The availability of adequate and reliable water supplies has always been a critical concern in central Arizona since prehistoric times. The early European settlers in 1868 initially utilized the ancient Hohokam Indian canal system which drew water from the Salt River. However, the river fluctuated with periods of drought and periods of high flows which destroyed the diversion structures. The settlers proposed a dam to store water and to regulate flows. In 1903, the Salt River Water Users Association was formed and an agreement was reached with the U.S. Government for the construction of a dam on the Salt River at its junction with Tonto Creek. The Salt River drains more than 4,306 square miles (mi) from the White Mountains of eastern Arizona to the confluence with Tonto Creek. Tonto Creek drains a 1,000-mi watershed above the confluence. The agreement was authorized under the Reclamation Act of 1902. The Theodore Roosevelt Dam was started in 1905, completed in 1911, and dedicated in 1911 (Salt River Project 2002). The dam has the capacity to store 2.9 million acre-feet (af) of water. However, between 1909 and 1925, 101,000 af of sediment were accumulated behind Roosevelt Dam (Rich 1961). Much of it came from erosion on the granitic soils from the chaparral lands above the reservoir, and much of the erosion was blamed on overgrazing by domestic livestock. Water users were concerned that accelerated sedimentation would eventually compromise the capacity of the dam to hold sufficient water for downstream demands. The Tonto National Forest was originally created to manage the watershed above Roosevelt Dam and to prevent siltation. The Summit Plots, located between Globe, Arizona, and Lake Roosevelt were established in 1925 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the effects of vegetation recovery, mechanical stabilization, and plant cover changes on stormflows and sediment yields from the lower chaparral zone (Rich 1961). The area initially was part of the Crook National Forest which was later added to the Tonto National Forest. The Summit Watersheds consisted of nine small watersheds ranging in size from 0.37 to 1.23 acres (ac). Elevations are between 3,636 and 3,905 feet (ft). The treatments included: exclusion of livestock and seeding grasses, winter grazing, hardware cloth check dams, grubbing brush, sloping gullies and grass seeding. Protection from grazing did not produce changes in runoff or sedimentation. Treatments that reduced surface runoff also reduced erosion. Hardware cloth check dams reduce total erosion, and mulch plus grass treatments checked erosion and sediment movement. Runoff was reduced by the combined treatments (Rich 1961). The Summit Watersheds were integrated into the Parker Creek Erosion-Streamflow Station in 1932.


Studies were conducted to evaluate if arachidonic acid (C20:4) could function as a second messenger within theca cells from the second largest preovulatory (F2) follicle from the ovary of the domestic hen. Arachidonic acid stimulated basal progesterone and androstenedione production, but inhibited LH-induced androstenedione production. The stimulatory effects of arachidonic acid were not altered by either cyclooxygenase or lipoxygenase pathway inhibitors (indomethacin and nordihydroguaiaretic acid, respectively), but were blocked by agents that prevented mobilization and/or efflux of calcium (TMB-8 and verapamil). The inhibitory effects of arachidonic acid on LH-stimulated steroidogenesis were determined to occur both prior and subsequent to cAMP formation. Fifty and 100 microM arachidonic acid attenuated LH- (10 ng) and forskolin- (0.2 microM) induced cAMP levels, and decreased androstenedione and estradiol production following treatment with 8-bromo-cAMP. Phospholipase A2 (PLA2) and the calcium ionophore, A23187, stimulated the release of 3H from theca cells prelabeled with [3H]arachidonic acid, and both PLA2 and the closely related fatty acid, eicosatrienoic acid (C20:3), could replicate the inhibitory effects of arachidonic acid on LH-stimulated androstenedione production. Finally, neither indomethacin nor nordihydroguaiaretic acid blocked the inhibitory effects of arachidonic acid on LH-promoted androstenedione production. We conclude that arachidonic acid can be released within theca cells in response to physiologic (PLA2) and pharmacologic agents (A23187), and accordingly, that it may act directly as a second messenger to modulate both basal and LH-stimulated steroid production.


Current Doppler Radar speed measurement systems lack the ability to distinguish multiple targets within the microwave beamwidth. In this paper, a traffic surveillance system is presented that is capable of automatically monitoring vehicle speeds on roadways using sensor fusion on data acquired from a calibrated video camera and a continuous wave Doppler radar. The Time-Frequency resolution of the Radar signal is improved by employing the method of Time-Frequency reassignment. Then, the 3D tracking information obtained from the calibrated video camera is augmented by the more accurate information from the Doppler Radar to produce a position and velocity track of the targets within the surveillance region.


This paper identifies the price responsiveness and preferences for wheat classes using a "Case" Function specification. Results indicate there have been numerous changes in market shares of wheat classes from the different exporters in specific markets. In general, quality differentials are important in some international markets, whereas others are very price responsive.


This paper explores the changes to social security and health proposed in the Beveridge Report through the lens of the framework proposed by Mahoney and Thelen for exploring the relationship between political and institutional contexts, change-agents, and types of institutional change. We find that, in terms of social security, the Beveridge Report led to 'layering' in that it both built on an inherited legacy of institutions from the earlier Liberal Reforms. Although Beveridge assumed the existing of a national health service for his social security plans to work, he did not specify what form such a service could take. Bevan had the advantage of being a Minister of Health with a large government majority, but had to deal with both internal (in Cabinet) and external (primarily from the medical profession) attempts to veto his reforms. Bevan's changes to healthcare have to be seen in that context, as well as in relation to his own pragmatism, in converting the wartime Emergency Medical Service into the National Health Service. By utilising the full Mahoney and Thelen framework in two cases that were near-contemporary with one another, but when contrasted with one another, we show the potential of the framework in cross-case analysis in illuminating the relationship between political and institutional context, change-agents, the type of change that results.


Weak ampholytes are ubiquitous in nature and commonly found in artificial pH-responsive systems. However, our limited understanding of their ionisation response and the lack of predictive capabilities hinder the bottom-up design of such systems. Here, we used a coarse-grained model of a flexible polymer with weakly ionisable monomer units to quantitatively analyse the ionisation behaviour of two oligopeptides. Differences in ionisation response between oligopeptides and monomeric amino acids showed that electrostatic interactions between weak acid and base side chains play a key role in oligopeptide ionisation, as predicted by our model. Moreover, by comparing our simulations with experimental results from potentiometric titration, capillary zone electrophoresis and NMR, we demonstrated that our model reliably predicts the ionisation response and electrophoretic mobilities of various peptide sequences. Ultimately, our model is the first step towards using predictive bottom-up design of responsive ampholytes to tailor their properties as a function of charge and pH.


In the years 1994-1996 a painted vault of a house in the Roman civilian town Brigetio was excavated in present-day Komarom/Szőny, Hungary. The wall-paintings, which date back to the late 2nd-early 3rd cents. A.D., represent the personifications of the Four Seasons as female busts in the corners, four panthers in the middle of the side-walls and a circular central motive with the figure of a nude woman and a horse. On the basis of relevant astrological sources the paintings on the vault can be interpreted as symbolic representations of the spheres of the sky (the aer and the aether) and of eternity. The central medallion, which creates a delusive impression of an oculus, shows the fixed constellations Andromeda and Pegasus in the highest spheres of the sky. Parallel ideas from the Roman pagan art and the Christian / early Byzantine art indicate that the concept was widespread from the 1st to the 6th cents. A.D., being echoed also by the descriptions and illustrations in some sources of the late antiquity, like, for instance, the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes.


This paper investigates a multistage batch arrival queue with different server interruptions and a second server replaces the main server during the interruptions. The different server interruptions are assumed to be: multiple vacation, extended vacation, breakdown with delay time and server under two phases of repair. Customers are assumed to arrive in batches according to Poisson process and a single server provides service to the customers. When the main server is inactive due to the interruptions, stand-by server provide service to the arrivals. In addition, customers may renege during server breakdown or during server vacation due to impatience. Transient solution and the corresponding steady state solution is derived using supplementary variable technique.


The Construction of Commercial Contracts by Professor J.W. Carter is an ambitious book. Its stated aim is to "explain as a coherent whole the principles which regulate the construction of commercial contracts" (at p. vii). As will be seen, it more than meets this lofty aim, and is a valuable contribution to an area of work that is not only difficult, but also of immense practical importance. The book achieves its aim by explaining construction as constituting three separate stages: the identification of context (and terms), the determination of the meaning (and legal effect) of a contract, and, finally, the application of a contract to the factual circumstances that have arisen (see p. vii). This central thesis is primarily supplemented by detailed references to English and Australian law, but references to other Commonwealth jurisdictions (including Singapore), as well as the UNIDROIT principles, CISG and the American Restatement (Second) of Contracts, are also made where relevant. The structural result is a book neatly organised around seven parts, with Parts I to III setting out the general concepts and themes behind the book, in addition to the general principles that apply to the construction of commercial contracts. Parts IV and V discuss the first of the three stages of construction, that is, discerning the context of the contract.Part VI discusses the meaning of the contract, and Part VII finishes off with the application of the contract. But quite apart from the structural clarity with which the book is organised, the book is also appropriately presented to different audiences. For the academic or student who may be interested in the conceptual background to the rules of construction, the book does not disappoint. The book, just to raise one of many examples, devotes a considerable number of thoroughly researched pages to discussing the history and evolution of the parol evidence rule. For the practitioner who may be interested in a quick reference material to the present law, the book has conveniently-placed 'articles' that summarise the law cogently and accessibly.


