Importance
Short-term infusions of single vasodilators, usually given in a fixed dose, have not improved outcomes in patients with acute heart failure (AHF).

Objective
To evaluate the effect of a strategy that emphasized early intensive and sustained vasodilation using individualized up-titrated doses of established vasodilators in patients with AHF.

Design, Setting, and Participants
Randomized, open-label blinded-end-point trial enrolling 788 patients hospitalized for AHF with dyspnea, increased plasma concentrations of natriuretic peptides, systolic blood pressure of at least 100 mm Hg, and plan for treatment in a general ward in 10 tertiary and secondary hospitals in Switzerland, Bulgaria, Germany, Brazil, and Spain. Enrollment began in December 2007 and follow-up was completed in February 2019.

Interventions
Patients were randomized 1:1 to a strategy of early intensive and sustained vasodilation throughout the hospitalization (n = 386) or usual care (n = 402). Early intensive and sustained vasodilation was a comprehensive pragmatic approach of maximal and sustained vasodilation combining individualized doses of sublingual and transdermal nitrates, low-dose oral hydralazine for 48 hours, and rapid up-titration of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, or sacubitril-valsartan.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary end point was a composite of all-cause mortality or rehospitalization for AHF at 180 days.

Results
Among 788 patients randomized, 781 (99.1%; median age, 78 years; 36.9% women) completed the trial and were eligible for primary end point analysis. Follow-up at 180 days was completed for 779 patients (99.7%). The primary end point, a composite of all-cause mortality or rehospitalization for AHF at 180 days, occurred in 117 patients (30.6%) in the intervention group (including 55 deaths [14.4%]) and in 111 patients (27.8%) in the usual care group (including 61 deaths [15.3%]) (absolute difference for the primary end point, 2.8% [95% CI, -3.7% to 9.3%]; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.07 [95% CI, 0.83-1.39]; P = .59). The most common clinically significant adverse events with early intensive and sustained vasodilation vs usual care were hypokalemia (23% vs 25%), worsening renal function (21% vs 20%), headache (26% vs 10%), dizziness (15% vs 10%), and hypotension (8% vs 2%).

Conclusions and Relevance
Among patients with AHF, a strategy of early intensive and sustained vasodilation, compared with usual care, did not significantly improve a composite outcome of all-cause mortality and AHF rehospitalization at 180 days.

Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00512759.


Production of tartaric acid from pomace of some Anatolian grape cultivators was investigated. Two different extraction methods based on either hot water or dilute acid were used. Based on the chemical analysis the amounts of CaCO 3 and CaCl 2 to be added into the extract were calculated and, the tartaric acid salts were precipitated as calcium tartrate. Calcium tartrate was first converted into tartaric acid by sulfuric acid treatment then, the tartaric acid was decolorized by means of active carbon and finally, crystallized under vacuum at 70°C. It was found that the calcium tartrate contents using dilute acid extraction were 1.3%, 1.7%, and 2.0% whereas in hot water extraction they were 2.1%, 2.5%, and 3.1% from Emir, Okuzgozu, and Bogazkere pomaces respectively. Tartaric acid contents corresponding to these calcium tartrates were 43.9%, 43.8%, and 44.1% from Emir, Okuzgozu, and Bogazkere grape pomaces, respectively. Tartaric acid amounts recovered from Emir, Okuzgozu, and Bogazkere grape pomaces processed with dilute acid extraction were 0.4%, 0.5%, and 0.6% and from hot water extraction were 0.6%, 0.8%, and 1.1%, respectively. Of two extraction methods hot water extraction was more efficient.


Globules and pillars, impressively revealed by the Spitzer and Herschel satellites, for example, are pervasive features found in regions of massive star formation. We studied the globule IRAS 20319+3958 in Cygnus X by means of visible and near-infrared imaging and spectroscopy, complemented with mid-infrared Spitzer/IRAC imaging, in order to obtain a census of its stellar content and the nature of its embedded sources. Our observations show that the globule contains an embedded aggregate of about 30 very young ($\lesssim 1$~Myr) stellar objects, for which we estimate a total mass of ~ 90 M_sun. The most massive members are three systems containing early B-type stars. Two of them most likely produced very compact HII regions, one of them being still highly embedded and coinciding with a peak seen in emission lines characterising the photon dominated region (PDR). Two of these three systems are resolved binaries, and one of those contains a visible Herbig Be star. An approximate derivation of the mass function of the members of the aggregate gives hints of a slope at high masses shallower than the classical Salpeter slope, and a peak of the mass distribution at a mass higher than that at which the widely adopted log-normal initial mass function peaks. The emission distribution of H$_2$ and Br gamma, tracing the PDR and the ionised gas phase, respectively, suggests that molecular gas is distributed as a shell around the embedded aggregate, filled with centrally-condensed ionised gas. Both, the morphology and the low excitation of the HII region, indicate that the sources of ionisation are the B stars of the embedded aggregate, rather than the external UV field caused by the O stars of Cygnus OB2. The youth of the embedded cluster, combined with the isolation of the globule, suggests that star formation in the globule was triggered by the passage of the ionisation front.


Mammalian telomeres are nucleoprotein complexes at the end of chromosomes containing a specific protein complex, called shelterin. Shelterin protects chromosome ends from the DNA damage response (DDR), by facilitating the formation of a telomeric capping structure, called the T-loop. During their elongation in S phase, telomeres become transiently uncapped and can be sensed as DNA damage in G2 phase. This leads to the recruitment of DDR factors, such as phosphorylated histone H2AX (γH2AX), to the telomeres forming the so-called, telomere dysfunction-induced foci (TIFs). My PhD work described here, indicates that DNA damage occurring during interphase can persist after entry into mitosis, indicated by the detection of γH2AX at a subset of mitotic telomeres in human and mouse cells. This accumulation of γH2AX to mitotic telomeres is ATM-dependent and the γH2AX-labelled uncapped telomeres that persist, are shorter than the average telomere length for the entire cell population. Most importantly, my work suggests that telomere uncapping, naturally occurring or artificially induced, is detected by two parallel ATM/ATR-dependent pathways at the G2/M transition: a p53/p21-dependent pathway through the ATM/ATR-mediated phosphorylation of p53 at Ser15 and a CHK1/CHK2-dependent pathway that acts through negative regulation of CDC25 phosphatases. In particular, telomere uncapping triggered by TRF2 depletion leads to CHK2-dependent CDC25A degradation, while POT1 depletion results in CHK1-mediated CDC25A and CDC25C degradation. Both pathways act as sensors of unprotected telomeres at the G2/M transition and block cell cycle progression through inhibition of CDK1/Cyclin B complex, allowing telomere re-capping before entry into mitosis. This mechanism protects telomere integrity by the maintenance of a cell cycle stage conducive for capping reactions and thereby prevents genomic instability induced by telomere dysfunction. Finally, I studied the cellular functions of 3 poorly characterised shelterin components, TRF1, RAP1 and TPP1, in telomere protection. TRF1 and to a lesser extent RAP1 were shown to be important for telomere protection by suppressing DDR at the telomeres, while TPP1 was shown to be mainly responsible for the recruitment of the catalytic subunit of telomerase, TERT , to the chromatin, contributing to telomere maintenance. In conclusion, my work on both human and mouse models, reveals an important part of the DDR pathways activated by dysfunctional telomeres, as well as the molecular mechanisms underlying the cell cycle specific regulation of telomere capping, which ensures that only cells with intact telomeres enter mitosis.


Government spending efficiency in providing education and health is evaluated across countries of the world, with a special emphasis on Latin American countries. Using stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis, it is found that important inefficiencies are at hand. Those inefficiencies are only partly explained by environmental factors such as education of the adult population and GDP per head.


In this paper, we investigate the so called 'consumption puzzle' that the volatility of consumption relative to income is higher in emerging countries than in the developed countries from the viewpoint of two well-known theories that permanent shock mainly contributes to this phenomenon or transitory shock can almost explain the fluctuation of consumption. In order to conduct investigation, we estimated a small open economy RBC DSGE model using Korean and Mexican data and analyzed the estimated results through the methods of variance decomposition, impulse response and simulation. We found that it is hard to say that the excessive consumption volatility of all the emerging countries are affected by the same source in that each exogenous shock's role varies by countries. While in Mexico transitory shock combined with financial friction induces the excess consumption volatility, in Korea permanent shock does. Especially in Korea permanent shock combined with financial friction can explain not only the excessive consumption volatility but also the change of interest rate, which is clearly different result from the previous studies.


This tutorial review summarizes chemical, biophysical and cellular biological properties of formally substitution-inert "non-covalent" polynuclear platinum complexes (PPCs). We demonstrate how modulation of the pharmacological factors affecting platinum compound cytotoxicity such as cellular accumulation, reactivity toward extracellular and intracellular sulfur-ligand nucleophiles and consequences of DNA binding is achieved to afford a profile of biological activity distinct from that of covalently-binding agents. The DNA binding of substitution-inert complexes is achieved by molecular recognition through minor groove spanning and backbone tracking of the phosphate clamp. In this situation, the square-planar tetra-am(m)ine Pt(ii) coordination units hydrogen bond to phosphate oxygen OP atoms to form bidentate N-O-N motifs. The modular nature of the polynuclear compounds results in high-affinity binding to DNA and very efficient nuclear condensation. These combined effects distinguish the phosphate clamp as a third mode of ligand-DNA binding, discrete from intercalation and minor-groove binding. The cellular consequences mirror those of the biophysical studies and a significant portion of nuclear DNA is compacted, a unique effect different from mitosis, senescence or apoptosis. Substitution-inert PPCs display cytotoxicity similar to cisplatin in a wide range of cell lines, and sensitivity is indifferent to p53 status. Cellular accumulation is mediated through binding to heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG) allowing for possibilities of tumor selectivity as well as disruption of HSPG function, opening new targets for platinum antitumor agents. The combined properties show that covalently-binding chemotypes are not the unique arbiters of cytotoxicity and antitumor activity and meaningful antitumor profiles can be achieved even in the absence of Pt-DNA bond formation. These dual properties make the substitution-inert compounds a unique class of inherently dual-action anti-cancer agents.


