It is envisaged that the Mosaic Approach (Clark and Moss, 2005) will explore how to listen to young children's views and experiences of their outdoor environment as well as demonstrate young children's competencies in expressing their perspectives. The individual pieces of the Mosaic approach include: observation, photographs, book making, tours and map making. As the project progresses it is hoped that new individual pieces may be added to the Mosaic approach. There are few studies that see children as active participants in research, but rather subjects of research. This approach may be methodologically challenging however Thompson (1992) and Rudduck (2001) both identified that young children are capable of insightful and intuitive analysis of their experiences of learning in schools and are able to understand the research process if presented to them in an age appropriate manner.


January 2009 marked the 6th anniversary of the launch of the Air Force Research Laboratory Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) instrument on the Coriolis spacecraft. Originally planned as a three year mission, SMEI has amassed an unprecedented dataset of ~25,000 full-sky images since 2003 with a 102-minute cadence, 1° spatial resolution, and better than 8th magnitude sensitivity. SMEI, with its Sun/Earth line views, has been joined by the twin STEREO spacecraft, launched in October 2006, whose heliospheric Imagers (HIs) image along the ecliptic with opposing, off-axis views, 70° in diameter. These two data sets are complementary and several events observed by both SMEI and STEREO are being analyzed. But SMEI is nearing its end of life and the STEREO spacecraft continue to drift apart by 45°/year with decreasing telemetry coverage. What would be the characteristics of the next generation instrument in heliospheric imaging? What would the differences be for an operational instrument vs. a research instrument? What are the advantages of staring vs. composite imaging, views from the Sun/Earth line vs. other views, L1 position vs. low Earth orbit, etc? What are the engineering lessons learned from SMEI and STEREO and the environment through which such an instrument operates? In this presentation we discuss these issues and some possible future mission concepts.


In the present invention, it is possible to perform the signal or the power supply voltage to the ID chip in a noncontact manner, and also provides an inspection method using the inspection apparatus, and the inspection apparatus of the ID chip that can increase the throughput of the inspection process. The inspection apparatus according to the invention comprises a unit that measures a unit, and the potential of the scan electrode for applying a voltage to the plurality of scan electrodes, a plurality of scan antenna, the position control unit, an antenna for each test for. One feature of the testing device is, by the position control unit, a plurality of the ID chip and the plurality of electrodes for inspection and with a predetermined gap overlap each other, a plurality of ID chips and a plurality of antennas for each test a predetermined gap with and overlap each other, and to which a plurality of ID chips caught between woojyeo for a plurality of scan electrodes and the plurality of scan antenna. ID chip inspection apparatus, the inspection electrode, the scan antenna, the position control unit, a voltage application unit, the voltage measuring unit


The governing equations of three dimensional elasticity problems include the six Beltrami-Michell stress compatibility equations, the three differential equations of equilibrium, and the six material constitutive relations; and these are usually solved subject to the boundary conditions. The system of fifteen differential equations is usually difficult to solve, and simplified methods are usually used to achieve a solution. Stress-based formulation and displacement-based formulation methods are two common simplified methods for solving elasticity problems.This work adopted a stress-based formulation for a three dimensional elasticity problem. In this work, the Maxwell's stress functions for solving three dimensional problems of elasticity theory were derived from fundamental principles. It was shown that the three Maxwell stress functions identically satisfy all the three differential equations of static equilibrium when body forces were ignored. It was further shown that the three Maxwell stress functions are solutions to the six Beltrami-Michell stress compatibility equations if the Maxwell stress functions are potential functions. It was also shown that the Airy's stress functions for two dimensional elasticity problems are special cases of the Maxwell stress functions.


Examines five strategic human resource management (HRM) issues using a qualitative methodology. Two of these are related to the central organisational-level constructs of structure and culture. The other three pertain to HR strategy, HR competencies, and HR outsourcing. The study employed the multiple-case design method proposed by Yin, with a view to extending theory in strategic HRM research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 managers (CEOs, line managers, and HR managers) of nine companies from two major industries in the manufacturing sector – electronic products and machinery/equipment. The research found that top management enlightenment and level of HR competencies together determine the role and status of the HR function in organisations, and that the companies studied pursue four types of HR strategies: informal and not communicated; informal and communicated; formal but not communicated; and formal and communicated. HR strategy was found to affect both vertical and horizontal fits of the HR function. Culture, HR strategy and HR competencies influenced organisational propensity to outsource HR activities.


ABSTRACT Small area estimation is becoming increasingly popular for survey statisticians. One very important program is Small Area Income and Poverty Estimation undertaken by the United States Bureau of the Census, which aims at providing estimates related to income and poverty based on American Community Survey data at the state level and even at lower levels of geography. This article introduces global–local (GL) shrinkage priors for random effects in small area estimation to capture wide area level variation when the number of small areas is very large. These priors employ two levels of parameters, global and local parameters, to express variances of area-specific random effects so that both small and large random effects can be captured properly. We show via simulations and data analysis that use of the GL priors can improve estimation results in most cases. Supplementary materials for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement.


Background: Mechanical neck pain can be defined as generalized neck and/or shoulder pain with mechanical characteristics including symptoms provoked by maintained neck postures or by movement. Mechanical neck pain causes morning stiffness, pain on forward flexion and also returning to erect position, pain is often aggravated by extension, lateral flexion, rotation and exercises. When playing chess on chess board for many hours continuously the players may notice increasing aches and pain in neck. Objective: To find out the effectiveness of trigger point release versus cervical mobilization in chess players with mechanical neck pain Study design: Pre-test Post-test Experimental study design Methods: Subjects will be randomly selected through inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria. Pre and post treatment assessment of pain and Disability using Neck Disability Index and range of motion using Universal Goniometer will be taken Subject will be assigned to group A and group B with 15 patients in each group. Treatment will be given 3 sessions in 1 week for 1 month duration. Outcome Measures: Neck Disability Index and Universal Goniometer Results: There is significant difference in effectiveness of trigger point release versus cervical manipulation in chess players with mechanical neck pain. Conclusion: This experimental study was performed on 30 subjects 15 subjects in each group with complaints of neck pain with intervention in the form of trigger point release and SNAG. The group treated with SNAG approach had significant improvement in ROM of cervical joint, pain and disability due to mechanical neck pain than those treated with trigger point release.


Racialised thinking about human diversity underlies some infamous medical and scientific abuses, although in some cases the form of discrimination is cloaked in the language of ethnicity. A central dilemma of measuring equity along the lines of ethnicity is that categories of difference are inevitably reinforced. Although measuring iniquity may facilitate its redress, it may also reify and reinforce categories which are the basis of discrimination. The role of historical manifestations of racism in the case of rickets and sickle cell disease are discussed. The compounding of racialised disadvantage with other forms of marginalisation is discussed in terms of individual and institutional discrimination with regard to the origins of the HeLa cell line.

Keywords:

racism;
ethnicity;
race;
terminology;
prejudice


Abstract Integrated weed management tactics are necessary to develop cropping systems that enhance soil quality using conservation tillage and reduced herbicide or organic weed management. In this study, we varied planting and termination date of two cereal rye cultivars ('Aroostook' and 'Wheeler') and a rye/hairy vetch mixture to evaluate cover-crop biomass production and subsequent weed suppression in no-till planted soybean. Cover crops were killed with a burn-down herbicide and roller-crimper and the weed-suppressive effects of the remaining mulch were studied. Cover-crop biomass increased approximately 2,000 kg ha−1 from latest to earliest fall planting dates (August 25–October 15) and for each 10-d incremental delay in spring termination date (May 1–June 1). Biomass accumulation for cereal rye was best estimated using a thermal-based model that separated the effects of fall and spring heat units. Cultivars differed in their total biomass accumulation; however, once established, their growth rates were similar, suggesting the difference was mainly due to the earlier emergence of Aroostook rye. The earlier emergence of Aroostook rye may have explained its greater weed suppression than Wheeler, whereas the rye/hairy vetch mixture was intermediate between the two rye cultivars. Delaying cover-crop termination reduced weed density, especially for early- and late-emerging summer annual weeds in 2006. Yellow nutsedge was not influenced by cover-crop type or the timing of cover-crop management. We found that the degree of synchrony between weed species emergence and accumulated cover-crop biomass played an important role in defining the extent of weed suppression. Nomenclature: Cereal rye, Secale cereale L.; hairy vetch, Vicia villosa Roth; yellow nutsedge, Cyperus esculentus L.


Having indexed much of the "surface" Web, search engines are now using various approaches to index the "deep" Web. At the same time, institutional repositories and digital libraries are adopting the open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) to expose their holdings. The authors harvested nearly 10 million records from OAI-PMH repositories. From these records, they extracted 3.3 million unique resource URLs and then conducted searches on samples from this collection to determine how much of the OAI-PMH corpus the three major search engines have indexed.


