Animal experiments using, in addition to asbestos, erionite and manmade mineral fibres, have confirmed that fibre dimension is an important factor in the carcinogenic potency of fibres. However, it seems to be established that it is not the only parameter of importance and that fibre type and physicochemistry play a role. In vitro experiments have provided new information on the relationship between fibre size and effect: long, thin fibres are more effective in inducing the transformation of certain cell types and in producing injury arising from oxygen species. Different in vitro experiments have tested chromosomal and genetic damage induced by fibres, especially asbestos. Depending on the cell type, chromosomal damage and aneuploidy have been observed and interactions with the genomic material have been demonstrated. Some conflicting data in this area might be explained by differences in cell type used or in methods used to prepare the asbestos samples. At present, a working hypothesis for the mechanisms of carcinogenesis induced by fibres can be suggested. Mineral or synthetic fibres deposited in the lung are first processed by macrophages, which eliminate short fibres. The remaining fibres may be ingested by cells that are potentially transformable, the longest fibres possibly being phagocytosed preferentially. Ingested fibres may produce DNA damage in both resting and dividing cells, either by the direct production of oxygen radicals, by the formation of clastogenic factor or by direct chromosome interaction in cells in mitosis. A missegregation of chromosomes can result from interactions between fibres and the mitotic spindle. Even if these processes take place slowly, they can occur over a long period of time due to the persistence of the fibres in the tissue. The carcinogenic potency of a fibre, therefore, will be dependent on its durability, its dimensions and its physicochemical properties. Asbestos fibres appear to be pluripotent in inducing chromosome abnormalities as well as some responses shared with compounds such as promoters. Thus, these fibres can be considered as potent complete carcinogens. The potency of a given fibre in a specific target tissue will be the sum of both its initiating and its promoting effects. It seems that new concepts must be formulated to account for the mechanisms of action of fibres. 'Particulate state' carcinogenesis includes the possibility of multiple hits occurring during the time that the particles remain within the target tissue and will therefore be time-dependent.


Among the stimuli capable of causing nevi and influencing the production of melanin there are, in addition to genetic factors, phototype, immune suppression, sun radiation, even hormonal factors (1). Clinical evidence of this is the exceptional occurrence of melanoma before puberty, the increase in moles and melanic production in conjunction with puberty and pregnancy, and the regression of many moles in the last decades of life (4). However, there are also experimental studies that demonstrate the role of hormones and in particular of estrogens in the appearance of benign and malignant melanocytic lesions. Prior to the discovery of estrogen receptors (ER) beta, studies with ER alpha had not demonstrated a role of estrogen on the pathophysiology of benign and malignant melanocytic lesions (8). After the discovery of ER beta, it was found that these receptors are present in all melanocytic lesions, both benign and malignant (6). As regards benign melanocytic lesions, ER beta are particularly present in congenital (2) and in Spitz-Reed nevi (7).
The vulvar melanocytic nevus of the actual report is probably a poorly pigmented congenital junc-tional nevus, also due to the non-photo-exposed site, which has suddenly become visible due to the effect of peripuberal hormonal stimuli.
There is another very similar example in clinical practice, namely the congenital melanocytic nevus not evident at birth (3). Melanocytic nevi that appear in the first year of life are usually thought to be congenital (5). However, many of these nevi are really present at birth, but not visible because they are junctional and non-pigmented (3). The accuracy of this hypothesis is demonstrated by the fact that at their first appearance these nevi already have many times a diameter greater than one centimeter and that after becoming evident due to the pigmentation generally induced by the first sun exposures they never show autonomous growth.


In this paper, we propose a multiobjective optimization framework for the sensor selection problem in uncertain Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The uncertainties of the WSNs result in a set of sensor observations with insufficient information about the target. We propose a novel mutual information upper bound (MIUB)-based sensor selection scheme, which has a low computational complexity, same as the Fisher information (FI)-based sensor selection scheme, and gives an estimation performance similar to the mutual information-based sensor selection scheme. Without knowing the number of sensors to be selected a priori, the multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) gives a set of sensor selection strategies that reveal different tradeoffs between two conflicting objectives: minimization of the number of selected sensors and minimization of the gap between the performance metric (MIUB and FI) when all the sensors transmit measurements and when only the selected sensors transmit their measurements based on the sensor selection strategy. Illustrative numerical results that provide valuable insights are presented.


In this paper we assess to what extent in the existence of a financial crisis, government spending can contribute to mitigate economic downturns in the short run and whether such impact differs in crisis and non crisis times. We use panel analysis for a set of OECD and non-OECD countries for the period 1981-2007. The fiscal multiplier for the full sample for instrumented regular and crisis spending is about 0.6-0.8 considering the sample average government spending share of GDP of about one third. Altogether, we cannot reject the hypothesis that crisis spending and regular spending have the same impact using a variation of controls, sub-samples and specifications.


There is a crisis in healthcare provision in remote and rural locations, as more and more GPs are leaving the countryside for positions in metropolitan centres. E-commerce may help to overcome the lack of services and remoteness of a country practice. But rural and regional GPs are not adopting E-Commerce at the same rate as other Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This study aims to answer the question: What are the major issues faced by rural and regional General Practice in adopting E-commerce? The study presents the results of a survey of E-commerce adoption by GPs in a rural location (South East NSW) and a regional location (The Illawarra region of NSW). The survey gathers data on the business characteristics of the GPs and their perception of the factors influencing E-commerce adoption and the benefits and disadvantages of E-commerce adoption. Statistical analysis of the results has confirmed some of the trends found in the literature but, more interestingly, our analysis also challenges some of the most widely observed trends. Overall, the results show that rural and regional GPs (SMEs) perceive E-commerce adoption differently to their metropolitan counterparts. In addition, there are differences in the perception of E-commerce adoption by service-oriented SMEs (GPs) compared to other industry sectors, such as manufacturing, retail etc.


This paper studies the properties of joint-venture relationship between a technologically advanced multinational firm and a local firm operating in a developing economy where the ability to enforce contracts is weak. We formulate a dynamic model of principal-agent relationship in which at any point of time the local firm can quit without legal penalties. An early breakup may be prevented if the multinational designs a suitable scheme in which both the pace and aggregate amount of technology transfer deviate from the first-best, and a suitable flow of side payments to encourage the local firm to stay longer.


For a brief period between the end of the Cold War and September 11, 2001, an opportunity arose to consider global concerns beyond East-West politics and nudear threats. The connection between states' failed environmental policies and the devastation wreaked on the health and stability of their people suddenly became a frequently discussed subject in foreign policy, no longer consigned to specialized journals. However, though the foreign policy debate has shifted, the potentially disruptive environmental conditions still persist. One solution to pollution and depleted biodiversity has come in the form of development assistance. International financial institutions' (IFI) environmental advice to the developing world and transitioning counties sounds familiar. Its components--principally market solutions--parallel what the institutions and their advisors (dubbed the Washington Consensus) tell the same counties to do to reform their economies. The environmental policies therefore suffer from the same failings as the economic advice. The IFIs, in a form of Environmental Consensus, preach that counties can only clean up badly polluted environments by adopting management systems based on economic incentives. Elements of the institutions' mantra include tradable emissions permits and effluent charge systems. Advice arrives in a flood of papers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Bank. The difference between the economic and environmental programs is that IFI environmental advice flies under the radar. The Washington Consensus has become a brawl among economists, lawyers, sociologists, and politicians who fight publicly over what went wrong in Russia and how best to manage Argentina's meltdown. In contrast, the Environmental Consensus has received little public attention. As a result, the countries most in trouble are not hearing the whole truth. What the Consensus does not say is that the institutions, infrastructure, and human capital needed to support the sophisticated environmental instruments the West promotes are not present in much of the developing world. Although the advice sounds appealing, it will not lead to clean air or drinkable water where it is badly needed. For the most part, the IFI investments have not improved environmental quality in any significant manner. It is time to end the silence and initiate a public discussion. The stakes are too great to cede the conversation to economists. Western Origins The story starts with the use of market-based instruments in the United States, the model for dissemination elsewhere. Economists were developing incentive-based approaches to environmental control at the same time that many of the basic environmental laws were being written in the United States, but none of those early laws used economic tools. Economists' suggestions began to make inroads when US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulators realized that they could help resolve difficult Clean Air Act implementation problems using incentives. Accordingly, the EPA set up a system that gave industry the opportunity to bank or sell emission reduction credits. This policy worked well enough that credit trading was written into a 1990 law to control acid rain. Firms that can control their pollution more cheaply may accumulate credits and can then sell the credits to others, who must otherwise spend more to reduce pollution. Trading has clearly accelerated the goal of reducing sulfur dioxide discharges in the United States and has saved money. Business, not government, decides the most cost-effective way to comply. The entire system, however, rests on the rule of law. The government firmly manages system integrity, expensive monitoring equipment assures that genuine reductions are being sold, and every credit (called an "allowance") is assigned a serial number, which allows the EPA to record transfers and ensure that a units emissions do not exceed the number of allowances it holds. …


ABSTRACT Real-time information about the spatial extents of wildfires can assist both emergency responders and the general public to mitigate the impact of the wildfires. However, in a large spatial and temporal scale, timely and accurate information about the areas affected by ongoing wildfires is often in scarce supply. This paper investigates the feasibility of generating such real-time information in Australia using the recently launched geostationary Himawari-8 satellite. The Himawari-8 satellite offers extremely high-temporal-resolution (10 minutes) multispectral imagery, which is suitable for real-time wildfire monitoring in a large spatial and temporal scale. The potential of real-time wildfire monitoring using Himawari-8 is evaluated by a case-study of the recent 2015 Esperance, Western Australia wildfire. The results demonstrate that the detection is robust to smoke and moderate cloud obscuration and sensitive enough for early detection of wildfires. Further, fine-grained temporal changes in the rate and direction of fire spread can be monitored in real-time, which enables the potential for automated detection of abnormal fire behaviour.


