I. INTRODUCTION The federal courts are sometimes asked to decide whether a federal health, safety, or environmental standard preempts a stricter standard adopted by one or more states. The practical stakes for advocates of environmental and consumer protection in these cases have been high in recent years, in no small part because the executive branch and Congress have been either hostile to, or ambivalent to the point of inaction with respect to, proposals for federal standards that would impose significant costs on business. From a broader normative vantage, how the federal courts respond to preemption challenges affects how vibrant a role the states can have in democratic governance, and thus affects how vibrant a role the people-"We the People"-can have in democratic governance. Preemption is an issue that implicates not just particular regulatory outcomes, but also our fundamental commitments to preserving and fostering democratic values. The recent wave of state laws regarding greenhouse gas emissions poses exactly the question whether a lax federal standard serves as a regulatory cap or as a floor.1 The most populous state-California-has adopted rules that would in effect require carmakers to market more fuel efficient cars than are required under the federal fuel economy statute and regulations.2 Twelve other states have followed suit, and more may join them.3 California and the states that have adopted the California rules account for a very sizeable percentage of the nation's population. California argues that its rules are fully consistent with the policies, objectives, and text of the federal Clean Air Act.4 The automobile industry argues that federal law, in particular the fuel economy standards provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), preempts the California rules.5 The federal agency responsible for promulgating federal fuel economy standards, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has issued what might be termed an interpretive rule that tracks the automobile industry position.6 The environmental, economic, and political importance of this controversy is almost impossible to overstate because stronger California rules (coupled with stronger rules in other states) could lead ultimately to more fuel efficient cars throughout the United States and perhaps even outside the United States. Three separate district courts are now hearing the question of preemption of state greenhouse gas emissions rules for automobiles, and we may well observe a flurry of opinions before the controversy finally winds its way up to the Supreme Court.7 Federal preemption doctrine is, famously, a mess, replete with poorly defined, overlapping, hyperformalistic categories.8 Express preemption provisions in federal statutes are relatively few, and when present, they often contain highly ambiguous terms.9 Many preemption cases, even some that the courts nominally treat as express preemption cases, involve a judicial inquiry as to whether Congress implicitly preempted a particular state law or program. Within the rubric of implied preemption, the courts rely heavily on various categories-field preemption, conflict or obstacle preemption, and foreign affairs preemption-that lack defined borders, that blur together in specific cases, and that sometimes seem to do little analytic work.10 One ostensibly uncontroversial proposition in preemption doctrine is that congressional intent governs whether, and to what extent, federal law preempts state law." The practical problem, of course, is that implied preemption inquiries ask the federal courts to answer a wholly hypothetical question: if Congress had spoken directly and unambiguously to the precise preemption question at hand, which it did not, what would it have said? The courts have materials available to them to guide this inquiry, including congressional statements of statutory purposes, the structure and language of the statutes, legislative history, and federal agency regulations. …


A series of experiments were performed to study the absolute instability of Type I travelling crossflow modes in the boundary layer on a smooth disk rotating at constant speed. The basic flow agreed with analytic theory, and the growth of natural disturbances matched linear theory predictions. Controlled temporal disturbances were introduced by a short-duration air pulse from a hypodermic tube located above the disk and outside the boundary layer. The air pulse was positioned just outboard of the linear-theory critical radius for Type I crossflow modes. A hot-wire sensor primarily sensitive to the azimuthal velocity component, was positioned at different spatial ($r,\theta$) locations on the disk to document the growth of disturbances produced by the air pulses. Ensemble averages conditioned on the air pulses revealed wave packets that evolved in time and space. Two amplitudes of air pulses were used. The lower amplitude was verified to produced wave packets with linear amplitude characteristics. The space–time evolution of the leading and trailing edges of the wave packets were followed past the critical radius for the absolute instability, $r_{c_{A}}$. With the lower amplitudes, the spreading of the disturbance wave packets did not continue to grow in time as $r_{c_{A}}$ was approached. Rather, the spreading of the trailing edge of the wave packet decelerated and asymptotically approached a constant. This result supports previous linear DNS simulations where it was concluded that the absolute instability does not produce a global mode and that linear disturbance wave packets are dominated by the convective instability. The larger-amplitude disturbances were found to produce larger temporal spreading of the wave packets. This was accompanied by a sharp growth in the wave packet amplitude past $r_{c_{A}}$. Explanations for this are discussed.


AbstractOBJECTIVE: Health planners and policy makers are increasingly asking for a feasible method to identify vulnerable persons with the greatest health needs. We conducted a systematic review of the association between a single item assessing general self-rated health (GSRH) and mortality.
 DATA SOURCES: Systematic MEDLINE and EMBASE database searches for studies published from January 1966 to September 2003.
 REVIEW METHODS: Two investigators independently searched English language prospective, community-based cohort studies that reported (1) all-cause mortality, (2) a question assessing GSRH; and (3) an adjusted relative risk or equivalent. The investigators searched the citations to determine inclusion eligibility and abstracted data by following a standarized protocol. Of the 163 relevant studies identified, 22 cohorts met the inclusion criteria. Using a random effects model, compared with persons reporting "excellent" health status, the relative risk (95% confidence interval) for all-cause mortality was 1.23 [1.09, 1.39], 1.44 [1.21, 1.71], and 1.92 [1.64, 2.25] for those reporting "good," "fair," and "poor" health status, respectively. This relationship was robust in sensitivity analyses, limited to studies that adjusted for comorbid illness, functional status, cognitive status, and depression, and across subgroups defined by gender and country of origin.
 CONCLUSIONS: Persons with "poor" self-rated health had a 2-fold higher mortality risk compared with persons with "excellent" self-rated health. Subjects' responses to a simple, single-item GSRH question maintained a strong association with mortality even after adjustment for key covariates such as functional status, depression, and co-morbidity.


Social media is an effective tool for millennials to learn many things nowadays. However, not all millennials understand how to use social media as a something useful, including entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, this programme held to 1) emerge teenagers 'entrepreneurial spirit through social media; 2) socialize social media ethics with its functions for learning. The method used was cooperative learning which matched for teenagers such as explanation, games, question and answer, sharing experience, case study, and discussion. Based on activities evaluation, both knowledge and spirit of the participants (teenagers) about entrepreneurship and social media ethics increased. Furthermore, there will be follow up programs by visiting some entrepreneurship facilities such as Management Business Development Centre (PPMB), Carrier Development Centre (CDC), and Capital Market Laboratory of Economics Faculty Universitas Negeri Jakarta. By this program, we expect that the participants are motivated to develop their entrepreneurship spirit.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Teenager, Social Media


We consider three estimators of the autocorrelation function for a stationary process with missing observations. The first estimator is linked with the Yule-Walker estimator, the second one the least squares estimator, and the third one the sample correlation coefficient. We clarify their asymptotic differences and derive asymptotic distributions for both short-memory and long-memory models. In most of short-memory models the third estimator has smaller asymptotic variance than the others. On the other hand, if a process follows a long-memory model and its spectral density function is not square integrable, then the asymptotic distributions of the three estimators are all the same and the distribution is still the same as that of estimator under complete sampling too.


That capitalism, in all its variants, produces material inequality is beyond dispute. What is less clear, however, is not only whether Hayek's 'equality of opportunities' is immune to the inegalitarian trend, but also whether liberalism itself is the occult source of this outcome. This paper delves into this by offering a post-national contextualisation and partial critique of Renato Cristi's 1984 and 1998 scholarship on Hayek's decisionism. The aim is to investigate the relationship between liberal thought and wealth inequality in light of the global-order project and crisis in democratic decision-making procedures. This will uncover a clear zone of interaction between Hayek's notion of legal liberty and Schmitt's sovereignty that was not spotted by Cristi and that will shed new light on the dehumanising and inegalitarian essence of the universalisation of liberalism and its notion of 'civilised economy'.


As the food and beverages industry grows in Indonesia, there also has been an increase in the soft-drinks production in the society. There are elements often added into the drinks; such as caffeine, artifical sweetener and preservatives,which the content should be monitored. Because, if they are over-used, they will be hazardous to health. The purpose of this research is to obtain the optimum analysis condition for determining the content of saccharin, aspartame, benzoic acid, sorbic acid and caffeine, which are in the soft-drinks, using the reversed phase High-Performance-Liquid-Chromatography (HPLC). In this study, the condition used are Latek 18 column (15 cm x 4.0 mm), mobile phase as a mixture of acetonitrile and acetat buffer pH 5(5:95), flow rate 1,0 ml/minutes and detected by a 254 nm length-wave. The detection limit discovered by this method are for saccharin, benzoic acid, sorbic acid, caffeine and aspartame, respectively, are 0,2 ppm; 0,2 ppm; 0,007 ppm; 0,142 ppm; and 6,5 ppm. Whereas, the quantitative limit for saccharin, benzoic acid, sorbic acid, caffeine and aspartame, respectively, are 0,689 ppm; 0,852 ppm; 0,027 ppm; 0,452 ppm; 25,2 ppm. The calibration curve ranged between 1-60 ppm for saccharin and benzoid acid, 1-40 ppm for caffeine, 0.05-2 ppm for sorbic acid, and 30-100 ppm for aspartame. The investigation has been done for five (5) brands of soft-drinks. The analysis results are sample A contains caffeine 96,66 ppm, sample B contains saccharin 112,13 ppm, benzoic acid 206,81 ppm, and caffeine 130,63 ppm. Sample C contains benzoic acid 10,83 ppm and caffeine 97,66 ppm. Sample D contains benzoic acid 163,78 ppm, caffeine 101,52 ppm, and aspartame 231,20 ppm. The amounts of saccharin, benzoic acid, caffeine, and aspartame which has been found in the sample, do not exceed the tolerance limit of USAge, whereas the amount of benzoic acid which has been found in sample B exceed the tolerance limit of USAge.


