Receptor occupancy assessed by Positron Emission Tomography (PET) can provide important translational information to help bridge information from one drug to another or from animal to man. The aim of this thesis was to develop nonlinear mixed effects methods for estimation of the relationship between drug exposure and receptor occupancy for the two mGluR5 antagonists AZD9272 and AZD2066 and for the 5HT1B receptor antagonist AZD3783. Also the optimal design for improved estimation of the relationship between drug exposure and receptor occupancy as well as for improved dose finding in neuropathic pain treatment, was investigated.Different modeling approaches were applied. For AZD9272, the radioligand kinetics and receptor occupancy was simultaneously estimated using arterial concentrations as input function and including two brain regions of interest. For AZD2066, a model was developed where brain/plasma partition coefficients from ten different brain regions were included simultaneously as observations. For AZD3783, the simplified reference tissue model was extended to allow different non-specific binding in the reference region and brain regions of interest and the possibility of using white matter as reference was also evaluated. The optimal dose-selection for improved precision of receptor occupancy as well as for improved precision of the minimum effective dose of a neuropathic pain treatment was assessed, using the D-optimal as well as the Ds-optimal criteria.Simultaneous modelling of radioligand and occupancy provided a means to avoid simplifications or approximations and provided the possibility to tests or to relax assumptions. Inclusion of several brain regions of different receptor density simultaneously in the analysis, markedly improved the precision of the affinity parameter. Higher precision was achieved in relevant parameters with designs based on the Ds compared to the D-optimal criterion. The optimal design for improved precision of the relationship between dose and receptor occupancy depended on the number of brain regions and the receptor density of these regions.In conclusion, this thesis presents novel non-linear mixed effects models estimating the relationship between drug exposure and receptor occupancy, providing useful translational information, allowing for a better informed drug-development.


A patient named Miss. Ayesha Saiyad, 18-year-old female, reported to the Department of Public Health Dentistry after undergoing lingual frenectomy for ankyloglossia, in the Department of Periodontics. As she was tutoring school students, she wanted improved clarity of her speech. Through postfrenectomy speech therapy sessions, we aimed to rehabilitate the patient's phonetics and improve her confidence in performing her work. Speech therapy sessions included counseling, motivation for improved speech outcomes and exercises to improve the range of the tongue movements. In the first visit, after recording the chief complaint and speech assessment it was noted that the patient's speech was comprehensible. However, problems were observed during production of speech sounds such as/l/,/ll/,/th/,/tha/ and/r/. The patient was diagnosed with a phonetic articulation disorder. Subsequently, the patient was advised to undergo speech therapy sessions. The counseling session was carried out and tongue protrusion and elevation exercises were demonstrated with the aid of the mirror. The patient was advised to practice the same at home. The patient was recalled after 1 week. Counseling was given and tongue elevation exercise holding water in the tongue was taught to the patient. While exercise and rolling of tongue were taught to improve tongue mobility. There was an improvement in tongue protrusion by 2 mm postspeech therapy. The patient was able to touch the palate with her tongue with mouth open, postspeech therapy. There was improvement in production of speech sounds/l/,/ll/,/th/,/tha/ and/r/. The patient's speech significantly improved after speech therapy.


Author(s): Agarwal, Sameer | Advisor(s): Stoica, Ion | Abstract: Modern data analytics applications typically process massive amounts of data on clusters of tens, hundreds, or thousands of machines to support near-real-time decisions. The quantity of data and limitations of disk and memory bandwidth often make it infeasible to deliver answers at human-interactive speeds. However, it has been widely observed that many applications can tolerate some degree of inaccuracy. This is especially true for exploratory queries on data, where users are satisfied with "close-enough" answers if they can be provided quickly to the end user. A popular technique for speeding up queries at the cost of accuracy is to execute each query on a sample of data, rather than the whole dataset. In this thesis, we present BlinkDB, a massively parallel, approximate query engine for running interactive SQL queries on large volumes of data. BlinkDB allows users to trade-off query accuracy for response time, enabling interactive queries over massive data by running queries on data samples and presenting results annotated with meaningful error bars. To achieve this, BlinkDB uses three key ideas: (1) an adaptive optimization framework that builds and maintains a set of multi-dimensional stratified samples from original data over time, (2) a dynamic sample selection strategy that selects an appropriately sized sample based on a query's accuracy or response time requirements, and (3) an error estimation and diagnostics module that produces approximate answers and reliable error bars. We evaluate BlinkDB extensively against well-known database benchmarks and a number of real-world analytic workloads showing that it is possible to implement an end-to-end query approximation pipeline that produces approximate answers with reliable error bars at interactive speeds.


Purpose: Evidence of adverse health effects of artificial trans fatty acids (TFAs) have accumulated since 1990s, yet TFAs are widely used by several food manufacturers around the world. This review aimed to: ascertain the available evidence of the known unfavourable biochemical properties of artificial TFAs, their metabolic functions and health consequences; estimate their average intake levels and trends in different countries in order to critically evaluate whether more action is required to eliminate them from the diet. Methodology: The published evidence was searched by employing: Medline, Pubmed, InterScience, BioMed Central and Annual Reviews. Findings: With reference to human health, evidences from epidemiological, retrospective and observational studies revealed that the consumption of TFAs could outweigh the health risks posed by saturated fat consumption. The main health concerns included unfavourably altered blood cholesterol concentrations, insulin resistance, foetal brain and neural disturbances, proinflammatory and carcinogenic responses. Great variation exists in the global trends of industrial TFAs intake, being low in Mediterranean region, Japan and Scandinavia and high in parts of United States of America and Iceland. Besides the intense use of TFAs by food manufacturers and in eateries, the use of TFAs in food products is often poorly regulated and ill‐informed to consumers. Value: Since competitive alternatives to TFAs have made them non‐mandatory a broad public health intervention at government level to regulate or completely eliminate them from the national diet is warranted.


This report presents final survival survey results from a previously reported study using oregovomab immunotherapy in patients with advanced ovarian epithelial cancer. Follow-up surveys to 5 years from randomization were collected for the cohort of stage III/IV ovarian cancer patients achieving initial remission who received subsequent maintenance immunotherapy with oregovomab or placebo. The relationship of time-to-relapse, survival postrelapse, and overall survival was analyzed. One hundred forty-five patients in the intent-to-treat population and the hypothesis generating subset of 67 patients (debulked to ≤2 cm, CA125 ≤65 U/mL before cycle 3, normal CA125 and no evidence of disease postchemotherapy) previously reported were evaluated for long-term outcomes. Patterns of relapse and survival were consistent in both groups for the intent-to-treat population. Median survival time was 57.5 months for oregovomab and 48.6 months for placebo with an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.72 (95% confidence interval, 0.41-1.25). Median survival has not been reached in the hypothesis generating subset of patients receiving oregovomab. Cox multivariate regression analysis identified velocity of CA125 rise at relapse to be a highly statistically significant predictor of postrelapse outcome (P=0.006). Although time-to-relapse may be a useful surrogate of survival in ovarian cancer immunotherapy studies, 5 years of follow-up has proved insufficient to permit a definitive survival analysis and it has been extended in ongoing phase III studies of oregovomab. Velocity of CA125 rise at relapse is a highly significant predictor of survival after relapse.


The CMS experiment has developed a powerful framework to ensure the precise and prompt alignment and calibration of its components, which is a major prerequisite to achieve the optimal performance for physics analysis. The prompt alignment and calibration strategy harnesses computing resources both at the Tier-0 site and the CERN Analysis Facility (CAF) to ensure fast turnaround for updating the corresponding database payloads. An essential element is the creation of dedicated data streams concentrating the specific event information required by the various alignment and calibration workflows. The resulting low latency is required for feeding the resulting constants into the prompt reconstruction process, which is essential for achieving swift physics analysis of the LHC data. This report discusses the implementation and the computational aspects of the alignment and calibration framework. Recent commissioning campaigns with cosmic muons, beam halo and simulated data have been used to gain detailed experience with this framework, and results of this validation are reported.