We present an analysis of the detectability of faint tidal features in galaxies from the wide-field component of the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. Our sample consists of 1781 luminous ( mag) galaxies in the magnitude range 15.5 mag < r′ < 17 mag and in the redshift range 0.04 < z < 0.2. Although we have classified tidal features according to their morphology (e.g., streams, shells, and tails), we do not attempt to interpret them in terms of their physical origin (e.g., major versus minor merger debris). Instead, we provide a catalog that is intended to provide raw material for future investigations which will probe the nature of low surface brightness substructure around galaxies. We find that around 12% of the galaxies in our sample show clear tidal features at the highest confidence level. This fraction rises to about 18% if we include systems with convincing, albeit weaker tidal features, and to 26% if we include systems with more marginal features that may or may not be tidal in origin. These proportions are a strong function of rest-frame color and of stellar mass. Linear features, shells, and fans are much more likely to occur in massive galaxies with stellar masses >1010.5 M☉, and red galaxies are twice as likely to show tidal features than are blue galaxies.


ABSTRACT Research on culinary tourism lacks an empirical examination of the relationship between motivation, experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. Drawing on the extant literature, this paper examines the relationships between antecedents and outcomes of culinary tourist participation in cooking classes using a structural equation modelling approach. Based on a convenience sample of 300 international tourists at cooking schools in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the structural model confirmed direct and indirect interrelationships among four main constructs of the study. It was found that culinary tourists' motivation positively influences both the culinary experience and satisfaction; and that the culinary tourist experience is positively associated with both culinary tourist satisfaction and loyalty, suggesting that the more tourists are motivated to participate in cooking classes, the more experiential value and satisfaction are perceived. Moreover, the more experiences encountered at the cooking class, the more satisfied and loyal the tourists become. Understanding the key motivators and elements of satisfaction in cooking classes can contribute to the achieving of sustainable destination loyalty. The findings are relevant to Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) as part of developing sustainable strategies that are in line with specific culinary needs and experiences of cooking class participants.


Reduced strength of attachment of the encapsulant resulting from the outdoor environment, including ultraviolet (UV) radiation, may decrease photovoltaic (PV) module lifetime by enabling widespread corrosion of internal components. To date, few studies exist showing how the adhesion of PV components varies with environmental stress. We have conducted an interlaboratory experiment to provide an understanding that will be used to develop climatic specific module tests. Factors examined in the study included the UV light source (lamp type), temperature, and humidity to be proposed for use in accelerated aging tests. A poly (ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) (EVA) formulation often used in veteran PV installations was studied using a compressive shear test — to quantify the strength of attachment at the EVA/glass interface. Replicate laminated glass/polymer/glass coupon specimens were weathered at 12 institutions using a variety of indoor chambers or field aging. Shear strength, shear strain, and toughness were measured using a mechanical load-frame for the compressive shear test, with subsequent optical imaging and electron microscopy of the separated surfaces.


cally proven breast cancer who were attending the Al-Thawra University Hospital, Sanaa, Yemen. Another 55 fasting blood samples were also collected from age-sex matched control. All samples were analysed for triacylglycerol, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDLcholesterol, glucose, insulin, CA 15.3 and TNF alpha. Patients with known diabetes, styroid disease, hyperlipidaemia or evidence of infected nerve were excluded as patients with weight loss The results showed that serum triacylglycerol levels increased significantly with increasing stage of the disease, but total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol were found to decrease significantly with increasing stage of the disease. Glucose and insulin levels showed a significantly low levels in late stages of the disease (111 and IV) than those of the early stages (I and 11). TNF alpha levels tended to increase significantly with increasing stage of the disease. It appeared to be a more sensitive indicator than CA 15.3 for disease progression in breast cancer.


Abstract : This report describes the research and development activities conducted under the Early Training Estimation System (ETES) development project. The Early Training Estimation System (ETES) is an integrated set of procedures and automated tools for estimating training requirements during the earliest phases of the weapon system acquisition process. The ETES has three major components; a System Description Technology (SDT), Early Training Estimation Aids and Procedures (TEAP), and Evaluative Technology. The SDT is a data base management system for storing and tracking task and training-related data. The data in the SDT is used in the TEAP to estimate training requirements for a new system. These training requirements include estimates of task requirements, course requirements, and resource requirements as well as estimates of training costs, training efficiency, and training effectiveness. In the Evaluative Technology, the integrated impacts of training requirements are assessed, training alternatives are evaluated, tradeoff and sensitivity analyses of key parameters are conducted, and the relationships between ETES outputs and key Army acquisition documents and processes are specified. This report provides an overview of the components of ETES, describes the research conducted under each of the five ETES study tasks; and outlines future directions for improving ETES. This report contains Appendix H, User's Gude, Media Selection Program: ARI research Note 84-81.


This study investigates how to use regression adjustment to reduce variance in experimental data. We show that the estimators recommended in the literature satisfy an orthogonality property with respect to the parameters of the adjustment. This observation greatly simplifies the derivation of the asymptotic variance of these estimators and allows us to solve for the efficient regression adjustment in a large class of adjustments. Our efficiency results generalize a number of previous results known in the literature. We then discuss how this efficient regression adjustment can be feasibly implemented. We show the practical relevance of our theory in two ways. First, we use our efficiency results to improve common practices currently employed in field experiments. Second, we show how our theory allows researchers to robustly incorporate machine learning techniques into their experimental estimators to minimize variance.


In this paper, we present an N-ocular imaging system with tilted image sensors to improve the depth resolution for objects under fixed system resource constraints. A nonplanar arrangement of image sensors enables one to improve the system performance due to the increase in the common field of view (FOV). We analyze the depth resolution based on the two point sources resolution criterion as a function of sensing parameters such as the number of cameras, the number of pixels, parallax, pixel size, and focal length. We carry out Monte Carlo simulations in the analysis. The results indicate that the proposed method may improve the common FOV zone and thus provide improved depth resolution for N -ocular imaging system when the objects are not very far from the sensors.


This report evaluates the 2002 farm bill and the effects of the individual programs within the bill on North Dakota net farm income. A stochastic simulation model was developed, using @Risk by Palisade. @Risk replaces the mean values for price and yield with a distribution of values for the eight major commodities grown in North Dakota. The counter-cyclical (target price) program, marketing loan program, and federal crop insurance benefits were separated and analyzed to determine which components were the most important to North Dakota producers. The U.S. Trade Representative offered to decrease the country's trade distorting subsidies by 60% if the European Union would lower its export subsidies 75%. The study estimates the impact of that plan. Two additional scenarios, a revenue insurance plan and an income insurance plan, were evaluated. Both plans were compared to the scenarios of no government support and the current legislation. The insurance plans support either revenue or income at the 70% level, as suggested by the World Trade Organization.


Due to the interconnectedness of financial entities, estimating certain key properties of a complex financial system, including the implied level of systemic risk, requires detailed information about the structure of the underlying network of dependencies. However, since data about financial linkages are typically subject to confidentiality, network reconstruction techniques become necessary to infer both the presence of connections and their intensity. Recently, several 'horse races' have been conducted to compare the performance of the available financial network reconstruction methods. These comparisons were based on arbitrarily chosen metrics of similarity between the real network and its reconstructed versions. Here we establish a generalized maximum-likelihood approach to rigorously define and compare weighted reconstruction methods. Our generalization uses the maximization of a certain conditional entropy to solve the problem represented by the fact that the density-dependent constraints required to reliably reconstruct the network are typically unobserved and, therefore, cannot enter directly, as sufficient statistics, in the likelihood function. The resulting approach admits as input any reconstruction method for the purely binary topology and, conditionally on the latter, exploits the available partial information to infer link weights. We find that the most reliable method is obtained by 'dressing' the best-performing binary method with an exponential distribution of link weights having a properly density-corrected and link-specific mean value and propose two safe (i.e. unbiased in the sense of maximum conditional entropy) variants of it. While the one named CReMA is perfectly general (as a particular case, it can place optimal weights on a network if the bare topology is known), the one named CReMB is recommended both in case of full uncertainty about the network topology and if the existence of some links is certain. In these cases, the CReMB is faster and reproduces empirical networks with highest generalized likelihood among the considered competing models.


an important problem in colour content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is the lack of an effective way to represent both the colour and spatial information of an image. In order to solve this problem, a new dominant colour descriptor that employs spatial information of image is proposed. A maximum of three dominant colour regions in an image together with their respective coordinates of the minimum-bounding rectangle (mbr) are first extracted using the colour-based dominant region segmentation. The Improved sub-block technique is then used to determine the location of the dominant colour regions by taking into consideration the total horizontal and vertical distances of a region at each location where it overlaps. A query-by-example CBIR system implementing the colour-spatial technique is developed. Experimental studies on an image database consisting of 900 images are conducted. From the experiments, it is evident that retrieval effectiveness has significantly improved by 85.86%.