A high-copy-number plasmid genomic library was screened for genes that when overexpressed down-regulate Ras protein activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We report on the structure and characterization of one such gene, RPI1, which potentially encodes a novel 46-kDa negative regulator of the Ras-cyclic AMP pathway. Three lines of evidence suggest that the RPI1 gene product operates upstream to negatively regulate the activity of normal but not mutationally activated Ras proteins: (i) overexpressed RPI1 lowers cyclic AMP levels in wild-type yeast cells but not in yeast cells carrying the RAS2Val-19 mutation, (ii) overexpressed RPI1 suppresses the heat shock sensitivity phenotype induced by overexpression of normal RAS2 but does not suppress the same phenotype induced by RAS2Val-19, and (iii) disruption of RPI1 results in a heat shock sensitivity phenotype which can be suppressed by mutations that lower normal Ras activity. Thus, RPI1 appears to encode an inhibitor of Ras activity that shares a common feature with Ras GTPase-activating proteins in that it fails to down-regulate activated RAS2Val-19 function. We present evidence that the down-regulatory effect of RPI1 requires the presence of one of the two Ras GTPase activators, IRA1 and IRA2.


In risk analysis there is a spatial mismatch of hazard data that are commonly modelled on an explicit raster level and exposure data that are often only available for aggregated units, e.g. communities. Dasymetric mapping techniques that use ancillary information to disaggregate data within a spatial unit help to bridge this gap. This paper presents dasymetric maps showing the population density and a unit value of residential assets for whole Germany. A dasymetric mapping approach, which uses land cover data (CORINE Land Cover) as ancillary variable, was adapted and applied to regionalize aggregated census data that are provided for all communities in Germany. The results were validated by two approaches. First, it was ascertained whether population data disaggregated at the community level can be used to estimate population in postcodes. Secondly, disaggregated population and asset data were used for a loss evaluation of two flood events that occurred in 1999 and 2002, respectively. It must be concluded that the algorithm tends to underestimate the population in urban areas and to overestimate population in other land cover classes. Nevertheless, flood loss evaluations demonstrate that the approach is capable of providing realistic estimates of the number of exposed people and assets. Thus, the maps are sufficient for applications in large-scale risk assessments such as the estimation of population and assets exposed to natural and man-made hazards.


For designing a wireless network, field test is mostly preferred for researchers to test and evaluate the system performance. However, it is expensive for field constructions and thus it is not affordable for most researchers. Software simulation is another option. However, the results by simulation may be undesirably biased away the true. This paper proposes a new method to trade off between resource consumption and test veracity, which constructs a hardware-in-loop simulation platform by integrating theoretic computation, computer simulation and hardware-based test. This platform can be used to verify wireless networking technologies, while resource is reduced greatly at the same time.


Human rights matter for marine conservation because people and nature are inextricably linked. A thriving planet cannot be one that contains widespread human suffering or stifles human potential; and a thriving humanity cannot exist on a dying planet. While the field of marine conservation is increasingly considering human well-being, it retains a legacy in some places of protectionism, colonialism, and fortress conservation. Here, we i) provide an overview of human rights principles and how they relate to marine conservation, ii) document cases where tensions have occurred between marine conservation goals and human rights, iii) review the legal and ethical obligations, and practical benefits, for marine conservation to support human rights, and iv) provide practical guidance on integrating human rights principles into marine conservation. We argue that adopting a human rights-based approach to marine conservation, that is integrating equity as a rights-based condition rather than a charitable principle, will not only help meet legal and ethical obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights, but will also result in greater and more enduring conservation impact.


The Sun's electromagnetic radiation is a continuum that spans radio wavelengths through the infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-ray, and beyond. Ultraviolet radiation, through a process termed photo ionization, interacts with upper atmospheric constituents to form an ionized layer called the ionosphere. The paper describes how the ionosphere affects radio signals in different ways, depending on their frequencies, which range from extremely low (ELF) to extremely high (EHF). On frequencies below about 30 MHz, the ionosphere may act as an efficient reflector, allowing radio communication to distances of many thousands of kilometers. Radio signals on frequencies above 30 MHz usually penetrate the ionosphere and, therefore, are useful for ground-to-space communications. The existence of the ionosphere allows the use of high frequency (HF) radio in, for example, ground-to-air or ship-to-shore communication over long distances. The effect of different types of solar activity on the ionosphere and consequently on communications is described.


Cyclanthura, gen. n., is described to accommodate the following 15 new Neotropical species of Derelomini (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Curculioninae): C. laticola, sp. n.; C. sphaerata, sp. n.; C. cordata, sp. n.; C. dentata, sp. n.; C. pilosa, sp. n.; C. capitulata, sp. n.; C. tenuicola, sp. n.; C. carinata, sp. n.; C. uncinata, sp. n.; C. oculata, sp. n.; C. cultrata, sp. n.; C. striata, sp. n.; C. bipartita, sp. n.; C. crepidula, sp. n.; and C. palmata, sp. n. The monophyly of Cyclanthura is indicated by the putatively synapomorphic elytral elevations and impressions, the posteriorly explanate female tergum VIII, and the posteriorly emarginate female tergum IX. These and various other characteristics - e.g.transformations in the apical region of the male median lobe - distinguish Cyclanthura from Phyllotrox Schonherr to which its species would have been assigned until now. Particular species of Cyclanthura are considered to pollinate and reproduce on the inflorescences of Araceae (Anthurium) and Cyclanthaceae (Asplundia, Carludovica, Sphaeradenia, and Cyclanthus). Several significant host plant transitions appear to have evolved within the genus. These patterns are discussed in the light of a phylogeny of the species of Cyclanthura which is based on an analysis of 22 taxa and 32 characters.


: Bio-polyols based on rapeseed oil were used to produce flexible polyurethane foams (FPURF). The bio-polyols were obtained on a laboratory and industrial scale with the two-step method involving epoxida tion of double bonds in rapeseed oil and opening of oxirane rings with different alcohols, such as isopropanol (iP) and diethylene glycol (DEG). The impact of bio-polyols production scale on selected physical and me chanical properties of FPURF was analyzed. The applied bio-polyols differed slightly by hydroxyl number, functionality, and water content. It was found that the scale of bio-polyol production has no significant impact on FPURF properties such as apparent density, hardness, hysteresis, support factor, and resilience. However, it was observed, that the addition of the bio-polyol to polyurethane (PUR) formulation had the impact on the FPURF properties as compared to the reference foams that were not modified with the bio-polyols. Moreover, a continuous method was used to prepare FPURF samples modified with different rapeseed oil-based polyols. For this purpose mixing-dosing device with conveyor line was used to synthesize the foams. It was found that the replacement of petrochemical polyols with the bio-polyols resulted in lower reactivity of the modified for mulations and the amount of catalysts had to be increased. Furthermore, the foams hysteresis, support factor, and hardness were higher, especially for foams modified with the bio-polyol that contained DEG in its struc -ture. Moreover, the fatigue tests were performed and the results showed a beneficial effect of the bio-based polyols on the functional properties, a.o. support factor of


In-vacuo and in-air ion beam analysis techniques have been developed to investigate diffusion in materials at the University of Surrey 2MV Tandem accelerator. Following Energy calibration of the accelerator, two main systems were studied using these techniques. Lithium intercalation into thin films of vanadium pentoxide was investigated using both nuclear reaction analysis and backscattering spectrometry in-vacuo. Energy loss techniques were used for both proton backscattering and the reaction 7Li(p,alpha)4He. Simulated annealing software enabled both data sets to be analysed simultaneously to give the Li profile. An in-air scanning micro-PIXE technique was developed to investigate diffusion into cementitious materials. Internal and external normalisation methods for elemental diffusion studies have been developed, applied and compared. Both Chloride and Sulphate ingress in cement, mortars and concrete have been studied. Results were obtained both from samples prepared in the lab and from large core samples taken from concrete blocks exposed to a saline environment for 30 years. Additional studies were performed both to compare results from scanning micro-PIXE and micro-XRF techniques and to compare results from an abraded small core. Another application of the technique is the study of chloride and heavy element distributions in paste, mortar and brick samples before and after electrochemical extraction methodologies. A CdTe detector was used for the first time with an external beam, to detect Kalpha X-rays induced from the heavy elements.


The process of gradual administrative and political decentralization in Bulgaria started in 1991, but the real financial decentralization process started in the beginning of 2003 with the adoption of a comparatively clear expenditure assignment and introduction of a transparent and predictable intergovernmental transfer system. Step by step, local governments have been given full control over some of the own-source revenues (local fees, service prices and revenues from municipal asset management) and limited control over the local tax levy. This study is intended to examine and critically analyze the financial decentralization reform in Bulgaria, outlining the key achievements and basic weaknesses of expenditure assignment, local taxation and intergovernmental fiscal relations. The results indicate that local governments gradually became powerful component of the public sector. Although reducing financial resources of the public sector, worldwide economic and financial crisis can turn into an opportunity for some of the local governments in the country to gain financial independence and concentrate the efforts on strengthening local tax capacity.


