ABSTRACT A broad survey of the fall webworm (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) populations in agricultural and forested areas in the Central Black Sea Region of Turkey led to the detection of a granulovirus (GV). Hyphantria cunea granulovirus (HycuGV)-Hc1 isolate was characterized and tested against third instar larvae of H. cunea. Electron microscopy confirmed typical GV morphology with ovoid granules of approximately 368 ±  16 nm × 201 ±  19 nm. Each granule contained a single rod-shaped virion with a mean size of 43 ± 12 nm × 250 ± 12 nm. The genome was analyzed by restriction endonuclease and estimated to be ∼112 kb. Partial sequencing of the granulin (gran), late expression factor-8 (lef-8) and late expression factor-9 (lef-9) genes also confirmed the identity of the virus as HycuGV. A phylogenetic analysis based on these conserved genes, HycuGV-Hc1 grouped together with the previous HycuGV isolate (A5-1) and Estigmene acrea granulovirus (EsacGV) isolate from the same family. The LC50 of HycuGV-Hc1 was 2.6 × 104 occlusion bodies (OBs/ml). Pot experiments, under field conditions, showed significant differences between virus treated and control groups. This is the first study to describe a novel Turkish HycuGV-Hc1 isolate, and preliminary data suggests that the virus has a significant potential as an effective biopesticide for control of H. cunea.


One of the aims of the treatment of domestic and industrial wastewater is the removal of phosphorus prior to discharge into the environment. Since phosphorus concentrations in wastewater exceed the requirement of bacterial growth, biological phosphorus removal is based on the ability of a group of microorganisms, named "Polyphosphate Accumulating Organisms" (PAO), to form large quantities of polyphosphate in their cells. In this study, we are focussing on the bacteria actively involved in the phosphorus removal in a lab scale bioreactor operated with aerobic granular sludge technology. This process based on dense microbial biofilms is a cost-effective and land-saving alternative to the conventional wastewater treatment with activated sludge. The identification of the microorganisms belonging to PAO relies on their distinct phenotype assessed with fluorescent probes targeting the intracellular polyphosphate structures. Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene amplicons of PAO selected with flow-cytometry will be used to reveal the phylogenetic affiliation of the different actors involved in the phosphorus removal. This is of particular significance since low abundant microorganisms may play an important role in the phosphorus removal performance of aerobic granular sludge. We hypothesize that the maintenance of different populations involved in the same functional process is explained by multiple ecological niches present in such biofilm structures.


Diffuse water pollution in urban areas is growing due to polluted runoffs. Therefore, there is a need to treat this kind of pollution. Different structural treatment practices can be used for these purposes. However, little is known about their environmental, economic and social impacts. Therefore, the aim of this study has been to develop an integrated methodology for sustainability evaluation of structural treatment practices, considering environmental, economic and social aspects. Both environmental and economic evaluations have been carried out on a life cycle basis, using life cycle assessment and life cycle costing, respectively. For social evaluation, a number of social indicators, identified and developed in this research, have been used. The methodology has been applied to the case of the Magdalena river catchment in Mexico City. Three structural treatment practices have been analysed: bio-retention unit, infiltration trench and porous pavement. Based on the assumptions and the results from this work, the bio-retention unit appears to be environmentally the most sustainable option for treatment of diffuse water pollution. It is also the second-best option for social sustainability, slightly behind the porous pavement. However, if the costs of treatment are the priority, then the porous pavement would be the cheapest option. If all the sustainability aspects evaluated here are considered of equal importance, then the bio-retention unit is the most sustainable option.Therefore, trade-offs between the different sustainability aspects are important and should be considered carefully before any decisions are made on diffuse water pollution treatment. This also includes the trade-offs with the additional life cycle impacts generated by the treatment options compared to the impacts from the untreated runoff. The decisions can only be made by the appropriate stakeholders; however, some recommendations are given, based on the outcomes of this research.


In this paper, preloaded specimen is used and confined by CFRP to act as structural concrete member in service. And the test to examine the behavior of the test piece has been carried on. After this, the strength and its influence factor has been analyzed. Referring the former strength model, the particular factor axial ratio B of the specimen this test has been taken into account.Then refering the existing model, the improvement has been made. And the new strength model for forecast to CFRP confined preloaded concrete is put forward, also it can be used as reference for reinforcing design of engineering.


TiO2 thin films of different N-doped quantity and different current density were deposited on medical glass slide by arc ion plating. Film structure, surface morphology and optical properties were measured with XRD, SEM and UV-VIS transmittance spectroscope. Photo-catalytic performance of the films was evaluated by degradation methyl orange. The current density, O2 partial pressure and N2 partial pressure were varied in order to determine their effect on the properties of TiO2 films. The study got the best doped process (current 50A,O2 50sccm, N2 250 sccm, Ar 20sccm). In these experimental conditions, the absorption edge successfully moved to 510nm, the as-deposited TiO2 films structure was composed with anatase and rutile. The annealing treatment made the crystal microscopy more obviously. The N-doped TiO2 film not only reduced the UV catalytic performance , but also extended the catalytic properties to the sun light.


Increase in demand of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has led to development of LPG facilities throughout the world. The limitation of ASME standard in the design of pressure vessels and reoccurring cases of gas plant, gas cylinder explosions led to this research. In this research, finite element method was used to investigate the displacements, deflections and Von-Mises stresses in a cylindrical  liquefied petroleum gas pressure tank with respect to plate thickness at different operating pressures and ambient conditions. A cylindrical pressure tank made of ASTM A516 Grade 70 with thickness; 2mm, 5mm, 10mm, 20mm and 30mm was selected for the analysis with plain strain condition assumptions. ANSYS was used to generate the mesh model of the liquefied petroleum gas pressure tank and conduct the finite element analysis. The displacement, deflection and Von-Mises stress showed an inverse relationship with the tank section shell thickness while varying the LPG pressure; 0.5MPa at 20 0 C, 0.91MPa at 40 0 C and 1.55MPa at 60 0 C respectively. It was also observed that the factor of safety showed a linear relationship with increasing shell thickness. For each operating pressure, a minimum shell thickness was deduced. This minimum thickness was at a Von-Mises stress which falls below the materials yield stress and allowable stress. Therefore, the vessel will not fail once operated at or above the minimum pressure tank shell thickness. The effect of weldment along the seams of vessel was not carried out in this research work. Sharp edges are stress raisers, also there is possibility of stress been developed at the inlet and exhaust valves of the pressure tank. The effect of stress at this points on the vessel were not considered for this research work.


Methods based on the POMDP (Partially-Observable Markov Decision Process) framework for planning under uncertainty rely on the knowledge about the system model and the noise models. However, in practical cases there are always discrepancies between the models used for computation and the realworld models. This paper proposes a dynamic replanning scheme which can perform real-time replanning as the system deviates from the desired plan or encounters any sign of such discrepancies. The main contribution of this paper is to implement a belief space planner on a physical robot and making POMDP methods one step closer to becoming a practical tool for robot motion planning. We demonstrate the planning results on an i-robot create equipped with a monocular camera. Moreover, we show that not only is the proposed method robust to model discrepancies, but also that it is robust to changes in the environment (both in the obstacle map and information sources), as well as unforeseen large deviations in robot's location.


When acid is pumped into damaged reservoirs for damage removal/stimulation, distorted inflow of acid into the formation occurs caused by acid preferentially traveling into highly permeable regions over low permeable regions, or (in general) into the path of least resistance. This can lead to poor zonal coverage and hence warrants diversion to carry out an effective placement of acid. Diversion is desirably a reversible technique of temporarily reducing the permeability of high perm zones, thereby forcing the acid into lower perm zones. The uniqueness of each reservoir can pose several challenges to engineers attempting to devise optimum and effective diversion strategies. Diversion techniques include mechanical placement and/or chemical diversion of treatment fluids, further sub-classified into ball sealers, bridge plugs, packers, particulate diverters, viscous gels, crosslinked gels, relative permeability modifiers (RPMs), foams, and/or the use of placement techniques, such as coiled tubing (CT) and the maximum pressure difference and injection rate (MAPDIR) methodology. It is not always realized that the effectiveness of diverters greatly depends on reservoir properties, such as formation type, temperature, reservoir permeability, heterogeneity, and physical well characteristics (e.g., completion type, well deviation, length of treatment interval, multiple intervals, etc.). This paper reviews the mechanisms by which each variety of diverter functions and discusses the effect of various reservoir properties on the efficiency of diversion techniques. Guidelines are recommended to help enhance productivity from zones of interest by choosing the best methods of diversion while pumping an optimized amount of treatment fluid. The success of an overall acid treatment often depends on the effectiveness of the diverting agents. Keywords—Acid treatment, carbonate, diversion, sandstone.


Aging involves cognitive decline and prominent alterations in brain activity. Electroacupuncture (EA), a traditional Chinese medicine approach, is demonstrated to be effective in improving cognitive function of older adults. However, the specific neural mechanism underlying this modulation effect remains unclear. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether EA could improve cognitive performance of community-dwelling older adults and whether these potential improvements are associated with the EA-induced brain functional connectivity alterations. Thirty healthy older adults were recruited and randomly assigned to the EA group and the control group. Behaviorally, we observed an EA-induced improvement in cognitive performance of older adults in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. On a neural perspective, the EA intervention significantly increased the functional connectivity within the default mode network. Moreover, we found a positive association between the improvement in delayed memory performance and the alterations in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex-hippocampal formation connectivity in the EA group. This study extends previous findings by showing that healthy older adults exhibit neural plasticity manifested as increased functional connectivity after EA sessions, which could induce therapeutic effects in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.


