Multi-view learning with multiple distinct feature sets is a rapid growing direction in machine learning with boosting the performance of supervised learning classification under the case of few labeled data. The paper proposes Multi-view Simple Disagreement Sampling (MV-SDS) and Multi-view Entropy Priority Sampling (MV-EPS) methods as the selecting samples strategies in active learning with multiple-view. For the given environmental sound data, the CELP features in 10 dimensions and the MFCC features in 13 dimensions are two views respectively. The experiments with a single view single classifier, SVML, MV-SDS and MV-EPS on the environmental sound extracted two of views, CELP & MFCC are carried out to illustrate the results of the proposed methods and their performances are compared under different percent training examples. The experimental results show that multi-view active learning can effectively improve the performance of classification for environmental sound data, and MV-EPS method outperforms the MV-SDS.


Hyperpalatable foods are high in sugar and/or fat and highly processed. These foods increase dopamine in the brain similar to other rewards, such as drugs of abuse, producing pleasure and an enhanced drive to consume them. Undergraduate students ( n = 44) completed an explicit memory task where they were asked if they recalled various types of food (high sugar, high fat, sugar+fat, fruits, vegetables and breads) and non-food images. Questionnaires evaluating eating patterns were also completed. It was hypothesized that hyperpalatable foods would be recalled better and faster than less-palatable foods or non-food images. The study found that hyperpalatable foods, especially high sugar and high fat foods, were recalled significantly faster than less palatable foods. Results also revealed significantly fewer false alarms for high sugar, high fat, and sugar+fat foods. Thus, hyperpalatable foods appear to create stronger memories, which may contribute to stronger motivation and consumption drives.


Ibn Khaldūn's in-depth analysis of civilizational development and dynamics encapsulates the socio-economic impact caused by the shift from a migratory society to a sedentary society in human history. This shift is a precursor to and reflects the process of urbanization and city living in modern life. Indeed, today's economists, sociologists and policy makers are familiar with the problems of urbanization vis-à-vis social and economic imbalances as a result of decaying cities and neglected rural areas. The problems of urbanization are aggravated by globalization but there is little development in the understanding of the nature and impact of urbanization in the context of globalization. All indications are that the problems associated with urbanization has not only been unresolved but has worsened due to globalization. Furthermore, the emergence of cities and mega-cities around the globe together with the attendant socio-economic and political upheavals suggests a need to revisit urbanization economics. This paper attempts to contribute to fulfilling this need by drawing from Islamic scholarship with specific reference to Ibn Khaldūn's ideas regarding civilizational dynamics. Specifically, we will leverage on a conceptual and historical approach to revisit Khaldūnian key-concepts relevant to the socio-economic impacts resulting from urbanization. This would further inform us about the dynamics of urbanization as a globalized phenomenon impacting upon the global economy and our understanding of urbanization economics.


Hydrogen stored, or transported, as ammonia has been proposed as a sustainable, carbon-free alternative for fossil-fuels in high-temperature industrial processes, including power generation. Although ammonia itself is toxic and exhibits both a low flame speed and calorific value, it rapidly decomposes to hydrogen in high temperature environments suggesting the potential use in applications which incorporate fuel preheating. In this work, the rate of ammonia-to-hydrogen decomposition is initially simulated at elevated temperatures to indicate the proportion of fuel conversion in conditions similar to gas pipelines, gas-turbines or furnaces with exhaust-gas recirculation. Following this, different proportions of hydrogen and ammonia are numerically simulated in independent, zero-dimensional plug-flow-reactors at pressures ranging from atmospheric to 50 MPa, and pre-heating temperatures from 600 K to 1600 K. Deflagration of very-lean-to-fuel-rich mixtures was investigated, employing air as the oxidant stream. Analyses of these reactors provide estimates of autoignition thresholds of the hydrogen/ammonia blends which are relevant for the safe implementation and operation of hydrogen/ammonia blends, or pure ammonia, as a fuel source. Further operational considerations are subsequently identified for using ammonia or hydrogen/ammonia blends as a hydrogen fuel carrier, by quantifying residual concentrations of hydrogen and ammonia fuel products, as well as other toxic emissions, within the hot exhaust products.


Agrin is a proteoglycan secreted by nerves that is well known for its role in organizing the postsynaptic regions of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ). However, agrin is not limited to nerves that innervate muscle and is a widely expressed protein, suggesting additional roles in synaptic organization in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Martin et al. provide evidence that agrin stimulates the switch from electrical coupling of cells to synaptic transmission in the adrenal gland. The abundance of the active form of agrin (Z+-agrin) increased during postnatal development of the adrenal gland and in adults was preferentially localized at cholinergic synaptic contacts. The amplitude, but not the frequency, of spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (sEPSCs) in the neonatal adrenal gland, but not the adult gland, was increased by application of Z+-agrin. The effect appeared to be postsynaptic, based on an increase in the amplitude of the current evoked by application of nicotine (a ligand of acetylcholine receptors, nAChR). In neonatal adrenal gland, pharmacological inhibition of α3-type nAChR completely blocked sEPSCs; however, application of Z+-agrin resulted in sEPSCs that could only be blocked by inhibition of both α3 and α7 nAChR, as it does in the adult adrenal gland. In the neonatal adrenal gland, decay of the sEPSC was fitted by two exponentials and appeared to result in part from synaptic coupling and in part from gap junction-mediated coupling. Application of agrin or pharmacological inhibition of gap junctions converted this to a decay with a single time constant like that observed in adult gland. Within minutes, application of agrin decreased the percentage of electrically coupled cells in the neonatal adrenal gland (based on measurements of intercellular Lucifer yellow diffusion and intercellular macroscopic junctional currents), and within 1 hour, synaptic transmission was increased (based on increased sEPSC amplitude). The conversion of electrically coupled cells to synaptic transmission was blocked by pharmacological inhibition of Src, which is also implicated downstream of muscle-specific kinase (MuSK) in NMJ organization. MuSK was also detected in the neonatal and adult chromaffin gland. Thus, agrin appears to have a role in regulating the developmental switch from electrical coupling to chemical coupling in the adrenal gland. A. O. Martin, G. Alonso, N. C. Guérineau, Agrin mediates a rapid switch from electrical coupling to chemical neurotransmission during synaptogenesis. J. Cell. Biol. 169, 503-514 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic affected the lives of people living across the world and the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is considered to be one of the most promising solutions to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In several countries, we are witnessing hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines, which is a complex phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors. A cross-sectional study was performed to comprehensively investigate the impact of factors like demography, COVID-19 pandemic-induced behavior, and vaccine attitude on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance (VA) among communities of five different universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To investigate the effect of demography and COVID-19 pandemic-induced behavioral factors, Analysis of Variance was perfomed. The effect of COVID-19 vaccine attitudes on COVID-19 VA was examined through partial least squares-structural equations modeling. The results of the study showed no difference among the population in accepting COVID-19 vaccines due to their demographic factors. The effect of pandemic-induced behavioral factors on COVID-19 VA suggested that the people of UAE accepted COVID-19 vaccines irrespective of the movement and travel restrictions imposed due to the pandemic. The results on the effect of vaccine attitudes on COVID-19 VA showed that vaccine benefit attitudes, safety concerns, and trust in health-care professionals (TrHP) were found to be significant factors in VA. Furthermore, TrHP was found to reduce the negative effect of safety concerns related to COVID-19 VA. The findings broadly highlight that COVID-19 VA in the UAE was not hampered by demographic factors and the pandemic-induced behavioral constraints. The study also showed that people with co-morbidities had lower level of COVID-19 VA than people with no co-morbidities. To improve COVID-19 VA, the perceived benefits with COVID-19 vaccine and TrHP must be enhanced and simultaneously safety concerns of the vaccines need to be addressed.


Energy demand in the world is nowadays growing further out of limits of installable generation capacity. Therefore, future energy demands should be met and improved efficiently and securely. Energy solutions should be supported by utilizing renewable energy sources. At present, the contribution of renewable energy to the world primary energy is not high to meet the primary energy and electricity supplies. Both developed and developing nations will necessarily continue to rely on fossil fuels in the coming decades. In developing countries, the situation is more inconvenient than that for developed countries. Many developing countries have been apparently trying to restructure their energy sectors. It seems that it is difficult to realize innovations. Cost, market share and policy are the main barriers for the development of renewable energy. In the strategy plans of many countries, the sustainable development in relation to the parameters such as economic, social and industrial is supported by their energy policies. New enabling technologies related to renewable energies will also help to reduce environmental costs, and thus the energy systems will be operated as both securely and economically without environmental problems. New renewable energy markets are surely required in both the wholesale and retail markets.


