Abstract   Research agendas play an important role in directing scholarly inquiry in a field. The Research Agenda for Physical Therapy From the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) outlines research priorities that are vital to advancing physical therapist practice and the profession. The development of the research agenda included multiple iterative steps and feedback from stakeholders. A research agenda subgroup (n = 6) of the APTA Scientific and Practice Affairs Committee (SPAC), with APTA staff support, gathered information on existing research agendas, developed draft priority descriptions, and gathered feedback via surveys. The subgroup first conducted an environmental scan of the research agendas in the physical therapy and rehabilitation fields. To gather information about research priorities, APTA's Technology and Organizational Performance department distributed a survey to 3 samples. APTA staff organized the feedback, and SPAC edited and synthesized a draft agenda. This draft was sent out in survey form to the original samples and to members of the APTA Academy of Research. Concurrently, a repeat environmental scan was conducted. A final draft of the research agenda was sent for final review to a smaller cohort (n = 95) that included content experts in each of the main categories of the agenda as identified by the APTA Academy of Research. The SPAC research agenda subgroup reviewed and incorporated the information into the final draft. The final research agenda includes priorities in topical areas (population health, mechanistic research, clinical research, education/professional development research, health services research, and workforce development) identified as key in the evolution of our profession. Impact The Research Agenda for Physical Therapy From APTA identifies research priorities within the profession vital to advancing the practice and profession of physical therapy. The research agenda has 6 key areas of focus: population health research, mechanistic research, clinical research, education and professional development research, health services research, and workforce research. Researchers, funding agencies, and public policy makers can use the research agenda to concentrate research efforts around these areas.


Multinational corporations account for 80 percent of all transfers of goods and services across borders, either within their own affiliate transactions or through networks with independent providers. As a result, the term supply chains is rapidly becoming the new norm in discussing the spread of trade and investment around the globe. From the point of view of developing countries, however, the ability to link host economies into international supply chains is anything but normal. There are important market failures and tricky obstacles that inhibit creation of supply chains in emerging markets. This working paper identifies the most important market failures and impediments that hinder the spread of supply chains in developing economies--with findings quite at variance with much conventional wisdom--and examines how some host governments have been successful in overcoming these obstructions. The evidence provides a useful perspective on the debate about the need for something that might be called industrial policy for countries that want to use foreign direct investment (FDI) to diversify and upgrade their production and export base. A sample of six diverse case studies--chosen because they offer detailed information about information asymmetries, market failures, and coordination externalities--shows clearly that developing country authorities should not merely sit back and wait to see what international market forces bring to them. The public sector "support" that is needed takes the form of creating effective investment promotion agencies and funding industrial parks, reliable infrastructure, and vocational training with curricula designed by companies that wish to employ the graduates. These interventions surely qualify as a kind of industrial policy, and definitely cost public money. This approach might be called light-form industrial policy to harness FDI to development and generate backward linkages as deep as possible into the host economy. This light-form industrial policy contrasts with policies that target specific domestic industries for special government support and protection while excluding foreign investment altogether from the targeted industries or subjecting foreign firms therein to performance requirements in the form of domestic content mandates, joint venture mandates, and/or other technology-sharing pressures. This latter approach could be called heavy-form industrial policy. Country experiences, including evidence from China, reveal counterproductive outcomes from the imposition of explicit performance requirements on foreign investors. To a certain extent, emerging market hosts can carry out policy interventions on their own. But the evidence presented here shows that external support is often crucial to success. Contemporary policy discourse often implies, indeed sometimes assumes, that with the explosion of international private sector investment flows there is less need for developed country donors and multilateral financial institutions to support growth and development programs--as opposed to pure poverty reduction programs--especially in middle-income emerging markets. But the evidence introduced in this working paper shows that there is a vital role for external donors, including the aid agencies of developed countries, the World Bank Group, and the regional development banks, to work with host country governments to improve the functioning of markets so that emerging countries can better harness FDI for development.


Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 1991, and Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1991.


This paper proposes a novel distance derivative weighted ENO (DDWENO) limiter based on fixed reconstruction stencil and applies it to the second- and highorder finite volume method on unstructured grids. We choose the standard deviation coefficients of the flow variables as the smooth indicators by using the k-exact reconstruction method, and obtain the limited derivatives of the flow variables by weighting all derivatives of each cell according to smoothness. Furthermore, an additional weighting coefficient related to distance is introduced to emphasize the contribution of the central cell in smooth regions. The developed limiter, combining the advantages of the slope limiters and WENO-type limiters, can achieve the similar effect of WENO schemes in the fixed stencil with high computational efficiency. The numerical cases demonstrate that the DDWENO limiter can preserve the numerical accuracy in smooth regions, and capture the shock waves clearly and steeply as well.


Tifgreen bermudagrass grown under different nutrient treatments in a greenhouse and artificially frozen in a growth chamber showed that nutrient level has some effect on winter hardiness. The nutrient treatment levels did not seem to vary the temperature range required for killing the grass over the range of 1 to 3 C. Within this range, the P/K ratio in the tissue appeared to influence cold hardiness. A high P/K ratio increased winterkill whereas low ratios showed little damage. Tissue N levels showed little effect on winterkill but seemed to influence uptake of P and K. N, P, and K were applied at the rate of 1.47 kg/100m₂ per month through December 1967 to Tifgreen bermudagrass under field conditions at College Station, Texas. With a low temperature of -8 C there was no winterkill of grass from any treatment. Plots receiving late applications of N remained green longer in the fall and were the first to recover in the spring. Under greenhouse conditions as well as in the field the tissue content of P and K tended to increase as the N level increased. Chemical analysis of grass samples collected from the various treatments showed a direct relationship between tissue content of N-K and N-P.


Bezier curves can cause a considerable gap to occur between the approximation curve and its control polygon, due to considering only the global information of the control points. In order to reduce this error in curve representations, localised information needs to be incorporated, with the main philosophy to narrow down the gap by shifting the Bezier curve points closer to the control polygon. To integrate this idea into the theoretical framework of the classical Bezier curve model, this paper presents a novel Half-way shifting Bezier Curve (HBC) model, which automatically incorporates localised information along with the global Bezier information. Both subjective and objective performance evaluations of the HBC model using upon a number of objects having arbitrary shape confirm its considerable improvement over the classical Bezier curve model without increasing the order of computational complexity. Index Terms – Bezier curve, localised information, global information, half-way shifting.


This article examines Nietzsche's notion of monumental history in "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" and considers its importance for Nietzsche's later work. In the first section, I examine the connections between monumental history and the work of Polybius, Thucydides, and Livy. Here I argue that Nietzsche takes his notion of monumental history directly from the practice of history in the ancient world. In the second section, I demonstrate that Nietzsche regards the production of illusions as the principal benefit of monumental history, while he criticizes its mendacious and conservative tendencies. Finally, I argue in the third section that the collection of characters we encounter in Nietzsche's later works—including the free spirits and the figure of Zarathustra—ought to be understood through Nietzsche's account of the uses and disadvantages of monumental history. These exemplary figures neither falsify nor glorify the past, but they remain illusions in the service of life.


Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) have received significant attention due to the memory and computation efficiency recently. However, the considerable accuracy gap between BNNs and their full-precision counterparts hinders BNNs to be deployed to resource-constrained platforms. One of the main reasons for the performance gap can be attributed to the frequent weight flip, which is caused by the misleading weight update in BNNs. To address this issue, we propose a state-aware binary neural network (SA-BNN) equipped with the well designed state-aware gradient. Our SA-BNN is inspired by the observation that the frequent weight flip is more likely to occur, when the gradient magnitude for all quantization states {-1,1} is identical. Accordingly, we propose to employ independent gradient coefficients for different states when updating the weights. Furthermore, we also analyze the effectiveness of the state-aware gradient on suppressing the frequent weight flip problem. Experiments on ImageNet show that the proposed SA-BNN outperforms the current state-of-the-arts (e.g., Bi-Real Net) by more than 3% when using a ResNet architecture. Specifically, we achieve 61.7%, 65.5% and 68.7% Top-1 accuracy with ResNet-18, ResNet-34 and ResNet-50 on ImageNet, respectively.


Seasonal availability of phosphate was assessed by the examination of P pools and turnover times of orthophosphate on 6 cruises between October 2001 and August 2002 in the upper water column (0 to 120 m) of the oligotrophic SW Pacific Ocean near New Caledonia (21° 30'S; 167°E). While the soluble reactive phosphate (SRP) concentration was below the analytical chemical detec- tion limit (30 nM) in summer and fall, it reached detectable values in winter and spring. The annual mean depth-integrated (0 to 100 m) SRP pool was 6.8 mmol m -2 (SD = 3.9, n = 6). Particulate phos- phate (PP) and soluble non-reactive phosphate (SNP) pools were, respectively, 1.7 (SD = 0.3, n = 6) and 23.0 mmol m -2 (SD = 4.8, n = 6). A strong seasonal variation of turnover times (T) of orthophos- phate was observed (0.17 to 19 d) in the upper water column, with shorter values in summer and fall. Indirectly estimated orthophosphate concentration ((PO4)), based on turnover time measurements, ranged from 56 to 118 nM in winter to 0.3 to 0.8 nM in fall. A seasonal P sufficiency in spring and win- ter T > 100 h; (PO4) > 20 nM) and a strong deficiency in summer (T < 15 h; (PO4) < 2 nM) and the beginning of fall (T < 5 h; (PO4) < 1 nM) occurred. This P deficiency was larger than at the ALOHA station in the North Pacific Ocean. Primary production and phosphate availability followed the same seasonal pattern. In this iron-rich area known to sustain high N2 fixation rates, phosphate may appear as a key factor controlling carbon production.