Since the 2000s, the minimum wage in Brazil has been going through an intense process of growth. Although no well-defined rule for its periodical adjustment existed until recently, the political and economic situation of the country favoured the granting of real increases. The result is that the minimum wage grew by 74% in real terms between 2003 and 2013. Currently the minimum wage receives each year the correction of inflation by the national index of consumer prices, as well as a real increase according to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate recorded two years earlier. This rule was created in 2011 through Law 12/382, it was renewed in 2015 and should remain valid until 2019. Brazil is known for its great social inequalities that are reflected in the unequal distribution of income and wealth. Since the 2000's, however, the main income distribution indicators experienced a great improvement. The Gini index of the household per capita income distribution, for example, fell from 0.583 in 2003 to 0.527 in 2013. Similarly, poverty rates also fell sharply. The proportion of poor households was reduced from 28% to 12% over the same period. Figure 1 illustrates these results.


Abstract. The Southern Ocean and Antarctic region currently best represent one of the
few places left on our planet with conditions similar to the preindustrial
age. Currently, climate models have a low ability to simulate conditions
forming the aerosol baseline; a major uncertainty comes from the lack of
understanding of aerosol size distributions and their dynamics. Contrasting
studies stress that primary sea salt aerosol can contribute significantly to
the aerosol population, challenging the concept of climate biogenic
regulation by new particle formation (NPF) from dimethyl sulfide marine
emissions. We present a statistical cluster analysis of the physical characteristics of
particle size distributions (PSDs) collected at Halley (Antarctica) for the
year 2015 (89 % data coverage; 6–209 nm size range; daily size
resolution). By applying the Hartigan–Wong k-mean method we find eight clusters
describing the entire aerosol population. Three clusters show pristine average low
particle number concentrations (< 121–179 cm−3) with three main
modes (30, 75–95 and 135–160 nm) and represent 57 % of the annual PSD
(up to 89 %–100 % during winter and 34 %–65 % during summer based on monthly
averages). Nucleation and Aitken mode PSD clusters dominate summer months
(September–January, 59 %–90 %), whereas a clear bimodal distribution (43 and 134 nm,
respectively; Hoppel minimum at mode 75 nm) is seen only during the December–April
period (6 %–21 %). Major findings of the current work include: (1) NPF and
growth events originate from both the sea ice marginal zone and the
Antarctic plateau, strongly suggesting multiple vertical origins, including
the marine boundary layer and free troposphere; (2) very low particle number
concentrations are detected for a substantial part of the year (57 %),
including summer (34 %–65 %), suggesting that the strong annual aerosol
concentration cycle is driven by a short temporal interval of strong NPF
events; (3) a unique pristine aerosol cluster is seen with a bimodal size
distribution (75 and 160 nm, respectively), strongly associated with high
wind speed and possibly associated with blowing snow and sea spray sea salt,
dominating the winter aerosol population (34 %–54 %). A brief comparison
with two other stations (Dome C – Concordia – and King Sejong Station) during
the year 2015 (240 d overlap) shows that the dynamics of aerosol number
concentrations and distributions are more complex than the simple
sulfate–sea-spray binary combination, and it is likely that an array of
additional chemical components and processes drive the aerosol population. A
conceptual illustration is proposed indicating the various atmospheric
processes related to the Antarctic aerosols, with particular emphasis on the
origin of new particle formation and growth.


One of the main objectives of the European Community (EC) is to avoid the distortion of competition in the internal market. This aim is to be achieved through the application of the more detailed competition provisions in the EC Treaty, namely the Articles 81 and 82. Article 82 states that any abusive conduct of a dominant undertaking which may affect trade between Member States is prohibited. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has, through a wide stream of judgements, set the frame for which conducts that may be considered as abusive. These judgements have also led to the development of the so called "essential facilities doctrine" in EC law, which concerns the grant of access to a facility or resource controlled by a dominant firm. The central concept of the essential facilities doctrine is that a dominant firm's refusal to provide access to something it owns or controls, to which the access for other firms is essential in order for them to provide products or services to customers, may be held as abusive and therefore also prohibited. This means that a dominant undertaking may have a duty to share its facilities – which it many times has developed during many years – with competitors. A broad application of the essential facilities doctrine could therefore risk removing incentives for research and innovation, as it would become less fruitful for undertakings to invest in such facilities. On the other hand, if the essential facility is a monopoly asset of a dominant undertaking, a non-application of the essential facilities doctrine could allow the undertaking to set abusively high access prices or to permanently exclude competition on the related market by refusing to share the facility. The essential facilities doctrine was first developed in cases where a dominant firm refused to supply a physical facility to other firms. In more recent cases, however, the European courts have also held a dominant firm's refusal to license intellectual property (IP) rights as infringing Article 82.6 The reason for such an approach has mainly been that exclusive rights, such as IP rights, give the right-holder a temporary monopolistic position and that a refusal to license therefore may lead to the elimination of all competition on the market as it will be impossible for competitors to enter that market without a license. Thus, in exceptional cases, the exercise of exclusive rights, in means of a refusal to license, has been prohibited by Article 82. One particular area of refusal to license concerns "interface information" within the information technology sector. Interface information is such information that providers of software need in order to create products which can operate with other programs and systems. This information is many times either protected by IP rights, such as patent or copyright, or kept as a non-patented know-how and thus only protected by its secret nature. In a recent judgement of the European Court of First Instance (CFI) Microsoft was held to infringe Article 82 by refusing to license secret interface information. This case is highly interesting not only because it may clarify the relation between EC competition law and IP rights in essential facilities cases, but also because of the way the CFI equalled secret information – know-how – with other IP rights in its judgement by stating that "… there is no reason why secret technology should enjoy a higher level of protection than, for example, technology which has necessarily been disclosed to the public by its inventor in a patent-application procedure." As mentioned above, one of the main reasons for competition rules to interfere with exclusive rights is that such rights may give the owner a legally protected monopolistic position for a longer period and that it is feared that the exercise of exclusive rights may eliminate all competition in that area from the market. This is however not the case with trade secrets which, once they are revealed, cannot be protected from other's exploitation. One may therefore question if trade secrets in reality endanger competition to the same extent than IP rights.


Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive disease characterized by recurring attacks of fever and serositis. Six sequence alterations (M694V, V726A, K695R, M680I, M694I, and E148Q), in the MEFV gene, account for the majority of FMF chromosomes. Differences in the clinical expression have been mainly attributed to MEFV allelic heterogeneity. Homozygotes for the M694V mutation have a more severe form of the disease and more frequently demonstrate articular and renal complications. The clinical manifestations associated with mutation M680I are considered less severe. Mutations E148Q, K695R and V726A have reduced penetrance, and many individual homozygotes or compound heterozygotes for these mutations remain asymptomatic. Here we report on one inbred family with 13 individuals (one grandparent, three parents, and nine grandchildren), either homozygotes or compound heterozygotes, for one or two of four mutations (V726A, M694V, M680I, and K695R). Three parents and one grandparent who each carried two mutated alleles remained asymptomatic. Of nine grandchildren who were compound heterozygotes for two mutations in the MEFV gene, only those with either the M694V/V726A or the M694V/M680I genotypes manifested the disease, bearing further evidence to the severity of mutation M694V in individuals sharing a similar genetic and environmental background. Nevertheless, one father and one grandmother who carried the M694V/V726A compound heterozygous genotype were symptom-free, while the four grandchildren with the same genotype manifested the disease from early age, providing further evidence for the role of additional environmental and genetic modifiers. The occurrence of four different mutations in two sets of consanguineous parents merits consideration per se.


Abstract Michelle Alexander argues that carceral inequality and mass incarceration together have created a "new racial caste system" in America (2010, p. 11). She contends that only a race-conscious social movement that engages both legal actors and the public can dismantle this system of racial control. Unfortunately, very little research has examined views about carceral inequality. Little is known about the attitudes of juvenile and criminal justice workers. We build on and integrate three literatures—scholarship on the framing perspective, comparative conflict theory, and group position theory and racial ideology—to develop a theoretical model of attitudes toward carceral inequality. We hypothesize that race influences the resonance of attributional frames, especially criminal injustice frames, but endorsement of these frames represents the primary factor shaping judgments about whether carceral inequality is a social problem (propriety, urgency, severity and policy frames). For several decades, framing efforts have been underway aimed at mobilizing JCJW to reduce racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. And most offenders first have contact with the state as juveniles. Accordingly, to test our theory, we analyze data on views about carceral inequality in the juvenile justice system—or disproportionate minority contact—among a nationwide sample of justice workers (N = 543). The findings show that race is strongly associated with attributional frames about carceral inequality, and is indirectly related, through attributional frames, to endorsement of propriety, urgency, severity, and policy frames about carceral inequality.


We present a pinpoint test set relaxation method for test compression that maximally derives the capability of a run-length encoding technique such as Golomb coding or frequency-directed run-length (FDR) coding. Before encoding a given set of test patterns, we selectively relax some specified bits of the test patterns. By changing a specified bit with value 1 to a don't-care, two consecutive runs of 0s in the test sequence can be concatenated into a longer run of 0, thereby facilitating run-length coding. This procedure retains the fault coverage of the test set. Since the increase in compression depends on the lengths of the two runs that are concatenated with each bit relaxation, a lookup table, referred to as the gain table, is pre-computed and used during the test set relaxation procedure to maximize the likelihood of increasing the amount of test data compression. The gain table is used to pinpoint the bit positions with value 1, which when relaxed to don't-cares, will yield the most compression. In this way, the given test pattern set is appropriately modified as a preprocessing step before test compression. Experimental results for the ISCAS benchmark circuits show that the proposed method can be used to increase the effectiveness of run-length coding methods for test data compression.


