In periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), pink, white and red-eyed (white corolla with red centre) are three common corolla colours, which are due to epistatic interaction between two genes R and W. Violet corolla, which is not found commonly in natural populations, is reported to be due to another gene B which blues the pigment in pink genotypes (RW-). Recently, another gene O and its allele Om have been reported to determine two uncommon corolla colours, orange-red and magenta corolla, respectively. Since, the relationship between genes determining violet, orange-red and magenta corolla was not known, a strain possessing violet corolla and white eye (VI) was crossed with strains possessing orange-red corolla and white eye (OR) and magenta corolla and white eye (MJ-1) to study: (i) the relationship between genes involved in the production of violet, orange-red and magenta corolla, (ii) to study the possibility of producing novel corolla colours and (iii) to determine the validity of the gene interaction models proposed earlier. The F1 plants of both crosses, VI x OR and VI x MJ-1, had violet corolla. The F2 generation of the cross VI x OR segregated into plants with (i) violet corolla, (ii) pink corolla, (iii) orange-red corolla, and (iv) white corolla in the ratio of 45:12:3:4, while the progeny of the backcross F1 x OR segregated into three types of plants, (i) violet corolla, (ii) pink corolla, and (iii) orange-red corolla in the ratio of 2:1:1. The F2 generation of the cross VI x MJ-1 segregated into fi ve kinds of plants viz., (i) violet corolla, (ii) pink corolla, (iii) magenta corolla, (iv) rose corolla, and (v) white corolla in the ratio of 144:48:12:36:16, while the progeny of the backcross, F1 x MJ-1 segregated into four types of plants viz., (i) violet corolla, (ii) magenta corolla, (iii) rose corolla and (iv) pink corolla in the ratio of 1:1:1:1. The results suggested that genes involved B, R, W, O/Om and J were inherited independently and that the gene B blued the corolla pigment in B-RRwwOgenotypes but not in B-RRwwOm-jj and B-RRwwOm-JJ genotypes. No new corolla colours were observed in the studied crosses due to the interaction between genes governing violet, orange-red and magenta corolla. The observed segregation for different corolla colours in the studied crosses was same as that expected from independent segregation and known interactions between the genes involved, validating the earlier proposed models.


Multiparameter fluorescence microscopy is often used to identify cell types and subcellular organelles according to their differential labelling. For thick objects, the quantitative comparison of different multiply labelled specimens requires the three‐dimensional (3‐D) sampling capacity of confocal laser scanning microscopy, which can be used to generate pseudocolour images. To analyse such 3‐D data sets, we have created pixel fluorogram representations, which are estimates of the joint probability densities linking multiple fluorescence distributions. Such pixel fluorograms also provide a powerful means of analysing image acquisition noise, fluorescence cross‐talk, fluorescence photobleaching and cell movements. To identify true fluorescence co‐localization, we have developed a novel approach based on local image correlation maps. These maps discriminate the coincident fluorescence distributions from the superimposition of noncorrelated fluorescence profiles on a local basis, by correcting for contrast and local variations in background intensity in each fluorescence channel. We believe that the pixel fluorograms are best suited to the quality control of multifluorescence image acquisition. The local image correlation methods are more appropriate for identifying co‐localized structures at the cellular or subcellular level. The thresholding of these correlation maps can further be used to recognize and classify biological structures according to multifluorescence attributes.


REPORT OF A CASE An 84-year-old white woman was seen in consultation by the Dermatology Service, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Ill, for evaluation of an asymptomatic pigmented papule located in the left inguinal region. The patient had been hospitalized for treatment of bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain, and dehydration due to infectious colitis. The lesion was discovered during physical examination, although it had been present for at least 5 years. Recent clinical changes were not known. Laboratory studies included a complete blood cell count with differential, clotting parameters, electrolyte levels, and measurements of hepatic function and enzyme levels. A mild metabolic acidosis and leukocytosis were present. A chest roentgenogram revealed changes consistent with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but did not reveal infiltrates and adenopathy. The lesion consisted of a 3 × 5-mm dark-brown papule with a slightly bluish hue. Irregular macular hyperpigmentation comprised its lateral border. On moistening the lesion, a


A lot of research on mobile ad hoc networks has focused on the development of routing and transport protocols. Specifically, this research is focused on the performance of TCP over wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Reliable transport protocols such as TCP are tuned to perform well in traditional networks where packet losses occur mostly due to congestion. However, networks in wireless links perform poorly and suffer from losses due to reasons such as bit error and handoffs. TCP responds to all losses by invoking congestion control and avoidance algorithms resulting in degraded end-to-end performance in wireless systems. The paper sets out the basis for research into the design and development of a new algorithm that is integrated with Mobile IPv6 in order to be implemented in future needs, and thus improve the performance of TCP in such networks. It is proposed to use OMNET++ as the simulation tool to compare the performance of TCP using different approaches with that of the general TCP.


The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) processing (at 450 or 600 MPa for 300 s) on microbial quality as well as on organoleptic properties of fish salad with mayonnaise during 26 days of storage at 5 and 10 °C. The salad contained diced smoked trout fish, mayonnaise, and different kinds of spices. These freshly made salads usually have only a couple of days of shelf life. The HHP treatment basically did not affect the physical and organoleptic characteristics of the fish salad with mayonnaise. At both storage temperatures, the HHP treated samples showed enhanced safety and increased shelf-life up to 3 weeks.


A new planarization grinding method based on the cluster magnetorheological (MR) effect is presented to grind optical glass in this paper. Some process experiments were conducted to reveal the influence of the speed of the grinding disc and grinding time and grinding pressure during the machining process. The results indicate that the speed of the grinding disc influences definitively on grinding effect of this planarization grinding method based on the cluster MR-effect. When the speed of the grinding disc is 110r/min, better machining effect can be achieved. Furthermore, the influence of the grinding time on machining effect is obviously, and the proper machining time is 6mins. However, under the experiment condition in this paper, the influence of grinding pressure on machining effect is unobvious.


The incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in 142 patients with thryotoxicosis was 21% and that of thromboembolic disease was 8.5%. Male sex, increasing age, and associated rheumatic or hypertensive heart disease were significantly associated with the presence of AF. Thromboembolic episodes occurred in 12 (40%) of the patients with AF and in none of the 112 patients without AF. Cerebral emboli accounted for 53% of the episodes. In view of the grave prognosis of the embolic episodes, patients with thyrotoxicosis should be treated with heparin during attacks of AF and with oral anticoagulants when they have chronic fibrillation.


There is a widely repeated claim that victims of domestic abuse suffer an average of 35 incidents prior to someone calling the police. This claim is often made without reference to any evidence. When evidence has been cited, the citations often refer to studies that contain no such evidence. After extensive inquiry, the only evidence we can find for making this claim about abuse victims in England and Wales comes from a 1979 study of police responses in a small Canadian city (London, Ontario; 1979 population = 250,000). The estimate is based on only 53 women who said they had had a prior incident before the police had been called to help them; these women represent 24% of the 222 victims the study attempted to interview. A further 15 respondents said they had had no prior incidents, but their responses were left out of the calculation. By a broad consensus of statisticians, this evidence is inadequate to support an estimated rate of prior assaults in that sample or that city, let alone to support an international generalization to the UK in 2014. We conclude that the claim of '35' in modern Britain has been a prime example of a 'mythical number'. Language: en


PURPOSE
High-dose therapy with autologous stem-cell transplantation (HDT-ASCT) is now almost standard therapy for many patients with multiple myeloma, partly because of higher complete response (CR) rates. Some studies suggest that tandem transplantation gives superior results. The aim of this study was to determine whether the depth of the response to HDT-ASCT leads to an improvement in time to progression (TTP) and overall survival (OS). We hypothesized that patients with CR before HDT-ASCT (BCR) will have their disease burden reduced further and experience a longer TTP and perhaps OS.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
All patients who achieved BCR or CR after HDT-ASCT (ACR) were identified. The characteristics and long-term outcome of these patients were evaluated.

RESULTS
We identified 14 patients with BCR and 103 patients with ACR who were treated in similar fashion. The patients have been followed for more than 6 years, and the median for OS has not been reached (60-month survival, 55% for BCR and 63% for ACR; P = .83). The median TTP was 43 months for BCR and 34 months for ACR (P = .39).

CONCLUSION
The depth of the response in myeloma does not necessarily lead to an improvement in TTP and OS. Tumor dynamics considerations show that the yield from sequential cycles of chemotherapy decreases. Patients who achieve CR with the first transplant can be safely observed without jeopardizing OS.


The structure of a homopentameric α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor is modelled by combining structural information from two sources: the X-ray structure of a water soluble acetylcholine binding protein from Lymnea stagnalis, and the electron microscopy derived structure of the transmembrane domain of the Torpedo nicotinic receptor. The α7 nicotinic receptor model is generated by simultaneously optimising: (i) chain connectivity, (ii) avoidance of stereochemically unfavourable contacts, and (iii) contact between the β1–β2 and M2–M3 loops that have been suggested to be involved in transmission of conformational change between the extracellular and transmembrane domains. A Gaussian network model was used to predict patterns of residue mobility in the α7 model. The results of these calculations suggested a flexibility gradient along the transmembrane domain, with the extracellular end of the domain more flexible that the intracellular end. Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) energy calculations and atomistic (molecular dynamics) simulations were used to estimate the free energy profile of a Na+ ion as a function of position along the axis of the pore-lining M2 helix bundle of the transmembrane domain. Both types of calculation suggested a significant energy barrier to exist in the centre of the (closed) pore, consistent with a 'hydrophobic gating' model. Estimations of the PB energy profile as a function of ionic strength suggest a role of the extracellular domain in determining the cation selectivity of the α7 nicotinic receptor. These studies illustrate how molecular models of members of the nicotinic receptor superfamily of channels may be used to study structure-function relationships.