Subduroperitoneal shunting is a commonly used treatment option for subdural fluid collections. Cranial migration of subduroperitoneal shunt is a rare complication. We report two cases with cranial migration of subduroperitoneal shunts. Both of them had a previous cranial surgery and they secondarily developed subdural fluid collections. These collections were treated with subduroperitoneal shunting using a single peritoneal catheter. Inadequate fixing can result in migration of these single catheters. Elevated intra-abdominal pressure, due to any occasion may also help this migration. We recommend using silk or other braided nonabsorbable sutures and anchoring wings for fixing single catheters when used in treatment of subdural fluid collections.


In wired or wireless distribution systems, as well as wireless mesh networks, multiple senders often need to deliver data to multiple receivers in the same interference domain. OFDMA enables interference avoidance by assigning disjoint sets of subcarriers to each sender. However, optimal subcarrier allocation requires CSI feedback to the transmitters, thus incurring overhead. We evaluate an allocation mechanism inspired in subcarrier switching techniques, which allows nodes to locally decide which subcarriers they prefer. Hence, feedback is minimal, as only preference values need to be shared. We implement this approach on software defined radios and compare it to standard CSI feedback mechanisms. Despite our approach only requires local information, the results show that it performs close to an ideal solution based on full CSI knowledge.


Neutrophils and monocytes are the prime defenders of the body against suppurative bacterial and fungal infections. To accomplish their role in inflammation, they must respond appropriately to chemotactic signals elaborated from complement and bacteria. This response predictably results in the adherence and subsequent directed movement of the phagocytes toward the infected area where they recognize opsonized microbes. Attachment of the microbes to the membrane of the cell leads to their ingestion and subsequent demise, principally by the reduced oxygen by-product H2O2, which is generated by the neutrophils and monocytes during phagocytosis. Optimal killing requires the translocation of granule myeloperoxidase into the phagocytic vacuole containing the bacteria and a suitable halide ion. Degranulation is controlled, in part, by assembled microtubules whereas ingestion requires assembly of submembrane microfilaments. Deficiency states resulting from vitamin E results in diminished membrane-related chemotaxis and ingestion, whereas depletion of cellular GSH results in defective microtubule assembly preventing the normal increase in adherence, chemotaxis, degranulation, and microbicidal activity of the phagocytic cells. Deficiency states resulting in dysfunction of the microtubule system include neutrophil glutathione synthetase deficiency, rodent glutathione peroxidase deficiency, and the Chediak-Higashi syndrome.


The currently growing importance of prostate cancer (PC) is given by the large increase in the number of cases diagnosed with this condition, to a great extent due to the diffusion of the most recent diagnostic techniques. Together with the traditional rectal examination, we have available today the PSA (prostate specific antigen) and the transrectal ultrasound, which allow to diagnose tumours undetectable with palpation. This paper presents the case of a male patient with high levels of PSA (in metastatic values), normal rectal examination and three series of negative prostate biopsies in spite of a high suspicion of PC, the diagnosis being confirmed after adenomectomy, with a subsequent PSA levels normalization, these levels remaining below 3 ng/ml after 22 months follow-up, which allows to think of a "recovery" (?) with just the removal of the prostate adenoma.


Abstract With the rapid advancement of innovative technology, coupled with IT being a core function in contemporary business, there has been an upward trend of multi-national companies (MNCs) reporting a skill deficit in areas such as data analytics and cybersecurity (Columbus, 2017. IBM predicts demand for data scientists will soar 28% By 2020. Forbes; NeSmith, 2018. The cybersecurity gap is an industry crisis. Forbes). In a recent survey with over 3,000 CIOs, 65% indicated their organizations were unable to maintain par with the progression of technology in areas such as data analytics and security due to a lack of adequate talent (Harvey Nash & KPMG, 2018. CIO survey 2018). Although, organizations have recently started to expand their talent pipeline following a neurological breakthrough: research as well as anecdotal evidence suggests adults with mild forms of autism display above-average intelligence, increased attention focus, and high visual–spatial abilities; a combination in high market demand for roles such as software testing, data analysis, cybersecurity, and engineering due to their uncanny ability with pattern recognition, information processing, analytics, and attention to detail. These auspicious developments come at the helm of an increasing rate of governments around the world implementing provisions to their labour regulations towards equitable hiring of people with disabilities (Myors et al., 2017. Perspectives from 22 countries on the legal environment for selection. Handbook of Employee Selection. 659–677. Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business.). Some, such as France, Japan, Kenya, Korea, and Taiwan, have gone so far as to set quota targets (Myors et al., 2017. Perspectives from 22 countries on the legal environment for selection. Handbook of Employee Selection. 659–677. Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business.). The implication for organizations is that they need to develop disability-inclusive recruitment and selection systems along with work designs and environments that are disability friendly. But what does this mean in practice? What does a disability-inclusive recruitment and selection system look like? Enter DXC Technology (DXC): born out of a merger between global conglomerate Computer Science Corporation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, generating close to $25 billion annually in revenue, with clients across more than 70 countries, they strategically became a pioneer in the digital transformation that was taking place globally. In the wake of the breakthrough in employment diversity, DXC recognized this as an opportunity to gain a critical edge within the increasingly competitive talent pool market. First, design a program of their own for recruiting and selecting adults with high functioning autism. Next, through a collaboration with various universities including the University of Queensland and Macquarie University, Neurodiversity Hubs were established; an initiative designed to assist neurodivergent students with obtaining work experience and internships. In doing so, they faced the following key challenges: How could they design a recruitment and selection strategy for neurodivergent individuals that was equitable, ethical, and efficient? In particular, where could they find suitable neurodivergent candidates, what criteria should they use to select them, and how should they handle unsuccessful candidates to ensure beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders?


Social recommendation task aims to predict users' preferences over items with the incorporation of social connections among users, so as to alleviate the sparse issue of collaborative filtering. While many recent efforts show the effectiveness of neural network-based social recommender systems, several important challenges have not been well addressed yet: (i) The majority of models only consider users' social connections, while ignoring the inter-dependent knowledge across items; (ii) Most of existing solutions are designed for singular type of user-item interactions, making them infeasible to capture the interaction heterogeneity; (iii) The dynamic nature of user-item interactions has been less explored in many social-aware recommendation techniques. To tackle the above challenges, this work proposes a Knowledge-aware Coupled Graph Neural Network (KCGN) that jointly injects the inter-dependent knowledge across items and users into the recommendation framework. KCGN enables the high-order user- and item-wise relation encoding by exploiting the mutual information for global graph structure awareness. Additionally, we further augment KCGN with the capability of capturing dynamic multi-typed user-item interactive patterns. Experimental studies on real-world datasets show the effectiveness of our method against many strong baselines in a variety of settings. Source codes are available at: https://github.com/xhcdream/KCGN.


Adolescents Living in Rural Poverty: Success, Resilience, and Barriers to Social Mobility by Elyse Pratt-Ronco Dissertation Chair Rebekah Levine Coley This study asked low-income adolescents from rural communities directly how they define success, resilience, and progress. More specifically, it assessed the ways in which rural youth and their families are resilient and identifies the main obstacles they face. This study used the participatory method of Interpretive Focus Groups (IFGs). Together with the researcher, participants examined photographs taken in a previous study (Pratt-Ronco & Coley, 2006), along with transcripts of previous interviews. The data analysis was directed at gaining a better understanding of what resilience and social mobility mean to the adolescents in the sample and identifying the barriers that beset adolescents living in rural poverty. This methodology is a good fit for these questions because the answers lie in the adolescents' perspectives of their worlds. All too often, adults (academics, teachers, families, and the government) decide what it means to be successful, socially mobile, or resilient. This study asked adolescents to define these terms and thereby gives insight to the complexity of working with these youth. In addition to the Interpretive Focus Groups, thirteen educators were interviewed. The purpose of the educator interviews was to gain a better understanding of how school personnel perceived the problem of rural poverty. This information allowed for triangulation of the data, as well as a way to look for disconnects between teachers and students. The findings of this study shed light on an understudied population. There are two overarching themes which categorize the data collected: pervasive poverty and hope and resilience. The adolescents at the center of this research were surrounded by want and deprivation. They were isolated from resources, opportunities, and wealth. The reality of just how much adversity rural poor youth face on a daily basis is disconcerting. However, they showed great resilience, hope, and a "grittiness" that came from their rural poor existence.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
Albuterol, a beta(2)-adrenergic agonist that is commonly used to treat asthma, reduces bronchial smooth muscle tone. The pharmacodynamics of inhaled albuterol on esophageal function were studied in healthy volunteers.

DESIGN
A prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover design.

SETTING
An academic medical center.

PATIENTS
Nine healthy volunteers (five men, four women; age, 22 to 30 years).

