Background: Many patients with behavioral health concerns seek services for their problems from primary care providers (PCPs) rather than specialty mental health services. This study investigated whether referrals by PCPs to integrated behavioral health specialists could be predicted by PCPs' stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illness, blaming of patients for their problems, and beliefs about the causes of mental illness.
Method: Participants were all PCPs (N = 22) from three integrated primary care clinics, all part of the same Federally Qualified Health Center. PCPs completed a brief packet of questionnaires. Referral rates (percentage of unique patients seen in the prior three months who were referred to integrated behavioral health specialists) were extracted from electronic medical records.
Results: PCPs showed moderate blame and low stigma towards patients with mental illness. PCPs reported mental illnesses were most strongly caused by environmental and biological factors, compared to psychological factors. Approximately 16% of patients seen by PCPs were referred to behavioral health specialists. Blame and stigma were not related to referral rates, but greater endorsement of biological causes was related to lower referral rates.
Conclusions: Educating PCPs into the psychosocial determinants of behavioral health problems might increase willingness to refer patients to integrated care specialists.


Honey samples (n = 126) from Castilla-La Mancha (Central Spain) were characterized based on their physicochemical properties and a melissopalynological analysis. The latter showed that Echium pollen type was the dominant palynomorph in most samples, representing at least 30% of the pollen in each sample. As anticipated, a relationship was observed between the proportion of this pollen and the properties of the honey. One goal of this study was to set a threshold that defines the percentage of pollen necessary for Viper's bugloss honey to be considered monofloral or multifloral. This is a mandatory requirement in light of the publication of the European Directive 2014/63/EU establishing the regulations governing the labelling and control of honey to eradicate fraud (BOE n° 147, June 2015). By analyzing how the proportions of Echium pollen type affected the physicochemical and sensory parameters of the honey, the honeys analyzed could be segregated into multifloral and monofloral honeys. The data indicates that the proportion of pollen necessary to discriminate monofloral Viper's bugloss honey lies at 70%.


Transgenic plants were constructed expressing a novel cytosolic inorganic pyrophosphatase in order to reduce the cytosolic pyrophosphate content. To this end the Escherichia coli gene ppa encoding inorganic pyrophosphatase was cloned between the 35S CaMV promoter and the poly(A) site of the octopine synthase gene and transferred into tobacco and potato plants by Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer. Regenerated plants were tested for the expression of the ppa gene by Northern blots and activity gels. Plants expressing active inorganic pyrophosphatase showed a dramatic change in photoassimilate partitioning. In both transgenic tobacco and potato plants the ratio between soluble sugars and starch was increased by about 3-4-fold in source leaves as compared with the wild-type. However, whereas source leaves of transgenic tobacco plants accumulated much higher levels of glucose (up to 68-fold), fructose (up to 24-fold), sucrose (up to 12-fold) and starch (up to 8-fold) this was not observed in potato plants where the change in assimilate partitioning in source leaves was due to an increase of about 2-fold in sucrose and a reduction in starch content. Expression of the cytosolic inorganic pyrophosphatase in tobacco results in stunted growth of vegetatively growing plants due to a reduced internode distance. Upon flowering the transgenic plants increase their growth rate, reaching almost the same height as control plants at the end of the growth period. Old source leaves accumulate up to 100-fold more soluble sugars than control leaves. This increase in soluble sugars is accompanied by a reduction in chlorophyll content (up to 85%). Transgenic potato plants showed a less dramatic change in their growth behaviour. Plants were slightly reduced in size, with stems more highly branched. Tuber number increased 2-3-fold, but tuber weight was lower resulting in no net increase in fresh weight.


We examine the propagation of disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere caused by fast forward shock interaction with the magnetopause. Our statistical study and event analyses show that the propagation speeds are larger in the magnetosphere than in the solar wind and are larger in the nightside magnetosphere than in the dayside magnetosphere. A case study of a double shock during 9 November 2002 is examined both observationally and using the GUMICS-4 global MHD simulation. Tracing the disturbance propagation allows us to confirm that the MHD simulation results are in good agreement with the in situ observations. The simulation results show that the propagation of the disturbance occurs in the antisunward direction at all clock angles simultaneously. However, changes in the magnetosheath are largest at high latitudes, while in the magnetotail the largest variations are seen in the plasma sheet.


Students in 1989 were at pains to distinguish their actions from those taken by students in the Cultural Revolution. Yet there were important similarities. In the present paper, we identify influence on the Democracy Movement from the Cultural Revolution through (1) the expansion and/or widespread familiarization of repertories of collective action available to Chinese activists; (2) precedents for collective action that may have lowered the barriers to action for some while raising them for others; (3) the participation of people at different stages of their lives in both movements; (4) the transformation of the significance of the ideas of democracy and political authority wrought by the Cultural Revolution for many Chinese; (5) the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese intellectuals; (6) the material consequences of the Cultural Revolution which contributed to China's position in the post-Mao era and the specific issues reform and protest sought to confront; (7) the discourse of corruption which provided the 1989 movement with its strongest links between students and ordinary citizens, and which was accentuated in the Cultural Revolution; (8) the affirmation of the value of ordinary life by which students in the 1980s, encouraged by the `literature of the wounded', rebelled against the Puritanism and denigration of `unauthorized' personal relationships that had been characteristic of the Cultural Revolution; (9) the role of the Cultural Revolution as a cautionary tale, shaping the movement itself, inhibiting some older intellectuals from participating, and determining much of how the government viewed and responded to the Democracy Movement; and (10) the embeddedness in different ways of both Cultural Revolution and 1989 protests in an international context.


The COVID-19 pandemic is having major economic and personal consequences for collegiate and professional sports. Sporting events have been canceled or postponed, and even when baseball and basketball seasons resumed in the United States recently, no fans were in attendance. As play resumed, several players developed COVID-19, disrupting some of the schedules. A hypothesis now under scientific consideration is that taking vitamin supplements to raise serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations could quickly reduce the risk and/or severity of COVID-19. Several mechanisms have been identified through which vitamin D could reduce the risks of infection and severity, death, and long-haul effects of COVID-19: (1) inducing production of cathelicidin and defensins to reduce the survival and replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus; (2) reducing inflammation and the production of proinflammatory cytokines and risk of the "cytokine storm" that damages the epithelial layer of the lungs, heart, vascular system, and other organs; and (3) increasing production of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, thus limiting the amount of angiotensin II available to the virus to cause damage. Clinical trials have confirmed that vitamin D supplementation reduces risk of acute respiratory tract infections, and approximately 30 observational studies have shown that incidence, severity, and death from COVID-19 are inversely correlated with serum 25(OH)D concentrations. Vitamin D supplementation is already familiar to many athletes and sports teams because it improves athletic performance and increases playing longevity. Thus, athletes should consider vitamin D supplementation to serve as an additional means by which to reduce risk of COVID-19 and its consequences.


Performing arts is important means of creative communication such as music, dance, drama, mime, puppetry, circus, illusion, magic, etc. Professionals may come across various difficulties, stresses, and issues of psychological wellbeing but, a little research on this subject is done in Pakistan. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship of perceived stress, self-efficacy, and psychological well-being among performing arts students. The sample comprised 203 (111 acting and 92 singing) performing arts students recruited from different colleges and universities of Pakistan. Simple linear regression analysis found that stress significantly negatively predicted four dimensions of psychological well-being such as environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relation, and self-acceptance. Women showed significantly higher levels of stress as compared to men among performing arts students. The research has implications for the performing arts students, counselors, and therapists for a better understanding of stress, self-efficacy, and dimensions of psychological well-being i.e., autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self-acceptance.


Three-dimensional (3D) biomimetic systems hold great promise for the study of biological systems in vitro as well as for the development and testing of pharmaceuticals. Here, we test the hypothesis that an intact segment of lumbar rat spinal cord will form functional neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) with engineered, 3D muscle tissue, mimicking the partial development of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Muscle tissues are grown on a 3D-printed polyethylene glycol (PEG) skeleton where deflection of the backbone due to muscle contraction causes the displacement of the pillar-like "feet." We show that spinal cord explants extend a robust and complex arbor of motor neurons and glia in vitro. We then engineered a "spinobot" by innervating the muscle tissue with an intact segment of lumbar spinal cord that houses the hindlimb locomotor central pattern generator (CPG). Within 7 days of the spinal cord being introduced to the muscle tissue, functional neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) are formed, resulting in the development of an early PNS in vitro. The newly innervated muscles exhibit spontaneous contractions as measured by the displacement of pillars on the PEG skeleton. Upon chemical excitation, the spinal cord-muscle system initiated muscular twitches with a consistent frequency pattern. These sequences of contraction/relaxation suggest the action of a spinal CPG. Chemical inhibition with a blocker of neuronal glutamate receptors effectively blocked contractions. Overall, these data demonstrate that a rat spinal cord is capable of forming functional neuromuscular junctions ex vivo with an engineered muscle tissue at an ontogenetically similar timescale.


