In Cromwell, award-winning biographer Antonia Fraser tells of one of England's most celebrated and controversial figures, often misunderstood and demonized as a puritanical zealot. Oliver Cromwell rose from humble beginnings to spearhead the rebellion against King Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, and led his soldiers into the last battle against the Royalists and King Charles II at Worcester, ending the civil war in 1651. Fraser shows how England's prestige and prosperity grew under Cromwell, reversing the decline it had suffered since Queen Elizabeth I's death.


A polyaniline (PAN) network structure was fabricated on a poly( o -aminophenol) (POAP) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) by using a three-step electrochemical deposition procedure, and applied to the electro-catalytic oxidation of ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) have been employed to investigate the PAN network structure on a POAP modified GCE (PAN-OAP/GCE), which indicated the formation of a 3-dimensional (3D) non-periodic PAN network with good electrical contract and the maintenance of the electro-activity of PAN in neutral and even in alkaline media. Because of its different catalytic effect towards the electro-oxidation of AA and UA, the PAN-OAP/GCE could resolve the overlapped voltammetric response of AA and UA into two sharp and well-defined voltammetric peaks with both CV and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), which could be applied for the selective and simultaneous determination of AA and UA in their binary mixture. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curves for AA and UA were in the range of 2.5 – 6200 and 0.5 – 450 μmol L^−1 with correlation coefficients of 0.998 and 0.998, respectively. The detection limits ( S / N = 3) are 1.4 and 0.3 μmol L^−1 for AA and UA, respectively. Besides good stability and reproducibility, the PAN-OAP/GCE also exhibited good sensitivity and selectivity. The proposed method has been applied to the simultaneous detection of AA and UA in human urine with satisfactory result.


Administration of 200 mg 1,1-dichloroethylene (1,1-DCE)/kg to fasted male rats rapidly decreased liver cytosolic glutathione (GSH) S-transferase activities by half within 1 hr. This early decrease was not associated with increased serum activities of this soluble enzyme and is considered due to enzyme deactivation. The early decrease in enzyme activities was concomitant with a three-fourths depletion of cytosolic GSH and preceded changes in cytochrome P-450 and the onset of liver cytotoxicity, both of which occurred abruptly between 2 and 3 hr. Substantial changes in GSH S-transferase activities at 4 hr were produced only by severely hepatotoxic doses of 1,1-DCE. The early decrease in hepatic GSH S-transferase activities was selective for substrates dichloronitrobenzene, chlorodinitrobenzene and 1,2-epoxy-3-(p-nitrophenoxy)-propane with apparent sparing of activity towards ethacrynic acid. The rapid, selective and dose-dependent deactivation of the hepatic GSH S-transferases could be relevant to the catastrophic hepatotoxicity of 1,1-DCE.


A genetic algorithm (GA) is hybridized with an artificial immune system (AIS) as an alternative to tackle constrained optimization problems in engineering. The AIS is inspired in the clonal selection principle and is embedded into a standard GA search engine in order to help move the population into the feasible region. The procedure is applied to mechanical engineering problems available in the literature and compared to other alternative techniques.


. This article presents a case of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in a Peruvian infant. His mother was diagnosed with disseminated TB, and treatment commenced 11 days postpartum. The infant was diagnosed with TB after 40 days and died at 2 months and 2 days of age. Congenital transmission of TB to the infant was suspected, because direct postpartum transmission was considered unlikely; also, thorough screening of contacts for TB was negative. Spoligotyping confirmed that both mother and baby were infected with identical strains of the Beijing family (SIT1).


In this letter, we demonstrate a new method to accurately measure the phase aberration induced by optical elements with a frequency dependent intensity transfer function. The method is based on an amplitude modulation of a tunable laser. The complex transfer function of the measured element can be accurately calculated when the ratio between the modulation frequency and the frequency step size of the tunable laser is an integer number. Our measurement technique might be important for measuring the dispersion and the phase aberration induced by fiber Bragg gratings.


ABSTRACT Repeated measurements of in situ water resistance were taken from uncased boreholes m the unconfined carbonate aquifer along the southwest coast of Barbados, W. I. during a two-year period from 1969-1971. With these data we can interpret the position of the fresh/salt water interface within the aquifer; monitor seasonal variations in the thickness of the fresh water lens; and note perturbations of the spacial position of the fresh water lens within the aquifer which may be associated with unusual climatic events. The coastal fresh water lens of Barbados varies in thickness both spatially and temporally from one to greater than 10 m, but averages about 7 m. A zone of diffusion or mixing, 0.1 to 12.8 m thick, separates the fresh water from underlying marine derived waters. Average seepage velocities of the fresh ground water were calculated using average rates of recharge, rock porosity, and lens thickness, to be 43-143 m/yr. However, following periods of high recharge, seepage velocities may exceed several thousand m/yr. Various subenvironments within the fresh water lens and associated mixing zone may migrate through considerable thickness of the upper portion of the saturated zone in the coastal aquifer of Barbados. Dissolution and/or precipitation of carbonate phases may occur during different periods of the recharge cycle throughout the entire thickness of the fresh water portion of the aquifer.


Abstract With the evolution of nanomedicine, the past decades witnessed diversified nanomaterials as marvelous anti-tumor tools ushering in a new era of tumor diagnosis and treatment. Among them, two-dimensional layered nanomaterial as an emerging class of nanomaterials has one dimension less than 100 nm, showing a high specific area and the thinnest sheet-like structure (Liu S, Pan X, Liu H. Twodimensional nanomaterials for photothermal therapy. Angew Chem Int Ed 2020;59:5890–900). The discovery of graphene drove the exploration of various new two-dimensional layered nanomaterials for tumor diagnosis and treatment including graphene-based nanomaterials, black phosphorus (BP), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), layered double hydroxides (LDHs), and bismuth oxyhalides (BiOX, X=F, Cl, Br, I) (Ma H, Xue MQ. Recent advances in the photothermal applications of two-dimensional nanomaterial: photothermal therapy and beyond. J Mater Chem 2021;9:17569). On the one hand, they exhibit strong near-infrared (NIR) absorption and the capacity of optimizing corresponding properties by adjusting the crystal structure. On the other hand, they own unique strengths such as fantastic physicochemical properties (graphene-based nanomaterials), high loading capacity (BP), distinct phase-dependent optical properties (TMDs), a specific chemical response to the tumor microenvironment (LDHs), and large X-ray attenuation coefficient (BiOX). Herein, we briefly introduce three typical two-dimensional layered nanomaterials, their prospects and future research priorities in tumor diagnosis and treatment are concluded.


Dementia is said to occur in at least 20% of the population aged 85 and older and is rising to almost epidemic proportions as the average age of the population in the United States continues to increase. Characteristically, dementia is manifested through memory impairment. These memory deficits along with other cognitive deficits render the individual at least somewhat disabled in social and occupational functioning. While there are many neuropsychological batteries which measure cognitive abilities and functional impairment, there has been no thorough consideration of how a cognitive screening battery might predict an individual's functional status. This study examined the Iowa Screening Battery for Mental Decline OSBMD) and its capabilities to act as a predictpr of functional impairment. Functional impairment was measured using the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) in the inpatient sample (n=13). The Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADL) and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale (IADL) were given in survey form to caregivers of the outpatient sample (n=9) to assess functional level. A significant correlation was found to exist between the composite score of the ISBMD and the total FIM Score (r=.742; p<.Ol). Preliminary findings suggest that the Iowa Screening Battery for Mental Decline is capable of predicting functional level.


This article investigates the non-consumptive, or appreciative value of the 'Big 7' and identifies the variables that influence willingness to pay (WTP). Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, is one of few places in the world where tourists can view all seven species: lion, buffalo, rhinoceros, leopard, elephant, southern right whale and great white shark. Two surveys were conducted, using the same questionnaire, one during summer and one during winter. A total of 232 completed questionnaires were used in the Heckman model selection procedure. The findings revealed that, although a variety of socio-demographic, behavioural and motivational factors influence the amount respondents are willing to pay, there is a clear distinction between the determinants for land species compared to marine species. This poses challenges for the marketing of and establishment of the Big 7 as a brand.


Shell eggs were irradiated and the physico-chemical, and functional properties of egg yolk and white were determined. The color of egg yolk was not affected, but the viscosity of egg white was dramatically lowered and became watery by irradiation. The foam capacity and foam stability of egg white were significantly decreased due to protein oxidation by irradiation. However, the texture characteristics of egg white were not changed by irradiation, indicating that irradiation may not alter the thermal characteristics of egg white proteins. Sulfur volatiles were generated by irradiation but disappeared during storage under aerobic conditions. Because egg white became watery, irradiation may not be advisable for table eggs but may be useful for pasteurizing liquid egg white or liquid whole egg without significant deterioration of their quality and functionality. In particular, the dramatic decrease in the viscosity of egg white by irradiation will improve flow of liquid egg white or liquid whole egg, which could be highly useful for egg processing.