INTERVENTIONS
Albuterol (2.5 to 10 mg) or placebo was given via nebulizer. Volunteers were studied at two sessions, 1 week apart, using a 6-cm manometry assembly and a low-compliance pneumohydraulic pump. The percentage of lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxation, the frequency of transient LES relaxations (TLESRs), and the amplitude, duration, and propagation velocity of esophageal contractions were measured at 5 and 10 cm above the LES. Dependent measures were evaluated using two-way, repeated-measures analysis of variance.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
Albuterol therapy reduced LES basal tone in a dose-dependent manner (baseline, 17.0 +/- 2.6 mm Hg; at 10 mg, 8.9 +/- 2.1 mm Hg; p = 0.01). The frequency of TLESRs was not different from placebo (not significant). Albuterol reduced the amplitude of esophageal contractions at 5 cm above the LES (baseline, 72.5 +/- 18.6 mm Hg; at 10 mg, 48.8 +/- 10.0 mm Hg; p<0.05). A significant reduction in esophageal body contractile amplitudes was noted at 10 cm (F[1,6] = 7.05; p<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
Inhaled albuterol reduced LES basal tone and contractile amplitudes in the smooth muscle esophageal body in a dose-dependent manner. Inhaled beta(2)-agonists may increase the likelihood of acid reflux in a subset of patients who receive cumulative dosing.


3G networks are currently facing severe traffic overload problems caused by excessive demands of mobile users. Offloading part of the 3G traffic through other forms of networks, such as Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), WiFi hotspots, and Femtocells, is a promising solution. However, since these networks can only provide intermittent and opportunistic connectivity to mobile users, utilizing them for 3G traffic offloading may result in a non-negligible delay. As the delay increases, the users' satisfaction decreases. In this paper, we investigate the tradeoff between the amount of traffic being offloaded and the users' satisfaction. We provide a novel incentive framework to motivate users to leverage their delay tolerance for 3G traffic offloading. To minimize the incentive cost given an offloading target, users with high delay tolerance and large offloading potential should be prioritized for traffic offloading. To effectively capture the dynamic characteristics of users' delay tolerance, our incentive framework is based on reverse auction to let users proactively express their delay tolerance by submitting bids. We further take DTN as a case study to illustrate how to predict the offloading potential of the users by using stochastic analysis. Extensive trace-driven simulations verify the efficiency of our incentive framework for 3G traffic offloading.


The BMJ might be on a long march from being like Brain , a forbidding, research based journal, to Cosmopolitan , a magazine full of froth and colour. The trick is deciding how fast to go. Most current BMJ readers would be appalled by a BMJ that was like either Brain or Cosmopolitan , but some—those who regret what they see as a constant "dumbing down" in our culture—would like a journal more like Brain , while others—longing for more accessibility and readability—want something closer to Cosmopolitan . Today the BMJ introduces a few changes that take us closer to Cosmopolitan . The most dramatic change is the introduction of a picture on the cover every week, but there are other changes as well.

The most profound but least visible change is that we have extended our mission. It now reads: "To publish rigorous, accessible, and entertaining material that will help doctors and medical students in their daily practice, lifelong learning, and career development. In addition, to be at the forefront of the international debate on health." Like most mission statements, this is somewhat stiff, dull, and pretentious, but it contains a lot …


Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) is the most common heart disease in dogs and has many similarities to human mitral valve prolapse (MVP). Transthoracic echocardiography is a non-invasive method for making a diagnosis and predicting the progression of heart failure (HF) in dogs and humans with mitral regurgitation (MR). It enables clinicians to detect the mitral valve (MV) lesions, to evaluate MR severity, and to assess its impact on cardiac remodeling, myocardial function, left ventricular (LV) filling pressures, as well as pulmonary arterial pressure. Furthermore, advanced ultrasound technologies such as tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), strain and strain rate imaging, and two-dimensional (2D) speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) provide a better assessment of global and regional myocardial function. Although the severity of MR and HF in dogs with MMVD is being evaluated as similar to human cardiology, the veterinary cardiologists are more focused on the severity of cardiac remodeling and cardiac dysfunction caused by MR, because surgical restoration of defected mitral apparatus is rarely done in dogs. The chapter will review conventional echocardiographic features of MMVD in dogs to provide a better understanding of the similarities and discrepancies between canine MMVD and human MVP to veterinary and human cardiologists and researchers.


The identification of people by measuring some traits of individual anatomy or physiology has led to a specific research area called biometric recognition. This thesis is focused on improving fingerprint recognition systems considering three important problems: fingerprint enhancement, fingerprint orientation extraction and automatic evaluation of fingerprint algorithms.
An effective extraction of salient fingerprint features depends on the quality of the input fingerprint. If the fingerprint is very noisy, we are not able to detect a reliable set of features. A new fingerprint enhancement method, which is both iterative and contextual, is proposed. This approach detects high-quality regions in fingerprints, selectively applies contextual filtering and iteratively expands like wildfire toward low-quality ones.
A precise estimation of the orientation field would greatly simplify the estimation of other fingerprint features (singular points, minutiae) and improve the performance of a fingerprint recognition system. The fingerprint orientation extraction is improved following two directions. First, after the introduction of a new taxonomy of fingerprint orientation extraction methods, several variants of baseline methods are implemented and, pointing out the role of pre- and post- processing, we show how to improve the extraction. Second, the introduction of a new hybrid orientation extraction method, which follows an adaptive scheme, allows to improve significantly the orientation extraction in noisy fingerprints.
Scientific papers typically propose recognition systems that integrate many modules and therefore an automatic evaluation of fingerprint algorithms is needed to isolate the contributions that determine an actual progress in the state-of-the-art. The lack of a publicly available framework to compare fingerprint orientation extraction algorithms, motivates the introduction of a new benchmark area called FOE (including fingerprints and manually-marked orientation ground-truth) along with fingerprint matching benchmarks in the FVC-onGoing framework. The success of such framework is discussed by providing relevant statistics: more than 1450 algorithms submitted and two international competitions.


The traditional reliability analysis method cannot handle discrete variables and cannot give response timely when there are a new information (usually measurements) about the structure. In this paper, a computational framework for structural reliability updating and damage assessment is proposed. System modeling of traditional Bayesian network is developed with continuous variables discretization and elimination. Firstly the reliability Bayesian network (RBN) is established according to the structure type, and to discretize the key component information variables. Then the redundant continuous nodes are eliminated according to Shachter's node elimination rule. Final the variable elimination method is used to carry out the exact inference and calculate the posterior probability distribution. When evidence (measurement) is available, at forward inference, the proposed method can facilitates structural reliability updating, and at backward inference, the proposed method can carry out damage assessment for the selected key component. Taking a rigid frame as the research object. By comparison with Monte Carlo method, the reliability deviation is less than 5%, it shows validity and accuracy of the proposed method.


Purpose – Red flags are mechanisms that can be used by internal auditors for early detection of possible fraud. In this context, the aim of this study was to identify the relevance credit unions' internal auditors attribute to red flags in assessing fraud risk. Design/methodology/approach – This article is characterized as descriptive concerning its goals, as a survey as to is procedures, and as quantitative in reference to its approach to the problem. The sample consists of 51 internal auditors working in Credit Union Centers in southern Brazil. Findings – Results indicate that, in the assessment of fraud risk, internal auditors attribute greater importance to red flags referring to operational activities and internal control procedures. In addition, it is suggested that internal auditors are not impartial concerning their perception of relevance of most of the warning signs of the possibility of fraud. Originality/value – The findings contribute by demonstrating to internal auditors the need for greater attention to the use of red flags as auditing tools.


A novel,safe and sensitive method of spectrophotometric estimation in UV-region has been developed for the assay of Paracetamol in its tablet formulation. The method have been developed and validated for the assay of Paracetamol using Methanol and water as diluents. Which does not shows any interference in spectrophotometric estimations. All the parameters of the analysis were chosen according to ICH [Q2(R1)] guideline and validated statistically using RSD and %RSD along with neat chromate grams.


We are in the midst of a privacy panic. We have been panicking about privacy for over a hundred years now, since at least 1890, when Warren and Brandeis wrote their famous article, "The Right to Privacy," the foundational text of the tort law of privacy. Warren and Brandeis envisioned the "right to privacy" as a means to combat what were perceived as the serious threats to privacy and identity posed by the new media of the time – yellow journalism, gossip columns, Kodak photography. Our privacy concerns are more intense now, with good reason – new technologies can track our thoughts, our movements, and the intimacies of our lives, and expose them to a global audience in an instant. The Warren and Brandeis tort has proven inadequate to address the harms caused by the exposure of private life in the mass media. It is especially ill-suited to address the needs of the twenty first century, when new technologies magnify privacy injuries. There have been numerous suggestions for legal reform, yet these proposals have ignored the lessons of history. This article argues that one important key to the reform of the tort law of privacy lies in understanding its historical evolution. This work offers a sociolegal history of the privacy tort from the late nineteenth century to the present. It suggests that privacy law, as it currently exists, rests on conceptual foundations that were created several decades ago, between roughly 1930 and 1960. It was built on assumptions about the social value of privacy and publicity, the public functions of the mass media, the capabilities and limitations of existing technologies, and the human costs of mass exposure that were specific to that historical era. Society, media, and technology have transformed, yet the law is still moored to its mid-twentieth century foundations. In particular, extra-legal forces that once restrained potentially egregious invasions of privacy by the media – social norms of privacy and journalistic ethics – have weakened, yet the law's protection against unwanted mass exposure of private life remains minimal. Privacy law should be saved from its past.