Chronic alcohol drinking has been associated with the development of a number of abnormalities, including neuron-behavioral disorders, liver, pancreas, and heart-related diseases and inflammation and immune disorders. Because diverse mechanisms are involved in the development of these disorders, the commonly used receptor- or enzyme-specific drugs do not provide comprehensive protection against the adverse effects of alcoholism. This study describes possible therapeutic potency of puerarin (PU) from kudzu root, polyenylphosphatidylcholine from soy (SPCh), and curcumin (CU) from turmeric against alcohol's addiction-related and inflammatory-related abnormalities in alcohol-preferring P rats receiving free choice water and 15% ethanol in water. P-rats were fed once daily either the vehicle (for control) or different doses of PU, SPCh, CU, PU + SPCh, or PU + CU. The rats were divided in two groups: one received water alone, and the other free choice water and ethanol. Four rats from each group were fitted with electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes for EEG recording. After 70 days of alcohol drinking, alcohol was withdrawn for 2 weeks, and the withdrawal symptoms were assessed. This study showed that alcohol drinking for 70 days (1) caused liver inflammation characterized by elevated tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-1beta, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 expression and (2) dysregulated lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced pleurisy. Alcohol withdrawal after 70 days of drinking generated severe withdrawal symptoms including seizure-type EEG activity. PU suppressed the addiction-mediated abnormalities but did not affect the inflammation-related abnormalities, while SPCh or CU suppressed only the inflammation-related abnormalities in alcohol-drinking rats subjected to LPS-induced pleurisy. A combination of PU with SPCh or CU suppressed both the addiction-related and inflammation-related abnormalities of alcohol drinking. Therefore, a mixture consisting of PU and either SPCh or CU may provide alternative therapy for alcohol-related disorders.


This article considers the role and influence of black and Asian professional associations in the criminal justice services, five years on from the pivotal Lawrence Inquiry (1999) and its assertion that 'institutional racism' was endemic in the British police service. Drawing on interviews with Chairpersons of seven professional associations, and a small case study of the Association of Black Probation Officers, the article explores their internal supportive function in assisting members who have experienced various forms of occupational racism. A tentative proposal is made for black and Asian professional associations to develop their external focus to utilize members' life skills and cultural knowledge to challenge the institutional dynamics of racism within the criminal justice services, and to engage more directly with local black and Asian communities. Such work can be conceptually framed by conceiving of ethnicity as a resource.


Extracted from text ... MONEYWEB No. 250 November 2006
SMALL BUSINESS TAX AMNESTY
Tax advisers exempted
from FICA reporting
By KATHY THERSBY
Contributing editors and consultants:
TAX ADVISERS, accountants and
tax practitioners are now free to
assist clients to apply for the small
business amnesty, without running
the risk of prosecution.
Special Government Gazette
no. 29299, gazetted on 13 October,
has exempted them from the
Financial Intelligence Centre Act's
provision that advisers who act as
intermediaries between their
clients and the SA Revenue
Service are required to report suspicious
transactions that emerge
from information disclosed to
them by the client.
Without the exemption, many
tax advisers would have been
reluctant to help clients apply for
amnesty, and many non-tax-compliant
businesses would have been
put off applying for amnesty.
Had a business, ..


PURPOSE Adults with diabetes were surveyed to determine the extent to which respondents perceived specific preventive regimens (diet, exercise, weight control, and education) had been prescribed or recommended, adhered to their prescribed regimens, and identified barriers to nonadherence. METHODS Surveys were mailed to 2 samples of adults diagnosed with diabetes. The clinic sample was from health department clinics (n=264); the agency sample was from a nonprofit agency serving people with diabetes (n=1 11). RESULTS Of the 4 preventive measures under investigation, diet plans and weight reduction were perceived as most commonly recommended by health professionals; exercise schedules were the least commonly recommended. Diabetes self-management education was reportedly recommended more often among the agency sample. In terms of adherence, approximately half of both samples were able to lose weight. A smaller portion of the clinic sample was able to get needed foods and exercise, and maintain weight loss. The most frequently cited reasons for nonadherence were cost, transportation, and other health conditions. CONCLUSIONS Improvement in the implementation of preventive behaviors is needed, particularly exercise schedules. Barriers to care, such as costs and transportation, may need special consideration.


This project reviews how American state courts portrayed Islam and Muslims from 1960 until September 11, 2001. The purpose of this project is not to construct some overarching theoretical framework to explain American social and legal views of Islam and Muslims, though I will necessarily interpret what the cases say to some extent. Given the lengthy time period involved, the number of cases in which Muslims or Islam are referenced, and the fact that these cases come from many states, it seemed prudent to defer to others who have constructed critiques of the way American law as a whole has treated Muslims. Nor will I attempt to put these cases in the historical contexts in which they arose, including the actions and views of the political branches when these cases were decided. But I hope that a survey of these cases will be instructive as to the ways in which implicit biases can affect the quality of justice and illuminate the ways in which courts both reflected and overcame these biases.


In this paper, a case study is used to evaluate the business process characterizing modeling BPCM language. The BPCM-framework is meant to guide both business stakeholders and model developers during model-based development. The focus of the approach is the use of BPCM as a starting point for capturing process knowledge when planning and developing information system support. Based on information within the BPCM models, goal models and process models can be developed and used for further development of the BPCM model. The approach in this paper is evaluated using a case study related to the arrangement of a conference series. Through the case study, the authors have confirmed the potential usability and usefulness of BPCM for early stage knowledge capture, getting input for further improvement of the approach.


This casebook provides a political, economic, and scientific context for toxic substance and hazardous waste law, along with key toxics statutes. Detailed consideration of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the Toxic Substances Control Act; and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act are included, and different approaches to toxics regulation are described and analyzed. The text of CERCLA, the """"Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Recovery Act,"""" is also included.This casebook focuses on the unique environmental effects of, and the consequent problems of regulating, toxic substances and hazardous wastes. It is suitable for use both in first courses in environmental law (in law schools where the introductory course covers two semesters, for example) and in advanced courses in toxic torts, chemical and pesticides regulation, hazardous waste law, or risk regulation. The casebook provides foundational material on risk assessment, cost-benefit an


Enabling unsubscribed Secondary User (SU) access through Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques provides a huge opportunity to the Wireless Service Providers (WSPs) for achieving efficient radio spectrum usage as well as gain additional profits. This paper presents a novel and dynamic SU pricing model for implementation by the WSPs at their Base Stations (BSs) based upon a BS-centric distributed framework, that allows the SU price to vary dynamically with the changing radio spectrum usage at the BS. Assuming high competition among regional WSPs, a non-cooperative competition structure is considered among the WSPs, where neither information nor resources are shared among the WSPs. A simple single cell scenario easily scalable to multiple cells achieving competitive yet dynamic SU pricing among the BSs of two WSPs, is presented in this paper. The final SU price is seen to depend on the spectrum utilization at the BS, the wireless channel, and the price charged by WSPs to their PUs.


We report a case of a 35-year-old man with nocardiosis infection involving soft tissue and the central nervous system who had received a cadaveric donor kidney. The patient was admitted with fever, malaise and right shoulder pain. Soft tissue abscess was seen on ultrasound examination. It was presumed due to gram (+) microorganisms, so 4 g day (IV) ampicillin/sulbactam was started empirically once the abscess was drained. Nocardia asteroides was found in the pus specimen. On the second day in hospital, severe headache, ataxia and signs of meningeal irritation appeared. The cranial CT showed two intracranial abscesses in the frontal lobe and cerebellum. We assumed Nocardia asteroides was the infective agent for the cerebral abscesses, so antibiotic therapy was switched to trimethoprim-sulphamethox-asole (3x160/800 mg/d). Nausea and vomiting occurred on the fifth day of therapy, improving after drainage from the frontal abscess. However, these complaints recurred five days later. CT showed cerebellar abscess had become bigger. The patient's complaints improved after the second surgical drainage. N. asteroides was again grown in the aspiration fluids of both cerebral abscesses. Complete regression of the abscesses was seen in the CT after two months. Co-trimoxazole was continued for six months then withdrawn. Graft dysfunction was not observed. Early medical and surgical interventions may be life-saving in this potentially lethal disease.


An individual supported employment program for people with psychiatric disabilities is described. Specific program components are outlined as well as issues related to implementation of job placement and job training processes. Preliminary outcome data indicated a 50% competitive employment rate following the first year of the program. The importance of collaboration between mental health and vocational rehabilitation specialists was highlighted. Emphasis on maintaining a client-centred approach was also discussed along with the need for a comprehensive employer education program.


Research councils, agencies, and researchers recognize the benefits of team-based health research. However, researchers involved in large-scale team-based research projects face multiple challenges as they seek to identify epistemological and ontological common ground. Typically, these challenges occur between quantitative and qualitative researchers but can occur between qualitative researchers, particularly when the project involves multiple disciplinary perspectives. The authors use the convergent interviewing technique in their multidisciplinary research project to overcome these challenges. This technique assists them in developing common epistemological and ontological ground while enabling swift and detailed data collection and analysis. Although convergent interviewing is a relatively new method described primarily in marketing research, it compares and contrasts well with grounded theory and other techniques. The authors argue that this process provides a rigorous method to structure and refine research projects and requires researchers to identify and be accountable for developing a common epistemological and ontological position.


We have reported that tyrosine phosphorylation and expression of the T cell receptor zeta chain (TCR ζ) was decreased in two systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients with an abnormal TCR ζ lacking exon‐7. To examine further the TCR ζ defect and any possible relationship with specific clinical features, we studied the expression of TCR ζ in peripheral blood T cells from 44 patients with SLE, 53 with other rheumatic diseases (30 rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 11 systemic sclerosis (SSc) and 12 primary Sjögren's syndrome(SjS)) and 39 healthy individuals. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated a significant decrease in the expression of TCR ζ in SLE (P < 0·001), but not in the other rheumatic diseases. Immunoprecipitation experiments confirmed that the expression of TCR ζ in SLE T cells was decreased dramatically (normal: 111·4 ± 22·6%, SLE: 51·6 ± 37·4%, P < 0·0001). The decrease in TCR ζ did not correlate with disease activity, or with the dose of prednisolone (PSL). There were, however, three SLE patients in whom the level of TCR ζ expression normalized after treatment, suggesting that mechanisms responsible for the TCR ζ defect appear to be heterogeneous. These results confirm the defective expression and altered tyrosine phosphorylation of TCR ζ in a large proportion of SLE patients, suggesting that it may play an important role in T cell dysfunction in SLE.