Traditionally, joints are assumed to be either pinned or fully rigid, but in reality, many behave between these two extremes giving them a semi-rigid classification. By acknowledging the semi-rigidity of nominal pin joints, steel frames can be designed as semi-continuous in which the beam bending moments are partially transmitted to the column members and the need for lateral bracing is eliminated, thus reducing material and construction costs. This thesis presents the results of numerical and theoretical studies of the behaviour of bolted endplate connections to Rectangular Hollow Section (RHS) columns using flowdrill bolts and their applications in semi-continuous frame design. Such connections exhibit significant levels of initial stiffness, strength, and deformation capacity while being more cost-effective than fully welded connections. Despite this, there is limited theoretical work carried out that allows such connections to be designed using analytical methods. In addition, there are no standardised connection design tables like that for open section columns (SCI, 1995), thereby inhibiting their adoption in practice.In this thesis, newly derived equations for initial stiffness that have a greatly improved range of validity and accuracy over existing equations are presented. Equations for bending strength of a newly derived elliptical mechanism based on yield line theory and for membrane action based on internal work principles are given. Equations for flowdrill thread stripping due to gross deformation of the RHS face are also presented thus allowing prediction of all common RHS face failure mechanisms. Equations for deformation capacity are derived thus making it possible to predict the full load-deflection behaviour of the RHS face in tension component. When combined with existing equations for bolt and endplate components, it is possible to predict the full moment-rotation behaviour of bolted endplate connections to RHS columns. Extensive parametric studies using finite element analysis (FEA) as well as validation against existing tests show that the newly derived equations can accurately predict the component-level and whole joint behaviour for a wide range of configurations.Taking advantage of the initial stiffness properties that these connections offer, a parametric study is conducted to show that connections with relatively simple detailing can offer sufficient initial stiffness and strength to enable unbraced semi-continuous design of low-rise steel frames. A hand calculation method for SLS sway in semi-continuous frames is also presented thus allowing the designer to readily carry out scheme designs without advanced software knowledge. A systematic method for the detailing of these connections for use in unbraced frame design is presented to facilitate adoption in practice.


Quantitative measurements of perceptual colour constancy show that human observers have a limited and variable ability to match coloured surfaces in scenes illuminated by different light sources. Observers can, however, make fast and reliable discriminations between changes in illuminant and changes in the reflecting properties of scenes, a discriminative ability that might be based on a visual coding of spatial colour relations. This coding could be provided by the ratios of cone-photoreceptor excitations produced by light from different surfaces: for a large class of pigmented surfaces and for surfaces with random spectral reflectances, these ratios are statistically almost invariant under changes in illumination by light from the sun and sky or from a planckian radiator. Cone-excitation ratios offer a possible, although not necessarily unique, basis for perceptual colour constancy in so far as it concerns colour relations.


In recent years many methodologies have been proposed for co-designing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and software systems. In these systems the FPGA is used to accelerate highly parallelisable and time critical parts of the system, while an instruction set processor (ISP) is used for the sequential parts. Existing systems require a specific programming style of the software developer. This makes it virtually impossible to use legacy software. Some systems require a message-passing interface between threads, and allow threads to migrate between software and FPGA [7]. Other systems give access to the hardware using a specific hardware driver and communication libraries [6]. Yet other systems provide a special compiler to enable hardware acceleration [11]. We propose a system where the original Java source code and even the compiled Java bytecode are left unmodified, and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is used for handling the communication with the FPGA. [4], [3]


[1] A new algorithm is developed to extract flow paths from digital elevation data without planar dispersion on the basis of the concept of global search. Widely used nondispersive algorithms, such as deterministic eight-neighbor flow direction retrieval algorithms, suffer serious uncertainty in their determined flow paths because of the lack of variability, i.e., only eight allowed flow directions. Although uncertainty at the local level is an inherent problem residing in the domain discretization, this study shows that more reasonable flow paths at the global scale can be obtained by maximizing the use of all information stored in the given digital elevation data. By utilizing information stored in cells other than those in the direct vicinity, this alternative approach can reduce the uncertainty residing in the extraction of flow paths. The proposed algorithm makes a significant improvement in flow path variability on both theoretical and real landscapes, while it is still simple.


One of the most important concepts in pediatric pharmacology is that exposure to drugs or chemicals may have latent, unforeseen effects on the child later in life. Some of the most dramatic occurrences, other than teratogenesis, are those in which hormonal exposure during the fetal or newborn period alters adult sexual development. However, none of these episodes is more impressive and ominous than that reported by Herbst et al.1 Herbst, an obstetrician at the Massachusetts General Hospital, was intrigued by the presentation of seven patients with adenocarcinoma of the vagina, an extremely rare tumor not previously seen at the hospital. The patients ranged in age from 14 to 22 years and sought medical advice because of vaginal bleeding. Several had benign adenosis, suggesting that the malignant change seen in all was based on a fundamental alteration in the biology of the vaginal epithelium. Six of the patients were treated with radical surgery, and one was treated with wide, local excision. One of the patients died after surgery.
 In what could serve as a model of a scientifically conducted, epidemiologic study, each of the seven patients, plus an additional patient from another hospital, was matched with four controls born in the same hospital within four days. Thus, the "control" group was chosen in a manner to eliminate many biases of artificially contrived control populations. A wide variety of possible influences in both mothers and offspring were considered, e.g., maternal age, smoking habits, exposure to X-rays, breast-feeding, birth weight, age at menarche, medications during pregnancy, and so forth.


In this paper, we aim to enhance the first-person indoor navigation and scene understanding experience by fusing inertial data collected from a smartphone carried by the user with the vision information obtained through the phone's camera. We employed the concept of vanishing directions together with the orthogonality constraints of the man-made environments in an expectation maximization framework to estimate person's orientation with respect to the known indoor coordinates from video frames. This framework allows to include prior information about camera rotation axis for better estimations as well as to select candidate edge-lines for estimation of hallways' depth and width from monocular video frames, and 3D modeling of the scene. Our proposed algorithm concurrently combines the vision-based estimated orientation with the inertial data using a Kalman filter in order to refine estimations and remove substantial measurement drift from inertial sensors. We evaluated the performance of our vision-inertial data fusion method on an IMU-augmented video recorded from a rotary hallway in which a participant completed a full lap. We demonstrated that this fusion provides virtually drift-free instantaneous information about the person's relative orientation. We were able to estimate hallways' depth and width, and generate a closed-path map from the rotary hallway over a roughly 60-meter lap.


B. West. Divergence in proportional fat intake in AKR/J and SWR/J mice endures across diet paradigms. Am. J. Physiol. 277 ( Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 46): R776–R785, 1999.—These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the contrasting patterns of macronutrient selection described previously in AKR/J (fat preference) and SWR/J (carbohydrate preference) mice are not dependent on a single diet paradigm. The effect of mouse strain on proportional fat intake was tested in naive mice by presenting two-choice diets possessing a variety of physical, sensory, and nutritive properties. In three separate experiments, AKR/J mice preferentially selected and consumed a higher proportion of energy from the high-fat diet than SWR/J mice. Specifically, this phenotypic difference was observed with 1 ) fat-protein vs. carbohydrate-protein diets, independent of fat type (vegetable shortening or lard), 2 ) isocaloric, high- vs. low-fat liquid diet preparations, and 3 ) high- vs. low-fat powdered-granular diets. These results confirm our previous observation of a higher proportional fat intake by AKR/J compared with SWR/J mice using the three-choice macronutrient selection diet and show that this strain difference generalizes across several diet paradigms. This strain difference is due largely to the robust and reliable fat preference of the AKR/J mice. In contrast, macronutrient preference in SWR/J mice varied across paradigms, suggesting a differential response by this strain to some orosensory or postingestive factor(s).


Efficient energy transfer in heart and skeletal muscle requires a series of moiety-conserved cycles. The intermediaries of the metabolic cycles are finely regulated to maintain a dynamic state of equilibrium. In heart muscle, depletion of the citric acid cycle (TCA cycle) through a block of 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase results in a rapid decline of contractile function, which is reversed by the addition of substrates promoting flux through the carboxylating enzymes, malic enzyme, pyruvate carboxylase and propionyl-CoA carboxylase. Anaplerosis describes a pathway, which replenishes a metabolic cycle. We show that enzymes for anaplerosis of the TCA cycle are expressed in heart and skeletal muscles. The role of anaplerosis of the TCA cycle in skeletal muscle is not entirely clear, but there is substantial evidence for its operational control during exercise. While the anaplerotic flux of carbon into the TCA cycle exceeds the removal of cycle intermediates, this process is only transient and reverses with prolonged exercise. It remains to be determined, however, whether the initial increase in TCA cycle intermediates is obligatory in order to attain high rates of TCA cycle flux, or primarily reflects a mass action phenomenon owing to increased substrate availability for anaplerotic pathways.


Using a panel of corporate transactions in 27 EU countries from 1999 to 2012, we investigate the impact of the financial crisis on the market for corporate assets. In particular, we test the 'fire-sale FDI' hypothesis by analyzing the number of cross-border transactions, the price of corporate assets and the impact of credit and macroeconomic conditions. According to the fire-sale FDI hypothesis, countries affected by a crisis attract foreign buyers selling assets at a discount. We find a dampening effect of the crisis on cross-border transactions in all EU countries. Although countries with higher sovereign default risk and lower economic demand attracted more foreign buyers in the crisis, lower domestic credit is associated with less cross-border transactions. Corporate assets in crisis countries are cheaper, particularly if domestic credit is low; however, these findings are not limited to the crisis period. This pattern is strikingly different from the East Asian and Latin American financial crises. Overall, we find little evidence for 'fire-sale FDI' suggesting an integrated European market without significant frictions.


