Surgery of endocrine tumors benefit from accurate pre and- intraoperative localization methods,and scintigraphy has become an important contribution in this respect. In the present thesis therequisites for scintigraphic localization of abdominal endocrine tumors and new detectors forintraoperative gammadetection are evaluated.Ac5 is a monoclonal murine antibody developed against human adrenocortical carcinoma. In a nude mouse experimental model, the radiolabeled antibody and its Fab´2 fragment were evaluated after grafting of two human adrenocortical carcinoma cell-lines (SW 13, T-CAR1). During scintigraphy of grafted animals, tumors were visualized especially with the fragmented antibody. The Ac5 antibody/Fab2 fragment may become a diagnostic tool for detection of adrenocortical carcinoma.The somatostatin analogue [111In]-DTPA-D-[Phe1]-octreotide (OctreoScan®) has been shown to visualize endocrine tumors with scintigraphy. The biodistribution of [111In]-DTPA-D-[phe1]-octreotide was studied by use of operative biopsies. Mid-gut carcinoids and endocrine pancreatic tumors of patients exposed to [111In]-DTPA-D-[Phe1]-octreotide, revealed high uptake in tumors with a tumor-to-blood ratio up to 2000. After preoperative single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), commercially available hand-held gammasensitive probes were used for intraoperative detection of tumors. These detectors were found to be insufficient in the abdomen mainly because of poor adaptation to the high background activity of 111In. A novel detector, H-probe2 was constructed. It was found to detect even tiny tumors, lesions inaccessible to surgical palpation upon ex vivo scanning of operative specimens. In vivo, H-probe2 detected smaller tumors than preoperative SPECT, but the scanning procedure was too time consuming for surgical applicability. Further development resulted in Matris 16, a computerized 16 channel detector for intraoperative use in combination with [111In]-DTPA-D-[Phe1]-octreotide. Matris 16 demonstratedsubstantial sensitivity and spatial resolution. It had the ability to detect abdominal endocrine tumorsmeasuring down to a few mm both in vivo and ex vivo. By allowing faster scanning with preserved sensitivity Matris 16 can improve the intraoperative tumor detection of endocrine neoplasms.


Chlorine has been widely used to kill disease-causing microbes in drinking water. During the disinfection process, organic and inorganic material in source waters can combine with chlorine and certain other chemical disinfectants to form disinfection by-products. The kind of disinfectant used can produce different types and levels of disinfectant byproducts in the drinking water, such as trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids (5HAAs). Currently, USEPA Method 552 utilizes a methyl tertbutyl ether extraction and diazomethane derivatization of HAAs and phenolic disinfectant by-products, and a gas chromatograph equipped with a capillary column to perform the separation of methyl-haloacetates and anisoles. To detect, gas chromatography and electron capture detector are used. This article demonstrates a simple method using direct injection ion chromatography hyphenated with mass spectrometry for the analysis of 5HAAs.


Increased attention is given to the global energy use and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) since research has shown that this is highly related to the increasing global temperature. A temperature rise of only 2 ◦C compared to pre-industrial level may have serious consequences for the global climate. The building sector accounts for up to 40% of the global energy use and GHG emissions, and has therefore experienced more investigations for energy saving measures in the last decades. Here, high-performance thermal insulation materials, with low thermal conductivity, in the building envelope may be a promising improvement for both new and existing (as retrofit) buildings. This study first gives an introduction to thermal insulation materials and the stateof-the-art high-performance solutions such as aerogels and vacuum insulation panels. Since these materials have their disadvantages has the knowledge obtained from this research later been used in the experimental work of producing a nano insulation material (NIM). NIM is regarded as a promosing path for development of new materials. In this work has sacrificial polystyrene templates been used for synthesis of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNS), which is a silica-based NIM. The procedure is a multistep process where adjustments can be made to reduce inner diameter or shell thickness of the spheres. Some of these modifications have been investigated and the thermal conductivity of the product has been measured with the use of a Hot Disk apparatus. These HSNS may be a possible stepping-stone in the work towards high-performance NIM, and with a measured thermal conductivity of 20 mW/(mK) for spheres with an inner diameter of 46.3 nm is there a reason for expectations. Suggestions for further research have also been included.


A problem of tracking surface shape-shifting extended target by using gray scale pixels on optical image is considered. The measurement with amplitude information (AI) is available to the proposed method. The target is regarded as a convex hemispheric object, and the amplitude distribution of the extended target is represented by a solid radial function. The Gaussian process (GP) is applied and the covariance function of GP is modified to fit the convex hemispheric shape. The points to be estimated on the target surface are selected reasonably in the hemispheric space at the azimuth and pitch directions. Analytical representation of the estimated target extent is provided and the recursive process is implemented by the extended Kalman filter (EKF). In order to demonstrate the algorithm's ability of tracking complex shaped targets, a trailing target characterized by two feature parameters is simulated and the two feature parameters are extracted with the estimated points. The simulations verify the validity of the proposed method with compared to classical algorithms.


Background Trichomonas vaginalis is common worldwide, with high rates in women of reproductive age. The evidence-base on potential consequences of infection in pregnancy is mixed. We conducted a meta-analysis of studies which examined the association between T.vaginalis infection and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Methods Following the PRISMA guidelines and MOOSE criteria, we searched the electronic databases Medline, EMBASE and BioMedCentral for articles published from January 1950 to February 2013; reference lists of published studies and reviews were also examined to locate additional eligible studies. The inclusion criteria were studies that assessed the statistical association between T.vaginalis in women and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The primary outcomes of interest were preterm birth, low birth weight and premature rupture of membranes. Meta-analysis methods were used to calculate a summary odds ratio for each outcome. Results A total of 174 papers were identified, of these 48 full text papers were reviewed and 10 studies met the inclusion criteria. Six studies were cohorts, one a randomised control trial, one a case control study, one a population data linkage study and one a secondary analysis of combined data from four studies. The study populations, outcomes and study quality varied. The summary odds ratios (OR) was 1.4 (95% CI: 1.3–1.6, p = 0.0) for preterm birth (8 studies; n = 78,573) with negligible heterogeneity between studies (Isq. = 0.0%, p = 0.44). For low birth weight (3 studies; n = 14,660) the summary OR was 1.6 (95% CI: 1.1–2.2, p = 0.009) with low-moderate heterogeneity between studies (Isq. = 35.9%, p = 0.21) and the summary OR was 2.3 (95% CI: 0.9–6.2, p = 0.09) for premature rupture of membranes (4 studies, n = 14,715) with high heterogeneity (Isq. = 80.0%, p = 0.002). Conclusion This review suggests that there is an association between T.vaginalis in pregnancy and preterm birth and low birth weight. These findings confirm the importance of screening for the infection, particularly in women of reproductive age in high prevalence areas.


Inhibition of complex I has been considered to be an important contributor to mitochondrial dysfunction in tissues subjected to ischemia-reperfusion. We have investigated the role of complex I in a severe energetic deficit that develops in kidney proximal tubules subjected to hypoxia-reoxygenation and is strongly ameliorated by supplementation with specific citric acid cycle metabolites, including succinate and the combination of -ketoglutarate plus malate. NADH: ubiquinone reductase activity in the tubules was decreased by only 26% during 60-min hypoxia and did not change further during 60-min reoxygenation. During titration of complex I activity with rotenone, progressive reduction of NAD+ to NADH was detected at >20% complex I inhibition, but substantial decreases in ATP levels and mitochondrial membrane potential did not occur until >70% inhibition. NAD+ was reduced to NADH during hypoxia, but the NADH formed was fully reoxidized during reoxygenation, consistent with the conclusion that complex I function was not limiting for recovery. Extensive degradation of cytosolic and mitochondrial NAD(H) pools occurred during either hypoxia or severe electron transport inhibition by rotenone, with patterns of metabolite accumulation consistent with catabolism by both NAD+ glycohydrolase and pyrophosphatase. This degradation was strongly blocked by alpha-ketoglutarate plus malate. The data demonstrate surprisingly little sensitivity of these cells to inhibition of complex I and high levels of resistance to development of complex I dysfunction during hypoxia-reoxygenation and indicate that events upstream of complex I are important for the energetic deficit. The work provides new insight into fundamental aspects of mitochondrial pathophysiology in proximal tubules during acute renal failure.


Abstract Treatment of epilepsy remains a clinical challenge, with >30% of patients not responding to current antiseizure drugs (ASDs). Moreover, currently available ASDs are merely symptomatic without altering significantly the progression of the disease. Inflammation is increasingly recognized as playing an important role during the generation of hyperexcitable networks in the brain. Accordingly, the suppression of chronic inflammation has been suggested as a promising therapeutic strategy to prevent epileptogenesis and to treat drug-refractory epilepsy. As a consequence, a strong focus of ongoing research is identification of the mechanisms that contribute to sustained inflammation in the brain during epilepsy and whether these can be targeted. ATP is released in response to several pathological stimuli, including increased neuronal activity within the central nervous system, where it functions as a neuro- and gliotransmitter. Once released, ATP activates purinergic P2 receptors, which are divided into metabotropic P2Y and ionotropic P2X receptors, driving inflammatory processes. Evidence from experimental models and patients demonstrates widespread expression changes of both P2Y and P2X receptors during epilepsy, and critically, drugs targeting both receptor subtypes, in particular the P2Y1 and P2X7 subtypes, have been shown to possess both anticonvulsive and antiepileptic potential. This review provides a detailed summary of the current evidence suggesting ATP-gated receptors as novel drug targets for epilepsy and discusses how P2 receptor–driven inflammation may contribute to the generation of seizures and the development of epilepsy.


