Human activity is having an increasing global impact on the environment, geology and ecosystems. There is an 80% probability that world population will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by 2100 and could even reach 10 billion by 2056, 6 years earlier than projected. Historically, global production of food has outpaced consumption growth. This is evidenced by falling real prices of food, however this is now slowing, caused by constraints on supply and continued growth of demand. Paradoxically, as billions suffer food insecurity through lack of food, more than 2 billion people, approximately 30% of the world's population, are overweight or obese and this percentage continues to grow. It is also estimated that the world will need to close a significant food-gap by 2050, primarily because of continued population growth and changing diets. Increases in temperature of over two degrees Celsius are projected to have a negative impact on global yields of major crops. Agri-food production, including manufacture, food preparation and cooking, accounts for approximately 30% of all greenhouse-gas emissions and livestock production accounts for approximately 50% of this. The agricultural sector will increasingly be driven by these global changes, including a rising world population, rapid development of emerging economies, with western lifestyle aspirations, growing geopolitical instability around shortages of land, water and energy and 'one health' issues. However, a technological revolution is taking place, including breakthroughs in nutrition, genetics, informatics, satellite imaging, remote sensing, meteorology, precision farming and low impact agriculture. These changes will hopefully continue to drive major global investment in agricultural technologies. It is of vital importance that countries around the world recognize fully the opportunities and challenges and provide the appropriate framework support, investment and infrastructure. In this regard, increasing high quality livestock research will be essential to help address the looming food and environmental challenges and is a message that animal scientists and veterinarians around the world need to be making to governments and funding agencies. Farming practices globally will continue to change because of competing demands. Hence it is essential that the livestock sector benefits fully, both from continued improvements of current reproductive technologies and in the application of future reproductive technologies to meet these global challenges.


Visual search is the subject of countless psychology studies in which people search for target items within a scene. The bulk of this literature focuses on the individual with the goal of understanding the human perceptual system. In life, visual search is performed not only by individuals, but also by groups -- a team of doctors may study an x-ray and a team of analysts may study a satellite photograph. In this paper, we examine the issues one should consider when searching as a group. We present the details of an experiment designed to investigate the impact of group size on visual search performance, and how different display configurations affected that performance. We asked individuals, pairs, and groups of four people to participate in a baggage screening task in which these teams searched simulated x-rays for prohibited items. Teams conducted these searches on single monitors, a row of four monitors, and on a single horizontal display. Our findings suggest that groups commit far fewer errors in visual search tasks, although they may perform slower than individuals under certain conditions. The interaction between group size and display configuration turned out to be an important factor as well.


In order to meet the user needs and enhance the brand identification, a new method of brand products design based on Kansei engineering is presented. Firstly, users' implicit semantic information is extracted using semantic differential method, and the brand gene pool is established. Secondly, according to analytic hierarchy process (AHP), genes which meet the goal of semantic information are selected from the gene pool, which can be used to constitute a new product. Then the whole frame of product is constructed, and the final design project can be quickly obtained after some adjustments. Finally, a new brand from a furniture design company is taken as an example to illustrate the specific of this new approach. By employing this method, a series of new sofa are designed.


We investigate the parameterization of deep neural networks that by design satisfy the continuity equation, a fundamental conservation law. This is enabled by the observation that any solution of the continuity equation can be represented as a divergence-free vector field. We hence propose building divergence-free neural networks through the concept of differential forms, and with the aid of automatic differentiation, realize two practical constructions. As a result, we can parameterize pairs of densities and vector fields that always exactly satisfy the continuity equation, foregoing the need for extra penalty methods or expensive numerical simulation. Furthermore, we prove these models are universal and so can be used to represent any divergence-free vector field. Finally, we experimentally validate our approaches by computing neural network-based solutions to fluid equations, solving for the Hodge decomposition, and learning dynamical optimal transport maps.


Background: Fasting Ramadan is the third pillar of Islam. Patients with primary hypothyroidism need levothyroxine replacement when fasting. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of fasting on thyroid hormone balance in patients with hypothyroidism under levothyroxine. Methods: This was a prospective study carried out during Ramadan of the Hegira years 1439 and 1440. We included all the patients with hypothyroidism who fast and take levothyroxine, with a normal rate of ultra-sensitive thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH us) before Ramadan. The study was conducted in two phases: a first phase before Ramadan when we evaluated the thyroid status by measuring TSH us and a second phase after Ramadan when we evaluated the thyroid status, the therapeutic compliance, the respect of the interval during the month of Ramadan. Treatment compliance was assessed using Morisky's questionnaire. Results: We collected 65 patients. Treatment adherence was good in 82.1% of cases, moderate in 12.5% of cases, and poor in 5.4% of patients After Ramadan, 80% of patients remained in euthyroidism while 9% of patients were in hyperthyroidism and 10% patients in hypothyroidism. Conclusion: Our study highlighted the importance of treatment adherence and respect of interval between the meal and levothyroxine intake to maintain euthyroidism.


Abstract
Despite the widespread use of corticosteroids in children, hypersensitivity reactions to
corticosteroids are rarely. However, life-threatening reactions have been described, and clinicians
should be aware of the risk posted by potential allergy to corticosteroid. Parenteral administration of
such corticosteroids as methylprednisolone and hydrocortisone is more commonly associated with
severe hypersensitivity reactions than other routes. A close and detailed evaluation is required to
confirm the presence of a true hypersensitivity reaction to the suspected drug, and a challenge test
with a different steroid must be performed in order to offer a safe alternative for further treatments. We
report the case of a 14-year-old boy with an adverse reaction caused by methylprednisolone


Leverment, J. N. and Mearns Milne, D. (1974).Thorax, 29, 228-231. Palliative intubation for malignant strictures of the oesophagus. Over a 16-year period the Mousseau-Barbin tube was used for palliation in 50 patients suffering from malignant stricture of the oesophagus. In only two cases was the Souttar tube used. Thirty-seven cases were intubated as a primary method of treatment—21 cases without preliminary exploration, 13 cases following exploration, and three cases as a `delayed' procedure. Twelve cases were secondarily intubated as a result of recurrence of malignancy following an earlier oesophagogastrectomy. In three cases perforation of the oesophagus was recognized at the time of intubation, following which palliative oesophagogastrectomies were attempted. Intubation remains one method of relieving the patient's most distressing symptom, but in the majority of cases prolongation of life was seldom for more than three months. The hazards of this form of treatment are discussed.


While adverse health effects of ambient air pollution have been well documented, there is scarce evidence on the impact of household air pollution (HAP) on mental health. We investigated the causal link between HAP exposure from the use of solid fuel on depressive symptoms using a nationally representative dataset of middle-aged and older population in China. Employing the propensity match score method (PSM), matching and adjusting for potential confounders, we found significantly higher Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) score and risk of depressive symptoms among solid fuel users than clean fuel users. These associations were especially stronger for older females who were less educated, of lower income, of higher body mass index, or had chronic diseases.


This Article explores the impact of federal disability laws on the NCAA's authority to apply its initial academic eligibility requirements to learning-disabled student-athletes. Part II provides an overview of the three primary federal laws governing students with learning disabilities. Part III describes the NCAA and the standards and processes it employs to determine freshman eligibility for athletic scholarships and participation in intercollegiate sports. Part IV tracks the judicial responses to litigation brought by students with learning disabilities challenging the NCAA eligibility criteria under the ADA. Part V analyzes the ADA's application to the NCAA and identifies specific instances in which the NCAA's process and standards for determining eligibility disparately impact students with learning disabilities. This analysis further examines the extent to which, if at all, the NCAA is obliged to modify its eligibility academic standards in order to accommodate students with learning disabilities, and considers whether the traditional judicial deference given to academic institutions to set academic standards is similarly warranted in the case of the NCAA. The Article concludes by exploring options for balancing the interest of the NCAA and its member institutions to ensure academic integrity in the intercollegiate athletic competition with the right of students with learning disabilities to participate in such competition despite their learning impairments.


This paper considers the influence of information presentation form and frame on decision outcomes. A more thorough understanding of the interactions between presentation effects and decision outcome will enable systems designers to produce more bias free designs and control the biases which may be inherent in any system. An experiment is presented which investigates the effects of framing in both tabular and graphic presentations. The experiment is a rough replication of an earlier study by McNeil, Pauker, Sox, and Tversky (1982) in which data describing historic outcomes of medical treatments were presented in mortality and survival frames. This previous study indicated that strong framing effects influenced the decision makers' choices. The current study presented similar data in a similar scenario, but utilized graphs and tables in place of textual presentations. Initial results indicate that framing effects arc diminished by the presentation of information in tables and graphs. A number of possible explanations, drawing on various theoretical constructs, are presented to explain these results.


A collection of 21,559 highly precise spectroscopic line positions from pure rotational and vibration-rotational spectra for seven isotopomers of carbon monoxide in the X1sigma+ ground electronic state has been employed in direct least-squares fits of the rovibrational Hamiltonian operator obtained from Watson's work [J. Mol. Spectrosc. 80, 411 (1980)] and that obtained by Herman and Ogilvie [Adv. Chem. Phys 103, 187 (1998)]. Fully analytical models are used for the various functions, including the Born-Oppenheimer internuclear potential function, and an account is taken of breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The resulting representations are more compact than currently available traditional Ukl/deltakl extended Dunham descriptions, and they generate quantum-mechanical eigenvalues that reproduce reliably the spectroscopic line positions to within the associated measurement uncertainties. Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation theory has been used to calculate highly accurate rotational and centrifugal distortion constants Bupsilon-Oupsilon for nine isotopomers of carbon monoxide. These constants are just as successful at reconstructing the observed spectroscopic information as the quantum-mechanical eigenvalues of the fitted Hamiltonian operators.