There are many technical parameters influencing on the coating quality in plasma spray forming which has become an important technology in materials processing. In this study, the relationships between the melting state, in-flight property of particles injected into plasma jet and the forming quality have been investigated. The experimental results show that the temperature field distributions of plasma jet are mainly affected by plasma generator power though CCD imaging and gray-scale processing. The velocity of in-flight particle is directly determined by the flow rate of work gas, and the surface temperature of in-flight particle is obviously affected by assisted gas rate. It is clear that the energy coupling and momentum transferring between plasma and particle have a significant influence on deposition efficiency, porosity, microhardness and microstructure of spray-formed parts, and it also provides a good idea to control the forming quality on-line.


Throughout the tire industry, virtual testing has been widely adopted in the design process. Both static deformation and dynamic response of the tire rolling on the road must be accurately predicted to evaluate the handling performance of a tire. Unfortunately, experimental characterization of rubber compound frictional properties is limited, and therefore, the Coulomb friction model is still often used in finite element (FE) simulations. To overcome this limitation, a different strategy is developed to capture observed effects of dry friction. The proposed friction model is decomposed into the product of a contact pressure dependent part and a slip velocity dependent part. The identification of the parameters of the slip velocity dependent part, using measured axle forces, is presented in this paper. The complete phenomenological friction model is coupled to a FE model of the tire under testing. A steady-state transport approach is used to efficiently compute the steady-state longitudinal slip characteristics, which show good quantitative agreement with experiments.


This paper describes internal quality system petformance at three Indonesian nursing schools and examines the match of the existing accreditation programmes with the developing internal quality system. A cross sectional study is used with self-administered questionnaires and applied to selected nursing schools. The questionnaire was designed according tocategories of framework of total quality management model. Interview and discussion with respondents including snowball sampling to other teachers and staffs were petformed to clarify and validate data and to enriched the information The activities measured were the enabling and the results factors. The enablers were including Leaderships, strategy, resources, human resources, educational management, teaching teaming process, research and development and also evaluation mechanism, while the results were covering students and personnel satisfaction and partnership. Results shows that some enabling factors were not included in the accreditation, while several indicators in the sub component of accreditation did not explicitly reflect internal quality system petformance. The school stratum as the outcome result of a quality measure is analogue to customer satisfaction, which would depend on direct influence of internal factors such as quality of schools leadership, strategy and educational management. Since the total accreditation score affects school strata and public recognition, it is necessary to use more objectives and relevant indicators by incorporating the internal and external factors as a measure of school quality petformances. Key words: accreditation, education, quality system evaluation, nursing


Osteoid osteoma is a small, benign, and painful tumor most commonly affecting the extra-articular portions of the long bones, especially the femur or tibia. Osteoid osteoma of the coracoid process is so rare that we have found only three previously reported cases in the international literature. We describe our experience in managing a case of osteoid osteoma in this unusual location.


Climate change exacerbates disadvantage and deepens inequality. Mitigation and adaptation measures to address climate change thus require equality-informed responses. This aligns with the goals of climate justice, which emphasise the rights of the most vulnerable, equality and fairness. Climate law and strategic litigation in pursuit of climate justice are rapidly evolving areas with a growing resort to human rights. This article argues that discrimination law should be considered, alongside other legal approaches, in shaping creative responses to the challenge of climate-related inequality. This strategic recourse to law is supported by the development of relevant discrimination law that is focused on humans within our ecological context, underpinned by an approach to equality that is transformative. The article draws on the example of access to a public swimming facility in the regional New South Wales town of Moree to consider how discrimination law might support equitable adaptation in pursuit of climate justice.


Man is bestowed with these things i.e. Body, soul and faculty of reason. Body and soul are parts & pared of each other. The faculty of reason makes human being distend from other creature. This faculty has been bestowed to take care of the health & well being of body & soul. But the human being cared for the health of body only. Resulting, body grew stronger but soul remained weak. Faculty of reason is taken care of in all the universities and colleges of word ignoring the improvement of soul (spirit).

Allah Says say: The spirit is a command of my lard (17;85) Scholars & philosophers of Islam like Ghazali Sh Sharf-Al-din Yahya al Muniri and Hafiz IBN Qayyam have defined spirit (soul) and laid emphasis , its importance every body knows that spirits is more powerful than body. Love of Allah and hearness to this serve as food for spirit. The spiritual power a can be enhance through, prayers, Fasting , voluntary prayers and remembrance of Allah. These who took interest in spiritual development on called friends of Allah (Aulia Allah).

Among these friends of Allah in Syed Ashraf Jahengir Samnani Who sacrificed kingdom at the alter of spirited way of life Syed Asrahf was born in Samnan (Khurrsani) in 688AH/1289AD. He was well versed in seven readings of the Quran. He completed his education at the age of 14 years. Love for mysticism lead him to a renowned mystic of this time Ala Al Dola samnani. He handed over the reins of kingdom to his brother Muhammad and left for India. He went to Bukhara, Samerkand and Ultimately reached Utch where he met Jalal Al-Din Bukhari known as Jahnian Jahan Gasht� He also visited Delhi, Sindh, planes of Ganges, Bengal and Bihar. Finally he settled in Kachucha Sharif i.e. (Rooh abad). From there he traveled to Mecca, Medina, Karbala, Najf Ashraf, Turkey, Damascus, Baghdad, Kashan, Samnan & Mashlad. He reached Roohabad via Multan and Delhi. There he died in 27 Muharram 808 AH-11/ July, 1405. A.D. He was a literary and spiritual figure who left behind a valuable treasure of the books in Arabic Persian & Urdu Most of his books were in Persian. His books like " Lataif-i-Ashrafi. Makhtubat Ashrafi, Tahqiqat-i-Ihsq, Hujjel Al-Zakrin and Risaloh Qabria have been translate. The transition of the Quran which he started while being a king in 727A. H is being translated. He also issued on Urdu magazine under the name of Akhlaq Wa Tasawwuf. This according to the Research scholars in the first Urdu Magazine.

He played a vital role in Academic and literary field just like his role in preaching Islam. His contributions in this field deserve to be recognized in a PLD. Thesis Having gemological relation with that personality, I understood this work.

I went to worthy Dr. Jalal Al-Din Noori in Karachi. University who encouraged me and agreed to guide me. I feel indebted to prof Rais Ahmad, Dr. Abdul Al-Rashib & DR. Syed Mahboob Shah who helped me at each & every step. I benefited from the library of my father Abu Muhammad Shah Syed Ahmad Ashraf Al-Jilani. This thesis also throws light on the life and works of premiered personalities in seventh and Eight centuries of Hijra. I have mentioned herein the progeny of Syed Ashraf Jahangir Samnani & their contributions towards preaching which proves that his teachings passed on to coming generations.


The temporal pattern of reproduction and its consequences for age structure and density were investigated in a population of the gracile mouse opossum Gracilinanus microtarsus in south-eastern Brazil. Individuals of G. microtarsus were monitored through capture–mark–recapture methods from August 2000 to February 2003 in a remnant of cerradão, a forest-like physiognomy of the highly seasonal cerrado biome. The temporal pattern of reproduction of the population studied was highly seasonal with rearing of the offspring occurring in the first half of the warm-wet season, when the abundance of food resources – primarily insects – in the cerrado is high. Shortly after reproduction, the density of adults decreased sharply, possibly because of high post-mating mortality, leading to a gradual replacement of adults by their offspring in the following months and little overlap of generations. Our data suggest that climatic and environmental factors affect the onset of reproduction and interact with endogenous factors that decrease post-mating survival to produce the observed pattern of seasonal variation in age structure and density. It is suggested that the dynamics of populations of G. microtarsus may be driven primarily by food limitation and that long-term studies are needed to understand its feedback structure.


In Vietnam, sugar industry is strongly developed. In this industry, sugar output not only satisfy domestic demand but also for the export and a large amount of molasses was not effectively used. Molasses containing the mixture of sugar and a little amount of vitamins and minerals could be used as materials for other industries. Biohydrogen production from molasses is regarded as a new, potential way to produce a clean, renewable energy with suitable price in order to satisfy the energy demand as well as to solve environmental pollution. In this paper, we studied the biohydrogen production from molasses by bacterium Clostridium Tr2 isolated from buffalo-dung in Vietnam using micro-aerobic fermentation. Various medium components (inoculum size, carbon and nitrogen sources, iron, sodium) and environmental factors (initial medium pH and temperature) were evaluated for their effects on the growth and the hydrogen production capacity by Clostridium sp. Tr2. Obtained results showed that the most suitable conditions for the growth and hydrogen production of strain Tr2 in dark, micro-aerobic fermentation consist of 10% (v/v) pre-culture, 15 ml/l molasses, 3 g/l yeast extract, 100 mg/l FeSO 4 .7H 2 O, initial medium pH 6.5, 30 o C.


Steer-by-wire is the electrical steering systems on vehicles that are expected with the development of an optimal control system can improve the dynamic performance of the vehicle. This paper aims to optimize the control systems, namely Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) and the Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) control on the vehicle steering system using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA). The control systems are built in a cascade, FLC to suppress errors in the lateral motion and the PID control to minimize the error in the yaw motion of the vehicle. FLC is built has two inputs (error and delta error) and single output. Each input and output consists of three Membership Function (MF) in the form of a triangular for language term "zero" and two trapezoidal for language term "negative" and "positive". In order to work optimally, each MF optimized using ICA to get the position and width of the most appropriate. Likewise, in the PID control, the constant at each Proportional, Integral and Derivative control also optimized using ICA, so there are six parameters of the control system are simultaneously optimized by ICA. Simulations performed on vehicle models with 10 Degree Of Freedom (DOF), the plant input using the variables of steering that expressed in the desired trajectory, and the plant outputs are lateral and yaw motion. The simulation results showed that the FLC-PID control system optimized by using ICA can maintain the movement of vehicle according to the desired trajectory with lower error and higher speed limits than optimized with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).


