The quadratic general rotary unitized design of two factors, the temperature and the time were used to study the influence of low-temperature to architectural membrane material. The tensile properties of architectural membrane material were tested after low-temperature treatment, and the mathematical models about breaking strength and elongation at break were built. The two mathematical models proved highly significant by F test, which indicates that the low-temperature environment has a distinctive influence on breaking strength and elongation at break of architectural membrane material. The results are kept to serve as a reference for the rational utilization of architectural membrane material in low-temperature environments.


Background: Perforations of the tympanic membrane (TM) are treated with various surgical techniques and materials. Although autologous temporalis fascia is the most common material used for the closure of TM perforations, however for a dry, small central perforation the fat graft myringoplasty (FM) is a good alternative as it is a simple and cost-effective technique. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of FM for repair of small central perforations. Suggestions for optimizing the outcome of FM are presented. Material and Methods: Twenty patients (10 males and 10 females) who had uncomplicated dry small central perforation, which was confined to one quadrant of the pars tensa underwent FM. The outcome was evaluated after 1-week, 1-month, and 3 months. Results: After 3 months of follow-up, a closure rate of 80% was achieved. Mean preoperative air-bone (AB) gap was 22.90 ± 6.54 dB and mean postoperative AB gap was 21.80 ± 6.28 dB. Mean improvement in AB gap postoperatively was 1.1 ± 2.63 dB. Conclusion: Fat graft myringoplasty, with its ease of technique and good graft uptake rate justifies its use in the closure of small dry central TM perforations.


Nigerian democratic political system is inherent with military features whereby every side of it is militarized in one way or the other. This is not a surprise considering the number of years the country spent under military regime. Even most of its states were created by military rulers. The military features of the country are also found active in its security approach whereby Nigerian military forces are mostly use for both internal and external security. The excessive use and unmerited priorities given to military sector requires a strict assessment in order to reveal the weaknesses of the most preferable security tool using by the government. This paper assesses the Nigerian military actions (JTF) in Niger Delta crisis in order to find out how deteriorated the crisis has become as a result of different military operations carried out by Nigerian armed forces and its implications on overall Nigerian security sectors. This paper reveals the inability of Nigerian military security approach to sufficiently securitize the multidimensional nature of threats inherent in the country. This paper uses the secondary method of data collection and qualitative in method of analysis. The needed information is obtained through examination of different secondary materials such as journal articles, books, magazine, internet sources, and personal observation.


The concentrations of copper, zinc, lead and cadmium in the living tissue of the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis from the Sinop coasts of the Black Sea were measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometry for monitoring metal pollution in the coastal water. A statistically significant difference in the concentrations of all metals was observed among four sampling stations. The results were compared with previous studies and discussed.


AIM: This paper reports a study to validate and test the reliability of a questionnaire constructed to evaluate the life situation of spouses after their partners have had a stroke.BACKGROUND: Stroke is a disease with great consequences for survivors and their families. Most survivors return home after the hospitalization and rehabilitation due to the stroke event. Relatives, primarily spouses, often feel obligated to care for the survivor at home, providing emotional support or assisting the person in activities of daily living. More specific information is needed about the spouse's life situation after the stroke event in order to develop effective supportive strategies.METHODS: Psychometric testing of the Life Situation Questionnaire was undertaken with 99 spouses of stroke survivors. The 13-item questionnaire consists of four subscales: 'Worries', 'Powerlessness', 'Personal adjustment' and 'Social isolation'.RESULTS: Item analysis showed that each item correlated with its own subscale (r = 0.63-0.78). The instrument had high internal consistency, with Cronbach's alphas of 0.80-0.86 and reasonable high congruent validity when correlated with a Wellbeing instrument, with a correlation of 0.59 (P = 0.001). Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the subscales, accounting for 77% of the variance.CONCLUSION: The Life Situation Questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument, and could serve as an assessment tool after a stroke event to identify family caregivers who have problems in their life situations and need support from healthcare services.


Since the early 1990s, tree ordinations have become an important practice for some Thai environmental activists who seek greater legitimacy for local management and use of natural resources.  This paper, explores the political and cultural effects of tree ordinations by applying the concepts of "cultural objectification" and "cultural generification. It argues that recent uses of tree ordinations depend on a process of cultural objectification, facilitating the generification of the ritual and its various components as an example of the larger category of "local wisdom." Significant forms of power difference are implicated in the process. Middle class NGO activists largely controlled the practice and representation of the ritual and its symbols, and tended to objectify and simplify the values and practices of rural people. The tree ordinations of 1996-1997, dedicated to King Rama IX, had the further effect of symbolically bolstering the hierarchical structure of the Thai state and Thai society as a whole – a structure in which local leaders and middle class NGO activists exercise power as arbiters of "good" and "bad" culture among rural people. These are the ambiguous implications to which the title of this article refers: a process of objectification and generification and its place in the reproduction of a hierarchical political and cultural order, together with some decidedly positive outcomes of tree ordinations for the conservation and control of natural resources by rural people. Key words: Thailand, environmental activism, social hierarchy, power, cultural objectification.


Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are the most important family of biopharmaceutical compounds in terms of market share. At present, 30 mAbs have been approved and are now commercialized for therapeutic purposes. mAbs are typically produced by mammalian cell culture in bioreactors that range in scale of 1–20 m3. Regardless of scale, from laboratory to commercial settings, the recovery and purification of mAbs present important challenges. Depending on the scale, the particular product, and the type of production process (bioreactor operation, process time, complexity of the culture media, cell density, etc.), many possible downstream configurations are possible and have been used. In this contribution, we review each type of unit operation that forms a downstream train for mAb production. We provide information regarding typical operation settings and critical variables for centrifugation, ultrafiltration, affinity chromatography, ion exchange chromatography, and viral removal operations. In addition, we discuss some important considerations required for the formulation of drugs based on mAbs. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 28: 899–916, 2012


In this thesis we study the problem of multi-session dense rgb-d slam for 3D reconstruc- tion. Multi-session reconstruction can allow users to capture parts of an object that could not easily be captured in one session, due for instance to poor accessibility or user mistakes. We first present a thorough overview of single-session dense rgb-d slam and describe the multi-session problem as a loosening of the incremental camera movement and static scene assumptions commonly held in the single-session case. We then implement and evaluate sev- eral variations on a system for doing two-session reconstruction as an extension to a single- session dense rgb-d slam system.The extension from one to several sessions is divided into registering separate sessions into a single reference frame, re-optimizing the camera trajectories, and fusing together the data to generate a final 3D model. Registration is done by matching reconstructed models from the separate sessions using one of two adaptations on a 3D object detection pipeline. The registration pipelines are evaluated with many different sub-steps on a challenging dataset and it is found that robust registration can be achieved using the proposed methods on scenes without degenerate shape symmetry. In particular we find that using plane matches between two sessions as constraints for as much as possible of the registration pipeline improves results.Several different strategies for re-optimizing camera trajectories using data from both ses- sions are implemented and evaluated. The re-optimization strategies are based on re- tracking the camera poses from all sessions together, and then optionally optimizing over the full problem as represented on a pose-graph. The camera tracking is done by incrementally building and tracking against a tsdf volume, from which a final 3D mesh model is extracted. The whole system is qualitatively evaluated against a realistic dataset for multi-session re- construction. It is concluded that the overall approach is successful in reconstructing objects from several sessions, but that other fine grained registration methods would be required in order to achieve multi-session reconstructions that are indistinguishable from singe-session results in terms of reconstruction quality.


• A common measure of tail dependence is the so-called tail-dependence coefficient. We present a nonparametric estimator of the tail-dependence coefficient and prove its strong consistency and asymptotic normality in the case of known marginal distribution functions. The finite-sample behavior as well as robustness will be assessed through simulation. Although it has a good performance, it is sensitive to the extreme value dependence assumption. We shall see that a block maxima procedure might improve the estimation. This will be illustrated through simulation. An application to financial data shall be presented at the end.


Several rat experiments were conducted to determine effects of fiber and alternate protein sources on methotrexate (MTX) toxicity associated with a casein-based semipurified diet. Additional experiments were conducted to determine the critical time of feeding in relation to toxicity development. Rats adapted to a casein-based semipurified diet developed severe anorexia and diarrhea on d 3 and 4 post-MTX dosing. Addition of amorphous cellulose to the semipurified casein-based diet slightly reduced toxicity symptoms. Additions of crystalline cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin did not lessen toxicity symptoms. Replacing casein with soybean concentrate totally alleviated the toxicity symptoms. Toxicity was lower when 25% of the protein normally supplied by casein was replaced with soybean concentrate, and no toxicity symptoms were present when 50% or more of the protein was provided by soybean concentrate. Replacing casein with whey isolate or hamburger had no effect on toxicity; replacing casein with egg albumen or corn gluten meal lessened toxicity symptoms but did not totally alleviate them. Feeding the casein-based diet only 1 d before and 1 d after MTX injection resulted in toxicity. However, feeding the same diet only after MTX injection did not cause toxicity. Results indicate that fiber sources have little effect on MTX toxicity, but replacing casein with soybean concentrate completely alleviates toxicity symptoms. Time of feeding affects subsequent development of toxicity.