Complex biological systems operate under non-equilibrium conditions and exhibit emergent properties associated with correlated spatial and temporal structures. These properties may be individually unpredictable, but tend to be governed by power-law probability distributions and/or correlation. This article reviews the concepts that are invoked in the treatment of complex systems through a wide range of respiratory-related examples. Following a brief historical overview, some of the tools to characterize structural variabilities and temporal fluctuations associated with complex systems are introduced. By invoking the concept of percolation, the notion of multiscale behavior and related modeling issues are discussed. Spatial complexity is then examined in the airway and parenchymal structures with implications for gas exchange followed by a short glimpse of complexity at the cellular and subcellular network levels. Variability and complexity in the time domain are then reviewed in relation to temporal fluctuations in airway function. Next, an attempt is given to link spatial and temporal complexities through examples of airway opening and lung tissue viscoelasticity. Specific examples of possible and more direct clinical implications are also offered through examples of optimal future treatment of fibrosis, exacerbation risk prediction in asthma, and a novel method in mechanical ventilation. Finally, the potential role of the science of complexity in the future of physiology, biology, and medicine is discussed.


In reservoir studies in clastic environments, the two major problems that we encounter are reducing the risk of finding productive sands and defining the boundaries of these sands. A recent approach to solving these problems involves generating seismic attributes that are physically related to the reservoir properties and combining these attributes to predict the petrophysical properties of the reservoir (Hampson et al., 2001). The combination of attributes can be done using either multilinear regression or neural network analysis. Once we have derived a relationship between the attributes and the petrophysical parameters, these log properties can be extrapolated through the seismic volume. This allows us to infer the lithology, fluid content, and boundaries of the productive zones.


Stability limits of highly elongated, D-shaped plasmas have been measured in the TCV (tokamak a configuration variable) tokamak. It is found that the plasma current is limited by kink-type disruptions, preceded by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) mode activity. The mode structure has been analyzed using magnetic fluctuation and soft x-ray diagnostics. Mode numbers, growth rates, and experimental stability limits are consistent with ideal and resistive MHD models, based on measured plasma shapes and profiles. These results provide the first experimental confirmation of previously predicted stability limits at high elongation, kappa less than or equal to 2.58.


The thesis inquires into governmental memory politics in Ukraine in the aftermath of Euromaidan protests focusing on the representation of the Second World War. At the theoretical level, the thesis has scrutinized concepts pertaining to studies in memory politics: political memory, memory agents, elite-mythmaking, and narratives. It also conceptualized the European discourses on the Second World War in order to evaluate newly forged Ukrainian narrative on WW2 in their light. At the analysis level, the thesis both scrutinized official legislative and administrative measures pertaining to WW2 remembrance as well as applied narrative analysis to the case of newly introduced narrative about the Ukrainians in WW2 by developing a set of narrative analysis categories. As the thesis argues, elite-mythmaking selectively 'Europeanizes' Ukrainian representation of WW2 while the narrative follows the essential characteristics of the Eastern Central European (ECE) historical narrative about the Second World War.


Poststructuralism is broadly considered to be a particular movement of thought that emerged in France during the 1960s in response to a range of philosophical approaches such as modernism and structural linguistics. Poststructuralism has been extensively explored across philosophy, cultural studies, politics, and numerous other fields. It has also received significant attention in education, particularly in relation to education policy, although much less so in relation to educational leadership and administration. Nevertheless, it is important to identify some of the main thinkers who have been associated with poststructuralism, examples of how their work has been used and drawn from in educational leadership, and explore how these ideas might be useful in providing alternative perspectives to much of the existing research in educational leadership and administration.


This reference work is the definitive chronology of the Korean War. It covers in-depth the day-by-day events, major and minor, of all combatants, including the United States, Great Britain, South Korea and other U.N. allies; North Korea; China; and the Soviet Union. Truly comprehensive, it details the war in the air, at sea and on land, with the actions of participating units, commanders and civilian leaders. Sixteen appendices provide significant statistics and supplemental information, including Medal of Honor recipients, U.S. naval vessels, units and commanders of each American military branch, carrier deployments, casualty figures and aces. There are 464 photographs accompanying the text.


The mechanism of prolonging service life of tap in low frequency vibration tapping was studied from two aspects of the reduction of wear and the insensitivity of the passivation of tap. Repeated cutting and separate type boundary lubrication improved the contact and lubrication status on rear face of tap. On the one hand, it greatly reduced the wear of rear face the tap, on the other hand, it markedly decreased the passivation sensitivity of tap to blunt radius and flank wear. With the interaction of two factors mentioned above, the service of life was prolonged greatly by low frequency vibration tapping.


In this report, we present a study in which we look into the possibilities of predicting end-to-end network connection characteristics on mobile handheld devices based on historical data. These characteristics include throughput, packet-loss and round trip time. We base these predictions on a relevant timeframe in the past and the interface they were recorded on. We also present a software framework that performs the measurements, the storage and the prediction of end-to-end network characteristics. This framework helped us researching the possibilities of predicting end-to-end network characteristics. We designed this framework to solve several issues encountered in the mobile environment. We ran two experiments to research the possibilities of predicting network characteristics. The first experiment showed us that there are patterns of network characteristics in time. Using this collected data, we show in the second experiment that there are possibilities of predicting network characteristics. We conclude that there is a possibility to predict end-to-end network characteristics based on historical data and that our framework is able to do this.


The efficient sparse coding and reconstruction of signal vectors via linear observations has received a tremendous amount of attention over the last decade. In this context, the automated learning of a suitable basis or overcomplete dictionary from training data sets of certain signal classes for use in sparse representations has turned out to be of particular importance regarding practical signal processing applications. Most popular dictionary learning algorithms involve NP-hard sparse recovery problems in each iteration, which may give some indication about the complexity of dictionary learning but does not constitute an actual proof of computational intractability. In this technical note, we show that learning a dictionary with which a given set of training signals can be represented as sparsely as possible is indeed \ssb NP-hard. Moreover, we also establish hardness of approximating the solution to within large factors of the optimal sparsity level. Furthermore, we give \ssb NP-hardness and non-approximability results for a recent dictionary learning variation called the sensor permutation problem. Along the way, we also obtain a new non-approximability result for the classical sparse recovery problem from compressed sensing.


Humans can learn to perform multiple tasks in succession over the lifespan ("continual" learning), whereas current machine learning systems fail. Here, we investigated the cognitive mechanisms that permit successful continual learning in humans. Unlike neural networks, humans that were trained on temporally autocorrelated task objectives (focussed training) learned to perform new tasks more effectively, and performed better on a later test involving randomly interleaved tasks. Analysis of error patterns suggested that focussed learning permitted the formation of factorised task representations that were protected from mutual interference. Furthermore, individuals with a strong prior tendency to represent the task space in a factorised manner enjoyed greater benefit of focussed over interleaved training. Building artificial agents that learn to factorise tasks appropriately may be a promising route to solving continual task performance in machine learning. Significance Statement Humans learn to perform many different tasks over the lifespan, such as speaking both French and Spanish. The brain has to represent task information without mutual interference. In machine learning, this "continual learning" is a major unsolved challenge. Here, we studied the patterns of errors made by humans and state-of-the-art deep networks whilst they learned new tasks from scratch and without instruction. Humans, but not machines, seem to benefit from training regimes that focussed on one task at a time, especially when they had a prior bias to represent stimuli in a way that facilitated task separation. Machines trained to exhibit the same prior bias suffered less interference between tasks, suggesting new avenues for solving continual learning in artificial systems.


This article situates online hook-up devices as an emergent infrastructure of the sexual encounter that has become popular among homosexually attracted men in urban centres. A focus on intimate infrastructures does two things. It draws attention to the material technologies, objects and environments that facilitate erotic encounters, casting these devices as active elements in the shaping of sexual practices. And it references how the different kinds of erotic attachments that people come to find necessary for their lives may be ignored if not actively degraded by hegemonic 'institutions of intimacy' without critical intervention (Berlant and Warner, 1998). Where institutions allocate resources and establish hierarchies of authority, infrastructures produce capacities and shape encounters in ways that become more or less durable and hardwired into the routines of everyday life. The article traces some of the new genres of sexual interaction afforded by online devices, with a focus on the significance of the concept of 'play' among participants. Such a focus enables an understanding of relations between sex and sociability that are being elaborated with these media, and it generates an approach to HIV prevention that promotes acknowledgement of how drug practices and other objects and devices participate in the construction of sexual encounters: their pleasures, qualities, risks and potentialities.