This chapter describes a part of autonomous driving of work vehicles. This type of autonomous driving consists of work sensing and mobility control. Particularly, this chapter focuses on autonomous work sensing and mobility control of a commercial electric robotic lawn mower, and proposes an AI-based approach for work vehicles such as a robotic lawn mower. These two functions, work sensing and mobililty control, have a close correlation. In terms of efficiency, the traveling speed of a lawn mower, for example, should be reduced when the workload is high, and vice versa. At the same time, it is important to conserve the battery that is used for both work execution and mobility. Based on these requirements, this chapter is focused on developing an estimation system for estimating lawn grass lengths or ground conditions in a robotic lawn mower. To this end, two AI algorithms, namely, random forest (RF) and shallow neural network (SNN), are developed and evaluated on observation data obtained by a fusion of ten types of sensor data. The RF algorithm evaluated on data from the fusion of sensors achieved 92.3% correct estimation ratio in several experiments on real-world lawn grass areas, while the SNN achieved 95.0%. Furthermore, the accuracy of the SNN is 94.0% in experiments where sensor data are continuously obtained while the robotic lawn mower is operating. Presently, the proposed estimation system is being developed by integrating two motor control systems into a robotic lawn mower, one for lawn grass cutting and the other for the robot's mobility.


Latest research clearly demonstrates the excellent capability of the gear skiving process. For further improvement of the process and particularly for the enhancement of the process reliability fundamental scientific research is conducted. In this paper the result of investigation of process kinematics and chip formation mechanisms are presented. First the experimental analyses will be described, which represent an essential basis for developing and validating the models. In further experiments the material behavior of the test material SAE 5120 was determined and a material model was developed. The modeling of the process represents a central aspect of the research. This includes the basic modeling of the kinematics in a 3D-model. The simulation enables analysis of the kinematical conditions as well as the chip formation mechanisms and evaluation of the effects on process reliability. The results support the tool and process design and are an important basis for the implementation of the process.


Assessment of the environmental outcomes associated with agricultural and rural policy is becoming increasingly important. The High Nature Value (HNV) Farmland indicator included within the EU's Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for rural development is taken as an example of the parameters used for environmental monitoring. The different methods used across the EU to estimate the extent and condition of HNV farmland are compared, and issues and challenges related to different approaches are discussed.


A plastic crack model for smectic A liquid crystals under longitudinal shear is suggested. The solution of the screw dislocation in smectic A is the key to the correct result that we obtained by overcoming a longstanding puzzle. We further use the dislocation pile-up principle and the singular integral equation method to construct the solution of the crack in the phase. From the solution, we can determine the size of the plastic zone at the crack tip and the crack tip opening (tearing) displacement, which are the parameters relevant to the local stability/instability of materials. Our results may be useful for developing soft-matter mechanics.


Rheumatoid cervical myelopathy was studied in 14 patients, clinically, radiographically and by computerized tomography with multiplanar reconstruction (CT/MPR). CT/MPR demonstrated significant unsuspected areas of compromise in 9 of the 14 patients, and altered the surgical procedure in 7 of these 9 patients. CT/MPR clearly identifies all levels of involvement including rotary subluxation. CT/MPR also allows assessment of the spinal nerve canal/foramen and the alignment of the foramina transversaria. CT/MPR is an essential addition to the evaluation of rheumatoid cervical myelopathy.


Ultrafast-optics applications of nonlinear-optical processes in gas-filled hollow fibers are briefly reviewed. The main physical processes behind the use of hollow fibers for efficient generation of unprecedentedly short light pulses, enhanced short-wavelength generation, and improvement of the sensitivity of nonlinear-optical gas-phase analysis are considered. These processes include self- and cross-phase modulation, coherent four-wave mixing, high-order harmonic generation, and stimulated Raman scattering. The methods to generate extremely short pulses, including few-cycle field waveforms, and to control such pulses are discussed.


The problem of distinguishing between two narrow-band signals in the presence of additive Gaussian noise when the forms of both signals are known except for phase is basically four dimensional, as the lack of phase information turns signal vectors into signal circles. The geometry of signal vectors and of the planes of signal circles is shown to account for the optimality of matched-filter detection. In the case of equal-energy equiprobable signals, it leads to the conclusion that a large variety of different pairs Of filters will perform exactly like a pair of matched filters. One such pair has orthogonal impulse responses, and its performance is, therefore, relatively easy to determine.


One hot day, Neligan goes off to town in his cart. Neligan's pig sits by the pond watching the ducks and geese play on the cool water. The pig gets hotter and hotter; the ducks and the geese get louder and louder. The Neligan's pig jumps in the pond. All the animals come to see the strange sight of the pig in the pond. Then Neligan returns. He looks at the pig - and as he looks, he gets undressed. Then Neligan, followed by all the animals, jumps in too. Martin Waddell's other books include "Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?" (winner of the 1988 Smarties Book Prize and the Kate Greenaway Medal, "Let's Go Home, Little Bear", "The Park in the Dark" (winner of the 1989 Emil/Kurt Maschler Award), "Rosie's Babies" (winner of the 1990 Best Books for Babies Award), "Farmer Duck" (winner of the 1991 Smarties Book Prize), "The Hidden House" (winner of the W.H. Smith Illustration Award in 1991) and the "Little Dracula" stories. Jill Barton's previous books include "The Happy Hedgehog Band", "Little Mo" and "Grape Zoo".


The human pathogen herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) can adapt to a variety of cellular pathways to enter cells. In general, HSV-1 is internalized by fusion of its envelope with the plasma membrane or by endocytic pathways, which reflects the high adaptation to differences in its target cells. The challenges are to distinguish whether multiple or only one of these internalization pathways leads to successful entry and, furthermore, to identify the mode of viral uptake. In this study, we focused on dynamin, which promotes endocytic vesicle fission, and explored how the presence and absence of dynamin can influence viral entry. Our results support the idea that HSV-1 entry into mouse embryonic fibroblasts depends on dynamin; however, depletion of dynamin still allows efficient viral entry, suggesting that alternative pathways present upon dynamin depletion can accomplish viral internalization. ABSTRACT Dynamin GTPases, best known for their role in membrane fission of endocytic vesicles, provide a target for viruses to be exploited during endocytic uptake. Recently, we found that entry of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) into skin cells depends on dynamin, although our results supported that viral internalization occurs via both direct fusion with the plasma membrane and via endocytic pathways. To further explore the role of dynamin for efficient HSV-1 entry, we utilized conditional dynamin 1 and dynamin 2 double-knockout (DKO) fibroblasts as an experimental tool. Strikingly, HSV-1 entered control and DKO fibroblasts with comparable efficiencies. For comparison, we infected DKO cells with Semliki Forest virus, which is known to adopt clathrin-mediated endocytosis as its internalization pathway, and observed efficient virus entry. These results support the notion that the DKO cells provide alternative pathways for viral uptake. Treatment of cells with the dynamin inhibitor dynasore confirmed that HSV-1 entry depended on dynamin in the control fibroblasts. As expected, dynasore did not interfere with viral entry into DKO cells. Electron microscopy of HSV-1-infected cells suggests viral entry after fusion with the plasma membrane and by endocytosis in both dynamin-expressing and dynamin-deficient cells. Infection at low temperatures where endocytosis is blocked still resulted in HSV-1 entry, although at a reduced level, which suggests that nonendocytic pathways contribute to successful entry. Overall, our results strengthen the impact of dynamin for HSV-1 entry, as only cells that adapt to the lack of dynamin allow dynamin-independent entry. IMPORTANCE The human pathogen herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) can adapt to a variety of cellular pathways to enter cells. In general, HSV-1 is internalized by fusion of its envelope with the plasma membrane or by endocytic pathways, which reflects the high adaptation to differences in its target cells. The challenges are to distinguish whether multiple or only one of these internalization pathways leads to successful entry and, furthermore, to identify the mode of viral uptake. In this study, we focused on dynamin, which promotes endocytic vesicle fission, and explored how the presence and absence of dynamin can influence viral entry. Our results support the idea that HSV-1 entry into mouse embryonic fibroblasts depends on dynamin; however, depletion of dynamin still allows efficient viral entry, suggesting that alternative pathways present upon dynamin depletion can accomplish viral internalization.


Double channel torch, which allows concentric flow of two different shielding gases, was designed and manufactured in order to pursue double channel torch gas metal arc welding of unalloyed structural steel S235JR (EN 10025-2) with fourteen passes. Tensile and Charpy V-notch tests were realized and the results were compared with those of conventional gas metal arc welding. In order to evaluate mechanical testing results, microstructural analyses were conducted. It was found that the increase with double channel gas metal arc welding process in yield and tensile strengths as well as in toughness tests, especially in subzero temperatures, compared with conventional gas metal arc welding was due to longer columnar grains and finer tempered zone grain structure between passes and due to solidification and less dendritic structure formation in all-weld metal in double channel gas metal arc welding.


