This Research leave from existence of perception of researcher in seeing the existence of imbalance of gender in Indonesia society, specially in domesticity, where in this case woman which at most harmed . This matter because of most Indonesia society represent follower of culture of patriarki, that is tending to to major men more than woman. So that role of existing gender in society progressively setle happened. Even, consciously or not mass media - specially media print, also have a share in effort overspread imbalance of gender in society. Though gender alone represent result of social construction able to be commuted for one otherly. selected of magazine of Ayahbunda as research object, hence this research represent effort to look for researcher answer about how balance representation of gender in magazine of Ayahbunda, tend to bias gender or not.
Research method which] used in this research by alliing two approach in text semiotic, there are social semiotic Halliday and connotation semiotic Rolland Barthes. And afterwards, continued by using Levi's Strauss structuralis semiotic. Pursuant to model analyse social semiotic Halliday, to know meaning from a text, hence we have to know elements of it self Ianguage, that is: text, situation, or register ( Ianguage style), code, linguistics system, and social structure. Later;Then know component as semantic as, there are three: Idea function, Component of Interpersonal, and Component of tekstual. While text interpretation process (sign) refer to model of two phase signification of Rolland Barthes, that is to check connotation-connotation which there are in text, and find ideology in text. Afterwards researcher to do a comparison of contrary opposition couple patterns, which hidden and yield meaning, that is using concept of paradigmatic Levi's Strausss, using the tables of binary opposition. With result of all analysis, hence can know depiction (balance representation) of gender in magazine of Ayahbunda, do magazine of ayahbunda tend to bias gender or not.
From result of data analysis, hence can be concluded is, first, magazine of Ayahbunda in election of Ianguage and appearance of appetite represent effort of Ayahbunda to give well-balanced gender representation, but implicitly Ayahbunda still instruct woman up at limited role. Both, magazine of Ayahbunda in representation to balance of gender have tendency bias gender. That thing is because of Ayahbunda embrace ideology of capitalis-patriarki. Which role of woman in family still stereotype just domestic region, though by eksplisit mentioned that woman also can work outdoorsly. But mentioned implicitly have a meaning that woman as housewife, also can plunge public region as does husband, but obligation of mother in taking care of house, mothering child, and also serve husband nor may be left. So that role of woman in family tend to more and longer than role of men.
Pursuant to this research, can know that a mass media masterpiece don't only seen from external appearance (categorized bias gender or not), but also have to be seen from its items substansi (mount psychological effect and education to reader). Thereby, needed studys concerning gender inequalities in mass media, passing various study to usage of Ianguage in text of gender in media, with a purpose to open awareness and improve knowledge for public about ideological strategy media in influencing view, action, and reader enthusiasm. Therefore, suggested to researcher hereinafter to be more try to test method capacities analyse semiotic at other rubric or other medias which of a kind, because study of semiotic more is giving to possibility of unloading messages which hidden in mass media. And also to enrich reference concerning imbalance of gender mass media, specially about how mass media to representation balance of gender, do mass media tend to diffraction of gender or not. Strive the also have to get full support of media, governmental, and also society, in effort realize balance of gender in society.


Nickel Titanium endodontic instruments facilitates instrumentation of curved canals. Continuous unidirectional rotation causes development of complex stresses in nickel titanium rotary instruments. The distribution of torsional anti bending stresses depends primarily on the cross sectional design and mass of the instrument to be cut. The finite element analysis is aimed to study and compare stress distribution and behavior of two rotary instruments, protaper and profile. The stress induced phase transformation of nickel titanium alloy is also studied by Finite Element Model, this model when simulated properly shows better understanding of stress analysis than other methods. The analyses are made by applying a concentrated torsional and bending moment to the protaper and profile instrument models. Under equal loads, protaper model showed uniform stress distribution and less elasticity compared to profile model. Profile model is more elastic but, showed stress peaks between flutes.


Recent observations of microwave background and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) suggest a space-fiat and accelerated expansion Universe. On the other hand, observations of supernovae 1997ff reveal that the Universe has undergone a decelerating-acceleratingprocess. Combining these two classes of observations, wepresent an eternal expanding Universe toy model driven by quintessence. In this picture, the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of accelerating-decelerating cycles.


In a 1993 research note in TRJ, Henderson and Bedini discussed the challenges of linking qualitative and quantitative data within a single study. Since that time, mixed method research has appeared more frequently in the therapeutic recreation literature. Mixed method research, however, has not been fully embraced as underlying philosophical concerns persist (Datta, 1994; Samdahl, 1999). A dominant-less dominant mixed method research design and its application in a study of family recreation is presented in this research note as an approach for addressing some of these concerns. The grounding of this work in the naturalistic paradigm is discussed, as are the influences of this framework on the collection, analysis, and reporting of the data.


Sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is a potent lipid mediator that works on five kinds of S1P receptors located on the cell membrane. In the circulation, S1P is distributed to HDL, followed by albumin. Since S1P and HDL share several bioactivities, S1P is believed to be responsible for the pleiotropic effects of HDL. Plasma S1P levels are reportedly lower in subjects with coronary artery disease, suggesting that S1P might be deeply involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. In basic experiments, however, S1P appears to possess both pro-atherosclerotic and anti-atherosclerotic properties; for example, S1P possesses anti-apoptosis, anti-inflammation, and vaso-relaxation properties and maintains the barrier function of endothelial cells, while S1P also promotes the egress and activation of lymphocytes and exhibits pro-thrombotic properties. Recently, the mechanism for the biased distribution of S1P on HDL has been elucidated; apolipoprotein M (apoM) carries S1P on HDL. ApoM is also a modulator of S1P, and the metabolism of apoM-containing lipoproteins largely affects the plasma S1P level. Moreover, apoM modulates the biological properties of S1P. S1P bound to albumin exerts both beneficial and harmful effects in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, while S1P bound to apoM strengthens anti-atherosclerotic properties and might weaken the pro-atherosclerotic properties of S1P. Although the detailed mechanisms remain to be elucidated, apoM and S1P might be novel targets for the alleviation of atherosclerotic diseases in the future.


Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) algorithm effectively combines different kernels to improve the performance of classification. Most MKL algorithms implicitly map samples into feature space by the form of inner-product. In contrast, Multiple Empirical Kernel Learning (MEKL) can explicitly map the input spaces into feature spaces so that the mapped feature vectors are explicitly represented, which is easy to process and analyze the adaptability of kernels for input space. Meanwhile, in order to pay attention to the structure and discriminant information of samples in empirical feature space, inspired by discriminant locality preserving projections, we introduce the discriminant locality preservation regularization into MEKL framework to propose the Multiple Empirical Kernel Learning with Discriminant Locality Preservation (MEKL-DLP). Experiments conducted on realworld datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed MEKL-DLP compared with the classical kernel-based algorithms and state-of-art MKL algorithms.


Alternatively activated (M2) macrophages regulate immune responses and tissue remodelling. In many tissues including placenta, M2 express stabilin-1, a multidomain protein that exerts a dual role as a scavenger receptor for acetylated low density lipoprotein (acLDL) and SPARC (secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine) and as an intracellular cargo carrier for SI-CLP. Using yeast two-hybrid screening, we identified the developmental hormone placental lactogen (PL) as a novel ligand of stabilin-1. In Chinese hamster ovary-stabilin-1 cells and M2, FACS and confocal microscopy demonstrated that stabilin-1 mediates internalization and endosomal sorting of PL. In M2 macrophages, PL was partially degraded in lysosomes; part of PL escaped degradation and was delivered to novel PL (cid:1) storage vesicles lacking endosomal/lysosomal markers. During formation, PL (cid:1) vesicles underwent transient interaction with the trans -Golgi network (TGN). Upon placement of PL-loaded M2 into PL-free medium, PL was secreted into the supernatant. Leupeptin, an inhibitor of lysosomal hydro-lases, reduced PL degradation, enhanced sorting of PL into the TGN/storage vesicle pathway and increased PL secretion. Thus, processing of PL in M2 macrophages occurs either by the classical lysosomal pathway or by a novel TGN-associated trans -secretory pathway. Macrophages isolated from human placental villi efficiently endocytosed PL-FITC and transported it to the storage vesicles. Our data show that extracellular PL levels are determined by uptake, degradation, storage, and release in M2. During pregnancy PL concentration reaches 10 (cid:2) g/ml in maternal circulation and stays below 0.5 (cid:2) g/ml in fetal circulation. We propose that stabilin-1-positive macrophages determine the difference in PL levels between maternal and fetal circulation. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 180: 3028–3037. of