The phospholipase A₂ (PLA₂) superfamily consists of many different groups of enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of the sn-2 ester bond in a variety of different phospholipids. The products of this reaction, a free fatty acid, and lysophospholipid have many different important physiological roles. This reaction occurs on a two dimensional lipid surface. The mechanism of this reaction has important consequences for not only phospholipid hydrolysis, but all of lipid enzymology. To better understand the mechanism of different phospholipase A₂ enzymes we have employed deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (DXMS). This technique has the ability to determine solvent accessibility and conformational changes not seen with x-ray crystallography or other structural techniques. This methodology has proven particularly useful to determine lipid binding sites that would be impossible to characterize with standard NMR or x-ray methodologies. This thesis first discusses the PLA₂ superfamily of enzymes and the different roles they have been shown to play in inflammatory diseases, as well as the deuterium exchange mass spectrometry methodology. With this background we were able to study the GIA cobra venom PLA₂ which has acted as a model lipid enzyme for over a hundred years, and determine the effects of binding both metal ions and phospholipid substrate. We also examined the GIVA human cPLA₂, which has been implicated in numerous diseases, and determined inter-domain contacts not seen in x-ray crystallography, as well as examining metal binding and phospholipid surface binding. The movement of the lid region was discovered using DXMS methods, that has until now only been a hypothesis. Finally we studied the binding of different inhibitors and used a combination of molecular modeling and DXMS towards the design of better GIVA PLA₂ inhibitors


This thesis examines the issues surrounding the collection and dissemination of
customer ergonomics requirements in the automotive industry. The aim of the
research is to develop a Toolset of methods, known as the Lifestyle Scenario
Toolset, for gathering customer requirements in overseas markets, and for
presenting the information collected to design teams, taking a user-centred design
approach. The Toolset was developed and evaluated with the co-operation of
employees from a major UK automotive company.
Four studies were conducted, the first comprised a series of interviews to establish
the needs of both the data gatherers and data users for a Toolset of methods to
collect and communicate overseas customer information. The data gatherers were
drawn from the company's Market Researchers, Ergonomists and people
responsible for the company's overseas operations. The data users were the design
team responsible for the development of the company's next generation 4X4
vehicle. Results showed that the data collection tools which formed part I of the
Toolset should be quick to use, require no ergonomics expertise to implement and
be cost effective to use. The interviews with data users identified the need for
tools which could communicate customer ergonomics requirements to them in a
way which fitted in with their current working practices. In addition the tools
needed to communicate information in language which was familiar to the design
team, and be visually based where possible.
The second study explored the development of suitable data collection tools for
inclusion in the Lifestyle Scenario Toolset. Building on the needs identified in the
first study together with information from the current literature a number of data
collection tools were developed for inclusion in part I of the Lifestyle Scenario
Toolset. These tools were a questionnaire, driving diary and photographs, focus
group, ergonomics audit and background information tool. The tools were
designed to collect a range of different data types, e.g. qualitative, quantitative, pictorial and customer verbatims, to provide a rich picture of users and their
activities. The tools were used in a field trial to collect data from overseas
customers about their ergonomics requirements and the tasks they carried out
using their vehicle, in the context of their lifestyle.
The third study focused on the development of a set of tools to communicate the
data collected in part 1 of the Toolset, to the design team who would use it in
their work. The data communication tools were developed to provide information
to design teams at a number of levels, enabling them to use the data at an
appropriate level for their needs. High level summaries of each of the tools were
developed and scenarios presented on storyboards were used to integrate
information from all of the data collection tools to provide detailed information
about customers' ergonomics requirements and lifestyle. The data communication
tools also used a variety of data types and presentation mediums, such as pictures,
graphs and customer quotes to increase the richness of the data presented.
The fourth study involved the evaluation of the suitability of the Toolset for
collecting and communicating overseas customer ergonomics requirements. The
data gatherers, and data users (design team) carried out a field trial using the
Toolset to establish its usefulness to them in their work. The results of the
evaluation showed that the data gatherers found the Toolset easy to implement
and were able to use it to pick up overseas customers ergonomics requirements.
The communication tools were able to provide the design team with new and
useful customer ergonomics information, in a range of formats which they felt
comfortable using in their work. The implementation of a user-centred design
approach to the development of methods for collecting and communicating
overseas customer ergonomics requirements enabled the creation of a Toolset
which met the needs of the people who will use it. This increased its acceptance by
people in the company and thus the likelihood of the Lifestyle Scenario Toolset's
continued use within the company.


The investigators considered the relationship between participation in aquatic activities and the consumption of alcohol, with their implications for the risk of drowning. In a telephone survey with random-digit dialing, interviewers asked Massachusetts residents ages 20 years and older how often they engaged in various aquatic activities, in what settings, and how often they drank alcohol in connection with participation in aquatic activities. Of 294 respondents, 79 percent of the men and 72 percent of the women reported participating in aquatic activities during August 1988, the month prior to the interview. Respondents were asked to identify their most recent aquatic activity. The mean number of days of participation in the month was 13. The most frequently reported aquatic activities were swimming (76 percent), followed by sunbathing (74 percent), power boating (25 percent), and fishing from shore (15 percent). Among those persons reporting participation in aquatic activities, 55 percent had been at the ocean on the most recent occasion, 26 percent at lakes or ponds, 17 percent at pools, and 2 percent at rivers. Among those persons reporting aquatic activities, 36 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women reported having drunk alcohol on the most recent occasion. Those who reported drinking in aquatic settings were more likely to report driving after drinking than those who did not drive. Implementation of new Federal regulations and State laws concerning drinking and boating should be accompanied by public education on the risks of drowning if aquatic activities and alcohol consumption are combined.


Lis1 is required for nuclear migration in fungi, cell cycle progression in mammals, and the formation of a folded cerebral cortex in humans. Lis1 binds dynactin and the dynein motor complex, but the role of Lis1 in many dynein/dynactin-dependent processes is not clearly understood. Here we generate and/or characterize mutants for Drosophila Lis1 and a dynactin subunit, Glued, to investigate the role of Lis1/dynactin in mitotic checkpoint function. In addition, we develop an improved time-lapse video microscopy technique that allows live imaging of GFP-Lis1, GFP-Rod checkpoint protein, green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled chromosomes, or GFP-labeled mitotic spindle dynamics in neuroblasts within whole larval brain explants. Our mutant analyses show that Lis1/dynactin have at least two independent functions during mitosis: first promoting centrosome separation and bipolar spindle assembly during prophase/prometaphase, and subsequently generating interkinetochore tension and transporting checkpoint proteins off kinetochores during metaphase, thus promoting timely anaphase onset. Furthermore, we show that Lis1/dynactin/dynein physically associate and colocalize on centrosomes, spindle MTs, and kinetochores, and that regulation of Lis1/dynactin kinetochore localization in Drosophila differs from both Caenorhabditis elegans and mammals. We conclude that Lis1/dynactin act together to regulate multiple, independent functions in mitotic cells, including spindle formation and cell cycle checkpoint release.


In acoustic well logging, the borehole may be considered as a vertical waveguide of infinite cross section with horizontal discontinuities, and the conventional mode expansion cannot be applied. Some authors introduced an artificial large coaxial cylindrical boundary, transforming the problem into one with finite cross section. However, this approach is limited to low frequency. Based on the theory of generalized function, the mixed spectrum of the infinite cross‐section waveguide is analyzed and a new hybrid method is proposed in which the acoustic field is expressed as a sum of several discrete modes and an integral of continuous modes with unknown weight functions which are obtained by numerically solving a group of integral equations deduced from the boundary conditions at discontinuities. It is shown that this method makes it possible to calculate up to the frequency for a typical logging environment. Laboratory experiments have been conducted in which a specific method was adopted to form a liquid c...


Introduction Exposure at work to inhaled respirable crystalline silica (RCS) has previously been linked with silicosis, tuberculosis, lung cancer and COPD. Whilst the risk of developing silicosis is largely a function of cumulative lifetime RCS exposures, current workplace exposures contribute to this risk. Methods A cross sectional GB based workplace study of brick manufacturers was carried out, in order to identify a subsequent longitudinal cohort. Participating worksites were using silica to make bricks for various uses. Consenting workers were asked to complete an interviewer led questionnaire, undergo lung function testing and complete a full occupational history including details of lifetime exposure to RCS. Consenting workers had a PA Chest Radiograph using a mobile facility, and levels of RCS exposure in the personal breathing zone were taken. Results 189 workers took part, with a mean age of 45.9 years and 22 years median (range 0.08–47) years worked overall in industry. Three had radiological evidence of silicosis (ILO standards used; 2 definite and one probable case). Respiratory symptoms were common; for example 14.3% reported cough, 21.2% wheeze in the last 12 months, 14.3% reported ever having asthma. 13.2% reported at least one work related respiratory symptom. Mean lung function values were as follows; mean (SD) percentage predicted FEV1 98.1 (15.2) and FVC 102.4 (13.9). Fourteen workers had measured airways obstruction (as defined by an FEV1/FVC <0.7); in this cross sectional analysis its presence did not significantly relate to current smoking status or lifetime duration of RCS exposure, although was significantly associated with an increased time worked in the current work area. Airways obstruction was also associated with the reporting of a diagnosis of (ever having) asthma and wheeze in the last 12 months. Conclusions This cross sectional study of silica exposed brick workers has identified a cohort for longer term follow up. Future work will allow the development of dose response relationships, corrected for other relevant factors, between cumulative RCS exposure and FEV1 decline and will assist in the development of workplace interventions to reduce the health risks associated with RCS exposure in this group of workers.