The adsorption of two dinitrophenol herbicides, 4,6-dinitro-o-cresol (DNOC) and 4,6-dinitro-o-sec-butyl phenol (dinoseb), by two reference smectite clays (SWy-2 and SAz-1) was evaluated using a combination of sorption isotherms, Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and molecular dynamic simulations. Clays were subject to saturation with various cations, and charge reduction. The DNOC adsorption decreased with increasing pH indicating that DNOC was primarily adsorbed as the neutral species. The FTIR spectra of DNOC-clay films showed that DNOC molecules are oriented parallel to the clay surface. Interlayer cations have a strong effect on adsorption depending largely on their hydration energies. Weakly hydrated cations, e.g. K+ and Cs+, resulted in greater sorption compared to more strongly hydrated cations such as Na+ or Ca2+. Lower hydration favors direct interactions of exchangeable cations with -NO2 groups of DNOC and manifests optimal interlayer spacings for adsorption. In the presence of sorbed DNOC, an interlayer spacing for K-SWy-2 of between 12 and 12.5 Å was maintained regardless of the presence of water. This d-spacing allowed DNOC molecules to interact simultaneously with the opposing clay layers thus minimizing contact of DNOC with water. The charge density of clays also affected sorption by controlling the size of adsorption domains. Accordingly, DNOC adsorption by low-charge clay (K-SWy-2) was much higher than by high-charge clay (K-SAz-1) and Li-charge reduction greatly enhanced dinoseb adsorption by K-SAz-1. Steric constraints were also evident from the observation that adsorption of DNOC, which contains a methyl substituent, was much greater than dinoseb, which contains a bulkier isobutyl group. Adsorption of DNOC by K-SAz-1 was not affected in the presence of dinoseb, whereas dinoseb adsorption was greatly reduced in the presence of DNOC.


The implementation of programs for feeding calves is one of the ways to achieve greater efficiency in milk production. The objective of this work was to analyze the cost of feeding and to evaluate the behavior of calves fed three commercial milk substitutes until the weaning stage. One hundred and twenty Holstein calves were randomly selected, which were separated from the mother at birth and housed individually in previously washed and disinfected wooden cages. The treatments were as follows: A: four L and B: six L milk with 22% crude protein, C: six L milk with 22.5% crude protein, and D: six L milk with 26% crude protein. The economic analysis included the price of the three substitutes and the cost of the initiator concentrate. The variables considered to estimate productivity were evaluated at birth and weaning, including: weight and height at the cross, daily gain and total weight gain. The daily weight gain was calculated by dividing the total weight gain by the number of days in lactation. Statistical analysis of the variables was performed using an analysis of variance and the comparison of means was performed with the Tukey test. The value of (P< 0.05) was used to consider statistical difference. Regarding the cost of food, treatment A was the cheapest and the least efficient while the treatment C was the most expensive and efficient. There was no statistical difference (P<0.05) in height at the cross at birth, weaning and birth weight; In the case of daily and total weight gain statistical difference was observed (P<0.01). Greater growth can be expected in heifers receiving a milk replacer that meets nutritional needs.


Assessment of the severity of coronary stenoses on arteriograms conventionally is based on subjective estimates of percent luminal diameter narrowing. However, in studies in patients with multivessel coronary artery disease, we have found a poor correlation between percent stenosis and the physiologic significance of an individual coronary obstruction. The purpose of this study was to determine whether computerized videodensitometry would allow estimation of coronary luminal area and therefore prediction of the physiologic significance of individual coronary stenoses in humans. Videodensitometry was used to define the minimal luminal area of 15 left anterior descending, 15 circumflex, and 15 right coronary artery segments in 43 patients. Computer-assisted quantitative coronary arteriography (method of Brown et al) was used to determine the minimal luminal cross-sectional area of these same segments. In each arterial segment, coronary vasodilator reserve was assessed using intraoperative (n = 18 segments) or intracoronary (n = 27 segments) Doppler measurements of coronary vasodilator reserve. Videodensitometric estimates of coronary luminal area correlated well with minimal luminal area defined using the independent geometric technique of quantitative coronary arteriography (r = 0.82, y = 0.97 X + 0.71, SEE = 1.83 mm2, n = 45) and with lesion physiologic significance as defined by studies of the peak-to-resting velocity ratio (r = 0.71, 0.92, and 0.74 for the left anterior descending, circumflex, and right coronary arteries, respectively). Thus, videodensitometry is a promising method that may supplement geometric approaches to quantitative analysis of coronary arteriograms in humans.


Objective: The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to explore the psychosocial process involved when senior baccalaureate students were being evaluated as unsafe by their preceptors; and 2) to understand how faculty play a role in that process. Method: A grounded theory method was employed. Data were generated from six faculty via semi-structured interviews and analyzed using constant comparative analysis. Results: The process of 'Facilitating student success' emerged as the core variable.  Intrinsic to this process were six major categories and their inherent subcategories: 1) recognizing red flags of unsafe practice; 2) strategies for managing students who display unsafe practice; 3) using evaluation strategies to foster success; 4) deciding to fail a student; 5) guiding and supporting the student and preceptor; and 6) guiding and supporting faculty. The six major categories represent the processes that faculty advisors used to facilitate student learning and success in the clinical setting. In this article, only findings related specifically to the last category 'Guiding and supporting faculty', and subcategories: 'role preparation', 'faculty advisor perceived roles', and 'guidance and support received from the educational program' will be discussed. The other categories have been reported elsewhere. Conclusion: The findings from this study can contribute to our understanding of: a) the process involved in working with final year nursing students who display unsafe clinical practice; b) identifying preparatory and support needs of faculty who oversee the preceptorship experience; and c) the value of the development and implementation of preceptorship support programs.


Multi-shot person re-identification (MsP-RID) utilizes multiple images from the same person to facilitate identification. Considering the fact that motion information may not be discriminative nor reliable enough for MsP-RID, this paper is focused on handling the large variations in the visual appearances through learning discriminative visual metrics for identification. Existing metric learning-based methods usually exploit pair-wise or triple-wise similarity constraints, that generally demands intensive optimization in metric learning, or leads to degraded performances by using sub-optimal solutions. In addition, as the training data are significantly imbalanced, the learning can be largely dominated by the negative pairs and thus produces unstable and non-discriminative results. In this paper, we propose a novel type of similarity constraint. It assigns the sample points to a set of reference points to produce a linear number of reference constraints. Several optimal transport-based schemes for reference constraint generation are proposed and studied. Based on those constraints, by utilizing a typical regressive metric learning model, the closed-form solution of the learned metric can be easily obtained. Extensive experiments and comparative studies on several public MsP-RID benchmarks have validated the effectiveness of our method and its significant superiority over the state-of-the-art MsP-RID methods in terms of both identification accuracy and running speed.


Transforming growth factor β is growth-inhibitory in non-transformed epithelial cells but becomes growth-promoting during tumorigenesis. The role of the type I and II receptors in tumorigenesis has been extensively studied, but the role of the ubiquitously expressed type III receptor (TβRIII) remains elusive. We developed short hairpin RNAs directed against TβRIII to investigate the role of this receptor in breast cancer tumorigenesis. Nontumorigenic NMuMG mouse cells stably expressing short hairpin RNA specific to mouse TβRIII (NM-kd) demonstrated increased cell growth, motility, and invasion as compared with control cells expressing shRNA to human TβRIII (NM-con). Reconstitution of TβRIII expression with rat TβRIII abrogated the increased growth and motility seen in the NM-kd cells. In addition, the NM-kd cells exhibited marked reduction in the expression of the adherens junction protein, E-cadherin. This loss of E-cadherin was due to increased NFκB activity that, in turn, resulted in increased expression of the transcriptional repressors of E-cadherin such as Snail, Slug, Twist, and Sip1. Finally, NMuMG cells in which TβRIII had been knocked down formed invasive tumors in athymic nude mice, whereas the control cells did not. These data indicate that TβRIII acts as a tumor suppressor in nontumorigenic mammary epithelial cells at least in part by inhibiting NFκB-mediated repression of E-cadherin.


Agro-tourism is a tool that has been widely used around the world for the purpose of intensifying the socio-economic aspects of the local community. Malaysia is supportive of this tool. The main objective of this paper is to unveil the potential socio-economic benefits that can be offered by the agro-tourism activities to progressive fishing communities or locally known as Desa Wawasan Nelayan1 community in Malaysia. Data were gathered through document analyses. The qualitative studies concluded that agro-tourism can be the impetus for sustainable development of Desa Wawasan Nelayan community.The benefits include enhancing their social empowerment system, strengthening their social ties and developing their social skills and relationships, increasing the income of local community, diversifying and intensifying the economic activities, providing job opportunities and alleviation of poverty. Thus, agro-tourism has the potential to raise the consciousness of the selected community regarding sustainable development.

 Key words: Agro-tourism, community development, sustainable development, economic development, social development.


Complex study of transosseous osteosynthesis effectiveness in treatment of patients with limb intra- and peri-articular fractures presented. Optimal treatment techniques for patients proposed depending on bone and soft tissue localization and degree of their involvement on the basis of experimental, clinical, physiological, biomechanical and biochemical techniques of studying. Good and satisfactory results of treatment obtained in 96.6 % of cases, and they allow to implement the transosseous osteosynthesis method in practical health service broader. This method combined with current diagnostic techniques, introduction of arthroscopy and endoprosthetics will allow to raise this branch of our specialty to a higher level.


Compressed sensing, an emerging multidisciplinary field involving mathematics, probability, optimization, and signal processing, focuses on reconstructing an unknown signal from a very limited number of samples. Because information such as boundaries of organs is very sparse in most MR images, compressed sensing makes it possible to reconstruct the same MR image from a very limited set of measurements significantly reducing the MRI scan duration. In order to do that however, one has to solve the difficult problem of minimizing nonsmooth functions on large data sets. To handle this, we propose an efficient algorithm that jointly minimizes the lscr1 norm, total variation, and a least squares measure, one of the most powerful models for compressive MR imaging. Our algorithm is based upon an iterative operator-splitting framework. The calculations are accelerated by continuation and takes advantage of fast wavelet and Fourier transforms enabling our code to process MR images from actual real life applications. We show that faithful MR images can be reconstructed from a subset that represents a mere 20 percent of the complete set of measurements.