A study was conducted on soil N mineralization in the field in an alley cropping system between 2003 -2005 under two soil depths (0-30cm and 30-60cm) through the utilization of an in-situ soil core technique for studying fluxes of mineral N and its uptake by maize. Result obtained indicated that N mineralization was in the pattern of Gliricidia sepium > Leucarna leucocephala > Cajanus cajan > fertilizer > control. The highest N mineralization of 78.91 mg N Kg-1 soil was obtained in the Gliricidia sepium treatment under 0-30cm soil depth. Between the alley and the fertilizer treatment, cumulative N mineralization was more in the alley treatments. Both mineralization and nitrification processes occurred more in the 0-30cm than 30-60cm soil depths. Among the legumes, low N mineralization, nitrification and ammonification were found in the Cajanus cajan alley treatments. Leaching was more pronounced in the fertilizer than in the alley treatments. However, nutrient uptake was observed highest in the alley treatments showing that nutrient recovery by maize was highest from the mineralization pruning of legumes in alley cropping system. Agro-Science Vol. 7 (2) 2008: pp. 143-148


PRRS remains the most economically devastating swine disease with an estimated annual loss of $664 million in the US. The PRRS genome is constantly changing, making accurate diagnosis difficult. Many pairs of primers have been used in some commercial PRRS PCR kits to cover the genetic diversity of the PRRS genomes. Hypothetically, using more primers can bring potential issues such as non-specific amplifications. On the vaccine side, there are four PRRS vaccines that have been used in the US, namely PrimePac; Ingelvac MLV, Ingelvac ATP and Fostera. Due to their close relationships to some field strains, differentiation between vaccine strains and field strains are challenging using common real-time PCR methods. Currently the differentiation is mostly done by PRRS ORF5 sequencing, which is expensive and time consuming. Luminex technology allows us to detect more molecular targets in a single reaction with the cost similar to that of one real-time PCR reaction. Beads of different colors are coupled with target-specific, i.e., pathogenspecific, capture oligos in the Luminex platform. A short piece of pathogen genome is amplified by target-specific primers. A region in the PCR product is complementary to the capture oligo on the beads, thus is hybridized to the beads for specific target identifications. Designing a Luminex PCR assay without a probe that is required in most real-time PCR assays, can simplify the designing process, and potentially resolve the multiplexing problem encountered in real-time PCR assays. By analyzing all available fulland near full-genome sequences of PRRS, we were able to design two pairs of primers that hypothetically can detect 98% of all PRRS sequences, thus the assay is predicted to detect 98% of filed strains. We were also able to design a pair of primers for each vaccine strains, which can differentiate PRRS strains that are 98% or less identical to the vaccine strains. Analytical sensitivity of this Luminex PRRS assay is lower than, but close to the sensitivity level of a typical real-time PCR assay. Testing on the vaccine strains and 489 PRRS field strains indicated that the Luminex PRRS assay we have developed can detect 95.2% of the field strains, and can differentiate majority of the vaccine strains especially for MLV-like strains. Although Luminex assays do not provide quantification data like Ct values generated by real-time PCR assays, it provides a cost-effective way of comprehensive detection of rather divergent PRRS strains, at the same time to differentiate the PRRS vaccine strains without using the more expensive sequencing procedure.


Strains carrying the Enterococcus (formerly Streptococcus) faecalis plasmid pAD1 responded to exogenous sex pheromone by inducing a number of gene products which facilitated mating. A 7-kilobase region of pAD1 was identified which contained genes that are important for the regulation of this response. Using the transposon Tn917-lac delivery vector pTV32Ts, we generated a number of fusions that allowed us to examine transcription in this region. At least three transcriptional units were identified by grouping fusions by their phenotype, direction of transcription, and response to pheromone. Transcription from one set of fusions was sensitive to the presence of pheromone. Analysis of the patterns of protein production previously shown to be induced in the presence of pheromone provided more information on the function of the genes of interest. We postulate the existence of two negative regulatory proteins that act coordinately to repress the pheromone response, one of which may be involved in sensing or transmitting the pheromone signal, and at least one positive regulatory protein whose synthesis is dependent on the presence of pheromone. In addition, the isolation of a relatively small deletion mutant capable of producing cAD1. the pheromone specific for pAD1-containing cells, indicates that a factor(s) that is important for the shutdown of endogenous pheromone is also present in this region.


The purpose of this study is to develop a three‐dimensional acoustic display, in which an interaction between a visual and a sound image is taken into account. To find out the characteristics of the interaction, it is useful to examine the effect of visual images on three‐dimensional sound localization. In general, it is known that the visual image affects the location of sound images. It is particularly evident when both of the locations are close to each other. For instance, when a sound image located at a certain angle with respect to the listener is presented, the perceived position of the sound image would be shifted toward the image due to the interactions. This phenomena may lead to a simplification of the signal processing for sound localization, since now information from both a visual and a sound image can be used to localize the sound image at a certain position. In this paper, results of some basic experiments will be presented, and the influence of visual images on sound localization will be ...


In vivo microcatheterization of the medullary collecting duct of rat kidney was used to compare the functional effects of intravenous infusion of rat atrial natriuretic factor, human urodilatin (a peptide produced in the kidney), or porcine brain natriuretic peptide. All three peptides resulted in striking and quantitatively similar inhibition of NaCl and water reabsorption in the duct. In addition, all three induced significant K+ secretion in this part of the nephron. These results could not be explained by functional alterations in upstream tubular segments. We conclude that the three peptides are equivalent in their transport effects on the inner medullary collecting duct system, when administered at the same (presumably supramaximal) dose.


The community's role during a disaster within the first 24–72 hours before having government's aid is crucial in making the condition under control in a timely manner. Disaster management institution, especially at local level, has not had any models for flood preparedness training through participative approach based on the local wisdom of Jambi community to reduce disaster risks. This study tries to evaluate the effectiveness of training programme for flood preparedness based on the local wisdom designed for Jambi community, Indonesia. This research is an experimental study with pre- and post-test control design, in-class training followed by field practice and evaluated using three components: pre-test and post-test evaluations (score scale: 0–100), skill observation during disaster training (score scale: 1–4). The participants consisted of 24 local people chosen from the disaster-prone area; all participated in the disaster training. The score of pre- and post-test evaluations indicates improved post-test result with 71.4 (p < 0.005). There was also a skill improvement in the final simulation with 75% excellent score using model modification of programme for enhancement of emergency responses based on the local wisdom. This study completely evaluates the effectiveness of training for flood preparedness based on the local wisdom to improve the knowledge, ability and skill of people in disaster-prone areas.


Abstract The data team intervention was designed to support Dutch secondary schools in using data while developing a solution to an educational problem. A data team can build school-wide capacity for data use through knowledge sharing among data team members, and knowledge brokerage between the team and other colleagues. The goal of this mixed-methods study is to understand how knowledge sharing and brokerage regarding data use and an educational problem changed over time. Social network data were collected twice at eight schools. These data were used to analyse (1) how well team members were connected with each other (density), (2) whether team members' relationships were mutual (reciprocity) and (3) whether all team members were equally important for the data team network (centralisation). Moreover, different types of knowledge brokering (inward, outward and forward) were examined to further understand knowledge exchange between data team members and their colleagues. Qualitative data were analysed to triangulate these findings for four particular cases. Among other things, findings illustrated that while knowledge sharing and knowledge brokerage both changed over time, there were considerable differences between teams in the extent and direction of change. It appeared that the dissemination of knowledge within the organisation requires more explicit attention.


It is well documented that inflammation plays a major role in the establishment and progression of atherosclerosis. Endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells and monocytes/macrophages are involved in this process by expressing inflammatory factors. The aim of the present study was to evaluate potential association and risk of VEGF-A and TGF-beta1 in human coronary atherosclerotic lesions. Twenty-six fresh human coronary artery segments were collected at autopsy. Conventional histology was performed and samples were classified into: no lesion group (NL), fatty streak group (FS), plaque group (P) and complicated lesion group (CL) based on the atherosclerotic lesion type. RNA extraction-analysis with RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry was also performed. We observed that VEGF-A protein and mRNA expression increased during atherogenesis. The expression levels (protein and mRNA levels) of TGF-beta1 were decreased from NL to the FS group while, strong protein-staining and signal of mRNA expression in P and CL groups were observed. Our findings suggest a crucial role of VEGF-A in the development of coronary artery disease. The high protein and mRNA expression levels of TGF-beta1 in P and CL suggest that this factor may be implicated in the deposition of excessive extracellular matrix in the intima of the vessel wall, contributing to the expansion of the atheromatic plaque.


Flexible robots are frequently represented by lumped models. In the mechanics of lumped systems, wave concepts have been avoided, for good reasons, generally. In the control of lumped flexible systems, however, wave concepts prove very fruitful. This paper provides a foundation for the wave-based control application by exploring the validity and nature of wave concepts in lumped robotic systems. A new wave-based model of uniform mass-spring systems is proposed and verified. The model is exact but not unique. Useful simplifications and approximations are also presented. The model leads to control strategies for flexible robotic systems that are simple, powerful, robust, and generic. The wave approach also provides a new analysis tool and conceptual framework for lumped dynamic systems


A significant part of the consequences of a severe earthquake in an urban area is related to the failure of the lifeline system. A systematic assessment of seismic risk, vulnerability, and criticality of lifelines in small communities (considering them both separately and from a systemic point of view) is performed. The risk is characterized by using functions related to the components of different lifelines. The approach allows the optimization of the use of economic limited resources in intervention to reduce risk. Given a set of remedial measures more expensive than the limited budget, the subset maximizing the risk reduction at the appropriate cost is selected. The developed methodology allows one to analyse the lifeline system characterized by the information related to vulnerability and to their functional model separately and as a whole. The definition of different reference earthquakes is also allowed. The information related to the vulnerability of the elements and to the seism is defined by means of probabilistic models. The present paper is organized as follows. After a brief introduction to the seismic risk associated to a system of lifelines, a synthetic description of the whole methodology adopted is given. In the second part of the paper the methodology developed to assess the risk due to cross-correlations effects between lifelines is described in detail. The problem is assessed from both structural and functional points of view. Results of the application of the whole methodology to test sites are also reported. This work is one of the outcomes of the activities promoted and directed by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia of Rome within the Programma Operativo di Ricerca per la Sismologia e l'Ingegneria Sismica (PRO.S.I.S.), aimed at assessing methods and instrumentations for the reduction of the seismic risk in Italy.