Biological effects were examined in confluent cultures of fibroblasts and epithelial cells exposed to very low mean doses of alpha radiation, doses by which only 1-2% of the cells were actually traversed by an alpha particle. Enhanced frequencies of sister chromatid exchanges and HPRT mutations occurred in the non-irradiated, 'bystander' cells associated with a similar increase in the frequency of micronuclei, indicating the induction of DNA damage in these cells. In order to gain information concerning molecular pathways, changes in gene expression were examined in bystander cells by western analysis and in situ immunofluorescence staining. The expression levels of p53, p21 and MDM2 were significantly modulated in bystander cells; the damage signals leading to these changes were transmitted from irradiated to bystander cells by gap junction mediated intercellular communication. The bystander response was suppressed by incubation with superoxide dismutase as well as an inhibitor of NADPH oxidase, suggesting the effect may be mediated by oxidative stress. To examine other signalling pathways responsive to oxidative stress, the activation of stress-related kinases and their downstream transcription factors were analysed in bystander cells by western blotting and electrophoretic mobility shift assays; a 2-4-fold increase in the phosphorylation levels of JNK, ERK1/2, p90RSK, Elk-1 and ATF2 was observed. These changes were detected by 15 min after irradiation and persisted for at least 1 h. These findings indicate the activation of multiple signal transduction pathways in bystander cells, involving signals arising from the plasma membrane as well as from DNA damage.


We have developed a quantitative technique for scoring of the severity of ischemic damage of the brain using quantitative data of the T2-weighted MRI images of brain in stroke. The principle of the method is the assumption that T2 signal increases proportionally to the severity of ischemic damage of cerebral tissue up to the level equal to intraventricular liquor signal in the case of postinfarction cystic degeneration. Depicting the mean T2-signal from the intraventricular liquor region as Iliq, the signal from ischemic brain area as Iinsult, and from the intact brain as Inorm, obviously, the volume quota of damaged tissue in the total volume of the stroke region is represented by the ratio (Iinsult - Inorm)/(Iliq - Inorm). The total volume of damaged tissue (VDT, cub.cm) in the stroke region is then the following sum taken over all slices i, where the stroke damage can be: VDT = sigma i d.Si.[(Iinsult - Inorm)/(Iliq - Inorm)]i, where d is the slice thickness, Si--area of the ischemic region in the slice i. The quota of damaged tissue in the physical volume of the stroke region is henceforth the following ratio: Q = [sigma i d.Si.[(Iinsult - Inorm)/(Iliq - Inorm)]i]/[sigma i d.Si]. The technique was applied in retrospective analysis of routine MRI studies in 15 patients referred because of acute ischemic stroke. The studies were performed using low-field MRI tomograph Magnetom-Open (Siemens Medical) with field strength 0.22 T. In patients studied during the first day after occurrence of ischemic insult with the minimal degree of acute neurologic deficit, who later have demonstrated clinically full recovery, the VDT was below 20 cm3, and Q was below 10%. In cases with VDT > 25 cm3 and Q > 20% the full regress was not observed in any patient. Henceforth, the quantification of cerebral damage in stroke using quantitative indices based on measurement of T2-parameters over ischemic and intact zones of the brain are of independent prognostic clinical value and improve clinical usefulness of the MRI in ischemic brain stroke.


This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue to ascertain how well Nigerian newspapers cover women in politics. It's also identified the pivotal role of the mass media in the promotion of women in Nigerian politics. The main purpose of the research is to find out the women who participate in politics by planning and maintaining message take campaigns for general awareness about the potential leadership qualities of women and also the empowerment and autonomy of women. Methodological tools of the research methods were simple random sampling technique was adopted and data collection for the study was code sheet which was contain the parameters, for the study period of eight months, 422 stories were gathered out of which only 56 were in politics. Therefore, the presentation and analysis of the data showed that the Nigerian newspapers did not give women in politics the desires coverage it required as compared to their male counterparts. Also, the study reveals that mass media is pivotal to social change and have the potential to increase the number of women aspirants to political offices. The result of the research can be useful as an additional literature on newspaper coverage of political issues as well as be of immense value to the media as it enlightens and educate the media professionals on how to play their fundamental role in the quest to eradicate gender discrimination of all types. The researchers conclude that Nigerian women still have a long way to go in attaining the pinnacle of political decision making and it is apparent that women's struggle to get relevant in political leadership continued of be hindered by certain factors, and recommends among others, that the media should give prominent coverage to women who have performed exceptionally well in politics and also create a platform to enlighten them about their political rights as well as the creation of political institutions, development partners and other donor agencies of facilitate women participation in politics and this can be successfully done through the mass media. It is therefore, pertinent for media professionals to play their fundamental role in the quest to eradicate gender discrimination of all types.


Appardurai's five landscapes of globalization are used in this article to demonstrate that storytelling in the mediascape can transform the terrain of an ideoscape. Storytelling is viewed to be of special significance to network organizations because it is the means by which they encourage members to identify with and act on behalf of the network. When network organizations compete in storytelling with other organizations, they engage in narrative netwar. An illustrative case of the Direct Action Network protests of the World Trade Organization's 1999 meetings in Seattle, Washington demonstrates how narrative netwar occurs in the global mediascape and how the global mediascape may influence the ideoscape.


Safety concerns have emerged regarding the potential long-lasting effects due to developmental exposure to xenobiotics. The pregnane X receptor (PXR) and constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) are critical xenobiotic-sensing nuclear receptors that are highly expressed in liver. The goal of this study was to test our hypothesis that neonatal exposure to PXR- or CAR-activators not only acutely but also persistently regulates the expression of drug-processing genes (DPGs). A single dose of the PXR-ligand PCN (75 mg/kg), CAR-ligand TCPOBOP (3 mg/kg), or vehicle (corn oil) was administered intraperitoneally to 3-day-old neonatal wild-type mice. Livers were collected 24 h post-dose or from adult mice at 60 days of age, and global gene expression of these mice was determined using Affymetrix Mouse Transcriptome Assay 1.0. In neonatal liver, PCN up-regulated 464 and down-regulated 449 genes, whereas TCPOBOP up-regulated 308 and down-regulated 112 genes. In adult liver, there were 15 persistently up-regulated and 22 persistently down-regulated genes following neonatal exposure to PCN, as well as 130 persistently up-regulated and 18 persistently down-regulated genes following neonatal exposure to TCPOBOP. Neonatal exposure to both PCN and TCPOBOP persistently down-regulated multiple Cyp4a members, which are prototypical-target genes of the lipid-sensor PPARα, and this correlated with decreased PPARα-binding to the Cyp4a gene loci. RT-qPCR, western blotting, and enzyme activity assays in livers of wild-type, PXR-null, and CAR-null mice confirmed that the persistent down-regulation of Cyp4a was PXR and CAR dependent. In conclusion, neonatal exposure to PXR- and CAR-activators both acutely and persistently regulates critical genes involved in xenobiotic and lipid metabolism in liver.


In the last decade or so a body of geographical work has begun to emerge that examines, in various ways, the interrelationship between people, place, volunteering and the voluntary sector. Work in this field is spread across a number of geographical subdisciplines, from social, health and development to political geography. As a body of work it is increasingly being referred to as 'geographies of voluntarism'. Focusing specifically on voluntary activity around health and welfare, this article reviews how geographers have begun to critically engage with issues of voluntary activity and space. It draws out how geographical perspectives on voluntarism are contributing to a wider understanding of how and why disparities in voluntary activity occur and the implications for people and places at a range of spatial scales from the global to the local.


Solar energy bears great potential in the substitution of conventional fossil fuels to enable a sustainable world. In order to harness and use solar energy, photocatalytic and photovoltaic systems made of semiconductor materials have been developed to convert sunlight into energy (electricity) based on the photoelectrochemical effects. Photoelectric events are related with the light–energy (electricity) conversion process, including photon absorption, photoexcited charge carrier separation and recombination, charge carrier transport, and photocurrent generation, as well as electron plasmonic resonance. We focus on the recent state‐of‐the‐art simulation methods correspondingly mimicking these photogenerated charge carrier behaviors, taking electron–phonon, electron–exciton, and exciton–exciton interactions into account. Results can be obtained from the standard density function theory (DFT) for ground‐state properties, many‐body perturbation theory for band gap renormalization and optical absorption, time‐domain DFT in combination with nonadiabatic molecular dynamics for photoexcitation dynamics, nonequilibrium Green's function and self‐consistent theory for charge carrier transport properties, and classical Maxwell's equations in discrete dipole approximation for localized surface plasmon resonance absorption and near‐field enhancement. In combination of the results from these simulation methods, a complete and consistent picture describing the fundamental photoelectric process in light–energy (electricity) conversion could be obtained. Simulation results offer guidelines for experimental efforts and provide new basic insights into the underlying mechanisms and the design principles for next‐generation photocatalytic and photovoltaic devices of high solar light utilization efficiency.


The paper, summarizing the experience of day hospital performance at the ambulatory centre of occupational rehabilitation in Gorky, provides data on patients requiring the services of day hospitals, average length of stay and conditions; advisability of introducing this form of medical services for patients at ambulatory rehabilitation centres is indicated.


ABSTRACT In an attempt to begin to redress the relative lack of literature focused on rhythm in acousmatic music, this article is intended as a brief look at the acousmatic perspective on rhythm. The article begins with a quick overview of discussion around rhythm in electroacoustic music in general, then contrasts this with some of Pierre Schaeffer's views on rhythm and finally compares the perceptual temporal levels identified by Schaeffer with similar levels drawn from electroacoustic music, contemporary music and cognitive psychology.


