Participation is a concept that is used and discussed, both within the field of occupational therapy and in other areas. The concept of participation is included in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and the Model of Human Occupation. The aim of this study was to investigate how the concept of participation has been used in studies published in peer-reviewed journals. A literature review was performed using the search terms 'occupational therapy' and 'participation'. Papers published in peer-reviewed journals during the period 2004–2006 were included (n = 38). Content analysis was used when analysing the data. The results show that interview is the most common method of data collection and that the physical field is the clinical field that is most frequently represented in these papers. Three different categories were identified with regard to how the concept of participation has been used. These were client-centredness (n = 11), involvement in the environment (n = 19) and meaningfulness (n = 23). The three categories represent three dimensions of participation and are interpreted as occurring on micro or macro levels. Further research is needed and this review contributes to this development.


Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) reduce insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes by increasing peripheral uptake of glucose, and they bind to and activate the transcriptional factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-gamma). Studies have suggested that TZD-induced activation of PPAR-gamma correlates with antidiabetic action, but the mechanism by which the activated PPAR-gamma is involved in reducing insulin resistance is not known. To examine whether activation of PPAR-gamma directly correlates with antidiabetic activities, we compared the effects of 4 TZDs (troglitazone, pioglitazone, BRL-49653, and a new derivative, NC-2100) on the activation of PPAR-gamma in a reporter assay, transcription of the target genes, adipogenesis, plasma glucose and triglyceride levels, and body weight using obese KKAy mice. There were 10- to 30-fold higher concentrations of NC-2100 required for maximal activation of PPAR-gamma in a reporter assay system, and only high concentrations of NC-2100 weakly induced transcription of the PPAR-gamma but not PPAR-alpha target genes in a whole mouse and adipogenesis of cultured 3T3L1 cells, which indicates that NC-2100 is a weak PPAR-gamma activator. However, low concentrations of NC-2100 efficiently lowered plasma glucose levels in KKAy obese mice. These results strongly suggest that TZD-induced activation of PPAR-gamma does not directly correlate with antidiabetic (glucose-lowering) action. Furthermore, NC-2100 caused the smallest body weight increase of the 4 TZDs, which may be partly explained by the finding that NC-2100 efficiently induces uncoupling protein (UCP)-2 mRNA and significantly induces UCP1 mRNA in white adipose tissue (WAT). NC-2100 induced UCP1 efficiently in mesenteric WAT and less efficiently in subcutaneous WAT, although pioglitazone and troglitazone also slightly induced UCP1 only in mesenteric WAT. These characteristics of NC-2100 should be beneficial for humans with limited amounts of brown adipose tissue.


Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a rare complication of acute pulmonary embolism. It is caused by persistent obstruction of pulmonary arteries by chronic organised fibrotic clots, despite adequate anticoagulation. The pulmonary hypertension is also caused by concomitant microvasculopathy which may progress without timely treatment. Timely and accurate diagnosis requires the combination of imaging and haemodynamic assessment. Optimal therapy should be individualised to each case and determined by an experienced multidisciplinary CTEPH team with the ability to offer all current treatment modalities. This report summarises current knowledge and presents key messages from the International CTEPH Conference, Bad Nauheim, Germany, 2021. Sessions were dedicated to 1) disease definition; 2) pathophysiology, including the impact of the hypertrophied bronchial circulation, right ventricle (dys)function, genetics and inflammation; 3) diagnosis, early after acute pulmonary embolism, using computed tomography and perfusion techniques, and supporting the selection of appropriate therapies; 4) surgical treatment, pulmonary endarterectomy for proximal and distal disease, and peri-operative management; 5) percutaneous approach or balloon pulmonary angioplasty, techniques and complications; and 6) medical treatment, including anticoagulation and pulmonary hypertension drugs, and in combination with interventional treatments. Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary disease without pulmonary hypertension is also discussed in terms of its diagnostic and therapeutic aspects. This report summarises current knowledge on chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) and presents key messages from the International CTEPH Conference, Bad Nauheim, Germany, 2021. https://bit.ly/3VJmc2l


In recent years, many nations around the world, including the Republic of Korea, have shown keen interest in the regeneration of cities as a viable solution to a host of environmental issues the world is facing today. As such, development of various regeneration methods is being undertaken. One integral part of the said initiatives is the recycling of existing buildings that are aging, though the focus is being placed on improving the internal and external aesthetics and structural performance rather than on enhancing fire safety performance of buildings. Reflecting such trends, relatively fewer studies have been conducted to address the ways to improve the safety performance during disasters such as fire which lead to fatality and massive property losses. Given the rationale, this study proposed a building owner/manager-friendly comprehensive and effective way to improve the safety performance of aging commercial buildings during fire/evacuation incidents so as to address the particular susceptibility exhibited by such buildings during disasters that result in large casualties and property damages. Statistical techniques were used to establish the buildings' properties relating to fire and evacuation. Also AHP analysis was performed to calculate property-specific weightings. In consideration of the calculated weightings and condition of buildings, the study proposed a logic and decision-making tool for the owner/manager such that a comprehensive improvement can be made about the fire/evacuation performance.


Problem During my pastoral experience at Nyagiki, I observed that although HIV/AIDS was a big threat in the church and society, many of the church leaders were not involved in addressing this crisis. There were no intentional church training programs to warn the members about its danger. The church did not make a budget of time or money to address this pandemic. The root problem that caused this situation was lack of health information literacy on HIV/AIDS to equip these leaders with knowledge and skills to deal with this crisis. Method The Doctor of Ministry Research Project was conducted at Nyagiki Seventh-day Adventist Church between March 2016 and August 2017 (18 months). There were 24 adult participants—18 women and 6 men—who were effectively trained on how to care for people living with HIV/AIDS in their communities. The 24 participants formed four groups and were assigned a specific church territory to visit. On the last Saturday of each month, the participants met in their focus groups to discuss progress made and then send reports to the researcher. Results The report from the participants indicate that there was a total of 246 general visits made and a total of 40 visits made to people living with HIV/AIDS. In the last month of the project, the participants were involved in speaking at a one-week camp meeting which was held in their community. Two participants spoke each day at this event to represent each of the four focus groups. On Friday of the camp-meeting (one day before completion) a graduation ceremony was conducted, and certificates of recognition were issued to the participants. The researcher was the chief speaker at this camp-meeting and 29 people responded to the altar call. -- Conclusions Nyagiki Seventh-day Adventist Church has indicated increased church attendance and the leaders have planned to build a bigger church facility. People who came to the camp-meeting from other churches in the community made requests to have similar research projects conducted in their churches. Consequently, I recommend continued interaction with Nyagiki and the surrounding community to keep the fire burning.


Bob offers a face-detection web service where clients can submit their images for analysis. Alice would very much like to use the service, but is reluctant to reveal the content of her images to Bob. Bob, for his part, is reluctant to release his face detector, as he spent a lot of time, energy and money constructing it. Secure MultiParty computations use cryptographic tools to solve this problem without leaking any information. Unfortunately, these methods are slow to compute and we introduce a couple of machine learning techniques that allow the parties to solve the problem while leaking a controlled amount of information. The first method is an information-bottleneck variant of AdaBoost that lets Bob find a subset of features that are enough for classifying an image patch, but not enough to actually reconstruct it. The second machine learning technique is active learning that allows Alice to construct an online classifier, based on a small number of calls to Bob's face detector. She can then use her online classifier as a fast rejector before using a cryptographically secure classifier on the remaining image patches.


The construction of a coaxial circle breathing circuit encloses the inspiratory limb within the expiratory limb to preserve heat, humidity, anesthetic gas, and oxygen. However, the construction also makes kinks or breaks in the enclosed inspiratory limb difficult to detect. With kinking or disconnection of the central inspiratory limb, the patient may rebreathe expiratory gases, leading to a significant increase in dead space and concomitant respiratory acidosis. We describe a clinical case in which a disconnection in the inner inspiratory limb of a King (King Circuits, Noblesville, IN) coaxial breathing circuit resulted in severe respiratory acidosis 4 hours after induction during a craniotomy for tumor resection. Similar cases have been reported in the literature [1-3], but this one differs in the timing of the rebreathing and respiratory acidosis. Therefore, anesthetic providers who are aware that coaxial circuit failures associated with the inspiratory limb can occur at any time during surgery will be in a position to identify the problem early, thereby limiting the degree of respiratory acidosis that develops and reducing the risk of associated complications.


century because of its addictive and side effects. The 38-year-old woman, mother of a 20-month-old child from Eastern Europe, was treated with liver insuffi ciency and vascular, parenchymal decompensated cirrhosis needing plasmaferesis for the fi rst time in our hospital. In case history, abusus of aethyl-alcohol and valeriana was found to be as toxic agent which was treated as the etiologic factor of the liver disease and liver failure. After intensive and conservative treatment her status was stabilised, during the follow-up she had no signs and symptoms, the laboratory results tend to be in normal range. Half year after her hospitalization intensive care treatment was necessary abroad due to gastric bleeding. In the background the histology of gastric biopsy taken during gastroscopic examination showed gastric sigillocellular carcinoma in our hospital. Total gastrectomia, omentectomia, lymphadenectomia were performed, the tumor was removed and she received cytostatic treatment. The use of valeriana and aethyl-alcohol is supposed to have a potential effect on tumorgenesis and on the increase of toxicity.