Purines, which are heterocyclic compounds built up of fused pyrimidine and imidazole rings, serve as ubiquitous structural cores of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), natural products, bio-active molecules, and pharmaceuticals. Among a variety of synthetic approaches toward purines, selective functionalization through C–H/N–H bond activation has undergone rapid development in the past few years. Since purines have several C–H/N–H bonds with distinct reactivities, the development of strategies that allow for the regioselective functionalization of purines is a central issue. This perspective offers an overview of the recent C–H/N–H bond activation methods in purine functionalization. The reported methods are categorized according to the type of bond being formed, e.g. C–CH2–, C–CH, C–C, C–X (I, Br), C–CN, C–N, C–Si, N–C. This covers most of the recent advances in the functionalization of C2–H, C6–H, C8–H, N7–H and N9–H bonds of purines, as well as their scope, limitations, mechanisms and practical applications.


OBJECTIVES
Only a third of patients with eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) are ANCA-positive, mainly directed against MPO. ANCA directed against PR3 are rarely found in EGPA. We aimed to examine the significance of PR3-ANCA in EGPA.

METHODS
We set up a retrospective European multicentre cohort including 845 patients. Baseline characteristics and outcomes were analysed and compared according to ANCA status.

RESULTS
ANCA status was available for 734 patients: 508 (69.2%) ANCA-negative, 210 (28.6%) MPO-ANCA and 16 (2.2%) PR3-ANCA. At baseline, PR3-ANCA patients, compared with those with MPO-ANCA and ANCA-negative, less frequently had active asthma (69% vs 91% and 93%, P = 0.003, respectively) and peripheral neuropathy (31% vs 71% and 47%, P < 0.0001), more frequently had cutaneous manifestations (63% vs 38% and 34%, P = 0.03) and pulmonary nodules (25% vs 10% and 8%, P = 0.046), and lower median eosinophil count (1450 vs 5400 and 3224/mm3, P < 0.0001). Vasculitis relapse-free survival was shorter for PR3-ANCA (hazard ratio 6.05, P = 0.005) and MPO-ANCA patients (hazard ratio 1.88, P = 0.0002) compared with ANCA-negative patients.

CONCLUSION
PR3-ANCA EGPA patients differ from those with MPO-ANCA and negative ANCA, and share clinical features with granulomatosis with polyangiitis. This suggests that PR3-ANCA EGPA could be a particular form of PR3-ANCA-associated vasculitis.


Electroencephalographic sleep patterns in children with minimal brain dysfunction syndrome (MBDS or hyperkinesis) before and during stimulant treatment differed little from those of age-matched controls. It is unlikely that the therapeutic mechanisms of amphetamines in MBDS are exerted on or reflected in physiological sleep patterns. Neither MBDS children nor normal young adults showed withdrawal elevations of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep after administration of amphetamines in constant dosage. Young adults showed REM rebounds only when the dosage was increased prior to withdrawal. In contrast to sedative-hypnotics, stimulant drugs do not reduce eye movement activity during REM sleep. This difference is emphasized for the specificity hypothesis-that different classes of psychoactive drugs differentially alter physiological sleep patterns—would be untenable if sedatives and stimulants produced the same effects on sleep.


The study first uses numerical simulations of hexagonal triangle and sphere arrays to optimize the performance of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) photovoltaic devices. The simulations indicated the potential for a sphere array to provide optical enhancement (OE) up to 7.4% compared to a standard cell using a nanosphere radius of 250 nm and silver film thickness of 50 nm. Next a detailed series of a-Si:H cells were fabricated and tested for quantum efficiency and characteristic and current–voltage (I–V) profiles using a solar simulator. Triangle and sphere array based cells, as well as the uncoated reference cells are analyzed and the results find that the simulation does not precisely predict the observed enhancement, but it forecasts a trend and can be used to guide fabrication. In general, the measured OE follows the simulated trend: (1) for triangular arrays no enhancement is observed and as the silver thickness increases the more degradation of the cell; (2) for annealed arrays both measured and simulated OE occur with the thinner silver thickness. Measured efficiency enhancement reached 20.2% and 10.9% for nanosphere diameter D = 500 nm, silver thicknesses h = 50 nm and 25 nm, respectively. These values, which surpass simulation results, indicate that this method is worth additional investigation.


A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a highly mobile wireless ad hoc network that is targeted to support vehicular safety, traffic monitoring, and other applications. Mobility models used in traditional mobile ad hoc networks cannot directly be applied to VANETs since real-world factors such as road layouts and traffic regulations are not considered. In this paper, we propose a vehicular mobility model that reflects real-world vehicle movement and study the performance of packet-routing protocols. First, we study the routing in small-scale VANETs and propose two routing schemes: (1) connection-based restricted forwarding (CBRF) and (2) connectionless geographic forwarding (CLGF). With the insights obtained, we consider routing in large-scale VANETs. Since road complexity and traffic variety may cause many potential problems that existing routing protocols cannot address, we introduce a two-phase routing protocol (TOPO) that incorporates road map information. The proposed protocol defines an overlay graph with roads of high vehicular density and access graphs that are connected to the overlay. While in the overlay, packets are forwarded along a precalculated path. As far as access routing is concerned, we employ the aforementioned CBRF and CLGF schemes and send packets to the overlay or handle packets delivered from the overlay. We argue that the TOPO can serve as a framework that integrates existing VANET routing protocols. We also consider data diversity in VANETs and design the TOPO as an intelligent transportation system (ITS)-friendly protocol. To validate our design philosophy and the routing protocol, we use different areas in the city of Orlando, FL, and generate vehicular mobility traces, following our mobility models. We feed the traces to network simulators and study the routing behavior. Simulation results demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed routing protocols for large-scale VANET scenarios.


Time-Tables are very important for any university administration. It informs the students and teachers when and where to be, the availability of the rooms and the availability of the teachers. But, the generation of time-tables manually is a very tedious task and is almost always inconvenient. This project aims at generation of course schedules automatically in a manner which ensures that they are optimal and thorough with little or no redundancy. It involves taking basic constraints and the structure of a time-table and incorporating them into the genetic algorithm. This system would serve as an ideal platform for less strenuous work by providing the administrator with an interactive interface for the time-table generation for all courses and departments.


This study analyzes the determinants of TE among traditional dairy farms in the State of Wisconsin taking into account dairy farms' heterogeneity. To do so, we first estimate a production frontier and the level of TE using the SPF framework. Then we analyze the determinants of TI using a quantile regression analysis. The results indicate that the determinants of TE affect in very specific ways farmers with different levels of TE. This result confirms our hypothesis on the importance of controlling for farm heterogeneity when analyzing the determinants of TE. This issue is also important from an empirical point of view. Policy makers could improve the effectiveness of their work by targeting specific agricultural services and aid designed for farmers with different level of TE.


Diseases of the Throat, Nose, anid Ear. Edited by F. W. Watkyn-Thomas. (Pp. 880; 367 illustrations (including 22 coloured plates). £5 10s.) London: H. K. Lewis. 1953. In a sense this work is based on Herbert Tilley's textbook of 30 years ago, but, as the editor points out in the preface, " the whole outlook in the field has changed beyond recognition." So that, though some of Tilley's observations still stand, the whole book has had to be rewritten and brought up to date; further, a section on the ear has been added. So good are all the articles that scarcely any criticism can be found. The book is in five parts. The first is novel in that it describes special methods of treatment, plastic surgery, fractured nose, and physiotherapy. The last section includes a clear description of the system of exercises introduced by Cooksey to overcome post-operative vertigo. The second part is devoted to the larynx, hypopharynx, trachea, oesophagus, and endoscopy. It is all sound and practical, and made easily readable by division into short chapters. Of special interest is the point that electromyography can help to distinguish between fixation of the cricoarytenoid joints and paralysis of the cords. The coloured illustrations of the various lesions of the cords are good and clear, though glowing with a curious pink tinge. For carcinoma of the cord laryngo-fissure is preferred to irradiation, and the discussion on laryngectomy is full of common sense. This operation and that of Owen for pharyngotomy are excellently described and illustrated. The author's wide experience is evident in the chapter on endoscopy, and he favours general anaesthesia for oesophagoscopy. The third part is on the oropharynx and nasopharynx. The well-worn subject of removal of tonsils and adenoids is truly dealt with, indications being described as " absolute " and " considered "; perhaps the impression given is that' the tonsil is the source of all evil. In conjunction with the pathologist and the expert on irradiation the difficult matter of malignant disease of the nasopharynx is made clear. The fourth part is on the diseases of the nose and accessory sinuses and is of a very high standard. The author has a heavy task, but has carried it out with striking success. After an account of the anatomy, physiology, and examination of the nose, a chapter is devoted to local analgesics, which gives many practical hints and instructions on their use. There is a chapter on allergy by Professor Lucas so skilfully written that this most complicated subject appears comparatively simple. In the following four chapters acute and chronic inflammations are clearly described, as is epistaxis and its rarely needed surgical treatment. The author of the chapters on sinusitis has made the pathology and diagnosis of the condition in the various cavities as clear as may be. There is a separate and first-rate chapter on the treatment, which is illuminated by many admirable illustrations. The fifth part is on the ear and is a tour-de-force on the part of its author (the editor). It is a most complete and up-to-date account of this vast subject, written in a scholarly style, and it is evident that the author has a complete and clear grasp of the pathology of infections of both middle and inner ear. The chapters on hearing are excellent, and include all the most recent research on audiology; theories on hearing are fully discussed, and Helmholtz's favoured for several reasons. The whole field of middle and internal ear deafness, with acute and chronic inflammations and the various types of operation, are all there clearly illustrated. The author discusses otosclerosis, and emphasizes that histological otosclerosis is four to eight times more frequent than deafness from that disease. There is no description of the fenestration operation, but good diagrams of the various openings made at it. In considering chemotherapy, the author insists that as much consideration must be given to ordering a course as that given to advising operation. Causes of aural vertigo are discussed and Atkinson's work on histamine reactions reviewed. Complications of middle ear suppuration are also described. Accounts of two complications are put into other hands. These are facial paralysis, fully and expertly discussed by Miss Collier, and intracranial abscess by Professor Lambert Rogers. He gives an excellent account of the neurosurgical approach and its technique, with appropriate illustrations. This treatise should be in the hands of all who wish to specialize in otolaryngology. W. M. MOLLISON.


