INTRODUCTION
Vestibular schwannomas (VS) account for approximately 8% of all intracranial neoplasms and nearly 80% of all cerebellopontine angle tumors. Spontaneous intratumoral hemorrhage (ITH) remains a rare entity with only 10 published reports existing in the international literature. In the present case, we discuss the clinical presentation, radiographic evaluation and management of a 66-year-old male with a histologically confirmed spontaneous hemorrhagic VS.

STUDY DESIGN
Case Report.

SETTING
Tertiary referral center.

RESULTS
A 66-year-old male with a history of prodromal left sided sensorineural hearing loss presented for evaluation after experiencing a rapid onset severe left sided headache, projectile vomiting and vertigo that woke him from sleep. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a left sided 2 X 2 cm cerebellopontine angle mass consistent with a VS. Local mass effect resulted in 4th ventricle effacement and hydrocephalus. Areas of T2 hypointensity and corresponding increased attenuation on CT confirmed an acute ITH. Hematology and coagulation laboratory studies were normal. The patient subsequently underwent a left suboccipital craniotomy with complete resection of a histologically confirmed hemorrhagic VS.

CONCLUSION
Spontaneous hemorrhage into a VS is an extremely rare event. In contrast to the insidious progression typified by nonhemorrhagic VSs, those with gross intratumoral bleeding most often present with acute cranial neuropathies and symptoms of subarachnoid hemorrhage. In surgically fit patients, we advocate urgent microsurgical resection. Simple observation with serial radiography may risk repeated hemorrhage while the role of radiosurgery is not yet defined.


Recap: Last time we introduced the principal elements of skeletal models and discussed forward kinematics. Recall that a skeletal model consists of a collection of joints, which have been joined into a rooted tree structure. Each joint of the skeleton is associated with a coordinate frame which specifies its position and orientation in space. Each joint can be rotated (subject to sum constraints). The assignment of rotation angles (or generally rotation transformations) to the individual joints defines the skeleton's pose, that is, its geometrical configuration in space. Joint rotations are defined relative to a default pose, called the bind pose (or reference pose).


Background
The HIV epidemic is a major public health concern throughout Africa. Malawi is one of the worst affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a 2014 national HIV prevalence currently estimated at 10% (9.3-10.8%) by UNAIDS. Study reports, largely in the African setting comparing outcomes in HIV patients with and without Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) indicate poor prognosis and poor health outcomes amongst HIV+KS patients. Understanding the mortality risk in this patient group could help improve patient management and care.

Methods
Using data for the 559 adult HIV+KS patients who started ART between 2004 and September 2011 at Zomba clinic in Malawi, we estimated relative hazard ratios for all-cause mortality by controlling for age, sex, TB status, occupation, date of starting treatment and distance to the HIV+KS clinic.

Results
Patients with tuberculosis (95% CI: 1.05-4.65) and patients who started ART before 2008 (95% CI: 0.34-0.81) were at significantly greater risk of dying. A random-effects Cox model with Log-Gaussian frailties adequately described the variation in the hazard for mortality.

Conclusion
The year of starting ART and TB status significantly affected survival among HIV+KS patients. A sub-population analysis of this kind can inform an efficient triage system for managing vulnerable patients.


Writing skills are imperative for students in any career; however, many students have acknowledged avoiding courses that emphasize writing. These same students fail to learn proper mechanics during their post-secondary education. Writing intensive courses have served as a place where students have the opportunity to improve confidence, minimize avoidance-like attitudes, and improve writing techniques. Prior literature has found a relationship between self-efficacy and writing apprehension; additionally, research has suggested how pedagogical strategies can be used to improve self-efficacy. This study sought to explore how the implementation of pedagogical activities changes self-efficacy and the student's level of writing apprehension. A qualitative research design allowed for a thick description of the students' perceptions and reactions to pedagogical activities. The findings suggested pedagogical practices and the role of the instructor played important roles to improve student confidence in writing. Specifically, practicing writing, opportunities to edit and reflect, following a guide, and writing about what matters may be used in courses to improve confidence and writing skills. Additionally, the instructor should provide constructive criticism and serve as a coach during the learning process. In order to improve writing curriculum and student confidence toward writing, instructors should incorporate these recommendations into their curriculum.


We present an overview of solid-state integrated circuit amplifiers approaching terahertz frequencies based on the latest device technologies which have emerged in the past several years. Highlights include the best reported data from heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) circuits, high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) circuits, and metamorphic HEMT (mHEMT) amplifier circuits. We discuss packaging techniques for the various technologies in waveguide modules and describe the best reported noise figures measured in these technologies. A consequence of THz transistors, namely ultra-low-noise at cryogenic temperatures, will be explored and results presented. We also present a short review of power amplifier technologies for the THz regime. Finally, we discuss emerging materials for THz amplifiers into the next decade.


Pose Machines provide a sequential prediction framework for learning rich implicit spatial models. In this work we show a systematic design for how convolutional networks can be incorporated into the pose machine framework for learning image features and image-dependent spatial models for the task of pose estimation. The contribution of this paper is to implicitly model long-range dependencies between variables in structured prediction tasks such as articulated pose estimation. We achieve this by designing a sequential architecture composed of convolutional networks that directly operate on belief maps from previous stages, producing increasingly refined estimates for part locations, without the need for explicit graphical model-style inference. Our approach addresses the characteristic difficulty of vanishing gradients during training by providing a natural learning objective function that enforces intermediate supervision, thereby replenishing back-propagated gradients and conditioning the learning procedure. We demonstrate state-of-the-art performance and outperform competing methods on standard benchmarks including the MPII, LSP, and FLIC datasets.


This study examines the relationship between early childhood morbidity and young adult health in a poor developing country with a high prevalence of childhood diseases. I take advantage of the rich observational data collected by the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) Longitudinal Study in Guatemala to estimate the effects of five types of childhood illnesses on metabolic syndrome in young adulthood, a predictor of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. This analysis supports the hypothesis that poor health in childhood is associated with a higher probability of metabolic syndrome in young adulthood. I also find that adult height, often used as a proxy for childhood conditions, does not capture the effects of childhood morbidity. Thus, studies that include height but no direct measure of childhood morbidity are likely to underestimate the effects of child health on later life outcomes. The results highlight the significance of child health programs that can improve population health over the life course.


Surface and sub-surface ocean temperature observations collected by sea turtles (ST) during the first phase (Jan 2019–April 2020) of the Sea Turtle for Ocean Research and Monitoring (STORM) project are compared against in-situ and satellite temperature measurements, and later relied upon to assess the performance of the Glo12 operational ocean model over the west tropical Indian Ocean. The evaluation of temperature profiles collected by STs against collocated ARGO drifter measurements show good agreement at all sample depths (0–250 m). Comparisons against various operational satellite sea surface temperature (SST) products indicate a slight overestimation of ST-borne temperature observations of ∼0.1°±°0.6° that is nevertheless consistent with expected uncertainties on satellite-derived SST data. Comparisons of ST-borne surface and subsurface temperature observations against Glo12 temperature forecasts demonstrate the good performance of the model surface and subsurface (<50 m) temperature predictions in the West tropical Indian Ocean, with mean bias (resp. RMS) in the range of 0.2° (resp. 0.5–1.5°). At deeper depths (>50 m), the model is, however, shown to significantly underestimate ocean temperatures as already noticed from global evaluation scores performed operationally at the basin scale. The distribution of model errors also shows significant spatial and temporal variability in the first 50 m of the ocean, which will be further investigated in the next phases of the STORM project.


Recent mobile devices are integrated with multiple network interfaces. Users want their devices connected to the network anytime anywhere. It is highly feasible for a user to change connection to another network for users that leave the service area of its current serving network, where handover needs to be executed seamlessly such that ongoing service sessions are not interrupted. The handover operation not only requires switching the interfaces within a device but also involves seamless reconfiguration of the supporting networks. In this article, an improved IP-based vertical handover technology for mobile WiMAX , 3GPP legacy systems (i.e., Global System for Mobile communications and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), and 3G Long Term Evolution is presented, which is based on existing optimized handover techniques between mobile WiMAX and 3GPP accesses. Formerly proposed 3GPP WiMAX optimized VHO solutions introduced new elements, such as the forward attachment function and access network discovery and selection function. The ANDSF supports the discovery of target access, and the FAF provides the functionality that authenticates the UE before the execution of VHO. However, the previous technique has limitations that result in data loss and abnormal disconnection to the source access. This article provides a solution by introducing an additional network element called the data forwarding function (DFF) that eliminates the data loss during VHO execution. In addition, the DFF resolves the problem of abrupt disconnection to the source network. The simulation results show that the proposed VHO technique is effective in minimizing data loss during VHO execution between mobile WiMAX and 3GPP networks. As the proposed solution of this article is an IP based handover solution, it can be similarly applied to other communication networks.


OBJECTIVES
To date, no studies in emergency medicine (EM) have addressed the educational value of the Residency Review Committee for Emergency Medicine's (RRC-EM) requirement for patient follow-up (FU). The authors examined whether performance of patient FU improved EM resident education.

METHODS
All EM resident FU encounters from September 25, 2001, through September 24, 2002, were documented and analyzed. All EM residents at a regional tertiary referral emergency department (ED) initiated patient FU encounters by entering information regarding patients' initial ED presentations into a Web-based follow-up system (WBFUS), subsequently entered FU information, and indicated whether they thought that the specific FU encounters improved their education (yes/no). Supervising faculty members then reviewed the residents' completed FU entries. Blinded to residents' responses regarding educational utility, faculty members evaluated whether they thought the specific FU encounters were educational for the residents (yes/no). Data entered into the WBFUS were then summarized as percentages.

