Introduction: Saliva is an easily accessible biofluid with diagnostic potential. Essential to saliva-based diagnostics is a complete catalog of proteins in saliva, as well as an understanding of the effect of collection method on its composition. For example, little is known of the changes to the whole human salivary proteome caused by stimulation. Purpose: The purpose of our study was to compare the proteome of stimulated vs. unstimulated whole human saliva. Methods and materials: Two samples of whole saliva, one unstimulated, one stimulated with citric acid, were collected from five healthy male subjects age 27-32. Saliva samples were analyzed using highly sensitive 2dimensional-liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (2D-LC/MS) to identify both major and minor proteins present. Relative protein amounts were estimated from the 2DLC/MS data utilizing spectral counting. Changes in protein relative abundance were compared using paired two-tailed Student's t-test. Results: The 2-DLC study was able to identify, with high confidence, 509 non-redundant proteins. 288 proteins found in at least 3 of 5 subjects were compared to detect changes in relative abundance. 36 proteins were found to change significantly (p<0.05) following stimulation (14 increased, 22 decreased). Conclusions: Stimulation with citric acid alters the proteome of human whole saliva, inducing changes in protein relative abundance. Future biomarker and pro teo me studies of whole saliva will need to account for the effect of stimulation on protein composition when considering collection protocols.


MFP is usually used to passively localize an underwater fixed source in wave-guide environments which has many civilian and military applications. But how to localize and trace a moving source is a new and difficult topic for it. This paper puts forward a signal processing scheme to combine the Doppler shifted frequencies estimate and the normal mode theory, and then, uses MFP to localize and trace a moving underwater source.


AbstractLiterature is a branch of art. About society, literature is a mirror of life that can take advantage of the values that exist in society. This study aims to describe the Language Style in the Piano Novel in Agnes Jessica's Glass Box. The method in this research is descriptive qualitative. Qualitative research is carried out by not prioritizing numbers, but prioritizing the depth of appreciation of the interaction between the concepts being studied empirically in this novel, providing an understanding of course in analyzing literary works with the approach used is a pragmatic approach considering the implications of readers through their various competencies. By considering indicators of literary works and readers, the problems that can be solved through a pragmatic approach, including the various responses of certain communities to a literary work, either as an explicit or implicit reader, both in a synchronic and diachronic framework. The results showed that the language style in the novel Piano in the Glass Box by Agnes Jessica is very varied and creative. Agnes Jessicas' novel Piano in a Glass Box totals 377 pages. The total frequency of using Language Styles is 98 units. In this novel Piano di Kotak Kaca by Agnes Jessicain, there are four groups of language styles, namely comparative language styles, namely parable, metaphor, personification, and antithesis, contradictory language styles, namely hyperbole, litotes, irony, oxymoron, and zeugma.Keywords: Language Style, Glass Box,


Objective To describe national patterns of National Health Service (NHS) analysis of mismatch repair (MMR) genes in England using individual-level data submitted to the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) by the NHS regional molecular genetics laboratories. Design Laboratories submitted individual-level patient data to NDRS against a prescribed data model, including (1) patient identifiers, (2) test episode data, (3) per-gene results and (4) detected sequence variants. Individualised per-laboratory algorithms were designed and applied in NDRS to extract and map the data to the common data model. Laboratory-level MMR activity audit data from the Clinical Molecular Genetics Society/Association of Clinical Genomic Science were used to assess early years' missing data. Results Individual-level data from patients undergoing NHS MMR germline genetic testing were submitted from all 13 English laboratories performing MMR analyses, comprising in total 16 722 patients (9649 full-gene, 7073 targeted), with the earliest submission from 2000. The NDRS dataset is estimated to comprise >60% of NHS MMR analyses performed since inception of NHS MMR analysis, with complete national data for full-gene analyses for 2016 onwards. Out of 9649 full-gene tests, 2724 had an abnormal result, approximately 70% of which were (likely) pathogenic. Data linkage to the National Cancer Registry demonstrated colorectal cancer was the most frequent cancer type in which full-gene analysis was performed. Conclusion The NDRS MMR dataset is a unique national pan-laboratory amalgamation of individual-level clinical and genomic patient data with pseudonymised identifiers enabling linkage to other national datasets. This growing resource will enable longitudinal research and can form the basis of a live national genomic disease registry.


Leg ulcers (ulcus cruris): The frequent macrovascular causes Abstract. Four pathologies make up the macrovascular etiologies of leg uclers: Venous leg ulcers (50 %), mixed venous-arterial leg ulcers (20 %), arterial leg ulcers (5 %), and Martorell hypertensive ischemic leg ulcer (5 %). The remaining 20 % concern a large array of other etiologies. Every leg ulcer requires vascular (arterial and venous) work-up, that can be completed with microbiology, biopsy, and more in-depth internal diagnostics, as indicated. Venous leg ulcers are treated with compression therapy. Incompetent saphenous veins and tributaries are abolished if the deep venous system is patent. Occluded iliac veins are recanalised and stented, as possible. Refractory venous leg ulcers are grafted with split skin or punch grafts, depending on their surface. Extensive dermatolipofasciosclerosis may be tangentially removed by shave therapy or fasciectomy, that can be combined with negative pressure wound treatment (NPWT). Skin equivalents are an alternative to treat superficial venous leg ulcers that fail to epithelialise. Their indication in the treatment of more complex leg ulcers still needs to be better investigated and understood. The use of dermal matrices leads to more stable scars. Mixed venous-arterial leg ulcers heal slower and recur more frequently. Compression needs to be reduced. Refractory cases require arterial revascularisation, to transform the mixed venous-arterial into a venous leg ulcer. Arterial leg ulcers require arterial revascularization and split skin graft. Martorell hypertensive ischemic leg ulcer is still underrecognised and often confounded with with pyoderma gangrenosum, which leads therapy into a wrong direction. Necrosectomy, antibiotic treatment in the presence of relevant bacterial superinfection, and repeated split skin grafts eventually heal the vast majority of these extremely painful and potentially mortal wounds.


Most law students, graduates and young lawyers have become all too familiar with how dismal the graduate employment market has become for aspiring lawyers – particularly thanks to the non-stop barrage of negative news stories which serve as a recurring reminder of how there is not nearly enough employment positions to cater for the oversupply of law graduates. Due to this oversupply, the idea of using a law degree to 'pick something else' by way of a non-legal career has become an increasingly common selling point used by several new and old law schools. Many are now perpetuating the idea that the law degree has become an increasingly generalist degree with transferable skills to other industries and professions, and that it is no longer inevitable that those who undertake a law degree will become lawyers. Despite these law schools' attempts to comfort prospective law graduates, this marketing rhetoric has done little to assuage law students' and graduates' employment concerns. This paper seeks to examine the current oversupply of law graduates, drawing upon survey results received by ALSA as well as other published pieces, which highlight key areas for concern arising from the current market. The paper also seeks to explore the impact (or lack thereof) that the current oversupply of law graduates may be having on issues pertaining to access to justice and access to legal education.


The National Network for Monitoring and Prevention of Occupational Diseases (RNV3P) brings together all 31 French occupational disease clinics (ODCs), as well as 9 occupational health services (OHSs) attached to the network. It records in a standardised way all the consultations carried out in the ODCs, and all the occupational health problems diagnosed by the OHSs participating in the RNV3P (demographic data on the patient, diseases, exposure, industry sector, profession, causality between disease and exposure). The data are open to the entire field of diseases suspected to be of occupational origin (regardless of medical-legal considerations of compensation). There are no inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the recruitment of cases depends on the network of doctors referring patients to the ODCs. But the data provided by the OHSs provide information on the incidence of the various work-related diseases (WRD), and complement that transmitted by the ODCs. We propose to discuss this complementary approach between ODcs and OHSs in a same network.


By replacing Chua's diode in the canonical Chua's oscillator with a smooth flux-controlled memristor, a memristor based oscillator is presented. The memristor oscillator generates a steady periodic orbit and has a transition from transient chaotic to steady periodic behaviour. The complicated dynamical behaviour is extremely dependent on the initial condition of the memristor.


Iron is a key micronutrient for phytoplankton growth in the surface ocean. Yet the significance of volcanism for the marine biogeochemical iron-cycle is poorly constrained. Recent studies, however, suggest that offshore deposition of airborne ash from volcanic eruptions is a way to inject significant amounts of bio-available iron into the surface ocean. Volcanic ash may be transported up to several tens of kilometers high into the atmosphere during large-scale eruptions and fine ash may stay aloft for days to weeks, thereby reaching even the remotest and most iron-starved oceanic regions. Scientific ocean drilling demonstrates that volcanic ash layers and dispersed ash particles are frequently found in marine sediments and that therefore volcanic ash deposition and iron-injection into the oceans took place throughout much of the Earth's history. Natural evidence and the data now available from geochemical and biological experiments and satellite techniques suggest that volcanic ash is a so far underestimated source for iron in the surface ocean, possibly of similar importance as aeolian dust. Here we summarise the development of and the knowledge in this fairly young research field. The paper covers a wide range of chemical and biological issues and we make recommendations for future directions in these areas. The review paper may thus be helpful to improve our understanding of the role of volcanic ash for the marine biogeochemical iron-cycle, marine primary productivity and the ocean-atmosphere exchange of CO2 and other gases relevant for climate in the Earth's history.