Antigenic mutants of poliovirus (Sabin strain, serotype 1) were isolated by the resistance of the virus to anti-Sabin neutralizing monoclonal antibodies. The amino acid replacements within the capsid protein sequence causing the altered antigenicity were identified for each of 63 isolates. The mutations cluster into distinct nonoverlapping peptide segments that group into three general immunological phenotypes on the basis of cross-neutralization analyses with 15 neutralizing anti-Sabin monoclonal antibodies. Location of the mutated amino acid residues within the three-dimensional structure of the virion indicates that the majority of these amino acid residues are highly exposed and located within prominent structural features of the viral surface. Those mutated amino acid residues that are less accessible to antibody interaction are often involved in hydrogen bonds or salt bridges that would stabilize the local tertiary structure of the antigenic site. The interactions of the peptide segments that form these neutralizing sites suggest specific models for the generation of neutralization-resistant variants and for the interaction between the viral surface and antibody.


Pulmonary involvement of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is an uncommon but important cause of pulmonary fibrosis and honeycombing in young adults. Rarely, pulmonary LCH may be complicated by spontaneous pneumothorax. It may be isolated or associated with multiple organ involvement. We describe here a case of LCH with diabetes insipidus, skin lesions and pulmonary involvement in a 15-year-old boy. The case was complicated by four episodes of spontaneous pneumothorax with typical radiologic findings of pulmonary LCH. His presentation, radiologic findings, treatment and clinical course during three-years of follow-up are discussed.


Various types of biofuels and feedstocks are considered and discussed in terms of their environmental and economic feasibilities. Biofuel is gaining the centre stage as human activities keep rising and the consequent increase in the discharge of lethal emissions is also a subject of concern. The need to cut down greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. CO2, N2O, CO, NO, SO2) is imperative to preserve our natural biodiversity. Biodiesel and bioethanol are the most common, viable alternatives and infinite green fuels that can be used in internal combustion engine. Biodiesel (commonly from waste cooking oil, nonedible vegetable oil, animal fat and tallow) and bioethanol (usually from forestry waste, Lignocellulosic biomass, starchy and sugary vegetable sources, and agricultural residues) are synthesized from straight vegetable feedstocks to bring their characters close to that of the fossil diesel and gasoline. The candidates as green fuels have the potential to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30% from their combustion in internal combustion engine. The various possible methods used for their productions determine the fuel sensitivity to the environment and the energy balance. In general, the energy balances are positive for both fuel substitutes.


The lanthanum (La) modification is known to improve dielectric and magnetic properties of ${\text{BiFeO}}_{3}$ (BFO), a promising room-temperature multiferroic oxide. The effects of La doping on the variations of the off-centering distortion and the orbital mixing of BFO are experimentally studied, in conjunction with first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. Both the Fe-O bond anisotropy in the ${\text{FeO}}_{6}$-octahedron cage and the off-centering ferroelectric polarization along the hexagonal ${[001]}_{\text{h}}$ are predicted to be substantially reduced by the La doping. These DFT predictions agree with the structural-refinement results obtained from high-resolution x-ray powder-diffraction data. We have shown that the apparent improvement of the polarization-field response is not intrinsic and can be attributed to the reduced leakage current by the La doping. X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy study further indicates that the degree of $\text{Fe}\text{ }3d\text{\ensuremath{-}}4p$ orbital mixing decreases with the La doping. The conclusion deduced from XANES study correlates well with the orbital-resolved density of states which predicts that the La doping increases the number of unoccupied states in the $p$ orbital but suppresses the number of unoccupied states in the $\text{Fe}\text{ }3d$ orbital.


SPINDLY (SPY) is a negative regulator of gibberellin (GA) responses; however, spy mutants exhibit various phenotypic alterations not found in GA-treated plants. Assaying for additional roles for SPY revealed that spy mutants are resistant to exogenously applied cytokinin. GA also repressed the effects of cytokinin, suggesting that there is cross talk between the two hormone-response pathways, which may involve SPY function. Two spy alleles showing severe (spy-4) and mild (spy-3) GA-associated phenotypes exhibited similar resistance to cytokinin, suggesting that SPY enhances cytokinin responses and inhibits GA signaling through distinct mechanisms. GA and spy repressed numerous cytokinin responses, from seedling development to senescence, indicating that cross talk occurs early in the cytokinin-signaling pathway. Because GA3 and spy-4 inhibited induction of the cytokinin primary-response gene, type-A Arabidopsis response regulator 5, SPY may interact with and modify elements from the phosphorelay cascade of the cytokinin signal transduction pathway. Cytokinin, on the other hand, had no effect on GA biosynthesis or responses. Our results demonstrate that SPY acts as both a repressor of GA responses and a positive regulator of cytokinin signaling. Hence, SPY may play a central role in the regulation of GA/cytokinin cross talk during plant development.


A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Philosophy.


Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a protean disease causing different degrees of clinical severity including fatality. In addition to humoral immunity, antigen-specific T cells may play a critical role in defining the protective immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes this disease. As a part of a longitudinal cohort study in Bangladesh to investigate B and T cell-specific immune responses, we sought to evaluate the activation-induced marker (AIM) and the status of different immune cell subsets during a COVID-19 infection. We analyzed a total of 115 participants, which included participants with asymptomatic, mild, moderate, and severe clinical symptoms. We observed decreased mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cell frequency on the initial days of the COVID-19 infection in symptomatic patients compared to asymptomatic patients. However, natural killer (NK) cells were found to be elevated in symptomatic patients just after the onset of the disease compared to both asymptomatic patients and healthy individuals. Moreover, we found a significant increase of AIM+ (both OX40+CD137+ and OX40+CD40L+) CD4+ T cells in moderate and severe COVID-19 patients in response to SARS-CoV-2 peptides (especially spike peptides) compared to pre-pandemic controls who are unexposed to SARS-CoV-2. Notably, we did not observe any significant difference in the CD8+ AIMs (CD137+CD69+), which indicates the exhaustion of CD8+ T cells during a COVID-19 infection. These findings suggest that patients who recovered from moderate and severe COVID-19 were able to mount a strong CD4+ T-cell response against shared viral determinants that ultimately induced T cells to mount further immune responses to SARS-CoV-2.


The effects of poloidal asymmetries and heated minority species are shown to be necessary to accurately describe heavy impurity transport in present experiments in JET and ASDEX Upgrade. Plasma rotation, or any small background electrostatic field in the plasma, such as that generated by anisotropic external heating can generate strong poloidal density variation of heavy impurities. These asymmetries have recently been added to numerical tools describing both neoclassical and turbulent transport and can increase neoclassical tungsten transport by an order of magnitude. Modelling predictions of the steady-state two-dimensional tungsten impurity distribution are compared with tomography from soft x-ray diagnostics. The modelling identifies neoclassical transport enhanced by poloidal asymmetries as the dominant mechanism responsible for tungsten accumulation in the central core of the plasma. Depending on the bulk plasma profiles, turbulent diffusion and neoclassical temperature screening can prevent accumulation. Externally heated minority species can significantly enhance temperature screening in ICRH plasmas.


Abstract Information about the effects of glyphosate on nematodes is limited and contradictory, while none existing for South African agricultural fields. The abundance and identity of non-parasitic nematodes in the rhizospheres of commercial glyphosate-tolerant and conventional (non-glyphosate-tolerant), soybean cultivars from cultivated fields, and adjacent natural vegetation (reference system) were obtained for two growing seasons. The impact of glyphosate was also investigated on non-parasitic nematodes in a 2-year soybean-maize cropping system. Thirty-two non-parasitic nematode genera were identified from soils of the three field ecosystems, with most of the genera occurring in natural vegetation (28), and less in conventional (23) and glyphosate-tolerant soybean (21). Bacterivores had the greatest diversity in soils of all three ecosystems during both seasons, while fungivores tended to be more abundant in glyphosate-tolerant soybean fields especially during the second season. Soils from the three ecosystems were disturbed and degraded with low abundance and diversity of omnivores and predators. Of the 14 genera identified from the soybean-maize cropping experiment, bacterivores dominated in terms of diversity in non-treated, and fungivores in glyphosate-treated plots. Soils from glyphosate-treated plots were degraded, less enriched and fungal-mediated, while those from non-treated plots were disturbed, enriched, and bacterial-mediated.