Abstract. We report on the ground-based FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) tropospheric water vapour isotopologue remote sensing data that have been recently made available via the database of NDACC (Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change; ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ndacc/MUSICA/ ) and via doi:10.5281/zenodo.48902 . Currently, data are available for 12 globally distributed stations. They have been centrally retrieved and quality-filtered in the framework of the MUSICA project (MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycle of Atmospheric water). We explain particularities of retrieving the water vapour isotopologue state (vertical distribution of H216O, H218O, and HD16O) and reveal the need for a new metadata template for archiving FTIR isotopologue data. We describe the format of different data components and give recommendations for correct data usage. Data are provided as two data types. The first type is best-suited for tropospheric water vapour distribution studies disregarding different isotopologues (comparison with radiosonde data, analyses of water vapour variability and trends, etc.). The second type is needed for analysing moisture pathways by means of H2O, δD -pair distributions.


Brontispa longissima is a serious pest of the coconut palm Cocos nucifera, presumed to have originated in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. It recently invaded Southeast and East Asia, where outbreaks have been reported. Mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals two cryptic species in B. longissima: one is distributed over a wide area including Asia and the Pacific region (the Asian clade) and the other in a limited area in the Pacific region (the Pacific clade). Recent invasions and outbreaks have been reported only from the area where the Asian clade has been found, suggesting that this clade has become a pest in Asia. To infer if the Asian clade has the ability to establish, spread and outbreak in novel habitats more effectively than the Pacific clade, we compared life‐history traits between the two populations of different clades. The net reproduction rate (R0) was 130.0 and 94.0, the mean length of a generation (T) was 57.7 and 54.7 days, and the intrinsic rate of natural increase (r) was 0.084 and 0.083 per day for the population from Ishigaki Island, Japan (ISH) (the Asian clade) and for the population from Papua New Guinea (PNG) (the Pacific clade), respectively. Although the difference in r was little, the simulated population growth showed that the ISH population can be 1.6 times larger than that of the PNG after ten generations. The rapid population growth of the Asian clade would be partly responsible for its establishment, spread and frequent outbreaks in Asia.


In recent years, open source software - more properly, free and open source software - has emerged as one popular solution to the so-called "software crisis". Advocates regard F/OSS as an agile, practice-led initiative that addresses three key issues namely cost, time scale and quality. F/OSS products are usually freely available for public download. The collaborative, parallel efforts of globally distributed developers allow many F/OSS products to be developed much more quickly than conventional software. Many F/OSS offerings are recognized for their high standards of reliability, efficiency, and robustness; products such as GNU/Linux, Apache, and Bind have become "category killers" stifling the incentive to develop any competing products.


When India purchased 200 tonnes of gold under the International Monetary Fund's limited gold sales programme, it was interpreted inter alia that it may further inflate the gold price when the price was already ruling high. This motivated us to examine the general trend among the central banks' demand for gold during recent global financial crisis. In that context, whether India's purchase of gold was a reserve management strategy or otherwise and whether it affected the gold price trend is examined in this study. In the course of analysis, several related issues such as optimum size of gold in the foreign reserves and rationale of central banks buying gold with special reference to the global crisis are also addressed. The study found that central banks in most of the EMEs and advanced economies had either bought fresh stock of gold or stopped selling their existing stock of gold in the wake of the 'recent global crisis'. This was strongly supported by economic rationale to hold sizable reserves of gold especially during 'heightened uncertainty'. India's purchase did not, apparently, has any impact on the gold price trend and to stock up gold is in line with the global trend.


primigravide) one wonders how your contributors define toxaemia. There are several non sequiturs in the text which others among your readers will doulbtless wish to question. I would only ask why, when they show themselves to be so progressive in their approach to the active management of labour, your contributors are so adamantly retrogressive in their attitude towards the management of pain in labour? -I am, etc.,


We introduce a new unsupervised learning algorithm for kernel-based topographic map formation of heteroscedastic gaussian mixtures that allows for a unified account of distortion error (vector quantization), log-likelihood, and Kullback-Leibler divergence.


A continuum model of the evolution of air ingestion and entrainment for open-ended squeeze film dampers is proposed in this paper. Hydrodynamic lubrication theory is extended to lubrication with mixture of a Newtonian liquid and an ideal gas. The solution to the universal Reynolds equation is determined numerically using a control volume method (Elrod algorithm) and the forth-order Range-Kutta method. This method conserves mass throughout the computational domain including air ingestion and entrainment. Excellent agreement is found with the experimental works of Diaz and San Andrès for the squeeze film damper [1, 2].


Platelet rich fibrin (PRF), developed in France by Choukroun et al(2001), is a second generation platelet concentrate widely used to accelerate soft and hard tissue healing. It's advantages over the better known platelet rich plasma (PRP) include ease of preparation & application, minimal expense and no need of biochemical blood handling (no bovine thrombin or anticoagulants required). This article describes the use of PRF in bilateral direct sinus lift case. Around 20 ml of blood is collected from the patient for each side procedure in the vacutainer tubes and then placed immediately before the coagulation cascade begins in a centrifugal machineat 3000 rpm for 10 min and the middle fraction containing the fibrin clot is then collected to obtain the PRF. Sinus cavities after lifting the membrane was filled with PRF in combination with DFDBA and FDBA. The post-operative radiograph showed faster healing as compared to physiologic healing. However, the preparation being strictly autologus, the amount of PRF obtained is limited.


Spectroscopic single-molecule localization microscopy (sSMLM) simultaneously provides spatial localization and spectral information of individual single-molecules emission, offering multicolor super-resolution imaging of multiple molecules in a single sample with the nanoscopic resolution. However, this technique is limited by the requirements of acquiring a large number of frames to reconstruct a super-resolution image. In addition, multicolor sSMLM imaging suffers from spectral cross-talk while using multiple dyes with relatively broad spectral bands that produce cross-color contamination. Here, we present a computational strategy to accelerate multicolor sSMLM imaging. Our method uses deep convolution neural networks to reconstruct high-density multicolor super-resolution images from low-density, contaminated multicolor images rendered using sSMLM datasets with much fewer frames, without compromising spatial resolution. High-quality, super-resolution images are reconstructed using up to 8-fold fewer frames than usually needed. Thus, our technique generates multicolor super-resolution images within a much shorter time, without any changes in the existing sSMLM hardware system. Two-color and three-color sSMLM experimental results demonstrate superior reconstructions of tubulin/mitochondria, peroxisome/mitochondria, and tubulin/mitochondria/peroxisome in fixed COS-7 and U2-OS cells with a significant reduction in acquisition time.


One of the key factors that determines the track density of a hard disk drive (HDD) is the performance characteristics of the HDD servo system, the control system that positions the read/write magnetic head close to the center of the desired track of the HDD. For most HDD servo systems, the deviation of the position of the magnetic head from the center of the desired track is measured whenever the head passes over sectors, referred to as servo burst sectors that carry prewritten position data. The position error signal (PES) is, therefore, generated at discrete points in time, the rate of which is limited by the number of the prewritten servo burst sectors and the spinning speed of the disk. This limited natural sampling rate puts limitations on how high the bandwidth of the controller can be as well as making it difficult to identify the continuous time modes which occur at frequencies close to or higher than the sampling frequency. In this paper, we first introduce a method for identifying the open-loop continuous-time dynamics of such HDD servo systems by processing the available sampled PES data. The method is based on exciting the system with two orthogonal sinusoids and constructing a linear complex equation that relates the sampled PES points with the unknown values of the transfer function. Then, we design a high bandwidth HDD servo controller with improved performance characteristics. In our control design we employ the "ACORN estimator" that generates estimates of the head position by processing the servo burst and data sector measurements, to provide PES estimates at higher sampling rates during read. Our control design is tested on an actual disk drive. The effect of the higher sampling rate, generated by the ACORN estimator, on the seek time and steady-state performance is evaluated. While our results show that the use of a higher sampling rate provides some improvement, the presence of varying high frequency resonance modes limits further increase in bandwidth that is now possible due to the higher sampling rate. Consequently, the proposed control scheme is expected to have additional benefits in future generations of disk drives employing dual stage actuators.


We propose new criteria for the classi cation of systems for database cooperation, based on the nature of the component databases. In fact, the traditional criteria | heterogeneity, distribution, and autonomy| are often constraints for the design process, rather than design parameters. In this case, other features of the component databases should be addressed. We claim that a more useful classi cation can be based on three new criteria: (a) degree of transparency, (b) complexity of operations, and (c) level of liveliness of data. This leads us to distinguish three main categories of systems: (i) multidatabases, (ii) data warehouses, (iii) local information systems with external data. For each of these categories we discuss implementations based on tools o ered by currently available technology.


The presence of circadian rhythms in human health and illness has been alluded to since the time of Hippocrates. However, it was not until the 1960's that a large variety of physiologic functions and biologic rhythms were described. Biologic variations have now been reported for several physiologic processes and play an important role in the manifestation of many illnesses. The past decade has witnessed rapid advances in the field of chronobiology, which are now being incorporated into clinical medicine, pharmacology and pharmacy practice. A number of chronotherapeutic medications, aiming at synchronizing medications and the intrinsic biorhythms of disease have been developed by novel drug delivery technology. In some cases, conventional medications are being administered according to circadian rhythms. This article focuses on biorhythms and the emerging role of chronotherapeutics in optimizing the treatment of several diseases.


The characteristic modeling problem of linear time-invariant systems is addressed in this paper. It is proved that the characteristic model of the MIMO linear time-invariant systems can be expressed by a time varying difference equation of order 2. The modeling error of characteristic model is discussed. When there is not zero real part pole in the plants, the transient modeling error is O(h) and the steady modeling error is O. In the general cases, the transient modeling error is O(h) and the steady modeling error is O(h2). The proof indicates that the characteristic model is essentially different from the conventional reduced-order model. It compresses all the information of the system dynamics into several characteristic parameters. In the bandwidth of control system, no information is lost.