Feedback plays a significant role for all the level of students to improve their second language learning. Although, there are various types of feedback, this study will focus only oral corrective feedback. The purpose of this dissertation was to find out the types of corrective feedback and how the approaches of corrective feedback are used by teachers when students make oral mistakes or errors in the classroom at primary and secondary levels. Besides, what type of feedback approach is most preferred and used by the teachers. In order that, the data has been collected through the research instruments such as survey questionnaires and classroom observation to find out how teachers provide feedback of ESL learning classroom. Then collected data has been analyzed by both qualitative and quantitative methods. After analyzing the responses of teachers and classroom observation, some recommendations have been suggested for the teachers to use while providing feedback in their classroom. However, the result of my investigation does not represent corrective feedback provided in the entire ESL context of Bangladesh because it does not show the whole real scenarios in Bangladeshi context of ESL classroom.


The changes in electrical membrane parameters and intracellular sodium activity associated with the absorption of D-glucose were studied in the isolated perfused proximal tubule of the Ambystoma tigrinum kidney. The addition of 10 mM D-glucose to a substrate-free luminal perfusate depolarized the basolateral and luminal membrane potentials by -16.2 +/- 0.9 mV and +20.4 +/- 0.9 mV, respectively (P less than 0.01), increased intracellular sodium activity (acellNa) by 5.1 +/- 0.8 mM (P less than 0.01) and significantly (P less than 0.01) decreased luminal membrane resistance from 2,859 +/- 454 to 1,483 +/- 120 omega X cm2. Both the electrogenic response and the change in acellNa induced by luminal glucose were a saturating function of luminal glucose and sodium concentrations. The electrogenic response to luminal glucose was sensitive to intracellular glucose concentration and the change in acellNa induced by luminal glucose was sensitive to intracellular sodium concentrations. Within the physiological range of membrane potentials and studied, the sodium-glucose cotransporter is more sensitive to a decrease in a favorable electrical gradient than to an increase in a favourable chemical gradient for sodium across the luminal membrane.


Performers and researchers who explore performance practices of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently come up against a problem recently highlighted by musicologist Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, among others. Comparing recordings of Schubert's "An die Musik" from 1911 and 1997, he observes that the contrast between the two is deeply unsettling, and that the "audience to whom one seems just right may find the other a travesty" (Leech Wilkinson 2011:2). Recordings by performers like Adelina Patti will reliably induce astonished laughter in an unprepared modern audience, and the slow, heavy portamento of early twentieth -century cellists such as Hans Kronold has a similar effect on conservatory cello students. 1 The contrast between then and now is not simply a matter of different but equally valid performing styles, or a question of, e.g., the degree of portamento employed, which a little audience re-education would eventually make familiar.2 It appears to challenge a modern audience's very notion of what musical expression is or means. The modern laughter is not derisive. It is provoked by a sudden collision of incongruous performance codes. This paper explores the application ofFoucault's concepts of enonce and discours to musical performance, to the peculiar aspects of older performing styles, and to the reactions they produced in the context of nineteenthcentury annotated editions of chamber music. Historically Informed Performance (hereafter referred to as HIP) is supported and sustained by performers and academic researchers. The research is largely positivist and does not generally engage with issues and methodologies typical of the more theoretical musicology that has emerged in recent decades. Likewise, the "cultural turn" has largely escaped performers. The simple practicalities of performance do not fit well with such notions as the death of the author, the decalage between sign and signified, or representations of the Other. Rehearsals are generally not given over to discussions of hermeneutics versus phenomenology. This paper is a preliminary step in showing how such theoretical approaches could be fruitful for both performance practice and scholarship. No written sources from the nineteenth or even the earlier twentieth centuries would wholly endorse the performance style of Patti or Kronold. In the matter of portamento alone, for all that singers and string players approve


The University of Central Florida (UCF) has an enrollment of about 47,000 students across an expansive main campus and a large regional campus system. We have a diverse student population with a variety of needs and expectations. Our campus includes centers dedicated to fostering cultural diversity, such as the Barbara Ying Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies, "one of the only buildings in the United States to be dedicated to the instruction of English as a Second Language (ESL)" (Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies). UCF has also embraced diversity by offering new-student orientations in languages other than English.


As in adults, haemorrhagic or thrombotic events may also occur in children. The underlying reasons are inborn or acquired. Inherited disorders usually present during in early infancy. In order to interpret clinical and laboratory findings in children, it is necessary to keep in mind some specific paediatric features. This knowledge also forms the basic requirement to choose the appropriate therapy.


Scalable model persistence frameworks have been proposed to handle large (potentially generated) models involved in current industrial processes. They usually rely on databases to store and access the underlying models, and provide a lazy-loading strategy that aims to reduce the memory footprint of model navigation and manipulation. Dedicated query and transformation solutions have been proposed to further improve performances by generating native database queries leveraging the backend's advanced capabilities. However, existing solutions are not designed to specifically target the validation of a set of constraints over large models. They usually rely on low-level modeling APIs to retrieve model elements to validate, limiting the benefits of computing native database queries. In this paper we present an extension of the Mogwaı̈ query engine that aims to handle large model validation efficiently. We show how model constraints are pre-processed and translated into database queries, and how the validation of the model can benefit from the underlying database optimizations. Our approach is released as a set of open source Eclipse plugins and is fully available online.


Introduction: For treatment of castration-refractory prostate cancer (CRPC) patients a systemic chemotherapy and a second line hormone therapy have been developed in the last years. The administration of the chemotherapeutic drug docetaxel in combination with prednisone given to patients with CRPC on the basis of its improved survival, pain reduction, PSA response, and quality of life is the state of the art treatment at the moment. However, many patients do not respond to docetaxel or develop a resistance during treatment. Due to the low overall response survival of the patient is prolonged just for a few months. Until now, not much of molecular characteristics for docetaxel resistance is known in prostate cancer. Therefore, the main aim of the study was the establishment and characterization of docetaxel resistant cell lines. For this reason we generated docetaxel resistent sub cell lines of DU-145 and PC3 cells, which are considered models for an advanced disease. Methods: PC3 and DU-145 cells were treated with increasing concentrations of docetaxel (up to 12,5nM). The resistance of the newly established sub lines was determined by testing cell viability, proliferation, apoptosis, and cell cycle regulation with MTT, [3H]thymidine incorporation assay and FACS measurement, respectively. Results: Treatment of parental PC3 and DU-145 cells with 12,5nM docetaxel up to 4 days leads to a significant decrease in cell viability. An increase of cleaved PARP protein after 48h for DU-145 and after 72h for PC3 cells could confirm this observation. In contrast to parental cells, the newly established PC3-DR and DU-145-DR docetaxel resistant cells have a different cell morphology. Treatment with docetaxel did not result in increased cPARP levels. Moreover, we could not detect a significant difference in proliferation, basal apoptosis and cell cycle regulation in a direct comparison between parental PC3 and PC3-DR cells. DU-145-DR cells showed a slight increase in apoptosis and a significant decrease in proliferation after docetaxel treatment. However, we still observed a higher viability compared to parental DU-145 cells treated with 12.5nM docetaxel. Conclusions: The generated sub lines are less sensitive to docetaxel compared to the parental cells. However, DU-145-DR cells are more sensitive to docetaxel than PC3-DR cells. Taken together, we report on successful establishment and characterization of docetaxel-resistant PC3 and DU-145 cells. These cells represent a promising cellular model to investigate the responsible molecular mechanism for docetaxel resistance in prostate cancer cells in vitro. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1711. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-1711


Reproductive and early‐acting life‐history traits are likely to be particularly important determinants of plant fitness under a changing climate. There have, however, been few robust tests of the evolution of these traits under chronic climate change in natural ecosystems. Such studies are urgently needed, to evaluate the contribution of evolutionary change to population persistence. Here, we examine climate‐driven evolutionary change in reproductive and early‐acting plant life‐history traits in the long‐lived perennial plant, Festuca ovina. We collected established plants of F. ovina from species‐rich calcareous grassland at the Buxton Climate Change Impacts Laboratory (BCCIL), after 17 years of in situ experimental drought treatment. P1 plants collected from drought‐treated and control (ambient climate) plots at BCCIL were used to create an open‐pollinated F1 progeny array, which was subsequently validated using microsatellite markers to establish a robust bi‐parental pedigree. We measured the timing of germination and seed mass in the F1 progeny, the P1 paternal contribution to F1 offspring (paternal reproductive success), and assessed the effects of flowering time on the mating system. F1 seed with ancestry in drought‐treated plots at BCCIL germinated significantly later than seed derived from individuals from control plots. P1 plants from the drought treatment flowered significantly earlier than those from the control plots in summer 2012, but not in 2013. Male reproductive success was also lower in P1 plants collected from drought plots than those from control plots. Furthermore, our pedigree revealed that mating among parents of the F1 progeny had been assortative with respect to flowering time. Synthesis. Our study shows that chronic drought treatment at Buxton Climate Change Impacts Laboratory has driven rapid evolutionary change in reproductive and early‐acting life‐history traits in Festuca ovina, and suggests that evolutionary differentiation may be reinforced through changes in flowering time that reduce the potential for gene flow.