This original study re-evaluates central texts of the modernist canon – Eliot's early poetry including The Waste Land, Joyce's Ulysses, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past – by examining sexual energies and identifications in them that are typically regarded as perverse. According to modern cultural discourses and psychosexual categorizations, these deviant desires and identifications feminize men or tend to render them homosexual. Colleen Lamos's analysis of the operations of gender and sexuality in these texts reveals conflicts concerning the definition of masculine heterosexuality which cut across the aesthetics of modernism. She argues that canonical male modernism, far from being a monolithic entity with a coherently conservative political agenda, is in fact the site of errant impulses and unresolved struggles. What emerges is a reconsideration of modernist literature as a whole and a recognition of the heterogeneous forces that formed and deformed modernism.


Underwater image-based sampling procedures, using SCUBA, are compared using imagery collected from a temperate hard-substratum community. The effectiveness of a low-budget, high-resolution image mosaicing technique is assessed by comparing the relative efficiency of data collection, extraction and analysis among sampling procedures. In addition, a manipulative experiment tested whether the sampling procedures could detect the physical removal of 10% of the reef community. Overall, four factors were explored within the data: data collection media (stills and video), cover and community composition estimation techniques (visual cover estimation, frequency of occurrence and point extraction), change detection (pre- and post-impact) and depth (8, 14, 18 and 22 m). Stills imagery sampled the reef community at a higher image resolution than the video imagery, which enabled identification of more species and less-conspicuous benthic categories. Using the visual cover estimation technique, the stills imagery also had the greatest benefit in terms of efficiency and species identification. However, the experimental impact was detected using only the point extraction technique. The recommendations are that: (1) the image mosaicing technique is applied to fixed-station monitoring; (2) the point extraction technique be used for efficient and cost-effective monitoring at coarse taxonomic resolutions; and (3) survey depths remain constant over the duration of hard-substratum community monitoring.


New advanced numerical computer model enabling accurate simulation of fragmentation parameters of large L/D explosively driven metal shells has been developed and validated. The newly developed large L/D multi-region model links three-dimensional axisymmetric high strain high strain-rate hydrocode analyses with the conventional set of Picatinny Arsenal FRAGmentation (PAFRAG) simulation routines. The standard PAFRAG modeling technique is based on the Mott's theory of break-up of idealized cylindrical "ring-bombs", in which the length of the average fragment is a function of the radius and velocity of the shell at the moment of break-up, and the mechanical properties of the metal. In the newly developed multi-region model, each of the shell region, the break-up is assumed to occur instantaneously, whereas the entire shell is modeled to fragment at multiple times, according to the number of the regions considered. According to PAFRAG methodology, the required input for both the natural and the controlled fragmentation models including the geometry and the velocity of the shell at moment of break-up had been provided from the hydrocode analyses and validated with available experimental data. The newly developed large L/D multi-region PAFRAG model has been shown to accurately reproduce available experimental fragmentation data.


Diabetes mellitus is associated with oxidative stress which plays an important role in development of chronic complications of diabetes. Due to various side effects associated with the drugs used for the management of diabetes, the development of new plant based drugs is the renewed interest of the present time. The new prospective anti-diabetic formulations should possess anti-oxidative potential to resist the oxidative insult of tissues during diabetes and their potential should also be comparable with standard drugs. Momordica charantia is extensively used in India, China and other parts of the world as vegetable. The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of Momordica charantia (MC) on antioxidant enzymes and lipid peroxidation in liver and kidney of alloxan induced diabetic rats. In a 30 days treatment, rats were divided into four groups (I-IV) of five animals in each, experiments were repeated thrice. Administration of MC (13.33 g pulp/kg body weight/day) extract in diabetic rats has remarkably improved the elevated levels of fasting blood glucose. A significant decrease in lipid peroxidation (p<0.001) and increase in the activities of key antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione-s-transferase (GST) and reduced glutathione (GSH) contents in liver and kidney tissues of diabetic rats were observed upon MC treatment. The anti-hyperglycemic and antioxidant properties of MC were comparable with Metformin, a standard hypoglycemic drug.


Money laundering refers to the process or processes through which the proceeds of certain crimes are first disguised and then legitimized so that they may be enjoyed without risking discovery and prosecution. While anti-money laundering efforts were initially implemented through domestic legislation, it soon became evident that the effectiveness of the system would heavily depend on how homogenously it was applied accross borders. In fact, empirical evidence shows that money laundering operations typically include an international dimension of one sort or another. Should the anti-money laundering legal regime be limited to some countries or not enforced homogenously, those seeking to launder the proceeds of their crimes would do so in the jurisdiction where their conduct would not be subject to stringent controls. The only effect of exclusively domestic anti-money laundering measures would this be a change in the geographical distribution of the phenomenon. This paper explores the development of international anti-money laundering standards and presents their main features in those specific areas that are most relevant to the question of international asset tracing and asset recovery, namely, the standards to prevent and detect transfers of proceeds of crime; the standards related to the adoption of provisional measures to prevent such transfers or the disposal of assets under investigation and the standards of confiscation of proceeds of crime domestically and in cross-border proceedings. It focuses on the rules and standards developed under the auspices of the United Nations, the European Union and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).


Abstract In the last two decades indigenous peoples have obtained a greater 'voice' at the international level while at the same time international laws have established the rights of indigenous peoples and drawn attention to their importance in environmental governance. A number of international legal instruments now make specific reference to indigenous peoples, customary law and traditional knowledge. However, they do not directly address the often complex issues involved in implementing law and policy in countries where multiple legal orders operate, and conflicts between customary and state-based legal norms and governance regimes often remain a significant issue. This paper explores the problem in the context of international environmental law and sustainable development, with particular reference to the small island developing states (SIDS) of the South Pacific. International law was in the past the domain of states. With the establishment of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in the 1980s, the interest generated following the International Year of the World's Indigenous People in 1993, and the Decade of the World's Indigenous People (from 1995), increasing attention has been given to indigenous peoples as non-state actors, and they now have an emerging legal personality in the international arena. Most independent post-colonial societies support equality and prohibit discrimination, but the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination is disputed, since it may entail a right of secession. Nevertheless many international instruments now acknowledge rights of indigenous peoples to protection and respect for their social, cultural, religious and spiritual values and practices, including rights in relation to customs and customary law. Many international law instruments which refer to the rights of indigenous peoples relate to sustainable development and natural resource management. In addition to international human rights law and international law in general, international environmental law has provided important rights and tools for indigenous peoples. Special attention to the needs of SIDS led to the Declaration of Barbados and the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA, 1994). The Declaration acknowledges that the "international community has a responsibility to facilitate the efforts of small island developing states to minimize the stress on their fragile ecosystems, including through cooperative action and partnership". BPOA has identified priority areas and set out actions under each which are to be undertaken at each level by a tripartite partnership involving the international community, regional bodies and the state. It has noted the need to harmonise environmental law amongst the SIDS, and the importance of global and regional programmes to develop and implement national environmental legislation. It is argued, however, that generally there has been a failure to meaningfully engage with the issue of legal pluralism which hampers implementation of culturally appropriate laws in many states in the Pacific region. There is a need for a greater role for international institutions and agencies, but it is essential to ensure that indigenous people themselves fully participate at the international level. Further proposals are advanced for a new research agenda and a strengthening of existing programmes to achieve the previously identified outcomes.


My dissertation examines the relationship between militarism and domesticity in the United States through the everyday lives of multigenerational Filipino Navy families in San Diego, California. The militarization and domestication of Filipino Navy families have engendered affective and effective desires to constitute themselves as legible subjects despite the violence of U.S. empire in the Philippines and the demands of resettlement in the U.S. imperial center. Arguably, the desire for such legibility in an imperial milieu (as Filipino/ American subjects) challenges the language of belonging (or inclusion) common to analyses of U.S. empire. From the epistemological perspectives of Filipino Navy families in my sample, I posit that such discursive legibility in the U.S. imperial center relies on inventing quotidian expressions of heteronormative Filipino masculinity and manhood alongside co-constructions of heteronormative womanhood and childhood. My analyses is based on original recorded interview data with approximately twenty Filipino Navy families residing in San Diego over a nine-month period between 2004 and 2005. Three members of each family (male enlistee, spouse, and adult child) were interviewed, for a total of sixty participants with a cumulative affiliation with the U.S. Navy that spans fifty years. In Militarized Filipino Masculinity and the Language of Citizenship, I examine how Filipino masculinity and manhood are constituted in and through a distinctly masculine framework for familial relationships, and explore the legibility of U.S. patriarchy and militarism in the lives of Filipino men. I show how the domestic space is always overseen, authorized, and enabled by U.S. authority--regardless of how and whether the Filipino Navy men in my sample identify, cope with, and resolve their expectations of themselves as men through the language of citizenship and the patriotic. In Militarized Filipino Motherhood and the Language of Mothering, I examine how domesticity, intimacy, and morality are imagined, staged, reproduced, and transferred intergenerationally by women to constitute a distinctly masculine framework for Filipino Navy families. Specifically, I look at how the incongruities of class consolidation and white bourgeois domesticity in everyday life gesture towards the everyday expressions of dissent and critique of U.S. empire, as well as the limitations. Finally, in Militarized Filipino Youth and the Language of Respect, I examine how gendered experiences of militarized childhood both enable and disable the possibilities of demilitarization from within the U.S. imperial center


Six months residence at an altitude of 10,000 feet produced significant pulmonary hypertension and arterial oxygen desaturation (86 per cent) in 10 normal steers born at 3,600 feet. Six of these animals, during the course of the experiment, showed a rise in mean pulmonary arterial pressure from 27 to 45 mm. Hg. The remaining four animals developed more severe pulmonary hypertension, and two with mean pressures greater than 100 mm. Hg had right heart failure. All 10 showed right ventricular hypertrophy proportional to the degree of pulmonary hypertension. Ten steers of similar age and origin, maintained as controls at 5,000 feet, showed a mean pulmonary arterial pressure of 27 mm. Hg throughout the experiment. The pulmonary hypertension observed at high altitude is considered to be due to an increased pulmonary vascular resistance resulting from a reduction in the total cross-sectional area of the pulmonary vascular bed. Chronic hypoxia appeared to be the most important etilogical factor responsible for initiating the hypertension. The observed beneficial effects of 100 per cent oxygen inhalation and the prompt recovery of an affected animal when moved to lower altitude supported the concept of pulmonary hypertension induced by hypoxia.


