Lactic acid bacteria as Lactococcus lactis are used as vector for protein but also DNA delivery into intestinal cells in vitro and in vivo. For the plasmid delivery strategy, the plasmid copy number per bacteria (PCN) is thus of great importance. The aim of this paper is to determine the physiological conditions when PCN is the highest in the bacteria. PCN was characterized by qPCR in five different recombinant Lactococcus lactis strains, containing one (mono-) or two different plasmids (biplasmidic), at exponential or stationary phase. We showed that in all cases but one, PCN is higher at exponential than stationary phase. PCN seems to depend on (i) monoplasmidic or biplasmidic strain; (ii) origin of replication of the plasmid; and (iii) the DNA load of the bacteria. Then we studied plasmid transfer in vitro from recombinant L. lactis to eukaryotic COS-7 cells using culture at exponential or stationary phase. We showed that plasmid transfer can be improved in vitro by using bacteria at exponential phase.


The beetle fauna of the island of Barbados is summarized. It is now known to contain 202 genera, and 254 species (in 40 families), of which 232 are named at the species level. Undoubtedly, the actual numbers of species on Barbados are much higher than now known. Nine species are possibly endemic to the island, 15 have been intentionally introduced, and 51 have probably been accidentally introduced through human activity. The remaining 157 named species may occur naturally as a result of natural over-water dispersal processes. These species mostly have a wide distribution in the Antilles and Latin America. The total named fauna is thus about 72% naturally occurring, and 28% the result of human-aided dispersal.


Presented work focuses on methods for the extended electronic control in the designs of inductance simulators based on single-loop feedback topology. Implementation is based on diamond transistors as voltage-to-current converters and two voltage-mode multipliers connected to different positions in topology (providing amplification or control of equivalent resistance). Presented solutions achieve significantly extended adjustability of equivalent inductance value in comparison to standard approaches based on CMOS differential pair-based operational transconductances amplifiers. Proposed designs of synthetic inductors are based on utilization of integer-order as well as fractional-order (constant phase element) capacitor. Their features are verified both via PSpice simulations and experimental measurements. Results confirmed intended purposes of designs implementing discussed methods.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eie.24.3.20976


This paper applies the Gappy proper orthogonal decomposition method, a recently-developed quantitative methodology for reconstructing unknown data, to archaeological problems and highlights the benefits of the method for quantitative analysis within the field. There are three main advantages of the method over polynomial regression, which is most commonly used for missing data problems. First of all, the method can be applied to problems where there are more attributes (variables) than complete samples (samples without missing data). Secondly, the method generates principal components (i.e. eigensamples) as a byproduct of its prediction algorithm; these principal components are useful for characterizing data sets and quantitatively assessing their dominant trends. Thirdly, the method employs fewer ad hoc modelling choices compared with standard regression, as it uses empirically-derived basis functions (the principal components) to make predictions. The Gappy proper orthogonal decomposition method is applied to two case studies on Roman housing focusing on the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. These case studies highlight the merits of the method and provide a new quantitative assessment of housing characteristics of the area, a subject which has been primarily analyzed impressionistically. The study concludes by offering extensions and future directions for applying the methodology.


"Spot samples" of urine are routinely used to monitor occupational exposure to uranium and other toxic heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, and cadmium. In the present work, it was shown that diurnal variations in the uranium concentration in different urine samples from the same individual could be quite large. However, these variations were in correlation to the creatinine level of the same samples, with values of R = 0.72-0.99, for the five subjects studied here. Thus, it is proposed here that uranium concentrations in "spot" urine samples be expressed in terms of ng uranium g-' creatinine rather than ng uranium L-'. Once the 24-h creatinine level is estimated for the individual based on weight, height and age, the adjusted values can be used for determination of the internal dose of uranium. Health Phys. 74(1):86-90; 1998


ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to make a comprehensive review of the traditional timber house constructions in Turkey, which constitutes the majority of the existing Ottoman architectural legacy. After a short historical background focused on the Ottoman territory, the first section explores regional differences in the housing tradition, developed according to local features and defined by architectural features, material characteristics, and availability of materials. Derived from these regional differences, in the second section diversity in traditional timber construction systems in Turkey is described with special emphasis on the Ottoman hımış system. In this part, besides the discussion of the hımış technique which spread over Ottoman lands from the Balkans to Syria, the timber masonry and frame systems of the Eastern Black Sea Region and Thrace are presented in detail with visual support.


: A mixture of Trichoderma harzianum NBRI-1055 (Fx) and T. harzianum BHU-99 (Th) was evaluated for their efficiency to induce systemic resistance during three way interaction among brinjal-Trichoderma-Macrophomina phaseolina. Total phenol content (TPC), defence related enzymes Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), Peroxidase (PO), Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and PR proteins (PR-2 and PR-3) were recorded. Total phenolic content was recorded 12.82 times and 1.8 times higher in Trichoderma mixture treated-pathogen challenge (Fx-Th-Pth) treatment than in untreated healthy control and untreated pathogen challenged (Pth) plants respectively after 72 hr pathogen inoculation (hapi). Defence related enzymes PAL 4.54 times higher, 48hapi, PO, 3.96 times higher, 72hapi and PPO 8.1 times higher, 72hapi in Fx-Th-Pth treatment than untreated healthy control, and the PR- proteins such as PR-2, 2.15 times and PR-3, 2.16 times higher, 72hapi than untreated healthy control. The results showed that a mixture of Trichoderma (Fx+Th) performed better than single isolate.


ABSTRACT Objectives To profile the kicking and handballing accuracy of female Australian football (AF) players and investigate potential differences across five competition levels. Methods Female AF players were classified into five competition levels: elite senior (≥18 years) (n=35), non-elite senior (≥18 years) (n=58), high-level junior (<18 years) (n=32), non-elite junior (14–17 years) (n=38), and non-elite junior (10–13 years) (n=42). Modified AF kicking and handballing tests examined accuracy outcomes. Competition level differences in accuracy were modelled using multivariate analysis of variance. Results A large, significant difference between the competition levels was noted (F=11.508, p<0.001, Wilk's Λ=0.462, η2 p=0.227), with significant differences (p<0.001) observed in the modified AF kicking (ω2=0.514) and handballing (η2 p=0.150-0.250) tests. Elite seniors and high-level juniors performed the modified AF kicking test more accurately than all non-elite competition levels (p≤0.001). Elite seniors were also more accurate in the modified AF handballing test (dominant hand) compared to all non-elite competition levels (p≤0.001). Conclusions This study is the first to report technical skill characteristics in female AF across a broader participation pathway. These exploratory findings could be used as reference data for player development and inform training designs, namely by incorporating non-dominant handballing competitive play situations to develop this skill in female AF players.


The Web is ephemeral. Many resources have representations that change over time, and many of those representations are lost forever. A lucky few manage to reappear as archived resources that carry their own URIs. For example, some content management systems maintain version pages that reect a frozen prior state of their changing resources. Archives recurrently crawl the web to obtain the actual representation of resources, and subsequently make those available via special-purpose archived resources. In both cases, the archival copies have URIs that are protocolwise disconnected from the URI of the resource of which they represent a prior state. Indeed, the lack of temporal capabilities in the most common Web protocol, HTTP, prevents getting to an archived resource on the basis of the URI of its original. This turns accessing archived resources into a signicant discovery challenge for both human and software agents, which typically involves following a multitude of links from the original to the archival resource, or of searching archives for the original URI. This paper proposes the protocol-based Memento solution to address this problem, and describes a proof-of-concept experiment that includes major servers of archival content, including Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. The Memento solution is based on existing HTTP capabilities applied in a novel way to add the temporal dimension. The result is a framework in which archived resources can seamlessly be reached via the URI of their original: protocol-based time travel for the Web.


Systems concerned with information hiding often use randomization to obfuscate the link between the observables and the information to be protected. The degree of protection provided by a system can be expressed in terms of the probability of error associated with the inference of the secret information. We consider a probabilistic process calculus to specify such systems, and we study how the operators affect the probability of error. In particular, we characterize constructs that have the property of not decreasing the degree of protection, and that can therefore be considered safe in the modular construction of these systems. As a case study, we apply these techniques to the dining cryptographers, and we derive a generalization of Chaum's strong anonymity result.


Much organizational activity and academic research relies on the accuracy of managers' perceptions. However, few studies have assessed the accuracy of managerial perceptions, and these studies indicate that managers' perceptions are often very inaccurate. This article discusses an odyssey into the study of managerial perceptions spanning two decades and two empirical studies. It depicts the evolution of research questions, samples, study designs, problems with such research and inferences drawn. It also identifies some errors that tend to be especially large and suggests some corrective actions. These corrective actions include using education and training to inform managers about organizational and environmental properties, exploiting improved technology, helping organizations to identify and correct misperceptions and designing robust organizations that can tolerate misperceptions.


Large-aperture ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser systems are able to achieve unprecedented super-high peak power. However, output power from a single laser channel is not high enough for some important applications and it is difficult to improve output power from a single laser channel significantly in the near future. Coherent beam combining is a promising method which combines many laser channels to obtain much higher peak power than a single channel. In this work, phase effects of coherent beam combining for large-aperture ultrashort laser systems are investigated theoretically. A series of numerical simulations are presented to obtain the requirements of spatial phase for specific goals and the changing trends of requirements for different pulse durations and number of channels. The influence of wavefront distortion on coherent beam combining is also discussed. Some advice is proposed for improving the performance of combining. In total, this work could help to design a practical large-aperture ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser system in the future.