The hotly contested debate about the nature of confrontation rights of the criminally accused under the Sixth Amendment continues. The latest issue before the United States Supreme Court is whether intent to prevent live in-court testimony is a necessary element of the constitutional forfeiture analysis. A number of state courts, including the Supreme Court of California in People v. Giles, 152 P.3d 433, 440 (2007), cert. granted, 128 S.Ct. 976 (2008), have rejected the element of intent. Other courts, including the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Stechly, 870 N.E.2d 333 (2007), have mandated the inclusion of the element of intent. The matter is now before the United States Supreme Court. In this article, we argue that the inclusion of the element of intent into the forfeiture analysis under the Sixth Amendment is not supported by the English and American common law and that it is not constitutionally mandated. Some courts mistakenly believe that forfeiture by wrongdoing necessarily requires intent because they improperly link the doctrine to jurisprudence that analyzes forfeiture under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The direct consequence of this improper connection to evidentiary rules is that these courts confuse the constitutional notion of forfeiture with that of waiver. We argue that a showing of intent to prevent the testimony of an out-of-court declarant is not constitutionally required in determining whether an accused has forfeited his or her Sixth Amendment rights to confrontation and disagree with Professor James Flanagan's waiver analysis.


1. Habitat complexity may stabilize interactions among species of different trophic levels by providing refuges to organisms of lower trophic levels. 2. Searching behaviour of the parasitoid, Diadegma semiclausum, was followed in different semifield set-ups, a low and high-density monoculture of Brassica oleracea and two intercrops, B. oleracea with Sinapis alba (also a member of the Brassicaceae) and B. oleracea with Hordeum vulgare (Poaceae). 3. When a low-density monocrop of B. oleracea was compared with a high-density monocrop, no differences were found in the ability of the female wasps to locate a host-infested plant, B. oleracea, infested with Plutella xylostella that was placed in the centre of the set-up. 4. The efficiency of the parasitoid to locate the host-infested plant was differentially affected by the species composition of the vegetation. Wasps entered the Sinapis-Brassica set-up faster, but took more time to find the host-infested plant than in the Hordeum-Brassica set-up. 5. The horizontal arrangement, i.e. by mixing S. alba or H. vulgare with, or placing them as rows between B. oleracea, did not affect host-finding efficiency. 6. Plant height did influence host finding. Wasps found the host-infested plants earlier in the set-up with short Sinapis plants compared with tall Sinapis plants. 7. Once the wasps had landed on the host-infested plant, the surrounding vegetation did not affect time needed to parasitize five consecutive hosts on the same infested plant, regardless of the composition or horizontal/vertical arrangement of the set-up. 8. Chemical and structural refuges in complex landscapes may play an important role in the persistence of this system through dampening oscillations of parasitoid and host populations. [KEYWORDS: crucifers ; Diadegma semiclausum ; Plutella xylostella ; proportional hazards model ; refuges]


BACKGROUND
Renoprotective effect of ACE-inhibitors has been questioned in case of decreased effective circulating volume, like in right or biventricular chronic heart failure.

OBJECTIVE
To detect clinical predictors of renal worsening in CHF patient population characterized by two types of ACE-inhibitor dosing regimens.

METHODS
According to a retrospective cohort design, we followed 2 groups of patients with CHF - whether right or biventricular -, all in III NYHA class treated with ACE-inhibitors (enalapril or lisinopril), and with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) < 50%, by distinguishing them by ACE-inhibitor dosing: average-low (<10 mg per day) or "high" dose (>10 mg per day) of enalapril or lisinopril. Worsened renal failure (ARD) was defined by Cr increase >30% from baseline. Cox proportional hazards model was used to identify the predictors of ARD among the following variables: ACE-inhibitors "high" dose, age, basal LVEF, history of repeated intensive intravenous loop diuretic therapies (IV diur), diabetes, basal Cr, history of hypertension, systolic blood pressure < 100 mm Hg.

RESULTS
57 patients were recruited, of whom 15 were treated with ACE-inhibitor "high" dose. During a mean follow-up of 718 days, ARD occurred in 17 (29.8%) patients. Only ACE-inhibitor "high" dose (HR: 12.4681 C.I.: 2.1614-71.9239 p=0.0050) and basal Cr (HR: 1.2344 C.I.: 1.0414-1.4632 p=0.0157) were shown to predict ARD. Moreover, ACE-inhibitor "high" doses were shown to fail to predict ARD in both CHF without IV diur and CHF with diabetes.

CONCLUSION
In III NYHA class CHF, ACE-inhibitor "high" doses and a higher basal Cr predicted ARD. Nephrotoxicity related to ACE-inhibitor "high" doses was increased by IV diur, whereas it was not detected in CHF patients with diabetes.


The paper explains how stock price of oil companies depends on oil futures market price. The model is applied to major oil company stocks: Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Total and Chevron. The topic is original because it focuses on short‐ and long‐term relationships with vector error correction models (VECM) with changing regimes. To get structural model between stock price of oil companies and oil futures market price, investigation is oriented to cointegration link with autoregressive vector (VAR). Research is conducted in using monthly data from November 1989 to June 2011. The stationarity of times series is tested with Dickey‐Fuller unit root test, Philips‐Perron and KPSS. The approaches of Engle‐Granger and Johansen do not enable to find long‐term relationship over the overall period. However, cointegration with 5 changing regimes is found. The Bai and Perron approach enables to find 5 breakpoints. In order to identify cointegration relationships with changing regimes, the Gregory and Hansen method is used and results show cointegration with changing regimes. Vector error correction (VEC) models associated to cointegration with changing regimes are estimated. VEC looks at the dynamics on the short‐term.Then economic and financial analysis is done and choc analysis is implemented with impulse response function. Furthermore, ARCH‐LM test shows the existence of an ARCH vectorial model. The paper shows how recent cointegration techniques are useful in including endogenous structural breaks leading to changing regimes. Further investigations could be done to estimate whether one could be able to hedge commodity price fluctuations in using stocks whose markets are a lot more liquid. This modeling will be extended by short‐term construction of models incorporating changing regimes with Markovian approach MS‐VAR and MS‐VECM.


High-fidelity rendering requires a substantial amount of computational resources to accurately simulate lighting in virtual environments. While desktop computing, with the aid of modern graphics hardware, has shown promise in delivering realistic rendering at interactive rates, real-time rendering of moderately complex scenes is still unachievable on the majority of desktop machines and the vast plethora of mobile computing devices that have recently become commonplace. This work provides a wide range of computing devices with high-fidelity rendering capabilities via oft-unused distributed computing paradigms. It speeds up the rendering process on formerly capable devices and provides full functionality to incapable devices. Novel scheduling and rendering algorithms have been designed to best take advantage of the characteristics of these systems and demonstrate the efficacy of such distributed methods. The first is a novel system that provides multiple clients with parallel resources for rendering a single task, and adapts in real-time to the number of concurrent requests. The second is a distributed algorithm for the remote asynchronous computation of the indirect diffuse component, which is merged with locally-computed direct lighting for a full global illumination solution. The third is a method for precomputing indirect lighting information for dynamically-generated multi-user environments by using the aggregated resources of the clients themselves. The fourth is a novel peer-to-peer system for improving the rendering performance in multi-user environments through the sharing of computation results, propagated via a mechanism based on epidemiology. The results demonstrate that the boundaries of the distributed computing typically used for computer graphics can be significantly and successfully expanded by adapting alternative distributed methods.


Objectives The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in telemedicine care delivery. This raises the question of whether the visit type affects the care provided to patients in the pediatric gastroenterology clinic. The aim of this study is to assess whether diagnostic, treatment, and outcome measures differ between telemedicine and in-person visits in patients seen in pediatric gastroenterology clinics for the chief complaint of abdominal pain. Methods We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients aged 0–22 who underwent their initial pediatric gastroenterology clinic visit, for abdominal pain, between March and September 2020 (n = 1769). The patients were divided into two groups: in-person or telemedicine. Clinical outcome measures were compared from the initial gastroenterology visit and followed for a total of 3 months. Results There was an increase number of images (M = 0.52 vs. 0.36, p < 0.001), labs (M = 4.87 vs. 4.05; p = 0.001), medications (M = 2.24 vs. 1.67; p < 0.001), and referrals (M = 0.70 vs. 0.54; p < 0.001) performed per visit in the in-person group. Electronic communications (3.97 vs. 5.12 p <0.003) was less frequent after in-person visits. There was no difference in number of procedures (M = 0.128 vs. 0.122, p = 0.718), emergency room visits (M = 0.037 vs. 0.017 p = 0.61), follow-up visits (M = 1.21 vs. 1.21 p = 0.922), or telephone encounters (M = 1.21 vs. 1.12 p = 0.35) between the two groups. Conclusion Telemedicine utilizes less resources while having comparable outcome measurements in children with a chief complaint of abdominal pain.


In a 3-year study, corn was grown on plots treated with 3 tons of wheat straw per acre, either placed on the surface or plowed under, and with two rates of N. Soil temperature, soil moisture, plant height and weight, N and K content of the plant and yields were obtained. Soil temperature at the 4-inch depth was lower throughout the growing season under mulch conditions. The low temperature under mulch was associated with a temporary depression of growth during the early growing season. A significant increase in growth of mulched over unmulched corn, beginning in late June, was attributed to the greater moisture under mulch during the period of high plant requirements. Mulched corn was 64 cm. taller at tasseling and produced 42 bushels per acre more grain than corn which had the straw plowed down. Runoff was seven times greater from the unmulched plots.