Lundstedt, G. 2001. Growing up with a chronic disease. A survey of children with PKU in Sweden. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Social Sciences 105, 66 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-5156-X. Phenylketonuria (PKU) is an inborn, metabolic disease affecting the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase, which converts phenylalanine to tyrosine. Since 1965, all Swedish patients are treated with a diet from the neonatal period, while patients without treatment become severely mentally retarded. This thesis presents a recent survey of intelligence, adjustment, and coping among Swedish patients with PKU aged 8-19 years. In Study I the patients' blood phenylalanine level was in accordance with treatment norms and they were normal in terms of intelligence and adjustment. The next study was a comparison of adjustment between patients with PKU, patients with neurobehavioral disorders, and patients with obesity. A reference group with matched non-clinical children was included. In this comparison, patients with PKU did not differ from the healthy children. Patients with neurobehavioral disorders were the least adjusted, and patients with obesity differed from the reference group and from patients with PKU in some respects, indicating less work capacity and internalising problems. Study II was undertaken for methodological reasons and showed that the measure of adjustment was reliable and valid. Study III was an investigation of psychological mechanisms associated with adherence to the dietetic therapy in PKU. The results showed that parents' problem-focused coping was the main factor behind good adherence. A marked transition to self-care was recommended to enhance the patients' motivation to continue with the diet into adulthood. This thesis concludes that the good outcome among the Swedish patients is due to general improvement of the treatment, but a contributing factor can be the high and fairly equal standards of living in the Swedish society.


A good production schedule in a semiconductor back-end facility is critical for the on time delivery of customer orders. Compared to the front-end process that is dominated by re-entrant product flows, the back-end process is linear and therefore more suitable for scheduling. However, the production scheduling of the back-end process is still very difficult due to the wide product mix, large number of parallel machines, product family related setups, machine-product qualification, and weekly demand consisting of thousands of lots. In this research, a novel mixed-integer-linear-programming (MILP) model is proposed for the batch production scheduling of a semiconductor back-end facility. In the MILP formulation, the manufacturing process is modeled as a flexible flow line with bottleneck stages, unrelated parallel machines, product family related sequence-independent setups, and product-machine qualification considerations. However, this MILP formulation is difficult to solve for real size problem instances. In a semiconductor back-end facility, production scheduling usually needs to be done every day while considering updated demand forecast for a medium term planning horizon. Due to the limitation on the solvable size of the MILP model, a deterministic scheduling system (DSS), consisting of an optimizer and a scheduler, is proposed to provide sub-optimal solutions in a short time for real size problem instances. The optimizer generates a tentative production plan. Then the scheduler sequences each lot on each individual machine according to the tentative production plan and scheduling rules. Customized factory rules and additional resource constraints are included in the DSS, such as preventive maintenance schedule, setup crew availability, and carrier limitations. Small problem instances are randomly generated to compare the performances of the MILP model and the deterministic scheduling system. Then experimental design is applied to understand the behavior of the DSS and identify the best configuration of the DSS under different demand ii scenarios. Product-machine qualification decisions have long-term and significant impact on production scheduling. A robust product-machine qualification matrix is critical for meeting demand when demand quantity or mix varies. In the second part of this research, a stochastic mixed integer programming model is proposed to balance the tradeoff between current machine qualification costs and future backorder costs with uncertain demand. The L-shaped method and acceleration techniques are proposed to solve the stochastic model. Computational results are provided to compare the performance of different solution methods.


Giraffes have been known for many thousands of years from rock art and Egyptian artefacts, displayed by Roman emperors at games and triumphs between 46BC and AD 274, and briefly exhibited in the zoos of the Italian City States in the 15th Century, yet they remained in the realm of mythology until, in 1764, Ryk Tulbagh, Governor of the Cape Colony, sent a skin and a drawing of a giraffe to Holland. This was the first evidence of their existence to reach Europe for 280 years. Philip Carteret took a copy of the drawing to England in 1769 where it was published by the Royal Society of London, and this drawing became the image that entered the encyclopaedias of natural history emerging at that time. In 1780, more skins, drawings, skeletons and notes were sent to Holland by Robert Jacob Gordon, and were taken to England by William Paterson. Other specimens were sent to France by Francois LeVaillant, and to England by William Burchell. The specimens sent to England were largely ignored. Those sent to Europe were studied by Arnout Vosmaer and Jean Allamand in Holland and by the Comte de Buffon and Etienne Geoffroy-St Hilaire in France. Recognition of the unique taxonomic position of giraffes was the significant outcome of these studies. The specimens prompted the import of living giraffes and the first of these was sent to France in 1826 and to England in 1827. Two publications on giraffe anatomy and reproduction by Richard Owen, first Director of the British Natural History Museum, put the study of giraffe biology on a sound scientific basis, and initiated the more detailed study of giraffes which has lasted nearly 200 years.


Respiratory syncytial virus infection has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality in infants with underlying cardiac and pulmonary disease. To understand better the cardiopulmonary interaction in patients with acute respiratory syncytial virus bronchiolitis, we performed M-mode echocardiograms and pulsed Doppler assessment of pulmonary arterial flow in 19 patients with structurally normal hearts during acute illness. Studies were repeated in 11 of these patients following complete recovery. Based on severity of respiratory compromise, patients were grouped into those with severe illness (ten patients) or mild illness (nine patients). Left ventricular dimensions and shortening fraction were used to assess left ventricular function. Right ventricular systolic time intervals and specific Doppler flow velocity measurements were used to assess right ventricular function and elevation of pulmonary artery pressure. Comparisons were made between patients with severe and mild illness and between acute and follow-up studies. No statistically significant differences in left ventricular function, right ventricular systolic time intervals, or Doppler flow measurements were observed. We conclude that in patients with structurally normal hearts, respiratory syncytial virus bronchiolitis is not associated with significant depression of cardiac performance or elevation in pulmonary resistance.


OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of electromyographic (EMG) activation and maximal molar bite force before and after a 3-month acupuncture therapy in individuals with temporomandibular disorder (Helkimo Index) from a pool of subjects attending the Special Care Course of the Ribeirão Preto Dental School, São Paulo University, Brazil.

DESIGN
All 17 patients, aged between 37 and 50 years (44.2 +/- 4.84 years), with an average weight of 71 +/- 9.45 kg and height of 1.64 +/- 0.07 m, were clinically examined with regard to pain and dysfunctions of the masticatory system. The temporomandibular acupuncture points of needling were IG4, E6, E7, B2, VB14, VB20, ID18, ID19, F3, E36, VB34, E44, R3, and HN3. EMG measures were acquired before and after the treatment using a MyoSystem-BR1 electromyographer. The data collected at rest, protrusion, left and right laterality, and clenching were normalized by maximum voluntary contraction. Maximal bite force in right and left molar regions were registered using a dynamometer with a capacity of up to 1000 N, adapted for oral conditions. The highest value out of three recordings was considered to be the individual's maximal bite force. The results were statistically analyzed using the paired t test (SPSS version 15.0) during the comparison before and after treatment.

RESULTS
We found decreased EMG activity at rest, protrusion, left and right laterality, and clenching; as well as increased values of maximal bite force after acupuncture treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Acupuncture promoted alterations in the EMG activity of masticatory muscles, increased maximal molar bite force, and led to remission of the subjects' painful symptomatology.


Thank you very much for reading perils and dangers. As you may know, people have look numerous times for their chosen readings like this perils and dangers, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they cope with some infectious virus inside their laptop. perils and dangers is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly. Our book servers hosts in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Kindly say, the perils and dangers is universally compatible with any devices to read.


In addition to images and text, more and more documents use graphs for system and idea illustration. Compared to grayscale images, graphs are more difficult to watermark because of their binary nature. We propose two methodologies for digital graph authentication, at the object and pixel levels, that detect and localize alterations.


There is an increasing interest in developing fully biodegradable materials for industrial applications. Composite combining biodegradable polymer and natural fiber could be a fully biodegradable material. This work focus on the investigation on China jute fiber reinforced PLA composites. Composites with three different fiber volume fractions were fabricated by film stacking hot press method. Mechanical properties have been investigated and the microstructure of the composites was observed. Fiber surface treatment by silane was applied in order to investigate the effects on the properties of the composites. The moisture absorption rates in a hygrothermal environment were also measured.