Until recently, it has been a universal and legitimate practice to use Anglo-Saxon organisation theory to describe organisation processes in other historical and cultural settings. This practice has not only produced a colonised grand-narrative of organisation, but has also contributed to misrepresent organisation experiences around the world. In fact, what has emerged from this practice is an imperialist way of writing that advocates a different organisational truth; a truth that comes from other countries. In this paper, we would like to challenge and examine this practice by re-writing the management grand-narrative from a local perspective. Using Chile as an example, and decision-making theory as the focus, we construct a management story that reflects the history, culture and ideology of the country. A story that does not derive from the universal Anglo-Saxon narratives, but one that reflects knowledge and understanding generated locally. In this way, we hope to add more thoughts to the debate on the way we write and interpret organisation stories around the world and, in particular, to appreciate how the way such stories are written can shape the way we represent what organisations are and their implications in a polyphonic world. Paper presented at the APROS Conference on "New World: Translating Present & Organising the Future". Dec 2003, Oaxaca, Mexico.


Equitable bandwidth allocation is essential when QoS requirements and purchasing power vary among users. To this end, we present a mechanism for bandwidth allocation based on differential pricing. In our model, the QoS vs. cost trade-off induces a minimum acceptable allocation, a maximum acceptable allocation, and a unique optimal allocation for each user. We analyze the fairness and truthfulness properties of our mechanism from a game-theoretic perspective. We show that it produces allocations that provably satisfy a variant of the classical notion of max-min fairness. It ensures that flows with higher QoS requirements need to pay at higher rates to increase their likelihood of being served. Furthermore, the Nash equilibrium induced by our mechanism leads to allocations that are comparable to "socially optimal" allocations; hence users gain very little by being untruthful.


Loads and yields of dissolved and particulate organic and inorganic carbon (DOC, POC, DIC, PIC) were measured and modeled at three locations on the Yukon River (YR) and on the Tanana and Porcupine rivers (TR, PR) in Alaska during 2001–2005. Total YR carbon export averaged 7.8 Tg C yr−1, 30% as OC and 70% as IC. Total C yields (0.39–1.03 mol C m−2 yr−1) were proportional to water yields (139–356 mm yr−1; r2 = 0.84) at all locations. Summer DOC had an aged component (fraction modern (FM) = 0.94–0.97), except in the permafrost wetland‐dominated PR, where DOC was modern. POC had FM = 0.63–0.70. DOC had high concentration, high aromaticity, and high hydrophobic content in spring and low concentration, low aromaticity, and high hydrophilic content in winter. About half of annual DOC export occurred during spring. DIC concentration and isotopic composition were strongly affected by dissolution of suspended carbonates in glacial meltwater during summer.


Evaluating portfolios based on numerous combinations of factors using the individual backtesting method could suffer from serious data mining bias and lead to spurious significant findings. Accordingly, the authors employ a multiple hypothesis testing method to examine the multifactor portfolio's performance. Their empirical results show that even after they adjust for the multiple comparisons bias, stock-picking strategies with certain combined firm characteristics could generate significantly better liquidity risk–adjusted returns. In addition, the outperforming multifactor strategies that the authors report are robust to alternative definitions of factors. However, they observe that the number of significantly profitable multifactor portfolios has decreased substantially in the era of increased liquidity and trading activity in the U.S. stock market.


The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the full Agenda 2030 in which they are embedded are aspirational and intended to be both transformational and integrative in a number of ways. The need for integration across policy domains is stressed throughout the agenda. The Sustainable Development Goals are also accompanied by an emerging system for follow-up and review centered on a long list of indicators that are intended to enable countries to be accountable towards their citizens. There is, however, in the accountability literature indication that some accountability mechanisms can be counterproductive for integrative policies. This paper is centered around the question whether an accountability regime, and if so how, is compatible with a high degree of policy integration both conceptually and in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. We approach this question through looking both at the literature on integrative governance and some of the central concepts it covers such as (environmental) policy integration and mainstreaming, and the accountability literature. This enables us to provide an analytical framework for evaluating the potential of the emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals to enhance more integrated policy making and action. We conclude that there are little or no strong hierarchical elements of accountability relationships at the global level which can be good news for more integrative policies – but only if there is a strong sense of shared responsibility among actors at all levels, available information on the types of behavioural efforts that support integration, and accountholders that take an active interest in integration. At the national level, there may be hierarchical accountability mechanisms with sanction possibilities that may discourage integration. Here, those who hold actors to account can counteract this if they have deeper understanding of the underlying interlinkages among the goals and targets, and based on this, engage in accountability mechanisms.


Cognitive impairment, a common finding with the brain tumors, may result from the tumor itself or the treatment used: surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy. Surgery for brain tumors improves the cognitive function due to reduction of compression as in case of removal of noninvasive tumors. Stability of cognitive function also was observed after tumor resection, such as tumors of third ventricle. Postoperative cognitive worsening was observed. Postoperative worsening of executive functions may correlate to volume of the operated area. Cognitive deficits may follow radiotherapy by several months to many years. These deficits may be due to vascular injury, local radionecrosis, and cerebral atrophy. This usually involves multiple domains, including memory, attention, executive function, and intelligence. The irradiated volume of brain tissue has great impact on cognition. Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and proton beam therapy result in greater sparing of healthy brain tissue and allow for a more-targeted delivery of radiation and smaller penetration of tissue beyond the tumor consequently reduce the risk of cognitive deficit after radiotherapy. Chemotherapy treatment in brain tumor seems to have a role in cognitive dysfunction deficits. The toxicity of chemotherapy increased when was given during or after radiotherapy. Chemotherapeutic agents, such as BCNU, CDDP, cytosine arabinoside, and intrathecal or intravenous methotrexate, have toxic effect to the CNS. Glioblastoma patients undergoing radiotherapy with concomitant and adjuvant temozolomide treatment do not develop cognitive deterioration. Patients with brain tumors face the challenge of cognitive impairment due to the tumor itself or treatments. Cognitive deficits in processing speed, memory, attention, and executive functions interfere with patients' daily life activities. Cognitive rehabilitation program has proven to be effective in patients with primary brain tumors. Cognitive impairments have a large impact on self-care, social and professional functioning, and consequently on quality of life. Preventing these late effects is a challenge for the medical team, psychologists, and rehabilitation specialists. Prevention depends in part on being able to predict those at greatest risk. Advances in neurosurgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy techniques are helping to a great extent, but may not be totally successful at preventing these late effects. © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Impacts of invasive species may change in magnitude and even direction with invasion age. Impacts could increase as the population increases, individuals grow in size and ecological changes accumulate. We used a chronosequence approach to characterize the development of soil impacts over time following the invasion of Cytisus scoparius, a widespread nitrogen‐fixing shrub thought to limit reforestation success. In a greenhouse experiment, we evaluated how abundance of ectomycorrhizal fungi, Douglas‐fir performance and leaf nitrogen changed across a 3‐ to 31‐year chronosequence of invasion. Each of the chronosequence sites were clearcuts where reforestation efforts were unsuccessful and where C. scoparius invaded. To estimate the contributions of the invasion separately from contributions of the accompanying disturbance, i.e. deforestation, we included soils from both invaded and uninvaded patches in each site of the chronosequence. In a complementary soil conditioning experiment, we examined the separate effects of host absence and invader presence on the mycorrhizal mutualism, leaf nitrogen and seedling growth. Ectomycorrhizal colonization was lower in invaded soil, but this effect did not intensify with time. Despite the suppression of the mutualism, Douglas‐fir grew larger in invaded soils. This positive response is likely due to nitrogen fertilization, a conclusion supported by higher concentrations of leaf nitrogen of Douglas‐fir grown in invaded soils. While leaf N concentration increased with invasion duration, Douglas‐fir survival and growth did not. Synthesis. Our findings suggest that soil impacts of an invader can develop rapidly and can be surprisingly stable over time. In such systems, recently invaded areas may be as difficult to restore as long‐invaded areas, especially where ectomycorrhizal fungi are important drivers of reforestation success. More chronosequence studies or long time series are needed to evaluate whether this is a general pattern.


Paper extends some basic results from the area of finite time and practical stability to linear, continuous, time invariant time-delay systems. Sufficient conditions of this kind of stability, for particular class of time-delay systems is derived.


It has been shown that chronic X-ray irradiation, (CRI), activates the formation of NO in rats. This is apparent in the increase in the level of NO2- in the blood plasma from 12.59 +/- 1.7 to 39.79 +/- 2.9 nmol/ml after 10 days of irradiation. On the 20 and 30 day of CRI, the level of NO2(-)- was 21.05 +/- 1.2 and 30.73 +/- 1.9 nmol/ml respectively. The changes in the NO-synthase component of the NO cycle were accompanied by a decrease in the osmotic resistance of the erythrocytes and the nitritreductase activity of hemoglobin.