A lead-free piezoelectric ceramic binary system based on bismuth sodium titanate (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3 (BNT)-bismuth potassium titanate (Bi0.5K0.5)TiO3 (BKT) was synthesized by conventional mixed-oxide technique. The XRD analysis showed that the rhombohedral-tetragonal morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) of the Bi0.5 (Na1-xKx)0.5 TiO3 system was in the composition range of x = 0.16 ~ 0.20. In addition, the piezoelectric properties of this system were also investigated. It was indicated that the piezoelectric properties are better with the compositions near the rhombohedral phase within the MPB than the compositions near the tetragonal phase.


Making violent threats towards minorities like immigrants or homosexuals is increasingly common on the Internet. We present a method to automatically detect threats of violence using machine learning. A material of 24,840 sentences from YouTube was manually annotated as violent threats or not, and was used to train and test the machine learning model. Detecting threats of violence works quit well with an error of classifying a violent sentence as not violent of about 10% when the error of classifying a non-violent sentence as violent is adjusted to 5%. The best classification performance is achieved by including features that combine specially chosen important words and the distance between those in the sentence.


Introduction: Valid and reliable methods for diagnosing depression are essential. The present study aimed to test the performance of a new diagnostic interview for depression focusing on the core symptoms of depression. Method: We developed a diagnostic interview for depression: the CORE Diagnostic Interview, CORE-DI, which assesses each of the core features of depression on the four dimensions: quality, reactivity, globality, and fluctuations over time. The diagnostic performance of this interview was tested in a clinical study including 83 individuals presenting with various depressive symptoms, who were interviewed independently (1) by means of the CORE-DI and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.), and (2) by highly skilled specialists in depression representing gold standard diagnoses. Results: We compared the outcome of the CORE-DI, the M.I.N.I., and the diagnosis made by clinicians, respectively, versus the gold standard diagnosis, using diagnostic efficiency statistics. The CORE-DI diagnosed depression with a high specificity (0.91, 95% CI: 0.85–0.97, for International Classification of Diseases [ICD]-10 criteria and 0.88, 95% CI: 0.81–0.95, for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-5] criteria) compared to both M.I.N.I (specificity 0.44, 95% CI: 0.33–0.55) and clinical diagnoses (specificity 0.76, 95% CI: 0.67–0.85). The sensitivity of the CORE-DI was 0.61 (95% CI: 0.55–0.72) for ICD-10 criteria and 0.67 (95% CI: 0.57–0.77) for DSM-5 criteria. Discussion/Conclusion: The CORE-DI increased the specificity of the depression diagnosis substantially compared to clinical diagnoses and the diagnoses obtained by M.I.N.I. The results point to the usefulness of an elaborated and systematic assessment of the core symptoms in the examination of patients with depressive symptoms and thereby indicate a way for further development of specific diagnostic tools for depression in both clinical and research settings. However, it should be noted that the sensitivity of the CORE-DI was modest, and the psychometric properties of the CORE-DI might be different in other settings with higher or lower prevalence or severity of depressive symptoms.


Web content accessibility for impaired people has been mainly addressed by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C Consortium. Those guidelines have proved to be good diagnostic means for testing accessibility for different types of impairments, as well as for guiding the development of accessible content. A further step would be to promote discovery of material having appropriate accessibility support, as well as the adjustment of control and display of resources to meet user accessibility needs and preferences [5]. The last two challenges have been addressed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium in the IMS-AccessForAll (ACCMD) and the IMS Learner Information Profile (ACCLIP) specifications. Although IMS has approached both goals in a learning framework, both accessibility specifications pay a special attention to impaired users' needs. As a first step, in this paper we survey how far IMS accessibility specifications cover WCAG, and discuss the convenience of extending it to the whole WAI guidelines. Secondly, we argue how accessibility could be considered as a key issue for promoting reusability. We continue explaining why using a semantic framework (such as the MPEG-7 semantic tool, RDF or OWL) for describing textual and contextual information in a standardized manner could promote both, accessibility and reusability. Finally, we explain how some accessibility issues have been already addressed by XimetriX's ximDEX, a semantic-web Content Management System (CMS). We conclude proposing a plan to better integrate the accessibility specifications and contextual description tools into that CMS.


Trichoderma species are ubiquitous soil saprotrophs and well-characterized biological control agents. Certain strains have also been shown to stimulate plant growth through the production of bioactive secondary metabolites, and are therefore receiving increased attention as natural plant growth stimulants. Previous research at the University of Exeter (Ryder et al. (2012) Microbiology 158, 84-97) has shown that the Plant Growth Promotion activity of a biocontrol strain of Trichoderma hamatum (strain GD12) can be dramatically enhanced by targeted mutation of the N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase-encoding gene nag. However, due to the loss in chitinase activities, the mutant (ΔThnag::hph) displays loss of saprotrophic competitiveness and reduced fitness as a biocontrol agent. We set out to investigate how we can use genetic manipulation to improve strain GD12 in the context of biological control and plant growth promotion. We approached this by firstly sequencing the whole genome of GD12 and then using the information available from this to produce a targeted deletion mutant in the GD12 background disrupting one of the most down regulated proteins in the ΔThnag::hph, a branched chain amino acid transaminase (bcat), implicated in the production of secondary metabolites. Secondly, we aimed to engineer hyper-secretion and enhanced PGP activities in GD12 without impairing biocontrol activity. Over-expression of the S. cerevisiae gene dolichol-phosphate mannose synthase (dpm1) in T. reesei leads to altered cell wall architecture and increased secretory potential. Using the constitutive promoter ToxA, we over-expressed the dpm1 gene in T. hamatum GD12 and assessed its effects on the biocontrol and PGP activities of the fungus. The data presented herein, shows, that bcat deletion in T. hamatum GD12 results in a detrimental effect of germination of lettuce seedlings grown in the presence of ∆Thbcat::hph. We show that single copy insertions of ToxA-dpm1 leads to improved PGP activities, while biocontrol fitness is unaffected. However, while multiple copy insertions similarly lead to enhanced PGP, such strains display impaired biocontrol of soil-borne pathogens such as the plurivorous damping-off pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. This work demonstrates that while significant improvements in crop productivity can be achieved through genetic modification of the beneficial rhizosphere fungus T. hamatum GD12, it can have important consequences for other aspects of its biology and ecology and competence as a soil-borne microorganism.


I. INTRODUCTION One of the fundamental characteristics of the American dream is that anyone should have the opportunity to get an education regardless of their ability to pay the cost. The Federal Student Loan Program started as a small allocation from the Department of Education to guarantee private loans in those exceptional cases where a person wanted to attend college but lacked the means to pay and the credit to obtain financing. Today, the Federal Student Loan Program accounts for more than half of the revenue produced in many higher educational institutions, making student loans a staple of American education. In public universities, 62% of students graduated with some kind of student debt; that number was 72% at private universities, and at the increasingly popular for-profit universities - where tuition rates are among the highest in the nation - it was a whopping 96%/ Along with this rise in federal funding and student loan guarantees, default rates skyrocketed as well, forcing many to seek the protection of bankruptcy to avoid mounting debts.2 As it turns out, the winning state for the most student debt is Arizona, home to the largest for-profit educational institution, the University of Phoenix.3 It's no secret: educational loans put students, as well as lenders, in a precarious position. There is no guarantee of employment for the student after graduation and no collateral for the lender. When the federal government started guaranteeing student loans, these loans were treated like any other kind of debt that could be discharged in bankruptcy. But in 1978, Congress began to withdraw such bankruptcy protection unless repayment of the loan would present an "undue hardship."4 This Act has incurred substantial criticism over the years for apparently being at odds with the overall goal of the Bankruptcy Code to provide a "fresh start" for the unfortunate debtor.5 Lenders contend that because there is no collateral to secure the loan, they need some kind of protection in order to provide other students with lower interest rates. As a result, taxpayers would ultimately have to foot the bill when the government ends up with a large number of defaulted loans. With debtors, lenders, other students, and taxpayers playing a game of musical chairs, someone is inevitably going to end up without a chair and be unfairly forced to bear the cost. The scholarly treatment of the "undue hardship" exception has been largely negative; scholars have argued either for a more lenient reading of § 523(a)(8) or for its repeal altogether.6 This Comment argues that there are legitimate reasons in support of a strict, uniform interpretation of "undue hardship" according to its plain language and the clear intent of Congress. While one underlying purpose of bankruptcy law is to provide a "fresh start" for certain qualified debtors, Congress has chosen to diverge from that policy in dealing with student loans, and for good reason. The results may be harsh, but they are not absurd. As more debtors receive such harsh treatment in the courts, Congress may be forced to reconsider the issue. As a result, Congress could restore equal protection for student loan defaulters, just as the Bankruptcy Code does for other debtors. Alternatively, Congress could preserve the current approach but turn its attention to the universities themselves, requiring them to truthfully educate prospective students about the risks of student loans and the reality of employment prospects upon graduation. Part II provides an overview of the bankruptcy system, the development of student loans in the United States, and the policies underlying § 523(a)(8) and its approach to student loans. Part III reviews how various courts have interpreted and applied the "undue hardship" exception in the student loan context. Part IV provides an analysis of these approaches, arguing that a strict implementation of the "undue hardship" exception is the best approach. …


In hydroelectric systems, water inflow is important to coordinate a cascade and define the energy price. This paper presents a method for managing inflow forecasting studies with a specific module for advanced assessment. The main goal is to provide a structure that facilitates the analysis of water inflow prediction models. A case study has been applied to five mathematical models based on linear regression, artificial neural networks, and hydrologic simulation. These models present daily and monthly inflow forecasts for a set of hydroelectric plants and monitoring stations. The benefits of the proposed method are analyzed in four situations: water inflow prediction, performance evaluation of a specific model, research tool for inflow forecasting, and comparison tool for distinct models. The results show that implementation of the proposed method provides a useful tool for managing inflow forecasting studies and analyzing models. Therefore, it can assist researchers and engineering professionals alike by improving the quality of water inflow predictions.