Information spreads across social and technological networks, but often the network structures are hidden and we only observe the traces left by the diffusion processes, called cascades. It is known that, under a popular continuous-time diffusion model, as long as the model parameters satisfy a natural incoherence condition, it is possible to recover the correct network structure with high probability if we observe O(d 3 logN) cascades, where d is the maximum number of parents of a node and N is the total number of nodes. However, the incoherence condition depends, in a nontrivial way, on the source (node) distribution of the cascades, which is typically unknown. Our open problem is whether it is possible to design an active algorithm which samples the source locations in a sequential manner and achieves the same or even better sample complexity, e.g., o(d 3 logN), than previous work.


The current regulatory process allows for the use of models employing realistic assumptions as opposed to conservative bounding approaches, requiring a concerted use of best-estimate modeling and comprehensive estimation of uncertainties, collectively referred to as best-estimate-plus-uncertainty methods. This necessitates access to an integrated and automated procedure for the propagation and understanding of key sources of uncertainties. Focusing on neutronic reactor core simulation, this paper lays the theoretical foundations for an uncertainty characterization framework that is comprehensive, informative, and efficient, implying its ability to propagate all sources of uncertainties and identify key contributors in a computationally efficient manner. This paper represents the overarching objective of our work to propagate multigroup (MG) cross section uncertainties through lattice physics calculations and core-wide simulation. This requires the evaluation of few-group parameters uncertainties in terms of a wide range of local conditions, e.g., burnup, fuel temperature, etc., which results in a very high dimensional uncertainty space. The first strategy employed to compress the few-group uncertainties is the physics-guided coverage mapping (PCM) methodology developed to assess the similarity between the branch and base uncertainties in lattice calculation. To further compress the uncertainty propagated, this paper employs an accuracy-preserving reduced order modeling (ROM) technique relying on the use of range finding algorithms to construct all few-group parameters variations to a very small preset tolerance. In a separate cosubmitted paper, this framework is demonstrated to thermal reactors including both light and heavy water systems using a number of computer codes, including NESTLE-C, SERPENT, SCALE's NEWT, and SAMPLER codes.


Recent multi-task learning research argues against unitary scalarization, where training simply minimizes the sum of the task losses. Several ad-hoc multi-task optimization algorithms have instead been proposed, inspired by various hypotheses about what makes multi-task settings difficult. The majority of these optimizers require per-task gradients, and introduce significant memory, runtime, and implementation overhead. We show that unitary scalarization, coupled with standard regularization and stabilization techniques from single-task learning, matches or improves upon the performance of complex multi-task optimizers in popular supervised and reinforcement learning settings. We then present an analysis suggesting that many specialized multi-task optimizers can be partly interpreted as forms of regularization, potentially explaining our surprising results. We believe our results call for a critical reevaluation of recent research in the area.


Over the last 20 years there has been considerable research into the use of immunonutrition, also referred to as pharmaconutrition, in the management of patients undergoing and recovering from elective gastrointestinal surgery for malignancy. In this group of patients, the use of pharmaconutrition seems to confer superior outcomes to standard nutrition formulations with regards to postoperative infective complications and length of hospital stay. It is therefore frequently recommended for use in elective gastrointestinal oncological surgical populations. However, it remains unclear whether the data supporting these recommendation is robust. Studies reporting improved outcomes with pharmaconutrition frequently compare this intervention with non-equivalent control groups, do not report on the actual nutritional provision received by study participants, overlook the potential impact of industry funding on the conduct of research and do not adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to the research undertaken. For these reasons, an urgent critical re-appraisal of the use and recommendations of pharmaconutrition in this group of patients is warranted to resolve some of the above mentioned issues.


Portals have evolved from simple Web applications with multiple links to an enterprise application delivery platform that serves composite applications. In a world where organizations are gearing up with service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategies and re-working existing apps to fit the Web 2.0 programming model, portals are strategic infrastructure components on every CIOs radar. As companies move toward SOA, portlets become an even hotter topic. Portlets provide the user interface for these services. IBMs unwavering commitment to open standards such as Java Specification Request (JSR 168) and strong presence in the application server market (IBM WebSphere Application Server) have helped establish WebSphere Portal as a leader among available portal solutions in the market.Programming Portlets, Second Edition takes developers down a path of understanding all the latest concepts, including SOA, AJAX, and best practices to consider when building a J2EEbased portal. The book offers the reader the tools and information necessary to develop portlets and portal applications in two ways. Part 1 focuses on building portlets that will adhere to the JSR 168 API standard. This allows developers who want to use any JSR 168compliant portlet container to quickly build quality portlets. Part 2 extends the focus to building JSR 168compliant portlets for the IBM WebSphere Portal Server and includes information on portlet extensions and WebSphere Portal capabilities that can be leveraged in a portal development effort.Among the many things you will find inside Programming Portlets, Second Edition: Addition of extensive JSR 168 material Updates for WebSphere Portal (V6) Coverage of new technologies such as IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory and Lotus Workplace Forms Ways to use AJAX in portlets Explanation of how portals and portlets fit into SOA Method for creating JSR 168compliant portlets using IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory, Workplace Forms, and creation of portal services Instructions for building complex portlets quickly using Rational Application Developer or WebSphere Portlet Factory Use of JavaServerTM Faces in portlets Proper use of JSTL with regard to portlets Effective integration of Struts in the portal framework Ways of inter-portlet communication Method to build a portlet from the ground up quickly and effectively The best practices of portlet development Valuable information resources, including examples of various types of portlets


The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately threatens vulnerable populations, including women and especially pregnant and post-partum women. Early estimates suggest that maternal and child deaths could increase by 8.7-38.6% and 9.8-44.7%, respectively, across low and middle-income countries (LMIC) due to disruptions in healthcare access and food insecurity. A global systematic review of impacts on maternal health found evidence of disruptions to healthcare services, reduced use of antenatal care, decreased access to family planning, and increased stress, anxiety, and depression related in part to isolation and fear of COVID-19 infection.3 Approximately one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, there continues to be a lack of information on the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on pregnant and post-partum women and their infants, particularly from LMICs. Prior to the pandemic, Kenya, in particular, reported one of the highest rates of maternal and neonatal mortality in the world. Action-oriented research is needed to identify solutions and strategies for national and local government and communities. This policy brief provides information on the experiences of pregnant and post-partum women during COVID-19, with particular attention to healthcare access, maternal and newborn healthcare utilization, and maternal and newborn health.


Mice immunized by percutaneous exposure to ultraviolet-irradiated Schistosoma mansoni cercariae developed levels of resistance to subsequent S. mansoni infection comparable to those induced by gamma-irradiated cercariae (50-70% reduction in adult worm burden). Cercariae treated with ultraviolet doses ranging from one to three times the minimum dose required to prevent long-term survival induced the highest levels of resistance.


This paper introduces the research results of the thermal stability and the delayed formation of ettringite in China and abroad. Aiming at the debate of the ettringite delayed formation condition of the massive shrinkage compensating concrete in the engineering field, the decomposition and delayed formation of ettringite were studied in simulated environments in massive concrete and other controlled curing environment. As UEA is the most applied expansive agent in domestic, the massive shrinkage compensating concrete mixed with UEA is selected as the research object. The test results show that, AFM appears in the research specimens when the inner temperature reach 80°C and the ettringite can reform under the condition of rich water supply after the concrete cooling to an ambient temperature. By comparing the test results of different curing environment, some points for attention during the construction of the UEA massive shrinkage compensating concrete are proposed.


Cooking of protein-rich food generates procarcinogenic heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCA) in amounts that range in the part per billion levels. HCA have been reported to induce xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes of the cytochrome P450 1A (CYP1A) subfamily, most notably the CYP1A2 isoform. The regulator mechanism of the CYP1A induction by HCA is, however, unclear. Studies in vivo in rats and in primary hepatocyte cultures revealed "that MelQx induced both CYP1A1/1A2 proteins and the corresponding catalytic activities. In contrast to previous studies, no preferential induction of CYP1A2 was observed in the present study. CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 are target genes of the intracellular dioxin receptor. This receptor interacts with xenobiotic response elements (XREs) of target promoters upon binding the environmental pollutant dioxin or related compounds. HCA exhibited capacity to activate the dioxin receptor to a form which interacts with XRE in vitro. Taken together, these results suggest that MelQx regulates both CYP1A isozymes by the same mechanism involving the dioxin receptor. Another group of putative dioxin receptor ligands of dietary orgin are the indolocarbazoles, which are produced in vivo from precursor molecules in cruciferous plants. Indolocarbazoles potently regulated gene expression of a reporter gene driven by a minimal XRE in both mouse and human hepatoma cells. The indolocarbazole-induced human receptor appeared to form more stable complexes with XRE in vitro relative to those generated by the dioxin-activated receptor. This study indicates that the HCA and the indolocarbazoles both represent distinct classes of dietary dioxin receptor agonists.