Abstract : IN Part I, a system of equations, which governs the stresses and the small deformation of an orthotropic, circular cylindrical, homogeneous shell under arbitrary load and support conditions, is developed. This system consists of two-dimensional shell equations an boundary conditions deduced, by means of Reissner's variational theorem, from consistent stress and displacement assumptions which include nonvanishing transverse normal stress and she r d formations. In Part II, the equations developed in Part I are incorporated in the formulation of the field equations and associated boundary conditions for the static analysis of thick, circular cylindrical, sandwich shells with orthotropic cores. These equations comprise five equilibrium equations in terms of stress resultants, sixteen stress resultant-displacement equations, and six equations that d cribe the force int raction of the orthotropic core wi h an orthotropic inner face layer and an isotropic outer face layer. Thus, in their most general form, these equations describe the stresses and deformations of a three layered, circular cylindrical shell. (Aut or)


During the five decades since the creation of the Bank of Israel in 1954 Israel experienced high and extremely variable inflation. Price stability (as defined by current international norms) was finally achieved at the beginning of the twenty first century. The paper divides the 1954-2015 sample into six sub-periods characterized by different inflation environments. The first part of the paper documents the impact of those different inflation environments on the average speed of individual price adjustments, the related pass-through from the exchange rate to domestic prices, inflation uncertainty, the extent of dollarization, relative price variability and the cost and time to maturity of the public debt. There are major quantitative differences in the above mentioned variables between the five inflationary sub-periods and the more recent price stability period. Among those are dramatic changes in the anchoring of inflation expectations, in the pass-through coefficient, inflation uncertainty, the speed of price adjustments, relative price variability, the (rather late) disappearance of dollarization in the real estate market and the benefits induced by price stability for the financing of the public debt. The paper provides an explanation for the fact that high inflation was stabilized in "one shot" while the subsequent moderate inflation was stabilized gradually within an inflation targeting framework. It argues that the second stabilization fits into the mold of the opportunistic approach to disinflation. The second part of the paper focuses solely on the period of price stability. It documents major, non-inflation related, structural changes since the turn of the century and discusses current policy dilemmas. Among the major structural changes are a persistent switch from current account deficits to surpluses, increased flexibility in the labor market, a reduction in the size of government, separation of pension and provident funds from the banking system and the emergence of a corporate bond market. Particularly remarkable is the macroeconomic resilience of the Israeli economy to the world financial crisis. As in many developed economies both the inflation gap and the output gap are recently in the negative range implying that, on both counts, monetary policy should be expansionary. The current policy rate is indeed almost at the zero bound. On one hand this policy, along with occasional interventions in the forex market, partially offsets overvaluation pressures on the exchange rate. On the other it reinforces a nine year long cycle of price increases in the real estate market.


Aspiculuris huascaensis n. sp. was found in the intestine of Mus musculus collected from 2 localities in Hidalgo, Mexico, and is described herein. The new species possesses cervical alae abruptly interrupted at mid-length of esophageal bulb form an acute angle, distinguishing it from 5 of the 17 species in the genus. The new species is differentiated from 11 of the remaining species by having cervical alae that form an acute angle and end at mid-length of the esophageal bulb. Aspiculuris huascaensis n. sp. most closely resembles A. tetraptera in the position of the terminal end of the cervical alae. However, the new species can be distinguished from that species by the number of caudal papillae (12 vs. 14), the presence of a sessile precloacal papilla between 2 cuticular folds, and by having a single pedunculate papilla located slightly posterior to the cloaca.


Fab Labs aim for projects to be shared within the global network. Yet the number of shared projects is small for various reasons – sharing is the responsibility of individual users who may encounter various barriers to sharing, and the rapid growth of the network rendered informal ways of sharing inefective. Creating a central repository has failed on several occasions. Fab Labs often choose their own website as the primary repository for their project documentation, also known as FabMoments. FabML has been proposed as a meta language to describe FabMoments across repositories. This proposal has been validated at the FabFuse2 conference in Amersfoort in 2013, and a narrative of a possible use scenario has been developed to further detail the initial FabML proposal. This article presents the initial FabML use context, as proposed earlier, which consists of a sharing part, a retrieval part, and some initial enhancements to the repository and retrieval system. The article then describes the FabMoment use scenario as developed at FabFuse2 and applies it to the initial FabML proposal. This results in four extensions to the initial description of the FabML use context. The article concludes with a summary of the requirements for the semantic design of a FabMoment, and it outlines the next steps for the development of the semantics of FabML. It also sketches the steps needed for the development of the technical and practical implementation of FabML.


Ecosystems are an integral part of climate, interacting with the atmosphere by modifying fluxes of energy, water, momentum, and carbon---processes whose importance varies spatially. This dissertation focuses on the study of ecoclimate -- unraveling the complex interactions between ecosystems and climate using a variety of tools including simple models, global scale carbon-climate models, and direct analysis of site-level data. Using a global climate model we show that transpired water vapor from expanded vegetation in the Arctic contributes greenhouse warming with a magnitude of forcing larger than that from the associated changes in albedo. This mechanism has not been considered in previous studies and here we suggest that it may negate the negative climate feedbacks expected from the surface latent cooling associated with the expansion of deciduous forest.Additionally we find that large-scale expansion of low albedo mid latitude forests in the model has the ability to increase Northern Hemisphere temperatures, moving the thermal equator northward and thus modifying global circulation patterns. We observe a northward shift of the intertropical convergence zone over Africa suggesting that extratropical vegetation may be partly responsible for the maintenance of precipitation over the Sahara inferred from proxy records of vegetation from ~6000 Years Ago. The ability of vegetation to effect remote circulation has implications for the role that plants may play in the current climate as well as in climates of the past and the future.In an analysis of nighttime respiration across the eddy covariance Ameriflux tower network we find a residual signal in respiration resembing seasonal variations in substrate mass after accounting for the effects of temperature and moisture. The prevalence of a mass signal indicates that allowing temperature sensitivity to change over time unphysically attributes variations in mass and moisture to changes in temperature. Using a simple carbon cycle model we show that ecosystems with long turnover times are most sensitive to long period forcing and therefore it will be harder to detect or attribute changes in these systems. This suggests that it may be easier to detect and attribute changes in the Tropics compared to the Boreal forest.


Faculty looking for consultation or support in any of the following areas are encouraged to contact the CITL: course or curriculum design; active or collaborative learning pedagogies; instructional approaches in new course contexts; instructional media or technology; online or hybrid teaching; writing assignment design; digital scholarship for research or teaching; high-performance computing for research or teaching; peer-to-peer learning; instructor presentation skills; student communication skills; assessment of student learning.


Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1854-1934) had achieved a sound school of neurobiology displaying an integrative and anatomo-functional paradigm of study of the Nervous System by integrating diverse morphological, physiological, and clinical sciences during the Second Spanish Republic. Such school flourished in the three locations of the Cajal Institute in Madrid, but was nearly lost during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) with the repression of the majority of the collaborators of the recently-extinct master. One part of these mature and capable researchers was able to reach sanctuary in the Americas to continue their research and teaching enterprises. Thanks to the welcoming policy of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas several of them developed an extensive work at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) becoming pioneers, founders of research institutions, and venerable teachers of several medical and neurological sciences. Among them are neuropsychiatrist Dionisio Nieto, pathologist Isaac Costero, both pupils of Pío del Río Hortega; physiologist José Puche and pharmacologist Rafael Méndez, both collaborators of Juan Negrín. The work of Dionisio Nieto is especially worthy to remark as beneficiary of the Cajal School since, among many other achievements, he applied the techniques of Del Río Hortega to study the neuropathology of epilepsy and schizophrenia since the 1950's. Besides from his legacy to Mexican psychiatry, Nieto's pupils have extended his neuroanatomical and histological work, such as Alfonso Escobar, or his psycho physiological leads, such as Augusto Fernández-Guardiola. The latter was another Spanish War refugee who before is death in 2004 published a profound testimonial pertaining to the neurosciences of the Spanish exile in Mexico.


We demonstrate a facile and general strategy based on ligand protection for the synthesis of unstable colloidal nanocrystals by using the synthesis of pure p-type NiO nanocrystals as an example. We find that the introduction of lithium stearate, which is stable in the reaction system and capable of binding to the surface of NiO oxide nanocrystals, can effectively suppress the reactivity of NiO nanocrystals and thus prevent their in situ reduction into Ni. The resulting p-type NiO nanocrystals, a highly demanded hole-transporting and electron-blocking material, are applied to the fabrication of organic solar cells and polymer light-emitting diodes, demonstrating their great potential as an interfacial layer for low-cost and large-area, solution-processed optoelectronic devices.


Optoelectronic packages are made with materials systems comprising ceramics, metal alloys, glasses, and polymers. The interplay between the properties of these materials determines stability and reliability of optoelectronic packages. Moreover, optoelectronic packages exhibit extreme sensitivity to minute changes in the geometry of the system. A sub-micron scale misalignment of an optical component can result in significant optical losses. As a result, the interplay of material properties may limit the short-term life of a unit that has no physical defects otherwise. Materials most likely to be involved with such misalignment are organic adhesives. This paper summaries our efforts in characterizing the dimensional stability of adhesives.


The charge migration process in DNA is subject to a lively debate among researchers at the moment. We have performed calculations on poly(G)-poly(C) DNA which substantiate a recent report indicating bandlike conduction for this particular form of DNA. Our results show that both guanine and cytosine give rise to conducting channels along the DNA strands. The conductivity results from the overlap of the pi orbitals along the base stacks. We also demonstrate that the measured increase of the threshold voltage with temperature in poly(G)-poly(C) DNA is the result of electron localization due to the structural disorder following high temperature.


With the advancement of smart phones, the rise of mobile payments has become a new payment method for consumers. The purpose of this study is to use structural equation model to verify the factors that affect consumers' behavior in using bank's mobile payment applications (APPs), so as to provide recommendations as main reference to enhance bank's mobile payment APPs. In this study, the research subjects were consumers who have used mobile payments APPs, a total of 300 valid responses were collected. The results show that security has a significant positive impact on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; perceived ease of use has a significant positive impact on perceived usefulness. Both of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have significantly positive influences on functional consumption value. Furthermore, functional consumption value and perceived usefulness have significant positive effect on usage behavior. As a result, banks are recommended to continually increase cooperative merchants that can use their mobile payments APPs, support for various operating systems of mobile phones, facilitate transaction speeds, ensure personal information, and provide user friendly interfaces.


