The aim of this paper is to introduce some principles of Evolutionary Medicine to the community of
medical educators in Brazil. Evolutionary Medicine can be defined as the application of the theory of
evolution through natural selection to the understanding of human health problems. This innovative
approach provides the medical field with a theoretical framework which contributes to the explanation
of a great variety of serious disorders. Evolutionary Medicine, which dates back to the early 1960s,
aims to explain diseases based both on recent physiological causes – those most commonly addressed
by medicine – and on more distant evolutionary causes – those responsible for the emergence and survival
of useful and functional biological structures throughout the history of the planet. Evolutionary
Medicine rests on the assumption that functional biological characteristics are the result of evolutionary
adaptive processes. Therefore, it is possible to analyze a great number of diseases in terms of adaptive
vulnerabilities connected to our phylogenetic inheritance, such as human bodily inadequacies in
relation to the modern environment. Besides presenting a definition of Evolutionary Medicine, this
paper discusses two health problems recently dealt with in the light of the theory of evolution through
natural selection. First, we discuss how the appearance, the ethnic and geographic distribution of
lactose intolerance (and, on the other hand, the persistence of lactase) can only be understood taking
our species' recent evolutionary history (including its cultural transformations) into consideration.
The limitations faced by previous explanations, which lacked evolutionary causes – are discussed.
Secondly, the paper discusses herniated spinal disc, trying to demonstrate the link between this condition
and the adaptation problems that bipedal posture may entail in view of the demands of modern
lifestyle. The understanding of such problems of adaptation, combined with restrictions to natural
selection pressures when adjusting a quadruped structure to a biped lifestyle, serve as the basis for
the development of specific concepts used to formulate a hypothesis with relevant diagnostic potential.
Finally, the paper describes ways in which medical students could incorporate this relatively new
knowledge into their education.


Genetic tests which target specific ethnicities are fraught with problems, and will become commonplace unless action is taken to stop them. The first has already been patented in Europe by the U.S. company Myriad Genetics, despite vigorous opposition. Myriad's patent covers testing for a mutation in the breast cancer gene BRCA2 in Ashkenazi-Jewish women. The patenting and approval of BiDil, a heart medication for African-Americans, provides strong evidence that patenting ethnically based medicine has become more acceptable in the United States. In allowing race-based drugs, the United States is much closer to allowing ethnic genetic testing, which has deeper, more insidious, and more widespread negative effects. As such, action must be taken to avoid the patenting of ethnic genetic tests. While existing anti-discrimination law may provide one reactive means to challenge these tests, its extent is unclear, and that route is slow and uncertain. Instead, Congress should proactively enact narrow legislation specifically tailored to prohibit these tests.


The ORANI-F model of the Australian economy is closely based on the original ORANI model (Dixon, Parmenter, Sutton and Vincent, 1982), which has been used for many policy analyses in Australia. However, as well as having a more recent database, ORANI-F is a forecasting model: it includes some dynamic mechanisms absent from ORANI. We have created a generic version of ORANI-F as a pattern or template model to initiate collaborative CGE modelling with teams outside Australia. The ORANI-F documentation (Horridge, Parmenter and Pearson, 1993) is well adapted to skill transfer; it takes the reader through all the steps required for implementation of such a model, including its computer representation in GEMPACK, a flexible system for handling CGE models (Harrison and Pearson, 1993). The template model enables foreign collaborators to rapidly start running and analyzing their own simulations, so building up CGE experience. Country-specific features are incorporated by adapting or extending the template model. We illustrate this with IDC-GEM, a CGE model of the South African economy that is based on ORANI-F, but contains several new elements. IDC-GEM distinguishes multiple households, differing by income and ethnicity. Labour is grouped by skill and ethnicity. The macro equation system, structured around a SAM, includes mechanisms to distribute labour income between the different households. We present IDCGEM simulations of the effects of a South African tariff cut. Export-oriented industries tend to gain, at the expense of import-competing sectors like textiles and cars. This causes ethnic groups who work more in expanding industries to gain at the expense of other groups who are concentrated in shrinking sectors. On the demand side, car tariff cuts (leading to cheaper cars) disproportionately favour the richer households -- the poor buy few cars. Similarly ORANI-F has been used as a basis for the CAMGEM CGE model of Thailand. Here, special additions include an explicit treatment of Thailand's large international tourism industry. We are also in the process of contructing a Vietnamese GGE model, again based on the template. GEMPACK software, the template model, and documentation that explains both of these thoroughly, are three key advantages as we transfer our modelling technology to foreign environments.


[1] This paper presents ground-based observations from Antarctic stations during a substorm observed on 23 March 2007. Using fluxgate magnetometer data, supported by numerical modeling, the locations of the stations are shown to straddle the open-closed magnetic field boundary. Near these locations (on closed field lines), VLF and riometer signatures are observed to show effects of energetic particle precipitation in the morning sector (extending to the postdawn region), confirmed by observations at geosynchronous orbit. In the VLF data, both the initial injection as well as echoes are observed. The mechanism responsible for such high-latitude injections is thought to be a combination of dynamics of the injection process and drift-shell splitting. Further work will address whether similar observations can be used to infer the dynamics and/or location of the injection region.


International solidarity is proclaimed as a key value of the international community. Natural disasters offer the perfect context for its demonstration. Oftentimes international actors readily offer aid and assistance but the governing legal framework remains uncertain. Thus, the current ILC drafting project presents a welcome opportunity to codify and concretise matters. This chapter analyses the ILC draft Article concerning external actors' rights to offer assistance to disaster-stricken states. If the project's focus is the protection of stricken populations, does this 'right' suggest or encourage the possibility of a duty to offer assistance when natural disasters strike? An alternative reading challenges any such duty. This chapter analyses the 'right to offer' in its own terms, and in the context of the other draft Articles, and considers whether the draft provision materialises international solidarity.


Abstract. The impact of the maximum convection location over eastern and central Equatorial Pacific over the intensity and positioning of the South American Low-Level Jet east of the Andes (SALLJ) during the austral summer was investigated. The Bonner criteria 1 was applied to the NCEP-NCAR circulation fields during the El Nino of 1997/1998 and 2002/2003 to identify the SALLJ episodes. The composites of the atmospheric circulation over the South America during El Nino events showed that the SALLJ can be influenced by small displacements of the quasi-stationary Rossby waves position. During the strong El Nino event of 1997/1998 the SALLJ is maintained by the eastern trade winds. A low-level anomalous anticyclonic circulation over the central part of Brazil enhanced the wind in the nucleus of the jet and displaced its axis to the Northern Argentina and South of Brazil. However, the northern trade winds seem to maintain the SALLJ during the weak El Nino of 2002/2003. The jet was weaker and displaced more southeastward of Brazil than during the strong event.


The subject of control is a major stream in information systems development (ISD) studies. It is a process in which controllers specify performance goals, evaluate the current performance of those over whom they have control, and initiate improvements when they observe a gap between the predefined goals and the actual performance level. Researchers have classified control into different types and have identified the critical determinants for selecting appropriate control mechanisms. We base this study on regulatory focus theory and argue that managers should also consider a team's goal orientation in order to maximize the effect of control. This study attempts to understand 1) whether the goal orientation of the ISD project team (prevention-focused vs. promotion-focused) is associated with its performance index, and 2) whether those relationships are stronger when the appropriate control mechanism (specification explicitness, evaluation flexibility, and reward) is exercised. To answer these research questions, we propose a research model integrating organization control and regulatory focus theory to explain ISD project performance (product performance, process performance, and teamwork satisfaction). Specific hypotheses are developed and will be tested using a field survey from ISD project managers and team members.


This second edition of an innovative undergraduate text offers an approach to understanding different economic systems that reflects both recent transformations in the world economy and recent changes in the field of Comparative Economic Systems. The traditional way of teaching comparative economics, with its reliance on relatively simple dichotomies (private vs. state, planning vs. market) does not take into consideration the many variants and mixtures of economic systems that exist in the real world. The Rossers' introduction in the first edition of the concept of the "new traditional economy"—the effort by a developing country to embed a modern economic system into a traditional culture, usually religious—presented a new way to look at developing economies. Their innovative examination of Iran and its effort to develop a "revolutionary Islamic economy" as an alternative to market capitalism illustrates the use of this new tool in comparative economics.


Angiogenesis is a multistep process that requires intricate changes in cell shape to generate new blood vessels. IF are a large family of proteins that play an important structural and functional role in forming and regulating the cytoskeleton. Vimentin, a major type III intermediate filament protein is expressed in endothelial and other mesenchymal cells. The structure of vimentin is conserved in mammals and shows dynamic expression profiles in various cell types and different developmental stages. Although initial studies with vimentin‐deficient mice demonstrated a virtually normal phenotype, subsequent studies have revealed several defects in cell attachment, migration, signaling, neurite extension, and vascularization. Regulation of vimentin is highly complex and is driven by posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation and cleavage by intracellular proteases. This review discusses various novel functions which are now known to be mediated by vimentin, summarizing structure, regulation and roles of vimentin in cell adhesion, migration, angiogenesis, neurite extension, and cancer. We specifically highlight a pathway involving growth factor‐mediated calpain activation, vimentin cleavage, and MT1‐MMP membrane translocation that is required for endothelial cell invasion in 3D environments. This pathway may also regulate the analogous processes of neurite extension and tumor cell invasion.