The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage between economic fundamentals and currency crises for four different group of countries that experience very different growth path or crises from 1991 to 2006. For this purpose, logit model was used in identifying the determinants of the currency crises' likelihood and the market pressure index (MPI) were used in determining the currency crises of the four different groups of countries. The study selects Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from America; Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Thailand from East and Southeast Asia; Russia and Turkey. The empirical findings stated that: (1) real interest rate, rate of inflation, growth rate of GDP, budget balance, real exchange rate and the ratio of M2 to foreign exchange reserves were statistically significant explanatory variables; (2) however, domestic credit to GDP and various types of trade variables were not statistically significant. Key words:


OF THE DISSERTATION Microstructure of Systems with Competition by Saurish Chakrabarty Doctor of Philosophy in Physics Washington University in St. Louis, 2012 Professor Zohar Nussinov, Chairperson The micro-structure of systems with competition often exhibits many universal features. In this thesis, we study certain aspects of these structural features as well as the microscopic interactions using disparate exact and approximate techniques. This thesis can be broadly divided into two parts. In the first part, we use statistical mechanics arguments to make general statements about length and timescales in systems with two-point interactions. We demonstrate that at high temperatures, the correlation function of general O(n) systems exhibits a universal form. This form enables the extraction of microscopic interaction potentials from the high temperature correlation functions. In systems with long range interactions, we find that the largest correlation length diverges in the limit of high temperatures. We derive an exact form for the correlation function in large-n systems with general two-point interactions at finite temperatures. From this, we obtain some features of the correlation and modulation lengths in general systems in the large-n limit. We derive a new exponent characterizing modulation lengths (or times) in systems in which the modulation length (or time) either diverges or becomes ii constant as a parameter, such as temperature exceeds a threshold value. In the second part of this thesis, we study the micro-structure of a metallic glass system using molecular dynamics simulations. We use both classical and first principles simulation to obtain atomic configurations in the liquid as well as the glassy phase. We analyze these using standard methods of local structure analysis – calculation of pair correlation function and structure factor, Voronoi construction, calculation of bond orientational order parameters and calculation of Honeycutt indices. We show the enhancement of icosahedral order in the glassy phase. Apart from this, we also use the techniques of community detection to obtain the inherent structures in the system using an algorithm which allows us to look at arbitrary length-scales.


Age changes in the aortic tunica intima may explain the higher prevalence of atherosclerosis among the elderly. Goat is a suitable model for the study of cardiovascular disease but the age changes in its aortic tunica intima are unreported. This study therefore examined structural changes that occur in the tunica intima of its aorta. Six healthy goats three aged over 60 months, and three aged less than 12 months, were used in this study. The animals were euthanized with sodium pentabarbitone and specimens taken from the various segment of the aorta studied by light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Materials for light microscopy were fixed 10% formaldehyde solution, processed for paraffin embedding and 7 micron sections stained with Mason's Trichrome and Weigert's Resorcin Fuchsin/Van Gieson stains. Those for transmission electron microscopy were fixed in 3% phosphate buffered glutaraldehyde solution, post fixed in osmium tetroxide and prepared for durcupan embedding. Ultrathin sections were stained with uranyl acetate, counterstained with lead citrate and examined by EM 201 phillips© electron microscope. Observations reveal that aging is characterized by endothelial discontinuities, presence of lymphocytes and dendritic cells in the tunica intima, subendothelial thickening, vacuolation and disintegration of internal elastic lamina. It is concluded that the intimal breaches observed in intimal aging may promote ingression of macromolecules into the vessel wall, and underpin the higher prevalence of atherosclerosis among the elderly. Control of serum atherogenic molecules should be enhanced in this age group. Keywords: Age, Tunica Intima, Aorta, Atherosclerosis


Purpose: To investigate any change in the number of extra views acquired for screening mammography in transitioning from screen/film (SFM) to full field digital mammography (FFDM) and the resulting effect this had on total dose. Methods and Materials: This was a retrospective study of screening mammograms performed at our institution over a four year period. A total of almost 50,000 screening exams were performed during the last two years of SFM use and the first two years of FFDM implementation with a 24 × 29 cm detector. The picture archiving and communications system was used to view and record the number of images taken per screening procedure for all digital exams, whereas the radiology information system was the source for repeat analysis for the SF period. Results: Of the 23,516 patients who received screening mammograms on FFDM equipment, 36.5% had more than the standard four‐views (craniocaudal and mediolateral oblique views of each breast). There were 15.5% who had a total of 5 images, 12.1% had 6 images, 3.3% had 7 images, and 5.6% had 8 or more images. The total repeat rate averaged over all patients was 14.1%. In contrast, preliminary results show that the repeat rate for patients undergoing SFM screening for an equivalent 2 year period was close to 5.5%. As for dose, there was, on average, an 18% decrease in mean glandular dose per view in going from SFM to FFDM imaging. This dose saving is decreased considerably when the number of extra views is taken into consideration. Conclusions: A notable increase in the total repeat rate for screening mammograms was observed once the switch from SFM to FFDM occurred. These extra views had the undesired effect of offsetting some of the dose savings afforded by the digital equipment.


The most impressive feature of this 13th symposium–this time on the subject of rhinoplasty–is the profuseness of photographs and diagrams. If there were no text, only the illustrations with titles, that would be sufficient reason for all surgeons performing rhinoplasties to have this volume available for reference. The recorded proceedings offer something old, as in chapter 23 on secondary and tertiary correction of postrhinoplastic deformities; something new, chapter 22 on septoplasty with pin fixation; and a few things bold, such as chapter 12 on open flap rhinoplasty. It must be understood that this valuable book can not be considered as a textbook on the subject, nor should it be read as a textbook. It should be enjoyed for its scenic pleasure. Nasal physiology, covered in chapter 7, is included for completeness, and therefore is too brief and too simple, especially on the subject of turbinate surgery. There is much duplication


Railway infrastructure is a vital transportation asset for many countries around the world and different geographic location may impose different challenges for train line operators. An example in Georgia is a snowfall related train line blockage during winter periods interrupting Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway corridor. In 2011 ViaCon Georgia was appointed for construction of snowfall protection structure with the total length of 2.434km. The snowfall protection structure was a steel tunnel lining comprising Multi-plate 200mmx5mm corrugated steel plates. This article describes ViaCon Georgia involvement in this project starting from contribution to scheme design development to complete construction of the snowfall protection structure. At the time of construction this structure was known as the longest structure in the world of such type. Authors of this paper envisage sharing their experience from this project thereby contributing ongoing developments of steel culvert design and construction.


A promising scenario for combining linked data and search is exploratory search. During exploratory search, the search objective is ill-defined and favorable to discovery. A common limit of the existing linked data based exploratory search systems is that they constrain the exploration through single results selection and ranking schemes. The users can not influence the results to reveal specific aspects of knowledge that interest them. The models and algorithms we propose unveil such knowledge nuances by allowing the exploration of topics through several perspectives. The users adjust important computation parameters through three operations that help retrieving desired exploration perspectives: specification of interest criteria about the topic explored, controlled randomness injection to reveal unexpected knowledge and choice of the processed knowledge source(s). This paper describes the corresponding models, algorithms and the Discovery Hub implementation. It focuses on the three mentioned operations and presents their evaluations.


Continuous measurement and monitoring of project performance is essential for objective goal assessment, early detection of errors and providing timely feedback relevant for successful project management. Traditional project management approaches that are used in the development of technical systems are based on tangible indicators for project performance measurement. However, for the effective project management there is a necessity to embrace the socio-technical perspective – working processes and organizational environment. Sociotechnical perspective can be measured by using operational indicators with an emphasis on behavior, knowledge exchange and ideation aspects. Analysis of interactions between individuals in hierarchical organization structures is a prerequisite for better understanding, monitoring and measuring project performance dynamics. Modeling of dynamics of operational indicators for competencies, innovativeness, communication and motivation on individual and team level, enables proactive management of technical systems development projects and identification of operational risks related to those indicators. Based on literature review and initial empirical studies, the list and network of intangible indicators were proposed. Indicators were grouped into four elements of intellectual capital on individual and team level: Competences and knowledge, Communication and information exchange, Innovativeness and ideation, and Motivation and satisfaction. The proposed list of indicators was used as a starting point for creating a survey, development of work sampling application and integration with IT systems for data gathering that allows monitoring of the performance of individuals and teams in real time. Work sampling has not been used in this context before and allows the quantitative and more objective data collection on activities within the technical systems development at the individual and team level. In addition, aggregation model was defined which allows calculation of aggregated values for each element of intellectual capital. Values for each intellectual capital element were calculated by using the weighting factors obtained with the Potential method and by applying the differential linear weighted aggregation. A case study was carried out in the R&D company whose research and development activities are focused on the development of systems for production, distribution and transformation of electrical energy. After case study had been conducted, analysis of the indicators enabled detailed insight into the performance of activities during the development of embedded control systems and validation of the proposed method. The validation process of the proposed method was divided into two parts: 1. Validation of the feasibility and usefulness of the method, and 2. Validation of results. Validation of the feasibility and usefulness of the method included a comparison with existing literature, the use of case study and discussion about the method usage in a broader context. The first part of the validation confirmed that the individual indicators were set correctly and that the proposed method fulfills its intended purpose in terms of internal consistency and external relevance. For the purposes of validating the results of intangible indicators, comparison was used with the results of the organizational risk analysis method. The second part of the validation confirmed the results of the indicators trends and complementary nature of the proposed method to methods for organisational risk assessment.