Purpose: To investigate the alterations in nitro-oxidative stress (OS) and antioxidant status in adolescents with metabolic syndrome (MetS) and whether these alterations occur independently from effects of overweight or obesity. Methods: Blood was collected in 47 adolescents with MetS and 94 adolescents without MetS as assessed with the International Diabetes Federation criteria. The International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) criteria were used to classify the subjects into those with overweight or obesity. We measured nitro-oxidative biomarkers including nitric oxide metabolites (NOx), lipid hydroperoxides (LOOH), and malondialdehyde (MDA), and antioxidant biomarkers, i.e. total radical-trapping antioxidant parameter (TRAP), paraoxonase (PON)-1 activity, thiol (SH-) groups, as well as tumor necrosis factor-α, glucose, insulin, triglycerides, uric acid and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). Results: Logistic regression analysis showed that increased MDA and NOx and a lowered TRAP/uric acid ratio were associated with MetS. Machine learning including soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) showed that the top-3 most important features of MetS were increased glucose and MDA and lowered HDL-C. Support vector machine using MDA, glucose, insulin, HDL-C, triglycerides and body mass index as input variables yielded a 10-fold cross-validated accuracy of 89.8% when discriminating MetS from controls. The association between MetS and increased MDA was independent from the effects of overweight-obesity. glucose, insulin, triglycerides and HDL-C. Conclusion: In adolescents, increased MDA formation is a key component of MetS, indicating that increased production of reactive oxygen species with consequent lipid peroxidation and aldehyde formation participate in the development of MetS. Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 23 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202006.0283.v1


ABSTRACT The human colonization of Near Oceania has an antiquity of over 40,000 years but colonization of Remote Oceania, including Vanuatu, did not begin until around 3200–3100 BP. Just before this time a distinctive form of dentate-stamped pottery known as the Lapita style appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago northeast of the island of New Guinea. The only direct evidence of health in these Remote Oceanic settlers is their skeletal remains, but until recently only small samples of late Lapita skeletons have been found. Here we report the preliminary findings on some aspects of health of the first large sample (36 individuals) of early Lapita-associated skeletons from Teouma, Vanuatu, dated to ca. 3100–3000 BP. Dental health, trauma and degeneration of joints show they were well adapted to the rigors of island life and lived a physically active life while coping with a significant disease burden. The discovery of skeletal remains of pioneer settlers on islands is extremely rare. The Teouma sample provides insights into the possible biological cost of such a colonization and is applicable to other contexts where human migration into virgin landscapes may have demanded biological adaptation to ensure success.


A 63-year-old female was admitted to the hospital because of collapse. She had no history of cardiovascular disease. Prior to admission she used co-trimoxazole, paracetamol, calcium tablets and 50 mg terodiline (Mictrol) daily because of bladder instability. Electrocardiography showed QT prolongation and polymorphous ventricular tachycardia with torsades de pointes. During admission she developed ventricular fibrillation, needing defibrillation. After withdrawal of terodiline and treatment with isoprenaline the symptoms and all ECG abnormalities disappeared. In this case terodiline was suspected of having been the causative agent. Terodiline shows structural resemblance to the anti-arrhythmic agent prenylamine, a known cause of torsades de pointes. Recently terodiline has been temporarily withdrawn from the worldwide market in order to investigate the causal relationship between this drug and cardiac arrhythmia and conduction disturbances.


ABSTRACT This article traces the changing notions of constraints in design and of systems since the mid-20th century in the intersection of design theory and systems theory. Taking a second-order cybernetic perspective, the article develops constraints as observer dependent and it analyzes conditions under which constraints tend to be beneficial or detrimental. Ethical implications of constraints in design processes are established with reference to system boundaries. Constraint-oriented design is discussed as an alternative to goal-oriented design, and a method called constraint reversal is introduced as a strategy of deliberate defiance of constraints to support design exploration.


In order to investigate the possibilities to increase the input impedance or the input power factor of railway line side power converters, several different structures of converter control were investigated on mathematical models and a laboratory model of 2.5 kW boost converter connected to a DC or AC supply network. The final choice was the solution with a boost converter on the input of the line side converter with cascade control of input current and output voltage of the boost converter. This solution assures high performances of input impedance or input power factor as well as allowable level of current disturbances in both DC and AC supply networks.


The development of video games promoting health related behaviour is increasing. This holds not only for chronic diseases like asthma and diabetes, but also for the field of child psychotherapy. At the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of Zurich University, the video game Treasure Hunt was developed to support psychotherapeutic treatment of children between eight and thirteen years of age. Treasure Hunt does not replace the therapist but supports treatment by offering attractive electronic work assignments. The scope of this article is an overview on health games for children and a description of Treasure Hunt. After the explanation of its therapeutic potentials, an evaluation based on questionnaires for therapists and children will be presented. 124 therapists answered a questionnaire on their impression of the game three months after download. 41 therapists were willing to participate in the further evaluation and sent questionnaires of 200 children with whom Treasure Hunt had been used. A limitation of these data is that a positive bias can not be excluded, as therapists with a positive attitude towards psychotherapeutic computer games were more likely to answer the questionnaire. 118 therapists (95.2%) considered Treasure Hunt a useful tool in child psychotherapy. 197 children (98.5%) report being satisfied with the use of the game during treatment. Treasure Hunt was predominantly used for the age group it is designed for and both, by very experienced and by young therapists. Eleven diagnostic categories reflect a broader range of indications than expected.


The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and the Legacy Loan and Legacy Security Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) were created anticipating investment by employee benefit plans and other retirement arrangements subject to ERISA (Plans), but there was no specific coordination of these programs with, or amendment of, ERISA-related provisions to facilitate this investment. This article describes the ERISA considerations that are relevant to a Plan's use of a TALF loan to finance its purchase of assetbacked and commercial mortgage-backed securities (ABS/ CMBS), either via a direct purchase of ABS/CMBS or by means of an intervening fund. It then discusses the ability of Plans to become investors in PPIP funds established to purchase CMBS/MBS legacy loans or securities given the additional ERISA complications that are created when a Plan invests in a managed fund. The article concludes that while the economy, the credit markets, and Plans could all benefit from allowing greater Plan investment in PPIP funds, current ERISA provisions hamper such investment. The author suggests that the U.S. Treasury might explore with the U.S. Department of Labor the possibility of granting an administrative exemption that could allow greater Plan participation in PPIP funds than is currently available.


This and a previous paper review systematically a new and fast-growing geographical research literature about 'neoliberalising nature'. This literature, authored by critical geographers for the most part, is largely case study based and focuses on a range of biophysical phenomena in different parts of the contemporary world. In an attempt to take stock of what has been learnt and what is left to do, the two papers survey the literature theoretically and empirically, cognitively and normatively. Specifically, they aim to parse the critical literature on nature's neoliberalisation with a view to answering four key questions: (1) what are the reasons why all manner of qualitatively different nonhuman phenomena in different parts of the world are being 'neoliberalised'? (2) what are the principal ways in which nature is neoliberalised in practice? (3) what are the effects of nature's neoliberalisation? and (4) how should these effects be evaluated? Without such an effort of synthesis, this literature could remain a collection of substantively disparate, theoretically informed case studies unified only in name (by virtue of their common focus on 'neoliberal' policies). This paper addresses questions 2, 3, and 4, while the previous paper concentrated on the first. It is argued that some unresolved issues in the published literature make it very difficult for readers and future researchers in this area to draw 'wider' lessons about process, effects, and evaluations. This is not so much a 'failing' of the literature as a reflection of its newness and the way its constituent parts have evolved. It is argued that these issues require careful attention in future so that the 'general' lessons of the literature published to date on nature's neoliberalisation can be made clear. Where the previous paper detected some 'signals in the noise' viz question 1, this paper suggests that more work needs to be done viz questions 2 to 4 for any signals to be detected.


F. D. Chattaway was born at Foleshill in Warwickshire on 9 November 1860, being the eldest of five children of Daniel Clarke Chattaway and Eliza Anne Adcock. He died at Torquay on 27 January 1944 in his eighty-fourth year. His father was a ribbon and trimming manufacturer in Coventry but this trade collapsed and with it the family fortune, following the 1870 treaty with France. In consequence Chattaway's education was achieved almost entirely by scholarships. His taste for science might derive from his grandfather, but his liking for and knowledge of poetry and literature almost certainly came from his mother who started a small private school in Birmingham when the family income failed. Chattaway received his early education privately from a nonconformist minister, the Rev. J. S. Withers. His training in chemistry began at Mason College under Sir William Tilden. A science and art scholarship enabled him to attend the School of Mines in London and he then passed preliminary examinations at Glasgow with a view to studying medicine. Having no stomach for dissection, however, he turned to chemistry as a career and proceeded to University College, Aberystwyth. Two years later he gained a scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford, where A. G. Vernon Harcourtwas tutor, and obtained a first class in the Natural Science School at Oxford in 1891: a first at London had been gained the previous year. He followed the then general practice of going to Germany and elected to work with Baeyar and Bamberger at Munich.