High-quality computer simulations are required when designing floating wind turbines because of the complex dynamic responses that are inherent with a high number of degrees of freedom and variable metocean conditions. In 2007, the FAST wind turbine simulation tool, developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), was expanded to include capabilities that are suitable for modeling floating offshore wind turbines. In an effort to validate FAST and other offshore wind energy modeling tools, DOE funded the DeepCwind project that tested three prototype floating wind turbines at 1/50th scale in a wave basin, including a semisubmersible, a tension-leg platform, and a spar buoy. This paper describes the use of the results of the spar wave basin tests to calibrate and validate the FAST offshore floating simulation tool, and presents some initial results of simulated dynamic responses of the spar to several combinations of wind and sea states. Wave basin tests with the spar attached to a scale model of the NREL 5-megawatt reference wind turbine were performed at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands under the DeepCwind project. This project included free-decay tests, tests with steady or turbulent wind and still water (both periodic and irregular waves with no wind), and combined wind/wave tests. The resulting data from the 1/50th model was scaled using Froude scaling to full size and used to calibrate and validate a full-size simulated model in FAST. Results of the model calibration and validation include successes, subtleties, and limitations of both wave basin testing and FAST modeling capabilities.


Reduction of chemical fertilizers and effective use of livestock excrement are required for the realization of sustainable agriculture and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The purpose of this study was to estimate the reduction rate of GHG emissions represented by comparing global warming potential (GWP) using organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers. The study was conducted in a managed grassland on Andosol in southern Hokkaido for 3 years from May 2017 to April 2020. There were five treatment plots: no fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, manure, slurry, and digestive fluid. Organic fertilizers were applied such that the amount of NPK did not exceed the recommended application rate, and the shortage was supplemented with chemical fertilizers. Fluxes in CO2 caused by heterotrophic respiration (RH), CH4, and N2O were measured using the closed chamber method. Net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) was obtained as net primary production + organic fertilizer application—RH—harvest. The GWP was estimated by CO2 equivalent NECB and CH4 and N2O emissions in each treatment. Chemical fertilizer nitrogen application rates in the organic fertilizer treatments were reduced by 10% for manure, 19.7% for slurry and 29.7% for digestive fluid compared to chemical fertilizer only, but the grass yields were not significantly different among the fertilizer treatments. The 3-year NECB showed significantly smallest carbon loss in manure treatment, and smaller carbon loss in the organic fertilizer treatments than in the chemical fertilizer only. The reduction rate in the GWP with use of organic fertilizers relative to that of chemical fertilizer was 16.5% for slurry, 27.0% for digestive fluid, and 36.2% for manure. The NECB accounted for more than 90% of the GWP in all treatments. CH4 emissions were < 0.1% of the GWP. On the other hand, N2O emissions accounted for more than 5% of the GWP, and was larger in the order of slurry > chemical fertilizer only > digestive fluid > manure. As a conclusion, these organic fertilizers can be used without no reduction of crop yield instead of chemical fertilizer, however, manure is the best way to increase soil carbon and to decrease GWP, followed by digestive fluid.


A good matching between initial training and job would improve employability, social promotion as the fight against abandonment of studies. Our investigations strongly relativize this assumption and emphasize the selection's weight in the so-called "performance" the professionalization of higher education. Not only is this selection made upstream of entry in the professional academic sector, plays against social promotion of its audience but it helps to increase and change the nature of inequ...


Mimicry is an excellent example of how natural selection can act on color, morphology, and behavior of species. Herein we assess predation rates on coral snake mimics in Central Brazil, a region with many mimics but only a single model, to answer the following questions: (i) Do predators avoid attacking coral snake mimics? (ii) Does the degree to which mimics resemble their venomous model affect the frequency of predator attacks? (iii) Do predators attack different body regions in mimics with different color patterns? Our experiment was conducted in the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, in the municipality of Alto Paraíso de Goiás, state of Goiás, Brazil. To evaluate predation rates on the different mimic patterns, we made 2,400 clay snake replicas using pre-colored nontoxic plasticine and distributed them in open savanna landscapes within the park. A total of 164 (6.83%) replicas were attacked by predators of snakes. Among these attacks, 121 were attacks by birds, and 43 were attacks by carnivorous mammals. Logistic regression and Fisher's exact test indicated that replicas with red, white, and black coloration are less likely to be attacked than were grey replicas, and coral snake replicas were attacked more often at the "head" end. Also, the greater the similarity to the pattern of venomous coral snakes, the rarer the attack on the replica. Our study underscores the strong selective force that protects coral snake mimics from predators. Our findings reinforce resemblance to the model as an extremely effective strategy in a complex natural system with only one model and numerous mimics.


complications was one day (IQR 0-2 days). Complications requiring hospitalization occurred in 3.56 per 1,000 colonoscopies (95% CI 2.78-4.57). Hemorrhage occurred in 2.18 per 1,000 colonoscopies (95% CI 1.59-3.00) with 12% (4/33) of all hemorrhage due to forceps biopsy (Table 1). Post-polypectomy syndrome occurred in 0.52 per 1,000 colonoscopies (95% CI 0.27-0.99), all of which required hospitalization. Th ere were 2 deaths within 30 days of the procedure (0.11 per 1,000 [95% CI 0.03-0.46]), one due to myocardial infarction and one of unknown etiology. Conclusion: In an open access referral colonoscopy program with a high proportion of therapeutic colonoscopies, the rate of all reported complication was 5.0 per 1,000 colonoscopies, and rate of serious complications 3.4 per 1,000 colonoscopies. Th ese complication rates are similar to rates reported in the literature in other settings.


Flow patterns and mixing behaviors in a gas stirred steelmaking ladle with a slag layer were discussed using a water model experiment as well as a numerical simulation. While the water model experiment was performed to investigate the effect of slag on the mixing behavior in ladle, the numerical simulation was carried out to figure out the flow pattern in ladle with a slag layer. Slag viscosity and its thickness in ladle were considered as major variables. It was found that a slag layer made a great change in the flow pattern in ladle, which, in turn, affected on the mixing behavior in ladle. A flow pattern without a slag layer showed that rising bubbles eventually made a recirculation loop at the central area of the ladle and this flow pattern was regarded as a favorable flow pattern for the better mixing behavior. However, a flow pattern with a slag layer showed distorted and localized recirculating loop near side wall below slag layer. This eventually gave a longer mixing time in ladle with a slag layer. Moreover, as the gas flow rate increases, slag existing on top of the ladle was found to be entrained into the melt. Slag viscosity and its thickness were found to be major variables affecting the behavior of slag entrainment. Lower the slag viscosity and thicker the slag layer, much more slag on top of the melt was entrained into the melt.


Many studies have reported results of semen analysis, but emphasis has always been on sperm count without taking into consideration other parameters as defined by WHO. This study examines the pattern of semen analysis in male partners of infertile couples in the local community in the light of six parameters (sperm concentration, motility, morphology, viability, semen volume and pH) to provide information on semen quality which could be useful in adopting treatment options for infertile men in this environment. A prospective study was carried out using a structured questionnaire to obtain demographic information as well as medical/fertility history of 114 men who came to the Gynaecology clinics of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals, Ile-Ife and Ilesa for male factor testing during the period of the study. Complete semen analysis was also carried out on samples obtained from these men according to WHO guidelines. 114 patients were seen in the course of the study. Sixty-nine percent of subjects were deficient in one or more of the semen quality parameters. 12.3% were azoospermic, 36.0% were oligospermic. A combination of Poor motility, abnormal morphology and oligospermia (Asthenospermic Teratospermic Oligospermic (ATO) syndrome) was seen in 2.6% of subjects. Many of the subjects (58.8%) had secondary infertility. Oligospermia was the most common of the disorders observed. The high incidence of abnormal semen quality in this locality becomes more obvious when all parameters, not just sperm count are taken into consideration. The role of infection should be investigated as suggested by the high incidence of secondary infertility.


Mobile consumer devices take increasingly important roles, more closely and personally interacting with users. As users get used to mobile devices, they often want the same level of computing experience as they can have from desktop PCs, but still in small and light form factors. Considering current technology, we find the limitations of the processor and the memory are still too big in current mobile devices to satisfy demanding mobile users. To alleviate resource limitations, many researchers explored techniques to share the resources of powerful surrogate servers nearby. In that line of research, we propose slim execution for an effective mobile computing paradigm. To experimentally verify our execution model, we develop a code transforming tool, distributed execution transformer (DiET). The DiET takes original Java bytecode and replaces the bodies of heavy methods with remote procedure calls to surrogate servers. Since the modified bytecode is still a legal Java bytecode, mobile devices can download and run the modified bytecode on standard JVMs, cooperating with surrogate servers. Our experiments with the SciMark 2.0 show our distributed execution scheme reduces the execution time by up to 71%.


In women it is not only narrow shoes that cause hallux valgus but also higher heels. These result in more weight placed on the forefoot, with overstretching of the toes and resultant splayfoot development, which in turn triggers metatarsus primus varus deformity. As the sesamoid bones embedded within the tendons of the flexor hallucis brevis muscle are laterally connected with the second metatarsal bone through the intermetatarsal ligament, the muscle's direction of movement changes and it slowly turns into an adductor muscle, like the flexor hallucis longus muscle, and therefore functionally "draws the bow" of the proximal phalanx of the great toe, which increasingly deviates laterally. The abductor hallucis muscle is not equal to this overload, shifts in a plantar direction and thus causes pronation of the proximal phalanx.

Wearing tight shoes is usually an agreeable sensation because they compress the forefoot and subjective provide greater stability; they functionally counteract splayfoot formation, so to speak.