Photoelectron pupillograph measurements of pupillary responses to light were made in 198 healthy individuals. Photoreaction of the pupils was declining with age contrary to the reciprocity rate which was stable (3.01-3.56). It indicates on the relative stability of parasympathetic-sympathetic relations. Young males with hyperpigmented irises had hyperactive parasympathetic reaction which sharply decreased to normal values at the age of 26-30 years. Estimated standard values of time, strength and speed of pupillomotor reaction can be used for comparative evaluation of autonomic neuromotor and brain structures involvement in various neurological diseases. These values may serve as initial point for devising medical algorithms and computer programs.


Tarjan's famous linear time, sequential algorithm for finding the strongly connected components (SCCs) of a graph relies on depth first search, which is inherently sequential. Deterministic parallel algorithms solve this problem in logarithmic time using matrix multiplication techniques, but matrix multiplication requires a large amount of total work. Randomized algorithms based on reachability -- the ability to get from one vertex to another along a directed path -- greatly improve the work bound in the average case. However, these algorithms do not always perform well; for instance, Divide-and-Conquer Strong Components (DCSC), a scalable, divide-and-conquer algorithm, has good expected theoretical limits, but can perform very poorly on graphs for which the maximum reachability of any vertex is small. A related algorithm, MultiPivot, gives very high probability guarantees on the total amount of work for all graphs, but this improvement introduces an overhead that increases the average running time. This work introduces SCCMulti, a multi-pivot improvement of DCSC that offers the same consistency as MultiPivot without the time overhead. We provide experimental results demonstrating SCCMulti's scalability; these results also show that SCCMulti is more consistent than DCSC and is always faster than MultiPivot.


The improved understanding of wound healing has resulted in the rapid expansion of tissue adhesives, platelet gels, and the use of growth factors. Tissue sealants have been used to close incisions, seal and secure skin flaps, as well as promote hemostasis. Platelet gels have multiple uses that take advantage of their inherent clot-forming ability as well as their potential to release growth factors. Recombinant platelet-derived growth factor has been studied extensively for the treatment of chronic dermal ulcers and shows promise in enhancing wound care. This article will address some recent advancements related to the expanding use of tissue sealants and growth factors to enhance wound healing within the head and neck area.


ABSTRACT Abessolo Ondoa, G.; Almar, R.; Kestenare, E.; Bahini, A.; Houngue, G-H.; Jouanno, J.; Du Penhoat, Y.; Castelle, B.; Melet, A.; Meyssignac, B.; Anthony E.; Laibi, R.; Alory, G., and Ranasinghe R., 2016. Potential of video cameras in assessing event and seasonal coastline behaviour: a case study at Grand Popo, Benin (Gulf of Guinea). In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No.75, pp. 442–446. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. In this study, we explore the potential of a nearshore video system to obtain a long-term estimation of coastal variables (shoreline, beach slope, sea level elevation and wave forcing) at Grand Popo beach, Benin, West Africa, from March 2013 to February 2015. We first present a validation of the video system with field data over a 10-day experiment conducted on Grand Popo beach in 2014. Secondly, 2-years daily and monthly timeseries are extracted and their variability is described as a function of regional forcing and climatic modes. All variables show large monthly variability. The longshore sediment transport estimated locally from video is in agreement with that derived from Era-Interim wave data re-analyses. Results show that the shoreline responds predominantly to tides at the event scale and to waves. Overall, this study suggests that video stations are efficient tools to monitor coastal processes over the long term, in complement with other conventional approaches. Although no clear conclusions can be drawn on inter-annual variability, the results show that it is important to build up extended coastal observation networks to address coastline changes over a wide range of scales.


Most attempts to monitor the effects of introductions of Genetically Modified Microorganisms (GMMs) have centred on the enumeration of specific populations. However for a significant perturbation to be measured, changes of between 100% and 300% (0.3 and 0.5 on a log scale) are necessary for the impact to be significant. Standard population measurements, assessing the survival, dissemination and effect on total indigenous populations do not give an indication of the functioning of the ecosystem. There is very little literature regarding the functional impact of GMMs, for instance the effect upon nutrient cycling or functionally important groups of organisms. Through out this review a number of methods for the detection of perturbation in the rhizosphere/soil ecosystem are assessed. A range of non functional methods are summarised first, including molecular and non molecular genetic population diversity studies. Functional methodology, for example nutrient cycling, is then assessed for application as indicators of impact in the soil ecosystem and the significance of measuring functional impact is highlighted. These functional methods are classified into those relying upon the culturability of the target organisms and those that do not. Non culture methods discussed include biomass, respiration, nutrient cycling, mRNA studies and soil enzyme assays. Recently a range of soil enzyme assays have been used as alternatives to population measurements. The impact of a chromosomally marked Pseudomonas fluorescens (SBW25), on soil chitobiosidase, N-acetyl glucosaminidase, acid and alkaline phosphatases, phosphodiesterase, aryl sulphatase and urease were studied. Using these enzyme assays impacts of less than 20% could be detected. A series of interactions were observed which depended on whether a mixture of soil enzyme substrates were added to soil. Generally, microbial inoculation increased the enzyme activity of the biomass, but effects are likely to be


Recommended reading from the library of Kumar Chatani, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System and Dean for Information Technology for the Icahn School of Medicine.


The detection of regions with unusually high risk plays an important role in disease mapping and the analysis of public health data. In particular, the detection of groups of areas (i.e., clusters) where the risk is significantly high is often conducted by public health authorities. Many methods have been proposed for the detection of these disease clusters, most of them based on moving windows, such as Kulldorff's spatial scan statistic. Here we describe a model-based approach for the detection of disease clusters implemented in the DClusterm package. Our model-based approach is based on representing a large number of possible clusters by dummy variables and then fitting many generalized linear models to the data where these covariates are included one at a time. Cluster detection is done by performing a variable or model selection among all fitted models using different criteria. Because of our model-based approach, cluster detection can be performed using different types of likelihoods and latent effects. We cover the detection of spatial and spatiotemporal clusters, as well as how to account for covariates, zero-inflated datasets and overdispersion in the data.


Energy homeostasis depends on insulin signaling in metazoans. Insulin levels reflect the nutritional status of the animal to control levels of circulating sugar and regulate storage of resources in the form of glycogen and fat. Over the past several years, evidence has begun to accumulate that insulin production and secretion, as well as cellular responsiveness to insulin, are subject to regulation by microRNAs. Here we present evidence that miR-14 acts in the insulin-producing neurosecretory cells in the adult Drosophila brain to control metabolism. miR-14 acts in these cells through its direct target, sugarbabe. sugarbabe encodes a predicted zinc finger protein that regulates insulin gene expression in the neurosecretory cells. Regulation of sugarbabe levels by nutrients and by miR-14 combines to allow the fly to manage resource mobilization in a nutritionally variable environment.


The cubic pyrochlore phase Bi1.5ZnNb1.5O7 nanopowder was successfully synthesized by the hydrothermal method (HTM) from the starting materials: Bi(NO3)3·5H2O, ZnO, Nb2O5 and the mineralizer: KOH. The XRD patterns prove that the cubic pyrochlore phase Bi1.5ZnNb1.5O7 nanopowder can be obtained by HTM, and TEM photographs show that the powders present the regularly granular shape, when the hydrothermal reactions were conducted at synthesis temperatures 140~220°C and reaction time for 6~48h. The crystalline sizes of the powders were calculated by the Scherrer equation to be about 43~49nm. The crystalline sizes decreased both with the increase in synthesis temperature and the prolonged reaction time until they reached to the minimum size about 43nm at 220°C for 24h.However, they tended to increase when the reaction time was above 24h.


This article attempts to discuss the role of moral values in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. The industrial revolution will decrease man's involvement in workplaces. The production number increased significantly, but job opening dropped that might cause fewer people to work. As we know, those who live in industrialized countries are very busy and disciplined particularly in running their activities. They have never thought about religious aspects and moral values. They only think about how much can be earned from their job and how to rise-up the production. This is the warmest issues which spread all over the world nowadays, and nobody can escape from that. On the one hand, industry 4.0 will need a skilled man to operate internet or machine to create efficiency and more production, and such circumstances will change people's paradigm. On the other hand, religious teachings should not be underrated because it is a necessary way to strengthen and defend moral values among people. These are two different things that are occurring at the same time, and therefore research which is related to the issues should be done. This study was done qualitatively, and data were collected through a single method---interview. The aims of the study are to find out whether moral values can save people from the influence of the fourth industrial revolution, whether people are pleased only by fulfilling their materialistic needs, and whether the national education curriculum related to moral values need to be changed in accordance with this modern era (industry 4.0).