Vascular wilt disease caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. elaeidis (Foe) causes a devastating disease of oil palm in West and Central Africa. However, this disease is a major threat to the Malaysian oil palm industry as it has not been reported in Southeast Asia, in spite of long term importation for breeding purposes of African seed and pollen, known to be often contaminated with Foe. This study shows that disease progress was substantially delayed/reduced in two non-autoclaved Malaysian soils compared to autoclaved Malaysian soils highlighting the possibility that Foe-suppressive soils in Malaysia might explain the non-appearance of this vascular disease there. This coincided with the limited presence of Foe in non-autoclaved soils compared to high presence of Foe in root (>145 cfu/g), bulb (>75 cfu/g), leaf 1 (>100 cfu/g) and leaf 3 (>60 cfu/g) of autoclaved soils. Population density of Fusarium spp. was also significantly greater in sterile soils compared to non-autoclaved soils. From this study, endophytes were also isolated from various parts of oil palm seedling inoculated with Foe and growing in Malaysian soils; showed degrees of antagonism towards Foe with 10 out of 15 isolates recording more than 50% inhibition


Background. The aim of the study was to compare efficacy and tolerance of first-line palliative chemotherapy EOX (epirubicin/oxaliplatin/capecitabine) and mDCF (docetaxel/cisplatin/5FU/leucovorin) regimens in patients with locally advanced inoperable or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma without overexpression of HER2 receptors.Methods. Each chemotherapy regimen was assigned with 21 patients. Planned treatment consisted of 12 every-two-weeks mDCF cycles or 8 every-three-weeks EOX cycles (24 weeks of treatment in each arm). The primary endpoint was overall survival in all patients who commenced at least one chemotherapy cycle.Results. Median progression-free survival was 5.8 months in EOX group and 7.5 months in mDCF group (p=0,11), and median overall survival was 8.5 months and 12.0 months respectively (p=0,219). In the EOX arm there were more frequent reductions of cytostatics doses (p=0,009) as well as delays in the administration of subsequent chemotherapy cycles (p=0,424). Rates of all grade 3 or 4 adverse events were comparable between both arms (p=1,000), however nausea (p=0,093), thromboembolic events (p=0,663) and grade 3 or 4 neutropenia (p=0,443) were more frequent in the EOX group.Conclusions. In patients with locally advanced inoperable or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma without overexpression of HER2 receptors treatment with mDCF regimen is associated with a statistically non-significant 3.5 month longer median overall survival without increase in toxicity.


Practitioners have agreed that service-learning programs or curricula guide students into developing a more robust connection to the community in which they live as well as amongst other members of that community (Eyler, Giles, Stenson, & Gray, 2001). However, what isn't known extensively is how these outcomes have been generated (Kiely, 2005a). Based upon Milne's (2000) reflective artmaking, this arts-based ethnographic study introduces the terminology reflective artmaking service-learning, demonstrating how the coupled learning processes of reflective artmaking and service-learning respond to the call for research. The Capacities for Imaginative Learning (Holzer, 2009) facilitated my ethnographic analysis, providing specificity towards deconstructing the underlying mechanisms of processing and filtering. Conducted in Texas among Christian homeschool students, this study inquires, how does reflective artmaking coupled with service-learning help to make the underlying concept of "community" visible? This ethnographic study focuses on the educative (Dewey, 1938) value of an arts-infused program with Christian homeschooled youth (ages 11-17) in Texas. Significant findings include the ways in which experiential learning based on a constructivist epistemology and a focus on the self was a suitable, but yet limiting, theoretical framework. Suggestions include ways to use reflective artmaking coupled with service-learning to enhance the authenticity and applicability of projects and thus to enhance student interest and ownership. This study provides a broad set practitioners in educational programs and public, private, and home schools with practical, innovative, substantive, and customizable methods of incorporating arts-based reflection on civic engagement within their teaching practices.
Keywords: Reflection, reflective, artmaking, arts-based learning, experiential learning, community service-learning, community development, civic engagement, Capacities for Imaginative Learning, homeschool, faith-based, visual literacy.


Edwin Lutyens' Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval in Northern France, visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists, is arguably the finest structure erected by any British architect in the twentieth century. It is the principal, tangible expression of the defining event in Britain's experience and memory of the Great War, the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, and it bears the names of 73,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found at the end of that bloody and futile campaign. This brilliant study by an acclaimed architectural historian tells the origin of the memorial in the context of commemorating the war dead; it considers the giant classical brick arch in architectural terms, and also explores its wider historical significance and its resonances today. So much of the meaning of the twentieth century is concentrated here; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing casts a shadow into the future, a shadow which extends beyond the dead of the Holocaust, to the Gulag, to the 'disappeared' of South America and of Tianenmen.


Cefazolin sodium (CFZ) is a semi-synthetic first-generation cephalosporin used for the treatment of infections caused by Gram‑positive and Gram‑negative microorganisms. Although it is a drug used worldwide, there are only a few green analytical methods described in the literature for its quantification. This work proposes an eco-friendly, low-cost, and rapid analytical method to analyze CFZ in lyophilized powder for injectable solution based on digital images, using thin-layer chromatography (TLC). For the TLC method, the mobile phase was comprised of ethanol and water, and the spots revelation was performed using iodine vapors. The TLC spots were analyzed through digital images, obtained by flatbed scanner, and evaluated using the free software "The Gimp" (GNU Image Manipulation Program), by quantification of pixels in pictures. This method was validated according to the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines and presented adequate linearity, accuracy, precision, and robustness. It also showed its selectivity and stability-indicating capability (under acid, alkaline, aqueous, oxidative, and photolytic stress conditions). This is an innovative, easy, and low-cost method that can be used for the analysis of cefazolin sodium in lyophilized powder. Considering that this method does not use toxic organic solvents for the environment and operators, it contributes to the development of green chemistry.


This paper presents an efficient way to implement flexible multirate signal processing systems with high oversampling ratio and adjustable fractional or irrational sampling rate conversion ratio. One application area is a multi-standard communication receiver which should be adjustable for different symbol rates utilized in different systems. The proposed decimation filter consists of parallel CIC (cascaded integrator-comb) filters followed by a linear interpolation filter. The idea is to use two parallel CIC filters to calculate the two needed sample values for linear interpolation. These samples occur just before and after the final output sample. This corresponds to a system where the linear interpolation is done at the higher input sampling rate.


Ultrasound (US) 2-D arrays are of increasing interest due to their electronic steering capability to investigate 3-D regions without requiring any probe movement. These arrays are typically populated by thousands of elements that, ideally, should be individually driven by the companion scanner. Since this is not convenient, the so-called microbeamforming methods, yielding a prebeamforming stage performed in the probe handle by suitable custom integrated circuits, have so far been implemented in a few commercial high-end scanners. A possible approach to implement relatively cheap and efficient 3-D US imaging systems is using 2-D sparse arrays in which a limited number of elements can be coupled to an equal number of independent transmit/receive channels. In order to obtain US beams with adequate characteristics all over the investigated volume, the layout of such arrays must be carefully designed. This paper provides guidelines to design, by using simulated annealing optimization, 2-D sparse arrays capable of fitting specific applications or fabrication/implementation constraints. In particular, an original energy function based on multidepth 3-D analysis of the beam pattern is also exploited. A tutorial example is given, addressed to find the $N_{\mathrm{ e}}$ elements that should be activated in a 2-D fully populated array to yield efficient acoustic radiating performance over the entire volume. The proposed method is applied to a $32 \times 32$ array centered at 3 MHz to select the 128, 192, and 256 elements that provide the best acoustic performance. It is shown that the 256-element optimized array yields sidelobe levels even lower (by 5.7 dB) than that of the reference 716-element circular and (by 10.3 dB) than that of the reference 1024-element array.


The final section covers Special Problems in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and encompasses a range of subjects, from sleep in children to aspects of the American legal and managed care systems. The book, which is well written and well referenced, is aimed primarily at those new to child psychiatry; those who dip into the field only once in a while, and non-medics, as a guide to what child psychiatrists should and can do. It does at times have a cookbook feel, which along with the total focus on the DSM classificatory system, is a drawback. As a British non-medical


Exhaust gas recirculation is a widely used technology on conventional vehicles, primarily for lowering emissions of local pollutants. Here we use chemical models to show that an exhaustgas recirculation loop can be converted into a heat-recovery system by incorporating a catalytic reformer. The system is predicted to be particularly effective for gasoline-fuelled spark ignition engines. The high temperature and low oxygen-content of the exhaust gas mean that endothermic reactions will predominate, when some of the gasoline is injected into the recirculation loop upstream of the reformer. The output of the reformer will, therefore, have a higher fuel heating value than the gasoline consumed. Chemical efficiency calculations, based on the predicted reformer output at chemical equilibrium, indicate that the direct improvement in fuel economy could be as high as 14%. Initial tests using a rhodium reforming catalyst suggest that much of the heat recovery predicted by the thermodynamic models can be achieved in practice, which together with a reduction in throttling may allow a gasoline spark ignition engine to match the fuel economy of a diesel engine. Introduction


Aim: The Swedish Government has a long tradition of setting quantified time-bounded road safety targets. Thisarticle identifies and analyses these targets, and evaluates the national road safety targets adopted in 1989, 1996 and1998 in order to assess whether the different targets fulfil the SMART criteria of being specific, measurable, achievable,realistic and time bounded.Methods: This study is a retrospective case study and in order to trace all relevant policy documents that containinformation on quantified targets, a snowball technique was applied. The searching process result in a total of 23 keydocuments and these were analyzed in two steps. The first step examined how the targets have been formulated andthe second step assessed whether the targets had been constructed according to the SMART criteria.Results: This study shows that, although all the specified targets were theoretically achievable, those targetsadopted in 1996 and 1998 were, according to this evaluation, unrealistic.Conclusion: This study raises the question as to the rationality of political leaders when adopting targets whichcould be difficult to achieve in reality. One explanation for their adoption is that unrealistic targets could serve as amanagement tool in that they could be rational from a road safety point of view because they could inspire stakeholdersto do more than they would otherwise have done. In this article, other motives behind the setting of unrealistic targetsare also discussed.