The purpose of this work is to provide a flexible thermodynamic model based on the filling and emptying approach for the performance prediction of turbocharged compression ignition engine. To validate the model, comparisons between the developed a computer program in FORTRAN language and the commercial GT-Power software results operating under different conditions. The comparisons show that there is a good concurrence between the developed program and the commercial GT-Power software. The variation of the speed of the diesel engine chosen extends from 800 RPM to 2100 RPM. In this work, we studied the influence of several engine parameters on the power and efficiency. Moreover, it puts in evidence the existence of two optimal points in the engine, one relative to maximum power and another to maximum efficiency; it was found that if the injection time is advanced, so the maximum levels of pressure and temperature in the cylinder are high, it was found that if the injection time is advanced, so the maximum levels of pressure and temperature in the cylinder are high.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.21.1.8690


In the field of data-mining, symbolic techniques have produced optimal solutions, which are expected to contain informative patterns. Visualizing these patterns can improve the understanding of the ground truth of the explored domain. However, up to now, the symbolic algorithms struggle to produce optimal solutions for domains that have an overlapping distribution of feature patterns. Furthermore, the majority of problems have an overlapping distribution. Thus, novel techniques are needed to improve symbolic techniques' capacity to address overlapping domains, so that it is practicable to achieve the visualization of the underlying patterns.
Michigan-style Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs) are rule-based symbolic learning systems that utilize evolutionary computation to construct a population of rules to capture patterns and knowledge of the explored domains. LCSs have been applied to many data-mining tasks and have achieved good performance. Recently, employing visualization methods to improve the understanding level of models has become more and more popular in the data-mining community. In the LCSs field, visualization techniques orientated to explore feature patterns have not been developed. Investigating LCSs' models is commonly based on reading rules or viewing their distribution. However, LCSs' models may contain hundreds or even thousands of unduplicated rules, which makes the identification of patterns challenging.
Previously, Butz defined LCSs' optimal solutions as [O] sets, which are expected to utilize a minimal number of non-overlapping rules to present an explored domain completely and correctly. In the last two decades, rule compaction algorithms have been designed to search for [O]s by compacting LCSs' models, where rules that violate [O]'s definition are considered redundant rules. However, in many problems, an ideal [O] does not exist. Even if such a ruleset exists, redundant rules are often discovered in the compacted models. Furthermore, compaction often results in a decreased prediction performance. The LCSs community used to believe the reduced performance is an unavoidable and acceptable price for producing a compacted model. It is observed that across multiple LCS produced populations for the same problem, the irrelevant/redundant rules are varied, but useful/accurate rules are consistent. According to this observation, this thesis collects the common accurate rules and finds that for an arbitrary clean dataset, the common rules can form a determinate and unique solution, i.e. the proposed natural solution. A natural solution is composed of all consistent and unsubsumable rules under the global search space. A natural solution can correctly and completely represent the explored clean datasets. Furthermore, searching for natural solutions can produce concise correct solutions without reducing performance.
To visualize the knowledge in the solutions, three visualization methods are developed, i.e. Feature Important Map (FIM), Action-based Feature Importance Map (AFIM), and Action-based Average value Map (AFVM).
FIM can trace how LCSs form patterns during the training process. Besides, AFIM and AFVM precisely present patterns in LCSs' optimal solution respectively regarding attribute importance and specified attribute's value's importance.
For the sake of efficiently producing natural solutions, a new type of compaction algorithm is introduced, termed Razor Cluster Razor (RCR). RCR is the first algorithm that considers Pittsburgh-style LCSs' conceptions to Michigan-style LCSs' compaction algorithms, i.e. compacting is based on multiple models. RCR was first designed for Boolean domains, then RCR has been extended to adapt to real-value LCSs' models. The conducted experiments demonstrated that natural solutions are producible for both Boolean domains and real domains.
The experiments regarding producing natural solutions lead this thesis to discover that LCSs have an over-general issue when addressing domains that have an overlapping distribution, i.e. optimal rules' encodings naturally share overlapped niches. The over-general issue causes LCSs to fail in maintaining the prediction performance, i.e. due to the optimal rules and over-general rules being repeatedly introduced and removed, training performance can never achieve 100% accuracy. This newly discovered issue inspires the development of the Absumption method as a complement to the existing Subsumption method, which continuously seeks to produce optimal rules by correcting over-general rules. Absumption not only improves LCSs' prediction performance in overlapping domains but also enables LCSs to employ hundreds of cooperative rules to precisely represent an explored domain.
The success of Absumption demonstrates LCSs' capacity in addressing overlapping domains. However, introducing Absumption to LCSs does increase the cost of computer resources for training, which results in a need for more efficient exploration. Furthermore, LCSs employed search techniques tend to evolve maximally generalized rules, rather than produce rules that do not overlap with the existing rules in the population. Thus, [O]s do not fit LCSs' fundamental search techniques. As a result, LCSs' accurate models often do not contain an optimal solution, which results in the LCSs produced models being poorly interpretable. This hampers LCSs from being a good data-mining technique. In this thesis, the Absumption and Subsumption based Learning Classifier System (ASCS) is developed. ASCSs consider natural solution as the search objective and promote the Absumption mechanism and Subsumption mechanism as the primary search strategies. Thus, it is possible to remove the traditional evolutionary search algorithms, i.e. crossover, mutation, roulette wheel deletion, and competition selection. Experiments demonstrated that ASCSs can use thousands of cooperative rules to represent an explored domain and enable easy pattern visualization that was previously not possible.


This is an open access article, available to all readers online . The attached file is the published version of the article.


Every year nearly 300 000 patients have heart valve operations and mostly prosthetic valves are inserted. Coumadin is the mainstay of therapy in these individuals but it has many side effects, mostly related to its anticoagulant effect. Rectus sheath haematoma (RSH) is a rare complication of abdominal trauma, surgery and excessive strain, however, anticoagulant agents may predispose to this condition without any precipitating event. Reversal of anticoagulation and resuscitation with fluids and blood products are necessary but anticoagulation is crucial in patients with prosthetic valves, as they have acquired thrombotic diathesis. Herein we report on a case of spontaneous RSH in a patient with prosthetic mitral and aortic valves and a history of prosthetic valve thrombosis. He was successfully managed medically.


BACKGROUND
Lichen sclerosus et atrophicus (LSA) is an inflammatory, mucocutaneous disorder that affects male and especially female with a debilitating impact on the quality of life. Common localization is the anogenital area. If not treated LSA can leave scars, functional impairment and can evolve in squamous cell carcinoma. The first line of treatment is represented by topical, ultra-potent corticosteroids, but often patients are unresponsive; moreover this therapy is frequently associated to relapses of the disease after discontinuation.

METHODS
In this prospective observational study, the efficacy of three different treatments - topical calcineurin inhibitors, avocado and soya beans extracts, and methyl aminolevulinate photodynamic therapy (MAL-PDT) - was evaluated, and an effort has been made to define a therapeutic algorithm according to the severity of the disease.

RESULTS
Of the 150 patients who were referred to the outpatient clinic for a dermatological and gynecological visit, 33 met the inclusion criteria. Sixteen (88%) patients showed an improvement of the lesion and a reduction of the itch; 3 (16.7%) patients with sever itch and fissurated lesions were evaluated for the MAL-PDT therapy. A total of 9 patients, after accurate examination of the lesions, were treated with MAL-PDT. The totality of the patients experienced a resolution of the lesions.

CONCLUSIONS
In the early stages the use of ASE can represent a valid alternative that is well tolerated by the patients reducing the itching, dryness and improving the mucosal texture. The use of MAL-PDT represents a valid treatment in the moderate-severe stages of LSA.


Eurostat is one of the directorates‐general of the Commission of the European Communities. Its aim is to create a European statistical system which will produce comparable statistics, by developing common classifications for products, industries, activities and regions, by surveys and questionnaires prepared by Eurostat in collaboration with the national statistical offices of the Member States and also by detailed methodologies giving common concepts and definitions for such areas as national accounts, agriculture and foreign trade. Eurostat publishes macro economic statistics for the twelve Member States covering national accounts, finance, balance of payments, social, agriculture, foreign trade, industry, energy and developing countries. An effort is made to have comparable information for the Communities, main trading partners, the United States of America and Japan, especially where the short‐term economic indicators are concerned. Three public databanks have been developed. CRONOS contains over a million chronological time series covering all the above subjects in very great detail. COMEXT is the foreign trade databank for the trade between the Member States and over 200 partner countries using the Combined Nomenclature, a goods classification with approximately 10,000 products. REGIO has the macroeconomic regional data for the Member States using the NUTS classification to breakdown the countries into three interrelated levels. A wide range of publications, microfiches, floppy discs and CD‐ROMs are also available. Eurostat's products reflect the economic and social policies of the Commission, especially where agriculture and national accounts are concerned. The information Eurostat requests from the Member States is directed by the needs of the Commission services.


Water distribution systems are often susceptible to failure events, mainly due to component
malfunctions, increase in demand and pollution events. However, levels of service to the
consumers cannot be compromised. Therefore, to understand the behaviour of distribution
systems, performance assessment is important.
In this thesis, problem of failure events in water distributions system is discussed and the causes
of failure are described. Component failures are selected to simulate the extreme situations in the
distribution systems. Random nature of the component failures are simulated by way of
employing a Monte Carlo technique based on the failure probabilities of the components. The methodology was illustrated with an example application. Appropriateness of existing network analysis methods to simulate failure events is analysed and
their shortcomings identified. To demonstrate the impact of component failures, they are
simulated with the hydraulic network analysis model. The traditional demand driven network
analysis approach is not sensitive to pressure variations in the system. Therefore, simulating
failures with demand driven analysis methods produces inaccurate flows at the nodes.
The pressure dependent demand analysis on the other hand, is capable of accommodating the
flow redistributions in the water distribution network, caused by failure events. The pressure dependent functions used in the analysis are meant to predict the flows that are consumed by the
secondary networks (tree network supplied from primary node). However, representing the
secondary network behaviour by using only a few coefficients (as in the PDD functions) do not
always results in correct predictions.
An alternative method that is based on micro level models (secondary networks) is proposed.
Micro level models try to simulate the exact network conditions, taking into account of the
consumers piping arrangements. Applying micro level models to a large real network will be a tedious process, as the size of the network will increase by many folds.
To avoid the difficulties in the micro level modeling, a method based on artificial neural networks
(ANN) is introduced. The ANNs mimic the behaviour of secondary networks in the micro level
model. Therefore, instead of physically attaching the secondary networks, ANNs are incorporated
with the analysis. The ANN based network analysis model predicts the pressure dependent demand outflows at the nodes. The behaviour of water distribution system is evaluated using performance measures. Existing performance indicators are reviewed and their shortcomings identified. New measures are proposed that give better insights into the behaviour of the system and also the failure experience of the consumers.
The improved performance assessment method is applied to a case study network and results were explained.