RESULTS
Eight hundred forty-seven FU encounters were completed by 18 EM residents and 29 EM faculty. Ninety-three percent of the FU entries were deemed by at least one evaluator (resident or faculty) to have educational value. Residents found the act of performing FU educational in 81.3% of cases, whereas faculty thought 80.4% were educational for the resident. Although the residents and faculty agreed on the educational value in 75.4% of cases, the overall strength of the agreement was slight to fair (kappa statistic = 0.21).

CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that EM residents and faculty believe that the act of performing patient FU has educational value for EM residents; however, the interobserver agreement between residents and faculty was low.


The neural transducer is an end-to-end model for automatic speech recognition (ASR). While the model is well-suited for streaming ASR, the training process remains challenging. During training, the memory requirements may quickly exceed the capacity of state-of-the-art GPUs, limiting batch size and sequence lengths.In this work, we analyze the time and space complexity of a typical transducer training setup. We propose a memory-efficient training method that computes the transducer loss and gradients sample by sample. We present optimizations to increase the efficiency and parallelism of the sample-wise method. In a set of thorough benchmarks, we show that our sample-wise method significantly reduces memory usage, and performs at competitive speed when compared to the default batched computation. As a highlight, we manage to compute the transducer loss and gradients for a batch size of 1024, and audio length of 40 seconds, using only 6 GB of memory.


This paper is based mainly on the results of the author's own research work on blood volume and circulation time in cases of normal and sick children.


Data exfiltration attacks have led to huge data breaches. Recently, the Equifax attack affected 147M users and a third party library - Apache Struts - was alleged to be responsible for it. These attacks often exploit the fact that sensitive data are stored unencrypted in process memory and can be accessed by any function executing within the same process, including untrusted third party library functions.This paper presents StackVault, a kernel-based system to prevent sensitive stack-based data from being accessed in an unauthorized manner by intra-process functions. Stack-based data includes data on stack as well as data pointed to by pointer variables on stack. StackVault consists of three components: (1) a set of programming APIs to allow users to specify which data needs to be protected, (2) a kernel module which uses unforgeable function identities to reliably carry out the sensitive data protection, and (3) an LLVM compiler extension that enables transparent placement of stack protection operations. The StackVault system automatically enforces stack protection through spatial and temporal access monitoring and control over both sensitive stack data and untrusted functions. We implemented StackVault and evaluated it using a number of popular real world applications, including gRPC. The results show that StackVault is effective and efficient, incurring only up to 2.4% runtime overhead.


Background: web-based surveillance is a useful tool for predicting future cases of various emerging infectious diseases. There are limited data available on web-based surveillance and patterns of distribution of eosinophilic meningitis (EOM), which is an emerging infectious disease in various countries around the world.
Methods: this study applied web-based surveillance to the prediction of EOM incidence and the analysis of its distribution pattern by using a national database, which may be used for future prevention and control. The number cases of EOM in each month over a period of 12 years (between 2006 to 2017) from Loei province were retrieved from the National Disease Surveillance (Report 506) website, operated by Thailand's Public Health Center.
Results: we developed autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models and seasonal ARIMA (SARIMA) models. The best model was used for predicting numbers of future cases. The forecast values from the SARIMA (1, 1, 2)(0,1,1)6 model were close to actual values and were the most valid, as they had the lowest RMSE and AIC. The predictive model for future cases of EOM was related to previous numbers of EOM cases over the past eight months. The disease exhibited a seasonal pattern during the study period.
Conclusions: web-based surveillance can be used for future prediction of EOM, that the predictive model applied here was valid, and that EOM exhibits a seasonal pattern.


Currently exist the following technological preconditions for gradual development of green economy: rapid development of Internet-globalization and computer technologies, modernization of transport, rapid technological change, increased volume of scientific and technical information and growth of high-tech industries. All these factors provide a basis for global use and spread of new green technologies, development of modern tools of controlling and monitoring of environmental issues, rapid response to a particular complex environmental situation. The article provides brief analysis of economic situation in Kazakhstan. Particular emphasis is placed on the issues related to energy capacity and energy efficiency, their impact on environment and competitiveness of the country, as well as opportunities to improve these indicators. Also, it includes the author's approach to the implementation of "green" economy in the Republic of Kazakhstan based on synergy effect of energy-saving and parallel increased influence of human capital on process of transition to


Deformation twinning has rarely been observed in coarse grained Al and its alloys except under some extreme conditions such as ultrahigh deformation strain or strain rates. Here, we report that a significant amount of Σ3 deformation twins could be generated in a coarse-grained Al-7 Mg alloy by dynamic plastic deformation (DPD). A systematic investigation of the Σ3 boundaries shows that they are Σ3{112} type incoherent twin boundaries (ITBs). These ITBs have formed by gradual evolution from copious low-angle deformation bands through 〈111〉-twist Σ boundaries by lattice rotation. These findings provide an approach to generate deformation twin boundaries in high stacking fault energy metallic alloys. It is suggested that high solution content of Mg in the alloy and the special deformation mode of DPD played an important role in formation of the Σ and ITBs.


Background Respiratory tract infection is leading causes of death among patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus in Vietnam. Identification the agents caused RTIs is very important to give specific treatment and to reduce mortality rate among HIV/AIDS patients suffering from RTI. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of 170 HIV/AIDS patients with signs and symptoms (clinical manifestations and/or broncho aveolar lesions through X-ray chest film) of respiratory tract to indentify the common agents by analysing bronchoaveolarlavage (BAL). Results A total of 170 HIV/AIDS patients (138 male and 32 female) involved in the study and 170 BAL samples had been taken to identify the common agents caused RTIs. 148/170 (87.1%) patients had been diagnosed RTIs with following agents: Mycobacterium tuberculosis 79/148 (53.4%), PJP 12/148 (8.1%), bacteria 59/148 (39.9%), fungi 54/148 (36.5%) and CMV 2/148 (1.4%). 52/148 (35.1%) patients had been isolated 2 differential agents at a moment. Most patients have very low CD4+ count (80.4% ≤ 100cells/mm3; mean = 74.6; SD = 118.7; median = 22). The more common bacteria are: Pseudomonas (P.aeruginosa, P.putida, P.pneumotropica) 15/59 (25.4%), Streptococcus (S.pneumoniae, S.pyogene) 11/59 (18.6%), Acinobacter (Aci.baumani, Aci.juni, Aci.minimus) 6/59 (10.2%), E.coli 3/59 (5.1%) and S.aureus 3/59 (5.1%). Other include: H.influenza 2/59 and each following spp have 1: Achromobacter xylosoxidans, K.pneumoniae, Enterobacter clocae, Moraxella catarhalis, and Rhodococcus equi. Isolated fungal spp include: Candida albicans 32/54 (59.2%), Penicillium marneffei 14/54 (25.9%), Aspergilus spp 4 (7.4%), Candida spp 3/54 (5.6%) and Cryptococcus neoformans 1/54 (1.9%). The common complex infections are MTB-Fungi (16 patients), MTB-Bacteria (14 patients) and Bacteria-Fungi (11patients). Conclusion Mycobacterium tuberculosis, bacteria (P.aeruginosa, P.putida, P.pneumotropica, S.pneumoniae, S.pyogene, and Aci.baumani) and fungi (Candida albicans and Penicillium marneffei) are the more common in HIV/AIDS patients who have RTIs. Because of advanced immune depression, patients may have complex infections in a moment.


This paper proposes a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) inspired by Multitask Learning (MTL) and based on speech features trained under the joint supervision of softmax loss and center loss, a powerful metric learning strategy, for the recognition of emotion in speech. Speech features such as Spectrograms and Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient s (MFCCs) help retain emotion-related low-level characteristics in speech. We experimented with several Deep Neural Network (DNN) architectures that take in speech features as input and trained them under both softmax and center loss, which resulted in highly discriminative features ideal for Speech Emotion Recognition (SER). Our networks also employ a regularizing effect by simultaneously performing the auxiliary task of reconstructing the input speech features. This sharing of representations among related tasks enables our network to better generalize the original task of SER. Some of our proposed networks contain far fewer parameters when compared to state-of-the-art architectures.


In modern Bulgaria corruption is one of the significant concerns plaguing the current legal system. With historical roots in the Ottoman Empire and the Communist regime, Bulgaria faces challenges in sustaining a strong judicial system that holds its members accountable. Since the transition from communism to democracy in 1989, Bulgaria's biggest challenge has been reforming its judicial system to combat corruption. Despite the number of reforms to the system, the Bulgarian legal system is perceived to be among the most corrupt in the world. Addressing the issue of corruption in Bulgaria's legal system is only possible through reforms centered around creating an environment where corruption cannot be easily practiced. These reforms must specifically attend to matters of judicial independence, accountability and discretion in the judicial system. The objective of this thesis is to answer three questions: what are the most significant faults of the Bulgarian judicial system that contribute to corruption? Where did these errors come from? How can they be resolved?


The excavated documents from Heisuicheng Town are another important discovery after the three great discoveries of inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang dynasty,bamboo slips for writings in the Han and Jin dynasties and Dunhuang documents.Shi Jin-bo does researches of them in the perspectives of cultural relics,philology,historical data and academic learning.Bai Bin analyzes some problems in the process of sorting out and doing researches from the three aspects of differentiating,restoration and dynasty.Sun Ji-min thinks that dynasties of these documents should come from Tang,Five Dynasties,Liao,Song,the Western Xia,Jin,Weiqi,Yuan(including the Northern Yuan)."Heisuicheng Learning" should take place of"Xixia Learning", for this name is not enough to cover its meaning.Yan Qian-miao thinks that military and governmental documents may works as supplements of historical data in the northwestern areas of China,and further it also plays an important role in the research of system,events and persons in the Song dynasty.