An essential step in the replication cycle of all retroviruses is the dimerization of genomic RNA prior to or during budding and maturation of the viral particle. In HIV-1, a 5' leader region site termed stem-loop 1 (SL1) promotes RNA dimerization in vitro and influences dimerization in vivo. In HIV-2, two sequences promote dimerization of RNA fragments in vitro: the 5'-end of the primer-binding site (PBS) and a stem-loop region homologous to the HIV-1 SL1 sequence. Because HIV-2 RNA constructs of different lengths use these two dimerization signals disproportionately, we hypothesized that other sequences could modulate their relative utilization. Here, we characterized the influence of sequences upstream and downstream of the major splice donor site on the formation of HIV-2 RNA dimers in vitro using a variety of RNA constructs and dimerization and electrophoresis protocols. We first assayed the formation of loose or tight dimers for 1-444 and 1-561 model RNAs. Although both RNAs could form PBS-dependent loose dimers, the 1-561 RNA was unable to make SL1-dependent tight dimers. Using RNAs truncated at their 5'- and/or 3'-ends and by making compensatory base substitutions, we found that two elements interfere with the formation of SL1-dependent tight dimers. The cores of these elements are located at nucleotides 189-196 and 543-550. Our results suggest that base pairing between these sequences prevents the formation of SL1-dependent tight dimers, probably by sequestering SL1 in a stable intramolecular arrangement. Moreover, we found that nucleotides downstream of SL1 decreased the rate of tight dimerization. Interestingly, dimerization at 37 degrees C in the presence of nucleocapsid protein increased the yield of SL1-mediated tight dimerization in vitro, even in the presence of the two interfering elements, suggesting a relationship between the nucleocapsid protein and activation of the SL1 dimerization signal in vivo.


Computer-aided translation (CAT), the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation process, has been proven to be useful in enhancing the productivity of human translators. Autocompletion, which suggests translation results according to the text pieces provided by human translators, is a core function of CAT. There are two limitations in previous research in this line. First, most research works on this topic focus on sentence-level autocompletion (i.e., generating the whole translation as a sentence based on human input), but word-level autocompletion is under-explored so far. Second, almost no public benchmarks are available for the autocompletion task of CAT. This might be among the reasons why research progress in CAT is much slower compared to automatic MT. In this paper, we propose the task of general word-level autocompletion (GWLAN) from a real-world CAT scenario, and construct the first public benchmark to facilitate research in this topic. In addition, we propose an effective method for GWLAN and compare it with several strong baselines. Experiments demonstrate that our proposed method can give significantly more accurate predictions than the baseline methods on our benchmark datasets.


DNAase I isolated from rat pancreatic juice was always found in association with a protein of molecular weight 43000. This association leads to inhibition of the isolated rat pancreatic DNAase I activity by 66%. The molecular weight of the complex was found to be 74000 by gel filtration indicating a 1 : 1 molar association of both proteins. Since the protein of molecular weight 43000 has a number of properties similar to skeletal muscle actin such as filament formation, nucleotide binding, inhibition of the rat pancreatic DNAase I activity and comigration with skeletal muscle actin on polyacrylamide gels in the presence of dodecylsulfate, it is concluded that DNAase I is bound to actin in rat pancreatic juice in a 1 : 1 complex. It is demonstrated that a protein fraction from bile is able to activate the DNAase I enzymatic activity of the rat secretory actin . DNAase I complex.


This paper describes the superimposed impulse voltage test, its test setup and the components in use. The advantages and disadvantages of using different coupling and measuring elements are shown. A recommended test setup is given thereby providing a guideline for performing this test.


Backgrounds and Objective: The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) receives patients whose situation demands high complexity tasks. Their recovery depends on medical care, their response to medications and clinical procedures, and the optimal functioning of the medical devices devoted to them. Adverse events in ICU due to failures in the facilities, particularly medical devices, have an important impact not only on the patients but also on the operators and all those involved in their care. The origins of the technological failures seem to be more oriented to the interaction between the equipment and the operator: once the medical equipment is functioning, we must guarantee its correct execution to meet both the clinical service's objectives and the expectations of those involved in care, including the patients themselves. We present an approach to quality management based on failure analysis as the source of risk for medical devices' functioning and operation in the ICU. We decided to address it through a systematic approach by using the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method and the Ishikawa diagrams' support to obtain the causes graphically.
Material and Methods: We used the risk analysis framework as a basis of the methodology. By obtaining the causes and sub causes of technological failures in the ICU for adult patients, we applied the FMEA method and the Ishikawa diagrams to analyze the relationship between cause and failure. The ICU devices came from the Official Mexican Standard and WHO information related to the ICU operation and facilities. The data from the causes of failure came from specialized consultation and discussion forums on medical devices where these topics were addressed; we searched for over five years in Spanish forums. We proposed a calculation of the Risk Priority Number based on the information subtracted from the forums. Then, we defined an indicator showing the priority level that can be used to address the issue.
Results: In general, the results showed that most of the medical equipment failure causes have medium and high-risk priority levels and, in some cases, the cause presented as the most prevalent didn't match with the reported in official documents such as technical or operation manuals. The most frequent causes found are related to electrical system issues and operation skills. We presented three study cases: defibrillator, vital sign monitor, and volumetric ventilator, to show the risk level designation. The conclusions inferred from these cases are oriented to training strategies and the development of support material in Spanish.
Conclusion: The development of risk management methodologies that aim to monitor and solve potential hazard situations in critical areas is valuable to the health technology management program. The FMEA method showed to be a strong basis for the risk assessment processes, and its application to the ICU medical technology allowed the creation of the evidence supporting the decision-making process concerning strategic solutions to guarantee patient safety


Path analysis of F3 popuiations in cowpea were studied for nine traits viz., plant height, number of branches per plant. number of pods per plant, pod length, number of seeds per pod, hundred seed weight, crude fibre content, crude protein content and seed yield per plant. Path analysis indicated that number of seeds per pod, number of pods per plant, crude protein content and plant height had high positive direct effects on seed yield while pod length, hundred seed weight number of branches per plant and crude fibre content had negative direct effects on seed yield. Pod length and hundred seed weight had positive indirect effects on seed yield through number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod and crude protein content. The study suggested that the characters, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, and crude protein content could be considered while formulating selection indices in the improvement of cowpea.


This paper deals with an optimal design of linear networked control systems. We study a class of delayed dynamical systems in the continuous time-domain and propose an optimization approach based on the newly elaborated hybrid LQ-type techniques. Moreover, we develop an explicit connection between the given networked control processes and auxiliary hybrid models. The optimal feedback control strategy for the networked systems is obtained as a consequence of the Riccati-formalism for the associated hybrid LQ problems. We also consider some alternative optimization techniques and discuss stability properties of the optimal trajectories.


The equilibrium fitting code (EFIT) and its application in the J-TEXT tokamak are integrated by the Matlab language. The function of analysis and visualization to the results is added. In addition, the experiment data measured by soft X-ray (SXR) are used to calculate plasma equilibrium as a constraint condition. The improved EFIT code is used for J-TEXT discharge and the profiles of plasma parameters such as flux function, safety factor q, pressure and current density are obtained from the reconstructed configurations.


It is generally difficult to assess the performance of an infrastructure with a substantially longer life span than economic models can handle, and the life cycle concepts in urban water systems are normally limited to single-asset projects. In order to explore the long-term impact of urban water infrastructure rehabilitation strategies, a life cycle approach for survival functions is suggested. A life cycle factor based on survival functions is introduced, which is a measuring value of the total expected service life of all pipes within a group of pipes. Another factor, termed the sustainability factor, is based on the relationship between the life cycle factor and a rehabilitation reference method, which makes it possible to correct the long-term performance of rehabilitation methods based on their expected service life provision. A case study presents the implications for investments in infrastructure rehabilitation when applying the sustainability factor in long-term planning, and shows the importance of considering the service life of rehabilitation methods when planning renewal interventions that minimize costs over their life cycles.


The 'Tigapapan Unit' is one ofseveral Miocene hydrocarbon bearing reservoirs in the northwestern Sabah Basin. This unit consists of bioclast-rich, clastic-carbonate mixture, and has been interpreted as progradation storm shoal deposits. Cathodoluminescence, geochemical and isotopic studies indicate that the sequence had undergone at least 9 stages of cementation which were responsible for complete occlusion ofinterstitial pores. Each stage represents one distinctive cement texture which was precipitated at specific temperature and burial condition. The diagenetic evolution was first introduced by (Cal) a syndepositional, accicular and bladed iron-free marine calcite, followed by (Dol) early methane-derived dolomite resulting from degradation of biogenic methane during uplifting and induced faulting, (Ca2) bladed calcite, (Ca31 Ca4) blocky, vein-filling Fe-calcites, (D02) clay-associated dolomite, (D031 D04) Fe-dolomite and ankerite, and (Ca5) late iron-rich calcite. Each cement stage is composed of distinctive Sr4+,Mn2+, Mga., Fe2+, Ca2+, Si4., and Na+ concentrations, reflecting changes in palaeopore fluid systems with time. The cement stages are correlatable over the whole unit. The cementation occured from very early to late phases of diagenesis at near surface to 2.0 km depth. With progressive burial and temperature increased, oxygen isotope values become strongly negative (for example, stage Ca4: 81aC = +2.70 %0 PDB, 8180 = -5.70 %0 PDB). Oxygen isotope data indicate that the cements were precipitated at temperatures in the range of 20-75°C. Carbon isotope data suggest that the source of carbon varies from marine dissolved carbonates to fermentation of organic matter, biogenic methane, and possibly hydrothermal fluids. Strontium isotope dating of Dol (with 81SC = -34.7 %0 PDB, 8180 = +2.60 %0 PDB) and D02 dolomites indicates that these two dolomitization events took place at 10.5 Ma and 8.9 Ma, respectively. The Dol dolomite was precipitated from the methane-derived brine exactly at the boundary between the Serravallian anl.. .cortonian stages after a major uplifting, induced faulting, and beginning of sealevel fall. The D02 dolomite was precipitated at an intermediate to deep burial diagenesis duringsmectite-illi te transformation.