Policymakers often look for ways to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper estimates the impact of a programme, Costa Rica Provee, that seeks to increase backward linkages between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and MNCs in Costa Rica. The impacts were measured by reference to real average wages, employment demand and the probability of exporting, using a combination of fixed effects and propensity score matching with panel data on treated and untreated firms for 2001-2011. Programme beneficiaries evinced higher average wages, labour demand and export probabilities than untreated firms, with dose and duration also having a major influence.


In the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand undertook a large number of tax reforms designed to improve the performance of the economy. Top marginal income-tax rates were reduced, a valueadded tax (GST) was introduced, a system of imputation credits for dividend income was implemented, and the taxation of retirement savings was reformed. As a result of these reforms, New Zealand now a tax system that differs in many ways from the tax systems of other OECD countries. Even though there is no capital gains tax, it is characterised by relatively high taxes on business and capital income and low taxes on labour incomes. Part of the difference occurs because New Zealand has very low social security taxes, and because retirement savings are taxed differently in New Zealand than in most OECD countries. This paper provides a review of the ways that the taxation of capital income in New Zealand may be affecting the economy. It argues that the idiosyncrasies of New Zealand's tax structure favour investments in urban real estate relative to investments in other productive assets, and that this may be hindering productivity growth. One part of the problem is a lack of a comprehensive capital gains tax, while another is relatively high taxes on business and capital income. The paper discusses some of the different possible reforms that the 2018 Tax Working Group has identified in its Interim Report. While supportive of a capital gains tax, it argues that aspects of the suggested reforms are inconsistent with standard international practice and may (i) further distort the tax advantaged position of owner-occupied property in the economy and (ii) raise effective tax rates on real capital income above statutory rates. Since New Zealand already has some of the highest taxes on capital income in the OECD, further increases in these taxes may adversely affect the accumulation of capital in the economy and make it difficult for New Zealanders to catch up with OECD productivity levels and incomes. Although New Zealand could introduce a capital gains tax without worsening the distortionary effects of the tax system on investment patterns by adopting the standard OECD method of taxing retirement savings, the Interim Report appears to rule this out. Part of the difficulty is that the terms of reference for the Tax Working Group limit its ability to design a tax system for the future by constraining it to adopt many features of the tax system designed in the past. In contrast, this paper supports general OECD recommendations that a country may wish to reduce taxes on business income. For this reason, in addition to introducing a capital gains taxes and reforming retirement income tax policy, a full discussion of the future of New Zealand's tax system should seriously consider altering the balance between capital and labour taxes by reducing income taxes, increasing taxes on land, and increasing social security taxes. This would bring New Zealand in line with standard OECD practice, and closer to the highly progressive tax systems adopted by most Scandinavian countries.


We developed genetically encoded fluorescent inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) sensors that do not severely interfere with intracellular Ca2+ dynamics and used them to monitor the spatiotemporal dynamics of both cytosolic IP3 and Ca2+ in single HeLa cells after stimulation of exogenously expressed metabotropic glutamate receptor 5a or endogenous histamine receptors. IP3 started to increase at a relatively constant rate before the pacemaker Ca2+ rise, and the subsequent abrupt Ca2+ rise was not accompanied by any acceleration in the rate of increase in IP3. Cytosolic [IP3] did not return to its basal level during the intervals between Ca2+ spikes, and IP3 gradually accumulated in the cytosol with a little or no fluctuations during cytosolic Ca2+ oscillations. These results indicate that the Ca2+-induced regenerative IP3 production is not a driving force of the upstroke of Ca2+ spikes and that the apparent IP3 sensitivity for Ca2+ spike generation progressively decreases during Ca2+ oscillations.


The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) is a machine-to-machine middleware shared service providing a single central catalogue of quality descriptions of collections of resources available to researchers, learners and teachers in the UK, along with details of the services that provide access to those collections. The collections and services are described according to a set of metadata, which is defined by IESR, but is based on open standards wherever possible. The prototype registry is implemented as an XML repository indexed with the Cheshire II information retrieval software, with an associated meta-registry to support browsing and data capture. Several interfaces for server-to-server retrieval of IESR XML descriptions are available, as well as a Web interface.


Uncoupling-protein (UCP) mRNA expression is decreased to 15% of virgin control levels between days 10 and 15 of pregnancy, and remains at these low values during late pregnancy and lactation. Abrupt weaning of mid-lactating rats causes a slight but significant increase in UCP mRNA. Expression of mRNA for subunit II of cytochrome c oxidase (COII) decreased to half that of virgin control in late pregnancy and during lactation. Whereas COII mRNA expression is in step with the known modifications of brown-fat mitochondria content during the breeding cycle of the rat, UCP mRNA expression appears to be diminished much earlier than the mitochondrial proton-conductance-pathway activity. On the other hand, the reactivity of brown fat to increase expression of UCP and COII mRNAs in response to acute cold or noradrenaline treatment is not impaired during lactation.


Background: Academic centers' and professional societies' top leadership representation and professional societies' award recipients remain disparate by gender in many fields. Little is known regarding leadership representation and recognition within pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine (PCCM), which has ∼22% women physicians. We sought to understand the landscape of female PCCM leaders. Methods: We abstracted gender of fellowship program directors (PDs), Department of Medicine (DOM) Chairs and Division Chiefs from academic medical centers with PCCM fellowship programs from 2018 and for comparison 2008. We abstracted leadership and recognition award recipients within four PCCM professional societies from 2013 to 2018 (American Thoracic Society [ATS], American Academy of Sleep Medicine [AASM], American College of Chest Physicians [CHEST], and Society of Critical Care Medicine [SCCM]). Results: In 2018, 29% of PCCM PD, 15% of PCCM Division Chiefs, and 15% of DOM Chairs were women. There were significantly more female PDs in 2018 (29%) compared with 2008 (16%, p = 0.04). On average, 25% of society presidents were women, with 28% of PCCM societal awards going to women, with significant difference between societies (p = 0.04). Each society differed in average distribution of female board members over the 6-year period: ATS 38%, AASM 35%, CHEST 18%, and SCCM 44% (p < 0.001). Conclusion: PCCM leadership and societal recognition are disparate by gender with few women holding top leadership roles and receiving societal recognition. Fortunately, the distribution notably is starting to reflect the specialty's demographics. Understanding why these inequalities exist will be essential to achieving gender parity in PCCM.


With few exceptions, the political and theoretical practice of the Left continues to deteriorate in Latin America from the proliferation of a new-born irrationalism. The first challenge is to try to understand the course of this community based on its most determining element: theoretical practice. Here I will initially deal with contextualizing the problem using the notion of "Intellectual Project" and to account for the transformation experienced in recent decades in the relationship between theoretical and political practice. The second moment corresponds to the central core of the article: I build a typology of intellectual left figures that could deploy an Intellectual Project from the academic system at some point in the contemporary history of Latin America. I define two general intellectual figures: the participatory social-cientist and the social-scientific translator. The work concludes with a proposal of synthesis and with the signaling of the main obstacles that it is necessary to overcome in order to activate from the academic system a new process of theoretical-political innovation in the constellation of the Regional Left.


The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the traditional academic model of gathering people into physical classes into a high-risk activity. Legal education is a Critical Infrastructure sector that supports democratic access to the legal system and trains students to become ethical members of the legal profession and society. Debates about whether legal education should be delivered in person, online, or through a hybrid model highlight the safety culture gap in American legal education. This Article proposes an ethical framework that values safety, recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, and centers diversity and inclusion as the foundation for effective educational dialogue, to recommend online legal education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This Article's interdisciplinary team analyzes scientific studies on COVID-19 available to date, the virus's mutation which promotes infection, and the limits of mitigation measures in indoor classrooms where people gather for more than an hour at a time to discuss educational material and develop legal skills. It examines the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinx Americans, older Americans, and those with certain underlying health conditions that would foreseeably lead members of those groups to participate in class online. Those participating in person in a hybrid educational model are likely to be younger and less diverse. The hybrid classroom model cleaves students and faculty by race, ethnicity, tribe, age, and health, undermining commitments to diversity and inclusion that support educational dialogue and first amendment values. In person classes may drive viral mutation and endanger health and safety as people under 45, the largest age cohort for American law students, lead the surge in COVID-19 infection. The Internet's development creates the opportunity to deliver effective, synchronous, inclusive, ethical legal education. This Article concludes that legal education should be conducted online during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Personal location-sensitive spatial audio describes an electronic medium within the concept of locative (audio) media , inclusive of the physically realistic medium of audio augmented reality . These concepts describe both systems and the particular forms of resultant media in which a mobile user of the system receives audio content relative to their location in the world. Since the early 1990s, various projects have been created based on such ideas, and since then, advancement of the technology has taken the inevitable route of miniaturisation, integration and convergence with other mobile audio communication technologies. Early systems were implemented using backpacks or roll-around cases to hold components, while current systems tend to use hand-held computing devices. This progression has arrived at a point where the medium can come closer to fully realising its full potential, however, successful implementations now rely on perceptual optimisation and creative application of the technology.


