I. INTRODUCTION For more than twenty years, courts have utilized the contemporary community standard announced in Roth v. United States,(1) and expanded in Miller v. California,(2) to determine obscenity.(3) The rationale behind these decisions was that obscenity standards drawn from one community differ from those of another.(4) In other words, some urban communities like New York City may have relatively liberal points of view about sexual materials while some others, like Maine, may be less tolerant.(5) Therefore, to protect the morality and well-being of its members, an individual community is entitled to draw its own definitions of what is indecent.(6) The validity of this geographical contemporary community standard has been questioned with the recent advances of the Internet.(7) This means of communication blurs the boundaries between local communities while creating a cyberspace that exists in virtual reality.(8) No geographic boundaries exist in a cybercommunity.(9) Rather, the Internet is a global community, where neighbors at either side of the globe can instantly communicate with one another.(10) Due to this virtual reality, the Miller concept of community does not apply appropriately to the context of the Internet. This paper not only explores significant obscenity cases involving the contemporary community standard, but also discusses where most obscene materials appear, such as the Internet, Computer Bulletin Boards, the World Wide Web, and USENET. In addition, United States v. Thomas,(11) a recent online obscenity case, is analyzed. Finally, this paper proposes a technological hierarchy in judging obscenity to assert that cybercommunity standards should be applied when drawing the line between protected materials and unprotected materials, such as obscene and sexually explicit materials. II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE OBSCENITY STANDARD An early English standard of obscenity judged material by the effect of isolated passages upon the most vulnerable members of society.(12) If certain sexual materials were obscene to the most susceptible persons, they were deemed obscene to everyone and banned.(13) Some American courts adopted this rule in determining the obscenity of materials.(14) However, the Supreme Court invalidated this rule in Roth, holding that obscenity falls outside constitutional protection and should be judged by the average person applying contemporary community standards, not by the most vulnerable members of society.(15) Roth conducted a publication business in New York, which involved mailing advertising circulars to promote the sale of his books, magazines, and photographs.(16) He was eventually convicted of violating a federal obscenity statute that prohibited the mailing of obscene, lascivious, or filthy publications.(17) In Roth, the Court defined obscene material as that "which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest[s]."(18) and has a "tendency to excite lustful thoughts."(19) The Court held that obscenity is not constitutionally protected because it is "utterly without redeeming social importance."(20) Justice Brennan observed that sexual materials should be judged by this test: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest[s]."(21) In 1969, however, the Supreme Court limited the application of the Roth standard in a case involving mere possession of sexually explicit materials in the privacy of one's own home.(22) In this case, federal and state agents obtained a search warrant and entered petitioner's home in a search for bookmaking materials.(23) The agents found three reels of eight-millimeter film, which the Court determined to be obscene and in violation of Georgia law.(24) The Court held that "mere categorization of these films as `obscene' is insufficient justification for such a drastic invasion of personal liberties guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. …


The microstrip patch antenna is a low-profile robust planar structure. A wide range of radiation patterns can be achieved with this type of antenna and, due to the ease of manufacture, is inexpensive compared with other types of antennas. However, patch-antenna designs have some limitations such as restricted bandwidth of operation, low gain, and a potential decrease in radiation efficiency due to surface-wave losses. In this paper, a photonic-bandgap (PBG) substrate for patch antennas is proposed, which minimizes the surface-wave effects. In order to verify the performance of this kind of substrate, a configuration with a thick substrate is analyzed. The PBG patch antenna shows significantly reduced levels of surface modes compared to conventional patch antennas, thus improving the gain and far-field radiation pattern.


Detecting unsolicited content and the spammers who create it is a long-standing challenge that affects all of us on a daily basis. The recent growth of richly-structured social networks has provided new challenges and opportunities in the spam detection landscape. Motivated by the Tagged.com social network, we develop methods to identify spammers in evolving multi-relational social networks. We model a social network as a time-stamped multi-relational graph where vertices represent users, and edges represent different activities between them. To identify spammer accounts, our approach makes use of structural features, sequence modelling, and collective reasoning. We leverage relational sequence information using k-gram features and probabilistic modelling with a mixture of Markov models. Furthermore, in order to perform collective reasoning and improve the predictive power of a noisy abuse reporting system, we develop a statistical relational model using hinge-loss Markov random fields (HL-MRFs), a class of probabilistic graphical models which are highly scalable. We use Graphlab Create and Probabilistic Soft Logic (PSL) to prototype and experimentally evaluate our solutions on internet-scale data from Tagged.com. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, and show that models which incorporate the multi-relational nature of the social network significantly gain predictive performance over those that do not.


BACKGROUND
This paper analyses the share of the family private health expenditures in the Brazilian GDP and in personal income; and the distribution of the family private health expenditures among social groups.

METHODS
The research utilized the 1998 Brazilian Home Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios) with the division of the population into four social groups according to the family income per capita; and the distribution of the family private health expenditures among health insurance, physicians, other health professionals, medical tests, drugs, orthopedic and other medical durables, vision products, dental services, hospital care, nursing home care and other health spending.

RESULTS
In 1998, only 7.2% of the population with family income per capita up to 1 minimum wage had health insurance and the health expenditures of this group, that represented 52.5% of the population, was US$ 4.62 per capita. For the people with 9 and more minimum wages per capita the health insurance coverage was 83.2% and the health expenditures was US$ 114.66 per capita.

CONCLUSIONS
The implementation of the Brazilian public universal health care system in 1988 denominated "Sistema Unico de Saude" was followed by an expressive expansion of private insurance coverage in the 1990's. Even if all public health expenditures had been exclusively directed to the population without any private insurance, these people's health expenditures would only reach 43% of the health expenditures of those with private insurance.


An experimental study of bifurcations associated with the stability of stationary points ~SP's! in a parametrically forced magnetic pendulum, and a comparison of its results with numerical results, are presented. The critical values for which the SP's lose or gain their stability are experimentally measured by varying the two parameters V ~the normalized natural frequency! and A ~the normalized driving amplitude!. It is observed that, when the amplitude A exceeds a critical value, the normal SP with u50 (u is the angle between the permanent magnet and the magnetic field! becomes unstable either by a period-doubling bifurcation or by a symmetrybreaking pitchfork bifurcation, depending on the values of V . However, in contrast with the normal SP the inverted SP, with u5p is observed to become stable as A is increased above a critical value by a pitchfork bifurcation, but it also destabilizes for a higher critical value of A by a period-doubling bifurcation. All of these experimental results agree well with numerical results obtained using the Floquet theory. @S1063-651X~97!06212-0#


The SE US Coastal Plain has unique characteristics that require specialized techniques to explain yield variations and to develop management zones. This paper discusses several new methods to estimate yield variations for the development of management zones. Four techniques were developed based on the following: yield maps, black and white bare ground aerial photos, soil survey maps, and automated regular polygons. Two project fields were used for a detailed analysis of these techniques. Eight other fields were included for comparison. Results indicated that the amount of yield variation explained is related to the number of polygons used, regardless of the method used to generate the polygons. Therefore, an easily automated procedure based on regular polygons appears to be the least costly approach. Increasing the number of polygons per field reduces the size of each polygon; thus a limit will be reached at which regular polygons are not practical. Since the placement of regular polygons is arbitrary, the description of yield depends on where each polygon lands with respect to the yield variation. However, corn-based polygons showed more potential in explaining yield variation of other corn crops with fewer polygons (or fewer management zones). The prior-year corn yield maps were the preferred method of defining management zones, especially for corn followed by corn.


Cryptosporidiosis is a debilitating diarrheal disease in young children in developing countries. The absence of effective treatments or vaccines makes this infection very difficult to manage in susceptible populations. ABSTRACT The apicomplexan parasite Cryptosporidium parvum contains an expanded family of 22 insulinase-like proteases (INS), a feature that contrasts with their otherwise streamlined genome. Here, we examined the function of INS1, which is most similar to the human insulinase protease that cleaves a variety of small peptide substrates. INS1 is an M16A clan member and contains a signal peptide, an N-terminal domain with the HXXEH active site, followed by three inactive domains. Unlike previously studied C. parvum INS proteins that are expressed in sporozoites and during merogony, INS1 was expressed exclusively in macrogamonts, where it was localized in small cytoplasmic vesicles. Although INS1 did not colocalize with the oocyst wall protein recognized by the antibody OW50, immune-electron microscopy indicated that INS1 resides in small vesicles in the secretory system. Notably, these small INS1-positive vesicles were often in close proximity to large OW50-positive vacuoles resembling wall-forming bodies, which contain precursors for oocyst wall formation. Genetic deletion of INS1, or replacement with an active-site mutant, resulted in lower formation of macrogamonts in vitro and reduced oocyst shedding in vivo. Our findings reveal that INS1 functions in the formation or maturation of macrogamonts and that its loss results in attenuated virulence in immunocompromised mice. IMPORTANCE Cryptosporidiosis is a debilitating diarrheal disease in young children in developing countries. The absence of effective treatments or vaccines makes this infection very difficult to manage in susceptible populations. Although the oral dose of oocysts needed to cause infection is low, infected individuals shed very high numbers of oocysts, readily contaminating the environment. Our studies demonstrate that the protease INS1 is important for formation of female sexual stages and that in its absence, parasites produce fewer oocysts and are attenuated in immunocompromised mice. These findings suggest that mutants lacking INS1, or related proteases, are useful for further characterizing the pathway that leads to macrogamont maturation and oocyst wall formation.


Service discovery and integration is an important research area with efforts invested to explore the potential advantages of collaborative computing in general and service-oriented computing in particular. However, current technologies still limit their application within the reach of enterprise systems or privately available services. Intents is an emerging and innovative technique aimed to discover and integrate publically available services. In Intents, intent message resolving is a critical step which is deemed to decide the quality of the whole system. However, existing schemes applied in intent resolving adopt the exact-matching strategy which may rule out services desired by the user. This paper brings in information retrieval techniques and applies them to intent resolving. We take an empirical approach through extensive experiments and analyses on a real dataset to obtain guiding principles. Based on the resulting principles, an adaptive intent resolving scheme is designed. Afterwards, we integrate the scheme into the Intents user agent developed in a previous project.