"Hammer toe" and "claw toe" deformities are by no means sequelae of the great toe's lateral deviation but defined as a hyperextension position in the proximal metatarsophalangeal joint with simultaneous flexion contracture of the medial interphalangeal joint; claw toe deformity also shows contracture of the distal interphalangeal joint. Such toe deformities can occur independently of hallux valgus, which can also lead to digitus superductus deformity of the neighboring toe.

Night splints are entirely pointless, as are redressing special sandals and the recommended toe straighteners and toe pads. The latter are supported by the much stronger great toe and therefore force the much weaker neighboring toe in a lateral direction.

The often comorbid rheumatic forefoot deformity with pronounced hallux valgus and often grotesque axial deviations of the other toes is not only not a contraindication to hallux valgus surgery but on the contrary, a much harder indication than in non-rheumatic hallux valgus.

Unfortunately, orthopedic specialists without an additional rheumatological qualification encounter only rarely those patients with toe deformities and axial deviations who also have severe splayfoot deformity accompanied by extremely painful synovitis and arthritis of the proximal joints, accompanied by sometimes complete destruction, owing to the inflammatory activity of the underlying disorder.


The lute, ch'in or guqin is one of China's oldest and most revered musical instruments. Records indicate that it has been a favourite of the literary classes for more than 2,500 years; Confucius himself was a great lover of the instrument. Over the centuries, it became representative of the life, taste and pastimes of the Chinese literati. In addition to its contributions to solo and orchestral musical arrangements, a wealth of symbolic meaning accrued to the lute over time. Not only was knowledge of the instrument reserved for the literati; its study was believed to be conducive to meditation and to facilitate intellectual enlightenment. While a significant body of literature has been written on the lute in Chinese, the present monograph is the first to assemble a broad picture of the instrument and its cultural significance in English. The author, a renowned Sinologue and linguist, studied the playing of the instrument under one of the most famous lute masters of his age.


·1-Adrenoreceptors are thought to be involved in prostate smooth muscle contractions and could hence play a role in the dynamic component of intravesical obstruction associated with symptomatic BPH. Consequently, since the mid-eighties · receptor blocking agents have been used for the treatment of BPH. Non-selective · blockers are usually associated with systemic sideeffects which resulted in an exclusion or withdrawal of many patients from this form of treatment. With the availability of so-called uroselective · blockers the management picture has changed since it was anticipated that these compounds cause lesser side-effects with at least the same, or even better, efficacy. Comparative clinical studies are essential for determining the eventual advantages of the uroselective ·1-antagonists and a large number of such studies have been performed worldwide studying the various available compounds. European studies with terazosin showed clear superiority of the drug over the placebo while causing only limited side-effects. Various other studies using ·-blocking agents such as doxazosin, tamsulosin and alfuzosin yielded identical results. Especially with tamsulosin and alfuzosin, the side-effects were comparable with those encountered in the placebo group. About 7% of the patients using tamsulosin experienced retrograde ejaculation in one study which did not occur in the alfuzosin studies. Important studies in Europe have also investigated the value of a combination of an · blocker with a 5·-reductase inhibitor. Comparable studies in which both alfuzosin and doxazosin were combined with the 5·-reductase inhibitor Proscar have shown that a combination is not superior to a blocker monotherapy and especially in the ALFIN study the results show that alfuzosin monotherapy is superior to Proscar in the management of symptomatic BPH. European studies have evaluated Quality of Life, sexuality as well as socio-economical outcome of the treatment with ·1 receptor antagonists. These studies completed the spectrum of clinical research in Europe in the important field of management of symptomatic BPH with uroselective ·1 antagonists.


AIM To identify the clinical features of gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma with extra copies of MALT1. METHODS This is a multi-centered, retrospective study. We reviewed 146 patients with MALT lymphoma in the stomach who underwent fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis for t(11;18) translocation. Patients were subdivided into patients without t(11;18) translocation or extra copies of MALT1 (Group A, n = 88), patients with t(11;18) translocation (Group B, n = 27), and patients with extra copies of MALT1 (Group C, n = 31). The clinical background, treatment, and outcomes of each group were investigated. RESULTS Groups A and C showed slight female predominance, whereas Group B showed slight male predominance. Mean ages and clinical stages at lymphoma diagnosis were not different between groups. Complete response was obtained in 61 patients in Group A (69.3%), 22 in Group B (81.5%), and 21 in Group C (67.7%). Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) eradication alone resulted in complete remission in 44 patients in Group A and 13 in Group C. In Group B, 14 patients underwent radiotherapy alone, which resulted in lymphoma disappearance. Although the difference was not statistically significant, event-free survival in Group C tended to be inferior to that in Group A (P = 0.10). CONCLUSION Patients with t(11;18) translocation should be treated differently from others. Patients with extra copies of MALT1 could be initially treated with H. pylori eradication, similar to patients without t(11;18) translocation or extra copies of MALT1.


Background

Elucidating and revealing the population genetic structure, genetic diversity and recombination is essential for understanding the evolution and adaptation of species. Ammopiptanthus, which is an endangered survivor from the Tethys in the Tertiary Period, is the only evergreen broadleaf shrub grown in Northwest of China. However, little is known about its genetic diversity and underlying adaptation mechanisms.
Results

Here, 111 Ammopiptanthus individuals collected from fifteen natural populations in estern China were analyzed by means of the specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq). Based on the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertions and deletions (InDels) detected by SLAF-seq, genetic diversity and markers associated with climate and geographical distribution variables were identified. The results of genetic diversity and genetic differentiation revealed that all fifteen populations showed medium genetic diversity, with PIC values ranging from 0.1648 to 0.3081. AMOVA and Fst indicated that a low genetic differentiation existed among populations. Phylogenetic analysis showed that NX-BG and NMG-DQH of fifteen populations have the highest homology,while the genetic structure analysis revealed that these Ammopiptanthus germplasm accessions were structured primarily along the basis of their geographic collection, and that an extensive admixture occurred in each group. In addition, the genome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) and principal component analysis showed that Ammopiptanthus nanus had a more diverse genomic background, and all genetic populations were clearly distinguished, although different degrees of introgression were detected in these groups.
Conclusion

Our study could provide guidance to the future design of association studies and the systematic utilization and protection of the genetic variation characterizing the Ammopiptanthus.


An abstract should be submitted with all submissions except for Letters to the Editor and Images of Interest. The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings (Objective, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusion). Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications.


In this study, the effects of gas turbine inlet air-cooling by evaporative technique on work output and thermal end exergy efficiency were analysed. These analyses are performed with the use of per unit volumetric flow, which is fixed regardless of atmospheric air conditions. In addition, a simple and effective model is developed for the economic analysis of evaporative cooling. As a case study, the payback periods of two different gas turbine models are calculated for eight different regions in Turkey. Depending on the technical, economic and environmental conditions, evaporative cooling may be suitable for the regions considered.


The Amateur Athletic Association, founded in 1880 during a meeting at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, was for many years the world's most influential governing body for track and field competition. It was the AAA which established the rules and ethos of the sport. In this official history of the AAA, Mel Watman - who attended his first AAA Championships 60 years ago - brings to life the personalities and events which shaped athletics from its Victorian origins to the present day. Highlights of each of the prestigious AAA Championships from 1880 onwards are included in this sumptuously illustrated book. All the great names of British athletics are featured, from the 19th century's most phenomenal runner Walter George through to more modern legends such as Dave Bedford, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Linford Christie and Jonathan Edwards. There is also a wealth of fascinating trivia. One of the AAA's Presidents was the judge at Dr Crippen's trial; another climbed the Matterhorn and swam across Niagara. Competitors at the AAA Championships have included a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a best-selling novelist, a man who took part in The Great Escape of movie fame, and a leader of the Liberal Democrat party. Exhaustive lists of champions in all age groups and other compilations round off a volume which is effectively a history of British men's athletics and represents the AAA's legacy for future generations of athletes. The first official history of the AAA was written by Peter Lovesey and published in 1980.


Mantle-derived carbonatites are igneous rocks dominated by carbonate minerals. Intrusive carbonatites typically contain calcite and, less commonly, dolomite and siderite as the only carbonate minerals. In contrast, lavas erupted by the only active carbonatite volcano on Earth, Oldoinyo Lengai, Tanzania, are enriched in Na-rich carbonate phenocrysts (nyerereite and gregoryite) and Na-K halides in the groundmass. The apparent paradox between the compositions of intrusive and extrusive carbonatites has not been satisfactorily resolved. This study records the fortuitous preservation of halite in the intrusive dolomitic carbonatite of the St.-Honore carbonatite complex (Quebec, Canada), more than 490 m below the present surface. Halite occurs intergrown with, and included in, magmatic minerals typical of intrusive carbonatites; i.e., dolomite, calcite, apatite, rare earth element fluorocarbonates, pyrochlore, fluorite, and phlogopite. Halite is also a major daughter phase of melt inclusions hosted in early magmatic minerals, apatite and pyrochlore. The carbon isotope composition of dolomite (δ13C = −5.2‰) and Sr-Nd isotope compositions of individual minerals (87Sr/86Sri = 0.70287 in apatite, to 0.70443 in halite; eNd = +3.2 to +4.0) indicate a mantle origin for the St.-Honore carbonatite parental melt. More radiogenic Sr compositions of dolomite and dolomite-hosted halite and heavy oxygen isotope composition of dolomite (δ18O = +23‰) suggest their formation at some time after magma emplacement by recrystallization of original magmatic components in the presence of ambient fluids. Our observations indicate that water-soluble chloride minerals, common in the modern natrocarbonatite lavas, can be significant but ephemeral components of intrusive carbonatite complexes. We therefore infer that the parental magmas that produce primary carbonatite melts might be enriched in Na and Cl. This conclusion affects existing models for mantle source compositions, melting scenarios, temperature, rheological properties, and crystallization path of carbonatite melts.