Human occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) is organized into distinct areas that are selectively activated by the visual presentation of different categories, like faces (Kanwisher et al., 1997), bodies (Downing et al., 2001), tools (Chao et al., 1999), hands (Bracci et al., 2010), and places (Epstein et al., 1999). However, the precise role of these areas in processing their preferred stimulus category is still unclear. Moreover, the debate on how such brain organization originates is still unresolved. In order to investigate these issues, we focused on one of these selective areas: a region in left lateral-occipitotemporal cortex (lLOTC) that has been shown to be selective to both hands and tools and that is functionally connected to left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and premotor cortex (PM), regions involved in action processing (Bracci et al., 2012). Although tools and hands are visually very different, they are both involved in object-directed actions. Thus, lLOTC might process both categories in order to efficiently communicate with IPS and PM. Alternatively, however, tool selectivity in lLOTC may simply reflect epiphenomenal association of tools with hands, for example related to mental imagery. Furthermore, the role of feedback projections between IPS and lLOTC in shaping tool selectivity in lLOTC has not yet been investigated.
Using fMRI, we found that lLOTC was more strongly activated when participants processed action-related properties of tools (deciding on the typical hand action associated with a tool), as compared to when they processed contextual properties of tools (deciding on the typical location associated with a tool). Importantly, TMS over lLOTC led to a specific decrease in accuracy for action judgments but not for contextual judgments, supporting a causal role for lLOTC in processing tool actions. We investigated lLOTC-IPS connections by interleaving repetitive TMS with short fMRI scans. In a first experiment, we applied TMS over left IPS and found a decrease in BOLD signal in left IPS, confirming that TMS suppressed neural processing in the target area. Moreover, BOLD responses also decreased in left dorsal PM and right IPS, suggesting that these two areas receive projections from left IPS. However, no significant change was found in lLOTC, indicating that tool selectivity in lLOTC does not require feedback from IPS. In a second study, we stimulated lLOTC. In this study, however, no significant TMS-induced BOLD changes were found in the target region, possible reflecting insufficient statistical power.
In conclusion, our results show that lLOTC is critical in processing action-related properties of tools, indicating that tool selectivity in this area reflects processes that are necessary for understanding tool actions. As a consequence, the finding that lLOTC is causally selective for both tools and hands, even if these two categories are visually very different, supports the hypothesis that the functional organization of OTC partly reflects non-visual organizational principles. Finally, the fact that we did not find significant back projections from IPS to lLOTC suggests that the role of lLOTC in processing tools does not arise as a consequence of activity in higher areas, but that lLOTC is relatively autonomous in processing action-related properties of tools.


: Radiologic diagnosis of the pancreas has undergone great progress in recent years and several valuable techniques are now available for examining the pancreas. Employed singly or in various combinations, as indicated by the individual patient's clinical and laboratory findings, they make possible an accurate diagnosis of pancreatic disease.


: Granisetron is a selective 5-hydroxy tryptamine3 receptor antagonist and widely used for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). Recommended dose of intravenous granisetron in the USA and Europe has been set at 0.01 mg/kg (1 mg/body) in the antiemetic treatment guidelines established by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and National Comprehension Cancer Network. In contrast, the approved dose in Japan is 0.04 mg/kg (3 mg/body). Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which compared 1 mg/body with 3 mg/body of intravenous granisetron for CINV had been reported in Japan. In these RCTs, however, hematological malignancy patients were excluded. We performed observational retrospective study to compare 1 mg/body with 3 mg/body of intravenous granisetron for the prevention of CINV and adverse events in hematological malignancy patients. Number of the patients and chemotherapy courses were 15 and 30 in the 1 mg/body group, and 15 and 27 in the 3 mg/body group, respectively. No nausea rates in the 1 and 3 mg/body group were 83% and 89% of courses, respectively. No vomiting rates in the 1 and 3 mg/body group were 97% and 100% of courses, respectively. The incidences of constipation in the 1 and 3 mg/body group were 34% and 45% of courses, respectively. Anaphylaxis and headache did not occur in both groups. Our findings suggested that 1 mg/body of intravenous granisetron can prevent from CINV in hematological malignancy patients, as well as 3 mg/body.


This paper examines the factors that have influenced the performance of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) since its establishment in 1995. It discovers a pronounced role for Kenya's competitive and fragmented political settlement, which generates strong incentives for ruling elites to constrain KRA's autonomy because of its potential as a patronage tool and as a political weapon. For much of KRA's first decade of existence, these dynamics curtailed its ability to function as a 'pocket of effectiveness' (POE). KRA did, however, emerge as a POE (albeit a fragile and progressively weakening one) from around 2003, when a shared set of ideas motivated newly elected President Mwai Kibaki and an inner circle of likeminded 'technopols' to try and insulate the organization from the more corrosive and short-termist pressures generated by Kenya's political settlement. They did so because of the importance of revenue mobilisation within their broader developmental vision. That said, KRA was a somewhat isolated POE, as Kibaki's administration failed to overcome the much greater political pressures around tax policy to provide the kind of broader enabling environment that would have allowed KRA to tap significant new revenue streams. Thus, even in periods when KRA has functioned as a POE, Kenya's performance with regards to revenue collection has demonstrated only moderate improvements. These findings, the paper concludes, offer insights into the limitations of POEs when the broader policy environment within which they are located remains unconducive.


Delonix elata, Enicostemma axillare, Merremia tridentata, Mollugo cerviana and Solanum incanum are medicinal plants used in traditional Indian medicine for the treatment of various ailments. These plants were selected to evaluate their potential antibacterial activity. To determine antibacterial activity and phytochemicals in the crude extracts of five medicinal plants used in traditional Indian medicine for the treatment of various ailments like rheumatism, piles fever, skin diseases and snake bite. The antibacterial activity of organic solvent extracts of these plants were determined by disc diffusion and broth dilution techniques against grampositive bacterial strains (Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus) and gram-negative bacterial strains (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa). Results revealed that the chloroform and methanol extracts of D. elata and methanol extracts of M. cerviana exhibited significant antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative strains with minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) ranging from 1.5 to 100 mg/ml. Methanol extracts of M. tridentata exhibited activity only against gram-positive bacterial strains with MBC ranging from 12.5 to 100 mg/ml. Extracts of E. axillare and S. incanum showed activity only against B. subtilis and were not bactericidal at 100 mg/ml. The most susceptible organism to the organic extracts from all the studied plants was B. subtilis and the most resistant organism was P. aeruginosa. The presence of phytochemicals such as alkaloids, tannins, triterpenoids, steroids and glycosides in the extracts of these plants supports their traditional uses as medicinal plants for the treatment of various ailments. The present study reveals potential use of these plants for developing new antibacterial compounds against pathogenic microorganisms. Key words: Antibacterial, Enicostemma axillare, Merremia tridentata, Mollugo cerviana, Solanum incanum


While endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is widely used to treat gastrointestinal tumors, it is rarely used for subepithelial tumors (SETs) originating from the muscularis propria of the esophagus and gastric cardia because of the risk of perforation and problems with inadequate space and field of view during procedures. Submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection (STER) is a new therapeutic method for treating SETs in specific locations in the esophagus and stomach. This technique is highly skill-dependent, using a mucosal flap that covers a deeper part of the gut wall, but is safe and minimally invasive compared with conventional endoscopic approaches such as ESD in SETs originating from the muscularis propria.We report a patient who underwent STER to remove a SET located at the gastric cardia. The patient recovered without any complications. We believe that our case shows the efficacy and safety of the STER technique for patients with a SET originating from the muscularis propria.(Korean J Gastroenterol 2015;66:340-344)


Background: Child sexual abuse cuts across cultures, races, ethnicity, beliefs, orientation and religion all over the world. The rate of defilement cases has been on a steady rise over the years in Nigeria. Medically, child sexual abuse is believed to be a risk factor for many diseases and the victims go through various health injuries both in the short and long terms which result in negative impacts on their lives. Children are no longer safe because most of the perpetrators of the crime still walk scot-free since many victims do not like to report the crime or even when they report the crime, the criminal justice system fails to convict and jail the accused persons thereby disappointing the victim for lack of justice and closure.Method: Thus, this work was undertaken to examine the medical effects of child abuse on the victims and the effectiveness of our laws as in bringing defilement to a necessary end. The findings from this research showed that the health consequences of child abuse on victims extends till the long term while the culture of silence in Nigeria amongst some defilement victims prevents arrest and prosecution of perpetrators.Recommendation: The study recommends free medical treatment for victims of defilement to ensure extensive treatment and the criminal justice system should ensure fast-tracked trial for all accused persons.Conclusion: It was thus concluded that not until our legal framework especially the Criminal and Penal Codes be amended to remove provisions of corroborative evidence, child sexual abuse will continue to be on the rise.Keywords: Child Abuse, Medical, Defilement, Victim, Sexual, Laws


Background: This paper investigates the views of University of Liverpool graduate foundation doctors and their consultants on their preparedness to undertake skills and competencies expected of new doctors in relation to the latest GMC recommendations. (GMC, 2007)
Summary of Work: One line questionnaires were distributed in Decemeber 2008 to all 1217 consultants and all 400 Liverpool graduate foundation doctors across the Mersey Deanery region.
Summary of Results: Ninety-one (45.5%, n= 200) F1 doctors 95 (47.5%, n=200) F2 doctors and 345 consultants (28.3%, n = 1217) responded. The vast majority of junior doctors and consultants generally rated the competencies listed on the questionnaire at midpoint (generally quite well prepared) and above. They were seen as being well prepared to work as F1 doctors and had good clinical skills but there were repeated criticisms of basic scientific knowledge due to PBL in the Liverpool curriculum.
Conclusions: Preparedness was largely attributed to final exams at the end of 4th allowing students to "shadow" junior doctors in final year and compulsory clinical and communication skills modules whilst PBL can create uncertainty over science knowledge acquisition.
Take-home messages: Liverpool graduates are seen as being generally well prepared to work as junior doctors and perform the skills required by the GMC despite concerns over basic science knowledge.