We develop a state space framework for estimating term structure models, where latent Markovian state variables are mapped non-linearly into observable market data. The measurement equation of our framework is explicitly constructed such that it takes raw market prices and rates as direct inputs. We thus avoid entirely, the need for data preprocessing, such as the use of ad hoc interpolation and data smoothing techniques. As our general estimation approach, we demonstrate how Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques are well suited for handling complex functional relations between state vari-ables and data, parameter restrictions and other features of popular term structure mod-els, which have proved hard to handle for alternative econometric techniques. Our estimation framework therefore handles popular multi-factor model specifications such as exponential affine and quadratic models, but facilitates richer Markovian HJM model specifications as well. Efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo implementations are highly model dependent. Therefore, having developed the general estimation principles of our framework, we demonstrate how one could approach sampler specification for a particular model example which we fit to a panel data set of swap and money market rates.


This letter proposes a novel single image super-resolution (SR) method based on the low-rank matrix recovery (LRMR) and neighbor embedding (NE). LRMR is used to explore the underlying structures of subspaces spanned by similar patches. Specifically, the training patches are first divided into groups. Then the LRMR technique is utilized to learn the latent structure of each group. The NE algorithm is performed on the learnt low-rank components of HR and LR patches to produce SR results. Experimental results suggest that our approach can reconstruct high quality images both quantitatively and perceptually.


Emily Egan (firstname.lastname@example.com) is a Healthcare Research Analyst at the American Action Forum. Since 1972, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has operated an innovative healthcare program that brings services to very ill veterans at home. The Home Based Primary Care (HBPC) program serves veterans with expensive chronic conditions that need comprehensive services. The program not only provides better medical care and coordinates additional social services for eligible individuals, but also delivers a substantial reduction in nursing home stays and hospitalizations. The success of HBPC makes it a potential model for higher quality care and lower costs in entitlement reforms and private healthcare markets.


A cross-sectional study was conducted within the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation in Cancer and Nutrition to assess the principal food sources of vitamin C, vitamin E, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, beta-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin in an adult Spanish population. The study included 41446 healthy volunteers (25812 women and 15634 men), aged 29-69 years, from three Spanish regions in the north (Asturias, Navarra and Guipúzcoa) and two in the south (Murcia and Granada). Usual food intake was estimated by personal interview through a computerized version of a dietary history questionnaire. Foods that provided at least two-thirds of the studied nutrients were: fruits (mainly oranges) (51 %) and fruiting vegetables (mainly tomato and sweet pepper) (20 %) for vitamin C; vegetable oils (sunflower and olive) (40 %), non-citrus fruits (10 %), and nuts and seeds (8 %) for vitamin E; root vegetables (carrots) (82 %) for alpha-carotene; green leafy (28 %), root (24 %) and fruiting vegetables (22 %) for beta-carotene; fruiting vegetables (fresh tomato) (72 %) for lycopene; green leafy vegetables (64 %) for lutein; citrus fruits (68 %) for beta-cryptoxanthin; citrus fruits (43 %) and green leafy vegetables (20 %) for zeaxanthin. In conclusion, the main food sources of nutrients with redox properties have been identified in a Mediterranean country. This could provide an insight into the interpretation of epidemiological studies investigating the role of diet in health and disease.


: It becomes increasingly evident that not only chemical but also electrotonic synapses are characteristic feature of the vertebrate brain. Experiments carried out on the isolated perfused central nervous system of lampreys and frogs have shown that in cyclostomes spinal motoneurons receive at least 4 different electrotonic inputs: from giant reticulospinal axons, from smaller descending fibers intrinsic to the cord, from primary afferents and ventral roots. In amphibian motoneurons it is possible to identify 3 electrotonically mediated monosynaptic actions: from primary afferents, recurrent, and reticulospinal. The exact mode of transmission of monosynaptic excitation 1a and supraspinal actions in mammals remains to be elucidated. The trends of evolutionary development of synaptic transmissional processes and synaptic organization in vertebrate nervous system are discussed.


We investigate the hydrodynamical flow of nuclear matter in a conical-shock-wave scenario of a central, asymmetric heavy-ion collision. This work is motivated by a suggestion of Chapline and Granik that the creation of a deconfined phase of quarks and gluons behind the shock will appreciably increase the deflection angle of the matter flow. We employ several hadron matter equations of state recently suggested to solve the conical-shock-wave problem and compare the results with a calculation using the bag equation of state. We find that large differences in the deflection angle obtained in the rest frame of the shock vanish in the laboratory system. However, a signature for the deconfinement transition may be the transverse momentum of the matter flow, which is up to a factor of 2 larger for the quark-gluon plasma. Thus, an excitation function of the mean transverse momentum would show an increase at a certain bombarding energy, signaling the onset of the deconfinement transition.


Dihydrodipicolinate synthase (DHDPS), an enzyme found in most bacteria and plants, controls a critical step in the biosynthesis of l-lysine and meso-diaminopimelate, necessary components for bacterial cell wall biosynthesis. DHDPS catalyzes the condensation of pyruvate and (S)-aspartate-β-semialdehyde, forming an unstable product that is dehydrated to dihydrodipicolinate. The tetrameric enzyme is allosterically inhibited by l-lysine, and a better understanding of the allosteric inhibition mechanism is necessary for the design of potent antibacterial therapeutics. Here we describe the high-resolution crystal structures of DHDPS from Campylobacter jejuni with and without its inhibitor bound to the allosteric sites. These structures reveal a role for Y110 in the regulation of the allosteric inhibition by lysine. Mutation of Y110 to phenylalanine results in insensitivity to lysine inhibition, although the mutant crystal structure reveals that lysine does bind in the allosteric site. Comparison of the lysine-bound Y110F structure with wild-type structures reveals that key structural changes due to lysine binding are absent in this mutant.


Addressing organisation politics is problematic in all parts of the management curriculum. It alludes to the dark side of organisational life and requires engagement with contentious issues of power and interest. Yet, at the same time, it potentially provides a critical perspective or window through which a richer understanding of management can be achieved. Set in this context it provides a challenge for curriculum and associated professional development. This paper reports upon a research based teaching and learning initiative undertaken in the context of one branch of management, human resource development, and considers its application for other professions. The initiative sought to raise the profile of the politics of HRD within the curriculum. The paper discusses the research undertaken to generate teaching material and how we have subsequently deployed this research within a process of curriculum development. Outcomes are discussed at two levels. First, conventionally, in terms of our use, for example, of a number of depth case studies within the curriculum. Secondly, in terms of the impact of the initiative upon our own self development and professional practice. It is in respect of the latter where we lay claim to more 'benefits'; though questions are raised about the ease with which such benefits may be transferred into curriculum and professional development in higher education management teaching more generally.


Sniffer and MITM attack can do nothing to local encryption, which is a new technology, because the plaintext is merely encrypted in user's browser. Therefore, this paper proposed a clever way to bypass local encryption to achieve the goal of network forensics, based on the idea of MITM attack. A middle device is added to the key point of the network in which the forensics is realized through hijacking and tampering with HTML pages. The system redirects the IP packet to another computer in LAN by hijacking the real IP of the server. That computer fakes the real web server, and then by inserting some code in HTML page, the unencrypted plaintext is got before the code of local encryption been executed. The results show that the object is not aware of the existence of the forensics system, but the system has logged all the information of a HTTP request, including the plaintext bypassed local encryption.


which received treatment for 9 months. He was a known hypertensive for 3 years, which was well controlled with medications. His pulse rate, blood pressure, and temperature were normal. Neurological examination did not reveal any focal Abstract A 54-year-old male presented to our center with a 3-month history of headache, giddiness, and blurring of vision. Cerebrospinal fluid examination revealed him to be having cryptococcal meningitis. He was worked up for probable causes of immunosuppression including HIV and other infections and had an autoimmune profile as well as a bone marrow examination, none of which revealed any abnormality. Lymphocyte flow cytometry revealed low counts of CD4 T lymphocytes, likely secondary to idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia. He was treated for cryptococcal meningitis. Due to marked immunosuppression, the disease progressed rapidly with deterioration in neurological and hemodynamic status, leading to his demise.