The effects of clonidine (CLO) on reflexly activated bladder motility have been examined in urethane-anesthetized rats and compared to its effects on field stimulation-induced contractions of isolated urinary bladder. Intravenous CLO suppressed micturition reflex transiently in a yohimbine-sensitive manner. The suppressive effect of i.v. CLO was greater after surgical sympathectomy (bilateral section of the hypogastric nerves). Intracisternal CLO was more effective than topical (on the bladder dome) or intracerebroventricular CLO in suppressing micturition. When tested in experimental conditions involving activation of both excitatory and inhibitory reflexes to the bladder CLO produced either inhibitory and/or excitatory effects on bladder motility in dependence of factors such as dose, route of administration and integrity of the sympathetic (inhibitory) innervation to the bladder. CLO suppressed bladder contractions produced by dimethylphenilpiperazinium, a ganglionic stimulant, and reduced those produced by postganglionic nerve stimulation. CLO inhibited, in a yohimbine-sensitive manner, amplitude of field stimulation-induced contractions of isolated rat bladder, and its effectiveness was inversely related to the frequency of stimulation. Our findings are suggestive that the inhibitory action of CLO on micturition reflex is counteracted, in normal animals, by a negative feedback on sympathetic inhibitory influences carried out through the hypogastric nerves.


We use the plane-wave (PW) method to calculate the superlens frequency of photonic crystals with various material compositions. At this frequency, photonic crystal behaves like a medium with isotropic negative index equal to −1. The relationship between the frequency and material compositions is derived from the calculated data. For the TE and TM modes, the relationship has the same format. From the relationship, a case has been chosen and, under these conditions, the wave-propagating field through the photonic crystal has been calculated by the finite-difference time-domain method. A good agreement is obtained between the results from the PW method and the finite-difference time-domain calculation. This is very useful for fabricating photonic crystal superlens material at an appropriate frequency.


Based on recent advances in first-principles theory, we develop a general model of the band offset at metal/ferroelectric interfaces. We show that, depending on the polarization of the film, a pathological regime might occur where the metallic carriers populate the energy bands of the insulator, making it metallic. As the most common approximations of density functional theory are affected by a systematic underestimation of the fundamental band gap of insulators, this scenario is likely to be an artifact of the simulation. We provide a number of rigorous criteria, together with extensive practical examples, to systematically identify this problematic situation in the calculated electronic and structural properties of ferroelectric systems. We discuss our findings in the context of earlier literature studies, where the issues described in this work have often been overlooked. We also discuss formal analogies to the physics of polarity compensation at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces, and suggest promising avenues for future research.


The epsilon-proteobacteria have recently been recognized as globally ubiquitous in modern marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and have had a significant role in biogeochemical and geological processes throughout Earth's history. To place this newly expanded group, which consists mainly of uncultured representatives, in an evolutionary context, we present an overview of the taxonomic classification for the class, review ecological and metabolic data in key sulphidic habitats and consider the ecological and geological potential of the epsilon-proteobacteria in modern and ancient systems. These integrated perspectives provide a framework for future culture- and genomic-based studies.


David Wildt's research on cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) from 1978 to 1983 helped to establish the use of embryological techniques in endangered species breeding programs. The cheetah is a member of the cat family (Felidae), which includes thirty-seven species. According to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [4] (CITES) all Felidae species are currently threatened or endangered, with the exception of the domestic cat (Felinus catus). Cheetahs [5] are an internationally recognized charismatic megafauna [6] species, prized zoo specimens, difficult to breed, and are the basis of many conservation campaigns. Like most species, cheetahs are less well studied than are model organisms in laboratory settings. Wildt's research revealed that the difficulty with breeding cheetahs in captivity is due to their lack of genetic diversity.


Ithaca, New York, September 2007 "The past is not dead. In fact, it is not even past." WILLIAM FAULKNER The burgeoning field of study loosely known as "cultural memory studies" fills a strange gap between more traditional historiography and the anthropology of memory. Historiography in the more traditional sense embraces the stance that the past is knowable, verifiable to the extent that we have reliable evidence, and retrievable to some extent. It concerns itself with what happened in the past (and the many complications of knowing that). Cultural memory studies, on the other hand, address what Paul Ricoeur so aptly labeled "the mnemonic phenomenon," the dialogical process through which collectivities recall the past in light of present concerns that are in part shaped by this very past that is being recalled and refashioned in the present. For the scholar of cultural memory, the object of study is not the past, but the many projects memory undertakes: healing, denial, revision, invention, recreation and re-creation, forgetting. What is the relationship between history and memory? What should it be? ...


Conventional coring can be an expensive and cumbersome technique in uncompacted, waterlogged sediments, especially when large numbers of samples are required rapidly and when vehicular access is restricted. The existing Van der Staay suction corer (Van de Meene et al. 1979) solves economic and other problems (chiefly logistical and environmental issues), but sample extraction has to be done in the field. The original purposes of the Van der Staay suction corer were to enable rapid drilling through sand and allow field sampling. It was not designed to recover intact samples for subsequent laboratory analysis. Cores from the new TESS-1 suction corer, however, are encapsulated in the field. The TESS-1 therefore combines the advantages of the original corer with the possibility of taking samples for laboratory analysis. Samples collected using the TESS-1 suction corer show little deformation, allow coring of soft uncompacted mud and retention of sedimentary structures. Problems due to sediment fluidization and movement inside the core pipe are usually minimal. The TESS-1 suction corer can be used in both wetland areas (beach, tidal flats, and marshes) and in shallow subaqueous environments (lakes, rivers, and nearshore subtidal areas).


Introduction There are several population-based English studies of AMI, but they are local rather than national, do not necessarily distinguish first events and re-infarctions, and are out of date. Our objective was to study AMI incidence and 30-day case fatality rates (CFRs) for first and recurrent events in England in 2007 (population 51.8 million). Methods Analysis of linked routine national hospital and mortality data, with an 8-year washout period to identify people who already had a prior event, in order to distinguish whether each AMI in 2007 was first or recurrent. Results Of 88 311 AMI events in 2007, 86% were first events. Age-standardised incidence of first AMI (per 100 000 person years) was 151 (150–152) in men and 64 (63–65) in women. Age-standardised 30-day overall CFRs including sudden deaths without hospitalisation for first AMI were 35.5% (35.1–36.0) and 34.4% (33.3–35.4) in men and 34.4% (33.9–35.0) and 31.0% (29.8–32.3) in women, for first AMIs and re-infarctions, respectively. Age-standardised 30-day hospitalised CFRs were much lower at 14.5% (14.1–14.9) and 14.1% (13.2–15.0) in men and 15.2% (14.7–15.7) and 13.9% (12.8–15.0) in women for first AMIs and re-infarctions, respectively. Conclusions This study provides, for the first time, total national-level population-based estimates of first and recurrent AMI as well as overall AMI incidence and case fatality in England. It holds informative value in better understanding AMI epidemiology and prognosis that should prove useful to practitioners and policy makers.


In situ measurement to determine mammalian cell number in a non-invasive, non-destructive and reagent-free manner is needed to enable continuous cell manufacturing. An analytical method is presented for non-invasive cell counting by conducting multiwavelength spectral analysis of mammalian cells achieving a minimal detectable cell count of 62,500 at 295 nm. Light absorbance was insensitive to culture volume, giving an absolute cell count rather than a concentration. The activation state of cells was also considered. The study was extended to quantification within polymeric microcapsules as an advanced substrate for mammalian cell growth in bioreactor formats and resulted in an offset directly correlating with the absorbance maxima of the polymer. These studies provide feasibility for optical density as a simple end point to indirectly quantify mammalian cell number for continuous monitoring of cell cultures.


Introduction: Patients' satisfaction has become a key criterion by which quality of health care services is evaluated. Quality of food and its services in a hospital is an important component of treatment process since it sometimes is a part of treatment and often affects the patients' satisfaction.
Objectives: To determine the level of patients' satisfaction about quality of food and services and to identify the factors affecting it.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was carried out from July 2018 to June 2019 in a tertiary military hospital, Dhaka. Structured questionnaires were used as data collection instruments and were analyzed by SPSS version 23.
Results: Out of 184 respondents' majority (60.3%) were satisfied with hospital food and food services. About 94%, 91.3%, 88%, 84.8%, 3.2% and 77.2% respondents were satisfied with amount, warmth, cleanliness of utensils, cleanliness of food servers, attitude and behaviour of food servers and food distribution time respectively. Relationship between overall satisfaction level and different aspects related to hospital food and food services was detected by chi-square and Fisher's exact test. In logistic regression analysis result showed that taste of food, food distribution time, cleanliness of food servers and cleanliness of ward/cabin were statistically significant and most important determinants of patients' satisfaction with the food served in hospital.
Conclusion: Improving taste of food, ensuring cleanliness of the food servers and ward and adjusting food distribution time are required to improve the level of overall patients' satisfaction towards hospital food and food services.
JAFMC Bangladesh. Vol 17, No 1 (June) 2021: 3-6


Underwater sound is modelled and mapped for purposes ranging from localised environmental impact assessments of individual offshore developments to large-scale marine spatial planning. As the area to be modelled increases, so does the computational effort. The effort is more easily handled if broken down into smaller regions that could be modelled separately and their results merged. The goal of our study was to split the Australian maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) into a set of smaller acoustic zones, whereby each zone is characterised by a set of environmental parameters that vary more across than within zones. The environmental parameters chosen reflect the hydroacoustic (e.g., water column sound speed profile), geoacoustic (e.g., sound speeds and absorption coefficients for compressional and shear waves), and bathymetric (i.e., seafloor depth and slope) parameters that directly affect the way in which sound propagates. We present a multivariate Gaussian mixture model, modified to handle input vectors (sound speed profiles) of variable length, and fitted by an expectation-maximization algorithm, that clustered the environmental parameters into 20 maritime acoustic zones corresponding to 28 geographically separated locations. Mean zone parameters and shape files are available for download. The zones may be used to map, for example, underwater sound from commercial shipping within the entire Australian EEZ.