In light of the development of third-generation synchrotron sources which deliver extremely bright radiation beam over a board energy band, tremendous progress has been made in x-ray science and the diverse range of disciplines that can be studied with x-ray. The special properties of synchrotron-produced x-ray such as coherence, polarization, etc., combined with different extreme experimental conditions, can meet almost any requirement of the research for material characterization, imaging, molecular dynamics, surface/interface physics and so on. In this work we will demonstrate how outstanding properties of synchrotron x-ray can be use to study the structural and dynamic properties of rapidly evolving nano -scale interfacial systems. A large part of this thesis is devoted to the investigation of the surface capillary fluctuations of laterally confined supported polystyrene films using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), a young coherent scattering technique that can probes the dynamics of matter. The structural evolution of interfacial/surface system, such as the self-assembled nanoparticle film at water-air interface and the nano- imprinted polystyrene pattern, can be studied by different time-resolved x-ray small angle scattering techniques in grazing incidence geometry (GISAXS,GIXOS,GID), as well as the conventional specular reflectivity (XR) measurement. Particularly in the case of the liquid surface research, special efforts have been made to improve a recently developed diffuse scattering technique Grazing incidence off-specular x-ray scattering (GIXOS) for probing the structure at liquid interface with much better temporal resolution compared with that of XR. In this work We will present all the experimental results together with conclusive data analysis from the studies of these evolving systems with x-ray scattering techniques. In comparison to the reciprocal space studies with x-ray scattering tools, part of this thesis is devoted to the experiments using real space probes such as optical microscope and Atomic force microscope (AFM)


We established hepatitis C virus (HCV) core-expressing cells and investigated whether HCV core would modify the Janus kinase (JAK)-signal transducer and activator transcription factor (STAT) pathway under interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interferon (IFN)-gamma stimuli. Phosphorylation of JAK1/2 and STAT3, and STAT3-mediated transcription, were prevented by HCV core under IL-6 stimulation. In contrast, HCV core increased phosphorylation of JAK1/2 and STAT1 and STAT1-mediated transcription under IFN-gamma stimulation. Immunoprecipitation/Western blot analysis showed that HCV core could bind to JAK1/2. The PGYPWP sequences at codons 79-84 within HCV core were important for interaction with JAKs by in vitro binding analysis. In the reporter gene assay, HCV core-mediated suppression of JAK-STAT pathway under IL-6 stimulation was not observed by abrogation of PGYPWP sequence, suggesting that HCV core/JAK interaction may directly affect the signal transduction. In contrast, augmentation of JAK-STAT pathway was still seen by HCV core without functional PGYPWP sequence under IFN-gamma stimulation. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that HCV core up-regulated of IFN-gamma receptor 2 expression, which may be responsible for HCV core-mediated enhancement of JAK-STAT pathway under IFN-gamma stimulation. In conclusion, HCV core has different effects on the JAK-STAT pathway under IL-6 and IFN-gamma stimuli. This may be exerted by these two independent mechanisms.


Taxonomy is an imprecise science that delimits the evolutionary continuum into discrete categories. For marine mammals, this science is complicated by the relative lack of morphological data for taxa that inhabit remote and often vast ranges. We provide guidelines to promote consistency in studies relying primarily on molecular genetic data to delimit cetacean subspecies from both populations and species. These guidelines identify informational needs: basis for the taxonomic hypothesis being tested, description of current taxonomy, description of relevant life history, sample distribution, sample size, number and sequence length of genetic markers, description of measures taken to ensure data quality, summary statistics for the genetic markers, and analytical methods used to evaluate the genetic data. We propose an initial set of quantitative and qualitative standards based on the types of data and analytical methods most readily available at present. These standards are not expected to be rigidly applied. Rather, they are meant to encourage taxonomic arguments that are consistent and transparent. We hope professional societies, such as the Society for Marine Mammalogy, will adopt quantitative standards that evolve as new data types and analytical methods become widely available.


1. Painful rib syndrome has many similarities to a new classification of pain conditions called myofascial pain syndrome. Both conditions respond well to noninvasive, supportive nursing interventions. 2. Painful rib syndrome is characterized by pain in the upper abdomen or lower chest, a tender spot on the costal margin, and reproduction of pain when pressing on the tender spot or trigger point. 3. The most critical intervention is to explain the benign nature of the condition, and provide support that the pain is real and can be managed. Prognosis is not gender or age specific, but is related to treatment response. 4. Employees and their families living and working with pain syndromes need the nurses' ongoing support and advocacy. Pain syndromes are difficult to diagnose and treatment may not eliminate the pain.


Abstract. Suspended sediment export from large Alpine catchments ( >  1000 km 2)
over decadal timescales is sensitive to a number of factors, including
long-term variations in climate, the activation–deactivation of different
sediment sources (proglacial areas, hillslopes, etc.), transport through the
fluvial system, and potential anthropogenic impacts on the sediment flux
(e.g. through impoundments and flow regulation). Here, we report on a marked
increase in suspended sediment concentrations observed near the outlet of the
upper Rhone River Basin in the mid-1980s. This increase coincides with a
statistically significant step-like increase in basin-wide mean air
temperature. We explore the possible explanations of the suspended sediment
rise in terms of changes in water discharge (transport capacity), and the
activation of different potential sources of fine sediment (sediment supply)
in the catchment by hydroclimatic forcing. Time series of precipitation and
temperature-driven snowmelt, snow cover, and ice melt simulated with a spatially distributed degree-day model, together
with erosive rainfall on snow-free surfaces, are tested to explore possible
reasons for the rise in suspended sediment concentration. We show that the
abrupt change in air temperature reduced snow cover and the contribution of
snowmelt, and enhanced ice melt. The results of statistical tests show that
the onset of increased ice melt was likely to play a dominant role in the
suspended sediment concentration rise in the mid-1980s. Temperature-driven
enhanced melting of glaciers, which cover about 10 % of the catchment
surface, can increase suspended sediment yields through an increased
contribution of sediment-rich glacial meltwater, increased sediment
availability due to glacier recession, and increased runoff from
sediment-rich proglacial areas. The reduced extent and duration of snow cover
in the catchment are also potential contributors to the rise in suspended
sediment concentration through hillslope erosion by rainfall on snow-free
surfaces, and increased meltwater production on snow-free glacier surfaces.
Despite the rise in air temperature, changes in mean discharge in the
mid-1980s were not statistically significant, and their interpretation is
complicated by hydropower reservoir management and the flushing operations at
intakes. Overall, the results show that to explain changes in suspended
sediment transport from large Alpine catchments it is necessary to include an
understanding of the multitude of sediment sources involved together with the
hydroclimatic conditioning of their activation (e.g. changes in
precipitation, runoff, air temperature). In addition, this study points out
that climate signals in suspended sediment dynamics may be visible even in
highly regulated and human-impacted systems. This is particularly relevant
for quantifying climate change and hydropower impacts on streamflow and
sediment budgets in Alpine catchments.


Findings on the efficacy of nutritional supplements used by athletes are reviewed. Many athletes have turned away from anabolic steroids and toward nutritional supplements in the hope of gaining a competitive edge without threatening their health. Athletes may require slightly more protein than sedentary people do to maintain positive nitrogen balance, but it is dubious whether extra dietary protein will help someone to achieve athletic goals. Purified amino acids have become a popular if expensive form of protein supplementation; there is no scientific evidence, however, to support their use. Excessive protein supplementation can lead to dehydration, gout, liver and kidney damage, calcium loss, and gastrointestinal effects. Supplementation with vitamins and minerals in excess of recommended daily allowances appears to have no effect on muscle mass or athletic performance. Other substances touted as having ergogenic properties are carnitine, cobamamide, growth hormone releasers, octacosanol, and ginseng; again, there is no reliable scientific evidence to support claims that products containing these compounds have ergogenic potential, and heavy supplementation may lead to adverse effects. Nutritional supplements are promoted through unsubstantiated claims by magazine advertisements, health food stores, coaches, and other sources. The FDA considers nutritional supplements to be foodstuffs, not drugs, and therefore has not required that they be proved safe and effective. Dosage guidelines are inadequate, and quality control is poor. The FDA has begun to revise regulations governing labeling and health claims for these products. There is little if any evidence that nutritional supplements have ergogenic effects in athletes consuming a balanced diet, and some products have the potential for harm.


Ecological modernization is emerging as a new paradigm for the environmental improvement of advanced nations. Rather than emphasize the use of remedial technologies as has been customary since the 1970s, this approach reframes the relationship between economics and the environment to overcome the zero-sum antagonism of the earlier era. This transformation faces numerous obstacles, and ultimate success will depend on a wide range of predisposing national characteristics, including institutional design and economic organization. The current analysis focuses specifically on an often overlooked third factor, cultural endowment, examining the extent to which it will likely condition the capability of individual nations to meet these challenges. Particularly important cultural attributes for ecological modernization are a strong public commitment to science and a robust environmental consciousness. Using data from several cross-national sources, including the Euro-Barometer, the World Values Survey, and the International Social Survey Programme, this analysis assesses the cultural capacities of a sample of fifteen advanced nations. The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, because of widespread lay respect for science and extensive public endorsement of environmental protection, appear to have enhanced cultural potential to pursue ecological modernization.