Abstract With its identification as a proto-oncogene in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and central role in regulating NF-κB signalling, it is perhaps not surprising that there have been an increasing number of studies in recent years investigating the role of BCL-3 (B-Cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia/Lymphoma-3) in a wide range of human cancers. Importantly, this work has begun to shed light on our mechanistic understanding of the function of BCL-3 in tumour promotion and progression. Here, we summarize the current understanding of BCL-3 function in relation to the characteristics or traits associated with tumourigenesis, termed 'Hallmarks of Cancer'. With the focus on colorectal cancer, a major cause of cancer related mortality in the UK, we describe the evidence that potentially explains why increased BCL-3 expression is associated with poor prognosis in colorectal cancer. As well as promoting tumour cell proliferation, survival, invasion and metastasis, a key emerging function of this proto-oncogene is the regulation of the tumour response to inflammation. We suggest that BCL-3 represents an exciting new route for targeting the Hallmarks of Cancer; in particular by limiting the impact of the enabling hallmarks of tumour promoting inflammation and cell plasticity. As BCL-3 has been reported to promote the stem-like potential of cancer cells, we suggest that targeting BCL-3 could increase the tumour response to conventional treatment, reduce the chance of relapse and hence improve the prognosis for cancer patients.


Forty-five Holsteins cows (15 primiparous; 30 multiparous) were used to evaluate the milk response to bovine somatotropin (bST) injections with three feeding systems combining pasture and total mixed ration (TMR) in a 21-wk repeated measures experiment. The three treatments were 1) pasture plus concentrate (PC), 2) pasture plus TMR (pTMR), and 3) TMR (non-pasture). Mean total DMI, estimated using chromic oxide as a fecal marker, was 21.6, 25.3, and 26.8 kg/d for cows fed PC, pTMR, and TMR, respectively. Milk production was greatest for cows fed TMR (38.1 kg/d), least for cows fed PC (28.5 kg/d), and intermediate for cows fed pTMR (32.0 kg/d). Cows fed pTMR and TMR had greater milk fat (3.33% vs 3.13%) and true protein (2.97% vs 2.82%) percentage than cows fed PC. Cows on PC gained less BW and lost more body condition than cows on pTMR and TMR. Ten bST injections were administered during the 21-wk trial. Cows had a milk peak different (P<0.05) from d 1 (injection day) for six of the injections on the PC treatment, for four of the injections on the pTMR treatment, and for nine of the injections on the TMR treatment. Day of peak milk yield postinjection and milk response per day were d 6.4 and 2.6 kg for the cows on the PC treatment, d 7.3 and 2.4 kg for cows on the pTMR treatment, and d 7.1 and 4.0 kg for cows on the TMR treatment, respectively. Overall, milk response to bST was greater for cows on the TMR treatment than for cows on the PC and pTMR treatments (344 vs. 259 kg per cow).


Ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis controls intracellular levels of various cell cycle regulatory proteins, and its inhibition has been shown to induce apoptosis in proliferating cells. In the present study, we examined induction of apoptosis in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cells by treatment with specific proteasome inhibitors, carbobenzoxy-L-leucyl-L-leucyl-L-norvalinal and lactacystin. In all three OSCC cell lines examined, apoptotic changes such as apoptotic body formation and DNA fragmentation were observed at various degrees after 24 h of the carbobenzoxy-L-leucyl-L-leucyl-L-norvalinal or lactacystin treatment. HSC2 cells showed the most prominent apoptotic changes among the cell lines examined and demonstrated the highest level of accumulation of p27Kip1 protein after the treatment with proteasome inhibitor. Reduced expressions of cyclin D1 and phospho pRb were also observed after the treatment with proteasome inhibitor. Moreover, 12 h of treatment with the proteasome inhibitor inhibited cdk2/cyclin E kinase activity and increased the ratio of the cell cycle population at the G1 phase. The proteasome inhibitor led to inhibition of cell cycle progression. In addition, activation of CPP32 and reduced expression of Bcl-2 were observed. Because apoptosis induced by the proteasome inhibitor was inhibited by treatment with antisense p27Kip1 oligonucleotide, accumulation of the p27Kip1 protein might play an important role in the apoptosis induced by proteasome inhibitor. The present results suggest that inhibition of proteasome function may be used as a possible target of novel therapy for OSCC.


The purpose of this study is to survey preservice classroom teachers at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to determine their attitudes toward music in the elementary curriculum. Research questions examined participants' (a) musical abilities and experience as well as beliefs regarding (b) the roles of the classroom teacher and music specialist, (c) their comfort level with teaching music as a subject and integrating music with other disciplines, (d) the importance of music in relation to other subjects, and (e) the importance of various outcomes of the general music program. A survey was administered to 116 preservice elementary classroom teachers enrolled in either student teaching or early field experience during the 2008—2009 academic year. Data indicated that most of these respondents do not feel comfortable teaching music as a subject, believe music should be taught by a specialist, and disagree that classroom teachers should be capable of teaching music. Results also suggest that participants regard music as less important than other subjects and nonmusical outcomes of music instruction as more important than musical outcomes. The majority of respondents, however, agree that music can improve achievement in other disciplines and are supportive of music integration. These findings were helpful in designing the music portion of an art and music methods course at Calvin College and may have implications for elementary music methods classes offered at other institutions.


A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) consists of wireless mobile nodes. The communication between these nodes happens without any centralized control. MANET is a self-organized and selfconfigurable network where the mobile nodes move arbitrarily anywhere in a network. The mobile nodes has a feature like routers which can forward and receive the packets with other nodes. Routing is a critical issue in MANET and hence the focus of this paper is on performance analysis of routing protocols. I compared the three routing protocols i.e. AODV, DSR and OLSR. Simulation tool will over here is QualNet Simulator – Network Simulator Software. The performance of these routing protocols is analysed by three metrics: Average end-to end delay, energy consumption and throughput based on node density. All the three routing protocols are compared and explained with results using QualNet simulator tool. The comparative analysis is carried out of all the three protocols which concludeswhich routing protocol is the best one for mobile ad hoc networks considering multiple parameters impacting the network.


In this paper, a dual mode baseband analog channel selection filter is described which is designed for the Bluetooth and WCDMA wireless communications. Using the presented current-mode integrator, a dual mode channel selection filter is designed. To verify the current-mode integrator circuit, Hspice simulation using 1.8V Hynix standard CMOS technology was performed and achieved gain, unity gain frequency. The described third-order dual mode analog channel selection filter is composed of the current-mode integrator, and used SFG(Signal Flow Graph) method. The simulated results show 0.51, 2.40MHz cutoff frequency which is suitable for the Bluetooth and WCDMA baseband block each.


A scheme of approximate solution is presented for the treatment of shock waves in the steady, plane flow of a perfect gas. It is based on the neglect of any entropy variations produced by the shocks and hence is applicable only when the shocks are weak. The method provides an extension of Friedrichs's (1948) results for simple waves to wave-interaction regions. By an examination of the solution of the continuous-flow equations in the neighbourhood of a known shock wave it is shown how the downstream flow may be calculated without reference to the particular shock shape (?2). There are certain cases in which this approach fails and they are discussed by means of a typical example in ?3*3. Once the downstream flow has been calculated, it is possible to set up general equations for the determination of the shock (?2). Examples of the solution of these equations for typical problems are given in ?3. In ?4 there is a brief discussion of the validity of using homentropic theory and estimates of the errors involved in the solution process are obtained.


Recently thromboembolic and hemorrhagic complications are main causes of maternal morbidity and mortality. Normal pregnancy is associated with ahypercoagulation. This condition is complicated if the patient has a mechanical prosthetic heart valve. Therefore an anticoagulant therapy in these patients is a challenging task. Effects of anticoagulant drugs on the fetus, pregnancy and delivery must also be taken into consideration. The review deals with international clinical guidelines. Diagrams of anticoagulant therapy in pregnant women with mechanical prosthetic heart valves using direct (unfractionated and low-molecular-weight heparins) and indirect (warfarin) anticoagulants are presented in the review.


In the past year, convolutional neural networks have been shown to perform extremely well for stereo estimation. However, current architectures rely on siamese networks which exploit concatenation followed by further processing layers, requiring a minute of GPU computation per image pair. In contrast, in this paper we propose a matching network which is able to produce very accurate results in less than a second of GPU computation. Towards this goal, we exploit a product layer which simply computes the inner product between the two representations of a siamese architecture. We train our network by treating the problem as multi-class classification, where the classes are all possible disparities. This allows us to get calibrated scores, which result in much better matching performance when compared to existing approaches.