ABSTRACT When it comes to existing buildings, the estimation of the structural residual bearing capacity is required to evaluate the potential for reuse/conversion. The level of detail and accuracy of surveys dramatically affect structural diagnostics. In order to optimise the experimental survey process, a simulation of the structural life-cycle may be useful. Based on a previously developed approach of Monte Carlo simulation implemented with a damage law for the life-cycle analysis of newly designed constructions, this paper presents the method application to a historic roof steel structure. It aims to identify critical situations, assess the residual life of the system, and plan possible retrofit strategies for the building conversion. The case study is a steel frame roof structure of the ex pig abattoir within the complex of the municipal slaughterhouse in Monza (close to Milan, Northern Italy) and protected from the Cultural Heritage Authority. The life-cycle of the structure is here investigated over different stages of the building lifespan along with the damages caused by aging and negligence. The construction was built in 1902, and abandoned in 1984. Therefore, the periods analysed are: from construction to disuse and from disuse to today. The second phase of life, still on going, has significantly sped up the degradation. The probabilistic evaluation of failure times is discussed and the possible interventions scenarios in terms of costs, and after-maintenance reliability and safety are investigated.


Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been demonstrated to be a promising class of biomimetic materials that can be tailored to meet specific end use recognition requirements. Molecular imprinting is achieved by the interaction, either covalent or non-covalent between complementary groups in a template molecule and functional monomer units through polymerization. MIPs have been widely employed for divers applications such as chiral separation, chemical sensing, catalysis, drug screening, chromatographic separations and solid phase extraction. During respiration and metabolism, human body produce free radicals as by products, which can damage genetic material, lipids and proteins leading to several fatal diseases such as Cancer, Cardio-vascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, Immune dysfunction etc. Antioxidants define a family of natural or synthetic nutrients in food, which acts as free radical scavengers. They are present in complex matrix such as herbs, fruit pulp in small concentration, either combined or in free form. Although several techniques have been developed for their detection, (e.g. HPLC, Thin layer chromatography, Capillary gas chromatography, Supercritical fluid chromatography), to achieve highly specific and sensitive analysis, high affinity, stable and specific recognition agents are needed. In this review, special attention is paid to the MIPs based analytical methods for antioxidants, focusing on solid phase extraction, chromatographic and non chromatographic separations and sensing approaches as well as on novel approaches for the discovery of new imprinted materials for antioxidants.


In this article, a methodology is proposed that can be used to predict the crack growth and fatigue life of a cantilever beam made of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) manufactured with fused deposition modeling. Three beam configurations based on length (L = 110, 130, and 150 mm) are considered. Empirical relationships are formulated between the natural frequency and the crack growth. The analytical and experimental results are found to be in good agreement for all configurations. Using the experimental data, a global relation is formulated for the crack depth prediction. This global relation is useful for an in situ crack depth prediction with an error of less than 10 %. Later, a residual fatigue life of these specimens is compared with a metallic structure (Aluminum 1050) of similar configuration available in the literature. It is found that the ABS material has more residual fatigue life compared with the metallic structure at the same frequency drop. Based on the remaining fatigue life, ABS material can be a potential material to manufacture machine components under cyclic loads.


Abstract There has been an increasing assertion of the velayat-e-faqih in Iranian politics in recent years. This has led to tensions between them and the presidential office in Iran. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to analyse the constitutional position of the velayat-e-faqih and how it has interacted with other institutions to shape Iranian foreign policy. The article critically analyses the relationship between the velayat-e-faqih and different popularly elected presidents. It concludes that this institution has been able to determine the course of Iranian foreign policy so far and will play an important role in its formulation in the future.


Currently 16% of Americans breastfeed their children for at least 12 months as recommended by the AAP, which is well below the HP 2010 goal of 25%. Breastfed infants receive benefits that can improve their health throughout their lives. The benefits of breastfeeding for children include increased resistance to infectious diseases, such as gastroenteritis, respiratory tract infections, and ear infections. Breastfed children also display lower rates of chronic diseases including diabetes, obesity, asthma, and leukemia. The choice to breastfeed results in economic benefits from lower health care costs and from reduced spending on infant formula. The Healthy People 2010 targets are reviewed along with several studies of interventions to increase breastfeeding rates. Health educators must work to increase breastfeeding rates.


An assay was developed for detecting beta-galactofuranosidase produced by Penicillium and Aspergillus spp. The substrate for the assay, 4-nitrophenyl beta-D-galactofuranoside, was synthesized from penta-O-acetyl-beta-D-galactofuranose and 4-nitrophenol by a tin chloride catalyzed reaction followed by O-deacetylation. Aspergillus spp. produced only small quantities of beta-galactofuranosidase during 30 d at 25 degrees C. Only the biverticillate Penicillium spp. (P. funiculosum, P. islandicum, P. rubrum and P. tardum) produced substantial beta-galactofuranosidase after 1-4 weeks at 25 degrees C. No extracellular antigens of these four Penicillium spp. could be detected in culture filtrates by the sandwich ELISA technique when antibodies to the extracellular beta-galactofuranoside-containing polysaccharide antigen of P. digitatum was used. Antigens to all other Penicillium and Aspergillus spp. were easily detected in their culture filtrates.


Rett Syndrome (RTT) is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused primarily by mutations in a Mecp2 gene and exclusively affects females. RTT is one of the prevalent developmental disorders with a high frequency of occurrence (about 1:15,000 to 1:10,000) and patients are prone to gastro-intestinal disorders and about 80% have seizures. Although the genetic defect in the Mecp2 gene defines RTT, the insights from recent studies have highlighted the complex pathophysiological mechanisms that point to developmental disorder. A better understanding of the interplay of these pathophysiological mechanisms is one of the challenges in establishing of effective therapeutic strategies. In the present study, we used Mecp2-null mice as a model to examine the physiological and/or pathophysiological cellular mechanism pathways that can play important role in the development of Rett Syndrome.
The main aspect of this study was to reveal the role of glutamate receptors (GluR) /K-ATP channels crosstalk in the development of RTT. Accordingly, the activities of these channels were examined in neurons from wild type (WT) and Mecp2-null mice that represent physiological and pathophysiological examples, respectively. Excessive stimulation of glutamatergic receptors can overexcite neurons. This can be dampened by K-ATP channels linking metabolic and neuronal activities. The crosstalk has not yet been examined on the single channel level. I aimed to examine how K-ATP channel activity changes after stimulation of neuronal glutamate receptors and whether those effects may be mediated through variations in the intracellular ATP levels.
In the hippocampal neurons, GluR agonists augmented the open state probability (Popen) of K-ATP channels with relative efficacy: Kainate = AMPA > NMDA > t-ACPD. Inhibition of calcium influx and chelation of intracellular calcium did not modify the GluR effects. Kainate did not augment production of reactive oxygen species measured with roGFP1. The oxidant H2O2 increased Popen about 2-fold within 1 min but the subsequent application of AMPA/Kainate produced further potentiation; in the same proportion as in the control. The data indicate that changes in the activity of K-ATP channels due to ROS and GluR stimulation have different mechanisms. GluR actions were abolished in Na+-free solutions and after blockade of Na+-K+-ATPase. GluR stimulation enhanced ATP consumption that decreased submembrane ATP levels, whereas metabolic poisoning diminished bulk ATP.
Increase of the K-ATP channel open state probabilities after GluR stimulation less in Mecp2 -/y hippocampal neurons. It allows to speculate whether protective role attributed commonly to K-ATP channels in RTT hippocampal neurons may be less effective.
I examined the role of GluR and K-ATP channels cross-talk in relation to mechanisms of epilepsy. In hippocampal organotypic slices using well established model, a seizure-like activity was evoked by removal of magnesium from bath. This was accompanied by calcium and ATP changes. The ATP responses were distinctly different in specific hippocampal regions: in dentate gyrus (DG) the neurons possessed higher ATP resting levels and showed smaller changes to epileptogenic stimuli in comparison with CA1 and CA3 areas.
ATP levels in RTT neurons were significantly higher than those measured in WT cells. This corroborates well with observations of diminished K-ATP channel open state probability. We propose that K-ATP channels and GluRs are functionally coupled and can regulate long-lasting changes of neuronal activity in the CNS neurons.
The obtained data indicate that RTT symptom as propensity to seizures can be essentially contributed by improper K-ATP channel functioning.


Five studies that evaluated five different quality-improvement initiatives for the prevention of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in adult, pediatric and/or neonatal intensive care units (ICUs) and that were published within the past two years in an infection-control and epidemiology journal were reviewed, assessed and compared. Each is a prospective cohort study that similarly concludes that the evaluated initiative was responsible for a significant and calculated reduction in the CLABSI rate, ranging from 30.3% to 85%. The soundness of these conclusions and calculations, however, like the legitimacy of several other common uses of CLABSI data, requires, in addition to satisfying a number of other criteria, that each study's CLABSI rates be accurate and complete. The primary goal of this analysis, therefore, was to confirm the hypothesis that each of these five studies had validated its CLABSI rates. The analysis found, however, that these five studies did not validate the accuracy and completeness of their CLABSI rates, which raises reasonable questions about each study's assessment of and conclusions about the initiative's effectiveness for the prevention of CLABSIs. In addition to their aims, calculations, and conclusions, these five studies share in common a number of features, as well as circumscribing qualities, which are discussed. The distinction between a qualitative assessment and a quantitative determination of an initiative's performance is also discussed. Both the circumspective use of CLABSI data that have not been validated and the cautious interpretation of conclusions about central-line care that are based on these CLABSI data are recommended.


Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta and GeneDx have devised a process to resolve discrepancies in gene variant interpretation between their testing laboratories that have impeded the effective use of genetic test results in clinical medicine. In a paper published recently in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the researchers outline how they resolved 72% of nearly 300 discrepancies between their labs and identify key sources of data that facilitated changes in variant interpretation (Garber et al, 2016). "Our paper shows that lab interpretation of variants is important and sharing data is critical to moving the fi eld forward," says lead author Madhuri Hegde, PhD, Vice President and Chief Scientifi c Offi cer at PerkinElmer, based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Organized data-sharing efforts like ClinGen are crucial to accurate genetic diagnosis, adds Dr. Hegde, who was a Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Emory Genetics Laboratory (EGL) when she wrote the paper and is now an Adjunct Professor at Emory. In addition, Dr. Hegde has chaired multiple curation committees in ClinGen, which has a partnership with the ClinVar database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The current study was partially funded by an NIH ClinGen grant that supported work aimed at depositing data into ClinVar and improving the quality of variant interpretation through expert consensus.


The robust locally weighted scattering smoothing (LWESS) is another regression method that not only smoothes the scatter plot but also guard against outliers that distort the smoothed points. The mud-rock line produced by the robust locally weighted smoothing scattering method, LOWESS, has shown superiority over the Castagna linear regression method in mapping the Glauconitic sand reservoir of Blackfoot area. The produced graph has demonstrated to be a good visualizing tool for an effective direct hydrocarbon indicator (DHI) as well as in discriminating sand and carbonate lines.


The Rho family of small guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) is critical for controlling cell shape, motility, polarity, and behavior in development and tumor progression. However, little is known about how the activity of different Rho GTPases is spatially coordinated to control these processes. Wang et al. (see the Perspective by Jaffe and Hall) examined the role of Smurf1, a HECT domain E3 ubiquitin ligase that modulates Smad signaling. The localization of Smurf1 to lamellipodia and filopodia required the activity of atypical protein kinase zeta, an effector involved in establishing cell polarity. Smurf1 controls the local level of RhoA whose accumulation in cellular protrusions is linked to the suppression of the transformed phenotype induced by knocking down Smurf1 expression. H.-R. Wang, Y. Zhang, B. Ozdamar, A. A. Ogunjimi, E. Alexandrova, G. H. Thomsen, J. L. Wrana, Regulation of cell polarity and protrusion formation by targeting RhoA for degradation. Science 302, 1775-1779 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text] A. B. Jaffe, A. Hall, Smurfing at the leading edge. Science 302, 1690-1691 (2003). [SUmmary] [Full Text]


BACKGROUND
The glycoprotein clusterin (CLU) has two known isoforms generated in human cells. A nuclear form of CLU protein (nCLU) is pro-apoptotic, while a secretory form (sCLU) is pro-survival. CLU expression has been associated with tumorigenesis and the progression of various malignancies.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The expression of CLU was studied immunohistochemically in paraffin sections of primary cutaneous malignant melanomas, metastases of malignant melanomas and acquired melanocytic naevi. Using PCR and Western blotting, the expression of CLU was also investigated in various vitamin D-responsive (MeWo, SK-MEL-28) and vitamin D-resistant melanoma cell lines (SK-MEL-5, SK-MEL-25), as well as in normal human melanocytes (NHM), along with 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25(OH)2D3] treatment.

RESULTS
In contrast to acquired melanocytic naevi, CLU immunoreactivity was found in primary cutaneous malignant melanomas and metastases of malignant melanomas in situ. Both CLU protein and RNA were detected in melanoma cell lines and NHM. Treatment with 1,25(OH)2D3 modulated CLU's expression in vitamin D-responsive but not in -resistant melanoma cell lines.

CONCLUSION
CLU may be of importance for the progression of malignant melanoma. The growth regulatory effects of 1,25(OH)2D3 in melanoma cell lines may, at least in part, be mediated via modulation of CLU expression.


Abstract. This paper focuses in particular on clastic sediment fluxes on talus slopes. Using orthophoto interpretation, field measurements and GIS-techniques, a quantification of areas and volumes of active sediment transfer related to specific landform units was achieved for different spatial scales. Closer investigation of a single landform complex, more specifically a talus sheet/ debris cone-complex, brought to light that remobilisation can overbalance sediment input by a factor of 57. This could be an indication of what may be expected in the whole catchment. At present. approximately 9% of the research area (3 km 2 ), comprising talus slopes and valley bottom, is characterised by sediment transfer mainly through gravilational and fluvial processes. A comparison of the vast volumes (117.174 m 3 ) derived from these active areas of recent sediment transfer and the volume of the entire valley fill (0.07 km 3 ) indicates, however, that the largest part must be related to remobilised sediments and cannot be considered as sediment input from the adjacent rockwalls. This conclusion is also supported by direct measurements of sediment input.


The compartmentalisation of company finance into equity and debt does not truly capture the enormous diversity of financial instruments available. A wide variety of hybrid instruments incorporate elements of both equity and debt. From a fiscal point of view the classification of such hybrid instruments as equity or debt is crucial for two reasons. First of all, the issuer can treat interest on the latter as tax-deductible in most cases, and secondly, for the investor the classification determines whether the payments received from the respective instrument is treated as a dividend or as interest. One important question in this context is how hybrid instruments are treated in the tax treaty between the source state and the residence state. It is the aim of this paper, to show how the yield on hybrid financial instruments can or must be qualified as either dividend or interest in the double tax treaties, irrespective of the treatment in contracting states. (author's abstract)


Background: Little is still known about what community, individual and program factors contribute to the successful community integration of formerly homeless persons diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI). Aims: The goal of this study was to use blended quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the impact of housing type (independent apartments and congregate settings) and neighborhood characteristics on physical, social and psychological aspects of community integration in this population. Method: Forty-four persons who had been stably housed for at least one year completed quantitative and qualitative assessments examining different aspects of community integration. Neighborhood structural variables were also examined using census data. Results: Quantitative findings confirm that community integration is multidimensional, and that different aspects of housing and neighborhood influence different dimensions of community integration. The concept of "locus of meaningful activity" (a lifestyle characteristic) emerged as an important construct from qualitative analyses. Locus of meaningful activity was associated with greater psychological integration and was linked to housing type. Conclusions: Findings offer direction for future studies seeking to understand the factors that influence the community integration of formerly homeless persons with SMI. Declaration of interest: Two authors are affiliated with Pathways to Housing, which provides services to homeless persons with SMI.


Abstract The growing trend of co-creation and co-design in cross-cultural design teams presents challenges for the design thinking process. We integrate two frameworks, one on reasoning patterns in design thinking, the other on the dynamic constructivist theory of culture, to propose a situation specific framework for the empirical analysis of design thinking in cross-cultural teams. We illustrate the framework with a qualitative analysis of 16 episodes of design related conversations, which are part of a design case study. The results show that cultural knowledge, either as shared by the cross-cultural team or group specific knowledge of some team members, shape the reasoning patterns in the design thinking process across all the 16 episodes. Most of the design discussions were approached by the designers as problem situations that were formulated in a backward direction, where the value to create was known first. Then the designers were using available cultural knowledge to articulate the unknown what to design (products/services) and how the design would work (the working principles of product/services). In conclusion, we demonstrate a novel approach for understanding how cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking in specific situations.


The case report of a patient with a giant calcified retro-peritoneal malignant fibrous histiocytoma is presented. Despite the size of the tumour, the patient was in good health and there was no evidence of metastatic disease. He did well following laparotomy and complete excision of the tumour. He received a full course of post-operative radiotherapy and remains well six months after discharge from hospital.


Taphole clays are a plastic ceramic-polymer composite used in iron making blast furnaces to control the casting of hot metal and slag from the blast furnace. They also protect the sidewall refractories in the blast furnace from erosion and corrosion. Taphole clays generally consist of liquid binder, refractory matrix, and refractory aggregate. A novolak resin solution has been used in this study because it is a c o m m o n binder used in industry. The matrix material is usually a mixture of fine particles of silicon carbide, coke, alumina, and other special additives. The aggregate material consists of coarse particles of alumina or alumino-silicates. Studies on taphole clays to date have generally focused on the effect of compositional variations on their performance. Extrusion behaviour is known to highly influence the performance of taphole clays but has not been previously studied in depth. In this thesis the rheology of the taphole clay mixtures and their components are studied. The binder was aged at various temperatures with and without the addition of the curing agent hexamethylenetetramine ( H M T A ) . The effect of temperature and curing time was assessed based on the binder's viscosity. Extrusion pressure variation in the mixture of binder and matrix material due to ageing, temperature and binder composition was also studied. The Benbow-Bridgwater model for paste extrusion was used to evaluate the extrusion pressures. The aggregate material was not added in this study and will be the focus of future work. Major findings of this study were that the binder was found to react with HMTA at temperatures above 40°C producing an increase in viscosity. This reaction occurred at XX temperatures much lower than had previously been reported. Without the addition of HMTA there was found to be no significant change in the viscosity of the binder. When the binder and HMTA mixture was heated to temperatures of 70°C and above, the reaction was rapid, taking less than 12 hours to observe a significant viscosity increase. Again, these cure temperatures were lower than reported in previous studies. It is proposed that the increased mobility of the polymer chains due to the addition of the solvent is the reason these reactions were occurring at relatively low temperatures. The extrusion behaviour of different taphole clay compositions was performed by comparing parameters from the Benbow-Bridgwater equation. This study has extended the application of the Benbow-Bridgwater equation, which was previously applied to the extrusion behaviour of ceramic pastes. Studying the matrix binder material variation found that ageing at 50°C, mixing technique and temperature all had a significant effect on the extrusion pressure. The effect of temperature of extrusion was also examined and found to be a significant factor in extrusion behaviour. A novel variation to the Benbow-Bridgwater equation is proposed to account for these temperature changes. It is envisaged that this work will be used to modify blast furnace taphole clay storage and utilization procedures to obtain more consistent taphole clay behaviour. This work also provides an understanding of the factors that can contribute to the variability observed in the extrusion pressures of taphole clays. Having a greater understanding of the external factors that can lead to significant differences in taphole clay performance will lead to better operating conditions in the blast furnace and a longer furnace life.