This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study with the aim to evaluate and self-evaluate the knowledge of nurses from adult Intensive Care Units about direct and indirect blood pressure measurement. Fifty-four nurses from three Intensive Care Units were approached. They answered a self-administered questionnaire with 65 questions (40 related to blood pressure). Nurses had insufficient performance on the test that assessed knowledge (average score 4.6). Half of the sample felt dissatisfied with their knowledge about blood pressure. After answering the questionnaire the subjects self-rated their knowledge as regular (48.2%), bad (27.8%) and poor (9.3%) indicating they are aware of the importance for the subject to practice. The results show the need of urgent implementation of continuing education for this sample, since they are professionals who work directly with a priority vital sign on care to critical patients.


We develop a mathematical model of cell-to-cell-signalling in Dictyostelium discoideum that pre-dicts the cAMP signal seen by individual cells in early aggregation. The model employs two cells on a plane and is designed to predict the space-time characteristics of both the extracellular cAMP signal seen by one cell when a nearby cell relays, and the intracellular cAMP response produced by the stimulus in the receiving cell. The effect of membrane bound phosphodiesterase is studied and it is shown that cells can orient effectively even in its absence. Our results give a detailed picture of how the spatio-temporal characteristics of the extracellular signal can be transduced into a time-and space-dependent intracellular gradient, and they suggest a plausible mechanism for orientation in a natural chemotactic wave.


Noncooperative classification of the modulation type of communication signals finds application in both civilian and military contexts. Existing modulation classification methods for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems commonly require a priori information on the number of transmit antennas employed by the multiantenna transmitter, which, in most of the noncooperative scenarios involving modulation classification, is unknown and needs to be blindly extracted from the received signal. Since the problems of MIMO modulation classification and detection of the number of transmit antennas are highly coupled, we propose a decision theoretic approach for spatial multiplexing MIMO systems that considers these two tasks as a joint multiple hypothesis testing problem. The proposed method exhibits a high performance even in moderate to low SNR regimes while requiring no a priori knowledge of the channel state information and the noise variance.


Without distinguishing unstable from stable features and anticipating likely new features, building evolvability into software systems can be time-consuming and, above all, ineffective. This paper introduces a method based on a software evolution model whose goal is to help requirements engineers and product managers identify the unstable features of an embedded system and anticipate its potential adaptation needs in the future, with the aim of planning for changes beforehand. The core characteristic of this method is its support for systematic reasoning on requirements volatility and planning for changes. An application of the method in the domain of assisted living is described as a proof-of-concept, providing both a preliminary validation of the proposed solution and a useful example of its use.


The first report of a connection between vocabulary learning and phonological short-term memory was published in 1988 (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). At that time, both Susan Gathercole and I were involved in longitudinal studies, investigating the relation between nonword repetition and language learning. We both found a connection. Now, almost 20 years later, in her Keynote Gathercole (2006) reviews a multitude of data bearing on the interpretation of this often replicated connection. Her main conclusions are three. First, both nonword repetition and word learning are constrained by the quality of temporary storage. She sees this storage as multiply determined, that is, affected by factors like perceptual analysis, phonological awareness (ability to identify and reflect on the speech sounds that make up words). Second, both nonword repetition and word learning are also affected by sensory, cognitive, and motor processes. Third, an impairment of phonological storage is typically associated with specific language impairment (SLI) but may not be a sole causal factor.


Apart from great convenience derived, computer networks have grown into the best intrusion channel for those who aspire to. This paper exploits a conglomeration of Artificial Immune System and Finite State Machine to build highly robust intrusion detection algorithm in order to reinforce information security. AIS is widely adopted in various disciplines, as it hold the advantage of achieving better diverity inherently than genetic algorithm does. Aiming to better identification in non-consecutive packet attacks and novel anomaly, our immunization algorithm takes inspiration from Wright's island model, gene migration, and heterosis of population genetics, producing effectual outcomes. The results shows that our algorithm is able to capture more novel attack patterns while maintaining low false positive rate.


Coal Gasification for IGCC Power Generation T. Takematsu and C. Maude lEA Coal Research, 1991, ISBN 9290291907. £180 or £60 to lEA CR member countries. IGCC, integrated gasification combined cycle power generation is technology which could provide the cheapest electricity through the 21st century. The potential exists for gasifying any quality coal, cleaning the gas (complete removal of sulphur and nitrogen) and providing high quality gas for power generation. This report provides a comprehensive survey of one of the most important emerging technologies.


Readers of the article by Mark and Neville (p 765) would do well to refer to a critique that appeared in Science (179:1109, 1973) where the author, Constance Holden, deals with the pros and cons of recent developments in psychosurgery. One learns that there is no agreement on its definition. Twenty or 30 years ago, the term might have been applied to the operation of prefrontal lobotomy, performed, too often in vain, to cure or ameliorate certain forms of psychosis for which there was no other remedy. Now, the targets, no longer cerebral lobes or portions thereof, are the deeply buried cingulum, thalamus, and amygdala—the supposed seats of such mysterious entities as emotion, behavior, and imagination. In place of the scalpel and electrocautery to whack away at brain tissue, we have the stereotaxically-placed electrode that can zero in precisely on any of these hidden islands and either stimulate or destroy


Data traffic in modern telecommunications systems is loss-sensitive, delay-insensitive, and highly bursty. Most data applications cannot predict their own traffic parameters, but require low cell loss rates. These features make traffic management for data traffic complex. In ATM networks, where multiple types of applications co-exist, it becomes even more difficult. Many models have been proposed for the flow control of data traffic over ATM networks. Among them the explicit rate (ER) mechanism proposed for the available bit rate (ABR) service is the principal method. The ER and other proposed mechanisms are found to suffer in some regard. These mechanisms also need many buffers in the intermediate switches and thus increase the hardware costs. Flow control based on bandwidth contracting (BCA), can achieve higher bandwidth throughputs at lower hardware costs. In this paper, we evaluate ER and BCA mechanisms in LAN and WAN environments for bursty data traffic. This study focuses on the use of short-term bandwidth contracts for the reliable transport of bursty data.


In several recent cases the Supreme Court has endorsed the idea that there are some general limits to incorporation of European Union law in the United Kingdom. The general limits stem from the Court's interpretation of the European Communities Act 1972, the statute that grounds domestic effect of EU law, construed both in the light of ordinary canons of interpretation and in the light of fundamental principles. This raises the question what are the legal consequences when an EU measure violates one of those limits. In this paper I propose an answer from the perspective of what a domestic court ought to do. My aim is to develop the legal position emerging from Assange, HS2 and Pham. I argue that sometimes UK courts are under a duty not to apply EU law. However, the circumstances where this is the case are even more limited than the focus on the general limits of incorporation of EU law may suggest. In particular, fundamental principles of UK law may work to expand the scope of domestic effect of EU law. I want to stress that neither the cited cases, nor the present paper, take a position of hostility towards EU law. The following discussion makes it clear that both EU law and UK law have many devices to avoid conflict and those devices need to be exhausted before a court concludes that it is under a duty not to apply EU law.


Directive 2006/54/EG from the European Union concerns the equal rights between men and woman and the principle of equal rights. The purpose of the directive is that the member states provide the equal rights between men and woman. Affirmative action is one exception from the principle of equal rights which is settled in directive 2006/54/EG, article 3. The purpose for the affirmative action must be to encourage the equal rights between men and women.EU has specific criteria to use affirmative action, which is created by praxis of the Court of Justice of the European Union. These criteria are that the affirmative action must involve an objective assessment, there must be equal qualifications between the person which is affirmative action and the person who is not, the positive action cannot be automatically decisive and this special treatment should be proportionate to the purpose. The rules about affirmative action in Sweden are the same as the EU has suggested in praxis.In directive 2000/43/EG aboutthe principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, article 5, EU declares that the principle of equal rights shall not prevent any member state from conserving or implementing specific measures to prevent or compensate disadvantages linked to ethnic origin or racial. This form of affirmative action due to ethnicities is prohibited in Sweden. The debate about this form has been large and labour unions in Sweden are not positive about it. The government in Sweden thinks that there is a problem that ethnicities is not a homogenous group and that it will bring complications with the enforcement.If affirmative action due to ethnicity should be assimilating in Swedish law requires statistic over ethnicity, and if that should be possible it must be a change in the 13 § Privacy protection law. The Privacy protection law is a subsidiary law, and if the government in Sweden want, they could make an exception for statistic over ethnicity.


It is well known that mold and casting table maintenance has a direct impact on the internal quality and surface quality of billets. In this paper, the evolution of the main key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the main consumables of the Wagstaff Air slip billet casting technology is shown, such as molds, casting rings, transition plates and thimbles. The strategies taken to preserve a high standard of quality whilst monitoring the associated costs, are discussed. An automated Mold and Casting Table Maintenance Management system has been developed in house to make available the relevant information from the casting table servicing at the casting pit and at the mold room. A case study is described where this tool allowed us to reduce costs, keeping a high quality standard of the casting table maintenance, ensuring the internal quality of the final product.


STUDY OBJECTIVE
To describe the outcomes of switching housestaff from a traditional model of "long-call" every 4 days to a 14-h work-shift model in a medical ICU (MICU) over a 5-week pilot period.

DESIGN
Retrospective comparison of a 5-week pilot period for a 14-h work-shift model vs a 4-month period for the traditional model.

SETTING
The MICU of a tertiary medical center.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 626 patients admitted to the MICU and 34 internal medicine residents taking care of them.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MEASUREMENTS
Severity-adjusted patient outcomes, housestaff performance on end-of-rotation examinations, and scheduled duty hours during the 5-week 14-h work-shift pilot period compared to a 16-week traditional nonpilot work period.