Content-based approaches to motion compensation offer the advantage of being able to adapt to the spatial and temporal characteristics of a scene. Three such motion compensation techniques are described in detail, with one of the methods being integrated into a video codec. The first approach operates by performing spatio-temporal segmentation of a frame. A split and merge approach is then used to ensure that motion characteristics are relatively homogeneous within each region. Region shape information is coded (by approximating the boundaries with polygons) and a triangular mesh is generated within each region. Translational and affine motion estimation are then performed on each triangle within the mesh. This approach offers an improvement in quality when compared to a regular mesh of the same size. However, it is difficult to control the number of triangles, since this depends on the segmentation and polygon approximation stages. As a result, this approach is difficult to integrate into a rate-distortion framework. The second method involves the use of variable-size blocks, rather than a triangular mesh. Once again, a frame is first segmented into regions of homogeneous motion, which are then approximated with polygons. A grid of blocks is created in each region, with the block size inversely proportional to the motion compensation error for that region. This ensures that regions with complex motion are populated by smaller blocks. Following this, bi-directional translational and affine motion parameters are estimated for each block. In contrast to the mesh-based approach, this method allows the number of blocks to be easily controlled. Nevertheless, the number and shape of regions remains very sensitive to the segmentation parameters used. The third technique also uses variable size blocks, but the spatio-temporal segmentation stage is replaced with a simpler and more robust binary block partitioning process. If a particular block does not allow for accurate motion compensation, then it is split into two using the horizontal or vertical line that achieves the maximum reduction in motion compensation error. Starting with the entire frame as one block, the splitting process is repeated until a large enough binary tree of blocks is obtained. This method causes partitioning to occur along motion boundaries, thus substantially reducing blocking artifacts compared to regular block matching. In addition, small blocks are placed in regions of complex motion, while large blocks cover areas of uniform motion. The proposed technique provides significant gains in picture quality when compared to fixed size block matching at the same total rate. The binary partition tree method has been integrated into a hybrid video codec. (The codec also has the option of using fixed-size blocks or H.264/AVC variable- size blocks.) Results indicate that the binary partition tree method of motion compensation leads to improved rate-distortion performance over the state-of- the-art H.264/AVC variable-size block matching. This advantage is most evident at low bit-rates, and also in the case of bi-directionally predicted frames. Keywords: motion estimation, motion compensation, video coding, video compression, content-based, variable-size block matching, binary partition tree.


Purpose of review Insight into the metabolic changes in cancer has become so important that cancer is regarded as a disease entity full of metabolic implications. We summarize the recent findings pertaining to cancer cell-derived metabolic changes that regulate the function of macrophages to favor cancer cell survival, and the reported approaches to reverse these changes. Recent findings Since the observation and dramatic revitalization of the Warburg effect, metabolic changes were thought to be confined in cancer cells. However, the Warburg effect has recently been proven to exist in various types of immune cells in tumor tissue. A growing number of publications now indicate that cancer cells interact with other cells in the tumor microenvironment, not only through traditional inflammatory mediators, but also through oncometabolites, and that metabolic changes in immune cells by oncometabolites are the key factors favoring the survival of cancer cells and pro-tumoral function of immune cells. Notably, these metabolic changes do not occur uniformly in tumor progression. Summary Understanding of the complex metabolic interactions in the tumor microenvironment can not only set a new paradigm for tumor progression, but also provide new breakthroughs to control cancer by modulation of function in tumor-associated macrophages.


A conventional 4-Hi cold rolling mill configuration was modelled and a computer program was developed to analyze the effects of inlet thickness, width, desired exit thickness, symmetric and asymmetric jack forces, screw positions, tensions on the strip, roll geometries, and material properties on strip shape and thickness. For the analysis, the finite difference method was used as the discretization technique. The roll force was obtained by integrating the calculated roll pressure over the arc of contact, and elastic distortion of rolls due to the strip interaction was also considered. For determining inter-roll force, the compatibility equation between work and backup rolls was expressed in terms of work and backup roll axis deflection and work roll surface deformation. The second compatibility equation between work roll and strip was expressed in terms of work roll axis deflections, work roll surface deformation, and estimated strip thickness. The calculated thickness distribution was used for determining shape.


The ELR(+)-CXCL chemokines have been described typically as potent chemoattractants and activators of neutrophils during the acute phase of inflammation. Their role in atherosclerosis, a chronic inflammatory vascular disease, has been largely unexplored. Using a mouse model of atherosclerosis, we found that CXCL5 expression was upregulated during disease progression, both locally and systemically, but was not associated with neutrophil infiltration. Unexpectedly, inhibition of CXCL5 was not beneficial but rather induced a significant macrophage foam cell accumulation in murine atherosclerotic plaques. Additionally, we demonstrated that CXCL5 modulated macrophage activation, increased expression of the cholesterol efflux regulatory protein ABCA1, and enhanced cholesterol efflux activity in macrophages. These findings reveal a protective role for CXCL5, in the context of atherosclerosis, centered on the regulation of macrophage foam cell formation.


A non-linear model of major fire spread in a tunnel is described briefly. It employs the concepts of bifurcation theory and identifies the onset of instability with major fire spread in a tunnel. In particular, the model associates the existence of a fold bifurcation with dramatic fire spread. The purpose is to identify the thermo-physical and geometrical conditions which lead to instability and sudden fire spread. The particular case considered assumes the existence of a longitudinal forced ventilation and predicts the critical heat release rate needed for a fire to spread from an initial fire to a target object. The illustrative case of fire spread from an initial fire to a heavy goods vehicle (HGV) is presented; it is not restricted to this case, however. The model is identified with the name FIRE-SPRINT A3, which is an acronym of Fire Spread in Tunnels, Model A, version 3. It is a development of an earlier model, FIRE-SPRINT A2. The current model takes greater account of thermal radiation than was done in earlier work and also assumes a more plausible flame shape. For the covering abstract see ITRD E114957.


Malignant glaucoma is a disease process in which the entire anterior chamber becomes uniformly shallow with forward movement of the lensiris diaphram with pooling of aqueous within or behind the vitreous and elevated intraocular pressure. Classically, this has been described as limited to cases occurring following glaucoma surgery. A case is presented in which malignant glaucoma developed without antecedent surgery. On the basis of this case and a review of similar cases in the literature, it is postulated that miotics can induce malignant glaucoma. The extreme shallowing of the central anterior chamber is the important feature in the clinical recognition of this disease process, differentiating it from pupillary block angle-closure glaucoma.


ABSTRACT A balanced-lethal plasmid expression system that switches from low-copy-number to runaway-like high-copy-number replication (pYA4534) was constructed for the regulated delayed in vivo synthesis of heterologous antigens by vaccine strains. This is an antibiotic resistance-free maintenance system containing the asdA gene (essential for peptidoglycan synthesis) as a selectable marker to complement the lethal chromosomal ΔasdA allele in live recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines (RASVs) such as Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strain χ9447. pYA4534 harbors two origins of replication, pSC101 and pUC (low and high copy numbers, respectively). The pUC replication origin is controlled by a genetic switch formed by the operator/promoter of the P22 cro gene (O/Pcro) (PR), which is negatively regulated by an arabinose-inducible P22 c2 gene located on both the plasmid and the chromosome (araC PBADc2). The absence of arabinose, which is unavailable in vivo, triggers replication to a high-copy-number plasmid state. To validate these vector attributes, the Yersinia pestis virulence antigen LcrV was used to develop a vaccine against plague. An lcrV sequence encoding amino acids 131 to 326 (LcrV196) was optimized for expression in Salmonella, flanked with nucleotide sequences encoding the signal peptide (SS) and the carboxy-terminal domain (CT) of β-lactamase, and cloned into pYA4534 under the control of the Ptrc promoter to generate plasmid pYA4535. Our results indicate that the live Salmonella vaccine strain χ9447 harboring pYA4535 efficiently stimulated a mixed Th1/Th2 immune response that protected mice against lethal challenge with Y. pestis strain CO92 introduced through either the intranasal or subcutaneous route.


The objective of the work presented is the super-resolution restoration of a set of images, and we investigate the use of learnt image models within a generative Bayesian framework. It is demonstrated that restoration of far higher quality than that determined by classical maximum likelihood estimation can be achieved by either constraining the solution to lie on a restricted sub-space, or by using the sub-space to define a spatially varying prior. This sub-space can be learnt from image examples. The methods are applied to both real and synthetic images of text and faces, and results are compared to R.R. Schultz and R.L. Stevenson's (1996) MAP estimator. We consider in particular images of scenes for which the point-to-point mapping is a plane projective transformation which has 8 degrees of freedom. In the real image examples, registration is obtained from the images using automatic methods.


High rates of error and variability in early word production may signal speech sound disorder. However, there is little consensus regarding the degree of error and variability that may be expected in the typical range. Relatedly, while variables including child age, word frequency and word phonological neighbourhood density are associated with variance in word production accuracy and variability, such effects remain under-examined in spontaneous speech. This study measured the accuracy and variability of 234,551 spontaneous word productions from five typically developing children in the Providence corpus (0;11–4;0). Using Bayesian regression, accuracy and variability rates were predicted by age, input frequency, phonological neighbourhood density, and interactions between these variables. Between 61% and 72% of word productions were both inaccurate and variable according to strict criteria. However loosening these criteria to accommodate production inconsistencies unlikely to be considered erroneous (e.g. the target /æləɡeɪtəɹ/ pronounced /ælɪɡeɪtəɹ/) reduced this figure to between 10% and 17%, with the majority of word productions then classed as accurate and stable (48%–58%). In addition, accuracy was higher and variability was lower in later months of sampling, and for high frequency words and high density words. The author discusses the implications of these results for future research and the differential diagnosis of speech sound disorder, and presents an explanatory account of findings emphasizing the development of oral-motor skills and increasingly detailed phonological word representations.


Background: The number of migrant workers in Indonesia has been increasing over the years. Most of the migrant workers are females with children, creating a huge number of left-behind children (LBC). The issue of LBC has become important to discuss because LBC tends to experience more emotional and behavioral problems than non-LBC. The aim of this study was to assess and compare emotional and behavioral problems between LBC and non-LBC in Indonesia. This paper analyzes data from a project by the Community Mental Health Research Group from the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, held in 2015 − 2016. Materials and Methods: Participants were 629 adolescents: 359 LBC and 270 non-LBC. The data were acquired in a cross-sectional study conducted in rural Indonesia. Data on emotional and behavioral problems were assessed with Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire, while data related to risk factor variables were collected using multidimensional scale of perceived social support, the 6-item De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale, and Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. Results: The prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems in LBC was 28.4% compared to 21% among non-LBC. Peer attachment, communication, social support, and loneliness were identified as factors that impact the emotional and behavioral problems among LBC. Conclusions: LBC has more emotional and behavioral problems than non-LBC. Comprehensive understanding of various protective and risk factors is needed to provide impactful interventions for LBC.