The paper analyses the security dimension of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) by taking into account traditional as well as non-traditional security issues. The Greater Mekong Subregion, which was established in 1992 at the initiative of the ADB, emerged after the Cold War in the wake of the so-called new regionalism as one of the growth triangles within ASEAN. Participating countries/regions are China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The article places the discussion of the Greater Mekong Subregion within the debate on post-Cold War sub-regionalism and sets out to discuss the development of regionalism in the Mekong Basin. The article shows how economic cooperation is followed in the pursuit of security and stability in a formerly conflict-ridden area and assesses the relevance of the GMS towards the issue of conflict reduction in the Mekong Basin.


Efficient production of PCB is the electronic industry's needs, while drilling is an important part in the printed circuit board manufacturing process. The drilling path optimization is crucial for improving the efficiency. Inspired by the shortest path algorithm, this paper used genetic algorithm for solving the shortest to optimal path selection of PCB drilling process and find the best path according to the specific circumstances of PCB drilling to achieve high efficiency drilling. The algorithm which has been used in the different points for practice is proved to be reasonable and efficient. The method can be optimized for fast global search, greatly reducing the computation, it is robust, efficient, can be a good solution for PCB drilling path optimization problem.


The problem of finding the edit distance between two sequences (and its closely related problem of longest common subsequence) are important problems with applications in many domains like virus scanners, security kernels, natural language translation and genome sequence alignment. The traditional dynamic-programming based algorithm is hard to parallelize on SIMD processors as the algorithm is memory intensive and has many divergent control paths. In this paper we introduce a new algorithm which modifies the dynamic programming method to reduce its amount of data storage and eliminate control flow divergences. Our algorithm divides the problem into independent `quadrants' and makes efficient use of shared memory and registers available in GPUs to store data between different phases of the algorithm. Further, we eliminate any control flow divergences by embedding condition variables in the program logic to ensure all the threads execute the same instructions even though they work on different data items. We present an implementation of this algorithm on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 GPU and compare against an optimized multi-threaded implementation on an Intel Core i7-920 quad core CPU with hyper-threading support. Our results show that our GPU implementation is up to 8x faster when operating on a large number of sequences.


Can the critical coalescence concentration (CCC) of the flotation frothers be predictable? What is the relation between their molecular structure and their CCC values? A literature survey found specific correlations between the hydrophilic-lipophilic balances (HLB) and HLB/Mw (where Mw stands for the molecular mass) of homologue series of frothers and their CCC values, but the results are invalid when the molecule's functional groups change. For this reason, 37 frothers with known values of CCC were analyzed. The CCC values of seven frothers were determined, and the rest were taken from the literature. The frothers were subdivided in homologue series with an increasing number of the carbon atoms with an account for the type and the location of the functional group, thus deriving three types of correlations lnCCC = f(HLB) applicable for: (i) alcohols; (ii) propylene glycols alkyl ethers and propylene glycols; (iii) ethylene glycols alkyl ethers. The average accuracy of these correlations between CCC and HLB is 93%.


Different studies have suggested that the use of vermicompost as part of the plant growth media can provide nutrients and retain moisture while promoting the development of crops. To corroborate this assumption we tested the effects of vermicompost supplementation to tomato (saladette type) under greenhouse conditions. The evaluated treatments included four mixtures (T1, T2, T3, and T4) of vermicompost and river sand, with volume ratios 0:1, 1:1, 1:2 and 1:3, respectively. Physical and chemical tests were performed in each mixture to determine nutritional elements (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, organic matter, pH, texture, cation- exchange capacity, electric conductivity, and apparent density) and water holding capacity. Treatment with 0:1 volume ratio (T1) was used as control, and it was fertilized with a nutrient solution (KNO3, Ca(NO3)2, Mg(NO3)2, phosphoric acid concentrate, and multi Maxiquel (Bioagro ®)). Seeds were sown in polystyrene trays with 200 cavities, padded with peat moss; seedlings were transplanted 37 days after sowing in 20 L black plastic bags. Harvest, including up to the fifth cluster, was performed manually, when the fruits reached a pink color. The treatment effects on tomato were evaluated considering the number of fruits, number of locules, equatorial and polar diameters, pulp thickness, soluble solids, fruit weight and fruit yield. The four treatments were repeated eight times in a completely randomized design. Data were statistically analyzed by analysis of variance and means were separated by the LSD0.05 test. Five of the variables studied - number of fruits, number of locules, soluble solids, pulp thickness, and yield- showed highly significant difference (P≤0.01) among treatments; the polar diameter showed significant differences (P≤0.05), and both equatorial diameter and weight of fruit were not significantly different among the substrates tested. The maximum yield (50.29 tha -1 ) was obtained in treatment T2 with a water volume of 40 Lpot-1, followed by T1 (49.93 tha -1 ), applying a water volume of 95.72 Lpot -1 . Derived from the results of the best treatment (T2), and under conditions described, the productivity was estimated in 30.66 kgm -3 . Since no synthetic fertilizers were used during the crop production, the results indicate that the vermicompost was able to satisfy the nutrient demand of tomato plants and reduces the volume of water required by this crop.


We present precise photometry and spectroscopy for 23 candidate spectrophotometric standard white dwarfs. The selected stars are distributed in the Northern hemisphere and around the celestial equator, and are all fainter than r ∼ 16.5 mag. This network of stars, when established as standards and together with the three Hubble Space Telescope primary CALSPEC white dwarfs, will provide a set of spectrophotometric standards to directly calibrate data products to better than 1%. In future deep photometric surveys and facilities, these new faint standard white dwarfs will have enough signal-to-noise ratio to be measured accurately while still avoiding saturation. They will also fall within the dynamic range of large telescopes and their instruments for the foreseeable future. This paper discusses the provenance of the observational data for our candidate standard stars. A comparison with models, reconciliation with reddening, and the consequent derivation of the full spectral energy density distributions for each of them is reserved for a subsequent paper.


For the first time in Lithuanian historical literature this article provides the analysis of Soviet militia staff changes in Lithuania during 1944-1990. After Soviet army had occupied the territory of Lithuania in summer in 1944, there was no hurry to organize the local bodies of militia, but first of all the Soviet armed forces were exterminating so called "the enemies of people" and by thus paved the way for creation of the Soviet law and order bodies in Lithuania. In October 1944 Moscow sent in the first numerous group of Soviet militia executives which started to organize the local bodies of militia. Until April 1945, 6116 executives have been sent from the East to Lithuania and 2783 of them were sent to The People's Commisariat of Internal Affaires. So called "Moscow aid in staff" was being given until 1947, so the body of Internal Affaires and militia were between the most russianized Lithuanian institutions during the entire Soviet period. There were about 59% of Russians among the Internal Affaires staff in July 1, 1947, and about 56% in January 1, 1949. Almost only Russians (together with other Soviet nationalities) worked in the authorities, so there were only 9% of Lithuanians among the executives of the Republican managing department and only 3,6% among the heads of the authorities. The number of the militia office workers was not very numerous (came to 5500 person because local inhabitants went with reluctance to work in militia, so they were recruited at the time of special campaigns carried by the leading agencies of the Communist Party. Early in 1950, the militia of Lithuania was passed from the competence of the Ministry of Internal Affaires to the subordination of the Ministry of State Security and more than for ten years all statistical data on personnel has dissapeared from Lithuanian archives. After that the number increased from 4,7 thousand persons to 7,1 thousand during 1961-1990 but there were plenty of vacant working places, formally up to 10%, and really up to 30%. The militia personnel's inteligence level has considerably increased during the last decade of the Soviet period and if it were 51,2% of persons without secondary school education in 1970, then it were 16,4% in 1980, and 4,8% in 1985. During 1961-1985, the number of persons with higher education increased from 86 to 1488 persons (from 1,8% up to 21,4% of all number of the workers, e.g. 11,9 times). During 1961-1990, the number of militia workers with higher juridical education increased from 65 up to 1026 persons (e.g. from 1,2% up to 15,03% of all workers). The changes of militia personnel were great at any time and especcially plenty of the officials discontinued their work in militia after graduation from special professional schools or higher schools.


The two articles in this issue that I consider here raise fascinating questions about the temporalities of capitalism and about the dilemmas of inclusion in the recent Occupy movements. I explore some of these questions by focusing on three features of the movements: their temporal registers, their moral imaginaries, and their implicit and explicit understandings of democracy. I connect these different threads by showing their relationships to one another and also to what activists believe Occupy has emerged in opposition to: the interrelated crises of global capitalism and representative democracy. [democracy, capitalism, public protest, Occupy, temporality]


There is no doubt that if the field of exercise physiology is to make further advancements, the various specialized areas must work together in solving the unique and difficult problems of understanding how exercise is initiated, maintained and regulated at many functional levels, and what causes us to quit. Exercise is perhaps the most complex of physiological functions, requiring the coordinated, integrated activation of essentially every cell, tissue and organ in the body. Such activation is known to take place at all levels - from molecular to systemic. Focusing on important issues addressed at cellular and systemic levels, this handbook presents state-of-the-art research in the field of exercise physiology. Each chapter serves as a comprehensive resource that will stimulate and challenge discussion in advanced students, researchers, physiologists, medical doctors and practitioners. Authored by respected exercise physiologists from nineteen countries, each chapter has been significantly updated to provide up-to-date coverage of the topics and to offer complete descriptions of the many facets of the most physiological responses from a cellular to an integrative approach within individual body systems in normal and disease states and includes some chapters that are rarely addressed in exercise physiology books, such as the influence of exercise on endothelium, vasomomotor control mechanisms, coagulation, immune function and rheological properties of blood, and their influence on hemodynamics. This book represents the first iteration to provide such a work.