: The article deals with the effect of the intravenous administration of streptodekase with heparin on the hemostatic system in patients with acute myocardial infarction. The data obtained are compared with the corresponding parameters in patients treated with native streptokinase. The advantages of the new thrombolytic drug over ordinary streptokinase are shown: a one-time administration of the whole therapeutic dose of streptodekase allows a significant simplification of the thrombolytic therapy scheme; streptodekase induces prolonged activation of fibrinolysis (up to 5-7 days) without any signs of its subsequent depression and with the minimum inhibition of blood coagulation. The specific selective influence of streptodekase on the fibrinolytic system helps to obviate hemorrhagic and thromboembolic complications characteristic of native streptokinase. In addition, low antigenicity and toxicity of streptodekase ensure the absence of any allergic and adverse side-effects in patients treated with the drug.


Recently, we demonstrated via large-scale molecular dynamics simulations a "coexistence period" in polymer melt ordering before crystallization, where nucleation and growth mechanisms coexist with a phase-separation mechanism [Gee et al., Nat. Mater. 5, 39 (2006)]. Here, we present an extension of this work, where we analyze the directional displacements as a measure of the mobility of monomers as they order during crystallization over more than 100 ns of simulation time. It is found that the polymer melt, after quenching, rapidly separates into many ordered hexagonal domains separated by amorphous regions, where surprisingly, the magnitude of the monomer's displacement in the ordered state, parallel to the domain axial direction, is similar to its magnitude in the melt. The monomer displacements in the domain's lateral direction are found to decrease during the time of the simulation. The ordered hexagonal domains do not align into uniform lamellar structures during the timescales of our simulations.


Background and aims Adhesions, that form in 60–80% of all abdominal operations, can cause complications such as chronic abdominal pain, small-bowel obstruction, female infertility, and the need for adhesiolysis in future surgeries. Our 2010 Adhesion Awareness survey demonstrated that despite the huge clinical impact of adhesions; adhesion-related complications were seldom mentioned in the informed consent. Six years later, a follow-up survey was conducted to assess the progress on awareness on adhesion-related complications in the Netherlands. Material and methods The 2010 Adhesion Awareness survey was repeated after a literature update. The knowledge regarding adhesions; the use of anti-adhesive agents and involvement in the informed consent process were assessed. Surgeons and surgical trainees were contacted by e-mail. The data was analysed using a Chi-square or Mann-Whitney U test and corrected for multiple testing. Results The response rate was 32.6%, similar to the survey in 2010 (34.4%). 88.1% agreed with the clinical relevance of adhesions, comparable to 2010 (89.8%). The score on the knowledge test was 38.8% (2010: 37.2%). Involvement of adhesion-related complications in the informed consent process increased, although 32.5% almost never mentions adhesions. In 2016, 42.4% reported a correct occurrence of bowel lesions during adhesiolysis, higher than in 2010 (P<0.001). Conclusions The adhesion awareness did not increase in six years, despite the efforts made. However, an increased awareness regarding adhesiolysis related complications was detected. Improvement of knowledge and behavior is essential to narrowing the gap between the impact of adhesions as a major complication of abdominal surgery and the limited adhesion awareness.


The paper reports on research into city modelling based on principles of Science of Complexity. It focuses on integration of major processes in cities, such as economics, land use, transport and population movement. This is achieved using an extended Cellular Automata model, which allows cells to form networks, and operate on individual financial budgets. There are 22 cell types with individual processes in them. The formation of networks is based on supply and demand mechanisms for products, skills, accommodation, and services. Demand for transport is obtained as an emergent property of the system resulting from the network connectivity and relevant economic mechanisms. Population movement is a consequence of mechanisms in the housing and skill markets. Income and expenditure of cells are self-regulated through market mechanisms and changing patterns of land use are a consequence of collective interaction of all mechanisms in the model, which are integrated through emergence.


Between 1973 and 1994, 15 samples of CI chondrites were analyzed by neutron activation analysis at the Max‐Planck‐Institute for Chemistry, Department of Cosmochemistry in Mainz, Germany. The analyses comprise nine Orgueil samples and three samples of Ivuna, two of Alais and one of Tonk. Samples came from various sources and had masses between 5 and 600 mg. Most data are published here for the first time. The results for the nine Orgueil samples demonstrate the essentially homogeneous chemical composition of Orgueil at a level of a few milligrams. The analytical results of Ivuna, Alais, and Tonk agree, with only few exceptions, with the results of Orgueil analyses. All samples agree within ±3% in their contents of Sc, Ir, Cr, Fe, Co, Zn, and Se. The elements Sc and Ir represent the refractory component; Cr, Fe, and Co the main component; and Zn and Se the volatile component. Thus, in all CI chondrites there are essentially the same fractions of the fundamental cosmochemical components. The essentially identical chemical composition of all samples shows that their water contents are constant at about 20 ± 5 wt%. There is excellent agreement between the data listed here with data reported in the relevant literature. There is no doubt that the CI composition is a well‐defined entity, which is thought to represent the non‐gaseous compositions of the solar nebula and the photosphere of the Sun. In addition, we conclude that the recently proposed new CI chondritic chlorine and Br values are too low, when compared to earlier measurements.


How neural activity is linked to behavior is a critical question in neural engineering and cognitive neurosciences. It is crucial to predict behavior as early as possible, to plan a machine response in real-time brain computer interactions. However, previous studies have studied the neural readout of behavior only within a short time before the action is performed. This leaves unclear, if the neural activity long before a decision could predict the upcoming behavior. By recording extracellular neural activities from the visual cortex of behaving rhesus monkeys, we show that: (1) both, local field potentials (LFPs) and the rate of neural spikes long before (>2 s) a monkey responds to a change, foretell its behavioral performance in a spatially selective manner; (2) LFPs, the more accessible component of extracellular activity, are a stronger predictor of behavior; and (3) LFP amplitude is positively correlated while spiking activity is negatively correlated with behavioral reaction time (RT). These results suggest that field potentials could be used to predict behavior way before it is performed, an observation that could potentially be useful for brain computer interface applications, and that they contribute to the sensory neural circuit's speed in information processing.


Personalised nutrition can be defined as developing unique nutrition guidelines for each individual; precision nutrition seeks to develop effective approaches based on the combination of an individual's genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. The former infers variants that underlie traits are largely fixed (i.e. stable across time) and appeals to the notion that we are inherently different from one another. The latter opens up the possibility that what we do and where we are may be more important than what we are. While there are undoubtedly a specific minority of individuals who clearly require a more personalised approach to nutrition, several criteria must be fulfilled before we can justify or implement personalised nutrition for the general population. These would include identifying a desired health outcome and a valid predictor of how that outcome changes, which can be measured with sufficient accuracy and exhibit a robust correlation and/or causal relationship in the required direction (i.e. predictor-response). Many attempts to personalise nutrition, such as profiling the genome or microbiome, do not currently meet all these criteria. Therefore, we argue that there is presently insufficient rationale for truly personalised nutrition for the majority of people based on the inter-individual differences that separate them. Conversely, we propose that precision nutrition based on the environmental and/or behavioural 'lifestyle' variance within each person may provide a more effective basis for adjusting diet dynamically, with recognition of varying physiological demands and requirements over time.


Three important features of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal era since the mid-1970s have been: (a) growing financialization, (b) increasing household debt, and (c) stagnant real wages for production and non-supervisory workers. This paper develops a discrete-time Marxian circuit of capital model to analyze the links between these three features and economic slowdown. The discrete-time model is used to address two important theoretical issues of general interest to the heterodox economic tradition: profit-led versus wage-led growth, and the growth-reducing impact of non-production credit. First, it is demonstrated that both profit-led and wage-led growth regimes can be accommodated within the Marxian circuit of capital model. Second, it is demonstrated that the steady-state growth rate of a capitalist economy is negatively related to the share of consumption credit in total net credit, when the total credit is large to begin with. Bringing these two results together, the paper demonstrates that the three characteristics of the U.S economy under neoliberalism can have a growth-reducing impact on a capitalist economy. Hence, this paper offers a novel explanation, rooted in Marx's analysis of the circuits of capital, of the slowdown of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal period.


Periodic broccoli-shaped Au and Ag surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) arrays were fabricated by combining ordered SiO2 colloidal crystal templates with the physical deposition technique. The SiO2 colloidal crystal-assisted Au and Ag SERS substrates have a long-range, adjustable periodic structure and a clean surface without incorporating any reductants or surfactant chemicals. Different from depositing directly on the flat substrates, the colloidal crystal-assisted nanostructure array has a larger effective surface area under the same projected area of laser irradiation, which exposes more "hot spots". An increased roughness and a larger surface area have also been created as the highly bumpy surface feature of the broccoli-shaped SERS morphologies, resulting in a greater Raman amplification than the conventional metal film over nanosphere (MFON). SERS performances by Au and Ag SERS arrays reveal that the long-range broccoli-like morphology is a promising SERS platform as it is highly sensitive, reproducible and stable. The colloidal crystal-assisted Ag SERS array has a slightly higher enhancement factor (EF) than the Au SERS array, and they both are of the order of 107 enhancement. Compared to our previous work, which directly deposited noble metal nanoparticles onto flat substrates, the EF of the colloidal crystal-assisted SERS array is improved by one to two orders of magnitude. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation was performed to estimate the electromagnetic field distribution. Finally, two endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) (dioctyl phthalate (DOP) and dibutyl phthalate (DBP), homologous series) at different concentrations were successfully identified by Au and Ag SERS arrays with the detection limits of 0.24 × 10−9 M and 0.22 × 10−9 M, respectively. This study suggests that the broccoli-like Au and Ag SERS arrays are promising candidates for chemical sensing and this SERS substrate fabrication technique can be accessible to the standard industrial processes.