A column consisting of algal biosorbents like agar-agar, alginic acid, calcium alginate and Spirulina platensis biomass entrapped in polyurethane foam matrix was designed and tested for the removal of As(V) from the aqueous medium. The performance of the column was studied in terms of removal efficiency, metal sequestered in the column during a specified time and biosorption capacity. The observations recorded during the study showed that the removal efficiency of As(V) after 60 min of treatment varied from 0.7 to 45.0% for 25–100 μg/L initial concentrations. The best removal efficiency of As(V) was exhibited by agar-agar and S. platensis biomass combination (45%), whereas agar-agar alone showed only 18.0% removal efficiency at 25 μg/L initial concentration. The biosorption capacity of As(V) varied from 108 to 694 μg/g for 25–100 μg/L initial concentration and the highest value (694 μg/g) was recorded for agar-agar and S. platensis biomass combination. This value was 20% higher than agar-agar alone (556 μg/g) after 60 min of treatment time. The results of the present study suggest that physical entrapment of an appropriate combination of algal adsorbents in polyurethane matrix offers a cost-effective solution for the treatment of water contaminated with arsenic.


The main goal of this paper is to introduce the Moon exploration mission design based on existing technology.The Moon exploration mission design entailsoptimal maneuvering orbit, payload and launch vehicle design. Optimal maneuvering orbit is designed with respect to Circular Restricted Three Body Problem (CRTBP) to model the motion of a spacecraft in the Earth/Moon system. To this end, optimal maneuvering orbitadopted CRTBP as dynamical model and obtained three-dimensional Earth to Moon transfers with low cost. This method is more preferable and flexible than Hohmann transfer because of its lower cost and its access to various inclinations in departure and arrival.The optimal Launch Vehicle Conceptual Design (LVCD) algorithm is based on optimization of major design parameters. LVCD algorithm is coded in a software to let the design engineer explore the design space and to reduce the cost and time of the conceptual design phase that is developed by the authors.The optimization process is performed subject to the restrictions and the performance index is optimized in a mutual iteration mechanism. Consequently, the designed launch vehicle ability to satisfy the mission objectives and its requirements is evaluated.


When agricultural productivity improves, farmers may react by expanding farming and further encroach on forest lands, or they may choose to intensify and produce more output with less land. We specify the conditions under which agricultural productivity can have such ambiguous effects on deforestation. We then examine the predictions of that model using county-level data from five waves of the Brazilian Census of Agriculture and satellite-based measures of land use. We identify productivity shocks using exogenous variation in rural electrification in Brazil during 1960-2000. We show that locations suitable for hydropower generation experienced improvements in crop yields, and that credit-constrained farmers subsequently shifted away from land-intensive cattle-grazing and into cropping. As a result, agricultural land use declines, more native vegetation is protected, and these effects persist 25 years later in both census and satellite data. Brazil's deforestation rate would have been almost twice as large between 1970 and 2000 without that increase in agricultural productivity. That makes the conservation benefits of productivity improvements comparable to the most prominent conservation packages ever implemented in Brazil. ∗We thank Arthur Bragança, Francisco Costa, Taryn Dinkelman, Torfinn Harding, Seema Jayachandran, Dana Kassem, Melanie Morten, Richard Hornbeck, Alex Pfaff, Eustáquio Reis, Mark Rosenzweig, Edson Severnini, Jillian Stallman, Joe Shapiro, Gabriel Ulyssea, and seminar participants at Stanford University, the NBER Summer Institute (Energy and Environmental Economics), Yale University, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Duke University, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC-Chile), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Fundação Getúlio Vargas Rio de Janeiro (FGV/EPGE) and São Paulo (FGV/EESP), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), UC–Santa Barbara, University of Zurich, the Econometric Society Summer European Meeting, Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (AERE) Annual Meetings, CESIfo Energy and Climate Area Conference, NEUDC for valuable comments and discussions. We also thank Steven Helfand for kindly sharing data from the Brazilian Census of Agriculture.


This study examined key dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviours in the Nigerian context and validated appropriate measure of the construct in Nigeria. One hundred (100) employees comprising of forty seven (47) males and fifty three (53) females from public and private organizations in Lagos State participated in this study. Consequent upon the cultural sensitivity of organizational citizenship behaviour dimensions, Organizational Citizenship Behaviours Scale (OCBS) was validated as a suitable measure of OCB in the Nigerian context. Factor analysis was used to identify the specific dimensions of the OCBS to include: Organizational Involvement (OI), Dutifulness (D) and Interpersonal Relationship (IR), consisting nine (9), nine (9) and twelve (12) items respectively. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy showed a value of .59. This value simply shows that the sample of 100 participants was adequate to conduct factor analysis on the OCBS. The Bartlett's test of Sphericity showed a significant value (x2(1830) = 3578.981,p< .001). The 30 item OCBS scale has a Cronbach alpha of .86, the Dutifulness sub-scale .74, the Interpersonal Relationship .75 and the Organizational involvement .88. The convergent validity between OCBS and the Intrinsic Religiosity dimension of the Religious Orientation Scale developed by Allport and Ross (1967) was found to be significant at .01. This paper concluded and recommended that the dimension of generalized compliance is vital to the measure of organizational citizenship behaviours in the Nigerian context and should not be underplayed.


We fabricated back-channel-cut and back-channel-passivated hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film transistors (TFTs) on clear-plastic (CP) foil substrates using a silicon nitride (SiN∞) deposition temperature of 300°C. The TFTs were fabricated on CP and are as stable under high gate bias as TFTs made on glass substrates. A self-alignment technique was developed to align the channel passivation, the a-Si:H island, and the source/drain (S/D) terminals to the gate. Self-alignment allowed us to fabricate discrete TFTs across 7 7 × cm2 of a free-standing sheet of CP foil to reduce the TFT channel length L to 3 m and reduce the S/D overlap with the gate LSD to ~1. To test the self-alignment techniques, we fabricated ring oscillators on the CP substrates. These results show that it is possible to fabricate state-of-the-art self-aligned a-Si:H TFTs and TFT circuits on plastic substrates.


Contemporary organizations frequently employ projects to leverage work across organizational units, utilizing specialized knowledge from different areas of the organization to meet specific quality criteria in a defined time period, at a set cost. Project managers act as hubs of knowledge in directing projects and driving their success, often using technology for this purpose. To date, little is known in how far technology support this knowledge sharing in the project management. The paper aims to explore project managers' perceptions regarding their knowledge sharing and how this is supported by recent technology. The paper further explores benefits and challenges experienced by project managers when using the specific technology for their knowledge sharing. The research adopts the interpretive qualitative approach and collects data through semi-structured interviews with project managers using such a technology. 3 C's analysis was used to analyze the collected empirical material to generate 6 concepts. The concepts are then reviewed in context of selected theoretical framework, including the informatics domain model by Beynon-Davies. The findings indicate that the technology largely supports knowledge sharing of project managers, both presenting opportunities for more efficiency as well as new challenges. The technology leads to change in the modus of knowledge sharing and also individuals' approach: what, when and how knowledge is shared.This enhanced understanding contributes to existing theory and the insights can aid practitioners in development or introduction of technology in the workplace. The work also contributes to theory about how project managers can leverage knowledge across projects with the aid of such a technology as well as to project managers' and managers' work, such as to make efficient use of a technology and avoid certain challenges.


Amongst accelerating trends, the response of coastlines to sea-level rise is of major importance to policy makers. This research aims to provides a nation-wide overview of short-term (2050) and long-term (2100) coastline recession and beach loss along the Sri Lankan coast.
Coastline recession estimates have been acquired using the original formulation of the first-pass assessment method for sea-level rise induced coastal erosion known as the Bruun rule, nearshore bathymetry measurements, and mean and likely climate change predictions according to the four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) in the Fifth Assessment Report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Additionally, future coastline recession at beaches downdrift from several important rivers, and large coastal lakes and lagoons have been assessed using the (reduced) Scale-aggregated Model for Inlet-interrupted Coastlines, and the BQART model determining annual fluvial sediment supplies combined with a sediment trapping efficiency protocol for nested reservoirs.
The nation-wide averaged (representing 48% of the Sri Lankan coast) mean sea-level rise induced long-term coastline recession is 16 m (RCP2.6), 21 m (RCP4.5), 23 m (RCP6.0) or 31 m (RCP8.5). However, significant regional (e.g. South-east vs North-east) in the coastline recession estimates are present. Combined with present beach widths measured from satellite data, the mean Bruun rule coastline recession estimates show considerably reduced future beach widths and the possible disappearance of a vast number of beaches along most of the Sri Lankan coast.
Downdrift from East and North-east coast lagoons that are open or intermittently closed to the ocean, sea-level rise will result in mild to (dangerously) strong local coastline recession. The presence of lagoons in the Jaffna Peninsula is expected to result in local coastline progradation. Projected changes to the terrestrial climate and continuing human development of river catchments will result in increased annual fluvial sediment supplies. However, without limits to future river mining activities, local coastline recessions remain a possibility.