Moen Incorporated identified a market need for more durable polished brass plumbing fixtures. NASA's Glenn Research Center is a leader in surface coating technology, which enhances the physical properties of a wide range of materials. The collaborative efforts of Glenn and Moen resulted in a new polished brass finish called LifeShine(R). Based on testing results generated at NASA Glenn, Moen was able to manufacture an affordable, polished brass finish that is as durable as chrome, and resists deterioration. LifeShine is guaranteed to resist normal wear and tear and is even scratch-resistant to cleaning products as abrasive as steel wool. Moen was able to incorporate other colors into the LifeShine finish technology including classic gold, nickel, Satine(TM), Black Opal(TM), stainless, and copper. The company added titanium to LifeShine, making the finish even stronger and increasing its already superior durability. Highly resistant to salt and humidity, the LifeShine finish will remain intact even when the fixture is dented.


Construction professionals are the authors on one hand and co-executors of constructionprojects on the other, therefore, the quality of the services expected of them in constructionproject delivery as environmental resource manager is key. This paper investigated whetherquality of service of the construction professionals in Nigeria is influenced by the level ofprofessional fees receivable for services rendered hence their resource management role. Thedeterminants of service quality are identified and their means of evaluation examined usingthe SERVQUAL; instrument used for measurement of the service quality on responses gotfrom a set of questionnaires administered on the construction stakeholders comprising of theconstruction clients on one hand and the construction professionals on the other hand inLagos, Nigeria with a view to assessing the perception of the clients regarding the quality ofservices being received from their construction professionals vis-a-vis clients expectations.The study revealed that there was no significant relationship between the level of fees paidand the quality of service rendered by the construction professionals as the result of theanalysis of variance between service quality gap and the various methods of fees paid is notreflected in the service quality of construction professionals.


As teachers of political theory, our goal is not merely to help students understand the abstract reasoning behind key ideas and texts of our discipline. We also wish to convey the historical contexts that informed these ideas and texts, including the political aims of their authors. But the traditional lecture-and-discussion approach tends to obscure the historical and political dimensions of political theory. Reacting to the Past historical simulations provide a powerful tool for remedying these shortcomings. The simulations foster three kinds of lessons that are difficult to impart with more traditional approaches. First, they help students see the intimate and reciprocal connections between politics, history, and political philosophy. Second, the simulations bring to light the inherently political dimensions of interpreting key political ideas. Finally, drawing upon the ideas of Hannah Arendt, we argue that the simulations educate students about the nature of freedom and political action.


Increasingly manifest, in recent discussions of economic policy-making of less developed countries, has been a greater concern for problems of industrial efficiency [see, 1 ;2;3;4;5;6;10]. This awakening interest is stirred by the realization that the process of industrialization has all too often led to a high-cost industrial structure, and a consequent inability to compete effectively in world markets and against imports. Understandably, absorption of national energies in the task of establishing an industrial structure has frequently meant that consideration of its qualitative performance was not given sufficient weight. Equally understandably, no one should expect the creation, ab initio, of a smoothly functioning industrial system


Multispectral imaging plays an important role in many applications, from astronomical imaging and earth observation to biomedical imaging. However, current technologies are complex with multiple alignment-sensitive components and spatial and spectral parameters predetermined by manufacturers. Here, we demonstrate a single-shot multispectral imaging technique that gives flexibility to end users with a very simple optical setup, thanks to spatial correlation and spectral decorrelation of speckle patterns. These seemingly random speckle patterns are point spread functions (PSFs) generated by light from point sources propagating through a strongly scattering medium. The spatial correlation of PSFs allows image recovery with deconvolution techniques, while the spectral decorrelation allows them to play the role of tunable spectral filters in the deconvolution process. Our demonstrations utilizing optical physics of strongly scattering media and computational imaging present a cost-effective approach for multispectral imaging with many advantages.


This article describes an experiment in the mediation of grievances that recently took place during two six-month periods in four districts of the United Mine Workers of America. Eighty-nine percent of the 153 grievances taken to mediation during the experiment were resolved before arbitration. This success rate did not appear to be influenced by whether one or both parties had to consent to take a grievance to mediation, or by the identity of the mediator or the nature of the issue, although no discharge grievances were mediated in the experiment. Instead, the key to settlement appeared to be the parties' willingness to negotiate. Cost savings attributable to mediating instead of arbitrating the 153 cases were nearly $100,000, and the average grievance was resolved three months sooner in mediation than it would have been had it gone to arbitration. Most of the participants in the experiment had favorable attitudes toward the process, regardless of the outcome of their particular case.


: In immature megakaryocytes, centriolar complexes have been observed with 8, 16, or 32 centrioles. In maturing and trombopoetic megakaryocytes, such a centriolar complex is absent, and individual centrioles lie separately in the cytoplasm. It is suggested that the quantitiy of centrioles in the centriolar complex correlates with the cell ploidy, and that only the cells with potential ability to divide have the centriolar complex.


Locomotion relies on the fine-tuned coordination of different muscles which are controlled by particular neural circuits. Depending on the attendant conditions, walking patterns must be modified to optimally meet the demands of the task. Assessing neuromuscular control during dynamic conditions is methodologically highly challenging and prone to artifacts. Here we aim at assessing corticospinal involvement during different locomotor tasks using non-invasive surface electromyography. Activity in tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius medialis (GM) muscles was monitored by electromyograms (EMGs) in 27 healthy volunteers (11 female) during regular walking, walking while engaged in simultaneous cognitive dual tasks, walking with partial visual restriction, and skilled, targeted locomotion. Whereas EMG intensity of the TA and GM was considerably altered while walking with partial visual restriction and during targeted locomotion, dual-task walking induced only minor changes in total EMG intensity compared to regular walking. Targeted walking resulted in enhanced EMG intensity of GM in the frequency range associated with Piper rhythm synchronies. Likewise, targeted walking induced enhanced EMG intensity of TA at the Piper rhythm frequency around heelstrike, but not during the swing phase. Our findings indicate task- and phase-dependent modulations of neuromuscular control in distal leg muscles during various locomotor conditions in healthy subjects. Enhanced EMG intensity in the Piper rhythm frequency during targeted walking points toward enforced corticospinal drive during challenging locomotor tasks. These findings indicate that comprehensive time-frequency EMG analysis is able to gauge cortical involvement during different movement programs in a non-invasive manner and might be used as complementary diagnostic tool to assess baseline integrity of the corticospinal tract and to monitor changes in corticospinal drive as induced by neurorehabilitation interventions or during disease progression.


A TOTAL of 546 crown-rump measurements was made on 316 patients with reliable menstrual histories, between the sixth and fourteenth week of pregnancy. The study showed that fetal length could be correlated accurately with reliable menstrual data and with a known date of ovulation (see also Drumm et al, 1976). Using the fetal crown-rump length, the date of delivery was predicted in patients with obscure menstrual histories. The technique was found to be highly accurate when compared with the actual delivery date of those patients who began labour spontaneously, and with paediatric maturity assessment.


Donald Barthelme, one of the foremost writers of postmodern fiction in the mid-to-later twentieth century, was continually engaged in the project of breaking down conventions of all kinds and especially of cutting through the accretion of conventional uses of language. With his 1965 novel Snow White , he turned to the ancient genre of the fairy tale to accomplish this goal. While many commentators on the novel claim that Barthelme's treatment of the Snow White tale is merely parodic and negative, I maintain that the novel is actually quite positive in breaking through an objectified and rigid version of human Being in the character of Snow to a much more open horizon of possible Being. To make this point, I draw on central aspects of the thought of Martin Heidegger, who, perhaps more than that of any other philosopher, helped to create the zeitgeist through which postmodern American fiction emerges in the last half of the twentieth century. Specifically, Heidegger collapses the subject-object dualism of Descartes into the wholeness of Being itself and conceives for language the role not of simply re-presenting the world to human beings but rather of discovering, or "clearing," Being itself.


Two water pumps were taken out of service because of reduced output. Visual inspection revealed considerable material loss in both impellers, which were 25.4 cm (10 in.) in diam x 1.3 cm (0.5 in.) wide and made from a cast bronze alloy. Several similar water pumps operating under nearly identical conditions, drawing water from an open tank through a standpipe, had no observable failures. Etched micrographs 100x of samples taken from the impellers showed clean, pockmarked, severely eroded surfaces, characteristic of cavitation damage. Investigation also revealed that considerable quantities of air were being drawn into the system when water in the supply tank dropped below a certain level. It was concluded that cavitation erosion (due to the uptake of air) caused metal removal and microstructural damage in the impellers. Recommendations included adding a water-level control to the piping system and excluding air from the pump inlet.


