This thesis explores constructions of masculinity, deviancy and educational failure through an examination of policy and the discursive accounts provided by teenage boys, all of whom had been excluded from school, and educational practitioners working with such boys. This topic is of interest because the exclusion of boys with behavioural problems has been of significant concern to schools and policy makers for some time. Although the numbers of exclusions has reduced recently it remains a significant social justice issue because permanent school exclusion is directly related to deviancy and unemployment and disproportionally affects those who are already disadvantaged, such as the poor working-class and those with special Educational Needs.

This thesis contributes to understanding how boys' peer interactions contribute towards perpetuating particular myths about masculine behaviour and its domination over females and alternative masculinities. It shows how some boys through drawing on discourses of hegemonic masculinity and gender binary asymmetries construct themselves in ways that contribute towards school confrontation. The voices of practitioners show how they contribute towards tensions and how education policy is considered as prohibiting staff from working effectively with some boys.

Consideration was given to literature discussing the social construction of parenting, childhood, and children's "needs". Literature regarding the persistence of the role model discourse as both a cause and solution to boys' problem behaviours in school is also investigated. Literature examining hegemonic masculinities was drawn on to further understand how it is performed and enforced through peer interaction, resulting in problematic behaviours which dominate particular constructions of masculinity.

The theoretical framework used for this study draws on the work of Foucault (1970, 1977, 1980) who theorised that people construct truth through the dominant discourses which they draw on. It also explains how and why power is afforded to one discourse at the expense of another. The methodology adopted for this research utilizes this theoretical framework. 35 narrative interviews were undertaken and examined using discourse analysis as discussed by Gee (2011) and Taylor (2001). The data collected was contrasted with literature to further understand the discourses respondents employed in their discursive constructions.

This thesis exposes the challenges that boys and practitioners face as they negotiate the dominant masculine discourses at large in both school and home. It also shows that respondents' understandings of masculinity rely on outmoded discourses of masculinity, essentialist gender binaries and constructions of childhood, which contribute towards problem behaviours in school. Tensions in school are also exacerbated by policy discourse and practitioners' constructions of childhood. However, these normative discourses are challenged by respondents' acknowledgment of alternative versions of masculinity and the coexistence of gender heteroglossia.


This article presents an analysis of the first phase in Peter Handke's work. It focuses on a theoretical concept developed by Handke to highlight his filmic sentence. Upon analysis of several of his works, it appears that this aesthetic sensibility pervaded his theater, his novels, his debut as a filmmaker and the scripts he wrote in collaboration with Wim Wenders. As an interpretative summary of his work, the paper defends the existence of a link between the practice of ekphrasis and the emergence of an intermedial dramaturgy, in which the writing gesture needs to reinvent itself between languages borders, media, new technologies and materialities.


ProModel is a powerful yet easy-to-use simulation tool for modeling all types of manufacturing systems ranging from small job shops and machining cells to large mass production and flexible manufacturing systems. ProModel is a Windows based system with an intuitive graphical interface and object-oriented modeling constructs that eliminate the need for programming. It combines the flexibility of a general purpose simulation language with the convenience of a data-driven simulator. This tutorial provides an overview of ProModel and presents its modeling and analysis capabilities.


The center-surround organization of the receptive fields (RFs) of retinal ganglion cells highlights the presence of local contrast in visual stimuli. As RF of thalamic relay cells follow the same basic functional organization, it is often assumed that they contribute very little to alter the retinal output. However, in many species, thalamic relay cells largely outnumber their retinal inputs, which diverge to contact simultaneously several units at thalamic level. This gain in cell population as well as retinothalamic convergence opens the door to question how information about contrast is transformed at the thalamic stage. Here, we address this question using a realistic dynamic model of the retinothalamic circuit. Our results show that different components of the thalamic RF might implement filters that are analogous to two types of well-known image processing techniques to preserve the quality of a higher resolution version of the image on its way to the primary visual cortex.


Aspect mining tries to identify crosscutting concerns in legacy systems and thus supports the refactoring into an aspect-oriented design. We briefly introduce DynAMiT, a dynamic aspect mining tool that detects crosscutting concerns based on tracing method executions. While the approach is generally fairly precise, further analysis revealed that some false positives were systematically caused by dynamic binding. Furthermore, some aspect candidates were blurred or not detected due to not-sufficient tracing mechanisms of method executions when using AspectJ's execution pointcuts for the trace generation. We enhanced the mining capabilities of DynAMiT by taking additional static type information into account and generating the traces using call pointcuts instead. In an initial case study with AnChoVis, a 1300 LOC Java program, the number of mined aspect candidates increased by a factor of three, while the number of false positives remained zero.


Scheduling can be defined as the allocation of resources over time to perform a collection of tasks. It is a decision making process that has a goal to optimize one or more than one objective functions. In manufacturing, the purpose of scheduling is to minimize the production time and costs, by telling a production facility what to make, when, with which staff, and on which equipment. Production scheduling aims to maximize the efficiency of the operation and reduce costs. Along with this paper, we solve scheduling in manufacturing problem using problem-solving method (PSM). We use knowledge modeling approach namely as ontology to model scheduling and PSM. Ontology can be seen as information model that explicitly describes the various entities and abstractions that exist in a scheduling and problem-solving, along with their properties. While Problem-solving Method (PSM) is provides the vocabulary necessary to characterize the search based problem-solving behavior of the scheduling task.


Nanopore-based devices provide the ability to detect, analyze and manipulate molecules by monitoring changes in ionic current and sieving molecules dissolved in an electrolyte. While devices with single nanopores can be used as molecular sensors and analyzers, including as a possible high-throughput DNA sequencer, devices with multiple nanopores (nanoporous devices) can be used to filter out ions from solutions, with possible use in water desalination. Sensitivity and molecular flux can be enhanced by using two-dimensional (2D) materials, like graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), as the nanopore membrane. However, these devices face challenges yet to be solved, including (a) fast DNA translocation velocity through 2D nanopores that limits temporal resolution required to achieve DNA sequencing, and (b) sensitive fabrication techniques that prevents large-scale commercialization of such devices. Additionally, TMD nanoporous membranes have been predicted to possess higher permeability of water molecules than their graphene counterparts, but no related experiments have been presented. In this dissertation, we explore not only ways to tackle the stated limitations, but also perform ion selectivity measurements through ion-irradiated TMD nanoporous devices. First, we investigate ionic flow and associated leakage currents in voltage-gated graphene nanopores predicted to help slow down DNA translocation velocity. We extract important parameters that can help reduce leakage currents while enhancing the signal strength and gating control. Next, we report DNA detection with high sensitivity through monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS2) nanopores fabricated via electron-beam drilling and observe laser irradiation induced expansion of the pore, which we are able to control with nanometer precision. Follow-up experiments are performed, wherein we characterize this technique by irradiating intact suspended WS2 membranes to fabricate nanoporous membranes and measure dependence of the induced defect sizes and density on laser power density. This process can be finetuned in future studies to enable facile creation of both nanopores and nanoporous devices based on TMDs. Additionally, we study and calibrate sub-nm defect formation in suspended molybdenum disulfide membranes using ion-beam irradiation. Ionic current characterization of the devices exhibits selective ionic transport, thus laying experimental foundation for future studies on TMD-based nanoporous devices for water desalination. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Electrical & Systems Engineering This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2722 First Advisor Marija Drndic


Nation states often create legislative schemes regulating services industries in order to protect fundamental rights such as human life, economic security, or human security. World Trade Organization members are constrained in their creation of such regulatory schemes by their obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services ('GATS'). WTO members raised concerns about such constraints even before the creation of GATS. As a result, GATS contains clauses specifically designed to allow members enough regulatory latitude to protect important domestic social interests, such as fundamental rights, while simultaneously liberalising trade in services. WTO jurisprudence interpreting these clauses, however, has called the robustness of this reserved power into question. Using the European Union's attempt to protect the fundamental right to privacy through a WTO-compliant privacy directive as a case study, this article highlights important aspects of international trade law that policymakers should take into consideration when deciding how to protect fundamental rights through domestic regulation of trade in services.


This proceedings is a compilation of 30 papers that were presented at the regional meetings of the Forest and Conservation Nursery Associations in the United States in 2004. The joint meeting of the Southern Forest Nursery Association and the Northeastern Forest and Conservation Nursery Association occurred July 12 to 15 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. The meeting was hosted by the South Carolina Forestry Commission, Taylor Nursery. In addition to technical sessions, tours of the Baucom Containerized Nursery and Mead/Westvaco Nursery were included. The Western Forest and Conservation Nursery Association meeting was held at the Red Lion Inn in Medford, Oregon, July 26 to 29. The meeting was hosted by the USDA Forest Service, J Herbert Stone Nursery. Morning technical sessions were followed by field trips to the J Herbert Stone Nursery and to restoration outplantings on the Timbered Rock Fire of 2002 in southern Oregon. Subject matter for both sessions included nursery history, conifer and hardwood nursery culturing, greenhouse management, fertilization, pest management, restoration, and native species propagation.Individual papers from this publication


Virtual avatars are widely used for collaborating in virtual environments. Yet, often these avatars lack expressiveness to determine a state of mind. Prior work has demonstrated effective usage of determining emotions and animated lip movement through analyzing mere audio tracks of spoken words. To provide this information on a virtual avatar, we created a natural audio data set consisting of 17 audio files from which we then extracted the underlying emotion and lip movement. To conduct a pilot study, we developed a prototypical system that displays the extracted visual parameters and then maps them on a virtual avatar while playing the corresponding audio file. We tested the system with 5 participants in two conditions: (i) while seeing the virtual avatar only an audio file was played. (ii) In addition to the audio file, the extracted facial visual parameters were displayed on the virtual avatar. Our results suggest the validity of using additional visual parameters in the avatars' face as it helps to determine emotions. We conclude with a brief discussion on the outcomes and their implications on future work.