Infants with intra- or extralobular lung-sequestrations normally suffer from chronic infections. In our case an infant is described who had a triangular area in chest X-rays behind the heart. Lung scintigraphy and computer-tomography could not commit the diagnosis. Only invasive angiography showed the sequestration. Although without symptoms the baby was operated preventively. Postoperative course was without complications.


An annual newsletter published by the Nova Scotia Museum, Collections and Research Unit, to improve communication of research in Nova Scotia between archaeologists and to inform the broader public.


The cooperation between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church has many legal implications. One such implication is that the ethical teachings of the Church exert influence on state policies in matters such as sexuality, gender, and family. This influence is one of this article's main areas of focus. The Church's teachings find wide support in Russian public opinion and thus indirectly influence lawmaking and law application in that nation. Another issue this article addresses is how the Church benefits from alliances with the State that enable it to consolidate itself by suppressing possible internal dissent and fighting its opponents among non-traditional religious denominations. The State and the Church also successfully cooperate at both a national and global scale to pursue a well-coordinated strategy of conservative denial of liberal views on human rights through the assertion of traditional family values. Law of the Russian Federation 2020 Amendments symbolically affirm the enduring pattern of unison of political and religious powers in Russia, while also creating new questions about the further development of this cooperation.


OBJECTIVE
This study examined the relationship of the Allen Cognitive Level Test (ACL) to demographics, diagnosis, and disposition after hospitalization among persons with psychiatric disorders.

METHOD
Data were retrospectively collected from medical records, including initial occupational therapy evaluation notes, on 62 female and 38 male patients consecutively admitted to an urban, acute psychiatric inpatient unit. Collected was information on demographics, diagnosis, mental and physical health history, initial ACL scores, role involvement, and discharge living situation (DLS).

RESULTS
Patients with higher initial ACL scores were more likely to be younger, to have lived independently before admission, to have been given nonpsychotic diagnoses, and to have been suicidal before admission. Although DLS was most strongly correlated with living situation before admission, ACL scores showed the second strongest correlation to DLS. Patients with higher ACL scores were significantly more likely to be discharged to independent living than were patients with lower ACL scores.

CONCLUSIONS
These results provide evidence that patients' cognitive level, as measured by the ACL, may be a useful predictor of community functioning. However, further research is needed to validate the Cognitive Disabilities Model.


The success of recombinan apoptin production in native form in the previous results open the way to develop this anticancer protein production to the larger scale. We optimized cultivation process of recombinant Bacillus subtilis 168 harbouring pOXGW12His8Arg with apoptin gene in a stirred tank fermentor and shake flasks. The parameters to optimize cultivation process are xylose-inducer concentration, agitation speed, and aeration rate. The xylose-inducer concentration variations are carried out in a shake flasks with 100 mL volume broth, while the agitation speed and aeration rate variation is carried out in a stirred tank fermentor with 3 L volume broth. The xylose concentration is varied between 0-5% w/v, while agitation speed and aeration rate are varied between 150-250 rpm and 0.5-1.5 NL min -1 respectively. The best condition in this cultivation is 1% w/v of xylose, 250 rpm of agitation speed and 1,5 NL min -1 of aeration rate giving the specific growth rate value for each parameter of 0.628 h -1 ; 0.630 h -1 ; and 0.747 h -1 respectively. The recombinant apoptin were purified by Ni-NTA column using AKTA system. However, the results showed that the optimum condition of producing recombinant apoptin was 1% w/v of xylose, 250 rpm of agitation speed, and 0.5 NL min -1 of aeration.


Objectives: Our aim was to determine the accuracy of a novel simple scoring system based on sonographic markers in differentiating between low and high risk forplacenta accreta (PA). Methods: All women who were referred to the Sheba Medical Center due to suspected PA were included, underwent a detailed ultrasound examination. A score was given based on the common sonographic findings of PA: loss of the hypoechoic retroplacental zone and placental lacunae. A score of 0–2 was defined as low risk and 3 was defined as high risk. Patients assigned to the high risk category underwent prophylactic pelvic artery catheterization before cesarean section and embolization if needed, whereas patients in the low risk category underwent simple cesarean section. Results: 71 women were included. PA was diagnosed clinically during surgery in 28 women, of whom 31 had a score of 3, and ruled out in 43 women, of whom only one had a score of 3. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of our ultrasound-based scoring system in predicting PA were 90%, 97.5%93 and 95% respectively. Conclusions: A simple scoring system based on ultrasound alone can identify accurately a high risk population for PA who can benefit from prophylactic pelvic artery catheterization and embolization.


The administration of and participation in present-day sport is inundated with situations requiring individuals with varying moral paradigms to determine appropriate action. The marketing discipline has drawn considerable attention from ethical decision makers, as marketing practitioners are responsible for satisfying both active and inactive consumer 'needs.' Traditional forms of promotion within the sport setting have focused on targeting fans through financial value, cost minimization, or product giveaways (e.g., Friday night fireworks, $1 hot dog night, bobble-head night). However, professional sport organizations have recently extended marketing endeavors to include faith based activations as a form of promotional strategy, accessing fans by means of their individual core values. The purpose of this paper is to propose a set of considerations for the proper utilization of fans' core values and subsequently present a decision making model for application prior to implementing such a promotional strategy. There is relative paucity of original research examining sport marketers' attempt to access fans core values via promotion in the sport setting. This paper will place particular emphasis on the considerations necessary for proper application of promotional campaigns targeting fans core values, via faith based activations, as the primary component for accessing target market segments. Acknowledgement of appropriate factors for consideration in application of a faith based promotional strategy and development of a related model for organizational application will be presented. Introduction The administration of and participation in present-day sport is inundated with situations requiring individuals with varying moral paradigms to determine appropriate action. The marketing discipline has drawn considerable attention from ethical decision makers, as marketing practitioners are responsible for satisfying both active and inactive consumer 'needs.' Traditional forms of promotion within the sport setting have focused on targeting fans through financial value, cost minimization, or product giveaways (e.g., Friday night fireworks, $1 hot dog night, bobble-head night). However, professional sport organizations have recently extended marketing endeavors to include faith based activations as a form of promotional strategy, accessing fans by means of their individual core values. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose a set of considerations for the proper utilization of fans' core values and subsequently present a decision making model for application prior to implementing such a marketing strategy. There is relative paucity of original research examining sport marketers' attempt to access fans core values via promotion in the sport setting. This paper will place particular emphasis on the considerations necessary for proper application of marketing campaigns targeting fans core values, via faith based activations, as the primary component for accessing target market segments. Acknowledgement of appropriate factors for consideration in application of a faith based marketing strategy and development of a related model for organizational application will be presented. 1 Hutchinson: Core Values as Avenue for Promotion in Sport


We investigate the radiation of surface polaritons by a charged particle rotating around a dielectric waveguide. The general case is considered when the waveguide is immersed in a homogeneous medium. For the evaluation of the corresponding electromagnetic fields the electromagnetic Green tensor is used. A formula is derived for the spectral distribution of the radiation intensity for surface-type modes. It is shown that the corresponding waves are radiated on the eigenmodes of the dielectric cylinder. We demonstrate that the number of radiated quanta for surface polaritons of a given harmonic can be essentially larger than that for guiding modes of the cylinder. The geometry under consideration is of interest from the point of view of generation and transmitting of waves in waveguides, a subject which is of considerable practical importance in microwave engineering and optical fiber communications.


The cost-to-benefit ratio of group-living is thought to vary with group size: individuals in "optimal" groups should have higher fitness than individuals in groups that are too large or small. However, the relationship between group size and individual fitness has been difficult to establish, a gap we address here in the gelada. We demonstrate group size effects on the production of surviving offspring and on female mortality rates, which are largely explained by group-size variation in infanticide risk and foraging competition. We also identify a mechanism by which females may alter group size: in large groups, females groomed with less than half of their group, increasing the likelihood of fissions. Our findings provide insight into how and why group size shapes fitness in long-lived species.


Abstract Background and objective: Providing brief advice to stop smoking (BASS) can significantly increase motivation to quit, long-term smoking cessation rates, and substantially impact public health. The study aimed to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and willingness of community pharmacy staff in Mures County, Romania, to provide BASS to smokers. Methods: The observational, cross-sectional study included a sample of 96 professionals working in community pharmacies in Mures County, Romania. Data were collected using an online questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were calculated. Results: Generally, more than 90% of the respondents acknowledged that smoking is addictive, represents a health hazard, and increases the risk of lung and laryngeal cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart attack, and stroke. Up to 70% of the respondents recognized the most common scientifically proven quit medications, such as nicotine replacement therapy, bupropion, and varenicline. Most pharmacists agreed that they should regularly ask the patients about their smoking status and encourage smokers to quit. They also declared they should receive continual education regarding quit services, medications, and techniques. BASS was credited with very high efficacy by 17.1%, high efficacy by 26.8%, and moderate efficacy by 46.3% of the respondents. The most common perceived barriers to providing BASS in community pharmacies were lack of demand from smokers (78.0%), lack of time (73.2%), and lack of educational materials (39.0%). About 70% of the pharmacists received no formal training regarding quit services, but more than 75% were interested in earning such a qualification. About 65% of the respondents estimated they could dedicate 10-15 minutes of their daily working time to provide BASS to interested customers. Conclusions: Overall, the study found an acceptable level of knowledge and willingness of the participants in offering BASS, suggesting that a program to provide BASS in Mures County community pharmacies may be feasible and useful.