Photon mapping is a light transport algorithm that simulates various rendering effects (e.g., caustics) robustly, and its progressive variants, progressive photon mapping (PPM) methods, can produce a biased but consistent rendering output. PPM estimates radiance using a kernel density estimation whose parameters (bandwidths) are adjusted progressively, and this refinement enables to reduce its estimation bias. Nonetheless, many iterations (and thus a large number of photons) are often required until PPM produces nearly converged estimates. This paper proposes a post‐reconstruction that improves the performance of PPM by reducing residual errors in PPM estimates. Our key idea is to take multiple PPM estimates with multi‐level correlation structures, and fuse the input images using a weight function trained by supervised learning with maintaining the consistency of PPM. We demonstrate that our technique boosts an existing PPM technique for various rendering scenes.


Cedae, a Rio de Janeiro Government Agency, carefully planned and designed an ocean outfall to be built in Barra da Tijuca, one of the most valuable and beautiful dwelling regions of Rio de Janeiro.

Due to the non-implementation of a public enlightening campaign, Cedae had to face radical community opposition to the outfall construction, fronted by very active persons, interested in personal promotion in a political elective period.

The authors concluded that it is indispensable for any planned public work to put an action in enlightening public information program, based on fact and mutual understanding, to inform the community to be served about the various technical, economical and social questions involved and as to the facilities to be built.


We perceive scenes as stable even when eye movements induce retinal motion, for example during pursuit of a moving object. Mechanisms mediating perceptual stability have primarily been examined in motion regions of the dorsal visual pathway. Here we examined whether motion responses in human scene regions are encoded in eye- or world centered reference frames. We recorded brain responses in human participants using fMRI while they performed a well-controlled visual pursuit paradigm previously used to examine dorsal motion regions. In addition, we examined effects of content by using either natural scenes or their Fourier scrambles. We found that parahippocampal place area (PPA) responded to motion only in world- but not in eye-centered coordinates, regardless of scene content. The occipital place area (OPA) responded to both, objective and retinal motion equally, and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) had no motion responses but responded to pursuit. Only PPA's objective motion responses were higher during scenes than scrambled images, although there was a similar trend in OPA. These results indicate a special role of PPA in representing its content in real-world coordinates. Our results question a strict subdivision of dorsal "what" and ventral "where" streams, and suggest a role of PPA in contributing to perceptual stability.


There are many nonlinear parabolic equations whose solutions develop singularity in finite time, say T. In many cases, a certain norm of the solution tends to infinity as time t approaches T. Such a phenomenon is called blow-up, and T is called the blow-up time. This paper is concerned with approximation of blow-up phenomena in nonlinear parabolic equations. For numerical computations or for other reasons, we often have to deal with approximate equations. But it is usually not at all clear if such wild phenomena as blow-up can be well reflected in the approximate equations. In this paper we present rather simple but general sufficient conditions which guarantee that the blow-up time for the original equation is well approximated by that for approximate equations. We will then apply our result to various examples. §


Background Stride-to-stride fluctuations, or gait variability, can be captured easily using body worn inertial sensors. Previously, sensor-measured gait variability has been found to be associated with fall risk and central nervous changes. However, further research is needed to clarify the clinical relevance of this method. Objectives In this study, we look at how gait variability is associated with muscle strength, measured two years earlier. Design, setting and participants This is study of longitudinal associations. Participants were community-dwelling volunteers between 70–81 years. Measurements Participants were tested while walking with a single sensor at their lower back, and they walked back and forth over a distance of 6.5 meters under four conditions: at preferred speed, at fast speed, with an added cognitive task, and while walking across an uneven surface. Gait variability in the anteroposterior (AP), mediolateral (ML) and vertical (V) directions was identified. A muscle strength score was composed by transforming hand grip strength, isometric knee extension strength and the 30 second chair rise-test to z-scores and adding them. Results 56 individuals were analysed (mean age at baseline 75.8 (SD 3.43), 60 percent women). In a backwards regression method using age, gender and baseline walking speed as covariates, muscle strength predicted gait variability after two years for AP variability during preferred speed (Beta=.314, p=.025) and uneven surface walking (Beta=.326, p=.018). Further, muscle strength was associated with ML variability during preferred speed (Beta=.364, p=.048) and fast speed (Beta=.419, p=.042), and V variability during preferred speed (Beta=.402, p=.002), fast speed (Beta=.394, p=.004) and uneven surface walking (Beta=.369, p=.004). Conclusions Sensor-measured gait variability tended to be associated with muscle strength measured two years earlier. This finding could emphasize the relevance of this relatively novel measure of gait in older adults for both research and clinical practice.


The way employee flows generate ethnic and gender segregation across workplaces is investigated using a population sample of 80,139 workplaces with 977,978 employees in the Stockholm area. Comparisons of actual stocks and flows of employees across workplaces to counterfactual simulations of these reveal that segregation clearly has a random component to it: Even with random allocation of employees to workplaces, segregation would still be substantial. Systematic (non-random) segregation appears to be upheld primarily because employees recruited to workplaces are similar to those already employed there, not because underrepresented groups within workplaces are systematically screened out. This tendency appears to be less connected to between-group differences in education, occupation or industry, but instead largely sustained by the tendency of employers to select new employees from a pool of workplaces where their employees have been employed previously. Network recruiting might generate this pattern, but unobserved individual and workplace factors cannot be ruled out as potential confounders. The results speak to theories of homosociality applied to segregation processes: If homosocial biases affect segregation, they apparently do so mostly in the recruitment process to workplaces, but less so through processes of exclusion of minorities from workplaces.


Introduction Gastric ulcers can harbour malignancy and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) therefore recommends follow-up gastrocopy (FU-OGD). Predictors of benign gastric ulcers can potentially reduce the burden of FU-OGD. Methods All patients with a first endoscopic diagnosis of gastric ulcer between January 2012 and September 2013 at this large teaching hospital were included. Patients with known gastric ulcers prior to study period or those referred for tertiary assessment were excluded. We defined neoplastic disease as histological evidence of gastric dysplasia or malignancy. Benign disease was defined as patients with complete ulcer healing, those with 2 sets of benign biopsies and no endoscopic suspicion of malignant disease, or in cases without FU-OGD one set of negative biopsies and at least 360 days cancer free survival. Patients with insufficient follow-up were excluded. We analysed the influence of demographic, endoscopic and histological factors on the likelihood of benign disease using chi-square test for categorical and t-test for continuous variables. Independence of variables was analysed using linear regression analysis. Results Of 377 patients included 350 (92%) had benign disease. 19 patients were diagnosed with adenocarcinomas, 2 with dysplasia, 5 with lymphomas, and 1 with melanoma. Patient sex, indication for gastroscopy and helicobacter pylori status did not influence the likelihood of benign disease. Benign disease was significantly associated with ulcer location in the antrum (p = 0.001), endoscopic benign appearance (p < 0.001), non-cratered ulcer morphology (p < 0.001), benign histology on 1st biopsy (p < 0.001), younger age (64 vs 73 years, p = 0.02), lower number of ulcers (1.4 vs 2, p < 0.001) and smaller ulcer size (10 vs 28 mm, p < 0.001). After linear regression analysis only endoscopic benign appearance (p = 0.03), benign histology on 1st biopsy (p < 0.001), lower number of ulcers (p < 0.001) and smaller ulcer size (p = 0.004) were independent predictors of benign disease. Conclusion We have demonstrated that several simple factors collected during index endoscopy and ulcer biopsy can predict benign disease. Risk stratification according to those factors could be used to re-examine the need for FU-OGD for all patients with gastric ulceration. If prospectively verified the described predictive factors could be used to identify low risk patients who do not require endoscopy. This may be a strategy to reduce the burden of FU-OGD. Disclosure of Interest S. Thanaraj: None Declared, A. Sainsbury: None Declared, R. Cochrane: None Declared, C. Selinger Grant/research support from: Ferring, Shire, Nycomed, Warner Chilcott.


In this paper, main and peaking voltages of a Doherty power amplifier are derived by means of the chain parameters of the output section to analyze the effect of the offset lines on the drain efficiency. It is shown that the main branch offset line dominates the drain efficiency. Furthermore, it is exhibited that moderate offset mismatch at the peaking branch has no significant influence on the output power performance of the amplifier. A 100W GaN Doherty power amplifier is realized to experimentally verify the results.


A decision graph is an AND/OR graph with a certain evaluation function. Decision graphs have been found a very useful representation for a variety of decision making problems. This article present a number of search algorithms computing an optimal solution from a given decision graph. These algorithms include one {\it depth-first heuristic-search algorithm}, one {\it best-first heuristic-search algorithm}, one {\it anytime-algorithm} and two {\it iterative-deepening depth-first heuristic-search algorithms}. Similar to the *-minimax search algorithms of Ballard, our depth-first heuristic-search algorithm is developed from the alpha--beta algorithm for minimax tree search. In addition, we show how heuristic knowledge can be used to improve search efficiency. Furthermore, we present an anytime algorithm which is conveniently obtained from the depth-first heuristic-search algorithm without incurring much overhead. The best-first heuristic-search algorithm is obtained by modifying the well known AO* algorithm for AND/OR graphs with additive costs. The iterative-deepening algorithms result from combining the iterative-deepening techniques with the depth-first search techniques. Some experimental data on some of these algorithms performance are given.