The results are based on field infection experiments with six spring barley cultivars registered in the Czech Republic and resistance sources Chevron and CI 4196. One of the four Fusarium isolates used for inoculations was a predominant nivalenol producer, while the other isolates were deoxynivalenol (DON) producers. Out of the other mycotoxins 3-AcDON was found in grain at a relatively higher concentration. Significant cultivar differences in DON content, examined yield traits, percentage of Fusarium colonies and percentage of non-germinating seeds were detected after inoculum spraying on two dates and mist irrigation of infected plots. When inoculated with aggressive isolate of F. culmorum Chevron and CI 4196 cvs. showed high resistance and the cultivars Jersey, Olbram and Scarlett moderate resistance to DON accumulation in grain. Treatment with fungicide Horizon 250 EW (active ingredient tebuconazole) led on average to a 52.5% reduction of DON content, but the efficacy of fungicide treatment was highly influenced by year and cultivar. Fungicide treatment did not have a significant effect on grain weight per spike and, in general, the influence of infection on examined yield traits was low in these experiments. DON content was closely related only with the parameter CT Fus (transformed) from quantitative real time PCR analysis. Using the developed PCR system it was possible to specify clearly cultivar responses to infection and effects of fungicide treatment on DON content.


Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets), a class of generative models over discrete and structured sample spaces, have been previously applied to the problem of inferring the marginal posterior distribution over the directed acyclic graph (DAG) of a Bayesian Network, given a dataset of observations. Based on recent advances extending this framework to non-discrete sample spaces, we propose in this paper to approximate the joint posterior over not only the structure of a Bayesian Network, but also the parameters of its conditional probability distributions. We use a single GFlowNet whose sampling policy follows a two-phase process: the DAG is first generated sequentially one edge at a time, and then the corresponding parameters are picked once the full structure is known. Since the parameters are included in the posterior distribution, this leaves more flexibility for the local probability models of the Bayesian Network, making our approach applicable even to non-linear models parametrized by neural networks. We show that our method, called JSP-GFN, offers an accurate approximation of the joint posterior, while comparing favorably against existing methods on both simulated and real data.


The Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations provide a powerful probe of the dark ages of the universe through the imprint of the secondary anisotropies associated with the reionization of the universe and the growth of structure. We review the relation between the secondary anisotropies and the primary anisotropies that are directly generated by quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. The physics of secondary fluctuations is described, with emphasis on the ionization history and the evolution of structure. We discuss the different signatures arising from the secondary effects in terms of their induced temperature fluctuations, polarization and statistics. The secondary anisotropies are being actively pursued at present, and we review the future and current observational status.


Jargon, jargon, jargon. Perplexing, meaningless, incomprehensible: that's all the business world is, right? Be flummoxed no more! The Penguin Dictionary of Business is your answer. From oligopoly to the Pareto analysis to the Chinese wall and the Taguchi method, this text deciphers and disentangles the mysteries of commerce, economics and finance. Written accessibly and succinctly, this is the ultimate reference for anyone with an interest in the business world, whether for study or work. Clearly written by experts in their fields, with practical and relevant examples, it covers a host of both general and more specialised terms, from 'A' shares to zero-sum game.


Adhesive joining is an attractive alternative to conventional joining methods, such as welding and mechanical fastening. The benefits of adhesive bonding include: the ability to form lightweight, high stiffness structures; joining of different types of materials; better fatigue performance, and reduction in the stress concentrations or the effects of the heat associated with welding. However, concerns about the durability of adhesive joints still hinder their widespread use in structural applications. Moisture has been identified as one of the major factors affecting joint durability. This is especially important in applications where joints are exposed to varying moisture conditions throughout their useful life.
The aim of this research is to develop models to predict degradation in adhesive joints under varying moisture conditions. This was achieved by a combination of experimental and numerical methods. Experiments were carried out to characterise the moisture uptake and mechanical properties of the single part epoxide adhesive, FM73-M. Single lap joints were manufactured from aluminium alloy 2024 in heat treated (T3) and non heat treated (O) states using the FM73-M, BR127 adhesive-primer system. Tensile testing of the single lap joints was carried out after the joints had been exposed to hot-wet conditioning environments. Models were developed for predicting moisture concentration in the adhesive under cyclic moisture absorption and desorption conditions. A finite element based methodology incorporating moisture history was developed to predict the cyclic moisture concentration. In the next step, a novel finite element based methodology, which was based on moisture history effects, was developed to determine stresses in bonded joints after curing, conditioning and tensile testing. In the final step, a moisture history dependent cohesive zone element based damage and failure criterion was introduced to predict damage initiation, crack growth and failure under variable moisture and temperature conditions. The methodology proposed in this work and its implementation by finite element method provides a systematic approach for determining the degradation in adhesive joints under varying environmental conditions and accomplishes the aim of this research.


Introduction: Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. It is considered a student-centered instructional design to motivate student learning and academic behavior. In this study, the effects of gamification on learning statistics (hypothesis testing issue) and attitude toward statistics in comparison with the common e-learning approach were investigated. The students' experience and critical elements of gamification on learning statistics were assessed, too. Methods: In a before and after trial, in a census manner, 64 health faculty students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran, non-randomly were assigned to the intervention (n=42) and control (n=22) groups. Learning activities were gamified in the intervention group, while the control group received traditional problem-solving in the learning management system. Narrative, avatar, level, point, progress bar, scoreboard, challenge and feedback elements were used in the game experience. The implementation of gamification was applied based on Landers' theory of gamified content. Valid and reliable Persian version of the Survey Attitude toward Statistics questionnaire measured the students' attitude before and after the intervention. The EGameFlow questionnaire and a valid and reliable researcher-made exam measured the users' experience of gamified content and learning hypothesis testing after the intervention. The independent samples T-test, analysis of covariance and the partial eta-squared effect size were calculated by SPSS software, version 26. Results: Compared to the control group, the intervention group had a more positive attitude toward learning difficulty (moderate partial eta-squared 0.099), value and cognitive competency (weak partial eta-squared=0.01 and 0.05). Learning between the two groups was not different (P=0.522). There was a significant correlation between learning and the students' perceived experience with feedback (r=0.583, P<0.001), concentration (r=0.509, P=0.005), and challenge (r=0.421, P=0.023) of the gamified content. Conclusion: It suggests using gamification on learning statistics while optimizing the design with more focus on the feedback, challenge and concentration elements.


Fresh beef cattle (Bos taurus) manure has traditionally been applied to cropland in southern Alberta, but there has been an increase in application of composted manure to cropland in this region. However, the quality of runoff under fresh manure (FM) versus composted manure (CM) has not been investigated. Our objective was to compare runoff quality under increasing rates (0, 13, 42, 83 Mg ha(-1) dry wt.) of FM and CM applied for two consecutive years to a clay loam soil cropped to irrigated barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). We determined total phosphorus (TP), particulate phosphorus (PP), dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), total nitrogen (TN), NH4-N, and NO3-N concentrations and loads in runoff after one (1999) and two (2000) applications of FM and CM. We found significantly (P < or = 0.05) higher TP, DRP, and NH4-N concentrations, and higher DRP and TN loads under FM than CM after 2 yr of manure application. The TP loads were also higher under FM than CM at the 83 Mg ha(-1) rate in 2000, and DRP loads were higher for FM than CM at this high rate when averaged over both years. Application rate had a significant effect on TP and DRP concentrations in runoff. In addition, the slope values of the regressions between TP and DRP in runoff versus application rate were considerably higher for FM in 2000 than for FM in 1999, and CM in both 1999 and 2000. Significant positive relationships were found for TP and DRP in runoff versus soil Kelowna-extractable P and soil water-extractable P for FM and CM in 2000, indicating that interaction of runoff with the soil controlled the release of P. Total P and DRP were the variables most affected by the treatments. Overall, our study found that application of CM rather than FM to cropland may lower certain forms of P and N in surface runoff, but this is dependent on the interaction with year, application rate, or both.


Modern Turkey is experiencing one of its most defining moments since its inception. If the passage from one-party system to multiparty system in 1940 was one such turning point and if the period of Turgut Ozal's governance, which gave the country access to the international market for the first time, was a second, then the recent developments concerning Ergenekon, a layer of an undiscovered world of the Turkish deep state, is the third of its kind. Until almost the end of the 1990s, most Turks were oblivious to the somewhat enigmatic concept of a state within a state. In the days of discussion following the coup d'état of 1997, then-president Suleyman Demirel pointed out that the Turkish military was the deep state. Twelve years after Demirel's concession, observers know that the deep state goes beyond certain factions within the Turkish military and percolates into various facets of the state machinery. This article sheds light on the organization of the deep state, some of the underlying reasons behind its emergence, and its activities affecting the country's course of democratization or lack thereof. It argues that with the recent efforts of deconstructing the deep state, Turkey has ushered in a new era of democratization.


The interactions between relativistic electrons in a hot plasma are analysed theoretically. By splitting the electron density fluctuations into the individual part and the collective part, we are concerned with the collective oscillation of the relativistic electrons resulting from the Coulomb interactions. Consequently, we derive the frequency of the hot plasma and the "Debye length" with relativistic modification.


American workers have often been characterized by the press, scholars, and policy-makers as apathetic and ill-informed about foreign policy issues. To highlight this point, scholars have frequently used an anecdote about a blue-collar worker who responded to an interviewer's questions regarding international issues in the 1940s by exclaiming "Foreign Affairs! That's for people who don't have to work for a living." Yet missing from many such appraisals is a consideration of the long history of efforts by both informal groups of workers and labor unions to articulate and defend the perceived international interests of American workers. During the early years of the American Republic, groups of workers used crowd actions, boycotts, and protests to make their views on important foreign policy issues known. In the late 19th century, emerging national labor unions experimented with interest group lobbying as well as forms of collective action championed by the international labor movement to promote working-class foreign policy interests. Many 20th- and 21st-century US labor groups shared in common a belief that government leaders failed to adequately understand the international concerns and perspectives of workers. Yet such groups often pursued different types of foreign policy influence. Some dominant labor organizations, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), participated in federal bureaucracies, advisory councils, and diplomatic missions and programs designed to encourage collaboration among business, state, and labor leaders in formulating and promoting US foreign policy. Yet other labor groups, as well as dissidents within the AFL and CIO, argued that these power-sharing arrangements compromised labor's independence and led some trade union leaders to support policies that actually hurt both American and foreign workers. Particularly important in fueling internal opposition to AFL-CIO foreign policies were immigrant workers and those with specific ethno-racial concerns. Some dissenting groups and activists participated in traditional forms of interest group lobbying in order to promote an independent international agenda for labor; others committed themselves to the foreign policy programs of socialist, labor, or communist parties. Still others, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, advocated strike and international economic actions by workers to influence US foreign policy or to oppose US business activities abroad.