Sarcina ventriculi is a Gram-positive, obligate anaerobic coccus, with a characteristic morphology. Only 22 cases of human infections by this microorganism, including 7 in children, have been reported in literature so far. Affected subjects usually present with abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and delayed gastric emptying. However, life-threatening complications, like emphysematous gastritis and gastric perforation have also been described. Gastroparesis and gastric outlet obstruction have been considered as a potential etiologic factor. All pediatric cases described thus far presented with concomitant gastrointestinal pathology, such as Helicobacter pylori gastritis, celiac disease, infection with Giardia lamblia or Candida spp. Here, we report two children with S. ventriculi infection, in whom the diagnosis was established by typical histological findings in mucosal biopsies. The first child presented with hematemesis due to ulcerative esophagitis and gastritis, the second child with a history of esophageal stricture had ulcerative gastritis. Confirmation of S. ventriculi infection is feasible by molecular microbiota detection methods, since this microorganism cannot be detected by classical culture techniques. Prompt treatment with antibiotics could prevent life-threatening complications.


Recently, fault-tolerance control (FTC) methods have been proposed to further improve the reliability of T-type three-level converters. However, the application of model predictive control (MPC) in FTCs is rare, and the neutral point (NP) voltage imbalance before an open-switch fault occurs has not been solved. This article focuses on these two problems and proposes two FTC control methods: sequential MPC and sequential model predictive tolerance control. Both methods are implemented by designing a sequential predictive control that first considers the NP voltage balance and then grid current tracking. Through the staggered operation of the two methods, a T-type grid-connected converter with an LCL filter can operate normally after an open-switch fault occurs. Moreover, both methods can achieve the NP voltage balance and excellent grid current outputs, eliminate the time-consuming selection of weighting factors, and reduce the number of calculation loops compared with the traditional model predictive tolerance control, thereby improving the control flexibility. The performance and comparison of the open-switch FTC with respect to the NP voltage oscillations, total harmonic distortion of the grid current, and pole voltage were demonstrated using numerous simulation and experimental results.


: Total replacement of hip joint is considered as the most traumatic and bloody intervention in surgery as it is characterized with an expressed bleeding. It is done a total hip joint replacement of 1044 patients of both sexes from 25 to 80 years old. It was developed a complex and optimal infusion-transfusion therapy with total hip joint replacement. It is described a case of the female patient who had acute bleeding after an operation and further syndrome of disseminated intravascular coagulation DIC. It had developed a vicious circle: coagulation factors were consumed quicker than they could restore. It was applied controlled hypotension to decrease bleeding intensity. It resulted in drainage bleeding reduction. Simultaneously it was conducted complex infusion-transfusion therapy, substitution therapy with blood preparations, it was transfused fresh frozen plasma by the generally accepted methods. Infusion therapy was done with crystalloids and colloids in ratio 2/1. In 3 days there were improved coagulogramm performances and total blood count, the critical status of the patient was improved. Therefore, we should note that acute bleeding is a serious problem that requires adequate complex infusion-transfusion therapy, circulating blood volume restoration, microcirculation improvement and prevention of all reasons of bleeding. In case of need in order to reduce bleeding intensity at the same time with the complex infusion-transfusion therapy use controlled hypotension.


Taking microcomputers into the field is boosting productivity at construction sites and other field offices. Four examples presented in this article include an owner calculating payments to contractors; a contractor recording labor and equipment costs; a state program to provide microcomputer systems to local traffic engineers; and inspection reports produced automatically from inspectors' verbal notes on cassettes.


The television world is changing, having been impacted by mutations of three different natures: technological, narrative and participatory. Productions now use technology to enhance their content as television series and movie franchises are, increasingly, basing their narratives on principles of narrative complexity since active audiences do not only consume, but also engage with the said texts. These efforts made by the industry to target involved audiences demonstrate how transmedia practices have impacted not only on storytelling processes, but the text – and brand – itself, the latter no longer being a mere programme with a limited duration, but a whole, composed of numerous elements spread across media. The goal of the different players involved is, nevertheless, quite different. While fans' activities represent a way to empower themselves and engage with this universe, the teams behind institutional transmedia strategies seek to secure more (faithful) customers and, incidentally, a higher financial return.Rather than reducing transmedia storytelling to the augmenting effect it had on the concept of narrative resulting from its ability to create an immersive environment, this issue seeks to discuss the wide range of economic perspectives available to film and television brands due to this very immersive environment. The transmedia phenomenon has, so far, mostly been approached from an either textual or participatory standpoint, but rarely so from a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing the marketing aspect. Providing insight on this topic – so far not discussed in Networking Knowledge – through contributions from researchers in media, communications, cultural studies and marketing, the issue seeks to enrich our collective understanding of transmedia practices, in the hope of offering a more holistic approach. In doing so, the various pieces presented in this edition clearly demonstrate that transmedia practices have revolutionised television branding.. and that it's just getting started.


The percent of young children with dental caries in the United States has increased to levels that make it a major public health problem. Approximately a quarter of children between the ages of 2 and 5 years old have experienced dental caries in the United States, but these numbers vary greatly among groups, especially among those who are of a low socioeconomic status or in a minority. Dental pain as a result from dental caries has impacts on the child's quality of life. They may have physical problems, e.g. failure to thrive or vitamin deficiencies, emotional problems, e.g. easily irritated, or social problems, e.g. missing school or day care. Dental caries can be caused by many environmental and biological factors working together, such as diet, oral health behaviors, microorganisms of the oral cavity, and genetic predisposition, and ongoing research is beginning to reveal the possible mechanisms underlying some of these relationships. Treatment can be costly and is not readily available in all areas. If caries are not prevented and treatment is not procured, the financial burden increases and the child's long term health outcome worsens. Prevention techniques can be started in the home by practicing good oral health and avoiding sugary foods and beverages, especially before bed or during the night. Topical applications to improve the strength of the enamel, such as fluoride, reduce risk. Regular evaluations of oral health are important, but due to a lack of dental professionals that are trained to work with children, this is not always available. Some programs are training and incentivizing professionals to work with this population to increase coverage. With better accessibility to dental care and more research into the causes behind tooth decay in young children, the public health problem of early childhood caries can be alleviated.


ABSTRACT:In the second half of the nineteenth century, European scientists began investigating genius as a psychopathological phenomenon. The most important representative of this genre of medical literature was the Italian criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, for whom genius and inborn criminality were closely interconnected; in his view, studying the special intuition of the genius, arising though it does from a pathological condition (a form of epilepsy), might advance the work of science. Edgar Allan Poe was one of Lombroso's key examples: he discussed Poe in all four of his books on genius, arguing that dipsomania had brought about an undiagnosed case of epilepsy that manifested itself as genius.Drawing on French, Italian, and German sources, this article examines Lombroso's interpretation of Poe as well as the interpretations put forward by his followers and opponents in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seeks to demonstrate that, although psychiatrists and other scientists trying to understand the genius of Poe did so in the name of science and of positivism, they actually reinforced the Poe myth established by Charles Baudelaire and R. W. Griswold.


This first of three papers in our series on materiality in credit ratings will examine the materiality of credit ratings from an "implied materiality" and governance disclosure perspective. In the second paper, we will explore the materiality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in credit ratings' methodologies and introduce the concept of "layered materiality." In the third paper, we will evaluate current and potential credit rating agency (CRA) business models based on our analysis in the previous papers, and introduce the concept of "institutionalized materiality." Starting with this paper, and in the rest of the series, we will also recommend how the credit rating model can be enhanced in the coming years to help build more sustainable credit markets. This first paper is focused on the "G" (governance) component of ESG reporting. The governance matters we identify in this paper must be addressed before turning our attention to the broader set of ESG considerations in credit ratings. Failure to put these important governance matters at the top of the credit ratings reform agenda would, in our opinion, undermine the efforts we will recommend in our second and third papers.


Respiratory exposure to asbestos fibers has been associated with diffuse malignant mesothelioma (DMM) in humans. Despite advancements in the molecular analyses of human DMM and the development of animal models, the carcinogenic mechanisms of the disease remain unclear. There are basically three hypotheses regarding the pathogenesis of asbestos-induced DMM, which may be summarized as follows: (1) the "oxidative stress theory" is based on the fact that phagocytic cells that engulf asbestos fibers produce large amounts of free radicals due to their inability to digest the fibers, and epidemiological studies indicating that iron-containing asbestos fibers appear more carcinogenic; (2) the "chromosome tangling theory" postulates that asbestos fibers damage chromosomes when cells divide; and (3) the "theory of adsorption of many specific proteins as well as carcinogenic molecules" states that asbestos fibers in vivo concentrate proteins or chemicals including the components of cigarette smoke. Elucidation of the major mechanisms underlying DMM would be helpful for the development of novel strategies to prevent DMM induction in people who have already been exposed to asbestos.


In this article we report the first known linear liquid-crystalline hexamer and in doing so demonstrate that higher oligomers and main chain polymers, with chemical structures based upon dimers and bimesogens, can exhibit the topical twist-bend 'nematic' mesophase. In doing so we find that there is continuation of properties and structures across the spectrum from dimer to polymer and possibly to macroscale objects such as helical flagella. This finding highlights the cross over from nanoscience based mainly on electrostatics and other non-covalent interactions to macroscience based mainly on molecular topology, density of packing, and minimisation of the free energy.