We present experimental results for the adaptive compensation of atmospheric turbulence effects on a free-space laser communication links at near horizontal propagation paths over 2.5 km and 5 km lengths. A high-resolution micro-machined piston type mirror array (12x12 elements) and a fast beam steering mirror were used in an adaptive optics laser communication system based on the model-free stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) optimization wavefront control technique. Control of the mirror was performed by a VLSI SPGD micro-controller. The experimental results demonstrate the improvement of the receiver performance (fiber coupling efficiency) on a summer day with a refractive index structure constant in the order of Cn2≈10-14 m-2/3.


We propose a multi-period extension of the competitive newsvendor model of Lippman and McCardle (1997) to investigate the impact of quick response under competition. For this purpose, we consider two retailers that compete in terms of inventory: customers that face a stockout at their first-choice store will look for the product at the other store. Consequently, the total demand that each retailer faces depends on the competitor's inventory level. We allow for asymmetric reordering capabilities, and we are particularly interested in the case when one of the firms has a lower ordering cost but can only produce at the beginning of the selling season, whereas the second firm has higher costs but can replenish stock in a quick response manner taking advantage of any incremental knowledge about demand (if it is available). We visualize this problem as the competition between a traditional make-to-stock retailer that builds up inventory before the season starts versus a retailer with a responsive supply chain that can react to early demand information. We provide conditions for this game to have a unique pure-strategy subgame-perfect equilibrium, which then allows us to perform numerical comparative statics. Our results confirm in a competitive setting the intuitive fact that quick response is more beneficial when demand uncertainty is higher, or exhibits a higher correlation over time. Finally, we find that part of the competitive advantage from quick response arises from the asymmetry in response capabilities.


We present an effective approach for grouping text lines in online handwritten Japanese documents by combining temporal and spatial information. Initially, strokes are grouped into text line strings according to off-stroke distances. Each text line string is segmented into text lines by dynamic programming (DP) optimizing a cost function trained by the minimum classification error (MCE) method. Over-segmented text lines are then merged with a support vector machine (SVM) classifier for making merge/non-merge decisions, and last, a spatial merge module corrects the segmentation errors caused by delayed strokes. In experiments on the TUAT Kondate database, the proposed approach achieves the Entity Detection Metric (EDM) rate of 0.8816, the Edit-Distance Rate (EDR) of 0.1234, which demonstrates the superiority of our approach.


"The work of Rosalind Maskell is unknown to many; yet, clearly ahead of her time, she performed scientifically rigorous studies that provided compelling evidence to disprove the dogma that urine was sterile in the absence of a clinically relevant infection." This accolade appears in a 2015 AJOG paper entitled "The new world of the urinary microbiota in women" from the Loyola University Urinary Research Collaboration, Chicago. Although the identification of bacteria by modern DNA sequencing techniques was unavailable to her research in the 1970s and 80s, Rosalind Maskell did pioneer the use of expanded urine culture methods, which are now recognised as an important component of urinary infection analysis.

Initially inclined to the arts, it was perhaps the influence of her mother, A G Rewcastle (the first …


Abstract. A technique based on a spatial light modulator is proposed for the labeling of nonplanar surfaces. This technique arises from the combination of a general method for generation of digital holograms with a diffractive axilens. Unlike existing methods in which hologram contrast critically decreases out of the focal plane, our proposed approach allows the system to increase the focus depth, resulting in enhanced hologram images out of the focal plane. Two existing methods for hologram generation are theoretically and experimentally compared in terms of efficiency and contrast: the iterative Fourier transform algorithm-based method and the random multiplexing of different lenses method. The most suitable one is selected for the implementation of the new axilens-based technique. Experimental results obtained with the axilens method provide a significant enhancement of the image quality of holograms obtained out of the focal plane when compared with an existing technique. The approach proposed in this manuscript may be of interest in industrial applications, where alphanumeric data must be registered on nonflat surfaces, as in the cases of beverage cans or bottles.


Arabis alpina is a perennial arctic-alpine plant and an upcoming model organism for genetics and molecular biology for the Brassicaceae family. One essential method for most molecular approaches is the analysis of gene expression by quantitative Real-Time PCR (qPCR). For the normalisation of expression data in qPCR experiments, it is essential to use reliable reference genes that are not affected under a wide range of conditions. In this study we establish a set of 15 A. alpina reference genes that were tested under different conditions including cold, drought, heat, salt and gibberellic acid treatments. Data analyses with geNORM, BestKeeper and NormFinder revealed the most stable reference genes for the tested conditions: RAN3, HCF and PSB33 are most suitable for cold treatments; UBQ10 and TUA5 for drought; RAN3, PSB33 and EIF4a for heat; CAC, TUA5, ACTIN 2 and PSB33 for salt and PSB33 and TUA5 for gibberellic acid treatments. CAC and ACTIN 2 showed the least variation over all tested samples. In addition, we show that two reference genes are sufficient to normalize qPCR data under our treatment conditions. In future studies, these reference genes can be used for an adequate normalisation and thus help to generate high quality qPCR data in A. alpina.


Soy isoflavones are popular ingredients with anti-adipogenic and anti-lipogenic properties. The anti-adipogenic and anti-lipogenic properties of genistein are well-known, but those of genistin and glycitein remain unknown, and those of daidzein are characterized by contrasting data. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to investigate the effects of daidzein, glycitein, genistein, and genistin on adipogenesis and lipogenesis in 3T3-L1 cells. Proliferation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes was unaffected by genistin and glycitein, but it was affected by 50 and 100 µM genistein and 100 µM daidzein for 48 h. Among the four isoflavones, only 50 and 100 µM genistin and genistein markedly suppressed lipid accumulation during adipogenesis in 3T3-L1 cells through a similar signaling pathway in a dose-dependent manner. Genistin and genistein suppress adipocyte-specific proteins and genes, such as peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ), CCAAT-enhancer-binding protein α (C/EBPα), and adipocyte binding protein 2 (aP2)/fatty acid-binding protein 4 (FABP4), and lipogenic enzymes such as ATP citrate lyase (ACL), acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1 (ACC1), and fatty acid synthase (FAS). Both isoflavones also activate AMP-activated protein kinase α (AMPKα), an essential factor in adipocyte differentiation, and inhibited sterol regulatory element-binding transcription factor 1c (SREBP-1c). These results indicate that genistin is a potent anti-adipogenic and anti-lipogenic agent.


Abstract Biosphere reserve models around the world are becoming increasingly people-oriented and conservation-conscious in achieving their objectives. However, reserves established in developing countries, such as the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in India, are facing management versus people conflicts due to the insensitivity of management to both genuine and irrational demands coming from people who are motivated by potential economic benefits. The present case study focuses on the issue of crop and livestock depredation by wildlife as a major source of conflict. Feasible solutions in the given socioeconomic context are outlined here; some of these are being tested by the authors in the study area. The results are expected to provide more sustainable livelihood measures and stimulate greater participation in conservation programs.


Biosurfactants are surface active biological compounds produced by microorganisms either extracellularly or cell bound. They possess the hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties which give the enablement to reduce surface and interfacial tension of different solutions. The biosurfactants studies began as early as 1960s and their function keeps evolving in recent times. It has proven useful in the food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, environmental and medical fields. Of noteworthy is the discovery of their use in procuring solution for the current pandemic (Covid-19). However, there are still limitations in the study of biosurfactants which has to do with their large scale production, reduction of bioprocessing cost and discovery of more applications. Different methods such as optimization and mutation have been employed as a way to increase production.


There are at least three possible ways that documents are distributed by relevance: informetric (power law), inverse logistic, and dichotomous. The nature of the type of distribution has implications for the construction of relevance ranking algorithms for search engines, for automated (blind) relevance feedback, for user behavior when using Web search engines, for combining of outputs of search engines for metasearch, for topic detection and tracking, and for the methodology of evaluation of information retrieval systems.


A widely accepted relationship in optimal speed theory is that speeds of vessels respond positively to changes in freight rates and negatively to changes in bunkers. In this thesis we analyse how this hypothesis corresponds to what is actually practiced by market participants. In addition, an important contribution of this thesis is to examine how vessel specific and operational specific variables affect speed in practice. The analysis is based on the theoretical speed optimization models of Ronen (1982), and utilizes a comprehensive panel dataset with observed average daily speed of 607 VLCCs in the period from Jan 2013 to Feb 2015. By applying a random effects panel data model, we are not only able to explain the variations within one vessel over time, but also variations between vessels. The empirical analysis shows considerable differences in how speed responds to changes in explanatory variables for the laden and the ballast leg. For the ballast leg, we find significant relationships between freight, bunkers and speed, in line with theory, but less in magnitude than theoretical models suggest. Conversely, for the laden leg we find no evidence for any relationship between speed and macro variables. Our analysis suggests that financing costs and the cost distribution among charterers and owners create split-incentive problems for VC contracts, leading to the discrepancies between theory and practice. The findings can also be caused by a larger share of the fleet sailing on TC contracts than first anticipated. Further, we find only slight evidence that vessel specific factors may have an influence on the speed decision. Cargo owners with operational control of the vessels are shown to have other speed incentives than traditional shipowners, with more emphasis on cargo value and the sourcing of cargo. Our findings substantiate that before introducing market-based measures to reduce emissions, regulating authorities should fully understand the true speed incentives of the market participants. 1 Very large crude carrier