The increasing pervasiveness of algorithmic tools in criminal justice has led to an increase in research, legal scholarship, and escalating scrutiny of automated approaches to consequential decision making. A key element of examination in literature focuses on racial bias in algorithmic risk assessment tools and the correlation to higher likelihoods of high bail amounts and/or pretrial detention. These two phenomena combine to initiate a cascading effect of increased likelihoods for conviction, incarceration, harsher sentencing, higher custody levels, and barriers to parole, leading to negative impacts on other factors unrelated to criminal history, all of which feed into subsequent assessment instruments for defendants who are re-arrested. This escalating cascade of algorithmic bias errors has particularly dire consequences for Black defendants, who are statistically more likely to receive higher failure-to-appear (FTA) and recidivism risk scores than white defendants, and are thus more likely to be negatively impacted by subsequent decisions, both human and computer-aided, throughout the criminal justice process. This is periodically referred to in literature as 'disparate impact' but lacks a deeper examination of broad-based effects. This Article endeavors to advance that examination by looking across multiple elements of criminal procedure and beyond to aid in understanding cascading effects and consequent injustices suffered by Black defendants due to the continued automation and encoding of societal biases into the criminal justice process.


The field of gene therapy is starting to move towards clinical applications but is currently limited by the lack of efficient delivery systems. Cell-penetrating peptides provide a means of cellular delivery for gene therapy applications as well as delivery of traditional drugs. Using cell-penetrating peptides a range of different cargoes have been successfully delivered into a number of cell types, in vitro as well as in vivo. In this review we discuss uptake mechanisms of different cell-penetrating peptides, with or without cargo. The transition from in vitro to in vivo applications and strategies to increase the bioavailability of cell-penetrating peptides are also discussed.


This paper describes an approach of implementing software based GPS receiver acquisition and tracking for LI C/A signal on ADSP SHARC. The main objective of this paper is bring out fast GPS signal tracking method using which more number of channels(satellites) can be tracked on a fixed and limited resources DSP platform. Further, GPS acquisition, Carrier Pull-in and C/A Code prediction modules are discussed.AH the processing for the algorithms are done using sign bit of the ADC.A time domain based approach without early and late codes is used for Tracking GPS signal.


This article defends legal instrumentalism, i.e. the thesis that law is distinguished among social institutions more by the means by which it serves its ends, than by the ends it serves. In Kelsen's terms, '[L]aw is a means, a specific social means, not an end.' The defence is indirect. First, it is argued that the instrumentalist thesis is an interpretation of a broader view about law that is common ground among theorists as different as Aquinas and Bentham. Second, the following familiar fallacies that seem to stand in the way of accepting the thesis are refuted: (1) If law is an instrument, then law can have no non-instrumental value. (2) If law is an instrument, then law always has instrumental value. (3) For law to be an instrument, there must be generic end that law serves. (4) If law is an instrument, law must be a neutral instrument. These claims are all wrong. In passing, the instrumentalist thesis is distinguished from other, unrelated, views sometimes associated with instrumentalism, including Brian Tamanaha's diagnosis of the vices of American law, and the views of those who think that jurisprudence is an instrument in the service of social ends.


categories of external cause deaths such as accidental poisonings and bums (the latter being of particular relevance for suicides among Asian women). In both these papers, for completeness and consistency crosschecks, we examined suicide verdict data as well. Although extending the definition significantly increases the numbers of suicides, it is important to note that patterns of relative suicide risk across ethnic groups are remarkably consistent in all four of our papers covering national data for the 1970% 80s and 90s in particular, the high risk in young Asian women, and the low risk in Asian men and African-Caribbeans. The caveats associated with mortality analyses using country of birth as a proxy for ethnicity are acknowledged but unavoidable until ethnic data become available. Until then, these large national data sets are an essential complement to local studies such as that of Neeleman et 01. As suicide is a relatively rare event, the former provide a much larger database for robust statistical analysis, while the latter facilitate in-depth investigation not otherwise possible. It is noteworthy that the pattern of highllow suicide risk (i.e. direction of differential risk) across ethnic groups is in fact similar in both Neeleman et al's and our approaches. countries and in the USA, led to deeply rooted concerns about possible misuse of genetic knowledge. The advent of molecular genetics during the past decade has opened up a new avenue of perspectives that has reinforced the ongoing debate. We agree with the opinion expressed in the recent review by Rutter & Plomin (1997) that the public discussion is sometimes blurred by misconceptions and false hopes associated with genetic findings. However, we are less optimistic than they are that precise genetic knowledge might prevent its abuse. Back in the 1920s population data gathered by Ernst Rudin, the major representative of eugenic psychiatry in Germany, suggested that affective and schizophrenic disorders involve multiple recessive genes. Riidin himself based on these findings favoured sterilisation programmes, whereas his co-workers Hans Luxenburger and Bruno Schulz correctly argued that sterilisation of phenotypes would not be effective in removing these disorders from the population; finally, the German eugenic programmes included about 100 000 people with schizophrenia (Weber, 1993). Hence, it is not calming to read in the paper by Rutter & Plomin (1997) that "susceptibility genes for mental disorders should not provide the basis for a major [emphasis added] expansion of the grounds achievements depends on interpretation that varies over time and is entirely independent of scientific reasoning. Therefore, abuse of genetic knowledge will not be prevented by eradication of scientific misconceptions, but by clear-cut and generally accepted ethical guidelines that have yet to be established.


Perhaps surprisingly, it is possible to predict how long an algorithm will take to run on a previously unseen input, using machine learning techniques to build a model of the algorithm's runtime as a function of problem-specific instance features. Such models have many important applications and over the past decade, a wide variety of techniques have been studied for building such models. In this extended abstract of our 2014 AI Journal article of the same title, we summarize existing models and describe new model families and various extensions. In a comprehensive empirical analyis using 11 algorithms and 35 instance distributions spanning a wide range of hard combinatorial problems, we demonstrate that our new models yield substantially better runtime predictions than previous approaches in terms of their generalization to new problem instances, to new algorithms from a parameterized space, and to both simultaneously.


The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology for the construction of models of interest to improve the choice of areas to radiate in the use of brachytherapy (BT). This work aims to propose a principal component model which is constructed from the data of different patients including medical images of arbitrary resolution and modality supplemented with delineations of radiation target (HR-CTV) structure, reconstructed applicator structure and eventual organs at risk (OAR) structures. The principal component model provides information about the spatial variability described by only a few parameters. It can be used to predict specific extreme situations in the scope of sufficient applicator radiation dose coverage in the target structure as well as radiation dose avoidance in OAR structures.


A monumental project which brings the English-speaking work key selections from the remarkable literature of early Christianity -- vertiable trasures of Christian faith and theology in superb translations.


Philips medical systems produces medical diagnostic imaging products, such as MR, X-ray and CT scanners. The software of these devices is complex, has been evolving for several decades and is currently a multi-MLOC monolithic software archive. In this paper we report on splitting a single software archive into multiple smaller archives so that these can be developed independently, easing the software's evolution. To determine how to split such a single software archive we use formal concept analysis. Because of the sheer size of the monolithic software archive, we also propose to use a 'leveled approach'. This leveled approach implies that the analysis technique is applied in several iterations, whereby in some iterations only part of the application is subjected to the analysis technique. We conclude this paper with an evaluation of the used analysis method in this industrial context.


Planning Support System is often an important feature of countries undergoing rapid economic development such as Malaysia. In this context, the task of monitoring and reviewing plan progress involves the assembly and integration of geographic information. The State of Negeri Sembilan decided to develop its own planning support system to monitor the implementation of its development plans over time. A distinctive feature of the Negeri Sembilan GIS (GIS9) that was developed for this purpose is that it is capable of operating on two distinct level of planning-the state and district level. GIS9 also provides updating facilities and interactive data display. It was developed as a planning support system to consider alternative spatial development strategies as well as visualise development potentials involved in land use planning. In addition, the monitoring system that has been developed for both the state and district levels make it possible to evaluate the success of plan implementation. The use of GIS as a major component of the planning support system is significant as spatial information concerning planning and development needs to be organized and updated frequently. The database is constructed through collaboration and data sharing effort from various government departments and agencies. The data sharing framework is seen as a strong basis for extension of GIS database development in all the other state agencies. This paper will discuss the approach and strategies employed in the preparation of GIS9 database and development plans monitoring systems for the State of Negeri Sembilan.


Beside other vascular imaging methods the importance of CT angiography and its usefulness is demonstrated. Conclusions: CT angiography is a fast, non-invasive method, and either in itself or combined with other ones it is suitable for a defi nitive diagnosis.


The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) is an accelerator-based facility. The accelerator of CSNS consists of a low energy linac, a Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS) and two beam transport lines. The overall physics design of CSNS accelerator is described, including the design principle, the choice of the main parameters and design of each part of accelerators. The key problems of the physics design, such as beam loss and control, are also discussed. The interface between the different parts of accelerator, as well as between accelerator and target, are introduced.