Estimating subsurface seismic properties is an important topic in civil engineering, oil and gas exploration, and global seismology. We have developed an application of 2D elastic waveform inversion with an active-source on-shore data set, as is typically acquired in exploration seismology on land. The maximum offset is limited to 12 km, and the lowest available frequency is 5 Hz. In such a context, surface waves are generally treated as noise and are removed as a part of data processing. In contrast to the conventional approach, our workflow starts by inverting surface waves to constrain shallow parts of the shear wavespeed model. To mitigate cycle skipping, frequency- and offset-continuation approaches are used. To accurately take into account free-surface effects (and irregular topography), a spectral-element-based wave propagation solver is used for forward modeling. To reduce amplitude influences, a normalized crosscorrelation (NC) objective function is used in conjunction with systematic updates of the source wavelet during the inversion process. As the inversion proceeds, body waves are gradually incorporated in the process. At the final stage, surface and body waves are inverted together using the entire offset range over the band between 5 and 15 Hz. The inverted models include high-resolution features in the first 500 m of compressional and shear wavespeeds, with some model updates down to 4.0 km in the first parameter. The inversion results confirmed by well-log information, indicate a better fit of compressional to shear wavespeeds ratios compared with the initial model. The final data fit is also noticeably improved compared to the initial one. Although our results confirm previous studies demonstrating that an NC norm combined with a source time function correction can partly stabilize purely elastic inversions of viscoelastic data, we believe that including an attenuation depth model in the forward simulation gives better results.


A gradual increase in diagnosed cases of lymphoma has led to greater dissemination of relevant information and has simultaneously revealed a need to improve understanding of the pathology. The prevalence of lymphomas involves many factors that vary regionally, with regional differences in prognosis indeed playing a role in therapeutic decisions. This observational study aimed to retrospectively evaluate the prevalence of lymphoma subtypes diagnosed between 2011 and 2015 at the Napoleao Laureano Hospital, the largest hematology facility in Paraiba, northeastern Brazil and a state reference for hematological oncology. Immunohistochemistry findings and associated prognostic variables were analyzed, including calculation of prognostic indexes such as the international prognostic index (IPI), age adjusted IPI, National Comprehensive Cancer Network IPI (NCCN-IPI), mantle cell lymphoma IPI (MIPI) and follicular lymphoma IPI (FLIPI). The most noteworthy findings include the large number of young people diagnosed with aggressive disease, with poor prognostic indexes but low mortality rates, confirming the technical strength of the institution as reflected in the improved prognosis associated with the disease. The prevalence of Hodgkin lymphoma was found to be high, contradicting a considerable part of the international literature but in agreement with some studies conducted with pediatric populations in Brazil. In addition, the most prevalent subtypes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, already well discussed in the international literature, were also represented in the present sample. All cases of lymphoma registered at this center were catalogued, with their prognoses and anatomopathological and immunohistochemical diagnoses being analyzed, consequently providing a better database for this geographical region of Brazil.


Since the world is full of indeterminacy, the neutrosophics found their place into contemporary research. We now introduce for the first time the notions of neutrosophic measure and neutrosophic integral.Neutrosophic Science means development and applications of neutrosophic logic/set/measure/integral/ probability etc. and their applications in any field. It is possible to define the neutrosophic measure and consequently the neutrosophic integral and neutrosophic probability in many ways, because there are various types of indeterminacies, depending on the problem we need to solve. Indeterminacy is different from randomness.Indeterminacy can be caused by physical space materials and type of construction, by items involved in the space, or by other factors. Neutrosophic measure is a generalization of the classical measure for the case when the space contains some indeterminacy. Neutrosophic Integral is defined on neutrosophic measure. Simple examples of neutrosophic integrals are given.


Semi-discretization method is applied to construct stability chart and performance contour in the parametric space for milling processes. The method creates a mapping of the system responses in a finite dimensional state space. Based on the discipline of that, the smaller the largest absolute value (μmax) of the characteristic multipliers of the mapping is, the faster the system converges to zero, minimization of μmax leads to optimal stable limit. The optimal limits are obtained by using stability chart and performance contours. Additional, a novel analytical method for selection of optimal depth of cut (axial depth of cut) is presented. An example of 2-DOF down-milling model is employed to demonstrate the method. It is shown that the spindle speeds corresponding to the optimal depths of cut locate the left side of the resonant spindle speeds, and the optimal cutting parameters pair (spindle speed and depth of cut) can be used to offer high finishing accuracy in precision machining.


Recent studies suggest that copy number variations (CNVs) encompassing several genes involved in neurodevelopmental pathways are associated with a variety of neuropsychiatric phenotypes, including developmental delay (DD), mental retardation (MR), and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Here we present eight patients in a cohort of ∼1,200 patients referred for clinical array CGH testing for various neurodevelopmental phenotypes, who were identified to carry small (<1.0 Mb with the majority <500 kb) either total gene or intragenic deletions encompassing critical synaptic and other neurodevelopmental genes. The presentations of these patients included variable degrees of DD, speech problems, learning disabilities, MR, autistic‐like features, and mild non‐specific dysmorphic features. These genes belong to four functional categories, including neuronal transcription factor genes (NFIA at 1p31.3, MEF2C at 5q14.3, and CAMAT1 at 1p36.23p36.31), neuron‐specific splicing factor genes (RBFOX1 at 16p13.2p13.3), genes involved in synapse formation and maintenance (CNTNAP2 at 7q35 and LRFN5 at 14q21.2), and genes involved in neurotransmission (CHRNA7 at 15q13.3 and IL1RAPL1 at Xp21.2p21.3). Our report expands the list of neurodevelopmental genes deleted in various neurobehavioral phenotypes, expands the phenotypes caused by haploinsufficiency of previously reported critical neurodevelopmental genes, and elucidates the clinical relevance and need for careful clinical interpretation of some small CNVs <500 kb. This report also suggests that small clinically relevant deletions encompassing critical synaptic and other neurodevelopmental genes can present clinically with various neurobehavioral phenotypes, which implies the existence of overlapping neuronal pathways in the pathogenesis of these phenotypes. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The authors present Jade, a high-level parallel programming language for managing course-grain concurrency. Jade simplifies programming by providing the programmer with the abstractions of sequential execution and a shared address space. Jade programmers augment sequential, imperative programs with constructs that declare how parts of the program access data; the Jade implementation dynamically interprets this information to execute the program in parallel. This parallel execution preserves the serial semantics of the original program. Jade has been implemented as an extension to C on shared-memory multiprocessors, a message-passing machine, networks of heterogeneous workstations, and systems with special-purpose functional units. Programs written in Jade run on all of these platforms without modification.<<ETX>>


People share a big part of their lives and opinions on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The companies behind these sites do their absolute best to collect as much data as possible. This data could be used to extract opinions in many different ways.Every company, organization or public person is probably curious on what is being said about them right now. There are also areas where opinions are related to the outcome of an event. Examples of such events are presidential elections or the Eurovision Song Contest. In these events, peoples' votes will directly reflect the outcome of the elections or contests.We have developed a simplistic prototype that is able to predict the result of the Eurovision Song Contest using sentiment analysis on tweets. The prototype collects tweets about the event, performs sentiment analysis, and uses different filters to predict the ranks of the contestants. We evaluted our results with the actual voting results of the event and found a Pearson correlation of approximately 0.65.With more time and resources we believe that it is possible to create a highly accurate prediction model. It could be used in lots of different contexts. Politicians and their parties could use it to evaluate their campaigns. The press could use it to create more interesting news reports. Companies would be able to investigate their brand appreciation. A system like this could be used in many different fields.


Climate change is expected to have an impact on the geographical distribution ranges of species. Endemic species and those with a restricted geographic range may be especially vulnerable. The Persian jird (Meriones persicus) is an endemic rodent inhabiting the mountainous areas of the Irano-Turanian region, where future desertification may form a threat to the species. In this study, the species distribution modelling algorithm MaxEnt was used to assess the impact of future climate change on the geographic distribution range of the Persian jird. Predictions were made under two Representative Concentration Pathways and five different climate models for the years 2050 and 2070. It was found that both bioclimatic variables and land use variables were important in determining potential suitability of the region for the species to occur. In most cases, the future predictions showed an expansion of the geographic range of the Persian jird which indicates that the species is not under immediate threat. There are however uncertainties with regards to its current range. Predictions may therefore be an over or underestimation of the total suitable area. Further research is thus needed to confirm the current geographic range of the Persian jird to be able to improve assessments of the impact of future climate change.


Herein, we report the catalytic use
of multifunctional CuO nanoparticles (NPs) to oxidatively fractionate
lignocellulosic feedstock with dioxygen in aqueous NaOH under mild conditions . In presence of CuO NPs,
lignocellulose is fractionated into three parts, overall yielding 90% carbon
efficiency. Lignin is converted to up to 45.6 wt% in organic soluble aromatic aldehyde
monomers, rich in vanillin and syringaldehyde, the value surpassing the theoretical
one based on b-O-4 bond content, indicating significant
cleavage of other ether bonds. All hemicellulose is selectively converted into water
soluble small (di)acids, mainly to oxalic acid. Up to 81% of cellulose, in
contrast, is obtained as a white crystalline residue with high cellulose purity
(over 95%), which can readily be transformed into high quality nanocellulose,
useful in many applications.