The ubiquitous nature of penetrating wounds of the neck has been emphasized in numerous previous studies.1-26Few surgeons, civilian or military, personally see enough such injuries to become expert in their management. The problem is compounded by the apparent benignity of many such wounds upon initial examination, and the lethal nature of complications if the original care is inadequate. It seems profitable, therefore, to review a simultaneous military and civilian experience with 75 penetrating wounds of the neck, in order to record the principles in the early treatment of such potentially lethal injuries. Clinical Experience Military Experience.—Between July 1 and Dec 1, 1968, 62 patients with penetrating injuries of the neck were admitted to the US Naval Support Activity Hospital in DaNang, Republic of Vietnam. All but four of these casualties were US marines wounded 30 to 90 minutes prior to being admitted by helicopter to this well-equipped


The JCR:LA-cp rat is obese, insulin resistant, and hyperlipidemic, and the males develop atherosclerosis and ischemic myocardial disease. Benfluorex at 35-40 mg.kg-1 body weight was administered in the food from 10 to 14 weeks of age and resulted in an initial 50% decrease in food consumption. Body weights of male and female rats initially decreased by about 7% and thereafter remained relatively constant, whereas control animals gained about 28% in weight over the treatment period. Pair-fed rats showed body weights virtually identical with those of benfluorex-treated animals. Benfluorex treatment and pair feeding decreased serum triacylglycerol concentrations by about 50%; there was a preferential loss of triacylglycerols containing longer chain fatty acids in the males, whereas this selectivity was not seen in the females. Hyperinsulinemic euglycemic insulin clamp studies were performed using [1-3H]glucose, a tracer that allows for the measurement of total glucose turnover, including hepatic uptake and release. In male cp/cp rats, hyperinsulinemia does not stimulate total glucose turnover, reflecting the very severe insulin resistance, and neither benfluorex treatment nor pair feeding increased total glucose turnover. Hyperinsulinemia in male cp/cp rats decreases hepatic glucose output, and benfluorex treatment or pair feeding reduced this insulin-mediated diversion of glucose to hepatic lipid synthesis. Hyperinsulinemia increases total glucose turnover in female cp/cp rats, and this was not increased further by benfluorex treatment or pair feeding. These effects emphasize the sex-specific differences in metabolic response of the rats to hyperinsulinemia and benfluorex treatment. Benfluorex ameliorates the obesity-insulin resistance-hyperlipidemia syndrome in this experimental model mainly by decreasing hyperphagia, with an accompanying improvement in hepatic glucose metabolism and a related reduction in hypertriglyceridemia.


Most millimeter wave (mmWave) channel measurements are conducted with different configurations, which may have large impacts on propagation channel characteristics. In addition, the comparison of different mmWave bands is scarce. Moreover, mmWave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel measurements are absent, and new propagation properties caused by large antenna arrays have rarely been studied yet. In this paper, we carry out mmWave massive MIMO channel measurements at 11-, 16-, 28-, and 38-GHz bands in indoor environments. The space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization algorithm is applied to process the measurement data. Important statistical properties, such as average power delay profile, power azimuth profile, power elevation profile, root mean square delay spread, azimuth angular spread, elevation angular spread, and their cumulative distribution functions and correlation properties, are obtained and compared for different bands. New massive MIMO propagation properties, such as spherical wavefront, cluster birth-death, and non-stationarity over the antenna array, are validated for the four mmWave bands by investigating the variations of channel parameters. Two channel models are used to verify the measurements. The results indicate that massive MIMO effects should be fully characterized for mmWave massive MIMO systems.


In this paper, the convergence time of federated learning (FL), when deployed over a realistic wireless network, is studied. In particular, a wireless network is considered in which wireless users transmit their local FL models (trained using their locally collected data) to a base station (BS). The BS, acting as a central controller, generates a global FL model using the received local FL models and broadcasts it back to all users. Due to the limited number of resource blocks (RBs) in a wireless network, only a subset of users can be selected to transmit their local FL model parameters to the BS at each learning step. Moreover, since each user has unique training data samples, the BS prefers to include all local user FL models to generate a converged global FL model. Hence, the FL training loss and convergence time will be significantly affected by the user selection scheme. Therefore, it is necessary to design an appropriate user selection scheme that can select the users who can contribute toward improving the FL convergence speed more frequently. This joint learning, wireless resource allocation, and user selection problem is formulated as an optimization problem whose goal is to minimize the FL convergence time and the FL training loss. To solve this problem, a probabilistic user selection scheme is proposed such that the BS is connected to the users whose local FL models have significant effects on the global FL model with high probabilities. Given the user selection policy, the uplink RB allocation can be determined. To further reduce the FL convergence time, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used to estimate the local FL models of the users that are not allocated any RBs for local FL model transmission at each given learning step, which enables the BS to improve the global model, the FL convergence speed, and the training loss. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can reduce the FL convergence time by up to 56% and improve the accuracy of identifying handwritten digits by up to 3%, compared to a standard FL algorithm.


Women lag men in their representation in management jobs, which negatively affects women's careers and company performance. Using data from 81 publicly traded firms with more than 2,000 establishments, the authors examine the impact of two management structures that may influence gender diversity in management positions. The authors find no association between the presence of an HR executive on the top management team—a structure envisioned in practice as enhancing diversity but which could, instead, operate merely symbolically—and the proportion of women in management. By contrast, the authors show a strong, positive association between a previously unexamined measure of commitment to diversity—the hierarchical rank of the individual certifying the company's required, confidential federal EEO-1 report—and women's representation in management. These findings counter the common perception that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations are too weak to affect gender diversity. The authors discuss the implications for diversity scholarship, as well as for management practice and public policy.


Decoding high complexity is a major issue to design a decode and forward (DF) relay protocol. Thus, the establishment of low complexity decoding system would beneficial to assist decode and forward relay protocol. This paper reviews existing methods for the min-sum based LDPC decoding system as the low complexity decoding system. Reference lists of chosen articles were further reviewed for associated publications. This paper introduces comprehensive system model representing and describing the methods developed for LDPC based for DF relay protocol. It is consists of a number of components: (1) encoder and modulation at the source node, (2) demodulation, decoding, encoding and modulation at relay node, and (3) demodulation and decoding at the destination node. This paper also proposes a new taxonomy for min-sum based LDPC decoding techniques, highlights some of the most important components such as data used, result performances and profiles the Variable and Check Node (VCN) operation methods that have the potential to be used in DF relay protocol. Min-sum based LDPC decoding methods have the potential to provide an objective measure the best tradeoff between low complexities decoding process and the decoding error performance, and emerge as a cost-effective solution for practical application.


During the summer holidays of 1960 to 1963 a great many localities of Miocene and Pliocene mammals were discovered in the Southern part of Zaragoza province (Spain). Remains of both large and small mammals were found, the latter by sieving clays and marls. This small fauna consists mainly of Cricetodontinae, Gliridae, Sciuridae, Lagomorpha and Insectivora. The object of the present study is the Cricetodontinae. Other families of the same localities will be described by H. de Bruyn of the State University of Utrecht, Netherlands. The localities are situated along the S.W. border of the Calatayud-Teruel basin. Apart from small local faulting and folding along the margin of the basin the sediments are undisturbed. This circumstance and the nearly continuous exposures made it possible to determine the relative stratigraphic position of the sites. With the stratigraphic succession as a directive it proved to be possible to follow the evolution of the Cricetodontinae step by step. The Cricetodon material found in the region falls into four groups. Within each group species are closely related. 1. The group minor (based on Cricetodon minor LARTET, 1851) comprises small species with elongated M1. The oldest member of this group is Cricetodon minor primitivus n. ssp. from the Valtorres locality near Calatayud. This form develops to C. collongensis MEIN, 1958, from Vieux-Collonges (France). The author considers this to be a subspecies of C. minor LARTET. Cricetodon minor collongensis was found in several Spanish localities. The evolutionary development of this form appears to be C. minor minor LARTET on the one side and C. gregarius SCHAUB, 1925 on the other. Representatives of both branches were found in the Calatayud-Daroca region. In the course of time members of the gregarius branch grow gradually larger, whereas in the minor branch they stay of about the same size. 2. The group larteti (based on Cricetodon larteti SCHAUB, 1925) comprises species of medium size. The molars are short and broad, squarishly built, and show definite reduction. The early and middle Miocene ancestors of Cricetodon larteti were now discovered in Spain, namely C. koenigswaldi n.sp. and C. darocensis n.sp. The most notable feature of the evolutionary trend in this group is a gradual increase in size. 3. The group affinis (based on Cricetodon affinis SCHAUB, 1925) comprises species of small and medium size. The molars are squat and show little reduction. C. brevis SCHAUB is synonymous with C. affinis. The type specimen of C. brevis from La Grive-St. Alban (France) is considered to be a small specimen of C. affinis. Cricetodon brevis from Sansan, being markedly different from the above mentioned, had better be named Cricetodon cf. vindoboniensis SCHAUB & ZAPFE, 1953. It is fairly certain that the species from Villafeliche II A (Spain) is identical to the latter. 4. The group sansaniensis (based on Cricetodon sansaniensis LARTET, 1851) comprises large species. The molars have high relief and fat cusps. Only one locality (Manchones) provided sufficient material for analysis. Comparison of this material with finds from France and North-Spain led to the conclusion that there are two identical lines of evolution within the group. These are most probably closely related, though the common ancestor is not yet known. One branch leads from C. meini n.sp. (from Vieux-Collonges) through a somewhat more highly developed member (from Manchones) to C. decedens (from La Grive-St. Alban, and the Valles-Penades). The other branch, which is also known from Vieux-Collonges, though not yet described, leads to sansaniensis from Sansan. Cricetodon sansaniensis from La Grive seems somewhat more developed and might well be called C. rhodanicus DEPERET. The highest developed member of this branch is found in the Valles-Penades (not yet described). With the above mentioned data of the evolutionary trends in the Cricetodontinae it was tried to correlate some of the well-known Miocene localities in France with the sites in the Calatayud-Daroca region (fig. 17). There proved to be a good agreement between miocene Cricetodon fauna of Spain and France, whereas no similarity was found with the North-African fauna from Beni-Mellal (Morocco). Comparison of the living species Cricetus cricetus canescens NEHRING and Mesocricetus auratus (WATERHOUSE) with the Cricetodontinae of Western Europe shows that none of these can be an ancestor of the recent Cricetinae. Certain primitive characters of the dentition of Cricetus have already disappeared in all known Cricetodontinae. The oligocene genus Cricetops from Mongolia is the only one that more or less satisfies the demands one should theoretically make on an ancestor of the Cricetinae. It is probable that the Cricetinae are originally an Asiatic family, arriving in Europe more or less at the same time as Hipparion and crowding out the Cricetodontinae. The common ancestor of Cricetodontinae and Cricetinae is at least of Oligocene age.