This paper proposes a design methodology for an active power filter (APF) system to suppress the second harmonic subgroup injected by an AC electric arc furnace (EAF) to the utility grid. The APF system is composed of identical parallel units connected to the utility grid via a specially-designed coupling transformer. Each APF converter is a three-phase three-wire two-level voltage source converter (VSC). The number of parallel APF units, coupling transformer MVA rating, and turns ratio are optimized in the view of the ratings of commercially-available high voltage (HV) IGBTs. In this research work, line current waveforms sampled at 25.6-kS/s on the medium voltage (MV) side of a 65-MVA EAF transformer are then used to extract the second harmonic subgroup, 95-, 100-, and 105-Hz current components, by multiple synchronous reference frame (MSRF) analysis, which was previously proposed to decompose EAF current interharmonics and harmonics in real-time. By summing up this digital data of the second harmonic subgroup, the reference current signal for the APF system is produced in real-time. A detailed model of the APF system is then run on EMTDC/PSCAD to follow the produced reference current signal according to hysteresis band control philosophy. The simulation results show that the proposed APF system can successfully suppress the second harmonic subgroup of an AC EAF.


Background To determine the effectiveness of high-fidelity simulation for team training, a valid and reliable tool is required. This study investigated the internal consistency, inter-rater reliability and test–retest reliability of two newly developed tools to assess obstetrical team performance. Methods After research ethics board approval, multidisciplinary obstetrical teams participated in three sessions separated by 5–9 months and managed four high-fidelity simulation scenarios. Two tools, an 18-item Assessment of Obstetric Team Performance (AOTP) and a six-item Global Assessment of Obstetric Team Performance (GAOTP) were used.5 Eight reviewers rated the DVDs of all teams' performances. Results Two AOTP items were consistently incomplete and omitted from the analyses. Cronbach's α for the 16-item AOTP was 0.96, and 0.91 for the six-item GAOTP. The eight-rater α for the GAOTP was 0.81 (single-rater intra-class correlation coefficient, 0.34) indicating acceptable inter-rater reliability. The 'four-scenario' α for the 12 teams was 0.79 for session 1, 0.88 for session 2, and 0.86 for session 3, suggesting that performance is not being strongly affected by the context specificity of the cases. Pearson's correlation of team performance scores for the four scenarios were 0.59, 0.35, 0.40 and 0.33, and for the total score across scenarios it was 0.47, indicating moderate test–retest reliability. Conclusions The results from this study indicate that the GAOTP would be a sufficient assessment tool for obstetrical team performance using simulation provided that it is used to assess teams with at least eight raters to ensure a sufficiently stable score. This could allow the quantitative evaluation of an educational intervention.


We consider the Ginzburg-Landau equation, @ t u = @ 2 x u+uujuj 2 , with complex amplitude u(x; t). We first analyze the phenomenon of phase slips as a consequence of the local shape of u. We next prove a global theorem about evolution from an Eckhaus unstable state, all the way to the limiting stable finite state, for periodic perturbations of Eckhaus unstable periodic initial data. Equipped with these results, we proceed to prove the corresponding phenomena for the fourth order Swift-Hohenberg equation, of which the Ginzburg-Landau equation is the amplitude approximation. This sheds light on how one should deal with local and global aspects of phase slips for this and many other similar systems.


The authors have investigated the possibility of using sera with cold auto-lymphocytotoxic antibodies for the differential diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and malignant non-Hodgkin's disease (MNHD) at the stage of leukemization. The new rapid immunologic method was approved in the diagnosis of 40 CLL and 52 MNHD patients. The high informative value of this method has permitted the authors to recommend its use as an additional procedure for the differential diagnosis of the above lympho-proliferative diseases.


Geodetic data and field observations demonstrate that the emplacement of dikes in volcanic rift zones frequently generates normal faulting and graben subsidence at the Earth9s surface. Elastic modeling of the vertical ground-surface displacements above dikes and faults indicates that the extent of graben subsidence can be achieved only if fault slip extends virtually to or beyond the dike plane at depth. A mechanical model that includes dikes and frictional faults shows that dike opening tends to compress and lock faults located to either side of the dike. Therefore, slip extending into or beyond the dike cavity must occur either (1) on faults that intersect the dike near its top, above the zone of dike-induced compression, or (2) on faults that slip ahead of the dike as it propagates laterally. Data from Iceland indicate that slip occurred on deep faults that presumably slipped in advance of the laterally propagating dike.


The practical learning through fieldwork is an integral part of social work education and practice. Learning by doing is the most acceptable methodology. Fieldwork practice facilitates the future of social work professionals through competent training facilities and developing appropriate skills and competencies. It provides an opportunity and exposure to working in various settings to the students. Urban Slums and other informal settlements are areas where social work students are placed for practicing the theoretical inputs. These settlements depict a picture of poverty characterized by substandard housing, illegal and inadequate building structures, overcrowding and high density, unhealthy living conditions, and hazardous locations. The present paper is qualitative and is based on the thematic content analysis of fieldwork case records of ten students who were placed in a community setting in different slums of Delhi. Through analysis, it has been noticed that students have tried to understand the community and its demographics. The community concerns have been underscored that range from lack of sanitation, education and health facilities, potable drinking water to poor quality of infrastructural facilities that indicated denial of basic services. This creates a complex web of urban poverty symbolizing deprivation and social exclusion for the residents. In these informal settlements of India, the challenges for the fieldwork practice have remained to understand the basic issues and address them through information, awareness generation, and sensitization rather than inducing structural changes.


In 1972 Gary Meisters and Wolfgang Schmidt showed that if the Fourier coefficient of a function is zero at the origin, then the function is a sum of three first order differences. They deduced from this that every translation invariant linear form on the space of square integrable functions on the circle group is automatically continuous. Their results were subsequently developed by the author for the case of n-dimensional Euclidean space (Lectures Notes in Mathematics, vol. 1586, Springer-Verlag,1994). The present paper gives an exposition of some of the ideas in this work, with the aim of minimising the technicalities. In particular, it is shown that if we differentiate s times the functions in the Sobolev space of order s on the real line, we obtain as the range of this operator a difference space of order s, where the form of the differences in this space can be explicitly described. This difference space is a Hilbert space, and the operation of differentiation s times is an isometry between these spaces. Whereas finite differences have long been used to approximate derivatives "locally", these results reveal the precise "global" relationship. The main technique involves understanding how the operation of taking a derivative or a finite difference of a function affects the behaviour of the Fourier transform of the function near the origin on the real line.


Synopsis

This case involves the March of Dimes (MOD) Foundation, the "leading nonprofit organization for pregnancy and baby health." MOD's mission was to support medical research, organize volunteer workers, and provide community services and education to save babies' lives (www.marchofdimes.org). The strategic issue in the case involves creating awareness of both the mission and services of MOD and the critical issue driving that mission – premature births. The organization must create a desire for various target markets to take action in response to the problem. The main protagonist is Doug Staples, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications.

Research methodology

Data were collected via personal interviews with the primary protagonists, Doug Staples, and Mike Swenson of the Barkley agency. The MOD provided quantitative Gallup studies they commissioned, as well as documents unveiling the roll-out in the San Jose, CA region. The Barkley Agency provided qualitative data from a study which consisted of eight focus groups conducted in two markets and ten personal interviews. Secondary research was used to provide a support for industry and market data, to supplement organizational facts provided by the MOD, and to identify and link marketing theory to the situations provided in the case. The organization, facts and characters in this case were not disguised. MOD was consulted throughout the case development process.

Relevant courses and levels

This case study is recommended for marketing courses at the undergraduate level. It is most appropriate for marketing management, introductory marketing, or marketing strategy classes. Additionally, this case is a good fit for courses focused upon not-for-profit marketing issues.

Theoretical bases

The strongest opportunities to apply theory using this case relate to branding (see De Chernatony and Dall'Olmo Riley, 1998 for a content analysis of the brand literature). These theories include brand image and personality (Aaker, 1997; Belk, 1998; Grohmann, 2009), brand awareness (Aaker, 2002), brand involvement and customer loyalty (Brakus et al., 2009), brand engagement (Sprott et al., 2009), brand relationships (Breivik and Thorbjornsen, 2008), and brand equity (Aaker, 2002, 2008). Specifically, question 2 addresses brand personality, and questions 3 and 4 explore relationships with the brand such as the emotional power of the brand and brand association. Question 6 focuses on positioning strategy.


Although standard anticonvulsants are effective in achieving complete seizure control in the majority of patients, an appreciable proportion (about 20 to 25%) is at least in part resistant to conventional pharmacotherapy. Efficacy of carbamazepine, phenytoin, phenobarbital and valproate is very similar. Should one drug fail because of inadequate efficacy and unacceptable adverse effects, an alternative monotherapy should be used. Surgical treatment is a possible therapeutic option for only some of these patients. The development of newer, more effective drugs, such as vigabatrin, lamotrigine, gabapentin and oxcarbazepine, for monotherapy is desirable. The search for new antiepileptic agents is reasonable in order to reduce the proportion of drug-resistant patients. The choice of conventional or new drugs should include not only expected efficacy and risk of adverse effects, but also pharmacokinetic properties and expense. Consequently, no general rule is appropriate, and each decision and recommendation for treatment should be individualized.


Because leakage accident of transportable toxicant has its characteristics such as great harmfulness and widely poisoning area, thus physicochemical properties of toxicant, toxicant leakage, leaking time, leaking speed are fully considered in the article. The hemisphere diffusion theory is used to analyse the diffusion orbit and define the diffusion areas of the transportable toxicant. With the disaster rescues for fire forces, on the premise that the rescue combat time, area and countermeasure are scientifically established, fire brigade combat command and decision is defined when the leakage traffic accident is happened. These will provide scientific foundation for fire forces to organize personnel evacuation and deal with the leakage accident of toxicant.


The precision control of the injection process in micro injection molding demands precise tracking of the moment that melt front passes through the nozzle so that accurate prediction of the amount of melt being injected into the mould can be achieved. The tracking accuracy, to large extent, depends on the processing of pressure signals followed by the identification of the critical moment that melt front reaches the nozzle. A new adaptive Kalman filter was introduced in this study to calculate and predict the amount of melt injected. The filter eliminated the delay error and was more robust than other filters. The adaptive Kalman filter switches between two Qs for steadystate and transient estimations, allowing resetting of the Kalman gain so that convergence is speeded up in calculations. Experimental and simulation results prove the effectiveness of the method proposed.