The exponential growth of technology has placed today's educational system in a quandary, where many schools are endeavouring to meet the requirements of the current digital generation without knowing how mobile technology affects learning. Mayer's (2005) Multimedia and Redundancy Principles of Learning offer explanations for learning, and were the key theories against which the current research was measured. The aim of the investigation was to measure learning outcome in three separate subject disciplines: science–topic heart; geography–topic map; and English–topic poem, over two testing times, to determine whether mode of presentation (paper vs. M-technology, i.e., Pads®) and cognitive load (text-only vs. text & graphics vs. graphics & audio vs. text, graphics & audio) had an impact on recall. The variables of gender, working memory, and motivation were identified as possible individual differences affecting learning outcome. An opportunity sample of 346 secondary school students, males and females 11-14 years-of-age, from a multinational independent school in The Middle East participated in the quasi-experimental research. Statistical analyses included group comparisons (ANOVA, ANCOVA) with supporting correlational analysis. Prior knowledge had an impact on recall in the heart topic. Findings revealed no significant difference to learning outcome between paper and M-technology resources in each of the three curriculum topics, except in the science topic where boys' retention of information was significantly better in the paper condition than the M-technology condition. Cognitive load had an impact on recall in each of the three subject areas, where a different cognitive load combination resulted in the significant retention of information in each of the curriculum areas. Motivation and gender modulated the effects of recall. Findings across the different subject disciplines either supported or refuted Mayer's (2005) Multimedia and Redundancy Principles of Learning, determining that no one cognitive load combination was suitable for all three subject disciplines and the type of content should dictate the cognitive load condition most effective for learning. Discovery informs teaching methods and warns educationalists about making claims for innovation without any data to support gains.


ABSTRACT Salmonella is an important, worldwide food-borne pathogen. Resistance to fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins has been increasingly reported, and new therapeutic agents are desperately needed. In this study, we evaluated the in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility of clinical nontyphoidal Salmonella isolates to tigecycline. Antibacterial activity of tigecycline, ceftriaxone, and ciprofloxacin were investigated by time-kill studies and the murine peritonitis model. The MIC50/MIC90 values of tigecycline, ceftriaxone, and ciprofloxacin against 76 Salmonella isolates were 0.25/0.5, 1/8, and 0.125/0.5 μg/ml, respectively. The intracellular inhibitory activity of tigecycline at 0.5 μg/ml (1× MIC) against Salmonella isolates in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells was sustained for 24 h. In a mouse peritonitis model, tigecycline reduced the extracellular and intracellular bacterial counts from 107 CFU/ml and 105 CFU/ml, respectively, to an undetectable level within 96 h. The results were similar to those obtained with ceftriaxone. The survival rate of mice exposed to tigecycline after being infected by an inoculum of 1 × 105 CFU was 80%, and that of mice exposed to ceftriaxone was 100%. When the inoculum was increased to 1.3 × 106 CFU, the survival rate of mice treated by tigecycline was 20%, and that of mice exposed to ceftriaxone was 0% (P = 0.2). When a ceftriaxone- and ciprofloxacin-resistant but tigecycline-susceptible isolate was tested, mice treated by tigecycline had a higher survival rate than those treated by ceftriaxone (15/20 [75%] versus 6/20 [30%]; P = 0.011). Our results suggest that tigecycline is at least as effective as ceftriaxone for murine Salmonella infections and warrants further clinical investigations to delineate its potential against human Salmonella infections.


Background Excessive gestational weight gain is associated with postpartum weight retention and downstream child obesity. Dopamine plays a critical role in the regulation of energy intake and body weight. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between excessive gestational weight gain and dopamine pathway-related polymorphisms, namely the variable nucleotide tandem repeat in the 3′untranslated region (UTR) region of the SLC6A3 (DAT-1) dopamine transporter gene and the 30-base pair variable nucleotide tandem repeat polymorphism of the 5′UTR of the monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) gene. Methods Ninety-three women of mean age 31.7 ± 4.2 years were recruited from the Ottawa and Kingston birth cohort and assessed at 12–20 weeks' gestation. Mean body mass index was 22.7 ± 2.5 kg/m2. Excessive gestational weight gain was defined according to the 2009 Institute of Medicine guidelines based on body mass index. Genotype analyses were performed using polymerase chain reaction and agarose gel electrophoresis. Results There was no relationship between the prevalence or magnitude of excessive gestational weight gain among women with the 3′ UTR single nucleotide polymorphism of the DAT-1 gene. However, 70% (19 of 27) of women carrying the MAO-A 4/4 (high activity) allele exceeded recommendations for gestational weight gain compared with 48% (32 of 60) of those with the pooled 3/3, 3/4, and 3/3.5 (low activity) alleles (P < 0.05). Similarly, those with the MAO-A 4/4 allele had significantly greater gestational weight gain than those with the 3/3, 3/4, or 3/3.5 pooled genotypes (19.3 ± 4.1 versus 17.0 ± 5.0 kg, P = 0.03). Conclusion Carriers of the 4/4 variants of the MAO-A gene may be at increased risk for excessive gestational weight gain.


Background— Fractional flow reserve predicts cardiac events after coronary stent implantation. The aim of the present study was to assess the 9-month angiographic in-stent restenosis rate in the setting of optimal stenting and a persisting gradient distal to the stent as assessed by a pressure wire pullback recording in the entire length of the artery. Methods and Results— In 98 patients with angina pectoris, 1 de novo coronary lesion was treated with a bare-metal stent. After stent implantation, pressure wire measurements (Pd=mean hyperemic coronary pressure and Pa=mean aortic pressure) were performed in the target vessel: (1) Pd/Pa as distal to the artery as possible (fractional flow reserve per definition); (2) Pd/Pa just distal to the stent; (3) Pd/Pa just proximal to the stent; and (4) Pd/Pa at the ostium. Residual abnormal Pd/Pa was defined as a pressure drop between Pd/Pa measured at points 1 and 2. Fractional flow reserve distal to the artery after stenting was significantly lower (0.88±0.21 versus 0.97±0.05; P<0.001), and angiographic in-stent binary restenosis rate was significantly higher (44.0% versus 8.1%; P<0.001) in vessels with a residual abnormal Pd/Pa. Residual abnormal Pd/Pa (odds ratio, 4.39; 95% confidence interval, 1.10 to 18.16; P=0.034), reference vessel size (odds ratio, 0.17; 95% confidence interval, 0.04 to 0.69; P=0.013), and stent length (odds ratio, 1.11; 95% confidence interval, 1.03 to 1.21; P=0.009) were predictors of angiographic in-stent restenosis after 9 months. Conclusions— A residual abnormal Pd/Pa distal to a bare-metal stent was an independent predictor of in-stent restenosis after implantation of a coronary bare-metal stent.


Natural hand manipulations exhibit complex finger maneuvers adaptive to object shapes and the tasks at hand. Learning dexterous manipulation from data in a brute force way would require a prohibitive amount of examples to effectively cover the combinatorial space of 3D shapes and activities. In this paper, we propose a hand-object spatial representation that can achieve generalization from limited data. Our representation combines the global object shape as voxel occupancies with local geometric details as samples of closest distances. This representation is used by a neural network to regress finger motions from input trajectories of wrists and objects. Specifically, we provide the network with the current finger pose, past and future trajectories, and the spatial representations extracted from these trajectories. The network then predicts a new finger pose for the next frame as an autoregressive model. With a carefully chosen hand-centric coordinate system, we can handle single-handed and two-handed motions in a unified framework. Learning from a small number of primitive shapes and kitchenware objects, the network is able to synthesize a variety of finger gaits for grasping, in-hand manipulation, and bimanual object handling on a rich set of novel shapes and functional tasks. We also demonstrate a live demo of manipulating virtual objects in real-time using a simple physical prop. Our system is useful for offline animation or real-time applications forgiving to a small delay.


This paper provides an extensive review and categorization of the work-family conflict literature, followed by a discussion of paradigmatic assumptions found within that literature and critical recommendations. The article describes the five most widely utilized theories in the work-family conflict literature: conflict theory, spillover theory, gender role theories, identity theory, and role theory. It concludes by recommending that future research focus on becoming more complex by moving from simple to complex explanations focusing less on hierarchy definitions and more on interactions, less on accounting for singular causality and more on multiple (sometime indeterminate) causalities, use less determinant and more indeterminate language, and adopt a morphogenic view of change.


Turbidity current and coastal storm deposits are commonly characterized by a basal sandy massive (structureless) unit overlying an erosional surface and underlying a parallel or cross‐laminated unit. Similar sequences have been recently identified in fluvial settings as well. Notwithstanding field, laboratory and numerical studies, the mechanisms for emplacement of these massive basal units are still under debate. It is well accepted that the sequence considered here can be deposited by waning‐energy flows, and that the parallel‐laminated units are deposited under transport conditions corresponding to upper plane bed at the dune–antidune transition. Thus, transport conditions that are more intense than those at the dune–antidune transition should deposit massive units. This study presents experimental, open‐channel flow results showing that sandy massive units can be the result of gradual deposition from a thick bedload layer of colliding grains called sheet flow layer. When this layer forms with relatively coarse sand, the non‐dimensional bed shear stress associated with skin friction, the Shields number, is larger than a threshold value approximately equal to 0·4. For values of the Shields number smaller than 0·4 the sheet flow layer disappeared, sediment was transported by a standard bedload layer one or two grain diameters thick, and the bed configuration was characterized by downstream migrating antidunes and washed out dunes. Parallel laminae were found in deposits emplaced with standard bedload transport demonstrating that the same dilute flow can gradually deposit the basal and the parallel‐laminated unit in presence of traction at the depositional boundary. Further, the experiments suggested that two different types of upper plane bed conditions can be defined, one associated with standard bedload transport at the dune–antidune transition, and the other associated with bedload transport in sheet flow mode at the transition between upstream and downstream migrating antidunes.