The standard methods available to test tracking and erosion resistance of filled silicone rubber do not allow to delineate the fundamentals of the thermal degradation, although the heat from the dry band arcing is the main degradation factor. In this work a thermal imaging camera is used to investigate the performance of filled silicone rubber in an inclined plane test, and a scheme is established to relate the temperature and the electrical discharge energy. Further, an infrared laser technique, based on constant energy approach, is developed to study the material performance under laser heating. The technique consists of applying a certain amount of infrared laser energy during a set time period, in order to produce erosion in the silicone rubber samples. Through correlation studies the applicability of the proposed laser technique to rank silicone rubber samples with various fillers has been validated. The laser tests show identical ranking of samples when compared to samples ranked using inclined plane tests, yet offering significant advantages of being faster, simpler, and reproducible.


To clarify the function of cyclin A2 in colon homeostasis and colorectal cancer (CRC), we generated mice deficient for cyclin A2 in colonic epithelial cells (CEC). Colons of those mice displayed architectural changes in the mucosa, and signs of inflammation as well as an increased proliferation of CEC associated with the appearance of low- and high-grade dysplasia. The main initial events triggering those alterations in cyclin A2 deficient CEC appear to be abnormal mitoses and DNA damage. Cyclin A2 deletion in CEC promoted the development of dysplasia and adenocarcinomas in the murine colitis-associated cancer model. We next explored the status of cyclin A2 expression in clinical CRC samples at the mRNA and protein level and found higher expression in tumors of stage I and II patients compared to those of stage III and IV. A meta-analysis of 11 transcriptome datasets comprising 2,239 primary CRC tumors displayed different CCNA2 (the mRNA coding for cyclin A2) expression levels among the CRC tumor subtypes with highest in CMS1 and lowest in CMS4. Moreover, high expression of CCNA2 was found to be a new independent prognosis factor for CRC tumors.


Population growth in urban areas is a world-wide phenomenon. According to a recent United Nations report, over half of the world now lives in cities. Numerous health and environmental issues arise from this unprecedented urbanization. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of urban green spaces and the role they play in improving both the aesthetics and the quality of life of its residents. In particular, urban green spaces provide ecosystem services such as: urban air quality improvement by removing pollutants that can cause serious health problems, carbon storage, carbon sequestration and climate regulation through shading and evapotranspiration. Furthermore, epidemiological studies with controlled age, sex, marital and socio-economic status, have provided evidence of a positive relationship between green space and the life expectancy of senior citizens.
However, there is little information on the role of public green spaces in mid-sized cities in northern Italy. To address this need, a study was conducted to assess the ecosystem services of urban green spaces in the city of Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy. In particular, we quantified the cooling effect of urban trees and the hourly amount of pollution removed by the urban forest. The information was gathered using field data collected through local hourly air pollution readings, tree inventory and simulation models. During the study we quantified pollution removal for ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter (<10 microns). We estimated the above ground carbon stored and annually sequestered by the urban forest. Results have been compared to transportation CO2 emissions to determine the CO2 offset potential of urban streetscapes. Furthermore, we assessed commonly used methods for estimating carbon stored and sequestered by urban trees in the city of Bolzano. We also quantified ecosystem disservices such as hourly urban forest volatile organic compound emissions.


Previous CCG supertaggers usually predict categories using multi-class classification. Despite their simplicity, internal structures of categories are usually ignored. The rich semantics inside these structures may help us to better handle relations among categories and bring more robustness into existing supertaggers. In this work, we propose to generate categories rather than classify them: each category is decomposed into a sequence of smaller atomic tags, and the tagger aims to generate the correct sequence. We show that with this finer view on categories, annotations of different categories could be shared and interactions with sentence contexts could be enhanced. The proposed category generator is able to achieve state-of-the-art tagging (95.5% accuracy) and parsing (89.8% labeled F1) performances on the standard CCGBank . Further-more, its performances on infrequent (even unseen) categories, out-of-domain texts and low resource language give promising results on introducing generation models to the general CCG analyses.


The identification of non-linear systems is an important topic in structural health monitoring of structures undergoing non-stationary behavior. In general, a non-linear or hysteretic response is typical for buildings, bridges, dampers and structural elements not only as a consequence of strong excitations (i. e. earthquake), but also for low to medium loading levels, due to the constitutive behavior of structural elements or joints. This paper focuses on the non-linear identification of a RC beam-column joint, modeled as a SDoF system, subjected to non-stationary loading: the technique used entails the definition of proper instantaneous estimators of the system dynamic properties by using a linear time-varying approximation of the actual system dynamics and representing the structural response in the joint time-frequency domain.


Background Despite data showing excellent results for revascularisation of patients with LMS disease by PCI in a randomised trial vs CABG, there is still a need for PCI outcome data in 'real world' patients, many of whom are not suitable for CABG. Objective We assessed the results of left main stem (LMS) PCI in a 'real world' cohort of 302 consecutive patients. Methods A retrospective analysis was made of prospectively collected data on every patient undergoing PCI to the LMS performed by a single operator between 2000 and 2009 including patients who were not candidates for coronary artery bypass surgery, those treated as an emergency and those in cardiogenic shock. Clinical and angiographic data and logistic New York PCI Risk Scores (NYRSs) and EuroSCOREs were recorded. The endpoint was long-term mortality and repeat revascularisation, short term mortality was modelled on risk adjusted funnel plots. Results We treated 302 consecutive, unselected, patients with LMS disease±multi-vessel disease. The mean age was 67±10, 72% were male, 41% were non-elective, 10% were in cardiogenic shock, 21.5% required IABP and 46% were not surgical candidates. The NYRS was median 0.6% (IQR 0.32–4.2) and EuroSCORE 3.9 (1.82–11.4). Apart from the LMS, 2.1±0.9 vessels were diseased, 69% of the LMS lesions involved the bifurcation. Technical success was achieved in 99% LMS lesions, 1.7±0.8 other vessels were successfully treated and 57% LMS lesions were treated with drug-eluting stents; single stent being used in 44% and simultaneous kissing stents in 50%. The in-hospital, 30 day, 1 year and 3 year mortality rates of the whole group were 5%, 7.6%, 13.9% and 20.8%. For elective vs non-elective patients, the equivalent figures were 1% vs 4%, 1.3% vs 6.3%, 4% vs 10% and 8% vs 12.8%. The ischaemia-driven target lesion revascularisation rate at 1, 2 and 3 y was 12% (3%LMS), 15% (3.5% LMS) and 15.5% (4%LMS). There was 1% emergency CABG. The 30-day mortality rate was 7.6%, as compared with 6.2% predicted by NYRS (abstract 101 figure 1) and 10.1% predicted by EuroSCORE. Incomplete revascularisation was associated with an increased mortality at follow-up (1 yr 20.2% vs 10.3%, 3 yr 29.3% vs 16%; p<0.02) after adjustment for age, number vessels diseased, LV systolic function, diabetes, extra-cardiac arteriopathy, renal failure, and type of presentation. Abstract 101 Figure 1 Conclusions PCI is applicable to a wide variety of patients with CHD involving the LMS, with very few patients being unsuitable. Excellent results can be achieved for a typical, mixed population of patients requiring revascularisation over a wide range of risk profiles, in terms of both mortality and repeat revascularisation, to 3 years. Mortality risk is strongly influenced by clinical factors rather than disease pattern or procedural details.


Staphylococcus aureus continues to offer challenges to medical science in the area of resistance to chemotherapeutic agents leading to treatment failures using common antibiotics. In this study, S. aureus isolated from patients from three hospitals in Kumasi, Ghana were tested for their sensitivity to some reference antibiotics using the Kirby-Bauer agar disc diffusion method. A total of 109 S. aureusisolates were obtained from wound and nose swabs of 300 patients. S. aureus was isolated from 44% female and 56.0% male patients. Majority of the S. aureus isolates were identified in patients aged between 20 and 29 years, while those within the age group of 60 to 69 years recorded the least number of S. aureus isolates. Vancomycin had the highest susceptibility of 74.1% followed by ceftriaxone with 67.6%, erythromycin with 49.0%, ampicillin with 47.0% and gentamicin with 44.4%. Out of the 109 S. aureus isolated from the three hospitals, 32.1% exhibited multiple drug resistance.

 Key words: Antibiotics, bacterial resistance, Staphylococcus aureus, sensitivity.


Electrical properties of single-gated (bottom-gated or top-gated) and double-gated (DG) organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) are systematically investigated in terms of threshold voltage (V th), subthreshold slope, and I ON/OFF. We found that the device structure has significant impacts on the aforementioned electrical properties and the operation modes in a poly-3-hexyl thiophene DG OTFT. An empirical electrostatic potential model is employed to describe well V th behaviors of DG OTFTs in different modulation schemes. In addition, selective active-area coating in OTFTs is realized using an inkjet printing process, and consequently, parasitic leakage is much suppressed.