The effect of the properties of starting boron powders on the superconducting properties of MgB2 has been studied. The 92% and 96% pure powders produce lower surface reactivity and larger particle size than the 99% boron powder, as can be seen from Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results, indicating that the low purity powders cannot be used to archive the same superconducting properties as those of samples made from pure 99% boron powder. However, the purity of 92% and 96% boron powders can be improved by using a simple chemical process, leading to enhanced magnetic critical current densities Jc. From x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement, oxide impurity has been observed, which might be originated from the B2O3 phase in the boron powders. In order to get high performance MgB2, it is obviously important to control the phase composition and microstructure of amorphous boron starting powders and solid reaction conditions.


Abstract: Reconstruction projects in Beirut, since the end of Lebanon's civil war, have drawn international attention and prestigious investors. Examples include the Four Seasons Hotel and the waterfront Marina Towers, which sit on land worth over US$300 million. However, such apparent prosperity is undermined by the fact that 60% of the Lebanese population lives below the poverty line. Text: Reconstruction projects in Beirut, since the end of Lebanon's civil war have drawn international attention and prestigious investors. Examples include the Four Seasons Hotel and the waterfront Marina Towers, which sit on land worth over US$300 million. However, such apparent prosperity is undermined by the fact that 60 percent of the Lebanese population lives below the poverty line. Lebanon is an economic paradox. Skyscrapers stand next to devastated churches and mosques. Upperclass citizens tote cellular phones and dress only in the latest European fashions; while close by poorer individuals sell vegetables and crackers in the streets to survive. If serious economic reform is not implemented soon to deal with Lebanon's tremendous economic challenges created by its civil war and subsequent spending, Lebanon's economy will be headed for collapse. The eruption of a civil war in Lebanon in 1975 can be traced to the historical presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. After 1943, Lebanon accepted 300,000 of the one million displaced Palestinian refugees. By 1975, these refugees had developed a sizable arsenal due to Soviet backing, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization decided to dislodge the Christian-dominated government, which by then controlled a population more Muslim than Christian. Foreign intervention by Syria and Israel prolonged the civil war, which lasted 15 years. The economic consequences of the war were devastating. It destroyed the major infrastructure and reduced the work force: 200,000 workers died, 1.5 million fled abroad, and 100,000 were permanently disabled. Foreign debt rose to several billion dollars, and a majority of foreign businesses and a large percentage of domestic businesses left the country. Not surprisingly, the civil war has required extraordinary reconstruction efforts. These efforts, advanced by the former Hariri government in power from 1992 to 1998, led to an external debt that now stands at US$20 billion, or 120 percent of Lebanon's current GDR. Yet only part of the massive reconstruction effort (estimated to cost US$60 billion) has been completed. The government of President Emile Lahoud, elected in November of 1998, faces major economic challenges requiring immediate attention. The previous government, led by billionaire businessman Rafiq Hariri, focused primarily on economic improvement in order to regain Beirut's pre-war status as the leading business and financial center of the Middle East. To accomplish this goal, Hariri's government needed to rebuild Beirut as a technologically advanced city, develop a modern infrastructure, solicit foreign investment and business by creating an open free market, stabilize the Lebanese pound, and offer the lowest corporate tax of any non-oil country in the Middle East. These objectives required great financial expenditures that the cash starved Lebanese government did not possess and could not generate from taxes in the post-war years. The Hariri government's solution to this problem soliciting foreign loans and investment was simple and in the short run achieved the government's goals at minimal political cost. Unfortunately, this policy has created the present economic peril. The drive to modernize Beirut cost US$7 billion in interest on the national debt between 1992 and 1998 and is estimated to cost US$2.6 billion for 1999 alone, an increase of 21 percent from the debt accumulated in 1998. Meanwhile, an expected partnership agreement with the European Union that will assign specific tariff reductions should make the Lebanese economy more open, However, this tax reduction could pose a major problem as customs dues constitute more than half of the government's current revenues. …


The study examines the banana production operations of Chiquita in the remote region of Changuinola in Panama and contrasts it with experiences from Guatemala and Costa Rica. Of particular interest are the local context and the socio-economic framework conditions in which the company is operating. They are essential to assessing the embeddedness of the company in the region. Moreover, they influence the potential of the enterprise to provide positive sustainability effects through its business activities for the local community, the local economy and the local environment. The study analyses how the use of technology, standards and partnerships can help to mitigate the significant social and ecological problems in the indigenous communities in Panama. It also highlights which areas the Chiquita company would need to address to improve its sustainability and further embed the company in Panama. The main recommendations are deduced from interviews with local experts and workers in the banana plantations.


In India and other large emerging economies, rural markets hold great promise for boosting corporate earnings. Companies that sell in the countryside, however, face poor infrastructure, widely dispersed customers, and other challenges. To better understand the obstacles and how to overcome them, the authors--researchers with Accenture--conducted extensive surveys and interviews with Indian business leaders in multiple industries. Their three-year study revealed several successful strategies for increasing revenues and profits in rural markets: Start with a good distribution plan. The most effective approaches are multipronged--for example, adding extra layers to existing networks and engaging local partners to create new ones. Mine data to identify prospective customers. Combining site visits, market surveys, and GIS mapping can help companies discover new buyers Forge tight bonds with channel partners. It pays to spend time and money helping distributors and retailers improve their operations. Create durable ties with customers. Companies can build loyalty by addressing customers' welfare and winning the trust of community leaders. INSET: Organizing to Serve Rural Markets.


Laser machining is an inexpensive and fast alternative to conventional microfabrication techniques that produce complicated three-dimensional, hierarchical structures. One of the major issues plaguing the use of laser micromachining to manufacture commercially usable devices is the formation of debris during cutting and the difficulty in removing these debris efficiently after the machining process. For silicon substrates, this debris can interfere with surrounding components and cause problems during bonding with other substrates by preventing uniform conformal contact.
 This study summarizes several post-process techniques that can be employed for complete debris removal during etching of Silicon samples using an Nd/YVO4 pulsed (∼ 1–3 kW) UV laser, detailing the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. A method that was found to be particularly promising to achieve very smooth surfaces with almost complete debris removal was the use of PDMS as a high rigidity protective coating. In the process, a novel technique to strip PDMS from Silicon surface was developed and a study was carried out to optimize the process. The result of this study is very valuable to the microfabrication industry where smooth and clean substrate surfaces are highly desirable. This work could facilitate adoption and significant improvements to the process of using UV lasers to create microstructures for commercial applications as well as in a research environment.


Investigation at scene is the key issue to Scene Traffic Accident Reconstruction(TAR). Although the photogrammetry technique is widely applied in China due to its convenience and lower cost, it can only provide the final state of the traffic accidents. In this paper, a novel method based on the time difference of arrival (TDOA) technique was proposed to monitor the location of the vehicles passing the accident-prone section on the highway. The methodology of application of TDOA to the Traffic accident scene investigation was proposed, and the arrangement of sensors on the accident-prone sections of the selected freeway is discussed. Based on the coordinates collected by TDOA receivers, real-time position of the each vehicle moving on the accident-prone section could be extracted respectively and when the accidents happen, the traces of the vehicles involved would be obtained. It could be concluded that this method is important supplement to photogrammetry technique during accident scene investigation and could make the forensic judgment of accident responsibility more accurate.


Intra- and extracellular acid-base status and changes of coelomic P CO CO2 were investigated during recovery following 24 h of anaerobiosis in Sipunculus nudus L. Metabolism, gas exchange and acid-base status were compared in animals collected during March and October. Anaerobiosis led to an uncompensated metabolic acidosis, the degree of the acidosis depending on the metabolic rate of the animals. During initial recovery in March animals, the acidosis was transiently aggravated in the extracellular, but not in the intracellular, compartment, indicating an efficient regulation of intracellular pH as soon as oxygen was available in the coelomic fluid. The extracellular acidosis was predominantly of non-respiratory origin. The non-respiratory part of the acidosis is attributed to the repletion of the phospho-l-arginine pool. The proton yield calculated from phosphagen resynthesis was highly correlated in time and in quantity to the observed negative base excess in the extracellular compartment. In October animals, strombine accumulation may have contributed to the acidosis that develops during recovery. The amount of succinate, propionate, and acetate in the coelomic plasma had already decreased when the acidosis developed. This discrepancy supports the conclusion that protons move between the body compartments independent of the distribution of anionic metabolites. The respiratory part of the acidosis is attributed to the repayment of an oxygen debt. The increase of P CO CO2 is higher in October than in March animals, probably because of differences in metabolic rate The time course of acid-base disturbances and their compensation is discussed in relation to the time course of metabolic events during recovery and to the priorities of the different processes observed.


Metamaterials have attracted a lot of attention over the last decade 1 and are destined to be the generic basis of applications in many areas of life. They are artificial composites and can be constructed in a variety of ways using some forms of artificial atoms and molecules, which can be termed metaparticles. In the beginning, the emphasis was on microwaves, and a metaparticle consisted of a metal wire combined with a metal split ring. If such metaparticles are arranged at a distance apart greater than their size, then the emergent bulk metamaterial is an average, effective medium that can display a negative permittivity and acquire magnetic properties that have a negative permeability. It is recognised now that many combinations of these negative properties can be created and this beautiful combination of electric and magnetic properties has stimulated a vast global interest. 2,3 Indeed, there is now a major effort to create materials suitable for the optical frequency range and there is, therefore, a major interest in all aspects of how to deploy nanoparticles, for metamaterial purposes, as opposed to wires and split rings. The latter could be scaled down with considerable care and effort but, in general, many new metamaterials will be collections of nanoparticle dispersions, leading to fascinating, collective, average behaviour. In this context, SPIE hosts the Optics and Photonics conference each year in San Diego, California. Considered the largest international meeting of its type in North America, it contains a significant number of constituent conferences on nanoscience and nanoengineering. It is a pleasure to present some pivotal papers from these conferences devoted to metamaterials and metallic nanostructures here as a special section to this journal.