Computer programming can help children develop problem solving and analytical skills. Thus, many countries have included computer science in the curriculum of primary school. Given differences in culture, available infrastructures, as well as the age pupils are introduced to computer science, forming a computer science curriculum still remains a challenge. Towards this end, this study focuses on ex-ploring the potential merits of introducing concurrent programming concepts ear-ly in the learning process. The basic premise is that although concurrent pro-gramming at its full details is a rather advanced topic even at university level, it is everyday practice to perform two or more tasks simultaneously that might need (or not) some sort of synchronization. Therefore, the tutor can capitalize on eve-ryday experience to explain basic concepts on concurrency. Such correlation be-tween life experience and concurrent programming challenges may expand the cognitive functions of the pupils and provide them with further background to improve analytical thinking. The proposed curriculum for fifth and sixth grade primary school was adopted in seven classes in Greece. Results indicate that un-initiated to programming pupils at the age of ten (fifth grade) were able to com-prehend basic concurrency topics, while pupils at the age of eleven (sixth grade) with some programming familiarity were able to understand more advanced concepts.


Background. The rapid proliferation of electronic health records (EHRs) in clinics has had mixed impact on patient-centered communication, yet few evaluated interventions exist to train practicing providers in communication practices. Aims. We extended the evidence-based Physician Asthma Care Education (PACE) program with EHR-specific communication strategies, and tested whether training providers with the extended program (EHR-PACE) would improve provider and patient perceptions of provider communication skills and asthma outcomes of patients. Method. A pilot randomized design was used to compare EHR-PACE with usual care. Participants were providers (n = 18) and their adult patients with persistent asthma (n = 126). Outcomes were assessed at baseline and 3- and 6-month postintervention, including patient perception of their provider's communication skills and provider confidence in using EHRs during clinical encounters. Results. Compared with the control group, providers who completed the EHR-PACE program reported significant improvements at 3-month follow-up in their confidence with asthma counseling practices (estimate 0.90, standard error [SE] 0.4); p < .05) and EHR-specific communication practices (estimate 2.3, SE 0.8; p < .01), and at 6-month follow-up, a significant decrease in perception that the computer interferes with the patient–provider relationship (estimate −1.0, SE 0.3; p < .01). No significant changes were observed in patient asthma outcomes or their perception of their provider's communication skills. Discussion. Training providers with skills to accommodate EHR use in the exam room increases provider confidence and their perceived skills in maintaining patient-centered communications in the short term. Conclusion. Evidence-supported training initiatives that can increase capacity of busy providers to manage increased computing demands shows promise. More research is needed to fully evaluate EHR-PACE on patients' health status and their perceptions of their provider's care through a large-scale trial.


Pure functional languages are expressive tools for writing modular and reliable code. State in programming languages is a useful tool for programming dynamic systems. However, their combination yields programming languages that are difficult to model and to reason about. There have been ongoing attempts to find subsets of the whole languages which have good properties; in particular subsets where the programs are more modular and the side effects are controlled. The existing studies are: interference control, typing with side-effects information, and linear logic based languages. This thesis presents a new classification for a paradigm called constant program throughout a computational invariant. A program is called constant throughout an invariant R if its input-output behaviour is constant over any variations of state that satisfy the invariant R. Hence such a program behaves in an applicative way when it is executed in a context that satisfies the invariant R. The language of discussion is a pure ML fragment augmented with ref, :=, and !. Programs with side effects are modelled in terms of sets, functions, and the side effect monad. Computational invariants are modelled in terms of transition systems. The notion of being constant throughout an invariant requires the notion of indistinguishability throughout an invariant and we define the latter using logical relation technique. We give two definitions of each of them: the first one can be used for reasoning about programs with flat stores adequately. The second one is more sensitive to the behaviour of ref and gives a better account of constant programs with dynamic allocations. Our results are: indistinguishability throughout an invariant R is an equivalence relation over elements that are constant throughout R, and the notion of being constant throughout an invariant is preserved under function application. On the practical side we present some substantial ML examples which use references and side effects but externally behave in a constant way, together with the proofs that they are classified as being constant. These are evidences that our notions are useful concepts in the practise of writing modular programs.


Monthly median values of ionospheric peak height (hmF2) and density (NmF2), derived from ionosonde measurements at four Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Network (CHAIN) stations situated within the polar cap and Auroral Oval, are used to evaluate the performance of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) 2007 empirical ionospheric model during the recent solar minimum between 2008 and 2010. This analysis demonstrates notable differences between IRI and ionosonde NmF2 diurnal and seasonal behavior over the entire period studied, where good agreement is found during summer periods but otherwise errors in excess of 50% were prevalent, particularly during equinox periods. hmF2 is found to be marginally overestimated during winter and equinox nighttime, while also being underestimated during summer and equinox daytime by in excess of 25%. These errors are shown to be related to significant mismodeling of the M(3000)F2 propagation factor. The ionospheric bottomside thickness parameter (B0) is also evaluated using ionosonde measurements. It is found that both of the IRI's internal B0 models significantly misrepresent both seasonal and diurnal variations in bottomside thickness when compared to ionosonde observations, where errors at times exceed 40%. A comparison is also presented between IRI and Resolute (74.75N, 265.00E) Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR)‐derived topside thickness. It is found in this comparison that the IRI is capable of modeling ionospheric topside thickness exceptionally well during winter and summer periods but fails to represent significant diurnal variability during the equinoxes and seasonal variations.


Objectives Pain is often poorly managed, highlighting the need to better understand and treat patients' pain. Research suggests that pain is assessed and treated differently depending on patient sex, race, and/or age. Perspective-taking, whereby one envisions the perspective of another, has been found to reduce racial disparities in pain management. This study used virtual human (VH) technology to examine whether a perspective-taking intervention impacts pain management decisions. Methods Ninety-six participants were randomized to an online treatment or control group and viewed 16 video clips of VHs with standardized levels of pain. Participants provided ratings on the VHs' pain intensity and their willingness to administer opioids to them. The intervention group received a brief perspective-taking intervention that consisted of having participants imagine how the patient's suffering could affect his/her life, whereas the control group was asked to wait for the next VH videos to load. A LENS model analysis was used to investigate both group level (nomothetic) and individual level (idiographic) decision policies. A LENS model of analysis is typically used as an analog method for capturing how groups of people and individuals use information in their environment to form judgments. Results Nomothetic results found that participants rated pain higher and were more likely to prescribe opioids to VHs postintervention, irrespective of group. Idiographic results, however, found that the use of cues to make pain management decisions was mitigated by the perspective-taking group. The participants in the perspective-taking group were more likely to think about pain and the patients' perspective during the intervention, while control participants were more likely to reflect on the VHs' sex, race, or age. Conclusion A brief intervention may alter participants' pain management decisions. These results indicate that a brief intervention might be an initial step toward aligning observers' pain management ratings with those of the patient. Future research is needed to replicate findings in a health care population.


Countries with tax benefits are still attractive for business entities operating in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. The paper aims to quantify the number of offshore companies based on data from the financial report of the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic and Bisnode A Dun & Bradstreet Company and evaluate the development of Slovak companies in tax havens in 2008-2020. The second aim is to verify the hypothesis about statistically significant differences in the number of Slovak offshore companies in analyzed countries between 2020 and 2008. The development of the number of Slovak companies is assessed in absolute and relative terms using a chain index, a base index, a growth rate, and a geometric mean. The stated hypothesis is tested using Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. The results showed that the number of companies in tax havens increased to the greatest extent in 2020. The highest average annual growth rate in the tax haven countries was 52.85% in the Marshall Islands and the lowest average annual growth rate for the analyzed period was in the Netherlands Antilles (3.75%). The USA, the Netherlands and Cyprus are the countries of tax havens with the highest value of Slovak capital.


SUMMARY Cephalopods are known for their ability to change camouflage body patterns in response to changes in the visual background. Recent research has used artificial substrates such as checkerboards to investigate some specific visual cues that elicit the various camouflaged patterns in cuttlefish. In this study, we took information from experiments on artificial substrates and assembled a natural rock substrate (fixed with glue) with those features that are thought to elicit disruptive coloration in cuttlefish. The central hypothesis is that light rocks of appropriate size, substrate contrast and edge characteristics will elicit disruptive camouflage patterns in cuttlefish. By adding graded light sand in successively greater quantities to this glued rock substrate, we predicted that disruptive camouflage patterns would be replaced by progressively more uniform patterns as the visual features of rock size, contrast and edges were altered by the addition of sand. By grading the degree of disruptiveness in the animals' body patterns, we found that the results support this prediction, and that there is a strong correlation between fine details of the visual background properties and the resultant body pattern shown by the cuttlefish. Specifically, disruptive coloration was elicited (1) when one or a few light rocks of approximately the size of the animal's White square skin component were in the surrounding substrate (dark rocks alone did not elicit disruptive coloration), (2) there was moderate-to-high contrast between the light rocks and their immediate surrounds, and (3) the rock edges were well defined. Taken together, the present study provides direct evidence of several key visual features that evoke disruptive skin coloration on natural backgrounds.


This Article examines the departmental structure of the executive branch, which facilitates, channels, and delimits the exercise of executive power. This structure is grounded in the text of the Constitution, which refers to "Department[s]" in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Appointments Clause, and Opinions Clause. The concept of the department also played a key role in the Framers' constitutional theory, referring to units of government that instituted the system of checks and balances. The developed structure of our administrative state implements the scheme that constitutional text and theory outlined. Legislation, case law, and executive branch practice have constructed departments within the executive branch as durable repositories of authority that distribute and rationalize power. This institutional infrastructure has been obscured by debates concerning the "unitary executive," which focus on the president's power to direct and remove particular officials. Departmental protections against official arbitrariness have been tested in recent events, such as the special counsel investigation, the effort to add a citizenship question to the census, and controversies concerning the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The departmental structure of executive power must be maintained with renewed investment from each of the constitutional branches.