INTRODUCTION. Augmented reality is little by little becoming incorporated in the area of inclusive education as an emergent technology that fosters learning through discovery and experience by all in equal terms. METHOD. The study used a quasi-experimental design and a small sample of N=41 students enrolled in the Inclusive Education Master's program, who were provided with an ad hoc-designed questionnaire —composed of 31 items and with a Likert-type response scale with 5 options—. The student's opinions were used to answer if augmented reality could be used in the area of inclusive education. For this, an initial evaluation of their opinion on the subject matter was conducted —pre-test—, and afterwards an intervention was conducted in which they were exposed to the content and a variety of tasks linked to the subject matter. Once finished, they were provided with the questionnaire once again, for the post-test. RESULTS. The results achieved after the descriptive and inferential studies showed that augmented reality could be used to foster group and collaborative work in inclusive environments, and it can possibly be used with subjects who have diverse disabilities, as well as within inter and multicultural spheres. DISCUSSION. Augmented reality has possibilities for being used in inclusive education in general, and specifically for the development of the school curriculum. It might not be able to be used with subjects that have visual disabilities, and likewise it might not be able to be used to prevent cases of bullying at school, but it can emphasize the digital divide of the individuals.


to Reduce Omicron Hospitalizations The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines' 2-dose primary series appeared to provide less protection against hospitalization from Omicron variant infections than Alpha and Delta infections, according to a recent study. A booster dose, however, was associated with increased effectiveness against Omicron hospitalizations at the same high levels achieved against earlier variants with 2 doses. The study included data from 11 690 adults admitted to 21 US hospitals from March 11, 2021, to January 14, 2022, about half of whom had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. The other half served as a control group. To calculate vaccine effectiveness, researchers compared the odds of vaccination between the 2 groups. In the COVID-19 group, SARS-CoV-2 variants were determined using whole-genome sequencing or were classified based on the predominant variant at the time of hospitalization. Sequencing results were available for 45.4% of the 5728 SARSCoV-2 infections. The effectiveness of 2 vaccine doses against hospitalization was 85% during the periods of the study when Alpha and Delta dominated but 65% during the Omicron period—late December 2021 through mid-January 2022. The effectiveness of 3 vaccine doses during the Omicron phase was 86%. Regardless of which strain was circulating at the time, COVID-19 severity, based on the World Health Organization clinical progression scale, was lower for vaccinated than for unvaccinated patients. Vaccination, including 2 or 3 doses, was 76% effective for preventing progression to invasive mechanical ventilation or death with the Alpha variant and around 45% effective with Delta or Omicron infections. The findings appeared in the BMJ.


The difficulties to obtain regular and trustworthy data series, which describe the set of demographic characteristics we could consider standard (number of existing persons, births and deaths, distributed by age, sex and social condition, within a certain geographic area) are notorious. Lacking all these elements, various statistical techniques or econometric modeling are employed. In situations of lack of systematic data, the results obtained through these methods are not always adequate. This paper presents a demographic model which simulates the evolution of a slave population in two phases: growth led by traffic and vegetative reduction, after the end of such import traffic. The unit of the model is one individual, whose numbers are calculated through continuous functions. The population totals, its subgroups by sex and origin (africans and natives), as well as the dynamic of mortality , fecundity and birth rates, imigration and total variation. In closing, the results are compared to a few historica indicators of population in Brazil and Pernambuco.


With the increasing reliance on computers for the automatic processing
of information a new method is needed for editing mathematical formulae.
We are used to WYSIWYG editors that produce beautiful presentations of
formulae and store the typesetting primitives rather than the meaning of the
formulas. However, new services such as database searching or calculation
web-services work best if they have access to the semantic information behind
a formula. This can only be done with a new generation of formula editors.
In this paper we present WIRIS OM Tools [17], a semantic oriented formula
editor which addresses these concerns. It is based on the OpenMath language
and a suitable transformation process between OpenMath and MathML ex-
pressions. Additionally, this approach adds new features for the users such
as error, type and syntax checking. The editor is currently being used in the
LeActiveMath and WebALT projects.


Media - Art - History defines the position of multimedia art now. The catalogue section shows how mass media and new technologies have influenced art during the 19th and 20th centuries. Descriptions and interpretations of the works - supplemented by a CD-ROM - throw light on these new developments, ranging from the visions borne out by early Modernist artists, and the art forms in the 60s, to the present day.


Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has grown significantly as an investment strategy over the past decade, leading to intensified demands among investors for more ESG disclosures from publicly listed companies. Perhaps the most high-profile example of this trend is the recent widespread demand among institutional investors, proxy advisory firms, and exchanges for more disclosure and compliance as it relates to board and workplace diversity. Given these efforts and the signals coming from the SEC that it intends to take a more proactive approach to ESG disclosure and compliance, issuers can expect an environment of more specific and detailed diversity disclosures. These increasingly comprehensive disclosures implicate the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws, particularly Rules 10b-5 and 14a-9. While the Supreme Court has held that the materiality requirement under each of these rules is identical, this note argues that, in the case of securities fraud claims related to diversity disclosures, they require distinct evaluations and lead to different outcomes. Specifically, Rule 14a-9, with its focus on what is important to a reasonable investor's voting decisions, is more favorable to plaintiffs than Rule 10b-5, which regulates information important to a reasonable investor's buying and selling decisions. The divergent outcomes are due, in large part, to the combined effects of ownership concentration, passive investing, and the preference among investors for addressing ESG and diversity by voting their shares rather than by selling them. As a result, this note finds that Rule 14a-9 is an increasingly viable option for claims against issuers for false or misleading statements related to board diversity. Consequently, Rule 14a-9 may constitute a mechanism by which plaintiffs can motivate compliance with board diversity standards by making noncompliance too costly.


An experimental study is conducted to simulate the thermal field in mass concrete. Accurate prediction of the thermal stress by analysis is quite difficult particularly at early ages, due to uncertain age-dependent properties of concrete. A series of tests was conducted in which the temperature was measured for a large number of observation points. The effect of aging and the amount of measuring points on thermal field development that can occur in realistic structures was evaluated. Numerical simulations of the thermal field setup were also performed using the finite element with ANSYS software to verify and extend the experimental interpretation and to determine the maximum temperature value which would occur under construction process. Mass concrete temperature field and stress field for specific projects were measured and analyzed. Numerical simulation of mass concrete temperature field for the actual project is compared with the measured results. The results show that the temperature field of numerical simulation results and measured curves result are of the same trend. And it is feasible that mass concrete temperature field is simulated based on ANSYS.


A moderately thermophilic, neutrophilic, aerobic, Gram-negative bacterium, strain 3729kT, was isolated from a thermal spring of the Chukotka Peninsula, Arctic region, Russia. It grew chemoorganoheterotrophically, utilizing proteinaceous substrates, including highly rigid keratins as well as various polysaccharides (glucomannan, locust bean gum, gum guar and xanthan gum). The major fatty acids of strain 3729kT were iso-C15 : 0 (60.9%), iso-C17 : 0 (12.0%), C16 : 0 (9.9%) and iso-C16 : 0 (7.4%). Isoprenoid quinones were Q-8 (95%) and Q-9 (5%). The major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylmethylethanolamine and three unidentified polar lipids. Strain 3729kT was inhibited by chloramphenicol, neomycin, novobiocin, kanamycin, tetracycline, ampicillin and polymyxin B, but resistant to rifampicin, vancomycin and streptomycin. At the same time, strain 3729kT inhibited growth of Micrococcus luteus and its genome possessed genes for antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive bacteria (a single putative bacteriocin and several secreted lysozymes and peptidoglycan lytic transglycosylases). The DNA G+C content was 69.8 mol%. 16S rRNA gene sequence-based phylogenetic analysis placed strain 3729kT into a distinct species/genus-level branch within the family Xanthomonadaceae (Proteobacteria). Phylogenetic analysis of 120 conservative protein sequences of all Xanthomonadaceae with validly published names and publicly available genomic sequences supported a species-level position of strain 3729kT within the genus Arenimonas. Pairwise ANI values between strain 3729kT and other Arenimonas species were of 75-80 %, supporting the proposal of a novel species. Accordingly, Arenimonas fontis sp. nov., with the type strain 3729kT (=VMK В-3232Т=DSM 105847T), was proposed.


into an EP were included in the final analysis. The clinicians were blinded to the initial hCG ratio when the diagnosis of EP was made. Women were managed expectantly, medically or surgically based on local protocols. Using the ANOVA test, correlation between initial hCG ratio and the type of subsequent management was analysed. Results: Of the 3341 consecutive scans were performed at the EPU during the study period, 5.8% (194/3341) were diagnosed with an EP. Within this group, 74.7% (145/194) of the EPs were seen at the first scan and 25.3% (49/194) of the EPs started as PULs. In the group of EPs that started as PULs, hCG ratios were available on 95.9% (47/49) women. The mean hCG ratio at the time of PUL classification for those EPs subsequently managed expectantly, medically and surgically was 1.1, 1.1 and 1.3 respectively (P = 0.06). Conclusions: The hCG ratio of those EPs that commence as PULs does not appear to correlate with the EP management.


A smart-metering system is a system that meters electricity, gas, and water consumption and manages their supply by controlling measuring devices remotely. Power-line communication (PLC) does not require a separate communication line and can be easily installed by utilizing power-line infrastructure. PLC also allows users to easily connect measuring devices to the PLC network by plugging the power cord into an electrical outlet. Therefore, a smart-metering system over PLC has been considered as one of the most appropriate technologies for meter reading and automatic control, which are essential in realization of a smart grid. We propose a secure smart-metering protocol including: 1) key materials generation and provisioning to devices without exposure; 2) initialization to authenticate devices in the network and share keys between devices before exchanging data, (3) secure transmission of meter-reading data, and 4) revocation management to handle discarded devices from the network. Especially, our protocol provides strong authentication of devices and data: It prevents a single point of failure by adopting secret sharing through multiple certificate authorities. It also reduces the risk of denial-of-service attacks on the server by hop-by-hop authentication for data transmitted from terminal nodes to the server.