The mathematical model for the diffusion of dust particles emitted from a fixed source in the presence of the longitudinal diffusion and absence of latitudinal and vertical diffusions, is investigated. The diffusion of dust particles in the atmosphere is governed by the atmospheric diffusion equation. In the previous paper [1], the general case of the time-dependent diffusion equation in the presence of a point source whose strength is dependent on time, was solved. The calculations showed that the diffusion parameters play an important role in the spread of the dust particles in the atmosphere. In the previous paper, we examined the model in the presence of vertical diffusion and absence of other diffusions to show that for small times, the dust spreads with a front that travels with the speed of the wind. In this study, we shall assume that the flow is a non-zero constant.  In the current paper, the vertical and latitudinal diffusions are absent while the longitudinal diffusion is present. It is found that the solution depends on the source of time dependence. To study the nature of the solution, two special cases of the source are specified. In both cases, it is found that there is no discontinuity front, and the dust particles spread slowly into the direction of the wind.


A Systems Engineering Educators Workshop was developed with a target audience of middle school and high school teachers. The objective was to introduce topics that could be easily brought into middle and high school classrooms with active learning exercises related to industrial and systems engineering, with an emphasis on the aerospace industry. Teachers learned concepts of systems engineering, design notebooks and engineering drawings, reverse engineering, transportation optimization problems, and shortest path network problems. They also toured a local distribution center. Several of the activities were based on engineering education websites, and information about further resources was included so that the teachers could continue to integrate more engineering content into their classrooms. For the activities that were introduced during the 2-day workshop, materials were provided to help the teachers adapt the activity for their classroom, demonstrate sample student worksheets, and link to K-12 grade level expectations or standards. Graduate and undergraduate engineering students were hired to work with the faculty on program development and recruiting, administration of the program, and follow-up during the school year. To entice K-12 teachers to participate during their summer break, a stipend was provided for up to ten participants. A project work site was set up online to allow the teachers to continue to communicate as they implement the activities in their classrooms, and provide further feedback and implementation assessment with different settings. Feedback after the workshop was very positive, and the organizers hope to repeat and expand the program.


We present a multisensor designed for industrial compressed air diagnostics and combining the measurement of pressure, flow, and temperature, integrated with the corresponding signal conditioning electronics in a single low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) package. The developed sensor may be soldered onto an integrated electro-fluidic platform by using standard surface mount device (SMD) technology, e.g., as a standard electronic component would be on a printed circuit board, obviating the need for both wires and tubes and thus paving the road towards low-cost integrated electro-fluidic systems. Several performance aspects of this device are presented and discussed, together with electronics design issues.


Recent theoretical analysis of the effect of using lasers with significant linewidths in coherent optical fiber transmission systems has shown how the design of the optical receiver, particularly the IF stage, affects the sensitivity. This paper reviews this theory for two classes of coherent systems-those making a differential phase measurement, and those not using phase information-where the requirements on laser linewidth are not stringent. We discuss the factors that affect the performance of systems with significant laser phase noise. Wherever possible, we compare the theoretical results with published system experiments. We show that our theory fits the experimental data well and indicates why experimental results have fallen short of the theoretical limits.


This article investigates efficient broadcast delivery of file download (filecasting) services in hybrid broadcast and cellular systems formed by a DVB-H network and an evolved 3G+ cellular network with HSDPA and MBMS capabilities. In particular, we investigate the delivery cost savings that can be achieved using HSDPA and MBMS to repair errors of the initial DVB-H broadcast transmission. In a realistic scenario, there may be users that experience significantly worse DVB-H reception conditions than the majority, such that it may be more efficient to serve them through the cellular network. To enable an easy and efficient implementation of the repair mechanisms in the hybrid DVB-H/3G+ system, we adopt application layer forward error correction (AL-FEC) with Raptor coding. With AL-FEC specific packets are not required to be retransmitted, and repair transmissions consist of additional repair packets that can be used for all users. Hence, repair data can be seamlessly delivered with unicast HSDPA, multicast MBMS, and broadcast DVB-H transmissions. Furthermore, AL-FEC provides a multiburst protection of the DVB-H transmission to exploit the time diversity of the mobile broadcast channel.


In applications as in wireless communication, computer graphics and digital signal processing, a massive of complex matrix operations is often performed. Reciprocal is computed in large quantities in these matrix operations. To obtain high performance, efficient algorithm and hardware architecture are important in terms of low cost, low computation time and high precision. Second order first sub-function and squaring shrunk method have been proposed to build efficient hardware architecture for reciprocal using field programmable gate array. Second order first sub-function in harmonized parabolic synthesis is presented to improve the approximating precision and decrease the memory usage at the cost of additional multipliers. To further reduce the complexity, squaring shrunk method is proposed to decrease the expensive cost of multipliers. The combination of these techniques yields good performance trade-off. Precision simulation and hardware implementation result has shown that hardware reciprocal of high precision, low memory and low multiplier usage has been obtained compared to traditional first order first sub-function harmonized parabolic synthesis method.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eie.24.2.20635


Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology has been proposed for the high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) extension to the 3GPP mobile wireless standard to achieve high data throughput with significantly increased spectral efficiency. Data is encoded, interleaved, spread and transmitted over multiple antennas. This paper presents an architecture for a baseband MIMO HSDPA receiver. The architecture is based on two prototype silicon devices that perform MIMO detection and turbo decoding. System simulations prove the high performance potential of the MIMO proposal for HSDPA. Furthermore, the acceptable complexity of both devices demonstrates the practicality of a single chip solution for an HSDPA MIMO receiver.


Tourism is one of the most vulnerable industries to disasters, and empirical studies on disaster preparedness have been surprisingly sparse. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this study sheds light on the unexplored mediating role of strategic decision-makers' (SDMs) disaster cognition along with their attitude to explicate how and why learning influences disaster planning. Hypotheses were tested using two-phase survey data collected from 301 SDMs of Sri Lankan accommodation establishments. Clarifying previous inconsistent findings regarding the role of learning, this study demonstrated that training and past disaster experience indirectly influenced SDMs' planning intentions via their disaster cognition and attitude toward disaster planning. In this regard, past experience was found to regulate the relationship of training with both cognition and attitude, implying that disaster training programs may be more influential for encouraging disaster planning intentions of lesser experienced SDMs by stimulating their disaster cognition and attitude.


The tear behavior of commercial butyl, EPDM, fluorosilicone, and two fluorocarbon elastomers, used for sealing applications, was studied at −40°C and +49°C. Measurements were made to study initiation and propagation behavior, using Die-C and Die-B, respectively, per ASTM D624. The behavior of tear strength, engineering strain, and energy per unit volume was studied. Tear strength for propagation was always higher than or equal to (within measurement error) that for initiation. Butyl showed the highest tear strength as well as elongation at break; hence, it also had the highest tear energy. The effect of post-cure on butyl is studied. Butyl which had not been post-cured showed unusually high elongation; this translates to the highest tear energy. Temperature is shown to have a major effect on the tear behavior but the magnitude of this effect is significantly different for different elastomers. The two fluorocarbons studied showed markedly different relative behavior at −40°C as compared to +49°C due to the difference in their glass transition temperatures. All torn surfaces of the test specimens after tear showed smooth and uniform surfaces, consistent with steady shearing; this was also consistent with the absence of "chatter" in the force signal. However, the tear direction (perpendicular to or at an angle to the displacement direction) did not show any simple correlation with other tear properties. The difference in behavior between EPDM and butyl rubbers (both with saturated aliphatic hydrocarbon backbones and both with carbon black filler) is elucidated.


We present an interactive visual analytics system for classification, iVisClassifier, based on a supervised dimension reduction method, linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Given high-dimensional data and associated cluster labels, LDA gives their reduced dimensional representation, which provides a good overview about the cluster structure. Instead of a single two- or three-dimensional scatter plot, iVisClassifier fully interacts with all the reduced dimensions obtained by LDA through parallel coordinates and a scatter plot. Furthermore, it significantly improves the interactivity and interpretability of LDA. LDA enables users to understand each of the reduced dimensions and how they influence the data by reconstructing the basis vector into the original data domain. By using heat maps, iVisClassifier gives an overview about the cluster relationship in terms of pairwise distances between cluster centroids both in the original space and in the reduced dimensional space. Equipped with these functionalities, iVisClassifier supports users' classification tasks in an efficient way. Using several facial image data, we show how the above analysis is performed.


A secondary flow system with a dominant passage vortex pattern has been observed in many gas turbine vane passage studies in which there is no upstream coolant injection or only near-passage endwall coolant injection (no combustor cooling). However, it was shown in recent studies that combustor coolant introduced upstream of the vane passage changes secondary flow patterns in the passage. This results in a different secondary flow vortex system, called the 'impingement vortex' system. It was discussed in recent literature having combustor coolant injection. Until now, there has been no study on how increases in combustor coolant momentum effect transition from the passage vortex system to the impingement vortex system. Such a study is presented in the present paper. Velocity component measurements are taken using a five-hole probe at three axial locations in the vane passage to document secondary flow development throughout the passage. Four combustor coolant flowrate cases are considered along with a comparison case having no coolant injection. It is shown that as the combustor coolant flowrate increases, the passage vortex system weakens and, at a sufficiently high combustor coolant flowrate, the impingement vortex system appears. Knowing the detailed flow physics of this transition between the two secondary flow systems is helpful for turbine thermal designers who wish to understand how secondary flows transport coolant within the turbine vane passage.