This paper looks at how patterns of occupational mobility in the UK have been affected by the change in the occupational structure away from middle-wage routine occupations and towards higher and lower wage non-routine occupations. The first analysis looks to identify the additional mobility created by this shift in the occupational structure – referred to here as displacement – separate from all the other factors which are associated with labour market transitions. Two UK birth cohort studies are used to compare the experiences of workers who entered the labour market in the mid-1970s and the late 1980s respectively. The main conclusion from this analysis is that the older cohort is less mobile in general, but did experience significant increases in occupation mobility associated with the decline in non-routine jobs, while the younger cohort was more mobile in general, but this mobility is largely unaffected by shifts in the occupational structure. This points to a fundamental change in the way recruitment takes place into the growing number of good non-routine jobs. For the older cohort, there were progression opportunities from lower positions, while the later cohort has not benefitted in this way. These conclusions are explained further by looking at a more representative panel dataset from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS records occupational transitions over the previous 12 months for a subset of survey respondents. For routine workers, patterns of mobility are observed that are consistent with those of the cohort analysis. Changes in the upward mobility paths for low-wage service workers are also explored as the number of good nonroutine jobs increases. The findings show there is some mobility for these workers, but it is limited by age, qualification and the state of the economy, and is more common in certain industries or occupations where internal progression pathways exist.


Abstract Background Breast milk transfer of first-line ART from mother to infant is not fully understood. Objectives To determine the concentrations of lamivudine, emtricitabine and tenofovir in maternal blood, breast milk and infant blood from breastfeeding mother–infant pairs. Methods Intensive pharmacokinetic sampling of maternal dried blood spots (DBS), dried breast milk spots (DBMS) and infant DBS from 30 Ugandan and 29 Nigerian mothers receiving first-line ART and their infants was conducted. DBS and DBMS were collected pre-dose and at 5–6 timepoints up to 12 h following observed dosing. Infant DBS were sampled twice during this period. Lamivudine, emtricitabine and tenofovir were quantified using LC-MS/MS, with non-compartmental analysis to calculate key pharmacokinetic parameters. Results Peak concentrations in breast milk from women taking lamivudine and emtricitabine occurred later than in plasma (4–8 h compared with 2 h for lamivudine and 2–4 h for emtricitabine). Consequently, the milk-to-plasma (M:P) ratio of lamivudine taken once daily was 0.95 (0.82–1.15) for AUC0–12, whereas for AUC12–20 this was 3.04 (2.87–4.16). Lamivudine was detectable in 36% (14/39) of infants [median 17.7 (16.3–22.7) ng/mL]. For 200 mg of emtricitabine once daily, the median M:P ratio was 3.01 (2.06–3.38). Three infants (19%) had measurable emtricitabine [median 18.5 (17.6–20.8) ng/mL]. For 300 mg of tenofovir once daily, the median M:P ratio was 0.015 (0–0.03) and no infant had measurable tenofovir concentrations. Conclusions Emtricitabine and lamivudine accumulate in breast milk and were detected in breastfeeding infants. In contrast, tenofovir penetrates the breast milk to a small degree, but is undetectable in breastfeeding infants.


The consequences resulting from the application of the concept of controlled designations of origin (Protected Designation of Origin or PDO) to products that are strongly tied to their terroir allows firm hypotheses to be proposed on the impact of this policy on rural development. This impact affects occupation, employment and countryside management in the territories concerned and the value assigned to these territories and local culture. A concrete and in-depth evaluation of the impact of AOC policy on rural development has never been carried out. Such an evaluation requires access to existing technical, economic and social statistics. It will also require specific statistics that are not currently available, as AOC products are considered as marginal except within the wine sector. Furthermore, non-economic disciplines need to be adopted to determine the impact on territorial value and on the creation and transmission of local culture.


A plaque assay for determination of the sensitivity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to the complement-dependent bactericidal activity of normal human serum was evaluated. The method was found to be rapid and easy to perform. All strains, which gave a positive result by the plaque assay, were serum-sensitive in a quantitative assay, whereas only 78% of strains giving negative results by the plaque assay were true serum-resistant. The growth of a few gonococcal strains was inhibited, i.e. formed plaques, after exposure to genuine as well as to heat-inactivated normal human serum.


Like many controversies about new technologies, debates over the ethics of reproductive cloning are divided between utopian (pro-cloning) and dystopian (anti-cloning) approaches. The former see the rise of cloning a simple case of technological progress, backed up by an insistence on respect for reproductive rights; the latter argue that the possibility of human cloning threatens individuality and raises the danger of turning human beings into mass-produced commodities. I evaluate these debates through a Heideggerian reading, arguing that the dystopian position falls prey to the typical setbacks confronting humanism, while setting the entire controversy within the assumption - shared to some extent by both sides - that the humanity of human beings is reducible to their physical nature. Utopian arguments either defend their position on ethical grounds, which conflict with this basic presupposition, or simply reject the relevance of ethical debate to what are largely questions of progress driven by market forces. Dystopian arguments, by contrast, tend to defend human uniqueness and dignity, but these attempts are undermined by the underlying assumption that humanity is directly shaped by its biology, so that a proliferation of cloning will inevitably change the human world into a posthuman one. I argue that given this assumption as the guiding framework within which the controversy takes place, no genuine ethical debate is possible; both sides, by reducing humanity to biology, undermine the grounds of ethical discourse. I conclude that the condition of possibility for an ethical debate over cloning requires an understanding of the human that does not reduce the essence of humanity to physical nature, allowing for a confrontation with the essence of technology rather than one fully circumscribed by its limits.


Results: 94 neonates were identified who had undergone fetal MRI in Sheffield and who had completed NHSP assessment. 32 of these babies had been admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and there was one case of congenital bilateral deafness among them. The national incidence of congenital hearing impairment detected by the NHSP is approximately 0.1%, rising to around 3% in NICU graduates. The incidence detected in babies following fetal MRI was 1% (95% confidence interval 0.0–5.8%), which is in accordance with the incidence expected given the high proportion of NICU graduates. For babies who were not admitted to NICU, there was no significant difference between their mean OAE cochlear response and the mean of a reference dataset of over 2000 OAE results from healthy babies. Conclusion: This study finds no significant excess clinical risk of permanent congenital hearing impairment as a result of magnetic resonance imaging during pregnancy. In addition, there was no evidence of impairment of frequency-specific cochlear response in healthy newborn babies who had been exposed to magnetic resonance imaging in utero.


This paper considers the pricing of European Asian options in the Black-Scholes framework. All approaches we consider are readily extendable to the case of an Asian basket option. Firstly we consider the partial differential equation approach to the pricing of Asian options. We show the link between the approaches of Rogers and Shi [1995], Andreasen [1999], Hoogland and Neumann [2000] and Vecer [2001]. For the latter two formulations we propose two reductions, which increase the numerical stability and reduce the calculation time. Secondly, we show how a closed-form expression can be derived for Rogers and Shi's lower bound for the general case of multiple underlyings. Thirdly, we sharpen Thompson's [1999a,b] upper bound for the value of an Asian option. This is important for the practically relevant case of options with long maturities. Numerical results show that when the strike price is not extremely high, the resulting upper bound is tighter than recently introduced upper bounds in studies by Nielsen and Sandmann [2003] and Vanmaele et al. [2005]. Finally, we consider analytical approximations for the value of an Asian option. A much heard criticism on moment-matching approaches is that the error in the approximation is not known beforehand. We combine the traditional moment-matching approaches (e.g. Levy [1992]) with the conditioning approaches (e.g. Curran [1994]) and introduce a class of analytical approximations, which can be proven to lie between a sharp lower and upper bound. In numerical examples the accuracy of these new approximations is demonstrated. The approximations are found to outperform all of the current state-of-the-art upper bounds and approximations.


This research examines two sites in downtown Toronto undergoing large-scale comprehensive brownfield redevelopment schemes. While city agencies helped to spur initial investment in King-Liberty Village, most changes have been privately-led while the planning department has attempted to incrementally guide development and the inclusion of specific public amenities. Waterfront Toronto's planning of East-Bayfront is seen as a strategic public investment and has undergone proactive policy-led planning. These differing frameworks have resulted in contrasting outcomes. While the planning and development framework of the latter has created the conditions for a neighbourhood well-serviced by transit and more robust parkland, affordable housing and sustainability goals, it has required enormous public investment. The process in King-Liberty Village is more indicative of the challenges facing other private redevelopments that often require greater public planning resources than are available to ensure Toronto's continued growth is sufficiently accommodated.