The clinical and postmorten anatomical data in a group of ten patients with occlusive cerebrovascular disease in the 15- to 40-year group were studied. The occlusion of the peripheral supply artery in the brain in all cases was found to be due to thromboemboli generated from focal thrombotic lesions situated proximally in the aorta and elastic arterial trunks arising from it. These central thrombotic lesions were caused by a transient form of focal aortoarteritis that primarily affects medial elastic tissue underlying the thrombi. This is a new disease entity, distinct from Takayasu's and other forms of segmental aortitis. The pathogenesis of occlusive cerebrovascular disease in the young remains obscure in a majority of cases. In this context, the definition of this new entity is an important contribution to the understanding of nonatherogenic occlusive cerebrovascular disease.


ABSTRACT We report a coral-sponge dominated reef lithofacies in detrital boulders of carbonate-clast conglomerate from the Olds Ferry terrane, Blue Mountains Province, Willow Spring locality, northeastern Oregon. This discovery constitutes the first report of Triassic reefal lithofacies from the Olds Ferry terrane. Corals at the site include a high-growing, dendroid-phaceloid species that acted as a framework or sediment baffle, and a low-growing, cerioid, encrusting coral and a sponge that acted as sediment binders. The co-occurrence of coral taxa in the Wallowa intraoceanic arc and Olds Ferry pericratonic arc terranes suggests that during the Late Triassic, these regions were in proximity to one another. With this report, Upper Triassic carbonate rocks are known from all of the major terranes of the Blue Mountains Province and a Tethyan affinity is established for the fauna of the Olds Ferry terrane. We suggest that the source of this Late Triassic coral-sponge reef fauna in the upper member of the Huntington Formation was intrabasinal and that the source rocks are no longer exposed in the region. Numerous possible regional source areas for these detrital limestone clasts rule out the need to call upon an exotic terrane source area.


In this paper, we propose a refined scene text detector with a novel Feature Enhancement Network (FEN)for Region Proposal and Text Detection Refinement. Retrospectively, both region proposal with only 3 x 3 sliding-window feature and text detection refinement with single scale high level feature are insufficient, especially for smaller scene text. Therefore, we design a new FEN network with task-specific, low and high level semantic features fusion to improve the performance of text detection. Besides, since unitary position-sensitive RoI pooling in general object detection is unreasonable for variable text regions, an adaptively weighted position-sensitive RoI pooling layer is devised for further enhancing the detecting accuracy. To tackle the sample-imbalance problem during the refinement stage,we also propose an effective positives mining strategy for efficiently training our network. Experiments on ICDAR2011 and 2013 robust text detection benchmarks demonstrate that our method can achieve state-of-the-art results, outperforming all reported methods in terms of F-measure.


To the Editor: I read with interest the article by Memtsoudis et al. in the recent issue of ANESTHESIOLOGY on perioperative outcomes after unilateral and bilateral total knee arthroplasty. When the authors discuss about the issue of benefits and risks of simultaneous versus staged bilateral total knee arthroplasty, they have quoted an article by Sliva et al. In the original article by Sliva et al., the authors have evaluated 332 patients who had bilateral knee replacement, of which 241 patients had staggered bilateral knee replacement with 4 –7 days apart between the procedures during a single hospitalization. They found that patients who had sequential bilateral total knee replacement and staged bilateral knee replacement had 2.5 times more complications than the ones who had staggered bilateral knee replacement. The rates of complications for staggered bilateral knee replacement, sequential bilateral knee replacement, and staged bilateral knee replacement were 13, 35, and 31%, respectively. Major complications seemed to have occurred mostly in patients with staged bilateral knee arthroplasty. Hence, they had concluded that staggered bilateral total knee arthroplasty with procedures performed 4 –7 days apart in a single hospitalization was a safe option. In the article by Memtsoudis et al., the aforementioned article by Sliva et al. has been quoted wrongly as "in a study including 267 patients who underwent bilateral total knee arthroplasty during the same hospitalization, Sliva et al. found that bilateral procedures performed 4 –7 days apart were associated with higher risk of mortality and morbidity when compared with simultaneously performed procedures." I am surprised by how the main conclusions in the original article could be completely misquoted. I hope in future, such inaccurate statements will be addressed right at the editing stage.


A microwave processing technology was applied to degrade saponins from the stems and leaves of Panax notoginseng. Six transformation products (1–6), named 20(S)-ginsenoside Rg3 (1), 20(R)-ginsenoside Rg3 (2), notoginsenoside SFt3 (3), ginsenoside Rk1 (4), ginsenoside Rg5 (5), and 20(S)-ginsenoside Rh2 (6) were isolated and identified from a microwave processed extract of the stems and leaves of P. notoginseng (MEL). This transformation method was also applied for producing the minor ginsenosides in flowers, seeds and pedicels of P. notoginseng. The extract and compounds 1–6 in MEL were evaluated in vitro for anticancer and anticoagulant activities. The results showed that the MEL extract and transformation products had outstanding inhibitory activities against human cervical cancer Hela and lung cancer A549 cells. The strongest inhibitory effect was observed for 20(S)-Rh2 (6) with an IC50 value of 8.23 mM in Hela cells. Moreover, the results showed that the MEL significantly prolonged prothrombin time in a concentration-dependent manner. The anticoagulant effect of the MEL improved with the increased contents of Rk1, Rg5, and SFt3.


A fine resolution and process scalable CMOS time-to-digital converter (TDC) architecture is presented. A 6-bit fine resolution TDC design using the new architecture is evaluated for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging application. The TDC architecture uses a hierarchical delay processing structure to achieve single cycle latency and high speed of operation. The fine resolution converter, realized in 130 nm CMOS, is designed to operate over a reference clock frequency of 500 MHz but can be scaled to multi GHz operation through time interleaving. Without external calibration, the TDC is used as a 5-bit fine resolution converter with 4.65 ENOB (effective number of bits). Under this condition, the 6-bit TDC has an INL (integral non-linearity) measurement of less than 1.45 LSB and a DNL (differential non-linearity) measurement of less than 1.25 LSB. With external calibration, a reduction of more than 50% in INL/DNL nonlinearities is demonstrated improving the ENOB to 5.5 bits, pushing the TDC to a 6-bit fine resolution operation. The TDC has a 31 ps timing resolution and power consumption of less than 1 mW. The design is believed to be the fastest and the lowest power consuming fine resolution TDC in the literature.


OBJECTIVE
To determine prevalence of the contralateral radiographic infrapatellar fat pad sign and contralateral radiographic degenerative sign (degenerative changes) and evaluate both signs as risk factors for subsequent contralateral cranial cruciate ligament (CrCL) rupture in dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.

ANIMALS
96 dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture and 22 dogs with bilateral CrCL rupture.

PROCEDURES
Dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture were classified as having normal (n = 84) or abnormal (12) contralateral stifle joints on the basis of joint palpation. Associations between potential predictive variables and rates of subsequent contralateral CrCL rupture were evaluated.

RESULTS
Of the 84 dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture in which the contralateral stifle joint was palpably normal, 29 (34.5%) had a contralateral fat pad sign and 31 (36.9%) had a degenerative sign. All dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture in which the contralateral stifle joint was palpably abnormal had a contralateral fat pad sign and degenerative sign. The contralateral fat pad sign was the most important risk factor for subsequent rupture of the contralateral CrCL. For dogs with unilateral CrCL rupture and palpably normal contralateral stifle joint with and without a contralateral fat pad sign, median time to subsequent rupture was 421 and 1,688 days, respectively, and the 3-year probability of subsequent rupture was 85.3% and 24.9%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Bilateral stifle joint radiography should be performed for all dogs with CrCL rupture. Bilateral stifle joint arthroscopy should be considered for dogs with a contralateral fat pad sign.


We performed a case-controlled study to study the immunoreactivity patterns and staining intensity of alphavbeta5 and alphavbeta6 integrins in ectopic and eutopic endometrium from women with endometriosis and compared them with those in normal control endometrium. Forty eutopic and ectopic samples from patients with endometriosis were compared with 12 control endometrial samples. Staining was evaluated using a computerized image analysis system by a blinded, independent observer. The immunoreactivity patterns for both alphavbeta5 and alphavbeta6 were very similar. In eutopic endometrium from women with or without endometriosis, the immunostaining intensity score for both integrins was stronger during the secretory than the proliferative phase. Immunoreactivity in endometriosis was greater than in eutopic endometrium. There were no significant menstrual cycle-related staining differences in endometriosis. The percentage of blood vessels immunolabeled was greater in endometriosis than eutopic endometrium from endometriosis patients and greater in eutopic endometrium from these patients compared with control endometrium. Ectopic tissue from patients with stages I and II endometriosis showed significantly higher staining intensity than ectopic tissue from patients with stages III and IV disease. Determination of the specific functional consequences of the differences observed in alphavbeta5 and alphavbeta6 integrin immunostaining may provide an increased understanding regarding the pathogenesis of endometriosis.


Diverting the fecal stream has been considered to benefit the course of Crohn's disease. Clinical signs and symptoms have not, however, been distinguished previously from the objective inflammatory changes in the distal segment. We reviewed the course of 16 consecutive patients with Crohn's disease in whom sigmoidoscopy showed normal mucosa at the time of diversion and who underwent an ileostomy or colostomy, the rectal segment being left in place. As early as 3 months after diversion, all 16 patients showed progressive friability, ulceration, and exudation in the retained rectum. Stricture occurred in four and lead to abdominoperineal resection in three. Four of eight patients with only moderate inflammation on sigmoidoscopy underwent reanastomosis which was followed by a return to a normal-appearing rectal mucosa. The rectal segment inflammed after diversion rarely shows the histological characteristics of Crohn's disease when resected. This leads us to suspect that the disorder of nonspecific "diversion colitis" might account for this phenomenon entirely, or at least it may accelerate the Crohn's disease process. Continuity of the intestinal tract should be maintained in the course of Crohn's disease surgery if feasible. If a diversion is clinically warranted, reanastomosis should be considered as early as possible despite progressive inflammation of the rectal mucosa.