This thesis concerns the analysis and sensitivity of nonlinear eigenvalue problems for matrices and linear operators. The first part illustrates that lack of normality may result in catastrophic ill-conditioned eigenvalue problem. Linearization of rational eigenvalue problems for both operators over finite and infinite dimensional spaces are considered. The standard approach is to multiply by the least common denominator in the rational term and apply a well known linearization technique to the polynomial eigenvalue problem. However, the symmetry of the original problem is lost, which may result in a more ill-conditioned problem. In this thesis, an alternative linearization method is used and the sensitivity of the two different linearizations are studied. Moreover, this work contains numerically solved rational eigenvalue problems with applications in photonic crystals. For these examples the pseudospectra is used to show how well-conditioned the problems are which indicates whether the solutions are reliable or not.


Basing on theoretical analyses the attributes of personality as a social display of a human, and the attributes of individity as a social display of an individual are defined. Besides, the integral indicator of personality is aesthetic sensibility, and the integral indicator of individity – depression. The generalized analysis of modern students' peculiarities empiric research results allowed to build the typology of students by the relation of aesthetic sensibility and depression as personality and individity integral attributes. 4 types of students were distinguished: I type «+ +» – high level of aesthetic sensibility and high level of depression (named "Avatarity"); II type «– +» – low level of aesthetic sensibility and high level of depression (named "Individity"); III type «– –» – low level of aesthetic sensibility and low level of depression (conditionally named "Vitality"); IV type «+ –» – high level of aesthetic sensibility and low level of depression (actually the type "Personality"). Basing on the revealed differences between types of students, defined by the relation of aesthetic sensibility and depression, in the level of the most studied psychological indicators, the typical psychological attributes are defined. The constructed students' typology gives us a possibility for better understanding of the destructive influence of educational surrounding and other social influences, coinciding with the time of study in a higher educational establishment, on the student's personality transformation. The perspective are the development and improvement of the method of personality (and its attributes) empiric researches application as an indicator for estimation of educational (production etc) surrounding favourableness / unfavourableness for the human vital activity and the development of his personality.


On facing the high productivity and elongation of life time in blast furnace iron-making, it is essential to protect the peripheral iron flow formed by a free space in the hearth in addition to maintaining the gas and liquid permeability of deadman. Therefore, it is important to stabilize the length of mud (tapping hole length) which is plugged and formed by hole closing refractory (mud materials), but the phenomena of fluctuation of tapping hole length are not clarified. In this paper, variables affecting the tapping hole length including the raceway depth measured by micro wave reflection struck tuyere are discussed under dimension analysis. As the burden weight above the raceway are balanced to upwind gas, the load to the hearth under the raceway is less than that in the furnace center and a high void ratio area or free space is easy to be formed under the raceway. As the result, it is clarified and quantified that the tapping hole length is recovered from shortage of distance by decreasing raceway depth which promotes deadman to sink further into bottom or increase the void ratio of peripheral area in the hearth.


Since HFE-245mc has both lower ozone depletion potential (ODP) and smaller global warming potential (GWP), it is expected being a possible candidate to replace R-114. We report a complete set of vapor pressures, PVT properties of HFE-245mc measured by a constant volume method. One hundred and ten vapor pressures were obtained from 310 K to the critical temperature (406. 80 K) and a vapor pressure correlation has been developed. One hundred and twenty-four PVT property data in the range of temperatures from 360 K to 440 K and pressures up to 8. 4 MPa were also obtained along 12 isochores. A virial-expansion type equation of state to represent the present measurements has also been developed.


Essays on Matching and Weighting for Causal Inference in Observational Studies Maŕıa de los Angeles Resa Juárez This thesis consists of three papers on matching and weighting methods for causal inference. The first paper conducts a Monte Carlo simulation study to evaluate the performance of multivariate matching methods that select a subset of treatment and control observations. The matching methods studied are the widely used nearest neighbor matching with propensity score calipers, and the more recently proposed methods, optimal matching of an optimally chosen subset and optimal cardinality matching. The main findings are: (i) covariate balance, as measured by differences in means, variance ratios, Kolmogorov-Smirnov distances, and cross-match test statistics, is better with cardinality matching since by construction it satisfies balance requirements; (ii) for given levels of covariate balance, the matched samples are larger with cardinality matching than with the other methods; (iii) in terms of covariate distances, optimal subset matching performs best; (iv) treatment effect estimates from cardinality matching have lower RMSEs, provided strong requirements for balance, specifically, fine balance, or strength-k balance, plus close mean balance. In standard practice, a matched sample is considered to be balanced if the absolute differences in means of the covariates across treatment groups are smaller than 0.1 standard deviations. However, the simulation results suggest that stronger forms of balance should be pursued in order to remove systematic biases due to observed covariates when a difference in means treatment effect estimator is used. In particular, if the true outcome model is additive then marginal distributions should be balanced, and if the true outcome model is additive with interactions then low-dimensional joints should be balanced. The second paper focuses on longitudinal studies, where marginal structural models (MSMs) are widely used to estimate the effect of time-dependent treatments in the presence of time-dependent confounders. Under a sequential ignorability assumption, MSMs yield unbiased treatment effect estimates by weighting each observation by the inverse of the probability of their observed treatment sequence given their history of observed covariates. However, these probabilities are typically estimated by fitting a propensity score model, and the resulting weights can fail to adjust for observed covariates due to model misspecification. Also, these weights tend to yield very unstable estimates if the predicted probabilities of treatment are very close to zero, which is often the case in practice. To address both of these problems, instead of modeling the probabilities of treatment, a design-based approach is taken and weights of minimum variance that adjust for the covariates across all possible treatment histories are directly found. For this, the role of weighting in longitudinal studies of treatment effects is analyzed, and a convex optimization problem that can be solved efficiently is defined. Unlike standard methods, this approach makes evident to the investigator the limitations imposed by the data when estimating causal effects without extrapolating. A simulation study shows that this approach outperforms standard methods, providing less biased and more precise estimates of time-varying treatment effects in a variety of settings. The proposed method is used on Chilean educational data to estimate the cumulative effect of attending a private subsidized school, as opposed to a public school, on students' university admission tests scores. The third paper is centered on observational studies with multi-valued treatments. Generalizing methods for matching and stratifying to accommodate multi-valued treatments has proven to be a complex task. A natural way to address confounding in this case is by weighting the observations, typically by the inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTW). As in the MSMs case, these weights can be highly variable and produce unstable estimates due to extreme weights. In addition, model misspecification, small sample sizes, and truncation of extreme weights can cause the weights to fail to adjust appropriately for observed confounders. The conditions the weights need to satisfy in order to provide close to unbiased treatment effect estimates with a reduced variability are determined and the convex optimization problem that can be solved in polynomial time to obtain them is defined. A simulation study with different settings is conducted to compare the proposed weighting scheme to IPTW, including generalized propensity score estimation methods that also consider explicitly the covariate balance problem in the probability estimation process. The applicability of the methods to continuous treatments is also tested. The results show that directly targeting balance with the weights, instead of focusing on estimating treatment assignment probabilities, provides the best results in terms of bias and root mean square error of the treatment effect estimator. The effects of the intensity level of the 2010 Chilean earthquake on posttraumatic stress disorder are estimated using the proposed methodology.


THE MEDIA WORKING GROUP was formed based on the identified needs to raise the profile of the Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB) and provide a mechanism by which the Executive might be provided with a public voice via the media. Furthermore, there was a desire to train interested members as well as local partners and collaborating organizations in media skills. At the meeting, participants were provided with a review of recent media activities from their organizations and shared experiences, and were also provided with copies of two published resources, namely "How to Write a Press Release" (from United States Fish and Wildlife Service) and a handout from the BirdLife Caribbean Program Media Training Workshop. The participants drafted a first paragraph of a possible post-conference media release by way of a practice exercise in press release writing. They reviewed one option to deal with negative media attention by discussing, "How to Write a Letter to the Editor," based on a handout. Participants were encouraged to contact the Chair of the Working Group for support should assistance be needed for media activities about birds and the Society. Participants also discussed two BirdLife Jamaica releases from the 2007 Caribbean Endemic Bird Festival.


Three broad theoretical approaches characterize the history of development economics: state-led growth, which dominated from the 1930s until roughly 1980; liberalization theory (the 'Washington Consensus'), which dominated in the 1980s; and institutionalism, which dominated subsequently. After 2000, development scholars increasingly focused on the legal institutions that support markets: property, contracts, and business law. This essay focuses on legal institutions that support economic innovation, which causes sustained growth. Developing countries mostly innovate by discovering new markets and adapting organizations, which is risky. A risky venture that unites capital and new ideas poses a problem of trust: the investor must trust the innovator not to steal his money, and the innovator must trust the investor not to steal his ideas. If institutions supply the means for entrepreneurs to solve the double trust dilemma, the economy strides ahead through innovation. Conversely, if institutions fail to supply the means for entrepreneurs to solve the double trust dilemma, the economy hobbles along without improvement. The origin of a nation's laws - whether common or civil law - is not so important as the ability to adapt law to business innovations.