It is shown that magnetic fields can be generated in a warm plasma by the nonstationary ponderomotive force of a large-amplitude electromagnetic wave. In the present Brief Report, we derive simple and explicit results that can be useful for understanding the origin of the magnetic fields that are produced in intense laser-plasma interaction experiments. PACS numbers: 52.25.Xz, 52.27.Ep, 52.30.Ex, 52.35.Hr


One of the serious problems which must be overcome in realising a 1 Mbit DRAM is high-power dissipation associated with data-line charging and discharging. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the following three techniques, which permit power reduction by about one-quarter: a multidivided data-line structure, 512 refresh cycles and an on-chip voltage limiter circuit. These techniques are proven to be useful through the design and evaluation of an experimental n-MOS 1 Mbit DRAM with a 46 mm2 chip size. The chip fabricated provides a 295 mW operating power at a 260 ns cycle time despite the fast access time of 90 ns. The possibility of further power reduction is also described.


RSV is the most common cause of infant bronchiolitis, leading to morbidity and mortality in both infants and the elderly. The relationship between RSV and asthma development further highlights the need to fully understand the immune responses involved in order to develop effective vaccines and therapeutics to aid prevention and treatment of RSV infection respectively. Helminths have long been studied both as a major pathogen of humans, infecting approximately 3 billion people worldwide, and also their ability to modulate the host immune response to allow survival and chronic infection to ensue. Specifically, helminth infections are thought to modulate the host immune response through regulatory mechanisms which are not fully understood. This not only confers protection and survival of the parasites themselves, but also modulates the immune response to unrelated antigens and pathogens. In this thesis, the potential role of a strictly enteric helminth infection, with Heligmosomoides polygyrus, in the modulation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection was investigated and the associated immune mechanisms were investigated. Firstly, the effects of prior H. polygyrus infection on RSV infection and immune responses in the lung were analysed. H. polygyrus significantly reduced the number of natural killer cells, CD8 T cells, B cells and conventional dendritic cells in the lung following RSV infection. Co-infection also reduced the production of proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-α in the lungs. All of these reductions were associated with significantly lower viral titres on day 4 of RSV infection. Interestingly, this attenuation of immune responses and viral titres, correlated with reduced severity of clinical disease, as assessed by weight loss and lung function. H. polygyrus excretory secretory product (HES) was not found to be the immunemodulatory factor in this system, as HES failed to suppress viral titres and reduce immune cell responses to RSV infection. However, irradiated larvae with stunted maturation to adult worms, revealed that larval stages were sufficient to suppress viral titres. Next, the role of type 2 signalling for H. polygyrus effects on RSV infection were examined, using IL-4Rα mice. H. polygyrus infection maintained the ability to attenuate RSV infection and subsequent immune responses in IL-4Rα mice. Furthermore, the presence of the adaptive immune response was not required for H. polygyrus-induced attenuation of RSV infection, as demonstrated in recombinaseactivating gene (RAG) deficient mice. H. polygyrus induces innate type 2 immune responses indicating the release of the innate alarmin, IL-33, in the lung and consequently an accumulation of group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2). Their contribution to H. polygyrus effects remain to be fully elucidated. Finally, the role of antiviral responses was explored in H. polygyrus and RSV coinfection. H. polygyrus infection alone induced expression of antiviral genes, IFN-β, OAS1A, Viperin and the antimicrobial peptide CRAMP, in both the duodenum and the lung. Expression of these genes was still higher in the lung 1 hour after RSV in H. polygyrus co-infected mice compared to controls without co-infection. The importance of type I IFN signalling pathway was demonstrated using mice deficient in the type I IFN receptor in H. polygyrus co-infection, which failed to suppress RSV titres and subsequent lung immune cell infiltration. These data highlight the ability of the strictly enteric helminth H. polygyrus to attenuate RSV infection and subsequent immune responses in the lung through the potentiation of type I IFN signalling and consequent upregulation of antiviral immune responses in the lung.


In the VHF range, high-quality narrow-band filters with reasonable physical dimensions are extremely d8icult to realize. Excessive pass-band insertion loss accompanies filters employing lumped constant elements, and unreasonable size is a natural consequence of coaxial-resonator filters. Harmonic crystal filters are inadequate because of the unpredictable amount of spurious modes above the harmonic frequency; and hence they can only be used for very low percentage bandwidths. A solution to the above problems is provided by the use of helical resonators for high-quality filters. This paper describes the helical resonator, measurement of its Q, and coupling to the resonator. A procedure for the design and construction of a filter using helical circuits is then presented. Finally an example is given illustrating the design method, and several photographs of helical-resonator filters are shown.


We present a semantically rich graph representation for indoor robotic navigation. Our graph representation encodes: semantic locations such as offices or corridors as nodes, and navigational behaviors such as enter office or cross a corridor as edges. In particular, our navigational behaviors operate directly from visual inputs to produce motor controls and are implemented with deep learning architectures. This enables the robot to avoid explicit computation of its precise location or the geometry of the environment, and enables navigation at a higher level of semantic abstraction. We evaluate the effectiveness of our representation by simulating navigation tasks in a large number of virtual environments. Our results show that using a simple sets of perceptual and navigational behaviors, the proposed approach can successfully guide the way of the robot as it completes navigational missions such as going to a specific office. Furthermore, our implementation shows to be effective to control the selection and switching of behaviors.


After the flood disaster in 1953 in the southwestern part of the Netherlands, Van Dantzig tried to solve the economic decision problem concerning the optimal height of dikes. His solution has a fixed probability of flooding after each investment. However, when there is economic growth, not the probability of flooding but the expected yearly loss by flooding is the key variable in the real optimal safety strategy. Under some conditions, it is optimal to keep this expected loss within a constant interval. Therefore, when the potential damage increases by economic growth, the flooding probability has to decline in the course of time in order to keep the expected loss between the fixed boundaries. The purpose of the paper is to show the implications of the optimal solution in case there are differences between costs and benefits among dike-ring areas. Further, the paper focuses on the translation of the theoretical results into new legal standards that can work well in practice.


Objective We investigated the effect and mechanism of hypoxic microenvironment and hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cancer stemness. Design HCC cancer stemness was analysed by self-renewal ability, chemoresistance, expression of stemness-related genes and cancer stem cell (CSC) marker-positive cell population. Specific small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) proteases 1 (SENP1) mRNA level was examined with quantitative PCR in human paired HCCs. Immunoprecipitation was used to examine the binding of proteins and chromatin immunoprecipitation assay to detect the binding of HIFs with hypoxia response element sequence. In vivo characterisation was performed in immunocompromised mice and stem cell frequency was analysed. Results We showed that hypoxia enhanced the stemness of HCC cells and hepatocarcinogenesis through enhancing HIF-1α deSUMOylation by SENP1 and increasing stabilisation and transcriptional activity of HIF-1α. Furthermore, we demonstrated that SENP1 is a direct target of HIF-1/2α and a previously unrecognised positive feedback loop exists between SENP1 and HIF-1α. Conclusions Taken together, our findings suggest the significance of this positive feedback loop between HIF-1α and SENP1 in contributing to the increased cancer stemness in HCC and hepatocarcinogenesis under hypoxia. Drugs that specifically target SENP1 may offer a potential novel therapeutic approach for HCC.


Henna (Lawsonia inermis Linn.) one of the promising dye yielding crops is grown in more than thirty thousand hectares in Pali district of Rajasthan, constituting more than 90% area under cultivation in India. Till 2000 no work was done on the improvement in this crop for higher leaf yield. In 2001, arid and semi-arid areas of Gujarat and Rajasthan were explored and cuttings from individual 20 shrubs with higher foliage, dark green and large leaves free from insect pests and diseases were collected from 20 different sites. The cuttings were rooted, and the clones were transplanted in a single- row- plot of 3 m length accommodating 6 plants per row in randomized complete block design with three replications during August 2001. Data were recorded for dry leaf weight on three randomly selected plants from each plot for seven years during 2002–2009 and lawsone content was estimated. There were significant differences among the clones, environments and genotype - environment interaction. Rainfall was 50.6 (2002), 418.7 (2003). 220.4 (2004), 283.0 (2005), 270.6 (2006), 323.6 (2007) and 212.0 mm (2009). Average leaf yield per plant per year was 39.4 g, and it was maximum 72.6 g in 2004 and minimum 12.0 g in 2009. Only six genotypes showed more than 25% more leaf yield than the grand mean. Khedbrahm was the highest leaf yielder per plant (69.8 g) followed by Pali (60.6 g), Panchotiya (52.0 g) and Malav (51.6 g). The relationship of mean leaf yield with coefficient of variation was negative but it was non significant. Coefficient of variation was more than 40% in most of the genotypes and high yielding genotypes were in this category. Relationships of leaf yield with annual rainfall were positive in all the genotypes except genotypes Anand and Malpur. Variation in leaf yield due to rains was in the range of 0% (Ajmer) to 37.8% (Jodhpur) and on an average only 5.5% variation in leaf yield was due to rains. Variation attributable to the rains was more than 20% in genotypes Jodhpur and Kothara and in other genotypes variation due to rains was less. In case of lawsone content the grand mean was 1.42% of the dry leaf weight and it was minimum 1.07 in 2002 and 2007, and maximum 1.98% in 2003. The mean lawsone content varied from 1.13% for Sarotra to 1.82% for Ajmer and this was the only genotype that showed more than 25% lawsone than the grand mean. Coefficient of variation was mostly less than 30% and it was minimum in genotype Jodhpur and maximum in Anand. There was more uniformity in lawsone content than the leaf yield over different years. The relationship of lawsone content with the rainfall was positive in all the genotypes and it was significant only in the case of genotype Jadia. Maximum variation in the lawsone content due to the rainfall was in Jadia followed by Anand. In all the genotypes variation due to rainfall in lawsone content was more than the variation in leaf yield. In the desert where rains are erratic, the high yielding genotypes at the cost of stability cannot be ignored. So the high yielding genotypes i. e. Khedbrahm, Pali, Malav and Panchotiya can be grown in larger areas.