This study examines the local and indirect impacts of the 2005-2010 armed conflict on under- five years' old children's nutrition and health outcomes in Chad. We exploit spatial variation of the number of attacks at the district level and assess the indirect impacts of mother's exposure to the conflict on their less than five years old children's anthropometrics. We use unique dataset from the 2014/2015 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS-MICS) with GPS location of households' clusters combined with the 2005-2010 ACLED geo-localised data on armed conflict in Chad. Our empirical analysis establishes a negative and significant impact of armed conflict on children's anthropometric Z scores as well as their likelihood of stunting, underweight, and wasting. We also find that mothers exposed to the conflict are more likely to have children with lower weight and size at birth. Our results are robust after purging the conflict-induced migration effects. Key mechanisms include mother's access and utilisation of healthcare facilities and services. We found that mothers who were exposed to the conflict were neither likely to deliver their children in hospital, nor likely to take iron pills or Vitamin A during and after pregnancy. It is therefore crucial for the Chadian government and the international humanitarian community to implement genuine health policy interventions directed to mothers at childbearing age (15-49) in order to sustain their access and provision of health care facilities and services during and shortly after the end of conflict.


A research about tidal analysis at Kuala Langsa and Pusong Island with different physical condition had been done, where Kuala Langsa is an estuary and Pusong Island is a coastal area in Kota Langsa District, Aceh Province. The purpose of this research is to determine tidal type on both locations. This research used secondary data which is obtained from Kuala Langsa – Pusong Island Hydro – Oceanographic Survey and primary data which is taken about 29 hours at both locations.  Admiralty method had been using to analyze the tides and from this method can be obtain amplitude and phase lag based on Formhazl number. The result of this research according to Formhazl number for Kuala Langsa and Pusong Island are 0.12 and 0.23 respectively. Both values of Formhazl number of the locations are smaller than 0.25, it concluded that both locations had showed same tidal type, i.e. semidiurnal. The phase lag for tidal types in Kuala Langsa for M 2 is 359 0 while for Pusong Island is 330 0 . While for the amplitude of both locations for M 2 is 56 cm for Kuala Langsa and 48 cm for Pusong Island. It is shown that the amplitudes at Kuala Langsa are a little bit higher than that of Pusong Island. The difference is suspect due to the different physical condition of the observation areas


Analysis of complementarity determining region 3 (CDR3) length of T lymphocyte receptors (TCRs) by immunoscope spectratyping technique has been used successfully to investigate the diversity of TCR in autoimmune diseases and infection diseases. In this study, we investigated the patterns of CDR3 length distribution for all 32 TCR AV gene families in human peripheral blood lymphocytes of four normal volunteers by the immunoscope spectratyping technique. It was found that PCR products exhibited an obscure band on 1.5% agarose gel electrophoresis. Each TCR AV family exhibited more than 8 bands on 6% sequencing gel electrophoresis. The CDR3 spectratyping of all TCR AV families showed a standard Gaussian distribution with different CDR3 length, and the expression frequency of CDR3 was similar among the gene families. Most of CDR3 in TCR AV family recombine in frame. However, some of the CDR3 showed out-of frame gene rearrangement. Additionally, we found that in some of TCR AV families there were 18 amino acid discrepancies between the longest CDR3 and shortest CDR3. These results may be helpful to further study the recombination mechanism of human TCR genes, the TCR CDR3 gene repertoire, and the repertoire drift in health people and disease state.


We evaluate the relative performance of formal and informal sectors in India by looking into their productivity difference. Recognizing the intersectoral linkages in the economy, the competitive general equilibrium prices are computed; these signal the productivities. Our model synthesizes frontier analysis with the general equilibrium approach to generate shadow prices. The formal activities are found to be more productive than the informal. However, the informal services sector is as efficient as the formal one. There would be an overall productivity gain of 22% to the economy if factors were allocated to productive activities. The shadow prices from the model indicate that the formal capital and informal capital are scarce factors, while it has been the opposite for formal (regular) and informal (casual) labour. Formal labour is more productive than its informal counterpart; formal capital and informal capital are equally productive.


: A number of data concerning the central action of mitochondrial toxins, substances impairing mitochondrial synthesis of ATP and thus compromising cellular energy status, has emerged within last years. 3-Nitropropionic acid (3-NPA) is an irreversible inhibitor of succinate dehydrogenase and mitochondrial complex II. The experimental administration of 3-NPA may lead to selective neuronal loss and chorea-like behavioral alterations but, as was recently shown, it also evokes clonic convulsions in rodents. The gathered data suggest that disturbed mitochondrial energy metabolism might initiate the chain of events culminating in seizure episode and that 3-NPA might become a useful tool in studying "mitochondrial" seizures. It has been hypothesized that the resistance to standard anticonvulsive therapy occurring among high proportion of epilepsy sufferers may result from the impairment of mitochondrial energy status due to either genetic predispositions or environmental influences.


Dynamic interactions of hydrological and geomorphological processes in the fluvial system result in accumulated deposit on the bed because the capacity to carry sediment has been exceeded. The bed load of the Aceh fluvial system is primarily generated by mechanical weathering resulting in boulders, pebbles, and sand, which roll or bounce along the river bed forming temporary deposits as bars on the insides of meander bends, as a result of a loss of transport energy in the system. This dynamic controls the style and range of deposits in the Aceh River. This study focuses on the spatial distribution of bed-load transport of the Aceh River. Understanding the spatial distribution of deposits facilitates the reconstruction of the changes in controlling factors during accumulation of deposits. One of the methods can be done by sieve analysis of sediment, where the method illuminates the distribution of sediment changes associated with channel morphology under different flow regimes. Hence, the purpose of this mini review is to investigate how the sediment along the river meander spatially dispersed. The results demonstrate that channel deposits in the Aceh River are formed from four different type of materials: pebble deposited along upstream left bank; sand located on the upstream, downstream, and along meander belts; and silt and clay located along the cut bank of meander bends. Because of different depositional pattern, the distribution of the sediment along the river can be used as a surrogate to identify bank stability, as well as to predict critical geometry for meander bend initiation


erythroblastosis with the exception of the first and occasionally the second child when the antibodies in the mother do not become sufficiently strong to produce noticeable damage. In the case of a heterozygous father (Rhrh) one might expect a more favourable result, because a proportion of the offspring should be Rh-negative and hence immune. In the aforementioned article this desirable result appears to be rare; thus there was not a single Rh-negative child of a series of fortyfour Rh-negative mothers, and, with one exception, no normal child was produced by a mother who had once given birth to an infant showing manifestations of erythroblastosis. In view of these results it may be worth while drawing attention to the following case:


Purpose Aldosterone/salt treatment (ALDOST) is associated with increased urinary losses of Ca 2+ and Zn, which can be prevented by spironolactone (S), an aldosterone receptor antagonist. The hypercalciuria and hyperzincuria of aldosteronism lead to hypocalcemia and the appearance of secondary hyperparathyroidism and to hypozincemia. Parathyroid hormone (PTH) promotes intracellular Ca 2+ overloading in diverse tissues, including the myocardium. In addition, aldosteronism is associated with increased expression and activity of cardiomyocyte L-type Ca 2+ channels. We hypothesized that aldosteronism leads to increased cardiomyocyte cytosolic [Ca 2+ ] i and is accompanied by increased cytosolic [Zn 2+ ] i , which could be prevented by S or attenuated by a Ca 2+ channel blocker. Methods and Results Cardiomyocytes were harvested by retrograde collagenase perfusion of the isolated, crystalloid-perfused rat heart. Cells were loaded in the dark with a Ca 2+ (Fura-2)- or Zn (FluoZin-3)-sensitive fluorescent probe for 1 hour with fluorescence measured, respectively, with a spectrophotometer or flow cytometer. Only viable cells deesterify Fura-2 into its active form; cell membrane integrity, a marker of cell viability, was determined by propidium iodide labeling. Four experimental groups were studied: age-/gender-matched controls (C); 4 weeks aldosterone (0.75 μg/h by minipump) + 1% NaCl in drinking water (A); 4 weeks A + S (150 mg/kg/d by gavage); and 4 weeks A + amlodipine (CCB, 5 mg/kg/d by gavage). We found ( p † A + S versus A, ‡ A + CCB vs A; mean ± SEM): Conclusions Cardiomyocyte [Ca 2+ ] i and [Zn] i each rose in response to aldosteronism. In the case of Ca 2+ , this occurred via Ca 2+ channel entry, which could be blocked by either S or CCB but which do not discriminate between PTH-mediated or increased L-type channel expression. In the case of Zn, a CCB attenuated but did not prevent the rise in [Zn] i , suggesting that Zn transporters are also involved in its entry. The functional significance of Ca 2+ and Zn loading of cardiomyocytes in aldosteronism now needs to be addressed and may adversely affect the heart9s electrical behavior and antioxidant defenses.