Association studies have identified several signals at the LRRK2 locus for Parkinson's disease (PD), Crohn's disease (CD) and leprosy. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms mediating these effects. To further characterize this locus, we fine-mapped the risk association in 5,802 PD and 5,556 controls using a dense genotyping array (ImmunoChip). Using samples from 134 post-mortem control adult human brains (UK Human Brain Expression Consortium), where up to ten brain regions were available per individual, we studied the regional variation, splicing and regulation of LRRK2. We found convincing evidence for a common variant PD association located outside of the LRRK2 protein coding region (rs117762348, A>G, P = 2.56×10−8, case/control MAF 0.083/0.074, odds ratio 0.86 for the minor allele with 95% confidence interval [0.80–0.91]). We show that mRNA expression levels are highest in cortical regions and lowest in cerebellum. We find an exon quantitative trait locus (QTL) in brain samples that localizes to exons 32–33 and investigate the molecular basis of this eQTL using RNA-Seq data in n = 8 brain samples. The genotype underlying this eQTL is in strong linkage disequilibrium with the CD associated non-synonymous SNP rs3761863 (M2397T). We found two additional QTLs in liver and monocyte samples but none of these explained the common variant PD association at rs117762348. Our results characterize the LRRK2 locus, and highlight the importance and difficulties of fine-mapping and integration of multiple datasets to delineate pathogenic variants and thus develop an understanding of disease mechanisms.


Concerns about the negative mathematical beliefs of prospective primary teachers have arisen from evidence that such beliefs detrimentally impact future teaching practices. The aim of this study was to explore factors contributing to the effectiveness of a mathematics content-focused intervention designed to nurture positive mathematical beliefs. Utilising interviews, concept mapping, workshop observations and document analysis, shifts in the mathematical beliefs of prospective primary teachers were revealed. The role of the mathematics education tutors was critical in contributing to the development of positive beliefs. In particular, their abilities to develop a positive rapport with prospective teachers and to create learning environments conducive to increased understanding of mathematics concepts were most influential. Implications for primary mathematics teacher education courses are addressed.


We use a unique dataset of SEC Form N-SAR filings to examine the gross flows of U.S. bond funds. We find that gross inflows and outflows average around 4% of total net assets per month, but net flows average only 0.26%. When modeling these flows, we see that, as with equity funds, bond fund investors chase returns. Most of the return chasing is done by inflows. Funds with the highest decile of returns average 1% higher net flow and inflow per month, and the lowest-decile funds lose nearly 0.6% in assets per month. Next, we find that positive net flows cause bond funds to diversify their holdings regardless of fund size. Finally, we test whether flows predict returns and find that an inflow-weighted portfolio generates alphas of 0.8% per year. Bond inflows appear to be "smart money."


An innovative approach is presented for analyzing finite arrays of regularly spaced elements. We review the recently proposed Array Decomposition Method, which exploits the block‐Toeplitz property of regularly spaced arrays for significant storage reduction. To further reduce storage, in this paper we incorporate a multipole expansion to treat distant element interactions. The suggested approach overcomes the matrix storage bottleneck associated with integral equation methods, resulting in fixed and minimal matrix storage for any sized array (on the same order as the storage of a single array element). Hence, fast and rigorous analysis of very large finite arrays can be accomplished with limited resources.


Taking into account the initial damage and the accumulation of damage of concrete, Mazars damage model was modified. Based on the modified Mazars damage model, combined with finite element software ANSYS, the fracture failure process of the three-point bending notched beam of concrete was simulated. The initiation load Pini and maximum load Pmax of the three-point bending beam were determined with the damage criterion, and the full relation curve of the load P versus the loading point displacement Δ of the fracture failure process of the three-point bending beam was obtained. The results show that the method of numerical simulation of concrete fracture failure process is feasible, and based on the initiation load of the crack determined by numerical simulation, the initiation toughness of the beam can be easily calculated, and the problem of calculation of the initiation toughness caused by the initiation load can not be accurately determined in the actual experiment is resolved.


Background: Fentanyl and dexmedetomidine have been tried to attenuate airway and circulatory reflexes during emergence and extubation individually but have not been compared with respect to the level of sedation to evolve a reliable technique for rapid and smooth extubation. Aim: To compare the effects of fentanyl and dexmedetomidine in attenuating airway and circulatory reflexes during emergence and extubation of the endotracheal tube. Setting and Design: This double-blind, randomized, controlled study was done in patients undergoing surgery under general anesthesia belonging to the American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status 1 or 2. Methodology: All patients received a standardized anesthetic protocol. Patients were randomized to receive either fentanyl 1 μg/kg or dexmedetomidine 0.75 μg/kg. Fifteen minutes before expected last surgical suture, isoflurane was cutoff and equal amount of test solution was given when train-of-four ratio was 0.3. The degree of sedation, airway, and circulatory responses at the time of suction and extubation were analyzed. Statistical Analysis Used: Chi-square test for nonparametric data and t-test for parametric data. Results: Heart rate (HR) was comparable in both the groups until endotracheal extubation. Later, there was rise in HR in fentanyl group. There was stastisticaly significant drop in blood pressure at 5 min after test drug administration in both the groups. Airway response for suctioning and extubation was better in dexmedetomidine group and it was associated with better sedation score than fentanyl group. Conclusion: Single dose of 0.75 μg/kg dexmedetomidine given 15 min before extubation provides smooth extubation when compared to fentanyl.


A map of the proposed fishing harbour at Kalk Bay showing the northern and southern breakwaters, the quay, and slipways for boats, with the depths of low water of ordinary spring tides. The shore includes the main road, the railway line, Kalk Bay Railway Station, goods and boat sheds and a store, the police station, the fishermen's cottages, teh Hofmeyers' house, a cottage and a dwelling house. Some colour. Relief shown by shading. Scale 1 inch to 50 feet.


JVRB, 2(2005), no. 1. - In the last years, the well known ray tracing algorithm gained new popularity with the introduction of interactive ray tracing methods. The high modularity and the ability to produce highly realistic images make ray tracing an attractive alternative to raster graphics hardware. Interactive ray tracing also proved its potential in the field of Mixed Reality rendering and provides novel methods for seamless integration of real and virtual content. Actor insertion methods, a subdomain of Mixed Reality and closely related to virtual television studio techniques, can use ray tracing for achieving high output quality in conjunction with appropriate visual cues like shadows and reflections at interactive frame rates.
In this paper, we show how interactive ray tracing techniques can provide new ways of implementing virtual studio applications.


This study examined the idea that each mathematical operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) is mainly linked to one of the components of working memory as proposed by Baddeley. The phonological loop, visual-spatial sketchpad and central executive have been studied using a dual-task methodology with 7 different secondary tasks. 35 undergraduate and graduate students were timed in their response time for mental calculation and error rates were calculated. Results show clear differences of operations and of number pairs. Interaction between conditions and operations was just approaching significance. Results did not give support to the idea that operations can be linked to a certain working memory component. Several factors, such as language, problem size, lack for detail in the working memory model, difficulty of the secondary tasks, and internal validity problems are discussed with regard to the results and mental arithmetic.


In this paper, we report the room temperature spectroscopic and thermal properties and continuous-wave (CW) laser operation of a new Yb:CaNb2O6 crystal. The peak absorption cross section for the E||a polarization is 0.97 times 10-20 cm2 with a full-width at half-maximum of 28 nm at 975 nm. The stimulated emission cross section is 1.19 times 10-20 cm2 at 1062 nm. The thermal conductivities at room temperature are 5.40, 5.15, and 6.05 Wm-1K-1 along the a, b-, and c-axis, respectively. The fracture strength of Yb:CaNb2O6 single crystal is 315 MPa. The properties of Yb:CaNb2O6 crystal were compared with those of typical Yb-doped materials. A CW output power of 801 mW at 1062 nm was obtained with a slope efficiency of 19% by use of diode pumping.


Anethole, a naturally occurring aromatic compound which can be extracted abundantly from plants like star anise, fennel and basil, has been conveniently transformed to a functional monomer in an overall yield of 81% via a two-step procedure. The obtained monomer combines reactive benzocyclobutene and propylene groups, thus it can undergo thermo-polymerization to form a crosslinking network, showing a low dielectric constant (<2.64 in a range of frequencies varying from 0.1 to 30 MHz) and low water uptake (<0.20% in boiling water for 144 h). TGA and DSC data exhibit that the cross-linked network has a 5 wt% loss temperature of 455 °C in N2 and a Tg of 160 °C, respectively. These results indicate that the new polymer based on biorenewable anethole is comparable to the materials derived from petroleum. On the basis of the wide application of low dielectric constant materials in the microelectronic industry, this work would offer a new sustainable feedstock to organic low k materials. Moreover, this contribution also provides a new route to convert other aromatic natural products.


A retrospective analysis was made from 490 patients with carcinoma of uterine cervix who were treated with medial-dose-rate remote afterloading intracavitary irradiation by 137Cs sources in our hospital from 1986 to 1987. At the same time, the results were compared with those of the low-dose-rate intracavitary irradiation therapy. There were 10 cases with stage Ib, 366 with stage IIb and 114 with stage IIIb. The Absolute 5-year survival rate of stage Ib, IIb and IIIb was 90%, 66.1% and 56.1%, respectively. It was clearly demonstrated that the optimal dose should be 55Gy. A fraction of 6-7Gy dose was used once per week. The article suggests that the clinical results by medial-dose-rate afterloading intracavitary irradiation therapy for cancer of uterine cervix are similar to those by the low-dose-rate technique.