T he World Health Organization's current estimate of the global number of deaths caused by tobacco use each year is 4.9 million. That's nearly four deaths a second, and about half of these people die before their working life ends. The great majority of these preventable, often wretched and painful early deaths occur among cigarette smokers. And the great majority of these smokers are the best, most loyal customers of multinational tobacco companies such as British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris.

> All four companies said they had not known that BAT was the headline act…all four rapidly withdrew

So imagine yourself as the chief executive of a company haemorrhaging customers in this way: BAT, with 15.4% of the global market share, loses 754 600 customers a year; Philip Morris, with 16.4%, contributes 803 600 dead customers. Acres of your embarrassing internal memos have caused you to give up decades of denial that your products cause all these deaths. You're not going to throw in the towel, so the only way forward is to use the device of informed consent—you sell risk. …


In recent years, there has been a growing angst about the state over retirement security. What seemed a golden age of retirement 15 years ago has become increasingly costly and precarious, and there is limited understanding of the underlying causes for the changing environment. The discussion here explores the evolution of public policies and demographics that have driven the different experience of successive generations under both Social Security and employer-sponsored pensions. Social Security has become much more expensive and less efficient over time because it is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Employer-sponsored pension costs have exploded in recent years because we largely deferred the funding of the baby boom generation's retirement benefits to the latter part of their working lives. This result was driven by a combination of policy appetites to keep income tax rates low and variations in financial market performance. The need to bring new policies to bear on our situation is delineated, and a description of potential policies to address current and future generations' income security is provided.


During any travel, vehicles present movements along their vertical axes due to road roughness, curved trajectory, braking, acceleration and inertial forces. The ordinary task of shock absorbers is to absorb the vertical oscillations, providing comfort to the driver, always maintaining the vehicle stability. In particular, the active ones offer the possibility to change the damping coefficient and the chassis lifting. The present study analyses regenerative hydraulic active shock absorbers, i.e. active shock absorbers able to recover the vibrational energy into electrical one and focuses on the design of a device able to route the recovered energy from the four corners shock absorbers into a battery. Exploiting the reversibility of brushless machines used for the lifting operation in active mode, the suspension movement generates a current, mostly characterized by a frequency component equal to the switching frequency of the brushless machine. This type of current is not suitable for battery charging. Starting from the constraints relative to the battery, and the analysis of the power flow, a DC/DC buck converter (whose output is represented by the port connected to the battery) has been identified as a solution. In order to design a proper current control, the converter has been modelled according to the state space average method. Combing this feedback control with a feedforward one on the converter input voltage, the device is able to smooth enough the current in input to the battery and provide to upper limits the voltages, according to the automotive standard and the battery needs. All simulations have been performed in Simulink environment and a simplified model has been implemented by the usage of a multipurpose power module.


Academic works produced by university members are valuable resources that should be managed properly. The development of Institutional repositories (IRs) was purposed to preserve and disseminated these resources so that benefit to the university in enhancing university scholarship and performances.. However, the existing of repository system is less used. It is alleged that lecturers are not aware and reluctant due to the lack of their motivation. User expectancy is regarded as motivational factor that lead invidual to use insitutitional repositories. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between user expectancy and the use of institutional repositories in higher education institutions in Indonesia. A study is conducted with 50 university lecturers at Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Structural Equation Modelling Partial Least Square (PLS-SEM) is used for data analysis. SmartPLs 2.0 software is employed in the analysis. The result indicated that since the measuring instruments are valid and reliable, user expectancy have influence to the use of IRs. Based on the structural model, it was found that user expectancy contributes to the use of IRs up to 57,6 %.


Background: Although no specific treatment for COVID 19 has been proven effective yet, some drugs with in vitro potential against SARS-CoV-2 virus have been proposed for clinical use. Hydroxychloroquine has in vitro anti-viral and immunomodulatory activity, but there is no current clinical evidence of its effectiveness on the outcome of the disease. Methods: We enrolled all 18-85 years old inpatients from Central Defense Hospital, Madrid, Spain, who were hospitalised due to COVID-19 and had a definitive outcome (either dead or discharged). We used a statistical survival analysis. Results: We analysed 220 medical records. 166 patients met the inclusion criteria. 48,8 % of patients not treated with HCQ died, versus 22% in the group of hydroxychloroquine (p=0,002). According to clinical picture at admission, hydroxychloroquine increased the mean cumulative survival in all groups from 1,4 to 1,8 times. This difference was statistically significant in the mild group. Conclusions: in a cohort of 166 patients between 18 to 85 years hospitalised with COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine treatment with an initial loading dose of 800mg improved patient survival when admitted in early stages of the disease. There was a non-statistically significant trend towards survival in all groups, which will need to be clarified in subsequent studies.


Large-amplitude vibrations in drilling often occur at frequencies near multiples of the rotation frequency, even when these are much lower than the system's first natural frequency. These vibrations are responsible for out-of-round, lobed holes. A simplified model of the mechanics of this phenomenon is presented in this paper. The model includes cutting and rubbing forces on the drill, but inertia and damping of the tool are neglected at low speeds. This quasi-static model remains dynamic because of the regenerative nature of cutting; the force on each cutting element depends on both the tool's current position and its position at the time of the previous tooth passage. Characteristic solutions, including unstable retrograde whirling modes, are found in terms of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a discrete state-transition matrix. These unstable modes correspond closely to behavior observed in drilling tests.


Numerous clinical studies in an adjuvant setting have been conducted and the combination therapy of 5‐fluorouracil and oxaliplatin has been established as the standard treatment for Stage III and as an option for high‐risk Stage II patients. Biologics such as bevacizumab and antiepidermal growth factor receptor antibodies have failed to show additional survival benefits. The indication of adjuvant chemotherapy has been determined according to the pathological stage. Nevertheless, a pathological diagnosis does not necessarily result in selection of the optimal treatment. To improve treatment decisions, many trials have aimed to stratify patients into treatment groups using genomic testing. Recently, gene signature, Immunoscore, and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) assays have been reported and among them, ctDNA was shown to be a promising accurate predictive marker for recurrence. Treatment of ctDNA‐positive patients with aggressive chemotherapy may reduce recurrence rates. The ultimate goal is to accurately predict the risk of recurrence and to prevent recurrence in colon cancer patients. In this review we focus on the clinical development of adjuvant chemotherapy and stratification of patients according to risk of recurrence and the future direction of adjuvant chemotherapy.


We report a Dalitz-plot analysis of the charmless hadronic decays of neutral B mesons to K±π∓π0. With a sample of (231.8±2.6)×106Υ(4S)→BB decays collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC, we measure the magnitudes and phases of the intermediate resonant and nonresonant amplitudes for B0 and B 0 decays and determine the corresponding CP-averaged branching fractions and charge asymmetries. The inclusive branching fraction and CP-violating charge asymmetry are measured to be B(B0→K+π-π0)=(35.7-1.5+2.6±2.2)×10-6 and ACP=-0.030-0.051+0.045±0.055 where the first errors are statistical and the second systematic. We observe the decay B0→K*0(892)π0 with the branching fraction B(B0→K*0(892)π0)=(3.6-0.8+0.7±0.4)×10-6. This measurement differs from zero by 5.6 standard deviations (including the systematic uncertainties). The selected sample also contains B0→D 0π0 decays where D 0→K+π-, and we measure B(B0→D 0π0)=(2.93±0.17±0.18)×10-4.


Fusarium head blight (FHB) is an economically important disease of barley caused by mycotoxin-producing Fusarium species. Resistance to FHB is associated with several agronomic traits, particularly height. Taller cultivars are generally more resistant; however increased height is less favourable due to the prospect of lodging, creating a trade-off between disease resistance and agronomic qualities.
Disease assays with pathogens of differing trophic lifestyles were conducted using barley BRI1 mutation lines, which display brassinosteroid (BR) insensitivity and a semi-dwarf phenotype. Interestingly, bri1 semi-dwarf lines did not display increased susceptibility to FHB. Additionally, bri1 mutation provided advantageous resistance to necrotrophs but did not increase susceptibility to biotrophs, demonstrating an absence of a resistance trade-off.
The barley cultivars Chevallier and Armelle display significant FHB resistance, yet also possess a tall height phenotype. To determine whether the resistance of these cultivars was associated with height, bi-parental populations were created by crossing to the short, modern variety NFC Tipple. High density genetic maps of the populations were produced using Genotyping-by-Sequencing and 384-SNP BeadXpress assays to enable quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping of both FHB and agronomic traits. Within the C×T population, a QTL for FHB resistance was identified on chromosome 6H which was not associated with either height or heading date, suggesting that resistance in this region is not due to linkage or pleiotropy with these traits. In contrast, FHB resistance within the A×T population was coincident with both height and heading date QTL on 3H.
QTL analysis of malting traits of Chevallier, an English malting landrace, was also undertaken. Chevallier compared favourably to NFC Tipple, a modern malting cultivar, for several malting characteristics including free amino nitrogen, diastatic power and wort β-glucan content. This demonstrates that Chevallier may be a useful potential source of both FHB disease resistance and quality traits.