The Scinapse Undergraduate Science Case Competition (USCC) provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to experience the development of a novel research proposal. A case is presented to all participants and, using in-depth literature search (publications, reports, studies and published writings), students connect and pinpoint key elements allowing them to develop a hypothesis in support of the case in question. Participants also develop a methodology which will test the validity of their hypothesis. This year's case topic focused on antimicrobial resistance as a major threat to global health that requires a complex, multifaceted response. In teams of 2-4, undergraduate students tackled the case and provided novel research ideas that may hold the key to combating the global spread of antimicrobial resistance. In total, the 2019-2020 USCC attracted 694 undergraduate students from 19 universities across Canada and the United States. The top 10% of written submissions are highlighted in this abstract booklet.


Radiation-induced death of human peripheral blood lymphocytes (HPBL) was studied using the comet assay. It has been shown that gamma-irradiation induced simultaneously two forms of death, necrosis and apoptosis which may be discriminated by the comet assay. Three groups of comets formed by HPBL are specified: symmetric/slowly asymmetric comets attributed to viable cells (C0/C1-class of comets); comets reminding "tear-drop" (C3/C4-class of comets) which are characterized by decreased total fluorescence of comet and formed by dying/dead (necrotic or apoptotic) cells; intermediate form of comets (C2-class), containing head, tail and attributed to cells committed to apoptosis (containing high molecular weight fragments of DNA). Kinetics of C2-comets permits detection of early stage of apoptotic death of irradiated HPBL.


Medical image segmentation is a crucial process which makes possible, the characterization and visualization of the structure of interest in medical images. Brain MRI segmentation is a more difficult procedure because of inconsistency of abnormal tissues like tumor. In this paper, we propose a fully automated technique that uses artificial intelligence to detect and segment abnormal tissues like tumor and atrophy in brain MRI images accurately. Three stages are offered in our work: (1) Feature Extraction (2) Classification and (3) Segmentation. The extracted features like energy, entropy, homogeneity, contrast and correlation from the brain MRI images are applied as input to an artificial intelligence system that uses a Neuro-fuzzy classifier which classifies the images into normal or abnormal. The abnormal tissues like tumor and atrophy are then segmented using region growing method. The accuracy of the segmentation results are assessed with metrics like False Positive Ratio (FPR), False Negative Ratio (FNR), Specificity, Sensitivity and Accuracy. This entire procedure is developed as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) system which results in automated detection and segmentation of tumor.


Material Supplemental http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/suppl/2011/09/01/gad.17446611.DC1.html References http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/25/18/1915.full.html#ref-list-1 This article cites 58 articles, 22 of which can be accessed free at: Open Access Open Access option. Genes & Development Freely available online through the Service Email Alerting click here. right corner of the article or Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article sign up in the box at the top


ABSTRACT Global warming is expected to cause several modifications to physical environments, and sea level rise is a certain outcome. However, assessment of the potential impacts caused by sea level rise on biodiversity is still emerging. Therefore, we assessed the combined impact of global warming and sea level rise on the potential distribution of 19 coastal lowland anurans in the biodiversity hotspot Atlantic Forest. We applied a correlative species distribution model (SDM) (BIOCLIM) and GIS-based spatial analyses. We evaluated the extent of changes of potential distributions under extreme and moderate global warming scenarios as well as two extreme sea level rise scenarios. Our results suggest wide areas of suitable habitat for most species in the future. However, for 15% of these species the SDMs predict massive losses of range extent as a result of a combination of global warming and sea level rise. Such observations highlight an immediate need to consider the potential effects of sea level rise in conservation action plans. Since the current potential distribution of these anuran species is likely underestimated, we also analyzed their environmental niche under current conditions in order to provide a baseline for further field surveys. Considering this current state of knowledge for such species, species distribution modeling to help gather further information on unknown species is desirable.


This article provides an alternative framework to price Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) based on a special case of Lévy distributions called a Meixner distribution. The proposed distribution has desirable properties such as skewness and fat tails. More importantly, it is relatively simple to implement compared to other Lévy distributions and is applicable to both copula-based and structural form approaches. Using the historical prices of CDOs on the CDX NA IG, we examine the performances of the proposed models in comparison to those of standard models such as Gaussian copula model, double-t copula model, and correlated Brownian motion structural model. In terms of the mean absolute pricing errors (MAPEs), Meixner-based models outperform standard models. We also examine the risk measures of the models and find that the risk measures from Meixner-based models are more reasonable than those of the standard models.


Internet-distributed hardware-in-the-loop simulation (ID-HILS) is emerging as a critical enabler for geographically dispersed concurrent systems engineering. This paper is concerned with transparency in ID-HILS, which is a measure of fidelity with respect to the nondistributed alternative of integration. Specifically, recognizing the need for a transparency analysis method for stochastic and nonlinear ID-HILS systems in general, the paper first proposes a statistical transparency analysis method. Next, this method is applied to a novel ID-HILS system. This application helps draw two important general conclusions: 1) Distributing the simulation can in and of itself be an important source of transparency degradation and can even dominate the adverse effects of the Internet's delay, jitter, and loss when delay is relatively small; and 2) transparency is not an independent property of the system, but is a system property that needs to be defined with respect to an output, as different output signals in the same system can experience different levels of transparency. These conclusions are important for guiding future efforts to improve transparency in a given ID-HILS system, and the proposed method enables such transparency analysis in other stochastic nonlinear ID-HILS systems, as well.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the prevalence, risk factors of metabolic syndrome, and lifestyle in religious women by age and metabolic syndrome status between the metabolic syndrome group and the normal group. Methods: As the subjects for this study, 125 religious women in the city of D, H, S, Y, participated in this study. The diagnostic criterion of metabolic syndrome used was the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III. Results: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome was higher as the religious women got older. The metabolic syndrome group in their forties showed higher waist circumference, triglycerides, and lower HDLcholesterol than the normal group. Among those in their fifties, the metabolic syndrome group had higher waist circumference, fasting glucose, triglyceride and lower HDL-cholesterol than the normal group. In their sixties, the metabolic syndrome group had higher fasting glucose, triglyceride and systolic blood pressure than the normal group. Conclusion: The metabolic syndrome group in their forties showed that their practice rate of 'trying to avoid stresses at work', 'taking prescription medicines' was low. For those in their fifties, the practice rate of 'reducing overeating' and 'choice of low fat meats' was low. Finally, in the group of those in their sixties, 'reducing fried foods' was low.


This thesis presents an account of some of the mental mechanisms
and processes that take the addressee from a linguistic input to the
interpretation of that input. Because on-line interpretation involves
our knowledge of language, the relation between input processing and
grammar is evaluated. The full interpretation of a linguistic input
also involves pragmatic, i.e. central cognitive processes, but these
processes are the least well understood within psycholinguistics.
Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) gives us a way of making
our understanding of these processes more explicit. However,
Relevance theory claims turn out to be incompatible with
psycholinguistic models which postulate an autonomous syntactic parser,
such as the 'Garden-path' model. A review of the experimental
literature reveals that the findings claimed to support the 'Garden-path' model do not in fact support it. Likewise, the principle of
Lexical Preference, proposed to account for how verb subcategorization
frames are accessed, turns out not to be supported by the experimental
evidence.
Full interpretation involves computing a conceptual representation,
and an account is given of what constitutes conceptual structure.
This leads to the proposal that verbs are represented as structured
concepts. This view of verb representation together with Relevance
theory can account for when arguments of verbs can be left implicit.
Finally, an account is given of how the addressee computes the
propositional form communicated by an utterance, by building hypotheses
about the conceptual structure of the proposition on-line. These
hypotheses are based on structural information stored under the
concepts referred to by the utterance. This proposal can account for
psycholinguistic research findings, with pragmatics playing an integral
role in the explanations: it is no longer grafted onto the model as a
psycholinguistic afterthought.


This study discusses the factors that affect the performance of sales in the direct selling business in PT Srirara Kanaka Pratama (PT SKP). Direct selling is part of a growing sector of small and medium businesses, especially in creating alternative jobs. The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the main factors that affect the performance of sales in PT SKP in Jabodetabek area and formulate its managerial implications. This study used a descriptive analysis to look at the characteristics of the respondent and a multiple linear regression analysis to identify factors that affect the sales performance in PT SKP. The number of respondents in this study is 60 active members. The study results showed that the factors affecting the sales performance in PT SKP are incentives and rewards from sold products. For the managerial implementation in order to improve the sales performance of its members, PT SKP will provide more interesting incentives or bonuses and increase the number of members who receive bonuses as well as the amount of bonuses by creating programs and activities supporting such a condition. It will also create more attractive products of higher selling power as a reward to increase the motivation of members in order to increase sales.


