger will be resolved and detected on the tape substrate using micro-ATR imaging.


The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is the most widely used deficit rating scale in modern neurology: over 500 000 healthcare professionals have been certified to administer it using a web-based platform. Every clinical trial in vascular neurology—prevention, acute treatment, recovery—requires a severity assessment, and the NIHSS became the gold standard for stroke severity rating after the first successful trial in acute stroke therapy, the NINDS r-tPA (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator) for Acute Stroke Trial (the Trial).1 As part of the Trial, detailed and rigorous training/certification procedures were created for the NIHSS that facilitate wider use of the scale outside of research.2

Today, payers and regulators demand reportable data on patient outcomes, and such outcomes must be adjusted for baseline severity: the NIHSS has become the de facto metric for regulatory compliance. The Joint Commission, as part of its certification program for Primary Stroke Centers, now requires an NIHSS score within 12 hours of admission for all stroke patients; this assessment is to be done by a certified examiner.3,4 Federal agencies also require outcomes adjusted for baseline stroke severity—using the NIHSS.5 Despite widening regulatory requirements, considerable problems may arise in using the NIHSS in clinical practice because the scale was designed for research purposes.6 Given that the scale was not designed for such widespread—and determinative—application, anyone using (or mandating use of) the NIHSS must understand its development history, clinimetric properties, and its proper bedside administration.

During the late 1980s, several stroke-deficit rating scales were in use.7–10 For use in a National Institutes of Health–sponsored trial of naloxone for acute stroke, investigators combined scales that had been developed at the University of Cincinnati, Canadian neurological scale, the Edinburgh-2 coma scale, and the Oxbury …


This paper shows how good RF capacitors can be made in a standard digital CMOS process. The capacitors which are also well suited for binary weighted switched capacitor banks show very good RF performance: Q-values of 57 at 4.0 GHz, a density of 0.27 fF//spl mu/2, 2.2 /spl mu/m wide shielded unit capacitors, 6% bottom plate capacitance, better than 3-5% process variation and negligible series inductance. Further, a simple yet accurate method is presented that allows hand calculation of the capacitance value.


Abstract: U–Pb zircon ages obtained by ion microprobe are presented for late Archaean granitoids from the Zimbabwe Craton and the North Marginal Zone of the Limpopo Belt. Similar ages of crust formation in the felsic gneisses of the Zimbabwe Craton and the felsic granulites of the North Marginal Zone support the view, previously argued on geological grounds, that they represent the middle and lower crustal layers respectively of the Zimbabwe Craton. Zircons from the southern margin of the Zimbabwe Craton and the northern part of the North Marginal Zone contain old cores, confirming the presence of an old (c. 3.5 Ga) nucleus to the Zimbabwe Craton and indicating that the areal extent of this old nucleus is greater than has been hitherto supposed. Thus late Archaean crustal growth involved both the reworking of and the addition of new magmas to this old crustal nucleus. At 2.7 Ga crustal growth was contemporaneous with plume volcanism in the greenstone belts. In contrast, crustal growth at 2.74, 2.67, 2.64 and ?2.62 Ga was focused at the margins of the 'old craton' and may be related to Andean style continental margin magmatism. Lower crustal melting at 2.61–2.59 Ga led to the emplacement of granitoids in the upper crust. Supplementary material: A summary of previously published U–Pb zircon geochronology for the Zimbabwe Craton and the North Marginal Zone of the Limpopo Belt, field relationships and sample localities for the samples used in this study, and U–Th–Pb secondary ionization mass spectrometry data are available at www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18466.


Using a unique micro dataset compiled from official real estate registries in Japan, we examine the evolution of loan-to-value (LTV) ratios for business loans over the 1975 to 2009 period, the determinants of these ratios, and the ex post performance of the borrowers. We find that the LTV ratio exhibits counter-cyclicality, implying that the increase (decrease) in loan volumes is smaller than the increase (decrease) in land values during booms (busts). Most importantly, the median LTV ratios are at their lowest during the bubble period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The counter-cyclicality of LTV ratios is robust to controlling for various characteristics of loans, borrowers, and lenders. We also find that borrowers that obtained high-LTV loans performed no worse ex-post than those with low-LTV loans, and performed better during the bubble period. These findings cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that banks adopted more lax lending standards during the bubble period, although we have other evidence in support of that story. We also draw some implications for the ongoing debate on the use of LTV ratio caps as a macroprudential policy measure.