Background : Mental disorders, including eating disorders, mostly begin during youth. Moreover, negative body image is found to cause unhealthy eating habits in the context of several cross-cultural settings. This study aimed to examine the correlation between health perception and body image with eating habits among high school students. Methods : A structured, anonymous questionnaire was distributed to students of a private high school in Bandung, Indonesia in June-October 2014. The questionnaire included questions about health perception, body image, eating habits, body weight and height, and also other demographic parameters. The school was selected as the study object through purposive sampling, and 140 high school students (72 male and 68 female) were ramdomly selected. Results : Male and female did not show considerable differences in health perceptions. Out of 13 statements, 12 statements of male respondents showed better body image than female. While in eating habits statements, female respondents seemed to maintain healthier eating habits than male respondents. No significant correlation was observed between body image and eating habits (r=-0.015, p=0.858). There was significant correlation between health perception and eating habits (r=0.374, p<0.001). Correlation between sex and eating habits was found (p=0.020), there was not significant relationship between eating habits and Body Mass Index (BMI) (p=0.368). Conclusions : The negative relationship between body image and eating habits is not significant. However there was a significant positive relationship between health perception and eating habits. Furthermore, there was correlation between sex and eating habits, while the positive relationship between eating habits and BMI was still not found. [AMJ.2016;3(2):216–21] DOI:  10.15850/amj.v3n2.770


The jet structure in gamma-ray burst (GRB) sources is still largely an open question. The leading models invoke either (1) a roughly uniform jet with sharp edges or (2) a jet with a narrow core and wide wings where the energy per solid angle drops as a power law with the angle θ from the jet symmetry axis. Recently, a two-component jet model has also been considered, with a narrow uniform jet of initial Lorentz factor Γ0 ≳ 100 surrounded by a wider uniform jet with Γ0 ~ 10-30. Some models predict more exotic jet profiles, such as a thin uniform ring (i.e., the outflow is bounded by two concentric cones of half-opening angle θc and θc + Δθ, with Δθ ≪ θc) or a fan (a thin outflow with Δθ ≪ 1 along the rotational equator, θc = π/2 + Δθ/2). In this paper we calculate the expected afterglow light curves from such jet structures, using a simple formalism that is developed here for this purpose and could also have other applications. These light curves are qualitatively compared to observations of GRB afterglows. It is shown that the two-component jet model cannot produce very sharp features in the afterglow light curve due to the deceleration of the wide jet or the narrow jet becoming visible at lines of sight outside the edge of the jet. We find that a "ring"-shaped jet or a "fan"-shaped jet produces a jet break in the afterglow light curve that is too shallow compared to observations, where the change in the temporal decay index across the jet break is about half of that for a uniform conical jet. For a ring jet, the jet break is divided into two distinct and smaller breaks, the first occurring when γΔθ ~ 1-2 and the second when γθc ~ .


Background Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is a highly aggressive cancer with a poor prognosis. Despite the use of several well-known markers, the diagnosis of MM is still challenging in some cases. we applied bioinformatics to identify key genes and screen for diagnostic and prognostic markers of MM. Methods The expression profiles of GSE2549 and GSE112154 microarray datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus database contained 87 cases of MM tissue and 8 cases of normal mesothelial tissue in total. The GEO2R tool was used to detect differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses of DEGs were performed using DAVID Bioinformatics Resources. The DEGs protein-protein interaction networks were constructed from the STRING database. Cytoscape was used to identify significant modules and hub genes. The GEPIA database was used to explore relationships between hub genes and prognosis of MM. Immunohistochemistry was used to analyze protein expression in tissue microarrays with 47 Chinese MM tissues. Statistical analyses diagnostic and prognostic values. Results 346 DEGs were identified: 111 genes upregulated, and 235 downregulated. GO analysis showed that the primary biological processes of these DEGs were cell adhesion, leukocyte migration, and angiogenesis. The main cellular components included the extracellular space, extracellular exosome, and extracellular region. The molecular functions were integrin binding, heparin binding, and calcium ion binding. KEGG pathway analysis showed that DEGs are primarily involved in PPAR signaling pathway, extracellular matrix–receptor interactions, and regulation of lipolysis in adipocytes. Survival analysis showed that seven genes—AURKA, GAPDH, TOP2A, PPARG, SCD, FABP4, and CEBPA—may be potential prognostic markers for MM. Immunohistochemical studies showed that Aurora kinase A (AURKA gene encode, Aurora-A) and GAPDH were highly expressed in MM tissue in comparison with normal mesothelial tissue. Kaplan-Meier analysis confirmed a correlation between Aurora-A protein expression and overall survival but did not confirm a correlation with GAPDH. The receiver operating characteristic curves of Aurora-A protein expression suggested acceptable accuracy (AUC = 0.827; 95% CI [0.6686 to 0.9535]; p = 0.04). The sensitivity and specificity of Aurora-A were 83.33% and 77.78%, respectively. Conclusion Aurora-A could be an optimal diagnostic biomarker and a potential prognostic marker for MM.


Several studies indicate that in young patients (less than 21 years of age at the time of diagnosis), the prognosis of thyroid carcinoma (TC) is more favorable than in older patients. However, a more radical treatment approach is recommended in children and adolescents due to the higher prevalence of local lymph-node involvement in these cases. Since the extent of primary surgical treatment is closely related to the overall prognosis, preoperative diagnosis becomes essential in the management of thyroid neoplasms in young patients. In this retrospective study (1987-1998), we analyzed a surgical series of 50 children and adolescents with thyroid nodules in an attempt to establish the role of diagnostic studies in detecting malignant lesions prior to surgery. Our diagnostic protocol for evaluating thyroid nodules was based on clinical evaluation, measurement of thyroid-hormone and thyroglobulin (TG) levels, anti-TG and anti-TPO antibody titers, calcitonin, CEA, and TPA levels, sonography, scintigraphy, and fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of the thyroid nodules and any enlarged lymph nodes. Eleven of the 15 cases of histologically confirmed carcinoma were preoperatively identified as malignant lesions with the aid of FNAC. The authors conclude that the preoperative work-up of children and adolescents with thyroid nodules requires the collaboration of an experienced team of professionals, and recommend FNAC as the initial test.


Botnet are identified as one of most emerging threats due to Cybercriminals work diligently to make most of the part of the users' network of computers as their target. In conjunction to that, many researchers has conduct a lot of study regarding on the botnets and ways to detect botnet in network traffic. Most of them only used the feature inside the system without mentioning the feature influence in botnet detection. Selecting a significant feature are important in botnet detection as it can increase the accuracy of detection. Besides, existing research focusses more on the technique of recognition rather than uncovering the purpose behind the selection. Therefore, this paper will reveal the influence feature in botnet detection using statistical method. The result obtained showed the accuracy is about 91% which is approximately acceptable to use the influence feature in detecting botnet activity.


Food products are very complex matrices, which makes the quality of these products an issue of great interest in our society. Considering the complexity of the food chain, the adulteration of food is increasing, causing food fraud cases. In this field, drinks are food products that can be very easily adulterated. This work will focus on the theme of fraud detection in coffee, one of the most popular beverages in the world. Coffee contains an elevated number of bioactive substances (phenolic acids, polyphenols, and alkaloids, being especially abundant in ellagic, caffeic and chlorogenic acids) that give rise to its important antioxidant activity, known for its beneficial health effects. The aim of this work was to develop an efficient non-targeted FIA-ESI-MS fingerprinting method in combination with chemometrics to achieve the characterization, classification, and authentication of coffee samples, together with possible adulterants (barley, chicory, and flours) using partial least squares regression discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) chemometric method. In addition, Arabica and Robusta coffee samples were adulterated with barley, chicory and flour and the obtained FIA-ESI-MS data subjected to partial least squares (PLS) regression. Results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed methodology to assess coffee authenticity and to quantify adulteration levels (down to 15%), showing good calibration and prediction errors. The poster of this work is provided in the supplementary materials.


The band of the Kiwi Concert Party performing in Egypt during World War II. Taken in 1941 by an official photographer.
Quantity: 1 b&w original negative(s).
Physical Description: Cellulosic film negative


Recently, we have witnessed great progress in the field of medical imaging classification by adopting deep neural networks. However, the recent advanced models still require accessing sufficiently large and representative datasets for training, which is often unfeasible in clinically realistic environments. When trained on limited datasets, the deep neural network is lack of generalization capability, as the trained deep neural network on data within a certain distribution (e.g. the data captured by a certain device vendor or patient population) may not be able to generalize to the data with another distribution.
In this paper, we introduce a simple but effective approach to improve the generalization capability of deep neural networks in the field of medical imaging classification. Motivated by the observation that the domain variability of the medical images is to some extent compact, we propose to learn a representative feature space through variational encoding with a novel linear-dependency regularization term to capture the shareable information among medical data collected from different domains. As a result, the trained neural network is expected to equip with better generalization capability to the "unseen" medical data. Experimental results on two challenging medical imaging classification tasks indicate that our method can achieve better cross-domain generalization capability compared with state-of-the-art baselines.


The flexibility and ubiquity of the term efficiency in tax analysis can be a double-edged sword. While tax scholars are naturally drawn to the notion of efficiency, with its implied virtues of eliminating waste and of guiding policy choices through objective, non-normative analysis, the danger exists that we can lose sight of which type of efficiency we are talking about when we invoke the concept. What one scholar calls efficient might be quite inefficient under the definition or perspective used by another scholar.