RESULTS
There were no statistically significant differences in patients' adjusted mortality rates, hospital lengths of stay, or housestaff performance on end-of-rotation knowledge assessment examinations between the pilot and nonpilot periods. During the pilot period, each resident was scheduled to work for an average of 61.3 h weekly, and each fellow for 65.3 h weekly. In comparison, each resident and fellow was scheduled to work for an average of 73.3 h weekly during the nonpilot period.

CONCLUSIONS
The 14-h work shift is a feasible option for housestaff rotation in the MICU. Although the power of our study to detect significant differences in mortality, length of stay, and educational outcomes was low, there was no evidence of compromised patient care or housestaff education associated with the 14-h shift model over the course of this 5-week pilot study.


Genetic drugs based on RNA or DNA have remarkable therapeutic potential as virtually any disease can be treated by silencing a pathological gene, expressing a beneficial protein, or by editing defective genes. However, therapies based on nucleic acid polymers require sophisticated delivery systems to deliver these macromolecules to the interior of target cells. In this study, we review progress in developing nonviral lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery systems that have attractive properties, including ease of manufacture, reduced immune responses, multidosing capabilities, larger payloads, and flexibility of design. LNP systems represent the most advanced delivery systems for genetic drugs as it is expected that an LNP-short interfering RNA (siRNA) formulation will receive clinical approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2018 for treatment of the hereditary condition transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, a fatal condition for which there is currently no treatment. This achievement is largely due to the development of optimized ionizable cationic lipids, arguably the most important factor in the clinical success of LNP-siRNA. In addition, we highlight potential LNP applications, including targeting tissues beyond the liver and therapeutic approaches based on messenger RNA or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/Cas.


During the past four decades, researchers and practitioners working in corrections have shifted from a "nothing works" to a "what works" orientation. Emphasizing the importance of adopting evidence-based interventions, Andrews and Bonta have argued that efforts to rehabilitate offenders should adhere to a number of specified principles of effective intervention, three of which—risk, need, and responsivity—are considered the most critical. These principles were derived from Andrews and Bonta's theory of the psychology of criminal conduct, which underscores the necessity to link correctional practice to empirically defensible theories of offending. The vast majority of research has provided evidence of the effectiveness of the risk-need-responsivity model; however, far less attention has been given to expanding its theoretical foundation. Given the wealth of evidence supporting biosocial explanations of criminal behavior, we consider potential avenues for enhancing the risk-need-responsivity model through the integration of key findings from biosocial research.


Text mining and information visualization techniques applied to large-scale historical and literary document collections have enabled new types of humanities research. The assumption behind such efforts is often that trends will emerge from the analysis despite errors for individual data points and that noise will be dominated by the signal in the data. However, for some text analysis tasks, the technology is unable to perform as well as domain experts, perhaps because it does not have sufficient world knowledge or metadata available. Yet, the advantage of language processing technology is that it can process at scale, even if not perfectly accurately. Geo-locating literary works is one example where human expert knowledge is invaluable when it comes to distinguishing between candidate works. This was the underlying assumption in Palimpsest, an interdisciplinary digital humanities research project on mining literary Edinburgh. From the outset, the project adopted an assisted curation process whereby the automatic processing of large data collections was combined with manual checking to identify literary works set in Edinburgh. In this article, we introduce the assisted curation process and evaluate how the feedback from literary scholars helped to improve the technology, thereby highlighting the importance of placing humanities research at the core of digital humanities projects.


Far-infrared specular reflectance spectra of seven optically black coatings near normal incidence are presented. Seven photometric spectra were obtained using eleven bandpass transmission filters in the wavelength range between 12 and 500 μm, and three interferometric spectra were obtained for corroboration. Data on the construction, thickness, and rms surface roughness of the coatings are also presented. The chemical composition of three coatings can be distinguished from that of the others by a strong absorption feature between 20 and 40 μm, which can be largely attributed to amorphous silicate material. At 100 μm, the most and least reflective coatings differ by nearly 3 orders of magnitude. Inverse relationships observed between the spectra and the roughness and thickness of the coatings led to development of a reflecting-layer model for the measured reflectance. The model successfully describes the spectra at wavelengths outside the silicate absorption, and optical constants are deduced from a nonlinear least squares fit to the data. Parametric errors are estimated by chi-square analysis, and sensitivity tests are performed to determine which parameters control reflectance in different spectral regions.


White LED spectra for general lighting should be designed for high luminous efficacy as well as good color rendering. Multichip and phosphor-type white LED models were analyzed by simulation of their color characteristics and luminous efficacy of radiation, compared with those of conventional light sources for general lighting. Color rendering characteristics were evaluated based on the CIE Color Rendering Index CRI, examining not only Ra but also the special color rendering indices Ri, as well as on the CIELAB color difference Eab for the 14 color samples defined in CIE 13.3. Several models of three-chip and four-chip white LEDs as well as phosphor-type LEDs are optimized for various parameters, and some guidance is given for designing these white LEDs. The simulation analysis also demonstrated several problems with the current CRI, and the need for improvements is discussed. © 2005


The SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the practice and understanding of human-computer interaction. This award recognizes the very best and most influential applications of human-computer interaction. It is awarded for a lifetime of innovation and leadership and carries an honorarium of $5000. The criteria for the award are: Cumulative contributions to the field directly and through the leadership of others. Innovation and the stimulation of innovation through practice. Impact on the field, industry, and society. Influence on the work of others, and the growth of other HCI practitioners and researchers. Successful application of human-computer interaction to products, services, and systems. Reasonably active participant in the ACM SIGCHI community, although outstanding individuals active in other professional communities are considered.


Typhoid is routinely diagnosed in Nigeria on clinical grounds or based on Widal serological test result. This approach does not provide information on the antibiotic susceptibility of the bacterium; Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhi. This study was done to assess the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Salmonella isolates in Umuahia. In this study, seventy-two (72) Salmonella isolates obtained from 135 fecal specimens were tested for their antibiotic susceptibility profile against 13 antimicrobial agents using the disk diffusion method according to the protocol of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI).  Sixty-two (86.1%) of the isolates were resistant to Amoxicillin, fifty-two (72.2%) to Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (Co-trimoxazole), forty-one (56.9%) to Chloramphenicol and fifty-two (72.2%) to Augmentin. Fifty-nine (81.9%) of the isolates were resistant to Tetracycline, 11(15.2%) were of intermediate susceptibility and only two (2.7%) were susceptible to the antibiotic. Thirty-five (48.6%) of the isolates were sensitive to Ciprofloxacin, forty-seven (65.2%) to ofloxacin and forty-three (59.7%) to gentamicin. the resistance profile of the isolates to cephalosporin antibiotics was as follows: cefuroxime (70.8%), ceftriaxone (68.0%) and ceftazidime (65.2%). Some of the isolates exhibited resistance to multiple antibiotics ranging from three or more of the antibacterial agents tested. The results obtained suggest that high proportion of S. Typhi strains circulating in the study area are resistant to multiple antibiotics and empirical treatment of typhoid fever without antibiotic susceptibility testing is not advisable in this setting.

 Key words: Salmonella typhi, antimicrobial resistance, typhoid fever, antibiotic susceptibility profile, Umuahia


Luminal gastroenterology What is the incidence of oesophageal adenocarcinoma in non-dysplastic Barrett's? The most widely cited annual incidence of oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) in Barrett's oesophagus (BO) is 0.5% but this estimate did not account for the presence of baseline dysplasia. In this issue of Gut, Desai et al report an updated meta-analysis of observational studies and provide an accurate estimate of the risk of OAC in patients with BO who were free of dysplasia at baseline. The 57 included studies comprised 11 434 patients and 58 547 patient-years of follow-up. The pooled annual incidence of OAC was 0.33% (95% CI 0.28% to 0.38%). During surveillance, patients with non-dysplastic BO may be at least 10 times more likely to die from an unrelated cause than to develop OAC. Among 16 studies that provided information on patients with short-segment BO, the annual incidence of OAC was only 0.19%. The incidence of OAC in non-dysplastic BO is around 1 per 300 patients per year while that in shortsegment BO is under 1 per 500 patients per year. These estimates are much lower than previously thought and suggest that surveillance strategies for patients with non-dysplastic BO, particularly those with short segments, may need to be reconsidered (see page 970).


This article seeks to give a first and comprehensive impression on the different stages of translations from Spanish Baroque theatre into German. While in the 17th and 18th centuries that contact is usually established through Dutch, Italian and French translations, it is at the beginning of the 19th century that key figures of the German Romanticism translate theatrical plays of the Spanish Baroque with a strong focus on formal aspects and philological accuracy. Nevertheless, this article shows that the first contacts between Golden Age theatre and Germany are much older than generally assumed and that the influence of Calderón and Lope on the creation of a German theatre tradition might be much stronger than it is commonly thought. Therefore, this article calls for a more profound study of the circulation of Spanish Golden Age theatre in Europe.


Abstract. The subject of this study was to identify the transferring polymorphism and analyse changes in the frequency of alleles and genotypes of the transferring in a flock of Polish long-wool sheep on the grounds of lambs from the four subsequent years. The flock comprised 3419 lambs, either sex, from the four subsequent lambings, (i – 920 off, ii – 849 off, iii – 914 and iv – 736 off accordingly). The separation of transferring variants was done using starch gel electrophoresis. The significant increase in the frequency of BD transferring phenotype was observed, CC and CE phenotypes, however, decreased and the frequency of Tf BD phenotype gradually dropped. The flock selected for quality traits exhibited a significant growth in the frequency of TfD allele in subsequent years of the study, whereas the frequency of TfC allele decreased. The frequency of remaining alleles varied in certain years of the study and no distinguished changes were found. The homozygosity of the polymorphic transferring noted in the first year. Regularities of changes in the frequency of phenotypes and alleles of transferring in the flock concerned could mark changes in the breeding – selecting scheme.