Problem: Adolescent pregnancy is one of the main problems of public health concerning the health of Brazilian teenagers, being the pregnancy on this population often unplanned and sometimes unwanted by the young girl, her partner and/or family. Objective: Observe the rate and risk factors for unwanted and unplanned pregnancy amongst teenagers. Method: Hereby we present a descriptive study, transversal with quantitative approach that took place at one Maternity-School of Fortaleza with 200 puerperal teenagers that were at the hospital for the end of their pregnancy between March and July of 2009. Results: We've noticed that 67,5% of pregnancies wasn't planned, however, wanted by most of them. Greater planning occurred between teens aged more than 15 years, dun, married, with incomplete basic education and winnings of less than a minimum wage. As for the desire of the gestation, we've noticed the same higher rate between those older than 15, dun, married differing only that these had basic education and winnings of more than 3 minimum wages. The variable that has presented most statistic relevance was the marital status regarding planning and desire to start pregnancy. Conclusion: The need of effective public policies for teenagers became evident, mainly on the access to quality family planning at the healthcare units.


two chapters. Acrostic is not necessarily a wisdom feature, nor mnemonic but rather aesthetic; the repetition of torah does not indicate obsession with a theme, but scaffolding for a prayer. The section on form argues for an individual lament, in which Torah denotes book and a means, but is often spoken of as if something beyond a book and as an end. Several lines of structural and thematic coherence are also indicated. On setting, Soll argues that the milieu, but not the purpose, of composition is wisdom. Then comes this: the speaker, and quite conceivably the author, is Jehoiachin! Apart from the virtual lack of positive evidence, why should the identity of an author matter at all to this kind of exegesis? PRD


Dendrite core is the center point of the dendrite. The information of dendrite core is very helpful for material scientists to analyze the properties of materials. Therefore, detecting the dendrite core is a very important task in the material science field. Meanwhile, because of some special properties of the dendrites, this task is also very challenging. Different from the typical detection problems in the computer vision field, detecting the dendrite core aims to detect a single point location instead of the bounding-box. As a result, the existing regressing bounding-box based detection methods can not work well on this task because the calculated center point location based on the upper-left and lower-right corners of the bounding-box is usually not precise. In this work, we formulate the dendrite core detection problem as a segmentation task and proposed a novel detection method to detect the dendrite core directly. Our whole pipeline contains three steps: Easy Sample Detection (ESD), Hard Sample Detection(HSD), and Hard Sample Refinement (HSR). Specifically, ESD and HSD focus on the easy samples and hard samples of dendrite cores respectively. Both of them employ the same Central Point Detection Network (CPDN) but do not share parameters. To make HSD only focus on the feature of hard samples of dendrite cores, we destroy the structure of the easy samples of dendrites which are detected by ESD and force HSD to learn the feature of hard samples. HSR is a binary classifier which is used to filter out the false positive prediction of HSD. We evaluate our method on the dendrite dataset. Our method outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines on three metrics, i.e., Recall, Precision, and F-score.


People share billions of pieces of content such as news, videos, and photos through social media every day. Marketers are interested in the extent to which such content propagates and, importantly, which factors make widespread propagation more likely. Extant research considers various factors, such as content attributes (e.g., newness), source traits (e.g., expertise), and network structure (e.g., connectivity). This research builds on prior work by introducing a novel behavior-focused transmitter characteristic that is positively associated with content propagation in social media: activity, or how frequently a person transmits content. Evidence for this effect comes from five studies and different paradigms. First, two studies using data from large social media platforms (Twitter and LiveJournal) show that content posted by higher-activity transmitters — whom we refer to as "social pumps" — propagates more than content posted by lower-activity transmitters. Second, three experiments explore the mechanism driving this effect, showing that social media users receiving content from a social pump are more likely to retransmit it (a necessary behavior for achieving aggregate-level propagation) because they infer that content from a social pump is more likely to be current, and therefore more attractive as something to pass along through retransmission.


An inexpensive and technically less-demanding methodology to quantify HIV-1 viral load would be of great value for resource-limited settings, where the nucleic-acid amplification technique (NAAT) is impractical and/or resource-prohibitive. In this study, an HIV-1 reverse-transcriptase enzyme-activity assay (ExaVir Load assay, version 1) was compared with the gold standard RT-PCR assay, Roche HIV-1 Amplicor Monitor, version 1.5. A total of 121 plasma specimens were used for the evaluation. ExaVir Load had a sensitivity of 97 % and a specificity of 71 % in identifying specimens with <400 copies ml(-1) in the Roche RT-PCR assay as being less than the detection limit of the assay (5500 copies ml(-1)). The mean difference (95 % limits of agreement) between Roche RT-PCR and ExaVir Load was -0.23 (-1.59 to 1.13) log(10)(copies ml(-1)) by Bland-Altman analysis. Significant negative correlations were seen between CD4(+) T-cell counts and the ExaVir Load assay (r=-0.32, P<0.05), and between CD4(+) T-cell counts and the Roche RT-PCR (r=-0.38, P<0.01). The present study with HIV-1 showed a strong correlation between the ExaVir Load assay and the RT-PCR assay. Hence, the ExaVir Load assay could be considered for use in resource-limited settings as an alternative viral-load assay to the standard NAAT-based assay after further evaluation with prospective specimens.


Patients' satisfaction is widely recognised as an important measure of the quality of care. This study measured patients' satisfaction with the outcome of breast reconstruction surgery and reduction mammaplasty and with the treatment received in hospital. A questionnaire about patients' reasons for having the operation and postoperative satisfaction was therefore sent to 137 patients after breast reconstruction and 142 who had had reduction mammaplasty. The response rate in the former group was 84% and in the latter 65%. In both groups of patients the main reasons for having the operation were difficulties with physical activities and in finding clothes to fit. Other factors were poor self-esteem and problems with body image. A total of 69% of the patients who had had reconstructions referred to problems with wearing an external prosthesis. In the reduction mammaplasty group one of the most important reasons for having the operation was pain, in particular neck, shoulder, and back pain. In the reconstruction group 94%, and in the reduction group 88%, thought the outcome of the operation was good or very good. They had no regrets about their decision to seek surgical treatment, even when the aesthetic outcome fell short of their expectations. The patients were generally satisfied with the treatment they had received. In the reconstruction group 97%, and in the reduction group 96%, of patients felt satisfied with their overall decision to have the operation. Our results confirm that these surgical procedures help to improve patients' quality of life. Among the patients who had had reconstructions, the resolved problems with body image were considered to be the main benefit of the operation. In the reduction group the main benefits were reduced neck, shoulder, and back pain. In both groups 91% of patients would have recommended the operation to a friend under similar circumstances. In the light of this evidence doctors should more readily recommend reconstruction to patients after mastectomy and reduction to women with heavy breasts.


The element mercury is one of the most hazardous substances known. Still, it is common in the air, water, soil and products we use in our daily life. LCD TVs is one of these products. To prevent the mercury in the LCD TVs from polluting the environment, the LCD TVs are recycled. This is done through automatic shredding or manual disassembly where the mercury can spread in the work environment, the process equipment or to the recycled material. This is due to broken CCFLs in the LCD TVs which contain the mercury. The aim of this paper is to investigate, through a literature review and an empirical study, the amount of mercury released into the work environment due to broken CCFLs from LCD TVs. In the literature review there were found the amount of mercury other researchers has found in CCFLs from LCD TVs, and also where the mercury was found. In the empirical study, the amount of mercury in a LCD due to broken CCFLs were measured and validates the results from other researcher and states that the mercury is difficult to predict.


Background. Little is known about the effect of guidelines that recommend shared decision making on physician practice patterns. The objective of this study was to determine the association between physicians' perceived effect of guidelines on clinical practice and self-reported prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening patterns. Methods. This was a cross-sectional study using a nationally representative sample of 3914 primary care physicians participating in the 1998—1999 Community Tracking Study Physician Survey. Responses to a case vignette that asked physicians what proportion of asymptomatic 60-year-old white men they would screen with a PSA were divided into 3 distinct groups: consistent PSA screeners (screen all), variable screeners (screen 1%— 99%), and consistent nonscreeners (screen none). Logistic regression was used to determine the association between PSA screening patterns and physician-reported effect of guidelines (no effect v. any magnitude effect). Results. Only 27% of physicians were variable PSA screeners; the rest were consistent screeners (60%) and consistent nonscreeners (13%). Only 8% of physicians perceived guidelines to have no effect on their practice. After adjustment for demographic and practice characteristics, variable screeners were more likely to report any magnitude effect of guidelines on their practice when compared with physicians in the other 2 groups (adjusted odds ratio= 1.73; 95% confidence interval=1:25−2:38;P=0:001). Conclusions. Physicians who perceive an effect of guidelines on their practice are almost twice as likely to exhibit screening PSA practice variability, whereas physicians who do not perceive an effect of guidelines on their practice are more likely to be consistent PSA screeners or consistent PSA nonscreeners.


Interfacing converters used in connecting energy storage systems like supercapacitors and battery banks to wind power systems introduce additional cost and power losses. This paper therefore presents a direct integration scheme for supercapacitors used in mitigating short-term power fluctuations in wind power systems. This scheme uses a dual inverter topology for both grid connection and interfacing a supercapacitor bank. The main inverter of the dual inverter system is powered by the rectified output of a wind turbine-coupled permanent-magnet synchronous generator. The auxiliary inverter is directly connected to the supercapacitor bank. With this approach, an interfacing converter is not required, and there are no associated costs and power losses incurred. The operation of the proposed system is discussed in detail. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the efficacy of the proposed system in suppressing short-term wind power fluctuations.