Fecal pollution is a major concern in creeks and rivers. The aim of this study was to enumerate fecal coliform bacteria and identify the source of contamination using Microbial Source Tracking at three different creeks (Mountain Oak, Long Cane, and Ulcohatchee) in the Piedmont region of Georgia. Data collected in this research will be used to formulate watershed rehabilitation plans to decrease the transfer of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) into these creeks. Samples were collected at several sites along the creeks (4 sites at Mountain Oak, 10 sites at Long Cane, and 5 sites at Ulcohatchee). The site locations are near artificial land cover such as roads, bridges, or houses. IDEXX analysis was performed to quantify fecal coliform (FC) bacterial levels and qPCR using human and animal specific Bacteroidales markers was used for Microbial Source Tracking (MST). FC pollution was highest in the warmer months: June through October in the Mountain Oak creek, April through September in the Long Cane creek, and August in the Ulcohatchee creek. Some measurements exceeded the USEPA guidelines of 200 MPN/100ml for FC bacteria in recreational waters. The highest value of 1986.3 MPN/100ml was detected at site 1 at the Mountain Oak Creek in June. In the Long Cane creek, the maximum value of 933.3 MPN/100 ml was recorded at site 2 during September 2019. The maximum value at the Ulcohatchee creek was 1299.7 MPN/100ml which was recorded in August 2018 at site 1. Microbial source tracking analysis showed that horse was the major source of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in Mountain Oak creek and was detected mostly at sites 1 and 4. Cattle and deer were the major contributors in the Ulcohatchee creek. The cattle marker was detected on 7 different occasions at this creek and was detected on two separate accounts at sites 1 and 2. These two sites also had the highest overall average FC levels out of the five sites at this creek. In the Long Cane creek, beaver was the main source of FIB because it was detected at every site


The assessment of exercise capacity is of critical importance in the evaluation and management of patients with moderate to severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The practicing clinician uses various exercise modalities in evaluating and managing patients with PAH. These include the 6-minute walk test (6MW), cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and exercise echocardiography. The change in exercise capacity appears to parallel other clinical indicators of disease severity, such as survival, hemodynamics, and time to clinical worsening. Exercise testing can aid the clinician in outlining the nature of a patient's exercise limitation, noninvasively assessing disease severity, establishing prognosis, and evaluating the response to therapy. Additional work must be done to validate the utility of measuring exercise capacity in patients with less severe PAH.


Weberbauera (Brassicaceae, tribe Thelypodieae) comprises 18 species distributed along the central Andes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. Of these species, W. spathulifolia has the largest geographical range in the genus, extending c. 3000 km along the Andean highlands from La Rioja Province in Argentina to Ancash Department in Peru. This species also shows the greatest morphological variation in the genus. However, whether this geographical and morphological variation represents one or more lineages remains unclear. In this study, we analyse W. spathulifolia across its entire distribution range using molecular, morphological and ecological data. Because there is no phylogenetic analysis for the genus, we generated a comprehensive molecular sampling using nuclear (ITS) and plastid (trnL-F and trnH-psbA) sequences for other Weberbauera spp. and representatives of South American Thelypodieae. Results support the presence of two different lineages within W. spathulifolia, one in the northern part of the species range and the other distributed across its southern and central range. In addition to the morphological differences and the allopatric distribution, these lineages also differ in their climatic niches. Therefore, we propose here to retain the northern lineage under W. spathulifolia and to treat the southern-central lineage under W. orophila, comb. nov. Phylogenetic placement of Weberbauera spp. among the South American Thelypodieae is also analysed and discussed. Results of this study contribute to understanding the biodiversity and evolution of the Andean Brassicaceae.


AIMS: To study the possible socio- demographic factors contributing to women obtaining antenatal care services.
To study the role of these factors in influencing the antenatal care utilisation.
METHODS: Cross sectional observational study was conducted on 140 postnatal mothers residing in Nadendla village of Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. The data was collected using a pre-tested semi- structured schedule.
RESULTS: About 46% (65) of the women were illiterates. Majority (63.6%) of the women work in paddy fields as Agricultural Labourers, the remaining (36.4%) are housewives. 51.4% of the mothers were living in nuclear families. 63% women conceived by 19 years of age. All the respondents utilized antenatal services either government or private or both. 73% utilized government services exclusively, being provided by accredited social health activists and female health workers.62% of mothers had 3 or more antenatal visits. Except for one, none of the women were paid home visits by the health staff. 66.7% mothers were satisfied with the behaviour of the health staff at the Primary Health centres (PHC). Cleanliness at the PHC needs improvement and more than 70% mothers were satisfied with the information provided for care during pregnancy.
CONCLUSION
Literacy rates among females need to be improved in the villages. When women are educated, the whole family is educated. All the women are utilizing antenatal care services, but home visits by the health staff during antenatal period should be done routinely. The staff at the Primary Health Centres should be periodically sensitized about the importance of antenatal care


To the Editor.— Increased use of antibiotics by farm workers as additives to feed 1 or in treating infected animals may result in increased contact allergy and dermatitis. We have recently treated a patient who had contact allergy to the veterinary antibiotic tylosin. Report of a Case.— A 51-year-old dairy farm foreman had had dermatitis on his arms and on the dorsa of his hands for several years. A biopsy specimen showed hyperkeratosis, parakeratosis, moderate acanthosis with slight spongiosis, and a perivascular, lymphohistiocytic infiltrate in the upper layer of the dermis. Although nonspecific, these features were consistent with a diagnosis of chronic contact dermatitis. The patient had previously injected Tylan 200 into cows to treat infections of the udder. He noted that the antibiotic would occasionally spray on his arms while he was filling the syringe. Patch testing to serial dilutions of Tylan 200 in isopropyl alcohol was positive in


We work towards efficient methods of categorizing visual content in medical images as a precursor step to segmentation and anatomy recognition. In this paper, we address the problem of automatic detection of level/position for a given cardiac CT slice. Specifically, we divide the body area depicted in chest CT into nine semantic categories each representing an area most relevant to the study of a disease and/or key anatomic cardiovascular feature. Using a set of handcrafted image features together with features derived form a deep convolutional neural network (CNN), we build a classification scheme to map a given CT slice to the relevant level. Each feature group is used to train a separate support vector machine classifier. The resulting labels are then combined in a linear model, also learned from training data. We report margin zero and margin one accuracy of 91.7% and 98.8% and show that this hybrid approach is a very effective methodology for assigning a given CT image to a relatively narrow anatomic window.


The perception of naturalistic events relies on the ability to integrate information from multiple sensory systems, an ability that may change with healthy aging. When two objects move toward and then past one another, their trajectories are perceptually ambiguous: the objects may seem to stream past one another or bounce off one another. Previous research showed that auditory or visual events that occur at the time of disks' coincidence could bias the percept toward bouncing or streaming. We exploited this malleable percept to assay age-related changes in the integration of multiple inter- and intra-modal cues. The disks' relative luminances were manipulated to produce stimuli strongly favoring either bouncing or streaming, or to produce ambiguous motion (equal luminances). A sharp sound coincident with the disks' overlap increased both groups' perception of bouncing, but did so significantly less for older subjects. An occluder's impact on motion perception varied with its duration: a long duration occluder promoted streaming in both groups; a brief occluder promoted bouncing in younger subjects, but not older ones. Control experiments demonstrated that the observed differences between younger and older subjects resulted from neither age-related changes in retinal illuminance nor age-related changes in hearing, pointing to weakened inter- and intra-modal integration with aging. These changes could contribute to previously demonstrated age-related perceptual and memory deficits.


This study sought to determine if there is a difference in the self-concept of students who are labeled or nonlabeled as having a disabling condition. Subjects in the study were 50 general education Chicago (Illinois) students (ages 12-15) and 50 special education students labeled as having learning disabilities, educable mental handicap, or social/emotional disturbance. Administration of the IMAGE Survey to the subjects revealed that, overall, there were no significant differences in self-concept, though 11 of the 27 survey statements did reveal self-concept differences between the two groups. The study concluded that: (1) special education students have a lower opinion of themselves in terms of personal appearance; (2) special education students often get discouraged before a goal is accomplished; (3) special education students do not view their work as being the best they can do and therefore do not feel proud of it; and (4) special education students often feel that their success on tests is due to luck instead of ability. (Contains 10 references.) (JDD) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * * from the original document. *******;4*************************************************************** The Differences of Self-Concept of the Labeled and Non-Labeled Student


This work presents an in-depth analysis and identifies the inherent modulation processes in power converters relating input and output parameters to a switching function. The timing of the switching instances and duration of the on/off periods applied to the semiconductor power switches constitutes a Switching Function. The steady state response of two popular power converters is first investigated: The AC to DC Controlled Rectifier and the PWM sinusoidally modulated 3-Level H- Bridge inverter. Both share the same power circuit configuration, namely the H-Bridge. For both configurations an appropriate switching Function acts on the input voltage to produce the output voltage in an amplitude modulation process. The same Function acts on the output current to set the input current in a similar way. The expressions relating output and input (and vice versa) with the switching function are exactly the same and easily derived from the voltage current waveforms; it is the switching function that differs. Next the mathematical models of the two converters in the time domain are derived based on the fundamental switching function expressions. The novelty here is that they are not exactly "averaging models". The switching action of the semiconductor switches is taken into account to a good degree thus giving the harmonics on output and input current. The derived models are verified using the PSIM simulation software.