With the ever increasing heat dissipated by IT equipment housed in data centers it is becoming more important to project the changes that can occur in the data center as the newer higher powered hardware is installed. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software that is available has improved over the years and some CFD software specific to data center thermal analysis has been developed. This has improved the timeliness of providing some quick analysis of the effects of new hardware into the data center. But it is critically important that this software provide a good report to the user of the effects of adding this new hardware. And it is the purpose of this paper to examine a large cluster installation and compare the CFD analysis with environmental measurements obtained from the same site. This paper shows measurements and CFD analysis of high powered racks as high as 27 kW clustered such that heat fluxes in some regions of the data center exceeded 700 Watts/ft2 (7535 W/m2 ). This paper describes the thermal profile of a high performance computing cluster located in an IBM data center and a comparison of that cluster modeled with CFD software. The high performance Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) cluster, developed and manufactured by IBM, is code named ASC Purple. It is the World's 3rd fastest supercomputer [1], operating at a peak performance of 77.8 TFlop/s. ASC Purple, which employs IBM pSeries p575, Model 9118, contains more than 12,000 processors, 50 terabytes of memory, and 2 petabytes of globally accessible disk space. The cluster was first tested in the IBM development lab in Poughkeepsie, NY and then shipped to Lawrence Livermore National Labs in Livermore, California where it was installed to support our national security mission. Detailed measurements were taken in both data centers of electronic equipment power usage, perforated floor tile airflow, cable cutout airflow, computer room air conditioning (CRAC) airflow, and electronic equipment inlet air temperatures and were report in Schmidt [2], but only the IBM Poughkeepsie results will be reported here along with a comparison to CFD modeling results. In some areas of the Poughkeepsie data center there were regions that did exceed the equipment inlet air temperature specifications by a significant amount. These areas will be highlighted and reasons given on why these areas failed to meet the criteria. The modeling results by region showed trends that compared somewhat favorably but some rack thermal profiles deviated quite significantly from measurements.Copyright © 2007 by ASME


Virtual medical imaging has overgrown in recent years and later implemented in such situations - all of the radiological modalities which include Computed tomography (CT scanners), Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound (US), positron emission tomography (PET), X-Ray (radiographs) made employing more than one providers and hosted by one or many websites which communicated over the DICOM network. The DICOM images required huge hard disk space and excellent transfer speed, which need to compress the DICOM images for effective capacity and transmission over the internet. The compression process is applied through utilized a recurrent neural network algorithm establishing Trainscg as the activation function. Extraordinary high-quality metrics like mean squared error (MSE), Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), Compression ratio (CR), and Compression time are computed on several medical test images. The proposed compression method shows better experimental results than the existing techniques based on performance parameters except for the compression time for the large image only.


Vacuum multi effect membrane distillation (VMEMD) is a thermal separation process with microporous hydrophobic membranes that is able to concentrate liquids with high salt concentrations close to saturation. This document describes the technology, test runs with high concentrated salt solution, observed phenomena and experiences gathered from the testing with VMEMD modules by memsys. Salt influences the distillation process in direction to lower distillate output due to boiling point elevation of the salt water. The process proofs reliability in a 365 days long-term testing with feed at conductivities between 130′000 μS/cm and 240′000 μS/cm (approximately 9.5–22wt% salt in solution) and distillate output with less than 10 μS/cm. The testing program delivers experience for the layout of modules with high recovery ratio.


Objectivity is the goal of hermeneutics so that the text of Scripture may speak for itself. For an interpreter to bring his subjective views to the text jeopardizes the authority o f the Word. Two forces at work among evangelicals today tend to increase the subjective element in interpretation. The first is the principle of the analogy of faith or the harmonizing of different texts with one another. Harmonizing is desirable, but if taken too far, it can distort a text by inserting theological motifs into places where they do not belong. Doctrinal considerations should be introduced only to solve complexities of certain passages. The second force is the practices of NT authors. Sometimes the interpreter must choose between using objective methods and following the example of NT authors in their use of the OT. He must maintain objectivity rather than pattern his exegesis after the NT in matters of typology, symbolism, role models, and fulfillments. The difference between contemporary exegetes and NT writers is that the former must abide by principles of hermeneutical objectivity while the former were led to follow the pattern of inspired subjectivity . Inspired subjectivity is not an option in this day and time.