The purpose of this critical ethnography was to investigate how music educators can approach the development of students' music listening abilities democratically in order to deepen students' musical understandings and, by teaching through music, create pathways for student–teacher transactions that are inclusive, educative, ethical and transformative. Critical ethnographies utilise qualitative data collection methods (e.g. observations, journaling, interviews, audiotapes) for sociopolitical and ethical purposes. That is, critical ethnographies are 'critical' in two senses: (a) they are framed and carried out with a social-ethical sense of responsibility to critique and, if necessary, change the status quo of specific contexts they investigate and (b) they are grounded in 'a self-referential form of reflexivity that aims to criticise the ethnographer's own production of an account' (Schwandt, 2007, p. 51). One finding of this critical ethnography of my urban music classroom is that students are most apt to learn music listening effectively and enjoyably when afforded democratic and creative opportunities to express their beliefs about the natures and values of the musics they decide to select, experience and discuss critically. Another finding is that although democratic teaching and learning inevitably involves conflicts, participants can and do learn to manage and transform these conflicts constructively. One important implication of these findings is that music classrooms can be powerful contexts and means for students' social-ethical development.


We investigated the antigen-specific sensitization of basophils in the peripheral circulation of guinea pigs using an in vitro histamine release assay. Animals were primed for cutaneous basophil hypersensitivity (CBH) by intradermal injection of either keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) or ovalbumin (OA) in saline. Basophils isolated from these animals 7 days after sensitization did not release histamine to the specific antigen in vitro. On day 9, however, basophils did release histamine when challenged with the antigen. These results were in contrast to 24-hr skin tests that showed a typical CBH profile both on day 7 and day 9. When animals were immunized via the footpad by emulsification of antigen in incomplete Freund's adjuvant, basophil sensitization (i.e., histamine release) either occurred earlier (day 7, KLH) or at lower antigen concentrations (OA). Thus, dissociation of in vivo CBH and in vitro basophil sensitization was demonstrated. The lack of correlation was only seen early after immunization and depended on the route of immunization used. An additional finding was a transient blood basophilia that also was dependent on the route of immunization, the antigen used, and the time post-sensitization. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that at early times post-immunization, CBH is mediated by T cells and not via homocytotropic antibodies, but that at later times such antibodies may also play a role in the elicitation of CBH reactions.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Coated coils have been in clinical use for several years without robust evidence to determine their safety/efficacy. The HydroCoil Endovascular Aneurysm Occlusion and Packing Study (HELPS) addresses this deficiency for the HydroCoil embolic system. This article reports periprocedural safety/operator-assessed angiographic results from HELPS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients were randomized to the hydrogel coil or control arms by using concealed allocation with minimization matching groups. Any bare platinum coils were allowed in the control arm, and assist devices could be used as clinically required. Both recently ruptured and not recently ruptured/unruptured aneurysms were included. Analysis was on an intention-to-treat basis. RESULTS: Four hundred ninety-nine patients were recruited. Coiling was successful in 98.6%. Mean aneurysm size was 6.5 mm (26% were ≥10 mm), 53% were recently ruptured aneurysms, and an assist device was used in 46%. Seventy procedural adverse events were reported in hydrogel coils and 86 in control arms. The 3-month mortality rate was 3.6% in hydrogel coils and 2.0% in control arms; the difference was not significant (P = .6). There was a lower 2-month mortality rate in the HELPS subarachnoid hemorrhage cohort (4.1%) than would be anticipated from the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (7%). There was a trend toward increased adverse events when assist devices were used, which was substantial for stents deployed in recently ruptured aneurysms. Ninety-six percent of patients discharged were World Federation of Neurosurgeons grade 0–2 at discharge. No difference was found between arms in the operator assessment of angiographic occlusions (P = .3). CONCLUSION: These HELPS results reinforce coiling as an effective treatment for aneurysms, with an excellent technical success rate. Hydrogel coils can be used in a wide spectrum of aneurysms with a risk profile equivalent to that of bare platinum.


This paper evaluates the predictive performance of machine learning techniques in estimating time-varying betas of US stocks. Compared to established estimators, tree-based models and neural networks outperform from both a statistical and an economic perspective. Random forests perform the best overall. Machine learning-based estimators provide the lowest fore-cast errors. Moreover, unlike traditional approaches, they lead to truly ex-post market-neutral portfolios. The inherent model complexity is strongly time-varying. The most important predictors are various historical betas as well as fundamental turnover and size signals. Compared to linear regressions, interactions and nonlinear effects enhance the predictive performance substantially.


Abstract : In a spectroscopic study carried out in this laboratory a new energy transfer mechanism from a noble gas molecule to an atom was identified. This transfer process is similar to the Penning ionization in the sense that it populates energy levels of a guest atom selectively within a certain range. A mixture of Ar:Xe was studied. This report discusses these studies using time dependence of spectra. The bulk of the material is presented in three papers, each of which is self-contained. The first paper gives a detailed description of the apparatus and characteristics of the transverse discharge. The second paper is a study of the He/Xe system, with reference in particular to the operation of the infrared laser based on this mixture. The third paper is a description of our experiments on the excitation of ionized xenon. A very short report is attached on experiments of vacuum spark gaps. Spectra of carbon and lithium have been photographed in the visible and near u.v.


Background and aims Rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease is complicated in majority of patients with dermatomyositis who are positive for anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 antibody (MDA5). Clinically amyopathic dermatomyositis with Heliotrope rash and Gottron's sign can offer an implication for MDA5-positivity and the critical treatment before uncovering the result of blood testing, since these patients can survive only if they received immediate and intensive therapy.We observed nailfold capillary formation of two acute patients with anti-MDA5 antibody using dermatoscopy in the current study in order to test the capability to predict the MDA5 positivity. Methods Nailfold of two patients with dermatomyositis were examined using dermatoscopy, (dermlite 3, 3 gen, USA.) MDA5 positivity was confirmed by ELISA.The findings were imaged using I pad mini (apple, USA). The images were compared to the patient with Jo-1, those with TIF1, or centromere. Results Marked haemorrhages and enlarged capillaries were observed in almost all nailfolds of both hands, while only upto three nailfolds in patients with antibodies against Jo-1, TIF1, or centromere. However, loss of capillaries was not detected under the dermatoscopy at all, while these were detected in capillary scope in the literature in anti-MDA5 antibody positive patients. Conclusions The results of the current study suggest that nailfold findings using dermatoscopy have a potential to diagnose the patients anti-MDA5 antibodies at their first visit, although there is a limitation in number of patient samples in this study. Likewise, the nailfold findings on dermatoscopy may provide visible information for the pathogensis of interstitial pneumonitis in these patients as well.


The blood behaviour in human circulatory system observed during space flights reveals that the microgravity environment reduces the flow rate and increases the haematocrit compared with the situation on the earth surface. The present study gives a theoretical analysis of the above phenomena by considering a two layer Newtonian model for blood flow in capillaries. The effect of gravity on plasma layer as well as on the blood viscosity is taken into account for calculating the percentage change in flow rate of blood. The corresponding apparent viscosities on the earth surface and in space are estimated. The results are analyzed and presented graphically. The findings agree reasonably well with the data observed in spaceflight experiments.


AK Steel 409 Ni is a 11% chromium ferritic stainless steel microalloyed with titanium and nickel. It provides excellent weldability, toughness, and fabricating characteristics superior to those of type 409 stainless steel in thicknesses over 3.05 mm (0.120 in.). This alloy is a cost effective alternative to mild steels and low-alloy steels that also provides superior corrosion and/or oxidation resistance. The recommended maximum service temperature of AK Steel 409 Ni is 730 °C (1350 °F). This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, elasticity, and tensile properties. It also includes information on corrosion resistance as well as heat treating and joining. Filing Code: SS-1336. Producer or source: AK Steel Corporation.


TAL1 oncogene encodes a helix-loop-helix transcription factor, Tal1, which is required for blood cell development, and its activation is a frequent event in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Tal1 interacts and inhibits other helix-loop-helix factors such as E47 and HEB. To investigate the function of Tal1 in B cells, we generated Emu-TAL1 transgenic mouse line, expressing Tal1 in mouse B-cell lineage. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis of lymphocytes isolated from spleens of five out of five founders reveals complete absence of IgM- or CD19-expressing cells. Only 2% to 3% of these cells were B220+ and 100% of B220+ cells were CD43+, indicating that these mice were able to make pro-B cells. Similarly, FACS analysis of bone marrow cells in Emu-TAL1 mice revealed complete absence of B220+IgM+ and B220+CD19+ cells. Analysis of the recombination status of IgH genes revealed the presence of D-J but absence or drastic reduction of V-D-J rearrangements. Our results suggest that Tal1 overexpression in B cells results in a phenotype similar to that of B cells of E47/E2A knockout animals. This represents first in vivo evidence that Tal1 can completely inhibit E47/E2A function.


We report on the integration of the Bragg filters with 1/spl times/8 multimode interference (MMI) power splitters on silicon substrate, and the demonstration of 1/spl times/8 external cavity distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers. Hybrid organic-inorganic material is developed based on the sol-gel synthesis of an organically modified silicon alkoxide. The sol-gel material is spin coated on grating SiO/sub 2/-Si wafers, and the designed components (splitters and filters) are UV imprinted and developed using solvent assisted photolithography. The Bragg reflectors show filtering up to 98% with a bandwidth of about 0.8 nm consistent with their theoretical prediction. Integrated reflectors and MMI splitters are then used as feedback resonators for DBR lasers. Single-mode lasing with sidemode suppressions of up to 40 dB and a linewidth of about 400 kHz is observed. At 1550- nm wavelength, the loss and power uniformity in the MMI splitters, designed on the basis of lowest loss, are, respectively, 0.13 dB and 0.03 dB poorer than their theoretical calculations.