Background The presence of antibodies against carbamylated peptides (anti-CarP) has been associated with increased disease activity and severe joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis. Our group has demonstrated their presence also in other inflammatory conditions with a high prevalence in Sjogren's Syndrome (SS) (14/45, 31.1%)1. There is only one study up to now investigating anti-CarP in SS demonstrating a prevalence of these antibodies in 27% of cases and an association with the presence of germinal centres (GCs)2. Thus, these antibodies have been proposed as a new tool for identifying SS patients with a more aggressive disease. Objectives To confirm the presence of anti-CarP antibodies in a large monocentric cohort of patients with SS and investigate their association with clinical, serological and histological features. Methods Serum samples from consecutive patients with SS (AECC criteria) were collected and stored at -20°. Anti-CarP antibodies were detected by a modified solid-phase "home-made" ELISA1. The mean +3 times SD was used as cut-off. Minor paraffin embedded salivary glands were stained by H&E and IHC using lymphocytes T and B markers [anti-CD3, anti-CD20 (DAKO)]. GCs presence was defined by H&E and confirmed by identification of follicular dendritic cells (anti-CD21, DAKO). Images were analysed as follows: focus score (FS) calculation, mean foci area, presence of segregated foci (SF), GCs and lymphoepithelial lesions (LELs). Results Clinical and laboratory features of SS patients are shown in table. Serum anti-CarP were detected in 30/104 patients (28.8%) without association with any clinical or serological feature (Fisher's exact test). Positive patients were more likely to present SF (P=0.024). No association was found with the presence of GCs or LELs. Anti-CarP titre correlated with the FS (P=0.045, r=0.304), the number of foci (P=0.008, r=0.347), mean foci area (P=0.028, r=) and the percentage of SF (P=0.046, r=0.331) (Spearman's test). Prevalence of anti-CarP was higher in patients with arthritis [7/15 (46.6%)] than those without ([23/89 (25.8%)] (p>0.05). Mean anti-CarP titre was higher in patients with arthritis compared to those without (322.3±173.8 aU/ml vs 279.5±171.1, P=0.004, respectively). Conclusions This is the largest cohort of SS patients screened for anti-CarP so far. Our results show a prevalence of anti-Carp antibodies in agreement with the literature; however, no association was found with any clinical or serological aspect. Anti-CarP do not seem to be associated with histological features predictive of lymphoma, i.e. CGs and LELs. Nonetheless, considering the titre correlation with the FS, mean foci area and percentage of segregation, higher serum levels of anti-CarP may reflect a severe tissue inflammation more prone to form organized infiltrates. This finding, in association with the evidence of higher levels in patients with arthritis, may support the idea that these antibodies are useful to measure the severity of systemic inflammation. References Pecani A et al. Arthritis Res Ther. 2016 25;18(1):276. Bergum B et al. Ann Rheum Dis. 2016;75(8):1494–500. Disclosure of Interest None declared


In the present work, Pt nanoparticles were deposited by means of microwave synthesis on the primary carbon supported Nb 2 O 5 composite which was prepared in two different ways: (A) by dispersion of Nb 2 O 5 and carbon with the mass ratio equal to 1:1 in a 2-propanol solution by ultrasonication for 30 min. with further desiccation of the mixture and (B) by heating the Nb 2 O 5 /C composite obtained according to the procedure (A) at 500 °C for 2 h. The transmission electron microscopy was used to determine the shape and the size of catalyst particles. X-ray diffraction and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy were employed to characterize the structure and composition of the synthesized catalysts. The electrocatalytic activity of the synthesized catalysts towards the oxidation of ethanol in an alkaline medium was investigated by means of cyclic voltammetry. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.22.2.8609


Using the Chandra ACIS-I instruments, we have carried out a deep X-ray observation on the Galactic plane region at (l,b) ~ (28.5, 0.0), where no discrete X-ray sources have been known previously. We have detected, as well as strong diffuse emission, 274 new point X-ray sources (4 sigma confidence) within two partially overlapping fields (~250 arcmin^2 in total) down to the flux limit ~3 x 10^{-15} $ erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} (2 -- 10 keV) and ~ 7 x 10^{-16} erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} (0.5 -- 2 keV). We clearly resolved point sources and the Galactic diffuse emission, and found that ~ 90 % of the flux observed in our field of view originates from diffuse emission. Many point sources are detected either in the soft X-ray band (below 2 keV) or in the hard band (above 2 keV), and only a small number of sources are detected in both energy bands.
On the other hand, most soft X-ray sources are considered to be nearby X-ray active stars. We have carried out a follow-up near-infrared (NIR) observation using SOFI at ESO/NTT. Most of the soft X-ray sources were identified, whereas only a small number of hard X-ray sources had counterparts in NIR. Using both X-ray and NIR information, we can efficiently classify the point X-ray sources detected in the Galactic plane. We conclude that most of the hard X-ray sources are background Active Galactic Nuclei seen through the Milky Way, whereas majority of the soft X-ray sources are nearby X-ray active stars.


The fact that the need for environmental conservation has been on the national and international agenda determined the development of this study, which aims to examine how the environment is an issue for nurses working in health surveillance services, according to their testimonies. From July to August 1999, eight female nurses described their routine. Their reports were studied by means of the discourse analysis technique. It was concluded that, in general, their actions were not aimed at environmental conservation and were limited to factual and emergency issues.


A celebratory panel took place at the 22nd International Conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications in Montreal. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of Fred Brooks' paper "no silver bullet: essence and accidents of software engineering." Fred suggested that useful solutions must address inherent complexity observing that object-oriented techniques have come closest to achieving this goal. David described a "silver bullet" as a technique that requires no training or experience to apply a silver bullet should find its mark without aim. Software engineering as a discipline has expanded significantly, both in terms of system complexity and the community's global extent. "no silver bullet" continues to be both an enjoyable must-read and an influential reference. People use languages without the ideas, so the object community still has much to do. It is nice to know that, when all else fails us, we have an innate decision-making tool to fall back on.


We propose a general method of moments technique to identify measurement error in self-reported and transcript-reported schooling using differences in wages, test scores, and other covariates to discern the relative verity of each measure. We also explore the implications of such reporting errors for both OLS and IV estimates of the returns to schooling. The results cast a new light on two common findings in the extensive literature on the returns to schooling: sheepskin effects' and the recent IV estimates, relying on natural experiments' to identify the payoff to schooling. First, respondents tend to self-report degree attainment much more accurately than they report educational attainment not corresponding with degree attainment. For instance, we estimate that more than 90 percent of those with associate's or bachelor's degrees accurately report degree attainment, while only slightly over half of those with 1 or 2 years of college credits accurately report their educational attainment. As a result, OLS estimates tend to understate returns per year of schooling and overstate degree effects. Second, because the measurement error in educational attainment is non-classical, IV estimates also tend to be biased, although the magnitude of the bias depends upon the nature of the measurement error in the region of educational attainment affected by the instrument.


The tourism industry of Viet Nam has developed rapidly over the last two decades. However, more attention must be given to destination marketing, especially joint destination marketing, if the sector is to continue to expand. To date there has been little research on joint destination marketing, especially in developing countries and transitional economies like Viet Nam. This study attempts to fulfil this gap by examining the joint destination marketing activities of the eight South Central Coast provinces of Viet Nam. The study has three objectives: (1) to examine the nature and extent of current joint destination marketing activities, (2) to analyze the factors that influence joint destination marketing decision-making, and (3) to investigate the destination marketing relationships between local destination marketing organizations(DMOs) of the eight provinces.  The South Central Coast was chosen as the study site as it is the most dynamic tourism development region of Viet Nam. The study triangulated both primary and secondary data. The primary data was collected mainly from semi-structured in-depth interviews with DMO representatives. This was complemented by the content analysis of official tourism websites.  Four sets of key findings result from this research. First, the South Central Coast provinces currently conduct destination marketing more individually than jointly. However, all provinces of the region practise a certain mix of both individual and joint marketing activities. Local DMOs also develop competitive and cooperative relationships with other counterpart DMOs. Second, joint destination marketing is an emerging and increasingly common trend in the region and is characterized by different patterns of cooperative behaviour and levels of involvement. Third, joint destination marketing decision-making is influenced by various factors, including preconditions, benefits, drawbacks, motives and barriers. These factors are inter-related, which in turn creates tensions for DMO in their joint destination marketing decision-making. Fourth, in the South Central Coast region, joint destination marketing activities occur more commonly at a sub-regional scale than at the scale of the whole region. Furthermore, these sub-region cooperative models involve provinces located in other regions. Decisive factors in destination marketing partnership formation include proximity, convenient transportation, mutual benefits, similar target markets and compatibility of tourism products.  The study concludes by highlighting the need to establish a regional tourism coordinating organization to facilitate joint actions and cooperative interrelationships between provinces. There is also much room left in for further joint destination marketing research.