Two brothers, aged 3 and 6 years, respectively, had their pulmonary conditions diagnosed as idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis (IPH). Both boys had severe iron-deficiency anemia, chronic cough, hemoptysis, and exertional dyspnea, and one had recurrent epistaxis. The results of light microscopic lung histopathologic studies in both patients showed numerous hemosiderinladen macrophages and chronic interstitial pneumonitis. No specific patterns of immunofluorescence of the alveolar capillary basement membranes were found. The results of electron microscopic examinations showed intact alveolar and capillary basement membranes and no evidence of electron-dense deposits. The lack of clinical or biochemical evidence for renal disease as well as the absence of serum antinuclear and antibasement membrane antibodies excluded associated autoimmune disorders. Evaluation for milk-protein allergy was negative and neither child demonstrated a clinical response to a milk-free diet. Sequential pulmonary function studies performed over four years showed episodes of acute obstructive airway disease that correlated with pulmonary hemorrhage and mild persistent restrictive lung disease. The results of this family study suggested that some cases of IPH may have a genetic basis.


We have developed a novel biofilm-membrane reactor (BMR) in which a nitrifying biofilm is fixed on the surface of a rotating membrane disk. With this reactor, both strict solid-liquid separation and oxidation of ammonia nitrogen can be simultaneously performed. Based on the results obtained in previous benchscale experiments, a pilot-scale study was conducted using river water at a water purification plant. The results obtained in the pilot study can be summarized as follows. (1) By implementation of pre-treatment (coagulation and sedimentation) and simple membrane cleaning (sponge cleaning), the filter run could be continued for 17 months without any chemical washing. (2) Sufficient nitrification was observed when water temperature was high. Deterioration in nitrification efficiency during winter was reduced by the addition of phosphorus. (3) In addition to nitrification, biological oxidation of AOC and manganese can be expected with the BMR. In this study, both AOC and manganese concentration in the permeate decreased to a level less than 10 μg/L. (4) Irreversible membrane fouling, which was thought to be mainly caused by manganese, became significant as the operation period became longer.


We study a new type of spatial-textual trajectory search: the Exemplar Trajectory Query (ETQ), which specifies one or more places to visit, and descriptions of activities at each place. Our goal is to efficiently find the top-k trajectories by computing spatial and textual similarity at each point. The computational cost for pointwise matching is significantly higher than previous approaches. Therefore, we introduce an incremental pruning baseline and explore how to adaptively tune our approach, introducing a gap-based optimization and a novel twolevel threshold algorithm to improve efficiency. Our proposed methods support order-sensitive ETQ with a minor extension. Experiments on two datasets verify the efficiency and scalability of our proposed solution.


Author(s): Forbush, Kelsey Johana | Advisor(s): Cheng, Weixin | Abstract: Anthropogenic driven climate change has the potential to dramatically reshape ecosystems worldwide. Rapid increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have increased global temperatures resulting in catastrophic losses of ecosystem services and biodiversity. Soils are the largest carbon reservoir in the terrestrial ecosystem, yet soil carbon is almost always excluded from global carbon models. Research in this field has been limited due to methodological and logistical difficulties. Understanding the key factors modulating soil carbon fluxes is essential for predicting future climatic conditions. Soil organic matter (SOM) provides numerous benefits to the soil ecosystem including maintaining soil structure, improving water holding capacity, and increasing nutrient availability. Soils that have relatively low amounts of SOM are less productive and less resilient to environmental change compared to soils with high amounts of SOM. Furthermore, the most recalcitrant carbon has been found to remain in the soil for centuries, therefore is it important to investigate the biological and the physical mechanisms that determine the rate of SOM decomposition. The rhizosphere, the 2mm of soil surrounding roots, is a biological hotspot within the soil ecosystem. The effects of live roots on SOM stores can be quantified by measuring the rhizosphere priming effect (RPE) which is the change in rate of SOM decomposition due to the presence of roots. The biological mechanisms driving the RPE have been studied in greenhouse and growth chamber experiments since the 1990s. However, much less is known about how the interactions between plant roots and soil structure dynamics effect the magnitude and direction of the RPE. In order to address this question, soybeans were grown at three different densities in a continuous 13C-isotope labeling greenhouse. I measured three indicators of soil structure (1) the amount of clay particles in the leachate (2) the amount of dissolved organic carbon in the leachate and (3) aggregate size distribution. Greater rhizosphere activity was linked with increases in dissolved organic carbon and clay particles in the leachate. There was a greater proportion of large (g2mm) water stable aggregates in the higher density treatments. Together these results indicate that rhizosphere activity increases aggregate turnover, which may physically expose SOM to microbial attack and increase priming effects. Evidence from greenhouse and laboratory experiments have indicated that plant roots and rhizosphere microbes jointly regulate the rate of SOM decomposition. However, due to methodological challenges, it is unknown how the RPE manifests at the ecological scale. Individual live roots from five woodies species were excavated from the field, inserted into chambers filled with native soil, and were incubated in the field for fifty days. A novel pulse trapping method was used to sample root and soil respiration in the field during a 48 hour period. Root and soil respiration were distinguished based on 13C partitioning. Generally, greater root biomass at the end of the infield incubation was associated with higher priming effects. Species specific effects were also found. These results are consistent with laboratory studies, and suggest that this method can be used in the future in order to gain a better understanding of root-soil interactions in near field conditions. Preserving soil carbon stores through targeted agricultural practices has been a subject of interest in the U.S. since the 1930s. The Conservation Reserve Program recommends switchgrass for soil remediation due to its tolerance for saline and sodic soils and its extensive root system. Biofuel production in the U.S. has garnered increasing attention since the 1990s due to a national interest in energy independence and potential impacts of fossil-fuel-related climate change. Switchgrass, a grass native to the Midwestern United States, improves soil quality, stores carbon deep in the soil, and provides habitat for birds. Increasing the production of biofuel from switchgrass may possibly decrease carbon emissions, increase carbon sequestration, and improve rural economies. I summarize the current social, technological, and logistical impediments to second generation biofuel production. I then examine the role of uncertainty, both political and economic, and its role in the second generation biofuels industry. I conclude that without crop insurance for farmers growing biofuel crops and increases in subsidies, farmers are unlikely to grow enough switchgrass for biofuel to meet the federal mandate. Instead, it is likely that farmers will meet the cellulosic mandate by selling corn stover.


An emotional trauma may induce a cascade of neurobiological events that have long-lasting consequences even altered gene expression. Early abuse and neglect can deregulate the child's developing neurobiological system by reducing its resistance to stressful events, leading to later problems of emotional regulation. Children who have been subjected to physical or emotional abuse tend to pay more attention to signs that contain anger and are hypersensitive to threat. Scar hypothesis and the theories of behavioural sensitization or electrophysiological kindling suggest that emotional traumas may leave traces that persist even after remission of depression, and render individuals vulnerable to the onset of new episodes, even under the influence of only moderate psychosocial stress. Unfavorable early social experiences, such as emotional abuse or institutionalization can affect the structure and function of the prefrontal cortex. Exposure to repeated emotional stressors, even in the absence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses, has been shown to produce increased synapse formation and dendritic growth in basolateral amygdala, dendritic retraction in the hippocampus, and anxiety-like behavior against specific triggers, such as phobia of open spaces. During the narration of an emotionally traumatic event, there is activation of the limbic system, the right amygdale, the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate gyrus. In addition, there is an activation of the anterior insula, which records the physical impact of negative emotions, and the anterior and medial temporal cortex, which are involved in negative emotions. Neuroimaging studies in PTSD patients have found hypoactivity in the frontal lobe, anterior cingulate and thalamic areas, indicating the effects of PTSD on executive function, attention and cognitive, memorial, and affective and somatosensory integration. One of the most replicated findings in studies involving PTSD patients is the decreased activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Studies have also found a negative correlation between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and amygdala activation. A recent meta-analysis revealed structural brain abnormalities associated with PTSD and emotional trauma and suggested that global brain volume reductions can distinguish PTSD from major depression. Neuroimaging studies of successful eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) treatment have consistently shown that patients exhibited increased frontal lobe activation. Moving beyond diagnostic boundaries, focusing on the causal interplay between specific traumatic processes and using standardized measures, are useful directions for future research in memory, emotion and emotional trauma.


The stable hybrid finite element time domain - finite difference time domain (FETD-FDTD) method is extended by incorporating higher order hierarchical basis functions in the finite element region. The use of unstructured tetrahedral elements in the modeling of antenna structure enables the application of the hybrid method to accurately model geometrically complex radiators. Pyramidal elements are used in the transition from unstructured tetrahedral elements to structured hexahedral elements of the FDTD grid. The finite element formulation incorporates the excitation of antennas using coaxial line or stripline feed with transverse electromagnetic mode (TEM). Traditional FDTD method with anisotropic perfectly matched layer (PML) is used to simulate unbounded media. The technique is extended for scattering problems, enabling the modeling and simulation of reception by antennas. Application of this method in the modeling of typical wideband antennas along with the numerical results is presented.


The aim of the presented paper is to contribute to the discussion on innovation activities of small and mediumsized businesses of the Slovak Republic and the European Union. It is based on the results of research carried out by the National Agency for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (NADSME), where the focus was on the innovation capacity of small and medium firms in Slovakia. And it was complemented by the results of an analysis of firms' innovation activities in the Banska Bystrica region carried out within the project "Regional Innovation Strategy of the Banska Bystrica Region".