Today, interconnected open-cell porous structures made of titanium and its alloys are replacing the prevalent solid metals used in bone substitute implants. The advent of additive manufacturing techniques has enabled manufacturing of open-cell structures with arbitrary micro-structural geometry. In this paper, rhombic dodecahedron structures manufactured using SLM technique and tested by Amin Yavari et al. (2014) are investigated numerically using ANSYS and LS-DYNA finite element codes for the modeling of the elastic and postyielding behavior of the lattice structure, respectively. Implementing a micro-mechanical approach to the numerical modeling of the yielding behavior of open-cell porous materials is the main contribution of this work.One of the advantages of micro-mechanical modeling of an open-cell structure is that, in contrast to the macro-mechanical finite element modeling, it is not necessary to obtain several material constants for different foam material models through heavy experimental tests. The results of the study showed that considering the irregularity in defining the cross-sections of the struts decreases both the yielding stress and densification strain of the numerical structure to the values obtained from the experimental tests. Moreover, the stress-strain curve of the irregular structure was much smoother in two points of yielding and densification, which is also observable in experimental plots. Considering the irregularity in the structure also decreased the elastic modulus of the lattice structure by about 20-30%. The post-densification modulus was more influenced by irregularity as it was decreased by more than 50%. In summary, it was demonstrated that using beam elements with variable cross-sections for constructing open-cell biomaterials could result in numerical results sufficiently close to the experimental data.


Most important large-scale surveys carried out by national statistical institutes are the repeated survey type, typically intended to produce estimates for several parameters of the whole population, as well as parameters related to some subpopulations. Small area estimation techniques are becoming more and more important for the production of official statistics where direct estimators are not able to produce reliable estimates. In order to exploit data from different survey cycles, unit-level linear mixed models with area and time random effects can be considered. However, the large amount of data to be processed may cause computational problems. To overcome the computational issues, a reformulation of predictors and the correspondent mean cross product estimator is given. The R code based on the new formulation enables the elaboration of about 7.2 millions of data records in a matter of minutes.


The article discusses the use of different methods to assess the spatial structure of the biotic and abiotic component of the techno-ecosystems of cooling ponds of thermal and nuclear power plants in Belarus and Ukraine. Field studies provide point information on the parameters of biotic and abiotic variables, whereas statistical mapping and remote sensing methods makes it possible to generalize visualization and provides a holistic picture of the spatial heterogeneity of conditions and distribution of biota. Spatial changes in cooling ponds are mainly determined by hydrodynamic conditions in the pond and the presence of anthropogenic flow of cooling water. Studies have shown that the distribution of quantitative indicators of plankton in the surface layer in the Khmelnitsky NPP cooling pond was mostly determined by the position of individualstations and sections of the pond surface relative to manmade technical and wind circulation flows. In contrary, thermal conditions had the greatest influence on the characteristics of the plankton distribution in the Lukomskoye Lake - cooling pond of Lukomlskaya TPP.


This thesis is based on the assumption that monitoring and evaluation can greatly assist the successful implementation of London Borough housing policies. Monitoring is defined as "the collection of information" and evaluation as "judging something against a standard".
Housing policy implementation involves the allocation of resources as a result of decision-making. To understand fully the role and uses of monitoring and evaluation, therefore, their functions within one model of decision-making (the rational process) are examined. Their role is to assist in the efficient allocation of resources. This is achieved through their uses which are to help define and describe the problem faced, examine the possible options available, select the strategy for implementation and review the progress of the selected strategy once it has been put into practice.
The decision-making process within which monitoring and evaluation function is bounded by a number of factors. It is bounded by the limited resources available, the organisational structure within which decisions are made and the prevalence of various "orthodoxies". The result of these factors is to pre-empt the decision-making process. Their effect upon the role and uses of monitoring and evaluation is to reduce them to a largely self-fulfilling function.
To test this argument, three case studies of London Borough housing policy implementation are studied. The first is of the Edward Woods Estate, a 1960's redevelopment scheme in Hammersmith; the second is of the Shuttleworth Road General Improvement Area, Wandsworth; the third is into the uses made of Housing Associations by a representative sample of Boroughs.
The case studies confirm that the decision-making process in each example is bounded by the above mentioned factors. The role and uses of monitoring and evaluation are similarly affected. Rather than help implement an appropriate means to achieve a desired end, they simply support and justify pre-determined strategies.
In conclusion, it is argued that monitoring and evaluation could still greatly assist the successful implementation of London Borough housing policies if the existence of these bounding factors is recognised. Only then can they be overcome, at least in part. When this happens, monitoring and evaluation can be used critically and not mechanistically as at present.


This paper presents a tool for assisting 3D modeling from perspective projections. The proposed system uses a projective geometry engine capable of rebuilding a 3D model from a set of lines and geometric constraints. A dialogue interface assists the user in expressing geometric constraints. The system finds out the relevant geometrical components in the sketch and automatically posts the constraints. The system is limited to rebuilding polyhedrons. If we can deduce, from a perspective sketch of a polyhedron, the planar constraints of the faces and the parallelism constraints of the edges that meet in the same vanishing points, the geometric engine will be able to build a 3D model of the polyhedron.


Purpose
This study aims to assess the risks of systematisation of corruption in the UK following the Brexit referendum.

Design/methodology/approach
The study applies theoretical and empirical findings of criminological, social, psychological, economic and legal research on the causes of systemic corruption to the socio-institutional developments following the Leave vote.

Findings
The events surrounding the referendum confirm that the resort to corrupt practices is normalised in certain sectors of the British institutions, business and media and that socio-political processes activated by the Leave vote and inadequate UK policymaking and lawmaking can aggravate the situational and socio-psychological enablers of systemic corruption. Effective solutions must go beyond mere anti-corruption laws and address deeper social issues.

Research limitations/implications
The study focuses only on some of the major situational and socio-psychological causes of systemic corruption, including the unintended criminogenic effects of the law. More interdisciplinary research is required to address other causes, such as historical and cultural factors.

Practical implications
The findings of this study can inspire practical solutions by policymakers and future research.

Social implications
The study contributes to raising social awareness and stimulating public discussion on systemic corruption in the UK and on the consequences of the referendum on public and private integrity.

Originality/value
The study offers the first systematic analysis of the effects of Brexit and the referendum on corruption through an integrated interdisciplinary approach to systemic corruption in the UK.


In this paper, we study bidder behavior in an eBay auction with a buy-it-now option. The digital environment that eBay provides gives bidders and sellers a variety of options when they participate. These include using sniping software to submit bids at the last minute and hard close times set a priori by the seller (versus Amazon.com's soft close which adds 10 minutes to the end of the auction if there is last minute acitivity in an auction). Due to the richness of behaviors which can be observed by the bidders participating in eBay, we realize that there are many equilibria for the bidders in eBay. We propose an equilibrium and prove that it is one of the existing equilibria which survives any kind of deviation by the bidders. We analyze this equilibria for the bidders on eBay and validate our model using the data we collected from the Internet.


A self-supervised multi-task learning (SSMTL) framework for video anomaly detection was recently introduced in literature. Due to its highly accurate results, the method attracted the attention of many researchers. In this work, we revisit the self-supervised multi-task learning framework, proposing several updates to the original method. First, we study various detection methods, e.g. based on detecting high-motion regions using optical flow or background subtraction, since we believe the currently used pre-trained YOLOv3 is suboptimal, e.g. objects in motion or objects from unknown classes are never detected. Second, we modernize the 3D convolutional backbone by introducing multi-head self-attention modules, inspired by the recent success of vision transformers. As such, we alternatively introduce both 2D and 3D convolutional vision transformer (CvT) blocks. Third, in our attempt to further improve the model, we study additional self-supervised learning tasks, such as predicting segmentation maps through knowledge distillation, solving jigsaw puzzles, estimating body pose through knowledge distillation, predicting masked regions (inpainting), and adversarial learning with pseudo-anomalies. We conduct experiments to assess the performance impact of the introduced changes. Upon finding more promising configurations of the framework, dubbed SSMTL++v1 and SSMTL++v2, we extend our preliminary experiments to more data sets, demonstrating that our performance gains are consistent across all data sets. In most cases, our results on Avenue, ShanghaiTech and UBnormal raise the state-of-the-art performance bar to a new level.


With ever increasing environmental standards and waste water loading rates, energy consumption for waste water treatment is predicted to rise by over 20% by 2020 in the United States. When considering the resource efficiency of waste water treatment plants factors such as effluent quality, carbon footprint and increasing electricity rates act as a driving force for sustainable design of these facilities. Exergy analysis has been identified in the literature as a powerful tool in the analysis of thermal systems. It enables the resource efficiency of systems to be benchmarked, where the process with the greatest exergy destruction represents the greatest energy efficiency opportunity. The objectives of this research are: (i) calculate the chemical exergy of the relevant process streams within waste water treatment plants; (ii) identify the most suitable parameter to calculate the chemical exergy of organic matter; (iii) identify exergy losses from process streams that could be utilised to produce work. Exergy analysis of three separate waste water treatment plants has been performed. Having identified and measured all the key process input and outputs, a comprehensive exergy analysis has been undertaken. Following an extensive literature review, earlier methods to calculate chemical exergy of organic matter are critically assessed; chemical oxygen demand was identified as the most useful parameter when calculating the chemical exergy of organic matter in waste water. Results for the work indicate that organic matter is the principal contributor to chemical exergy values in waste water treatment plants. Influent organic matter loading rates also greatly impact the exergy destruction rates across a waste water treatment plant.