Evaluation of keyword spotting (KWS) systems that detect keywords in speech is a challenging task under realistic privacy constraints. The KWS is designed to only collect data when the keyword is present, limiting the availability of hard samples that may contain false negatives, and preventing direct estimation of model recall from production data. Alternatively, complementary data collected from other sources may not be fully representative of the real application. In this work, we propose an evaluation technique which we call AB/BA analysis. Our framework evaluates a candidate KWS model B against a baseline model A, using cross-dataset offline decoding for relative recall estimation, without requiring negative examples. Moreover, we propose a formulation with assumptions that allow estimation of relative false positive rate between models with low variance even when the number of false positives is small. Finally, we propose to leverage machine-generated soft labels, in a technique we call Semi-Supervised AB/BA analysis, that improves the analysis time, privacy, and cost. Experiments with both simulation and real data show that AB/BA analysis is successful at measuring recall improvement in conjunction with the trade-off in relative false positive rate.


Experiential learning contributes to the development of thought-related abilities, such as critical thinking and creative thinking. This article evinces the contribution of this theoretical and conceptual proposal through a specific experience with the CAMBRIA project, a solar electric vehicle built at Universidad EAFIT, that potentiated aspects related to multidisciplinary work amongst undergraduate students and, in turn, brought about pedagogical changes at the Institution. CAMBRIA opened a panorama for exploring new alternatives in the teaching-learning process and, through participation in non-simulated activities, led to the restatement of certain core aspects of the University's educational activities. An analysis of this topic also leads to the formulation of a learning and competency acquisition model. Finally, project results and conclusions are presented, which include elements derived from the proposed model and testimonies from some of the participating students, who were interviewed in depth.


While conventional open thyroidectomy techniques are the most widely performed thyroid operation, they produce an anterior neck scar that may be difficult to conceal. The endoscopic thyroidectomy was developed to decrease the cosmetic impact on the patient and has the advantage of reducing the incidence of anterior neck hypoesthesia and paresthesia. However, this procedure has some drawbacks, which motivated surgeons to develop a new operation method. Robotic thyroidectomy is a relatively new approach for treating differentiated thyroid cancer. Over the last few years, robotic thyroidectomies have become more common. Robotic thyroidectomies are a feasible, safe alternative for managing thyroid disease that has remarkable functional benefits beyond those of conventional open methods. The applications for robotic thyroidectomy have expanded to include increasingly advanced cases, which will consequently change the thyroid surgery paradigm in the future.


In the 1970s, coyote attacks on humans in urban and suburban environments began to occur, primarily in Southern California. Such attacks have increased in number, and since the late 1980s coyote attacks on people have been reported from at least 16 additional states and 4 Canadian provinces. Attack incidents are typically preceded by a sequence of increasingly bold coyote behaviors, including attacks on pets during daylight hours. In suburban areas, coyotes can habituate to humans as a result of plentiful food resources, including increased numbers of rabbits and rodents, household refuse, pet food, water from ponds and landscape irrigation run-off, and intentional feeding. Cessation of predator control has also contributed to coyotes' loss of wariness toward humans. Preventive (e.g., habitat modification) and corrective actions (e.g., hazing) can be effective if implemented before coyote attacks on pets become common. However, if environmental modification and changes in human behavior toward coyotes are delayed, then removal of offending coyotes is needed to resolve threats to human safety. Coyote attacks on humans in suburbia are largely preventable, but the long-term solution of this conflict requires public education, changes in residents' behavior, and in some situations, the means to effectively remove individual offending animals.


In this work we seek to analyze the characteristics of the political participation of secondary students in their schools and in social movement organizations. Our empirical findings show that these characteristics were related to recent changes in provincial educational policy, its effects and multiple appropriations from the main characters (administrators, students and activists). We suggest that policy changes have complex and multidimensional relationships with the political organizations of youth activism. Moreover, we suggest that this confluence has revitalized student participation and the creation of student organizations, both independent and partisan. We consider that this work can enrich the reflections regarding the relationship between educational policies, schools and collective action. Last but not least, the Argentinian case is set in a regional context where the literature describes student political participation as being confrontational towards the State and other politically representative institutions. Finally, our case allows us to reflect on other possible relations between these spaces and political participation of the youth.


Determination of genetic diversity among Zimbabwean and exotic flue-cured tobacco varieties is important for variety identification and for rational use of germplasm in breeding programs. This research investigated genetic diversity among Zimbabwean and exotic flue-cured tobacco varieties using phenotypic traits and simple sequence repeats markers. A total of twenty eight flue-cured cultivars (sixteen from China, six from Brazil, two from South Africa and four from Zimbabwe) were studied. Phenotypic data for tobacco descriptor traits were collected from a field experiment carried out using standard cultural practices for flue-cured tobacco in Zimbabwe. A sample of fifteen cultivars was genotyped with simple sequence repeats markers. Low levels of diversity were detected among the cultivars using analysis of either phenotypic or DNA marker data. Pair wise genetic similarities ranged from 0.80 to 0.99.  Genetic distances determined were all less than 0.4. The study suggests the need for conservation of germplasm used in Zimbabwe to avoid further genetic erosion.

  Key words: Fingerprinting, genetic erosion, genetic conservation, Nicotiana tabacum.


Compositional changes that occur during fruit development affect both the organoleptic and nutritional quality of small fruit. Compositional changes in blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L) and cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon Aiton) fruit were determined at 3 maturities (white, turning and fully colored) during 2 seasons by analyzing sugar, acid, total phenolic, and total anthocyanin composition, ORAC antioxidant capacity, and fruit firmness. In blueberry fruit, the primary sugars were glucose and fructose, which increased as fruit ripened. Citric acid comprised 77 to 87% of the organic acids in blueberry fruit. In addition, quinic and malic acids comprised 4 to 11% of total acids and small amounts of succinic, tartaric, and shikimic acids were present. Total acids declined 68% during fruit ripening. Total phenolics were greatest in white fruit and anthocyanins were greatest in blue fruit. Antioxidant capacity declined as fruit ripened from white to turning. Fruit firmness decreased about 80% as fruit ripened. In cranberry fruit, sugar concentration increased slightly as fruit ripened with glucose comprising about 80% of the total sugars. Acid content decreased 22% during ripening primarily due to a decline in citric acid. Quinic and malic acids increased slightly during ripening. Total anthocyanins increased as color developed, while total phenolics and antioxidant capacity remained relatively constant. In contrast to blueberries, red cranberry fruit were firmer than white or turning fruit.


The tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a potent inducer of apoptosis in many cancer cells. However, a significant proportion of tumours are TRAIL-resistant erecting a major hurdle for a successful TRAIL-based treatment regimen in the future. In this context, it would be a major advantage to be able to identify the tumours that respond to TRAIL. The existence of two apoptosis-inducing receptors (TRAIL-R1 and TRAIL-R2) and two receptors that cannot transmit an apoptotic signal and have an inhibitory function (TRAIL-R3 and TRAIL-R4) make TRAIL signalling complicated. We analysed the surface expression of all four membrane-bound TRAIL receptors in cancer cell lines of various origin and primary cancer and normal cells and found a good correlation between TRAIL-sensitivity and the expression of TRAIL-R1 alone, but an even better correlation when a ratio of TRAIL-R1/TRAIL-R3+TRAIL-R4 was analysed. Experimental overexpression of TRAIL-R1 alone or in combination with TRAIL-R4 in PANC-1 cells confirmed our correlation results. Similar to the surface expression-apoptosis correlation analysis we found a high correlation between TRAIL-sensitivity and the mRNA level ratio of TRAIL-R1/TRAIL-R3+TRAIL-R4. A value of <0.85 for the ratio predicted TRAIL resistance in both protein and RNA analysis. Hence, TRAIL receptor RNA expression analysis by real-time PCR might be a feasible approach to predict possible TRAIL-responses in individual tumour samples.


Natural Language Processing (NLP) has recently achieved great success by using huge pre-trained models with hundreds of millions of parameters. However, these models suffer from heavy model sizes and high latency such that they cannot be deployed to resource-limited mobile devices. In this paper, we propose MobileBERT for compressing and accelerating the popular BERT model. Like the original BERT, MobileBERT is task-agnostic, that is, it can be generically applied to various downstream NLP tasks via simple fine-tuning. Basically, MobileBERT is a thin version of BERT_LARGE, while equipped with bottleneck structures and a carefully designed balance between self-attentions and feed-forward networks. To train MobileBERT, we first train a specially designed teacher model, an inverted-bottleneck incorporated BERT_LARGE model. Then, we conduct knowledge transfer from this teacher to MobileBERT. Empirical studies show that MobileBERT is 4.3x smaller and 5.5x faster than BERT_BASE while achieving competitive results on well-known benchmarks. On the natural language inference tasks of GLUE, MobileBERT achieves a GLUE score of 77.7 (0.6 lower than BERT_BASE), and 62 ms latency on a Pixel 4 phone. On the SQuAD v1.1/v2.0 question answering task, MobileBERT achieves a dev F1 score of 90.0/79.2 (1.5/2.1 higher than BERT_BASE).