We consider the evolution of perturbed cosmological spacetime with multiple fluids and fields in Einstein gravity. Equations are presented in gauge-ready forms, and are presented in various forms using the curvature (Φ or φχ) and isocurvature (S(ij) or δϕ(ij)) perturbation variables in the general background with K and Λ. We clarify the conditions for conserved curvature and isocurvature perturbations in the large-scale limit. Evolutions of curvature perturbations in many different gauge conditions are analysed extensively. In the multi-field system we present a general solution to the linear order in slow-roll parameters.


: Purpose: The main purpose of the article is to present the essence of controlling of logistics and the results of own research on the use of IT tools supporting controlling in Polish process-oriented production companies. The results presented in the study constitute a fragment of a broader study, also including, conditions of controlling of logistics processes and cost analysis in the assessment of logistics processes. Approach/Methodology/Design: The undertaken research issues and the set goal determined the choice of research methods, such as, critical literature review and questionnaire research of Polish production companies. Findings: Decisions made by process-oriented production companies in the area of logistics are aimed at using the potential of the organization and assessing the effectiveness of logistics processes. Practical Implications: A helpful tool is logistics controlling, supported with IT tools. The most frequently used IT solutions supporting the controlling of logistics processes in Polish production companies are spreadsheet, own programs and databases. Originality/Value: The proposed solutions are to contribute to the development of Polish production companies.


Nuclear fusion is an extremely attractive option for future generations to compete with the strong increase in energy consumption. Proper control of the fusion plasma is mandatory to reach the ambitious objectives set while preserving the machine's integrity, which requests a large number of plasma diagnostic systems. Due to the large neutron flux expected in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), regular windows or fibre optics are unusable and were replaced by so-called metallic first mirrors (FMs) embedded in the neutron shielding, forming an optical labyrinth. Materials eroded from the first wall reactor through physical or chemical sputtering will migrate and will be deposited onto mirrors. Mirrors subject to net deposition will suffer from reflectivity losses due to the deposition of impurities. Cleaning systems of metallic FMs are required in more than 20 optical diagnostic systems in ITER. Plasma cleaning using radio frequency (RF) generated plasmas is currently being considered the most promising in situ cleaning technique. An update of recent results obtained with this technique will be presented. These include the demonstration of cleaning of several deposit types (beryllium, tungsten and beryllium proxy, i.e. aluminium) at 13.56 or 60 MHz as well as large scale cleaning (mirror size: 200 × 300 mm2). Tests under a strong magnetic field up to 3.5 T in laboratory and first experiments of RF plasma cleaning in EAST tokamak will also be discussed. A specific focus will be given on repetitive cleaning experiments performed on several FM material candidates.


A large-scale conversational agent can suffer from understanding user utterances with various ambiguities such as ASR ambiguity, intent ambiguity, and hypothesis ambiguity. When ambiguities are detected, the agent should engage in a clarifying dialog to resolve the ambiguities before committing to actions. However, asking clarifying questions for all the ambiguity occurrences could lead to asking too many questions, essentially hampering the user experience. To trigger clarifying questions only when necessary for the user satisfaction, we propose a neural self-attentive model that leverages the hypotheses with ambiguities and contextual signals. We conduct extensive experiments on five common ambiguity types using real data from a large-scale commercial conversational agent and demonstrate significant improvement over a set of baseline approaches.


The effects of HHV - 6 infection in vitro on cytokines such as IL - 6, IL - 8 synthesis and NK activity of human peripherial blood mononuclear cels (PBMC) were studied by comparing CN8 strain with GS strain. Interleukin - 8 (IL - 8) could be detected as eary as 24 h, plateaued at 48h or so by ELISA. There were significant differences of IL - 8 leve between the control groop and HHV -6 GS or CN8 strain infection groups- Comaring with uninfected cells, synthesis of IL - 6 in infected cells was inhibited slightly determined by biological activity assay and ELISA. The inhibition activity of GS strain was significantly higher than that of CN8 strain, By LDH releasing assay, activity of NK was augumnted 24 h after infection, then graduanlly decreased. The NK activity stimulated by GS strain was lower than that of CN8 strain- All these results indicated that HHV - 6 could disturb function of human immunoloical Cells and immunity inhibitbo activity of GS strain (A variant) was more remarkable than tha of CN8 strain


Perturbation (2nd and 5th order), as detailed and used to compute the benchmark calibration in "Comparing solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies". This code may be freely reproduced for educational and research purposes, so long as it is not altered, this copyright notice is reproduced with it, and it is not sold for profit. Consent of the corresponding author (Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde) must be obtained before using all or any part of this code in a publication.


CMOS scaling is rapidly reaching physical limits, forcing the industry to consider alternative routes to realise performance improvements. Strain-engineering is one such option and is already widely exploited in order to improve charge transport in the device channel. Almost every leading chipmaker has announced their version of strain-engineered CMOS and strain is forecast to play a major role in future device generations. The effects of strain-engineering are certainly not restricted to the device channel. For example, the heavily doped source/drain extension regions are subjected to high levels of strain that can play a major role in determining dopant activation, dopant diffusion and carrier mobility. A vigorous research effort is underway in order that highly active doping concentrations with minimal diffusion and good charge mobility are achieved. Since conventional dopant solubility limits already restrict dopant activation, scientists employ innovative methods to try to heighten doping ceilings. Such research has tended to focus on ordinary, unstrained silicon and up until now, no comprehensive experimental research has been carried out to address the subject of heavy doping in the context of strain-engineering. In this thesis, a detailed study into the effects of tensile strain on impurity activation and carrier mobility has been carried out for n-type dopants in silicon. Significant stress effects have been uncovered including a 30% strain-induced electron mobility enhancement to the universal mobility curve. This improves the resistance characteristic of heavily n-doped regions by 30%. For arsenic, tensile strain is shown to have little effect on dopant activation. Since tensile strain also increases arsenic diffusion, the effects of strain on arsenic doping are mixed since higher mobility is annulled by increased arsenic diffusion. On the other hand, tensile strain is shown to positively affect antimony doping in strained silicon. In addition to reducing antimony diffusion, modest amounts of tensile strain increase both electron mobility by 30% and increase antimony activation by a factor of 2 or more. These effects combine to create antimony ultrashallow junctions in strained silicon with a sheet resistance of <600o/Sq, a junction depth of 10nm and junction abruptness of 2mn/decade - satisfying the requirements of the semiconductor technology roadmap for upcoming technology nodes.


One of the world's leading causes of death is Coronary Heart Disease (CHD); it has been implicated in about 12% of all deaths globally. Plaque accumulation within the heart's arteries causes CHD and leads to fatal complications including heart attack and stroke. Currently, the treatment for moderate plaque levels in CHD is placing a stent to hold plaque back from interfering with the blood flow and to deliver preventative drug treatment. Stents are constructed from longitudinal segments called struts, commonly having 8, 10, or 12 struts. Stent struts can change the amount of surface area available for drug delivery and also affect the blood flow rate. Recently, to maximize surface area, researchers have considered stents having a square instead of round strut cross-section. While the new square cross-section provides more surface area, its shape does not appear to be as efficient for the blood flow rate. However, limited investigations have been done on the relationship between the number of struts and their cross-section geometry on the blood flow rate. In this study, we tested the effect of strut design on simulated blood flow rate in a designed artificial heart. The results of this study showed that the 12-strut round cross-section had a higher blood flow rate than the other stent geometries. More research is still needed to investigate additional stent geometries to ensure both the added surface for the restenosis-prevention drug and a maximum blood flow rate are achieved simultaneously.


Management issues in many sectors of society demand integrated analysis that can be supported by integrated modelling. Since all-inclusive modelling software is difficult to achieve, and possibly even undesirable, integrated modelling requires the linkage of individual models or model components that address specific domains. Emerging from the water sector, the OpenMI has been developed with the purpose of being the glue that can link together model components from various origins. The OpenMI provides a standardized interface to define, describe and transfer data on a time basis between software components that run simultaneously, thus supporting systems where feedback between the modelled processes is necessary in order to achieve physically sound results. The OpenMI allows the linking of models with different spatial and temporal representations: for example, linking river models and groundwater models, where the river model typically uses a one-dimensional grid and a short timestep and the groundwater model uses a two- or three-dimensional grid and a longer timestep. The OpenMI is designed to accommodate the easy migration of existing modelling systems, since their re-implementation may not be economically feasible due to the large investments that have been put into the development and testing of these systems.


It is now virtually certain that Australia and the world will experience significant climate change over the next century, as a result of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. This note is a brief discussion of the projected effects of climate change on agriculture, under 'business as usual' conditions in which global concentrations of CO2 grow steadily and under the assumption that a global mitigation effort successfully stabilises global concentrations of CO2 and slows the climate change. Both global effects and effects on Australian agriculture are considered, with a particular focus on irrigated agriculture in the Murray–Darling Basin.


A tri-generation plant producing power, heat and refrigeration has been designed and analyzed. Using solar energy as input. The power side of the plant employs supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) recompression cycle. The refrigeration side includes an aqueous lithium bromide absorption system. Thermal energy has been extracted from many places in the plant for heating purposes. A detailed thermodynamics model has been developed to determine performance of the plant for many different conditions. Thermal efficiency, energy effectiveness and exergetic efficiency of the system has been calculated for different operating conditions. It turns out that the pressure ratio of the recombination cycle and effectiveness of the energy exchanger for transferring energy from the power side to the refrigeration side play important roles.