Shape invariance is a property of demand functions that is widely used for parametric and semiparametric modeling and is associated with a commonly employed class of equivalence scale models used for welfare calculations. This paper derives the set of all shape-invariant demand functions and associated preferences. All previously known shape-invariant demands were derived from utility functions that, up to monotonic transformation, are called IB/ESE (independent of baseequivalence scale exact) utility functions, because they yield IB/ESE equivalence scales. This paper shows that there exist exceptional shape-invariant demands that are not derived from a transform of IB/ESE utility and provides some simple tests for these exceptions. In particular, all the exceptions have rank 2, so any rank 3 or higher demand system is shape invariant if and only if it is derived from a transform of IB/ESE utility.


In this article traffic-engineering issues regarding network survivability, traffic grooming, impairment-aware routing, virtual-topology engineering, and coordination among multiple layers of network architecture will be reviewed for next-generation optical networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). Due to the recent progress and development of WDM technology, increasing traffic demands can be readily accommodated in the next-generation optical networks. In spite of the huge amount of capacity (e.g., OC-192) provided by a WDM channel, enhanced network services and network performance improvement can only be achieved with efficient traffic-engineering mechanisms. The fault-tolerant function is essential in order to provide seamless services to users by protecting their traffic against failures in the optical network because many connections can be carried on a fiber. Because the capacity of a WDM channel is very large, its bandwidth may not be efficiently utilized by a single connection. Hence, low-rate user connections need to be efficiently aggregated through the traffic-grooming scheme. An intelligent routing algorithm is especially necessary in the optical network where signal impairments due to device imperfections might degrade the signal quality. In addition, the virtual network connectivity (topology) should be flexibly maintained such that dynamic changes to the traffic demands can be easily absorbed, which can be implemented by the virtual-topology engineering method in a WDM network. As the dominant usage of Internet protocol (IP) of the Internet is expected to reside directly above the WDM layer in the future network, the coordinated traffic-engineering scheme should be deliberately designed for the multi-layer network by judiciously choosing where to put many overlapping functions in the different network layers.


California's October 1989 earthquake and its effects have been thoroughly analyzed and reviewed by engineers and water utility specialists. Area utility managers interviewed by the authors believe their organizations did fairly well during and after the earthquake, but all suggested improvements that would lessen problems in a future earthquake. In this article the authors review those areas for improvement, including, among many others, internal organization, communication with other public utilities, access to supplies, emergency disinfection, construction methods, and location of distribution lines. The authors suggest that the development and regular testing of an official Emergency Response Plan is crucial if utilities are to perform effectively during the confusing and stressful circumstances of an earthquake or other disaster.


Six years into post-socialist economic reform, a division has appeared between the Central and Eastern European reform countries (CEE) and the CIS-countries. Whereas the former are dedicated to introducing the institutions of a capitalist market economy, the European CIS-countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakstan) still hang on to some type of state-planning and a high degree of political interference in economic life. We show this development in a country that is new to European economics and policy: Ukraine. Just like its fellow CIS-countries, Ukraine has quickly succeeded macroeconomic stability, but insufficient structural reform may prevent a sustained economic development process. Our thesis is that Ukraine is at present embarking on a path from non-monetary socialism to a monetary planned-economy. An incredible amount of planning activity is observed in almost all spheres of economic life. We provide proof of that through empirical case studies, carried out personally in about 50 industrial enterprises all over the country. We conclude that the "window of opportunity", during which substantial reforms can be pushed through based on a large social consensus, is over. Remaining reforms will be piecemeal only, and hence, can have only piecemeal results. The post-Soviet patterns of economic reforms that are emerging in the CIS-countries have a direct impact on the European and world integration of these countries.


The main problem in this study is that the handicapped people are not able to use the public areas of public building without the help of others due to the built physical environment. In order to exist in the public areas and be included in social life, every person should be able to attend to public areas and have the right to access the services given by the public buildings. This is directly related by the compliance of these public buildings and their near surroundings to the Turkish standards TS 9111 and TS 12576 related with accessibility to the built environment for the handicapped. In the research made for the M.S. Thesis which is the base of this article, five of the many public buildings in Ankara chosen form municipal services buildings (M.S.B.) are evaluated with regard to the Turkish standards related with accessibility. Data collection thorough observations and photography was made through forms prepared for every activity areas in these buildings to determine the deficiencies that cause lack of accessibility for the handicapped. Through these evaluation forms, the accessibility value (A.V.) for every activity area of these public buildings were determined. Also the general accessibility value (G.A.V.) for the five different municipality buildings were determined. In preparation of this article only two of the forms related with Accessible Route from public transportation areas and the Informative Signage were chosen in as the main focus of this article. As a conclusion the compliance to the standards of the near surroundings of these buildings are not only related with the built physical environments and the architectural obstacle but also is related directly with the topographical status of the building site and the neighborhood and setting these buildings are located. Also the deficiencies in signage with regard to the Turkish standards could easily be refined through minor efforts and should be easily perceptible and simple and understandable by more than two senses and also be compliant to the related Turkish Standards if any of these public areas are to be accessible and usable by handicapped people without the help of others and sustain the design for all principle in built environment.


In Group B Streptococcus (GBS) three structurally distinct types of pili have been discovered as potential virulence factors and vaccine candidates. The pilus-forming proteins are assembled into high-molecular weight polymers via a transpeptidation mechanism mediated by specific class C sortases. Using a multidisciplinary approach including bioinformatics, structural and biochemical studies and in vivo mutagenesis we performed a broad characterization of GBS sortase C. The high resolution X-ray structure of the enzymes revealed that the active site, located into the β-barrel core of the enzyme, is made of the catalytic triad His157-Cys219-Arg228 and covered by a loop, known as the "lid". We show that the catalytic triad and the predicted N- and C-terminal trans-membrane regions are required for the enzyme activity. Interestingly, by in vivo complementation mutagenesis studies we found that the deletion of the entire lid loop or mutations in specific lid key residues had no effect on catalytic activity of the enzyme. In addition, kinetic characterizations of recombinant enzymes indicate that the lid mutants can still recognize and cleave the substrate-mimicking peptide at least as well as the wild type protein.


ABSTRACT Richards, R., Hughes, L., Gee, D. and Tomlinson, R., 2013. Using generalized additive models for water quality assessments: A case study example from Australia Water quality management is an ongoing challenge for coastal managers. They are faced with disentangling the multiple determinants involved when assessing the utility of management interventions, understanding the processes behind historical trends and progress towards future water quality goals. Nonparametric statistical methods such as locally weighted scatterplot smoothing are often used in water quality assessments for this purpose while generalized additive models (GAMs) have been applied sparingly. Conversely, the extensive use of GAMs for air quality studies because of their reported ability to account for nonlinear confounding effects of seasonality, covariate trends and weather variables indicates that this is a statistical method that is well–suited to water quality studies. In this paper, we present a case–study application of GAMs in demonstrating the potential for this methodology to be used for trend analysis of water quality datasets. The case study is based upon an extensive water quality monitoring program that recently took place along the coastal region of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. We use GAMs to uncover the functional relationships between a common water quality indicator (turbidity) and the suite of predictor variables that are expected to influence turbidity. The selection of suitable candidate predictors to trial in the model is based on expert judgement regarding the key determinants of turbidity in the case study area and is partially undertaken to minimise the effects of 'colinearity' in the predictor variables. Overall, the GAM approach performed well and provided insight into the drivers of turbidity for the case study area.


We studied the sensitivity of human melanoma (Bro strain) xenografts to drugs of the nitrosoalkylurea (NAU) class: nitrosomethylurea (NMM), karmustin (BCNU), nimustin (ACNU), nitrulin, and ADEKO. High antitumor activity of NAM was shown when the drugs were applied not only at the early, but also at the late stages of tumor progression (tumor mass 400 and 1200 mg, respectively). The therapeutic effect of the drugs was estimated with the use of criteria characterizing the kinetics of tumor regression, increased life span, and survival of treated animals. After early administration of the drugs (Day 4 after tumor transplantation), 67% and 50% of animals survive under the influence of nitrulin and ACNU, respectively, while the rate of tumor regression increased in the sequence nitrulin < karmustin < NMM < ACNU. After late administration (11 days after tumor transplantation), NMM was most effective at increasing survival (35% of survived animals by 35 days of observation), while the rate of tumor regression increased in the sequence ADEKO < NMM < karmustin < nitrulin < ACNU.


Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail.


A problem became apparent while analyzing intensive conversation between very "competent" elderly that a) were eye-witnesses of National Socialism in Germany as well as of wartime including the bombardment of larger cities, and b) volunteered to participate in the project as such witnesses. This problem seems worthy of being scrutinized in a sophisticated and systematic fashion: It is methodologically difficult to assess divergent--or even contradictory--information pertaining to the specific subjective foundations of an individual's competence and there are problems with integrating this information to a plausible and tenable statement about their action orientations. This holds especially for the assumptions related to the concept of "locus of control," since this concept could prove itself relevant in regard to a differential intervention strategy as well as for basic research on aging, in which the concept's potential for explaining aspects of the aging process remains to be further clarified. Finally, a possible solution to this assessment problem is presented.