In recent years, more Malaysians are moving into stratified unit, especially in urban centers due to limited land availability. Thus, there is a greater awareness of the need for these properties to be well-managed. Property management has historically been underrated and is often associated with mundane maintenance work. However, with the increasing development of strata titled property and legislation to govern the property management of such property, there has been an increasing demand for professional property management skills. Therefore, this study has been developed with the aim to identify the main problems related to property management and the issue in managing the high rise condominium in Malaysia. The study was conducted through structured interview with professional property managers, and also through postal questionnaires. From the study, it was found that the most common complaint lodge by tenants in high rise condominium is defects in their unit not attended within time specified. The process and procedures of handling defects complaint from tenants are also inefficient. The most common problem faced by property management in managing the high rise condominium is poor collection of maintenance fee. The tenants do not pay up the maintenance fee because they are not satisfied with the maintenance work carried out by property management.


The stability of complexes of a recently synthetized (Scott et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc.2011, 134, 107) opened nanocontainer C50H10 with several guest molecules, H2, N2, CO, HCN, H2O, CO2, CS2, H2S, C2H2, NH3, CH4, CH3CN, CH3OH, CH3CCH, 2-butyne, methyl halides, and with noble gas atoms, has been examined by means of symmetry-adapted perturbation theory of intermolecular interactions, which fully incorporates all important energy components, including a difficult dispersion term. All complexes under scrutiny have been found stable for all studied guests at 0 K, but entropic effects cause many of them to dissociate into constituent molecules under standard conditions. The estimation of temperature at which the Gibbs free energy ΔG = 0 revealed that the recently observed (Scott et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc.2011, 134, 107) complex CS2@C50H10 is the most stable at room temperature while the corresponding complexes with HCN and Xe guests should decompose at ca. 310 K and that with CO2 at room temperature (ca. 300 K). In agreement with the ΔG estimation, molecular dynamics simulations performed in vacuum for the CS2@C50H10 complex predicted that the complex is stable but decomposes at ca. 350 K. The MD simulations in CHCl3 solution showed that the presence of solvent stabilizes the CS2@C50H10 complex in comparison to vacuum. Thus, for the complexes obtained in solution the CO2 gas responsible for the greenhouse effect could be stored in the C50H10 nanotube.


Neural surface reconstruction has been shown to be powerful for recovering dense 3D surfaces via image-based neural rendering. However, current methods struggle to recover detailed structures of real-world scenes. To address the issue, we present Neuralangelo, which combines the representation power of multiresolution 3D hash grids with neural surface rendering. Two key ingredients enable our approach: (1) numerical gradients for computing higher-order derivatives as a smoothing operation and (2) coarse-to-fine optimization on the hash grids controlling different levels of details. Even without auxiliary inputs such as depth, Neuralangelo can effectively recover dense 3D surface structures from multiview images with fidelity significantly surpassing previous methods, enabling detailed large-scale scene reconstruction from RGB video captures.


3D woven carbon fibre preforms (~ 2 mm thickness) were impregnated with single or mixture of non oxide ceramic nanoscale powders in ethanolic suspensions using electrophoretic deposition (EPD). The measurement of the ζ potential of the suspension compared with its behaviour in sedimentation permits to conclude about the optimal concentration of surfactant necessary to get the most stable suspension. The experimental results were in agreement with the theoretical ones obtained using DLVO (Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey and Overbeek) theory. EPDs were carried out by applying a constant voltage between the 3D carbon fibre preform serving as deposition electrode and counter electrodes in graphite. The effect of the powder concentration on the rate and the quality of impregnation was studied. A qualitative model based on the experimental results and literature was then proposed. Experiments were not only carried out on raw 3D fibrous preforms but also on preforms with interphases. SEM and optical micrographies of fractured and polished sections of the infiltrated fabrics revealed that a quite high degree of infiltration (rates of impregnation estimated between 50 and 70 %) was obtained. At last, the composite was densified using spark plasma sintering (SPS).


We present a method for estimating the number of states in the continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs) underlying high-level models using least-squares fitting. Our work improves on existing techniques by producing a numerical estimate of the number of states rather than classifying the state space into on of three types. We demonstrate the practicality and accuracy of our approach on a number of CTMCs generated from three Generalised Stochastic Petri Net (GSPN) models with up to 11 million states.


Our recent morphological studies on the echinoderm collection of the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo (NMST), indicated that the goniasterid starfishes Ceramaster japonicus (Sladen, 1889) and Ceramaster patagonicus (Sladen, 1889) are distributed in the Pacific Oceanside of Japan. In this study, we studied the NMST samples of C. japonicus and C. patagonicus from Japan, by using two mitochondrial DNA genes, the COI and 12S-rRNA, as markers to test relationships between these species in Japan. C. patagonicus sequences from GenBank were mined and included in the analyses. Results of phylogenetic and haplotype network analyses of both genes (final sequence lengths: COI = 317 bp, 12S = 477 bp) suggested that "Ceramaster patagonicus" and "Ceramaster japonicus" from Japanese waters are almost certainly synonymous without any population structure inside Japan.


One approach to address antibiotic resistance is to develop drugs that interfere with bacterial virulence. A master regulator of virulence in Gram-negative bacteria is the oxidative folding machinery comprising DsbA and DsbB. A crystal structure at 2.5 Å resolution is reported here for Escherichia coli DsbA complexed with PFATCDS, a heptapeptide derived from the partner protein Escherichia coli DsbB. Details of the peptide binding mode and binding site provide valuable clues for inhibitor design. Structure-activity relationships for 30 analogues were used to produce short peptides with a cysteine that bind tightly to EcDsbA (Kd = 2.0 ± 0.3 μM) and inhibit its activity (IC50 = 5.1 ± 1.1 μM). The most potent inhibitor does not bind to or inhibit human thioredoxin that shares a similar active site. This finding suggests that small molecule inhibitors can be designed to exploit a key interaction of EcDsbA, as the basis for antivirulence agents with a novel mechanism of action.


In high-temperature transcritical organic Rankine cycles (ORCs), the expansion process may take place in the neighborhood of the thermodynamic critical point. In this region, many organic fluids feature a value of the fundamental derivative of gas dynamics Γ that is less than unity. As a consequence, severe nonideal gas-dynamic effects can be possibly observed. Examples of these nonideal effects are the nonmonotonic variation of the Mach number along an isentropic expansion, oblique shocks featuring an increase of the Mach number, and a significant dependence of the flow field on the upstream total state. To tackle this latter nonideal effect, an uncertainty-quantification strategy combined with Reynolds-averaged flow simulations is devised to evaluate the turbine performance in presence of operational uncertainty. The results clearly indicate that a highly nonideal expansion process leads to an amplification of the operational uncertainty. Specifically, given an uncertainty in the order of 1% in cycle nominal conditions, the mass flow rate and cascade losses vary ±4% and ±0.75 percentage points, respectively. These variations are four and six times larger than those prompted by an ideal-like expansion process. The flow delivered to the first rotating cascade is severely altered as well, leading to local variations in the rotor incidence angle up to 10 deg. A decomposition of variance contributions reveals that the uncertainty in the upstream total temperature is mainly responsible for these variations. Finally, the understanding of the physical mechanism behind these changes allows us to generalize the present findings to other organic-fluid flows.


Reamed tibial nails that allow interlocking have been the most significant recent advance in the management of tibial fractures. Interlocking nails have expanded the indications for intramedullary fixation to include most nonarticular tibial fractures. Regardless of the amount of comminution, tibial fractures extending from just distal to the tibial tuberosity to 5 cm above the ankle joint may now be safely stabilized with interlocking nail devices.


PURPOSE
To define the blood-brain barrier (BBB) characteristics of microvessels in the optic nerve head (ONH).

METHODS
Immunohistochemical staining of different regions of the ONH, retro-laminar optic nerve, and retina of human and monkey eyes was carried out, using antibodies against BBB markers (glucose transporter 1, transferrin receptor, and P-glycoprotein), the non-BBB marker PAL-E, and against plasma proteins fibrinogen and IgG, which serve as endogenous markers of nonspecific microvascular permeability. In the ONH of monkey eyes, the number of transport-related endothelial pinocytotic vesicles and their cellular distribution within the microvessels were determined by electron microscopy.

RESULTS
In both human and monkey eyes, only microvessels in the prelaminar region of the ONH were positive for the PAL-E antigen. The prelaminar region microvessels showed either no or weak expression of the transferrin receptor and P-glycoprotein but stained positive for glucose transporter 1. In human ONH, fibrinogen and IgG were present around microvessels in the prelaminar region but not in other parts of the optic nerve or retina. By electron microscopy, endothelial cells of prelaminar region microvessels contained a higher number of pinocytotic vesicles, located at the luminal and abluminal side of the endothelial cell membrane, in contrast to a mainly abluminal localization in microvessels of the retina and other parts of the optic nerve.

CONCLUSIONS
Microvessels in the prelaminar region of the ONH lack classical BBB characteristics and display nonspecific permeability, possibly mediated by vesicular transport.