The paper x-rayed the origins and growth of Pentecostalism in American and African milieu. It is a comparative study. Finding showed that in spite of African Pentecostals being African initiated churches, American  Pentecostalism has direct or indirect influence on Nigerian Pentecostal spirituality. Making use of the hermeneutical circle, I related the biblical teachings of pneumatology, faith healing, economic and spiritual empowerment to demonstrate their inherent compatibility and their application in the emergence of Pentecostal programmes in American and African Pentecostalism as is related to social crisis, the dislocation of masses brought on by economic deprivation, urbanization, the break up of traditional society and consequence loss of traditional values. The method of approach is analytical based on the review of related literature.


BACKGROUND
The aim of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of migraine headache among Canadian adults (aged > or = 18 years) and analyse variation by age, gender, household income and province of residence.

METHODS
A population-based survey was undertaken using telephone interviews with 2922 adults who were randomly selected from households across Canada by stratified regional sampling. The questionnaire asked about frequency and characteristics of headaches experienced and other symptoms. The diagnostic criteria of the International Headache Society were used to classify people as migraineurs (with or without aura), headachers or non-headachers.

RESULTS
Of 8921 random calls to households, 4235 were eligible and 2922 interviews were successfully completed (response rate 66%). The prevalence of migraineurs, headachers and non-headachers among males was 7.8%, 76.1%, 16.1% and among females was 24.9%, 65.6%, 9.4%. For females prevalence appears to increase with age, peaking at 40-44 years and declining thereafter. Sex-specific prevalence for males and females, controlling for age, was significantly lower in the province of Quebec compared to other provinces. We found no association between migraine prevalence and household income. Of 500 people classified by IHS criteria as migraineurs only 232 (46%) reported any migraine diagnosis by a physician.

CONCLUSION
We estimate that 2.6 million adult females and 0.8 million adult males in Canada are migraineurs, but only half are likely to have been diagnosed by a physician. Contrary to a recent US survey, people from lower income households in Canada are not at greater risk of migraine. The lower prevalence of migraine in Quebec was unexpected and remains unexplained, but it may be influenced by language/translation problems.


Though real-time Java offers significant advantages over other programming languages for safe programming, the analysis of worst case execution of real-time Java programs is considerably more difficult. The extra complexity can be addressed using a minimal set of parameterized annotations and data flow analysis to provide a standard worst case execution time analysis tool with the additional information necessary to determine the worst case execution time analysis of real-time Java programms. This methodology has the advantage over existing methods in that it is equally applicable to general purpose library code as to application specific implementation code.


There are three normal sizes of loading plate as 30 cm, 50 cm, 75 cm in roadbed compaction quality detection. The size effect rule for coefficient of foundation is obtained from the investigation on plate load test results by the experiment in lab. The laboratory test may control well the conditions by building the test section modeling the roadbed. The test section is 15 m by 5m. The diameters of loading plate used is 30cm, 35cm, 40cm, 45cm, 50cm, 55cm, 60cm, 65cm, 70cm and 75cm in the test. The regression equation between coefficients of foundation measured by different size of loading plate has been concluded. It is obtained that the ratio of coefficients of foundation between the plate of 50 cm and 30cm is 1.6 for granule filler, 1.65 for grind filler, and the one between the plate of 70 cm and 30cm is 2.17 for granule filler, 2.3 for grind filler.


This document introduces project Neem, its goals and directions, and its motivation. Project Neem at the University of Colorado is concerned with improving distributed multimedia meetings. A major novel aspect of this research is the use of intelligent artificial agents as full-fledged meeting participants. Goals of this interdisciplinary project include the enhancement of group interaction understanding, and the creation and testing of a prototype distributed meeting environment. Research methods include theoretical modeling, meetings analyses, prototype implementation and testing in real world environments, and meeting metrics development and application. Tools for understanding the social and organizational context of these meetings include the SYMLOG methodology applied by social agents, and the IBIS methodology applied by organizational agents. The work described herein is part of an ongoing effort within the Collaboration Technology Research Group at the University of Colorado to understand human collaboration, and to assist and enhance that collaboration via technology.


Old-age pension reform is on the agenda across the OECD, and a key target is to delay retirement. Most of these countries also have a disability insurance (DI) program accounting for a large share of labor force exits. This paper builds a quantitative life-cycle model with endogenous retirement to study how DI and old-age pension (OA-pension) systems interact with health and wages to determine retirement age, with particular focus on the macroeconomic effects of OA-pension reforms. Individuals face uncertain future health status and wages, and if in bad health they are eligible for DI if they choose to retire before reaching the statutory retirement age. I calibrate the model to the Norwegian economy and explore the effects of raising the statutory retirement age and cutting OA-pension on labor supply and public finances. The main contribution of the paper is that I, in contrast to standard macro pension models, include DI as another endogenous margin of retirement. I show that failure to account for this margin might severely bias the analysis of OA-pension reforms.


Peptides and biogenic amines are important regulators of muscle activity in
reproductive tissues, and therefore can play important roles in the reproductive
success of insects. The role of neuropeptides was investigated in regulating
contractions of the male accessory gland (MAG) and the ejaculatory duct (ED). The
FlyAtlas tissue expression database indicated that DMS, dromyosuppressin (DMS)
pro-hormone, is highly expressed in the MAGs of D. melanogaster. However, DMS,
could not be found using HPLC and mass spectrometry, but was detected by
immunohistochemistry which revealed extensive staining of neuronal processes on
the surface of MAGs and ED of Drosophila melanogaster, D. yakuba, D. erecta, D.
virilis, D. simulans, and the pest species D. suzukii. The GAL4-UAS expression
system revealed DMS neuronal fibres descending from the abdominal ganglion onto
the surface of the MAG, ED, and seminal vesicles. A pair of rectal cells and a single
cell, that we have called the ejaculatory duct cell because of its projections to the
ED, also contain DMS. The rectal and ED cells were isolated and subjected to
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Molecular ions of several neuropeptides were
detected, and the identity of DMS and sNPF4-11 were confirmed by fragmentation
sequencing. Both DMS and sNPF
4-11 reduced the frequency of contractions of the
MAG and ED, suggesting that these peptides are involved in regulating ejaculation
of seminal fluid and spermatozoa. Furthermore, the finding of DMS-R1 and DMSR2
expression in the epitracheal cells suggested that both receptors might be
involved in adult ecdysis. The silencing of DMS expression using nSyb-GAL4/UASdicr2>DMS-RNAi
(108760), shows abnormal abdomen phenotype and mortality at
day 5 post-emergence. Inhibitors of neuropeptide metabolism were shown to be
larvicidal when fed to two species of mosquitoes (Anopheles gambiae and Aedes
aegypti) identifying an enzyme target for the development of novel control
chemicals.


This cross sectional study was conducted at the Mayo Hospital Lahore from January 2019 to April 2019 to find out difference and agreement between Bagolini Striated Glasses and Worth Four Dot Test in assessment of fusion and suppression in patients with strabismus. Fifty patients with strabismus, with visual acuity of ≥ 0.6 Log Mar and at least 4 years of age were included. Fusion and suppression were assessed with Bagolini Striated Glasses (BAG) and Worth Four Dot Test (W4DT) at 1/3 meter. Forty-one patients were able to perform W4DT and forty-five patients performed BAG. There were 9 patients who were unable to demonstrate results with W4DT. There were 5 patients who could not demonstrate BAG. Fisher exact test showed 0.570 Exact sig. (2 sided) that exhibited an insignificant difference in the results of the two techniques. Cohen's kappa test showed -0.180 which indicated poor agreement between the two tests.


Applications are migrating en masse to the cloud, while accelerators such as GPUs, TPUs, and FPGAs proliferate in the wake of Moore's Law. These technological trends are incompatible. Cloud applications run on virtual platforms, but traditional I/O virtualization techniques have not provided production-ready solutions for accelerators. As a result, cloud providers expose accelerators by using pass-through techniques which dedicate physical devices to individual guests. The multi-tenancy that drives their business is lost as a consequence. This paper proposes automatic generation of virtual accelerator stacks to address the fundamental tradeoffs between virtualization properties and techniques for accelerators. AvA (Automatic Virtualization of Accelerators) re-purposes a para-virtual I/O stack design based on API remoting to present virtual accelerator APIs to guest VMs. Conventional wisdom is that API remoting sacrifices interposition and compatibility. AvA forwards invocations over hypervisor-managed transport to recover interposition. AvA compensates for lost compatibility by automatically generating guest libraries, drivers, hypervisor-level schedulers, and API servers. AvA supports pluggable transport layers, allowing VMs to use disaggregated accelerators. With AvA, a single developer could virtualize a core subset of OpenCL at near-native performance in just a few days.