The use of ozone in the treatment of peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is increasing. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of ozone on haemoglobin oxygen affinity in Type-2 diabetic patients with PVD. Twenty diabetic patients presenting with PVD (Clinical stage II-IV according to Fontaine) and 20 non-diabetic healthy matched subjects were studied. In both groups, aliquots of blood were ozonised with mixtures of oxygen-ozone (O2-O3) to reach end-concentrations of 6.5, 13, 26 and 78 micrograms O3 per ml of substrate. At baseline, diabetic patients presented significantly lower haemoglobin oxygen affinity values but higher plasma levels of free haemoglobin and malonyldialdehyde (MDA) than controls. In both diabetic patients and controls, exposure of blood to ozone reduced haemoglobin oxygen affinity in an "all-or-none" fashion, without changing 2-3, diphosphoglycerate concentrations in erythrocytes. Both free haemoglobin and MDA concentrations showed significant, dose-dependent increases after blood ozonisation. Thus, ozone caused a significant increase in oxygen unloading of haemoglobin in both normal subjects and Type-2 diabetic patients with PVD.


The real estate sector keeps contributing significantly to the Spanish economy. A recent news article reports the existence of inefficiencies in the nature and delivery of new properties. We investigate the technical efficiency of this sector using a non-parametric "reasonable" benchmarking frontier, acknowledging the marked influence of the sector's shadow economy. We then relate the results applying a panel data analysis to the shareholding concentration and identity of firm ownership. We find no systematic support for the effect of corporate ownership on technical efficiency.


This volume is a collection of new, published and revised essays, providing a distinctive, thoroughgoing, realist approach to contemporary psychological theories, concepts, methods, and applications. The essays also offer critical analyses of antirealist trends both in and outside of mainstream psychology.


We report a case of torsion of a pedunculated uterine leiomyoma. A 56-year-old married Chinese female presented at the emergency department with complaints of severe lower abdominal pain on July 27, 2010. A transabdominal sonogram revealed multiple uterine masses, including a pedunculated mass. With a preoperative diagnosis of torsion of a pedunculated subserosal leiomyoma, the patient underwent a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. On gross inspection, the resected myoma was ischemic, and both focal hemorrhage and necrosis were noted in the pathology report. In conclusion, torsion of a pedunculated uterine myoma is rare but represents a surgical emergency to improve symptoms and avoid consumptive coagulopathy. doi:10.4021/jmc136w


The intragastric balloon is a non-surgical procedure indicated for the control of obesity. It is considered more efficient than the conservative treatment, which has less risk than the surgery, but there is still a lack of consensus about its indications and there is little information about its limitations. The present study describes the experience of the first 100 cases in Paraguay where 32% of obesity is estimated in the urban population. The objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of the intragastric balloon in the decrease of the weight and waist circumference of obese patients subjected to this treatment. Since October 2004 to December 2008, 100 patients were subjected to the placing of an intragastric balloon after a clinical, psychological and nutritional evaluation. They received a hypocaloric diet and indications of daily physical activity. Seventy six women with a mean age of 36±21 years and 24 men with a mean age of 37±19 years were evaluated. The initial weight was 105±23 kg in women and 134±27 kg in men, presenting a waist diameter above the normal values (110 and 132 cm respectively), a mean weight of 112±23 kg, a BMI of 40 and waist diameter of 115 cm. In the result analysis, the weight values decreased significantly after the surgery being the median Jiménez Bazzano MC: 37-45 37 values 112 (IC 95%: 96.4 to 113.9 kg; p< 0.0001) at initial level and 88 (IC 95%: 80.0 a 89.3) at final level providing a net difference of 24 kg in a period of six to eight months. In relation to the body mass index (BMI), the change observed was one obesity degree of difference going from morbid obesity and grade III to obesity grades II and I. The values were the following: median of 38 kg/m (IC 95%: 36.4 to 39.9) at the initial level and median of 31.0 kg/m (IC 95% 29.4 to 33.9) at the final level. The results show significant losses of weight, BMI and waist diameter. This can be achieved combining the intragastric balloon, restricted diet and behavioral support therapy. The waist diameter, a very important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, showed an important decrease.


Data from cows of a five-breed diallel involving Angus, Brahman, Hereford, Holstein and Jersey were analyzed. Females were used in inter se matings to produce three second-generation parturitions per cow. Crossbred (CB) cows were 43 d younger (P less than .05), 14 kg heavier (P less than .05) and 2 cm taller (P less than .05) at first calving than straightbred (SB) cows; however, no differences were detected (P greater than .10) between the two groups for pelvic measurements. Although large differences among breed types existed for gestation length, crossbreds generally did not differ from straightbreds for this character. Crossbred cows exhibited a 7.5 d shorter (P less than .05) interval from parturition to first service, but did not exhibit a shorter interval from parturition to conception (P greater than .10). The dairy breeds (Holstein and Jersey) and their crosses exhibited similar postpartum and calving intervals as Angus, while Brahman and their crosses had longer intervals. Crossbred calves were 1.3 kg heavier (P less than .01) and had greater (P less than .01) shoulder and hip dimensions at birth than SB calves, but no difference in the amount of calving difficulty was detected (P greater than .10) between the two groups. Higher (P less than .01) rates of survival to 24 h (3.7%) and to weaning (8.7%) were observed for CB calves compared with SB calves. Heterotic effects for weaning weight (15.2 kg), weaning height (2 cm) and preweaning average daily gain (68 g) were large and illustrate the importance of individual and maternal heterosis for these characters. These results suggest that substantial amounts of heterosis may be retained for survival and weaning characters of calves in early generations of inter se mating of CB.


Abstract interpretation (AI) and integer linear programming (ILP) are two techniques which were used independently from each other for worst case execution time (WCET) approximation. With AI one can compute interesting properties of programs. It can be implemented efficiently and yields provably correct results. Previous work has shown that it is suitable for cache behaviour prediction of memory references of a program. By using ILP the structure of a program and the program path can be described easily and in a very natural way. A set of constraints describes the overall structure of the program and solving the constraints yields very precise results. However when modelling microarchitectural components like caches or pipelines, the complexity of the solving process can increase dramatically. Our approach uses AI to model the microarchitecture's behaviour and ILP for finding worst case program paths using the results of the Al. This combines the advantages of both approaches.


Drawing on the power of discourse in Foucault's concept of panopticism, of language in the Deleuzean concept of territorialisation, and Althusser's interpellation, my study focuses on how Gao Xingjian dismantles the grand narrative of the Cultural Revolution in his second novel One Man's Bible. Deploying textual, critical discourse and stylistic analyses as key tools to analyse selected data, this paper highlights the way a panoptic political order 'hails' and 'recruits' an intellectual hence marginal subject to participate in a culture of violence that comes to dominate the Chinese street politics during 1966-76. So pervasive is the hold of its 'command-words' that it transforms the very nature of his subjectivity, rendering him 'docile and serviceable'; not only harmless to the state but also pliantly serving the cause, interest and ideology of the Party in power. To shake off the power-effects, one needs a new form of 'deterritorialised' or 'counter' subjectivity evoked by Deleuze and Foucault respectively, and symbolically represented in the physical act of 'flight' from home. By absconding from the scene of violence, the self-exile thwarts the forces of oppression in their attempt to subjectify him, and takes charge of his own subjectivity. This is an area which has not stirred any debate in the critical circles yet, hence the study has potential to be an important addition to literature on Gao.


Cancer cell mutations occur when cells undergo multiple cell divisions, and these mutations can be spontaneous or environmentally-induced. The mechanisms that promote and sustain these mutations are still not fully understood. This study deals with the identification (or reconstruction) of the usually unknown cancer cell mutation law, which lead to the transformation of a primary tumour cell population into a secondary, more aggressive cell population. We focus on local and nonlocal mathematical models for cell dynamics and movement, and identify these mutation laws from macroscopic tumour snapshot data collected at some later stage in the tumour evolution. In a local cancer invasion model, we first reconstruct the mutation law when we assume that the mutations depend only on the surrounding cancer cells (i.e., the ECM plays no role in mutations). Second, we assume that the mutations depend on the ECM only, and we reconstruct the mutation law in this case. Third, we reconstruct the mutation when we assume that there is no prior knowledge about the mutations. Finally, for the nonlocal cancer invasion model, we reconstruct the mutation law that depends on the cancer cells and on the ECM. For these numerical reconstructions, our approximations are based on the finite difference method combined with the finite elements method. As the inverse problem is ill-posed, we use the Tikhonov regularisation technique in order to regularise the solution. Stability of the solution is examined by adding additive noise into the measurements.