Cytological analyses were performed in nineteen accessions belonging to seven Achillea species. The results indicate that two species, A. filipendulina and A. tenuifolia, are diploid (2n = 2x = 18) and three species, A. bieberstinii, A. pachycephala, and A. aucheri are tetraploid (2n = 4x = 36). For two latter species, the chromosome numbers are new. Two ploidy levels of 2n = 6x = 54 and 2n = 8x = 72 in A. millefolium and two ploidy levels of 2n = 2x = 18 and 2n = 4x = 36 in A. santolina species were found. Cluster analysis based on chromosomal characteristics and karyotype asymmetry indices clustered the studied genotypes into three major groups. The first group included the diploid species (A. filipendulina, A. santolina and A. tenufolia), while the second group comprised tetraploid species (A. santolina, A. aucheri and A. pachycephala). A. millefolium (hexaploid, octaploid) and A. bieberstinii (tetraploid) were classified in the third group. Total form percentage (TF%) in groups 1, 2 and 3 were 42.03, 42.15 and 41.08, respectively. Group 1 possessed the highest average of symmetry index (S% = 70.8). Stebbins classification method grouped all accessions in class A. Moreover, group 1 (diploid level species), had the most symmetric karyotype from point of view of centromere and chromosome length. Therefore, it can be concluded that the genotypes belonging to group 1 are the earliest evolutionary form.


MusicBrainz is a 'community music metadatabase' and an 'open music encyclopedia' to which users contribute information about artists, releases, tracks, and other aspects of music toward the goal of creating a 'comprehensive music site'. As a peer-produced music metadatabase, MusicBrainz is a constructed cultural commons where users develop and distribute musical knowledge through the community website, an institution that supports and manages the pooling of metadata into a database. Studying how MusicBrainz works and why people contribute builds on a growing body of research that seeks to understand how contributors cooperate to create and sustain constructed cultural commons. Understanding how these projects develop, thrive, and sometimes fail sheds light on potential solutions to collective action problems and other social dilemmas relating to cooperation, specifically in regard to information pools and collective knowledge systems. This case study provides a point of comparison between other constructed cultural commons as well as links between cultural taste, social habits, and peer-production. It also emphasizes the socio-cultural importance of music metadata. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods, beginning with a survey administered to the MusicBrainz community and data scraped from user profiles, followed by observation and qualitative interviews with registered users, called editors. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed and interpreted at the same time. The study sought to answer the following research questions about MusicBrainz: Contribution: Why do people contribute? Who are the MusicBrainz contributors? What characterizes editors' participation? How is contribution linked to cultural preference? How can one compare contributors' motivations in MusicBrainz to other constructed cultural commons? Music Information: How does MusicBrainz negotiate guidelines and standards? What is the relationship of MusicBrainz to other music resources? What is the role of metadata in music technology? Findings are split into four categories: Demographics, including information about age, gender, region, and overall editing statistics; How MusicBrainz Works, an overview of the technical components and governance structure; Patterns & Processes, which describes the links between musical taste and contribution, how MusicBrainz serves as a tool for discovery, and the ways editors' decisions mimic those made by information professionals; and Attitude & Motivation, which examines intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that drive users to contribute, from their belief in the philosophy of open source to a compulsion for accuracy and consistency.


Abstract: Scatter-hoarding by rodents is expected to benefit palm recruitment by allowing cached seeds to escape predation and to colonize new areas, but evidence that seedlings emerge from cached seeds is scarce. We aimed to assess to what extent seedling establishment of two palm species (Astrocaryum aculeatissimum and Attalea humilis) is favoured by seed caching by rodents in a large Atlantic Forest remnant. We mapped the location of conspecific seedlings within circular plots of 15-m radius around five adult individuals of each palm species, checking if seedlings established from dispersed (>2 m from parent palms) or non-dispersed seeds (0–2 m from parent palms), and from buried or unburied seeds. We found a total of 42 A. aculeatissimum seedlings and 16 A. humilis seedlings. Nearly all (98%) seedlings established from seeds dispersed away from parents (mainly located 10–15 m from parents), and 83% and 75% of seedlings of A. aculeatissimum and A. humilis, respectively, established from seeds buried in the soil. Results show that both palm species depend almost entirely on caching of seeds by rodents to establish seedlings. Our study suggests that checking for endocarps associated with established seedlings can accurately estimate the process behind seedling establishment, improving our understanding about the net outcome of seed caching for large-seeded palms.


A variety of intermolecular interactions occurs when an energetic material responds to its surroundings. With a better grasp of these energetic material contacts, improved performance on plastic-bonded explosives, superior swab materials for explosives detection, and novel insensitive munitions are possible. In order to further understand these interactions, the following relationships were researched: adhesion between energetic materials and polymer substrates; quantitative collection and detection of energetic materials on electrostatically charged swabs; and noncovalent derivative investigation between energetic material pairs. A number of explosives detectors rely on introduction of the analyte to the instrument via swabs. However, most swab materials are burdened by either poor sorption (pickup) or poor desorption (release). Therefore, finding a swab that can both easily sorb and desorb an explosive is highly desirable. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), while normally employing a sharp (~5 nm) tip for topographic and force measurements, can also be used to measure adhesion between a material and substrate surface. AFM force curve experiments were performed on eleven polymers with nine energetic materials, organic explosives, and energetic salts. Teflon was the least adhesive polymer to all energetic materials, while no distinct trend could be elucidated among the other polymers or energetics. Rather than create a novel swab material for explosives detection, improving current commercial off the shelf (COTS) swabs would be a fast and cost-effective way to increase analyte detection on existing security instrumentation. For this reason, the viability of electrostatically charging COTS swabs was explored. COTS swabs were charged both triboelectrically and inductively, and voltage degradation both in time and through changes in relative humidity was determined. For collection efficiency, transfer efficiency, and uncharged swab comparison, quantification of energetic materials on a triple quadrupole liquid chromatograph/mass spectrometer was performed. Limits of quantification for trace amounts of energetic material were typically in the single nanogram level. In addition to adsorption of energetic material comparable to traditional uncharged swabs, electrostatically charged swabs can also adsorb material at standoff, introducing a new noncontact sampling method. The synthesis of the next generation of explosives is increasingly difficult because available novel reagents and synthetic techniques are limited. Energetic material solvates have been known for nearly 65 years, but cocrystallization of an energetic material and another solid has only been demonstrated in the last decade. Relying on noncovalent derivatives (NCDs), cocrystals can tailor explosive properties such as density and detonation velocity, potentially yielding a new energetic material without novel molecule synthesis. The most common synthons for pharmaceutical cocrystallization involve carboxylic acid and amide functionalities, but the majority of common energetic materials are devoid of these groups. With the wealth of knowledge from pharmaceutical cocrystals, utilizing these groups could yield more effective screening for energetic cocrystal pairs. Herein, we present the TNT-nicotinamide cocrystal, an energetic cocrystal with an amide synthon.


(TIME, May 24, 1982) -Ronald Reagan last week called it "a political football" kicked around by "demagoguery" and "falsehoods." To one of the President's advisers it is "the most sacred cow we have around here." Democratic Senator James Sasser of Tennessee believes that "it might well be the dominant issue in this fall's campaigns." Even last week Senate Republicans were pitted against House Republicans, to the glee of their Democratic adversaries, and a meeting of a blue-ribbon presidential commission degenerated into a partisan shouting match (see box).


Mining software repositories provides developers and researchers a chance to learn from previous development activities and apply that knowledge to the future. Ultra-large-scale open source repositories (e.g., SourceForge with 350,000+ projects, GitHub with 250,000+ projects, and Google Code with 250,000+ projects) provide an extremely large corpus to perform such mining tasks on. This large corpus allows researchers the opportunity to test new mining techniques and empirically validate new approaches on real-world data. However, the barrier to entry is often extremely high. Researchers interested in mining must know a large number of techniques, languages, tools, etc, each of which is often complex. Additionally, performing mining at the scale proposed above adds additional complexity and often is difficult to achieve.
The Boa language and infrastructure was developed to solve these problems. We provide users a domain-specific language tailored for software repository mining and allow them to submit queries via our web-based interface. These queries are then automatically parallelized and executed on a cluster, analyzing a dataset containing almost 700,000 projects, history information from millions of revisions, millions of Java source files, and billions of AST nodes. The language also provides an easy to comprehend visitor syntax to ease writing source code mining queries. The underlying infrastructure contains several optimizations, including query optimizations to make single queries faster as well as a fusion optimization to group queries from multiple users into a single query. The latter optimization is important as Boa is intended to be a shared, community resource. Finally, we show the potential benefit of Boa to the community by reproducing a previously published case study and performing a new case study on the adoption of Java language features.


Eva Mozes-Kor was ten years old when she and her family were deported from their home in Transylvania to Auschwitz. There, Dr. Josef Mengele was doing medical experiments on twins. Eva's mother, father, and two older sisters were put to death in the gas chambers, but Eva and her twin sister Miriam were preserved to be subjected to experiments. Eva was given an injection that nearly killed her at the time, and Miriam died of the aftereffects of the experiments many years later. As an adult, having married and moved to America, Eva watched her sister struggle with lingering medical issues. She donated a kidney to Miriam and tried to gather information about what had been done to her sister at Auschwitz, but Mengele's files have never been recovered. Eva's search to find more information, or even Mengele himself, was unsuccessful; but in the course of her quest, Eva discovered the powerful healing effects of forgiveness. On May 20, 2010, she met with our editor, Joanie Eppinga, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana that she started fifteen years ago, and gave the following interview.