Author(s): Kamdar, Jayneil | Advisor(s): Grotjahn, Douglas B | Abstract: Global concern about the long-term sustainability and environmental impact of burning fossil fuels has prompted widespread research on alternative fuels. Hydrogen is attractive as a chemical fuel because it is carbon-free and therefore its exothermic reaction with oxygen does not generate CO2 as a byproduct. Large scale implementation of hydrogen, however, depends on efficient and clean production of hydrogen from non-fossil sources. Splitting water with sunlight is often considered the "Holy Grail" of a sustainable hydrogen economy, however the greatest challenge towards achieving this goal is in lowering the high kinetic barrier of the water oxidation half reaction. With the right electronics and geometry of coordinated ligands, transition metals can effectively mediate the loss of 4 e- / 4 H+ required to oxidize water. This dissertation details the syntheses, characterization, and reactivities of three novel catalytic systems containing multi-functional ligands that appear to have a marked effect on catalysis. Chapter 2 details the synthesis and reactivity of novel ruthenium complexes bearing 2,2'-bipyridine ligands with various pyrazolate groups in the 6,6'-positions. The structures of these complexes were characterized by NMR spectroscopy and x-ray crystallography and for one of the complexes, the unique solvatochromic and acid-base properties involving the uncoordinated nitrogen atoms of the ligand were investigated by non-aqueous and aqueous UV-visible spectroscopy and electrochemistry. Rapid O2 evolution was witnessed under acidic conditions in the presence of CeIV. While the apparent rates (between 3 and 4 s-1) are in the upper range of rates observed for ruthenium-based molecular catalysts, lag periods observed for 1 – 1.5 min prior to O2 production may be indications of slow catalyst dissolution or activation, or of catalyst modification. Alternatively, CeIV may have a non-innocent role during catalysis by interaction with the uncoordinated nitrogen. Chapter 3 details the synthesis and catalysis-relevant properties of two novel ruthenium complexes, [Ru(2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-diphosphonato)(pic)2] (pic=4-picoline) and [Ru(6,6'-diisopropyl-2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-diphosphonato)(pic)2]. These complexes are the first examples of water oxidation catalysts deliberately bearing phosphonate groups positioned to serve as metal-bound ligands. They have been characterized by NMR spectroscopy, elemental analyses, x-ray crystallography, cyclic voltammetry, and UV-visible spectroscopy. From electrochemical data, we have discovered that charge states of P-OH / P-OR groups have a significant influence on redox and catalytic properties, features that are absent in much more commonly studied carboxylate analogs.Chapter 4 details the synthesis and reactivity of a series of ruthenium complexes bearing novel 2,2'-biimidazole-4,4'-phosphonate ligands. Surprisingly, the new ligands did not participate in the intended tetradentate coordination, but instead bidentate N,N'-coordination, placing the phosphonate groups in the secondary coordination sphere to engage in hydrogen bonding interactions with two aquo ligands. The presented complexes have been characterized by NMR spectroscopy, x-ray crystallography, and cyclic voltammetry. Qualitative and quantitative oxygen evolution studies (from cyclic voltammetry and addition of excess CeIV, respectively) have shown a dramatic improvement in catalytic rates compared to those of previously reported Ru diaquo complexes. Our working hypothesis to explain the superior catalytic activity includes involvement of the phosphonates in the secondary coordination sphere potentially as basic proton-relaying functionalities.


The question concerning the material situation of older people and its consequences for their wellbeing seems to be more important than ever. This is especially true given rapid demographic changes in the Western World and economic pressures on governments to reduce public spending. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to examine different aspects of old-age poverty and its possible effects on deterioration in health. The data contains information on representative samples from 12 European countries including the Czech Republic and Poland. We use the longitudinal dimension of the data to go beyond cross sectional associations and analyze transitions in health status controlling for health in the initial period and material conditions. We find that poverty matters for health outcomes in later life. Wealth-defined and subjective poverty correlates much more strongly with health outcomes than income-defined measure. Importantly subjective poverty significantly increases mortality by 58.3% for those aged 50–64 (for details see Adena and Myck, 2013a and 2013b).


In Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the genes pilB, pilC, and pilD encode proteins necessary for posttranslational modification and assembly of pilin monomers into pilus organelles (D. Nunn, S. Bergman, and S. Lory, J. Bacteriol. 172:2911-2919, 1990). We show that PilD, encoding a putative pilin-specific leader peptidase, also controls export of alkaline phosphatase, phospholipase C, elastase, and exotoxin A. pilD mutants accumulate these proteins in the periplasmic space, while secretion of periplasmic and outer membrane proteins appears to be normal. The periplasmic form of exotoxin A was fully mature in size, contained all cysteines in disulfide bonds, and was toxic in a tissue culture cytotoxicity assay, suggesting that in pilD mutants, exotoxin A was folded into its native conformation. The function of the other two accessory proteins, PilB and PilC, appears to be restricted to pilus biogenesis, and strains carrying mutations in their respective genes do not show an export defect. These studies show that in addition to cleaving the leader sequence from prepilin, PilD has an additional role in secretion of proteins that are released from P. aeruginosa into the surrounding media. PilD most likely functions as a protease that is involved in processing and assembly of one or more components of the membrane machinery necessary for the later stages of protein extracellular localization.


Evidence suggests that apples or their bioactive components (polyphenols and/or fiber) may have beneficial effects on lipid metabolism and other markers of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, further adequately powered randomized controlled trials are necessary to confirm this evidence. Moreover, it has been shown that proanthocyanidins, the highest polyphenolic class in apples, reach the colon almost intact where together with fiber they interact with the gut microbiota. Recently, gut microbiota profiles and their metabolic output have also been suggested to influence CVD risk. This thesis investigated the potential interaction between modulation of the gut microbiota and cardiometabolic benefit in response to daily apple consumption. An in vitro batch culture fermentation identified that Renetta Canada variety significantly increased bifidobacteria, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and influenced microbial production of short chain fatty acids and phenolic microbial metabolites. Renetta Canada was therefore chosen for a randomized, controlled, crossover, dietary intervention study to determine the effects of apple intake on circulating lipids, vascular function, other CVD risk indicators and gut microbiota composition and activity in healthy mildly hypercholesterolemic subjects. Volunteers (23 women, 17 men), with a mean BMI 25.2 kg/m2 and age 51 years, consumed 2 apples/day, or a sugar matched control apple beverage for 8 weeks separated by a 4-week washout period in a random order. Blood lipids, bile acids, endothelial and inflammatory biomarkers and microvascular reactivity using laser Doppler imaging with Iontophoresis were measured. Fecal microbial profiles were monitored by 16S rRNA gene ilium ina MiSeq sequencing (V3-V4 region) and targeted groups of important gut bacteria quantified using Fluorescence in Situ Hybridization (FISH). Putative polyphenol metabolites of apple intake were identified in urine using LC-HRMS based metabolomics approach. Apple intake decreased serum total cholesterol (P=O.OOB) and LDL cholesterol (P=O.016) and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (P=O.037) compared with the control beverage. Apples had no effect on vascular function or other markers of CVD. No changes were observed in gut microbiota measured by 16S rRNA sequencing but apple intake significantly decreased Enterobacteriaceae enumerated by FISH compared with the control beverage. Valerolactones, valeric and phenolic acids were identified as microbial polyphenol metabolites among the 33 urine biomarkers related to the apple intake. These data suggest that the daily consumption of 2 Renetta Canada apples may result in beneficial effects on cardiovascular health and modifies both microbiota community structure and metabolic output.


We study the problem of computing an optimal policy of an infinite-horizon discounted constrained Markov decision process (constrained MDP). Despite the popularity of Lagrangian-based policy search methods used in practice, the oscillation of policy iterates in these methods has not been fully understood, bringing out issues such as violation of constraints and sensitivity to hyper-parameters. To fill this gap, we employ the Lagrangian method to cast a constrained MDP into a constrained saddle-point problem in which max/min players correspond to primal/dual variables, respectively, and develop two single-time-scale policy-based primal-dual algorithms with non-asymptotic convergence of their policy iterates to an optimal constrained policy. Specifically, we first propose a regularized policy gradient primal-dual (RPG-PD) method that updates the policy using an entropy-regularized policy gradient, and the dual via a quadratic-regularized gradient ascent, simultaneously. We prove that the policy primal-dual iterates of RPG-PD converge to a regularized saddle point with a sublinear rate, while the policy iterates converge sublinearly to an optimal constrained policy. We further instantiate RPG-PD in large state or action spaces by including function approximation in policy parametrization, and establish similar sublinear last-iterate policy convergence. Second, we propose an optimistic policy gradient primal-dual (OPG-PD) method that employs the optimistic gradient method to update primal/dual variables, simultaneously. We prove that the policy primal-dual iterates of OPG-PD converge to a saddle point that contains an optimal constrained policy, with a linear rate. To the best of our knowledge, this work appears to be the first non-asymptotic policy last-iterate convergence result for single-time-scale algorithms in constrained MDPs.


The Internet of Things introduces a new paradigm where small scale sensor devices can be used to capture data on physical phenomena. The potential scale of data that will be captured by such devices stands to transcend the capabilities of today's client-server architectures. The necessity to reduce the data volume has been reflected in enormous research interests dedicated towards developing new data aggregation techniques for sensor networks. However, the application-specific nature of data aggregation techniques has resulted in the development of a large volume of options, thereby introducing new problems of appropriate selection. This paper introduces a unique method to deal with this problem by proposing a classification approach for data aggregation techniques in wireless sensor networks. It presents the theoretical background for the selection of a set of high-level dimensions that can be used for this purpose, while a use case is presented to support the arguments. It also discusses how the dimensions dictate data collection procedures and presents how this framework can be used to develop an adaptive model for the dynamic selection of data aggregation techniques based on the characteristics of a sensing application use case.