Background: The purpose was to examine whether very brief paper-pencil interventions can have an effect in various domains of health behaviour change.Theoretical basis was the health action process approach (HAPA) that makes a distinction between motivational and volitional phases. Methods: A series of leaflet-based interventions were conducted in Poland, India, Iran, and Costa Rica with more than 1,000 participants. Repeated measures analyses of variance were applied to test time by treatment effects, observing treatment and control groups over several weeks. Findings: Modest intervention effects were found for diet, exercise, hand hygiene, and dental flossing. Moreover, mediation and moderation analyses identified the role of social-cognitive variables (intentions, planning, self-efficacy, action control). Discussion: A case has been made in favor of very parsimonious interventions that provide either a starting point for the adoption of health behaviors, or a cue to action that helps to maintain on-going behaviors.


The usefulness and limitations of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) for the assessment of several soil characteristics are still not sufficiently explored. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of visible and near-infrared reflectance (VIS-NIR) spectroscopy to predict the composition of organic matter in soils and litter. Reflectance spectra of the VIS-NIR region (400–2500 nm) were recorded for 56 soil and litter samples from agricultural and forest sites. Spectra were used to predict general and biological characteristics of the samples as well as the C composition which was measured by 13C-CPMAS-NMR spectroscopy. A modified partial least-square method and cross-validation were used to develop equations for the different constituents over the whole spectrum (1st to 3rd derivation). Near-infrared spectroscopy predicted well the C : N ratios, the percentages of O-alkyl C and alkyl C, the ratio of alkyl C to O-alkyl C, and the sum of phenolic oxidation products: the ratios of standard deviation of the laboratory results to standard error of cross-validation (RSC) were greater than 2, the regression coefficients (a) of a linear regression (measured against predicted values) ranged from 0.9 to 1.1, and the correlation coefficients (r) were greater than 0.9. Satisfactorily (0.8 ≤ a ≤ 1.2, r ≥ 0.8, and 1.4 ≤ RSC ≤ 2.0) assessed were the contents of C, N, and production of DOC, the percentages of carbonyl C and aromatic C and the ratio of alkyl C to aromatic C. However, the N-mineralization rate and the microbial biomass were predicted unsatisfactorily (RSC < 1.4). The good and satisfactory predictions reported above indicate a marked usefulness of NIRS in the assessment of biological and chemical characteristics of soils and litter.


† Background and Aims The production system of cut-rose (Rosa × hybrida) involves a complex combination of plant material, management practice and environment. Plant structure is determined by bud break and shoot development while having an effect on local light climate. The aim of the present study is to cover selected aspects of the cut-rose system using functional –structural plant modelling (FSPM), in order to better understand processes contributing to produce quality and quantity. † Methods The model describes the production system in three dimensions, including a virtual greenhouse environment with the crop, light sources (diffuse and direct sun light and lamps) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) sensors. The crop model is designed as a multiscaled FSPM with plant organs (axillary buds, leaves, internodes, flowers) as basic units, and local light interception and photosynthesis within each leaf. A Monte-Carlo light model was used to compute the local light climate for leaf photosynthesis, the latter described using a biochemical rate model. † Key Results The model was able to reproduce PAR measurements taken at different canopy positions, different times of the day and different light regimes. Simulated incident and absorbed PAR as well as net assimilation rate in upright and bent shoots showed characteristic spatial and diurnal dynamics for different common cultivation scenarios. † Conclusions The model of cut-rose presented allowed the creation of a range of initial structures thanks to interactive rules for pruning, cutting and bending. These static structures can be regarded as departure points for the dynamic simulation of production of flower canes. Furthermore, the model was able to predict local ( per leaf ) light absorption and photosynthesis. It can be used to investigate the physiology of ornamental plants, and provide support for the decisions of growers and consultants.


Background: Oral cancer in Sudan has high incidence rate due to the use of Toombak , a home- made smokeless tobacco, rich in tobacco specific nitrosamines .There have been calls for continuous monitoring on toombak users to discover very early the carcinogenic changes to avoid mortality, and  morbidity.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess technically, and financially affordable  methodologies, that are  reliable, reproducible,  sensitive, specific and cost effective valid  for use  in  mass  screening  amongst  the  high  risk  groups. (The toombak  users).The present study was done to evaluate the levels of copper, zinc and magnesium in serum of toombak dippers.
Materials and Methods: The levels of copper, zinc, and magnesium were estimated in the serum of 150 toombak dippers . The values were compared with 50 normal age matched, healthy control subjects and 50 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma, using Atomic absorption spectrophotometry.
 Results: There was significant difference of the mean serum copper, zinc, and magnesium levels of toombak  dippers when compared to the normal controls. In oral cancer patients there was significant difference in the copper, zinc, and magnesium levels. Copper level was found increased gradually starting from control through toombak dippers to oral squamous cell carcinoma patients , while the level of zinc and magnesium was found decreased in the same sequence.
Conclusion: Serum may be used as a potential diagnostic tool, which can be efficiently employed  to evaluate the copper, zinc and magnesium  levels in Sudanese snuff dippers for population based  mass screening .Serum trace elements levels could be used as potential  diagnostic markers for early changes caused by toombak dipping.
Keywords: Atomic absorption spectrophotometry, copper,  magnesiumm , zinc,  oral squamous cell carcinoma, tobacco specific nitrosamines,  serum , toombak.


Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA and their housing conditions are officially characterized by a "temporary status", a situation which has lasted the past sixty years. This article explores this time-paradox by focusing on the host governments' and UNRWA's policies affecting the refugees' housing conditions. After having reviewed available literature, this contribution analyses the current housing situation. Drawing on data from a recent survey, the authors provide insights on areas where intervention is needed. In all UNRWA's fields of operation, overcrowding, lack of public spaces, humidity and structural defects are the main sources of housing discomfort that camp refugees endure. Host countries' restrictions as well as the incapacity or unwillingness of larger urban municipalities to incorporate refugee camps in their master plans are among the main obstacles to the refugees' housing development. Rehabilitation and self-help re-housing programs may offer substantial incentives for housing improvement. The success of such programs depends, among several factors, on the host governments' good will to [...] RUEFF, Henri, VIARO, Mario Alain. Palestinian Refugee Camps: From Shelter to Habitat. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2009, vol. 28, no. 2-3, p. 339-359 DOI : 10.1093/rsq/hdp041


We present the results of modeling dust spectral energy distributions (SEDs) across the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with the aim of mapping the distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in a low-metallicity environment. Using Spitzer Survey of the SMC (S 3 MC) photometry from 3.6 to 160 µm over the main star-forming regions of the Wing and Bar of the SMC along with spectral mapping observations from 5 to 38 µm from the Spitzer Spectroscopic Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud (S 4 MC) in selected regions, we model the dust spectral energy distribution and emission spectrum to determine the fraction of dust in PAHs across the SMC. We use the regions of overlaping photometry and spectroscopy to test the reliability of the PAH fraction as determined from SED fits alone. The PAH fraction in the SMC is low compared to the Milky Way and variable– with relatively high fractions (qPAH� 1 − 2%) in molecular clouds and low fractions in the diffuse ISM (average hqPAHi = 0.6%). We use the map of PAH fraction across the SMC to test a number of ideas regarding the production, destruction and processing of PAHs in the ISM. We find weak or no correlation between the PAH fraction and the distribution of carbon AGB stars, the location of supergiant H I shells and young supernova remnants, and the turbulent Mach number. We find that the PAH fraction is correlated with CO intensity, peaks in the dust surface density and the molecular gas surface density as determined from 160 µm emission. The PAH fraction is high in regions of active star-formation, as predicted by its correlation with molecular gas, but is supressed in H II regions. Because the PAH fraction in the diffuse ISM is generally very low–in accordance with previous work on modeling the integrated SED of the SMC–and the PAH fraction is relatively high in molecular regions, we suggest that PAHs are destroyed in the diffuse ISM of the SMC and/or PAHs are forming in molecular clouds. We discuss the implications of these observations for our understanding of the PAH life cycle, particularly in low-metallicity and/or primordial galaxies. Subject headings: dust, extinction — infrared: ISM — Magellanic Clouds


Elevated blood pressure (BP) is the most common cause of cardiovascular disease. Salt intake has a strong influence on BP, and plasma sodium (pNa) is increased with progressive increases in salt intake. However, the associations with pNa and BP had been reported inconsistently. We evaluated the association between pNa and BP, and estimated the risks of all-cause-mortality according to pNa levels. On the basis of data collected from health checkups during 1995-2009, 97,009 adult subjects were included. Positive correlations between pNa and systolic BP, diastolic BP, and pulse pressure (PP) were noted in participants with pNa ≥138 mM/L (P<0.001). In participants aged ≥50 yr, SBP, DBP, and PP were positively associated with pNa. In participants with metabolic syndrome components, the differences in SBP and DBP according to pNa were greater (P<0.001). A cumulative incidence of mortality was increased with increasing pNa in women aged ≥50 yr during the median 4.2-yr-follow-up (P<0.001). In women, unadjusted risks for mortality were increased according to sodium levels. After adjustment, pNa ≥145 mM/L was related to mortality. The positive correlation between pNa and BP is stronger in older subjects, women, and subjects with metabolic syndrome components. The incidence and adjusted risks of mortality increase with increasing pNa in women aged ≥50 yr.


It is a well-known observation that morphologically complex words 'inherit' phonological properties of their stems. Famous examples involve transderivational preservation of stress, which is involved in the analysis of secondary stress in English (Chomsky & Halle 1968), syncope in Palestinian Arabic (Brame 1974) and diphthongization in Spanish (Harris 1983). This paper will deal with the preservation of stem stress in Dutch complex words.