Questions We discovered forests with very high local numbers of
vascular plant species in southern Siberia. Are these the most
species-rich forests of the Eurasian boreal and temperate
zones, and which factors cause such high species richness?
Location Altai Mountains in southern Siberia, Altai Republic,
Russia. Methods We sampled vegetation and measured
environmental variables across the Altai Mountains in plots of
100 m2 and established series of nested plots of the size from
1 to 1000 m2 at sites with the highest species richness. We
compared the richest forests with other forests of the Altai
and with literature records of species-rich vegetation types
from elsewhere. Results The richest forests contained 45
vascular plant species per 1 m2, 82 per 10 m2, 114 per 100 m2
and 149 per 1000 m2. They are open hemiboreal forests dominated
by Pinus sylvestris, with an admixture of Betula pendula, and
sparse shrub and moss layers. About 95% of their vascular plant
species are in the herb layer. All species are native. These
forests occur in a forest-steppe landscape of the northern
Altai, where the mean January temperature is between –12.5 and
–10 degrees C, mean July temperature is 16–18 degrees C, and
total annual precipitation is 560–610 mm. Soils are deep and
mesic, with a pH of 6.2–6.4. Conclusions Hemiboreal forests of
the northern Russian Altai are probably the most species-rich
forests in boreal and temperate Eurasia. Such a high
concentration of many species in small plots probably results
from the incidental combination of several factors conducive to
high species richness. These factors include the rich regional
flora of the Altai Mountains, stability of the environment of
this region since the Pleistocene, heterogeneity of the
mountainous forest-steppe landscape with a combination of
forested areas on north-facing slopes and steppes on
south-facing ones, an open canopy that ameliorates microclimate
conditions but does not exclude light-demanding species through
strong shading, a macroclimate that is not too harsh, mesic
soils with near-neutral pH, and limited competition within the
herb layer.


Growing stock volume (GSV) is a fundamental parameter of forests, closely related to the above-ground biomass and hence to carbon storage. Estimation of GSV at regional to global scales depends on the use of satellite remote sensing data, although accuracies are generally lower over the sparse boreal forest. This is especially true of boreal forest in Russia, for which knowledge of GSV is currently poor despite its global importance. Here we develop a new empirical method in which the primary remote sensing data source is a single summer Sentinel-2 MSI image, augmented by land-cover classification based on the same MSI image trained using MODIS-derived data. In our work the method is calibrated and validated using an extensive set of field measurements from two contrasting regions of the Russian arctic. Results show that GSV can be estimated with an RMS uncertainty of approximately 35–55%, comparable to other spaceborne estimates of low-GSV forest areas, with 70% spatial correspondence between our GSV maps and existing products derived from MODIS data. Our empirical approach requires somewhat laborious data collection when used for upscaling from field data, but could also be used to downscale global data.


This thesis extends the literature on the dynamics of firm growth and failure by testing the robustness of past findings for capitalist firms to alternative ownership structures. While the theoretical results are altered by the internal organisation of the firm, the empirical findings are unchanged. This suggests that the theoretical models place excessive emphasis on the organisational structure and inadequate emphasis on more basic and fundamental factors affecting firm growth. The thesis applies the learning models of growth to the case of the Illyrian labour managed firm, where members maximise profits per worker. The critical efficiency-size relationship is indeterminate under labour management. Thus, the majority of the clear cut empirical predictions of the model for profit maximisation no longer hold. Three possible explanations for the breakdown of the results are examined. One explanation is that the Illyrian model is overly simplistic and does not accurately reflect the actual behaviour of cooperatives. This is rejected using an institutional structure model of the French producer cooperative which yields predictions which are remarkably similar to those of the Illyrian model. The second explanation considered is that the growth and survival of cooperatives in fact substantially differs from capitalist firms. This explanation is rejected in the empirical section which tests the actual growth and survival relationships using a dataset of French producer cooperatives. The estimated survival-size relation is convexly positive and the growth-size relation convexly negative, exactly as they have been found previously for conventional firms. The final remaining explanation is that the theoretical models are structured so as to overemphasize the internal structure of the firm to the neglect of more generic factors affecting growth and survival. This is accepted in a final section which proposes new directions for theoretical research on the growth and survival of all firms.


In his speech at Murmansk on October 1, 1987, General Secretary Gorbachev presented a programme to radically lower the level of military confrontation in the Arctic and proposed a number of confidence-building measures. The Murmansk initiative followed numerous previous proposals along the same line, going back to the nineteen fifties. The political and military aspects of the initiative are linked to the Soviet concept of international security. There are three main elements to this concept: first, the impossibility, to-day, of insuring a country's security by military means alone; second, security must be mutual between the Soviet Union and the United States and it must be universal in the rest of the world; third, security must be comprehensive and must include the military, political, economic and humanitarian dimensions. Specifically on northern security, it must be noted that the Soviet Union is quite vulnerable in the Arctic, with about half of its total land mass north of the 60th parallel. Also, the Arctic offers the shortest route for ICBMS, SLBMs and strategic bombers. Consequently, international security in the Arctic dictates confidence-building measures. The Murmansk initiative represents a significant contribution to the whole process of confidence-building by proposing, in particular: to limit the number of large exercises by naval and air forces in the Northern seas; to invite observers to such exercises; to include Barents Sea, along with other Northern seas, in a zone of peace; to ban anti-submarine activities in agreed areas of the Northern and Western Atlantic; to include the reduction of military activities in the Arctic on the agenda of the second stage of the Conference on CBM and Disarmement in Europe; to reduce naval activities in international straits; and to pursue the establishment of a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone for which the Soviet Union would act as guarantor.


In this study, we have cloned a novel cDNA encoding for a papain-family cysteine protease from the Uni-ZAP XR cDNA library of the polychaete, Periserrula leucophryna. This gene was expressed in Escherichia coli using the T7 promoter system, and the protease was characterized after partial purification. First, the partial DNA fragment (498 bp) was amplified from the total RNA via RT-PCR using degenerated primers derived from the conserved region of cysteine protease. The full-length cDNA of cysteine protease (PLCP) was prepared via the screening of the Uni-ZAP XR cDNA library using the 32P-labeled partial DNA fragment. As a result, the PLCP gene was determined to consist of a 2591 bp nucleotide sequence (CDS: 173-1024 bp) which encodes for a 283-amino acid polypeptide, which is itself composed of an 59-residue signal sequence, a 6-residue propeptide, a 218-residue mature protein, and a long 3'-noncoding region encompassing 1564 bp. The predicted molecular weights of the preproprotein and the mature protein were calculated as 31.8 kDa and 25 kDa, respectively. The results of sequence analysis and alignment revealed a significant degree of sequence similarity with other eukaryotic cysteine proteases, including the conserved catalytic triad of the Cys90, His226, and Asn250 residues which characterize the C1 family of papain-like cysteine protease. The nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the novel gene were deposited into the GenBank database under the accession numbers, AY390282 and AAR27011, respectively. The results of Northern blot analysis revealed the 2.5 kb size of the transcript and ubiquitous expression throughout the entirety of the body, head, gut, and skin, which suggested that the PLCP may be grouped within the cathepsin F-like proteases. The region encoding for the mature form of the protease was then subcloned into the pT7-7 expression vector following PCR amplification using the designed primers, including the initiation and termination codons. The recombinant cysteine proteases were generated in a range of 6.3% to 12.5% of the total cell proteins in the E. coli BL21(DE3) strain for 8 transformants. The results of SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis indicated that a cysteine protease of approximately 25 kDa (mature form) was generated. The optimal pH and temperature of the enzyme were determined to be approximately 9.5 and 35 degrees, respectively, thereby indicating that the cysteine protease is a member of the alkaline protease group. The evaluation of substrate specificity indicated that the purified protease was more active towards Arg-X or Lys-X and did not efficiently cleave the substrates with non-polar amino acids at the P1 site. The PLCP evidenced fibrinolytic activity on the plasminogen-free fibrin plate test.


Bacteriophages isolated from culture supernatants of Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae and from sewage were identified. The DNA from each phage was isolated and digested with the restriction endonuclease EcoRI. Eight isolates were determined to be different, with two phage isolates from sewage having restriction patterns identical to two phages from culture supernatants. The sizes of the phage DNA ranged from 24 to49 kilobases for isolates from sewage and from 39 to 52.5 kilobases for the isolates from culture supernatants. Buoyant densities of phage particles in CsCl varied from 1.498 to 1.507 g/cm3 for isolates from sewage and from 1.506 to 1.516 g/cm3 for isolates from culture supernatants. Electron microscopy revealed four morphological types. Based on plaque-forming ability of culture supernatants, 31 out of 47 strains of P. syringae are probably lysogenic. Images


Pelvik organ prolapse is a common condition affecting women of all ages. Contemporary women postpone their pregnancies to their late 30's and prefer to preserve their fertility in advanced years. Therefore, uterus preserving pelvic organ prolapse surgery has gained wide acceptance. Surgical techniques including abdominal (open, laparoscopic, robotic) or vaginal methods may be preferred. The aim of this review is to discuss the most commonly used uterus preserving surgical techniques for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse.