The objective of this study is to compare the effects of different well defined freezing solutions with a reduced concentration of dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) combined with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and/or trehalose on cryopreservation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from mice, rats and calves. Post-thaw cell viability, proliferation capacity and differentiation potential of MSCs from different species were assessed after cryopreservation with the conventional slow freezing method. Although the post-thaw viabilities and metabolic activities varied among the different species, satisfactory results were obtained with 5 percent (v/v) DMSO, 2 percent (w/v) PEG, 3 percent (w/v) trehalose and 2 percent (w/v) bovine serum albumin (BSA) as the freezing solution. Our results showed that mouse MSCs were more robust to cryopreservation compared with rat and bovine MSCs.


Abstract A rearranged bovine papillomavirus type 4 DNA fragment, present in a line of transformed C127 cells, was molecularly cloned into lambda GT 10. The rearranged viral fragment was found to consist of two separate sequences of 3.8 kb each. Clone A comprised 3.3 kb of host DNA linked to 0.5 kb of BPV-4 DNA. Clone B consisted of 2.2 kb of host DNA linked to 1.5 kb of BPV-4 DNA. The AB locus was found to be amplified and rearranged in a number of different BPV-4 transformed C127 cell lines, irrespective of the presence of viral DNA. The rearranged amplified locus was transferred and maintained in second and third round transformants. We propose that the altered AB locus is involved in the maintenance of the transformed phenotype in the absence of the BPV-4 DNA, and may act as an activated oncogene.


A series of glasses in the system xPbO center dot(100 - x)B2O3 (x = 45, 55, 65 mol %) were prepared using analytical grade PbO consisting of a mixture of orthorhombic and tetragonal phases (ca. 1:1, w/w) and H3BO3 melted in silica beaker in the temperature range of 575-900 degrees C for 30 min under normal atmosphere. Only the 55PbO center dot 45B(2)O(3) glass prepared at 575 (U), 650 (W) and 700 degrees C (L4) showed several optical absorption bands in the visible region. However, all the bands disappeared either when a 1.7 mol % equivalent PbO from Pb3O4 was added in the batch or the melting temperature was increased to more than 800 degrees C. L2 glass showed a broad absorption band at ca. 485 nm which was thought to be due to combined effect of nanometallic lead (Pb-0) and Pb+. The formation of hexagonal nano-Pb-0 particles of 7-13 nm size in 55PbO center dot 45B(2)O(3) glass melted at 575-700 degrees C was confirmed by TEM and Pb+ was identified by a broad EPR. signal with 9-value at ca. 2.00. Optical absorption at ca. 485 nm and 565 nm (broad shoulder) was observed in L3 glass whereas a new peak at ca. 525 nm appeared in L4 which was identified due to Pb3+ by EPR signal with g-value ca. 2.176 and A-tensor, ca. 6340x10(-4) cm(-1). A mechanism for the formation of Pb-0, Pb+ and Pb3+ has been proposed.


In a one year pilot project in Hamburg, the feasibility of a sentinel practice system was tested by paediatricians and the health officials. The items to be documented were four symptoms of possible allergic pathogenesis. The mean of contacts per practice and week was 42 for rhinitis, 9 for wheeze, 8 for acute conjunctivitis and 4 for urticaria. Rhinitis, conjunctivitis and wheeze showed clear seasonal trends, but also shortterm peaks running against the seasonal trends were detectable. Seasonal covariations between symptoms and environmental parameters were strongest between wheeze, temperature and sulfur dioxide concentration of the air. But only a part of the wheeze-peaks followed peaks of temperature or sulfur dioxide. The implications of the feasibility study results for a long-term sentinel system in Hamburg are discussed.


In our century philosophy has indeed taken a "linguistic turn," both in the AngloAmerican analytic tradition (in the work of Russell, Wittgenstein, and subsequent logicians), and in the Continental tradition, which has been deeply influenced by Saussurean "structuralism," as well as by Lacan's notion of language as a mirror of consciousness, and Heidegger's concept of language as the "house of being." Most philosophical discussion, however, has considered language as an essentially undifferentiated whole, treating, for example, such problems as the role of language in general in acquiring knowledge (Gadamer), the significance of metaphor in general in understanding (Ricoeur), the possibility of a universal ambiguity in language (Derrida), and so on. Apart from such studies as Quine's theory of untranslatability (which is, in any case, rather abstract) there has been surprisingly little attention paid by philosophers to the important question of differences between real language--what factors are involved in diachronic language change, why there should be hundreds of extant languages, etc. Even the linguists' eminently philosophy-oriented hypothesis of language-thought relativity (the theory that the grammars of different languages might cause their speakers to develop different world views), first investigated by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the early 1800's and further developed by prominent 20th century linguists (in America, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf; in Germany, Leo Weisgerber and Jost Trier), has not been treated in a significant way by recent philosophers. Certainly, though, the theory has profound import for philosophy, not least of all in philosophy's self-examination, as it attempts to determine causes for the variety of philosophic schools that have traditionally formed, not only from shared political ideologies, historical determinism, and perpetuation of respect for teachers and tradition, but also along linguistic lines. In the synthesis of environmental and genetic factors that create philosophic world views (and cultural views in general), syntactic and semantic differences between languages might constitute a larger ingredient than has generally been acknowledged. As Edward Sapir rather pointedly states in an essay written for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury in 1924: To a far greater extent than the philosopher has realized, he is likely to become the dupe of his speech-forms, which is equivalent to saying that the mould of his thought, which is typically a linguistic mould, is apt to be projected into his conception of the world. Thus innocent linguistic categories may take on the formidable appearance of cosmic absolutes. If only, therefore, to save himself from philosophic verbalism, it would be well for the philosopher to look critically to the linguistic foundations and limitations of his thoughts. (157) The current situation in linguistics has not been very much more favourable than that in academic philosophy to the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." Dominated by Noam Chomsky's oft-revised attempts at a structuralist "universal generative grammar," linguists have likewise devoted comparatively slight attention to the theory of language-thought relativism; but Chomskyan and relativist theories are not necessarily mutually incompatible. Even Chomsky, who holds that human knowledge and understanding in language and thought "is not derived by induction.... Rather, it grows in the mind, on the basis of our biological nature, triggered by appropriate experience," admits that cognitive and linguistic understanding is "in a limited way shaped by experience that settles options left open by the innate structure of the mind" (Sophia Linguistica, p. 25).1 This "limited" shaping of languagethought by experience remains, however, undefined by Chomsky; presumably it is an amalgam of individual and group experience (including the linguistic); and intercultural world view differences, insofar as they are non-innate (i.e., non-genetic), must then, for the Chomskyan structuralists, be experientially shaped. …


Gamification is widely used to increase learner motivation when using a learning environment. Recent research has shown that gamification should be adapted to learner profile, as learners do not respond at the same manner to game elements, and in some cases, learners can feel demotivated by certain game elements. We propose a structured approach for gamification, named structural gamification that allows adapting game elements without changing the educational content or altering the functioning of the learning environment. This approach relies on three levels of abstraction: motivational strategies (high-level tactics or techniques to encourage learners to participate in the learning process), game elements (specific implementations of motivational strategies), and game element instances (contextualised instantiations of game elements). Using this approach, adaptation can occur on any of the three levels, either by changing motivational strategy, or game element, or by modifying the game element instance directly. This allows for a more fine-grained adaptation that is based on three components: the learner profile, interaction traces with the learning environment, and contextual information. Our future work will be focused on the analysis of learner engagement during the learning activity through their interaction traces to allow for dynamic adaptive gamification.


These days, everyone in Lake Eden, Minnesota, is buzzing with activity, and Hannah Swensen is no exception. But no matter how busy she may be, Hannah can always find time to help a friend in need - especially when there's a murder to investigate. A new minister is in town to cover for Reverend Bob Knudson, who's honeymooning with Hannah's good friend Claire. But when the replacement is found face down in a plate of devil's food cake with a bullet in his head, Hannah starts asking questions. She soon discovers that the good Reverend wasn't quite the saintly fellow he appeared to be. It will take some more digging to find the culprit, but Hannah is sure of one thing: even the most half-baked murder plot can be oh so deadly...


A Scientometrics focused on quantitative study aspects of the publications and citation study is an emerging trend and thrust area of scientometrics study and derives the quantitative and qualitative research for describing the result of cited documents. This study depicts the qualitative and quantitative study of journal's contributors, institutions and countries. In this study, A total 1872 publications with 15711 citations analyzed to know the productivity of the Journal 'Scientometrics' during the period from 2015 to 2019. The paper covers the growth rate of publications and citation impact, author's productivity, authorship patterns, and most relevant country-wise & institutions-wise distribution of contributors. Data extracted from Web of Science and Bibiblimetrix R package was used for data analysis and VOSviewer was used for collaboration networks. Sankey diagram was used for interconnecting the relationship between country, authors and keywords.


The detection of gravitational waves and neutrinos from astrophysical sources with gamma-ray counterparts officially started the era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy. Their transient and extreme nature implies that monitoring the VHE sky is fundamental to investigate the non-electromagnetic signals. However, the limited effective area of space-borne instruments prevents observations above a few hundred GeV, while the small field of view and low duty cycle of IACTs make them unsuited for extensive monitoring activities and prompt response to transients. Extensive Air Shower arrays (EAS) can provide a large field of view, a wide effective area and a very high duty cycle. Their main difficulty is the distinction between gamma-ray and cosmic-ray initiated air showers, especially below the TeV range.
Here we present some case studies stressing the importance that a new EAS array in the Southern Hemisphere will be able to survey the sky from below 100 GeV up to several TeV. In the energy domain between 100 and 400 GeV we expect the strongest electromagnetic signatures of the acceleration of ultra-relativistic particles in sources like SNRs, blazar jets and gamma-ray bursts, as recently proved by IACT observations. This spectral window is also crucial to understand the Universe opacity to high energy radiation, thus providing constraints on the cosmological parameters. We will discuss the implications of VHE radiation on the mechanisms at work and we will focus on the advantages resulting from the ability to monitor the energy window lying between the domain of space-borne detectors and ground-based facilities.