Techniques for functional assessment of blood flow dynamics in individual microvessels are likely to become tools of increasing importance, for example in the evaluation of new vasoactive drugs. Laser Doppler perfusion Imaging (LDI) is a non- contact method for visualization of spatial and temporal blood flow dynamics. In this thesis the LDI technique was adapted for investigation of flow dynamics in separate microvessels. The technique was evaluated and used for flow studies during microdialysis in human skin, in the rabbit tenuissimus muscle and in the hamster cheek pouch model. Furthermore, an algorithm was introduced, relating the technique to quantitative flow assessment.For investigations of individual structures of microvascular networks, a resolution higher than that in standard LDI is required. This can be achieved by focusing the laser beam and reducing the step length between adjacent measurement sites to a degree determined by the requirement of the application. In High Resolution LDI (HR-LDI) the laser spot is reduced to a diameter of 100 μm in the focal plane situated 7 cm beneath the scanner head. The laser beam is moved in steps of 125 or 250 μm in this plane, resulting in full format images of 8 mm x 8 mm or 16 mm x 16 mm. Enhanced High Resolution LDI (EHR-LDI) reduces the diameter of the laser beam to 40 μm in the focal plane, positioned 40 mm beneath the scanner head. The step length in this plane is 25 or 50 μm, which corresponds to full format images of 1.5 mm x 1.5 mm or 3 mm x 3 mm respectively. Thus blood flow variations within an area of a single measurement site in standard LDI are visualized by EHR-LDI.Inside separate micro vessels a high concentration of blood cells is present and the prerequisite of a low density of moving scatterers usually assumed in laser Doppler theory is not valid. Many of the detected photons originating from such vessels can thus be expected to have suffered multiple Doppler shifts. To further investigate this situation, an in vitro model of plastic tubes perfused with human blood was used. The LDI signal was found to scale linearly with average flow velocity (0 - 9 mm/s) and was not influenced by haematocrit variations (16 - 44 %). An underestimation of the LDI signal was observed as the tube diameter increased, interpreted as being caused by the limited depth of laser light penetration. By an algorithm considering both the Doppler shifts and the tube diameter, this effect could be compensated for. Furthermore, volume blood flow in tubes of diameters 500 μm, 750 μm and 1.4 mm were predicted by correlation coefficients of 0.994, 0.993 and 0.996.In applications based on high resolution LDI, the textures of the vascular structures in the rabbit tenuissimus muscle and the hamster cheek pouch preparation were rendered in good agreement with corresponding microscopic images. The vascular structures showed their sensitivity to vasoactive substances by changes in flow. The spatial heterogeneity in these changes and in flow redistribution occurring after a period of ischemia were visualized by the images, whereas the temporal flow changes inside separate microvessels were captured by single point recordings. The muscle tissue reacted to ambient air oxygen tension by a reduction in blood flow. Further, blood flow changes in the human skin following microdialysis probe insertion could be followed in detail. 60 minutes after probe insertion skin blood perfusion had returned towards pre-insertion levels. Individual variations, which might be of importance for the interpretation of microdialysis data were, however, observed.


The synthesis of mesoporous silica materials was reviewed with a view to discuss the reaction mechanism and the various attempts made at enhancing the materials' properties by utilizing varieties of templating agents and silica frameworks from pure synthetic chemicals. This chapter also reviewed studies in which either the template or the framework was synthesized from benign reagents obtained from renewable sources, to achieve enhanced material properties. The view was to encourage the development of mesoporous silica materials in which both the template and the silica framework are from biomass origin. This approach may promote the large‐scales synthesis of mesoporous silica for commercial purposes, which had previously been hampered by the toxic nature, cost of synthetic chemical reagents, and unsustaina‐ ble synthetic routes.


Oral Cancer remains a greatly problematic disease with rising distribution globally, par- ticularly the disappointing presentation among younger age groups. Varying common risk factors exist, including but not limited to premalignant disorders such as human papilloma virus (HPV) infection and immunosuppression. Genetical abnormalities and the field of epigenetics remain a new and vital piece of the puzzle in the development of Oral Cancer. Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) remains the main histological burden with its varying counterparts; however, many types of other Oral Cancers can present in the mouth and are discussed in this chapter. More so, Oral Cancer brings with it the challeng-ing face of diagnosis and treatment as well as effective control of metastasis. We discuss in this chapter, the epidemiology of the disease, Oral Cancer nomenclature, histological advances, clinical presentations, important risk factors, and metastatic disease pathology.


Electricity is a major cost in running a data centre, and servers are responsible for a significant percentage of the power consumption. Given the widespread use of HTTP, both as a service and a component of other services, it is worthwhile reducing the power consumption of web servers. In this paper we consider how reverse proxies, commonly used to improve the performance of web servers, might be used to improve energy efficiency. We suggest that when demand on a server is low, it may be possible to switch off servers. In their absence, an embedded system with a small energy footprint could act as a reverse proxy serving commonly-requested content. When new content is required, the reverse proxy can power on the servers to meet this new load. Our results indicate that even with a modest server, we can get a 25% power saving while maintaining acceptable performance.


We show that fading noise in phase-noise compensated optical frequency domain reflectometry (PNC-OFDR) can be effectively reduced by applying an optical comb light source without any degradation in the reflectometry performance. The optical comb light source provides broad wavelength tunability, which is required for the frequency shift averaging (FSAV) for fading noise reduction while maintaining a narrow linewidth of the fiber laser used as a seed lightwave. We also clarify that PNC-OFDR with a reference interferometer simultaneously compensates for both phase noise and group velocity dispersion (GVD) induced by wideband measurement and a dispersive medium. These PNC-OFDR functions enable us to realize a high accuracy measurement of Rayleigh scattering level with low fading noise and high spatial resolution over 10 km range.


Micro‐solid oxide fuel cell (micro‐SOFC) systems are predicted to have a high energy density and specific energy and are potential power sources for portable electronic devices. A micro‐SOFC system is under development in the frame of the ONEBAT project [1‐3]. In this presentation, we report on the fabrication and characterization of a sub‐system assembly consisting of a startup heater and a micro‐reformer bonded to a Si chip with electrochemically‐active micro‐SOFC membranes. A functional carrier including fluidic channels for gas feed and integrated heaters was bonded to a microreformer with an overall size of 12.7 mm x 12.7 mm x 1.9 mm [4‐7]. As a catalyst, a foam‐like material made of ceria‐zirconia nanoparticles doped with rhodium was used to fill the 58.5 mm3 reformer cavity. This micro‐reformer allows for high methane and butane conversion of > 90 % with a hydrogen selectivity of > 80 % at 550 °C in the reformer [7, 8]. A silicon chip with 30 free‐standing micro‐SOFC membranes (390 μm x 390 μm) with a thickness of less than 500 nm was bonded to the carrier‐reformer assembly described above. The micro‐SOFC membrane consisted of an yttria‐ stabilized zirconia thin film electrolyte. Both Pt‐based and ceramic‐based electrode materials were tested regarding the thermal stability and carbon poisoning at temperatures below 600 °C. The functional‐carrier mirco‐reformer micro‐SOFC assembly was electrochemically tested with hydrocarbon fuel between 300 °C and 600 °C. The fuel cell performance and the microstructural evolution of the anode are discussed as well.


In the present communication, a new relationship for the temperature dependences of elastic constants are developed using a new expression for the temperature dependence of bulk modulus and the formulation derived from Tallon's model. The proposed relationship is applied to study elastic constants of NaCl, KCl, CaF2, MgO, CaO, and Mg2SiO4. The result obtained for second-order elastic constants are found to compare well with the experimental data.


Author(s): Todd, Kevin Charles | Advisor(s): Card, David E | Abstract: An important fact that has emerged from the past decade of research in labor economics is that the identity of a worker's employer is an important determinant of their labor market outcomes. More recent work in the field has emphasized a correlation between consolidation of industries and worse outcomes for workers employed in those industries. Both of these findings are consistent with employers' having substantive wage-setting power in the labor market, a consideration that is at odds with standard competitive models of labor markets. This dissertation contributes to the field of labor economics by providing empirical evidence about how mergers and acquisitions --- events that lead to changes in the identity of a worker's employer and which tend to increase the concentration of an industry --- affect labor markets. I do so in two complementary ways. In the first chapter, which was coauthored with Joerg Heining of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Germany, I use matched employer-employee data from West Germany to study how acquisitions --- specifically the acquisition of an establishment by another similar establishment close by --- affect workers. Using an event study framework with a control group of workers at unaffected plants, I find that acquisitions lead to employment losses for workers initially employed at the acquired (or ``target'') firm, mainly associated with labor force withdrawals by older female workers. At the same time I find evidence of a rise in wages for workers initially employed at targets and at the acquiring (or ``buyer'') firm who remain with the combined enterprise, concentrated among lower-wage workers. I interpret these findings as suggesting that consolidations lead to a reduction in overall employment but a rise in rents per worker that lead to a pattern of losers and winners in the labor market. The contribution of this chapter is that it is the first study to identify establishment acquisitions and their impacts on workers who are directly impacted by them. In the second chapter, I consider how merger and acquisition activity affects local labor market aggregates. I examine how merger-driven consolidation of hospitals in different local labor markets in the United States affected the wage and employment growth of Registered Nurses (RNs). This chapter finds that MSAs where there was merger activity had higher rates of growth in hospital market concentration than markets that did not. I find that the reduced form relationship between the presence of merger activity and changes in the average RN wage in each MSA indicates that merger activity is also associated with lower rates of wage growth for nurses. These results are consistent with prior research indicating that merger-driven consolidation depresses local labor market-level wage growth. The contribution of this chapter is to measure concentration, mergers, and labor market data for a specific profession in the United States.The empirical results of both chapters are consistent with employers' exercising some degree of wage-setting power in labor markets.


The US Agricultural Act of 2014 stipulates that the age range for 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans expands to include from birth to 24 months. A group of pediatric nutrition researchers and practitioners met to discuss recent data and research gaps, as well as to generate research and potential public-private partnership ideas for future guidance on the feeding of young children, with a focus on 12 to 24 months old. Specific to this age range, the meeting participants analyzed cross-sectional dietary intake data and reviewed dietary guidance history, developmental feeding, policy considerations, and principles of public-private partnership. The group generated a number of research questions, emphasizing the need to investigate ways to improve acceptance of nutrient-dense foods, including vegetables. Research is needed to understand whether an innate preference for sweetness can be used strategically to help caregivers persevere in feeding less accepted nutrient-dense foods to toddlers.