Epanechnikov Mean Shift is a simple yet empirically very effective algorithm for clustering. It localizes the centroids of data clusters via estimating modes of the probability distribution that generates the data points, using the "optimal" Epanechnikov kernel density estimator. However, since the procedure involves non-smooth kernel density functions,the convergence behavior of Epanechnikov mean shift lacks theoretical support as of this writing---most of the existing analyses are based on smooth functions and thus cannot be applied to Epanechnikov Mean Shift. In this work, we first show that the original Epanechnikov Mean Shift may indeed terminate at a non-critical point, due to the non-smoothness nature. Based on our analysis, we propose a simple remedy to fix it. The modified Epanechnikov Mean Shift is guaranteed to terminate at a local maximum of the estimated density, which corresponds to a cluster centroid, within a inite number of iterations. We also propose a way to avoid running the Mean Shift iterates from every data point, while maintaining good clustering accuracies under non-overlapping spherical Gaussian mixture models. This further pushes Epanechnikov Mean Shift to handle very large and high-dimensional data sets. Experiments show surprisingly good performance compared to the Lloyd's K-means algorithm and the EM algorithm.


Regenerative treatment of periodontally damaged teeth is a demanding task. Advantages which comes with use of biomaterials are mainly connected with fact that traditional, surgical treatment protocols often do not lead to bone regeneration. The aim of this research was to evaluate clinical and radiological effectiveness of surgical periodontal treatment (with application of HA-Biocer, Biogramu, Bio-Oss) after eight years prior to surgical protocol. Clinical evaluation consisted of measuring pocket depths with perio probe, than evaluation of API (approximal plaque-index) hygiene index (-). Calculation of modified sulcus bleeding index - SBI (%) by Muhlemann and Son was done. Engelberger, Marthaler and Rateitschak index on xrays was calculated. Routine check up eight years after surgical treatment of periodontitis with use of biomaterials was conducted on 32 patients (20 woman, 12 men). The group of patients was divided into: 28 patients with chronic periodontitis (CP), and 4 patients with general aggressive periodontitis (GAP). Eight years after surgical treatment increase of bleeding areas were observed - in all applied biomaterials. For Bio-Oss average percent of SBI 45.2% (+/-24.3), for Biogran 62% (+/- 36.2) and respectively for HA-Biocer 51% (+/-33.2) API index (%) on teeth proximal surfaces was estimated for Biogran 47%, BioOss - 46.5% and for HABiocer 45.6%. Mean pocket depth (mm) has decreased - in case of all applied biomaterials. Radiological index was also calculated. Decrease of index value was stated. Outcomes of 8 years study indicate, decrease of oral hygiene, increase bleeding, decrease of Engelberger, Marthaler, Rateitchak index. It is necessary to perform routine check up of and control on oral hygiene. It seems to be important to mobilize patients to preserve high oral hygiene.


This main aim of this work is the determination of the regional background in Holocene sediments of the Guadiana River estuary. These background values are essential in order to establish the environmental quality of the most recent sediments, and to evaluate the possible incidence that some processes associated
to human activities (acid mine drainage, urban effluents) could produce in these sediments. For this purpose, a sedimentological and geochemical characterization have been done in two sediment cores from the lower Guadiana basin, in which Al normalized concentration has been calculated for the most important metals and metalloids present in these sediments (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn).The results obtained have allowed us the determination of the regional background in these sediments.


A traveling salesman problem (TSP) is an NP-hard optimization problem. So it is necessary to use intelligent and heuristic methods to solve such a hard problem in a less computational time. This paper proposes a novel hybrid approach, which is a data mining (DM) based on multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), called intelligent MOPSO (IMOPSO). The first step of the proposed IMOPSO is to find efficient solutions by applying the MOPSO approach. Then, the GRI (Generalized Rule Induction) algorithm, which is a powerful association rule mining, is used for extracting rules from efficient solutions of the MOPSO approach. Afterwards, the extracted rules are applied to improve solutions of the MOPSO for large-sized problems. Our proposed approach (IMOPSP) conforms to a standard data mining framework is called CRISP-DM and is performed on five standard problems with bi-objectives. The associated results of this approach are compared with the results obtained by the MOPSO approach. The results show the superiority of the proposed IMOPSO to obtain more and better solutions in comparison to the MOPSO approach.


Anaphylaxis is a serious systemic allergic reaction that is rapid in onset and may cause death. Despite numerous national and international guidelines and consensus statements, common misconceptions still persist in terms of diagnosis and appropriate management, both among healthcare professionals and patient/carers. We address some of these misconceptions and highlight the optimal approach for patients who experience potentially life-threatening allergic reactions.