Six thousand patients sent for radiography by a 24 hour care centre in northwest London have been left in limbo, with no evidence that a specialist radiologist ever reviewed the radiographs to see if the patients had any serious conditions.

NHS Brent has logged the failures at Brent Urgent Care Centre as a serious incident and has launched a full investigation. A review of 5% of the cases has indicated that 2% had "missed pathology" because their radiographs had not been reviewed—which means that up to 120 patients could potentially have experienced harm because of the failure.

The centre, which is located at Central Middlesex Hospital, is run by Care UK, a private company with many NHS contracts in primary and secondary care. It deals with minor illnesses and injuries that require urgent and immediate treatment, referring more serious cases to the emergency department at the hospital.

Care UK told NHS Brent on 30 March that it had …


Incidence and prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases, have increased in the last four decades, to epidemic proportions worldwide. Despite a significant decline in the morbidity and mortality related, to cardiovascular diseases in industrialized nations, diabetes related deaths are on the rise. Patients with type-2 diabetes, suffer from a greater risk of vascular disease, often in association with dyslipidaemia. Majority of clinics, use fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance, to determine the progress of prediabetic state to that of diabetes. In view of the fact, that glycated haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), represents three months average value of the glycemic load, it is used as the gold standard, to monitor the success or otherwise of the interventions, as well as progress or regression of the disease. Hypothyroidism causes many cardiometabolic abnormalities, as well as clinical symptoms, including insulin resistance, hypertension and dyslipidaemia, known features of type-2 diabetes. In this case report, we have presented our preliminary findings on, forty long-term diabetic subjects, less than 70 years of age and under regular supervised medical management. We have screened these patients, for vascular dysfunction using thermal imaging, to obtain risk scores for diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidaemia. Our study shows, that at clinically significant value of HbA1c (> 6.5), the observed values correlate well, with diabetes risk index. However, in some individuals with HbA1c greater than 9, the risk index is less than 3, indicating a moderate risk. In these patients, HbA1c seems to be independent of the state of diabetes condition, which is usually directly associated with HbA1c levels in type-2 diabetes. Results of these studies raise some very important questions on the role of glycemic load on treating diabetic patients with co-morbidities. What are the underlying mechanisms that promote vascular complications in diabetic patients with high levels of HbA1c? In the case of diabetic patients with comorbidities, is HbA1C sufficient for treatment? Further studies with a larger cohort, will provide answers to these very important questions related to the role of glycated proteins and lipids in the pathophysiology of endocrine disorders.


Gaussian process prior models offer a nonparametric approach to modelling unknown nonlinear systems from experimental data. These are flexible models which automatically adapt their model complexity to the available data, and which give not only mean predictions but also the variance of these predictions. A further advantage is the analytical derivation of derivatives of the model with respect to inputs, with their variance, providing a direct estimate of the locally linearized model with its corresponding parameter variance. We show how this can be used to tune a controller based on the linearized models, taking into account their uncertainty. The approach is applied to a simulated wheel slip control task illustrating controller development based on a nonparametric model of the unknown friction nonlinearity. Local stability and robustness of the controllers are tuned based on the uncertainty of the nonlinear models' derivatives.


This article introduces explosion diagrams to Augmented Reality (AR) applications. It presents algorithms to seamlessly integrate an object's explosion diagram into a real world environment, including the AR rendering of relocated objects textured with live video and the restoration of visual information which are hidden behind relocated objects. It demonstrates several types of visualizations for convincing AR explosion diagrams and it discusses visualizations of exploded parts as well as visual links conveying their relocation direction. Furthermore, we show the integration of our rendering and visualization techniques in an AR framework, which is able to automatically compute a diagram's layout and an animation of its corresponding explosion.


The aim of this thesis is to critically examine the marketing policies and practices of the operators of long distance coach services and extended coach tours. The historical development of the industry is recounted in chapters 2 and 3, with the latter concentrating on the post 1947 years, in which there has always been some degree of public ownership in the road , passenger transport industry. Chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with reviewing the relevant transport and tourism literature respectively. Not only are works recounted, but also critically analysed, and their bearing upon the subject under study is evaluated. Chapter 6 examines the tourism phenomenon within which the greater part of coach travel falls. The increasing number of staying tourists is shown to help counteract the declining market share of coach travel, although the numbers using the coach for holiday purposes still falls. The type of person to travel by coach is examined in Chapter 7, and supportive, although not conclusive, evidence is offered in Appendix 5. This data results from analysis of the British National Travel Survey, and shows that tour passengers are likely to be of socio-economic group C2, either elderly and female, or middle aged married couples. The data also suggests that C2 people aged 35-54, and DE, over 65 years, are the two most common types of express passenger. This supports operators' views that coach travellers tend to be elderly and from the lower income groups. Coach operators are constrained in their operational and marketing activities by matters which are beyond their control. These limitations, which mainly affect product formulation, are examined in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 is devoted to one of the most important influences upon the coach industry, the licensing system. The effect of the 1930 legislation upon such marketing activities as pricing and product formulation is examined. The consequences of relaxing the licensing system are also discussed. The marketing practices of operators is the subject of chapter 10. The product formulation, pricing, promotion and distribution by tour and express operators is described. These practices, and operators* attitudes towards knowledge of marketing are critically analysed. The final chapter is based upon these findings. Chapter 11 consists of recommendations of what can be done to improve the marketing of coach services. In this way a more efficient relationship can be created between consumer and producer in the market for coach operations.


We consider regression problems where the response is a smooth but non-linear function of a kdimensional projection of p normally-distributed covariates, contaminated with additive Gaussian noise. The goal is to recover the range of the k-dimensional projection, i.e., the index space. This model is called the multi-index model, and the k = 1 case is called the single-index model. For the single-index model, we characterize the population landscape of a natural semi-parametric maximum likelihood objective in terms of the link function and prove that it has no spurious local minima. We also propose and analyze an efficient iterative procedure that recovers the index space up to error using a sample size Õ(p 2/μ)+p/ ), whereR and μ, respectively, parameterize the smoothness of the link function and the signal strength. When a multi-index model is incorrectly specified as a single-index model, we prove that essentially the same procedure, with sample size Õ(p /μ) + p/ ), returns a vector that is -close to being completely in the index space.


Mesenteric lymph node (ln) metastasis is the single most important prognostic characteristic in colorectal cancer (CRC). The ln status is used for staging and is a decisive selection criterion for postoperative adjuvant therapy. However, it is difficult to accurately determine ln status by routine histopathology (H&E). Thus, ~25% of CRC patients, who by H&E are considered to lack tumor cells in their lns, i.e. stage I+II, die from CRC.To explore the utility of biomarker mRNA analysis for staging and prognosis of CRC, lns were collected at surgery and mRNA levels for fourteen biomarkers, including carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), kallikrein 6 (KLK6), cytokeratin 20 (CK20), guanylyl cyclase C (GCC), CEACAM1-S, CEACAM6 and mucin 2 (MUC2), were determined by quantitative RT-PCR with RNA copy standards. Results were compared to routine H&E analysis.The biomarkers were analyzed for capacity to detect disseminated tumor cells in lns. mRNA levels were determined in CRC- and control lns, primary tumor, normal colon, immune cells and fibroblasts. Lack of expression in immune cells and fibroblasts and high and homogenous expression in primary tumors showed to be the determining factors. CEA fulfilled these criteria best, followed by KLK6, CK20, GCC, and MUC2.Utility of the biomarker mRNAs for staging and prognosis was examined in 174 CRC patients. CEA was the best predictor of disease-free survival time after surgery with a 71 months difference between CEA(+) and CEA(-) patients and a hazard ratio of 5.1 for risk of recurrence for CEA(+) patients. CEA, CK20 and MUC2 were more sensitive than H&E in that these biomarkers identified patients who succumbed from recurrent CRC although H&E analysis had failed to detect the disseminated tumor cells. Combined analysis of CEA and MUC2 mRNAs improved prediction of outcome. Patients with high risk for recurrence had low MUC2/CEA ratios.KLK6 mRNA was identified as a potential progression marker by genome-wide microarray analysis of gene expression. It was found to be ectopically expressed in CRC tumor cells. KLK6(+) lns was an indicator of poor prognosis (hazard ratio 3.7). Notably, the actual level was of importance for outcome. The higher the KLK6 mRNA levels the greater the risk of recurrence. At the 90thpercentile the hazard risk ratio for KLK6(+) patients was 5.6. KLK6 positivity in lns with low numbers of tumor cells, as indicated by low CEA mRNA levels, indicated poor prognosis (hazard ratio 2.8). Thus, KLK6 adds prognostic information to CEA analysis.Increased levels of mRNA for the proinflammatory cytokine interferon- and the down-regulatory cytokine interleukin-10 in lns of CRC patients suggested ongoing immune reactions against the infiltrating tumor cells. Elevated TGF-1 levels correlated weakly with survival, suggesting protection by the antiproliferative effect of TGF-1 in sporadic cases.CEA mRNA was the best single biomarker for staging and prediction of disease-free survival time and risk of recurrence after surgery. In addition to CEA, KLK6 positivity and low MUC2/CEA ratio correlate with poor prognosis. Thus, CEA, MUC2 and KLK6 mRNAs form a strong "trio" for staging and prediction of outcome for CRC patients.