Acute hypoxia produces an increase in ventilation. When the hypoxia is sustained, the initial increase in ventilation is followed a decrease in ventilation. The precise mechanism of this decline in ventilation during sustained hypoxia is unknown. Recent studies hypothesized that the accumulation of dopamine in the central nervous system might have a major role in production of hypoxic respiratory depression. The purpose of this study was to examine whether dopamine has an effect on occurance of central ventilatory depression which is seen in acute hypoxia in peripheral chemoreceptors denervated animals. The experiment were conducted in rabbits anesthetized with Na-pentobarbital (25 mg x kg(-1) i.v.). For intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injections of dopamine (1 microg) in each animal, canula was placed in left lateral cerebral ventricle by stereotaxic method. Respiratory frequency (f x min(-1)), tidal volume (V(T)) ventilation minute volume (V(E)) and systemic arterial blood pressure (BP) were recorded during air and 3 minutes hypoxic gas mixture (8%O2-92%N2) breathing. I.c.v. administration of dopamine during normoxia decreased V(T), f, V(E) and BP, significantly. When rabbits were injected with an i.c.v. dopamine on hypoxic gas mixture breathing in control animals, there was depression of hypoxic ventilatory responses. After i.c.v. administration of dopamine antagonists haloperidol (0.1 mg) and domperidone (0.07 mg) in chemodenervated rabbits, the significant increases in V(T), V(E) and BP were observed. On the breathing of hypoxic gas mixture of chemodenervated and i.c.v. dopamine antagonists administrated rabbits, hypoxic depression was completely abolished. These results of this study show that accumulation of dopamine in the brain seems to reduce the response of the central control mechanisms to chemoreceptor impulses during normoxia and hypoxia. In conclusion present study suggests important role played by central dopaminergic pathways in the occurence of acute hypoxic ventilatory depression.


Background Socially disadvantaged populations carry a disproportionate burden of diabetes-related morbidity and mortality. There is an emerging interest in quality improvement (QI) strategies in the care of patients with diabetes, however, the effect of these interventions on disadvantaged groups remains unclear. Objective This is a secondary analysis of a systematic review that seeks to examine the extent of equity considerations in diabetes QI studies, specifically quantifying the proportion of studies that target interventions toward disadvantaged populations and conduct analyses on the impact of interventions on disadvantaged groups. Research design and methods Studies were identified using Medline, HealthStar and the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care database. Randomised controlled trials assessing 12 QI strategies targeting health systems, healthcare professionals and/or patients for the management of adult outpatients with diabetes were eligible. The place of residence, race/ethnicity/culture/language, occupational status, gender/sexual identity, religious affiliations, education level, socioeconomic status, social capital, plus age, disability, sexual preferences and relationships (PROGRESS-Plus) framework was used to identify trials that focused on disadvantaged patient populations, to examine the types of equity-relevant factors that are being considered and to explore temporal trends in equity-relevant diabetes QI trials. Results Of the 278 trials that met the inclusion criteria, 95 trials had equity-relevant considerations. These include 64 targeted trials that focused on a disadvantaged population with the aim to improve the health status of that population and 31 general trials that undertook subgroup analyses to assess the extent to which their interventions may have had differential impacts on disadvantaged subgroups. Trials predominantly focused on race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and place of residence as potential factors for disadvantage in patients receiving diabetes care. Conclusions Less than one-third of diabetes QI trials included equity-relevant considerations, limiting the relevance and applicability of their data to disadvantaged populations. There is a need for better data collection, reporting, analysis and interventions on the social determinants of health that may influence the health outcomes of patients with diabetes. PROSPERO registration number CRD42013005165.


PT. Pos Indonesia is a State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) which is engaged
in. Recently the performance of manager has decreased as shown by the declining
quality and quantity as well as decreasing the ability of cooperation among
managers. The reduced quantity and quality of the work is demonstrated by the
increasedreprimand from his superior in 2009, namely an increase in rowing than
in the previousyear (PT Pos Indonesia, 2009). In addition, decline in performance
reflected the manager of the company's financial performance. The purpose of
this study is to investigate and test the leadership style, job satisfaction and work
motivation has positive influence on the performance of manager in PT Pos
Indonesia in South Surabaya.
Sampling technique used in this research is census technique in which
each of the element are relatively few have the same opportunity to become
members of the sample. The sample used in this study were all members of the
population of this study were 11 people that includes the manager of PT Pos
Indonesia in South Surabaya. The analysis used in this study is the multiple linier
regression analysis to describe the linear influence between independent variables
and the dependent variable.
Based on the result of research and testing has been done can be concluded
that leadership style variable (X1), job satisfaction (X2) and work motivation (X3)
affect the performance of managers (Y). this can be seen from the result obtained
by testing the value of Fcount was at 35,438 with a significant level of 0,001 where
a smaller significance level of 0,05, and regression models generated in this study
are : Y = -20.690 + 0.538 X1 + 0.297 X2+ 0.263 X3, was suitable for use in
testing the hypothesis proposed.


The study of cognitive processes is built on a close mapping between three components: overt gaze behavior, overt choice, and covert processes. To validate this overt–covert mapping in the domain of decision‐making, we collected eye‐movement data during decisions between risky gamble problems. Applying a forward inference paradigm, participants were instructed to use specific decision strategies to solve those gamble problems (maximizing expected values or applying different choice heuristics) during which gaze behavior was recorded. We revealed differences between overt behavior, as indicated by eye movements, and covert decision processes, instructed by the experimenter. However, our results show that the overt–covert mapping is for some eye‐movement measures not as close as expected by current decision theory, and hence question reverse inference as being prone to fallacies due to a violation of its prerequisite, that is, a close overt–covert mapping. We propose a framework to rehabilitate reverse inference.


In this paper, the ergodic channel capacities are established for the amplify-and-forward (AF) half-duplex cooperative systems, which consist of a source node, a destination, and multiple-relay nodes. The relay nodes assist the transmission from the source node to the destination. Since the channel matrices for the cooperative systems involve product of Gaussian random variables, which are no longer Gaussian, the approach in obtaining the ergodic channel capacity for conventional multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian channels (Telatar, 1999) is not applicable. By using a novel approach, we have arrived at the following conclusions about the ergodic channel capacities for the AF cooperative systems. For the single antenna AF relay systems in which all nodes are equipped with one antenna, the optimal covariance matrix of the input signals to achieve the ergodic channel capacity is diagonal, and the diagonal elements are obtained by solving optimization problems of multidimensional integrals. These diagonal entries are not all equal even if all the channel gains in the cooperative systems are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian with unit variance. Therefore, a white input signal for the AF cooperative system may not achieve the ergodic channel capacity of the system. This is in direct contrast to the case of conventional multiple-input-single-output (MISO) systems having i.i.d. Gaussian channel gains of unit variance, in which case, the ergodic capacity is achieved if the input covariance matrix is a scaled identity matrix. For the MIMO relay system in which the nodes have multiple antennas, the input covariance matrix to achieve the ergodic capacity is block diagonal and each block diagonalizes the autocorrelation of channel matrix from the source to the destination. This is different from the case of conventional MIMO systems, where the input covariance matrix to achieve the ergodic channel capacity diagonalizes the channel autocorrelation matrix of the MIMO system (Tulina, Lozano, and Verdu, 2006). If the channel gains in conventional MIMO systems are correlated Gaussian random variables, the input covariance matrix is a full matrix, not block diagonal; and if the channel gains are i.i.d. Gaussians, the optimal input covariance matrix is a scaled identity. The observations obtained in this paper reveal useful insights of how the AF cooperative systems ldquomimicrdquo the conventional MISO and MIMO systems from the ergodic channel capacity perspective.


Bayesian optimization is an effective method for finding extrema of a black-box function. We propose a new type of Bayesian optimization for learning user preferences in high-dimensional spaces. The central assumption is that the underlying objective function cannot be evaluated directly, but instead a minimizer along a projection can be queried, which we call a projective preferential query. The form of the query allows for feedback that is natural for a human to give, and which enables interaction. This is demonstrated in a user experiment in which the user feedback comes in the form of optimal position and orientation of a molecule adsorbing to a surface. We demonstrate that our framework is able to find a global minimum of a high-dimensional black-box function, which is an infeasible task for existing preferential Bayesian optimization frameworks that are based on pairwise comparisons.


A vital role of static task scheduling is to obtain high performance in distributed computing environment. Several algorithms have been proposed for homogeneous and heterogeneous distributed computing systems. In this paper we propose a static list Path based Heuristic Task Scheduling (PHTS) algorithm to efficiently schedule tasks on the heterogeneous distributed computing systems. The algorithm is mainly focused on reducing the makespan. It consists of three phases: A path prioritizing phase, selecting all possible paths from the given graph and sorting them by descending order. Secondly, a task selection phase, selecting the tasks from the sorted paths and finally, a processor selection phase, assigning the tasks to processors which minimizes the completion time. From the theoretical analysis of the PHTS algorithm with HEFT for a DAG graph, the better schedule length is observed.