The study of plasma membrane and phagosome membrane of Dictyostelium discoideum was performed using 2 lectins: concanavalin A (Con A) and Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA), and 2 markers of anionic sites: colloidal iron hydroxide (CIH) and cationized ferritin (CF). These labellings were applied to fixed partially broken cells, which had ingested a large quantity of yeast. They showed that Con A and CF labelled both the outer and inner faces of the plasma membrane, whereas CIH and WGA were deposited on the outer face only. Phagosome membranes displayed the same location as the plasma membrane for Con A, CF and CIH even in very old phagosomes. This suggests that most receptors of these 3 markers were not degraded by hydrolases. In contrast, phagosome membranes of young and old phagosomes did not react with WGA. When labellings were made on yeast phagocytozing cells, the membrane of phagocytic cups were also devoid of WGA, while it was labelled with the 3 other markers. The absence of WGA labelling was not observed during ingestion of bacteria and latex beads, suggesting a specific relationship existed between yeast cells and WGA receptors.


Higher Education is the climax of the process of providing knowledge, changing learners attitude and inculcating specialized skills in individuals preparatory to taking a life-long employment with intent to earning a living and equally contributing to national economic growth and development. The Teaching and learning process is cardinal to the realization of the educational objectives of any nation. The advent of information and communication technology has made teaching and learning easier and beyond the traditional face to face interaction between the teacher and the learner. E-learning basically involving the transfer of skills and knowledge through an electronic device aims at improving the teaching/learning process. In spite of the benefits of e-learning to both regular students and distance learners, e-learning has been fraught with some challenges in Africa. Therefore, this paper discusses some of the challenges facing e-learning in Africa particularly in the Nigerian higher education system. These among others are epileptic power supply, high cost of procurement of computer hardware, inadequate infrastructure, and resistance to change on the part of the instructors, inability of learners to make use of ICT infrastructure, inadequate skilled manpower ICT, and corruption of computer storage device through viruses. Effectively managing the identified challenges means that the government would have to ensure regular power supply, lecturers and learners should be trained in the use of ICT infrastructure, and the government should evolve viable ICT policy as well as control or subsidise the price of the s of ICT infrastructure to make it affordable for both lecturers and learners. Keywords - Education, Challenges, Information and Communication Technology, National Educational Objectives, University system, Descriptive Research, Ibadan, Nigeria


Hyperargininaemia is a disorder of the last step of the urea cycle. It is an autosomal recessive disease caused by deficiency of liver arginase‐1 and usually presents later in childhood with progressive neurological symptoms including marked spasticity. In contrast with other urea cycle disorders, hyperammonaemia is not usually present but can be a feature. A number of guanidine compounds may accumulate in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of these patients, which could play an important pathophysiological role. Guanidinoacetate is of particular interest as a well‐known potent epileptogenic compound in guanidinoacetate methyltransferase deficiency. We found markedly elevated guanidinoacetate levels in a patient with arginase deficiency, which dropped significantly in response to dietary and medical treatment. Measurement of guanidinoacetate and other guanidino compounds may, therefore, be important for therapeutic monitoring in arginase deficiency.


A case of homicide by dual modality is presented. The intriguing involvement of a hired killer is described. Attention is drawn to the legal implications of the autopsy findings, as well as to the differing emphases placed on them by the defence counsel and the counsel for the prosecution. The forensic significance of the different injuries is discussed.


A 2-yr study utilizing 120 mature, crossbred (Angus × Herford) cows/year, evaluated the influence of cow BCS and dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) supplementation during late gestation on cow performance and productivity of subsequent offspring. Treatments were arranged as a 2×2 factorial in a randomized complete block design with 2 BCS and with or without DDGS supplementation. Cows were nutritionally managed to enter the last trimester of gestation with a BCS of approximately 4 (LBCS) or 6 (HBCS) and were thereafter managed in a single herd (initial BCS were 4.4 and 5.7 for LBCS and HBCS treatments, respectively). During the last trimester, 12.7 kg/cow of low quality meadow hay (6.4% CP; DM basis) was provided each day. Supplemented cows were gathered and sorted into pens (12 pens; 5 cows/pen; 6 pens/BCS) every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and received the equivalent of 0.9 kg/cow daily of DDGS (31% CP; DM basis; supplement was consumed within 30 min on each supplementation day). Calf birth weight was greater for HBCS compared to LBCS (P=0.001) and for supplemented compared to nonsupplemented cows (P=0.04). Cow weight at weaning was greater for HBCS compared with LBCS (P<0.001); however, no differences were noted because of supplementation (P=0.16). Weaning weight was greater for the offspring of supplemented compared to nonsupplemented cows (P=0.02). There were no differences in postweaning calf performance (growing lot and feedlot) or carcass characteristics (P>0.05) due to treatments. Nevertheless, HBCS cows had approximately 10% more live calves at birth and at weaning (P≤0.01) compared to LBCS cows. Consequently, the total weaned calf weight per cow was 26 kg greater for HBCS compared with LBCS (P=0.004). Pregnancy rate was greater (P=0.05) for HBCS than LBCS cows (92% vs. 79%, respectively) but not affected by supplementation (P=0.94). This research demonstrates the potential consequences of not maintaining cows in adequate BCS at calving. Also, though it appears that supplementation of beef cows with DDGS during late gestation has a positive effect on weaning weight, there was no apparent developmental programming effect on feedlot performance and carcass characteristics of calves.


Turbidostats are a class of bioreactors gaining interest due to the recent availability of microscale and small-scale devices for characterization and scalingup of the biotechnological systems relevant in the biotech and pharma industries. The goal is to keep cell density constant in continuous operation. Thus, the control law, i.e., the substrate feeding strategy, must guarantee global or semiglobal convergence to an equilibrium point. However, their control is difficult due to the uncertain, time varying, and nonlinear nature of the processes involved. In this brief, we propose an adaptive control law that globally stabilizes the desired biomass setpoint. Furthermore, in a certain region of the state space, the controller linearizes the dynamic behavior after some time scaling. By this way, the orbits of the closed-loop system are imposed by the designer. The intrinsic integral action of the gain adaptation rejects the parameter uncertainties. Moreover, the controller implementation only assumes the biomass concentration to be measured. Both the simulated and experimental results show the performance of the controller.


AIMS--To investigate the integration of human papillomavirus (HPV)16 in 13 HPV16 positive cervical squamous carcinomas. METHODS--Samples were investigated by Southern blot analysis of the Pst I digestion pattern, two-dimensional gel-electrophoresis, and in situ hybridisation. RESULTS--Integration of HPV16 was found in all cases. In 12 biopsy specimens episomal HPV16 DNA and integrated HPV16 DNA were seen. The episomal DNA occurred as dimers and multimers. In situ hybridisation showed that both integrated and episomal HPV16 DNA were present in the same cell in most tumour cell nuclei. CONCLUSIONS--An intact episomal E2 gene is present in most cases of these cervical cancers, and could therefore replace the regulatory function of an integrated defective E2 gene.


Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection has been strongly implicated as a cause of genital neoplasia. Although Southern blot DNA hybridization techniques are regarded as the most accurate means of identifying HPV infection, studies using this technique to measure infection have provided varying estimates of the prevalence of HPV among healthy and diseased groups. This investigation provides a possible explanation for study‐to‐study differences, by demonstrating interlaboratory variability in the detection and typing of HPV by Southern blot. Four experienced laboratories tested 40 identical, masked samples of DNA extracted from presumed infected and non‐infected tissues. The pairwise percentage agreement between the laboratories in judging samples as HPV‐positive or negative ranged from 66 to 97%. Among samples judged to contain HPV, agreement as to type ranged from 77 to 96%. We conclude that inter‐laboratory differences are an important consideration in any discussion of HPV prevalence estimates.


The field of melanoma immunobiology has made tremendous strides in the past decade, resulting in the molecular identification of a vast array of tumour-expressed antigens that contain determinants that are recognised by patient T cells or immunoglobulins. The integration of these antigens, their derivative peptides or improved analogues in vaccine trials allows for the augmentation of melanoma-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in situ that may prove clinically efficacious in the adjuvant or therapeutic setting. Indeed, melanoma peptide-based immunotherapies targeting the activation of anti-tumour CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes have proven successful (i.e. yielding objective clinical responses), particularly when combined with T cell growth factors or potent antigen-presenting cells, such as dendritic cells. Vaccine approaches implementing poly-epitope and/or melanoma peptides recognised by CD4+ T cells are anticipated to yield still better clinical outcomes due to the in vivo promotion and maintenance of a diversified, poly-specific effector T cell repertoire directed against resident tumours.


The electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA) is a kind of power-by-wire (PBW) actuator that converts the electrical power into localized hydraulic power for flight control. In order to solve the problem of flow mismatching in the asymmetric cylinder, this paper presents a novel EHA which applies a three-ports fixed displacement pump to work with the asymmetric cylinder. The working principle of the novel EHA is introduced, and its nonlinear mathematical model is built. The sliding-mode control is proposed to control the position loop of the EHA. The controller structure of EHA is built including the position control using sliding-mode control, the speed control using PI, and the current control using PI. The model of mechanical parts including the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), controller and hydraulic parts are built in the SIMULINK. Simulation results show that the sliding-mode control improves the dynamic response and control accuracy compared with the traditional classic PID.


Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) are used as markers in association studies and may contribute directly to inherited disease. Here, we investigated high throughput in silico and in vitro methods for identifying SNPs and applied these to large scale genomic projects. We evaluated the utility of the Transgenomic NavigatorTM software to facilitate automated detection of aberrant denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (dHPLC) elution profiles. 3,747 dHPLC profiles were analysed with this software and 98.3% of products with profiles distinct from wild type harboured novel variants (Chapter 3). We applied this software to investigate whether rare inherited variants in genes that play a role in oxidative DNA damage repair (OxDR) predispose to colorectal adenomas (CRA) and found that unlike MUTYH, inherited variants in other OxDR genes are unlikely to be a frequent cause of CRA (Chapter 4). We evaluated the sequence analysis packages Sequencher, InSNP, Mutation Surveyor and Staden to identify variants in patients with CRAs (using >4,000 chromatograms). Staden and Mutation Surveyor correctly identified 76/77 (98.7%) SNPs and 96.7% and 99.3% of the genotypes respectively (Chapter 5). We compared an optimised version of Staden against Sequencher for variant detection over a 2.5kb region of the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene in 969 healthy controls. We found 100% concordance between these packages and found that rare nonsynonymous variants in APC were significantly over-represented in patients with CRAs as compared to healthy controls (32/480 vs. 37/969, P=0.0166) (Chapter 5). We evaluated data held in dbSNP (build 129) for common variants in the Caucasian population by examining ten DNA repair genes and subsequently developed software for automatically extracting selected information from dbSNP (Chapter 6). This program was used to rapidly identify 221 common nonsynonymous SNPs in every DNA repair gene in the human genome; these were subsequently typed in 480 publically-available human lymphoblastoid cell lines generating a resource for functional analyses (Chapter 6). We also assessed the role of these SNPs in susceptibility to CRC and response to therapy by exploiting data and samples for the randomised controlled trial COIN (Chapter 7). Finally, we used Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to discover SNPs in the exomes of 10 patients that exhibited peripheral neuropathy in response to chemotherapy and discovered that ERCC4 nonsense mutations may contribute to this toxicity (Chapter 8). NGS is likely to become the key SNP discovery technique over the next decade due to its potential to comprehensively search an entire genome at a comparatively low cost.


Amodiaquine (AQ), an effective antimalarial drug for uncomplicated malaria, has been greatly restricted after cases of life-threatening agranulocytosis and hepatic toxicity during prophylactic use. We conducted a hospital based open-label randomised clinical trial in 40 indigenous semi-immune healthy adult male volunteers with and without malaria parasites. The objective was to collect data on biological and haematological safety, tolerability, and parasitological efficacy to serve as baseline in the evaluation of the effectiveness of AQ preventive intermittent treatment against malaria morbidity in infants. Volunteers were stratified according to parasitaemia status and randomly assigned 20 participants each arm to three days treatment with either AQ or chloroquine (CQ). The level of difference of selected haematological and hepatological values pre-and post-trial were marginal and within the normal limits. Clinical adverse effects mostly mild and transient were noticed in 33.3% CQ treated-aparasitaemic, 23.8% of CQ treated-parasitaemic, 28.6% ofAQ-treated parasitaemic and 14.3% of aparasitaemic receiving AQ. Amodiaquine attained 100% parasitological clearance rate versus 70% in CQ-treated volunteers. The findings indicate that there was no agranulocytosis or hepatic toxicity suggesting that AQ may pose no public health risk in its wide therapeutic dosage uses. Larger studies are needed to exclude rare adverse effects.


This work is a longitudinal network analysis of the interaction networks of Wikipedia, a free, user-led collaborativelygenerated online encyclopedia. Making a case for representing Wikipedia as a knowledge network, and using the lens of contemporary graph theory, we attempt to unravel its knowledge creation process and growth dynamics over time. Typical small-world characteristics of short path-length and high clustering have important theoretical implications for knowledge networks. We show Wikipedia's small-world nature to be increasing over time, while also uncovering power laws and assortative mixing. Investigating the process by which an apparently un-coordinated, diversely motivated swarm of assorted contributors, create and maintain remarkably high quality content, we find an association between Quality and Structural Holes. We find that a few key high degree, cluster spanning nodes 'hubs' hold the growing network together, and discuss implications for the networks' growth and emergent quality.


The desire to add more intelligent functionality and enhanced real-time Control capability to robotic systems places a heavy demand on computational resources. Nascent application-specific VLSI technology offers an unprecedented opportunity to relieve this computational burden by implementing specific robotic functions directly in hardware. A VLSI architecture, designed to compute the direct kinematic solution (DKS) on a single chip, is described. The DKS chip features fixed-point calculation and on-chip generation of trigonometric functions. The calculation achieves the resolution required for most industrial applications. Innovative modifications of the conventional adder control and the form of the homogeneous transformation matrix have improved throughput. Simulation results indicate that speed improvements of several orders of magnitude in the kinematic computation are achievable with application-specific integrated circuit technology, compared to microprocessor implementation.


Until the late 19th century, education in the United States was single-sex education. Coeducation gradually entered the American educational landscape in the late 1800s (Bureau of Education, 1883; Butler, 1910; Kolesnik, 1969), and since that time, single-sex education mainly has been confined to private and denominational (mostly Catholic) schools. According to Tyack and Hansot (1990) and Hawtrey (1896), economic factors were the major impetus for the rising "tide of coeducation." Simply put, it was cheaper to educate boys and girls together than to operate separate schools, which would have required duplicating expensive facilities, equipment, and personnel. Feminists of the day also valued coeducation as a necessary step in the women's rights movement and their influence contributed to the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, aimed at guaranteeing gender equity in federally financed schools, colleges, and universities. Finally, coeducation was considered "natural" in that it facilitated the development of positive relations with members of the opposite sex, allowed boys and girls the opportunity to learn to work together, and was conducive to happier marriages (Atherton, 1972; Hale, 1929). In the second half of the 19th century, William Harris, superintendent of the St. Louis schools and later U.S. Commissioner of Education, argued that mixing the sexes improved instruction and discipline for boys and girls by merging their different abilities and allowing students of each gender to serve as a "countercheck" on the other (Harris, 1870). As we have seen with most educational reforms and innovations, the fanfare that welcomed coeducation very soon led to concerns and indictments. In his book, Sex in Education, Clarke (1873) purported that academic competition with boys overloaded girls' brains and interfered with the development of their reproductive organs. Single-sex education (also less frequently called single gender and SS) garnered renewed interest in the 1990s from researchers, advocacy groups, and policymakers; and since 2003, there has been an extraordinary surge in interest in single-sex public education. The new regulations, issued by the U.S. Department of Education on October 25, 2006, fueled the fire of this renewed interest. Secretary Spellings, commenting on the "final rule," noted that Research shows that some students may learn better in single-sex education environments. The Department of Education is committed to giving communities more choice as to how they go about offering varied learning environments to their students. These final regulations permit communities to establish single-sex schools and classes as another means of meeting the needs of students. (U.S. Department of Education, 2006) Assessing the relative advantages and disadvantages of single-sex classes and schools is difficult. As singlesex education gains interest and appeal, educators, policymakers, and advocates continue to search for research evidence to legitimize this approach to improving student outcomes (e.g., academic, behavioral, social, attendance, self-esteem). While this review of the research will not be limited solely to middle grades schools, many of the studies that are reviewed were conducted in middle grades schools. Considerable exploration of single-sex education has occurred in the realm of legal and political issues, but there has been comparatively litde examination of student outcomes and other educational implications. Salomone (2006), recognizing the problematic and inconclusive nature of this research literature, noted that most of the research originates from private and denominational schools and from abroad and tends to be anecdotal reports and scattered studies that lack scientific rigor. This installment of What Research Says will focus on what we currently know about single-sex education. Specifically, it will critically review in relation to single-sex education (a) what proponents and critics claim, (b) what researchers say about school culture and academic climate, (c) the attitudinal effects, (d) academic issues, and (e) problems with the research. …


The research aimed to find out leadership style in Sengkaling Recreation Park of Malang, find out work motivation in Sengkaling Recreation Park of Malang, and also find out whether situational leadership style has significant influence to employee work motivation at Sengkaling Recreation park of Malang.
Data analysis technique used scale rate and multiple linear regression. From the research, there found that leadership style used in Sengkaling Recreation park of Malang directed into consulting leadership style, it based on scale rate calculation which showed that task behavior and relation behavior of Sengkaling Recreation Park was so high. Employee work motivation at Sengkaling Recreation park of Malang was high. According to statistical test or empiric condition in the company, there found that task behavior, relation behavior, work maturity and psychological maturity was a factor decided employee work-motivation and influence with determination coefficient 0.869, which means that the influence contribution was 86%. Next, after t test, task contribution influence was 86%. Next, after t test, task behavior variable, relation, employee maturity and psychological had significant influence to employee work motivation.
According to the research, suggestion to be given was: in order to make the leader more flexible in applying leadership style by applying fit leadership style with subordinate character, tried to reckon the subordinate needs, paid attention to the maturity condition and condition of each subordinates. The leader should also able to make policy to support/motivate employee to the work done, also deciding positive attitude like fluid policies or even force to create interpersonal harmonic communication which build comfort work environment.


Since lymphocyte telomere length (LTL) plays critical roles in the maintenance of genomic stability and integrity, LTL thus may influence the etiology and prognosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the oropharynx (SCCOP). However, given the association between LTL and risk of HPV-associated SCCOP and between LTL and tumor HPV status of SCCOP, we hypothesized that LTL is associated with SCCOP prognosis, particularly in HPV-positive patients after definitive radiotherapy. LTL and tumor HPV type 16 (HPV16) status were determined in 564 incident SCCOP patients before radiotherapy or chemoradiation. Both univariate and multivariable Cox regression analyses were performed to estimate the association between LTL and prognosis. Eighty-five percent of the patients had HPV16-positive tumors. Patients with shorter telomeres had significantly better overall, disease-specific, and disease-free survival than did those with longer telomeres (log-rank p < 0.001). Moreover, patients with shorter telomeres had significantly lower risk of death overall (hazard ratio [HR], 0.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.1-0.4), death due to SCCOP (HR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1-0.4), and SCCOP recurrence (HR, 0.3; 95% CI, 0.2-0.5) after adjusting for other important prognostic confounders. Finally, we found more pronounced effects of LTL on survival in HPV16-positive SCCOP patients after stratified analysis according to tumor HPV status. These findings indicate that LTL plays a significant role in the survival of patients with SCCOP, especially HPV16-positive patients who undergo definitive radiotherapy. Therefore, pretreatment LTL may be an independent prognostic biomarker for HPV16-positive SCCOP. Prospective studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm these findings.