Headache is a common disease that occurs in almost all kinds of people due to tension, changing lifestyle, and symptoms of other serious issues in the human body. The correct diagnosis of this lacks due to complex test procedures, irregular monitoring, visiting the physicians as an outpatient, and inexperience of physicians. To assist the specialists in detecting the accurate types of headaches, the proposed system is developed to classify the types of headaches using Modified Neural Network. The Introduction of the Brilliant Binary Chromosome Algorithm (BBCA) will generate brilliant chromosomes with the filter-based method that will give the most relevant features. The optimization of resource handling and reduced computational time is achieved by using the Fitness Based Crossover Algorithm (FBCA). The public Migbase dataset is taken for the study. Migbase contains collective information on headache attacks from 849 patient data from three different hospitals in Turkey. This Customized approach of the Genetic Algorithm is proposed to extract the elite features with a significant effect. The well designed modified Artificial Neural network model is implemented as the classifying model. The entire implementation of the proposed work is performed in Python 3.7 environment from which it is confirmed that the suggested novel combined methodology (CGA & MANN) will give optimal results compared with other current research methodologies concerning the proposed method. The proposed customized feature selection method improved the performance of the migraine classifier, producing a robust system that achieved over 98% accuracy. The results suggest that the proposed methods can be used to support specialists in the classification of migraines in patients undergoing treatment. Keywords-Migraine; Brillian Binary Chromosome; Fitness Based Crossover; Artificial Neural Network; Feature Selection


OBJECTIVE
In an effort to determine the safety and efficacy of laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) in patients who have received neoadjuvant hormonal therapy (NHT), our initial series of 65 patients undergoing successful LRP was analyzed, specifically comparing 5 patients who received neoadjuvant hormonal therapy to 60 who did not.

METHODS
From March 2000 to March 2002, 68 patients were scheduled for LRP. Three cases, none post-NHT, were converted to open radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP). Clinical and pathologic data were recorded on the remaining 65 patients, 5 of who had received NHT. Forty-two bilateral and 16 unilateral nerve sparing LRP were performed in the non-NHT cohort, and 3 bilateral and 1 unilateral nerve sparing LRP in the NHT cohort.

RESULTS
The mean patient age, preoperative prostate specific antigen (PSA), clinical stage, and biopsy grade were similar for the NHT and the non-NHT LRP cohorts. The mean estimated blood loss (EBL) and serum hemoglobin decrease (preoperative to postoperative day 1) were lower in the NHT cohort than the non-NHT cohort: 160 mL and 2.4 g/dL vs. 317 mL and 3.1 g/dL, respectively. The mean operative time and hospital stay were similar: 5.7 hours and 2.4 days for the NHT cohort and 5.8 hours and 2.8 days for the non-NHT cohorts. As expected, the mean prostate weight was lower for the NHT cohort: 36.8 g vs. 46.5 g. All NHT cohort tumors were pathologic stage pT2, with negative margins. Eleven (18%) of the non-NHT cohort had pathologic T3 (10 patients) or T4 (1 patient) tumors and 10 (17%) specimens had a positive surgical margin. Four of 5 (80%) NHT cohort and 21 of 25 (84%) non-NHT cohort patients are continent (no pad use) 3 to 6 months postsurgery. One NHT cohort patient (20%) and 20 (33%) non-NHT cohort patients had an elevated drain fluid creatinine 24 hours postoperatively. There were no other complications in the NHT cohort. All 5 NHT cohort patients have no evidence of recurrent disease, whereas 2 non-NHT cohort patients (3.3%) have developed PSA recurrence. No NHT patient and only 1 non-NHT patient received a blood transfusion postoperatively.

CONCLUSION
LRP appears to be a safe and efficacious procedure in patients who have received NHT. Perioperative morbidity of NHT patients undergoing LRP appears equivalent to non-NHT patients, with slightly lower EBL, hemoglobin decrease, urinary extravasation, positive margin, and complication rates.


Two forms of continuity are defined for Pareto representations of preferences. They are designated continuity and coordinate continuity. Characterizations are given of those Pareto representable preferences that are continuously representable and, in dimension two, of those that are coordinate-continuously representable.


The intent of this thesis is to explore existing gender norms in mixed martial arts cultures. Masculinity is particularly valorized in sport, creating tension for female athletes who are forced to balance masculine norms with feminine beauty ideals. While there is a robust literature on the intersections of mixed martial arts (MMA) and masculinity, female voices are rarely heard in that literature. My research goes beyond the work of others by incorporating female voices and perspectives. Grounded in gender constructionism, my thesis addresses how both male and female MMA fighters conceive of their and others' participation in gendered terms, and how this informs their gender identities. My thesis further examines the intersections of masculinity and gender that are readily observable within MMA, and those that are less conspicuous or go largely unnoticed. Finally, my thesis explores how norms perpetuate gender stereotypes and highlight differences, as masculine norms persist in the fighting culture. The examination of gender norms in MMA contributes to a larger body of research concerning gender roles and norms in other social contexts. This contribution extends beyond MMA and sport, serving as a commentary on existing power structures solidified by a gender binary. Yet, the question remains, how do male and female fighters navigate masculine norms and expectations in mixed martial arts?


Introduction The use of drugs of abuse during pregnancy is a public health problem, with deleterious consequences for the mother, her son, family and society effects. The seriousness of the problem and the lack of data concerning the use of drugs by pregnant women in our maternity motivated us to design this study. Objectives To identify among pregnant women admitted to the maternity HEAC users of licit and illicit drugs through self-declaration. Method A descriptive, cross-sectional study period August 1, 2013 a January 3, 2014. Questionnaire was applied during the hospital postpartum women, after signing an informed consent. Results 1055 women were studied, of these 266 (25.21%) were users of drugs of abuse. Among the women who reported using any drugs, were identified: tobacco (36.46%), alcohol (27.81%), cocaine (5.6%) and marijuana (2.2%). The average age of the group of drug users was 25.49 years, while the non-users was 24.81 years. The prevalence of drug use among adolescents was 18.04%. The children of drug users 7.5% had required neonatal intensive care. There was no statistical difference in relation to perinatal asphyxia among a group of users and non- drug users. Conclusion Considering that the identification of these women was only through self declaration of the use of licit and illicit drugs, it becomes even more concerning the current situation with regard to drug use by pregnant women, since this is probably just the tip of a large iceberg, we need to know so we can meet.


Abstract Based on highly disaggregated customs data from 2016–19, this paper investigates the impact of the China–U.S. trade war on the exports of Chinese firms, from the perspective of the extensive margin of product scope. The paper finds that the rise in U.S. import tariffs during the trade war led to Chinese exporters concentrating on production of their core products and shrinking their export scope. Higher import tariffs resulted in an average 2.43 percent decline in export scope and an average 1.25 percent increase in the export share of core products. The damage was particularly pronounced for intermediate products and heterogeneous products, which is consistent with the high duties. The paper provides direct evidence on the harm to export diversification caused by the China–U.S. trade war, suggesting a welfare loss from the decrease in product variety, as emphasized in the literature. This result holds after controlling for factors such as production cycles and heterogeneity.


In this study, it was aimed to compare the effects of vermicompost (VC) and compost (C) containing same originated organic materials (oil rose processing waste, dairy manure, poultry manure and straw on materials) on the growth, nutrient concentrations and nutrient uptakes of corn plant. Vermicomposts and compost were applied with the rates of 0, 10, and 30 t hato 2 kg soil containing pots. Study was conducted in glasshouse conditions for eight weeks with three replicates. During the growing periods plants were harvested 2 weeks intervals. After each harvest, plants were analysed for mineral nutrient concentrations (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu) and nutrient uptakes were calculated using dry weight and nutrient concentrations. No significant differences were observed between C and VC in terms of plant dry weight, but increasing dosage of both C and VC significantly increased plant dry weight. Plant Ca, Mn and Zn concentrations were significantly affected from the individual effects of sources (C and VC) and also Ca, Fe and Zn concentrations were significantly affected from source x week interactions. Plant N and other micronutrient concentrations increased with the dosage. While only plant P, Zn and Cu uptake significantly varied with C and VC and their interactions, all nutrient uptakes significantly increased with the application levels.


Ferguson, Missouri is everywhere. This has been an enduring and sad lesson in the year since Michael Brown was killed. The national spotlight has moved throughout cities and towns across the United States, as unarmed Black men, women and children have been killed by police officers at an exhausting pace. Mr. Brown's death has caused stakeholders to grasp and examine the similarities between the wide range of issues impacting Ferguson's Black communities and their respective communities. Thus, the events in Ferguson have been the source of reflection, examination and action. In that spirit, this essay looks at some similarities between Ferguson and Baltimore, which have grown despairingly closer in light of Freddie Gray's death in April 2015. Specifically, the essay explores the vast capacities of the criminal justice systems in these two cities to police and prosecute communities of color, particularly for low-level crimes that flood the criminal court dockets in both jurisdictions. It then focuses on ways in which poor, Black residents in Ferguson and Baltimore remain stuck in the criminal justice system because of court-issued warrants.


In 1957 one of us (RLS) with Keeley reported a series of four lipomas of the hand, three in the palm, and one in the finger. At that time only 14 palmar lipomas had been reported; our 3 brought the total to 17. We were unable to ascertain the number of digital lipomas reported but it was equally small or smaller. Since then no further cases have been recorded in the literature. Therefore, we think it is appropriate to report a recent case of ours which involved a finger as well as the palm and in which the diagnosis was correctly established preoperatively with the help of roentgenograms, a diagnostic aid which has not previously been mentioned in this regard. An 86-year-old Negro came to Mercy Hospital Free Dispensary in August, 1958, because of a mass in the palm of his right hand. He said that the mass had been


This paper describes steps taken towards introducing Web-based educational technology in teaching demography at the university level. Traditionally, demography is taught by giving lectures to the students, who are then expected to study from textbooks and exercise in demographic calculus. Some students find this way of learning monotonous and exhausting, hence their motivation gradually drops. Modern learning technology can help prevent such a situation, at least to an extent. Of course, using any technology to support teaching and learning requires representing essential parts of the domain knowledge with that technology first. The paper presents initial results in building such a knowledge infrastructure for Webbased education (WBE) in the domain of demography.


Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are considered a promising alternative to Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for their event-driven computing paradigm when deployed on energy-efficient neuromorphic hardware. Recently, deep SNNs have shown breathtaking performance improvement through cutting-edge training strategy and flexi-ble structure, which also scales up the number of parameters and computational burdens in a single network. Inspired by the state transition of dendritic spines in the filopodial model of spinogen-esis, we model different states of SNN weights, facilitating weight optimization for pruning. Fur-thermore, the pruning speed can be regulated by using different functions describing the growing threshold of state transition. We organize these techniques as a dynamic pruning algorithm based on nonlinear reparameterization mapping from spine size to SNN weights. Our approach yields sparse deep networks on the large-scale dataset (SEW ResNet18 on ImageNet) while maintaining state-of-the-art low performance loss ( ∼ 3% at 88.8% sparsity) compared to existing pruning methods on directly trained SNNs. Moreover, we find out pruning speed regulation while learning is crucial to avoiding disastrous performance degradation at the final stages of training, which may shed light on future work on SNN pruning.


This problem deals with the scheduling of data packets for different users who share a common wireless channel of limited capacity and who have different service time requirements. From a system point of view it is important to maintain a high throughput, that is, a high number of packets served per unit of time. However from a user point of view it is important to minimise the service time. This poses a trade-off problem, which is one of the goals we wish to analyse.

The wireless transmission channel alternates between good and bad states over time. While the channel is in a bad state the transmission of a packet fails and the packet needs to be retransmitted. When the state of the channel is good, packets are transmitted successfully and do not require retransmission. The system transmission efficiency or throughput might be defined as the number of data packets that can be transmitted successfully in a given time.

The scheduler we wish to study is designed to consider both the wireless channel conditions and the users' quality of service requirements. For this purpose users are assigned a credit every scheduling frame, which is a function of the wireless channel conditions and the quality of service required, which depends on the traffic class.


Background: Tuberculosis on the spine is involved approximately 1 % of all tuberculosis cases. It is  a lethal type of TB skeletal due to highly neurologic compromised because of adjacent medullary  compression and incidence kyphotic deformity. Early diagnosis and management of this disease is  mandatory to prevent serious complications. Method: Serial case report was conducted in Sanglah  General Hospital from January 2014 until December 2015. All patients were diagnosed based on local  protocol using appropriate imaging technique. All patients were treated by anti-tuberculosis drugs for  2 weeks followed by functional assessment by MMT, ASIA, and JOA. Result: The author reported  10 patients of spinal TB whom were treated in Sanglah Hospital, Bali between January 2014- Desember 2015. Among pts 8 male and 2 female with location of spinal TB i.e 4 in thoracal, 4 in  lumbal and 2 in cervicothoracal. Preoperative ASIA scale was an average scale C and postoperative  ASIA scale was in D. The average JOA pre-surgical score was 10.5 and postsurgical was 14.5.  Improvement using the formula JOA achieved with an average of 21.6 %. All patients neurologically  improved, no complications and surgical implant failures in this series. Conclusions: Surgical  management of spinal tuberculosis, if delivered with appropriate indication, proved to be effective in  correcting spinal kyphosis. Early management is mandatory in order to ensure better prognosis.


Objective: The electrochemical behavior of peracetic acid (PAA) in disinfectant "Delakson" has been studied. Materials and Methods: "Delakson" disinfectant is a sample preparation, which was used for the analysis. A new voltammetric method for the quantitative determination of PAA in "Delakson" disinfectant at the carbositall rotating electrode (CE) in the interval of potential +1.0…–1.0 V (the reference electrode Ag, AgCl/KСl [sat]) (Ep = +0.15 V) was proposed. Results: It has been experimentally proved that height of PAA reduction peak decreases and the reduction peak potential is shifted toward more electronegative values with the background electrolyte pH increasing from 2.15 to 4.78. The optimum pH for analysis is approximately 3.6. The linear relationship has been observed in the PAA concentration range 3.12–12.50 × 10–5 mol/L, the calibration curve equation was Iр = (3.78 ± 0.46) × 103с (r = 0.995). Determining PAA in the work solution with the relative standard deviation (RSDs) were 0.035–0.022 (δ = +0.30... +0.90%); limit of detection = 1.19 × 10–6 mol/L, and limit of quantification = 3.97 × 10–5 mol/L. Determining PAA in the test solution of "Delakson" disinfectant with the concentrations of 0.1% the RSD was 0.024 (δ = +0.9%). Conclusions: Thus, new voltammetric method of PAA determination in "Delakson" disinfectant at CE has been developed and the possibility of its quantitative determination has been shown.


Low folate status might inhibit colorectal carcinogenesis and high folate status may promote colorectal carcinogenesis, contradicting findings from epidemiological studies showing an inverse relationship between folate status and risk of colorectal cancer

Folate is a water soluble B vitamin, deficiency of which appears to play an important pathogenetic role in the development of anaemia, atherosclerosis, neural tube defects (NTDs), adverse pregnancy outcomes, neuropsychiatric disorders, and cancer.1 Folic acid is the fully oxidised monoglutamyl form of this vitamin that is used commercially in supplements and in fortified foods. Folate is generally regarded as safe and has long been presumed to be purely beneficial and an ideal functional food component for disease prevention.2,3 For example, an overwhelming body of evidence for a protective effect of periconceptional folic acid supplementation against NTDs led to mandatory folic acid fortification in the USA and Canada in 1998.4 The effectiveness of folic acid fortification in improving folate status has already been shown to be quite striking, with a dramatic increase in blood measurements of folate concentrations in the USA and Canada.4 Preliminary reports also suggest a significant reduction (∼15–50%) in the incidence of NTDs in the USA and Canada.4

Perhaps one of the most speculative and provocative new medical applications of folate nutrition is the potential role of folate as a cancer preventive agent.1,5 The concept that folate deficiency enhances, whereas folate supplementation reduces, the risk of neoplastic transformation appears counterintuitive and contradictory to our conventional understanding of folate biochemistry. Folate is an essential cofactor for the de novo biosynthesis of purines and thymidylate, and in this role folate plays an important role in DNA synthesis and replication.5,6 Consequently, folate deficiency in tissues with rapidly replicating cells results in ineffective DNA synthesis. In neoplastic cells where …


In local modelling, function estimates are computed from observations in a local neighborhood of the point of interest. A central question is how to choose the size of the neighborhood. Often this question has been tackled using asymptotic (in the number of observations) arguments. The recently introduced direct weight optimization approach is a non-asymptotic approach, minimizing an upper bound on the mean squared error. In this paper the approach is extended to also take a priori known bounds on the function and its derivative into account. It is shown that the result will sometimes, but not always, be improved by this information. The proposed approach can be applied, e.g., to prediction of nonlinear dynamic systems and model predictive control.


BACKGROUND
With increasing public awareness of and greater coverage for gender-confirming surgery by insurers, more transgender patients are likely to seek surgical transition. The degree to which plastic surgery and urology trainees are prepared to treat transgender patients is unknown.

OBJECTIVE
We assessed the number of hours dedicated to transgender-oriented education in plastic surgery and urology residencies, and the impact of program director (PD) attitudes on provision of such training.

METHODS
PDs of all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited plastic surgery (91) and urology (128) programs were invited to participate. Surveys were completed between November 2015 and March 2016; responses were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS
In total, 154 PDs (70%) responded, and 145 (66%) completed the survey, reporting a yearly median of 1 didactic hour and 2 clinical hours of transgender content. Eighteen percent (13 of 71) of plastic surgery and 42% (31 of 74) of urology programs offered no didactic education, and 34% (24 of 71) and 30% (22 of 74) provided no clinical exposure, respectively. PDs of programs located in the southern United States were more likely to rate transgender education as unimportant or neutral (23 of 37 [62%] versus 39 of 105 [37%]; P = .017). PDs who rated transgender education as important provided more hours of didactic content (median, 1 versus 0.75 hours; P = .001) and clinical content (median, 5 versus 0 hours; P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS
A substantial proportion of plastic surgery and urology residencies provide no education on transgender health topics, and those that do, provide variable content. PD attitudes toward transgender-specific education appear to influence provision of training.


Localized wave (LW) solutions of the homogeneous wave equation can represent either focused or extended pulses, depending on the choice of a free parameter present in the solution. One can form finite energy superpositions, with respect to this parameter, and one such superposition, known as a modified power spectrum (MPS) pulse, has been extensively studied [R. W. Ziolkowski, Phys. Rev. A 39, 2005–2032 (1989)]. In particular, the enhanced near‐field LW propagation effect has been demonstrated by others, in the context of multi‐time‐derivative transmit/receive systems [R. W. Ziolkowski and D. K. Lewis, J. Appl. Phys. 68, 6083–6086 (1990)]. The LW solutions are broadband, so it is perhaps to be expected that one could use this property, along with the enhanced focusing characteristic, to extract target parameters when scattering LW superpositions from objects. The acoustic MPS pulse backscattered spectra from a number of different sized steel and aluminum spheres will be presented. It will be demonstrated that these spectra can be used to extract target size information. [Work supported by NSERC.]


The bacterial kingdom provides a major source of antimicrobials that can either be directly applied or used as scaffolds to further improve their functionality in the host. The rapidly increasing amount of bacterial genomic, metabolomic and transcriptomic data offers unique opportunities to apply a variety of approaches to mine for existing and novel antimicrobials. Here, we discuss several powerful mining approaches to identify novel molecules with antimicrobial activity across structurally diverse natural products, including ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides, nonribosomal peptides and polyketides. We not only discuss the direct mining of genomes based on identification of biosynthetic gene clusters, but also describe more advanced and integrative approaches in ecology-based mining, functionality-based mining and mode-of-action-based mining. These efforts are likely to accelerate the discovery and development of novel antimicrobial drugs.