Precision measurements of CP violating observables in the mixing and decay of B mesons provide excellent opportunities to search for possible contributions from New Physics beyond the Standard Model. In these proceedings, key measurements pursued by the LHCb collaboration at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are described. Results obtained from the analysis of data collected in 2011 already match or even surpass the measurements of previous experiments in their precision. All results obtained so far are compatible with Standard Model predictions, hints for possible deviations reported by previous experiments are not confirmed. All results are dominated by statistical uncertainties and significant improvements are expected from analysing larger data sets. The total integrated luminosity accumulated by LHCb has already been tripled in 2012 and is expected to more than double again in the data taking period following the first long shutdown of the LHC. A comprehensive upgrade of the LHCb apparatus is then foreseen for the second long shutdown of the LHC accelerator in 2018/2019. The main goals of the LHCb upgrade are to operate the experiment at higher instantaneous luminosities and to improve further the trigger efficiency for heavy quark decays to purely hadronic final states.


Purpose

To examine the implementation of quality management systems (QMSs) of Grade 7 (G-7) Indonesian construction companies. This includes the initial motives that have driven the development of QMSs, barriers to effective QMS implementation, the current practice and integration of QMS-ISO 9001 principles and elements, and the performance of contractors implementing such QMSs.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was conducted involving 403 respondents (Quality Management Representatives, Managers, and Project and Site Engineers) from 77 G-7 as well as ISO 9001 certified Indonesian construction companies.

Findings

The main motive for G-7 contractors in establishing and implementing ISO 9001 based QMSs are identified as being to effectively and efficiently control project activities. Respondents apparently do not often experience problems related to QMS implementation. However, issues of management attitude and purpose are identified as barriers that may affect effective QMS implementation. The study highlights the ISO 9001 principles and elements that still require to be more critically applied by G-7 contractors in order to fully implement and improve their current QMS effectiveness. The findings also suggest that, although certified, many G-7 contractors have not yet achieved a satisfactory level of performance to be truly competitive in global markets outside Indonesia.

Originality/value

To date, only limited research has been conducted into the application of ISO 9001 in the Indonesian construction industry. The research findings reinforced the value of pursuing more effective QMS implementation. They also support current attempts to introduce ISO 9001 QMSs to a much wider base of Indonesian construction companies, particularly small and medium sized contractors and builders.


Prebiotics are known as fermented ingredient with specific health benefits. The two main fermentative substrates of dietary origin are non-digestible carbohydrates and proteins which escape digestion in the small intestine. Beside traditional protocols for production of prebiotics, there are some commercial advanced methods for mass production of prebiotics with acceptable health effects. On the other hand, different types of nondigestible oligosaccharides (NDO) are used in the food and drug industries as functional foods and nutraceuticals due to their prebiotic effects and also immunomodulation effects (ex. SCFA modulate chemokine expression in intestinal epithelial cells). Prebiotics with novel and wide variety of health benefits deal with a bright future for improving society health.


In some applications, the signals received by an array are a mixture of signals emitted by both far-field and near-field sources. This study develops a new cumulant-based multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm for source localisation using a new structural sparse array for scenarios where both far-field and near-field sources coexist. The key feature of this algorithm is that it utilises fourth-order cumulants to compute the virtual covariance matrix and constructs a new special cumulant matrix to acquire the largest number of virtual sensors and the largest array aperture for a given number of sensors. The authors provide a geometric proof to justify the utilisation of the proposed sparse linear array and compute the effective aperture of the array. The proposed algorithm increases resolution ability, direction of arrival (DOA) and range estimation accuracy, and the number of sources to be localised. Moreover, the new method has the main advantage that it does not use the information of all sensors; so that it provides somewhat low computational complexity while it uses many actual and virtual sensors. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The random utility model (RUM) of voting behavior can account for strategic voting by making use of proxy indicators that measure voter incentives to vote strategically. The contribution of this article is to propose a new method to estimate the RUM in the presence of strategic voters, without having to construct proxy measures of strategic voting incentives. Our method can be used to infer the counterfactual sincere vote of those who vote strategically and provides an estimate of the size of strategic voting. We illustrate the procedure using post-electoral survey data from Spain. Our calculations indicate that strategic voting in Spain is about 2.19%.


EDITOR,—In August 1996 there was a change in legislation. The Explosives Act (Northern Ireland) 1970 (as amended by the Explosives (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1996) allowed over the counter sale of fireworks to anybody over 16 year of age. Prior to this, it was illegal to buy fireworks in Northern Ireland. For the same four week period (11 October–11 November) for the years 1994 and 1995, all accident and emergency notes were reviewed retrospectively and patients with firework related injuries were identified. The years 1996–1998 were collected prospectively. The patients' age, sex, date of presentation, injury, site of injury and follow up were recorded. Thirty five patients presented to the department with fireworks related injuries over the study period. This consisted of 27 men and eight women (fig 1). Men in their late teens (mean age 18 years, 77% of all males) were the predominant group. Fifty five per cent of all injuries involved the hand. There has been a threefold increase in the number of injuries presenting to this department after the change in legislation (÷ = 20.61, p<0.001). In this hospital, firework injuries presented most commonly on Hallowe'en night (31 October) and the following night (fig 2). This is due to the people of Londonderry celebrating "the biggest Hallowe'en party in Europe". This peak is not reflected in national figures as the trend is for the injuries to occur around the 5th of November (Guy Fawkes night). With this in mind, campaigns should run to target periods that are identified locally. Firework injuries in Northern Ireland are not included in the national yearly figures published by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Firework injury reporting has only been monitored in Northern Ireland since 1996, but the figures are collected and sent yearly to the DTI. Legalising the sale of fireworks has resulted in an increase in the number of fireworks related incidents. This is not in keeping with the trends noted in Great Britain. Northern Ireland firework injury figures, albeit collected, are not included in the national reported figures.


BACKGROUND
Although gemcitabine is the standard treatment for pancreatic cancer, this particular type of cancer develops rapidly and has intrinsic chemoresistance. Chemoresistance plays a critical role in tumor progression, invasion and migration. Nevertheless, the effect of adenoviral therapy on chemoresistant cancer cells has not been studied. In this study, we compared the efficacy of adenoviral therapy in parental and chemoresistant pancreatic cancer cells.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
To establish gemcitabine-resistant cells, pancreatic cancer SUIT2 cells were exposed to increasing concentrations of gemcitabine. Both parental and chemoresistant cells were infected with adenoviruses expressing either green fluorescent protein (Ad-GFP) or the hepatocyte growth factor antagonist, NK4 (Ad-NK4). To investigate the transduction efficacy, GFP expression and NK4 concentrations were measured and an invasion assay was used to investigate the efficacy of the adenoviral therapy.

RESULTS
The 50% inhibitory concentration of gemcitabine was <10 nM in the parental SUIT-2 cells, while it was >1 μM in gemcitabine-resistant cells. A large number of gemcitabine-resistant cells were GFP-positive compared with only a small number of parental cells (p<0.05). The NK4 expression level was significantly higher in gemcitabine-resistant cells than in parental cells (p<0.05). The supernatant from Ad-NK4-infected gemcitabine-resistant cells significantly inhibited the invasion of cancer cells compared with that from Ad-NK4-infected parental cells (p<0.05).

CONCLUSION
Both the efficiency of transduction and the therapeutic efficacy of adenoviral therapy were higher in gemcitabine-resistant cells than in parental cells, suggesting that adenoviral gene therapy is more effective in patients with gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer.


The growing use of Big Data frameworks on large machines highlights the importance of performance issues and the value of High Performance Computing (HPC) technology. This paper looks carefully at three major frameworks Spark, Flink and Message Passing Interface (MPI) both in scaling across nodes and internally over the many cores inside modern nodes. We focus on the special challenges of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) using an Intel Haswell HPC cluster with 24 cores per node. Two parallel machine learning algorithms, K-Means clustering and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) are used in our performance studies. We identify three major issues — thread models, affinity patterns, and communication mechanisms — as factors affecting performance by large factors and show how to optimize them so that Java can match the performance of traditional HPC languages like C. Further we suggest approaches that preserve the user interface and elegant dataflow approach of Flink and Spark but modify the runtime so that these Big Data frameworks can achieve excellent performance and realize the goals of HPC-Big Data convergence.