Mature microRNAs (miRNAs), derived through cleavage of pre-miRNAs by the Dicer1 enzyme, regulate protein expression in many cell-types including cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. To investigate the importance of miRNAs in mouse insulin secreting β-cells, we have generated mice with a β-cells specific disruption of the Dicer1 gene using the Cre-lox system controlled by the rat insulin promoter (RIP). In contrast to their normoglycaemic control littermates (RIP-Cre+/− Dicer1 Δ/wt), RIP-Cre+/− Dicer1flox/flox mice (RIP-Cre Dicer1 Δ/Δ) developed progressive hyperglycaemia and full-blown diabetes mellitus in adulthood that recapitulated the natural history of the spontaneous disease in mice. Reduced insulin gene expression and concomitant reduced insulin secretion preceded the hyperglycaemic state and diabetes development. Immunohistochemical, flow cytometric and ultrastructural analyses revealed altered islet morphology, marked decreased β-cell mass, reduced numbers of granules within the β-cells and reduced granule docking in adult RIP-Cre Dicer1 Δ/Δ mice. β-cell specific Dicer1 deletion did not appear to disrupt fetal and neonatal β-cell development as 2-week old RIP-Cre Dicer1 Δ/Δ mice showed ultrastructurally normal β-cells and intact insulin secretion. In conclusion, we have demonstrated that a β-cell specific disruption of the miRNAs network, although allowing for apparently normal β-cell development, leads to progressive impairment of insulin secretion, glucose homeostasis and diabetes development.


Reviewed by John Barnes Many students at The Masters or Doctoral levels will benefit from Mann's many years as a research librarian. The cover of the book contains glowing testimonials to Mann's erudition and skill on his subject of library research. And the book is in it's fourth edition which supports their claim. This book will be of invaluable assistance to students at the MBA and Doctoral levels and to Ajarn and library staff teaching research students. The book comprises the following chapters each of which is subdivided into specific easy to handle components: Preface; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Initial Overview; Chapter 2: Subject Headings and The Library Catalogue; Chapter 3; General Browsing and Focused Browsing; Chapter 4: Subject Headings and Descriptors in Data Bases for Journal Articles; Chapter 5: Keyword Searches; Chapter 6: Citation Searches; Chapter 7; Related Record Searches; Chapter 8:Higher-Level Overview Sources: Literature Review Articles Chapter 9:Published Subject Bibliographies; Chapter 10: Truncations, Combinations and Limitations; Chapter 11: Locating Material in other Libraries; Chapter 12: People Source; Chapter 13: Hidden Treasures; Chapter 14: Special Subjects and Formats; Chapter 15: Reference Sources: Types of Literature; Appendix A:Wisdom and Information Science. Appendix B: Scholarship vs Quick Information Seeking; Notes; Index Conclusion This book is highly recommended to both faculty, students and research librarians The volume quickly gets to the point and carefully explains each issue. The author recommends specific resources which experience has taught him are the best in their specific library and research applications. .


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two decades it has become clear that each of these items should be
considered and evovolve in its own right, as suggested in RFC 2181.
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The main function of differentiated skeletal muscle is contraction, allowing for movement. However, contraction also has important developmental roles and thus is indispensable for proper muscle formation and organization. On a molecular level, the initiation of skeletal muscle contraction relies on the interplay of two mechanically coupled Ca2+ channels - the principal subunit of the 1,4 dihydropyridine receptor (Cav1.1) and the type 1 ryanodine receptor (RYR1), the key event in the process of excitation-contraction coupling (ECC). While multiple functional and structural studies over the last decades have led to a deeper understanding of the roles of Cav1.1 and RYR1 in ECC, their specific involvement in muscle development and in gene expression remains obscure.
The present work analyzes the morphological and global transcriptomic changes occurring in limb skeletal muscle from RYR1- and Cav1.1-deficient (RYR1-/- and Cav1.1-/-, respectively) mice at the beginning (E14.5) and at the end (E18.5) of secondary myogenesis. In both models initial muscle structure alterations are already observable E14.5. At this stage, increased apoptosis is observed only in Cav1.1-/- limb skeletal muscle. Microarray analyses reveal discrete transcriptomic changes in both mutants at E14.5, with downregulation of genes primarily associated with innervation and neuron development in RYR1-/-, and with muscle contraction in Cav1.1-/- skeletal muscle. At E18.5, both RYR1-/- and Cav1.1-/- skeletal muscles are characterized by more severe structural malformation, fibrosis, and signs of developmental retardation. At this stage a high number of the detected differentially expressed genes (DEGs) overlap i RYR1 /- and Cav1.1-/-. Both mutants display a failure to upregulate the expression of many genes involved in the buildup of the contractile machinery and exhibit changes in the expression of global signaling pathways and multiple microRNAs. Mutant-specific transcriptomic changes point to changes in the composition of the extracellular matrix in RYR1-/- muscle and in the lipid metabolism in Cav1.1-/- muscle. Finally, the absence of RYR1 in RYR1-/- mice alters the ratio of Cav1.1 splice variants at E14.5, and the total Cav1.1 mRNA levels at E18.5.
Taken together, the results of this work highlight the importance of Cav1.1 and RYR1 for the proper execution of the developmental gene expression program during secondary myogenesis in mouse limb skeletal muscle. Furthermore, it provides insights into mutual but also specific roles of each Ca2+ channel during skeletal muscle development.


Extracting practical information from the large amounts of data gathered during the live imaging analysis of plant organs is a challenging issue. The present work investigates the use of the logistic growth model to analyze experimental data from root elongation assays performed in milli-fluidic devices with in situ imaging. Lactuca sativa was used as a bioindicator and was subjected to wide concentration ranges of four different herbicides: 2,4-D, atrazine, glyphosate, and paraquat. The model parameters were directly connected to standard indicators of toxicity and plant development, such as the LD50 and the absolute growth rate, respectively. In addition, it was found that realistic predictions of the maximum root length can be achieved about 60 h before the bioassay end point, which could significantly shorten the turnaround time. The combination of milli-fluidic devices, real-time imaging, and model-based data analysis becomes a powerful tool for environmental studies and ecotoxicity testing.


In the Main Ethiopian Rift (MER), the supply of drinking water principally relies on groundwater wells,
springs (including some hot springs), and rivers, and is characterized by a significant problem of
fluoride (F¯) contamination. New analyses reveal that the F− geochemical anomaly is sometimes
associated with hazardous content of other potentially toxic elements such as As, B, Mo, U, Al, Fe, and
Mn. The F¯ content exceeds the permissible limit for drinking prescribed by the World Health
Organization (WHO; 1.5 mg/L) in many important wells (up to 20 mg/L), with even more extreme F
concentration in hot springs and alkaline lakes (up to 97 mg/L and 384 mg/L respectively) and is
causing prevalent endemic fluorosis disease in the region.
87 % of the groundwater wells, 38 % of rivers and 100 % of hot springs and lakes show F¯ content
above 1.5 mg/L. The groundwater and surface water from the highlands, typically characterized by low
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and Ca2+ (Mg2+)-HCO3¯ hydrochemical facies, do not show high F¯
content. The subsequent interaction of these waters with the various rocks of the rift valley induces a
general increase of the TDS and a variation of the chemical signature towards Na+-HCO3¯
compositions, with a parallel enrichment of F¯. The interacting matrixes are mainly rhyolites consisting
of volcanic glass and only rare F-bearing accessory minerals (such as alkali amphibole).
Comparing the abundance and the composition of the glassy groundmass with other mineral phases, it
appears that the former stores most of the total F¯ budget. This glassy material is extremely reactive,
and its weathering products (i.e. fluvio/volcano-lacustrine sediments) further concentrate the fluoride.
The interaction of these "weathered/reworked" volcanic products with water and carbon dioxide at high
pH causes the release of fluoride into the interacting water. This mainly occurs by a process of baseexchange
softening with the neo-formed clay minerals (i.e. Ca-Mg uptake by the aquifer matrix, with
release of Na+ into the groundwater). This is plausibly the main enrichment mechanism that explains
the high F¯ content of the local groundwater, as evidenced by positive correlation between F¯, pH, and
Na+, and inverse correlation between F¯ and Ca2+ (Mg2+). Saturation indices (SI) were calculated (using
PHREEQC-2) for the different water groups, highlighting that the studied waters are undersaturated in
fluorite. In these conditions, fluoride can not precipitate as CaF2, and so F¯ mobilizes freely without
forming other complexes.
On the other hand, 35 % of the 23 investigated groundwater wells and 70 % of the 12 hot springs (and
deep geothermal wells) show Arsenic concentration above the recommended limit of 10μg/L (WHO
2006). The average concentration of Arsenic is 0.9μg/L in rivers, 39μg/L in hot springs, 236μg/L in
deep geothermal wells, 21.4μg/L in groundwater wells, 77μg/L in lakes, whereas maximum
concentrations reach up to 3μg/L, 156μg/L, 278μg/L, 157μg/L and 405 μg/L respectively. Arsenic in
groundwater wells shows positive correlations with Na+ (R2=0.63) and HCO3
− (R2=0.70) as well as with
other trace elements such as Mo (R2=0.79), U (R2=0.70), V (R2=0.68) whereas no correlations are
observed with Fe and Mn. PHREEQC speciation modelling indicates that Fe and Al oxides and
hydroxides are stable in the water systems, suggesting that Fe and Al mineral phases are potential
adsorbents and thus influence the mobility of As. The oxidizing, high pH condition combined with Na+-
HCO3¯ hydrochemical facies (competing effect of HCO3
− for adsorption sites) of the MER waters play
an important role in the mobilization of arsenic.
Chemical analyses of leachates from MER rhyolitic rocks and their weathered and reworked fluviolacustrine
sediments were performed in order to evaluate their contribution as a source of the mentioned
geochemical anomalies. The leachates were obtained from a one-year leaching experiment on powdered
rocks and sediments mixed with distilled water (10g:50ml). The sediment leachates contain as much as
7.6 mg/L of F¯, 220 μg/L of As, 181 μg/L of Mo, 64 μg/L of U and 254 μg/L of V suggesting that the
local sediments represent the main source and reservoir of toxic elements. Laboratory column
experiment was also conducted in volcanic ash sample using synthetic rain water flushing, and the result
showed that significant amount of F¯ were leached out over the duration of the experiments.
This showed that these elements were originally present in the glassy portion of the MER rhyolitic
rocks, were progressively concentrated in weathered and redeposited products. It further confirms that
the pyroclastic materials are the major source and reservoir of many of the chemical elements (e.g. F¯,
As). Therefore, together with the renowned F¯ problem, the possible presence of geochemical
anomalies in As, B, Mo, V, U, Al, Fe, and Mn have to be taken into consideration in water quality issues
and future works has to investigate their possible health impact on the population of MER and other
sectors of the east African rift.
The stable δ18O, δD and radiogenic (87Sr/86Sr) isotopic composition of waters and representative
volcanic rocks (Ignimbrite and basalt) were carried out during this study. Different ranges of isotopic
values were recorded for different water groups: 10 hot spring samples show δ18O value with in the range of (-3.36‰ – 3.69‰) and δD (-0.95‰ – 24.23‰) (VSMOW), 12 groundwater wells δ18O (-
3.99‰ – 5.14‰) and δD (-19.69‰ – 32.27‰) in contrast to the 5 Lakes δ18O (3.98‰ – 7.92‰) and δD
(26.19‰ – 45.71‰). The 2 deep geothermal wells and 1 of the 2 river samples are depleted in stable
isotopic values. 87Sr/86Sr values range from 0.7045 to 0.7076 in the hot springs, and the two deep
geothermal wells have 0.7043 and 0.7054 values. These signatures are typical of water interacted with
mantle derived materials (with a minor crustal contamination), similar to the rocks widely covering the
study area. The Sr isotope values of the basalt and ignimbrite samples are 0.7063 and 0.7071
respectively. Generally, the result shows that there exists a complex surface water and groundwater
interactions that is reflected on a diversity of the stable and Sr isotopic signature in waters.
The preliminary results of the study has showed that there is a need for future extended works on the
geochemistry of solid samples (rocks, sediments and soils) as well as in waters that investigate all the
spectrum of chemical elements that are potentially detrimental to human health and environment.
Furthermore, from water resource point of view, the following works must focus on a comprehensive
study of various isotopes and geochemical data to constrain groundwater age dating, water-rock
interaction and flow path and thus help to model and systematize the hydrologic cycles in the basin.