Visual features constitute compact yet effective representations of visual content, and are being exploited in a large number of heterogeneous applications, including augmented reality, image registration, content-based retrieval, and classification. Several visual content analysis applications are distributed over a network and require the transmission of visual data, either in the pixel or in the feature domain, to a central unit that performs the task at hand. Furthermore, large-scale applications need to store a database composed of up to billions of features and perform matching with low latency. In this context, several different implementations of feature extraction algorithms have been proposed over the last few years, with the aim of reducing computational complexity and memory footprint, while maintaining an adequate level of accuracy. Besides extraction, a large body of research addressed the problem of ad-hoc feature encoding methods, and a number of networking and transmission protocols enabling distributed visual content analysis have been proposed. In this survey, we present an overview of state-of-the-art methods for the extraction, encoding, and transmission of compact features for visual content analysis, thoroughly addressing each step of the pipeline and highlighting the peculiarities of the proposed methods.


The existence of Semarang city as a trading town on the north coast of Java had been going on since the founding of Old Mataram Kingdom and continues to grow, until the period of Dutch colonial rule. The rapid development as a city of Semarang in the Dutch colonial period was marked by the establishment of the buildings at the site which is now called Semarang Old Town. Most of these buildings serve as offices and private VOC trade. Over time, Semarang became not only a trading center but it evolved into a gemeente (municipality), up to the present period. Nevertheless, there seems to be lack of interest in making the history of Semarang as a subject in teaching history at the local level, especially in educational circles, as the subject matter in teaching history. As a source of considerable historical importance, there is nothing wrong if a teacher of History, especially in the city of Semarang, making the Old City as a source of learning for students in the city of Semarang. Therefore the existence of sites as well as historical buildings in the city of Semarang is should no longer simply regarded as old buildings that have without meaning. And at least it will foster public awareness of Semarang city, especially among students to participate in regard to keep the existence of the Old Town and make it as an asset of History and Tourism in the city of Semarang.


PURPOSE
We compare the success rate and complications of retrograde ureteroscopy, laparoscopic ureterolithotomy, and percutaneous nephrolithotomy for the management of large upper ureteral stones.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed data from 73 patients with large (≥1 cm) upper ureteral stones at two institutions from January 2010 to May 2013. Twenty-two patients underwent retrograde ureteroscopy (group ULS), 30 patients underwent percutaneous nephrolithotripsy (group PCNL), and 21 patients underwent laparoscopic ureterolithotomy (group LS) for removal of upper ureteral stones. CT, intravenous urography, and ultrasound were performed 1 week and 1 month after surgical removal.

RESULTS
There were no significant differences in age, sex, or stone size among the three groups. Mean estimated blood loss and mean hospital stay showed a statistically significant difference among the three groups. Success rates in the PCNL, LS, and ULS groups were 100%, 90.5%, and 77.3%, respectively. The procedures of two patients in group LS were converted to open surgery because of the inability to find the ureteral stone in one patient and an adhesion too difficult to dissect in the other. The procedures of two patients in the ULS group were converted to LS, and those of three patients were converted to PCNL because of severe edema impaction at the site of the stone, a sharply angulated ureter obstruction, upward migration of the stone (seven patients), and intraoperative complications (two patients).

CONCLUSIONS
Percutaneous antegrade nephrolithotomy is a safe and effective minimally invasive treatment for patients with large upper ureteral stones that has several advantages over retrograde ureteroscopy and laparoscopic ureterolithotomy. Thus, percutaneous antegrade nephrolithotomy is recommended as a safe and good treatment option for large upper ureteral stones. A combined procedure (e.g., ureteral push-back and percutaneous removal) can be considered in some patients.


Female parasitoids have evolved various foraging strategies in order to find suitable hosts. Egg parasitoids have been shown to exploit plant cues induced by the deposition of host eggs. 2. The tiny wasp Trichogramma brassicae uses oviposition-induced cues from Brussels sprouts to locate eggs of the cabbage white butterflies Pieris brassicae and Pieris rapae that differ in their egg-laying behaviour. These plant cues are elicited by male-derived anti-aphrodisiac pheromones in the accessory reproductive gland (ARG) secretions of mated female butterflies. However, the closely related generalist species Trichogramma evanescens does not respond to Brussels sprout cues induced by the deposition of P. brassicae egg clutches. 3. Here we showed in two-choice bioassays that T. evanescens wasps respond to Brussels sprout cues induced by (i) the deposition of single eggs by P. rapae ,a nd (ii) the application of ARG secretions from either mated P. rapae females, or from virgin female butterflies in combination with P. rapae's anti-aphrodisiac compound indole. The wasps only associatively learned to respond to Brussels sprout cues after applying indole alone by linking those cues with the presence of P. rapae eggs. 4. Our results indicate that Trichogramma wasps more commonly exploit oviposition-induced plant cues to locate their host eggs. Generalist wasps show less specificity in their response than specialists and employ associative learning.


The objective of the study was to three dimensionally compare the density and homogeneity of "GuttaFlow®"
using backfilling technique with conventional lateral compaction technique using spiral computed tomography.
30 human extracted maxillary central incisors were used for this study. Following access cavity preparation,
working length was determined and root canal preparation was carried out using standard step-back technique.
Root canal irrigation was performed using 2.5% NaOCl ,saline and final flushing with 17%EDTA and normal
saline.
After root canal preparation, the specimens were randomly divided into 3 groups with 10 teeth in each group.
Specimens in Group-I were obturated with GuttaFlow® using backfilling technique, Group-II were obturated by
lateral compaction technique using GuttaFlow® as the sealer and Group-III were obturated by lateral compaction
technique using zinc-oxide and eugenol as the sealer.
The specimens were then analyzed in both horizontal and vertical sections from the apex to the cemento-enamel
junction of each specimen with section thickness of 1mm each using Spiral Computed Tomography.
The data obtained was statistically analyzed using one way ANOVA test followed by FISHER'S test and TUKEYS
HSD test.
Results showed that specimens of Group -I was denser, more homogenous compared to other groups and was
statistically significant. In the evaluation of obturation in the apical, middle and coronal third individually, Group
-I showed better results than other groups in apical and middle third which was statistically significant, but
showed inferior results in the coronal third though it was not statistically significant. And Group-II and Group-III
showed inferior results in the middle third when compared with Group-I and was statistically significant.
From the results of the study it can be concluded that, Obturation done using GuttaFlow® with backfilling technique
is superior in the apical and middle third but is inferior in the coronal third of the root canal system when
compared to lateral compaction technique.
Spiral computed tomography is a very useful tool fo checking the density of obturation in endodontics.


ABSTRACT Molecular-phylogenetic sequence analyses have provided a new perspective on microbial communities by allowing the detection and identification of constituent microorganisms in the absence of cultivation. In this study we used broad-specificity amplification of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) genes to survey organisms present in the human outer ear canal. Samples were obtained from 24 individuals, including members of three extended families, in order to survey the resident microbiota and to examine microbial population structures in individuals related by familial or household associations. To examine the stability of the microbial populations, one individual was sampled four times and another twice over a 14-month period. We found that a distinct set of microbial types was present in the majority of the subjects sampled. The two most prevalent rDNA sequence types that were identified in multiple individuals corresponded closely to those of Alloiococcus otitis and Corynebacterium otitidis, commonly thought to be associated exclusively with infections of the middle ear. Our results suggest, therefore, that the outer ear canal may serve as a reservoir for normally commensal microbes that can contribute to pathogenesis upon introduction into the middle ear. Alternatively, culture analyses of diseases of the middle ear may have been confounded by these contaminating commensal organisms.


This thesis explores how gender influences local access to resources through a case study of an upland community in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It also teases out the implications of these gender dynamics for the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in Vietnam. To address the complexity of the chosen topic and case study, I employ a theoretical framework that fuses both Ribot and Peluso's (2003) theory of access and Feminist Political Ecology (Rocheleau et al. 1996). The qualitative methods encompass interviews, participant observation, life histories and photovoice. My findings show that gendered access to resources is shaped by various factors including gender, ethnicity, age, culture and social status. Gendered access to resources can also be negotiated through social relations including kinship, conjugal relationships and political connections to local authorities at the household and community levels. Resource access, however, is not only concerned with local actors. When it comes to decision-making regarding resource access, both national and local actors are involved. Accordingly, the legal systems of resource management imposed by the Vietnamese state and the customary ways of resource use practised by local villagers in Kala Tongu are both brought to bear in decision-making in different ways at different levels. These national-local dynamics of resource access might take different forms. On the one hand, the politics of decision making at the national level often results in gender policies being less prioritised and being limited to women's participation, which might contradict local understandings of gender. On the other hand, everyday politics within the village also feed into the wider debates about what is actually happening around resource access and reflect local expectations of how these forestry policies should be implemented.