1. Wide differences in the intensity of incident ultra violet energy are not accurately compensated by corresponding changes in the exposure time, so that the Bunsen-Roscoe reciprocity law does not hold, strictly, especially for bactericidal action on young, metabolically and genetically active bacteria. In the present series of experiments, however, the energies used at various wave lengths did not differ by so much as to cause a significant error in the reported reactions. 2. The longer wave length limit of a direct bactericidal action on S. aureus was found to be between 302 and 313 mµ. The shorter limit was not determined because the long exposures required vitiate quantitative results. Bactericidal action was observed at λ225 mµ. 3. The temperature coefficient of the bactericidal reaction approaches 1 and thus furnishes empirical evidence that the direct action of ultra violet light on bacteria is essentially physical or photochemical in character. 4. The hydrogen ion concentration of the environment has no appreciable effect upon the bactericidal reaction between the limits of pH 4.5 and 7.5. At pH 9 and 10 evidence of a slight but definite increase in bacterial susceptibility was noted, but this difference may have been due to a less favorable environment for subsequent recovery and multiplication of injured organisms. 5. Plane polarization of incident ultra violet radiation has no demonstrable effect upon its bactericidal action. In a third paper of this group the ratios of incident to absorbed ultra violet energy at various wave lengths and the significance of these relations in an analysis of the bactericidal reaction will be discussed.


Forty-six strains of group B streptococci (GBS), including various serotypes and non-serotypable strains, were tested for their ability to induce platelet aggregation in human platelet-rich plasma; four strains, all belonging to type III, showed a positive reaction. The characteristics of the reaction were investigated in these four positive strains. Aggregation was dependent on the ratio of bacteria to platelets, being maximal at a ratio of 4.3. Platelet aggregation was inhibited by EDTA (100% inhibition at 3.1 mM), indomethacin (100% inhibition at 10 mM), acetylsalicylic acid (93-100% inhibition at 5.0 mM) and quinacrine (100% inhibition at 0.25 mM). Thus the reaction was cation-dependent and required cyclooxygenase activity. Assays for cytosolic lactate dehydrogenase did not indicate platelet lysis. GBS induced the release of [3H]serotonin, which was maximal (68-78%) at 10 min after the reaction was started. Experiments with gel-filtered platelets suggested that GBS-induced platelet aggregation required both fibrinogen and heat-resistant (56 degrees C, 30 min) serum factors. Type-specific antisera prevented the platelet aggregation activity of heat-killed bacteria, but not of live bacteria. Trypsin digestion of the bacterial cells caused an almost complete loss of the platelet aggregation activity.


Summer, 1976. A plane crashes on a farm in the Cambridgeshire fens. Out of the flames walks young Maggie Beck, clutching a baby in her arms. Twenty-seven years later, investigative journalist Philip Dryden - visiting his wife, Laura, in hospital - is witness to Maggie's deathbed confession. But some secrets are best kept secret, and what started out for Dryden as a small and curious story about the only survivor of an almost-forgotten plane crash soon escalates into a full-blown murder investigation. And while Dryden is wondering what other secrets Maggie carried, his semi-conscious wife is trying to tell him something that might just save his life...


The mock theta functions were invented by the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who lived from 1887 until 1920. He discovered them shortly before his death. In this dissertation, I consider several of the examples that Ramanujan gave of mock theta functions, and relate them to real-analytic modular forms of weight 1/2.

In Chapter 1, I consider a sum, which was also studied by Lerch. This Lerch sum transforms almost as a Jacobi form under substitutions in (upsilon, nu, tau ). I show that the transformation behaviour becomes that of a Jacobi form if we add a (relatively simple) correction term. This correction term is real-analytic in (upsilon, nu, tau) but not holomorphic. For special values of (upsilon, nu), we could call the Lerch sum (considered as a function of tau ) a mock theta function, although these examples were not considered by Ramanujan.

In Chapter 2, I consider theta functions for indefinite quadratic forms. These indefinite theta functions are modified versions of theta functions introduced by Gottsche and Zagier. I find elliptic and modular transformation properties of these functions, similar to the properties of theta functions associated to positive definite quadratic forms. In the case of positive definite quadratic forms, the theta functions are holomorphic. The theta functions in the chapter are not holomorphic. By taking special values of certain parameters, we get most of the examples of mock theta functions given by Ramanujan.

Andrews gave most of the fifth order mock theta functions as Fourier coefficients of meromorphic Jacobi forms, namely certain quotients of ordinary Jacobi theta-series. This is the motivation for the study of the modularity of Fourier coefficients of meromorphic Jacobi forms, in Chapter 3. We find that modularity follows on adding a real-analytic correction term to the Fourier coefficients.

In Chapter 4, I use the results from Chapter 2 to get the modular transformation properties of the seventh-order mock v-functions and most of the fifth-order functions. The final result is that we can write each of these mock theta-functions as the sum of two functions ? and G, where:
- ? is a real-analytic modular form of weight 1/2 and is an eigenfunction of the appropriate Casimir operator with eigenvalue 3/16 (this is also the eigenvalue of holomorphic modular forms of this weight); and
- G is a theta series associated to a negative definite unary quadratic form. Moreover G is bounded as ? tends vertically to any rational limit.
Many of the results of Chapter 4 could be deduced using the methods from Chapter 1 or Chapter 3 instead of Chapter 2. This means that I have actually given three approaches to proving modularity properties of the mock theta -functions.


Self-acceleration of a spherically expanding hydrogen-air flame was experimentally investigated in a closed dual-chamber apparatus with the quartz windows enabled to a flame diameter with up to 240 mm. The flame radius and flame speed in lean hydrogen-air mixtures at elevated pressure were evaluated using a high speed Schlieren photography. The experimental results from hydrogen-air explosion at elevated pressure validated the prediction model for self-similar propagation. The flame radius and its speed calculated by the prediction models agree well with the experimental results of hydrogen-air explosions at elevated pressure. Furthermore, the acceleration exponent α is evaluated by plotting the flame radius with time. The results show the α value increase with the dimensionless flame radius, r/rcl. It is indicated that the self-acceleration and the transition regime to self-similar propagation exist in the spherically expanding hydrogenair flame.


Phishing, or stealing of sensitive information on the web, has dealt a major blow to Internet Security in recent times. Most of the existing anti-phishing solutions fail to handle the fuzziness involved in phish detection, thus leading to a large number of false positives. This fuzziness is attributed to the use of highly flexible and at the same time, highly ambiguous HTML language. We introduce a new perspective against phishing, that tries to systematically prove, whether a given page is phished or not, using the corresponding original page as the basis of the comparison. It analyzes the layout of the pages under consideration to determine the percentage distortion between them, indicative of any form of malicious alteration. The system design represents an intelligent system, employing dynamic assessment which accurately identifies brand new phishing attacks and will prove effective in reducing the number of false positives. This framework could potentially be used as a knowledge base, in educating the internet users against phishing. Keywords—World Wide Web, Phishing, Internet security, data mining.


In autografts of thymus enclosed in porous cellulose membranes, the epithelium grows out in the shape of nodules, compact sheets, cords, and scattered isolated islands. During the experimental period, regeneration of the thymocytes did not take place in the grafts, provided that exogenous lymphocytes from other parts of the body were prevented by the cellulose barrier from penetrating the remnants of the thymic epithelium.


Gel-glass dispersed liquid crystal (GDLC) films may be used as electro-optic devices. Films scatter light according to the number of droplets and the relative refractive indices of the LC and the silica matrix. LCs are birefringent; therefore their refractive index depends on the LC orientation and the optical angle of incidence. If the film is coated with transparent electrodes, and an electric field is applied, a reorientation of the LC director in the droplet occurs, producing a variation of the LC refractive index as `seen' by the incoming light. If the refractive index of the sol - gel substrate matches the new LC index, the material changes from an opaque, scattering state to a transparent state. This feature can be used for preparing devices for visual presentation, i.e. displays. Unaltered GDLCs switch from white opaque to colourless transparent states. The contrast ratio, viewing angle and switching time of GDLC displays are presented. If these materials are to be used for displays, colour needs to be incorporated for many applications. The use of GDLCs associated to gel-glasses doped with fluorescent dyes for preparation of emissive `all sol - gel' displays is presented, with the GDLC acting as an optical shutter for the RGB emission of the fluorescent dyes located at the backplane. A number of fluorescent dyes with high quantum yield for the chosen UV excitation, and appropriate colour coordinates, have been investigated.


Motivated by recent experimental progress in the context of ultra-cold multi-colour fermionic atoms in optical lattices, this thesis investigates the properties of the antiferromagnetic SU(N) Heisenberg models with fully antisymmetric irreducible representations labelled by a Young tableau with $m$ boxes on each site of various lattices. Thanks to an intensive use of variational Monte Carlo method based on Gutzwiller projected fermionic wave functions, we aim to determine the ground state and its related properties of systems which are beyond the capabilities of other numerical methods. This typically means that we will study large lattices with many particles per site for $N>2$. The first part of this thesis will introduce the basic theoretical tools connected to the SU(N) Heisenberg model. A very short review of group theory introducing Young tableaux, will clarify the concept of fully antisymmetric irreducible representation of the SU(N) Lie algebra. Some properties of the Heisenberg model will be discussed and a mean-field solution will be given. The numerical methods used during this thesis and their limitations wil also be introduced. We will investigate the properties of 1-dimensional systems in the second part of this work. In particular, the chains have been studied for arbitrary $N$ and $m$ with non-abelian bosonisation leading to predictions about the nature of the ground state (gapped or critical) in most but not all cases. We have been able to verify these predictions for a representative number of cases with $N\leq10$ and $m\leq N/2$, and we have shown that the opening of a gap is associated with a spontaneous dimerisation or trimerisation depending on the value of $m$ and $N$. We have also investigated the marginal cases, where non-abelian bosonisation did not lead to any prediction. In these cases, variational Monte Carlo predicts that the ground state is critical with exponents that are consistent with conformal field theory. The other 1-dimensional system that has been studied is the ladder for which field-theory gives some predictions. For instance, the ground state of the SU(4) case in the fundamental irreducible representation is believed to consist of a 4-site plaquette state for any non-zero inter-leg coupling. We have confirmed the presence of this state, even if in the weak coupling regime, the optimal variational state is gapless. The study has been extended to various $N$ and $m$ values providing interesting results. The last part will present the results for 2-dimensional lattices. The square lattice will first be investigated. A mean-field analysis predicts a plaquette ground state for $3\leq N/m 1$ for SU(3m) and $m>2$ for SU(6m)). Then, for the SU(6m) Heisenberg model with $m$ particles per site on a honeycomb lattice, we make the connection between the $m=1$ case, for which the ground state has recently been shown to be in a plaquette singlet state, and the $m\rightarrow \infty$ limit, where a mean-field approach has established that the ground state has chiral order. We were able to show that this system has a clear tendency toward the chiral order as soon as $m\geq 2$. This demonstrates that the chiral phase can be stabilised for not too large values of $m$, opening the way to its experimental realisations in other lattices. We will finally present results for the SU(3m) on the triangular lattice for which we find a plaquette state, when $m>1$.