A consensus protocol for treatment of distal radius fractures (DRF) has been developed to aid clinicians in treatment decision making. The protocol was evaluated in Paper I using a validated subjective outcome instrument, DASH in 518 consecutive patients. A good final subjective result was achieved with the proposed protocol, regardless of initial severity with a low median DASH score in all groups at final follow up 1 year after the fracture. No differences were seen for the various operative techniques. In Paper II, 50 patients with an unstable or complex DRF were randomized to either closed reduction and external fixation, or open reduction and internal fixation using the TriMed® system. Pronation/supination and grip strength were better in the internal fixation group at one year compared to the external fixation group. There were no differences in DASH scores or in radiographic parameters. In Paper III we investigated function in patients following an osteotomy due to a malunion after a DRF. Instead of autologous iliac crest bone graft we used a slow resorbing bone substitute (Norian SRS®), consisting of hydroxyapatite, to fill the gap in combination with the TriMed system for fixation. We were able to improve forearm rotation, flexion/extension and radioulnar deviation from. Grip strength increased and DASH scores decreased substantially. The achieved radiographic correction was consistent over the first year but the resorption was slow and the time to remodel was long. In Paper IV a novel bone substitute (Cerament®) was used with a faster resorbing mixture of calcium phosphate and calcium sulphate. 15 consecutive patients with a radiographic and clinically manifesting malunion after a DRF underwent an osteotomy. The same technique was used for fixation of the osteotomy as in Paper III but this time with Cerament® as bone substitute. Grip strength increased and DASH scores decreased. A fast remodelling of the bone was noticed but also an increase of ulnar variance from immediately postoperatively to final follow up. Using a bone substitute, the operation can be performed as an outpatient procedure and donor site pain avoided. Osteotomy of the distal radius is an effective treatment for malunited distal radius fractures, but perhaps a more rigid fixation is needed in fast remodelling bone substitutes. (Less)


SINCE 1961 when the oral poliomyelitis vaccines were first made available for general use in the United States, scattered cases of paralytic disease have occurred in association with these vaccines. Many of the cases have been clinically indistinguishable from poliomyelitis. Epidemiologically, the pattern of their occurrence has raised the possibility that some may have been caused by the vaccine. In 1962 when the existence of this problem was first appreciated, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service convened a special advisory committee which met on a number of occasions between August and December. The Committee reviewed in detail reported cases of paralytic disease occurring within a period of 30 days following ingestion of the oral poliomyelitis vaccines. The Committee concluded that 18 cases of paralytic poliomyelitis were "compatible with the possibility of having been induced by the vaccine." Of these, 11 followed type III vaccine and 7 followed type


Reliability of calculated 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts for various classes of organic compounds obtained with gauge‐invariant atomic orbital (GIAO) approach has been studied at the PBE/3ζ level (as implemented in PRIRODA code) using linear regression analysis with experimental data. Empirical corrections for the calculated chemical shifts δH,calc = δPBE/3ζ − 0.08 ppm (RMS 0.18 ppm, MAD 0.66 ppm) and δC,calc = δPBE/3ζ − 6.35 ppm (RMS 3.09 ppm, MAD 9.42 ppm) have been developed using the sets of 263 and 308 experimental values for 1H and 13C chemical shifts, respectively. The confidence intervals of NMR chemical shifts at 95% confidence probability are δH,calc ± 0.35 ppm for 1H and δC,calc ± 6.05 ppm for 13C. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2011


This study was to evaluate the use of green waste compost (GWC) as a growth media for rooting of Impatiens hawkeri. The experiments were divided into two sections. In the first experiment, GWC samples were collected periodically during a 60-d rapid composting period from a single windrow. A germination test was carried out previously in order to evaluate the phytotoxicity presence of GWC using Lepidium sativum L. (cress) as an indicator. Subsequently, five growth media were prepared containing 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% by volume of GWC with the corresponding peat as diluents, plus an untreated control (0 %). The same cuttings of Impatiens hawkeri were selected and potted into plugs. The germination tests showed that 45 days after rapid composting GWC could be considered to be mature. It was therefore concluded that GWC could be successfully used as a good adjuvant for peat substitutes for cutting propagation of Impatiens hawkeri in quantities of 25-50% by volume.


Overactivation of glutamate receptors is a critical mechanism for neuronal death in ischemic stroke. Previously, we reported that overactivation of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)—type glutamate receptor induced calpain-mediated truncation of metabotropic glutamate receptor mGluR1α, resulting in suppression of its neuroprotective signaling pathway. A fusion peptide containing the transactivating regulatory protein (TAT) protein transduction domain (PTD) and the mGluR1α sequence spanning the calpain cleavage site effectively blocked mGluR1α truncation and protected neurons against NMDA-induced neuronal toxicity. We recently evaluated the role of this mechanism in ischemia-induced cell death. We found that mGluR1α was truncated in both in vitro and in vivo models of stroke and that this truncation was accompanied by the typical calpain-mediated proteolysis of spectrin. The TAT-mGluR1 fusion peptide produced robust neuroprotective effect in the in vitro model of stroke. In addition, we found that the TAT protein transduction domain peptide itself altered the function of membrane channels through some unknown mechanisms and showed some mild neuroprotective effects. Together, these experiments indicated a synergistic relationship between the TAT carrier sequence and the mGluR1α peptide cargo sequence, and this synergy might account for the neuroprotective properties of the TAT-mGluR1 peptide. NEUROSCIENTIST 14(5):409—414, 2008. DOI: 10.1177/1073858407309762


Civic problems are often too complex to solve through traditional top-down strategies. Various governments and civic initiatives have explored more community-driven strategies where citizens get involved with defining problems and innovating solutions. While certain people may feel more empowered, the public at large often does not have accessible, flexible, and meaningful ways to engage. Prior theoretical frameworks for public participation typically offer a one-size-fits-all model based on face-to-face engagement and fail to recognize the barriers faced by even the most engaged citizens. In this article, we explore a vision for open civic design where we integrate theoretical frameworks from public engagement, crowdsourcing, and design thinking to consider the role technology can play in lowering barriers to large-scale participation, scaffolding problem-solving activities, and providing flexible options that cater to individuals' skills, availability, and interests. We describe our novel theoretical framework and analyze the key goals associated with this vision: (1) to promote inclusive and sustained participation in civics; (2) to facilitate effective management of large-scale participation; and (3) to provide a structured process for achieving effective solutions. We present case studies of existing civic design initiatives and discuss challenges, limitations, and future work related to operationalizing, implementing, and testing this framework.


Systematic reviews are an enormously valuable method to understand the level of scientific evidence for a specific problem. However, the exponential rate of publication poses a major barrier to our capacity to conduct and update high quality systematic reviews in a timely manner. Several machine learning text mining tools have been developed to address this problem. Abstrackr is one such tool, hosted at Brown University, USA, that is a free web-based platform that uses an active learning algorithm to generate predictions of relevance from the words in citation titles, abstracts and keywords (using unigrams and bigrams). Abstrackr then sorts citations according to relevance, allowing researchers to quickly identify relevant articles, and reducing the need to screen articles with very low relevance. Previous studies have shown that Abstrackr is a useful tool to reduce the burden of conducting and updating systematic reviews in specific topics in health (e.g., genetics) without compromising sensitivity and specificity to identify relevant citations for full text review. We used Abstrackr to support screening in a systematic review examining the role of fault attributions in recovery from transport injury. A comprehensive search of five databases identified 10,559 citations. Two reviewers screened citations: one screened every citation for relevance (the "gold standard" method), and the second rated citations until a stopping prediction rule was met (no new predictions in Abstrackr). An overview of our experience in using Abstrackr and text mining for health research will be discussed, especially our learnings on the workload efficiencies, precision and false-positives observed from machine-learning assisted screening.


This project has provided a population database depicting the worldwide distribution of population in a 1X1 latitude/longitude grid system. The database is unique, firstly, in that it makes use of the most recent data available (1990). Secondly, it offers true apportionment for each grid cell that is, if a cell contains populations from two different countries, each is assigned a percentage of the grid cell area, rather than artificially assigning the whole cell to one or the other country (this is especially important for European countries). Thirdly, the database gives the percentage of a country's total population accounted for in each cell. So if a country's total in a given year around 1990 (1989 or 1991, for example) is known, then population in each cell can be calculated by using the percentage given in the database with the assumption that the growth rate in each cell of the country is the same. And lastly, this dataset is easy to be updated for each country as new national population figures become available.


Abstract Convincing evidence demonstrates that psychopathy is associated with premeditated aggression. However, studies have failed to explain why this association exists and whether socio-cognitive functions, such as mentalizing, could explain the relation. This cross-sectional study investigates, in 108 patients with schizophrenia, the association of psychopathy and mentalizing abilities with premeditated and impulsive aggression and probes the nature of their influence on these specific aggression patterns. Patients' engagement in premeditated aggression was associated with diminishing mentalizing and increasing psychopathic tendencies. Moreover, mediation analyses reveal that the ability to attribute mental states to others mediates the relation between psychopathy and type of aggression. This mediation is facilitated by a specific mentalizing profile characterized by the presence of intact cognitive and deficient emotional mentalizing capacities. This study is the first to report a mediating effect of mentalizing on the relationship between psychopathy and type of aggression in schizophrenia. Implications of these results are discussed.


The loss of crown immunity resulting from section 2 of the National Health Service (Amendment) Act 1986 has understandably caused much concern relating to the application of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to hospitals. The NHS managers must remember that their legal obligations can be both civil and criminal.


Abstract A wheel drive mechanism is simple, stable, and efficient, but its mobility in unstructured terrain is seriously limited. Using a deformable wheel is one of the ways to increase the mobility of a wheel drive robot. By changing the radius of its wheels, the robot becomes able to pass over not only high steps but also narrow gaps. In this article, we propose a novel design for a variable-diameter wheel using an origami-based soft robotics design approach. By simply folding a patterned sheet into a wheel shape, a variable-diameter wheel was built without requiring lots of mechanical parts and a complex assembly process. The wheel's diameter can change from 30 to 68 mm, and it is light in weight at about 9.7 g. Although composed of soft materials (fabrics and films), the wheel can bear more than 400 times its weight. The robot was able to change the wheel's radius in response to terrain conditions, allowing it to pass over a 50-mm gap when the wheel is shrunk and a 50-mm step when the wheel is enlarged.