In the present work experimental data from seven perforated (7PF) JA2 propellant combustion in a micro closed bomb is presented and the linear burning rate of the JA2 propellant is determined. The burn rate measurement is based on a sophisticated lumped parameter model which accounts among other things for arbitrary cross sectional propellant geometries with the help of the ICT-Cellular-Combustion-Algorithm (ICCA), pressure dependent thermophysical parameters and heat loss. The model is used to construct a vivacity based objective function which depends on the parameters of the empirical law for the linear burning velocity. With the Nelder-Mead downhill simplex optimization algorithm the objective function is minimized and the burn rate parameters determined. The comparison of the results to published data show that with the new burn rate measurement method the linear burning rate can be determined with great accuracy even when only a few propellant grains with a total propellant mass of less than 8 g per shot are used.


Silicon nitride based composites with different amount (1, 2 and 3 wt%) of
 multi-wall and single-wall carbon nanotubes, and graphene have been prepared.
 Optimisation of the manufacturing processes has been conducted to preserve
 the carbon nanotubes in composites and to avoid damaging during high
 temperature processing. The first results show that carbon nanotubes have a
 good contact to the surface of silicon nitride grains. In the case of
 increase of sintering pressure an increase of bending strength was achieved.
 It was found that microstructure features achieved by properly designed
 sintering parameters are the main responsible factors for the strength
 improvements.


ABSTRACT The dynamics in a swirl-stabilized flame is studied using large eddy simulation (LES). We account for the effect of turbulence on the flame through a model based on a filtered flamelet technique. The model provides a consistent and robust reaction-diffusion expression for simulating the correct propagation of premixed flames. The filtered flamelet formulation has been implemented into a high-order-accurate LES code and used to study the flame stabilization and the combustion dynamics in a gas-turbine combustion chamber. The effects of inlet boundary conditions, in terms of velocity and equivalence ratio radial profiles, have been studied. The flow is found to be very sensitive to small changes in terms of flame shapes and anchoring position. The sensitivity of the results to the subgrid-scale flame thickness has also been investigated. The influence on the flame position is not significant. However, a too-large subgrid-scale flame thickness leads to different flame dynamics.


The landscape of international development has changed dramatically, with a rise of emerging economies, more diverse actors of development cooperation, and intensifying aid competition. Moreover, Japan itself stands at a major turning point. There is a new wave of 'internationalization' of Japanese manufacturing FDI involving SMEs, which necessitates building much deeper and co-creative partnerships with Asia. The latest revision of the 2003 ODA Charter and the formulation of the new Development Cooperation Charter by the Japanese government can be understood as an attempt to respond to such changes. This paper stresses the four principles of Japan's contribution to international development in a new era—i.e., a quality and knowledge leader, a people-centered approach, a solution-provider, and network-based cooperation. It then proposes three sets of enhanced partnerships with Asia: (i) manufacturing (monozukuri) partnership, (ii) city development (toshizukuri) partnership, and (iii) knowledge (chiteki) partnership. Japan should create a global strategy that increases its soft power, making full use of the intellectual assets and expertise as well as the human networks accumulated in Japan and abroad, building on its sixty-year ODA cooperation. 'Co-creative' partnerships with Asia should be central to this global strategy.


Variant views, on the existence of religious radicalisation as a problem in Pakistan, have restricted sustainable initiative for de-radicalisation. The culture of not challenging the violent discourse is the real problem creating an intolerant society in Pakistan. The present narrative of the militants is based on the notion that Pakistan's identity, as an Islamic state, is under attack and people can only prove to be good Muslim if they oppose the state following the western ideals of liberalism and democracy. The paper examines the contradiction between the existing narrative preventing the efforts to eradicate the mind-set based on hatred and intolerance and the need for a counter-narrative to reclaim Pakistan's identity as a progressive Muslim state. It is important to note that military operations against terrorism can only treat the symptom but not the cause. The problems multiply due to lack of a unified approach to identify the issue and its solution. The way religious radicalisation is defined by the conservative groups is completely different from the secular forces in the country; the majority of the moderates prefer to remain silent on the issue which is often misunderstood by the West as a tacit support to religious radicalisation.


In recent years, the analysis of exhaled breath condensate samples has been given great weight as a noninvasive methodology of studying physiology and lung diseases. The present study describes a device for measuring exhaled breath condensate that is affordable, easily constructed, portable and suitable for use in the field, as well as allowing the collection of simultaneous samples. The results obtained with this device in terms of the concentrations of pH, peroxide oxide and nitrite, metabolites related to inflammatory and oxidative damage, in exhaled breath condensate samples are comparable to those obtained with other devices previously described.