WHO estimates that in 2009, 9.4 million people developed tuberculosis and 1.7 million died of the disease worldwide. 1 In the UK, incidence has risen over the past two decades; most cases are in vulnerable groups such as migrants, people who are homeless, or those with a history of imprisonment.2 Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG) vaccine offers 70-80% efficacy against severe forms of tuberculosis in childhood, particularly meningitis in infancy.3 4 When given later in life, efficacy against tuberculosis (which, in adults, commonly presents as pulmonary disease) varies in different regions of the world, for reasons that are not clearly understood.3 5 The failure of BCG to protect adults in some populations—in particular in some studies in India6—has sometimes been wrongly generalised to suggest that BCG never protects against pulmonary disease. However, the Medical Research Council trial established that use of BCG in school age children in the UK was highly effective against tuberculosis (80%).7

On the basis of criteria from the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease,8 universal BCG vaccination of school children with a negative tuberculin skin test (aimed at preventing the peak of tuberculosis in young adults in the UK) was discontinued in 2005. Current policy recommends vaccination in infancy of children in high risk groups to prevent severe forms of childhood tuberculosis,9 10 and this practice is cost effective.4 Uncertainty remains, however, about how long …


The use of games as a method for planning and designing cities is often associated with visualisation, from simplistic to immersive environments. They can also include complex and sophisticated models which provide an evidence base. The use of such technology as artefacts, aids, or mechanics curates the player experience in different and very often subtle ways, influencing how we engage with (simulated) urban phenomena, and, therefore, how the games can be used. In this article, we aim to explore how different aspects of technology use in city games influence the player experience and game outcomes. The article describes two games built upon the same city gaming framework, played with professionals in Rome and Haifa, respectively. Using a mixed-method, action research approach, the article examines how the high-tech, free form single-player games elicit the mental models of players (traffic controllers and planners in both cases). Questionnaires and the players' reflections on the gameplay, models used, and outcomes have been transcribed and analysed. Observations and results point to several dimensions that are critical to the outcomes of digital city games. Agency, exploration, openness, complexity, and learning are aspects that are strongly influenced by technology and models, and in turn, determine the outcomes of the game. City games that balance these aspects unlock player expertise to better understand the game dynamics and enable their imagination to better negotiate and resolve conflicts in design and planning.


Introduction: There has been increasing interest in the use of stemless humeral implants for total shoulder arthroplasty when compared with both short-stem (SS) and standard-length implants. Although evidence for decreased surgical time and blood loss exists for stemless versus standard-length stems, far less literature exists comparing these clinical parameters for stemless versus SS implants. Methods: A retrospective review of consecutive anatomic total shoulder arthroplasty (aTSA) cases conducted by a single, fellowship-trained shoulder surgeon was undertaken from January 2016 through January 2022 with the exception of March 2020 through January 2021 secondary to the COVID-19 pandemic. Demographic patient and surgical data, including age, sex, body mass index, American Society of Anesthesiologists score, age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index, prior ipsilateral shoulder arthroscopy, surgical time, use of a Hemovac drain and/or tranexamic acid, hospital length of stay (LOS), and both postoperative day #1 (POD 1) and discharge visual analog scores. The use of a stemless or SS implant was recorded. Intraoperative total blood volume loss (TBVL) was calculated, in addition to the need for either intraoperative or postoperative transfusions. Nonparametric analysis of covariance was used to examine effects of stemless versus SS aTSA on surgical time and intraoperative TBVL adjusted for demographic, clinical, and surgical variables. Results: There were 47 SS and 83 stemless anatomic implants included, of which 74 patients (57%) overall were women. The median surgical time for the stemless cohort was 111 minutes (IQR 96-130) versus 137 minutes (IQR 113-169) for the SS cohort (P < 0.00001). The median intraoperative TBVL for the stemless cohort was 298.3 mL (IQR 212.6-402.8) versus 359.7 mL (IQR 253.9-415.0) for the SS cohort (P = 0.05). After multivariable regression analysis, use of stemless humeral implants was independently associated with both decreased surgical time and intraoperative blood loss (P < 0.001 and P = 0.005, respectively). There was a shorter median hospital LOS in the stemless group (2 days [IQR 1-2] versus 2 days [IQR 2-3], P = 0.03). The visual analog score pain score at discharge was lower among the stemless cohort (0 [IQR 0-3] versus 4 [IQR 2-6], P < 0.00001). Increased surgical time was associated with intraoperative TBVL (r = 0.340, P < 0.0001). Discussion: Stemless aTSA is associated with a markedly decreased surgical time and intraoperative TBVL when compared with a SS aTSA. Furthermore, the use of a stemless implant results in a shorter hospital LOS and lower discharge pain scores.


The inflammation is a basis of pathogenesis of an atherosclerosis and destabilization of the atherosclerotic plaque. However ways of liquidation of inflammatory process at this disease are not found. Heterogeneity of initiation of the system inflammatory answer at an atherosclerosis causes necessity of studying factors of an inflammation and its correlation with traditional metabolic disorders at an atherosclerosis of various localizations. Proteins of acute phase of an inflammation, general blood count and markers of oxidizing stress are analyzed in this article. Materials and methods of research included the analysis of the clinic and laboratory data at 30 patients with a peripheral (in iliac-femoral arterial pool) atherosclerosis (PA) and at 43 patients with coronary atherosclerosis (CA). It is established, that all patients have high level of C-reactive protein (CRP) in blood serum. It increases more, then 2 times concerning the control at all patients, but relationships of cause and effect of this increase at PА and CА were various. There are strong and positive correlation between CRP and blood glucose level, between CRP and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, CRP and triglycerides at CA patients. There was found correlation between CRP and body mass index, CRP and systolic blood pressure (SBP) at CA patients. This data suggest that the inflammation at CА is closely connected with metabolic disorders. On the contrary, at a peripheral atherosclerosis this dependence is not revealed. Correlation between CRP and total white blood cells (WBC) was (r = 62, p > 0,05), its specifies the contribution of local inflammatory reaction of peripheral tissues after chronic ischemia at PA patients. Expressed correlation between blood glucose, SBP and an inflammation, testifies to importance of metabolic syndrome in inflammation development at CA patients. Comparative estimation of inflammatory factors at peripheral and coronary atherosclerosis has shown that PA is characterized by the inflammatory reaction with high CRP level which correlates with a WBC accumulation; the oxidizing stress has the compensated character. CA is characterized by high CRP level which correlates with components of a metabolic syndrome; oxidizing stress is strong and accompanied by activation of antioxidant systems.