Employment disputes are increasingly centered on the conflicting moral and religious values of corporations, their employees, and their customers. These conflicts are especially challenging when they involve the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) employees and customers contraposed against the religious beliefs of corporations and their owners. When religious values compete with civil rights in the employment context, a complex web of legal protections renders the outcome unclear. Conflicts over these competing rights can involve a number of broad, thorny legal disputes, including: those concerning the First Amendment and Title VII, fights between secular and religious beliefs, and competition between religious beliefs and Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. This article illustrates the reasons for this growing tension between the beliefs of business owners and the beliefs of their employees. It explores recent conflicts between religion and rights in the workplace particularly in the context of LGBTQ rights, the ways in which state-level regulation complicates these conflicts, and the potential impact of recent cases addressing these concerns. It also identifies examples of potential specific conflicts in the context of LGBTQ rights and suggests the principles that should guide the resolution of these cases, offering a framework for assessing the hierarchy that a court may use in resolving cases in which values conflict with rights in the workplace. Finally, it addresses some of the troubling implications that arise as a result of the resolution of the potential specific conflicts.


Grasslands are inherently dynamic systems having developed with frequent disturbance from fire and grazing that varies in space and time to create heterogeneity. Today, many management practices emphasize the even use of grasslands by grazers and either no fire or uniform fires, resulting in grasslands that lack the variability in plant structure and composition to support the entire suite of grassland biodiversity. Previous research has suggested that the reintroduction of variable disturbance may be among the best conservation strategies for grassland birds, as these practices promote diversity and abundance of many species. However, the reintroduction of heterogeneity is taking place in the context of the continued development of grasslands for energy production, and the utility of heterogeneity based management practices may decline in fragmented landscapes. We investigated how fragmentation from oil and gas may constrain management efforts to promote biodiversity by evaluating changes in bird abundance with distance from roads and conventional oil wells across a gradient of times since fire. We found that time since fire was the primary driver of grassland bird distribution, with dickcissels, eastern meadowlark and grasshopper sparrows occurring in all vegetation patches, while Henslow's sparrows primarily occurred in patches that were greater than 13 months post-fire and upland sandpipers were mostly detected in recent burns. Further, Henslow's sparrows avoided oil wells for considerable distances, while eastern meadowlark was more abundant in areas close to oil wells in vegetation patches that were one-year post-fire. Grasshopper sparrows avoided roads in recent burns and dickcissels, and eastern meadowlarks were attracted to roads in patches that were recently burned and one-year post-fire, respectively. The restoration of heterogeneous fire regimes will benefit bird communities by creating variable vegetation structure that can support multiple grassland bird species; however, energy development has the potential to fragment grasslands for some species.


INTRODUCTION
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale-Revised is a basic tool for the evaluation of people with this disease. In our country, versions are used without the necessary methodological process to adapt them culturally and to be able to certify the plausibility of the data collected. It was our goal to generate an appropriate version adapted to Argentine Spanish.

METHODS
Cross-cultural adaptation of the scale was carried out, producing its Argentine version. Said production was carried out according to internationally accepted methodological procedures: sequential process of translation / synthesis / back-translation and consolidation of the version obtained by a multidisciplinary committee that solved of disagreements under Delphi methodology. The version obtained was tested on ALS people to determine of the existing syntactic - pragmatic level of difficulty, after which the final version was constituted. Difficulty level analysis was performed according to indicators: mode, median, qualitative variation index, variation ratio, accumulated frequency of positive evaluations, identification / modification of observed items (determining criterion: concordance criterion = 80%).

RESULTS
After 3 rounds of consultation, the version agreed upon by the committee was obtained, obtaining agreement levels of 83.33%-100%. Its testing involved 21 functional alphabets, natives/residents, 67% men, mean age 51 years old, mean evolution 1.4 years. The general indicators supported the understanding of the version and the absence of conflicting items.

DISCUSSION
The version obtained demonstrated its conceptual content validity regarding the English version, presenting not semantic nor pragmatic conflicts affecting their use in an Argentine population of ALS patients.


Preservation of Jain manuscripts is a very old tradition originated from Jain temple library concept of Jainism. There are numerous amount of literature is saved in Jain temple libraries and bhandars. Rajasthan is one of the rich states for the preservation of oriental Jain manuscripts as a knowledge content and religious importance. This study examines the Rajasthan Jain temple libraries and Jain shastra bhandars, their collections, places, types of manuscripts, RORI's collection and preservation policy of Jain manuscripts in Bikaner branch, translations of manuscripts work, publications of catalogue etc.


In order to discuss the abnormal fracture in drop weight tear test (DWTT) of API X80 medium-thickness plate, some unqualified samples in DWTT are characterized by SEM, AES, electrolysis and thermal simulation. SEM results show that there are many spherical precipitates in the fracture surface. EDS and AES results show that the abnormal spherical precipitates are carbides including Fe, Ni, Mo, Ti, etc. These precipitates can be extracted by neutral electrolyte method and their EDS results further demonstrate they are carbides. The formationmechanismof the precipitates is discussed based on thermal simulation experiments. When the cooling rate of medium-thickness plate is not enough high, especially in carbide formation area in Fe-C diagram, abnormal spherical carbides will occur and they are harmful for DWTT.


Although value creation has been proven to be effective factor for good businees performance, it may not be  the case for smalland medium enterprises (SMEs). This study is aimed at investigating  the impact of value creation of the performance of small and medium busineesses. The study employedpath analysis and data of 30 samples of  leading small and medium busineesses inWest Java, Indonesia.This provincehas considerable potential to serve as a center of small and mediumindusry developmentfor its abundant source of raw materials and being the largest market potential in the country.The results of hypothesis testing revealed that the network partnership,  benefits of customer and business domain had great and significant correlation with business performance. The results also indicated that SMEs failed to consider the creation of benefits over their product. Keywords: SMEs development, Value creation


This paper discusses developing country interests regarding the inclusion of competition law disciplines in the WTO. Although developing countries have a great interest in pursuing an active domestic competition policy, this can and should be done independently of the WTO. Given the mercantilist basis of multilateral trade negotiations, the WTO is less likely to be a powerful instrument to encourage adoption of welfare-enhancing competition rules than it is as a forum for the abolition of border measures. Priority should therefore be given to pursuit of the traditional market access focus of the WTO?further reduction in direct barriers to trade in goods and services.


In addition to their direct effects on tumor cells, certain anticancer therapies elicit a prosurvival response in benign tissues in the tumor microenvironment. This host response can be seen as an attempt of the body to diminish chemotherapy-induced damage in tissues crucial for functioning. Unfortunately, this acute reaction to damage can be exploited by the tumor to reduce therapy-induced damage in cancer cells. The host response can therefore interfere with the antitumor activity of a drug, and may provide an explanation for the limited success of certain anticancer agents. Targeting the host response will likely augment current antitumor therapies. In this thesis we have utilized preclinical and translational studies to show that the host response following chemotherapy exposure consists of changes in numerous cell types and cytokines. For example, we show that chemotherapy can activate cells in the pulmonary vascular bed to create a favorable niche for tumor cell colonization, a process involving upregulation of VEGFR-1 on pulmonary endothelial cells. When chemotherapy was combined with antibodies targeting VEGFR-1, this effect was reversed and the number of lung colonies was decreased. Furthermore, platinum-containing chemotherapeutics induce a host response in mesenchymal stem cells, leading to secretion of rare fatty acids (PIFAs) that can protect tumors against a broad spectrum of chemotherapeutic drugs. Inhibitors of COX-1 and thromboxane synthase could prevent PIFA formation. Addition of either of these inhibitors to chemotherapy blocked the release of PIFAs from MSCs, ameliorating the antitumor effects of the cytotoxic agent. Interestingly, these same PIFAs are found in fish oil, which can induce resistance to chemotherapy in mouse models as well. In healthy volunteers, rapid rises in PIFA plasma levels were found after intake of the recommended daily amount of fish oil. Our findings show that fish oil might not be just an innocent food supplement during chemotherapy. Acute responses of host tissues to antitumor agents are not exclusive to chemotherapy. A similar host response takes place after administration of 'cytotoxic-like' vascular disrupting agents (VDAs) in mice and men. Mobilization of pro-tumorigenic bone marrow-derived cells into the circulation has been shown, which promotes angiogenesis and indirectly also tumor growth. When the mobilization of these bone marrow-derived cells was blocked by co-administration of an agent targeting VEGFR-2 present on their cell membranes, tumor regrowth was prevented, resulting in enhanced tumor control. All of these factors may interfere with the antitumor activities of the drugs. The net effect of antitumor therapy will thus be determined by both the direct antitumor effects, as well as by the counteracting host response. Based on our preclinical results, combining conventional chemotherapy with agents blocking specific aspects of the systemic host response seems promising to enhance chemotherapy efficacy. By improving our understanding of the prosurvival effects of chemotherapy on the microenvironment, we aim to provide novel strategies to optimize antitumor therapy. Therefore, this thesis is an incentive to combine conventional antitumor therapies with novel 'targeted agents', and to develop new drugs targeting the tumor microenvironment.