An increasing prevalence of calcium and/or vitamin D deficiency in the general population (especially, but not only, in elderly subjects) has been emphasized in recent epidemiologic studies. These deficiencies could be responsible for accelerated bone loss mediated by secondary hyperpara-thyroidism and increased bone turnover and could explain the dramatic increase of the incidence of osteoporotic fractures with age. High calcium intake in prepubertal girls seems to be associated with higher peak bone mass in late adolescence. Calcium supplementation could slow bone turnover and bone loss in particular subsets of patients, including calcium-deficient postmenopausal women and elderly patients. A specific antif-racture effect of calcium supplementation in postmenopausal osteoporotic patients has not been established, but a calcium-plus-low-dose-vitamin D3 supplementation has been suggested to decrease the peripheral fracture incidence (especially hip fracture) in elderly institutionalized women. After a critical review of these data, some practical recommendations are suggested.


Nonhomogeneous substitution models have been introduced for phylogenetic inference when the substitution process is nonstationary, for example, when sequence composition differs between lineages. Existing models can have many parameters, and it is then difficult and computationally expensive to learn the parameters and to select the optimal model complexity. We extend an existing nonhomogeneous substitution model by introducing a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo method for efficient Bayesian inference of the model order along with other phylogenetic parameters of interest. We also introduce a new hierarchical prior which leads to more reasonable results when only a small number of lineages share a particular substitution process. The method is implemented in the PHASE software, which includes specialized substitution models for RNA genes with conserved secondary structure. We apply an RNA-specific nonhomogeneous model to a structure-based alignment of rRNA sequences spanning the entire tree of life. A previous study of the same genes from a similar set of species found robust evidence for a mesophilic last universal common ancestor (LUCA) by inference of the G+C composition at the root of the tree. In the present study, we find that the helical GC composition at the root is strongly dependent on the root position. With a bacterial rooting, we find that there is no longer strong support for either a mesophile or a thermophile LUCA, although a hyperthermophile LUCA remains unlikely. We discuss reasons why results using only RNA helices may differ from results using all aligned sites when applying nonhomogeneous models to RNA genes.


Two-stage complete mixing ferment process was used for developing carbon source with primary sludge. The effects of hydrolysis retention time (HRT) and sludge retention time (SRT) on the ferment system were studied. The results showed that the effective HRT was between 32 h and 36 h, and the effective SRT was between 4 d and 7 d. Under above conditions, the average effluent SCOD was in the range of 980 mg/L and 1180 mg/L, and supernatant MLSS was in the range of 50 mg/L and 80 mg/L. And then, the separation effect of the sludge thickener was clearly. Acidogenic bacteria and methanogenic bacteria could be separated effectively in the conditions.


PURPOSE
The aim of this study was to compare the outcome of consecutive patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) treated concurrently by means of open repair (OR) and endoluminal repair (ER) with second-generation prostheses by the same surgeons during a defined interval.

METHODS
Between May 1995 and December 1998 second-generation (low profile, fully supported, modular) endoprostheses were implanted in 148 patients. These patients, together with 135 patients treated concurrently with OR during the same period, comprised the study group of 283 patients. Patient selection was based on aneurysm morphology. Those patients who were anatomically suitable for ER were treated with this method. The ER and OR groups were similar with regard to age, sex, and size of AAA. The ER group contained high-risk patients considered unfit for OR (n = 46), and the OR group contained high-risk patients who were anatomically unsuitable for ER (n = 19). Outcome criteria in both groups were survival and successful aneurysm repair. Success in the ER group was defined as exclusion of the aneurysm sac and stability or reduction in AAA maximum transverse diameter. Persistent endoleaks were classified as failures, regardless of whether they were subsequently corrected with secondary endovascular intervention. Data were analyzed with the life table method. The minimum period of follow-up for all patients was 18 months.

RESULTS
The perioperative mortality rate was 5.9% in the OR group and 2.7% in the ER group (not significant). There was a statistically significant difference between the survival curves of the two groups in favor of the ER group when analyzed with the log-rank test (P =.004). The Kaplan-Meier curve for graft failure for the ER group revealed a 3-year graft success probability of 82%. Survival probability with successful repair in the OR group at 3 years was 85%.

CONCLUSIONS
A concurrent comparison of ER with second-generation prostheses versus OR demonstrated a significant difference in survival in favor of the ER group. The probability of survival with successful repair at 3 years was similar in both groups.


Background Increasing control and empowerment are considered central to efforts to reduce health inequalities. From our critical review of theory, low control or powerlessness emerged as a potentially fundamental mechanism underlying social inequalities in health. Amartya Sen's theories of "freedom" and "capabilities" to live a long and healthy life have been influential: focusing attention on the health consequences of a lack of freedom for women in contexts where there is pervasive gender discrimination. We conducted a systematic review, which addressed the question: what is the empirical evidence of the extent and nature of the relationship between control in the living environment and health-related outcomes, differentiated by gender, socio-economic status or ethnicity? Findings relating to gender inequalities are presented here. Methods Logic models developed from our critical review of theory were used to guide our search strategy and to locate relevant literature. Studies were identified by searching seven bibliographic databases, screening reference lists, consulting key informants and searching organisational websites. Observational studies of any design were included that addressed our review question. Data extraction and quality appraisal of included studies were carried out by two reviewers, with disagreements brought to the wider team for discussion. This was followed by a narrative synthesis. Results We identified 61 studies, 25 of which reported findings on the health-related outcomes of low control/discrimination against women, all but one set in low and middle-income countries. There is some evidence that women with low control have reduced freedom of movement and control over important determinants of health such as access to food and nutrition, household resources, healthcare, education, employment, land and property ownership and reproductive rights. For women, low control or autonomy was associated with increased anxiety, stress and depression, increased childhood malnutrition and mortality, higher fertility, poorer reproductive health and higher levels of violence against women. Son preference, in societies characterised by low female control and discrimination, is associated with poorer health outcomes that include reduced survival of girls and women; resulting in the phenomenon of "missing women". The effects of gender discrimination on survival begin before birth through selective abortion of female foetuses, leading to distorted population demographics. Conclusion There is empirical evidence of an adverse impact on the health of women and female children living in societies in which they suffer low control and overt gender discrimination. Purposeful measures to improve the economic, social and political position of women in their societies are advocated to improve the situation.


Sol-Gel derived thin films are becoming increasingly important for optical sensor applications. Analyte-sensitive dyes are easily entrapped in the porous film while remaining accessible to the analyte, and the nature of the sol-gel process lends flexibility to film fabrication, in particular enabling tailoring of film properties for specific sensor applications.

Recent work has indicated the ormosil films, fabricated from organically modified precursors, produce better sensor performance for some specific applications, compared to films from conventional sol-gel precursors such as tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) or tetramethoxysilane (TMOS). This project aims to compare film properties and sensor behaviour for films fabricated from different organically modified precursors. Microstructural differences, for example porosity changes due to the different precursor backbone structures, are investigated by monitoring sensor response. Sol-Gel fabrication parameters such as sol pH and R-value are varied. Resulting film properties such as thickness, thickness stabilisation time and sensor response are discussed in terms of relative hydrolysis and condensation behaviour for the different precursors. Issues that have been identified as being of crucial importance for optimum sensor response, such as dye leaching, film surface hydrophobicity and humidity response are discussed for both film types. The motivation for this work is film optimisation for optical sensors in particular gas phase and dissolved oxygen sensors.


Patients who have suffered a spinal cord injury and who demonstrate new or changing clinical features such as increasing myelopathy, ascending neurological level, pain or increasing muscle spasms may have developed a late complication such as post-traumatic syrinx. MRI is the investigation of choice for assessment of chronic spinal cord injury. The aim of this pictorial review is to illustrate the various late appearances of the injured spinal cord.


The 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence caused significant damage to the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) building stock. The extent of damage, post-earthquake changes to the seismic code, new legislation around earthquake-prone buildings, and ongoing changes to clinical service requirements created a challenging decision-making environment for capital works repair and retrofit. In this article, we present a framework designed to assess the seismic resilience of buildings from a holistic perspective and to determine appropriate levels of seismic retrofit. The framework design ensures that decisions are driven by building criticality in the context of a healthcare system. It helps users to balance life safety risk and the demands of delivering critical clinical services day to day: resulting in safe facilities that provide effective health services under a range of future conditions. Pilot application of the framework enabled the reprioritization of significant capital toward buildings that provide the most life safety and health service resilience benefits in the long term. The process and resulting framework from this project is applicable to a wider range of building owners navigating seismic retrofit decision-making and the emerging movement toward functional recovery–based building regulation.