Background Poor quality of pediatric healthcare services at health facilities is a major contributing factor to child morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries, including Ethiopia, and it brings parental dissatisfaction. Eliciting parents' perception is an important method used to assess functionality or quality of pediatric healthcare services. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the perceived quality of pediatric healthcare services and to identify factors for it in Felege-Hiwot Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia. Methods A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted among parents of childhood patients from September 15, 2019 to October 15, 2019; 407 participants were recruited. Stratified random sampling was used to select respondents and data were collected using face-to-face interviews. Frequencies, percentages, and means with standard deviations were used to describe profiles of respondents. Both bi-variable and multivariable logistic regressions were used to model the odds of perceived quality of pediatric healthcare services. Results The proportion of perceived quality of pediatric healthcare services was 57.6% (95% CI:52.6-62.3%). College and above parental education status (AOR=5.22, 95% CI:2.39-11.38), urban residency (AOR=3.35, 95% CI:1.97-5.72), outpatient services (AOR=2.52, 95% CI:1.35-4.71), and surgical illnesses (AOR=2.18, 95% CI:1.28-3.73) were independent determinants for increased parental lower perceived level of quality. The odd of parental lower perceived level of quality was 2.42-times greater in those parents who did not prefer the hospital for revisiting (AOR=2.42, 95% CI:1.36-4.30). Conclusion Perceived quality of healthcare services in the hospital was low compared to the national plan which reflected that childhood patients did not receive optimal care. Educational status, place of residence, service delivering unit, illness type, and intention of hospital preference were independent determinants for parental perceived quality of pediatric healthcare service delivery. Continuous and periodic parental feedback should be considered in order to assess their satisfaction which in turn is an insight for quality improvement to be taken by the facility managers.


This work compares the incomes of the rural families of the Southern Region of Brazil in the years of 1995 and 2001, using the special micro data tabulation of the National Sample Home Research (PNADs). The results show that the agricultural income is steady: the non - agricultural income has grown in some kinds of families; the pensions/retirement incomes have increased among the families in the universe of home agriculture; and the "other incomes" are irrelevant. It is inferred that low economical dynamism of the rural cities and the agricultural crisis led to agricultural income stagnation and also to an impoverishment process of the families. Thus, there is a need of redefining the public policies for the rural families concerning the diversity of incomes, as well as new sustainable mechanisms for the families in higher levels than the current ones.


Relevance of the work is caused by the necessity to study the environmental conditions in Altai exposed to long term migration of pollutants from adjacent territory of East Kazakhstan. Objects and methods of research. To explore the nature and extent of pollutants transfer in 2015 the authors have tested snow cover and leaves of black poplar (15 and 17 points respectively) in the territory of the Altai Republic and partially within Altai territory at four regional transects with a pitch of 40-60 km. Filtrate, solid residue of snow and ash of poplar leaves (Populus nigra L.) were studied by ICP-MS at the Institute of Mineralogy, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Miass) on content of 50 chemical elements. Results. The mapped data on chemical composition of filtrate, solid residue of snow and ash of leaves of black poplar found out on the territory of Gorny Altai a large halo of spatially conjugate low pH and elevated concentrations of sulfates, compounds of mineral nitrogen and geochemically different associations of rock-forming elements and elements of polymetallic ores, processed at the enterprises of the plant «Kaztsinc» (Ust-Kamenogorsk, Ridder). Zinc, copper, lead are the main elements of ore association; cadmium, tin, molybdenum, tungsten, antimony, arsenic, bismuth, selenium, tellurium and thallium are the secondary ones. Similar size, morphology and North-East orientation of the halos of their increased concentrations are typical for spatial distribution of all investigated substances and elements in melt water, dust and leaves of poplar. The length of the generalized mega halo of transboundary pollution within Altai exceeds 300 km with its average width of 100-120 km and area over 30 km2. Conclusions. The authors predetermined the similar type of range and level of elements content of the ore association in snow dust near the plant «Kaztsinc» (Ust-Kamenogorsk) and dust in snow cover dust in Gorny Altai, which makes the emissions of the plant the source of transboundary transfer of dust aerosols of heavy metals and toxic elements and their input to the region in the form of local dry and wet deposition.


This review summarizes the progress that has been made recently in the medicinal chemistry of cantharidin, a potent antitumor agent from traditional Chinese medicine. Thousands of analogs have been synthesized on the basis of cantharidin, a part of which shows excellent properties, in particular, norcantharidin and norcantharimide. Despite the enormous efforts made, the intriguing bioactivities, mechanism, indications, and their interplay are still ill-defined. This review provides our up-to-date understanding in connection with the therapeutic use, mechanism, structure-activity relationship (SAR) and interesting properties of cantharidin analogs. Considerable development in the design of cantharidin analogs, in combination with mechanistic studies, has laid a foundation for transforming novel antitumor drugs into the clinic.


Background: COPD is one of so-called life-style related diseases and reported to show systemic inflammation, due to strong relationship to long-time tobacco smoking. Therefore, COPD patients often have a variety of comorbid diseases, including cardiovascular diseases (CVD), diabetes mellitus (DM), and other systemic diseases. Purpose: To investigate smoking status and frequency of comorbid COPD among the patients with CVD, DM, or both, who had smoking history (>10 pack×years), and also to investigate how CVD, DM or COPD is associated with systemic inflammation, oxidative stress and clinical disorders. Method: Totally 83 patients, over 40 years with history of cigarette smoking, were recruited for this study. All the participants were examined for pulmonary function test with bronchodilator, urine 8-OHDG/Creatinine, plasma levels for TNF-α, hs-CRP and pentosidine as predictors of airway obstruction, oxidative stress and systemic inflammation. Results: 11 in the 21 patients with CVD (52.4%) were diagnosed as COPD, 14 in 37 with DM (37.8%), and 9 in 25 with both (36.0%). Further analyses on the associations between each disease and systemic inflammation or oxidative stress were performed by logistic multivariate analyses adjusted with age, sex, smoking history, statin use, and each disease. As the results, Systemic inflammation evaluated by hsCRP increased significantly with statin use. The risk of oxidative stress evaluated by 8-OHdG increased approximately 3 fold with COPD. Conclusions: Because the smokers with DM or CVD seem to have much higher risk of COPD than smokers without them, they should be examined with pulmonary function test.


In this paper, we propose a novel packet scheduling approach for quality-of-service support in the IEEE 802.16 systems. The proposed approach is a really compromised solution which has good performance on all evaluating aspects of data throughput, packet drop rate, and fairness. We discuss different scheduling strategies for 802.16 systems and propose a new scheduling approach based on both the concepts of weighted fair queuing and earliest deadline first. The simulation results show the superiority of our proposed approach over other ones.


This paper compares the responses of short-term bank lending rates to policy rates in a sample of 12 industrialised countries and seeks to relate them to characteristics of the financial system and of the policy environment. The degree of competition in the loan market and the clarity of the signal associated with changes in policy rates appear as some of the most relevant factors affecting the pass-through. There is evidence of mark-up pricing on average funding costs but not much supporting asymmetric responses with respect to increases and decreases in the policy rate. The paper is part of a broader BIS cross-country study on the impact of financial structure on the transmission mechanism.


We verify the effective refraction index approach (ERIA) developed for surface plasmon propagation in ultrathin tapered metal–dielectric–metal slot waveguides by means of comparison of exact solutions obtained within ERIA for two different profiles and different scales of tapering with finite-difference time-domain numerical simulations. We show that for smooth enough tapering, ERIA gives the plasmon field structure closely matched with numerical results. We also outline the range of the taper scales in which ERIA leads to the results different from simulations.


The syntactic rules of today's High German are generally thought to have crystallized during the 18th century. One can therefore expect that during that time the processes of grammaticalization had a particular influence on doubtful cases in the usage of language. The syntactic development varied from region to region and was accompanied by theoretical controversies. One of the controversial issues was word order. The debates focused primarily on the order in verbal complexes and on the possibility of extraposing simple components and dependent clauses. This paper is based on the assumption that the theoretical controversies in some way reflected the doubtful cases in the usage of language. In order to identify the actual variants, the theoretical controversies will be outlined first. Then the analysis will focus on whether and how these variants were used in a corpus of 18th century texts. The objective is to determine the language-internal, sociological, and geographical factors of the variants' usage and thus to model the situations in which the doubtful cases ocurred. In conclusion, the following issues will be discussed: the relationship between the doubtful cases and diachronic language developments, the language-external factors of the doubtful cases, and the approach of language theorists to doubtful cases.


A COVID-19 vaccine booster dose is effective and safe for older adults. This study investigated facilitators and barriers to take up a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose among older adults in Hong Kong. Participants were Chinese-speaking community-dwelling adults aged ≥65 years. Telephone numbers were randomly selected from up-to-date telephone directories. A total of 395 participants completed the telephone interview. Logistic regression models were fitted. Among the participants, 31.6% received a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose. After adjustment for significant background characteristics, positive attitudes toward the booster dose, perceiving significant others would support them to receive the booster dose, and less uncertainty regarding the choice of the booster dose was associated with higher uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose. Concerns about poorer responses to the booster dose due to older age and the presence of chronic conditions were negatively associated with the dependent variable. In addition, the belief that governmental promotional materials could address their concern and were helpful for them to make decisions was associated with a higher COVID-19 vaccine booster dose uptake. Improving booster dose health promotion materials, modifying perceptions, involving significant others and reducing uncertainty are potentially useful strategies to improve COVID-19 vaccine booster dose uptake among older adults.