Background Development of model systems have helped to a large extent, in bridging gap to understand the mechanism(s) of disease including diabetes. Interestingly, WNIN/GR-Ob rats (Mutants), established at National Centre for Laboratory Animals (NCLAS) of National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), form a suitable model system to study obesity with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) demonstrating several secondary complications (cataract, cardiovascular complications, infertility, nephropathy etc). The present study has been carried out to explore the potent application(s) of multipotent stem cells such as bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs), to portray features of pre-diabetic/T2D vis-à-vis featuring obesity, with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), hyperinsulinemia (HI) and insulin resistance (IR) seen with Mutant rats akin to human situation. Methodology/Principal Findings Primary cultures of BM-MSCs (third passage) from Mutants, its lean littermate (Lean) and parental control (Control) were characterized for: proliferation markers, disease memory to mark obesity/T2D/HI/IR which included phased gene expression studies for adipogenic/pancreatic lineages, inflammatory markers and differentiation ability to form mature adipocytes/Insulin-like cellular aggregates (ILCAs). The data showed that BM-MSCs from Mutant demonstrated a state of disease memory, depicted by an upregulated expression of inflammatory markers (IL-6, TNFα); increased stem cell recruitment (Oct-4, Sox-2) and proliferation rates (CD90+/CD29+, PDA, 'S' phase of cell cycle by FACS and BrdU incorporation); accelerated preadipocyte induction (Dact-1, PPARγ2) with a quantitative increase in mature adipocyte formation (Leptin); ILCAs, which were non-responsive to high glucose did confer the Obese/T2D memory in Mutants. Further, these observations were in compliance with the anthropometric data. Conclusions Given the ease of accessibility and availability of MSCs, the present study form the basis to report for the first time, application of BM-MSCs as a feasible in vitro model system to portray the disease memory of pre-clinical/T2D with IR - a major metabolic disorder of global concern.


G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) oligomerization has emerged as a vital characteristic of receptor structure. Substantial experimental evidence supports the existence of GPCR-GPCR interactions in a coordinated and cooperative manner. However, despite the current development of experimental techniques for large-scale detection of GPCR heteromers, in order to understand their connectivity it is necessary to develop novel tools to study the global heteroreceptor networks. To provide insight into the overall topology of the GPCR heteromers and identify key players, a collective interaction network was constructed. Experimental interaction data for each of the individual human GPCR protomers was obtained manually from the STRING and SCOPUS databases. The interaction data were used to build and analyze the network using Cytoscape software. The network was treated as undirected throughout the study. It is comprised of 156 nodes, 260 edges and has a scale-free topology. Connectivity analysis reveals a significant dominance of intrafamily versus interfamily connections. Most of the receptors within the network are linked to each other by a small number of edges. DRD2, OPRM, ADRB2, AA2AR, AA1R, OPRK, OPRD and GHSR are identified as hubs. In a network representation 10 modules/clusters also appear as a highly interconnected group of nodes. Information on this GPCR network can improve our understanding of molecular integration. GPCR-HetNet has been implemented in Java and is freely available at http://www.iiia.csic.es/~ismel/GPCR-Nets/index.html.


Abstract Encapsulation offers broad scope of applications. It can be used to deliver almost everything from advanced drugs to unique consumer sensory experiences; it could be also employed as a protection system or a sensing material. This cutting-edge technology undergoes rapid growth in both academic and industrial conditions. Research in this matter is continuing to find a new application of microcapsules as well as to improve the methods of their fabrication. Therefore, in this review, we focus on the art of the encapsulation technology to provide the readers with a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of up-to-day development of microcapsule preparation methods. Our goal is to help identify the major encapsulation processes and by doing so maximize the potential value of ongoing research efforts.


This study analysis 16 cases of dental injuries occurring during endotracheal intubation. The overall rate was 1 out of 6000 cases of intubation. As expected, the upper jaw teeth are most often involved. Partial dislocations were the most common lesion, together with dental fractures. A well-documented dental evaluation before delivery of anesthetics and appropriate precautions and protective devices during intubation will prevent most dental trauma related to endotracheal intubation. Also, early use of dental and risk management services often will ensure timely resolution of such problems.


Numerical integral operators of convolution type form the basis of most wave-equation-based methods for processing and imaging of seismic data. As several of these methods require the solution of an inverse problem, multiple forward and adjoint passes of the modeling operator are generally required to converge to a satisfactory solution. This work highlights the memory requirements and computational challenges that arise when implementing such operators on 3D seismic datasets and their usage for solving large systems of integral equations. A Python framework is presented that leverages libraries for distributed storage and computing, and provides a high-level symbolic representation of linear operators. A driving goal for our work is not only to offer a widely deployable, ready-to-use high-performance computing (HPC) framework, but to demonstrate that it enables addressing research questions that are otherwise difficult to tackle. To this end, the first example of 3D full-wavefield target-oriented imaging, which comprises of two subsequent steps of seismic redatuming, is presented. The redatumed fields are estimated by means of gradient-based inversion using the full dataset as well as spatially decimated versions of the dataset as a way to investi-gate the robustness of both inverse problems to spatial aliasing in the input dataset. Our numerical example shows that when one spatial direction is finely sampled, satisfactory redatuming and imaging can be accomplished also when the sampling in other direction is coarser than a quarter of the dominant wavelength. While aliasing introduces noise in the redatumed fields, they are less sensitive to well-known spurious artefacts compared to cheaper, adjoint-based redatuming techniques. These observations are shown to hold for a relatively simple geologic structure, and while further testing is needed for more complex scenarios, we expect them to be generally valid while possibly breaking down for extreme cases


The Winograd or Cook-Toom class of algorithms help to reduce the overall compute complexity of many modern deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Although there has been a lot of research done on models and algorithmic optimizations of CNN, little attention has been paid to the efficient implementation of these algorithms on embedded CPUs, which usually have very limited memory and low power budget. This paper aims to fill this gap and focuses on the efficient implementation of Winograd or Cook-Toom based convolution on modern Arm Cortex-A CPUs, widely used in mobile devices today. Specifically, we demonstrate a reduction in inference latency by using a set of optimization strategies that improve the utilization of computational resources, and by effectively leveraging the ARMv8-A NEON SIMD instruction set. We evaluated our proposed region-wise multi-channel implementations on Arm Cortex-A73 platform using several representative CNNs. The results show significant performance improvements in full network, up to 60%, over existing im2row/im2col based optimization techniques.


In this work we address the challenge of augmenting n-gram language models according to prior linguistic intuitions. We argue that the family of hierarchical Pitman-Yor language models is an attractive vehicle through which to address the problem, and demonstrate the approach by proposing a model for German compounds. In our empirical evaluation the model outperforms a modified Kneser-Ney n-gram model in test set perplexity. When used as part of a translation system, the proposed language model matches the baseline BLEU score for English!German while improving the precision with which compounds are output. We find that an approximate inference technique inspired by the Bayesian interpretation of Kneser-Ney smoothing (Teh, 2006) offers a way to drastically reduce model training time with negligible impact on translation quality.


Health sector reform of the 1990s affected most health care workers in Ontario and in other provinces. As a result of organizational changes, many workers experienced work intensification. This paper examines the associations between work intensification, stress and job satisfaction focusing on nurses in three teaching hospitals in Ontario. Data come from our 2002 survey of 949 nurses who worked in their employing hospital since the early 1990s when the health sector reform era began. Results show that nurses feel their work has intensified since the health sector reform of the 1990s, and work intensification contributed to increased stress and decreased job satisfaction. Results provide empirical support to the literature which suggests that work intensification has an adverse effect on workers' health and well-being, and work attitudes.


The emergence of the use of mechanical metamaterials for vibration suppression and the creation of frequency gaps in structures requires an understanding of the fundament underlying dynamics partial differential equations coupled to ordinary differential equations. Essentially periodic structures consist of a distributed parameter structure connected (embedded) to a series of spring-mass-dampers. Such systems in the past have been studied as combined dynamical systems. This work deals with modal analysis of non-conservative combined dynamic systems formed by assembling distributed parameter structures and linear, viscously damped, lumped parameter oscillators. The mathematical model of the forced response of such dynamic systems is presented via differential operators. The related non-linear eigenproblem is formulated next and a proper solution is provided. Furthermore, the orthogonality of the eigenfunctions is studied and the completeness of the generated solution space is verified. Coupled modal coordinate differential equations result through modal analysis, thus revealing the non-proportional damping configuration, while the proportional damping conditions are also derived and discuss. The theory is applied to non-conservative Euler-Bernoulli beams subject to different types of boundary conditions and coupled to linear, viscously damped oscillators. Additional numerical examples yield interesting conclusions about the non-proportionality and the applicability of the associated methods to solving the coupled differential equations.


In Sprague-Dawley rats by means of in vivo microdialysis it was shown that stress, evoked by conditioned fear response acquisition, resulted in inhibition of exploratory behavior and produced a reduction of exploration-induced rise in extracellular levels of citrulline (an NO co-product) in the nucleus accumbens which were observed 24 hours after the stress. Intra-accumbal infusion of dopamine D2 receptor antagonist raclopride (10 μM), made after the conditioned fear response acquisition, in 24 hours after the infusion, restore the exploratory behavior and exploration-induced rise of extracellular levels of citrulline in this brain area. The data obtained indicate for the first time that stress-induced inhibition of the exploratory behavior might be mediated by inhibition of the nucleus accumbens nitrergic system occurring under the control of D2 receptors of this brain area.