The main goal of this study was to assess the relationship among women and its effects to the successes of their economic projects. The study attempted to answer the following questions: What is the type of relationship among women in economic group projects? What economic group activities do they commonly conduct? Do they experience any conflicts? What are the main causes of the said conflicts, and what are the effects of these conflicts on the success/performance of the involved women's economic projects? The study was conducted among petty business women in Kinondoni municipality. Their selection was done using non-probability sampling procedures, especially through purposive and snowball sampling procedures. The study included both qualitative and quantitative data, which were obtained through face to face interview, focus group discussions, and direct observation methods. In relation to the objectives of this study, the research findings indicate that, women are mostly involved in relationships with one another in their groups; albeit the fact that these relationships are to some significant extent unstable and non-persistent. The study also revealed that, women are involved in different economic group projects which, in principle were expected to be of significant contribution to their economic empowerment. However, members in most of these groups have conversely demonstrated to be involved in conflicts and confrontations which, in turn have weakened their friendship relations and retarded the said women's economic development. Hence, conflict remains one of the major factors contributing to women low economic performance, low income development, the split and collapse of women's business networks as well as women's group business drop out and the stagnation of their economic development in general. Thus, deliberate interventions need to be taken by the government, women institutions or organisations, and women in general to promote the involved women's education, raise their awareness on the importance of working together through trusting and respecting each other as well as managing their conflicts rationally and amicably.


Sydney's pre-industrial culture was comprehensive and public, and most European inhabitants participated as players, performers or spectators. After 1850, however, a series of distinct but overlapping cultures emerged, imported and adapted from Europe and America to meet the needs of a modern, class-based city. In this essay I explore the characteristics of the city's pre-industrial culture, and map its replacement by a set of sometimes conflicting modern, urban cultures. My aim is also to show how new forms of cultural transmission facilitated a process of cultural resolution after World War I even as new forms of culture based on ethnicity, age and gender emerged to produce a different mix of cultural diversity.


: The paper presents results of the examinations and surgical treatment of 28 patients with lesions of the sciatic nerve. Sciatic nerve injuries and functional outcomes are described. Recommendations on medical strategy and treatment are given depending on the injury mechanisms, location, time of surgery, surgical techniques.


Abstract Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the phenotypic features (adherence, biofilm formation, virulence, antibiotic susceptibility) and the genetic background of antibiotic resistance in nosocomial ESCAPE strains consecutively isolated from surgical wound infections in hospitalized patients. Methods: 86 bacterial strains consecutively isolated from various wound infections were analysed by their antibiotic resistance (antibiotic susceptibility testing and PCR for certain antibiotic resistance genes), virulence, biofilm formation and cellular adherence. Results: The bacterial isolates were identified as: Enterobacterales (n = 39) including Escherichia coli (n = 9), Klebsiella pneumoniae (n = 14) Proteus mirabilis (n = 7), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (n = 26) and Enterococcus faecalis (n = 20). Compared to other isolates, S. aureus strains exhibited the highest capacity to produce soluble virulence factors and to develop biofilms in vitro, with significant differences between methicillin resistant and methicillin susceptible isolates. Among enterobacterial isolates, K. pneumoniae strains expressed the highest capacity to develop biofilms. The assessment of bacterial adherence to HeLa cells revealed that all bacterial strains adhered to the cellular substrata, showing various adherence patterns. E. faecalis strains exhibited a low soluble virulence factors profile, a lower capacity to adhere to epithelial cells and to develop biofilms. Conclusions: The present study could contribute to the understanding of the pathology of infected wounds, depending on the etio-logical agents, providing data with positive impact on the therapeutic management of surgical wounds infections.


This article outlines the practices of digital scholarly communication (moving research production and dissemination online), critical making (producing theoretical insights by transforming digitized heritage materials), and social knowledge creation (collaborating in online environments to produce shared knowledge products). In addition to exploring these practices and their principles, this article argues for a combination of these activities in order to engender knowledge production chains that connect multiple institutions and communities. Highlighting the relevance of critical making theory for scholarly communication practice, this article provides examples of theoretical research that offer tangible products for expanding and enriching scholarly production.


: Radiations at cellular level produce different effects, depending on type of radiation and irradiated tissue. The radiation-induced cancers are associated to non-letals genetics mutations, and to classify like radiation induced tumors is necessary that appear in the treatment volume, a long latency period (years), histolo-different to the primary lesion, enough doses quantitatively and that exists a greater incidence in the irradiated populations. The genetics mutations affect at tumoral suppressors gen(Gen RB I, p53, BRCA I, BRCA 2) and repressors gen (hMSH 2, hMLH I,...), they could be longer and multifocals mutations, and produce lack of cellular control and a greater predisposition to develop tumors and a probable risk of increment of radiosensitivity. We present some of the more representatives studies about radiation-induced tumors.


The structure of the cumacean assemblages from the southern margin of the Cap Ferret Canyon was studied at 13 stations ranging from 346 to 1099 m depth with a modified Macer-GIROQ suprabenthic sledge (four superimposed nets; 0.5 mm mesh size). A total of 1885 specimens were collected and classified into 5 families and 42 species. The total abundances fluctuated between 2.8 ind./100 m2 (station TS04; 484-485 m) and 55.8 ind./100 m2 (station TS08; 714-708 m). The highest values of species richness and diversity were recorded at station TS13 (1097-1099 m): S=25 species; H'(log2)=4.05. The near-bottom vertical distribution of the cumacean fauna showed the same pattern at all stations: at least 60% of the individuals were sampled by the lower net of the sledge and a drastic abundance decrease occurred between the two lowermost water layers sampled by the sledge. The multivariate analysis carried out on abundance data discriminated three main groups of stations distributed across depth (TS09 excluded): group Ia (346-485 m) characterized by the dominance of Nannastacidae (57.2%) at family level and Campylaspis sulcata, Leptostylis macrura at species level; group Ib (522-714 m) characterized by the dominance of Nannastacidae (66.1%) at family level and Campylaspis squamifera, C. laevigata and Leptostylis macrura at species level; and group II (790-1099 m) characterized by the dominance of Diastylidae (40.3%) at family level and Makrokylindrus (Adiastylis) josephinae, Leucon (Epileucon) pusillus and Diastyloides serratus at species level. According to this analysis, the main faunal change occurs between group I and II between 714 and 790 m, in relation to changes in the texture of surficial sediments. Although bathyal cumacean assemblages appear to be less abundant than those studied on continental shelves, they are significantly more diverse. However, such results could be in part related to the use of different sampling methods.


Deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown superior performances on various multimodal learning problems. However, it often requires huge efforts to adapt DNNs to individual multimodal tasks by manually engineering unimodal features and designing multimodal feature fusion strategies. This paper proposes Bilevel Multimodal Neural Architecture Search (BM-NAS) framework, which makes the architecture of multimodal fusion models fully searchable via a bilevel searching scheme. At the upper level, BM-NAS selects the inter/intra-modal feature pairs from the pretrained unimodal backbones. At the lower level, BM-NAS learns the fusion strategy for each feature pair, which is a combination of predefined primitive operations. The primitive operations are elaborately designed and they can be flexibly combined to accommodate various effective feature fusion modules such as multi-head attention (Transformer) and Attention on Attention (AoA). Experimental results on three multimodal tasks demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed BM-NAS framework. BM-NAS achieves competitive performances with much less search time and fewer model parameters in comparison with the existing generalized multimodal NAS methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/Somedaywilldo/BM-NAS.


Regulation of nonpoint source pollution often relies in one way or another on policy instruments based on ambient indicators. For well-known reasons, enforcement of ambient-based policies is, at best, limited. If no individual choices or actions are observed, than ambient-based regulation might be the only feasible approach. Often, some relevant individual indicators, such as output or certain inputs, are observable. For such cases, we offer a regulation mechanism that does away with ambient indicators. The mechanism implements the optimal output-abatement-emission allocation and gives rise to the full information outcome when the social cost of transfers is nil. Special attention is given to the regulation of (unobserved) abatement.


Anal malignancies constitute approximately 1 to 3 % of all large-bowel carcinomas 12 and less than 6 % of all anorectal carcinomas 34 . The latter is either squamous or glandular type. The squamous cell carcinoma is much more common than adenocarcinoma. Anal canal adenocarcinoma is subclassified into adenocarcinoma arising in anal mucosa and extamucosal (perianal) adenocarcinoma. The latter includes adenocarcinoma with anorectal fistula, and adenocarcinoma of anal glands 5 . In this article, we present a case of 49-year-old man with anal mass diagnosed as anal gland adenocarcinoma. We also reviewed the literature of this rare entity.


Although failure can be financially, socially, and psychologically costly, it can promote future entrepreneurial success. This study investigated how failure can be utilized as a springboard for new ventures by considering the cost recognition, learning ability, and resources of entrepreneurs within a social environment. Failure costs, learning outcomes, and residual resources following business failure and how they influence the intention to undertake subsequent entrepreneurial endeavors were considered. With the motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework as a theoretical foundation, we quantitatively analyzed the sample, which comprised 216 entrepreneurs who had experienced business failure. Perceived residual resources were a major factor affecting an entrepreneur's decision-making in subsequent ventures, even when the entrepreneur had learned from failure and overcome the associated costs. Additionally, the psychological costs incurred exhibited a nonsignificant effect on learning from failure. Based on the MOA framework, failure costs can be regarded as learning opportunities for an entrepreneur as well as drivers promoting the intention to resume business. Such intentions are mediated by the learning ability of entrepreneurs and moderated by motivation in terms of residual resources. This study provides a holistic view re-examining the mechanisms of frustrated entrepreneurs to identify opportunities and evaluate resources.