Real-time 3D sound generation provides an opportunity to create directional sounds in game applications. In addition, they could also be useful for headset based mobile applications for the blind and visually impaired (B/VI) community providing us our primary motivation. This paper describes an implementation towards real-time 3D sound generation. HRTF functions are used to create a 3D experience using headsets. Existing HRTF database is used to composite 3D sound in real-time using TI's DSP hardware implementing the Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters. Ear location is estimated using existing facial tracking system. Algorithms implementing parallax correction are explained and future research directions are identified.


BACKGROUND. The high visibility of controversies regarding vaccination makes it increasingly important to understand how parents decide whether to vaccinate their infants. OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this research was to investigate decision-making about vaccinations for infants. DESIGN. We conducted qualitative, open-ended interviews. PARTICIPANTS. Subjects included mothers 1 to 3 days postpartum and again at 3 to 6 months. RESULTS. We addressed 3 topics: attitudes to vaccination, knowledge about vaccination, and decision-making. Mothers who intended to have their infants vaccinated ("vaccinators," n = 25) either agreed with or did not question vaccination or they accepted vaccination but had significant concerns. Mothers who did not intend to vaccinate ("nonvaccinators," n = 8) either completely rejected vaccination or they purposely delayed vaccinating/chose only some vaccines. Knowledge about which vaccines are recommended for children was poor among both vaccinators and nonvaccinators. The theme of trust in the medical profession was the central concept that underpinned all of the themes about decision-making. Promoters of vaccination included trusting the pediatrician, feeling satisfied by the pediatrician's discussion about vaccines, not wanting to diverge from the cultural norm, and wanting to adhere to the social contact. Inhibitors included feeling alienated by or unable to trust the pediatrician, having a trusting relationship with an influential homeopath/naturopath or other person who did not believe in vaccinating, worry about permanent side effects, beliefs that vaccine-preventable diseases are not serious, and feeling that since other children are vaccinated their child is not at risk. CONCLUSION. Trust or lack of trust and a relationship with a pediatrician or another influential person were pivotal for decision-making of new mothers about vaccinating their children. Attempts to work with mothers who are concerned about vaccinating their infants should focus not only on providing facts about vaccines but also on developing trusting and positive relationships.


Injuries to the shoulder form 7% of all sports injuries and commonly limit the athlete in his or her ability to continue with their chosen sport. Careful management of these injuries, combined with a better knowledge of which soft tissue injuries are most common, is likely to be associated with a better quality of medical and physiotherapy management for the athlete, a reduction in disability, and will ultimately result in the athlete avoiding long-term lay-offs and returning to his or her sporting activities more quickly. This paper summarizes the more common injuries to the shoulder which occur in sporting activities in the UK. The unstable or subluxing shoulder problem has been emphasized because the author believes this is the most common, and the most commonly missed, lesion in the shoulder in the athlete.


The discharge time dependence of key parameters of electrostatic capacitors employing a dielectric composed of the oxide film formed on titanium via anodization, saturated with various aqueous ion solutions, that is tube-super dielectric materials (T-SDM), was thoroughly documented for the first time. The capacitance, dielectric constant, and energy density of novel paradigm supercapacitors (NPS) based on T-SDM saturated with various concentrations of NaNO 3 , NH 4 Cl, or KOH were all found to roll-off with decreasing dis- charge time in a fashion well described by simple power law relations. In contrast, power density, also well described by a simple power law, was found to increase with decreasing discharge time, in fact nearly reaching 100 W/cm 3 for both 30 wt% KOH and NaNO 3 solu-tion-based capacitors at 0.01 s, excellent performance for pulsed power. For all capacitors, the dielectric constant was tested, which was greater than 10 5 for discharge times >0.01 s, confirming the materials are in fact T-SDM. The energy density for most of the capacitors was greater than 80 J/cm 3 of dielectric at a discharge time of 100 s, once again demonstrating that these capacitors are competitive for energy storage not only with existing com- mercial supercapacitors but also with the best prototype carbon-based supercapacitors.