Acute visceral ischemia and subsequent reperfusion injury, which accompanies the surgical repair of a thoracoabdominal aorta aneurysm, is associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether endogenous tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-1 (IL-1) production contributes to organ dysfunction in animals subjected to visceral ischemia secondary to 30 min of supraceliac aortic occlusion. C57BL6/j mice were treated with either a TNF binding protein (TNF-bp-10 mg/kg) or an anti-IL-1 receptor type 1 antibody (150 μg) 2 h prior to 30 min of supraceliac aortic occlusion. An additional group of mice received 30 min of infrarenal aortic occlusion to determine the contribution of lower torso ischemia-reperfusion injury to the changes seen following supraceliac aortic occlusion. Visceral organ ischemia for 30 min produced by supraceliac aortic occlusion followed by 2 h of reperfusion produced measurable TNF-α in 38% of untreated mice, but TNF-α was undetectable in both sham-operated mice and following infrarenal aortic occlusion. After 2 h of reperfusion, lung myeloperoxidase levels were significantly elevated in the mice experiencing visceral ischemia-reperfusion compared with either a sham operation or infrarenal ischemia-reperfusion (11.6 ± 1.3 U/g vs. 3.4 ± .2 U/g and 3.7 ± 1.0 U/g, respectively, p < .05). Pretreatment with TNF-bp and anti-IL-1 antibody decreased lung neutrophil recruitment (7.2 ± 1.2 U/g and 4.6 ± 1.1 U/g) and capillary membrane permeability changes in mice following visceral ischemia-reperfusion. The present study demonstrates that brief (30 min) clinically relevant visceral ischemia produces TNF-α and IL-1 dependent lung injury.


Abstract Sufficient fertility is important for crop growth and yield but supplying a balanced amount of N, P, and K with compost and manure is a challenge and nutrient imbalances can benefit weeds more than crops. The goal of this study was to compare the aboveground growth responses of common northeastern U.S. crops and weeds to addition of composted poultry manure (CPM). A secondary goal was to test whether the observed growth responses to CPM could be attributed to the three macronutrients—N, P, and K—supplied in the CPM. Two field experiments were conducted over 2 yr. Species grown were corn, lettuce, kale, Powell amaranth, common lambsquarters, giant foxtail, and velvetleaf. Plants were grown in soil amended with CPM or single-nutrient organic N, P, and K fertility amendments. Single-nutrient P treatments with bone char did not adequately mimic P supply from CPM. In both years, biomass of all weeds studied increased with CPM amendment rate. Powell amaranth was the most responsive to CPM addition, increasing 1,775 and 159% from the control to the highest CPM rate in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Corn biomass increased by 22% with CPM rate in 2010 but did not increase with CPM rate in 2011. Lettuce biomass increased with CPM amendment rate (175% in 2010 and 109% in 2011), but due to the increased weed biomass at high CPM amendment rates, good weed control will be necessary to maintain this yield benefit. The increase in growth of Powell amaranth, common lambsquarters, and giant foxtail with CPM amendment was not due to N or K, and may have been influenced by P or another factor in the CPM. Velvetleaf was the only species that exhibited increased biomass with N addition (as blood meal), similarly to the increase with added CPM, suggesting the velvetleaf growth response to CPM was due to N in the CPM. The results show that nutrient ratios should be considered when applying organic amendments, because application rates of organic amendments that meet the crop's needs for one nutrient may oversupply other nutrients. Overfertilization will not benefit crop yield, but the results of this study show that high organic fertility application rates are likely to increase weed growth. Nomenclature: Common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album L. CHEAL, giant foxtail, Setaria faberi Herrm. SETFA, Powell amaranth, Amaranthus powellii S. Wats AMAPO, velvetleaf, Abutilon theophrasti Medik. ABUTH, corn, Zea mays L. 'VK7610', lettuce, Lactuca sativa L. 'New Red Fire', kale, Brassica oleracea L. 'Lacinato'.


Reinforcement learning (RL) agents are particularly hard to train when rewards are sparse. One common solution is to use intrinsic rewards to encourage agents to explore their environment. However, recent intrinsic exploration methods often use state-based novelty measures which reward low-level exploration and may not scale to domains requiring more abstract skills. Instead, we explore natural language as a general medium for highlighting relevant abstractions in an environment. Unlike previous work, we evaluate whether language can improve over existing exploration methods by directly extending (and comparing to) competitive intrinsic exploration baselines: AMIGo (Campero et al., 2021) and NovelD (Zhang et al., 2021). These language-based variants outperform their non-linguistic forms by 47-85% across 13 challenging tasks from the MiniGrid and MiniHack environment suites.


The treatment of cerebral aneurysms includes open microsurgical options (e.g., clipping, trapping/bypass) and evolving endovascular techniques. Following the landmark trials that propelled endovascular treatment to the forefront, flow diversion has shown high aneurysm cure rates with minimal complications. Flow diversion stents are placed in the parent vessel, redirecting blood flow from the aneurysm, promoting reendothelization across the neck, and resulting in complete occlusion of the aneurysm. As a result, flow diversion has become increasingly used as the primary treatment for unruptured aneurysms; however, its applications are being pushed to new frontiers. Here, the authors present three cases showcasing the treatment of intracranial aneurysms with flow diversion. The video can be found here: https://stream.cadmore.media/r10.3171/2022.7.FOCVID2253


AIM: To determine whether moderate hypothermia, applied after a hypoxic-ischaemic insult in neonatal rats, reduces cerebral damage. METHOD: Unilateral hypoxic-ischaemic brain damage was induced in 7 day old rats by left carotid ligation, followed by 120 minutes of normothermic exposure to 8% O2, followed by random selection to three hours of hypothermia (rectal temperature, mean (SD), 32.5 (0.4) degrees C) or normothermia (38.3 (0.4) degrees C). One hundred and one animals were used for brain temperature or blood chemistry studies and 24 for survival studies (7 days) with neuropathology, including cell counting as outcome measures. RESULTS: Thirty sections from each brain were histologically examined with respect to distribution and pattern of damage and given a score from 0 to 4. Animals treated with hypothermia had significantly less damage than normothermic animals (score 0.5 (0.3) vs 1.8 (0.5)). CONCLUSIONS: Posthypoxic hypothermia reduces brain damage in awake, unrestrained 7 day old rats.


Summary The Baggy Beds (440 m thick) form a transgressive sequence of shallow-water marine and delta-like sediments of Upper Famennian age between the continental Pickwell Down Sandstone and the overlying neritic Pilton Beds (which straddle the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary). The Baggy Beds are divided into lower and upper divisions (the lower division containing the bulk of the sandstones) and a number of members. There is a strong diversity of facies, and nine main facies are recognized; they show little evidence of cyclicity but their stratigraphical relationships are important for their interpretation. Penecontemporaneous erosion, principally attributed to wave-action, was often intense, and has contributed more than any other factor to the overall aspect of the marine facies. The bulk of the sediment comprises the shales, siltstones, and very fine sandstones of the Diplocraterion yoyo facies group, which display all gradations from non-life (letal) graded siltstones and shales to intensely bioturbated sandstones, in which the trace-fossil D. yoyo is generally conspicuous. The Reynard facies comprises graded sets of fine to very fine sandstones, the upper portions of which commonly show oscillation ripple or are bioturbated. The sets are intercalated singly in the D. yoyo facies, or form cosets (11 per cent of Baggy Beds). These two facies, which yield a small neritic fauna, are considered to represent deposits of the delta-front platform, or a like off-shore environment, with the cosets of Reynard facies for the most part representing a nearer-shore environment. The other facies (with an interpretation of their depositional environment) are as follows: Arenicolites curvatus facies (6 per cent), which include thin, fine to very fine sandstones with A. curvatus and bioturbated sandstones: sub-beach environment. Rough facies (1 per cent), thin sets of shelly, cross-stratified sandstones with Dolabra, and intraformational conglomerate of local derivation: near-shore, shelly, and possibly intertidal channel fills. Gull facies (1 per cent), cross-stratified fine well-sorted sandstones: near-shore submarine dune depositis. Lingula facies (8 per cent), bioturbated and pene-contemporaneously eroded graded siltstones and shales with patches of disarticulated Lingula and thin bellerophontoid limestones: lagoonal or restricted bay environment, possibly brackish. Timber and Cormorant facies (11⋅5 per cent), channel-fill sediments with parallel and cross-stratified fine to very fine sandstones of northerly provenance with much plant debris: distributary fills. (Cormorant subfacies represents deposition mainly under upper flow regime.) Tag facies (5 per cent), multiple channel-fill sediments deposited under lower flow intensity with fine to very fine sandstones and silt-grade sediments, in which small-scale cross-lamination is important: interpretation doubtful, possibly distributary mouth bar deposits, or crevasse fill or the fill of an off-shore barrier inlet. Hoe facies (1⋅5 per cent), shales and siltstones associated with Timber and Tag facies: deposited under conditions of low flow intensity, or in fresh-water lakes. Plant remains and, rarely, Chondrites? parvus. A model is erected (Fig. 27) suggesting that the sediments were deposited in the vicinity of a delta or similar fluvially influenced environment, subject to a moderate tidal range, though largely on the delta-front platform, or relatively inshore on the continental shelf.


Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a class of porous materials with high surface area, high porosity, good stability and tunable structure that have been widely used in the separation area. In this work, we have proposed the in situ synthesis of a novel COF composed of 4,4',4''-(1,3,5-triazine-2,4,6-triyl)trianiline (Tz) and 1,4-dihydroxyterephthalaldehyde (Da) onto the capillary inner surface for electrochromatographic separation. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, elemental analysis (EA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have facilitated the characterization of the prepared capillary columns. The COF (TzDa) modified OT-CEC column exhibited satisfactory separation selectivity towards neutral compounds (such as chlorobenzenes and alkylbenzenes), acidic and basic compounds (such as phenols and anilines), food additives (vanillin and its analogues) and small biomolecules (such as amino acids and polypeptides). Furthermore, the TzDa modified capillary was quite stable and reproducible. The relative standard deviations for retention times of the test analytes (alkylbenzenes) were as follows: for intra-day (n = 3) runs (≤1.74%), inter-day (n = 3) runs (≤2.25%) and between columns (n = 3) (≤4.83%). This new type of COF-based stationary phase has tremendous potential in separation science.


We report transient sub-picosecond pump and probe experiments performed on a semiconductor microcavity into which quantum wells have been inserted. The cavity is featuring resonance and strong coupling with the exciton. It is strongly and resonantly excited. Optical amplification of the probe beam (up to a factor of 5) appears, a blueshift of the polaritons occurs once the excitation reaches the exciton saturation density. The intensity of the probe, reflected or transmitted by the sample, oscillates while the pump to probe delay is varied. The frequency of the beats increases with pump intensity, and at the highest pumping rates it exceeds by far the frequency corresponding to the unperturbed Rabi splitting. This increase of the Rabi frequency is discussed in terms of the dynamical Stark shift of the excitons, while the amplification of the probe is qualitatively described as a coherent energy exchange between pump, excitons and probe.


IMPORTANCE
The 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommended a minimum of 75 vigorous-intensity or 150 moderate-intensity minutes per week (7.5 metabolic-equivalent hours per week) of aerobic activity for substantial health benefit and suggested additional benefits by doing more than double this amount. However, the upper limit of longevity benefit or possible harm with more physical activity is unclear.

OBJECTIVE
To quantify the dose-response association between leisure time physical activity and mortality and define the upper limit of benefit or harm associated with increased levels of physical activity.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
We pooled data from 6 studies in the National Cancer Institute Cohort Consortium (baseline 1992-2003). Population-based prospective cohorts in the United States and Europe with self-reported physical activity were analyzed in 2014. A total of 661,137 men and women (median age, 62 years; range, 21-98 years) and 116,686 deaths were included. We used Cox proportional hazards regression with cohort stratification to generate multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs. Median follow-up time was 14.2 years.

EXPOSURES
Leisure time moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The upper limit of mortality benefit from high levels of leisure time physical activity.

RESULTS
Compared with individuals reporting no leisure time physical activity, we observed a 20% lower mortality risk among those performing less than the recommended minimum of 7.5 metabolic-equivalent hours per week (HR, 0.80 [95% CI, 0.78-0.82]), a 31% lower risk at 1 to 2 times the recommended minimum (HR, 0.69 [95% CI, 0.67-0.70]), and a 37% lower risk at 2 to 3 times the minimum (HR, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.62-0.65]). An upper threshold for mortality benefit occurred at 3 to 5 times the physical activity recommendation (HR, 0.61 [95% CI, 0.59-0.62]); however, compared with the recommended minimum, the additional benefit was modest (31% vs 39%). There was no evidence of harm at 10 or more times the recommended minimum (HR, 0.69 [95% CI, 0.59-0.78]). A similar dose-response relationship was observed for mortality due to cardiovascular disease and to cancer.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Meeting the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans minimum by either moderate- or vigorous-intensity activities was associated with nearly the maximum longevity benefit. We observed a benefit threshold at approximately 3 to 5 times the recommended leisure time physical activity minimum and no excess risk at 10 or more times the minimum. In regard to mortality, health care professionals should encourage inactive adults to perform leisure time physical activity and do not need to discourage adults who already participate in high-activity levels.


Secondary structure representation of proteins provides important information regarding protein general construction and shape. This representation is often used in protein similarity searching. Since existing commercial database management systems do not offer integrated exploration methods for biological data e.g. at the level of the SQL language, the structural similarity searching is usually performed by external tools. In the paper, we present our newly developed PSS-SQL language, which allows searching a database in order to identify proteins having secondary structure similar to the structure specified by the user in a PSS-SQL query. Therefore, we provide a simple and declarative language for protein structure similarity searching.


Coffea canephora organoleptic cup attributes are the most important factors that define its price in world markets. Determining the components that contribute to the diversity of organoleptic characters will help in the improvement of these qualities in order to obtain favourable markets. Two hundred and six genotypes from twenty one districts and two research institutes were analyzed by a three member expert panel from Uganda Coffee Development Authority using a 10 point descriptive scale and protocols from, The Coffee Quality Institute of America (CQIA). The results revealed that the evaluators' organoleptic cup trait ratings were significantly different (p< 0.05) for all attributes, reflecting a diversity of cup interests. Four multivariate groups that were significantly different for fragrance, aroma and flavour were formed offering diverse cup tests to different markets. A variety of fine and commercial flavours were detected in ripe cherry and green roasted beans. Cup balance contributed the highest regression coefficient (R 2 =0.90) to overall assessment while fragrance/aroma had the least (R 2 =0.22). The above average rating of 75% for cup balance, flavour, mouth feel, aftertaste, fragrance and aroma revealed that Ugandan Robusta coffees were of high quality with a mild taste. The higher cup acidity among land races,'nganda' and 'erecta' genotypes revealed that genotypes with high sugars and cup acidity could be selected for from local germ-plasm. Coffee types and environmental factors such as soil texture, altitude and location influenced the content and level of organoleptic cup attributes. A diversity of flavours that exist among Uganda Robusta coffee and has so far remained unexploited, would provide new marketing channels, enhance quality and earn the country the much desired foreign exchange capital.


Abstract Previous research has shown that different forms of migration in general, and tourism-related international migration in particular, could act as potential drivers for various forms of rural transformations. This paper investigates self-employment in tourism among foreign-born people in rural Sweden. The questions addressed in this paper are: What is the magnitude of self-employment, and what types of business do in-migrants run, in rural areas? A discussion on the extent to which in-migrants to rural areas contribute to rural restructuring through self-employment in tourism follows. The results are analyzed by drawing on theories connected to restructuring and ideas of the "new economy". The longitudinal, individual and geo-referenced database ASTRID with official Swedish register data is used to identify foreign-born people self-employed in tourism in Sweden. Self-employment is more common for in-migrants coming from culturally proximate Western countries, followed by Asia and the Middle East. The length of time in Sweden plays a significant role in the incidence of self-employment in tourism, with restaurants dominating as the type of establishment. It can be discussed how much restaurants help invigorate the economy of rural areas, and how much they contribute to rural change and transformation in qualitative terms.


The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, of the United Nations Development Programme or of the United Nations Environment Programme concerning the legal statue of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.


Predator–prey interactions play a key role in the evolution of species traits through antagonistic coevolutionary arms races. The evolution of beak morphology in the Darwin's finches in response to competition for seed resources is a classic example of evolution by natural selection. The seeds of Tribulus cistoides are an important food source for the largest ground finch species (Geospiza fortis, G. magnirostris, and G. conirostris) in dry months, and the hard spiny morphology of the fruits is a potent agent of selection that drives contemporary evolutionary change in finch beak morphology. Although the effects of these interactions on finches are well known, how seed predation affects the ecology and evolution of the plants is poorly understood. Here we examine whether seed predation by Darwin's finches affects the ecology and evolution of T. cistoides. We ask whether the intensity of seed predation and the strength of natural selection by finches on fruit defense traits vary among populations, islands, years, or with varying finch community composition (i.e., the presence/absence of the largest beaked species, which feed on T. cistoides most easily). We then further test whether T. cistoides fruit defenses have diverged among islands in response to spatial variation in finch communities. We addressed these questions by examining seed predation by finches in 30 populations of T. cistoides over 3 yr. Our study reveals three key results. First, Darwin's finches strongly influence T. cistoides seed survival, whereby seed predation varies with differences in finch community composition among islands and in response to interannual fluctuations in precipitation. Second, finches impose phenotypic selection on T. cistoides fruit morphology, whereby smaller and harder fruits with longer or more spines exhibited higher seed survival. Variation in finch community composition and precipitation also explains variation in phenotypic selection on fruit defense traits. Third, variation in the number of spines on fruits among islands is consistent with divergent phenotypic selection imposed by variation in finch community composition among islands. These results suggest that Darwin's finches and T. cistoides are experiencing an ongoing coevolutionary arms race, and that the strength of this coevolution varies in space and time.


Purpose: There is an assumption in emergency planning that the public will 'panic' or refuse to comply in the event of mass decontamination. This assumption has serious implications for how the public will be managed.
Method: We carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 emergency responders, six of whom had experience of incidents involving decontamination. We asked them, first, about their experiences of these events and, second, about their expectations for decontamination involving a large crowd. The aim was to explore the extent to which responders perceived non-compliance and anxiety as (crowd) problems during decontamination, and if so, how they felt that they could be addressed.
Findings: Responders with experience of decontamination perceived non-compliance and excessive anxiety to be rare, and suggested that orderly behaviour was more common. However, the majority of emergency responders with no experience of decontamination said they expected panic and non-compliance. They therefore emphasised the importance of 'controlling', rather than communicating with, the public.
Implications: We argue that 'control'-based emergency management strategies can impact negatively on the relationship between the public and responders, and hence hinder effective management of an incident. It would therefore be beneficial to provide training for emergency responders on likely public behaviour during incidents involving decontamination.
Originality: This research extends previous research by facilitating a detailed understanding of emergency responders' experiences and perceptions of managing incidents involving decontamination, and showing how these experiences and perceptions can affect the way in which such incidents are managed.