The hepatoprotective effect of Gomisin A (TJN-101), which is a lignan compound isolated from Schizandra fruits, was studied on three immunologic liver injury models in mice. The first liver injury model was produced by the injection of anti-basic liver protein (BLP) antibody into DBA/2 mice which had been previously immunized with rabbit IgG (RGG). Other models were effected by injection of anti-liver specific protein (LSP) antibody into DBA/2 mice or by the injection of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) into ddY mice pretreated with Corynebacterium parvum (C. parvum). TJN-101 inhibited the elevation of transaminase (GOT and GPT) activities and showed the tendency to inhibit the histopathological changes of the liver in all models. Moreover, TJN-101 inhibited deoxycholic acid-induced release of transaminase from cultured rat hepatocytes in vitro, but did not affect the formation of hemolytic plaque forming cells in immunized mice spleens and hemolytic activity of guinea pig complement in immunohemolysis reaction. These results, therefore, suggested that the hepatoprotective effect of TJN-101 could be related to the protecting effect of hepatocyte plasma membrane rather than the inhibiting effects of the antibody formation and complement activity.


BACKGROUND
The present study aimed to assess micronutrient intake among Greek adults and to identify the main food sources that contribute to it.

METHODS
Food consumption data from 2389 participants in the Hellenic National Nutrition and Health Survey (HNNHS), collected with 24-h recalls, was used to calculate micronutrient intakes. Usual nutrient intake was estimated according to the National Cancer Institute method. Nutrient adequacy was estimated using the estimated average requirement (EAR) cut-point method, when available, or adequate intake otherwise. The probability approach was used to determine iron intake adequacy in females of reproductive age. Food group contribution for each nutrient assessed was derived to identify their main food sources.

RESULTS
Almost all individuals had vitamin D intake below EAR, whereas vitamins A, E, K and C, as well as potassium intake, were also insufficient in a considerable percentage of the population (>70% in most age groups). Calcium intake was substantially below the EAR for females aged >50 years and males >70 years; the same for magnesium in males >70 years. Furthermore, 50% of females, including those of reproductive age, had intake of folate below EAR. More than 50% of the population (to 79%) exceeded the upper tolerable limit for sodium (2300 mg day-1 ). Food contribution analysis revealed that most vitamins were derived from low-quality foods (i.e. fast-food).

CONCLUSIONS
A significant proportion of adults residing in Greece have low nutrient intake and poor food selections. These results provide guidance to public health policy makers for developing strategies to improve the dietary quality in Greece.


Efforts to support education for all students have increasingly become priorities for governments around the world. Key international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have provided foundational direction to jurisdictions in implementing policies to engage all students including those with special education needs. As initiatives to support equitable and inclusive education for all become more widespread globally, it is important to consider how these efforts affect economically wealthy countries. Using the example of Canada, and specifically the province of Ontario, implications of supporting education for all through the framework of inclusive education are examined. These implications include funding, teaching commitment and training, resources, and privatization. Inclusive education refers to the ability of all students, regardless of gender, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or ability, to attend their neighborhood community school and be in classes with similar aged peers. Students with special education needs, whether these be learning disabilities, visual or hearing disorders, or mental health disorders, among many other conditions, are key stakeholders in inclusive education. The conclusion raises important questions for future research to examine inclusive education and the parallel implications not only in economically wealthy countries but for all jurisdictions that are trying to initiate and support educational programs for all students.


The e-commerce VAT package that was adopted in December 2017 is a key element of the European Commission VAT Action Plan and the Digital Single Market strategy. While it should be transposed into the national legislations of the Member States by 2019 and 2021, in this article the author identifies key implementation issues and unfixed enforcement challenges. She highlights, in particular, that relying on electronic platforms to collect the VAT does not come without difficulties and risks of abuse and that the lack of enforcement jurisdiction of EU tax administrations on non-EU businesses remains an unsolved and most worrying issue. Her conclusion is that the adoption of the e-commerce VAT package is certainly not the last step of the EU VAT modernization journey.


Aeromonas species are known to be involved in human gastrointestinal diseases. These organisms colonize the gastrointestinal tract. Aeromonas hydrophila, A. caviae, and A. sobria have been demonstrated microscopically to adhere to animal cell lines that express mucous receptors, but quantitative studies of adherence to mucosal components such as mucin have not been published to date. Purified bovine submaxillary gland, hog gastric mucin, and fish skin mucin were used as a model to study mucin-binding activity among A. caviae, A. hydrophila, and A. sobria strains. Our findings revealed that binding of radiolabeled and enzyme-conjugated mucins to Aeromonas cells varied depending on the labeling procedure. The highest binding was observed when the three mucin preparations were labeled with horseradish peroxidase. Binding of the various horseradish peroxidase-labeled mucins by A. caviae, A. hydrophila, and A. sobria cells is a common property among Aeromonas species isolated from human infections, diseased fish, and from environmental sources. The proportion of Aeromonas strains which bind the various horseradish peroxidase-labeled mucins was significantly higher for A. hydrophila than for A. caviae and A. sobria. Bacterial cell-surface extracts containing active mucin-binding components recognized the horseradish peroxidase-labeled mucins. The molecular masses of the mucin-binding proteins were estimated by SDS-PAGE and Western blot as follows: A. caviae strain A4812 (95 and 44 kDa); A. hydrophila strain 48748 (97, 45, 33 and 22 kDa); and A. sobria strain 48739 (95 and 43 kDa). Mucin interaction with Aeromonas cells was also studied in terms of growth in mucin-rich media. The culture conditions greatly influence the expression of A. hydrophila mucin-binding activity.


The rare cases of hypoglycemia reported during treatment with cibenzoline, have been observed with drug overdoses, in combination with kidney failure, and with ECG signs of drug intoxication. A case report involving an 80 year old man is presented. He had a moderate degree of kidney failure and was on high drug dosage, considering his age and weight. Nevertheless, serum concentrations of cibenzoline were normal, and the QRS wave was not widened on the ECG. The hypothesis of an individual susceptibility to this agent is postulated. The absence of any ECG changes is emphasized. Monitoring of blood sugar is routinely required in patients treated with cibenzoline.


In Pastoral Care in the Classical Tradition, Andrew Purves argued that pastoral care and theology has long ignored Scripture and Christian doctrine, and pastoral practice has become secularized in both method and goal, the fiefdom of psychology and the social sciences. He builds further on this idea here, presenting a christological basis for ministry and pastoral theology.


Progressive phases in the evolution of the Royal Academy of Dancing's founding intentions and philosophy have been explored in order to determine the on-going development and contextualisation of the training of classical ballet teachers. While the use of archival material and interviews comprised the main source of evidence another significant source was the author's personal perspective first as a student and then as a teacher and examiner in the system under review. An examination of ways in which the many issues, values and practices of teaching ballet interrelate and function revealed a number of tensions, one of which was the identification of how the specifics of this multiform enterprise of teaching have been amalgamated at key stages to achieve reliable learning outcomes in the Academy's development. Since its foundation as the Association of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain in 1920, the Royal Academy of Dancing, RAD (retitled in 200 las the Royal Academy of Dance) devised a spectrum of examinations, reaching its zenith m the last decade of the twentieth century with the introduction of degree programmes validated by the University of Durham. In terms of structure, content and aspirations, an in-depth study of these degrees, and of the Routemaster which followed them, reveals tenets considered necessary to produce an increasingly informed classical ballet teacher. As the RAD enters the twenty-first century with its declared policy of widening access and extending genre, and with the introduction of a single distance learning degree, questions are raised concerning the ability of the World's leading organisation in classical ballet education to maintain and promote its reputation for executant excellence. While acknowledging that some of the current changes reflect the difficult financial position facing the Academy, a case is put forward for alternative ways of proceeding and recommendations made for a critical reappraisal of classical ballet teaching m the light of the original aims of the organisation and the current context in which it operates.


Adversarial training (AT) is proved to reliably improve network's robustness against adversarial data. However, current AT with a pre-specified perturbation budget has limitations in learning a robust network. Firstly, applying a pre-specified perturbation budget on networks of various model capacities will yield divergent degree of robustness disparity between natural and robust accuracies, which deviates from robust network's desideratum. Secondly, the attack strength of adversarial training data constrained by the pre-specified perturbation budget fails to upgrade as the growth of network robustness, which leads to robust overfitting and further degrades the adversarial robustness. To overcome these limitations, we propose \emph{Strength-Adaptive Adversarial Training} (SAAT). Specifically, the adversary employs an adversarial loss constraint to generate adversarial training data. Under this constraint, the perturbation budget will be adaptively adjusted according to the training state of adversarial data, which can effectively avoid robust overfitting. Besides, SAAT explicitly constrains the attack strength of training data through the adversarial loss, which manipulates model capacity scheduling during training, and thereby can flexibly control the degree of robustness disparity and adjust the tradeoff between natural accuracy and robustness. Extensive experiments show that our proposal boosts the robustness of adversarial training.