Beginning with Woodrow Wilson and U.S. entry into World War I and closing with the Great Depression, The Perils of Prosperity traces the transformation of America from an agrarian, moralistic, isolationist nation into a liberal, industrialized power involved in foreign affairs in spite of itself. William E. Leuchtenburg's lively yet balanced account of this hotly debated era in American history has been a standard text for many years. This substantial revision gives greater weight to the roles of women and minorities in the great changes of the era and adds new insights into literature, the arts, and technology in daily life. He has also updated the lists of important dates and resources for further reading. "This book gives us a rare opportunity to enjoy the matured interpretation of an American Historian who has returned to the story and seen how recent decades have added meaning and vividness to this epoch of our history."--Daniel J. Boorstin, from the Preface William E. Leuchtenburg is William Rand Kenan Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and recent past president of the American Historical Association. He has published numerous books on twentieth-century American history.


The effect of absorbed moisture on the fiber and interfacial strengths of an epoxy reinforced with continuous fibers of E-glass has been investigated. Single-fiber fragmentation tests of E-glass/epoxy model composites have shown degradation of both the strength of the fiber and the strength of the interface after immersion in water at 25 and 75 C. This work has expanded to investigate the effects of water on the tensile and interlaminar properties of full-scale composite materials after immersion in water for comparison with the results from the single-fiber fragmentation test. One goal of this research is an assessment of the ability to predict composite structural properties from a small-scale test such as the single-fiber fragmentation test, of particular interest is the possibility that the smaller scale of the test coupled with full immersion and elevated temperatures can provide an accelerated test for composite structures subjected to longer exposure under less severe environmental conditions. Four different composite test methods have been chosen to emphasize different aspects of the problem: tension tests of unidirectional layups should reflect the degradation of the fiber strength, while testing unidirectional layups in compression and in Mode I and Mode II delamination fracture should be more indicative ofmore » the degradation of the interface. Two different fiber coatings have been used in an effort to vary the nature of the glass/epoxy interface, and the specimens have been immersed at both 25 and 75 C to investigate the influence of temperature.« less


The effect of two different single oral doses of loxiglumide (CR 1505, CAS 107097-80-3) on gall-bladder emptying induced by a 550-cal standard mixed meal in 6 healthy volunteers was studied. Following placebo, the maximal gall-bladder emptying occurred about 90 min after the meal (minimal residual gall-bladder volume 27.4% of basal volume). Loxiglumide 400 or 800 mg dose-dependently inhibited the physiologica gall-bladder emptying. Loxiglumide plasma levels dose-dependently increased. The inhibition of gall-bladder emptying and the kinetic of loxiglumide plasma levels were temporally related. The results of the present study confirm that oral loxiglumide is a potent orally active cholecystokinin (CCK) antagonist in man and that CCK is the major physiological mediator of gallbladder emptying in response to meal.


The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors influencing consumer's loyalty toward e-commerce website. The samples were those who used and interacted to the website. We applied accidental sampling and the questionnaires were distributed manually and through on line. Returned and processed questionnaires were from 175 respondents. Ten of 14 hypotheses in our research were supported by the data. Those hypotheses are the relationship among the factors of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust, social presence, enjoyment and value, patronage intent and e- loyalty towards the website. Keywords:    perceived ease of use, trust, social presence, enjoyment and value, consumer's loyalty toward e-commerce website


Improved communication systems, shrinking battery sizes and the price drop of tracking devices have led to an increasing availability of trajectory tracking data. These data are often analyzed to understand animal behavior. In this work, we propose a new model for interpreting the animal movent as a mixture of characteristic patterns, that we interpret as different behaviors. The probability that the animal is behaving according to a specific pattern, at each time instant, is nonparametrically estimated using the Logistic-Gaussian process. Owing to a new formalization and the way we specify the coregionalization matrix of the associated multivariate Gaussian process, our model is invariant with respect to the choice of the reference element and of the ordering of the probability vector components. We fit the model under a Bayesian framework, and show that the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm we propose is straightforward to implement. We perform a simulation study with the aim of showing the ability of the estimation procedure to retrieve the model parameters. We also test the performance of the information criterion we used to select the number of behaviors. The model is then applied to a real dataset where a wolf has been observed before and after procreation. The results are easy to interpret, and clear differences emerge in the two phases.


Abstract This paper is a review of and a commentary on the published addresses of WSSA presidents from the founding of the Society through 2000. The paper's assumptions are that the presidential remarks will reveal what the Society has emphasized, what its major concerns and goals have been, and how the presidents have addressed what they considered to be important issues. Seven issues have been addressed by many presidents. These include the importance of agricultural production and profit, the necessity of herbicides, weed science and the environment, the regulation of herbicides, the need for education, comparison of weed science and other plant protection disciplines, and the problem of herbicide resistance. Nomenclature: Presidents; Society; WSSA.


Chronic inflammation is a crucial driver of carcinogenesis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Several studies have investigated the prognostic significance of cyclooxygenase−2 (COX−2) expression in PDAC patients, obtaining conflicting results. Nuclear factor kappa−B (NF−κB), specificity protein 1 (Sp1), and c−Jun are known as the transcription factors of the COX2 gene. This exploratory observational study investigated the association of the NF−κB, COX−2, Sp1, and c−Jun expressions with patient survival in PDAC. We used the immunohistochemical method to detect the PDAC tissue expressions of NF−κB (RelA/p65), COX−2, Sp1, and c−Jun. The expressions of these proteins were correlated with the overall survival (OS) and other clinicopathological characteristics of PDAC patients. We obtained 53 PDAC specimens from resections and biopsies. There were significant correlations between the four proteins' expressions in the PDAC tissues. The expression of the cytoplasmic (aHR = 0.31; 95% CI 0.11–0.90; p = 0.032) or nuclear NF−κB (aHR = 0.22; 95% CI 0.07–0.66; p = 0.007) was independently associated with a better prognosis in the PDAC patients. COX−2, Sp1, and c−Jun showed no significant association with a prognosis in the PDAC patients. The PDAC patients who expressed NF−κB had a better prognosis than the other patients, which suggests that the role of inflammation in PDAC is more complex than previously thought.


We propose a decision-theoretic model akin to Savage (1972) that is useful for defining causal effects. Within this framework, we define what it means for a decision maker (DM) to act as if the relation between the two variables is causal. Next, we provide axioms on preferences and show that these axioms are equivalent to the existence of a (unique) Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) that represents the DM's preference. The notion of representation has two components: the graph factorizes the conditional independence properties of the DM's subjective beliefs, and arrows point from cause to effect. Finally, we explore the connection between our representation and models used in the statistical causality literature (for example, Pearl (1995)).


A process for cracking hydrocarbon feedstock comprising at least one sulfur-containing compound comprising: heating the feedstock and a peroxide containing compound, mixing the heated feedstock and peroxide-containing compound with a fluid and/or a primary dilution steam stream to form a mixture, flashing the mixture to form a vapor phase and a liquid phase which collect as bottoms and removing the liquid phase, separating and cracking the vapor phase, and cooling the product effluent, wherein the oxidized sulfur-containing species are removed as bottoms


The intensification of collaborative networking in the enterprises, wide adoption of mobile applications and other progressive IT technologies by businesses, influence enterprise development. Thus, we focus in this paper onto the evaluating the role and place of communication&collaborative platforms in new generation of enterprise management paradigm dependent onto the social collaboration tools. Explicitly, we consider here integration challenges of main collaboration strategies. Besides, we analyze the role of different advanced IT technologies in the enterprise social collaboration platform. Next, we define impact factors of social networking onto corporate world including placement of a social collaboration layer in new enterprise architecture. And finally, we conclude with presentation of our findings along with further research strategies discussion.


Summary 1. Identifying those areas suitable for recolonization by threatened species is essential to support efficient conservation policies. Habitat suitability models (HSM) predict species' potential distributions, but the quality of their predictions should be carefully assessed when the species-environment equilibrium assumption is violated. 2. We studied the Eurasian otter Lutra lutra, whose numbers are recovering in southern Italy. To produce widely applicable results, we chose standard HSM procedures and looked for the models' capacities in predicting the suitability of a recolonization area. We used two fieldwork datasets: presence-only data, used in the Ecological Niche Factor Analyses (ENFA), and presence-absence data, used in a Generalized Linear Model (GLM). In addition to cross-validation, we independently evaluated the models with data from a recolonization event, providing presences on a previously unoccupied river. 3. Three of the models successfully predicted the suitability of the recolonization area, but the GLM built with data before the recolonization disagreed with these predictions, missing the recolonized river's suitability and badly describing the otter's niche. Our results highlighted three points of relevance to modelling practices: (1) absences may prevent the models from correctly identifying areas suitable for a species spread; (2) the selection of variables may lead to randomness in the predictions; and (3) the Area Under Curve (AUC), a commonly used validation index, was not well suited to the evaluation of model quality, whereas the Boyce Index (CBI), based on presence data only, better highlighted the models' fit to the recolonization observations. 4. For species with unstable spatial distributions, presence-only models may work better than presence-absence methods in making reliable predictions of suitable areas for expansion. An iterative modelling process, using new occurrences from each step of the species spread, may also help in progressively reducing errors. 5. Synthesis and applications. Conservation plans depend on reliable models of the species' suitable habitats. In non-equilibrium situations, such as the case for threatened or invasive species, models could be affected negatively by the inclusion of absence data when predicting the areas of potential expansion. Presence-only methods will here provide a better basis for productive conservation management practices.