In this work, Expectation-Maximization type receiver for uplink of an MC-CDMA system based on a time sharing hopped communication technique is proposed in order to cope with the multipath fading effect in a wireless communication system. In the proposed time-sharing hopped communication method, managing mechanism determines each user channel quality knowledge by controlling the quality of the channels between users and it. In order to present a higher quality transmission for the users with low quality channels, managing mechanism gives an opportunity to them to send their message over the users with high quality channels in time sharing mode. Thus, transmission quality for the users with low quality channel is improved. The performance of the proposed receiver, with/without hopping and with cooperative communication technique, is analysed for multipath flat fading channels by computer simulation, and results are presented.


In her provocative new book, Laurie Winn Carlson questions the larger aims of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 and sees it as part of a broad range of schemes to wrest the American West from the claims of established European powers. If American ships were already plying the waters off the Pacific Northwest coast, why, Ms. Carlson asks, was it necessary to send these two intrepid explorers overland-except as a demonstration of American reach, and perhaps as a ploy to tempt the Spanish to attack the expedition, thus provoking a war with Spain in Florida and the West. Ms. Carlson views the Lewis and Clark expedition as just one of several schemes to seize Western lands from foreign powers and extend the new United States to the Pacific. And behind the scenes in most all of them was the Virginian who actually knew little about the region but under whose presidency the Louisiana Purchase was completed, Thomas Jefferson. As Ms. Carlson notes, Jefferson never traveled west, but he was involved to varying degrees with men who did the exploring, organizing, and trekking at the Western frontiers-men who left few papers for historians to pursue and have been largely forgotten. Seduced by the West investigates the wide range of players in this drama of intrigue and possibilities. Russia, Spain, England, and France all tried to explore the West, and all for different reasons. Only one nation succeeded, but as Ms. Carlson shows, it was not always a simple task-or even an intended one.


Maerua crassifolia Forssk. is an evergreen tree widely used as traditional medicine throughout its distributional range in the Sahel region, peninsular Arabia east to Pakistan, east and west Africa. This study is aimed at providing a critical review of medicinal uses, phytochemical and pharmacological properties of M. crassifolia. Documented information on medicinal uses, phytochemical and pharmacological properties of M. crassifolia was collected from several online sources such as Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed and Science Direct, and pre-electronic sources such as book chapters, books, journal articles and scientific publications obtained from the university library. The articles published between 1964 and 2020 were used in this study. This study revealed that the bark, fruit, leaf and twig infusion and/or decoction of M. crassifolia are mainly used as ethnoveterinary medicine, and traditional medicine for cephalalgia, headache, fever, malaria, wounds, skin infections, toothache and gastro-intestinal problems. Phytochemical compounds identified from the species include alkaloids, amino acids, betaines, cardiac glycosides, fatty acids, flavonoids, lignan glucosides, phenolics, quaternary ammonium compounds, saponins, steroids, tannins and terpenoids. The M. crassifolia extracts exhibited antibacterial, anti-diarrhoeal, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiplasmodial, antiprotozoal, antitrypanosomal, antipyretic and cytotoxicity activities. Maerua crassifolia should be subjected to detailed phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological evaluations aimed at correlating its medicinal uses with its phytochemistry and pharmacological activities.


Electron microscopy depicts subcellular structures at synapses exquisitely but only captures static images. To visualize membrane dynamics, we have developed a novel technique, called flash-and-freeze, which induces neuronal activity with a flash of light and captures the membrane dynamics by rapid freezing. For characterizing membrane movements during synaptic transmission, a light-sensitive cation channel, channelrhodopsin, is heterologously expressed in mouse hippocampal neurons or in Caenorhabditis elegans motor neurons. A brief pulse of blue light activates channelrhodopsin and induces an action potential, leading to synaptic transmission. Following the light stimulation, neurons are frozen at different time intervals ranging from 10 ms to 20 s. Electron micrographs are then acquired from each time point to visualize the morphological changes. Using this approach, we have characterized a novel form of endocytosis, ultrafast endocytosis, which rapidly removes excess membrane added to the surface during neurotransmission. The flash-and-freeze approach can be adapted to study other cellular phenomena that can be induced by light-sensitive genetic or pharmacological tools.


The capability to generate and manipulate quantum states in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces is a crucial step for the development of quantum technologies, from quantum communication to quantum computation. One-dimensional quantum walk dynamics represents a valid tool in the task of engineering arbitrary quantum states. Here we affirm such potential in a linear-optics platform that realizes discrete-time quantum walks in the orbital angular momentum degree of freedom of photons. Different classes of relevant qudit states in a six-dimensional space are prepared and measured, confirming the feasibility of the protocol. Our results represent a further investigation of quantum walk dynamics in photonics platforms, paving the way for the use of such a quantum state-engineering toolbox for a large range of applications.


This paper discusses chaos control in discrete-time nonlinear systems using one-step-ahead adaptive fuzzy controller. The chaotic system in a general form is modeled by a Mamdani type fuzzy system with parameters tuned on-line using system input-output data by the least square algorithm with deadzone. Based on this fuzzy model, a one-step-ahead controller is designed to minimize the error between the desired and the real system outputs. Performance analysis and simulation results in control of the Sin and Lozi systems are given to show the effectiveness of the scheme.


In this paper the relevance of General Equilibrium Theory for the understanding of the Eastern European transformations is discussed. Using several examples and problems it is demonstrated that GET illuminates the classical problem of Adam Smith: how market coordination is possible without central controll. However, because of its formal mode of construction and the non-empirical character of its basic assumptions the theory cannot have any descriptive relevance. Contrary to the claims of most main-stream economists, it is argued that the transformation should aim for a mixed economy in which the state has to take an important task, which either could not be solved by markets or for which markets do not exist.


Microbes play a critical role in plant litter decomposition and influence the fate of carbon in rivers and riparian zones. When decomposing low‐nutrient plant litter, microbes acquire nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from the environment (i.e., nutrient immobilization), and this process is potentially sensitive to nutrient loading and changing climate. Nonetheless, environmental controls on immobilization are poorly understood because rates are also influenced by plant litter chemistry, which is coupled to the same environmental factors. Here we used a standardized, low‐nutrient organic matter substrate (cotton strips) to quantify nutrient immobilization at 100 paired stream and riparian sites representing 11 biomes worldwide. Immobilization rates varied by three orders of magnitude, were greater in rivers than riparian zones, and were strongly correlated to decomposition rates. In rivers, P immobilization rates were controlled by surface water phosphate concentrations, but N immobilization rates were not related to inorganic N. The N:P of immobilized nutrients was tightly constrained to a molar ratio of 10:1 despite wide variation in surface water N:P. Immobilization rates were temperature‐dependent in riparian zones but not related to temperature in rivers. However, in rivers nutrient supply ultimately controlled whether microbes could achieve the maximum expected decomposition rate at a given temperature. Collectively, we demonstrated that exogenous nutrient supply and immobilization are critical control points for decomposition of organic matter.


Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate the changes in diagnostics of Trisomy 21 in a 10 mil population between 1994–2018. Methods: Data from the national registries. Results: There were 5496 fetuses with trisomy 21 in the studied period. The detection rate increased from 40.7% (1994) to 87.66 (2018). The number of invasive procedures varied between 1757.6/10000 newborns (2007) and 580.9/10000 newborns (2018). Indications for invasive testing were 80% combined first-trimester screening (FTS) and 20% morphologic findings on ultrasound and second-trimester screening. The number of trisomy 21 newborns per 10000 decreased from 7.79 in 1994 to 3.42 in 2018. The gestational age at the final diagnosis decreased from 20.33 weeks in 1994 to 14.24 weeks in 2018. Since 2015, 122 cases of Trisomy 21 were detected with NIPT. Conclusions: Since 1994 the screening methods developed to FTS and NIPT. The Trisomy 21 screening has already in 2006 reached a plateau: the percentage of detected cases in the whole population exceeded 80% and was improving until 2020 to 87.6%. High sensitivity and specificity of FTS caused a steep decrease in invasive procedures. In the same time period, the maternal age was significantly increased without affecting the detection rates. We could not assess the effect of NIPT due to the small number of examinations. It can not be expected, that in real life, higher detection rates would be achieved in the whole population, even with new, more sensitive technologies. Research grant provided by the Czech Ministry of Health AZV17-29622A and RVO-VFN64165.


In news coverage of children in the media in Kenya, I noticed serious infringement of the children's rights, especially when it came to negative news. There were cases where defilement of children was reported unprofessionally where the child's face was blurred but the clothes and the mother's name and face were clearly used on television in particular. Many victims of defilement are usually from poor families and items such as clothing will obviously identify them. This was disturbing. As a features writer at the time with Kenya's largest news organization, the Nationa Media Group, I had taken a keen interest in reporting children and as such had trained a lot on the subject. So this kind of reporting was disturbing and I was persuaded to do something to address the issue. So my Masters research picked three cases of reporting children where the children's rights were abused by the media. My research exposed me to the rampant abuse of children's rights and it was clear that media professionals need to be seriously trained on the best practices of covering children in the media.


ABSTRACT The MMPI-2 is the psychological testing instrument most frequently used in forensic treatment and evaluation contexts. This practice mirrors use of its predecessor–the MMPI–in forensic settings and likely reflects the empirical derivation and rich research base of the instruments. Given its use and acceptance by psychologists, expert testimony based on the MMPI-2 has rarely been excluded from legal proceedings. MMPI-2-based testimony has been excluded, however, when the instrument was used in ways that are not supported by the empirical literature. Thus, the question is not whether it is appropriate to use the MMPI-2 in forensic settings, but rather, for what purposes may the MMPI-2 be used in forensic settings? In this article, appropriate and inappropriate forensic uses of the MMPI-2 are identified, recent developments are discussed, and areas worthy of further investigation are identified.