This paper presents a methodology of decision-making for embedded I/O buffer sizes in a single-bus shared-memory system. The decision is made with the aid of a queuing model, simulation, and the proposed algorithm. The generalized queueing model is simulated to cover two cases: independent processing units and pipelined processing units in a shared-memory environment. The objective is to obtain the best performance with the optimized embedded buffers in the system. Therefore, an algorithm is developed to find the optimal solution efficiently by exploring the correlation between buffers and system performance. The local optimum is guaranteed. The method can be widely applied to many applications.


Many classic tasks in vision -- such as the estimation of optical flow or stereo disparities -- can be cast as dense correspondence matching. Well-known techniques for doing so make use of a cost volume, typically a 4D tensor of match costs between all pixels in a 2D image and their potential matches in a 2D search window. State-of-the-art (SOTA) deep networks for flow/stereo make use of such volumetric representations as internal layers. However, such layers require significant amounts of memory and compute, making them cumbersome to use in practice. As a result, SOTA networks also employ various heuristics designed to limit volumetric processing, leading to limited accuracy and overfitting. Instead, we introduce several simple modifications that dramatically simplify the use of volumetric layers - (1) volumetric encoder-decoder architectures that efficiently capture large receptive fields, (2) multi-channel cost volumes that capture multi-dimensional notions of pixel similarities, and finally, (3) separable volumetric filtering that significantly reduces computation and parameters while preserving accuracy. Our innovations dramatically improve accuracy over SOTA on standard benchmarks while being significantly easier to work with - training converges in 10X fewer iterations, and most importantly, our networks generalize across correspondence tasks. On-the-fly adaptation of search windows allows us to repurpose optical flow networks for stereo (and vice versa), and can also be used to implement adaptive networks that increase search window sizes on-demand.


The output voltage and current of renewable energy sources such as Photo- voltaic are not controlled. Consequently PV- Grid interface system is employed condition output voltage and current into the grid. This call for efficient and well designed control strategies to ensure reliability, stability and quality power output. This paper proposes nine- level cascaded NPC/H-bridge inverter as the PV- Grid interface. Cascaded NPC/H-Bridge inverter is modeled and a control law for realizing nine- level output with reduced harmonic content is developed. Modeling is easily achieved by considering the whole inverter as having four cascaded three level legs, two positive and two negative. Then a mathematical model is formulated for LCL filters assuming that the resistances associated with the inductances have negligible effect on the system steady state variables. Finally a control technique is developed for the whole system and its robustness tested by carrying out several simulations tests in MATLAB under different operating conditions.


We present MotionDiffuser, a diffusion based representation for the joint distribution of future trajectories over multiple agents. Such representation has several key advantages: first, our model learns a highly multimodal distribution that captures diverse future outcomes. Second, the simple predictor design requires only a single L2 loss training objective, and does not depend on trajectory anchors. Third, our model is capable of learning the joint distribution for the motion of multiple agents in a permutation-invariant manner. Furthermore, we utilize a compressed trajectory representation via PCA, which improves model performance and allows for efficient computation of the exact sample log probability. Subsequently, we propose a general constrained sampling framework that enables controlled trajectory sampling based on differentiable cost functions. This strategy enables a host of applications such as enforcing rules and physical priors, or creating tailored simulation scenarios. MotionDiffuser can be combined with existing backbone architectures to achieve top motion forecasting results. We obtain state-of-the-art results for multi-agent motion prediction on the Waymo Open Motion Dataset.


It is far too early to assess the ultimate role of the antimetabolites in the therapy of autoimmune diseases in general. In a few specific instances, such as the thiopurines in autoimmune hemolytic anemia and the antifolic acids in psoriasis, these uses are approaching the state of recognized therapeutic regimens. However, as several authors have pointed out, the drugs presently available provide little margin between the dosages required for therapeutic effects and those which will produce serious toxicity. Very little is available in the way of comparative effects of several antimetabolites in a given disease. Moreover, on the basis of present results, one is unable to sort out in a given situation the relative importance of effects on circulating antibodies, delayed hypersensitivity, and anti-inflammatory activities, although there are some indications that these effects may be at least partially separable.

One may reasonably inquire, in view of their less marked effects on established immunity than on the induction of the primary response, why these drugs influence autoimmune disease at all. Perhaps another apparent anomaly might be mentioned. The induction of tolerance requires a high initial dose of antigen, and tolerance is maintained only in the continuing presence of antigen. The persistence of a simple antigen is significantly increased when a carrier, such as Freund's adjuvant, is given simultaneously. One might expect that by this means the induction and maintenance of tolerance to the antigen would be facilitated, but the opposite is true. Whether this is the result of the route or site of administration or the nature of the carrier, it appears that the adjuvant may have altered the antigenic stimulus in some fundamental way. One clue which may provide future information is the observation of Mathe et al . (222) that different cell types are stimulated by different antigens and indeed by the same antigen with and without adjuvant. Similarly, Bieber (23) observed that the repressive effects of purine antagonists as opposed to those of thymidine affected different portions of the cellular response of the spleen to heterologous erythrocytes. Studies such as these eventually may aid in the classification of drugs by their effects on specific antigenic stimuli and may aid in the understanding of some of the species differences in responsiveness and in the interpretation of the responses obtained in the autoimmune diseases.

The mechanism of action of the antimetabolites in their effects on the immune response cannot be defined with any certainty at this time. Since most of the drugs which inhibit immune processes are also "anticancer" agents, a mechanism involving cellular destruction first comes to mind. It can be shown that effects on immunity can be obtained at levels of drug which produce no obvious effects on the numbers of circulating lymphocytes, but this does not exclude the possibility of a selective destruction of a small clone of cells in which the rate of multiplication has increased in response to an antigenic stimulus. An evaluation of these factors may be facilitated if new drugs become available which show a greater separation of "anti-immune" and "antitumor" effects (161). Alternative explanations might involve a metabolic block of some informational process through inhibition of the biosynthesis of a nucleic acid. This might take the form of an inhibition of the synthesis de novo of the purine and thymine moieties of the nucleic acids. In the case of the base analogs, a direct incorporation might occur into one or more of the nucleic acid fractions, either deoxyribonucleic acid, or informational, soluble, or microsomal ribonucleic acid. The principal hindrance to a direct attack on these problems is the present inability to obtain the cell line concerned with a specific immune response in anything like a pure culture. It is impossible to carry out meaningful biochemical studies on cell populations in which only a small percentage of the cells is participating in the reaction to be studied. This may be summed up by saying that there is no solid foundation for an interpretational structure, but that a multitude of challenging problems exists. It is predictable that the solutions to many of these will come with further progress in studies of the immune response in vitro , as further advances are made in achieving uniformity in pertinent cell populations.


Introduction Dental diseases and disorders can negatively impact on the quality of life of preschool children and their families. Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics may confound those effects, but this issue has been scarcely studied in this age group. Objective To evaluate the effects of untreated dental caries, dental pain and malocclusions on the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) of 5-years-old children and their families, adjusting for mothers' schooling, household income, sex and children skin colour. Methods A subsample of 1129 children from the 2004 Pelotas, Brazil, Birth Cohort study, was investigated in 2009. Children were dentally examined and their mothers were interviewed at home. The outcome, OHRQoL, was assessed by the Brazilian version of Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) using child and parental subscales and total scores as discrete variables. Multivariable Poisson regression models were performed to estimate the association between the outcome and the co-variates. Results The multivariable adjusted model showed that dental pain had a great impact on child (IRR 4.50 95% CI 3.58 to 5.65) and parental (IRR 3.05 95% CI 2.25 to 4.13) quality of life. The severity of high levels of untreated dental caries had also a negative impact on children (IRR 2.01 95% CI 1.56 to 2.59) and their family (IRR 3.75 95% CI 2.58 to 5.45) quality of life. Malocclusions had impact only on the total score (IRR 1.32 95% CI 1.09 to 1.60) and the family subscale (IRR 1.40 95% CI 1.08 to 1.81). Conclusions Dental problems were associated with lower scores of OHRQoL of children and their families regardless potential confounders.


This guide provides an overview to citing archival materials in some of the most frequently used citation styles, including Chicago/Turabian, MLA, and APA.


Aim To present the long-term angiographic and subjective results of patients with head and neck arteriovenous malformations (HNAVMs) after endovascular treatment. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the medical files of 14 patients with HNAVM who were treated between 2000 and 2014. The treatment of choice was a transarterial superselective microcatheter-based approach followed by embolization using liquid embolic agents. The patients were asked to answer a quality of life questionnaire about the following symptoms before and after treatment: pain, functional impairment, cosmetic deformity, impairment in daily life, and bleeding. Results Complete or >90% closure of the AVM was achieved in 6 of 14 patients (43%). >50% shunt reduction was achieved in 10 patients (71%). Three complications were encountered in a total of 86 interventional procedures. Six patients presented with bleeding which was cured in all cases (100%). Four of the 14 patients (29%) specified pain which was resolved in two of them. Another six patients (43%) presented with functional impairment; four were cured and two noted an improvement. All 14 patients presented with cosmetic concerns; four were cured and eight experienced a clearly visible improvement. Nine of 13 patients (69%) presented with impairment in daily life which was resolved in five patients and four reported an improvement. Conclusions Endovascular embolization is a well-tolerated therapy for HNAVM with a low complication rate. Good angiographic results, positive subjective results, and improvement in different aspects of quality of life can be achieved.