A novel melt manipulation "RheoDrop" concept for hot runner injection molding is presented. In this concept, a controlled rotational shear is applied to a polymer melt in the hot drop to reduce its viscosity without raising the temperature. This is achieved by providing a transient rotational motion to the valve pin in the hot drop. This strategy is developed to mitigate issues associated with cold slug formation during injection molding in hot runner systems. The cold slug formation is particularly relevant for injection molding of engineering plastics such as liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) for medical and electronic applications. Analytical and experimental investigations were performed to validate the concept. The efficacy of the concept is assessed analytically utilizing a combination of two software modules, autodesk, moldflow and ansys fluent. The results confirmed that the concept was able to produce enough shear to reduce the dynamic viscosity between injection molding cycles. A prototype RheoDrop system was designed and developed and retrofitted in a four drop hot runner system mold to experimentally validate the concept. Preliminary experiments were performed utilizing acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, and parts were successfully fabricated at temperatures that are too low for traditional molding in a hot runner system.


Many scenarios try to describe a future of supply and demand for electricity in Sweden. All the studied scenarios contain an increased amount of variable renewable energy (VRE) power production. VRE power sources, such as solar and wind power, depend on weather conditions, like solar irradiance and wind speed. There are also scenarios predicting an increased amount of plug-in electrical vehicles (PEVs), which charge their batteries from the electricity grid and thereby changes the consumption patterns. In a future power system with less nuclear power and increased VRE power production it is of interest to investigate the scenarios impact on supply and demand. The scenarios were compiled into cases for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100. Simulations of each case VRE shares resulted in hourly power production data. Aggregating the data and comparing it with the consumption gives an understanding of the power and regulation need. For Case 2030, a VRE share of 10.3% was calculated. The hydropower in Sweden could cover the power need for the whole year and even peaks in demand. For the larger shares of Case 2050 and 2100, hydropower was not able to cover peaks in power demand solemnly. The consumption of PEVs was small for all cases, reaching shares of 1.5% to 7.1%, compared to the consumption of all other sectors. Considering short-term statistics for wind power and the latest news that some of Sweden's nuclear reactors might shut down in advance, it is possible that Case 2030 might occur sooner than predicted. If larger shares of VRE power have to be produced to meet consumer needs in the near future, grid-stabilizing measures has to be investigated.


We present a causal speech enhancement model working on the raw waveform that runs in real-time on a laptop CPU. The proposed model is based on an encoder-decoder architecture with skip-connections. It is optimized on both time and frequency domains, using multiple loss functions. Empirical evidence shows that it is capable of removing various kinds of background noise including stationary and non-stationary noises, as well as room reverb. Additionally, we suggest a set of data augmentation techniques applied directly on the raw waveform which further improve model performance and its generalization abilities. We perform evaluations on several standard benchmarks, both using objective metrics and human judgements. The proposed model matches state-of-the-art performance of both causal and non causal methods while working directly on the raw waveform.


Vibro stone column techniques create an improved composite foundation in fine grained soils because of: (1) the installed load bearing columns of well-compacted, coarse-grained material and (2) the improvements to the surrounding soil due to the construction of the stone columns consolidating the surrounding soil. Extensive research work has been carried out over the last 20 years to understand the improvement in the composite foundation performance due to the consolidated soil. Few of these studies have quantified the changes in the stiffness and stress state of the treated soil, or have considered the impact that these changes have upon the performance of the composite foundation. Consequently, empirical and conservative design methods are still being used by ground improvement companies leading to a significant range of results in engineering practice. Based on cylindrical cavity expansion theory, two-dimensional finite element study to develop an axisymmetric model of a single stone column reinforced foundation was performed using PLAXIS 2D to quantify the effect of the vibro installation of this column in soft saturated clay by producing the load settlement response of the foundations. An updated mesh was used to cope with the large deformation of the soft clay around the installed column caused by the lateral expansion due to the Vibro technique. Different amounts of lateral expansion were simulated to determine the change in the stress state, stiffness and load settlement response. It was found that the radial expansion increases the pore pressure in the clay that starts to dissipate immediately after finishing the column installation leading to a permanent improvement of the stiffness of the soil which decreases with distance from the column. The radial stress acting on the column also changes creating a new coefficient of lateral earth pressure K, a key design parameter. The effect of these altered soil characteristics were assessed by applying a load to the composite foundation and calculating the resulting settlement.
The previous model results have been validated and applied for a well-documented field case of stone column groups using Plaxis 3D after adopting a conceptual model for accumulating the installation effect of two adjacent stone columns. A very good agreement between the recorded and simulated load-settlement curves was achieved after performing few calculation cycles of different degrees of expansion cavity. A simplified design framework base on numerical analysis in how to account for the stone column installation and the recommended degree of applied radial cavity during stone column installation was the main output of this research to achieve more efficient composite foundations.