Lipids play a very important role in cell structure and function, as well as in the physiopathology of many diseases. Maintenance of the lipid profiles should be tightly regulated as it is very important for preserving membrane permeability, cell integrity and several other functions. Large-scale kinetic models of metabolic networks are essential in order to accurately capture and predict such behaviors of cellular systems when subject to perturbations. We have thus developed a detailed model of the lipid metabolism for the yeast S. cerevisiae, in order to identify how the stoichiometric and kinetic coupling determines lipid homeostasis and its regulation. The model encompasses 308 reactions and 212 unique metabolites, and includes the following subsystems: glycolysis, fatty acid biosynthesis and elongation, biosynthesis of phospholipids, sphingolipids, cardiolipin and sterols, triacylglycerides decomposition and the mevalonate pathway. We curated this model using thermodynamic data as well as lipidomic measurements and we used the Optimization and Risk Analysis of Complex Living Entities (ORACLE) framework to generate populations of parametrized kinetic models that are consistent with the given physiology, while satisfying the stoichiometric and thermodynamic constraints. We used these models to identify parameters (i.e. enzyme activities) that determine lipid distribution and homeostasis.


Multitasking motor imagery (MI) of the unilateral upper limb is potentially more valuable in stroke rehabilitation than the current conventional MI in both hands. In this paper, a novel experimental paradigm was designed to imagine two motions of unilateral upper limb, which is hand gripping and releasing, and elbow reciprocating left and right. During this experiment, the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were collected from 10 subjects. The time and frequency domains of the EEG signals were analyzed and visualized, indicating the presence of different Event-Related Desynchronization (ERD) or Event-Related Synchronization (ERS) for the two tasks. Then the two tasks were classified through three different EEG decoding methods, in which the optimized convolutional neural network (CNN) based on FBCNet achieved an average accuracy of 67.8%, obtaining a good recognition result. This work not only can advance the studies of MI decoding of unilateral upper limb, but also can provide a basis for better upper limb stroke rehabilitation in MI-BCI.


The remarkable diversity of neuronal morphologies and synaptic connections in the CNS provide striking examples of cell polarity. Over the past decade, genetic studies in Caenorhabditis elegans identified a series of PAR (for partitioning-defective) proteins required to generate cell polarity and asymmetric cell divisions. The discovery of related proteins in Drosophila and vertebrates suggests an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for cell polarity divisions (Hutterer et al., 2004; Macara, 2004; Wiggin et al., 2005). In mammals, Par3, Par6, and aPKC/PKC form a protein complex (mPar6 ) that binds the Rho GTPase Cdc42. Although the molecular mechanism by which conserved polarity proteins influence cell polarity in different species and/or different cell processes are not likely to be identical, they provide an exciting new experimental approach to neuronal polarity in the developing brain. This Mini-Review summarizes some of the work presented as a Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on recent progress in neuronal polarity related to CNS development. Using the mouse cerebellar granule cell as a model system, Dr. Hatten will discuss live imaging experiments, which illustrate the key role of mPar6 signaling in glial-guided neuronal migration (www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/42/10624). Cultures of hippocampal neurons have long provided a key assay system for defining signaling cascades leading to axon and dendrite development. Studies by Dr. Kaibuchi and others have revealed the important role of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-kinase)/ Akt/glycogen synthase kinase-3 /collapsin response mediator protein-2 signaling for axon specification and elongation. Dr. Kaibuchi will discuss recent findings on the Rho family small GTPases and the mPar6 signaling complex in the initial events of neuronal polarization (www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/42/10626). Dr. Jan and colleagues used genetic screens in Drosophila to identify mutations that perturb dendritic patterning (www. jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/42/10631). The mutants have defects in the secretory pathway of dendrites, but not axons, suggesting a key role for the secretory pathways in the growth and differentiation of dendrites. The final article in this Mini-Review series, by Dr. Van Aelst, discusses polarity mechanisms in the establishment of functional connectivity (www.jneurosci.org/ cgi/content/full/26/42/10633). Previous experiments by Dr. Van Aelst and colleagues showed that the Rho GTPases are key integrators of environmental cues, which regulate axo-dendritic plasticity in developing hippocampus. Van Aelst reviews mechanisms, by which Rac regulators remodel both the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons, in hippocampal axon development. Thus, the research presented in the symposium, on both invertebrate and vertebrate systems, reviews and integrates the rapid advances in this exciting interface between cell biology, genetics, and neuroscience, to provide novel insights into the development of neuronal polarity.


Temporal logics for the specification of information-flow properties are able to express relations between multiple executions of a system. The two most important such logics are HyperLTL and HyperCTL*, which generalise LTL and CTL* by trace quantification. It is known that this expressiveness comes at a price, i.e. satisfiability is undecidable for both logics. In this paper we settle the exact complexity of these problems, showing that both are in fact highly undecidable: we prove that HyperLTL satisfiability is $\Sigma_1^1$-complete and HyperCTL* satisfiability is $\Sigma_1^2$-complete. These are significant increases over the previously known lower bounds and the first upper bounds. To prove $\Sigma_1^2$-membership for HyperCTL*, we prove that every satisfiable HyperCTL* sentence has a model that is equinumerous to the continuum, the first upper bound of this kind. We prove this bound to be tight. Finally, we show that the membership problem for every level of the HyperLTL quantifier alternation hierarchy is $\Pi_1^1$-complete.


Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) - often seen as the fastest growing sector on the post-Cold War diplomatic agenda - are increasingly viewed by the international community as useful instruments for addressing a range of security and diplomatic issues. Rethinking Confidence-Building Measures warns against an uncritical pursuit of CBMs, arguing that the idea has been oversold. The author asserts that obstacles to meaningful agreements are much more important than usually acknowledged, and the political and military ramifications have been generally ignored. She concludes that the same effort, painstaking negotiation, and possibilities for failure are inherent in CBMs as in the wide array of other potential solutions for managing interstate security relations, but with far fewer substantial results.


Grounded in the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, we develop a research model for assessing the value of e-business at the firm level. Based on this framework, we formulate six hypotheses and identify six factors (technology readiness, firm size, global scope, financial resources, competition intensity, and regulatory environment) that may affect value creation of e-business. Survey data from 612 firms across 10 countries in the financial services industry were collected and used to test the theoretical model. To examine how e-business value is influenced by economic environments, we compare two subsamples from developed and developing countries. Based on structural equation modeling, our empirical analysis demonstrates several key findings: (1) Within the TOE framework, technology readiness emerges as the strongest factor for e-business value, while financial resources, global scope, and regulatory environment also significantly contribute to e-business value. (2) Firm size is negatively related to e-business value, suggesting that structural inertia associated with large firms tends to retard e-business value. (3) Competitive pressure often drives firms to adopt e-business, but e-business value is associated more with internal organizational resources (e.g., technological readiness) than with external pressure to adopt. (4) While financial resources are an important factor in developing countries, technological capabilities become far more important in developed countries. This suggests that as firms move into deeper stages of e-business transformation, the key determinant of e-business value shifts from monetary spending to higher dimensions of organizational capabilities. (5) Government regulation plays a much more important role in developing countries than in developed countries. These findings indicate the usefulness of the proposed research model and theoretical framework for studying e-business value. They also provide insights for both business managers and policy-makers.


In this thesis, we address two important characteristics of prediction tasks in many real world problems
by developing an adversarial classification framework. Structured data is the feature of many real
world applications (e.g., computer vision, bioinformatics, natural language processing) requiring structured
prediction methods to deal with interrelated variables. The other characteristic is lack of annotated
data resulting in unreliable accuracy and high cost of annotation.
We first introduce adversarial data augmentation (ADA) for object detection to demonstrate the adversarial
approach and its benefits for computer vision without employing structural constraints on the
output. Instead, the adversarial distribution over detected objects is shaped entirely by the evaluation performance
measure. Our approach avoids the non-convexity of the empirical risk minimization for loss
functions specialized for computer vision tasks (e.g., overlap over 70% being treated as correct), while
providing strong theoretical guarantees (e.g., Fisher consistency). We find significant improvement on
efficiency and predictive performance comparing with other methods across different deep architectures
and features. As a next step, we study two structured prediction tasks: multi-label classification and
bipartite matching. For the first task, we consider learning in edge-weighted graphs by proposing an adversarial
robust cut framework. We explain two applications of our approach in supervised multi-label
classification and semi-supervised binary classification, and find better prediction performance, tighter
loss bound and time efficiency comparing with the state of the art methods. Next, we investigate modeling
bipartite matching problems in our adversarial framework as our third contribution. We apply our approach in a video tracking application and demonstrate the efficiency and Fisher consistency of our
method.
As the third part of this thesis, we leverage adversarial active learning for structured prediction problems
to address the lack of annotated data characteristics. We employ our adversarial structured prediction
frameworks (Adversarial robust cut and adversarial bipartite matching) and apply active learning
using uncertainty sampling heuristics.
Finally, we target zero-shot learning problem where the training phase is done in the absence of
testing data classes. We achieve better performance than comparison methods (e.g., structural support
vector machine, Conditional random field) by leveraging adversarial robust cuts and a hierarchical feature
representation.


Continuous Ventricular Stroke Work (VSW) estimation requires accurate estimate of both stroke volume and aortic pressure. However, accurate beat-to-beat stroke volume measurement is highly invasive and thus typically unavailable in clinical practice. This study analyses the accuracy of a model-based method estimating relative change in VSW using only aortic pressure measurements. Using data from porcine experiment, the correlation coefficient was determined between the relative change of VSW from directly measured data and the model-based estimate of VSW. The result showed good agreement with, R=0.71. The model accurately captured the trend of VSW using only aortic pressure measurements and thus offers significant clinical value in early diagnosis and improving care for cardiovascular dysfunction.