BACKGROUND
Few studies have examined the association between periodontitis risk, gender, and marital status in older adults. The purpose of this study was to assess if the oral health status of older subjects could be explained by differences in: 1) marital status; 2) gender; and 3) ethnicity.

METHODS
Clinical and radiographic periodontal oral conditions were studied in 701 older subjects from the TEETH clinical trial. Medical conditions as well as ethnic and marital status and smoking habits were considered.

RESULTS
A total of 89 married couples were identified; 40.7% of these were of European descent and 48.1% of Chinese descent. The mean age was 67.7 years (SD +/- 4.7). The men were older than the women (mean difference: 1.5 years, SD +/- 4.6, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.5 to 2.5, P<0.01). No significant differences in periodontal conditions were found between spouses or by marital status. Chinese descent was associated with a higher risk for periodontitis, regardless of marital status (odds ratio: 1.5, 95% CI: 1.05 to 2.04, P<0.03).

CONCLUSIONS
1) Married couples have similar social habits, similar oral health perceptions, and similar patterns of periodontal disease. 2) Dental studies including married couples do not bias data for married subjects as such. 3) Marital status has a limited impact on periodontal health but may have a greater impact on several systemic conditions, especially in widowed, divorced, or never married women. 4) Older Chinese subjects perceive themselves as being at lower risk for periodontitis but have more objective signs of periodontitis than older subjects of European descent.


A combination of carbon ions/photons irradiation and hyperthermia as a novel therapeutic approach for the in-vitro treatment of pancreatic cancer BxPC3 cells is presented. The radiation doses used are 0–2 Gy for carbon ions and 0–7 Gy for 6 MV photons. Hyperthermia is realized via a standard heating bath, assisted by magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH) that utilizes magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) exposed to an alternating magnetic field of amplitude 19.5 mTesla and frequency 109.8 kHz. Starting from 37 °C, the temperature is gradually increased and the sample is kept at 42 °C for 30 min. For MFH, MNPs with a mean diameter of 19 nm and specific absorption rate of 110 ± 30 W/gFe3o4 coated with a biocompatible ligand to ensure stability in physiological media are used. Irradiation diminishes the clonogenic survival at an extent that depends on the radiation type, and its decrease is amplified both by the MNPs cellular uptake and the hyperthermia protocol. Significant increases in DNA double-strand breaks at 6 h are observed in samples exposed to MNP uptake, treated with 0.75 Gy carbon-ion irradiation and hyperthermia. The proposed experimental protocol, based on the combination of hadron irradiation and hyperthermia, represents a first step towards an innovative clinical option for pancreatic cancer.


The goal of this master's thesis is to understand key motivators and activities supporting high levels of national Electronic Health Record (EHR) usage by healthcare professionals in Estonia and relate them to findings from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) research. This thesis aims at contributing both, to better understanding of Estonian EHR implementation case, and TAM application in national public healthcare settings. In this thesis, I found out that the key motivator for the high levels of usage of the system was legal act making it mandatory for healthcare professionals to send data to the national EHR. Despite that, I discovered that TAM variables perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and psychological ownership played a role in Estonian EHR implementation case in positively influencing attitude towards the system. In this thesis, I argue that attitude towards the system is an important predictor of success for public systems, even if their usage is mandated by the law. I also argue that importance of psychological ownership may be especially important in the mandatory use cases. Furthermore, I discovered that in this particular case, information quality and job relevance influenced perceived usefulness, and that compatibility, self-efficacy and support influenced perceived ease of use. In Estonia, compatibility however had controversial effect on perceived ease of use and I argue that in this case, it may have influenced it negatively rather than positively.


This joint OED(Operations Evaluation Department)/OEG (Operations Evaluation Group) study follows up OED's 1993 review of the Bank's experience in telecommunications. It assesses how World Bank Group assistance from 1993 onward has influenced the development of information infrastructure in developing countries. It finds that recommendations of the 1993 review have generally been heeded with a) the adoption of a new private-sector-led agenda; b) the incorporation of the new agenda in most recent Bank lending and non-lending interventions; and c) the increasing share of IFC in total Bank Group funding commitments for telecommunications. The study points out that, at a time when the information revolution presents developing countries with far-reaching opportunities and risks, the Bank Group's ability to play a global policy leadership role has been hampered by its benign neglect of the sector at both the strategic and country management levels, as well as a fragmented internal organization. As a result, the number of countries where it has had a real impact is limited. The study recommends that the Bank Group a) restate its strategy in the broader information infrastructure, with a particular focus on optimizing the use of its instruments and expert skills; and b) gaps in the existing monitoring and evaluation systems be filled, to provide the necessary framework to assess the future effectiveness of the revised strategy.


Background: The incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is relatively high in Guyana. Estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) reporting allows for early-stage CKD identification, when therapeutic interventions can prevent CKD progression. Accurate creatinine measurements are essential for valid eGFR calculations. This study was undertaken to assess the accuracy of creatinine measurements in Guyana prior to implementing routine eGFR reporting. Methods: Sixteen Guyanese laboratories participated in this study. Each laboratory received a common set of blinded human serum samples (n = 3) containing clinically relevant creatinine concentrations, assigned by an international reference method (ID-GCMS). Laboratories performed repeated measurements of creatinine in each sample. These data were used to calculate bias, precision and total error (TE) for each creatinine method. Linear regression was used to compare measured creatinine results to assigned reference sample values and to post-analytically correct calibration bias, a priori, for recent patient results from each laboratory. Patient eGFR profiles were compared before and after bias correction. Results: The mean across samples CV and bias for all labs were 9% (range 2.5–39.3%) and 11% positive (range 0.4-29.1%), respectively. The mean total error (TE) was 28.6%. If the mean TE from a subset of the better performing laboratories (CV <7%) were to apply nationally, an "all stage" eGFR misclassification rate of 36% would result. Conclusions: There is a pressing need to improve the accuracy of creatinine measurements in Guyana as, at this time, routine reporting of eGFR by Guyanese laboratories cannot be recommended based on the accuracy data presented in this study.


: A retrospective study was performed to examine the occurrence of condylar atrophy in connection with orthognathic surgery. Patients with high-angle mandibular deficiency (n = 29) were selected from among those who underwent bimaxillary osteotomy (n = 93) during the period from January 1987 through December 1990. This group of 29 was examined for shortening of the ascending ramus of the mandible because of condylar resorption. In 9 of these 29 (31%), the ramus had resorbed more than 2 mm, or more than 6% of the total length of the ramus. All 9 of these patients were female. There was no correlation between resorption and age, the amount of retrognathism, or the presence of preoperative temporomandibular joint dysfunction. Female patients with high-angle retrognathism should be informed of the possibility of postoperative condylar resorption and should be followed with radiographic controls for at least 2 years after surgery.


Sufu is a form of food derived from traditional Chinese fermented soybean. It has a unique flavor and contains abundant nutrients. With demands for healthy food on the rise, a higher level of sufu functionality is required. In fermentation of soybean-derived products, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are widely used as an adjunct culture, which provides health benefits and enhances flavor of food. Among LAB, Lactobacillus brevis has the potential to generate γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is well-known for its physiological functions. In this study, L. brevis was added to bacteria-fermented sufu to evaluate its impacts on sufu quality. Sufu was produced via co-inoculation with Bacillus subtilis and L. brevis (group A sufu) or a single inoculation with B. subtilis (group B sufu). Metabolite changes in the two groups during fermentation were investigated and physicochemical changes were observed. The results indicated that the addition of L. brevis increased the concentration of GABA and decreased the concentrations of histamine and serotonin. The concentrations of volatile compounds, such as esters and acids, especially 2-methyl-butanoic acid ethyl ester, as well as the concentrations of phenylethyl alcohol and 3-methyl-butanol were significantly higher in group A. Inoculation of L. brevis changed the metabolite profile of sufu and improved its functionality and safety of edibility. The current study explored the potential of applying L. brevis to the manufacture of bacteria-fermented sufu.


Author(s): Allison, Juliiann; Cline, Nathaniel; Reese, Ellen | Abstract: Workers and residents in Ontario are not benefiting as much as they could from the city's economic development projects. Ontario's politicians have overlooked the community building potential of economic development projects found in other California cities where politicians have engaged residents in negotiations to incorporate community benefit agreements (CBAs) or project labor agreements (PLAs) into public agreements with developers. The model CBAs and PLAs in other California cities that we review show how they involve community stakeholders in on-going monitoring and oversight of the completion and implementation of the economic development project. Here we contrast these "best practices" for economic development as well as Measure JJJ in Los Angeles City with the 2015 operating agreement between the City of Ontario and QVC, Inc., an on-line and shopping channel retailer, regarding its distribution center located in Ontario. That agreement establishes Ontario as the "point of sale" (or location of sale) for QVC goods stored in its Ontario distribution center, allowing the city to collect sales tax revenue when consumers purchase those items. In exchange, the City has agreed to return to QVC an astounding 55% of total sales tax revenue collected, up to $500 million and 60% thereafter, in addition to 60% of sales taxes on QVC's purchases of goods and equipment. The political process also lacked transparency and inclusivity, which limited the ability of local community stakeholders to be involved in crafting the agreement. This operating agreement is an example of just how little local officials expect from developers and retailers. We argue that this "low road" approach to economic development contributes to the city's high level of poverty, keeps the city's tax base low, and fails to capitalize on civic engagement to improve the quality of life for workers and residents.