Abstract For a fixed game and a type structure that admits a common prior, Action Independence states that the conditional beliefs induced by the common prior do not depend on the player's own strategy. It has been conjectured that Action Independence can be behaviorally characterized by means of a suitable no-betting condition ( Dekel & Siniscalchi, 2015 ), but whether this is indeed the case remains an open problem. In this paper, we prove this conjecture true by focusing on strategy-invariant bets, which are bets that cannot be manipulated by the players. In particular, first, we show that at least one of the common priors satisfies Action Independence if and only if there exists no mutually acceptable strategy-invariant bet among the players. Second, we show that, all common priors satisfy Action Independence if and only if there exists no mutually acceptable strategy-invariant bet among the players and an outside observer. These results give us a deeper understanding of existing foundations of solution concepts using only epistemic conditions that are expressed in terms of type structures and are therefore elicitable.


Both chlorogenic and caffeic acids exhibited nonsaturable transport in Caco-2 cells, whereas caffeic acid also showed proton-coupled polarized absorption. Thus, the absorption efficiency of caffeic acid was greater than that of chlorogenic acid. Polarized transport of caffeic acid was inhibited by substrates of MCT such as benzoic and acetic acids. Almost all of the apically loaded chlorogenic and caffeic acid was retained on the apical side, and the transepithelial flux was inversely correlated with the paracellular permeability of Caco-2 cells. These results indicate that transport was mainly via paracellular diffusion, although caffeic acid was absorbed to a lesser extent by the monocarboxylic acid transporter (MCT). Furthermore, m-coumaric acid and 3-(m-hydroxyphenyl)propionic acid, the main metabolites of chlorogenic and caffeic acid by colonic microflora, competitively inhibited the transport of fluorescein, a known substrate of MCT. This suggests that their absorption could also be mediated by MCT. These findings have exemplified the physiological importance of MCT-mediated absorption in both phenolic acids per se and their colonic metabolites.


Sir, We wish to comment on the article by McKinlay and Farquhar (1976) and to give the opinion of the International Study Group of Diabetes in Children and Adolescents-the association of paediatric diabetologists. At the meeting of the study group held in Belgium 25-26 June 1976, one of the sessions was entitled 'Standardization of types of insulins and syringes' (moderator, Prof. 0. Aagenaes, Oslo). Of course, the dual U-40/U-80 syringe is a source of dosage errors and the type of syringe with 2 graduated scales has to be discarded (Emould et al., 1973; Rosenbloom, 1974; Shainfeld, 1975). The use of U-100 insulins is certainly of great interest for diabetic adolescents and adults who need a larger number of units each day. But in children receiving small doses of insulin, the stuay group preferred the U-40 insulins because of greater accuracy in measuring the dose in the syringe, since a smaller concentration of insulin per ml allows easier reading of graduations on the syringe. So paediatric diabetologists of the study group would like to maintain, in Europe, the existence of U-40 insulins for diabetic children. The ideal syringe must be graduated at 1-U increments, with graduations not too close, for only a single strength of insulin, and with no dead space (Shainfeld, 1975).


Background The antimalarial dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHA-PPQ) is one of the recommended drugs to treat uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria. However, DHA-PPQ has a relatively narrow, poorly defined therapeutic dose range and it is unclear whether PPQ concentration-dependent cardio-toxicity (QTc prolongation) poses a clinical risk for specific subgroups. Uncertainty about the exact safe upper PPQ concentration threshold and recognition of the vulnerability of children has led WHO to consider a complex weight-based dosing regimen. These complex dosing schemes may challenge DHA-PPQ introduction into national control programmes. It also highlights the urgent need to standardise the dose optimisation process. Methods The IMPACT project aims to determine the frequency and severity of DHA-PPQ cardio-toxicity, and its correlation with dose and drug concentration through WWARN-pooled patient-level pharmacokinetic-pharmaco-dynamic safety analysis, and antiretroviral drug interactions using all available data. Using the established WWARN platform, an open study group has been established to allow data sharing and joint analyses by data contributors and other key stakeholders. Results We will present a progress update of the IMPACT project and associated WWARN DHA-PPQ safety group. Findings will inform an up-to-date safety profile and upper PPQ dose thresholds across key risk groups and identify remaining research priorities. DHA-PPQ dosing challenges, lessons learnt, and opportunities to address these through a more standardised process for antimalarial dose optimisation will be reviewed, and awareness of dose optimisation research priorities will be raised among researchers, funders and control programmes. Conclusions This work will help inform policy decisions on DHA-PPQ dosing regimens and help demonstrate the importance of identifying global research priorities for targeted antimalarial safety studies and of integrating pooled individual level safety analyses into WWARN's global efficacy data platform, as a powerful standardised process for dose optimisation.