One of the main challenges in laparoscopic procedures is handling intraoperative bleeding. We propose video-based Computer-aided Laparoscopic Bleeding Management (CALBM) for early detection and management of intraoperative bleeding. Our system performs the online video-based segmentation of bleeding sources and displays them to the surgeon. It hinges on an improved space-time memory network, which we train from real and semi-synthetic data, using adversarial domain adaptation. Our system improves the IoU and F-Score from 69.97% to 73.40% and 50.23% to 58.09% in comparison to the baseline space-time memory network. It is far better than the prior CALBM systems based on still images, which we reimplemented with DeepLabV3+, reaching an IoU and F-Score of 65.86% and 43.19%. The improvement is also supported by user evaluation.


Purpose: Although proteinuria has been established as an independent risk factor of diabetic nephropathy, the timely and accurate estimation of proteinuria has scope for improvement. Hence, this study intends to compare the accuracy of spot sampled urine albumin creatinine ratio (UACR) to 24 hour urine protein among diabetics in the quantification of proteinuria. Design/Methodology/Approach: This prospective study was conducted amongst 120 patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Two types of urine samples namely spot samples and 24-hour samples were analysed across an array of clinical variables including urine biochemistry, kidney failure and glomerular filtration rate. UACR in spot samples was correlated with the 24-hour urine protein levels. The sensitivity, accuracy, specificity and predictive values of UACR for proteinuria were determined. A p


The unique plasma-specific features and physical phenomena in the organization of nanoscale soild-state systems in a broad range of elemental composition, structure, and dimensionality are critically reviewed. These effects lead to the possibility to localize and control energy and matter at nanoscales and to produce self-organized nano-solids with highly unusual and superior properties. A unifying conceptual framework based on the control of production, transport, and self-organization of precursor species is introduced and a variety of plasma-specific non-equilibrium and kinetics-driven phenomena across the many temporal and spatial scales is explained. When the plasma is localized to micrometer and nanometer dimensions, new emergent phenomena arise. The examples range from semiconducting quantum dots and nanowires, chirality control of single-walled carbon nanotubes, ultra-fine manipulation of graphenes, nano-diamond, and organic matter to nano-plasma effects and nano-plasmas of different states of matter.


Purpose

A free-piston engine (FPE) is an unconventional engine that abandons the crank system. This paper aims to focus on a numerical simulation for the lubricating characteristics of piston rings in a single-piston hydraulic free-piston engine (HFPE).

Design/methodology/approach

A time-based numerical simulation program was built using Matlab to define the piston motion of the new engine. And a lubrication mode of piston rings was built which is based on the gas flow equation, hydrodynamic lubrication equation and the asperity contact equation. The piston motion and the lubrication model are coupled, and then the finite difference method is used to obtain the piston rings lubrication performances of the FPE. Meanwhile, the lubrication characteristics of the new engine were compared with those of a corresponding conventional crankshaft-driven engine.

Findings

The study results indicate that compared with the traditional engine, the expansion stroke of the HFPE is longer, and the compression stroke is shorter. Lubrication oil film of the new engine is thicker than the traditional engine during the initial stage of compression stroke and the final stage of the power stroke. The average friction force and power of the hydraulic free piston engine are slightly lower than those of the traditional engine, but the peak friction power of the FPE is significantly greater than that of the traditional engine. With an increase in load, the friction loss power and friction loss efficiency decrease, and with a decrease in equivalence ratio, the friction power loss reduces, but the friction loss efficiency decreases first and then increases.

Research limitations/implications

In this paper, only qualitative analysis was performed on the tribological difference between conventional crankshaft engine and HFPE, instead of a quantitative one.

Practical implications

This paper contributes to the tribological design method of HFPE.

Social implications

No social implications are available now, as the HFPE is under the development phase. However, the authors are positive that their work will be commercialized in the near future.

Originality/value

The main originality of the paper can be introduced as follows: the lubrication and friction characteristics of the new engine (HFPE) were investigated and revealed, which have not been studied before; the effect of the HFPE's special piston motion on the tribological characteristics was considered in the lubrication simulation. The results show that compared with the traditional crankshaft engine, the new engine shows a different lubrication performance because of its free piston motion.


Our patient was diagnosed as having Philadelphia chromosome positive pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukaemia with lymphoid blast crisis (blast crisis of chronic myeloid leukaemia) in 2011. Treatment with two cycles of hyper-CVAD (alternating cyclophosphamide+vincristine+doxorubicin+dexamethasone with methotrexate+cytarabine) plus dasatinib resulted in a negative bone marrow biopsy (remission). He had an allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplant from a 10/10 HLA matched unrelated donor in 2013. Conditioning was with cyclophosphamide and 1200 cGy total body irradiation. Graft versus host disease prophylaxis was with tacrolimus and methotrexate. Dasatinib was continued after his transplant. In late 2013 he developed relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. He was treated with fludarabine, cytarabine, and granulocyte colony stimulating factor. Bone marrow biopsy after chemotherapy showed persistent acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, even after he was switched to ponatinib and dexamethasone. Daunorubicin and vincristine were added for one cycle but were discontinued when he was admitted to hospital for cellulitis. Bone marrow biopsy was negative but one three months later showed recurrent acute B lymphoblastic leukaemia. Remission occurred after re-induction with clofarabine in the autumn of 2014; this was followed by 6-mercaptopurine, methotrexate, vincristine, and prednisone maintenance therapy.

He had no history of graft versus host disease and was not taking additional immunosuppressants. After his transplant, both Aspergillus versicolor and A fumigatus were isolated from his sputum, but he had no other evidence of invasive fungal infection. Pneumocystis jirovecii nucleic acid was isolated from his sputum but was thought to represent colonisation rather than infection. He had no evidence of tuberculosis at any time. His prophylactic antimicrobial regimen did not include an antifungal drug (voriconazole was discontinued in 2015 owing to raised liver transaminases) but did include dapsone and aciclovir. About three weeks before admission, pus was noted around his peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC). There was no cellulitis and his PICC was …


This article aims to review, based on the literature and statistical data, the debate about the relationship between investments in education systems and the quality of education, focusing especially on the situation of Brazil. The paper seeks to show how the debate about the relationship between inputs and quality of education, dating back to the 1960s, remains susceptible to controversies around the world. The article concludes that, based on international indicators of spending per pupil, student performance on standardized tests, and comparative data between spending per pupil in public and private schools that charged tuition, that, in particular for countries with low investment per student, such as Brazil, a significant increase in educational spending can indeed make a difference in quality.  Increased spending can particularly improve the infrastructure and supply of equipment in schools as well as the attractiveness and retention of good teachers . The paper aims also to warn of the risk of evaluating the quality of education offered by schools based solely on student performance in standardized tests because they are strongly influenced by the socioeconomic status of families. Finally, it is shown that the effect of the school in the formation of their students involves a set of indicators that go beyond performance on standardized tests.


More and more people are demanding an end to violence as a means of arbitrating international demands and resolving problems between nations. This collection of essays brings social scientific evidence to bear on the question of the "inevitability" of war, and evaluates the potential for managing the international system in the interest of peace instead of war. The contributors discuss methods of lowering distrust among DEGREESnations; they consider whether war persists because it has become an economic necessity built into a "military-industrial complex."' They deal with implications of expansion of the military into civilian areas such as education, and into increasingly sophisticated technology such as the ABM Safeguard system. They discuss* the involvement of social scientists in the formulation of "peace" and "war" policy. Collectively, these essays present the most serious questions social scientists have been asking about problems of war and peace, and offer hope that the present international system, dangerous and appallingly costly as it is, may offer enough stability to give us time to transform it into something that bettet serves human needs.


The area of the 10th-11th-century West Tibetan kingdom and its successor kingdoms Purang, Guge and Ladakh is today mainly divided between China and India, with a small part belonging to Nepal. Tibetan inscriptions constitute an important part of the extensive Buddhist heritage and vital cultural traditions in areas all over historical Western Tibet. This paper seeks to present an overview on these inscriptions in key areas of historical Western Tibet, such as Purang and Guge (including Spiti and Upper Kinnaur), based on selected examples, all of which were documented in situ during the past two decades by taking into account their various contexts. In the first part, after a brief introduction on the research history, the geographical-historical setting and spatial and functional contexts of inscriptions are discussed, which are mainly characterized by Tibetan Buddhism. Then, the dominating emic concept of religious purpose (merit) and Tibetan terminology related to inscriptions, technical and material realities are briefly given attention before highlighting relevant administrative and ritual practices as well as visual aspects. Finally, structured mainly on the material support on which inscriptions are found (correlating to some degree with the chronological distribution), a number of inscriptions on stone, mineral building materials, metal, clay and cloth are analysed and also presented through illustrations, partly also in transliteration and in translation, in order to demonstrate the various different types of inscriptions, their content, materiality, functions and contexts.


The present study was aimed to investigate the antibacterial activity of some common locally available plants, in order to estimate the biological potential of these herbs. The alcoholic extract of Tagetes erecta L (Asteraceae), Argemone mexicana L (Papavaraceae), Datura stramonium L. (Solanaceae) and Tylophora indica (Burm.f.) Merr. (Asclepiadaceae) were evaluated for antibacterial activity using broth dilution bioassay method. It is clear from the results that, the extracts of these plants acts as a good source of antibiotics against various bacterial pathogens tested and exhibited broad spectrum of antibacterial activity. These plant extracts were shown to be moderate to maximum inhibitory effect against different bacterial forms such as Salmonella typhii, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli, where as, mild to moderate activity against Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus. The results of these studies revealed most valuable information and also support the continued sustainable use of these plants in traditional systems of medicine.