Objective: Women and their infants need special protection in war context, as traumatic events can risk maternal mental and obstetric health and compromise infant development. This prospective study examined, first, how exposure to war trauma is associated with maternal mental health in pregnancy and postpartum, obstetric and newborn health, and infant development. Second, it tested the role of maternal mental health and obstetric risks in mediating between war trauma and infant development. Method: Palestinian women (N = 511) from the Gaza strip participated during pregnancy (T1) and at 4 (T2) and 12 (T3) months postpartum. They reported PTSD, depressive, anxiety, and dissociative symptoms, as well as pregnancy complications, newborn health risks such as prematurity, and infant sensorimotor and language development. Results: First, exposure to war trauma was associated with high levels of maternal mental health and complications at pregnancy, and with increased postpartum mental health symptoms, but exposure was not directly associated with newborn health risks or problems in infant development. Second, maternal mental health both in pregnancy and postpartum, but not pregnancy complications or newborn health, mediated the negative impact of war trauma on infant sensorimotor and language development at 12 months. Conclusion: Interventions to protect early child development in war conditions should be tailored to support maternal mental health.


Background Stroke is a leading cause of death and serious, long-term disability across the world. Urgent stroke care treatment is time-sensitive and requires a stroke-trained neurologist for clinical diagnosis. Rural areas, where neurologists and stroke specialists are lacking, have a high incidence of stroke-related death and disability. By virtually connecting emergency department physicians in rural hospitals to regional medical centers for consultations, specialized Web-based stroke evaluation systems (telestroke) have helped address the challenge of urgent stroke care in underserved communities. However, many rural hospitals that have deployed telestroke have not fully assimilated this technology. Objective The objective of this study was to explore potential sources of variations in the utilization of a Web-based telestroke system for urgent stroke evaluation and propose a telestroke assimilation model to improve stroke care performance. Methods An exploratory, qualitative case study of two telestroke networks, each comprising an academic stroke center (hub) and connected rural hospitals (spokes), was conducted. Data were collected from 50 semistructured interviews with 40 stakeholders, telestroke usage logs from 32 spokes, site visits, published papers, and reports. Results The two networks used identical technology (called Remote Evaluation of Acute isCHemic stroke, REACH) and were of similar size and complexity, but showed large variations in telestroke assimilation across spokes. Several observed hub- and spoke-related characteristics can explain these variations. The hub-related characteristics included telestroke institutionalization into stroke care, resources for the telestroke program, ongoing support for stroke readiness of spokes, telestroke performance monitoring, and continuous telestroke process improvement. The spoke-related characteristics included managerial telestroke championship, stroke center certification, dedicated telestroke coordinator, stroke committee of key stakeholders, local neurological expertise, and continuous telestroke process improvement. Conclusions Rural hospitals can improve their stroke readiness with use of telestroke systems. However, they need to integrate the technology into their stroke delivery processes. A telestroke assimilation model may improve stroke care performance.


We have measured the variation of the spatial coherence with plasma column length in a saturated table-top 46.9-nm Ne-like Ar capillary discharge soft x-ray amplifier for lengths up to 16.4 cm. The measurements, which are in good agreement with time dependent wave-optics model computations, provide the first experimental evidence of a monotonic increase of the coherence with length in a soft x-ray amplifier. The variation of the coherence across the beam profile was also studied. Off axis, the coherence is larger in the tangential than in the radial direction. [S0031-9007(97)04235-X]


Cell transplantation has emerged as the most promising therapy for restoring the scarred myocardium in the treatment of heart failure. However, clinical efficacy of (stem) cell therapies is still limited by poor retention rate and survival of injected cells in the ischemic tissue. Here we present a new strategy to deliver microtissues in the treatment of heart dysfunction in order to improve the retention, survival, and integration of the delivered cells. For this purpose, we developed stimuli responsive biodegradable polymer constructs consisting of a thin film of thermosensitive hydrogel coupled to a thin film of non‐responsive polymer. Due to the temperature responsive swelling behavior of the hydrogel layer, the bilayer polymer constructs can roll or unroll at will. Therefore they can potentially be used for efficient encapsulation and protection of cell clusters during delivery, while under physiological conditions, the constructs, named cell wraps, can unroll and expose the delivered microtissue to the ischemic tissue.


PURPOSE
alpha-Melanocyte stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH; Fluka Chemie AG, Geneva, Switzerland) and oxytocin induce erection in rats after intracerebroventricular administration. We studied possible interactions of alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone with mechanisms pertaining to oxytocin or nitric oxide.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We used 78 anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats. Catheters were implanted in the lateral cerebral ventricle or into the subarachnoid space at L6 to S1. Intracavernous pressure was documented and arterial blood pressure was directly measured.

RESULTS
Intracerebroventricular alpha-MSH (3 microg.) produced a mean of 2.6 +/- 0.6 erectile responses (p <0.05) with a mean duration of 3.4 +/- 1.1 minutes (p <0.05). Mean peak intracavernous pressure was 114 +/- 8 cm. water. An intracerebroventricular dose of 100 microg. N-nitro-L-arginine-methyl ester HCl (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, Missouri) given in intracerebroventricular fashion abolished alpha-MSH induced erectile responses, whereas intracerebroventricular administration of 500 ng. of the oxytocin receptor antagonist l-deamino, 2-D-Tyr(Oet), 4-Thr, 8-Orn-OT (Ferring AB, Malmö, Sweden) had no effect. Intracerebroventricular oxytocin (30 ng.) induced a mean of 3.2 +/- 0.9 erectile responses (p <0.05) with a mean peak intracavernous pressure of 81 +/- 8 cm. water and a mean duration of 3.3 +/- 1.1 minutes. Intrathecal alpha-MSH (3 microg.) did not produce any erectile responses, whereas a mean of 5.7 +/- 0.9 responses (p <0.001) with a mean peak intracavernous pressure of 142 +/- 8 cm. water and mean duration of 5.0 +/- 1.3 minutes was obtained with 30 ng. oxytocin intrathecally. Responses induced by intrathecal oxytocin were abolished by 100 microg. N-nitro-L-arginine-methyl ester HCl intrathecally.

CONCLUSIONS
We confirmed by monitoring intracavernous pressure and blood pressure that supraspinal erectile responses induced by alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone involve effects mediated by nitric oxide but are independent of oxytocinergic mechanisms. At the spinal level oxytocin produces erectile responses involving nitric oxide. alpha-Melanocyte stimulating hormone does not seem to have a spinal site of action.


The purpose of this study was to investigate how the urban poor community dwellers in Bangkok manage their own developmcnt projects through community schemes. The main objectives were to explore the needs of the poor, the management constraints, opinions on the successfulness of the schemes, the possibility for their sustainability, and to obtain suggestions for improved methods. There were three groups of respondents to the questionnaires used: the community dwellers, the scheme (project) committee members, and two officers of supporting organisations (NGOs). The numbers involved were 135 community dwellers and 14 committee members as well as the two organisational officers. The results showed that the community dwellers did not in general participate in project preparation, design and implementation with the main barrier being their poverty which required them to spend all their time earning. However, most were satisfied with the intentions of the project committees and noted that the Social Investment Fund (the funding scheme) would reduce their poverty if the project committees could continue the work started and increase the amount of the loans. The committee members are the social capital of the community and were supported by the co-ordinating organisational officers. However, the committee could not use full participatory approaches due to insufficient time, but the members did participate in all stages of the project cycle: preparation, design and implementation. This experience will assist the locals in working for their community in the longer run. Committee members and the organisational officers agreed that the SIF project was effective in bringing about social cohesion and mutual support. The project should be sustainable through its revolving fund even though it includes the poorest people as beneficiaries. A successful outcome will not be seen in the short run as effects of factors such as enhanced education take many years and will depend on the continuing access to credit. The final evaluation will need to be carried out after the project has been in operation for several years.


Scotland's colleges are significant economic institutions in their own right. Their activities help support and sustain employment across the communities that they serve. However, the key contribution that colleges make extends well beyond simply how much they spend or invest in the local economy. Colleges play a crucial role in developing Scotland's growth potential through enhancing human capital – whether that be providing routes from school to work, further training or university; continuous skills-development (often in conjunction with employers); or re-training people for new opportunities. By developing a more productive workforce and boosting participation, colleges help deliver long-term sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Sustainable growth is more important than ever given the new revenue raising responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. This study undertakes a detailed assessment of the contribution to Scotland's economy from a cohort of college learners over the eight years 2008/09-2015/16. To do this we assess the costs and benefits to the economy from graduates leaving college with a nationally recognised qualification. We use the Fraser of Allander's macroeconomic model of the Scottish economy to provide a robust estimate of the impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment and tax revenues. For the period 2008/09-2015/16 graduate cohorts we estimate that: The Scottish economy (as measured by GDP) will be better off by over £20 billion in present value terms (i.e. with future benefits discounted) over the long-term. This corresponds to around an additional £55,000 boost to productivity for the Scottish economy per graduate. The present value of the increase in public sector revenues is estimated to be £6.8 billion. Over the years studied, the total costs to the public sector of investing in these learners through nationally-recognised qualifications was approximately £2.4 billion – just 35% of the cumulative tax revenues generated over the long-term. The investment is estimated to support 13,896 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs in present value terms. The analysis in this report has been conducted by the Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) at the University of Strathclyde. The report was commissioned by Colleges Scotland. Colleges Scotland asked the FAI to estimate the long-term value to the Scottish economy from graduates of Scotland's colleges. The technical analysis, methodology and writing of the results was undertaken independently by the FAI, using their detailed macroeconomic model of the Scottish economy to undertake the analysis.