Newcastle disease (ND) which is endemic and prevalent in Nigeria causes high mortality in indigenous poultry. The most practical means of vaccinating indigenous poultry is via feed some of which have been found to negatively affect the efficacy of live vaccines. This study was conducted to determine the suitability of three staple grains as delivery systems for La Sota or V4 vaccines. ND virus (NDV) La Sota or V4 vaccines were administered orally, in ground grains, brans or water to seronegative chicks at 5, 7 and 9 weeks (WK) of age. The NDV Antibody titres in the sera of vaccinated and unvaccinated chicks were determined before and after vaccination by the haemagglutination inhibition test. The time it took the chicks to drink vaccines in water and consume the feeds incorporated with the vaccines during each vaccination was determined. Two WK after the last vaccination at 9 WK of age vaccinated and unvaccinated chicks were challenged intramuscularly with Hert's 33 NDV. The signs and lesions observed were recorded and protection rates calculated. Before vaccination at 5 WK of age, 100% of the chicks had no detectable NDV Abs but at 11 WK of age all the chicks had NDV Ab in their sera. The titre was highest in chicks vaccinated with V4 (5.0+3.5 Log2) and with La Sota (6.4+2.4 Log2) vaccine via water. The Ab titre for chicks vaccinated with feed was highest when Guinea corn Bran (GCB) was used as vehicle for V4 vaccine (4.5+3.4 Log2) and GCB for La Sota vaccine (3.2+1.3 Log2). It took chicks less than eight minutes (min) to drink La Sota and V4 administered in drinking water, 30 min to consume La Sota administered through ground guinea corn (GGC) and 2 hours (h) when administered through guinea corn bran (GCB). Signs and lesions similar to viscerotropic velogenic form of ND were observed in challenged chicks. All chicks vaccinated with La Sota in water and 90% of the chickens vaccinated with V4 in water were protected from challenge. Ninety per cent of chicks vaccinated with La Sota in maize bran (MZB), ground maize (GMZ) or GGC were protected. Water was the best vehicle for administration of V4 and La Sota vaccines and La Sota was able to protect 90 % of challenged chicks when administered through MZB, GMZ or GGC. The grains used in the present study need further processing to remove possible antiviral substances that may be present and improve palatability. Further experimental trials using large number of birds and further processed grains and brans are necessary to further determine the suitability of Guinea corn (GC), Maize (MZ) and Millet (ML) and their brans for the routine vaccination of indigenous chickens against ND using V4 vaccine in Nigeria.


The concept behind combinatorial chemistry burgeoned in the early 1980s when Mario Geysen, invented the method of simultaneous synthesis of diversified peptides. And now the approach has developed so much that combinatorial chemistry is being heralded as a future of pharmaceutical research. For the preliminary cognizance of this exciting technology, I have described techniques involved in combinatorial technology, which will briefly encompass the methodology of combinatorial technology as a tool for drug discovery. Emphasis is on the aspects of library design, syntheses involved, screening, and enumeration procedures which are an integral part of overall methodology. Article also tries to present pros and cons of combinatorial technology and emphasis is on the limitations and disadvantages for adopting combinatorial technology as a developing approach for drug discovery.


To uncover the steps necessary to restore hearing loss in a more superior way than is currently available, it is necessary to obtain a more complete understanding of the genetic and molecular mechanisms of vertebrate mechanosensory development. Attempts to fully restore hearing are currently focused on manipulating adult ear cells in model organisms using specific basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) genes. The main purpose of our study was to better understand the development of inner ear neurosensory pathfinding ability and determine if neuronal projections are controlled by diffusible cues from the hindbrain, or by cues from the neurons themselves. To address this we overexpressed an ancestral proneuronal bHLH gene from the sponge Amphimedon queenslandica in the two-cell stage embryo of Xenopus laevis. Following this we performed ear transplants from the injected animals to control animals as well as from control animals to the injected. It was found that when transplanting from an injected animal to a control the pathfinding ability of the neurons in the inner ear was derailed in the same way that it is derailed in an injected animal prior to transplantation. When transplanting from the control animal to an injected the inner ear neurons were not derailed. These findings suggest that cues from the hindbrain are not responsible for the pathfinding ability of inner ear afferents, but rather the neurons themselves affect the pathfinding ability. From this we determined that the overexpression of AmqbHLH affects the neurons ability to pathfind, likely due to a malfunction of the wnt/PCP pathway component, Frizzled.


The study purpose was to examine the relationship between cancer screening and traditionality, using a culturally specific survey instrument. American Indian (AI) women were randomly selected from the Vermont Breast Cancer Surveillance System (VBCSS), a statewide mammography database. The 13 items that assessed traditionality examined identity, cultural beliefs, customs, and health practices. The sample of 115 was predominately married, educated, middle class, insured, and rural. Significant associations were found between traditionality and past mammography and clinical breast examination (CBE) behavior, as well as future mammography intention. Results suggest that traditionality scales can be useful for identifying differences in screening behavior, with further testing of traditionality items with other AI women recommended. International implications of the study findings are also addressed.


OBJECTIVE
To explore the impacts of types and degree of obesity on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and related lipids disturbance in Chinese school-age children.

METHODS
A total of 1 452 school-age Children of 7 to 17 years were recruited in Beijing with representative cluster sampling method. Data of anthropometric measurements including weight, height and waist circumference were collected from March to May of 2007. Body mass index(BMI)was calculated. Blood samples were obtained and lipid profiles including triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were measured, while glutamate-pyruvate transaminase (ALT) and glutamic-oxalacetic transaminase (AST) were determined to evaluate liver function. The liver was also scanned by sonography, and abnormal hepatic sonograms were documented. NAFLD was diagnosed according to the criteria recommended by the Fatty Liver and Alcoholic Liver Disease Study Group under the Chinese Liver Disease Association. Analysis of covariance (ANOVA), Chi-square test for trend and binary logistic regression analysis were performed.

RESULTS
The dyslipidemia and ultrasonographic fatty liver deteriorated with the degree of obesity defined either by BMI or waist circumference. Compared with BMI, waist circumference contributed more to the development of dyslipidemia, fatty liver and NAFLD. The highest levels of TG, TC, LDL-C, and lowest level of HDL-C were seen in the mixed obese group followed by abdominal obese, peripheral obese and non-obese ones. Adjusted for gender and age, the odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals of peripheral obesity, abdominal obesity and mixed obesity were 0, 10.93 (0.98-121.96) and 79.16 (10.95-572.44) for predicting NAFLD; 12.61 (1.24-127.78), 19.39 (5.23-71.85), and 93.21 (29.56-293.90) for predicting ultrasonographic fatty liver; 1.78 (0.59-5.44), 3.01 (1.91-4.77), and 4.64 (3.52-6.12) for predicting dyslipidemia, respectively compared with the non-obese control group. The trend of hazards over groups was statistically significant (P<0.01).

CONCLUSION
The levels of lipid profile and the prevalence of NAFLD and dyslipidemia increased in parallel with the degree of obesity; As compared with the non-obese control, the mixed obesity had the strongest association with NAFLD and dyslipidemia, followed by abdominal obesity and peripheral obesity in Chinese school-age Children.


This work focuses on the etching characteristic of (100) silicon wafer in surfactant added tetramethyl-ammonium-hydroxide (TMAH:( CH3)4NOH) solution. The experimental result shows that under etching effect in TMAH achieves a significant reduction by adding fatty alcohol ethoxylate (R-O (CH2-CH2)n-OH) in the solution. Synperonic-A series fatty-alcohol-ethoxylate with increasing length of ethylene oxide segments are used to carry out the experiment. Comparing with the pure TMAH, the maximum under etching rate in the surfactant added TMAH is reduced to three quarters. The etching loss of convex corners is negligible for shallow to medium-deep etching (<30μm).


One of the main levers to reduce CO2 emissions in cars and trucks is mass and friction reduction, which is often achieved through the use of special coatings. The aim of the present work was to develop metal-ceramic-lubricant composite coatings with the best combination of wear, seizure, fatigue, and thermal resistance. Metal-based coatings incorporating hard particles and solid lubricants were cold sprayed onto steel substrates and the relationship between coating microstructure and tribology was studied. To meet the demanding tribological requirements of heavily loaded engines, the interfaces between the different components were optimized by selecting appropriate feedstock powders and assessing a wide range of process parameters. Alumina-reinforced bronze composite coatings were made from powders with different morphologies. Aggregated ceramic powders were found to be more beneficial in terms of wear than massive powders, and graphite was found to be effective for reducing seizure.


Objective: Radiolabeled antibodies were being developed commercially for the detection of several cancer types. However, imaging with radiolabeled antibodies require a relatively long interval between injection and imaging acquisition for adequate contrast to develop. The pretargeting method is a 2-step method: a unlabeled bsMAb with affinity for the tumor and a small radiolabeled molecule is injected, followed by the a radiolabeled compound. This aims to optimize the imaging system by specific tumor accumulation and fast blood clearance of the radiopharmacon, which allows imaging within one hour. Short-lived positron emitting radionuclides, e.g. 68Ga (half life: 68 min) match the pharmacokinetics of the small molecule. In this study, pretargeted immunoPET with a bispecific monoclonal anti-carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) x anti-histamine-succinyl-glycine (HSG) antibody, TF2, and a radiolabeled peptide, IMP288, was compared to 18F-FDG in detecting CEA-expressing tumors in nude mice. Methods: Groups of five BALB/c nude mice were inoculated with CEA-expressing human colonic tumor cells intraperitoneally. One group received 5 MBq 18F-FDG intravenously (i.v.). Another group received TF2 and 5 MBq 68Ga-IMP288 i.v. 16 h later. After one hour PET/CT images were acquired. One day later this was repeated vice versa. Uptake of 68Ga-IMP288 or 18F-FDG in the tumors and other dissected tissues was determined. Results: High, specific tumor uptake of 68Ga-IMP288 (23.4 ± 7.2% ID/g) was observed, with very low accretion in the normal tissues (intestines: 0.50 ± 0.19 % ID/g; liver: 1.83 ± 0.45 % ID/g). This resulted in high tumor-to-background ratios (e.g. tumor-to-intestines 57.5 ± 22.4) and in the clear visualization of the small intra-abdominal tumor lesions (1.5–5 mm), as soon as one hour after the injection of 68Ga-IMP288. 18F-FDG localized efficiently in the tumors (8.7 ± 3.1 % ID/g), but with physiological uptake in various normal tissues (intestines: 2.15 ± 0.61 % ID/g; liver: 2.78 ± 0.52 % ID/g). The low tumor-to-background ratio (e.g. tumor-to-intestines 4.0 ± 0.9) complicated the detection of the tumors. Conclusions: This study indicated that pretargeted immunoPET with TF2 and 68Ga-IMP288 is a specific and sensitive method for detecting colon cancer. Citation Information: Clin Cancer Res 2010;16(7 Suppl):A32