This study investigated the effect of maintaining perception-action coupling during a 4-week perceptual training program aiming to reduce biomechanical risk factors associated with ACL injury. Kinetic (valgus and internal rotation knee moments) and neuromuscular (total knee muscle activation and directed co-contraction ratios) variables were calculated during evasive sidestepping of 3D-projected opponents in 1-on-1, 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 game-based situations pre and post-intervention training. An additional transfer scenario was assessed post-intervention. Twenty-six amateur Australian Rules footballers were allocated to control (C), uncoupled (U) or coupled (PA) groups. Participants completed biweekly perceptual training containing 48 trials requiring a verbal (uncoupled) or running sidestep (coupled) response while counting the number of attentional cues displayed. Training groups showed no reductions in peak valgus and internal rotation moments, however, a small decrease in peak valgus moments was observed in the transfer condition. Coupled training displayed significant group differences in medial-lateral co-contraction ratios from controls. No changes in muscle activation patterns pre-post ARF were observed, however C and UC groups redirected co-contraction ratios laterally in the transfer condition. Results suggest that attentional cueing perceptual training with a coupled response may have a beneficial impact on kinetic ACL injury risk factors and maintain muscle activation levels associated with decreased ACL injury risk.


This project is a continuation into the design and implementation of a Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) device that will be used to conduct high frequency testing on tire tread compounds. The design requirements necessary were to design a device that will produce a target frequency of 10 kHz with a 0.05% strain, while being at room temperature. The 3-D model developed by the previous year's students was improved upon and new parts were designed as well. The assemblies (most importantly the connector piece) were 3-D modeled using Creo Parametric and analyzed with COMSOL Multiphysics. A new design involving flexures was also designed to be used in the third year of the project to help increase the overall frequency of the assembly while adding support to keep the assembly in place. Different designs were examined to determine the best design that met all of the design requirements. After the best design was chosen, communication with both local and international companies was done to determine the best method for manufacturing. Communication with companies that could give quotes for glue used to prevent the rubber from shearing off the metal surfaces. The part was then ordered and delivered to the university. The part was then assembled to ensure the parts were manufactured properly and will be tested in the future.


Protein crystals are routinely prepared for the elucidation of protein structure by X‐ray crystallography. These crystals present an highly accurate periodical array of protein molecules with accompanying highly ordered porosity made of interconnected voids. The permeability of the porous protein crystals to a wide range of solutes has recently triggered attempts to explore their potential application as biotemplates by a controlled "filling" process for the fabrication of novel, nano‐structured composite materials. Gaining control of the porosity of a given protein crystal may lead to the preparation of a series of "biotemplates" enabling different 'filler'/protein content ratios, resulting in different nanostructured composites. One way to gain such control is to produce a series of polymorphic forms of a given "parent‐protein" crystal. As protein packing throughout crystallization is primarily dominated by the chemical composition of the surface of protein molecules and its impact on protein–protein interactions, modification of residues exposed on the surface will affect protein packing, leading to modified porosity. Here we propose to provide influence on the porosity of protein crystals for biotemplating by pre‐crystallization chemical modification of lysine residues exposed on protein's surface. The feasibility of this approach was demonstrated by the serial application of chemical "modifiers" leading to protein derivatives exhibiting altered porosity by affecting protein "packing" throughout protein crystallization. Screening of a series of modifying agents for lysine modification of hen egg white lysozyme revealed that pre‐crystallization modification preserving their positive charge did not affect crystal porosity, while modification resulting in their conversion to negatively charged groups induced dramatic change in protein crystal's packing and porosity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that chemical modification of lysine residues affecting modified protein packing may be simultaneously performed with the crystallization process: aldehydes generating Schiff base formation with protein's lysine residues readily affected modified protein packing, resulting in altered porosity. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of the use of site directed chemical modifications for the generation of a series of protein crystal exhibiting different porosities for biotemplating, all derived from one "parent" protein. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011; 108:1–11. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Meetings are the fuel of organizations' productivity. At times, however, they are perceived as wasteful vaccums that deplete employee morale and productivity. Current meeting tools, to a great extent, have simplified and augmented the ways meetings are conducted by enabling participants to ``get things done'' and experience a comfortable physical environment. However, an important yet less explored element of these tools' design space is that of psychological safety -- the extent to which participants feel listened to, or motivated to be part of a meeting. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach would benefit the creation of new tools designed for retrofitting meetings for psychological safety. This approach comes with not only research opportunities -- ranging from sensing to modeling to user interface design -- but also challenges -- ranging from privacy to workplace surveillance.


Objective To provide new epidemiological evidence base of information on models of hospice care for children and young adults. Design Retrospective cohort study of children referred to a hospice. Setting Martin House Children's and Young Person's Hospice in Boston Spa, North Yorkshire, UK. Participants All children who had been referred for care at Martin House Children's Hospice since it opened in August 1987, until May 2008. Main outcome measures Demographic profiles and survival times overall and by diagnostic group classified by the Association of Children's Palliative Care (ACT) Diagnostic Categories, calculated using the Kaplan– Meier and log rank pair-wise methodology. Results Over a 20-year period, 1554 children aged from birth to 19 years were referred to Martin House, of whom 89.5% (mean age 7.45 years) were accepted. The deprivation profile, referral source and distribution of diagnoses of these children have changed over time with recently increasing numbers of non-progressive disorders (ACT category 4). The ethnicity profile has changed with an increase in the numbers of South Asian children. The overall mean survival time was 5.6 years (95% CI 5.1 to 6.1) but this differed by ACT category. Diagnostic category was significantly associated with differing survival patterns. Conclusions There are a disproportionate number of children from areas of higher deprivation being referred for palliative care services. There has been a recent increase in the number of children from South Asian families being referred to palliative care services in Yorkshire. Survival times for children and young people receiving care from a hospice can vary from hours and days to more than 20 years.


In Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome, hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis of Dutch origin, and normal aging, amyloid accumulates in the brain parenchyma and blood vessels. The major protein in the deposits is the beta-protein, a 4-kD peptide possibly generated by an abnormal degradation of its precursor, the beta-protein precursor (beta PP). We found, as a second component of the brain amyloid, the serine protease inhibitor alpha 1-antichymotrypsin (ACT). Inasmuch as ACT is tightly associated with the beta-protein and is never found in other amyloidoses, we hypothesized a role for ACT in the degradation of the beta PP. We used synthetic peptides made according to the sequence flanking the N-terminus of the beta-protein to screen brain fractions for protease activity. After several purification steps, two protease fractions were found that can cleave the peptide between methionine and aspartic acid, aspartic acid being the N-terminus of the beta-protein. One protease is activated by calcium and inhibited by ACT, beta PP containing the Kunitz-type inhibitory domain, diisofluorophosphate, and 1,10-phenanthroline. This protease fraction is also able to degrade the beta PP in vitro. The second protease is a metal-dependent cysteine protease.


The cost of data movement in big-data systems motivates careful examination of near-data processing (NDP) frameworks. The concept of NDP was actively researched in the 1990s, but gained little commercial traction. After a decade-long dormancy, interest in this topic has spiked. A workshop on NDP was organized at MICRO-46 and was well attended. Given the interest, the organizers and keynote speakers have attempted to capture the key insights from the workshop into an article that can be widely disseminated. This article describes the many reasons why NDP is compelling today and identifies key upcoming challenges in realizing the potential of NDP.


A Forum for the Discussion of Teaching, Learning, and Assessment 1di.a.logue or di.a.log \ 'di-ê-,lög, -,läg\ n [MF, fr. OF, fr. L dialogus, fr. Gk dialogos, fr. dialegesthai to converse, fr. dia+ legein to speak] 1: a written composition in which two or more characters are represented as conversing 2 a: a conversation between two or more persons; also : a similar exchange between a person and something else (as a computer) b: an exchange of ideas and opinions. D I A L O G U E


The majority of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the ocean is resistant to microbial degradation, yet its formation remains poorly understood. The fluorescent fraction of DOM can be used to trace the formation of recalcitrant DOM (RDOM). A long‐term (> 1 year) experiment revealed 27–52% removal of dissolved organic carbon and a nonlinear increase in RDOM fluorescence associated with microbial turnover of semilabile DOM. This fluorescence was also produced using glucose as the only initial carbon source, suggesting that degradation of prokaryote remnants contributes to RDOM. Our results indicate that the formation of a fluorescent RDOM component depends on the bioavailability of the substrate: the less labile, the larger the production of fluorescent RDOM relative to organic carbon remineralized. The anticipated increase in microbial carbon demand due to ocean warming can potentially force microbes to degrade less labile substrates, thereby increasing RDOM production and stimulating ocean carbon storage.


The inflammation response requires the cooperation of macrophages with immune cell function and active factors, such as cytokines and chemokines. Through this response, these factors are involved in the immune response to affect physiological activities. Macrophages can be categorized into two types: 'M1' and 'M2'. M1 macrophages destroy the pathogen through phagocytosis activation, ROS production, and antigen-presenting, among other functions. M2 macrophages release cellular factors for tissue recovery, growth, and angiogenesis. Studies have determined that tumour tissue presents with numerous macrophages, termed tumour-associated macrophages. Tumour cells and peripheral stromal cells stimulate the tumour associated with macrophages (M2) to produce factors that regulate angiogenesis. Modulating the balance of the M1 and M2 function has already gained interest as a potentially valuable immune disease therapy. However, applications of the immunotherapy in clinical treatments are still not clear with regard to the cellular working mechanism. Therefore, we summarized the functions of common biomaterials involved in the modulation of the macrophage.