The effects of temperature on the color of 'Ruby Roman' grape berry skin in 5-year-old potted trees were investigated. Thirty-six trees were divided into six groups: five groups received low-temperature treatment (28°C/20°C, day/night) at different developmental stages: at 54 (13 days after veraison) to 63 days after full-bloom (DAFB) (54 DAFB group); 63–72 DAFB (63 DAFB group); 72–81 DAFB (72 DAFB group); 81–90 DAFB (81 DAFB group); 54–90 DAFB (low-temperature control, 28°C/20°C); and one group received high-temperature treatment (35°C/27°C) at 54–90 DAFB (high-temperature control). Before and after treatments, the trees were kept under high-temperature conditions. After treatment, color change including the color chart value and concentration of anthocyanin in berry skin were the highest in the 63 DAFB group, followed by the 72 DAFB group. For harvested berries, the low-temperature control group had the deepest skin color, whereas the high-temperature control and 54 DAFB groups had the lightest skin colors. These results indicate that the color of 'Ruby Roman' berry skin is enhanced by exposure to low temperature after 63 DAFB and is the most sensitive to low temperature from 63 to 80 DAFB. Gene expression analysis showed higher expression levels of the VlMybA1-2 and VlMybA1-3 genes in the high-temperature than in the low-temperature control group. However, the expression levels of VviF3′H and VviF3′5′H2 immediately following low-temperature treatment in the 63 and 72 DAFB groups were higher than in both control groups. These findings suggest that the decrease in anthocyanin accumulation under high-temperature conditions might not be controlled by VlMybA1 transcriptional factors, and that a different mechanism may be involved in regulation of the biosynthesis of anthocyanin in 'Ruby Roman' grape berry skin.


The energy consumption of a system depends upon the hardware and software component of a system. Since it is the software which drives the hardware in most systems, decisions taken during software design has significant impact on the energy consumption of the processor. The paper focuses on decreasing energy consumption of a processor using software techniques. A novel compiler technique is proposed which reduces energy consumption by proper register labeling during the compilation phase. The idea behind this technique is to reduce the energy of the processor by reducing the energy of the instruction register (also the instruction data bus) and the register file decoder by encoding the register labels such that the sum of the switching costs between all the register labels in the transition graph is minimized. There is no hardware penalty since this is purely a compiler optimization. Results on benchmarks show that the energy consumption of the DLX processor can be reduced by 9.82% (maximum) and 4.25% (average) (as measured by DLX energy simulator). In addition several compiler techniques such as loop unrolling, software pipelining, recursion elimination and of effects of different algorithms on power and energy consumption are studied. This evaluation methodology is useful for computer architects to evaluate energy improvements of their hardware, compiler writers to evaluate energy of the compiled code and program writers to evaluate energy of data structures and algorithms.


Mapping an environment with an imaging sensor becomes very challenging if the environment to be mapped is unknown and has to be explored. Exploration involves the planning of views so that the entire environment is covered. The majority of implemented mapping systems use a heuristic planning while theoretical approaches regard only the traveled distance as cost. However, practical range acquisition systems spend a considerable amount of time for acquisition. In this paper, we address the problem of minimizing the cost of looking around a corner, involving the time spent in traveling as well as the time spent for reconstruction. Such a local exploration can be used as a subroutine for global algorithms. We prove competitive ratios for two online algorithms. Then, we provide two representations of local exploration as a Markov Decision Process and apply a known policy iteration algorithm. Simulation results show that for some distributions the probabilistic approach outperforms deterministic strategies.


Abstract. In the frame of the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch Urban Research Meteorology and Environment programme (GURME), a system for forecasting air pollution episode potential in the Canary Islands has been developed. Meteorological parameters relevant to air quality (synoptic wind speed, wind direction, boundary layer height and temperature at 91 vertical levels) are obtained from the European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) once a day for up to four days ahead. In addition, a model based on the analogue method utilising six years of historical meteorological and air quality data predicts the probability of SO2 concentration exceeding certain thresholds for a measurement station located in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Meteorological forecasts are also provided from a high resolution (2 km) local area model (MM5) implemented for the Canary Islands domain. This simple system is able to forecast meteorological conditions which are favourable to the occurrence of pollution episodes for the forthcoming days.


The 289 residue nuclear oncoprotein encoded by the adenovirus 5 Ela gene contains two peptide sequences that behave as nuclear localization signals (NLS). One signal, located at the carboxy terminus, is like many other known NLSs in that it consists of a short stretch of basic residues (KRPRP) and is constitutively active in cells. The second signal resides within an internal 45 residue region of E1a that contains few basic residues or sequences that resemble other known NLSs. Moreover, this internal signal functions in injected Xenopus oocytes, but not in transfected Xenopus A6 cells, suggesting that it could be regulated developmentally (Slavicek et al. 1989. J. Virol. 63:4047). In this study, we show that the activity of this signal is sensitive to ATP depletion in vivo, efficiently directs the import of a 50 kD fusion protein and can compete with the E1a carboxy-terminal NLS for nuclear import. In addition, we have delineated the precise amino acid residues that comprise the second E1a NLS, and have assessed its utilization during Xenopus embryogenesis. Using amino acid deletion and substitution analyses, we show that the signal consists of the sequence FV(X)7-20MXSLXYM(X)4MF. By expressing in Xenopus embryos a truncated E1a protein that contains only the second NLS and by monitoring its cytoplasmic/nuclear distribution during development with indirect immunofluorescence, we find that the second NLS is utilized up to the early neurula stage. In addition, there appears to be a hierarchy among the embryonic germ layers as to when the second NLS becomes nonfunctional. For this reason, we refer to this NLS as the developmentally regulated nuclear localization signal (drNLS). The implications of these findings for early development are discussed.


Background: In the United States, between 200 and 500 thousand Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAS) are reported yearly, only 50% report symptoms to their physician. Rapid action is of critical importance to reduce risk of brain injury. TIA is a chance for timely lifestyle changes or medical intervention. Momentary signs could precede a potentially fatal stroke or could be a stroke. TIA is recognized as an emergent warning sign of underlying disease. Hospital admission is costly and may be unacceptable to symptom free patients. We developed a rapid work up, CODE TIA, to faciltate patient stays of less than 23 hours. Method: We reviewed methods to decrease length of stay(LOS), decrease unnecessary tests ordered, treat & educate patients to prevent stroke where appropriate, send them home, treated in a reasonable time frame. We conducted extensive staff education. A CODE TIA sticker was created & placed on the front of TIA patients' charts to alert staff to the time left until the proposed discharge.TIA order sets were developed and MDs were educated to use them. A TIA checklist for nurses was created to follow patient's progress & any pending tests. A TIA pathway handout was also created for patients. This visual record enables the patient to participate in their own care and track their progress.The stroke team meets monthly to discuss data & opportunities for improvement. For example, discharge delays occurred while waiting for bubble studies (TEE with echocontrast). We trained & certified all stroke nurses to administer echocontrast.Delays for echocardiography were eliminated. Results: The LOS was 3.66 days for patients diagnosised with TIA.The data shows that the CODE TIA program is successful. We have decreased the LOS dramatically. Since August, we had 59 patients the TIA pathway. Of these,31(52%) converted to a regular stay if co-morbidities or diagnosis of stroke was discovered. Interestingly, 28 (47%) patients went home in 0.92 days. That is a 74.9% decrease in the patient's LOS. Patients diagnosed withTIA, not on pathway, had a LOS of 1.6 days. Conclusion: A directed TIA pathway, with extensive education, order sets, patient materials & aggressive stroke team involvement yielded significant reduction in LOS.Outcome studies needed to assure stroke risk reduction.


The present study explores the meanings sailors make with their songs and the functions that are culturally pursued by sailors through singing. The study presents a model of functions of singing based on a qualitative approach which was developed after participatory, one-on-one and focus group interviews with 10 child sailors and 14 adult sailors. The model covers social, cultural and personal experiences with singing. Five main functions of singing were identified; singing for: intra-personal, inter-personal, spiritual, social and emotional functions. Some of the functions identified include singing to: ward off hunger, as a tool to attract fishes, as a tool for boosting self esteem and singing to keep in touch with the Supreme Being for: protection from the wrath of the sea god and protection of trapped fish from escaping. Future directions in cultural psychology of music, implications of the study for research and practice are also discussed.


Haemophilus influenzae, a commensal of the human respiratory mucosa, is an important cause of localized and systemic infections. We have recently shown that numerous strains of capsulate (typeable) and acapsulate (non‐typeable) H. influenzae target the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) family of cell adhesion molecules (CEACAMs). Moreover, the ligands appeared to be antigenically variable and, when using viable typeable bacteria, their adhesive functions were inhibited by the presence of capsule. In this report, we show that the antigenically variable outer membrane protein, P5, expressed by typeable and non‐typeable H. influenzae targets human CEACAM1. Variants and mutants lacking the expression of P5 of all strains tested were unable to target purified soluble receptors. A non‐typeable strain that did not interact with CEACAM1 was made adherent to both the soluble receptors and CEACAM1‐transfected Chinese hamster ovary cells by transformation with the P5 gene derived from the adherent typeable strain Rd. However, several H. influenzae mutants lacking P5 expression continued to bind the cell‐bound CEACAM1 receptors. These observations suggest that (i) CEACAM1 alone can support P5 interactions and (ii) some strains contain additional ligands with the property to target CEACAM1 but require the receptor in the cellular context. The identification of a common ligand in diverse strains of H. influenzae and the presence of multiple ligands for the same receptor suggests that targeting of members of the CEACAM family of receptors may be of primary significance in colonization and pathogenesis of H. influenzae strains.