Summary: Obesity and overweight are significant public health problems, worldwide. Hence, there is the importance of developing and applying strategies that reduce weight in this population. We set out to evaluate the effectiveness of obesity intervention with three different approaches—one of them with a platform that promotes physical activity.
Methods: Randomized, controlled, parallel clinical trial that compared three arms, multicenter study in overweight or obese patients, with a 12-month follow-up. The patients were randomized into three groups: Intervention in the primary care center with intervention G1: Control group, which received the usual recommendations of losing weight following the SEEDO 2000 (Sociedad Espanola para el Estudio de la Obesidad) Consensus, G2: Motivational intervention of obesity (IMOAP) with a trained nurse and small periodic work groups, and G3: IMOAP adding the use of a digital platform to record physical activity, monitors it, and, in turn, favors the practice of this (aka iwopi: the concept that physical activity has a positive impact beyond the activity). Variables collected included: weight, height, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, lipid parameters, blood pressure, and glycosylated hemoglobin. After the interventions, clinical relevance indicators were studied. Relative risk (RR), absolute risk reduction (ARR), relative risk reduction (RRR), and number needed to treat (NNT), both for intention to treat and for biological efficacy.
Results: Cholesterol levels in three groups were reduced. The BMI showed a general average reduction. Total cholesterol levels were reduced in all groups, with the largest decrease in G3. Triglyceride levels were significantly reduced in two groups. Glycosylated hemoglobin showed a slight decrease that did not reach a statistically significant value.
Conclusions: The digital health platform that stimulates physical activity added to an interventionist motivation in patients with overweight or obesity is a significant additional benefit in terms of weight loss results, BMI reduction, and lipid profile in patients affected by overweight or obesity, and a most effective cost.


The TGD inspired model for "cold fusion" led to ask whether electrolytes are really understood in standard chemistry. The question of my friend related to di-electric breakdown in gases led me to consider this problem more precisely. In this article I will first consider di-electric breakdown and then ionic conduction in electrolytes from TGD point of view to see whether the hypothesis stating that dark matter consists of phases of ordinary matter with non-standard Planck constant h eff = nh 0 following from adelic physics could provide concrete insights into these phenomena.


Storage insect pests, microbial deterioration, and mycotoxins are major threats to dried fruit. Methyl bromide (MeBr) was the fumigant used to control pests until it was banned. The present study compared the use of MeBr (60 g m −3 for 24 h) and alternatives—magnesium phosphide (1 and 2 g of phosphine (PH 3 ) per ton of dried fig for 5 days), and carbon dioxide (CO2) at atmospheric pressure (in gas tight cubes for 5 days) and high pressure (2 h in pressurized tanks at 25 bars)—in controlling major pests (Ephestia cautella (Zell.) and Carpoglyphus lactis) of dried fig and in respect to dried fig quality. Fruit quality was investigated before exposure and after 2 months of storage at ambient conditions by analyzing moisture content, water activity, surface color, firmness, total soluble solids, titratable acidity, pH, and sugaring index. The effect on fruit surface was examined under a scanning electron microscope. The results show that the tested methods effectively controlled storage pests without any major adverse effects on quality, and each had an advantage for the implementation stage. Magnesium phosphide treatment of 1 g t −1 for 5 days is recommended due to its low investment and operational costs, CO2 in pressurized tanks is recommended due to its short exposure period, and CO2 under atmospheric pressure in gas-tight cubes is recommended due to its low cost and suitability for organic production.


Building a paradigm on Islamic communication does not actually have to start from the scratch. Synthesis heavy foundation can be use the existing communication theories, but the more important for Muslim scholars is to create a new synthesis through meta-theories aspects which include epistemology, ontology and perspectives. Settling on the aspects of the value and ethics dimensions must be able to collaborate with monotheism and responsibilities hereafter. Islamic communication functions is to realize the meaning of the equation, thus there will be changes in attitude or behavior of the Muslim societies. While the ultimate goal of Islam is the point which stressed on the aspect communicant, not the communicator. In the aspect of social change and community development, communication tends to be positivistic and functionally oriented to the individual, instead the social system and sociocultural functions that are critical to stimulate social changes. Quality of communication regarding the values of truth, simplicity, kindness, honesty, integrity, fairness, validity of the message and sources, are the important aspect in the Islamic  communication. Therefore, in this perspective, communication is established to joint Islamic Triangular Relationship between "God, man and society".


Machine learning and data analytics continue to expand the fourth industrial revolution and affect many aspects of our lives. This talk will explore machine learning applications in data-driven neuroscience, and low-energy implementations of machine learning and deep learning systems. Data-driven neuroscience can exploit machine learning approaches including deep learning to generate hypotheses associated with biomarkers for specific neuro-psychiatric disorders. In the first part, I will talk about use of machine learning to find biomarkers for epilepsy. In the second part of the talk, I will talk about approaches for energy-efficient implementations for both traditional machine learning and deep learning systems. I will talk about the roles of feature ranking and incremental-precision approaches in reducing energy consumption of traditional machine learning systems. I will then talk about reducing energy consumption in deep learning systems. I will describe our recent work on Perm-DNN based on permuted-diagonal interconnections in deep convolutional neural networks and how structured sparsity can reduce energy consumption associated with memory access in these systems.


The sensing of protein adsorption by silver nanoparticles/hydroxyapatite composites was investigated using a phosphate buffer solution containing bovine serum albumin (BSA) or lysozyme (LSZ). The adsorption of BSA and LSZ on the composites prepared without using trisodium citrate was similar to plain hydroxyapatite, whereas composites prepared with trisodium citrate showed lower BSA adsorption and higher LSZ adsorption than plain hydroxyapatite powder. Because the ability of the adsorption is mainly governed by surface charges of the powders, the usage of trisodium citrate during the preparation is assumed to produce high negative charges on the surface. The protein adsorption resulted in peak shifts in localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectra. The peak shifts clearly corresponded to the concentration of the surrounding proteins up to the point of saturation of adsorption on the hydroxyapatite. The silver nanoparticles/hydroxyapatite composites are promising candidate materials for detection of protein adsorption by measurement of LSPR peak shifts, that may be attributed to changes in the dielectric properties of the matrix fluid surrounding the silver nanoparticles.


The identification of cancer stem cells (CSCs) has fundamentally changed the understanding of tumor biology. CSCs drive tumor initiation and long term tumor growth, can cause relapse and are essential for metastatic colonization. These features place cancer stem cells in the focus for cancer therapy. Recently, great advances have been made in the field of cancer adoptive immunotherapy using engineered T cells. Combining both fields of cancer research to generate immune therapies directly targeting CSCs for increased efficacy and long-term anti-tumor effects would generate great hope for cancer patients. Herein, proof of concept is made that chimeric antigen receptor (CARs) T cells killing breast CSCs are capable of eliminating established metastases. Killing of the CSCs modifies the immune environment resulting in the loss of regulatory T cells and in the induction of an endogenous immune response directed against the tumor that is indispensable for treatment success. Antibody mediated ablation of the CAR T cells induced a rapid re-appearance of CSCs and re-establishment of an immunosuppressive environment in the tumor creating a need for continuous targeting of the CSCs. I demonstrate that endogenous T cell responses are less effective against CSCs than the rest of the tumor. Furthermore, proof is made across multiple tumor models, that activated immune cells and inflammation induce dedifferentiation of bulk tumor cells which regain stem-like phenotypes. This observation further emphasizes the importance of directly targeting the CSCs. Studying the interplay between CSCs and the immune system requires syngeneic, immune competent murine models. This greatly limits the transgenic markers that one can use to visualize, track and target CSCs. Herein, we developed different tolerant mouse models to study breast cancer stem cells in vivo. 4T1 breast adenocarcinoma cells were engineered to express hCEA or GFP-based model surface antigens under the control a stem cell specific promoter. These cells, injected into syngeneic model antigen-tolerant mice established lung metastases which were eliminated by CAR T cell therapy. To further validate this approach using endogenous CSC markers, a genetic cancer model (MMTV-PyMT) has been developed, where stem cell Identification is based on CD90 allelic differentiation. Overall, this work highlights an important interplay between CSCs and the immune system. My results suggest that a feedback loop may be created were immune attack induces CSCs, which are immune privileged and escape killing from endogenous T cells. Subsequently, CSCs induce and control an immunosuppressive environment leading to immune escape. This provides a strong rationale to develop CSC-targeted therapies to be administered in combination with immunotherapies.


Road traffic accidents are a leading cause of death of children. It is the law that all children should be appropriately secured when traveling in vehicles. The aim of this study was to evaluate parental conformity with these regulations and to test if advice given at a Paediatric outpatient clinic could improve compliance. Two groups were assigned, an intervention group (parents given an information leaflet and a clear explanation about appropriate restraints for their children) and a non-intervention group (received no information). They were contacted again after 2 months and asked regarding compliance. A total of 394 children from 186 families were initially given the questionnaire. Nearly one third of children (29.2%) were not using any restraint while travelling rising to 35.3% on follow up. This study concluded that once off parental education made negligible difference to an already inconsistent and haphazard approach to compliance with safety regulations.


This paper summarizes background fundamentals of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) as related to terminology and diverse applications. This information is followed by a discussion on the challenges that need to be overcome in order to take full advantage of what UAS may offer, focusing on control system design, autonomy and cooperation. A UAS simulator currently under development at the Technical University of Crete, capable of simulating complex aerial systems under operational environments, is presented. The simulator is mission oriented and is focused on the design and performance evaluation of these systems.


An hypothesis of increased endorphinergic activity has been proposed to account for the characteristic symptoms of Rett syndrome. Cerebrospinal fluid samples from eight girls with Rett syndrome were analysed for β‐endorphin (β‐EP) immunoactivity and compared with samples from a control group of 15 children with acute leukaemia in remission. Severity of symptoms was not found to be related to β‐EP level. A group of early‐treated adolescents with phenylketonuria had β‐EP levels similar to the Rett syndrome patients, but no symptoms resembling theirs. Therefore it is unlikely that increased levels of β‐EP are of primary pathogenetic significance. The conflicting findings of many earlier reports may be a result of differences between control groups.