This contribution examines selected issues from a policy and legal perspective. Against the background of the broader social security reform agenda in South Africa and the vision of a comprehensive social security system, the contribution covers five key areas, namely alignment with international standards; the need to develop synergies with the rest of the social security system and for institutional reform and alignment; addressing certain material deficiencies and inconsistencies in the UIF legislation (with reference to removing the restriction on certain contributors to benefit and redefining the range of dependants); re-aligning the current UIF benefit regime to focus on loss of employment; and improving the UIF benefit regime through the introduction of standardised measures and other reforms (with reference to the indexation of benefits, utilising a minimum wage arrangement as a basis for benefit enhancement, adjusting the contribution rate and developing a streamlined adjudication framework). It is argued that complying with relevant international standards will move South Africa closer to be in a position to ratify these instruments, in particular ILO Convention 102 of 1952 on minimum standards in social security. Ample opportunity exists to introduce streamlined approaches in among others the collection of contributions and shared benefit payment facilities and arrangements, and the harmonisation of benefits. However, particular considerations and substantive constraints define and circumscribe the extent and content of the alignment of the UIF that is currently considered. These relate in particular to the compensation function of the UIF; its role as a labour market instrument; and the need to recognise unemployment insurance as a separate risk category with a ringfenced contribution and benefit regime framework. It should also be considered to separate unemployment insurance benefits in the strict sense of the word (ie benefits accruing to a beneficiary as a result of loss of employment) from unemployment-related benefits such as sickness, maternity and adoption benefits.


Watching a 360° sports video requires a viewer to continuously select a viewing angle, either through a sequence of mouse clicks or head movements. To relieve the viewer from this 360 piloting task, we propose deep 360 pilot - a deep learning-based agent for piloting through 360° sports videos automatically. At each frame, the agent observes a panoramic image and has the knowledge of previously selected viewing angles. The task of the agent is to shift the current viewing angle (i.e. action) to the next preferred one (i.e., goal). We propose to directly learn an online policy of the agent from data. Specifically, we leverage a state-of-the-art object detector to propose a few candidate objects of interest (yellow boxes in Fig. 1). Then, a recurrent neural network is used to select the main object (green dash boxes in Fig. 1). Given the main object and previously selected viewing angles, our method regresses a shift in viewing angle to move to the next one. We use the policy gradient technique to jointly train our pipeline, by minimizing: (1) a regression loss measuring the distance between the selected and ground truth viewing angles, (2) a smoothness loss encouraging smooth transition in viewing angle, and (3) maximizing an expected reward of focusing on a foreground object. To evaluate our method, we built a new 360-Sports video dataset consisting of five sports domains. We trained domain-specific agents and achieved the best performance on viewing angle selection accuracy and users preference compared to [53] and other baselines.


OBJECTIVE
Many claims have been made regarding the therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture. However, most controlled clinical studies have been limited to treatment of pain-related disorders and do not provide objective, quantifiable data for analysis. Traditional acupuncture has been applied to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, only a few studies have been performed to determine the efficacy of this treatment. This study was conducted to determine whether a combination of traditional acupuncture treatment and conservative treatment for COPD improves dyspnea on exercise.

METHODS
This was a prospective trial with matched-pair parallel groups of patients from the departments of respiratory internal medicine of Gifu University of Medicine, Meiji University of Oriental Medicine, and Gifu Red Cross Hospital, Japan. Thirty patients were divided into the acupuncture group (n = 15) and the control group (n = 15). The control group received conservative treatment with medication only. The acupuncture group received acupuncture treatments once a week for 10 weeks, in addition to conservative treatment with medication. The main outcome measure was the Modified Borg dyspnea scale after the 6-minute walk test.

RESULTS
The acupuncture group had significantly better results on the Borg scale than the control group after 10 weeks (2.2 +/- 2.7 versus 6.4 +/- 3.4, p = 0.0001, 95% confidence interval, -5.10 to -2.35, paired t-test). The 6-minute walk distance and oxygen saturation at the minimum rate improved significantly in the acupuncture group compared with the control group.

CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrated that acupuncture contributed to the reduction of COPD-related dyspnea on exercise in 15 matched-pair parallel subjects.


Background: Intense pulsed light (IPL), as a therapeutic approach for rosacea, had advan-tage in removing erythema and telangiectasia and was gradually accepted by rosacea patients, but there have been few studies on economic evaluation of this therapy. Purpose: This study aimed to detect willingness-to-pay (WTP) of IPL treatment for rosacea and to conduct a benefit–cost analysis (BCA) among the Chinese population, so as to provide an economic reference for doctors to make treatment decisions. Materials and Methods: An observational, cross-sectional study assessed respondent's demographic characteristics and willingness-to-pay (WTP) of IPL and rosacea patients' clinical data and Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI). WTP was obtained by contingent valuation (CV) method. In brief, contrast figures of three cases treated with IPL (Case1, Case2, and Case3 represented the increasing severity of rosacea) were showed and WTP was inquired. The costs were obtained according the market and compared with WTP (benefits) to get a benefit–cost ratio (BCR). Predictors of cost-effective WTP were identified using the multivariable logistic regression model. Results: A total of 303 rosacea patients and 202 controls were included in the study. The average cost of a single IPL treatment for rosacea was USD 208.04 in Changsha, China. The mean WTP for Case 1, Case 2, and Case 3 was USD 201.57, 214.64, and 221.74, respec-tively. WTP was statistically lower for Case 1 than that for Case 2 or Case 3 (P<0.05). The BCRs were 0.85, 1.03, and 1.06 for Case 1, Case 2, and Case 3, respectively. WTP is significantly associated with household monthly income, previous treatment cost, and DLQI after adjustments for demographic characteristics (P<0.05). Conclusion: IPL is an acceptable treatment for rosacea with moderate to severe erythema. For patients with relatively high income or severely impaired quality of life, IPL is an economically feasible therapy and deserves to be recommended.


▸ Bain CC, Bravo-Blas A, Scott CL, et al. Constant replenishment from circulating monocytes maintains the macrophage pool in the intestine of adult mice. Nat Immunol 2014;15:929–37. Macrophages are essential for pathogen defence, tissue homeostasis and wound repair. The current paradigm that tissue resident macrophages (TRMs) derive from embryonic precursors and are independent of blood monocytes has never been studied in the intestine, which houses the largest pool of TRMs. In this study, the authors set out to investigate the origin of the intestinal TRM compartment in mice from birth until adulthood. Using a combination of immunotyping, lineage tracing and parabiosis techniques, the authors demonstrated that macrophages in the intestine are an exception to this paradigm. Specifically, intestinal macrophages under steady-state conditions are continuously replenished by blood-derived monocytes even though the yolk sac-derived macrophages are seeded to the gut tissue during the neonatal period. Resident intestinal macrophages proliferated in situ in the first few weeks of life, but this lessened concomitantly with the arrival of bone marrow-derived monocytes during weaning, around 2–3 weeks of age. This finding is in stark contrast to results obtained for the liver, lung, spleen, kidney, epidermis and brain, where macrophages retain their embryonic signature into adulthood. The colonic macrophage pool in adult mice was associated with CCR2-dependent recruitment of classic Ly6C monocytes and their subsequent differentiation into mature, anti-inflammatory macrophages. This process was driven mostly by commensal microbiota and continued throughout adulthood to sustain a normal intestinal macrophage pool. This study sheds light on the regulatory mechanisms that control macrophage homeostasis in the highly dynamic intestinal microenvironment. Significant progress has been made into understanding the role of intestinal macrophages in steady-state and inflammatory conditions. In both environments, macrophages of the intestinal wall derive from blood monocytes. From a clinical aspect, future work should focus on identifying the factors that affect monocyte differentiation, as these may be possible therapeutic targets for IBD treatment.


The MUC1 mucin is expressed on the luminal surface of most simple epithelial cells but in carcinomas, especially those of the breast and ovary, MUC1 is upregulated and aberrantly glycosylated. MUC1 contains a large amount of O-linked glycans which, in the mucin expressed by normal mammary epithelial cells, consist mainly of core 2 based structures carrying polylactosamine chains. However, the mucin expressed by breast carcinomas has shorter side-chains, often consisting of sialylated core 1 (Galbeta1-3GalNAc). in situ hybridization of primary breast tissue showed that a sialyltransferase (ST3Gal I), responsible for adding sialic acid to core 1 thereby terminating chain extension, is elevated in primary breast carcinomas when compared to normal or benign tissue. Furthermore, the level of mRNA expression encoding ST3Gal I is correlated to the intensity of staining seen with the antibody SM3, which specifically recognises underglycosylated, tumour associated MUC1. Thus, the aberrant glycosylation of MUC1 seen in breast carcinomas appears to be due, at least in part, to the elevation of ST3Gal I.


Cisplatin is one of the most widely used chemotherapeutic agents in oncology, although its nephrotoxicity limits application and dosage. We present the results of a clinical study on prophylaxis of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity in patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis undergoing cytoreduction and hyperthermic intraperitoneal intraoperative chemotherapy (HIPEC-cisplatin). Prophylaxis was with imipenem/cilastatin. Cilastatin is a selective inhibitor of renal dehydropeptidase I in the proximal renal tubule cells that can reduce the nephrotoxicity of cisplatin. Unfortunately, cilastatin is not currently marketed alone, and can only be administered in combination with imipenem. The study has a retrospective part that serves as a control (n = 99 patients receiving standard surgical prophylaxis) and a prospective part with imipenem/cilastatin prophylaxis corresponding to the study group (n = 85 patients). In both groups, we collected specific data on preoperative risk factors of renal damage, fluid management, hemodynamic control, and urine volume during surgery (including the hyperthermic chemotherapy perfusion), as well as data on hemodynamic and renal function during the first seven days after surgery. The main finding of the study is that cilastatin may exert a nephroprotective effect in patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis undergoing cytoreduction and hyperthermic intraperitoneal cisplatin perfusion. Creatinine values remained lower than in the control group (ANOVA test, p = 0.037). This translates into easier management of these patients in the postoperative period, with significantly shorter intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay.