This thesis contains a set of contributions that focuses on challenges in visualization of polygon models of trees, in particular models of tree stems and branches. These challenges cover a wide range of the visualization research field, including generation of polygon models of trees, hardware accelerated visualization and animation of trees from parametric systems, and surface modelling and tessellation for tree stems. To generate polygon models of trees, an existing approach for automatically generating polygon models of branching vascular transportation systems, typically blood vessels, is extended to handle tree stems. The approach allowed for automation of the generation process, while maintaining smoothness at branching areas. The approach is used to generate polygon models of trees. For hardware accelerated visualization and animation of trees from parametric systems, methods for visualization of trees described by parametric descriptions are adapted and extended to run on dedicated graphic processing hardware. To allow for animation of trees visualized in such a manner, an animation process that is hardware accelerated is developed using knowledge gained from work on hardware acceleration approaches in the field of image processing. For surface modelling and tessellation for visualization of trees, concepts, ideas and early work are presented. The basic concept is that by working with a coarse polygon model of a tree during animation (or by generating a coarse polygon model of a tree after animation is done); one can tessellate this coarse model in hardware in real-time to a much higher degree then earlier approaches. This will then enable one to visualize trees stems of a higher Level of Detail (LOD) and at higher speeds than were previously achievable. Although the contributions in this thesis cover a wide range of challenges from the visualization research field, the main focus has been on generation, animation and visualization of tree stems and branches for use in real-time applications. Especially the concept of hardware acceleration has become more of a focus, as graphic processing hardware has become more and more powerful both in speed and especially in functionality. The contributions will hopefully help in future development of even better methods for visualizing trees and plants.


The recent state of the art on monocular 3D face reconstruction from image data has made some impressive advancements, thanks to the advent of Deep Learning. However, it has mostly focused on input coming from a single RGB image, overlooking the following important factors: a) Nowadays, the vast majority of facial image data of interest do not originate from single images but rather from videos, which contain rich dynamic information. b) Furthermore, these videos typically capture individuals in some form of verbal communication (public talks, teleconferences, audiovisual human-computer interactions, interviews, monologues/dialogues in movies, etc). When existing 3D face reconstruction methods are applied in such videos, the artifacts in the reconstruction of the shape and motion of the mouth area are often severe, since they do not match well with the speech audio.To overcome the aforementioned limitations, we present the first method for visual speech-informed perceptual reconstruction of 3D mouth expressions. We do this by proposing a "lipreading" loss, which guides the fitting process so that the elicited perception from the 3D reconstructed talking head resembles that of the original video footage. We demonstrate that, interestingly, the lipreading loss is better suited for 3D reconstruction of mouth movements compared to traditional landmark losses, and even direct 3D supervision. Furthermore, the devised method does not rely on any text transcriptions or corresponding audio, rendering it ideal for training in unlabeled datasets. We verify the efficiency of our method through objective evaluations on three large-scale datasets, as well as subjective evaluation with two web-based user studies. Project webpage: https://filby89.github.io/spectre/


The Supreme Court's decision in Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. highlighted the fragility of judicial independence and impartiality in the United States. A similar, less-noticed fragility of independence and impartiality exists among the arbitrators, mediators and administrative hearing officers who resolve an increasing number of disputes. Everywhere one looks, there is unremarked yet remarkable evidence of the rise of - embedded neutrals, particularly in uneven contexts between one-time and repeat players. This phenomenon becomes particularly worrisome when the embedded neutral's role is due to their special relationship with the repeat player, and the one-time player is not as sophisticated as the repeat player, has not voluntarily or knowingly chosen the dispute resolution forum that will be used to resolve their dispute, and is either unaware of the special relationship between the neutral and the repeat player or effectively unable to challenge it. As dispute resolution becomes a lucrative private business, it is easy to begin to worry about the corrupting influence of repeat business and money on the ability of embedded neutrals to - hold the balance nice, clear and true. The Supreme Court, however, seems largely oblivious to these concerns. The Court has encouraged deference to the decisions and settlement agreements these neutrals produce and has regularly rejected one-time players' claims of structural bias. This Article explores whether the analysis in Caperton and its antecedents - i.e., conducting a close examination of the volume and flow of monies that may provide direct and indirect benefit to the neutral, their timing, and the plausibility of their effect on an adjudicated outcome, in order to determine whether the risk of actual bias is - too high to be deemed - constitutionally tolerable - could be applied to assess the sufficiency of the impartiality offered by embedded neutrals and private dispute resolution organizations when they are treated as adequate - and sometimes superior - replacements for independent and public trial courts.


Ungulates in higher latitudes and altitudes experience sharp seasonal changes in forage abundance and quality. In response, ungulates show varying degrees of synchrony in reproduction. Diet type has been hypothesized to be a determinant of differences in reproductive synchrony. Analyses at global scales using proxies of plant phenology such as climate, latitude and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) have found no evidence in support because such proxies do not capture differences in phenology among plant taxa at local scales. We compared seasonal variations in diet quality with reproductive synchrony in the Himalayan musk deer (Moschus chrysogaster), a browser, and the Himalayan goral (Naemorhedus goral), a grazer, in mid-altitude Himalaya. We also compared seasonal variations in physiological stress using fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM). We identified different stages of female reproductive cycle using fecal concentrations of metabolites of estradiol, pregnanediol-3-glucuronide (PdG) and testosterone and used fecal crude protein (CP) as an indicator of diet quality. In musk deer, fecal estradiol and PdG concentrations showed a dispersed estrous and parturition, respectively. Goral had a more synchronized estrous and parturition. Estrous cycles in both species occurred when diet quality was poor, but parturition occurred when diet quality was high. Greater seasonality in reproduction in goral is driven by sharp phenological changes in graminoids on which it feeds, compared to slow changes in browse on which musk deer feeds. Thus, we show that diet type drives the differences in reproductive synchrony in these two sympatric species. Spring and summer with highest diet quality were times of highest stress in both the ungulates. We hypothesize predation pressure from feral dogs and resource competition with livestock as plausible explanations for this, which need to be tested in future. Our findings also highlight the need for studying relationships among plant phenology, diet type and reproductive biology of ungulates at local scales if we are to understand species responses to global phenomena such as climate change.


The importance of tax-exempt borrowing as a capital source to the nonprofit sector has significantly grown over time. Outstanding tax-exempt bonds issued by nonprofits have risen from an inflation-adjusted US$106.3 billion in 1993 to US$388.5 billion in 2010 representing an 8% compound annual growth rate over the period. The increased importance of tax-exempt borrowing relative to other borrowing for nonprofits has gone unnoticed. Here, we ask what factors are associated with this trend. We find wide variation in the increasing use of tax-exempt bond usage between nonprofit sectors. Although nonprofit borrowers other than hospitals have increasingly entered the tax-exempt capital market over the past decade, they still tend to be large organizations with lower risk of bankruptcy or default. Our empirical findings continue to raise the questions that others have raised: How do we make smaller, capital-starved nonprofits better able to take advantage of the tax-exempt market in a responsible manner?


Some of the most important impacts of global climate change will be felt among the populations, predominantly in developing countries, referred to as "subsistence" or "smallholder" farmers. Their vulnerability to climate change comes both from being predominantly located in the tropics, and from various socioeconomic, demographic, and policy trends limiting their capacity to adapt to change. However, these impacts will be difficult to model or predict because of (i) the lack of standardised definitions of these sorts of farming system, and therefore of standard data above the national level, (ii) intrinsic characteristics of these systems, particularly their complexity, their location-specificity, and their integration of agricultural and nonagricultural livelihood strategies, and (iii) their vulnerability to a range of climate-related and other stressors. Some recent work relevant to these farming systems is reviewed, a conceptual framework for understanding the diverse forms of impacts in an integrated manner is proposed, and future research needs are identified.


: 1. Rats were treated with acute and chronic schedules of metergoline (2.5 mg/kg I.P. twice daily) and acutely with dl-propranolol (15 mg/kg), amitriptyline (12.5 mg/kg) and fluoxetine (2 mg/kg). 2. Metergoline given both acutely and chronically blocked the behavioural response to the 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor agonist 5-methoxy-N1, N1-dimethyltryptamine (5MeODMT) (2.5 mg/kg I.P.). The response to 5MeODMT) was also blocked by acute administration of dl-propranolol and amitriptyline, but not fluoxetine. 3. Rats given chronic treatment with metergoline and then withdrawn from drug treatment for 3 days showed an enhanced response to 5MeODMT. 4. Chronic metergoline treatment caused an increase in ambulatory movement following 5MeODMT administration. 5. Exploratory behaviour, when measured under dark conditions, was reduced by chronic metergoline treatment. 6. The results suggest that supersensitivity to 5-hydroxytryptamine agonists can be induced by chronic treatment with an antagonist. Furthermore, metergoline and 5-methoxy-N1, N1-dimethyltryptamine may not act on identical receptor populations.


We introduce language-based games, a generalization of psychological games [6] that can also capture referencedependent preferences [7]. The idea is to extend the domain of the utility function to situations, maximal consistent sets in some language. The role of the underlying language in this framework is thus particularly critical. Of special interest are languages that can express only coarse beliefs [9]. Despite the expressive power of the approach, we show that it can describe games in a simple, natural way. Nash equilibrium and rationalizability are generalized to this setting; Nash equilibrium is shown not to exist in general, while the existence of rationalizable strategies is proved under mild conditions.