Despite its supposed central role in electoral 'shocks' such as Donald Trump's election as US President in November 2016, 'fake news' remains one of the most popular misnomers of the 21st century. Members of the public broadly agree that it refers to "news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false." Yet, it is also a pejorative term used by politicians to discredit media outlets that are critical of their conduct in office. By way of response, scholars characterise the current 'Post-Truth' era as a crisis born of the entire information ecosystem, not just the mainstream media. They argue that information disorders, such as the intentional sharing of false information to cause harm to others (disinformation) and the inadvertent sharing of such information (misinformation), are more appropriate conceptual frameworks for analysing the threat of information pollution to liberal democracies. Nevertheless, much of the empirical research in this field has concentrated on the supposed effects of digital disinformation, manufactured in 'fake news factories' for the financial gain of their 'workers' and amplified on social media by bots, on voting behaviour during national elections and referenda between 2015 and 2017. This is despite the fact that these 'pure' forms of 'fake news' have been virtually non-existent in most countries during this period.

There have been few studies exploring the impact of digital disinformation within deeply divided societies. Anti-Muslim riots in Myanmar in July 2014 were blamed on an unsubstantiated rumour spread on Facebook claiming that the proprietor of a Muslim tea shop had raped a Buddhist employee. The circulation of false storie suggesting that Muslims were planning to violently overthrow the Buddhist majority on the same online platform were linked to sectarian violence in Sri Lanka in March 2018. Although there have been no such incidents in Northern Ireland to date, the limited empirical data available thus far suggests that false or fabricated content about contentious parades and related protests have a very short lifespan on social media and thus have limited influence on 'real world' events. This chapter builds on this work by presenting the first-in-depth study of digital disinformation in 'post-conflict' Northern Ireland. It does so by providing an overview of the emergent literature on information disorders, as well as efforts to mitigate their impact on democratic processes such as elections and referenda. The chapter then moves on to explore how propaganda was deployed by state and non-state actors during the thirty-year conflict known colloquially as 'The Troubles.' The recent empirical research on the role of Facebook and Twitter in spreading disinformation during contentious parades and related protests will be elaborated in order to explore how Northern Irish citizens have responded to deliberately false content shared via social media. Public opinion data from organisations such as Ofcom will also be analysed in order to explore the apparent decline in public trust in both professional news media and political institutions in the divided society, which are key characteristics of the information crisis facing contemporary democracies.


This paper presents a method of embedding and recovery of a large amount of data on printed documents. The proposed method is characterized by the following points: (1) As the medium for recording the data, backgrounds (white space) of pages are utilized. Since white space is dominant in ordinary pages, this enables us to record a large amount of data. (2) As the representation of data, an arbitrary figure (such as a logo mark of a company) is stippled to obtain a set of points, each of which is superimposed on a page image. This allows us to prevent the appearance of a page from deteriorating, since stippled figures play a role of background patterns on printed documents. The experimental results show that the method is capable of both recording 7.8KB of data and reading the embedded data with the accuracy of 99%.


Zumba® is a popular form of Latin-themed aerobic dance exercise engaged in by an estimated 14 million people in over 150 countries, yet little (ie in class participants) to no (ie in registered instructors) information exists in terms of the injury surveillance of this activity. PURPOSE: To describe the injury incidence rates and patterns of injury associated with engagement in Zumba®. METHODS: Zumba® dancers were invited to complete an anonymous web-based survey containing 13 demographic background and 14 (1 yr retrospective) injury history questions. Recruitment was undertaken using four web-based social networking services. Inclusion criteria stated that the respondents had to be aged 18 64 yr and currently involved in group-based classes of Zumba®, either as a registered instructor or class participant. Binomial logistic regression analysis was used to predict the odds of injury during Zumba® and Mann-Whitney tests were employed to ascertain differences between groups. RESULTS: The survey response rate was 74%. The final sample of respondents (N = 138; female = 100%) included 19 registered instructors and 119 class participants, of which 58% and 16%, respectively, sustained ≥ 1 injury during Zumba® in the past year. The median (Q1 Q3) number of injuries for registered instructors and class participants was 2 (1 2) and 1 (1 1), respectively. Of the physical complaint injuries, only 5% required medical attention. The majority (80%) of time-loss injuries were minor in severity and none required medical attention. The injury incidence rate for registered instructors and class participants was 5.7 (95% CI 3.1 8.2) and 3.9 (95% CI 2.5 5.3) injuries per 1000 h of exposure, respectively. The odds of injury was 7 (95% CI 2 19) times greater (p < 0.01) for registered instructors than for class participants. Zumba® dancers had a 17 (95% CI 7 28) % greater (p < 0.01) odds of injury for every 1 h of non-Zumba®-related moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) engagement per week. Age, Zumba® experience, and Zumba® engagement per week were found to be non-significant (all p > 0.05) covariates in the analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Zumba® is a relatively safe form of exercise. For registered instructors, the increased risk of injury observed during Zumba® is likely due to the high total volume of MVPA engaged in weekly.


On the basis of the analyzing of the criterion of the evaluation index, a comprehensive evaluation model for RAL (reconfigurable assembly line) is proposed based on the hierarchy analysis according to the characteristics of the RAL and the engineering application. The new combination weighting method is used to calculate the weights of every index, and the index is assessed by fuzzy synthetically evaluation. The subordinate degree of evaluation object relative to optimum reference value adopting least squares principle is regarded as the evaluation criteria. Finally, this method is demonstrated to be reasonable and effective by a simulation example.


The core functions of case management, assessment, planning, linking, monitoring, advocacy, and outreach assume a new perspective in the context of systems that have adopted the Chronic Care Model. This article considers case management through the experience of three systems that have implemented the Chronic Care Model. A movement toward condition neutral case management, focused on care that is more wholly patient centric, is also examined.


With the recent explosive growth of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, guaranteeing consistent web appearance across all environments has become a significant problem. This happens simply because it is hard to keep track of the web appearance on different sizes and types of devices that render the web pages. Therefore, fixing the inconsistent appearance of web pages can be difficult, and the cost incurred can be huge, e.g., poor user experience and financial loss due to it. Recently, automated web repair techniques have been proposed to automatically resolve inconsistent web page appearance, focusing on improving usability. However, generated patches tend to disrupt the webpage's layout, rendering the repaired webpage aesthetically unpleasing, e.g., distorted images or misalignment of components. In this paper, we propose an automated repair approach for web pages based on meta-heuristic algorithms that can assure both usability and aesthetics. The key novelty that empowers our approach is a novel fitness function that allows us to optimistically evolve buggy web pages to find the best solution that optimizes both usability and aesthetics at the same time. Empirical evaluations show that our approach is able to successfully resolve mobile-friendly problems in 94% of the evaluation subjects, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art baseline techniques in terms of both usability and aesthetics.


Thanks to the forgiving nature of the emerging recognition, mining and synthesis applications, approximate computing (AC) has been recently rediscovered as a viable technique for improving the performance of computing systems. Although the application of AC techniques has, in several cases, an indirect positive effect on the performance of the on-chip communication sub-system, there are only few works aimed at proposing AC techniques specifically designed to improve the efficiency of the on-chip communication fabric. This paper introduces the concept of approximate communication in the context of wireless network-on-chip (WiNoC) architectures. This paper presents a technique through which the programmer can annotate those data structures of an application that, whenever affected by errors, do not impact the functionality of the application itself but only the quality of its outputs. Based on this annotation, the communications induced by the access to such data structures are realized with a reduced energy effort that, however, results to an increase of the probability for the data to be affected by errors. The underlying hardware mechanisms enabling the energy versus reliability trade-off are based on the dynamic link voltage swing and on the dynamic transmitting power tuning of the wired links and wireless transmissions, respectively. Both the hardware and software components needed for supporting the proposed technique are presented. The technique is assessed on a set of representative benchmarks and the energy saving vs. application output quality is discussed.


The book gives traffic engineers, planners, and managers a methodology to identify, analyze, and correct factors that cause traffic accidents. The procedures and materials required are of low cost and simple installation, accessible to most entities that administer traffic systems. The book focuses on critical spots on urban roads. The methods and solutions are equally useful for reducing accidents elsewhere on urban roads and on interurban highways and rural roads. This book is based on work contracted in 1987 by the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) of Brazil. During the last 12 years, the author has used the material in numerous traffic safety training courses and has used this unique opportunity to test, revise, and update the contents, resulting in the current volume. The manual has both practical and didactic characteristics. It presents the elements of road design, signs, signals, and markings (or their absence) and the behaviour of drivers and pedestrians that, separately or in combination, cause accidents. This diagnosis is followed by an examination of corrective traffic engineering to reduce accidents, along with ways to monitor the results. The book complements existing norms by showing how traffic engineering techniques may be more widely and correctly utilised. A previous version of the book was awarded the Volvo Traffic Safety Prize in 1993.