A combined strategy of an improved simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and genetic algorithm is presented, with the goal of reducing the computational expenses. The improvements made on the SA algorithm include two parts, i.e., the adaptive regulating for the step vector, and the dynamic testing for the equilibrium of the Metropolis process. The proposed strategy has both the advantage of SA algorithm, the ability to avoid being trapped in a local optimum, and that of genetic algorithm, the ability to use the information about the searched states for the next iteration. A practical application on geometry optimization of pole shoes in large salient pole synchronous generators is effectively implemented using the strategy. The numerical results show that the number of iterations used by executing the combined strategy are only about 75% of those by executing basic SA algorithm.


Neural networks have been criticized for their lack of easy interpretation, which undermines confidence in their use for important applications. Here, we introduce a novel technique, interpreting a trained neural network by investigating its flip points. A flip point is any point that lies on the boundary between two output classes: e.g. for a neural network with a binary yes/no output, a flip point is any input that generates equal scores for "yes" and "no". The flip point closest to a given input is of particular importance, and this point is the solution to a well-posed optimization problem. This paper gives an overview of the uses of flip points and how they are computed. Through results on standard datasets, we demonstrate how flip points can be used to provide detailed interpretation of the output produced by a neural network. Moreover, for a given input, flip points enable us to measure confidence in the correctness of outputs much more effectively than softmax score. They also identify influential features of the inputs, identify bias, and find changes in the input that change the output of the model. We show that distance between an input and the closest flip point identifies the most influential points in the training data. Using principal component analysis (PCA) and rank-revealing QR factorization (RR-QR), the set of directions from each training input to its closest flip point provides explanations of how a trained neural network processes an entire dataset: what features are most important for classification into a given class, which features are most responsible for particular misclassifications, how an adversary might fool the network, etc. Although we investigate flip points for neural networks, their usefulness is actually model-agnostic.


This important work brings together the new tools necessary for the prime urban development initiative of the 1980s. The Enterprise Zone, the most important new concept in job vitalization, was formulated in England, ad-vocated by Reagan, and has the sup-port of both parties. This, as well as the National Development Bank, a new Reconstruction Finance Corpora-tion, and the estimation of municipal costs and revenues from job develop-ment are discussed in detail.


This volume, bringing together six ethnographic papers and an epilogue first presented at ASAO sessions in 2009 (Santa Cruz) and 2010 (Alexandria), includes a wealth of ethnographic and historical information on a topic of enduring interest in Pacific studies and anthropology: cargo cults. These fascinating social phenomena undoubtedly have ongoing relevance for ethnographies of Melanesia. In this collection of papers, we learn about the history of the concept itself as well as how contemporary movements articulate world views, political awareness, material desires and even criticism of the now globalized concept of cargo cult itself. The chapters offer remarkable stories of cult activities and interesting arguments about the entanglement of Western desire for both cargo and cults with these Melanesian visions of how to create a prosperous future for themselves.


SUMMARY

In glasshouse pot experiments, uptake of benomyl, thiophanate-methyl and carbendazim from equivalent soil applications (in the range 0–003– 0–035 %a-i- atarateof 2&4 ml/plant) gave equal levels of control of Botrytis lesions developing from inoculations of freshly exposed leaf scars on tomato stems. Spray applications of benomyl to exposed leaf scars controlled infection at concentrations down to 0025 % a.i. The effect of lower concentrations of the stem spray could be markedly enhanced either by the addition of a mineral oil (2 % Actipron) or by a prior soil application of benomyl at a low rate which on its own had little effect on lesion development. Protectant spray applications of glycophene and vinclozolin gave levels of control quite comparable to that of benomyl at equivalent concentrations.

Evidence was obtained that the lesions formed at the artificially-inoculated leaf scars at the top of the stems of young pot-grown tomato plants were larger than those lower down. In spite of this, the level of disease control with soil applications of fungicides containing or generating carbendazim (MBC) was greater at the top than at the bottom, probably because of the normal migration of the fungicides and their accumulation at the extremities of the plant.

In an observation trial in a commercial crop of tomatoes, benomyl applied either as five soil drenches at approximately monthly intervals, or as two drenches followed by five sprays at three-weekly intervals, or as five sprays alone gave marked reductions in plant loss and number of Botrytis stem lesions in both cvs Eurocross BB and Cudlow Cross. Those stem lesions which did develop, however, were generally as large as those on untreated control plants. Five sprays of dichlofiuanid gave similar levels of disease control. All the treatments gave apparently higher yields (statistically untested) in Eurocross BB, but less consistent responses were recorded in Cudlow Cross.


Palm stearin has limited application in natural form because of its high melting point, low plasticity and hence cannot be used directly in margarine production. Palm kernel oil contains short and medium triacylglycerols that can give desired melting characteristics and ensures the stable beta prime (P') polymorph in products. To enhance the PS compatibility, it needs to be blended and/or interesterified with soybean oil to impart desirable properties to the final products. Blends of PS, PKO and SBO at certain proportions were formulated using a mixture design (Design Expert 8.0.4, 2010). All the 10 oil blends were subjected to chemical and enzymatic interesterification. The physicochemical, thermal, polymorphism, microstructural, textural properties and kinetics of isothermal crystallisation were studied. The interesterified (IE) blends had lower slip melting points and solid fat contents due to the randomisation in the TAGs.
Interesterification also promotes significant alterations in the microstructural and polymorphism of blends, resulted in smaller crystals with P' form. The hardness of interesterified blends were reduced following the reaction. Interesterification also altered
the mechanism of crystallisation kinetics of the blends, depending on the composition and the crystallisation temperatures. The optimisation of interesterified ternary blends for trans-free table (TM) and soft margarine (SM) formulations were conducted through graphical multiple responses in Design-Expert. The CIE and EIE for the TM formulation showed slightly different proportions of PS/PKO/SBO with 50/18/32 and 50/22/28 (w/w),
while for SM formulation, both the interesterified blends give the same proportions of 51/0/49 (w/w) of PS/PKO/SBO.


The nature of the antigens stimulating xenogeneic lymphocytes was studied using "primed LD typing". Human lymphocytes were sensitized in vitro against mouse spleen cells and restimulated with spleen cells of mouse strains sharing non-H-2 antigens or various regions of H-2 with the initial stimulating strain. The largest thymidine uptake was caused by restimulation with cells from the specific primary stimulator or an H-2-identical strain. Species-specific antigens or strain-specific antigens carried in the C57BL/10 background account for less than 15% of the total stimulation; a non-H-2 antigen associated with the Mlsalpha genotype caused moderate restimulation, amounting to 25% of the average H-2 response. Within H-2, the strongest restimulation was caused by antigens controlled by the I-A subregion; the K and D regions caused moderate, the I-C and S regions very weak, and the I-B subregion no restimulation. Thus, the genetic control of antigens stimulating xenogeneic and allogeneic MLC responses requires T cells and adherent cells, but in the human-mouse MLC, both cell types must come from the human responder; the majority of the proliferating cells are T cells. It is suggested that allograft and xenograft reactions are fundamentally identical processes, and that the relative vigor of alloaggression may be explained by secondary potentiating mechanisms depending on species-specific interactions between aggressor and target cells.


We explore the distortions in business cycle models arising from inefficiencies in price setting and in the search process matching firms to unemployed workers, and the implications of these distortions for monetary policy. To this end, we characterize the tax instruments that would implement the first best equilibrium allocations and then examine the trade-offs faced by monetary policy when these tax instruments are unavailable. Our findings are that the welfare cost of search inefficiency can be large, but the incentive for policy to deviate from the inefficient flexible-price allocation is in general small. Sizable welfare gains are available if the steady state of the economy is inefficient, and these gains do not depend on the existence of an inefficient dispersion of wages. Finally, the gains from deviating from price stability are larger in economies with more volatile labor flows, as in the U.S.


The effect of Sb addition on microstructure, intermetallic compound (IMC) and mechanical properties of Sn-Ag solder joints is investigated. The compositions of selected solders are Sn2.58Ag, Sn2.82Ag1.75Sb, Sn2.87Ag4.75Sb and Sn2.7Ag8.78Sb. Experimental results show that most of the added Sb are solved in -Sn matrix, and the rest react with the Ag3Sn to form Ag3(Sb,Sn) phase, which contributes to suppress the coarsening of Ag3Sn phase. SbSn phase can be observed in β-Sn matrix as the Sb addition exceeds 4.75% and remains stable during the thermal storage test. The solder microhardness increases with increasing Sb. And the growth rate of interfacial IMC layer decreases as Sb addition increases. EPMA analysis indicates there are some Sb diffusing into the interfacial IMC layer. Shear strength of solder joints are raised by adding Sb. The shear strength by as-soldered condition are 27.8MPa (0%Sb), 29MPa (1.75%Sb), 30.4MPa (4.75%Sb) and 43.4MPa (8.78%Sb) respectively


Variable amounts of olive oil rather than hard fats were used in classic Mediterranean diets. We review the effects of replacing hard fats with olive oils or starchy foods on blood lipoprotein concentrations. The saturated fatty acids lauric, myristic, and palmitic acids raise both low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) somewhat compared with oleic acid. If any fat is replaced by carbohydrates, fasting triglyceride values rise and HDL concentrations fall; effects on LDL depend on the type of fat that is being replaced. Trans isomers of oleic acid lower HDL and raise LDL and lipoprotein(a). The fatty acids in unhydrogenated fish oil potently lower triglycerides but may raise LDL somewhat. When body weight is forcibly kept constant, substitution of unsaturated oils such as olive oil for hard fats rich in saturated or trans fatty acids will produce a more favorable lipoprotein profile than replacement of fat by carbohydrates. However, high-oil diets might lead to obesity, which would undo their favorable effects.