ABSTRACT Swine origin 2009 H1N1 influenza virus has spread globally to cause the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century. Serological studies can improve our understanding of the extent of human infection and risk factors associated with the transmission of this pandemic virus. The "gold standard" for serodiagnosis of human influenza virus infection is the detection of seroconversion between acute- and convalescent-stage samples. However, the timing of seroepidemiological investigations often precludes the collection of truly acute-phase sera, requiring development of serological criteria for evaluating convalescent-phase sera that optimize detection of true positives and true negatives. To guide seroepidemiological investigations into the spread of the novel 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus, we characterized serum antibody responses to 2009 H1N1 virus in 87 individuals with confirmed viral infection and 227 nonexposed U.S. individuals using microneutralization (MN) and hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assays. Sensitivity and specificity were determined for each assay alone and in combination for detection of 2009 H1N1 virus-specific antibodies in convalescent-phase sera. Although the HI assay was more specific for detecting antibody to 2009 H1N1, the MN assay was more sensitive, particularly for detecting low-titer seroconversions. A combination of titers (MN ≥ 40 and HI ≥ 20) provided the highest sensitivity (90%) and specificity (96%) for individuals aged <60 years and 92% specificity for adults aged ≥60 years for detection of serologically confirmed 2009 H1N1 infections in U.S. populations during the first pandemic waves. These studies provide an approach to optimize timely serological investigations for future pandemics or outbreaks of novel influenza viruses among humans.


Latinos trail behind their non-Latino White peers in academic achievement from early childhood through higher education. While attention has been paid to improving Latinos high school completion and college enrollment rates, far less attention has been given to college completion. This study utilized quantitative data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman (NLSF) to address two overarching research questions: (1) Is a culturally accepting/inclusive school climate related to positive academic outcomes? and (2) Does the effect of the cultural climate on student achievement vary by students' ethnic identity? The sample was comprised of 917 Latino college students attending 28 selective universities from across the nation. The empirical research on these areas of interest has produced mixed results. This may be partially due to ethnic identity and academic outcomes being defined and measured differently from one study to another, making it difficult to make comparisons from one study to another. This study examined ethnic identity from a multi-dimensional perspective and examined academic achievement from a mainstream and Latino perspective (students' ability to obtain a formal education while maintaining strong family/community ties). The cultural school climate was related to five outcomes (timely degree completion, increased academic aspirations and connectedness to family, community, and ethnic group). The effect of the cultural climate on student achievement was dependent on students' ethnic identity for seven outcomes (i.e. grades earned, timely degree completion, degree completion (six years), increased aspirations, reduced aspirations, family connectedness, and feeling resented by one's ethnic group). The majority of these students completed their degree and earned high grades, however, a sizeable amount reported their going to college made them feel less part of their family and reported feeling resented by members of their ethnic group. This study supports the need to develop targeted programs to serve a range of Latino students because depending on the outcome in question and/or students' unique dimensions of ethnic identity, some students stand to benefit more from culturally inclusive learning environments than others. Also, this study shows schools can strengthen students' relationships with family and their ethnic group while also nurturing their academic aspirations and timely completion.


Photoperiod is associated to phenotypic plasticity of somatic growth in several teleost species. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are currently unknown but it is likely that epigenetic regulation by methyltransferases is involved. The MLL (mixed-lineage leukaemia) family comprises histone methyltransferases that play a critical role in regulating gene expression during early development in mammals. So far, these genes have received scant attention in teleost fish. In the present study, the mean weight of Atlantic cod juveniles reared under continuous illumination was found to be 13% greater than those kept under natural photoperiod conditions for 120 days. We newly determined cDNA sequences of five mll (mll1, mll2, mll3a, mll4b and mll5) and two setd1 (setd1a and setd1ba) paralogues from Atlantic cod. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the cod genes clustered within the appropriate mll clade and comparative mapping of mll paralogues showed that these genes lie within a region of conserved synteny among teleosts. All mll and setd1 genes were highly expressed in gonads and fast muscle of adult cod, albeit at different levels, and they were differentially regulated with photoperiod in muscle of juvenile fish. Following only one day of exposure to constant light, mll1, mll4b and setd1a were up to 57% lower in these fish compared to the natural photoperiod group. In addition, mRNA expression of myogenic regulatory factors (myog and myf-5) and pax7 in fast muscle was also affected by different photoperiod conditions. Notably, myog was significantly elevated in the continuous illumination group throughout the time course of the experiment. The absence of a day/night cycle is associated with a generalised decrease in mll expression concomitant with an increase in myog transcript levels in fast muscle of Atlantic cod, which may be involved in the observed epigenetic regulation of growth by photoperiod in this species.


Background: The evidence to support operative versus nonoperative treatment for rotator cuff tears is sparse and inconclusive. Purpose: To assess pain and functional outcomes in patients undergoing operative and nonoperative treatments for rotator cuff tears. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: From March 2011 to February 2015, a multicenter cohort of patients with rotator cuff tears undergoing operative and nonoperative treatments was recruited. Patients completed a detailed history questionnaire, the Shoulder Pain and Disability Index (SPADI), and the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) standardized form and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. In addition to baseline assessments, patients received follow-up questionnaires at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months. Propensity score weighting was used to balance differences in characteristics of the operative and nonoperative groups. Results: Adjusted for propensity scores, the operative (n = 50) and nonoperative (n = 77) groups had similar characteristics, as evidenced by the small standardized mean differences between the groups. Adjusted mean differences in the SPADI and ASES scores between the operative and nonoperative groups were –22.0 points (95% CI, –32.1 to –11.8) and –22.2 points (95% CI, –32.8 to –11.6) at 18 months, respectively. The operative group had a significantly higher proportion of patients who showed ≥30% (P = .002) and ≥50% (P < .0001) improvement in SPADI and ASES scores as compared with the nonoperative group. Conclusion: In this prospective cohort study, patients undergoing operative treatment had significantly better pain and functional outcomes as compared with patients undergoing nonoperative treatment for rotator cuff tears. Differences between the 2 groups in SPADI and ASES scores at the 6- to 18-month time points met the minimal clinically important difference (depending on the threshold used). A large randomized controlled trial is needed to answer this question more definitively.


Even after years of receiving considerable foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished, tremendously fragile state. Over a span of ten years, the United States spent over $4 billion in aid to Haiti, yet the average Haitian still has to survive on one dollar a day. Why has assistance been so ineffectual, and what can we learn from Haiti's plight about foreign aid in general? Haiti in the Balance tackles those questions by analyzing nearly twenty years of Haitian history, politics, and foreign relations. Terry Buss and his colleagues at the National Academy on Public Administration found a general failure to reinforce the capacity of institutions at all levels of Haitian government. Building up that system of institutions appears to be a necessary precursor to a nation using foreign aid in the most effective manner. Such an effort demands improved security, a more professional (and less corrupt) bureaucracy, and eventually decentralization and perhaps even some privatization. Different levels of government must be willing to learn how best to work with one another: according to Buss, "Haitian governments seemed consumed by politics, rather than good governance." People still matter, and so does administration. Until we learn that lesson, even the most generous foreign aid will not fulfill its intent.


Consultation-liaison psychiatry and general hospital psychiatry have played a major role in promoting the concept of integrated care. New models for care have been developed and policy assurances about the quality of care have been expressed in the form of guidelines and indicators relating to procedure and performance. General hospital psychiatry is playing an increasingly important role in the training of psychiatrists. Due to the ageing population there is greater awareness of the importance of comorbidity and more support for the concept of integrated care. These changes will promote the further development of general hospital psychiatry.


Excitatory synapses in the CNS are formed on both dendritic spines and shafts. Recent studies show that the density of shaft synapses may be independently regulated by behavioral learning and the induction of synaptic plasticity, suggesting that distinct mechanisms are involved in regulating these two types of synapses. Although the molecular mechanisms underlying spinogenesis and spine synapse formation are being delineated, those regulating shaft synapses are still unknown. Here, we show that postsynaptic ephrinB3 expression promotes the formation of glutamatergic synapses specifically on the shafts, not on spines. Reducing or increasing postsynaptic ephrinB3 expression selectively decreases or increases shaft synapse density, respectively. In the ephrinB3 knock-out mouse, although spine synapses are normal, shaft synapse formation is reduced in the hippocampus. Overexpression of glutamate receptor-interacting protein 1 (GRIP1) rescues ephrinB3 knockdown phenotype by restoring shaft synapse density. GRIP1 knockdown prevents the increase in shaft synapse density induced by ephrinB3 overexpression. Together, our results reveal a novel mechanism for independent modulation of shaft synapses through ephrinB3 reverse signaling.


In Reply. —Dr Roizen's letter raises an important point, ie, that general platitudes or vague suggestions provided by internists during preoperative consultations are unlikely to be useful to those requesting consultation. Indeed, we found during additional analysis of our data 1 that the likelihood of advice being followed was directly related to the "definitiveness" of the advice being offered. However, though we agree with the main thrust of Dr Roizen's letter, we would hasten to point out that the compliance calculations used in ourArchivesarticle excluded those recommendations "that were vague in wording," ie, exactly those about which Dr Roizen expresses appropriate concern. Thus, the poor compliance demonstrated by those requesting consultations in this study cannot be attributed to the lack of specificity in the recommendation.