The persistence of 5 insecticides in two soils, one rich (soil 1), the other poor (soil 2) in organic matter was examined in the laboratory using gas chromatographyc and radiometric techniques. About half DDT and aldrin were lost in 256 days. The other pesticides, in order of decreasing persistence were lindane, parathion (Table I) and malathion (Table II). Aldrin was converted to dieldrin faster in soil 1 than in soil 2. Parathion and lindane were both lost faster from soil 2 than from soil 1. In contrast, malathion was lost more slowly from soil 2 than soil 1, from which all disappeared in 4 days (Table II)


Loss of cell polarity overcomes Ras-induced cellular senescence to drive tumorigenesis in flies. Overcoming Ras-induced senescence Although activating mutations in the GTPase Ras promote cancer, Ras also induces cellular senescence, a barrier that is necessary to overcome for Ras activation to promote tumor progression. Using a model of Ras-induced tumor growth in flies, Ito and Igaki found that Ras-induced cellular senescence required the ETS family transcription factor Pnt. Loss of cell polarity, which frequently occurs in cancers of epithelial origin, activated the transcription factor Yki, resulting in a series of microRNA-mediated regulatory events that ultimately inhibited Pnt. Given the conservation of most of these proteins and their regulatory relationships, this mechanism may be relevant to how the loss of cell polarity removes the brakes on Ras-induced tumor growth in humans. The activation of Ras signaling is a major early event of oncogenesis in many contexts, yet paradoxically, Ras signaling induces cellular senescence, which prevents tumorigenesis. Thus, Ras-activated cells must overcome senescence to develop into cancer. Through a genetic screen in Drosophila melanogaster, we found that the ETS family transcriptional activator Pointed (Pnt) was necessary and sufficient to trigger cellular senescence upon Ras activation and blocked Ras-induced tumor growth in eye-antennal discs. Through analyses of mosaic discs using various genetic tools, we identified a mechanism of tumor progression in which loss of cell polarity, a common driver of epithelial oncogenesis, abrogated Ras-induced cellular senescence through microRNA-mediated inhibition of Pnt. Mechanistically, polarity defects in Ras-activated cells caused activation of the Hippo effector Yorkie (Yki), which induced the expression of the microRNA bantam. bantam-mediated repression of the E3 ligase–associated protein Tribbles (Trbl) relieved Ras- and Akt-dependent inhibition of the transcription factor FoxO. The restoration of FoxO activity in Ras-activated cells induced the expression of the microRNAs miR-9c and miR-79, which led to reduced pnt expression, thereby abrogating cellular senescence and promoting tumor progression. Our findings provide a mechanistic explanation for how Ras-activated tumors progress toward malignancy by overcoming cellular senescence.


Although a third of the public still believe that antibiotics work against coughs and colds, simply getting the public to believe otherwise may not be enough to reduce the level of prescribing. The large Department of Health sponsored household survey demonstrated that those with a greater knowledge about antibiotics were no less likely to be prescribed an antibiotic, and although those with increased knowledge about antibiotics were more likely to complete a course they were also more likely to self-medicate and to keep left-over antibiotics. Future campaigns that are aimed at reducing the level of prescribing should be focused towards those more likely to be prescribed antibiotics at present: younger women and those with a lower level of education. They should also examine and consider modifying consultation behaviour and other behavioural components involved in patient' expectations for antibiotics. This should include delayed antibiotic prescriptions. The easiest way to reduce the use of leftovers may be to shorten the course of antibiotics prescribed to 3 or 5 days. We should also promote a 'Do not recycle antibiotics' message towards the more highly educated, young women who are more likely to store, take and share antibiotics without advice.


One of the longest and most dramatic trade routes of the ancient world, the Tea Horse Road carried a crucial exchange for 13 centuries between China and Tibet. China needed war horses to protect its northern frontier and Tibet could supply them. When the Tibetans discovered tea in the 7th century, it became a staple of their diet, but its origins are in southwest China, and they had to trade for it. The result was a network of trails covering more than 3,000 kilometers through forests, gorges and high passes onto theHimalayan plateaus, traversed by horse, mule and yak caravans, and human porters. It linked cultures, economies and political ambitions, and lasted until the middle of the 20th century. Re-tracing the many branches of the Road, photographer and writer Michael Freeman spent two years compiling this remarkable visual record, from the tea mountains of southern Yunnan and Sichuan to Tibet and beyond. Collaborating on this fascinating account, ethno-ecologist Selena Ahmed's description of tea and bio-cultural diversity in the region draws on her original doctoral research.


During embryonic development, diffusible signaling molecules called morphogens are thought to determine cell fates in a concentration-dependent manner1–4, and protocols for directed stem cell differentiation are based on this picture5–8. However, in the mammalian embryo, morphogen concentrations change rapidly compared to the time for making cell fate decisions9–12. It is unknown how changing ligand levels are interpreted, and whether the precise timecourse of ligand exposure plays a role in cell fate decisions. Nodal and BMP4 are morphogens crucial for gastrulation in vertebrates13. Each pathway has distinct receptor complexes that phosphorylate specific signal transducers, known as receptor-Smads, which then complex with the shared cofactor Smad4 to activate target genes14. Here we show in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) that the response to BMP4 signaling indeed is determined by the ligand concentration, but that unexpectedly, the expression of many mesodermal targets of Activin/Nodal depends on rate of concentration increase. In addition, we use live imaging of hESCs with GFP integrated at the endogenous SMAD4 locus to show that a stem cell model for the human embryo15 generates a wave of Nodal signaling. Cells experience rapidly increasing Nodal specifically in the region of mesendoderm differentiation. We also demonstrate that pulsatile stimulation with Activin induces repeated strong signaling and enhances mesoderm differentiation. Our results break with the paradigm of concentration-dependent differentiation and demonstrate an important role for morphogen dynamics in the cell fate decisions associated with mammalian gastrulation. They suggest a highly dynamic picture of embryonic patterning where some cell fates depend on rapid concentration increase rather than absolute levels, and point to ligand dynamics as a new dimension to optimize protocols for directed stem cell differentiation.


Estimates suggest that 15% of children in the United Kingdom have been exposed to at least one form of domestic violence (DV) during their childhood, with more than 3% having witnessed an incident during the past year. This exposure increases the risk of children suffering both short-term and long-term impacts, including effects on their behaviour, social development, physical and mental health, educational attainment and quality of life. In addition, children living in environments where there is DV are at higher risk of maltreatment. Adult relatives and friends of the family often observe the experiences of children in situations of DV, and have the potential to shed light in a way that children and survivors may struggle to articulate, or be reluctant to acknowledge or disclose. Such accounts are largely absent from existing research, and yet bring a perspective which can broaden our understanding of the impact that DV has on children. This paper reports a secondary analysis of qualitative data collected during 21 in-depth interviews with people across the United Kingdom who were a friend or family member of a woman experiencing DV. An inductive thematic analysis was undertaken and the themes generated were as follows: 'the context of DV: a chaotic and unpredictable home life'; 'the roles children assume within households where there is DV including: witness of, victim of and conduit of violence and abuse',; 'the impacts of DV on children'; and 'children's coping and resilience'. The implications of these findings are discussed using a basic needs model lens.


Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a mesh-free numerical approximation technique for simulating various physical problems. A calculation system for transient heat transfer problem by SPH has been improved to deal with various boundary conditions and several model calculations are performed to verify it. As a practical application, the transient temperature field of a brake disk under emergency braking is analyzed. Both solid and ventilated disks are modeled with a moving heat source on the sliding surface. The numerical results show that the temperature sharply fluctuates because of the cyclic loading. Improvement of the calculation model is also discussed.


Slotted ALOHA is proposed as a multiple access scheme for high capacity voice cellular communications. In real-world conditions of propagation (fading environment), its performance is evaluated, both on mobile-to-base and on base-to-mobile channels. The analysis shows that the proposed system exhibits remarkable performance when compared with fixed-assignment techniques, and that it can perform even better than code division multiple access (CDMA), which is currently considered to be the most efficient multiple access scheme.<<ETX>>


BACKGROUND
The onset of COVID-19 and related policy responses made it difficult to study interactive health informatics solutions in clinical study settings. Instrumented log and event data from interactive systems, capture temporal details that can be used to generate insights about care continuity during ongoing pandemics.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate user interactions with a digital health wallet (DHW) system for addressing care continuity challenges in chronic disease management in the context of an ongoing pandemic.

METHODS
We analyzed user interaction log data generated by clinicians, nurses, and patients from the deployment of a DHW in a feasibility study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya. We used the Hamming distance from Information Theory to quantify deviations of usage patterns extracted from the events data from predetermined workflow sequences supported by the platform.

RESULTS
Nurses interacted with all the user interface elements relevant to triage. Clinicians interacted with only 43% of elements relevant to consultation, while patients interacted with 67% of the relevant user interface elements. Nurses and clinicians deviated from the predetermined workflow sequences by 42% and 36% respectively. Most deviations pertained to users going back to previous steps in their usage workflow.

CONCLUSIONS
User interaction log analysis is a valuable alternative method for generating and quantifying user experiences in the context of ongoing pandemics. However, researchers should mitigate the potential disruptions of the actual use of the studied technologies as well as use multiple approaches to investigate user experiences of health technology during pandemics.


A variety of anti-plagiarism software applications have appeared in recent years, but the pedagogical and institutional practices underpinning their use remains largely unexplored. It is essential to increase the amount of evidence-based literature that investigates the use of anti-plagiarism software in higher education. In the light of this, this chapter explores the integration of anti-plagiarism software in an Irish university since early 2006 and the progress made to date. We use data gathered from our own context to show how instructors are using this software to date, what trends emerge and what can be deduced about the adoption of the system to guide future research questions. Best practices are suggested for educators in order to help them to use anti-plagiarism software in proactive, positive, and pedagogically sound ways.