BACKGROUND
Common mental disorders (CMD) and adverse social circumstances are widespread among mothers of infants and toddlers in resource-constrained settings. These can undermine early childhood development through compromised caregiving and insufficient access to essential resources. The aim was to examine the effect of maternal CMD and social adversity in the post-partum year on toddler's length-for-age index in a rural low-income setting.

METHODS
A population-based prospective cohort study of women in Ha Nam province, Vietnam who completed baseline assessments in either late pregnancy or 4-6 weeks post partum and were followed up, with their toddlers, 15 months later. CMD were assessed at both points by psychiatrist-administered Structured Clinical Interviews for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Diagnoses. Anthropometric indices were calculated from toddler's age, sex, weight and length using World Health Organization Child Growth Standards. Social adversities were assessed by study-specific questions and locally validated psychometric instruments. The hypothesized model of factors governing toddler's length-for-age Z score (LAZ) was tested using path analysis.

RESULTS
In total, 211/234 (90.1%) mother-toddler pairs provided complete data. Baseline prevalence of CMD among women was 33.6% and follow-up was 18.5%. The mean LAZ among toddlers was -1.03 and stunting prevalence (LAZ < -2) was 15.6%. Maternal CMD at baseline were indirectly related to toddler LAZ via maternal CMD at follow-up (regression coefficient = -0.05, 95% CI -0.11 to -0.01). Maternal CMD at follow-up was associated significantly with toddler LAZ (regression coefficient = -0.15, 95% CI -0.28 to -0.05). Poorer quality of marital relationship, mothers' experiences of childhood abuse and <30 days dedicated post-partum care were associated indirectly with lower toddler LAZ via maternal CMD.

CONCLUSIONS
Maternal post-natal CMD are associated with child growth measured by LAZ in this resource-constrained setting. Social adversities affect child growth indirectly through increasing the risk of maternal CMD. Interventions to reduce stunting in low-income settings may need to address maternal CMD and social adversities in order to improve impact.


Nine strains of herpetomonads have been isolated in pure culture from eight varieties of insects, and three strains from two species of plants. Four of the cultures were derived from latex-feeding insects (Oncopeltus fasciatus, Oncopeltus sp. ?, Lygaeus kalmii) and three from latex plants (Asclepias syriaca, Asclepias nivea), two from mosquitoes (Culex pipiens and Anopheles quadrimaculatus), one from the house fly (Musca domestica), and two from bluebottle flies. In addition impure cultures have been obtained from Oncopeltus cingulifer and from its plant host, Asclepias curassavica. The flagellates cultivated, all of which belong to the genus Herpetomonas, have been identified chiefly by their biological relationships, which will be described in detail in Part II of this report. The seven strains from latex-feeding insects and latex plants represent two distinct species, which have been designated H. oncopelti and H. lygaegorum. The two strains from mosquitoes proved to be the same organism and have been called Herpetomonas culicidarum. The culture obtained from Musca domestica contained larger individuals than those of any other strain, and the organism is morphologically distinct from either of the Calliphora strains. None of the fly flagellates cultivated could be identified with the. species H. muscae domesticae or H. calliphorae, and hence they have been given new names, Herpetomonas muscidarum, H. media, and H. parva. Blood agar plates were used for initial cultivation of the strains from insects and the semisolid leptospira medium for isolation of the plant flagellates. A number of the strains were purified by plating on acid blood agar, a procedure which reduces considerably the growth of bacterial contaminants. The Barber technique was utilized for isolation of the flagellates from flies, because of the very large number of bacteria found with them in these insects, and, in one or two instances, for the purification of impure cultures. Once they have been obtained in culture, all the strains grow well on leptospira medium, as well as on blood slants. Growth takes place both at 26 degrees C. and at 37 degrees . The morphology of the organisms is considerably modified by cultivation. This is especially true of the plant flagellates. In the latex they have ribbon-like bodies, often twisted, and comparatively short flagella; the protoplasm is clear, almost hyaline. The flagellates seen in the gut and feces of insects are usually large, slender organisms, with flagella as long as or even longer than the body, which contains numerous volutin granules in the cytoplasm. In cultures under parallel conditions the flagellates from both these sources become shorter and thicker, the plant forms no longer appear flat and ribbon-like, and in general the organisms approach one another in morphological features. Even in the case of the least modified insect flagellates, i.e. those from flies, there is never exact correspondence between the natural and the cultivated forms. The morphological features of the cultivated flagellates vary according to the medium on which the organisms are grown and the age of the culture. The flagellates grown on the surface of blood slants are pyriform, with truncated anterior portion, and short flagellum; in the condensation water, however, the individuals are elongated and have long active flagella. On the leptospira medium the slender active forms with long flagella predominate. In the presence of fermentable carbohydrate, or in medium containing considerable acid, peculiar bifurcated or multifurcated individuals are seen. Similar forms have been seen under natural conditions. Cultures of Leishmania behave in the same way under the conditions described. There is a striking difference in rapidity of growth between the organisms isolated by us and the leishmanias, H. ctenocephali, and T. rotatorium. While the stock cultures of the group first mentioned multiply rapidly at 37 degrees C., growth becoming visible within 24 hours, the latter group grow scarcely at all at 37 degrees and only slowly at 25 degrees , 1 to 2 weeks being required for growth to become macroscopically demonstrable. While the flagellum of the leishmanias, as also of H. ctenocephali, is long, serpentine in its movements, and heavy, having the appearance of being enveloped by a sheath throughout its entire length, that of the recently isolated strains is thin, less flexible, and without the sheathlike appearance. The only exceptions to this rule are the flagellates from Musca domestica and Calliphora No. 1, which have a long flagellum not unlike that of the leishmanias. As the foregoing observations indicate, morphological differentiation of the flagellates studied, while not impossible, is subject to error by reason of the variations due to age and cultural conditions. The flagellates of the latex-feeding insects, the plants, the flies, and the mosquitoes can readily be distinguished from Leishmania by their rapid growth at 37 degrees C., but their differentiation from one another is possible only by serological and fermentation reactions.


We revisit the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model in the presence of labour market frictions a la Mortensen-Pissarides. Relaxing the assumption of the one-worker- one-firm matching rule, we show that the Stolper-Samuelson theorem and the Rybczynski theorem may not hold in specific circumstances. We also demonstrate that the Factor Price Equalization theorem is valid only for capital and unemployed labour across countries, but not for employed labour. In equilibrium, trade patterns are determined by countries' factor endowments and relative factor intensities in sectors (independent of factor intensities in production). Finally, our results suggest an additional explanation for the 'missing trade' phenomenon. JEL classification: F 16, J64


The red giant L2 Pup started a dimming event in 1994, which is considered to be caused by the ejection of dust clouds. We present near-IR aperture-synthesis imaging of L2 Pup achieved by combining data from VLT/NACO speckle observations and long-baseline interferometric observations with the AMBER instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). We also extracted an 8.7 micron image from the mid-IR VLTI instrument MIDI. Our aim is to spatially resolve the innermost region of the circumstellar environment. The diffraction-limited image at 2.27 micron obtained by bispectrum speckle interferometry with NACO with a spatial resolution of 57 mas shows an elongated component. The aperture-synthesis imaging combining the NACO speckle data and AMBER data (2.2--2.29 micron) with a spatial resolution of 5.6x7.3 mas further resolves not only this elongated component, but also the central star. The reconstructed image reveals that the elongated component is a nearly edge-on disk with a size of ~180x50 mas lying in the E-W direction, and furthermore, that the southern hemisphere of the central star is severely obscured by the equatorial dust lane of the disk. The angular size of the disk is consistent with the distance that the dust clouds that were ejected at the onset of the dimming event should have traveled by the time of our observations, if we assume that the dust clouds moved radially. This implies that the formation of the disk may be responsible for the dimming event. The 8.7 micron image with a spatial resolution of 220 mas extracted from the MIDI data taken in 2004 (seven years before the AMBER and NACO observations) shows an approximately spherical envelope without a signature of the disk. This suggests that the mass loss before the dimming event may have been spherical.


The correct depiction of atmospheric blocking still poses a key challenge for current numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models. This study evaluates the representation of blocking in the new global ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic NWP and climate model ICON and links model mean state biases to observed blocking deviations. Blocking is identified using both an anomaly and a flow reversal approach in an eight member ensemble of 15-year AMIP-type ICON simulations and verified against ERA Interim reanalyses. Either approach demonstrates a good representation of annual blocking frequencies in ICON. Deviations emerge when considering individual seasons. In the anomaly framework, enhanced blocking occurrence in the mid-latitude Pacific domain during winter and spring and a marked underestimation of blocking in the Euro-Atlantic region are found during summer. Moreover, this approach indicates a general underestimation of blocking at higher latitudes. The flow reversal index reveals the often reported underestimation of blocking in the Euro-Atlantic region during winter. Furthermore, increased blocking activity in the Pacific and Greenland region during spring and decreased blocking occurrence at high latitudes in summer are found. Focusing on the anomaly approach, we assess how the model mean state influences blocking identification. A systematically higher tropopause, forced by a cold bias in the lower stratosphere, reduces diagnosed blocking frequencies at higher latitudes especially during summer. This goes along with a reduction in blocking size, duration, and intensity. While confirming an overall good representation of blocking in ICON, this study demonstrates how mean state biases can crucially affect the identification of blocking and that blocking deviations have to be interpreted with caution as they are highly dependent on the exact diagnostic used.