We report on a patient who remained cancer-free for an extended time after palliative radiotherapy (RT) and chemotherapy (nedaplatin plus 5-fluorouracil) treatment for stage IV (cT3N3M1) esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Although multiple lymph nodes outside the RT field recurred, the local primary tumor within the RT field did not recur, even 17 mo after palliative RT of 30 Gy in 10 fractions. In this case, acute toxicity, such as myelosuppression or esophagitis, was not enhanced by increasing the fraction dose from 1.8-2.0 Gy to 3.0 Gy. Because 30 Gy in 10 fractions can be completed within a shorter time and is less expensive than 50.4 Gy in 28 fractions, we think that 30 Gy without oblique beams is a more favorable RT method for patients.


Cartesian differential categories were introduced to provide an abstract axiomatization of categories of differentiable functions. The fundamental example is the category whose objects are Euclidean spaces and whose arrows are smooth maps.
Tensor differential categories provide the framework for categorical models of differential linear logic. The coKleisli category of any tensor differential category is always a Cartesian differential category. Cartesian differential categories, besides arising in this manner as coKleisli categories, occur in many different and quite independent ways. Thus, it was not obvious how to pass from Cartesian differential categories back to tensor differential categories.
This paper provides natural conditions under which the linear maps of a Cartesian differential category form a tensor differential category. This is a question of some practical importance as much of the machinery of modern differential geometry is based on models which implicitly allow such a passage, and thus the results and tools of the area tend to freely assume access to this structure.
The purpose of this paper is to make precise the connection between the two types of differential categories. As a prelude to this, however, it is convenient to have available a general theory which relates the behaviour of "linear" maps in Cartesian categories to the structure of Seely categories. The latter were developed to provide the categorical semantics for (fragments of) linear logic which use a "storage" modality. The general theory of storage, which underlies the results mentioned above, is developed in the opening sections of the paper and is then applied to the case of differential categories.


Objectives and Methods: Alternative splicing provides proteomic diversity that can have profound effects. The extent, pattern, and roles of alternative splicing in pancreatic cancer have not been systematically investigated. We have utilized a spliceoform-specific microarray and polymerase chain reaction to evaluate all known splice variants in human pancreatic cancer cell lines representing a spectrum of differentiation, from near-normal HPDE6 to Capan-1 and poorly differentiated MiaPaCa2 cells. Validation of altered spliceoforms was verified in primary cancer specimens and normal pancreatic ductal cells. In addition, expression of 92 spliceosomal genes was examined to better understand the mechanism for observed differences in mRNA splicing. Results: A statistically significant reduction in alternative splicing was found in the pancreatic cancer cell lines compared with HPDE6 cells. Many splice variants identified in Capan-1 and MiaPaCa2 cells were observed in grades 3 and 4 tumors. Analysis of genes encoding spliceosomal proteins revealed that 28 of 92 genes had significantly decreased expression in cancer compared with normal pancreas. Conclusions: Pancreatic cancer has reduced alternative splicing diversity compared with normal pancreas. This is demonstrated in both cell lines and primary tumors, with the loss in splicing diversity correlated with relative reduction in expression of spliceosomal genes.


Abstract The apicomplexan pathogens of Eimeria tenella cause coccidiosis, an intestinal disease of chickens that has a major economic impact on the poultry industry. Members of Apicomplexa share an assortment of unique secretory organelles (rhoptries, micronemes, and dense granules) that mediate invasion of host cells and the formation and modification of the parasitophorous vacuole. Among these, microneme protein 2 from E. tenella (EtMIC2) has a putative function in parasite adhesion to the host cell to initiate the invasion process. To investigate the role of EtMIC2 in host parasite interactions, the production and characterization of 12 monoclonal antibodies (mabs) produced against recombinant EtMIC2 proteins is described. In an immunofluorescence assay, all mabs reacted with molecules belonging to the apical complex of sporozoites and merozoites of E. tenella, E. acervulina, and E. maxima. By Western blot analysis, the mabs identified a developmentally regulated protein of 42 kDa corresponding to EtMIC 2 and cross-reacted with proteins in developmental stages of E. acervulina. Collectively, these mabs are useful tools for the detailed investigation of the characterization of EtMIC2-related proteins in Eimeria species.


4 Abstract The different phospholipid classes play a critical role in cell membrane structure and function. Skin is the first barrier for the animal body to prevent environmental damage and are in addition to the gills also involved in osmoregulation. However, there are no earlier studies that have investigated the relationship between different dietary levels of either EPA, DHA or a mix of EPA and DHA on thefatty acid composition of Atlantic salmon skin PL subclasses. Therefore, we aimed to find the effects of n-3 PUFA deficiency for the fatty acid composition in Atlantic salmon skin PL subclasses. The experimental fish was reared from 40 gram and divided into 14 groups. For each group, they were fed with one of 14 different diets. The diets were 12 different diets (0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2% of either EPA, DHA or a 1:1 mix of EPA+DHA, respectively) with one negative control diet (0% EPA + DHA) and one diet with a composition close to a commercial diet with 2,2% EPA+DHA. The skin samples was taken when the fish was 200 gram and 400 gram, for each group, the skin sample was analyzed in duplicates (in EPA or DHA group) or triplicates (in EPA+DHA, NC and CC group). TLC was applied in duplicate, to separate the different PL classes. GC was used to determine the fatty acid composition in the PL subclasses. PCA was used to do the statistical analysis. Each PL subclass contains a unique fatty acid pattern regardless the diet group. But all of PL subclasses were affected by the different fatty acid compositions of the diets. The influence was more pronounced the longer time the fish had been fed the different diets, PS and PI are more conserved than PC and PE. 20:4n-6 is dynamically increased when EPA and DHA decreases in the PE and PI fractions, whereas an increase in 20:3n-6 follows the EPA and DHA decrease in the PS fraction. Moreover, PI fraction contains the highest percentage of 20:4n-6. An increase in short chain MUFAs in the PC and PS fractions was also observed when the EPA and DHA decreased, while the increase of some SFA (12:0, 16:0, 18:0) with EPA and DHA decrease was observed in almost all PL subclasses, except PC fraction. The percentage of DHA was significantly reduced in all Atlantic salmon skin PL classes, while a significant reduction of EPA was detected in the PC and PE fractions. Furthermore, DHA is much better retained in PE and PS group than in PC and PI fractions. In general, 18:1n-9, some short chain SFA and n-6 PUFA increased with the dietary


As features of modern electronics shrink, the demands of the spatial resolution of the characterization techniques increase. One family of potential building blocks for future devices is nanowires. We show how low-temperature cathodoluminescence can be used to study variations in the emission from two types of nanowires: Nanowires with a GaInAs segment in an otherwise GaAs core and radial InAs quantum wells on an InP core. Introduction


In this dissertation, we analyzed selected deposition and reaction processes on Si(100) using Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation of suitable atomistic lattice-gas models. For the first project on the room-temperature deposition of Ga on Si(100), analysis of the island size distribution reveals that it is monotonically decreasing rather than monomodal, a clear departure from classical nucleation theory. KMC simulations of a realistic model recover this behavior, and simulations of refined models show that aggregation is responsible for the unexpected shape of the island size distribution. From these simulations, we were also able to extract reasonable values for the anisotropic diffusion barriers which recover key aspects of experimental data (e.g. average island size). Next, we extended this analysis to other known systems which exhibit a monotonically decreasing form of the island size distribution and found a large ratio of the nucleation rate to the aggregation rate in all cases. For the second project, we studied oxidation and etching of oxygen on Si(100) for a wide range of temperatures ranging from high to moderate. In the high temperature regime, etching via the removal of SiO dominates but increasingly competes with the formation of oxide clusters as the temperature approaches the 550 C 700 C range. After prolonged etching, oxide-capped Si nanoprotusions gradually emerge as the dominant feature of the surface. We first developed a simplified atomistic model to describe this behavior under the conditions of layer-by-layer etching of a flat surface. In the subsequent modeling, focus was on oxidation and etching of vicinal Si(100) where detailed treatment of the equilibrium step structure and Si(100) dynamics makes it possible to analyze phenomenon such as step recession, pinning of receding steps by oxide clusters leading to the creation of "fingers", their subsequent pinch-off, and break-away islands. To our knowledge, this was the first attempt to include detailed description of the key surface diffusion processes (like di-vacancy diffusion) in lattice-gas modeling. In addition, we have also explored the effects of an enhanced nucleation at the step edges and its role in the emergence of fingers.


Youth with disabilities are amongst the poorest and most marginalised of young people worldwide. Approximately 80 per cent of disabled young people live in countries of the Global South. Despite a growing body of research problematising youth transitions in situations of poverty and increasing interest in disability issues beyond the Global North, little is known about how youth with disabilities in the Global South make their transitions to adulthood. This thesis addresses this gap by reporting on a qualitative study on the transitions to adulthood of young people with different impairments living primarily in Accra, Ghana. Using innovative, participatory methods, it explores young people s individual narratives within the areas of education, employment, and social and community life, and the ways in which these shape their life trajectories.
The study shows that the transitions to adulthood of youth with disabilities in Accra are substantially influenced by disability-related factors and processes that are socio-spatially embedded and intricately intertwined. Disabling social and physical environments restrict disabled young people s participation in education, employment, and social and community life, which increases their vulnerability to marginalisation and exclusion in society. As a consequence, their transitions to adulthood are even more complex, protracted, and uncertain than for their non-disabled peers. Youth with disabilities, however, use a variety of coping strategies to navigate the challenges they face associated with school, work, and social life in their attempts to achieve adulthood. Foregrounding the voices of young people with differing categories of social difference challenges the hitherto existing homogenisation of the lives of youth with disabilities in the Global South highlighting their agency and capabilities as well as the complex ways in which they negotiate transitions during the life-course.