ABSTRACT Alongside modern urbanization, traditional Lilong housing structures have undergone tremendous changes in internal and external spatial form and usage status in order to adapt to the needs of modern, social life. In these spontaneous transformations, the street "publicness" and the residential privacy create a set of contradictory relationships that affect the overall morphology of the neighborhood. Taking the traditional lane residential area of Xing'anli, Dongtai Road, Shanghai, China as an example, we analyze the relationship between street "activeness" and the rate of residential remodeling. We attempt to clarify the characteristics of street publicness and housing "privateness" in the traditional Lilong neighborhoods and their mutual effects. This contributes to a comprehensive, workable knowledge of traditional cities and has reference significance for future urban transformation. We analyze the space utilization characteristics of Lilong neighborhoods from two perspectives here. First, with the overflow articles as a medium, we explore the activeness characteristics of different types of roads using the SD method. Second, based on field surveying and mapping, we assess the remodeling characteristics of buildings around different types of roads through remodeling volume and rate statistics. We draw conclusions through careful analysis of the relationship between the street activeness and residential remodeling rate information. Graphical Abstract


The transition to surface mounted device (SMD) technology in electronics manufacturing has placed new demands on the post‐solder cleaning process. For spacecraft electronic systems it is of the utmost importance that all flux residues be removed. This paper reports the results of an investigation of the impact of component stand‐off heights and the distance between solder joints on the cleaning process efficiency. The capability to clean beneath large chip carriers was evaluated for four different cleaning methods using isopropanol or CFC‐113 (Freon TMS) as cleaning liquid. The results show that the cleaning efficiency decreases considerably if the stand‐off height is less than 240 µm for 100 mil pitch chip carriers. For 50 mil pitch chip carriers the stand‐off height needs to be greater than 240 µm to achieve high cleaning efficiency. The cleaning efficiency beneath chip carriers with small stand‐off heights can be increased by using ultrasonic cleaning. However, a very thin layer of white residues is left where the flux has been removed if isopropanol is used as the cleaning liquid.


Inspired by chaotic firing of neurons in the brain, we propose ChaosNet-a novel chaos based artificial neural network architecture for classification tasks. ChaosNet is built using layers of neurons, each of which is a 1D chaotic map known as the Generalized Luröth Series (GLS) that has been shown in earlier works to possess very useful properties for compression, cryptography, and for computing XOR and other logical operations. In this work, we design a novel learning algorithm on ChaosNet that exploits the topological transitivity property of the chaotic GLS neurons. The proposed learning algorithm gives consistently good performance accuracy in a number of classification tasks on well known publicly available datasets with very limited training samples. Even with as low as seven (or fewer) training samples/class (which accounts for less than 0.05% of the total available data), ChaosNet yields performance accuracies in the range of 73.89%-98.33%. We demonstrate the robustness of ChaosNet to additive parameter noise and also provide an example implementation of a two layer ChaosNet for enhancing classification accuracy. We envisage the development of several other novel learning algorithms on ChaosNet in the near future.


Protective ventilation strategies for the injured lung currently revolve around the use of low VT, ostensibly to avoid volutrauma, together with positive end-expiratory pressure to increase the fraction of open lung and reduce atelectrauma. Protective ventilation is currently applied in a one-size-fits-all manner, and although this practical approach has reduced acute respiratory distress syndrome deaths, mortality is still high and improvements are at a standstill. Furthermore, how tominimize ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) for any given lung remains controversial and poorly understood. Here we present a hypothesis of VILI pathogenesis that potentially serves as a basis upon which minimally injurious ventilation strategies might be developed. This hypothesis is based on evidence demonstrating thatVILI begins in isolated lung regionsmanifesting a Permeability-Originated Obstruction Response (POOR) in which alveolar leak leads to surfactant dysfunction and increases local tissue stresses. VILI progresses topographically outward from these regions in a POOR-get-POORer fashion unless steps are taken to interrupt it. We propose that interrupting the POOR-get-POORer progression of lung injury relies on two principles: 1) open the lung to minimize the presence of heterogeneity-induced stress concentrators that are focused around the regions of atelectasis, and 2) ventilate in a patientdependent manner that minimizes the number of lung units that close during each expiration so that they are not forced to rerecruit during the subsequent inspiration. These principles appear to be borne out in both patient and animal studies in which expiration is terminated before derecruitment of lung units has enough time to occur.


Crafting the landscape
Today the quiet of the woods can be broken from time to time by a tractor in neighbouring fields, or the retort of ahunting gun. In the mid-19th century the woods and valleys echoed with the strike of an axe, the rasp of the saw, the hum of a lathe and the shouts of men as they laboured to supply fuel wood and timber for woodware and furniture workshops, or worked at the craft of 'bodging'.

This article is my contribution to the Chilterns Conservation Board (CCB) Landscape Conservation Action Plan (LCAP) which is the guiding document for the Chalk, Cherries and Chairs Landscape Partnership Scheme. It provides background to the Chilterns landscape and its distinctive character, and brings together the research, consultation and planning that have taken place since 2016, under the leadership of the CCB, and funded
by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Bucks New University is a partner in the scheme.


BACKGROUND
For people with disabilities, identity formation is based on responses to hierarchical values determined by able populations. Some adopt a disability identity, whereas others may seek to conceal their disability. No research has focused on how women with Down's Syndrome form an identity.

DESIGN
Eight women with Down's Syndrome took part in semi-structured interviews designed to find out more about their individual and shared identities. The transcripts were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis.

FINDINGS
Negative assumptions of others and oppressive, paternalistic care often lead to a lack of ownership over narratives. "Finding a place in society" is an attempt to challenge this and gain a sense of ownership over their lives.

CONCLUSIONS
This research uncovered the individual and shared identities that women with Down's Syndrome construct. Services need to be aware of the role they have in supporting these women to develop autonomy and ownership over their lives.


In the nanometer era, the physical verification of CMOS digital circuit becomes a complex task. Designers must account of new factors that impose a significant change in validation methods. One of these major changes in timing verification to handle process variation lies in the progressive development of statistical static timing engines. However the statistical approach cannot capture accurately the deterministic variations of both the voltage and temperature variations. Therefore, we define a novel method, based on non-linear derating coefficients, to account of these environmental variations. Based on temperature and voltage drop CAD tool reports, this method allows computing the delay of logical paths considering more realistic operating conditions for each cell. Application is given to the analysis of voltage drop effects on timings


Background and Objective: The introduction of novel ultrasound guided Pecs block has changed the choice for providing anaesthesia and/or analgesia to the upper part of the anterior chest wall. This technique was later adapted (PECS II block) to provide better coverage for more extensive procedures, especially involving the axilla. We would like to conduct a prospective descriptive study to masure the safety level of Ropivacaine and the analgesic efficacy for PECS II block using 30ml Ropivacaine 0.5%. Method: After obtaining approval from the UMMC Medical Research Ethics Committee (20165-2443) and written informed general anaesthesia (GA) and regional
block consent, adult female patients undergoing unilateral mastectomy with axillary clearance were prospectively enrolled. PECS II block was performed with ultrasound guidance before induction of anaesthesia, and chronological blood samples were obtained by a piration from a large bore venous cannula specifically placed in the antecubital fossa. All participants received a total dose of R pivacaine not more than 3mg/kg, which is diluted with 0.9% saline to constitute 30ml of Ropi a aine 0.5% solution concentration. Venous blood was sampled from the blood taking canulla at I 0, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, and 120 minute after Ropivacaine administration. Plasma Ropivacaine concentration was measured with liquid chromatography- tandem mass spectrometry method at the Pharmacology department Medical Faculty, University Malaya. Results: There were 6 patient who successfully completed this study protocol; they were aged between 52 and 71 (mean 63) years old. The weight of the patients is between 54 and 70kg (mean 63kg). Total Ropivacaine used for every patient was fixed at l50mg. In our study, there were no signs of CVS or CNS toxicity seen in the patients during the study period. The mean peak venous plasma concentration (Cmax) was 2.12ug/ml (SD 0.41, range 1.80-2.61). The median time point of maximum concentration (Tmax) of Ropivacaine occurred at 37.5min (range 20-60 min). The highest individual venous plasma concentration (Cmax) was 2.61 ug/ml ocurred at 45 min. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the use of 150mg Ropivacaine in the unilateral PECS II block in adult females is safe withou exceeding the toxic level. There were no patients reported to have signs or CNS and CVS toxicity.


This chapter examines source and application of phenolic compounds in the built environment as well as their environmental fate and treatment methods. We further describe the role of phenolic compounds in delaying aging and degradation of outdoor construction elements when exposed to intense solar radiation. In this chapter both plant-based and synthetic sources of phenolic compounds and their fate in the environment were examined. In addition, merits of select sources of phenolic compounds to resist ultraviolet radiation in composites as well as delaying degradation were studied. This chapter further provides insights pertaining to the underlying molecular interactions which afford phenol's role as an anti-aging additive for outdoor construction elements. This in turn provides a solution to promote bio-economy and enhance sustainability in the built environment.