Introduction: Nowadays, cracked tooth syndrome is the third main cause of tooth extraction, following caries and periodontal diseases, done in almost all the dental clinics. Nevertheless, the diagnosis and treatment of this condition remain controversial. All candidate therapeutics, such as occlusal adjustment, preventive filling, root canal therapy (RCT), and crown restoration, provide unpredictable outcomes. As such, methods to prevent further crack development and to induce crack self-healing must be developed. The Hypothesis: Mussels secreting adhesive foot protein (Mafp) can attach to various surfaces under aqueous conditions. In nature, mussels adhere to stones and deposit layer by layer through mineralization, thereby forming mussel-stone composites with excellent mechanical property. Given the natural process of mussel-stone complex formation, we hypothesize that application of Mafp coating at the crack interface may mineralize the cracks by capturing calcium and phosphate ions from the saliva. This process consequently leads to crack self-healing and complete restoration of the tooth structure. Evaluation of the Hypothesis: To test our hypothesis, we need to develop a model in vivo . Cracked teeth disks are adhered together using Mafp solution. Then, the tooth disks are sutured on the interior side of the cheeks. After regular intervals, the disks are removed and characterized. Scanning electron microscopy is performed to evaluate the morphology of the crack interface. Microhardness and shear bond strength are used to evaluate the mechanical property of the healing cracked zone. Transmission electron microscopy is also conducted to evaluate the crystallinity of the crack interface.


.......................................................................................................................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................................................ v LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................................................................................................vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................................................................. viii


Great research work has been studied for cancer detection due to its high death rate. In this paper, a novel design of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is introduced and numerically analyzed for cancer cell detection. Full vectorial finite element method (FVFEM) is used throughout the numerical analysis of the reported structure. The reported PCF has a V-shaped surface that is coated by ZrN as a plasmonic material. A coupling occurs between the core guided mode and surface plasmon mode which depends on the studied analyte. The geometrical parameters are optimized to achieve high sensor sensitivity. The proposed biosensor achieves high optical sensitivity of 5600 nm/RIU, 5700 nm/RIU for the x- and y-polarized modes, respectively. The reported optical sensor can pave the road for efficient and simple technique for cancer detection instead of surgical and chemical techniques.


This paper introduces a new transistor sizing technique for timing optimization in a transistor level netlist. Starting from an initial solution, the widths of the transistors in the netlist are tuned iteratively to meet the specified timing constraints. Efficient heuristics to significantly improve the run time performance are outlined. The improvement of timing and area performance are demonstrated with several real circuits.


Questions on awareness, use, and results of blood cholesterol tests were included in telephone surveys on cancer conducted in 1988 on random samples of persons 40-74 years of age in Long Island, NY (N = 440), and in Connecticut (N = 453). Educational level was significantly and positively associated with the proportions reporting ever having heard of blood cholesterol tests, ever having had a test done ("by a doctor"), and having a recent test, 1987-88, but not with the proportion reportedly having been told by a doctor that their cholesterol level was "high." In multivariate analyses, greater education (college graduate versus all others) and greater frequency of medical checkups (annual versus other) were significant independent predictors of ever having had a cholesterol test or having been tested in 1987 or 1988. Implications of findings were discussed with regard to monitoring changes over time in awareness and use of cholesterol tests according to educational level and to planning interventions aimed at less educated groups.


OBJECTIVES: Otoacoustic emissions (OAE) technology, used widely in newborn hearing screening programs and validated by professional organizations as a reliable and objective tool, is beginning to be recognized as superior to subjective methods when screening young children in a variety of settings. This study examines the efficacy of integrating OAE hearing screening into services routinely provided in health care settings. METHODS: Three federally funded clinics serving low-income and uninsured people in a metropolitan area participated in the 10-month study. Subjects included 846 children (842 in the target population <5 years of age and 4 older siblings) who were screened during routine visits to their primary care providers using a distortion product OAE instrument. A multistep screening and diagnostic protocol, incorporating middle ear evaluation and treatment, was followed when children did not pass the initial screening. Audiological evaluation was sought for children not passing a subsequent OAE screening. RESULTS: Of the 846 children screened, 814 (96%) ultimately passed the screening or audiological assessment and 29 (3%) exited the study. Three children (1 was <5 years of age and 2 were >5) were identified with permanent hearing loss. CONCLUSIONS: The rate of identification of permanent hearing loss in this study is similar to findings from a study of OAE screening in early childhood educational settings. OAE screening holds the potential for being an effective method for helping to identify young children with permanent hearing loss in primary care settings.


Linear/nonlinear and Stokes based-stabilizations for the filter equations for damping out primitive variable (PV) solutions corrupted by uniformly distributed random noises are numerically studied through the natural convection (NC) as well as the mixed convection (MC) environment. The most recognizable filter-scheme is based on a combination of the negative Laplace equation multiplied with the selection of the spatial scale and a linear function in order to preserve the uniqueness of the filtered solution. A more complicated filter-scheme, based on a Stokes problem which couples a filtered velocity and a filtered (artificial) pressure (or Lagrange multiplier) in order to enforce the incompressibility constraint, is also studied. Linear and Stokes basedfilters via nested iterative (NI) filters and the consistent splitting scheme (CSS) are proposed for the NC/MC problems. Inspired by the total-variation (TV) model of image diffusion, well preserved feature flow patterns from the corrupted NC/MC environment are obtained by TV-Stokes based-filters together with the CSS. Our experimental results show that our proposed algorithms are effective and efficient in eliminating the unwanted spurious oscillations and preserving the accuracy of thermal convective fluid flows. AMS subject classifications: 65M60, 76M10


An approach to photonic generation of a windowed binary phase-coded microwave waveform with suppressed spectrum sidelobes is proposed and demonstrated. An optical double sideband plus carrier signal with the carrier and the two sidebands being orthogonally polarized is generated by a dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK) modulator, with the generated signal sent to a phase modulator (PM) where phase coding is performed. The PM can support phase modulation in two orthogonal polarization directions. The phase-modulated signals are projected to one polarization direction and detected at a photodetector (PD). Switching the polarity of the coding signal, a π phase shift is introduced. Since the amplitude of the generated signal is dependent on the amplitude of the input coding signal, a windowing function is applied to the generated waveform by using a windowed input phase coding signal, to suppress the sidelobes in the spectrum of the generated microwave waveform. The key features of the proposed waveform generator include all-optical generation without the need of electronic components and optical filters, thus ensuring a wide operating frequency range. The proposed phase-coded microwave waveform generator also has the ability to switch between the fundamental and harmonic carrier frequency by controlling the modulator bias voltages. Experimental results show that, using a windowed 64-bit Gaussian pseudo-random binary sequence coding signal, a phase-coded microwave waveform is generated with the sidelobes of the spectrum largely suppressed by 20 dB and a pulse compression ratio as large as 133. Generation of binary phase-coded microwave waveforms at the 2nd harmonic carrier frequencies is also demonstrated experimentally.


Democracy has been defined and measured in various ways. This article argues that combining two basic dimensions of democracy - competition and participation - can yield a theoretically satisfactory measurement of democracy that employs three measures: degree of electoral competition, degree of electoral participation and a combined index of democratization. These variables have been used in the author's previous comparative studies of democracy. The new dataset combines previous data and extends these to cover the period 1810-1998. That dataset includes 187 contemporary and former independent states from the year 1810 or from the year of independence. In the dataset, original electoral and other political data needed to calculate the values of Competition and Participation variables are given and documented separately for each country. The values of the three variables are calculated and given for each year over the period of comparison. Finally, the new dataset is compared with the Polity98 measures of democracy and the combined Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties.


ABSTRACT Objectives To assess whether the clinical outcome of advanced/metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) treated with sorafenib, in real-world conditions, differs in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods mRCC patients (n = 2256 before matching) were matched by propensity score into CVD (n = 560) and non-CVD groups (n = 560), followed by safety and effectiveness analyzes. Results After matching, patients' features used for matching were balanced between the CVD and non-CVD groups, except for age (p = 0.0049). Renal comorbidity occurred more frequently in the CVD group. Exposure to sorafenib and objective response rate (25.4% [CVD], 28.5% [non-CVD]) were comparable in both groups. Median progression-free survival (PFS; 7.1 months, 95% CI: 6.4–8.6 [CVD]; 6.7 months, 6.3–8.3 [non-CVD]), and hazard ratios for PFS (0.954, 0.821–1.108) and overall survival (0.889, 0.683–1.156), were similar in the matched population. The incidences of adverse drug reactions (ADR, ≥10%) were generally similar between groups, although hypertension (42.1% vs 34.5%), diarrhea (26.3% vs 19.6%), decreased appetite (11.3% vs 7.5%), and non-serious and serious renal failure/dysfunction (3.6% vs 1.4% and 1.8% vs 0.4%), occurred more frequently in the CVD group. Conclusion This analyzes suggests that sorafenib has clinical benefit for mRCC patients regardless of baseline CVD. Serious ADRs increased for renal dysfunction. Clinical trial registration www.clinicaltrials.gov identifier is NCT01411423.


One of the most interesting phenomena in heterojunction structures is the mobility enhancement behavior first reported by Dingle et a1.I in MBE grown  modulation-doped  GaAsA1,Gal-,As superlattices. In this paper, we describe a novel field-effect ransistor  with  extremely  high-speed  microwave capabilities. The device is operated by controlling the density of high-mobility electrons accumulated at the GaAs side near a GaAs-AlXGal-,As interface. Hereafter, we call the device a high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The epilayer of the HEMT, 1.0 pm thick, was grown by MBE. It consists of a nondoped GaAs buffer layer and Sidoped n-Al,Gal-,As (x = 0.32) covered by nondoped GaAs grown successively o n a semi-insulating GaAs substrate. The doping level is 7 X 10' '/cm3. The density of the high-mobility electrons can be controlled by a gate voltage through a capacitance coupling between the electron accumulation layer and the gate electrode. We have simultaneously fabricated 2-,urn gate length HEMT's, Hall bridges, and diodes for C-V measurement in the wafer. The electron density n, = 7.2 X lO1l/crn2 and Hall mobility p~ = 6 180 cmZ/V . s are observed. The sample has been measured with a differential capacitance feedback profiler, showing the peak value of the electron density n = 5 X 1017/cm3. We observed complete pinchoff of the drain current from the gate and drain-current saturation at reasonably high-drain voltages. To assess its microwave capabilities, we measured s parameters in the frequency range 2-12 GHz. The unity current gain frequency fT was 8.2 GHz which is 20 percent higher than that of a conventional 2-pm gate length GaAs MESFET. When the HEMT was cooled to 77 K, we observed a dramatic increase in transconductance by a factor as much as 2 t o 4, depending on the operation condition of the device. This increase in transconductance is partly due to the increase in the electron mobility at 77 K. The Hall mobility measured a t 77 K was 32500 cm2/V s, which is higher than what has thus far been reported in modulation-doped superlattices.