Throughout the world, occupational exposure in cement factories continue to cause serious public health problems and are leading cause of disability and disease among workers. Since there has not been any study on the prevalence and associated factors of occupational injury in cement factory, this study investigates the prevalence and associated factors of occupational injuries among cement factory workers in Mugher. An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted using stratified random sampling by job category. The study participants were selected using simple random sampling technique and data collected by trained data collectors using pretested questionnaire. The data was edited, entered into a computer using Epi Info version 3.5.0 then exported to IBM SPSS version 21 and cleaned. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were done. The prevalence of occupational injury in one year was 10.4%. In addition, 1356 working days were lost as a result of 52 work related injuries. Thirty-seven (71.2%) were hospitalized, accounting for 51.4% hospitalization for more than 24 h, 18(34.6%) were absent from work for 15 to 30 days. Job category was the significant contributing factor for occupational injuries with workers in the cement production factory 74.7% less likely to experience occupational injury than workers in clinker production [AOR= 0.25, CI: (0.100-0.639)]. The prevalence of occupational injury was high, hence focus should be on preventive measures like timely provision of adequate and quality safety materials along with workplace supervision.

 Key words: Occupational injury, cement factory workers, disability, disease and safety materials.


The aim of this paper is to describe how to measure welfare effect of the deregulation and increased competition of the public transport by railway in Sweden. The paper also includes a numerical example of how to measure the welfare effect. In our study we use public data from SJ regaring quantity and ticket prices for the period 1996 - 2005. We have used equivalent variation, EV, as the method to measure the welfare effect. We demonstrate how to derive the equation to calculate EV by starting with a Marschallian demand function. As the alternative price path we use the Swedish producers' price index, PPI. The result of the measurement is that the increased competition in Sweden has had a positive effect on welfare. Since the data is limited, the monetary value of the welfare effect presented in this paper should be interpreted with caution and evaluated further with a more enlarged set of data.


This paper suggests a reconfigurable single-phase inverter topology for a hybrid ac/dc solar powered home. This inverter possesses a single-phase single-stage topology and the main advantage of this converter is that it can perform dc/dc, dc/ac, and grid tie operation, thus reducing loss, cost, and size of the converter. This hybrid ac/dc home has both ac and dc appliances. This type of home helps to reduce the power loss by avoiding unnecessary double stages of power conversion and improves the harmonic profile by isolating dc loads to dc supply side and rest to ac side. Simulation is done in MATLAB/Simulink and the obtained results are validated through hardware implementation using Arduino Uno controller. Such type of solar powered home equipped with this novel inverter topology could become a basic building block for future energy efficient smart grid and microgrid.


Design of hand tools is an age-old activity associated with the human species as makers' of artefacts. There are evidences of tools manufactured by even pre-historic proto-human species that have been discovered all around the world. Knowledge of tool manufacturing has been seen as the pre-cursor to all the major technological discoveries in the history of the human species. Evidences of primitive tool making and use are also associated with some other animal species such as crows and chimpanzees. Therefore, it could be claimed that continuousimprovements in tool making distinctly distinguish human species from all the rest of the animals. The chisel is one of the most primitive tools that was manufactured first by proto-humans and later improved upon by the present-day humans. Woodworking chisels find a special place in any Maker's toolkit and have been essential in the creation of numerous utilitarian and aesthetic artefacts we are surrounded by today.

 There are two broad categories of value additions that can find place in sophisticated versions of basic hand tools. Firstly, value could be added to a hand tool in terms of increasing or improving its technical functionality. Concepts such as productivity and efficiency are two common measures used in validating such value additions. Such measures can on most occasions be objectively measured. Secondly, the other important kind of value addition to a tool design is in terms of improvements in the specific experiences associated with it - which is the primary concern of this research work. Comfort is one such positive experiential phenomenon. Comfort is a multidimensional experience and is highly subjective in nature. There could be different sources of comfort, and they are investigated primarily by conducting psychometric investigations. Aesthetic qualities of a specific product experienced through different sensory modalities leads to specific emotional responses in a user. This interaction affects the comfort experience of a user. It should also be noted from the past research that apart from pure psychological factors, there also exist physical factors that affect comfort experiences – especially a factor such as the'fit' of a product with a human user. Misfit of hand tools to a user's hand is a common cause of injuries and musculoskeletal disorders. Apart from physical dimensions of 'fit', there also exist psychological dimensions to the concept. An appropriate'fit' of a product to a user can be judged by a user by sensory experience and a'fitting' product has greater chances of being picked up for purchase as well as being retained by user or being purchased again.

 The present work aims to investigate experiential and comfort related factors associated with the design of wood working chisel handles during the early concept design phase of product development cycle. The methodology used in this study utilizes modes of analysis and validation centred on investigating subjective visual and physical experiences with products images and actual products. This research involves collecting information on field survey, analysis of hand anthropometry and grip strength data, understanding of manufacturer and user perceptions about design of tool handles and development of user comfort centered methodology for conceptual design of anatomically shaped inline chisel handles. Design directions from this work could be implemented as such or with specific tailoring in designing better chisels for regular wood working professionals in India and elsewhere.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate trends in the incidence of medically recognized migraine in Olmsted County, Minnesota over approximately a decade.

METHODS
The authors used the records-linkage system of the Rochester Epidemiology Project to identify individuals whose records included any diagnostic rubric related to headache for the 3-year period 1979 through 1981 and the 2-year period 1989 through 1990. A nurse abstracter and a neurologist (J.W.S.) reviewed the complete history of each potential case and assigned a diagnosis using the International Headache Society classification (IHS, modified). Only patients who consulted a doctor for their headache and had their initial visit for migraine within the study years were considered as incident cases.

RESULTS
The incidence of medically recognized migraine increased in female subjects between the 1979-through-1981 period and the 1989-through-1990 period for all ages, but particularly among those who were aged 10 to 49 years. The peak incidence rate at age 20 to 29 years increased from 634.5 new cases per 100,000 person-years in 1979 through 1981 to 986.4 in the 1989-through-1990 period (absolute increase 351.9; relative increase 56%). The rise in incidence in female subjects was most sizable for migrainous disorder (IHS code 1.7); smaller increases were noted for migraine without aura and with typical aura. Only a slight absolute increase in migraine incidence rates was observed in male subjects, restricted to those 10 to 19 years of age (absolute increase 174.7; relative increase 89%).

CONCLUSIONS
Although the incidence rates reported here are restricted to patients who consulted a doctor for their headache, the authors suggest that the incidence of migraine has increased over time in female subjects, especially those of reproductive age. The increase was most pronounced for migrainous disorder. Incidence rates were more stable in male subjects over time.


A trust-region algorithm using inexact function and derivatives values is introduced for solving unconstrained smooth optimization problems. This algorithm uses high-order Taylor models and allows the search of strong approximate minimizers of arbitrary order. The evaluation complexity of finding a $q$-th approximate minimizer using this algorithm is then shown, under standard conditions, to be $\mathcal{O}\big(\min_{j\in\{1,\ldots,q\}}\epsilon_j^{-(q+1)}\big)$ where the $\epsilon_j$ are the order-dependent requested accuracy thresholds. Remarkably, this order is identical to that of classical trust-region methods using exact information.


Aims: NDRG2 (N-myc downstream regulated gene 2) gene is involved in important biological processes: cell differentiation, growth and apoptosis. Several molecular studies have shown NDRG2 as a promising diagnostic marker involved in brain tumor pathology. The aim of the study was to investigate how changes in epigenetic modification and activity of NDRG2 reflect on glioma malignancy and patient outcome. Methods: 137 different malignancy grade gliomas were used as the study material: 14 pilocytic astrocytomas grade I, 45 diffuse astrocytomas grade II, 29 anaplastic astrocytomas grade III, and 49 grade IV astrocytomas (glioblastomas). Promoter methylation analysis has been carried out by using methylation-specific PCR, whereas RT-PCR and Western-blot analyses were used to measure NDRG2 expression levels. Results: We demonstrated that NDRG2 gene methylation frequency increased whereas expression at both mRNA and protein levels markedly decreased in glioblastoma specimens compared to the lower grade astrocytomas. NDRG2 transcript and protein levels did not correlate with the promoter methylation state, suggesting the presence of alternative regulatory gene expression mechanisms that may operate in a tissue-specific manner in gliomas. Kaplan-Meier analyses revealed significant differences in survival time in gliomas stratified by NDRG2 methylation status and mRNA and protein expression levels. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the usefulness of combining epigenetic data to gene expression patterns at mRNA and protein level in tumor biomarker studies, and suggest that NDRG2 downregulation might bear influence on glioma tumor progression while being associated with higher malignancy grade.