In this work, we report the magnetoelectric HoMnO3-BaTiO3 composites prepared by the solid-state reaction method. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the phase composition and structures of the composites. The material/impedance analyzer was used to investigate the dielectric properties of the composites. It is shown that the composite consists of both ferroelectric ordering and magnetic ordering. The addition of BaTiO3 decreases the antiferromagnetic phase transformation temperature of the HoMnO3, indicating that there exists the coupling interaction between BaTiO3 and HoMnO3 phases.


We consider the learning of algorithmic tasks by mere observation of input-output pairs.
Rather than studying this as a black-box discrete regression problem with no assumption whatsoever
on the input-output mapping, we concentrate on tasks that are amenable to the principle of divide and conquer, and study what are its implications in terms of learning.

This principle creates a powerful inductive bias that we exploit with neural architectures that are defined recursively, by learning two scale-invariant atomic operators: how to split a given input into two disjoint sets, and how to merge two partially solved tasks into a larger partial solution. The scale invariance creates parameter sharing across all stages of the architecture, and the dynamic design creates architectures whose complexity can be tuned in a differentiable manner.

As a result, our model is trained by backpropagation not only to minimize the errors at the output, but also to do so as efficiently as possible, by enforcing shallower computation graphs. Moreover, thanks to the scale invariance, the model can be trained only with only input/output pairs, removing the need to know oracle intermediate split and merge decisions. As it turns out, accuracy and complexity are not independent qualities, and we verify empirically that when the learnt complexity matches the underlying complexity of the task, this results in higher accuracy and better generalization in two paradigmatic problems: sorting and finding planar convex hulls.


Author(s): Tsukerman, Emmanuel | Advisor(s): Sturmfels, Bernd; Williams, Lauren | Abstract: Many objects in mathematics, at first sight, seem to belong to the domain of continuous mathematics. These objects are continuous, smooth and infinite, far different from the discrete and finite objects that are the classical domain of combinatorics. Objects of the former type are, for instance, determinants of matrices (which can take on every complex value), Grassmannians (which are smooth manifolds), and the eigenvalues of matrices (which take on any tuple of complex values). In the latter class lie objects such as paths in graphs, finite groups and generating functions. Applications of the study of such finite objects to the continuous ones would seem unlikely, or at least, trivial. For example, one may count the number of minors of a matrix, but that's about it. As we will demonstrate, however, this is not the case. The field of combinatorics has developed into a mature field of study, and it is the author's view that combinatorics can be used as a toolbox to obtain interesting and deep information on all areas of mathematics, continuous especially. In this work, we will demonstrate this by studying three different continuous problems using the techniques of combinatorics. The first problem concerns the study of symmetric matrices and their principal- and almost-principal minors. Here the main result is a proof of a conjectural combinatorial formula of Kenyon and Pemantle (2014) for the entries of a square matrix in terms of its connected principal and almost-principal minors. The second problem is the study of Bruhat interval polytopes. These polytopes arise as the moment-map images of Richardson varieties of flag varieties. Their study is motivated in part by the integrable system called the Toda lattice. Information obtained about these polytopes can be readily translated to information about the Richardson varieties. For instance, the dimension of the polytope will be used to determine when the Richardson variety is toric. The third problem will pertain to the study of the spectral theory of tensors via tropical methods. We show that an elegant theory in which there is a unique tropical eigenvalue arises. We describe briefly how the corresponding eigenvalue informs us of the asymptotic behavior of the corresponding classical eigenvalues.


This study reports blood model scores used for detection of recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) abuse by athletes. Elite female rowers were monitored prior to their World Championships, including a period spent training at moderate altitude. In contrast to previous results, no substantial increase in model scores was found following altitude exposure.


Although it has been previously reported that bee venom (BV) can induce apoptosis in many cancer cell lines, there is no information on the effect of BV on human cervical cancer cells and its molecular mechanisms of action are not fully elucidated. In this study, the possible mechanisms of apoptosis by which BV acts on human cervical cancer Ca Ski cells were investigated. BV induced morphological changes and decreased the percentage of viable Ca Ski cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that BV induced the production of reactive oxygen species, increased the level of cytoplasmic Ca2+, reduced mitochondrial membrane potential which led to cytochrome c release, and promoted the activation of caspase-3 which then led to apoptosis. BV also induced an increase in the levels of Fas, p53, p21 and Bax, but a decrease in the level of Bcl-2. The activities of both caspase-8 and caspase-9 were enhanced by BV, promoting caspase-3 activation, leading to DNA fragmentation. Based on the DNA fragmentation and DAPI staining, BV-induced apoptosis was mitochondrial-dependent and caspase-dependent. BV also promoted the expression of AIF and Endo G in the Ca Ski cells. Both AIF and Endo G proteins were released from the mitochondria, and then induced apoptosis which was not through activation of caspase. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that BV-induced apoptosis occurs via a Fas receptor pathway involving mitochondrial-dependent pathways and is closely related to the level of cytoplasmic Ca2+ in Ca Ski cells.


OBJECTIVE This trial tested whether mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) alone or with daclizumab (DZB) could arrest the loss of insulin-producing β-cells in subjects with new-onset type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A multi-center, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-masked trial was initiated by Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet at 13 sites in North America and Europe. Subjects diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and with sufficient C-peptide within 3 months of diagnosis were randomized to either MMF alone, MMF plus DZB, or placebo, and then followed for 2 years. The primary outcome was the geometric mean area under the curve (AUC) C-peptide from the 2-h mixed meal tolerance test. RESULTS One hundred and twenty-six subjects were randomized and treated during the trial. The geometric mean C-peptide AUC at 2 years was unaffected by MMF alone or MMF plus DZB versus placebo. Adverse events were more frequent in the active therapy groups relative to the control group, but not significantly. CONCLUSIONS Neither MMF alone nor MMF in combination with DZB had an effect on the loss of C-peptide in subjects with new-onset type 1 diabetes. Higher doses or more targeted immunotherapies may be needed to affect the autoimmune process.


Gastric dilatation and volvulus syndrome (GDV) in dogs is an abnormal accumulation of gastric gas (dilatation), which may be complicated by rotation of the stomach (volvulus) about its mesentric axis. A number of factors, both environmental and host have been implicated in GDV. This syndrome has a variety of effects on the cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, metabolic, haemolymphatic-immune, renal and central nervous systems. Clinical signs include distended, painful, tympanic abdomen, retching, unproductive vomiting, hypersalivation, respiratory distress accompanied by varying degrees of shock. Treatment of GDV includes
medical and fluid therapy at shock dosages to initially stabilize the patient followed by gastric decompression. Surgical procedure comprises of gastric derotation followed by partial gastrectomy or spleenectomy depending upon gastric or spleenic viability and lastly,
permanent right sided gastropexy. Post surgical considerations include frequent small meals instead of one large meal, avoiding vigorous activity immediately after meals and not allowing animal to gorge on water after meals or activities.


Myocardial strain (epsilon) is a dimensionless index of change in myocardial length in response to an applied force. epsilon Rate (SR) is the rate of change of length and is usually obtained as the time derivative of the epsilon signal. In echocardiography, SR is calculated as the difference between 2 velocities normalized to the distance between the 2 velocities. SR imaging (SRI) has a theoretic advantage over Doppler tissue imaging in that SRI is relatively immune to cardiac translational motion and tethering. Therefore, SRI may be superior to Doppler tissue imaging in quantitative assessment of regional myocardial function and may find clinical application in the interrogation of coronary artery disease. The high frame rates of SRI have also renewed interest in timings of global and regional mechanical events, and their potential clinical applications. The high temporal resolution allows SRI to depict regional systolic and diastolic asynchrony. Ongoing clinical trials will determine the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of SRI parameters for a variety of clinical conditions. Potential clinical applications include investigation of ischemia (at rest and with stress), myocardial viability, and altered global and regional systolic and diastolic function in cardiomyopathies. Suboptimal signal quality remains a major limitation of strain imaging, and advances in data acquisition and postprocessing capabilities will help determine its future incorporation into standard regional myocardial assessment.


Economic Geography maintains that economic activities are not randomly distributed across space. This paper examines the impact of industrial and regional characteristics on venture capital activities in the United States from 1995 until 2009. The unique database allows for stratifications into seventeen industries within nineteen regions of the United States. This study affirms the significance of both Location and industry in venture capital investment. Both statistical and graphical methods are employed in order to better ascertain the dynamic nature of the data.


While global urban development is increasingly oriented towards strategies to facilitate green urbanism, potential community trade-offs are largely overlooked. This article presents the findings of a quantitative and qualitative meta-analysis of the current literature on green gentrification (the process leading the implementation of an environmental planning agenda displacing or excluding the most economically vulnerable population) in connection with climate change adaptation and mitigation across the globe. Based on specific keywords, we selected the recorded entry of 212 articles from Scopus covering the period 1977–2021. Our review focused on the historical and geographical development of the literature on urban greening and gentrification. The analysis shows that the concept of green gentrification has strong roots within the environmental justice debate in the US. In terms of intervention, most studies focused on urban parks and trees and were primarily oriented towards restoration. However, debates around the role of green facades, green roofs, or blue infrastructure (such as ponds and rivers) and other nature-based solutions as a driver for green gentrification are few and far between. Finally, we also identified a strong gap between the observation of green gentrification and potential countermeasures that respond to it. Most studies suggest that the existence of a stronger collaborative planning process within the affected communities may overcome the challenge of green gentrification. Based on our results, we identify several gaps and new research directions to design a green and just city.