There is a clear need for standardized measures to assess health status that are valid and appropriate to the needs of children with orthopaedic problems. The Child Health Questionnaire and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Pediatric Outcomes Data Collection Instrument, two new pediatric health status measures, were assessed for their ability to detect differences in health states in a pediatric orthopaedic population. The instruments have a range of scales designed to measure various aspects of physical and psychosocial health. Two hundred forty-two patients with wide-ranging diagnoses were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. The instruments exhibited ceiling effects in some domains but generally performed as they were intended in this large cohort. Using secondary factor analysis, it was shown that the domains of the instruments appropriately distinguish physical and psychosocial health. Several domains from each instrument discriminated between diagnosis groups and patients with varying numbers of comorbidities. Both of these measures show significant promise and have an important role in helping define the outcomes of children with orthopaedic problems.


Background: The characteristics of Chiari malformation type III and its treatment are evaluated in this study. Radiological and surgical findings were correlated and the benefits of the therapy are discussed. Methods: Eight patients (6 males, 2 females) with Chiari malformation type III were studied. All patients underwent surgery to remove encephalocele along with neural tissue and to repair the dura and the skin. Associated pathologies such as hydrocephalus, tethered cord syndrome and syringomyelia were also surgically treated. Follow-up was based on the evaluation of postoperative motor and mental development, as well as on magnetic resonance imaging findings. Results: Ventriculoperitoneal shunt malfunction in 2 patients was the only surgical complication. One patient died 10 days after the operation, 7 patients survived, and the outcome of 2 patients was quite poor because of severe mental retardation and neurological deficits at the beginning. In the remaining patients, motor and mental development was normal, and the neurological outcome was satisfactory. Conclusion: Surgery in the newborn period, initial severity of neurological deficits, the presence of intermittent apnoea, delayed treatment of hydrocephalus and the amount of neuronal tissue within the excised encephalocele were determined as unfavourable prognostic factors for the outcome. If the appropriate surgical procedure is done at the right time, the outcome of the Chiari malformation type III patient can be satisfactory with a low mortality rate.


The present article reports the findings obtained from wheelchair field testing at Frankfurt central station and airport, initiated by the working group on "Public Transport Accessibility" of the Federal Rehabilitation Council (BAR) and approved by its managing board. Relevant information concerning accessibility and useability of this major traffic junction for handicapped persons is presented. The test emphases are put forth, namely access of wheelchair users to intercity and suburban traffic as well as to air transport facilities. Planning and implementation of the field test as well as participating persons and organizations are outlined; test sequence and test evaluation are described. Finally, major aspects of test findings and their evaluation are dealt with in more detail.


Sludge and soil samples were collected through purposive sampling method within Champion Breweries and Plasto Crown Company waste disposal sites during wet and dry seasons for status evaluation of their heavy metals (Fe, Pb, Zn, Ni, Cr, Cd, Co and Hg) for comparison with the control site and the world threshold standards for tropical soils. The results showed that the sludge pH value of 7.89 during wet season signified alkaline medium (outside the natural range of acidic medium for soils in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria) which was attributed to the high calcium content of the brewery effluent. The 7.42 pH value during wet season for soil in the Plasto Crown Company waste disposal site indicated alkaline medium which was due to the remnants of the wastes which formed lime to neutralize the acidic medium of the soil while the electrical conductivity values (below 4 dSm-1) indicated the nonsalinity of the soils. More so, a two way analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical method used to run the analysis revealed that the soil in terms of heavy metal concentrations did not exceed the world threshold standards. Keywords : Soil, sludge, heavy metal concentrations, permissible standards.


This paper proposes a constraint-free model and a budget-constrained model to determine the optimal air travel policy in terms of the seat upgrading. The approach strikes a balance between cost-saving and the boosted productivity by upgrading the employees to higher classes. We specify a benefit function based on the Hensher Equation's core idea and leverage economics assumptions of the marginal productivity of labor. The study fills the blank of the literature in terms of modelling framework, and the usage of a large multinational company's booking records to solve for an exemplary optimal travel policy.


For some time there has been an effort to bring together the scattered fragments of spatial information theory into a single, organised body of knowledge and theory. The state of this effort is first surveyed and many of the gaps and problems identified. Following this, a list of desired characteristics for a full theory is presented. Then, a new framework or paradigm which meets most of the desired characteristics is proposed. This new paradigm is coherent with previous work in bringing together spatial information theory, particular the efforts which have been recently labelled Naive Geography, but the proposed paradigm goes beyond the characteristics heretofore proposed. Some of the consequences of adopting the new paradigm are then discussed in the paper. The new paradigm integrates cognitive and geometric approaches to space, provides a framework for understanding the relationship between different data structures such as raster and vector, and situates much existing work with GIS into a well-defined sub-discipline of what might potentially be a much larger discipline.


Purpose The extent and types of ophthalmic disease and non-battle injury (DNBI) seen by expeditionary ophthalmologists at deployed military medical treatment facilities have not previously been reported. We aim to characterise the extent and type of ophthalmic pathology including DNBI at a US military medical treatment facility in Afghanistan. Methods We conducted a retrospective non-interventional cohort study of all patients seen by ophthalmologists at Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Airfield (BAF), Afghanistan, between 1 October 2018 and 31 August 2019. Results There were 281 patients seen in 540 separate encounters, of which 146 patients seen were active duty military stationed at BAF with DNBI, of a population at risk of 6000 personnel. Diagnoses managed included open and closed globe injury, bacterial and herpetic keratitis and retinal detachment, with the most common being dry eye, corneal abrasion/foreign body, blepharitis, chalazion and uveitis. Thirteen patients (5%) required aeromedical evacuation out of theatre and 39 patients were aeromedically transferred within theatre for assessment. Expert consensus estimated that 89 patients (36%) would be likely to require aeromedical evacuation out of theatre without ophthalmic input. Conclusions The rate of ophthalmic DNBI among deployed US, UK and coalition forces at BAF was 2.65% per year, of whom 97% were returned to duty (95% of all patients). We estimate that evacuation and loss to unit would increase from 5% to 36% without an ophthalmologist present. The low number of within-theatre aeromedical transfers suggests that the local presence of an ophthalmologist at a patient's deployed medical treatment facility affects access to deployed ophthalmic care.


Few studies in sport marketing have examined the formative role of venue stimuli in affecting sport spectators. As such, the fi eld currently lacks methodological direction for dealing with venue stimuli as a means to understand the sport spectator experience. Research is needed to inform academics and practitioners about the appropriate use and potential outcomes of venue stimuli, particularly as they relate to destination image and local place. Given the notable lack of investigation on this topic, this study was exploratory in nature, with the purposes of developing and validating a sport venue stimuli and local image fi t (SIF) scale. The development process of the SIF scale comprised the six stages of scale development recommended by previous scholars. Th e scale developed in this study provides a reliable and valid instrument designed to assess the extent to which sensory stimuli in the sport venue are congruent with local image, thus offering practitioners and academics a means to understand how inimitable elements of the local culture enrich the venue experience when they become intertwined with spectators' sensory experience.


ZnO nanobelts with ultralong nanocantilevers were synthesized by evaporating ZnO powders. The nanobelts have an average width of 200nm and thickness of 50nm. It grows along the direction, with±(2110) and±(0001)side surfaces. The growth direction of the nanocantilevers is along [0001], perpendicular to the (0001) side surface of the nanobelts and they have ultralong length, even to tens of micrometers. The growth mechanism and dynamics of the nanostructures are proposed. The surface polarization as an important factor for formed the growth of nanocantilevers. Because of the ultra-long nanocantilevers, this structure could be potentially useful as nanocantilever arrays for nanosensors and nanotweezers. The room-temperature photoluminescence of ZnO nanostructures is discussed.


BACKGROUND
A mesiodens is a supernumerary tooth located in the palatal midline between the two maxillary central incisors. The overall prevalence varies between 0.15 and 1.9%. The present study aimed to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of mesiodens in the pediatric population.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A longitudinal prospective study was carried out in 7932 children to determine the prevalence of mesiodens. The following data were also recorded: age, sex, shape, sagittal position, orientation, eruption status, number and complications caused by mesiodens.

RESULTS
The prevalence of mesiodens in the present study was 0.8%. The sex ratio was 1.78:1, favoring boys. The majority of mesiodens (67.9%) were conical in shape, followed by the supplemental (17.9) and tuberculate (14.1%) types. 71.8% of the mesiodens were palatally placed, 25.6% erupted on the arch and 2.6% were labially positioned. A majority of the mesiodens (62.8%) were vertically aligned. Inverted and horizontal positions were observed in 30.8% and 6.4% of the cases. Most of the mesiodens (53.8%) were impacted, and 14 children had two mesiodens. Most of the mesiodens were associated with complications, and only 26.9% were asymptomatic.

CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of mesiodens was 0.8% .Conical shape, palatal position and vertical orientation were common characteristic observations in the study.


We examined the contribution of glucose, independently of insulin, on fetal glucose kinetics in the sheep by infusing somatostatin (SRIF), followed by SRIF plus glucose (protocol A) or reversing the initial infusion sequence (protocol B). In protocol A (n = 8), infusion of SRIF at 200 micrograms/h decreased plasma insulin (IRI) and blood glucose (G) by 2.8 +/- 1.0 microU/ml and 1.34 +/- 0.2 mg/dl from their respective basal concentrations of 6.8 +/- 1.4 microU/ml and 16.47 +/- 0.91 mg/dl (P less than 0.05; P less than 0.005). There were no significant changes in plasma glucagon (IRG) or the rates of umbilical G uptake or of G utilization, but G turnover decreased by 1.77 +/- 0.34 mg.kg-1.min-1 (P less than 0.005). Addition of G at a rate of 5.6 +/- 0.8 mg.kg-1.min-1 had no effect on IRI and IRG. Total G uptake (G infusion rate plus umbilical G uptake) increased from 6.37 +/- 0.77 to 10.25 +/- 1.0 mg.kg-1.min-1 (P less than 0.01), despite suppression of umbilical G uptake by 33%. Fetal G reached a new steady state of 23.08 +/- 1.37 mg/dl, and G turnover increased by 4.81 +/- 0.96 mg.kg-1.min-1 from its SRIF-induced nadir (P less than 0.005). Since G concentration was maintained at steady state, the rate of G utilization was equivalent to the rate of total G uptake, an increase of 60% from basal despite suppressed IRI.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


: Upper crossing syndrome is a common postural dysfunction resulting from the muscles in the body's shoulder girdle/cervicothoracic region having a deficient tone. The muscles typically affected are the upper trapezius and the levator scapula, which is extremely common in physiotherapists. Poor posture is the main driver of UCS. Researchers have long seen the syndrome, whose work demands much bending and twisting. A cross-sectional study assessed the Upper Cross Syndrome in working female physiotherapists. Two hundred female physiotherapists completed The Oswestry Neck Pain and Disability Questionnaire, administered to individuals aged 23-38 who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Significant factors for the prevalence of upper cross syndrome in female physiotherapists were Age, gender, and working hours, all of which posed serious risks for the emergence of UCS. UCS was, nevertheless, very common among female physiotherapists. It was determined that 27% of practicing physiotherapists had Upper Cross Syndrome (UCS). The study found that pain intensity, headache, driving, and work were all significantly associated, with P-values of 0.000, 0.005, and 0.002, respectively, as determined by the chi-square test. This indicates that the results were statistically significant. Additionally, the study revealed that upper cross syndrome was highly prevalent among working physiotherapists, with a prevalence rate of 27%. The prevalence was directly related to the duration and hours of work. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between work-related musculoskeletal disorders and upper cross syndrome.


The addition of Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) in pure hydroponics systems can result in the improvement of the crop by oxygenating the fertigation nutrient solution (NS), among other benefits. We studied the effect of different doses of this peroxide on the size of pepper fruit (Capsicum annuum L.). Gauges are set according to the Ministry of Agriculture Policy in the BOE, corresponding to the trasposed european rules for fresh green pepper consumption, Regulation EC No 1455/1999 of the COMMISSION of July 1, 1999. The results show that Level 1 (0.75 mMol/L) behaves as the Test; meanwhile, 1.50 mMol/1 has a minimal size effect. The Level 3.0 mMol/L decreases the Level 1 but increase notably Level II and Destri. The recomendation is not to exceed 1.50 mMol/L concentration in nutrient solutions.


Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes are susceptible to several different types of foulants and scales. Common foulants observed in RO systems are organics, metals, clays and colloidal material. Common scales that are observed are carbonate, phosphate, sulfate and silica. Onsite cleaning is the norm to remove these foulants and scales but sometimes a desire for cleaning optimization or a requirement for process troubleshooting leads operators to undertake a more detailed investigation. Therefore, one option is to send membranes for offsite cleaning to a facility that is able to clean membranes individually or in small groups. Another common approach is a membrane autopsy which requires the sacrifice of a membrane. A membrane autopsy entails membrane dissection, foulant and/or scale sampling, identification of the foulant and/or scale and permits a detailed cleaning study on flat sheet samples harvested from the full element to be conducted. Once the cleaning method has been optimized through the lab the process can be duplicated on full membranes from the same site to observe the effects of the clean on a larger scale. This paper reviews 248 studies that were carried out over three years from 2012 to 2014. The data collected included brackish, seawater and nanofiltration membranes. This body of analytical work gives a definitive statistical representation of the most common types of foulants. It also highlights fouling patterns such as the proportion of membranes that contained multiple foulants and/or scales. The effect of each foulant and/or scale on the flow and differential pressure. Additionally, the recoverability of RO membranes was analyzed and compared to the foulants and/or scales present.


We propose a novel approach to support teacher's work in an unpredictable learning environment, such as a robotics class. The Conflative Learning Environment (CLE) approach blends the roles of the student, the teacher, and the software developer by taking the diverse users of the learning environments beyond their traditional, fixed roles and blending the users' activities and working environments with each other. We report results from a qualitative study indicating that a novel monitoring environment developed by following the CLE approach helped teachers to recognize students' particular problems better than when observing the students without such support. Results of the study have been used to guide us in the further development of the CLE approach and the monitoring environment.


The structure of quebrachitol and the influence of methoxy group on its radical scavenging ability is investigated by DFT studies. To study its electron donating ability, bond dissociation enthalpy (O-H BDE), frontier molecular orbitals (FMOs), molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) and molecular descriptors of quebrachitol and viscumitol are computed and compared. Charge delocalization and stability of the compounds are analyzed by natural bond orbital (NBO) method. The 4-OH radical of quebrachitol and 3-OH radical of viscumitol possess the least BDE and exhibit weak intramolecular hydrogen bonds which are clearly illustrated by NBO. The results show that quebrachitol, which has one methoxy group, can act as better radical scavenger than viscumitol having two methoxy groups at the same ring. The fundamental vibrational modes and wave numbers of quebrachitol are characterized theoretically based on potential energy distribution.


(1) The ovotestis of Helix aspersa is formed of fingerlike diverticula. The latter are hollow at their lower ends, which connect to the hermaphrodite duct, while the upper ends contain more yolk, and are filled completely with metamorphosing male cells. (2) According to the manner of derivation--that is, the nutrimental conditions of the locality from which new cells arise, and the number (if any) of times which these new cells divide--there are quite wide differences in the individual generations derived from and under such varying conditions. (3) These differences are found in nucleus, mitochondria, Nebenkern, and general cell volume. (4) The mitochondria vary in size and number, and such variation seems to be caused by the varying number of spermatogonial divisions in different regions of the ovotestis. (5) In the early spermatid smaller mitochondria, the micromitochondria appear in an unknown way near the region from which the axial filament takes its origin from the centro some applied to the nucleus. These micromitochondria are about one-fourth the size of the other, or macromitochondria. No perceptible variation in size of the micromitochondria of various generations has been found. (6) The micromitochondria form the front sheath of the sperm; the hind region of the micromitochondrial sheath intercommunicates with the macromitochondrial sheath, which follows behind. (7) The Nebenkern does not apparently become absorbed into the substance of the mitochondrial sheath. A sloughing off appears to take place. (8) The minute cytology of the derivation of the sperms, eggs, and nurse-cells is described. (9) The determination of the sex of the indifferent cell seems to be brought about by a variety of causes. The explanation of femaleness by presence of yolk cells is held to be inadequate, for male progerminative cells also appear in regions choked with yolk. (10) The probable function of the Nebenkern is discussed.


Measures of running performance (RP) and heart rate responses (HR) to matchplay during three different heat stress (HS) conditions were assessed in seven National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I male soccer players. Total distance (TD), as well as distance covered within distinct velocity zones [walking (WALK), jogging (JOG), low speed running (LSR), high-speed running (HSR), sprinting (SPRINT), low-intensity running (LIR), and high-intensity running (HIR)] were assessed using GPS units over 12 matches. HS was monitored during each match, and matches were defined as low (HSlow, n=4), moderate (HSmod, n=4), or high (HShigh, n=4) HS. Minutes played were significantly different across HS conditions (p=0.03). Therefore, distance covered within each movement velocity was assessed relative to minutes played, and as a percentage of total playing time. WALKrel was significantly greater during HShigh compared to HSlow (p=0.035). LIRrel was significantly greater during HSmod (p=0.015) compared to HSlow. A trend was observed for %WALK being higher during HShigh compared to HSlow (p=0.066). %LIR was significantly greater during HShigh compared to HSlow (p=0.048). HIR was not significantly different across HS conditions. Percent of time spent >85% HRmax was significantly greater during HShigh (p=0.002) and HSmod (p<0.001) compared to HSlow. Percent of time spent between 65-84% HRmax was significantly greater during HSlow compared to HShigh (p<0.001). Results indicate that HS resulted in increased LIR and %HR≥85, while HIR was maintained. HIR performance may be conserved through decreased playing time and/or the adoption of pacing strategies. This may assist coaches in altering player management strategies to optimize team performance.