A significant proportion of cancer patients reports a decline in their usual cognitive functions. This impairment may be the consequence of either the malignant disorder itself or the side-effect of the treatment. This impairment in cognitive skills was referred to with a sticky witty name as chemobrain or chemofog, reflecting on the old conception based on the assumption that solely the neurotoxic effect of chemotherapy was responsible for this kind of disturbances. However, today there is increasing evidence proving that such hypotheses can only partially explain the cognitive decline of cancer patients and cancer survivors. As a matter of fact, the cognitive impairment of cancer patients is a much more complex consequence of the malignant disorder than chemobrain or chemofog. Nowadays, this process is described as "cancer-related cognitive impairment" (CRCI). Orv Hetil. 2019; 160(38): 1495-1502.


Data uncertainty is common in emerging applications, such as sensor networks, moving object databases, medical and biological fields. Data uncertainty can be caused by various factors including measurements precision limitation. Data uncertainty is inherited in various applications due to different reasons such as outdated sources or imprecise measurement and transmission problems. Classification is one of the most popular data mining techniques. Lot of people used decision tree for data classification and it widely used on certain or precise data. However in this paper we applied on uncertain data which is taken from UCI machine learning repository. This paper proposes a decision tree based classification method on uncertain data. We construct decision tree algorithms by including entropy and information gain, considering the uncertain data intervals. We use some pruning techniques that can improve efficiency of the decision tree and our experiment show that it significantly reduce the treeconstruction time.


Each human genome is a 3 billion base pair set of encoding instructions. Decoding the genome using deep learning fundamentally differs from most tasks, as we do not know the full structure of the data and therefore cannot design architectures to suit it. As such, architectures that fit the structure of genomics should be learned not prescribed. Here, we develop a novel search algorithm, applicable across domains, that discovers an optimal architecture which simultaneously learns general genomic patterns and identifies the most important sequence motifs in predicting functional genomic outcomes. The architectures we find using this algorithm succeed at using only RNA expression data to predict gene regulatory structure, learn human-interpretable visualizations of key sequence motifs, and surpass state-of-the-art results on benchmark genomics challenges.


*These authors contributed equally to this work Purpose: Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) can improve the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer. This study aimed to evaluate clinical factors relevant to the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer who received intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) alone. Patient and Methods: Data of 103 patients with pathologically confirmed esophageal cancer who were admitted to our hospital between October 2011 and November 2017 were retrospectively reviewed. All patients had squamous cell carcinoma. All patients received IMRT. Patients with stage I–IVA tumors were included to represent the real-world clinical practice. We performed univariate and multivariate analyses to identify prognostic factors for overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). In univariate analyses, the Kaplan–Meier method was used to estimate OS and PFS for various subgroups. In multivariate analyses, hazard ratios were calculated. Results: Single-factor analysis revealed that T stage (P=0.019), N stage (P =0.047), and lesion length (P =0.000) were associated with the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients who received IMRT. Cox regression analysis revealed that T stage (odds ratio [OR] = 4.68; P < 0.05), N stage (OR = 0.28; P < 0.05), and lesion length (OR = 0.09; P < 0.05) were independent factors relevant to prognosis. Conclusion: T stage, N stage, and lesion length influenced the long-term curative effects of IMRT for esophageal cancer and were prognostic factors for patients with esophageal cancer receiving definitive radiotherapy alone. The higher the stage and the longer the tumor, the lower the survival rate.


Spread of information in a crowd is analysed in terms of directed percolation in two-dimensional spatial network. We investigate the case when the information transmitted can be incomplete or damaged. The results indicate that for small or moderate probability of errors, it is only the critical connectivity that varies with this probability, but the shape of the transmission velocity curve remains unchanged in a wide range of the probability. The shape of the boundary between those already informed and those yet uninformed becomes complex when the connectivity of agents is small.


During the last two decades, comparative cytogenetics has developed from a specialized discipline to a highly dynamic field of research. Major technological advancements have driven this development, combined with the increasing awareness that many aspects of human genome function can be better understood in an evolutionary context. Comparative chromosome and genome analysis is providing a valuable tool in various fields of basic and applied genome research, such as the identification of candidate gene loci in biomedical animal models, or for the understanding of relationships between chromosome evolution and disease. This article provides a summary of recent technical developments in the field of comparative cytogenetics and genomics, together with selected examples for their applications.

Keywords:

cross-species chromosome painting;
Zoo-FISH;
comparative mapping;
DNA micro-array;
chromosomal homology;
phylogenetic analysis


We investigate cooling mechanisms in magneto-optically and magnetically trapped erbium. We find efficient sub-Doppler cooling in our trap, which can persist even in large magnetic fields due to the near degeneracy of two Lande g factors. Furthermore, a continuously loaded magnetic trap is demonstrated where we observe temperatures below 25 {mu}K. These favorable cooling and trapping properties suggest a number of scientific possibilities for rare-earth-metal atomic physics, including narrow linewidth laser cooling and spectroscopy, unique collision studies, and degenerate bosonic and fermionic gases with long-range magnetic dipole coupling.


A snap bean planting was established on March 21, 1978, at the Fortuna Substation, in southern Puerto Rico, with the purpose of comparing mechanical with hand harvesting. There were no significant differences between yields of the hand-harvested and the mechanical harvested plots. There was significant difference between the time consumed per ha in the hand and mechanical harvesting, i. e. 395.7 vs. 100.7 man-hours, respectively. Although the percentage of extraneous matter harvested was high (32.8%) it could be reduced with adequate blower and reel calibration.


This paper theorizes the Baberowski affair at Berlin's Humboldt University (HU) as a case study in the politics of remembering the past. It highlights the role of history and memory in legitimizing contemporary German foreign policy and raises institutional questions about the HU's complicity with state power as Germany grows increasingly authoritarian, militaristic, and imperialistic. Jorg Baberowski, the HU's Professor of Eastern European History, stands by his 2014 claim that "Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasn't vicious." His books refuse to recognize the role of anti-Semitism in the Jewish Holocaust. His revisionist historiography seeks to relativize the crimes of the Third Reich in order to legitimize a right-wing agenda in the present. For example, he routinely agitates against immigrants in far right media outlets such as Breitbart. In public appearances he calls for the most brutal state violence to deal with terrorists. When students circulated a leaflet calling him a right-wing extremist, he took legal action against them - and lost. The court ruled the students were within their rights to call him a right-wing extremist based on his public statements on immigration. Nevertheless, the HU defends Baberowski to the hilt, misrepresenting the court's ruling in a statement, trying to prevent student criticism of him, and then deploying security personnel to stop students distributing flyers alleging violation of their freedom of speech. Especially in light of the HU's ignominious capitulation to National Socialism, serious questions need to be asked about the university's willingness to provide institutional enforcement for a falsification of history whose main function is to legitimize state violence.


The surgical treatment of carcinoma in situ of the breast depends on the histological type. After detecting a lobular carcinoma in situ (CLIS) either an intensive (aftercare) follow-up is recommended or a bilateral mastectomy. The choice for one of these two very different forms of therapy can be done only after intensive psychological dialog with patient. The reason for the different forms of further treatment is the multicentric and often bilateral occurrence of CLIS and the potential risk of developing an invasive cancer. The therapy of the ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which often spread out in a segment of one breast, is the total excision of the lesion with clear margins. The Van Nuys Prognostic Index depending on the histological results (tumor-diameter, thickness of clear margins, pathocytologic classification) indicates further treatment such as radiotherapy or mastectomy to lower the chance of local recurrence.


The study of the divertor heat flux is of great importance for the operation of ITER and future fusion devices. In this paper, the behaviors of the widths of the particle flux footprints on the tungsten divertor in EAST have been statistically studied for the first time. A large number of divertor Langmuir probe (Div-LP) data from EAST general discharges in the 2016 campaign have been stepwise selected and analyzed for both L- and H-mode plasmas. It is found that the scaling dependences on poloidal magnetic field for the particle flux fall-off width at the inner tungsten divertor agree well with those at the outer graphite divertor in both L- and H-mode plasmas. The difficulty of extracting reliable footprint widths has been overcome by fitting data from two Div-LP arrays distributed toroidally. The nonlinear regressions of the particle flux fall-off width and particle flux spreading width at the inner tungsten divertor in H-mode plasmas have then been performed. A negative dependence on the plasma stored energy is found in the regression of the particle flux fall-off width and the exponent of the stored energy in the regression is consistent with previous experimental studies. The comparison between the particle flux fall-off width at the tungsten divertor with that at the graphite divertor indicates that statistically the divertor material and the direction of the toroidal magnetic field seem to have no significant influence on the particle flux fall-off width at the inner divertor. In addition, the similar particle flux fall-off width in L- and H-mode plasmas and the in–out asymmetry of the particle flux fall-off width at the graphite divertor have also been shown.


Stereoselective synthesis of the C1'-C25' fragment of symbiodinolide, which was obtained as a degraded product from symbiodinolide by alkaline hydrolysis, has been accomplished. The synthetic route features Kotsuki coupling and Julia-Kocienski olefination in the introduction of the side chains. This enantio- and stereoselective synthesis has established the absolute configuration of the C1'-C25' fragment.