With respect to Benjamin's treatments of the work of art and his historiographical method, Adorno accuses Benjamin of not being dialectical enough and of inadequate theorizing. This article argues that Adorno's blanket prescription for more dialectics covers over a chiastic relationship between his particular concern in each case. On one hand, Adorno worries that Benjamin gives over the artwork to ideological narratives. On the other hand, Adorno is concerned that Benjamin's historical materialism refuses historical narrative, which is precisely where Benjamin locates ideology. Indeed the disruptive potential that Adorno grants the artwork with respect to social and political ideology thus corresponds to the disruptive potential that Benjamin ascribes to his historical materialism with respect to historicist ideology. In this context the article considers the nature of autonomy for Benjamin and Adorno and its relationship to subversion, disruption, and redemption.


The study of long-term trends in tide gauge data is important for understanding the present and future risk of changes in sea-level variability for coastal zones, particularly with respect to the ongoing debate on climate change im- pacts. Traditionally, most corresponding analyses have ex- clusively focused on trends in mean sea-level. However, such studies are not able to provide sufficient information about changes in the full probability distribution (especially in the more extreme quantiles). As an alternative, in this paper we apply quantile regression (QR) for studying changes in arbi- trary quantiles of sea-level variability. For this purpose, we chose two different QR approaches and discuss the advan- tages and disadvantages of different settings. In particular, traditional linear QR poses very restrictive assumptions that are often not met in reality. For monthly data from 47 tide gauges from along the Baltic Sea coast, the spatial patterns of quantile trends obtained in linear and nonparametric (spline- based) frameworks display marked differences, which need to be understood in order to fully assess the impact of fu- ture changes in sea-level variability on coastal areas. In gen- eral, QR demonstrates that the general variability of Baltic sea-level has increased over the last decades. Linear quan- tile trends estimated for sliding windows in time reveal a wide-spread acceleration of trends in the median, but only localised changes in the rates of changes in the lower and up- per quantiles.


Do you need to know your lime putty from your lime plaster? Want to improve your flatness tolerance? Stuck with an incomprehensible DIY manual? "The Penguin Dictionary of Building" is your answer. Ably steering you through the confusing maze of jargon and technical terms, this is invaluable for anyone interested in construction: students, professional architects, bricklayers, carpenters, glaziers, plasterers, plumbers or DIY enthusiasts. From abrasives to Z-purlin via the murder clause, this clear and comprehensive dictionary provides succinct and accurate explanations of the techniques, equipment and issues of the building world.


Introduction: Activities promoting research reproducibility and transparency are crucial for generating trustworthy evidence. Evaluation of smoking interventions is one area where vested interests may motivate reduced reproducibility and transparency. Aims: Assess markers of transparency and reproducibility in smoking behaviour change intervention evaluation reports.Methods: One hundred evaluation reports of smoking behaviour change intervention randomised controlled trials published in 2018-2019 were identified. Reproducibility markers of pre-registration, protocol sharing, data-, materials- and analysis script-sharing, replication of a previous study and open access publication were coded in identified reports. Transparency markers of funding and conflict of interest declarations were also coded. Coding was performed by two researchers, with inter-rater reliability calculated using Krippendorff's alpha.Results: Seventy-one percent of reports were open access and 73% pre-registered. However, only 13% provided accessible materials, 7% accessible data and 1% accessible analysis scripts. No reports were replication studies. Ninety-four percent of reports provided a funding source statement and eighty-eight percent of reports provided a conflict of interest statement.Conclusions: Open data, materials, analysis and replications are rare in smoking behaviour change interventions, whereas funding source and conflict of interest declarations are common. Future smoking research should be more reproducible to enable knowledge accumulation.


The objective of this study was to investigate the inhibitory effect of the synthetic nanohydroxyapatite (HA) on dental caries. The nano-HA was synthesized by using the depositing reaction of Ca (H2PO4)2. The artificial dental caries was made by using sour solution and inoculating Streptococcus mutans (S.mutans) to the Sprague-Dawley (SD) rat's mouth respectively. After mineralization of solution of nano-HA for 10 days, the hardness of enamel was measured. The inhibitory effect of the synthetic nano-HA on dental caries was detected by gargling way to rinse the rat tooth with the solution of nano-HA in the animal test. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the dried HA particles were needle-like with ф5-20nm×60nm and the sintered HA particles were spherical with less than 100nm. The remineralized test indicated that the solution of nano-HA with different shapes enhanced the hardness of artificial caries and improved the remineralization of artificial caries. The animal test showed that the dried nano-HA had the inhibitory effect on dental caries. The good absorptive effect of the nano-HA on both the saliva protein and the glucans leads to the development of interventions that could reduce or modify bacterial colonization of tooth surfaces.


Providing feedback is one of the most influential means of teachers to enhance student learning. In this dissertation, we first focused on what is known from research about effective (i.e. learning-enhancing) feedback. Effective feedback, mostly studied from a cognitive psychologist point of view, should, according to the literature, be specific, goal-related, and not too elaborated. Praise and feedback-on-the -self are considered to be ineffective types of feedback. From positive psychology stance, additions are that providing more positive than negative feedback influences the experienced emotion, and hence learning. Moreover it seems that feedback on character strengths as a type of feedback on the self does enhance learning. Praise might indirectly influence learning, through the creation of 'emotional spaces'. Progress feedback, information that performance has improved compared with a previous performance in a similar task, seems to be a valuable addition to the common view of feedback as discrepancy feedback, which is described as information about the gap between a current level of performance and a goal. For our second study, we videotaped 78 teachers in their classroom and analyzed the recordings on the occurrence of effective feedback. Teachers did not provide much effective feedback, with no differences related to age or experience. Subsequently, in our third study, we focused on the professional development of experienced teachers in providing learning-enhancing feedback. Research already showed that traditional professional development interventions, such as workshops or symposia did not help teachers change their classroom behavior. Hence, we studied the effectiveness of a multi-component professional development program, entitled FeTiP (Feedback Theory into Practice), aiming to enhance effective teacher feedback by teachers in secondary education. The program was aimed at three levels, the whole team level (two training sessions), the small collegial group level (video-coaching), and the individual level (feedback conversation about actual classroom feedback behavior, modelling in the classroom, and synchronous coaching). Interventions were carried out both outside and inside the classroom. We found that teachers did indeed change their classroom behavior as a result of the FeTiP program. They showed significant progress in the frequency of their feedback, they provided significantly more specific feedback, and their ratio of positive and negative feedback improved. Again, we did not find differences for age or experience. For our fourth study, we analyzed changes in the teachers' feedback behavior, based on the analyses of video-recordings at four moments in time: (1) before starting the FeTiP program, (2) after the training sessions, (3) after the modelling and practice intervention, and (4) after the data-driven feedback interventions (feedback conversation, synchronous coaching, and video-coaching). Next, we did an exploratory search for possible change patterns. There seemed to be three possible change patterns, namely 'Ongoing learning', 'Learning from explicit modeling and feedback', and 'Learning from data-driven feedback'. Findings from the teachers' learner reports showed that stimulating teachers' confidence through feedback, and providing opportunities to observe the effect of specific feedback on students were helpful in teachers' learning processes. Data-driven feedback encouraged the teachers, particularly those who showed resistance, to change their classroom behavior.


Abstract:The "pussy patrols" in academia are the economic, discursive, sexual, and epistemological forms of violence in academia that control, silence, and reroute all femmes—not just cis women—in higher education. Although feminists have long examined sexual harassment in educational and occupational spaces, very few have turned their attention to the specific, embodied experiences of sex-working academics. Employing "epistemic disobedience" and "Critical Life Story" interviewing methodologies, I look at the experiences of thirteen sex-working academics, including my own experiences as a sex-working undergraduate and graduate student. I disrupt the false dichotomy of empowerment/oppression in the sex industry; I ask if higher education is necessarily emancipatory; and I offer suggestions, based on the forced rerouting and silencing of sex-working academics, for moving forward as activist-academics. Indeed, the time for rebelling against the strict academic codes that rely on Cartesian dualism is now.


With the improvement of remote sensing technology, the spatial, structural and texture information of land covers are present clearly in high resolution imagery, which enhances the ability of crop mapping. Since the satellite RapidEye was launched in 2009, high resolution multispectral imagery together with wide red edge band has been utilized in vegetation monitoring. Broad red edge band related vegetation indices improved land use classification and vegetation studies. RapidEye high resolution imagery acquired on May 29 and August 9th of 2012 was used in this study to evaluate the potential of red edge band in agricultural land cover/use mapping using an objected-oriented classification approach. A new object-oriented decision tree classifier was introduced in this study to map agricultural lands in the study area. Besides the five bands of RapidEye image, the vegetation indexes derived from spectral bands and the structural and texture features are utilized as inputs for agricultural land cover/use mapping in the study. The optimization of input features for classification by reducing redundant information improves the mapping precision over 9% for AdaTree. WL, and 5% for SVM, the accuracy is over 90% for both approaches. Time phase characteristic is much important in different agricultural lands, and it improves the classification accuracy 7% for AdaTree.WL and 6% for SVM.