The breadth of the humoral immune response following SARS-CoV-2 infection was indicated to be important for recovery from COVID-19. Recent studies have provided valuable insights regarding the dynamics of the antibody response in symptomatic COVID-19 patients. However, the information regarding the dynamics of the serological and cellular memory in COVID-19 recovered patients in scarce. It is imperative to determine the persistence of humoral memory in COVID-19 recovered patients as it will help to evaluate the susceptibility of recovered patients to re-infection. Here, we describe the dynamics of both the SARS-CoV-2 specific serological and B cell response in COVID-19 recovered patients. We found that symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 patients mount a robust antibody response following infection however, the serological memory decays in recovered patients over the period of 6 months. On the other hand, the B cell response as observed in the SARS-CoV-2 specific memory B cell compartment, was found to be stable over time. Moreover, the frequency of SARS-CoV-2 specific B cell plasmablasts was found to be associated with the SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody levels. These data, suggests that the differentiation of short-lived plasmablasts to become long-lived plasma cells is impaired and the main contributor of antibody production are the short-lived plasmablasts. Overall, our data provides insights regarding the humoral memory persistence in recovered COVID-19 patients. Notwithstanding the insights from this study, it is still to be determined if the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 memory B cells can be considered as a correlate of protection in the absence of serological memory.


The authors were asked to discuss specific methodological approaches to evaluating three hypothetical interventions. This article uses this forum to discuss three misperceptions about randomised trials. First, nobody argues that randomised trials are appropriate in all settings, and for all questions. Everyone agrees that asking the right question is the highest priority. Second, the decision about what to measure and how to measure it, that is, through qualitative or participatory methods versus quantitative survey or administrative data methods, is independent of the decision about whether to conduct a randomised trial. Third, randomised trials can be used to evaluate complex and dynamic processes, not just simple and static interventions. Evaluators should aim to answer the most important questions for future decisions, and to do so as reliably as possible. Reliability is improved with randomised trials, when feasible, and with attention to underlying theory and tests of why interventions work or fail so that lessons can be transferred as best as possible to other settings.


In recent years, there has been an increase in the international activities of local governments in Turkey. Local governments conduct international activities by establishing sister city relations, becoming members of international organizations, and signing cooperation protocols, and memoranda of understanding/goodwill letters. The present study aimed to investigate the activities regarding the international relations of local governments in Turkey. In the study, lectures on international activities, following the description of theoretical, historical and legal backgrounds of international relations, the statistical data on the activities of local governments in Turkey are presented, and some observations and assessments were made through the information obtained from the relevant unit managers of six metropolitan municipalities in Turkey which have the strongest memberships in international organizations. As a result, it was determined that there has been an increase in the number of international relations activities of local governments in Turkey, memberships to these organizations have been effectively carried out, the municipalities have become a member of international organizations which are expected to benefit from, a purpose was determined by these municipalities before becoming a member, and these municipalities have become stakeholders of international organizations and have gained significant benefits through these joint projects.


five days previously. The bridge was swollen, but in spite of the swelling it was seen to be displaced towards the left, while palpation revealed that the right nasal bone was tilted so that its lower edge formed a prominence under the skin. Internally the cartilaginous septum presented a hard vertical bulge: this showed that it also had been fractured or buckled. Under chloroform, by means of external manipulation aided by a flat padded elevator inside the nose, the deformities were easily reduced. With the exception of a padding of gauze inserted for twenty-four hours in the atrium of the nose under the bony bridge no apparatus was applied. The result is a straight nose. There is, however, still a depression on the nasal bridge just below the ends of the nasal bones. This is due to the septal deformity which still exists to some extent.


Topographic change in regions of active deformation is a function of rates of uplift and denudation. The rate of topographic development and change of an actively uplifting mountain range, the Santa Monica Mountains, southern California, was assessed using landscape attributes of the present topography, uplift rates and denudation rates. Landscape features were characterized through analysis of a digital elevation model (DEM). Uplift rates at time scales ranging from 104 to 106 years were constrained with geological cross‐sections and published estimates. Denudation rate was determined from sediment yield data from debris basins in southern California and from the relief of rivers set into geomorphic surfaces of known age. First‐order morphology of the Santa Monica Mountains is set by large‐scale along‐strike variations in structural geometry. Drainage spacing, drainage geometry and to a lesser extent relief are controlled by bedrock strength. Dissection of the range flanks and position of the principal drainage divide are modulated by structural asymmetry and differences in structural relief across the range. Topographic and catchment‐scale relief are ≈300–900 m. Mean denudation rate derived from the sediment yield data and river incision is 0.5±0.3 mm yr−1. Uplift rate across the south flank of the range is ≈0.5±0.4 mm yr−1 and across the north flank is 0.24±0.12 mm yr−1. At least 1.6–2.7 Myr is required to create either the present topographic or the catchment‐scale relief based on either the mean rates of denudation or uplift. Although the landscape has had sufficient time to achieve a steady‐state form, comparison of the time‐scale of uplift and denudation rate variation with probable landscape response times implies the present topography does not represent the steady‐state form.


Recently, semantic segmentation models trained with image-level text supervision have shown promising results in challenging open-world scenarios. However, these models still face difficulties in learning fine-grained semantic alignment at the pixel level and predicting accurate object masks. To address this issue, we propose MixReorg, a novel and straightforward pre-training paradigm for semantic segmentation that enhances a model's ability to reorganize patches mixed across images, exploring both local visual relevance and global semantic coherence. Our approach involves generating fine-grained patch-text pairs data by mixing image patches while preserving the correspondence between patches and text. The model is then trained to minimize the segmentation loss of the mixed images and the two contrastive losses of the original and restored features. With MixReorg as a mask learner, conventional text-supervised semantic segmentation models can achieve highly generalizable pixel-semantic alignment ability, which is crucial for open-world segmentation. After training with large-scale image-text data, MixReorg models can be applied directly to segment visual objects of arbitrary categories, without the need for further fine-tuning. Our proposed framework demonstrates strong performance on popular zero-shot semantic segmentation benchmarks, outperforming GroupViT by significant margins of 5.0%, 6.2%, 2.5%, and 3.4% mIoU on PASCAL VOC2012, PASCAL Context, MS COCO, and ADE20K, respectively.


Continued improvements in deep learning architectures have steadily advanced the overall performance of 3D object detectors to levels on par with humans for certain tasks and datasets, where the overall performance is mostly driven by common examples. However, even the best performing models suffer from the most naive mistakes when it comes to rare examples that do not appear frequently in the training data, such as vehicles with irregular geometries. Most studies in the long-tail literature focus on class-imbalanced classification problems with known imbalanced label counts per class, but they are not directly applicable to the intra-class long-tail examples in problems with large intra-class variations such as 3D object detection, where instances with the same class label can have drastically varied properties such as shapes and sizes. Other works propose to mitigate this problem using active learning based on the criteria of uncertainty, difficulty, or diversity. In this study, we identify a new conceptual dimension - rareness - to mine new data for improving the long-tail performance of models. We show that rareness, as opposed to difficulty, is the key to data-centric improvements for 3D detectors, since rareness is the result of a lack in data support while difficulty is related to the fundamental ambiguity in the problem. We propose a general and effective method to identify the rareness of objects based on density estimation in the feature space using flow models, and propose a principled cost-aware formulation for mining rare object tracks, which improves overall model performance, but more importantly - significantly improves the performance for rare objects (by 30.97\%


BACKGROUND
Bladder cancer is the second most common malignancy of the genito-urinary system. During the past 20 years many phase II clinical trials have investigated the role of chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer. These studies have identified a number of active single-agent cytotoxic drugs such as cisplatin. Although promising results have also been achieved with various combinations of drugs there is no conclusive evidence that chemotherapy improves survival, irrespective of whether it is given before (neoadjuvant or pre-emptive), with (concurrent) or after (adjuvant) local treatment. Despite this, many clinicians now use neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the routine treatment of locally advanced bladder cancer.

OBJECTIVES
The main objective of this review was to investigate whether platinum-based chemotherapy given either before or during local treatment, improves the survival of patients with locally advanced bladder cancer. A further objective was to determine whether there is any evidence that such chemotherapy is more or less effective within well defined subgroups of patients.

SEARCH STRATEGY
MEDLINE and CANCERLIT bibliographic searches were supplemented by information obtained from trial registers and, by hand searching relevant meeting proceedings, and by discussion with relevant trialists and organisations.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Trials were included in the meta-analysis provided they were properly randomised, included patients with advanced bladder cancer and compared local treatment versus the same local treatment plus neoadjuvant or concurrent chemotherapy.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Updated individual patient data were sought from the trialists responsible for all eligible randomised controlled trials (all were unpublished at outset of meta-analysis). Time-to-event analyses of survival were done on intention to treat basis. A sensitivity analysis including summary data from the single trial for which individual patient data were not available was also done. Pre-defined subgroup analyses by age, sex, tumour stage and grade were also carried out.

MAIN RESULTS
Individual data on 479 patients from 4 randomised trials were available. Data extracted from a published report was used for 1 further trial (325 patients) in a supplementary analysis. Analysis of the individual patient data gave an overall hazard ratio of 1.02 in favour of local therapy alone (P = 0.845, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.81 to 1.26). When this analysis was supplemented by data from the only trial for which individual patient information was not available, the hazard ratio was 0.91 in favour of chemotherapy (P = 0.328, 95% confidence interval = 0.75 to 1.10). Neither analysis was conventionally significant. The only prognostic factor for which the evidence suggested a differential treatment effect (interaction) across groups was age (chi(2) test for trend = 3.833, P = 0.05), with younger age groups (< 60 years) showing a possible effect in favour or chemotherapy.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There is insufficient information currently included in this meta-analysis to obtain a definitive answer to the question of whether neoadjuvant cisplatin-based chemotherapy improves the survival of patients with locally advanced bladder cancer. Since the publication of this review by the collaborative group in 1995, 4 additional trials have been completed, although none of these has yet been published in full. The next update of the meta-analysis (planned for 1999/2000) will aim to include source data from these trials and should therefore provide more definitive results.