The interactions underlying the cooperativity of soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complexes during neurotransmission are not known. Here, we provide a molecular characterization of a dimer formed between the cytoplasmic portions of neuronal SNARE complexes. Dimerization generates a two-winged structure in which the C-termini of cytosolic SNARE complexes are in close apposition, and involves residues from the vesicle-associated (v)-SNARE synaptobrevin 2 that lie close to the cytosol-membrane interface within the full-length protein. Mutation of these residues reduces stability of dimers formed between SNARE complexes, without affecting the stability of each individual SNARE complex. These mutations also cause a corresponding decrease in the ability of botulinum toxin-resistant synaptobrevin 2 to rescue regulated exocytosis in toxin-treated neuroendocrine cells. Moreover, such synaptobrevin 2 mutants give rise to a dominant-negative inhibition of exocytosis. These data are consistent with an important role for SNARE complex dimers in neurosecretion.


Abstract:This project employs a close textual reading of Cambodian Canadian hip-hop artist Honey Cocaine's 2016 music video "Bad Gal." Drawing from the fields of Critical Refugee Studies, comparative racialization, and neoliberal critique, I delineate the processes of gendered racialization for the Cambodian diasporic subject, and begin to unpack its racialized relationship to Blackness. In observing "Bad Gal" for its audiovisual content, temporal narrative, themes of deviance and Blackness, as well as supplemented by historical and spatial contexts, and interviews with Honey Cocaine, I argue that the construction of the "bad gal" or "bad refugee" persona is racialized through the genre of hip-hop and Blackness, and acts as a way for the Cambodian diasporic subject to negotiate against neoliberal logics and binary discourses of the "good" versus "dysfunctional" refugee. Through engaging with a cultural studies lens, this project encourages a reading of Asian diasporic hip-hop that complicates static understandings around authenticity, appropriation, and race relations, and to read the texts for their contradictions in revealing the ways it negotiates systems of neoliberalism, rather than to assess work for their "critical" or "politically resistive" value.


The "imperative of data" seems to be at the core of current debates concerning relationships between technology and society, as well as the status of knowledge, freedom and identity. Departing from the plenary roundtable Datafication and Technoscience from Below: Sharing, Moving, Opening at the 7th STS Italia Conference held in Padua (June 2018), the authors go through different aspects of the sociotechnical process of datafication, emphasizing from complementary STS perspectives some of the most urgent and emergent challenges posed by the constant exploitation of data at an economic and financial level. Topics covered are ambivalences of datafication and their consequences for everyday life (Pellegrino); the epistemological consequences of the "race to the bottom-up" and fake news as ultimate drift of such a race (Söderberg); data-logies and grassroots epistemologies as conditions for possibility for a datafication from below (Milan).


Research in quantum technology has shown that quantum computers can provide dramatic advantages over classical computers for some problems. The efficiency of quantum computing is considered to become so significant that the study of quantum algorithms has attracted widespread interest. Development of quantum algorithms and circuits is difficult for a human researcher, so automatic induction of computer programs by means of genetic programming, which uses almost no auxiliary information on the search space, proved to be useful in generating new quantum algorithms. This approach takes advantage of the intrinsic parallelism of the genetic algorithm and quantum computing parallelism. The paper begins with a brief review on some basic concepts in genetic algorithms and quantum computation. Next, it describes an application of genetic programming for evolving quantum computing circuits.


In this study self-organizing maps (SOM) were utilized for spatiotemporal analysis and classification of body surface potential mapping (BSPM) data. Altogether 86 cardiac depolarization (QRS) sequences paced by a catheter in 18 patients were included. Spatial BSPM distributions at every 5 ms over the QRS complex were first presented to an untrained SOM. The learning process of the SOM units organized the maps in such a way that similar BSPMs are represented in particular areas of the SOM network. Thereafter, time trajectories and distance maps were created on the trained SOM from sequential maps in a selected paced QRS. The trajectories and distance maps can be applied as such for the localization of abnormal ventricular activation, as well as quantitative input for statistical classification. The results indicate that the method has potential for locating endocardial sites of abnormal ventricular activation, despite the patient material being too limited to provide a reliable statistical evaluation of the source localization accuracy.


This paper describes a novel distributed mobility management (DMM) scheme for the "named-object" information centric network (ICN) architecture in which the routers forward data based on unique identifiers which are dynamically mapped to the current network addresses of a device. The work proposes and evaluates two specific handover schemes namely, hard hand-off with rebinding and soft handoff with multihoming intended to provide seamless data transfer with improved throughput during handovers. The evaluation of the proposed handover schemes using system simulation along with proof-of-concept implementation in ORBIT testbed is described. The proposed handoff and scheduling throughput gains are 12.5% and 44% respectively over multiple interfaces when compared to traditional IP network with equal share split scheme. The handover performance with respect to RTT and throughput demonstrate the benefits of clean slate network architecture for beyond 5G networks.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Cropland Data Layer (CDL) is a 30 m resolution crop-specific land cover map produced annually to assess crops and cropland area across the conterminous United States. Despite its prominent use and value for monitoring agricultural land use/land cover (LULC), there remains substantial uncertainty surrounding the CDLs' performance, particularly in applications measuring LULC at national scales, within aggregated classes, or changes across years. To fill this gap, we used state- and land cover class-specific accuracy statistics from the USDA from 2008 to 2016 to comprehensively characterize the performance of the CDL across space and time. We estimated nationwide area-weighted accuracies for the CDL for specific crops as well as for the aggregated classes of cropland and non-cropland. We also derived and reported new metrics of superclass accuracy and within-domain error rates, which help to quantify and differentiate the efficacy of mapping aggregated land use classes (e.g., cropland) among constituent subclasses (i.e., specific crops). We show that aggregate classes embody drastically higher accuracies, such that the CDL correctly identifies cropland from the user's perspective 97% of the time or greater for all years since nationwide coverage began in 2008. We also quantified the mapping biases of specific crops throughout time and used these data to generate independent bias-adjusted crop area estimates, which may complement other USDA survey- and census-based crop statistics. Our overall findings demonstrate that the CDLs provide highly accurate annual measures of crops and cropland areas, and when used appropriately, are an indispensable tool for monitoring changes to agricultural landscapes.


This volume contains a summary of the flooding in the upper Mississippi River Basin during the spring and summer of 1993 and 36 articles describing severe, widespread, or unusual flooding in the United States from January 1, 1992, to the end of the 1993 water year, September 30, 1993. Each flood is described to an extent commensurate with its significance and the availability of data on the hydrology and the damages. Each article includes one or more maps showing the general area of flooding and the sites for which data are presented. Most articles include tables of data that allow the reader to compare the described flood with past floods at selected flood-determination sites. The articles generally do not attempt to analyze the floods or draw definitive conclusions, except for a few cases in which the author had sufficient information for an analysis to be made.


The primary goal of this research study is to compare the relative 'fairness,' 'efficiency,' and 'effectiveness' of decriminalized administrative adjudication processes in two geographic areas, (Buffalo, New York and the State of North Dakota) with traditional adjudication programs in similar geographic areas (Syracuse, New York and the State of South Dakota, respectively). To accomplish this goal, information common to all selection sites was identified, collected and analyzed to determine if significant differences in impact existed on a series of criterion measures, the type and degree of impact, and whether obtained differences were attributable to specific causative factors. This report is produced in three volumes: Volume I contains the Analysis and Findings; Volume II contains the Discussion, Summary, Conclusions, and Appendices; Volume III is a Special Summary Report.


It is well established that external confinement of concrete with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets results in significant improvements on the axial compressive behavior of concrete. This understanding has led to a large number of experimental studies being conducted over the last two decades. However, the majority of these studies have focused on normal strength concretes (NSC) with compressive strengths lower than 55 MPa, and studies on higher strength concretes have been very limited. This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the compressive behavior of FRP confined high- and ultra high-strength concrete (HSC and UHSC) with average compressive strengths of 65 and 100 MPa. A total of 29 specimens were tested under axial compression to investigate the influence of key parameters such as concrete strength and method of confinement. All specimens were cylindrical, confined with carbon FRP and were 305 mm in height and 152 mm in diameter. Results obtained from the laboratory testing were graphically presented in the form of axial stress-strain relationships and key experimental outcomes are discussed. The results of this experimental study indicate that above a certain confinement threshold, FRP-confined HSC and UHSC exhibit highly ductile behavior. The results also indicate that FRP-wrapped specimens perform similar to concrete-filled FRP tube (CFFT) specimens at ultimate condition, however notable differences are evident at the transition region when comparing stress-strain curves.


Background: Despite the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), pharmaceutical treatment options for brain injury remain limited. However, nutritional intervention (such as with branched chain amino acids [BCAAs]) has emerged as a promising treatment option for TBI. Objectives: (1) To determine whether TBI patients have lower levels of endogenous BCAAs postinjury; and (2) to evaluate whether post-TBI BCAA supplementation improves clinical outcome. Design: A systematic review of primary research articles examining the relationship between BCAAs and TBI recovery indexed in Ovid/MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO. Results: Of the 11 studies identified, 3 examined the effects of TBI on endogenous BCAA levels and consistently reported that BCAA concentrations were depressed postinjury. The remaining 8 studies examined the effects of BCAA supplementation on TBI outcome in animals (n = 3) and humans (n = 5). The animal studies (in mild-to-moderate TBI) showed that BCAAs improved post-TBI outcome. Similar results were found in human trials (conducted primarily in patients with severe TBI), with 4 of the 5 studies reporting improved outcome with BCAA supplementation. Conclusion: Although our review demonstrates an overall positive association between BCAAs and TBI outcome, the evidence of the efficacy of supplementation has been limited to severe TBI. To date, there is insufficient evidence to determine the benefits of BCAAs in mild TBI. Given the high frequency of mild TBI and the promise of BCAAs as an intervention in severe TBI, future research should examine the effects of BCAAs in milder brain injury.