Wildlife-watching and ecotourism are effective approaches for improving
public attitudes and raising awareness of wildlife conservation.
However, the ability of wildlife tourism to enhance the conservation of
less appealing taxa such as bats has rarely been examined. We sampled a
total of 197 tourists in Monfort Bat Cave Sanctuary in the Philippines,
the world's largest colony of Geoffroy's Rousette (Rousettus
amplexicaudatus). Convenient pre/post-visit surveys were conducted to
(a) explore the potential of bat-watching to raise tourists' knowledge,
attitudes towards bats, and determine how perceptions vary across
demographic classes; and (b) determine potential predictors of
conservation willingness among sampled urban tourists. Our study
observed an increase in knowledge about bats and 61% of the tourists
are willing to support conservation bat protection after the
bat-watching visit to the cave site. Tourists' conservation willingness
was associated with age group, prior knowledge of bat ecosystem
services, and perceptions about the conservation relevance of
bat-watching as a conservation initiative. Our study highlights the
effectiveness of short-term engagements such as bat-watching at
improving human-bat interactions and suggests such programs should focus
on highlighting ecosystem services and benefits of bats. However, it
should be noted that we performed this study before the COVID-19 global
pandemic and misinformation linking bats to the disease spread has
increased since. We expect that public perception will change in the
post-COVID-19 period and the conservation willingness survey should be
repeated to understand how to counter misconceptions to develop
effective bat conservation management in the post-COVID-19.

 This manuscript is accepted in Environmental Challenges


The potential impact of ship emissions on concentrations of nitrogen oxides and reactive nitrogen compounds in the marine boundary layer is assessed using a global chemical transport model. The model predicts significant enhancements of these compounds over large regions, especially over the northern midlatitude oceans. This result is consistent with a recently published study, though the impacts predicted here are more widespread and the peak enhancements are not as large. However, comparisons of model results with recent measurements over the central North Atlantic Ocean do not provide support for these model predictions. While one cannot completely overlook the possibility that emissions of nitrogen oxides from ships may be overestimated, our analysis suggests that there may be a gap in our understanding of the chemical evolution of ship plumes as they mix into the background atmosphere in the marine boundary layer. On a related note, it is also possible that the overestimate of the impacts of ships on nitrogen oxides in the marine boundary layer by global models is due to the lack of parameterized representations of plume dynamics and chemistry in these models.


Television Drama in Spain and Latin America addresses two major topics within current cultural, media, and television studies: the question of fictional genres and that of transnational circulation. While much research has been carried out on both TV formats and remakes in the English-speaking world, almost nothing has been published on the huge and dynamic Spanish-speaking sector. This book discusses and analyses series since 2000 from Spain (in both Spanish and Catalan), Mexico, Venezuela, and (to a lesser extent) the US, employing both empirical research on production and distribution and textual analysis of content. The three genres examined are horror, biographical series, and sports-themed dramas; the three examples of format remakes are of a period mystery (Spain, Mexico), a romantic comedy (Venezuela, US), and a historical epic (Catalonia, Spain).
Paul Julian Smith is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He was previously Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of twenty books and one hundred academic articles.


Microsimulation models that simulate travel demand at the level of individual travelers have been gaining increasing interest among practitioners. Transportation planning agencies across the country are steadily migrating to activity-based microsimulation models, which provide considerable flexibility when testing policy scenarios. Generating a synthetic population is the first step in the application of any activity-based model system and has therefore been a topic of extensive research in the activity-based modeling arena. Several researchers have developed population synthesizers that can generate synthetic populations and can match household- and person-level constraints at a specified geographic resolution (e.g., a census block group). However, although information for some control variables may be available at the specified spatial resolution, information for other control variables may be available only at a more aggregate spatial resolution. Ignoring control variables at different levels of spatial resolution could result in the generation of a synthetic population that would not be representative of the underlying population. However, there has been limited progress in the development of synthetic population generators that are capable of accommodating control variables at multiple spatial resolutions. This paper proposes a robust approach to control for constraints at multiple geographic resolutions when generating a synthetic population. The method is an extension of the iterative proportional updating algorithm previously proposed and implemented by the authors. A case study demonstrating the efficacy of the enhanced algorithm is presented.


In spite of special advantages of IIR filters in active noise and vibration control (ANVC) applications, the multimodal error surface and instability problem of adaptive IIR filters has prevented its extensive use. To alleviate these problems, in this paper, a new RLS-based fast array adaptive IIR filters in ANVC applications is proposed. The algorithm is developed with slow adaptation assumption and by transforming the active noise and vibration control problem to an output-error identification problem. By derivation of the fast-array equivalent form both computational complexity and numerical stability of the proposed algorithm are improved. The geometrical illustration of the algorithm, in a simple case, is also given to unify and complete its mathematical formulation. In spite of low computational complexity of the order , simulation results confirm high convergence speed of the proposed algorithm and also its ability to reach the lower minimum mean square error in comparison with commonly used adaptive IIR algorithms in ANVC systems.


Abstract: Genetic methods based on sampling of feces and hairs to study brown bears have become the method of choice for many wildlife researchers and managers. Feces and hairs are the most common sample material for DNA identification of individual bears. While the collection of feces and hairs in the field is carried out in an opportunistic manner, hair-trapping can be applied systematically at specific locations. We have here tested a novel systematic method based on hair sampling on power poles. The method relies on the specific behavior of bears to mark, scratch, bite and scrub on power poles, and by this also leave some hairs behind. During late summer and autumn we have investigated 215 power poles in the Pasvik Valley and sampled 181 hair samples in 2013 and 57 in 2014. A total of 17.3% of the samples collected in 2013 and 12.3% in 2014 were positive on brown bear DNA. Our success rates are comparable to other studies, however, DNA quality/content in the hair samples was generally low. Based on other studies, the method could be improved by sampling during spring and early summer and to use shorter frequencies of 2 to 4 weeks between each sampling. Based on our results and previous studies, we can conclude that this sampling technique should be improved by the development of a more accurate and frequent sampling protocol. Hair sampling from power poles may then lead to improved potential to collect valuable samples and information, which would be more difficult to collect otherwise.


An international overview of the extent and type of ecological restoration can offer new perspectives for understanding, planning, and implementation. The Nordic countries, with a great range of natural conditions but historically similar social and political structures, provide an opportunity to compare restoration approaches and efforts across borders. The aim of this study was to explore variation in ecological restoration using the Nordic countries as an example. We used recent national assessments and expert evaluations of ecological restoration. Restoration efforts differed among countries: forest and peatland restoration was most common in Finland, freshwater restoration was most common in Sweden, restoration of natural heathlands and grasslands was most common in Iceland, restoration of natural and semi-cultural heathlands was most common in Norway, and restoration of cultural ecosystems, mainly abandoned agricultural land, was most common in Denmark. Ecological restoration currently does not occur on the Faroe Islands. Economic incentives influence ecological restoration and depend on laws and policies in each country. Our analyses suggest that habitat types determine the methods of ecological restoration, whereas socio-economic drivers are more important for the decisions concerning the timing and location of restoration. To improve the understanding, planning, and implementation of ecological restoration, we advocate increased cooperation and knowledge sharing across disciplines and among countries, both in the Nordic countries and internationally. An obvious advantage of such cooperation is that a wider range of experiences from different habitats and different socio-economic conditions becomes available and thus provides a more solid basis for developing practical solutions for restoration methods and policies.


1/2× forward whirl repeatedly occurred after a test rotor spinning at 5800 rpm was dropped onto ball bearing type auxiliary bearings (AB), utilized as a backup for magnetic bearings (MB). The measured contact forces that occurred between the rotor and the AB during the ½× subsynchronous vibration were about thirteen times larger than the static reaction force. The vibration frequency coincided with the rotor-support system natural frequency with the rotor at rest on the AB, an occurred at ½ of the rotor spin speed when dropped. The test rig provided measurements of rotor-bearing contact force, rotor orbit (vibrations), and rotational speed during rotor drop events. A simulation model was also developed and demonstrated that parametric excitation in the form of a Mathieu Hill model replicated the measured ½× forward whirl vibrations. The simulation model included a nonlinear, elastic-thermal coupled, ball bearing type AB model. The transient model successfully predicted the ½× vibration when the rotor was passing 5800 RPM as well, and the simulation results quantitatively agreed well with the test results in the frequency domain. Several approaches for mitigating the 1/2× forward whirl were presented such as adding an elastomer O-ring or waviness spring in the AB support system. Measurements confirmed that adding AB dampers effectively mitigated the ½ subsynchronous forward whirl and significantly reduced the contact forces.


Abstract Frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA) is a primary lymphocytic cicatricial alopecia that is often considered a clinical variant of lichen planopilaris (LPP) due to their shared histopathologic features. FFA is characterized by the recession of the frontal, temporal, or frontotemporal hairline; the clinical pattern is distinct and usually includes eyebrow hair loss, as well as other associated symptoms. Pruritus, facial papules, eyelash loss, body hair involvement, and trichodynia may also occur in addition to the frontotemporal recession and eyebrow loss classically seen. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment are critical as FFA is a progressive disorder that can result in permanent hair loss. FFA is challenging as patients may not present or be recognized until the disease has progressed. Additionally, there is currently no consensus or standard treatment regimen for FFA. While many different therapies have been reported as beneficial, there are a limited number of published guidelines for the treatment of FFA. This article is a review of the literature on treatment modalities for FFA and the objective is to offer a practical guide for clinicians on the evidence-based management options currently available in the literature.