This paper analyses the asymptotic and finite sample implications of different types of nonstationary behavior among the dependent and explanatory variables in a linear spurious regression model. We study cases when the nonstationarity in the dependent and explanatory variables is deterministic as well as stochastic. In particular, we derive the order in probability of the t-statistic in a linear regression equation under a variety of empirically relevant data generation processes, and show that the spurious regression phenomenon is present in all cases considered, when at least one of the variables behaves in a nonstationary way. Simulation experiments confirm our asymptotic results.


Background: Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) can be a severe and debilitating disease associated with significant morbidity, complete anosmia, sinus pressure, and asthma exacerbations. Eosinophils play a role in the majority (85%) of patients. Benralizumab, an afucosylated monoclonal antibody directed against the IL-5 receptor has powerful apoptotic effects on eosinophils. Objective: We sought to investigate the therapeutic benefit of inhibiting the IL-5 receptor using benralizumab to treat severe nasal polyposis. Methods: Twenty-four patients (n = 24) with severe NP (grade 5 or more out of 8) with elevated eosinophils and a history of previous polypectomy were randomized in a double-blind fashion to receive 30mg benralizumab SC or placebo. Endoscopic NP score was assessed at baseline and at treatment week 20. CT scan, SNOT-22 survey, and UPSIT smell test score changes were also evaluated from baseline. Results: Compared to baseline, 8 out 12 patients receiving benralizumab had a significantly improved NP score versus 4 out of 12 placebo. 5 of 12 benralizumab treated patients had improvements in all major outcomes (polyp score, CT, SNOT-22 and smell test) versus 2 out of 12 placebo. The ratio of blood eosinophil count to allergen skin test positivity correlated with polyp reduction. Conclusion: Compared to baseline, benralizumab achieved a statistically significant reduction in polyp size by endoscopy and CT scan and was associated with both less symptoms and improved sensation of smell for most patients (10 of 12).


In Translation Theory and the Old Testament in Matthew, Woojin Chung employs a rigorous method of Skopos theory to examine Matthew's citation technique in his infancy narrative and locates the specific purpose of his use of Scripture.


The GH/insulin-like growth factor-I (GH/IGF-I) axis is known to be involved in aging of physiological functions. Recent studies indicate that the GH/IGF-I axis may be associated with cognitive functioning. The aim of the present study was to determine whether the age-related decline in circulating levels of IGF-I, as an index of anabolic status, is associated with cognitive functions that are known to decline with aging, but not with cognitive functions not sensitive to aging. Twenty five healthy older men with well-preserved functional ability participated in the study. We also administered neuropsychological tests of general knowledge, vocabulary, basic visual perception, reading ability, visuoconstructive ability, perceptual-motor speed, mental tracking, and verbal long-term memory. Performance on the last four tests decline with aging, whereas the first four of these tests have been shown not to be sensitive to cognitive aging. Mean age of the subjects was 69.1 +/- 3.4 (SD) yr (range 65-76 yr), their mean body mass index was 27.0 +/- 2.4 kg/m2, and their mean IGF-I level was 122 ng/mL (range: 50-220). We found IGF-I levels to be significantly associated with the performances (controlled for education) on the Digit Symbol Substitution test (r = 0.52, P = 0.009) and the Concept Shifting Task (r = -0.55, P = 0.005), which measure perceptual-motor and mental processing speed. Subjects with higher IGF-I levels performed better on these tests, performance on which is known to decline with aging. In conclusion, the results of this study support the hypothesis that circulating IGF-I may play a role in the age-related reduction of certain cognitive functions, specifically speed of information processing.


This study investigated two main research questions: first, could countertransference manifestations, operationalized as counsellor over-involvement and under-involvement, be reliably identified by independent judges observing videotapes of actual therapy sessions; and second, was there evidence to support the contention that counsellor over-involvement and under-involvement were valid indicators of countertransference behaviour. A multiple case study research design was employed to research this phenomenon. In order to respond to the second research question, this study had to determine whether the first research question could be answered with confidence. Thus, a methodology was employed for the first research question that maximized the reliability of measuring counsellor over-involvement and under-involvement. A generalizability (G) study was conducted to assess the dependability o f the behavioural measure of countertransference. The G study helped to design the decision (D) study (e.g., how many counsellor-client dyads, sessions, and judges would be needed to obtain a reliable measure o f counsellor over-involvement and under-involvement). The D study included two counsellor-client dyads across eight therapy sessions. Three judges used videotapes and transcriptions o f the sessions to rate each counsellor response for over-involvement and under-involvement using a 7-point Likert scale (i.e., 3 = under-involved; -2 = somewhat under-involved; -1 = possibly under-involved; 0 = empathically involved; +1 = possibly over-involved; +2 = somewhat over-involved; +3 = over-involved). This study confirmed that counsellor over-involvement and underinvolvement could be reliably observed by independent judges. The average intra-class correlation across eight therapy sessions was .76 for Counsellor One and .79 for Counsellor Two. A moving averages graphing procedure was used to identify episodes where each counsellor's over or under-involved response departed from their individual baseline, using sessions with reliability coefficients greater than .75. These episodes were used as the focus for research question two, investigating indicators of countertransference. A Qualitative (Q) study was conducted to respond to the second research question. Data was collected from multiple information sources (e.g., episodes of over and under-involvement from session transcripts, counsellor session notes, supervision notes, and counsellor and supervisors ratings). These data were then analyzed qualitatively by triangulating the data and identifying themes. The results suggested that counsellor over-involvement and under-involvement are interpretable as valid indicators o f countertransference behaviour.


This paper explores the discussion on biofuels within the fourth World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Barcelona. The focus on energy and biofuels at the WCC was a change from previous Congresses, highlighting a new negotiation of conservation and development trade-offs within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Resolutions and IUCN programmes from the 2000 WCC onwards built on one another to reframe energy policy in terms of sustainable use, clean energy technologies, and energy access. With this structure in place, an informal group of key actors at the 2008 WCC were able to dominate the biofuels discourse to advance international sustainability standards for biofuels production. Procedural ambiguities in the resolution contact group made this community of practice, largely formed around the Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels, especially important. The negotiation of biofuels policies, and energy policy in general, serves as an example of a large-scale trade-off that will directly affect local conservation practice.


The relation between ethnicity and religion has had a troubled history in the People's Republic of China. Conflating religious practice with ethnic culture is considered to carry the risk of breeding "splittism" – especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. While in the post-Mao era the outright hostility against religion has given way to a religious revival, keeping religion and (nationality) politics separate has remained a major concern for the Chinese Communist Party. Religion is supposed to be a private matter that does not interfere with politics. Against this backdrop, a recent phenomenon in the Tibet Autonomous Region is all the more remarkable: the (re-)fusion of ethnicity and religion under the label of cultural heritage and its protection. This paper approaches this officially endorsed re-fusion ethno-graphically and examines its wider implications. I argue that endorsing religion as an attribute of Tibetan heritage corresponds to the concept of defining public spaces and events in which religious practice is legitimate and expected. Simultaneously, religious practices outside these dedicated spaces and events become even more problematic, leading to everyday Buddhist practices, such as circumambulation, being seen as (and performed as) political acts.


Cardiac syndrome X defines patients with typical anginal chest pain, a positive exercise ECG stress test and angiographically normal coronary arteries. Aim of this study was to evaluate the role of myocardial perfusion SPECT with dipyridamole stress in the diagnosis of cardiac syndrome X. Patients, methods: 68 patients with syndrome X aged 32 to 60 years were subjected to myocardial imaging using 99mTc-MIBI according to the two-days protocol: at rest and after dipyridamole infusion. Semiquantitative evaluation of the images was based on the assessment of 99mTc-MIBI uptake in 17 myocardial segments using a 5-points scale (0 point – normal uptake, 4 points – no uptake). Scores obtained in each segment were summed up, constituting the summed rest score (SRS) and summed stress score (SSS). Results: Mean SRS was 7.9 ± 4.8 and mean SSS was 7.2 ± 4.4 (non-significant difference). Individual comparison of SRS and SSS values revealed three patterns of scintigraphic images: 1) in 25 patients (36.8%), a paradoxical improvement of perfusion at stress images was found, 2) in 23 patients (33.8%), the myocardial perfusion deteriorated after dipyridamole, 3) in 20 patients (29.4%), no significant change of the myocardial perfusion between rest and stress images occurred. Conclusions: In cardiac syndrome X, myocardial SPECT with dipyridamole stress shows different patterns of myocardial perfusion that reflects heterogeneity of this pathology.


This study investigates observed interannual changes in the Northern winter stratosphere with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) using the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/ National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis data for 56 years. We focus on changes in occurrence of major stratospheric sudden warmings (MSSWs) as well as in seasonal mean states. Our results reveal complex changes in the MSSW probability with both ENSO and QBO as in the seasonal mean states. However, statistically significant changes at the 90 % confidence level are obtained only for some combinations of ENSO and QBO conditions reflecting the limitation of the data period. When the QBO is in a westerly phase, the MSSW probability increases with the ENSO sea-surface temperature condition in the eastern equatorial Pacific, i.e., from ENSO cold (La Niña), through neutral, to warm (El Niño) years. When the QBO is in an easterly phase, on the other hand, the probability significantly increases for La Niña years than for neutral years, whereas the probability is not significantly different between neutral and El Niño years. A characteristic feature is the high MSSW probability for the La Niña and QBO easterly winters, which is consistent with strengthened stationary wave with zonal wavenumber 1 compared to the climatology. These results suggest the importance of taking into account both ENSO and QBO factors, when one examines the frequency of MSSWs in the Northern winter stratosphere.