Xue, A. G., Chen, Y., Marchand, G., Guo, W., Ren, C., Savard, M. and McElroy, A. R. B. 2015. Timing of inoculation and Fusarium species affect the severity of Fusarium head blight on oat. Can. J. Plant Sci. 95: 517-524. The influence of timing of inoculation and pathogenicity of four Fusarium spp. (F. culmorum, F. graminearum, F. sporotrichioides, and F. avenaceum) causing Fusarium head blight (FHB) were examined on 12 oat genotypes under controlled environmental conditions in two separate sets of experiments. In the first set, early inoculations with F. graminearum at or before the complete emergence of ears resulted in little or no visible FHB symptoms but deoxynivalenol (DON) contents ranging from 0.4 to 2.6 ppm were detected in the harvested grain. Severe levels of FHB were observed on these genotypes with infected spikelets ranging from 30 to 74% and DON concentrations, from 6.6 to 10.0 ppm, when plants were inoculated at or after the 50% anthesis stage. Inoculation at 50% anthesis was considered the most appropriate as it allowed sufficient time for disease development and assessment prior to the physiological maturity of the plants. In the second set of experiments, F. culmorum and F. graminearum were equally highly pathogenic, having areas under the disease progress curve of 45.3 and 47.3, respectively. Fusarium sporotrichioides was significantly less pathogenic than the two highly pathogenic species. The pathogenicity of F. avenaceum was intermediate and was not significantly different from those of either the highly pathogenic or the weakly pathogenic Fusarium species.


By exploiting the permutation symmetry of Dick states, we derive closed analytical expressions of Schmidt decompositions for {\it all} possible bipartitions of a system described by this kind of state. This allows us to exhaustively compute the entropy of entanglement of the bipartitions and, thus, compare the their entanglement extent. We also address the multipartite character of Dicke states by calculating the purity of balanced bipartitions to determine the potential of multipartite entanglement (the average purity). In particular, we found that the entanglement of $W$ states remains constant as the number of qubits is increased. As a final application we define a family of multipartite entanglement witnesses and compute their resistance against random and systematic imperfections. It is shown that in some circumstances, for a fixed white noise fraction, the entanglement becomes detectable only if one {\it increases} the amount of systematic imperfection in the state.


AIM
To investigate the proteome changes of stem cells due to ciclopirox olamine (CPX) treatment compared to control and retinoic acid treated cells.

METHODS
Stem cells (SCs) are cells, which have the ability to continuously divide and differentiate into various other kinds of cells. Murine embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and multipotent adult germline stem cells (maGSCs) were treated with CPX, which has been shown to have an antiproliferative effect on stem cells, and compared to stem cells treated with retinoic acid (RA), which is known to have a differentiating effect on stem cells. Classical proteomic techniques like 2-D gel electrophoresis and differential in-gel electrophoresis (DIGE) were used to generate 2D protein maps from stem cells treated with RA or CPX as well as from non-treated stem cells. The resulting 2D gels were scanned and the digitalized images were collated with the help of Delta 2D software. The differentially expressed proteins were analyzed by a MALDI-TOF-TOF mass spectrometer, and the identified proteins were investigated and categorized using bioinformatics.

RESULTS
Treatment of stem cells with CPX, a synthetic antifungal clinically used to treat superficial mycoses, resulted in an antiproliferative effect in vitro, without impairment of pluripotency. To understand the mechanisms induced by CPX treatments which results in arrest of cell cycle without any marked effect on pluripotency, a comparative proteomics study was conducted. The obtained data revealed that the CPX impact on cell proliferation was accompanied with a significant alteration in stem cell proteome. By peptide mass fingerprinting and tandem mass spectrometry combined with searches of protein sequence databases, a set of 316 proteins was identified, corresponding to a library of 125 non-redundant proteins. With proteomic analysis of ESCs and maGSCs treated with CPX and RA, we could identify more than 90 single proteins, which were differently expressed in both cell lines. We could highlight, that CPX treatment of stem cells, with subsequent proliferation inhibition, resulted in an alteration of the expression of 56 proteins compared to non-treated cells, and 54 proteins compared to RA treated cells. Bioinformatics analysis of the regulated proteins demonstrated their involvement in various biological processes. To our interest, a number of proteins have potential roles in the regulation of cell proliferation either directly or indirectly. Furthermore the classification of the altered polypeptides according to their main known/postulated functions revealed that the majority of these proteins are involved in molecular functions like nucleotide binding and metal ion binding, and biological processes like nucleotide biosynthetic processes, gene expression, embryonic development, regulation of transcription, cell cycle processes, RNA and mRNA processing. Proteins, which are involved in nucleotide biosynthetic process and proteolysis, were downregulated in CPX treated cells compared to control, as well as in RA treated cells, which may explain the cell cycle arrest. Moreover, proteins which were involved in cell death, positive regulation of biosynthetic process, response to organic substance, glycolysis, anti-apoptosis, and phosphorylation were downregulated in RA treated cells compared to control and CPX treated cells.

CONCLUSION
The CPX treatment of SCs results in downregulation of nucleotide binding proteins and leads to cell cycle stop without impairment of pluripotency.


An all-solid-state contact electrode selective for sulfite/hydrogensulfite was constructed using a wire coated with a mixture of graphite, epoxy and hardener and covered by 4-methylpiperidinedithiocarbamate–mercury(II) complex. Its preparation and the response characteristics were examined. With an optimum thickness of the complex at the surface of the all-solid-state contact (which appears to affect the response time, slope and lifetime), the electrode exhibited a short response time and high selectivity for reducing species, and also was found to be reproducible for 3 weeks when kept in distilled water or dry. For electrodes exposed to solutions containing high levels (0.1 mol dm–3) of sulfite/hydrogensulfite or reducing species, e.g., SnII or CuI, the response was significantly lower. The observed response of the electrode only to reducing species can be attributed to a heterogeneous redox reaction (sulfite in the sample reduces HgII to HgI at the electrode–sample interface). Under controlled conditions such a heterogeneous redox reaction resulted in a highly selective and reproducible response to reducing species, especially to sulfite/hydrogensulfite. The response of the all-solid-state contact electrode was linear with a slope of –70 ±5 mV between 0.1 and 5 × 10–6 mol dm–3 sulfite/hydrogensulfite concentration and the useful pH range from 0.1 to 1 × 10–6 mol dm–3 sulfite/hydrogensulfite was between 3.0 and 9.0. Further, the selectivity of sulfite over iodide, thiocyanate, thiosulfate and bromide was much improved compared with that for a liquid membrane sulfite electrode.


ABSTRACT Since the introduction of vertical greenery systems (VGSs) in Singapore, building designers have experimented with different VGS designs and types to apply to high-rise building facades. Although innovative designs have brought variety to the utilitarian high-rise facades clad in glass, steel and concrete, little consideration has been given to the issues of maintainability during the design/planning stage. This lack of foresight and planning has hindered the efforts of maintenance personnel and compromised the performance of such green facades. To address these concerns, an instrumental case study approach was undertaken using a series of site investigations and interviews with experts and stakeholders. The aim of this research was to strengthen the knowledge base on high-rise vertical greenery facades in the tropics, leading to the formulation of case study-based 'design for maintainability' (DfM) guidelines. These guidelines will assist clients, designers and contractors by providing a supplemental reference during the design, installation and maintenance of high-rise VGSs located in tropical regions.


Long-term treatment with timolol in patients ages 65-75 years who survived myocardial infarction was related to a significant reduction, compared with placebo, in overall mortality (p < 0.05), total cardiac death (p < 0.01), sudden death (p < 0.05) and reinfarction (p < 0.01). The analyses were based on 732 patients (384 taking placebo and 348 timolol) from a cohort of 1884 patients in the Norwegian multicenter timolol study. The dosage of timolol was 10 mg twice daily and the patients were followed for 12-33 months (mean 17 months). There were 83 deaths in the placebo group and 52 deaths in the timolol group, a reduction of 35.5%. There were 69 initial reinfarctions in the placebo group and 38 in the timolol group, a reduction of 39.2%. There was no difference in the reduction of mortality and reinfarction between patients 65-75 years of age and patients less than 65 years of age. The incidence of side effects, the number of withdrawals and the reasons for withdrawal were similar in older and younger patients. We conclude that age should not be a decision-making factor concerning timolol therapy in postinfarct patients.


Unlike the great majority of the aerobactin-producing enteric bacteria documented in the literature, Enterobacter cloacae EK33, isolated from a case of human neonatal meningitis, did not show any homology at the DNA level with the prototype aerobactin system encoded by the ColV-K30 plasmid. However, both the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum and fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry of the siderophore purified from EK33 confirmed its identity with aerobactin. Bioassay screening of a gene library of total DNA of EK33 led to the isolation of several aerobactin-positive clones. Under conditions of iron limitation, these clones expressed in Escherichia coli a protein of 72 kilodaltons that reacted with antiserum raised against the pColV-K30 74-kilodalton aerobactin receptor, while the original E. cloacae strain synthesized an 85-kilodalton protein which also cross-reacted with the antiserum. Restriction endonuclease analysis of the cloned DNA confirmed the structural differences between the two aerobactin genetic systems.


Abstract Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a life-threatening disease caused by the Gram-positive, opportunistic intestinal pathogen C. difficile. Despite the availability of antimicrobial drugs to treat CDI, such as vancomycin, metronidazole, and fidaxomicin, recurrence of infection remains a significant clinical challenge. The use of live commensal microorganisms, or probiotics, is one of the most investigated non-antibiotic therapeutic options to balance gastrointestinal (GI) microbiota and subsequently tackle dysbiosis. In this review, we will discuss major commensal probiotic strains that have the potential to prevent and/or treat CDI and its recurrence, reassess the efficacy of probiotics supplementation as a CDI intervention, delve into lessons learned from probiotic modulation of the immune system, explore avenues like genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions, genome sequencing, and multi-omics to identify novel strains and understand their functionality, and discuss the current regulatory framework, challenges, and future directions.