Abstract: This study regards the evaluation of the failure probability of a symmetrical 2D reinforced concrete frame composed of 4 spans and 5 floors, in case of an accidental event which causes the central base column loss. The frame is an internal one of a typical building designed in a highly seismic area, characterised by a high ductility class. The frame is modelled in the non-linear finite elements software Atena 2D, accounting for both geometrical and material non-linearities. The uncertainties relevant to the problem are included by sampling both material and action variables, adopting the Latin Hypercube Sampling technique. To compute the failure probability associated to the accidental scenario, two sets of analyses are considered: the first set to compute the capacity of the structure against the column removal by means of displacement-controlled pushdown analysis; the second set to evaluate the demand in terms of external loads, properly combined within the accidental combination according to the codes. The external load is then amplified in order to include the dynamic effects characterising a scenario of a structural member loss. Finally, the probability of the demand exceeding the capacity is evaluated.


In 1976, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration established the present program--Study of Flywheel Energy Storage--to determine the practicality and viability of flywheel propulsion systems for urban mass transit vehicles. The study began with a review of the U.S. transit properties requirements, which showed that the most suitable vehicle for deployment of flywheel propulsion is the full-size transit bus. Several propulsion concepts were hypothesized and subjected to comparative analysis with present diesel buses, trolley coaches, and battery buses in regard to performance and life-cycle economics. This screening resulted in the establishment of the following basic concepts that can provide various types of high quality transit service: Pure flywheel propelled bus; flywheel/diesel engine hybrid bus; flywheel-augmented trolley coach; and flywheel/battery hybrid bus. The design studies that were conducted for the four propulsion configurations then showed a high degree of commonality of components among the four concepts. Final life-cycle cost analyses showed all four concepts to be in a competitive range with present transit vehicles. Plans were then made for a Phase II development program that will result in the design, fabrication, and testing of all four propulsion configurations in full-size buses within 36 months. Volume 4 of this Phase I study describes more » the methodology developed to guide the life-cycle cost analysis of the flywheel propelled vehicles as compared with the three baseline vehicles. « less


According to the energy consumption status of industrial heat exchanger in the whole life cycle, the energy efficiency evaluation index system of industrial heat exchanger is put forward firstly. Secondly, aiming at the complexity and fuzziness of energy consumption of industrial heat exchanger, the energy efficiency evaluation model of industrial heat exchanger based on fuzzy matter-element method is established by using fuzzy matter-element theory and combining the concept of Hemingway schedule. Finally, taking the shell-and-tube heat exchanger as an example, five shell-and-tube heat exchangers with different designs and materials were selected to analyze their energy consumption advantages and disadvantages. Via calculation and analysis, the optimal energy efficiency design of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger was obtained. At the same time, reference opinions were provided for the design and manufacture of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger.


The sodium borate glasses with fixed alkali content of 10 mole % and different modifiers have been prepared. The concentration of the modifiers (PbO, Al2O3 and fly-ash) has been kept at 5 mole % and results are compared with binary sodium borate glasses. From the optical data, the optical band gap and cutoff wavelength were calculated and structural changes induced by addition of these modifiers have been investigated by UV-VIS, FTIR spectroscopy, XRD and density measurements. This work can lead to future utilization of flyash in glass forming materials.


Implants and grafts are employed in the fields of orthopaedic surgery to fill osseous defects and to restore destroyed joints. These bone substitute materials may be derived from different biological and technical sources. In this overview-paper the various methods of bone and joint substitution are discussed concerning their advantages and their disadvantages in comparison to the alternative methods. The decision, which way to go, which implant or graft should be employed in each individual case must be based on the specific medical, economical and social situation of every single patient. Finally future aspects of allogeneic bone and joint grafting are discussed, an hopeful experimental approach for a biological form of joint replacement.


Mandragora officinarum L. (Solanaceae ) was collected from western area of the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Mandragora autumnalis Bertol. is widespread in the Mediterranean area at rock slopes, ruins, under Pinus brutia , olive trees and edges of fields in Turkey but M. officinarum L. has not been reported previously. In this study, the detailed morphological characteristics are discussed and compared with the mediterranean M. autumnalis Berthol. Line drawing, diagnostic characters and a distribution map of M. officinarum L. species of Turkey are presented.


The ability to generate highly realistic 2D images from mere text prompts has recently made huge progress in terms of speed and quality, thanks to the advent of image diffusion models. Naturally, the question arises if this can be also achieved in the generation of 3D content from such text prompts. To this end, a new line of methods recently emerged trying to harness diffusion models, trained on 2D images, for supervision of 3D model generation using view dependent prompts. While achieving impressive results, these methods, however, have two major drawbacks. First, rather than commonly used 3D meshes, they instead generate neural radiance fields (NeRFs), making them impractical for most real applications. Second, these approaches tend to produce over-saturated models, giving the output a cartoonish looking effect. Therefore, in this work we propose a novel method for generation of highly realistic-looking 3D meshes. To this end, we extend NeRF to employ an SDF backbone, leading to improved 3D mesh extraction. In addition, we propose a novel way to finetune the mesh texture, removing the effect of high saturation and improving the details of the output 3D mesh.


-~igital imaging with cathodoluminescence (CL) capability , provides an additional, quantitative imaging perspective. While CL images can be useful by themselves , most microbeam instruments allow simultaneous acquisition of other signals including backscattered electron (BSE), secondary electron (SE), and X-ray images providing a powerful set of data for interpretation . Digital panchromatic images allow the use of standard and advanced image processing now available on laboratory computers to enhance single images or provide a means of combining information from two or more images . Other . advantages of digital CL images include : 1) se~ect1ve scan rates to avoid image distortion ; 2) adJustable dwell times at any point to collect sufficient light due to weak CL; 3) calibrated image scales allowing relocation of features for additional study. Many minerals and synthetic phases show CL and these images often reveal textures either difficult or impossible to observe with other signals. Examples of digital CL images are presented for : 1) diamond, where complex internal textures are revealed including the presence of features possibly corresponding to giant platelets ; 2) forsterite from the A~le~de . meteorit~ where CL reveals complex zoning within single grains the intensity of which correlates '."'it~ the Al and Ti ; 3) terrestrial carbonate showing intricate banding, the intensity of which can be compared with X-ray images; 4) meteoritic melilite wh~r~ the _c~ reveals complex zoning and intensity variation within minor included spinel phases.


On September 23, 1912, the Dutch Copyright Act - Auteurswet - was enacted. A century after its enactment the Dutch law is one of the world's oldest 'living' acts of the author's rights tradition. While the Act has seen many small and large amendments since its adoption in 1912, it has never been thoroughly revised, so its conception and basic structure have remained essentially intact. This book celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the Dutch Act. It traces and assesses, for an international readership, the development of Dutch copyright law since its codification in 1912 until today. The book focuses on the interesting or even unique features of Dutch copyright law, with a view to the on-going harmonization of copyright law in the European Union, and possible future unification. What can Europe or the world at large learn from a century of Dutch copyright law, jurisprudence and doctrine? What solutions might inspire the European legislature or law makers elsewhere in the world? What mistakes are better to be avoided? Sixteen scholars on Dutch copyright have written extensive papers on distinct aspects of the Dutch Act, focussing on the characteristic elements of the Dutch Act from an international perspective. The book also contains an English translation of the Dutch Copyright Act.


Accepted, February 19, 2002. OBJECTIVE: The use of a covered stent-graft to repair disruptions of the cervical carotid and vertebral arteries is described. This device maintains vessel patency while effectively excluding pseudoaneurysms, arteriovenous fistulae, and other breaches in the integrity of the arterial wall. METHODS: Patient 1 bled from a large rent in the proximal common carotid artery as a result of tumor invasion. Patient 2 developed a vertebral arteriovenous fistula after a stab injury to the neck. Patient 3 developed cerebral infarction and an enlarging pseudoaneurysm of the internal carotid artery, also after a stab wound to the neck. RESULTS: All three patients were treated with the Wallgraft endoprosthesis (Boston Scientific, Watertown, MA). In each case, the vessel wall defect was repaired while antegrade flow through the artery was preserved or restored. No neurological complications occurred as a result of stent-graft deployment. CONCLUSION: Covered stent-grafts offer an alternative to endovascular occlusion of the parent vessel, thereby expanding the therapeutic options for patients with extracranial cerebrovascular disease. These three cases highlight the usefulness and versatility of these devices for endoluminal reconstruction of the brachiocephalic vasculature.


abstract:High rates of gender-based violence and sexist political rhetoric are central features of contemporary Turkey. This article explores the complex relationship between the two by drawing on the literature that investigates the (re)making of the category of "woman" in the Middle East and the scholarship on femicide/feminicide. The article employs critical discourse analysis of ruling politicians' gender-normative statements and shows how they reconstruct the category of "proper woman" as one with institutional and social consequences that compromise women's safety. Using John L. Austin's theory of performative speech acts, the article develops a theory of the speaking state to explain the effects of political speech. Ultimately it argues that the politics of "woman making" is central to "the politics of woman killing."


Current deep learning based text classification methods are limited by their ability to achieve fast learning and generalization when the data is scarce. We address this problem by integrating a meta-learning procedure that uses the knowledge learned across many tasks as an inductive bias towards better natural language understanding. Based on the Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning framework (MAML), we introduce the Attentive Task-Agnostic Meta-Learning (ATAML) algorithm for text classification. The essential difference between MAML and ATAML is in the separation of task-agnostic representation learning and task-specific attentive adaptation. The proposed ATAML is designed to encourage task-agnostic representation learning by way of task-agnostic parameterization and facilitate task-specific adaptation via attention mechanisms. We provide evidence to show that the attention mechanism in ATAML has a synergistic effect on learning performance. In comparisons with models trained from random initialization, pretrained models and meta trained MAML, our proposed ATAML method generalizes better on single-label and multi-label classification tasks in miniRCV1 and miniReuters-21578 datasets.