In chapter 5 of his 1992 book A Study of Concepts, Christopher Peacocke claims that his account of concepts can be reconciled with naturalism. Nonetheless, despite Peacocke's greatest efforts to convince the skeptics that the mentioned accommodation is viable if one accepts his approach to concepts, some suspicion survives. In a recent paper on this very topic, Jose Luis Bermudez raises questions about Peacocke's supposed naturalization by arguing that the approach in question is not able to make sense of the distinction between misapplying a concept one nonetheless possesses and not possessing that concept at all. What I am going to do here is, on the one hand, defend Peacocke's concept naturalization project from Bermudez's objection and, on the other hand, show that the latter's suggestion cannot save the surely crucial distinction between making a mistake in using a concept and being incapable of a mistake or a correct use because of not having the concept.


In order to determine the relative role of neural factors in the regulation of the activity of the eccrine glands of rats during stress, the cytological and cytochemical criteria of their activity that we used earlier (glycogen, isoelectric point of the mitochondria, ratio of light and dark secretory cells) were applied to the eccrine glands of rats with chemical sympathectomy, induced for four-week administration of guanethidine. The level of sweat secretion and the histochemistry of monamine oxidase and cholinesterases were also investigated. It is found that after 2-h immobilization stress and in the case of chemical sympathectomy, the eccrine glands of rats exhibit practically complete similarity in the level of sweat secretion and in various histochemical indices of the activity of the glands and the state of the neuromediator systems. In comparison with the control, in these glands the sweat secretion is increased, there is no glycogen, the number of light secretory cells is increased and the number of dark ones decreased, the isoelectric point of the mitochondria is shifted by a unit of the pH scale in the alkaline direction, the monamine oxidase activity of the mitochondria of the secretory cells and the myelinated nerves is sharply reduced, and the anticholinesterase of the nerves that interlace the gland disappears. In the case of immobilization stress there is an apparent functional denervation of the eccrine glands.


The state of the organization of scientific research activities carried on by higher educational institutions within a frame of the Ministry of Public Health of Ukraine has been analyzed. Data about their scientific potential and the role in the preparation of highest qualification scientific personnel, etc. are presented. Recommendations have been given on further improvement of the organization and an increase of efficiency of research works in the higher medical and postgraduate educational institutions.


Combined piled raft foundation is an efficient foundation for medium rise buildings in which the superimposed load is transferred to the soil by the combined action of pile and raft and facilitates settlement reduction. Raft and pile are combined in a view to reduce the overall settlement of the structure. In this paper, 1g model study is conducted on piled raft foundation subjected to vertical axial loading. The foundation medium adopted is a layered soil profile. As a result of experimental model study, loadsettlement graphs are plotted for various configurations of piled raft where the arrangement, length and spacing of piles are varied. The thickness of raft is kept constant as it has less influence on the capacity. Numerical modeling is done in Plaxis 3D software to validate the results. The major parameter used in this study to identify the best piled raft configuration is the settlement ratio. As a result of the study, when the number of piles increases settlement ratio decreases and becomes negligible beyond a 4x4 pile arrangement, where the spacing between the piles is 3.75D, where 'D' is the diameter of the pile.


This study examined a new hypothesis proposing that the lateral cerebellum is not activated by motor control per se, as widely assumed, but is engaged during the acquisition and discrimination of tactile sensory information. This proposal derives from neurobiological studies of these regions of the rat cerebellum. Magnetic resonance imaging of the lateral cerebellar output nucleus (dentate) of humans during passive and active sensory tasks confirmed four a priori implications of this hypothesis. Dentate nuclei responded to cutaneous stimuli, even when there were no accompanying overt finger movements. Finger movements not associated with tactile sensory discrimination produced no dentate activation. Sensory discrimination with the fingers induced an increase in dentate activation, with or without finger movements. Finally, dentate activity was greatest when there was the most opportunity to modulate the acquisition of the sensory tactile data: when the discrimination involved the active repositioning of tactile sensory surface of the fingers. Furthermore, activity in cerebellar cortex was strongly correlated with observed dentate activity. This distinct four-way pattern of effects strongly challenges other cerebellar theories. However, contrary to appearances, neither our hypothesis nor findings conflict with behavioral effects of cerebellar damage, neurophysiological data on animals performing motor tasks, or cerebellar contribution to nonmotor, perceptual, and cognitive tasks.


This thesis examines the extent to which Green Consumerism has the capacity to confer competitive advantage to the producers and distributors of certain fast moving consumer goods in the Irish retail market. It begins with a review of the literature linking mass consumerism to the major threats which currently beset the environment both on a national and global scale e.g. Ozone depletion and water pollution.

The research section focuses on two major consumer markets, laundry detergents and paper tissues - both of which have been considerably influenced, during the period under review (1992-1996), by consumer concern about the environment.

Senior management figures in the leading companies describe both the level and source of this consumer pressure and provide extensive details of the new initiatives and policies they have introduced as a consequence of it. A central part of this section is an attempt to measure the success of these so-called green marketing initiatives. One of the biggest consumer marketing campaigns ever undertaken in Ireland was conducted in this area by Lever and the objective and outcome of this is evaluated.

The major food retailers in Ireland describe how, in customer panels, a very high level of concern is traditionally expressed about the negative impact of certain consumer goods on the environment. All agree, however, that there is a distinct and wide gap between this level of expressed concern of their customers and their actual buying behaviour.

The 'green brands' which have been launched to appeal to this market segment as less damaging to the environment appear to have failed to win significant market share. Almost all have had to be withdrawn from the supermarket shelves because their rate of sale was considered to be unacceptably low compared with existing standard lines in their category.

Nonetheless, the manufacturers and retailers involved in this study still believe this is an issue which will continue to grow in importance over the coming three years but, they expect, the impetus will no longer be coming from the marketplace but will instead come from Europe and new legislation on pollution and packaging waste.


Chloroplast nucleoids are large, compact nucleoprotein structures containing multiple copies of the plastid genome. Studies on structural and quantitative changes of plastid DNA (ptDNA) during leaf development are scarce and have produced controversial data. We have systematically investigated nucleoid dynamics and ptDNA quantities in mesophyll of Arabidopsis, tobacco, sugar beet, and maize from the early post-meristematic stage until necrosis. DNA of individual nucleoids was quantified by DAPI-based supersensitive epifluorescence microscopy. Nucleoids occurred in scattered, stacked or ring-shaped arrangements and in recurring patterns during leaf development remarkably similar between the species studied. Nucleoids per organelle varied from few in meristematic plastids to >30 in mature chloroplasts (corresponding to about 20-750 nucleoids per cell). Nucleoid ploidies ranged from haploid to >20-fold even within individual organelles, with average values between 2.6- and 6.7-fold and little changes during leaf development. DNA quantities per organelle increased gradually from about a dozen plastome copies in tiny plastids of apex cells to 70-130 copies in chloroplasts of about 7 μm diameter in mature mesophyll tissue, and from about 80 plastome copies in meristematic cells to 2,600-3,300 copies in mature diploid mesophyll cells without conspicuous decline during leaf development. Pulsed-field electrophoresis, restriction of high-molecular weight DNA from chloroplasts and gerontoplasts, and CsCl equilibrium centrifugation of single- and double-stranded ptDNA revealed no noticeable fragmentation of the organelle DNA during leaf development, implying that plastid genomes in mesophyll tissues are remarkably stable until senescence. Significance Statement Plastid DNA is organized in nucleoids that are highly dynamic in organization, structure and amount during leaf development. The present investigation fully resolves now this dynamic and is a precise cytogenetic characterization of nucleoids DNA spanning the entire life cycle of the leaf.


Human population growth and accelerating coastal development have been the drivers for unprecedented construction of artificial structures along shorelines globally. Construction has been recently amplified by societal responses to reduce flood and erosion risks from rising sea levels and more extreme storms resulting from climate change. Such structures, leading to highly modified shorelines, deliver societal benefits, but they also create significant socioeconomic and environmental challenges. The planning, design and deployment of these coastal structures should aim to provide multiple goals through the application of ecoengineering to shoreline development. Such developments should be designed and built with the overarching objective of reducing negative impacts on nature, using hard, soft and hybrid ecological engineering approaches. The design of ecologically sensitive shorelines should be context-dependent and combine engineering, environmental and socioeconomic considerations. The costs and benefits of ecoengineered shoreline design options should be considered across all three of these disciplinary domains when setting objectives, informing plans for their subsequent maintenance and management and ultimately monitoring and evaluating their success. To date, successful ecoengineered shoreline projects have engaged with multiple stakeholders (e.g. architects, engineers, ecologists, coastal/port managers and the general public) during their conception and construction, but few have evaluated engineering, ecological and socioeconomic outcomes in a comprehensive manner. Increasing global awareness of climate change impacts (increased frequency or magnitude of extreme weather events and sea level rise), coupled with future predictions for coastal development (due to population growth leading to urban development and renewal, land reclamation and establishment of renewable energy infrastructure in the sea) will increase the demand for adaptive techniques to protect coastlines. In this review, we present an overview of current ecoengineered shoreline design options, the drivers and constraints that influence implementation and factors to consider when evaluating the success of such ecologically engineered shorelines.