In 31 patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus, morphological examinations of the central and peripheral nervous system were carried out. In the nervous system, changes of the connective tissue, the vessels and the myelin membranes of the nervous fibres were discovered. Characteristic of the systemic lupus erythematosus were nuclear pathology and appearance of micronecroses in the cerebral tissue. The most pronounced changes in the nervous system were noted in 14 cases of autoimmune lupus crises. In these cases, the disease was distinguished for a high clinical and immunological activity.


The Albertine Rift corresponds to the northern section of the western branch of the East African Rift System which runs over a distance of about 2100 m from Lake Albert in the north to Lake Malawi in the south. Lake Albert basin is considered as a classical half-graben oriented NNW-SSW, with a major northeasterly bounding fault, the Bunia fault system, located along the western shoreline. Pre-rift stage has started around 12 Ma while major rifting episode is assumed to begin around 8 Ma (Ebinger, 1989; Pickford & al., 1993). Referring to Van Damme and Pickford (2003), a palaeo-lake (Lake Obweruka) existed from 7.5 to 2.5 Ma and covered the entire area of the Albertine Rift during of that period. This study attempts to characterize the tectono-sedimentary evolution of the rift through time by restoring (1) the kinetic of vertical movements and the subsidence evolution, (2) the geometry and paleoenvironments variations of the sedimentary infilling and (3) the geomorphological evolution and associated deformations. Compilation of field vertical sections and correlations with sub-surface data led to highlight three majors lacustrine flooding events with a maximum occuring between 7 and 8,5 Ma. Comparison with Cenozoic vegetation evolution in tropical Africa (Bonnefille, 2010) confirmed the ages based on molluscs and vertebrates fossils scales (Gautier, 1970; Pickford et al., 1993; Van Damme and Pickford, 2003). Seismic interpretations will help to characterize the 3D geometry of the rift and the relationship between tectonic and sedimentation. Coupled with these data, identification and characterization of paleo-surfaces allow us to propose a first model of geomorphological evolution which highlights successive weathering and erosional periods since 50 Ma. Around 3 Ma, uplift of a metamorphic basement block (the Ruwenzori Mountains) led to the tearing up of the paleo-lake Obweruka ant to the creation of two local base levels: the Albert and Edward lakes. We assume that present-day scarp is related to a recent final uplift stage causing a regional tilting of the basins between 14 and 12 Ka (Ebinger, 1989; Pickford et al., 1993). It results a reversal of the flow directions in the whole western Uganda and the formation of Lake Victoria.


Objectives : The Objectives of this study is to determine the outcome and effectiveness of Ultra-mini percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) for treating low-volume renal stone without placement of any stent and nephrostomy tube as a supplement to the conventional PCNL.
Material and methods: The Patients who underwent ultra-mini PCNL bwtween July 2018 to December 2018. were studied.This was a prospective study of 14 patients.This study was carried out in urology centre of CMH Dhaka.Before the study ethical clearance was taken from hospital ethical committee. All these patients had their first-line treatment. The patients had calculus limited to either a single calyx or just extending to the pelvis and the stone size was less than 1.5 cm in its maximal dimension. The mean stone size was 10.8+_4.2(5-15mm). An 6 Fr operating nephroscope was used. The patients were placed in prone position. The stones were fragmented using Holmium-YAG laser. Various surgical outcomes including duration of the surgery, stone-free rate and any subsequent complications-if any-were analyzed.The stone free rate was assessed on the 1st day and at three month after surgery by X-ray KUB and ultrasonography.
Results: The study includes a series of 14 patients (one patient treated with bilateral renal stone disease). The mean age of the patients was 39.07 years and body mass index was 25.5 kg/m2. Intrarenal stone location was as follows: lower calyx, n=7; middle calyx, n=3, upper calyx, n=1, and pelvis, n=3. Median operative time was 52.66 min (range: 40–65) and the stone-free rate was 93.3% at first day and 97% after three month follow up.. Only one patient had residual fragments and needed subsequent extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy.
Conclusion: Ultra-mini PCNL in prone position with a complete tubeless approach for renal stone disease is a safe method for treating low-volume stone disease. A long term large scale multicentre study may be required to validate this technique.
Bangladesh J. Urol. 2021; 24(2): 118-123


A haze of fractal particles may account for the warm temperatures that led to the wet conditions of the early Earth. In 1972, Carl Sagan and George Mullen noted the earlier discovery that our Sun should have been around 30% less luminous 4.5 billion years ago, and examined the consequences for primordial Earth (1). Main-sequence stars like the Sun burn hydrogen to helium, and as they do the star becomes more luminous. Sagan and Mullen showed that this solar evolution meant that Earth's current 33° of greenhouse warming, primarily from water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2), could not have kept Earth's average surface temperatures above freezing prior to around 2 billion years ago (see the figure). The abundant evidence for liquid water at Earth's surface before that date, they argued, constitutes what is now called the "early faint Sun paradox."


One of the artifacts produced during the cutting of thin sections for electron microscopy is a shortening of the section in the direction of knife travel. Normally, a thin section cut with a glass knife is shortened 30 to 50 per cent of its expected length 1 (1). Floating the sections on a dilute solvent (10 per cent acetone is commonly used) at room temperature does very little to expand the compressed section. Higher concentrations of solvent in the fluid filling the collecting trough are more effective, but unfortunately, the concentrations necessary for removing the shortening artifact can also remove a large enough portion of the embedding material to affect seriously the electron microscopic appearance of the sections. One of us (1) has previously discussed the problem of compression of thin sections and has described a method of considerably reducing the artifact by softening the floating sections with heat. A serious and admitted disadvantage of this method is the production of thermal changes in the microtome which interfere with further sectioning. The present paper describes a simple method for spreading sections which does not have this disadvantage. We have found that treatment of the floating sections with solvent mpor is very effective in spreading the sections while producing no noticeable removal of embedding material. The mechanism of the action is apparently a softening of the sections by the solvent, followed by a spreading under the influence of surface tension forces. Since the sections are not in direct contact with solvent in a liquid phase, there is no solvent extraction of the section. A convenient method consists of dipping an instrument, such as a needle, a glass rod, or a fine camel's hair brush into xylene and slowly bringing the instrument dose to, but not in contact ~ h , the sections. The effect is very rapid and dramatic; it consists of an expansion of the ribbon parallel to the direction of cutting. Most of the compression artifact is eliminated, the section length becoming


THE PAPERS PRESENTED can be divided into two broad subject areas: the study of pyroxenes in plutonic rocks as a means of tracing the history of magma input and crystallization within a magma chamber; and the study of relict pyroxenes in altered volcanic rocks as a means of 'seeing through' the effects of chemical alteration and thus of identifying any important magmatic characteristics. The first was covered by studies on the following three plutonic bodies: Fongen–Hyllingen complex in Norway (Wilson et al), the Bushveld complex (Buchanan) and the Freetown complex, Sierra Leone (Wells & Bowles). Two important points of caution emerged from these studies. Buchanan examined the relative merits of using focused and defocused beams to probe pyroxenes and found that focused beams only gave analyses representative of the pyroxene as a whole provided exsolution lamellae were below a critical size. Wells & Bowles questioned the generally-held assumption that all layered textures in intrusive bodies have an igneous origin by providing convincing evidence of pyroxenes which grew by a late-stage autometamorphic process. The implications of pyroxene studies on metabasalts was discussed by Nisbet & Pearce and by Rowbotham & Bevins. This type of application is still in its infancy but it was apparent that it has the potential to provide useful information on the magmatic character of rocks too altered for conventional studies. To be fully effective, more information is needed on the relationship between pyroxene composition and the temperature, composition and cooling history of its host magma. Nevertheless,


Using U.S. data from 1960 to 2007 this empirical note re-examines the semi-endogenous and Schumpeterian R&D growth models presented by Ha and Howitt (2007) and Madsen (2008). The empirical results support the Schumpeterian R&D growth model. Specifically, in the long-run increases in R&D expenditures are necessary to counteract lower R&D productiv-ity due to the presence of product proliferation. Furthermore, the study provides a frame-work for further investigation of R&D growth models at the regional level.


The simultaneous delivery of hyperthermia and ionizing radiation has the potential to improve clinical outcome. To this purpose, a scanning ultrasound reflector-linear array system (SURLAS) with the ability both to conform power to superficial volumes and to operate concomitantly with medical linear accelerators is currently under development. In this purpose-specific design, the ultrasound waves generated by a linear array are directed toward a scanning reflector which in turn deflects the waves toward the target. In previous experiments, the technical feasibility of this design was demonstrated. Here, the authors are concerned with the minimization of a key design parameter, namely, the array element size, in order to minimize the amount of attenuating/scattering water-equivalent medium that a photon or a electron beam passes through before entering the target. First, the SURLAS design is described. Second, an acoustic model to compute power deposition patterns is presented. This model is coupled to a bioheat transfer model for computation of temperature fields. Third, an analysis is performed to determine the minimum array element size for three target categories. Finally, acoustic fields and temperature distributions induced by the SURLAS for the three target categories are presented. The analysis and simulations show that the SURLAS has the potential to induce uniform temperature distributions in large superficial volumes with small enough elements to allow simultaneous delivery with electron beam therapy.