Far-infrared hydrogen recombination lines H15α (169.4 micrometers), H12α (88.8 micrometers), and H10α (52.5 micrometers) were detected in the peculiar luminous star MWC 349A from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. Here it is shown that at least H15α is strongly amplified, with the probable amplification factor being greater than or about equal to 103 and a brightness temperature that is greater than or about equal to 107 kelvin. The other two lines also show signs of amplification, although to a lesser degree. Beyond H10α the amplification apparently vanishes. The newly detected amplified lines fall into the laser wavelength domain. These lasers, as well as the previously detected hydrogen masers, may originate in the photoionized circumstellar disk of MWC 349A and constrain the disk's physics and structure.


the 3 categories. Conclusion: We showed that the workup of abnormal ALT is inadequate in primary care and is detrimental to patient quality healthcare, leading to an increased risk of missed diagnoses and interventions, inability to determine the value of future hepatology visits, and inability to triage appropriate time until hepatology visits. Future QI initiatives should be aimed at improving guideline recommended workup, differentiating "borderline" from "mild ALT" elevations prior to early hepatology referral and differentiating the importance for autoimmune workup with moderate/severe aminotransferase elevations for early detection and intervention for autoimmune hepatitis.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the critical decision factors of public–private partnership (PPP) concession which is complex due to a number of uncertain and random variables. To identify critical factors contributing to determination of concession period, this study reviews the published literature. It also identifies countries contributing most in PPP research. As a whole, it provides a mutually beneficial scenario by formulating a decision-making matrix.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviews the literature published during the period 2005-2015. A two-staged methodology is followed on retrieved scholarly papers: first, countries contributing to PPP are identified along with authors and affiliated institutions. Second, using frequency analysis of shortlisted critical factors, yearly appearance and stakeholders affected, a decision matrix is formulated.

Findings

The most contributing country toward PPP research is China, followed by the USA both in terms of country- and author-based contribution. In total, 63 factors are identified that affect PPP concession out of which, 8 per cent are highly critical and 21 per cent are marginally critical for decision-making.

Practical implications

Critical factors of PPP concession period will be identified with the help of decision-making matrix. This will help in adequate resource allocation for handling critical factors ensuring project success. Researchers may also understand the research trends in the past decade to usher ways for future improvements.

Originality/value

This paper reports findings of an original and innovative study, which identifies critical success factors of PPP concession period and synthesizes them into a decision-making matrix. Many of the previous studies have identified and ranked the critical factors but such a synthesis has not been reported.


The design and implementation of the control system of an ARM9-based biochemical analyzer was introduced in detail. The S3C2440, an ARM9-based MCU, was the core of the control system. Precision regulator circuit of light of the analyzer was designed to stabilize the voltage supply of the light source. Closed-loop motor positioning control technology and freely programmable CPLD stepper motor sub-circuit technology were used to precisely position the grating. And flexible gain control technology based on digital potentiometers was employed to solve the problem of signal regulation. Such core technical problems was solved in succession, it thereby improves the instrument's performance and function and provides a number of inexpensive high-quality products for domestic small and medium sized hospitals especially rural hospitals and promoted the establishment of those hospitals in consequence.


The purpose of this study was to investigate whether certain subtypes of withdrawn children show evidence of difficulties with social acceptance and negative feelings about their social situation. Additionally, differences between subtypes in terms of other social behaviors, such as aggression and prosocial behavior, were examined. Groups of each of three withdrawn subtypes, passive-withdrawn, active-isolate, and unsociable, were created based on peer nominations of withdrawn behavior, and were compared to one another and to a non-withdrawn control group. Results indicated that the active-isolate group showed evidence of poorer social acceptance and social adjustment, whereas the passive-withdrawn and unsociable groups did not differ from each other or the control group. Results demonstrate the need to determine subtypes of social withdrawal for both research and clinical purposes.


Due to the complexity of machine tool thermal errors affected by various factors, a new combining prediction model, based on the theory of gery system GM (1,1) model, is applied to the trend prediction of machine tool thermal errors. The degree of smoothness of primary data sequence is first improved by function transform method and sequentially grey system GM (1,1) model is established; second, time series analysis model is established by remnant sequence of GM (1,1) model to amend the precision of grey system GM (1,1) model. Thus, the precision of combining prediction model is further improved. Through the prediction study on thermal error modeling in a spot NC turning center, testing results showed that combining prediction model can highly improve machine tool's prediction precision and make it more effective for real-time compensation of machine tool thermal error.


Autonomous Systems (ASes) in the Internet use BGP to perform interdomain routing. BGP routing policies are mainly determined by the business relationships between neighboring ASes, which can be classified into three types: provider-tocustomer, peer-to-peer, and sibling-to-sibling. ASes usually do not export provider routes and peer routes to providers or peers. It has been proved that if all ASes conform to this common export policy then all AS paths are valley-free. Since AS relationships are not publicly available, several studies have proposed heuristic algorithms for inferring AS relationships using publicly available BGP data. Most of these algorithms rely on the valley-free property of AS paths. However, not all AS paths are valley-free because some ASes do not conform to the common export policy. As a result, inferred AS relationship are inaccurate. Instead of inferring AS relationships, we propose an algorithm for computing observed AS relationships based on transit relationships between ASes that are revealed by BGP data. We analyze the types of mismatches between observed AS relationships and actual AS relationships and show that the mismatches can be used to identify ASes that violate the common export policy.


When a road network is broken by a large-scale disaster, the authors have to immediately restore some links and connect the whole network as a first-aid restoration for transporting relief supplies. This study proposes a model to determine the optimal facility locations and routes for working vehicles. The feature of the first-aid restoration is that travel time of a link changes before and after the link is restored. In order to represent the change of travel time, the authors employ a time-space network and formulate the model as an integer linear programming. The objective function consists of required time taken until all nodes are visited by at least one working vehicle, sum of all working vehicles' travel time, and sum of required time taken until a node is visited by a working vehicle. By applying the model to some example networks, the authors show the features of the optimal state for first-aid restoration.


OBJECTIVE: To compare risks for adverse obstetric events between females who did and did not receive trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine during pregnancy. METHOD: This retrospective, observational cohort study was conducted at seven Vaccine Safety Datalink sites. Pregnancies were identified from administrative and claims data using a validated algorithm. Females vaccinated while pregnant from 2002 to 2009 were matched one-to-two with replacement to unvaccinated pregnant females. Using a generalized estimating equation method with a Poisson distribution and log link, we evaluated the association of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine with 13 outcomes. Given our large sample size and multiple comparisons (19 contrasts), a cutoff for significance of P<.005 was selected a priori. RESULTS: Our cohort included 74,292 vaccinated females matched on age, site, and pregnancy start date with 144,597 unvaccinated females. We did not observe increased risks within 42 days of vaccination for hyperemesis, chronic hypertension, gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, proteinuria, or urinary tract infection. Using a risk window from vaccination through pregnancy end, we did not observe increased risks after vaccination for proteinuria, urinary tract infection, gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or eclampsia, chorioamnionitis, puerperal infection, venous complications, pulmonary embolism, or peripartum cardiomyopathy. A reduced risk for gestational diabetes after vaccination was detected (adjusted hazard rate ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.83–0.93), likely as a result of healthy vaccine bias or earlier detection among vaccinees. CONCLUSION: In this large cohort, influenza vaccination during pregnancy was not associated with increased risks for medically attended adverse obstetric events. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


- This Consideration of the people of nature have a vital important of systems of belief, religious and cultural traditions of the world. Water and nature are directly related to ontology and, as such, consideration of the people of water and nature have a vital important of systems of belief, religious and cultural traditions of the world. In fact, our conceptions of water and nature are influenced substantively by theological, religious and cultural traditions orientation. This study ideas of water, nature, landscape, and environment extant in influential world religions and cultural traditions: Eastern faiths (Hinduism; Buddhism; Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto) ; Judaism; Christianity and Islam. We study the concept of the sacred about water, nature, landscape, green environment and tree. The phenomenon of pilgrimage is explored, as an archaic instance of the fusion of land, religion, and sacralised human behaviour. We will discern the manner in which conceptualizations of water and nature are implicated in social and cultural stances and behaviours toward nature and the human-created landscape and environment. Conceptualizations of and stances toward it environmental issues" often embody theological presuppositions, either explicitly or implicitly. There are numerous questions that arise when discussing cultural tradition, religion and natural environment. But we will put on more" How has the relationship between Turkish Islamic society religion, cultural tradition and nature changed?"


Nowadays, many event organizers try to market their products based on small-scale sports events which are usually organized and held in rural areas. This is due to the type of visitors who participate in such events because of several reasons. This study aims to examine the factors that influence visitors to visit these small-scale sports tourism events and whether such events can become a potential tourism product to attract visitors. A survey was undertaken in the Northern States of Malaysia. A set of questionnaires were distributed to the visitors of this small-scale sports tourism event. Data was collected among 468 visitors during the event in two northern states of Malaysia. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) used to analyse the data. Finding from this study has confirmed that small-scale event sports tourism can become one of the potential products for sports tourism besides mega sporting events. As many event organizers tend to focus on mega sporting events, organizing these small-scale sports tourism events can also generate positive economic benefits towards the community and indirectly to the state government.


An in vivo model is used to define Fc motifs engaged by mAbs to deplete target cells. Human IgG1 and human IgG4 were very potent, and mutations within a motif critical for Fc gammaR binding (glutamate 233 to proline, leucine/phenylalanine 234 to valine, and leucine 235 to alanine) completely prevented depletion. Mouse IgG2b was also potent, and mutations to prevent complement activation did not impair depletion with this isotype, as previously shown for human IgG1. In contrast, a mutation that impaired binding to mouse Fc gammaRII (glutamate 318 to alanine) eliminated effector function of mouse IgG2b and also reduced the potency of human IgG4. To reveal potential contributions of domains other than C(H)2, domain switch mutants were created between human IgG1 and rat IgG2a. Two hybrid mAbs were generated with potencies exceeding anything previously seen in this model. While their mechanism of depletion was not defined, their activity appeared dependent upon interdomain interactions in the Fc region.