Moiré grating is a basic optical component, and can be used in various moiré methods. The conventional grating fabrication technology is based on photolithography and holographic interferometry, however, it requires complex optical components and is very difficult to put into practice. In this study, nanoimprint lithography (NIL), or rather, hot embossing lithography (HEL), is proposed for producing high frequency grating. Compared with silicon mold, holographic moiré grating mold costs less and is not easy to break, thus is chosen to be the mold in HEL. Using this mold and the hot embossing system, the grating structure can be transferred to the polymer after HEL process. Through a number of experiments, the process parameters were optimized and gratings were successfully fabricated. The multi-scale morphology of the fabricated gratings was then characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscope (AFM) and moiré interferometry. The microscale images observed by AFM and SEM show the regulate dots with equal spacing and the macroscale moiré patterns illuminate the excellent qualities of fabricated grating in a large area. The successful experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the grating fabricated by HEL for the moiré measurement.


Iran ABSTRACT Background: Insulin resistance and progressive β -cells failure are the key factors in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) pathogenesis. Many studies support a primary role of RBP4 in insulin resistance and suggest that genetic variations which alter the expression level of RBP4 might influence the risk of T2DM and its complications. Diabetic foot is one of the main complications of diabetes leading to disability and hospitalization. In addition, it reduces quality of life and imposes great cost to patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between two single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs10882273 and rs10882283) of RBP4 genes with diabetic foot ulcer in order to identify a biomarker for prediction of diabetic foot ulcer. Methods: This is a case-control study. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms of RBP4 genes were genotyped by hit Tetra ARMS PCR technique. In this study, 100 and 133 diabetic patients with and without foot ulcer were selected as the cases and controls, respectively. Results: The Chi-square test revealed no significant difference in frequency of TT, CC and TC alleles of rsl0882273 between case and control groups (P=0.414). Also, Comparison of AA, CC and AC alleles of rsl0882283 in both groups did not show significant difference (P=0.85). Conclusion: According to this study, there is no relationship between two single nucleotide polymorphisms of RBP4 genes (rs10882273 and rs10882283) with diabetic foot ulcer in type2 diabetes


Various protein sequence analysis techniques are described, aimed at improving the prediction of protein structure by means of pattern matching. To investigate the possibility that improvements in amino acid comparison matrices could result in improvements in the sensitivity and accuracy of protein sequence alignments, a method for rapidly calculating amino acid mutation data matrices from large sequence data sets is presented. The method is then applied to the membrane-spanning segments of integral membrane proteins in order to investigate the nature of amino acid mutability in a lipid environment. Whilst purely sequence analytic techniques work well for cases where some residual sequence similarity remains between a newly characterized protein and a protein of known 3-D structure, in the harder cases, there is little or no sequence similarity with which to recognize proteins with similar folding patterns. In the light of these limitations, a new approach to protein fold recognition is described, which uses a statistically derived pairwise potential to evaluate the compatibility between a test sequence and a library of structural templates, derived from solved crystal structures. The method, which is called optimal sequence threading, proves to be highly successful, and is able to detect the common TIM barrel fold between a number of enzyme sequences, which has not been achieved by any previous sequence analysis technique. Finally, a new method for the prediction of the secondary structure and topology of membrane proteins is described. The method employs a set of statistical tables compiled from well-characterized membrane protein data, and a novel dynamic programming algorithm to recognize membrane topology models by expectation maximization. The statistical tables show definite biases towards certain amino acid species on the inside, middle and outside of a cellular membrane.


The international financial crisis led many central banks to adopt explicit financial stability objectives. This raises the question of how central banks deal with policy trade-offs resulting from potential conflicts between price and financial stability objectives. We analyse this issue in the Asia-Pacific region, where many economies with inflation targeting central banks have adopted macroprudential policies in order to safeguard financial stability. Using structural vector autoregressions that identify both monetary and macroprudential policy actions, our results highlight similarities in the effects of monetary and macroprudential policies on the real economy. Tighter macroprudential policies used to contain credit growth have also had a negative impact on output and inflation. The similar effects of monetary and macroprudential policies could create challenges for policy, given the frequency of episodes where low inflation coincides with buoyant credit growth.


Building machine translation systems for many South Asian languages (such as Hindi, Gujarati, etc.) using statistical methods is problematic. The primary reason is insufficient parallel data to learn accurate word alignment. Additionally, these languages are morphologically rich and have free word order. When it is difficult to rely purely on statistical methods due to insufficient data, research shows that better performance can be obtained by building hybrid systems that rely on language specific resources, such as morphological analysers or dictionaries, as well as statistical methods. However, it is difficult to find such language specific resources for many South Asian languages.

Since languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi are all very similar in structure and the main differences lie in the script and vocabulary used for these languages, we hypothesise that it is possible to develop resources for one of these languages and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the other closely related languages -- with minimal effort and similar accuracies. To verify this, we develop a few resources for the Hindi language, including a sentence alignment algorithm, a morphological analyser and a transliteration similarity component and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the Gujarati language. We show that the approach works on both the Hindi and Gujarati languages and achieves results that are comparable to similar state-of-the-art (SOA) resources available for these languages.

We also hypothesise that it is possible to develop a high performance hybrid word alignment algorithm that relies on such language specific resources. To verify this, we design, implement and evaluate a novel English-Hindi hybrid word alignment system that uses the Hindi specific resources developed by us. Not only do we show our word alignment system outperforms other SOA English-Hindi word alignment systems, but also how simple it is to adapt it to the English-Gujarati language pair.


It has previously been realized that angle-resolved spectra (or far-field spectra) reflect in detail the complex dynamics of femtosecond pulses propagating in nonlinear dispersive media [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 22, 862 (2005)], and thus represent a potentially useful experimental diagnostic tool. In this paper we extend an effective three-wave mixing approach previously applied to nonlinear X-waves [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 253901 (2004)] to the analysis of far-field spectra. Theoretical justification for the approach is presented, and a practical method is proposed that makes it possible to interpret all features of far-field spectra, and to extract quantitative information about the underlying intra-pulse dynamics.


The intrinsic form of bronchial asthma remains an enigma. For some it signifies asthma of unknown cause, preferably termed "idiopathic"; to others it is largely a psychosomatic problem, but for many it is still almost wholly equated with "bacterial" or "infective" asthma. At the heart of the last concept lies the question of the relationship of sinus infection to bronchial asthma, which persists as a matter of controversy. This report is offered in the hope of clarifying the issues involved in this problem. Four years ago a clinical research unit, including an allergist and a bacteriologist, was organized in the department of otolaryngology at the Mount Sinai Hospital, to investigate the subject of focal infection 1 as it concerns the role of nasal and sinus disease. This group met one morning a week for three years. Bronchial asthma constituted the largest group of cases studied, and these comprise the case


Life skills are basically the psychosocial skills which include personal, social, interpersonal, cognitive and affective components on an individual. For a better life one needs to have better decision making and problem solving skills. If any head or leader posses these characteristics then his/her tasks of making his/her leadership effective also becomes easy. Present study aims to see the impact of life skills sessions on problem solving and decision making attitude of school level leaders. For this purpose, 150 students were selected from 10 different schools. The age group ranged between 16-18 years. It is a pre and post test study. After taking the pre-test of the students (head/leaders) on the basis life-skills questionnaire by NCERT, the students were provided with 10 life-skills sessions (5 on problem solving and 5 on decision making, one session per day). After the sessions, the same questionnaire was administered on the students. On the basis of students' response, t-test was applied and results have showed a significant enhancement in the skills of decision making and problem solving in the leaders. Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-3: 273-274 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijssm.v2i3.12650


A case of ossifying fibroma has been described in the jaw of filly of 3 months of age of Pure spanish breed.
The mass, of rapid growth, was located in the pertaining to the rostral jaw region nearby to the extreme incisor
tooth. The radiological image shows radiolucid limited areas and neoformation osseous, displacement of the
dental pieces and projection towards the interior of bone radiodensity 3, presenting radiopaque lines.
Microscopically, the superficial area has necrosis with abundant bacteria, neutrophils and vascular thromboses.
The middle and deep zones present a very cellular connective tissue constituted by cells similar to fibroblast
cells, and fundamental substance that shows a pre-osseous structure. Between bands of connective tissue, bony
tissue perfectly differentiated with the presence of osteoblast, osteocyte and osteoclast cells are observed. The
observations of the histopathologic study confirm the diagnosis of ossifying fibroma. This tumor of strange
presentation in horse, in spite of it benign characteristics, presents reserved evolution and prognosis.


Bacterial blight., caused by Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. dieffenbachiae (Xad), is the most common foliar disease of caladium, an ornamental aroid grown for its colorful foliage. The disease can reduce the marketability of caladiums produced as potted plants and lower the yield of caladiums grown for tuber production. Three bacterial strains were isolated from symptomatic caladiums and identified as Xad using fatty, acid analysis, carbon source use, and the sequence of the 16S-23S spacer, and tested for virulence against three susceptible cultivars. Two strains were virulent to all of the cultivars; however, one strain was differentially, pathogenic, virulent against two cultivars, but not to the usually highly, susceptible 'Candidum'. In greenhouse inoculation tests of 17 cultivars and one breeding line, four cultivars were ranked as highly susceptible, nine as moderately susceptible, and five as resistant. Ten of these cultivars were also evaluated with natural infection in the field with good agreement between the results of the greenhouse and field evaluations. Cultivars White Queen, Florida Red Ruffles, Florida Sweetheart, Candidum Jr., and Mrs. Arno Nehrling have been identified as resistant to bacterial blight in greenhouse or field evaluations and can potentially, be used in future breeding efforts to produce improved cultivars.