Bilateral mild diabetic retinopathy and disc swelling occurred in a young woman with type I diabetes during the second month of pregnancy. The disc edema showed the typical pattern of diabetic papillopathy (D.P.). This is a recently discovered syndrome of juvenile diabetics characterized by transient bilateral edema of the optic disc with minimal functional impairment. The features of D.P. and two different pathogenetical hypotheses, ischemic and dysmetabolic, expressed by other authors, are listed in detail. The case described showed a particular evolution, with bilateral prepapillary transitory neovascularization followed by scant glial reaction. Moreover pattern VEPs analysis showed a clearly increased latency. These findings suggest that both dysmetabolic (VEPs increased latency) and and ischemic (neovascularization) stimuli are responsible for D.P., even if differences with typical ischemic optic neuropathy are evident.


Abstract This study examines the perceptions of senior students in four Seventh-day Adventist schools in New South Wales toward the range of subject options available at their school. In particular the study focuses upon students' perceived levels of satisfaction in relation to the availability of practical subjects. It also examines the nature of the factors involved in influencing students' choice of subjects and their perceptions of the relative status of practical versus academic subjects. Finally, the study examines student choices in relation to their post-secondary aspirations. These aspects of subject options are examined in the light of the Seventh-day Adventist philosophy of education to establish whether there is consistency between their philosophy of a holistic approach to education and the options that are available to senior students. A questionnaire involving attitudinal items set against a 5-point Likert scale was used to generate data about their sense of satisfaction with the subject options at their school, about their feelings in relation to the status of practical versus academic subjects and their choice of subjects in relation to their future aspirations. These data were analysed using the SPSS statistical package. The results indicated that most students reported that they were adequately catered for in relation to subject offerings. However, there were pockets of concern about the limited subject options for practically oriented students for the HSC. A large number of students indicated that they chose their own subjects for the HSC and that they chose them with the aim of attending university. Student responses also indicated that there was a pervasive belief among the students that academic subjects were of greater worth than practical subjects and received higher recognition from the school. Hence, the recommendation was made that there is a need for more balanced approach in providing commendation and affirmation of student choice and performance in practical and academic subjects within Seventh-day Adventist schools. Finally, xii it is recommended that students' satisfaction levels in relation to their subject options be constantly monitored to ensure student needs and desires are being met throughout the HSC.


[1] The extent and thickness of Antarctic sea ice have important climatic effects on radiation balance, energy transfer between the atmosphere and ocean, and moisture availability. This paper explores the role of sea ice and related feedbacks in the Cenozoic evolution of Antarctic climate and ice sheets, using a numerical climate model with explicit, dynamical representations of sea ice and continental ice sheets. In a scenario of decreasing Cenozoic greenhouse gas concentrations, our model initiates continental glaciation before any significant sea ice forms around the continent. Once variable ice sheets are established, seasonal sea ice distribution is highly sensitive to orbital forcing and ice sheet geometry via the ice sheet's control on regional temperature and low-level winds. Although the expansion of sea ice has significant climatic effects near the coast, it has only minimal effects in the continental interior and on the size of the ice sheet. Therefore the Cenozoic appearance of Antarctic sea ice was primarily a response to the growth of grounded ice sheets and was not a critical factor in episodes of Paleogene and Neogene glaciation. The influence of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet on sea ice, Southern Ocean surface temperatures, and winds has important implications for ocean circulation, the marine carbon cycle, and the development of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The sensitivity of sea ice to grounded ice sheets implies reconstructions of sea ice based on marine diatoms are good indicators of glacial conditions in the continental interior and may provide insight into the long-term stability of Antarctic Ice Sheets.


Soaking and maceration of dry soybean seeds induce the formation of aliphatic volatile compounds that impact the flavor properties of food products prepared from soybean. Most aliphatic volatile compounds are formed through oxygenation of unsaturated fatty acids by lipoxygenases; however, lipoxygenases are not responsible for the formation of 1-octen-3-ol. 1-Octen-3-ol in soybean products is in general an off-flavor compound; thus, a procedure to manage its formation is required. In this study, we show that the formation of 1-octen-3-ol after hydration of soybean seed powder is independent of oxygen, suggesting that 1-octen-3-ol is not formed de novo from unsaturated fatty acids but instead from its derivative. When crude methanol extract of soybean seeds was reacted with β-glycosidases, 1-octen-3-ol was rather liberated from its glycoside. We purified the parent glycoside from soybean seeds and confirmed it as ( R)-1-octen-3-yl β-primeveroside [( R)-1-octen-3-yl 6- O-β-d-xylopyranosyl-β-d-glucopyranoside]. Green immature soybean fruits (pericarp and seeds) contain a high amount of 1-octen-3-yl β-primeveroside. Its amount decreases after hydration of dry soybean powder. The results indicate that management of 1-octen-3-ol levels in soybean products requires a different strategy than that applied to off-flavor compounds formed de novo.


Buildings rarely fail within a short time of commissioning; most become unsatisfactory
gradually, over a period of many years, as the design becomes obsolete and/or inadequate
maintenance and improvements fail to keep pace with demand. Maintenance work is thus
necessary to keep a building in an acceptable minimum condition. The industrialised
building methods much used in the 1960s were frequently innovative and, at that time,
unproven methods of construction. When these are added to the list of 'traditional build'
failure contributors, the need for additional and regular maintenance is increased.
Various factors contribute to domestic accommodation buildings ceasing to be
Satisfactory—to fail in their purpose of providing a safe, warm and dry environment for
the occupants. To the layperson, bad workmanship by the builders, poor quality
materials, poor design and inadequate maintenance are common causes for complaint.
This research investigated the cost of maintenance for buildings of multiple domestic
accommodation, methods used to organise maintenance planning and budgeting, and
considered whether the use of industrialised building methods had affected that cost. The
current and anticipated future use of Planned Preventative Maintenance, together with
other management methods, as tools for minimising maintenance cost is also examined.
A method for introducing a system of planned preventative maintenance that is
specifically tailored to individual buildings from a common pattern was developed as an
output of this research.
'Designing out' the need for maintenance requires an understanding of maintenance
activity cost centres (i.e. where does the money go and what elements of maintenance
account for the greatest expenditure?). The way that building professionals perceive
potential maintenance cost requirements is therefore investigated and comparison made
with actual costs for the same elements of maintenance.


What is Islamic about reform among Muslims and what is not? How can we differentiate reform within an Islamic paradigm and a paradigmatic shift from the Islamic tradition to something else in a Muslim community? How do we establish the connection between reform as an intellectual or scholarly project and the translation of that project into social reality (or, in some cases, the absence of such a translation)? This article addresses these questions in the context of the Volga-Ural region in the late Russian Empire, where reformist Muslims attempted to reform existing Islamic educational institutions, particularly the religious seminaries called "madrasas," as a means to modernize the region's Muslim communities. Educational reform initiatives among Volga-Ural Muslims originated within the framework of Muslim networks and institutions. Yet, especially after Russia's Revolution of 1905, reform in a number of prominent madrasas came to be characterized by various non-religious and at times even anti-religious influences emerging from the globalization of Western European modernity. Consequently, in these madrasas, education and the overall student experience turned into a secularizing process, and Islam as a religious system lost its weight and appeal for many students, who then engaged in a reform movement that evolved beyond an Islamic paradigm.


PURPOSE
This study was done to examine physical, psycho-social, and individual factors influencing musculoskeletal symptoms among Korean military trainees.

METHODS
Using a correlation study design, military trainees who had completed almost of all the basic combat training (BCT) days were recruited from two military training units selected by convenience sampling. Data from 415 participants were analyzed.

RESULTS
Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms was 29.6% defined as a participant having pain or discomfort in one or more body parts during training hours for more than seven consecutive days. Back/pelvic (10.8%), knees (10.1%), shoulders (7.7%), feet/toes (5.6%), ankles (4.8%) were prone to musculoskeletal symptoms. Musculoskeletal symptoms appeared to be related to physical exertion during BCT, stress during BCT, social support from fellow trainees, or previous musculoskeletal injuries. In the logistic regression model, physical exertion during BCT (OR=2.27, 95% CI: 1.42~3.65), stress during BCT (OR=1.79, 95% CI: 1.15~2.78), and previous musculoskeletal injuries (OR=1.58, 95% CI: 1.01~2.47) were the significant factors affecting prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms.

CONCLUSION
Findings indicate that physical exertion and psycho-social stress should be managed to prevent musculoskeletal symptoms in military trainees with more attention being given to trainees having a history of musculoskeletal injuries.


Understanding vernacular way of energy-saving and providing low-impact thermal comfort in the building of every region may have significant impacts on developing well-established green strategies for the new architecture for that region. The conducted preliminary desktop research revealed fundamental similarities among architectural approaches of different regions of Iran. The conducted literature review also revealed that much research has been done for exploring different angles of vernacular sustainable methods of architecture in central arid zone of Iran which is often recognised as the representative of the traditional architecture of Iran; as this part already contributes to almost three fourth of the total area of Iran. In other words, the creative methods of adopting sustainable architecture in other parts have been neglected by far. This fact also applies to the well-established vernacular architecture of Azerbaijan the history of which backs to more than 10,000 years ago. This research investigated the innovative methods through which the architects of cold and dry Azerbaijan managed energy use in the vernacular buildings. The study adapted field studies as well as archival research followed by qualitative methods of content analysis. The research discovered the similarities and differences between the vernacular methods of energy saving in this part of Iran and those for the arid central parts of the country. The results revealed that although there are a lot of similarities between these two architectural styles, the traditional architects of Azerbaijan have had various innovative and sustainable methods in construction and structure of the buildings which are exclusive for this region only. This research contributes with highlighting particular and significant approaches of the ancient sustainable architecture of Azerbaijan which could be used as a reference for further development and adaptation in designing new buildings in this part of the world.