This thesis presents a theory and analysis of the role of imagination in organizations. More specifically, the work exposes how central traditions of interpretative research within organization studies have overlooked the phenomenon of imagination and, thus, it aims at narrowing this gap, by empirically investigating the role of imagination in the risk management practices of a Brazilian conglomerate. With a long tradition in the sugar-ethanol sector, this company – here called Group – has been diversifying its business in order to position itself as a global player in the energy and infra-structure sector. This change involves the articulation of idiosyncratic notions of risk and opportunity within different levels of the conglomerate. Using a qualitative research strategy and an interpretative method, the thesis explores a narrative of risk management within the three levels of the conglomerate: its corporate level, a business here called Energy and a business named Land. Accordingly, the constitutive and reproductive aspects of risk management in these levels were highlighted. Constitutive refers to the moments in which the signification of risk led practitioners to engage in transforming their own practices; reproductive refers to the routinization and dissemination of such practices within the company. By casting light on the intersections between these aspects and imagination, the thesis describes risk management as an imaginary institution. This description adopts a dialectical phenomenological approach to institutions developed from the works of Cornelius Castoriadis (1987). Following this perspective, risk is a social imaginary signification working as an institutional resource that managers use in order to introduce new regimes of practice. Findings point to three emergent imaginaries of risk management in the conglomerate, along with, respectively, different logics: risk management as the exploration and exploitation of new uncertainties; risk management as a cultural collusion; and risk management as a techno-logical production of images. Implications of these findings to both organizational and risk management theory are explicated. First, the findings imply that rather than logics being a central mechanism of organizing (Thornton et al., 2012), organizations have at their core imaginary significations which enable and determine multiple logics. This assumption challenges the dominant understanding that institutional logics shape action in organizational fields, because logics stem, in this case, from imaginary institutions. Second, the thesis shows that, while enacted by domains of practice, risk is necessarily deferred within discourses and practices. Through this deferral, the imaginary of risk incorporates novel and unpredicted elements into itself contributing to changing the very way risk is understood within the conglomerate. This leads practices of risk management to be revised, changed or supplemented. Risk management assumes, in this case, a less monolithic aspect. As the thesis makes explicit, the managers and analysts of the Group and the other two businesses are not being colonized by risk (Rothstein et al., 2006), but are instead colonizing through and within the imaginary signification of risk.
The thesis draws, finally, two associated conclusions regarding the role of imagination in organizations. On the one side, managers use imagination to produce figural orderings. These refer to the many forms of accounting in organizations (i.e. through figures, images, sets, etc.) that are constructed and differentiated in order to give support for action. Rationality emerges here out of the practices, techniques, language and tools used to organize action around spatial images and the recombination of imaginary locations. On the other side, however, imagination provokes (re)presentations in organizations, that is, imagination pushes practitioners to constantly re-interpret established images and to construct new representations beyond available logics of organizing. Individual imagination then intertwines with the practices, objects and technologies constructed in and for organizations, through the non-technical aspects involved in organizational action and change. Practices in organizations are, according to this view, always fragmentary and must rely on the continuous expansion of action within action itself. Organizations are, therefore, socially and imaginarily constructed through the putting in place of particular techniques and languages – the logics of talking and doing things – according to interests and projects that underpin and are underpinned by social imaginary significations.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is accompanied by pain, inflammation and muscle weakness. Skeletal muscle inflammation and inactivity are independently associated with muscle insulin resistance and atrophy. Our objective was to identify early molecular and biochemical markers in muscle from a rodent model of RA relative to control and subsequently identify commonality in muscle gene expression between this model and muscle from RA patients. Pain behaviour and locomotor activity were measured in a collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) model of RA (n = 9) and control (n = 9) rats. Energy substrates and metabolites, total alkaline-soluble protein:DNA ratio and mRNA abundance of 46 targeted genes were also determined in Extensor digitorum longus muscle. Expression of targeted mRNAs was quantified in Vastus Lateralis muscle from RA patients (n = 7) and healthy age-matched control volunteers (n = 6). CIA rats exhibited pain behaviour (p<0.01) and reduced activity (p<0.05) compared to controls. Muscle glycogen content was less (p<0.05) and muscle lactate content greater (p<0.01) in CIA rats. The bioinformatics analysis of muscle mRNA abundance differences from the control, predicted the activation of muscle protein metabolism and inhibition of muscle carbohydrate and fatty acid metabolism in CIA rats. Compared to age-matched control volunteers, RA patients exhibited altered muscle mRNA expression of 8 of the transcripts included as targets in the CIA model of RA. In conclusion, muscle energy metabolism and metabolic gene expression were altered in the CIA model, which was partly corroborated by targeted muscle mRNA measurements in RA patients. This research highlights the negative impact of RA on skeletal muscle metabolic homeostasis.


: A summary of the treatment of a borderline patient illustrates (I) that psychoanalytic therapy with such patients is feasible within the framework of the structural hypothesis and (2) that the results of such treatment are influenced materially by the analyst's use of his emotional responses to the patient and her production.


The purpose of this study was to describe and assess the use of fissure sealant retention as a quality measure of the delivery system for pediatric dentistry. The Pediatric Dentistry Section at the Ohio State University College of Dentistry adopted Sealant retention as a measure of quality. Sealant retention in first and second molars was evaluated at each six-month recall appointment. Sealants were categorized as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Two hundred five sealants were evaluated between March 1998 and March 1999. The mean age of the patients at the time of sealant evaluation was 14.0 +/- 2.9. Mean sealant retention period was 29.8 +/- 23.2 months, with a range of 0.9 to 148 months. Median sealant retention period was 23.2 months. Overall, 75.6 percent of the sealed teeth were classified as satisfactory. Use of this data in making improvements is discussed. Our results indicate that the use of sealant retention is a suitable measure for quality of care in pediatric dentistry.


An interesting class of "geometric intersection problems" calls for dealing with the pairwise intersections among a set of N objects in the plane, These problems arise in many applications such as printed circuit design, architectural data bases, and computer graphics. Shamos and Hoey have described a number of algorithms for detecting whether any two objects in a planar set intersect. In this paper we extend their work by giving algorithms that count the number of such intersections and algorithms that report all such intersections.


There is a widespread idea that corporations have completely taken over invention and innovation processes throughout the twentieth century, thus becoming the main users of patent systems. However, recent studies suggest that, in spite of corporate expansion, independent invention is still economically significant nowadays, and that individuals outside the boundaries of the firm were actually the principal source of innovation before World War II. This article analyzes the history of corporate and independent patents in Spain in the long-term, in order to confirm that independents were also very relevant to promoting innovation and technology transfer in latecomers with high rates of technological dependence. Employing a new method of work with patent files, we also offer new historical evidence of the structure, effectiveness and scope of emerging international social networks of innovation. After introducing the research framework, Section Two briefly summarizes the characteristics of the Spanish patent system, and compares corporate and independent patents taken out between 1820 and 1939. Section Three studies the duration and strength of independent patents and the structure of the communities of innovation, and the conclusions make up Section Four.


For datasets in Collaborative Filtering (CF) recommendations, even if the identifier is deleted and some trivial perturbation operations are applied to ratings before they are released, there are research results claiming that the adversary could discriminate the individual's identity with a little bit of information. In this paper, we propose $k$-coRating, a novel privacy-preserving model, to retain data privacy by replacing some null ratings with "well-predicted" scores. They do not only mask the original ratings such that a $k$-anonymity-like data privacy is preserved, but also enhance the data utility (measured by prediction accuracy in this paper), which shows that the traditional assumption that accuracy and privacy are two goals in conflict is not necessarily correct. We show that the optimal $k$-coRated mapping is an NP-hard problem and design a naive but efficient algorithm to achieve $k$-coRating. All claims are verified by experimental results.


This thesis presents a new hybrid active and semi-active control method for vibration suppression in flexible structures. The method uses a combination of a semi-active device and an active control actuator situated elsewhere in the structure to suppress vibrations. The key novelty is to use the hybrid controller to enable the semi-active device to achieve a performance as close to a fully active device as possible. This is accomplished by ensuring that the active actuator can assist the semi-active device in the regions where energy is required. Also, the hybrid active and semi-active controller is designed to minimise the switching of the semi-active controller. The control framework used is the immersion and invariance control technique in combination with a sliding mode control. A two degree-of-freedom system with lightly damped resonances is used as an example system. Both numerical and experimental results are generated for this system and then compared as part of a validation study.
The experimental system uses hardware-in-the-loop simulation to simulate the effect of both the degrees-of-freedom. The results show that the concept is viable both
numerically and experimentally, and improved vibration suppression results can be obtained for the semi-active device that approaches the performance of an active device. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid controller, it is implemented to keep the contact force constant in the pantograph-catenary system of high-speed trains. A detailed derivation is given after which the simulation results are presented.
Then a method to design a reduced order observer using an invariant manifold approach is proposed. The main advantage of this approach is that it enables a systematic design approach, and (unlike most nonlinear observer design methods), it can be generalised over a larger class of nonlinear systems. The method uses specific mapping functions in a way that minimises the error dynamics close to zero. Another important aspect is the robustness property which is due to the manifold attractivity: an important feature when an observer is used in a closed loop control system. The observer design
is validated using both numerical simulations and hardware-in-the-loop testing. The proposed observer is then compared with a very well known nonlinear observer based on the off-line solution of the Riccati equation for systems with Lipschitz type nonlinearity. In all cases, the performance of the proposed observer is shown to be excellent.