This study addresses the characteristics of a transaction-based index of commercial real estate as reported in a full-disclosure market. Prior research on transaction-based indices has enumerated various shortcomings for commercial real estate markets. This study circumvents many of these problems by using a large data set of commercial property transactions obtained for the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan statistical area. The empirical analysis demonstrates that investors stand to gain considerable insight by comparing full-disclosure, transaction-based indices with voluntary-disclosure, appraisal-based indices. The results suggest that full-disclosure indices avoid some of the institutional biases associated with other benchmarks of commercial real estate performance. In addition, some public policy issues emerge on the role of state mandated disclosure rules.


This paper addresses the important problem of separating and estimating the contributions of multiple users (sources) signals impinging on an antenna array in a wireless communication system. The proposed approach has key advantages over existing ones, which are listed below: (i) the structure of estimation is recursive, therefore it estimates the incoming bits on the fly as they reach the receive array instead of estimating a separating matrix. (ii) it exploits the finite alphabet property (here, BPSK) of the communication signals in an explicit manner, through the use of a finite-state trellis. (iii) perfect decisions are obtained in the absence of noise upon certain mild conditions on the transmitted signals (excitation conditions). Therefore (local) convergence is not an issue here.


Are you aware that the T-shirt or the running shoes you are wearing may have been produced by children as young as 13 years old, working 14-hour days for 30 cents an hour? Don't be reassured by a label that claims the item was manufactured in the USA or Europe. It could have been sewn in Haiti or Indonesia -- or in a domestic sweatshop where conditions rival those in the Third World. The label may tell you how to treat the garment, but it says nothing of how the worker who made it was treated. To find out about that you need to read this book. No Sweat shows you: * How Michael Jordan earned more for endorsing Nike running shoes that then company's 30,000 Indonesian workers get between them in a year. * How Disney CEO Michael Eisner's annual pay and stock options, worth $200 million, are partly paid for out of profits from the sale of Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame T-shirts made by Haitian teenagers who work for less than $10 per week and are force-fed contraceptive pills. * How companies like GAP and Wal-Mart (producer of the Kathie Lee Gifford line), have been forced into embarrassing concessions after successful campaigning by the New York-based National Labor Committee, the American garment workers union UNITE and the European-based Clean Clothes Campaign. * How you can join the growing global campaign of consumer groups, human rights activists and international labor organizations to close down sweatshops and guarantee basic rights for those who cut and sew our clothes. In hard-hitting words and pictures, No Sweat tells the story of the chasm between the glamour of the catwalk and the squalor of the sweatshop. Don't go shopping without it.


In the following paper, ratios which correlate aged care places with physical infrastructure requirements are developed for the regional Victorian Local Government Area of Greater Bendigo, by analysing its existing aged care facilities. These ratios are then used in conjunction with the federal government's population based measures to model scenarios of future aged care infrastructure requirements for Greater Bendigo. Strategies for the provision of additional residential aged care facilities are explored using a matrix governed by size and configuration. Variations in these two aspects are shown to affect the location options for future facilities in Greater Bendigo.


In this work, we have developed a simple, cost-effective and sensitive fluorescent method for the selective determination of chromium(VI) ions (Cr(VI)) in aqueous solution. In the presence of bromide ions (Br−), the strong oxidization of Cr(VI) enables it to selectively etch the bovine serum albumin-stabled gold nanoclusters (BSA-Au NCs) and formed AuBr2− complexes. Proportional fluorescence quenching of BSA-Au NCs induced by the leaching process was closely connected with concentrations of Cr(VI) and thus provided a new detecting strategy towards Cr(VI). Under optimal conditions, the amount-dependent fluorescent response was linearly correlated with the Cr(VI) concentrations ranging from 1.0 nM to 2.5 μM over 3 orders of magnitude, with a detection limit down to 0.6 nM. The as-developed strategy also performed satisfactory selectivity as well as excellent reproducibility. Moreover, this method had been successfully applied to monitor Cr(VI) with real river water samples which demonstrated the potential for field applications.


Patients today are often reduced to their physical and mental problems, while subjective experiences of illness are not taken into account. However, narratives are one of the most powerful forms to express suffering and can aid the treatment and recovery of a person. Working with narratives can be especially important during transitional developments which psychiatric patients experience, as mental illness requires them to reevaluate their lives and make plans for the future. Reevaluating one's own life in life stories has been investigated in a broad body of research confirming its value to the mental health of the patient. Future narratives, however, have not found much attention in research yet even though the ability of futuring (creating the future) and narratives in general were related to mental health. Therefore, this explorative and correlational study was interested in the association between future narratives and mental health measured by agency and communion. Agency and communion are used to express strivings and goals important for the individual. The sample contained 40 "letters from the future" of psychiatric patients. In the first analysis the future narratives have been analyzed with the coding scheme proposed by McAdams (2001b) to investigate agency and communion related themes only including text passages focusing on the future. Then, the results have been correlated in a second analysis with the total scores of the Mental Health Short Form Continuum to investigate a possible relationship between agency and communion and mental health. The results showed that seven out of eight categories of agency and communion could be found in the sample confirming the first research question. However, no correlations between agency and communion and mental health have been found, disproving the second research question. This study could show that psychiatric patients are able to create positive future narratives and are aware of their own desired goals. Therefore, it is suggested that the ability of imagining positive future outcomes may not be dependent on the mental health status but is something which may represent the opposite of imagining negative outcomes, as psychiatric patients are often involved in the latter. Moreover, it has also been shown that agency and communion can be investigated without taking past passages into account. In conclusion, psychiatric patients ability to imagine positive future outcomes may aid the recovery process.


The need to increase the number of students participating in study abroad is a goal that higher education must recognize. For ten years, the level of participation among students enrolled in colleges of agricultural sciences has remained at constant level. In a society that is globally interconnected, it is imperative that future graduates comprehend various dimensions of culture, agricultural production, and economy to succeed. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of online videos to modify students' knowledge and perceived barriers regarding study abroad opportunities. The objectives of this paper are: 1. Describe the amount of learning obtained through watching study abroad videos; 2. Determine changes to students' perceived barriers regarding their possible participation in study abroad programs. In order to assess students' perceptions, three online videos were developed. Videos were based on a semester-long study abroad program in Russia and two study tour programs in Puerto Rico and Brazil, respectively. A quasi-experimental research design was used in this study. One hundred fifty six students from nine sections of the first year seminar participated in the study. In this study, the use of online videos was effective in communicating information and diminishing the perceived barriers to study abroad. Other colleges and programs could use this strategy to promote their international programs. In addition, administrators could use the results of this study to develop online videos to teach content and dispel myths regarding study abroad programs.


Our understanding of non-linear soil behaviour at small strains hinges on laboratory static and dynamic element testing of ideal undisturbed samples. However such samples are prohibitively expensive for day to day geotechnical engineering projects, especially in sandy soils. In addition to soil's complex nature, construction processes also have an important effect on foundations' behaviour under working load. This is especially true in piling engineering. It is well acknowledged that the base stiffness of a displacement pile is much higher than that of an equivalent bored pile. To be able to understand and predict such effects of geotechnical processes on soil-foundation performance, it is necessary to develop practical techniques to measure both the in situ non-linear soil behaviour and any construction-induced changes. This thesis presents an attempt at fulfilling both of these objectives within the limited scope of wished-in and pressed-in model piles in a dense silica sand. Simplified methods of pile base settlement prediction are then developed using the analogy with spherical cavity expansion. To measure monotonic soil properties in situ, a new miniature pressuremeter was developed for the centrifuge. The design successfully avoided any installation disturbance by adopting a wished-in installation process, and produced repeatable results in the small to intermediate strain rage. However, membrane penetration errors proved severe for the current design at small strains. The large-strain cross-hole method of Salgado et al. (1997a) was successfully implemented in the centrifuge. Small-strain stiffness and its dependency on mean stress level were successfully measured and compared well against data obtained from triaxial tests. The dynamic shear stiffness-strain relationship was also estimated assuming a power law constitutive model of Bolton & Whittle (1999). The in situ shear stiffness field around a penetration pile was measured directly using the large-strain seismic method both during pile jacking and after pile unloading. An estimate of the corresponding in situ stress field was made from the stiffness field, giving direct evidence of stiffer soil behaviour and the existence of large locked-in stresses after pile jacking. These higher values of shear stiffness and large locked-in stress are shown to be the main reason behind the stiffer load-settlement behaviour of a displacement pile vs a non-displacement pile. The effect of soil densification due to the action of pile penetration does not contribute significantly to the above difference in behaviour.


A series of ZSM-11 zeolites was synthesized by adding different amounts of boron to a synthesis gel for the purpose of improving its catalytic performance for conversion of methanol to olefins (MTO). It was found that boron has marginal effects on the crystal structure, texture properties and acid site strength of ZSM-11, but it significantly increases its catalytic stability and hydride transfer activity that results in an increase in the amounts of aromatics and alkanes in products. DFT calculations revealed that aluminum and boron atoms competitively enter the ZSM-11 framework. In combination with 27Al MAS NMR, GC-MS, m-xylene isomerization and Co2+-exchanged ZSM-11 diffuse reflectance UV-vis spectroscopy results, it can be deduced that incorporation of boron compels some aluminum atoms to shift towards the intersection T sites, which can greatly alleviate the coking process although it allows the formation of more bulky molecules. This shows that the MTO catalytic performance of ZSM-11 can be largely adjusted by changing the amount of incorporated boron through regulation of aluminum or acid site locations in the framework.