In this study, a U-pipe evacuated tube solar collector was tested in a solar simulator under indoor conditions and an efficiency curve was formed. The pressure drop of the solar collector was determined for different mass flow rates. Beams that come from the simulator to the solar collector are provided with halogen lamps. Since beams from the lamps do not come parallel to the collector like solar beams, it would be misleading to use the absorber projection area in the calculation of efficiency. As a more realistic approach, a method that calculates the angular absorber area of beams was developed. While collector efficiency that depends on the collector absorber projection area varies between 116% and 80%, collector efficiency that depends on the field of the angular absorber has changed between 56% and 38%. These results obtained from the experimental study reveal the importance of determining the collector's area to be used in the solar simulator for the efficiency calculation of evacuated tube solar collector tests. The effect of fluid flow on collector efficiency and pressure drop is also investigated. As the fluid flow in the collector increases, the pressure drop also increases and a relatively increase in the efficiency is observed.


Here we demonstrate that the encapsulation of crystal-state emitters in sol–gel matrices is an efficient way to produce bright nanotracers for bioimaging applications. We report the development of a family of fluorescent organic@silicate core–shell nanoparticles (NPs) containing an organic core surrounded by a silicate shell, with a high loading of dyes (30–40 wt%), prepared by an original spray-drying technique combining sol–gel chemistry and nanocrystallization. Four dyes were encapsulated within the silicate nanoparticles. The crystallinity of the organic core is discussed on the basis of characterization by electron microscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy. Bright, red-emitting core–shell NPs have been produced, which are promising for use in bio-imaging.


Engaging science in everyday life often means not advancing knowledge or making new claims, but evaluating given claims with available evidence. In everyday situations, evidence is usually presented in some type of inscription (e.g. tables, diagrams, and other images). This study explores elementary students' use of inscriptions as evidence in written arguments about socioscientific issues and how a school year of science instruction may play a role in that use.Three science teachers and their 102 students in 5th and 6th grades at a progressive urban K-6 school participated in this study. I administered a written argument task at the beginning and the end of the 2013–2014 school year, in which students were asked to justify their personal decisions about either alternative energy use or genetically modified organisms. Throughout the year, I worked closely with the teachers to organize classroom instruction towards promoting argumentation and coordination between claims and evidence, and videotaped their science lessons.Content analysis on students' written arguments reveals that photos were cited the most in students' written arguments, while tables were cited the least. Students tended to merely point to an inscription without articulate its relation to a particular claim, or to assert that an inscription "shows" a claim without saying how. They were also likely to credit inscriptions that aligned with their own position rather than discount those that supported counterclaims. From pre to post, these patterns did not change significantly. Analysis on science instruction further shows that the contestability of the claims students encountered in the classroom was low, meaning that they were not framed in arguable ways. The resources available to students for resolving these claims were also limited. The classroom discourse was not open enough for productive argumentation. These patterns may potentially account for the lack of change in students' use of inscriptions in their written arguments.This study extends previous research on what children think counts as evidence in arguing about everyday science. Findings suggest that while students learn to evaluate scientific explanations in school, they are put in a different position of having to justify their decisions when facing everyday science. School science should explicitly link the two tasks. Further, we need to frame the learning of science as stabilizing legitimately contestable claims, and provide relevant resources for students to argue with. Classroom discourse, lastly, should be open to argumentation and integrative with disciplinary and epistemic aspects of scientific practices.


In this report, the properties of fluorocarbon-containing (tridecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetrahydrooctyl)triethoxysilane (TTS) (C14H19F13O3Si) nanofilm coated on silicon surface and its potential to resist protein adsorption were examined. Thickness and wettability of the silicon surface before and after TTS nanofilm coating were examined by ellipsometry and contact angle goniometry, respectively. The same techniques were used to examine protein layer on nonmodified and TTS-coated silicon surface. In addition, bright-field optical microscopy and fluorescence spectrophotometry were used to provide visual, qualitative description of adsorbed proteins and the specific signal of fluorescence-labeled bovine serum albumin (BSA), respectively, on bare and TTS-coated silicon surface. Single-component protein solution of four model proteins, namely BSA, human fibrinogen, bovine serum immunoglobulin G, and fibronectin, was prepared and the adsorption responses of these four proteins on TTS nanofilm was examined, using nonmodified silicon surface as comparison. TTS substantially reduces the adsorption of all four proteins tested. Our results indicate that fluorocarbon-containing TTS, once coated on surfaces, is an effective molecule for resisting protein adsorption. This will open up potential applications particularly for silicon-containing implant devices such as glass. C � 2013


In the context of interactive, virtual experiences, the use of personality models to maintain consistent character behaviour is becoming more widespread in both industry and academia. Most current techniques, however, are limited in one of three ways: either they overly restrict user actions, have a high cost for creating varied content, or rely on a representation that prohibits conveying complex content to the user.  Toward addressing these issues, we introduce Socially Consistent Role Passing, a mechanism for ensuring consistent character behaviour that leverages the design of PaSSAGE, an existing system for generating adaptive, interactive stories.  While results from previous human user studies have shown that PaSSAGE improves the enjoyment of players with little gaming experience, we present results from a new study showing that PaSSAGE's adaptive stories, augmented with Socially Consistent Role Passing, improve the enjoyment of all players versus a set of fixed-structure alternatives.


In this paper we evaluated traffic characteristics and vegetation and topographic features associated with mule deer kills on 3 highways (US 40, SR 32, SR 248) in northeastern Utah. We also compared number, and sex and age composition of roadkills to that of the living population observed during spotlight counts. From 15 October 1991 to 14 October 1993 we documented 397 deer roadkills: 51.6% were does, 18.9% bucks, 21.7% fawns, and 7.8% could not be classified. Sixty-seven percent of adult kills were 2.5 yr of age. Kill composition compared closely to spotlight counts. Of 1515 spotlight deer, 65.2% were does, 8.9% bucks, and 25.9% fawns. Spotlight density and deer mortality were strongly correlated from summer 1992 through summer 1993 ( r = 0.94). Traffic conditions, topographic features, and vegetative characteristics contributed to mortality levels. Roadkills were highest along US 40 (68% year 1, 55% year 2) where traffic volume and speed were significantly higher along either state route. Large drainages intersected highways in 78% of designated kill zones. Roads adjacent to agricultural areas along all routes sustained the fewest highway mortalities. Percent cover was higher (40%) in kill zones than in other areas (29%).


A retrospective study of post surgical complications was conducted on records of students' Large Animal Surgical Laboratories in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (F.V.M.), Ahmadu Bello University (A.B.U), Zaria from 1989 to 1993. Three hundred and eleven surgical complications were recorded from five surgical procedures namely dehorning, orchidectomy, vasectomy, rumenotomy and enterotomy. The commonest complications were wound dehiscence (25.4%), sinusitis (16.7%), and hemorrhage (14.6%). Others included fever (11.3%), edema (10.6%) slipped ligature (6.4%), wound infection (5.5%), peritonitis (4.8%), death (2.6%), intestinal obstruction/adhesion (1.3%), physiological bloat (0.6%) and myiasis (0.3%). Dehorning, castration and rumenotomy resulted in more complications. Surgical site debridement and surgical reconstruction coupled with antibiotic therapy were used in the management of complications. Responses from questionnaires administered to instructors of the surgical laboratories, revealed that post surgical complications were due to poor health status of sheep and goats used, broken asepsis during surgery, wrong use of instrument, poor surgical technique and dirty pens in which they were kept after surgery. Surgical complications no doubt contribute to tremendous high cost of running the students' surgical laboratories which was estimated to cost N80,000 per annum. In order to minimize these complications and consequently to reduce money spent on surgical reconstruction and antibiotic therapy some recommendations are made.
KEY WORDS: Surgical complications, students' practical, sheep and goats
(Nigerian Veterinary Journal: 2002 23(2): 40-45)


Hyperinsulinemia may contribute to hypertension by increasing sympathetic activity and vascular resistance. We sought to determine if insulin increases central sympathetic neural outflow and vascular resistance in humans. We recorded muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA; microneurography, peroneal nerve), forearm blood flow (plethysmography), heart rate, and blood pressure in 14 normotensive males during 1-h infusions of low (38 mU/m2/min) and high (76 mU/m2/min) doses of insulin while holding blood glucose constant. Plasma insulin rose from 8 +/- 1 microU/ml during control, to 72 +/- 8 and 144 +/- 13 microU/ml during the low and high insulin doses, respectively, and fell to 15 +/- 6 microU/ml 1 h after insulin infusion was stopped. MSNA, which averaged 21.5 +/- 1.5 bursts/min in control, increased significantly (P less than 0.001) during both the low and high doses of insulin (+/- 5.4 and +/- 9.3 bursts/min, respectively) and further increased during 1-h recovery (+15.2 bursts/min). Plasma norepinephrine levels (119 +/- 19 pg/ml during control) rose during both low (258 +/- 25; P less than 0.02) and high (285 +/- 95; P less than 0.01) doses of insulin and recovery (316 +/- 23; P less than 0.01). Plasma epinephrine levels did not change during insulin infusion. Despite the increased MSNA and plasma norepinephrine, there were significant (P less than 0.001) increases in forearm blood flow and decreases in forearm vascular resistance during both doses of insulin. Systolic pressure did not change significantly during infusion of insulin and diastolic pressure fell approximately 4-5 mmHg (P less than 0.01). This study suggests that acute increases in plasma insulin within the physiological range elevate sympathetic neural outflow but produce forearm vasodilation and do not elevate arterial pressure in normal humans.