The authors characterize the radiation-induced charge trapping and transport properties of the buried-oxide (BOX) layer using the photocurrent response technique and capacitance-voltage shift measurements for a variety of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) materials. They observe dramatic differences as a result of different BOX processing conditions. The radiation response of the SOI materials as a whole is shown to be consistent with the basic properties of the material(s) contained in the BOX layer. In comparison to standard separation by implantation of oxygen (SIMOX) materials, SIMOX materials receiving a supplemental oxygen implant and low-temperature anneal produce large normalized photocurrent values, indicating that both radiation-generated charge carriers move through the BOX. Of the materials examined, the bond-and-etch-back SOI (BESOI) material containing a silicon nitride layer produced the lowest normalized photocurrents, heavy trapping of both carriers. By comparison, BESOI with thermal oxide layers traps neither carrier in the oxide bulk. The authors suggest that results of this study should be considered in the design of radiation-hardened components and when considering processing variations. >


The problem of automatically extracting structured information from texts is an important, unsolved problem within the field of Natural Language Processing. The extraction of such information can facilitate activities such as the building of knowledge bases, automatic
summarisation and sentiment analysis. A human reader can easily discern the events described in a text, along with the participants and the relationships between them,
but using a computer to automatically discover the same information is much more challenging. Particular focus has been given to extracting relations between the entities in a text, such as those representing geographical locations, personal and social relationships, and employment. In this thesis, we consider two closely related entity relationships, which are interesting, frequent and have not been tackled previously, which we refer to collectively
as entity instantiations.
We define an entity instantiation as an entity relation in which a set of entities is introduced, and either a member or subset of this set is mentioned. In the example below,
we see a set membership instantiation, between 'several EU countries' and 'the UK', along with a subset instantiation, between the same set and 'the low countries'. Inflation has increased sharply in several EU countries. In the UK, this has accompanied a drop in interest rates, but in the low countries rates have remained steady. This thesis details the creation of the first corpus of entity instantiations. The final corpus consists of 4,521 instantiations, 2,118 of which are intersentential, and 2,403 of which are intrasentential, annotated over 75 Penn Treebank Wall Street Journal newswire texts. The subsequent annotation study shows high levels of inter-annotator agreement and our
corpus study analyses the annotated entity instantiations in terms of their internal structure, the distance between arguments and their syntactic relationship, finding a particularly strong link between syntactic parent-child relationships and sentence-internal entity instantiations.
To establish that the accurate automatic identification of entity instantiations is possible, we develop the first instantiation identification algorithm, which uses a supervised machine learning approach. The feature set draws on surface, syntactic, contextual, salience and knowledge features to aid classification. We separately apply our classifier to intersentential and intrasentential entity instantiations and experiment with both balanced data, with a 50/50 positive/negative split, and the original unbalanced corpus. The classifier records highly significant performance increases over both unigram-based
and majority class baselines on the balanced data, and also on the original distribution of intrasentential instantiations.
In order to take advantage of the aforementioned link between syntax and intrasentential entity instantiations, tree kernels were employed to learn directly from the syntactic parse trees which contain the two potential participants in an intrasentential instantiation.
The tree kernel features perform similarly to the unstructured feature set, with a much shorter development time. Combining tree kernels with unstructured features gives further improvements over both the baselines, and either method in isolation. We also apply our entity instantiations to the difficult problem of implicit discourse relation classification, hypothesising that introducing features identifying the presence of an entity instantiation between the arguments of a discourse relation can improve classification performance. Our experiments show that an entity instantiation is a strong indicator of the presence of an Expansion.Instantiation discourse relation. We create a binary Expansion.Instantiation classifier, based on the feature set detailed in Sporleder
and Lascarides (2008), but augment it by adding entity instantiation features based on gold standard annotations. The classifier which includes entity instantiation data performs significantly better than the same classifier without entity instantiation data. We also experiment with the incorporation of machine-identified entity instantiations. However, our entity instantiation classifier is not sufficiently accurate to impact on discourse relation classification.


Adherence to medication prescription schedules is an important step in the prevention and treatment of diseases in modern medicine. For the most part, adherence is the responsibility of the individual or their caregivers requiring them to remember to take the proper doses every day. Missing doses of critical medications can affect the overall health of the individual and drastically set back the progress of the treatment wasting both the time and resources of the medical community. Electronic solutions exist to aid in this process by reminding, measuring, and alerting individuals of their medication schedules, and help to keep detailed logs to verify overall patient adherence. While each of these solutions has improved overall medication adherence, there are still reports of difficulties with their use and accuracy of the results. A new battery powered portable smart pillbox concept has been designed to address the issues with current solutions, focusing particularly on ease of use and accuracy. A proof of concept prototype system has been developed using a commercial of the shelf (COTS) pillbox form factor demonstrating both the operation and feasibility of the design. This system utilizes pills distributed in blister packs, which is a common and familiar packaging technology with many benefits. Multiple pill detection strategies were considered, and an innovative optical solution was developed that could determine when individual pills were removed from the packaging increasing adherence accuracy. The pillbox stores a complete time log of pill removal events, and transmits the record wirelessly to receiving stations. Wireless Radio Frequency (RF) communication is implemented utilizing protocols similar to active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) standards. This demonstrates the ability of the pillbox to utilize possible future RFID receiver infrastructures in hospitals, pharmacies, and homes expanding the functionality of such RFID systems. A prototype receiving station was developed as a testing platform for the pillbox verifying the systems overall operation and providing a baseline Human Machine Interface (HMI). The final system provides successful pill monitoring with a device that appears both physically and functionally to be a normal pillbox, improving the chances of its acceptance and use by patients.


Human gesture recognition has drawn much attention in the area of computer vision. However, the performance of gesture recognition is always influenced by some gesture-irrelevant factors like the background and the clothes of performers. Therefore, focusing on the regions of hand/arm is important to the gesture recognition. Meanwhile, a more adaptive architecture-searched network structure can also perform better than the block-fixed ones like ResNet since it increases the diversity of features in different stages of the network better. In this paper, we propose a regional attention with architecture-rebuilt 3D network (RAAR3DNet) for gesture recognition. We replace the fixed Inception modules with the automatically rebuilt structure through the network via Neural Architecture Search (NAS), owing to the different shape and representation ability of features in the early, middle, and late stage of the network. It enables the network to capture different levels of feature representations at different layers more adaptively. Meanwhile, we also design a stackable regional attention module called Dynamic-Static Attention (DSA), which derives a Gaussian guidance heatmap and dynamic motion map to highlight the hand/arm regions and the motion information in the spatial and temporal domains, respectively. Extensive experiments on two recent large-scale RGB-D gesture datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and show it outperforms state-of-the-art methods. The codes of our method are available at: https://github.com/zhoubenjia/RAAR3DNet.


We present a measurement of relative partial widths and decay rate CP asymmetries in K-K+ and pi(-)pi(+) decays of D0 mesons produced in pp collisions at sqrt[s]=1.96 TeV. We use a sample of 2x10(5) D(*+)-->D0pi(+) (and charge conjugate) decays with the D0 decaying to K-pi(+), K-K+, and pi(-)pi(+), corresponding to 123 pb(-1) of data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab II experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. No significant direct CP violation is observed. We measure Gamma(D0-->K-K+)/Gamma(D0-->K-pi(+))=0.0992+/-0.0011+/-0.0012, Gamma(D0-->pi(-)pi(+))/Gamma(D0-->K-pi(+))=0.035 94+/-0.000 54+/-0.000 40, A(CP)(K-K+)=(2.0+/-1.2+/-0.6)%, and A(CP)(pi(-)pi(+))=(1.0+/-1.3+/-0.6)%, where, in all cases, the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.


Summary AMANCIO S., SANTOS H. & CHAMPIGNY M.-L. 2000. Sucrose synthesis in nitrate fed detached maize and wheat leaves as analyzed by 13C-NMR. - Phyton (Horn, Austria) 40 (3): (5) - (14). Sucrose and the organic acids, which provide carbon skeletons for amino acid synthesis, have triose phosphate as common precursor. Different biological systems fed with a nitrogen source showed an increase in amino acid synthesis in parallel with a decrease in sucrose formation. The main objective of the present research was to study the interaction between carbon and nitrogen metabolism in maize, a C4 type plant, in order to compare with the results previously published on wheat leaves. Leaves detached from two weeks N-limited seedlings were fed high nitrate concentrations by the transpiration stream. Nitrate uptake and assimilation was proportional to time and NO3" concentration, showing that detached maize leaves represent a suitable system for the present study. Sucrose synthesis and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPCase) activity were the main parameters analyzed. Feeding 40 mM NO3" for more than four hours decreased sucrose synthesis in leaves of both species, although in maize at a lesser extent than in wheat. In C 3 as in C4 plants, PEPCase activity is responsible for the anaplerotic reactions, which assure the equilibrium between carbon and nitrogen metabolism. In wheat, it has been previously shown that enzyme activity is activated by nitrate. Maize leaves showed an increase of more than 50% after one-hour uptake on 40 mM NO3". The aim of furnishing 13Crglucose to maize and wheat leaves was to identify by 13CNMR the 13C-metabolites, particularly sucrose, synthesized within short times, and thus to compare the response of C 3 and C4 plants to high NO3". In wheat leaves the decrease in resonances corresponding to the direct synthesis of sucrose was more evident than in maize. No variation was noticed in the 13C resonances of other metabolites for both types of leaves. The results are discussed in terms of competition between carbon and nitrogen metabolism upon NO3" supply in wheat and maize leaves.


The goal of this study is to examine how eco-friendliness in the brand experience impacts product selection, and how product selection induces green brand loyalty among customers and consumers. A conceptual model is tested with empirical data collected with a web survey on mobile phone brands. The findings of this research indicate that eco-friendliness in the brand experience influences positively product selection and green brand loyalty for some global brands. The findings also point out that technology firms should seriously consider their sustainability and eco-friendliness strategies in their technology commercialization activities.