Different approaches have been studied for dealing with the life cycle problem of paying for retirement consumption. Two key aspects of this problem are saving enough for retirement during the pre-retirement period and managing the spend down of assets during the retirement period. The proposal in this article addresses both issues. This article presents a proposal for voluntary top-up contributions to Social Security. With these contributions, workers could purchase earnings credits. These purchased earnings credits would enter the calculation of Social Security benefits in exactly the same way as actual earnings credits. When workers file their federal income taxes, they could purchase earnings credits for that tax year up to the Social Security taxable maximum earnings. This approach to voluntarily increasing Social Security benefits is less susceptible to problems of adverse selection than some other approaches that have been proposed. TOPICS: Wealth management, retirement, social security Key Findings • Voluntary add-on contributions to Social Security would delay the date of insolvency by bringing new revenue into the system. • Voluntary add-on contributions to Social Security would be possible for workers earning less than the Social Security taxable maximum, who could purchase additional earnings credits. • The calculation of the person's increase in benefits would be done using the progressive structure of the Social Security benefit formula.


Background: A new mode of surfactant administration without intubation - less invasive surfactant administration (LISA) - has recently been described for premature infants. Objective: We report single-center outcome data of extremely premature infants who have been managed by LISA in our department. Mortality and morbidity rates of the cohort were compared to historical controls from our own center and to data of the Vermont-Oxford Neonatal Network (VONN). Patients and Methods: All infants born at 23-27 weeks' gestational age during 01/2009 and 06/2011 (n = 224) were managed by LISA and included in the study group. Results: LISA was tolerated by 94% of all infants. 68% of infants stayed on continuous positive airway pressure on day 3. The rate of mechanical ventilation was 35% within the first week and 59% during the entire hospital stay. Compared to historical controls, we found significantly higher survival rates (75.8 vs. 64.1%) and significantly less intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) (28.1 vs. 45.9%), severe IVH (13.1 vs. 23.9%) and cystic periventricular leukomalacia (1.2 vs. 5.6%); only persistent ductus arteriousus (PDA) (74.7 vs. 52.6%) and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (40.5 vs. 21.1%) occurred significantly more often. Compared to VONN data, we found significantly less chronic lung disease (20.6 vs. 46.4%), severe cerebral lesions (IVH 3/4 + cystic PVL; 9.4 vs. 16.1%) and ROP (all grades) (40.5 vs. 56.5%); only PDA (74.7 vs. 63.1%) and severe ROP (> grade 2) (24.1 vs. 14.1%) occurred significantly more often in our cohort. Conclusion: Surfactant can be effectively and safely delivered via LISA and this is associated with low rates of mechanical ventilation and various adverse outcomes in extremely premature infants.


: Programmed ventricular stimulation and a search for late surface potentials (LP) by means of signal-averaging and quantification by Simson's method were performed in 115 patients divided into five groups: group I (n = 50) with no myocardial infarction (MI) and no clinical or induced ventricular tachycardia (VT); group II (n = 28) with MI and no clinical or induced VT; group III (n = 8) with MI, no clinical VT but induced non sustained VT (NSVT); group IV (n = 19) with MI, no clinical VT but induced sustained VT (SVT); group V (n = 15) with clinical and induced VT. The terminal portion of the averaged signal (AS) was analyzed by three parameters: duration of AS terminal portion less than 40 microvolts (Dur TP), AS amplitude 50 and 40 ms before its end (Amp 50, Amp 40). The presence of TP was defined in two ways: criterion A = Amp 40 less than 25 mcv, criterion B = at least two sub-criteria: Dur TP greater than 40 ms, Amp 50 less than 25 mcv, Amp 40 less than 15 mcv. Compared to groups I and II, the AS of group V was characterized by a prolonged and low amplitude terminal portion (p less than 0.001). Groups III and IV were intermediate. The incidence of TP in groups I to V was 20, 28, 37, 56 and 80% respectively with criterion A, and 4, 4, 0, 28 and 66% respectively with criterion B. The lower incidence of TP in group IV as compared to group V was probably due to the induction of purely artefactual SVT's, notably those with rapid cycle (greater than 270 cps/min) which are remarkable on several accounts.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Aim of the study: to identify the features of neuropsychological and neuroimaging status in patients with Graves' disease. Materials and methods. The study is based on the analysis of the results of neurological, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in 53 patients with diffuse toxic goiter with the experience of the disease is not more than 5 years. Results. Found that patients with diffuse toxic goiter in the early stages of the disease there are changes in neu-ropsychological and neuroimaging status, which indicates the feasibility study of this category of patients for a neurologist appointment of appropriate therapy. Conclusion. The study evaluated the neuroimaging and neuropsychological status of patients with Graves' disease. The goal set in the study achieved.


BACKGROUND
Discrepancies may exist between what oncologists communicate and what patients understand about their cancer stage and its implications.

OBJECTIVE
We explored patients' ability to identify their stage of breast cancer.

METHODS
As part of a study testing a cancer self-management intervention we asked women to identify their stage of disease and compared responses to the electronic medical record (EMR) for validation. The sample included women with recently diagnosed nonmetastatic (stage I-III) disease. We calculated descriptive statistics and used logistic regression to examine relationships between knowledge of stage, demographic and clinical variables, and study outcomes. Measurement instruments were the Control Preferences Scale (CPS), Knowledge of Care Options Test (KOCO), Measurement of Transitions Scale (MOT), Medical Communication Competence Scale (MCCS), Chronic Disease Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSE), Uncertainty in Illness Scale (MUIS-C), and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS).

RESULTS
Participants (n = 98) had a mean age of 52.3 years (range 27-72). Per the EMR, 19 participants (19.4%) had stage I breast cancer, 56 (57.1%) had stage II, and 23 (23.5%) had stage III. Of the 28 participants (28.6%) unable to identify their stage of cancer correctly, 11 (39.3%) provided vague responses, 11 (39.3%) reported an incorrect stage, and 6 (21.4%) did not know their stage. Younger age (p = 0.0412) and earlier cancer stage (p = 0.0136) were predictive of correctly identifying stage. Participants who at baseline had a greater knowledge of care options (curative, palliative, and hospice care) were more likely to correctly identify their stage (KOCO, p = 0.0345).

CONCLUSIONS
Clinicians should revisit conversations about cancer stage and care options to ensure patients' understanding and support self-management.


It has been shown that red cells sensitized with anti-Rh antibody are agglutinated by anti-γ-globulin sera, regardless of the "order" of Rh antibody activity. Red cells sensitized with anti-Lewis antibody, on the other hand, are agglutinated by anti-sera to non-γ-globulin substances. Of six other blood group antibodies studied, five provided γ-globulin red cell coating materials and one, an anti-Kidd, a non-γ-globulin material. The participation of complement, or complement-like, substances was shown in some instances. Various pitfalls in the technics employed in absorbing Coombs sera so as to render them immunochemically specific are discussed.


Industrialization of animal agriculture has created a battle groundpitting farmers against farmer, rural residents against large producers, and producer against consumer. The dilemma (tradeoff) of whether to have more small family farms or to lower food costs (with large farms) cannot easily be resolved. The answer is to internalize externalities (in waste disposal, odor, etc.), then to allow markets to work.


Within the orthopedic field, a post-installation complication such as aseptic inflammation occurs around orthopedic prosthetic implants. Immunological studies within the field have so far been correlating the aseptic osteolytic process to activated macrophages due to phagocytosis of implant wear debris. The activated macrophages respond with an inflammasome mediated secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators Macrophage-polarization is another theory behind the mechanism of aseptic inflammation induced by orthopedic prosthetic implants, leading to a higher ratio of the pro-inflammatory subtype M1-macrophage in the local peri-implant tissue.Together with the lack of a true definition of peri-implantitis of dental implants, the mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis remain unravelled. Hence, the aim of our study was to investigate if mechanisms previously mentioned could be correlated to factors involved in pathogenesis of peri-implantitis. We hypothesized that samples of solid titanium and titanium-ions in combination with microbial stimuli could induce an enhanced pro-inflammatory interleukin-1β (IL-1β) secretion from macrophages. This hypothesis was tested in our in vitro experiments, where THP-1 cells (human monocyte cancer cell line) and freshly isolated human macrophages were exposed to solid titanium samples and titanium-ions in the presence of microbial stimuli (Escherichia coli LPS). Results showed that a pro-inflammatory response could be induced from THP-1 cells, due to exposure of titanium-metal and titanium-ions, dependent on the dose/purity of titanium. This indicates that a bacteria-induced inflammatory response could be further enhanced in vicinity to titanium implants.


The results of a current study point out the macroeconomic effects associated with the use and production of renewable resources (NAWARO) in Germany. It focuses on the direct and indirect employment effects in the NAWARO market segments biofuels, energy/electricity, chemical commodities and materials. Supply quantities of renewable resources and agricultural area in Germany required by the industrial production in the different market segments and associated employment effects in the German agricultural sector are also analyzed. Above all, if Germany succeeds to be a lead market in certain NAWARO market segments while retaining agricultural and industrial value chains in Germany considerable employment potentials emerge.