Crystal Structure Prediction (CSP) is crucial in various scientific disciplines. While CSP can be addressed by employing currently-prevailing generative models (e.g. diffusion models), this task encounters unique challenges owing to the symmetric geometry of crystal structures -- the invariance of translation, rotation, and periodicity. To incorporate the above symmetries, this paper proposes DiffCSP, a novel diffusion model to learn the structure distribution from stable crystals. To be specific, DiffCSP jointly generates the lattice and atom coordinates for each crystal by employing a periodic-E(3)-equivariant denoising model, to better model the crystal geometry. Notably, different from related equivariant generative approaches, DiffCSP leverages fractional coordinates other than Cartesian coordinates to represent crystals, remarkably promoting the diffusion and the generation process of atom positions. Extensive experiments verify that our DiffCSP significantly outperforms existing CSP methods, with a much lower computation cost in contrast to DFT-based methods. Moreover, the superiority of DiffCSP is also observed when it is extended for ab initio crystal generation.


A subcritical transition to turbulence in magnetized Keplerian shear flows is investigated by using a statistical approach. Three-dimensional numerical simulations of the shearing box equations with zero net magnetic flux are employed to determine the transition from decaying to sustained turbulence as a function of the magnetic Reynolds number R{m}. The results reveal no clear transition to sustained turbulence as the average lifetime of the transients grows as an exponential function of R{m}, in accordance with a type-II supertransient law.


Word sense disambiguation (WSD), identifying the most suitable meaning of ambiguous words in the given contexts according to a predefined sense inventory, is one of the most classical and challenging tasks in natural language processing. Benefiting from the powerful ability of deep neural networks, WSD has achieved a great advancement in recent years. Reformulating WSD as a text span extraction task is an effective approach, which accepts a sentence context of an ambiguous word together with all definitions of its candidate senses simultaneously, and requires to extract the text span corresponding with the right sense. However, the approach merely depends on a short definition to learn sense representation, which neglects abundant semantic knowledge from related senses and leads to data-inefficient learning and suboptimal WSD performance. To address the limitations, we propose a novel WSD method with Knowledge-Enhanced and Local Self-Attention-based Extractive Sense Comprehension (KELESC). Specifically, a knowledge-enhanced method is proposed to enrich semantic representation by incorporating additional examples and definitions of the related senses in WordNet. Then, in order to avoid the huge computing complexity induced by the additional information, a local self-attention mechanism is utilized to constrain attention to be local, which allows longer input texts without large-scale computing burdens. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that KELESC achieves better performance than baseline models on public benchmark datasets.


Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are common but seem to be largely undetected within general dental care. To improve dentists' awareness of these symptoms, three screening questions (3Q/TMD) have been introduced. Our aim was to validate 3Q/TMD in relation to the diagnostic criteria for TMD (DC/TMD), while taking into account the severity level of the symptoms. The study population consisted of 7831 individuals 20-69 years old, who had their routine dental check-up at the Public Dental Health Service in Västerbotten, Sweden. All patients answered a health declaration, including the 3Q/TMD regarding frequent temporomandibular pain, pain on movement and catching/locking of the jaw. All 3Q-positives (at least one affirmative) were invited for examination in randomised order. For each 3Q-positive, a matched 3Q-negative was invited. In total, 152 3Q-positives and 148 3Q-negatives participated. At examination, participants answered 3Q/TMD a second time, before they were examined and diagnosed according to DC/TMD. To determine symptom's severity, the Graded Chronic Pain Scale and Jaw Functional Limitation Scale-20 (JFLS-20) were used. In total, 74% of 3Q-positives and 16% of 3Q-negatives met the criteria for DC/TMD pain or dysfunction (disc displacements with reduction and degenerative joint disorder were excluded). Fifty-five per cent of 3Q-positives had a TMD diagnosis and CPI score ≥3 or a JFLS-20 score ≥5, compared to 4% of 3Q-negatives. The results show that the 3Q/TMD is an applicable, cost-effective and valid tool for screening a general adult population to recognise patients in need of further TMD examination and management.


Recently one of the most significant research-field in the development of amorphous alloys is the research of the Cu-based amorphous alloys. The Zr-based alloys developed earlier can be replaced by the newly developed Cu-based alloys as the high price of the Zr-based alloys limits their utilization in spite of their favourable properties. Production of Cu-based alloys having the same or more favourite properties than Zr-based alloys is cheaper and this fact can promote their increasing utilization. Cu-Zr-Ti and Cu-Hf-Ti alloy systems – they are Cu-based alloys – have excellent mechanical properties. In this paper investigations of crystallization of amorphous Cu44,25Zr36Ag14,75Ti5 powder produced by ball milling (these processes have not been investigated yet according to the reference data) are described. In the course of investigation of the crystallization process, samples were heated to a temperature of investigation by means of a DSC equipment and the developed state was frozen by chilling. The investigation of the developed structure and to identify the phases formed during heat treatment, X-ray diffraction method was used.


We have developed a phase-field model which can simulate the growth process of self-assembled SiGe/Si islands during deposition. The novel feature of this model is that it can reproduce the morphological transitions of islands, i.e., from single-faceted pyramid to multifaceted dome and from dome to barn, by taking a high anisotropy and a sixteen-fold anisotropy of surface energy into account. Two-dimensional simulations have been performed on a large computational model. As a result, island nucleation on the surface of a wetting layer, island morphological change and Ostwald ripening due to an interaction between two neighbor islands were well reproduced. The bimodal distribution of island size, which is a very important phenomenon in self-assembled quantum dots, could also be generated. Furthermore, it has been clarified that the bimodal distributions are largely affected by island morphological change from pyramid to dome. Furthermore, in order to discuss the mechanism of island growth, a simulation of single-island growth has been conducted and the variations of island size and energies have been estimated in detail. As a result, it is concluded that the island morphological transitions occur so as to reduce the elastic strain energy.


We report on a new approach for positioning of self-assembled InAs quantum dots on [110] GaAs with nanometer precision. By combining self-assembly of quantum dots with molecular beam epitaxy on in-situ cleaved surfaces we have successfully fabricated arrays of long-range ordered InAs quantum dots. Atomic force microscopy measurements demonstrate the ability to control size, position, and ordering of the quantum dots. Furthermore, single dot microphotoluminescence investigations confirm the high optical quality of the fabricated quantum dots.


Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) editing is being considered as a potential gene repair therapy to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a dystrophin-deficient lethal muscle disease affecting all muscles in the body. A recent preliminary study from the Olson laboratory (Amoasii et al. Science 2018;362:89-91) showed robust dystrophin restoration in a canine Duchenne muscular dystrophy model following intramuscular or intravenous delivery of the CRISPR editing machinery by adeno-associated virus serotype 9. Despite the limitation of the small sample size, short study duration, and the lack of muscle function data, the Olson lab findings have provided important proof of principle for scaling up CRISPR therapy from rodents to large mammals. Future large-scale, long-term, and comprehensive studies are warranted to establish the safety and efficacy of CRISPR editing therapy in large mammals.


Regulation is a critical tool by which governments seek to foster economic growth and social well-being. Countries in Latin America are increasingly investing in processes and institutions that support regulatory quality. Based on the OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG) for Latin America 2016, this paper explores the state of play of regulatory policy in seven countries in Latin America and identifies potential opportunities to improve. The annex includes individual profiles of each of the countries covered, highlighting key achievements and challenges. The analysis of the data shows that countries in the LAC region have taken steps to improve their regulatory governance framework but important gaps remain in most countries in terms of the implementation of key tools, such as consultation with stakeholders, Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and ex post evaluation. Strengthening the institutional oversight of the regulatory process will be critical to ensure the consistent implementation of these tools in the future.


Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine, from the stereotype content model (SCM) perspective, the role of the competence and warmth stereotypes of older adults held by professional caregivers. Methods A quasi-experimental design, ex post facto with observational analyses, was used in this study. The cultural view on competence and warmth was assessed in 100 caregivers working in a set of six residential geriatric care units (three of them organized following a person-centered care approach and the other three providing standard geriatric care). In order to assess caregivers' cultural stereotypical views, the SCM questionnaire was administered. To evaluate the role of caregivers' cultural stereotypes in their professional performance as well as in older adult functioning, two observational scales from the Sistema de Evaluación de Residencias de Ancianos (assessment system for older adults residences)-RS (staff functioning and residents' functioning) were applied. Results Caregivers' cultural views of older adults (compared to young people) are characterized by low competence and high warmth, replicating the data obtained elsewhere from the SCM. Most importantly, the person-centered units predict better staff performance and better resident functioning than standard units. Moreover, cultural stereotyping of older adult competence moderates the effects of staff performance on resident functioning, in line with the findings of previous research. Conclusion Our results underline the influence of caregivers' cultural stereotypes on the type of care, as well as on their professional behaviors and on older adult functioning. Caregivers' cultural stereotypes could be considered as a central issue in older adult care since they mediate the triangle of care: caregivers/older adults/type of care; therefore, much more attention should be paid to this psychosocial care component.