Phenotypic expression in the muscular dystrophies is variable, even with the identical mutation, providing strong evidence that genetic modifiers influence outcome. To identify genetic modifier loci, we used quantitative trait locus mapping in two differentially affected mouse strains with muscular dystrophy. Using the Sgcg model of limb girdle muscular dystrophy that lacks the dystrophin-associated protein γ-sarcoglycan, we evaluated chromosomal regions that segregated with two distinct quantifiable characteristics of muscular dystrophy, membrane permeability and fibrosis. We previously identified a single major locus on murine chromosome 7 that influences both traits of membrane permeability and fibrosis in the quadriceps muscle. Using a larger cohort, we now found that this same interval strongly associated with both traits in all limb skeletal muscle groups studied, including the gastrocnemius/soleus, gluteus/hamstring, and triceps muscles. In contrast, the muscles of the trunk were modified by distinct genetic loci, possibly reflecting the embryological origins and physiological stressors unique to these muscle groups. A locus on chromosome 18 was identified that modified membrane permeability of the abdominal muscles, and a locus on chromosome 3 was found that regulated diaphragm and abdominal muscle fibrosis. Fibrosis in the heart associated with a region on chromosome 9 and likely reflects differential function between cardiac and skeletal muscle. These data underscore the complexity of inheritance and penetrance of single-gene disorders.


SiO2 coatings were deposited on silver foils substrate by sol–gel method and their atomic oxygen (AO) erosion resistance was tested in a ground-based AO simulator. The surface morphologies and structures of the SiO2 coatings were investigated by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) 、X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The experimental results clearly demonstrate that this kind of coatings provided a good protection from AO attack. The erosion yield of the coatings was 2×10-26 cm3/atom, decreased by 30 times compared with that of the uncoated silver foils. This SiO2 layer significantly retarded the penetration of oxygen atoms, preventing further oxidation of the bulk silver. It was found that after AO exposure, the film structure tends to transfer from SiOH to amorphous SiO2. This implies that a more stable amorphous SiO2 structure could be formed in sol-gel SiO2 film during AO exposure. The results demonstrate that the coatings prepared by sol-gel technique can protect the silver from atomic oxygen erosion and can be used easily for practical application.


The aim of this study was to develop a method that will use satellite imagery to identify areas of high forest growth and productivity, as a primary input in prioritising revegetation sites for carbon sequestration. Using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data, this study analysed the annual net primary production (NPP) values (gC/m 2 ) of images acquired from 2000 to 2013, covering the Condamine Catchment in southeast Queensland, Australia. With the analysis of annual rainfall data during the same period, three transitions of "normal to dry" years were identified to represent the future climate scenario considered in this study. The difference in the corresponding NPP values for each year was calculated, and subsequently averaged to the get the " Mean of Annual NPP Difference " (MAND) map. This layer identified the areas with increased net primary production despite the drought condition in those years. Combined with key thematic maps (i.e. regional ecosystems, land use, and tree canopy cover), the priority areas were mapped. The results have shown that there are over 42 regional ecosystem (RE) types in the study area that exhibited positive vegetation growth and productivity despite the decrease in annual rainfall. However, seven (7) of these RE types represents the majority (79 %) of the total high productivity area. A total of 10,736 ha were mapped as priority revegetation areas. This study demonstrated the use of MODIS-NPP imagery to map vegetation with high carbon sequestration rates necessary in prioritising revegetation sites.


1.1 Method 3561 describes the use of supercritical fluids for the extraction of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from soils, sediments, fly ash, solid-phase extraction media, and other solid materials which are amenable to extraction with conventional solvents. This method is suitable for use with any supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) system that allows extraction conditions (e.g., pressure, temperature, flow rate) to be adjusted to achieve extraction of the PAHs from the matrices of concern. The following compounds may be determined by this method:


By means of contact dynamics simulations interfaced with computational fluid dynamics, we analyze the effect of a suspending fluid on the dynamics of collapse and spread of a granular column. We find that the runout distance increases as a power law with the aspect ratio of the column and, for a given aspect ratio, it may be the same in the grain-inertial and fluid-inertial regimes but with considerably longer duration in the latter case. We show that, in both viscous and fluid-inertial regimes, this behavior results from compensation between two effects of the fluid: 1) reduction of the kinetic energy during collapse and 2) enhancement of the flow by lubrication during spread.


The 2011 edition of the ESC guidelines on non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS) maintains the approach strongly based upon risk stratification, following the concept that "the higher the risk of ischemic events, the larger will be the benefit of an aggressive pharmaco-interventional approach". This concept applies both to the indication and timing of angiography/revascularization and to the choice of concomitant pharmacological therapies. The proofs of efficacy of the most recent drug treatments are solid, but the choice among the several available options and the evaluation of the efficacy/safety ratios in patient subsets require clinical wisdom, especially for the management of the most complex and frail patients. The indication for performing coronary angiography within 24h in high-risk patients would imply extending to NSTE-ACS patients the networks already in place for primary percutaneous coronary intervention in ST-elevation myocardial infarction.


We present a dynamical theory of opinion formation that takes explicitly into account the structure of the social network in which individuals are embedded. The theory predicts the evolution of a set of opinions through the social network and establishes the existence of a martingale property, i.e. the expected weighted fraction of the population that holds a given opinion is constant in time. Most importantly, this weighted fraction is not either zero or one, but corresponds to a non- trivial distribution of opinions in the long time limit. This coexistence of opinions within a social network is in agreement with the often observed locality effect, in which an opinion or a fad is localized to given groups without infecting the whole society. We verified these predictions as well as others concerning the fragility of opinions and the importance of highly connected individuals by computer experiments on scale-free networks.


This research deals with the production of fresh crude cellulase by solid-state fermentation (SSF) using cassava residue and a co-culture of Trichoderma reesei and Saccharomyces cerevisiae under cassava residue weight, liquid medium volume. The fresh product from SSF was performed for moisture removal until crude cellulase obtained after grinding.  Submerged fermentation was investigated using lignocellulosic materials as a substrate suspended in cultivation medium and then mixing with cellulase powder. In the production of fresh crude cellulase, the experiment began of 100 g cassava residuemoisture content 12% w/w and the co-cultured microorganisms in pH 5 liquid medium (LM) of 107 cell/mL. To find the suitable moisture content for SSF, 100 g cassava residuemoisture content 12% w/w to LM was tested at ratios of 1:0.6, 1:0.8 and 1:1 w/v, initial sugar concentration in LM was varied between 0.8, 1.6, 2.4 and 3.2%w/w and initial cell concentration is constant. The solid-state fermentation was carried out at  C for 7 days. The optimal condition of SSF are 3.2% w/w initial sugar concentration in 100 mL LM100g cassava residue and 6 days of incubation at C. The fresh crude cellulase with 55% w/w moisture content was subsequently dehydrated and pulverized to produce crude cellulase powder with 12% w/w. The powder was applied to dried pineapple peels fermentation for ethanol production.


Was the persecution of the Sinti and Roma under National Socialism an act of genocide? This article posits that the conference of January 15, 1943 constituted a point of culmination for Nazi policy toward 'Gypsies.' Until now, researchers have attached little importance to this event, but the author will show that various actors gathered at this meeting to shape Nazi Germany's racial policies – including those directed at Gypsies – and reached agreement on subsequent actions against Mischlinge, persons of 'mixed race.' This paper explores the increasing persecution of this minority and its escalation in 1943 with deportations to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Such persons were to be rendered extinct within a generation by means of forced sterilization; only a very few were to be 'Germanized.' On the basis of empirical data, the author also shows that the group of 'Gypsies' defined as 'racially pure,' and therefore exempted from deportation to Auschwitz, was extremely small. The racially-motivated elimination of Gypsies continued until the end of the Nazi regime. The author also makes clear how the men who made Nazi racial policy correlated the lessons learned from the parallel processes of the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Sinti and Roma.


Background: This was a pre-market, observational, actual use study with the Tobacco Heating System (THS), a candidate modified risk tobacco product. The main goal of the study was to describe THS adoption within current adult daily smokers by replicating the usage of THS in real-world conditions with participants being able to consume cigarettes, THS, and any other nicotine-containing products (e.g., e-cigarettes, cigars, etc.) ad libitum. Methods: This study assessed self-reported stick-by-stick consumption of THS compared with the use of commercial cigarettes over six weeks. The aim of the analysis was to identify potential predictors for adoption of THS using stepwise logistic regression analysis. Results: By the end of the observational period (in Week 6), 14.6% of participants (n=965) had adopted THS meaning that THS formed 70% or more of their total tobacco consumption. The main predictors of adoption were the liking of the smell, taste, aftertaste, and ease of use of THS. The proportion of adoption was higher in participants aged 44 years and older and in Hispanic or Latino adult smokers. Additionally, adoption of THS was more likely in participants who had never attempted to quit smoking and in participants who smoked up to 10 cigarettes per day. Finally, the adoption of THS was higher in participants who consumed both regular and menthol THS compared with those who consumed only one THS variant. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the introduction of THS in the U.S. has the potential to result in adoption by current adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke cigarettes, and that the adoption of THS is unlikely to result in an increase of tobacco consumption. Post-marketing studies will provide further insights on THS adoption and THS use patterns to allow assessment of the impact of the THS at the individual and the overall population level.


Abstract Raising of Participation Age (RPA) legislation mandates English youth to participate in post-16 education, employment or training. However, how does this particular college accommodate youth that were so-called disaffected learners and previously not in education, employment and training (NEET)? The aim was to investigate the educational experiences of 26 Skills to Succeed (S2S) students to discover their trajectory and the extent to which they could access various provisions that facilitate higher academic and employment outcomes as per RPA discourse. Hence, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted alongside documentation analysis. Key findings revealed that S2S students find themselves in a very competitive college environment that institutionalises a system of success and failure, and also brings them in direct competition with better qualified young people for access to desirable and limited provision. What's more, embodied policies and practices used GCSE capital to construct an intellectual divide, segregating those with low GCSEs from those deemed more academic. Consequently, S2S students faced exclusion from a range of educational opportunities, placing higher levels of vocational courses, apprenticeship training and the opportunity to re-take GCSEs out of reach. S2S provision fundamentally contributed to exclusionary discourses and practices that constructed great ambiguity as to whether higher academic and employment goals could be accomplished in such a milieu.