TO BE TRULY LITERATE, children need to learn to create, comprehend and use written, visual, aural and multimodal texts. When they start school, they are usually able to create spoken and visual texts (drawings) but have limited skills in written text creation (writing). Our study investigated what would happen if teachers encouraged children, in the first six months of formal schooling, to continue visual text creation while they taught them to create written texts. Ten teachers and 60 children from six schools in a regional centre in Australia informed the study. Genetic Research Methodology (GRM) provided a framework with which to interrogate and understand the data and consequently a 'new' way of exploring the relationship between drawing and early writing development. We argue that encouraging children to draw, while teaching them how to write, allows children to create meaningful texts of a complexity that they may not be able to create using conventional print forms alone. We also argue that the incorporation of drawing into the early writing curriculum is more important than ever given contemporary understandings of literacy. ]


Static shear-rheology for self-made semi-solid AZ91D magnesium alloy slurry was studied by using the tester and a universal electronic machine. Shear-stress along with cylindrical surface in the sample was produced by using the tester and then shear-rheologic deformation happened. It showed that on the condition of the same loading, the longer the loading time and holding time were, the larger the deforming rate was. When the holding time attained a certain value, small grains acquired enough energy to grow up or amalgamate with prolonging the holding time and coarse grains started to melt from intergranular or grain boundaries, but the critical shear-stress kept a constant. The sample didn't flow but appeared to instantaneous shear-strains with starting to load. When the loading exceeded the critical value, the sample started to flow and had the phenomena of elastic after-working, elastic before-working and remained deformation. The rheologic characteristics of semi-solid AZ91D magnesium alloy were expressed by the five element mechanical model: H1—(N1/H2)—(N2/S).


In addition to marshalling immune and inflammatory responses, transcription factors of the NF-kappaB family control cell survival. This control is crucial to a wide range of biological processes, including B and T lymphopoiesis, adaptive immunity, oncogenesis and cancer chemoresistance. During an inflammatory response, NF-kappaB activation antagonizes apoptosis induced by tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, a protective activity that involves suppression of the Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) cascade. This suppression can involve upregulation of the Gadd45-family member Gadd45beta/Myd118, which associates with the JNK kinase MKK7/JNKK2 and blocks its catalytic activity. Upregulation of XIAP, A20 and blockers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) appear to be important additional means by which NF-kappaB blunts JNK signaling. These recent findings might open up entirely new avenues for therapeutic intervention in chronic inflammatory diseases and certain cancers; indeed, the Gadd45beta-MKK7 interaction might be a key target for such intervention.


Occurrence data on geographic distribution for most endemic Neotropical plants are scarce and spatially biased, which interferes with decisions on their conservation status. In this study we present a three-step approach applying: 1) Euclidean Environmental Distance models to search for unknown populations; 2) MaxEnt incorporating additional presence data to produce forecasts of the potential distribution and 3) coupling of convex hull methods with SDM. We studied Petunia mantiqueirensis, an Atlantic Forest endemic species. This approach enabled us to obtain new presence points, and to improve species distribution models. Finally, we identified and excluded environmental unsuitable areas inside the extent of occurrence, allowing us to reassess the conservation status of the species. These recommendations are important to crucial to establish, in a more assertive way, the extent of occurrence and area of occupancy of the species to determine proper strategies for conservation.


Intravascular photoacoustic (IVPA) imaging is a catheter-based, minimally invasive, imaging modality capable of providing high-resolution optical absorption map of the arterial wall. Integrated with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging, combined IVPA and IVUS imaging can be used to detect and characterize atherosclerotic plaques building up in the inner lining of an artery. In this paper, we present and discuss various representative applications of combined IVPA/IVUS imaging of atherosclerosis, including assessment of the composition of atherosclerotic plaques, imaging of macrophages within the plaques, and molecular imaging of biomarkers associated with formation and development of plaques. In addition, imaging of coronary artery stents using IVPA and IVUS imaging is demonstrated. Furthermore, the design of an integrated IVUS/IVPA imaging catheter needed for in vivo clinical applications is discussed.


Local energy markets (LEMs) have been introduced in the last few decades as a bottom-up approach solution to create a competitive market for prosumers/consumers to trade their energy and have control over their energy sources. However, there is still a gap in research for prosumers/consumers willing to exchange energy at defined price-and energy-preferences. In this work, we propose an open-source LEM model for matching prosumers and consumers with the same energy and price policy in a decentralized LEM. Our model was verified of its applicability by simulating it with the data from a German community. The simulation results showed that the model was able to satisfy the energy preferences of the consumers and prosumers in the local community to an average of more than 60%. Moreover, the model also demonstrated improved performance in terms of self-sufficiency and self-consumption ratio to the community compared to trading with the central LEM.


Recently, there has been a growing interest in the reforms being taken by the Socialist Government in the Republic of Albania, in terms of deepening and promoting a 'good sustainable democracy' in the country after two decades of rocky, challenging democratic transition. This majority came in power after the overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections held in June 2013 being credited in compliance with the European standards in terms of reliability, fairness and political honesty.

This paper will evaluate the effectiveness of this 'successful political rotation' towards establishment of a governmental accountability tradition with regard to equal, respectful and fair job chances to every official of the public administration sector, which has been the most sensitive corrupt and over-trodden segment as highlighted by the Socialist electoral rhetoric. The research analysis will demonstrate that despite the elections triumph results, the Socialist Government is pursuing and even deepening the democratic deficit in respect of rule of law, and in particular in compliance with the civil status of public administration officials that have to be hired based on professional meritocracy instead of political affiliation be it right or left wing.

In order to achieve this analysis, we refer to social constructivism theoretical framework to explore, identify and analyze the specific features of Albanian society, its cultural identity, and its economic context; in addition, we refer to democratization literature on challenges of fragile democracies. Finally, having drawn an objective picture of the current link between the newly elected decision-makers and the social-economic circumstantial factors, we highlight the democratic deficit and provide policy recommendations towards establishment of non-politically biased public administration a very significant component for the integration process of the country.

Keywords: Democracy consolidation, rule of law, public administration


OBJECTIVE
To construct a global directory of biomedical databases(DBD), which can be used free of charge on INTERNET. It will be convenient for researchers to find out related databases quickly, easily and accurately by using DBD since there are not enough useful tools for database retrieval. Biomedical databases will be an accelerator in development of biomedicine with the help of DBD.

METHODS
PubMed and Google were main tools for searching related databases. Proper search strategy with rigorous indexing rules helped us to filter databases. The database management system was Microsoft SQL-Server 2000. The web pages of DBD were designed with Macromedia Dreamwaver MX. ASP (active server pages) technology was used to deal with the key words and scores sent by users.

RESULTS
There were 66 subjects and 1 258 databases in DBD at this time. We released the Chinese and English versions of DBD on the INTERNET at the same time http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/DBList/index.htm http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/DBList/index_en.htm . Score system was also established to evaluate the content of the indexed databases. Users can search DBD by subjects key words and alphabetic databases' names easily.

CONCLUSION
DBD has laid the primary foundation for further core biomedical database evaluation system. DBD, as a useful tool for biomedical database retrieval, will be of great aid to users since databases have played a more and more important role in the biomedical research.


Ruthenium porphyrin functionalised single-walled carbon nanotube arrays have been prepared using coordination of the axial position of the metal ion onto 4-aminopyridine pre-assembled single-walled carbon nanotubes directly anchored to a silicon(100) surface (SWCNTs-Si). The formation of these ruthenium porphyrin functionalised single-walled carbon nanotube array electrodes (RuTPP-SWCNTs-Si) has been monitored using infra-red spectroscopy (IR), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), and cyclic voltammetry. Mixed assembly of ferrocene/porphyrin onto carbon nanotube arrays has been achieved by altering the ratio of two redox-active species in the deposition solution. These results suggest these ruthenium porphyrin modified electrodes are excellent candidates for molecular memory devices.


The interactions between hydrological and ecological processes are key issues to improve our predictions of ecosystem responses to increasing droughts. However, predicting the dynamics and the impacts of vegetation water stress remains challenging because of complex ecohydrological feedbacks. The ecohydrological optimality approach proposes that functional adjustments within plant communities may buffer the increase in vegetation water stress despite local water shortage. This study aimed to test whether vegetation water stress may be invariant across contrasting plant communities, reflecting possible optimality processes. We addressed the following question: does a lower soil water storage capacity under the same climate generate greater vegetation water stress over time? We hypothesized that vegetation water stress would be buffered around a low and constant level through the adjustment of vegetation biomass productivity net primary productivity (NPP), evapotranspiration (ET) and/or water-use efficiency (WUE) in relation with local soil water storage capacity. We monitored 12 native plant communities distributed along a gradient of soil water storage capacity (ranging from 20 mm to 120 mm) during five successive years. Net primary productivity, ET, WUE as well as soil water dynamics were assessed and modelled for each plant community throughout the 5 years of study. Vegetation water stress was determined for each plant community as the deviation of between actual ET and their maximum ETm rate achieved under non-limiting conditions. We found that NPP and ET were together proportionally related to local soil water storage capacity across the 5 years of study while WUE did not differ between plant communities. Vegetation water stress was found quite similar for all plant communities whatever the soil water storage capacity. These results suggested that vegetation water stress was strongly buffered by the community-level plant growth rates and total water use along the soil gradient, but not by WUE. Our results suggest that stressful environments rarely exist for plant communities. A dynamic scaling relationship between NPP and ET may underpin the control of vegetation water stress over seasonal and pluriannual time-scales. Such results could contribute to better understanding processes associated with ecohydrological optimality and improve the predictions of vegetation dynamics under increasing droughts. (Resume d'auteur)