In 2004, a collision with a ship cut short the life of an endangered North Atlantic right whale named Stumpy. Many lamented her death, but Stumpy9s demise could ultimately help other whales. Researchers are using her tough, hairlike baleen to develop a new method of reconstructing a whale9s life story—much as scientists use growth rings to reveal a tree9s past. The nascent technique could make it easier to study, and perhaps protect, whales. Deriving whale biographies from baleen is just one concept to be discussed next week at the 21st Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Francisco, California. Some 3000 researchers will share insights into some of the world9s most charismatic creatures, including first-time audio recordings of rare species and updates on struggling populations. They9ll also discuss novel ways of assessing the health and physiology of free-swimming mammals that can be hard to study in the wild. That9s where the work involving Stumpy—and a second right whale named Staccato—will come in. Over the past decade or so, wildlife researchers have been figuring out how to pry life history information out of tissues based on keratin, the fibrous protein found in nails, hair, feathers, horns, claws, hooves, and skin. Now, they9re focusing on the keratin in baleen.


s 16th World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine s29 fessionals and increasing the early retirement of experienced staff. It is time to begin the awareness campaign to both prepare new graduates and recognize it in senior staff. How much is enough for our nurses and doctors to give of themselves and their own lives in caring for others in emergency and traumatic life events?


Ray tracing simulations based on experimental PBX-M equilibria show a limited range of the parallel wave number (n/=k/;cko) along the ray trajectory. The range of n/ 1 accessible to the excited wave is shown to have both a lower and an upper bound. The ray's phase volume is projected into (n/;, R, Z) space to define a domain of wave accessibility for each toroidal mode number excited by the launcher. A comparison of circular and bean shaped plasmas with high aspect ratio (A-5.5) shows that the rays fill a substantially larger portion of the accessible domain in bean shaped plasmas. Furthermore, in the bean shaped case the accessible domain tends to extend to higher n/.


ZZ (Zamioculcas zamiifolia), a member of the family Araceae, is emerging as an important foliage plant due to its aesthetic appearance, ability to tolerate low light and drought, and resistance to diseases and pests. However, little information is available regarding its propagation, production, and use. This report presents relevant botanical information and results of our four-year evaluation of this plant to the ornamental plant industry.


Borage is a well-known plant of great importance in human nutrition and health. Expanding knowledge of particular plants that have anti-cancer products is a global concern. There is substantial information regarding the benefits, presence and extraction of gamma linolenic acid (GLA; 18:3n6) in different plants around the world, especially in borage seeds. However, there is little information concerning the effects of the salinity of the nutrient solution on the growth and presence of GLA in borage seeds. The objective of this work was to determine the optimal salinity of the nutrient solution for obtaining GLA in soilless cultivation systems. Borage plants were grown in coconut fibre and provided three treatments of nutrient solution of 2.20, 3.35 and 4.50 dS m-1, increasing solution salinity with the standard nutrient solution of concentrated macronutrients as a reference. Vegetative growth, seed production and GLA ratio were measured. The results of vegetative development and GLA production doubled and tripled with the increase in salinity of the nutrient solution, respectively.


Urban metabolism has been advanced as an approach to quantifying energy and resource use and supply in the modern urban system. It is a multidisciplinary approach focused on providing insight into the behaviour of cities for drafting effective proposals for a more humane and ecologically responsible future. Urban metabolism indicators could play an important role in promoting the science and practice of urban metabolism for sustainability. This paper presents a systematic review of literature centred on defining sustainabilityaimed urban metabolism indicators to improve the integration of urban metabolism and urban sustainability. Furthermore, this paper concentrates on two indicator sets (emergy synthesis and material flow analysis [MFA]), examining the relationship between these indicators and the three dimensions of sustainability (environment, economy, and society) in the literature. The paper thus builds a bridge between urban metabolism and urban sustainability in the hope that urban metabolism indicators can be used to measure and assess urban sustainability.


There have been growing concerns about the protracted effects of cannabis use in adolescents on emotion and cognition outcomes, motivated by evidence of growing cannabis use in adolescents, evidence linking cannabis use to various psychiatric disorders, and the increasingly perceived notion that cannabis is harmless. At the same time, studies suggest that cannabinoids may have therapeutic potential against the impacts of stress on the brain and behavior, and that young people sometimes use cannabinoids to alleviate feelings of depression and anxiety (i.e., "self-medication"). Exposure to early adverse life events may predispose individuals to developing psychopathology in adulthood, leading researchers to study the causality between early life factors and cognitive and emotional outcomes in rodent models and to probe the underlying mechanisms. In this review, we aim to better understand the long-term effects of cannabinoids administered in sensitive developmental periods (mainly adolescence) in rodent models of early life stress. We suggest that the effects of cannabinoids on emotional and cognitive function may vary between different sensitive developmental periods. This could potentially affect decisions regarding the use of cannabinoids in clinical settings during the early stages of development and could raise questions regarding educating the public as to potential risks associated with cannabis use.


The Protal process combines surface preparation using a laser and thermal spraying in one production step. The laser preparation is based on a photomechanical reaction induced by the interaction between a laser of high instantaneous power and a polluted surface. The mechanism of bonding and the coating-substrate interface are then changed in comparison with grit blasting resulting in a significantly reduced substrate roughness. This study is aimed at finding the optimal Protal process parameters for the coating adhesion of a Ni5%Al sprayed on Ti6Al4V and IN718 alloys. The parameters investigated are laser beam intensity, the time delay between the laser impact and the spray impact, powder feed rate, substrate roughness and temperature. A test plan including these parameters is analysed by means of a fractional factorial design of experiment method. The adhesions of the coatings are measured using the ASTM C633 standard test. Data are analysed by a multiple linear regression model using a least squares fit. In addition, the coating/substrate interface is examined by optical and electron scanning microscopy (SEM) techniques as well as by Auger electron spectroscopy. Substrate roughness, substrate temperature and laser intensity are all shown to have a negative correlation with adhesion strength within the investigated range. Areas of diffusion are noticed at the coating/substrate interface.


Dynamics of weighing products with irregular forms, like potato chips, with combinatorial weigher is very complex. Many parameters are to be set at their optimal values for efficient and block-less operation. Conveying processes are important part of combinatorial weighing. Conveying is found at vibratory feeders and at supply conveyor. Vibratory feeders have two control parameters, vibration intensity and time of operation. Speed of potato chips vibratory conveying as function of intensity in steady-state is found from experimental data obtained from created experimental platform. Vibration feeders are modelled as variable speed on/off accumulating conveyors and Simulink model for simulation was build. Model was used for simulating one weighing head. It was found that effective control variable for head control is cycle time, defined as time between two discharges. Steady-state weighed values are not dependent on vibration intensity and operation time.


Preeclampsia is a serious and phenotypically heterogeneous vascular pregnancy disorder. Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is a stress response enzyme that may protect the maternal endothelium and facilitate adequate metabolic adaptation to pregnancy by its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions. HO-1 stress response is modulated by HO-1 gene (HMOX1) polymorphisms. Individuals with the long allele of a guanine-thymine (GTn) microsatellite repeat located in the promoter region of HMOX1 have a higher risk of cardiometabolic diseases compared with those with the short allele. We investigated whether the long GTn allele of HMOX1 is associated with subtypes of preeclampsia. The GTn repeat was genotyped in 759 patients and in 779 controls from the Finnish Genetics of Preeclampsia Consortium (FINNPEC) cohort using DNA fragment analysis. In subtype analyses, the long-long (LL) genotype was associated with nonsevere (additive model: odds ratio [OR], 1.94; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.13–3.31; recessive model: OR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.02–1.89) and late-onset (additive model: OR, 1.44; 95% CI, 1.02–2.05; recessive model: OR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.02–1.59) preeclampsia and with preeclampsia without a small-for-gestational-age infant (recessive model: OR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.02–1.58). The long allele was associated with nonsevere (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.07–1.70) and late-onset (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.03–1.42) preeclampsia and with preeclampsia without a small-for-gestational-age infant (OR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.02–1.40). Moreover, both the LL genotype and the long allele were associated with preeclampsia in women who had smoked during pregnancy. In conclusion, the GTn long allele seems to predispose to late-onset, less severe form of preeclampsia. This finding supports the role of HO-1 in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia and suggests that the HO-1 pathway may provide a potential target for the treatment of preeclampsia.


Chicory taproots accumulate sesquiterpene lactones lactucin, lactucopicrin, and 8-deoxylactucin, predominantly in their oxalated forms. The biosynthetic pathway for chicory sesquiterpene lactones has only partly been elucidated; the enzymes that convert farnesyl pyrophosphate to costunolide have been described. The next biosynthetic step of the conversion of costunolide to the tricyclic structure, guaianolide kauniolide, has so far not been elucidated in chicory. In this work three putative kauniolide synthase genes were identified in chicory named CiKLS1, CiKLS2, and CiKLS3. Their activity to convert costunolide to kauniolide was demonstrated in vitro using yeast microsome assays. Next, introduction of CRISPR/Cas9 reagents into chicory protoplasts was used to inactivate multiple chicory KLS genes and several chicory lines were successfully regenerated. The inactivation of the kauniolide synthase genes in chicory by the CRISPR/Cas9 approach resulted in interruption of the sesquiterpene lactone biosynthesis in chicory leaves and taproots. In chicory taproots, but not in leaves, accumulation of costunolide and its conjugates was observed to high levels, namely 1.5 mg/g FW. These results confirmed that all three genes contribute to STL accumulation, albeit to different extent. These observations demonstrate that three genes oriented in tandem on the chicory genome encode kauniolide synthases that initiate the conversion of costunolide toward the sesquiterpene lactones in chicory.