We use the standard modern corporate finance theory to review the rules of the Italian company law related to three areas of firms' financial management: the decision to buy back shares, the decision on the method to raise new equity capital, and the decision on the method to raise new debt capital. We show that Italian company law makes share repurchase very difficult when the objective of this operation is to reduce the equity capital and return free cash flows back to shareholders. We also show that the Italian regulation favors rights issues, as opposed to public (underwritten) offers, and bank debt, as opposed to bond issues. All these three features of the Italian law have, however, very week, if any, economic justifications, even in terms of minority shareholders or creditors protection. We propose some remedies and highlight how the scope for reform is constrained by current EU directives on company law.


The direct binary search (DBS) algorithm is an iterative method designed to minimize one metric of error between the grayscale original and halftone image. This metric incorporates a model for the human visual system. To achieve the optimization, an initial halftone is adjusted until a local minimum of the metric is achieved at each pixel. However this local minimum can be shown to simultaneously minimize another metric of error using another visual model; this alternative metric and visual model combination are referred to as the dual interpretation of DBS. An analysis of this dual reveals the origin of tone reproduction bias in DBS. Many model based halftoning algorithms are effected by this problem. The dual can also be used to quantify the perceived tone reproduction capabilities of DBS and provides insight on why DBS yield very high quality halftones. Despite the complexity of the DBS algorithm it can be implemented with surprising efficiency. We demonstrate how the algorithm simultaneously exploits two different visual models and error metrics to efficiently yield very high quality halftones.


Rapidly developing proteomic tools are improving detection of deregulated kallikrein‐related peptidase (KLK) expression, at the protein level, in prostate and ovarian cancer, as well as facilitating the determination of functional consequences downstream. MS‐driven proteomics uniquely allows for the detection, identification, and quantification of thousands of proteins in a complex protein pool, and this has served to identify certain KLKs as biomarkers for these diseases. In this review, we describe applications of this technology in KLK biomarker discovery and elucidate MS‐based techniques that have been used for unbiased, global screening of KLK substrates within complex protein pools. Although MS‐based KLK degradomic studies are limited to date, they helped to discover an array of novel KLK substrates. Substrates identified by MS‐based degradomics are reported with improved confidence over those determined by incubating a purified or recombinant substrate and protease of interest, in vitro. We propose that these novel proteomic approaches represent the way forward for KLK research, in order to correlate proteolysis of biological substrates with tissue‐related consequences, toward clinical targeting of KLK expression and function for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and therapies.


For the purposes of art as a whole and of plastic surgery in particular an anthropometric research of lateral surface and the edge of the ears has been carried out from 1975 to 1979 among 450 grown-up persons of Bulgarian origin ( male = 225, female = 225). Using an apparatus for cephalometrics constructed by the author of this study, compasses and measuring tape, applying the classical points of Martin-Saller and the defined by the author 34 new anthropometrical points the average values (mm) are accepted and their variations of 44 dimensions. Five of the shown features determine the outer dimensions of the ear and the ear cartilage, and the remaining 39--the dimensions of the basic anatomical parts of the lateral surface of the ear, as follows: 1. lobulus auriculae, 2. concha auriculae, 3. tragus, 4. antitragus, 5. incisura intertragica, 6. anthelix, 7. helix, 8. porus acusticus externus. It is considered, that knowing of these dimensions in grown-up persons can have a leading role in re-creating and sculpturing of the ears.


An integrate-and-dump receiver based on an active feedback integrator is demonstrated in a 45-nm SOI CMOS process. The integrate-and-dump receiver provides matched filtering for non-return-to-zero, return-to-zero, and pulse amplitude modulation digital modulation formats, resulting in high SINAD as well as inherent anti-aliasing/low-pass filtering for a 2 GS/s high linearity/high-dynamic-range optical sampling receiver. The measured SINAD is greater than 28 dBc with a sinusoidal input up to 1 GHz; the SNR is greater than 29 dBc. The 2-GS/s integrate-and-dump receiver consumes less than 100 mW. The chip area is 0.980×0.762 mm2 including the pads.


Background: Raw Moutan Cortex (RMC), derived from the root bark of Paeonia suffruticosa, and Processed Moutan Cortex (PMC) is obtained from RMC by undergoing a stir-frying process. Both of them are indicated for different pharmacodynamic action in traditional Chinese medicine, and they have been used in China and other Asian countries for thousands of years. Objective: To establish a method to study the RMC and PMC, revealing their different chemical composition by fingerprint, qualitative, and quantitative ways. Materials and Methods: High-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector and electrospray mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-ESIMS) were used for the analysis. Therefore, the analytes were separated on an Ultimate TM XB-C18 analytical column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5.0 μm) with a gradient elution program by a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and 0.1% (v/v) formic acid water solution. The flow rate, injection volume, detection wavelength, and column temperature were set at 1.0 mL/min, 10 μL, 254 nm, and 30°C, respectively. Besides, principal components analysis and the test of significance were applied in data analysis. Results: The results clearly showed a significant difference among RMC and PMC, indicating the significant changes in their chemical compositions before and after the stir-frying process. Conclusion: The HPLC-DAD-ESIMS coupled with chemometrics analysis could be used for comprehensive quality evaluation of raw and processed Moutan Cortex.


In this paper, we propose two compression methods for hyperspectral images with discriminant features enhanced. Generally, when hyperspectral images are compressed with conventional image compression algorithms, which mainly minimize mean squared errors, discriminant features of the original data may not be well preserved since they may not be necessarily large in energy. In this paper, we propose two compression methods that do preserve the discriminant information. In the first method, we enhanced the discriminant features and then compressed the enhanced data using conventional image compression algorithms such as 3D JPEG 2000. In the second method, we applied a feature extraction method and extracted the discriminantly dominant feature vectors. By examining the dominant feature vectors, we determined the discriminant usefulness of each spectral band. Based on these findings, we determined the bit allocation of each spectral band assuming 2D compression methods are used. Experiments show that the proposed methods effectively preserved the discriminant information and yielded improved classification accuracies compared to existing compression algorithms.


Lack of hydrological information of the most basins in Tanzania increase uncertainties in understanding hydrological processes in the basin, and consequently leads to risks decision making related to significant water resources development plans and climate change adaptation. The lack of hydrological information also is coupled with uncertainty related to the predictions of future climate and land use change. Some of the gaps can be filled using rainfall-runoff modeling, which results can be used to generate reliable information to enable decision making and planning for water resources management. This paper discusses the results of applying a semi-distributed rainfall-runoff model which was established for the Little Ruaha Sub-Basin, using the available historical data, with a goal of understanding processes of runoff generation and the inherent uncertainty related to data. Issues of water resources assessment in the basin and approaches used to address them, and some directions for future research are discussed. There are challenges associated with the quality of data for model set-up and understanding of the model structure. Despite these challenges, there remain many opportunities to improve the methods used for water resources assessment and management within the basin.


A clinically manifest primary or secondary syphilis that develops during pregnancy has become an extremely rare occurrence. What is more frequently found in pregnant women, however, is a reactive syphilis serology where there is otherwise an absence of clinical symptoms or where, at least, there are untypical symptoms. What has to be decided in these cases is whether one is dealing with latent seropositive syphilis that can be transmitted to the child and thus needs to be treated, or with a serum scar resulting from an infection which occurred some time before. As a rule, this decision can be reached serologically by demonstrating Treponema-specific IgM antibodies by means of the 19S-IgM-FTA-ABS test or some similar methods. In the case of specific IgM detection, immediate treatment of the mother, and thus of the child, is important. Daily intramuscular injections of 1 million I.U. penicillin over a total of 21 days are recommended. Only in proved cases of penicillin allergy should one resort to erythromycin; although it must be said that there is no guarantee that this will produce a therapeutically sufficient fetal blood level. In rare cases such as these, the child must therefore be retreated with penicillin after birth. Today, the clinical signs of premature or retarded congenital syphilis are hardly ever seen in their classic form. Symptoms are frequently uncharacteristic - especially in the case of premature births - and can only be distinguished from other congenital infections with difficulty.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Gambling problems are overrepresented among men seeking treatment for substance use problems, including alcohol dependence. Early maladaptive schemas are overrepresented among substance users, although no known study has examined the early maladaptive schemas of men with potential gambling problems. This study examined the relations among potential gambling problems and early maladaptive schemas among a sample of alcohol-dependent men seeking treatment at a residential substance use facility (N=628). Using preexisting patient records of self-report measures for early maladaptive schemas and potential gambling problems, results showed that a number of early maladaptive schemas were associated with gambling. Men with potential gambling problems scored significantly higher than nonproblem gamblers on a number of early maladaptive schemas. These results suggest that early maladaptive schemas may be an important underlying characteristic for gambling problems, and that substance use treatment programs should consider screening for and targeting gambling problems and early maladaptive schemas.


In this work, we train an Automatic Post-Editing (APE) model and use it to reveal biases in standard MT evaluation procedures. The goal of our APE model is to correct typical errors introduced by the translation process, and convert the "translationese" output into natural text. Our APE model is trained entirely on monolingual data that has been round-trip translated through English, to mimic errors that are similar to the ones introduced by NMT. We apply our model to the output of existing NMT systems, and demonstrate that, while the human-judged quality improves in all cases, BLEU scores drop with forward-translated test sets. We verify these results for the WMT18 English to German, WMT15 English to French, and WMT16 English to Romanian tasks. Furthermore, we selectively apply our APE model on the output of the top submissions of the most recent WMT evaluation campaigns. We see quality improvements on all tasks of up to 2.5 BLEU points.