The early impact of genomic research on animal agriculture was relatively modest, as it proved difficult to translate quantitative trait loci mapping to industrial application. Fortunately, developments in technology have facilitated the application of genomics to animal agriculture, which has led to more substantial impacts on many commercially produced animal species. A brief look back on the history of genomic research will be presented, followed by an overview of recent developments in genomic technologies. Examples of application of genomic research, focusing on beef cattle and comparative genomics with other bovinae specie, and the current status of some new genomic resources emerging for sheep, pigs, and goats, will also be presented.


We present a mixed-integer programming model for the problem of designing a survivable capacitated network, and describe a cutting plane algorithm for its solution. The model and the solution methods are integrated in our network dimensioning tool, DISCNET. Given a communication demand between each pair of switching nodes in a region, the task is to determine the topology of a telecommunication network connecting the given nodes and to select, from a given set of valid values, a capacity for each potential physical link such that the communication demands are satisfied, even if a network component fails. A solution consists of the chosen links and their capacity, as well as the routings for each demand, in the case of failure-free operation and the case of single component (node or link) failure. We suggest two alternative models to deal with failures of single network components. The first employs diversified paths to guarantee the routing of a specified fraction of each demand without rerouting effort; the second allows rerouting in failure situations. At the end we discuss alternative ways to implement survivability using these two models.


Abstract Background and aim. Chronic kidney disease has recently been shown to be a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and carotid intima-media thickness has been widely used as a biomarker for early detection of cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to confirm whether carotid thickening and carotid plaque are associated with preclinical chronic kidney disease in individuals without clinical cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. Material and methods. We conducted a cross-sectional study on participants from Maanshan City, China. All participants underwent carotid ultrasonography. Kidney function was measured using cystatin C, serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen and blood uric acid. Demographics and risk factors for cardiovascular diseases were obtained from each participant. Results. A total of 927 subjects were surveyed; 453 (48.87%) were men and 474 (51.13%) were women. A total of 525 (56.63%) of the participants were found to have carotid thickening of which 281 (53.52%) were men and 244 (46.48%) were women. Kidney function was strongly associated with carotid thickening and plaque in the unadjusted analysis. However, cystatin C was the only measure of kidney function that was significantly associated with carotid thickening and plaque in the adjusted analysis (in order to select risk factors from sex, age, BMI, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, total cholesterol, triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein, apolipoprotein A, apolipoprotein B, cystatin C, creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, blood uric, estimated GFR). Conclusion. Cystatin C, an alternative measure of kidney function, was more strongly associated with carotid thickening and plaque than other measures of kidney function.


Level crossings (LCs) are identified as critical security points in both road and rail infrastructures. Statistics show that more than 300 people are killed every year in Europe in more than 1200 accidents occurring at LCs. In this paper, we first propose a global model involving both rail and road traffic in the LC area. This model is obtained by a progressive integration of elementary models that we developed, each of which describes the behavior of a part in the whole LC environment. We are more precisely interested in a particular phenomenon that may cause collisions at LCs and corresponds to the accumulation of vehicles' waiting queues at the LC exit zone. As a notation, we use stochastic Petri nets (SPNs) in such a way as to precisely reflect the system's dynamics. Second, the simulation of the global system behavior is performed in light of the behavioral model while adopting the Monte Carlo principle. The TimeNet tool is used as a simulator that allows the monitoring of risky situations. To qualitatively and quantitatively assess the effect of various factors on the risk level, setup tasks are undertaken. Finally, the simulation results are analyzed and interpreted. This analysis makes it possible to consider some solutions to reduce the incurred risk.


There had been a historical and structual interest in family studies in Japan. As family sociology became institutionalized since the 1960s and 1970s, however, family studies shifted to take a micro-scopic view. Family scholars had to do so, in a sense, because of the rapid social change and its negative effects on the family in those days. Family studies transformed itself in order to study the family more effectively. On the other hand, the transformation caused family studies to become less historical and less interdisciplinary.Since the 1980s, the development in family history and historical demography which began in Europe in the 1960s stimulated Japanese family scholars. They have been working to interpret the 'traditional family' in Japan from the new perspective which they learned from the Western scholars. Some of these studies are comparative and fruitful enough to contribute to international academia.This field of family studies has been methodologically challenging to family sociology as a whole. I believe it has contributed, and will contribute to family sociology in Japan in the fields of the research and education.


The thick and relatively complete Jurassic succession of eastern Greenland provides a unique biostratigraphic record for the North Atlantic region. The main biostratigraphic control for the succession has been provided by molluscs, especially ammonites and to a lesser extent by bivalves and belemnites. The late John Callomon and colleagues recognised 93 Boreal ammonite-bearing horizons in the Mid to Late Jurassic. This provides a reliable backbone to the biostratigraphy of these strata, prompting a palynological colleague to comment that they are the "Policemen of Jurassic Stratigraphy". Other biostratigraphically significant microfossil and palynological groups, can be calibrated against this standard, but on their own cannot achieve the same precision. The Early Jurassic of eastern Greenland does not have such fine control as later parts of the period. No single biostratigraphic group can be used successfully throughout the interval, and there are only three significant ammonite faunas during this period. Reliance on various different organisms is necessary to cope with the changing range of marine to non-marine environments. CASP field-work from 1990 to 2012 has resulted in the collection of much biostratigraphic material. In this article, published data are summarised together with previously unpublished data in the form of a unified table. The integrated chart shows detailed columns for the whole eastern Greenland Jurassic. It demonstrates the ammonite, palynological and microfossil events/biozones and horizons which are correlated by time. More limited information is available on belemnites, bivalves and macroflora. This is the first time such an integrated biostratigraphic scheme has been assembled for the Jurassic of eastern Greenland. It will be of value to the offshore oil-industry in the northern North Atlantic and on the Barents Shelf as well as to field geologists in Greenland.


SUMMARY: A formula for calculating the oxygen demand of a growing culture is derived. The fate of substrate-glucose in cultures of Aerobacter cloacae was found to depend on the amount of available oxygen and the oxygen demand of the organisms. Anaerobically, cell synthesis and CO2 production are at their minimum levels and most of the glucose-carbon is converted into ethanol, formic acid, 2:3-butanediol, acetoin and acetic acid. A small supply of oxygen suppresses the formation of ethanol and formic acid but still permits the production of butanediol and acetoin and increases the proportion of glucose-carbon converted to acetic acid, cells and CO2. A larger supply of oxygen suppresses the formation of butanediol and acetoin and still further increases the yields of cells and CO2. With an excess of oxygen available, provided the growth rate of the organism is not too near its maximum value, acetic acid production is suppressed and complete conversion of the glucose-carbon into cell and CO2 occurs. At growth rates very close to the maximum a part of the glucose is converted into acetic acid even with an excess of available oxygen. The metabolism in a batch culture with excess oxygen resembles the metabolism with excess oxygen in a continuous cultures in which the organisms are growing at a rate close to the maximum. Means of recognizing and preventing an oxygen deficiency are discussed.


PURPOSE
This study aims to determine the extent to which community mental health nurses are currently practicing beyond the traditional scope of nursing practice.

DESIGN AND METHODS
A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to community mental health nurses in Victoria, Australia.

FINDINGS
The majority of participants reported routine involvement in practices that would normally be considered beyond the scope of nursing practice, such as prescribing, ordering diagnostic tests, and referral to specialists.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS
The extent to which the current mental health service system is dependent upon nurses transgressing professional and legal boundaries warrants further study. Psychiatrists and community mental health nurses need to work collaboratively to understand their respective knowledge and skills and to be clear about how they take responsibility for client care.


The PepR1 protein from Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis DSM 7290 shares extensive homology with catabolite-control proteins from various Gram-positive bacteria. Expression of the subcloned pepR1 gene allowed for partial complementation of a ccpA defect in Staphylococcus xylosus. The influence of PepR1 on transcription of the prolidase gene pepQ, which is located adjacent to pepR1, was examined by use of lacZ reporter gene fusions in Escherichia coli. PepR1 stimulated transcription initiation at the pepQ promoter about twofold, and this effect required the integrity of a 14 bp palindromic cre-like sequence located 74 nt upstream of pepQ. In gel-mobility-shift assays, PepR1 specifically interacted with the pepQ promoter region and also with DNA fragments covering the promoters of the pepX, pepI and brnQ genes of Lb. delbrueckii subsp. lactis, which encode two additional peptidases and a branched-chain amino acid transporter, respectively. cre-like elements were identified in each of these DNA fragments. Catabolite control of PepQ was demonstrated in Lb. delbrueckii subsp. lactis. During growth with lactose the enzyme activity was twofold higher than in the presence of glucose, and corresponding differences were also detected in the level of pepQ transcription.


Homestead vegetable gardening can play a significant role in improving food security for the resource poor rural households in developing country like Bangladesh. The present study quantifies costs/benefits of traditional and developed homestead vegetable production systems, and analyzes the underlying factors contributing to food security. The result suggests that developed gardening has better performances in terms of calorie intake and economic performances over traditional but the optimal calorie intake with least-cost technology could be a feasible livelihood strategy for resource poor people. The result also suggests that education, sex, and garden area have significant effect on food security. The occupation and family size are also positively associated with food security.