Background Oedema is a common clinical symptom in people with nephrotic syndrome and human albumin has been widely used in the treatment of oedema by increasing vascular volume and this inducing diuresis. It may be used with or without diuretics such as furosemide. However, the quantitative contribution of human albumin in treating oedema is not fully understood. If human albumin were found to be effective and safe in the treatment of oedema, it could help clinicians to develop therapeutic strategies to improve the management of diuretic resistance associated with nephrotic syndrome. Objectives This review aimed to examine the benefits and harms of human albumin infusion for treating oedema associated with nephrotic syndrome. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Kidney and Transplant Register of Studies up to 23 June 2019 through contact with the Information Specialists using search terms relevant to this review. Studies in the Specialised Register are identified through searches of CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE, conference proceedings, the International Clinical Trials Register (ICTRP) Search Portal and ClinicalTrials.gov. Selection criteria We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs evaluating the effect of human albumin infusion compared with placebo or no intervention, human albumin with diuretics compared with diuretic alone, human albumin compared with diuretics and other treatments, clinical outcomes, death, quality of life, kidney function and adverse effects in people with nephrotic syndrome. We excluded cross-over studies but data for the first period was to be included if available. Data collection and analysis Standard methods of the Cochrane Collaboration were used. Two authors independently assessed eligibility, risk of bias, study quality and extracted data. We calculated mean difference (MD) for continuous data with 95% confidence intervals (CI). We assessed the certainty of the evidence using GRADE. Main results One study met our inclusion criteria (26 children with minimal change nephrotic syndrome) and 11 were excluded (nine cross-over studies, one where albumin was not used for nephrotic syndrome and one where authors did not state whether the children had oedema). Risk of bias for the included study was unclear for selection bias, high for performance and detection bias, low for attrition bias, and high for selective reporting. The included study compared albumin plus furosemide with an equal volume of dextrose. Of our prespecified outcomes, the authors reported clinical improvement as weight change, serum sodium and adverse outcomes (blood pressure). The authors reported a greater weight loss in the albumin treated group initially but no difference overall at 10 days. However, the data in the text and the figures were inconsistent so we could not confirm the authors statements (very low certainty evidence). It is uncertain whether albumin infusion improves serum sodium when compared with an equal volume of dextrose (MD 2.00 mEq/L, 95% CI -0.09 to 4.09), systolic blood pressure (MD 2.00 mmHg, 95% CI -3.52 to 7.52) or diastolic blood pressure (MD 2.00 mmHg, 95%CI -4.29 to 8.29). Death, quality of life, and kidney function were not reported. Authors' conclusions We identified only one small study that was relevant to our review, therefore we are unable to draw any conclusions regarding the use of human albumin with or without diuretics in nephrotic syndrome. More RCTs are needed.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common bacterium, Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen capable of infecting humans with compromised natural defenses and causing severe pulmonary disease. It is one of the leading pathogen associated with nosocomial infections. It has a vast arsenal of pathogenicity factors that are used to interfere with host defenses. Pathogenesis in P. aeruginosa facilitates adhesion, modulate or disrupt host cell pathways, and target the extracellular matrix. The propensity of P. aeruginosa to form biofilms further protects it from antibiotics and the host immune system. P. aeruginosa is intrinsically resistant to a large number of antibiotics and can be acquired resistance to many others, making treatment difficult. P. aeruginosa provokes a potent inflammatory response during the infectious process. The majority of mortalities in immunocompromised patients; cystic fibrosis, can be attributed to the progressive decline of lung function resulting from chronic infection by pathogens such as P. aeruginosa. Antibiotic treatment of chronic P. aeruginosa infections may temporarily suppress symptoms; however, they do not eradicate the pathogen. Lung diseases caused by P. aeruginosa are a leading cause of death in immunocompromised individuals as well as in children. Although immunocytes recruitment is critical to augment the host defense, excessive neutrophil accumulation results in life-threatening diseases, such as acute lung injury, as well as acute respiratory distress syndrome. Several virulence factors have been studied for their roles as potential vaccine candidate, although there is currently no clinically accepted vaccine. Understanding host-pathogen interaction is critical for the development of effective therapeutic strategies to control the damage in the lung.


Slovakia's, Lithuania's and Czech's entry into the European Union resulted in their labour market integration in Europe. Factors influencing job satisfaction or employee motivation are identical on the markets of new members of the EU. Satisfaction at work is one of the most rigorous determinants of employee motivation . Sampling unit consisted of 2,369 respondents from Slovakia, 270 respondents from the Czech Republic and 183 respondents from Lithuania. Sampling units were tested using one-way analysis of variance, Fisher F-test. We find out that motivation needs of individual countries are not identical despite 10 years of EU membership. There are significant differences in motivation needs of employees in individual countries. The most exacting needs are those of the respondents in Lithuania and the less exacting ones are those of the respondents in Slovakia. Variety in opinions is also fundamentally different in individual countries. The highest variety is in Slovakia and the lowest one in Lithuania. Atmosphere in the workplace, supervisor's approach, basic salary, good work team, job security, fair appraisal system are the most important motivation factors in all studied countries. However, t he order of importance varies in individual countries. Defining the level of satisfaction in individual countries is the result of the research. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.29.5.13953


We investigate the relationship between locally maximally entangleable (LME) states and W-type states which are equivalent to a W state under stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC). We prove that (i) some special W-type states of three qubits are LME; and (ii) no W-type state of four and more qubits is LME. Our results show that the W state of four and more qubits cannot be prepared by using LME states under SLOCC. However, for three qubits some special LME states can be used to prepare the W state under SLOCC.


General practice p 1106)

Is there an increased risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding associated with antidepressant therapy? Most clinicians probably think this unlikely Indeed, despite spontaneous case reports,1–3 most drug reference sources, including the British National Formulary and the Data Sheet Compendium , do not mention any such association. In this issue, however, de Abajo et al report that there is indeed an increased risk with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (p 1106).4 Moreover, they suggest a possible interaction with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, leading to an increased risk far beyond a simple additive effect. How robust are these results and what are the implications for clinical practice?

Retrospective observational studies are always subject to confounding, and the present case-control study is no exception. However, this study seems to be less prone to it. Upper gastrointestinal bleeding is not generally known to be associated with serotonin reuptake inhibitors, so channelling bias5 is less likely. The more obvious possible confounders were carefully adjusted for and the database used is respected for the quality of its data. Therefore, …


We study the problem of recovering an incomplete $m\times n$ matrix of rank $r$ with columns arriving online over time. This is known as the problem of life-long matrix completion, and is widely applied to recommendation system, computer vision, system identification, etc. The challenge is to design provable algorithms tolerant to a large amount of noises, with small sample complexity. In this work, we give algorithms achieving strong guarantee under two realistic noise models. In bounded deterministic noise, an adversary can add any bounded yet unstructured noise to each column. For this problem, we present an algorithm that returns a matrix of a small error, with sample complexity almost as small as the best prior results in the noiseless case. For sparse random noise, where the corrupted columns are sparse and drawn randomly, we give an algorithm that exactly recovers an $\mu_0$-incoherent matrix by probability at least $1-\delta$ with sample complexity as small as $O(\mu_0rn\log(r/\delta))$. This result advances the state-of-the-art work and matches the lower bound in a worst case. We also study the scenario where the hidden matrix lies on a mixture of subspaces and show that the sample complexity can be even smaller. Our proposed algorithms perform well experimentally in both synthetic and real-world datasets.


In this paper we focus on the problem of automatic classification of melanocytic lesions, aiming at identifying the presence of reticular patterns. The recognition of reticular lesions is an important step in the description of the pigmented network, in order to obtain meaningful diagnostic information. Parameters like color, size or symmetry could benefit from the knowledge of having a reticular or non-reticular lesion. The detection of network patterns is performed with a three-steps procedure. The first step is the localization of line points, by means of the line points detection algorithm, firstly described by Steger. The second step is the linking of such points into a line considering the direction of the line at its endpoints and the number of line points connected to these. Finally a third step discards the meshes which couldn't be closed at the end of the linking procedure and the ones characterized by anomalous values of area or circularity. The number of the valid meshes left and their area with respect to the whole area of the lesion are the inputs of a discriminant function which classifies the lesions into reticular and non-reticular. This approach was tested on two balanced (both sets are formed by 50 reticular and 50 non-reticular images) training and testing sets. We obtained above 86% correct classification of the reticular and non-reticular lesions on real skin images, with a specificity value never lower than 92%.


Stress and high temperature influence titanium alloys specially while they are in contact with other solid metals. This has led to an investigation how Ti-64, Ti-811 and Ti-6242 perform while in contact with copper and gold. A modified form of ASTM/SAE standard for stress corrosion cracking was established and used to test these titanium alloys. Parameters that could affect SCC were also understood like film thickness of copper and gold on the surface the samples. The solid metal contact was also evaluated to understand better the propagation of SCC in titanium alloys. The project was divided into two phases Batch 1 and Batch 2. The results from Batch 1 have been evaluated and compared to a previous study. Whereas in Batch 2 the modified form of ASTM/SAE standard testing was used. Ti-811 was used as the reference material for testing of SCC, the results from Ti-64 and Ti-6242 were evaluated in comparison with results obtained from Ti-811.