Obesity is a prevalent childhood condition and the degree of adiposity appears likely to be an important covariate in the pharmacokinetics (PKs) of many drugs. We undertook these studies to facilitate the evaluation and, where appropriate, quantification of the covariate effect of body fat percentage (BF%) on PK parameters in children. We examined two large databases to determine the values and variabilities of BF% in children with healthy body weights and in those with obesity, comparing the accuracy and precision of BF% estimation by both clinical methods and demographically derived techniques. Additionally, we conducted simulation studies to evaluate the utility of the several methods for application in clinical trials. BF% was correlated with body mass index (BMI), but was highly variable among both children with healthy body weights and those with obesity. Bio‐impedance and several demographically derived techniques produced mean estimates of BF% that differed from dual x‐ray absorptiometry by < 1% (accuracy) and a SD of 5% or less (precision). Simulation studies confirmed that when the differences in precision among the several methods were small compared with unexplained between‐subject variability of a PK parameter, the techniques were of similar value in assessing the contribution of BF%, if any, as a covariate for that PK parameter. The combination of sex and obesity stage explained 68% of the variance of BF% with BMI. The estimation of BF% from sex and obesity stage can routinely be applied to PK clinical trials to evaluate the contribution of BF% as a potential covariate.


Milhauser v. Minco Products, Inc., 701 F.3d 268 (8th Cir. 2012) I. INTRODUCTION Between 2000 and 2010, more than two million United States soldiers, marines, and sailors served in Iraq or Afghanistan. (1) At times, nearly thirty-five percent of U.S. forces in the Middle East consisted of National Guard and Reserve military forces. (2) These service members--sometimes referred to as "citizen soldiers"--maintain normal civilian lives and employment but are prepared to serve their country as needed. (3) Unfortunately, upon return from military service, many citizen soldiers suffer adverse retaliation, discrimination, or termination at the hands of their civilian employers. (4) With 90,000 troops slated to return from Afghanistan by 2014, reemployment rights for returning service members are an increasing concern. (5) The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects uniformed service members returning to civilian employment. (6) For qualified service members, the act establishes a right to reemployment upon return from military service in the position the service member would have been in had he or she never left for service. (7) The employee's employment position--determined upon return by the "escalator principle"--may move up, down, or stay the same while the employee is on military leave. (8) A recent Eighth Circuit decision, Milhauser v. Minco Products, Inc., clarified that in certain circumstances, even termination qualifies as a reemployment position. (9) In Milhauser, a maintenance technician took military leave from his employer to train for his anticipated deployment to Iraq. (10) Subsequently, the employer suffered significant financial difficulties, and the company ordered a reduction in force. (11) Based on the service member's mediocre employment record, he was one of four persons terminated from his department. (12) The Eighth Circuit held that the service member employee was not entitled to return to the company following his required military training because, according to the escalator principle, his position of reemployment was termination. (13) This Note assesses Milhauser's impact on reemployment claims under USERRA. Part II begins with an analysis of the facts and holding of the case. Next, Part III synthesizes the background of USERRA, provides an overview of the statute, and introduces the escalator principle. Part IV outlines the court's rationale in deciding Milhauser. Finally, Part V discusses the impact of Milhauser on USERRA reemployment claims. This Note argues that: (1) the court's reliance on USERRA regulation [section] 1002.194 was misplaced because the court's interpretation presents a conflict between two sections of the statute and creates burden of proof issues; (2) the Milhauser holding should be narrowly interpreted; and (3) the case presents several unanswered questions that will spur subsequent litigation. II. FACTS AND HOLDING Douglas Milhauser brought the present action against his former employer, Minco Products, Inc. (Minco), claiming the company violated his rights under USERRA. (14) Milhauser worked as a maintenance technician for Minco from 2006 to 2009. (15) Throughout his employment with Minco, Milhauser also served as a member of the Navy Reserves and the Air Force Reserves. (16) Milhauser's membership in the armed services required him to take three separate military leaves of absence from Minco between 2007 and 2009. (17) The circumstances giving rise to litigation surrounded Milhauser's third leave of absence. (18) Prior to his third military leave of absence, Milhauser's performance as a maintenance technician was "inconsistent and sometimes poor." (19) Several of Milhauser's colleagues expressed concerns about his attitude and the quality of his work. (20) On one occasion, Milhauser received a written reprimand from his supervisors. (21) Following the reprimand, Milhauser's supervisors reassigned several of his duties to other maintenance technicians, replacing them with more menial tasks. …


This thesis provides an ethnographic account of post-industrial life in East Manchester, a locality which has undergone repeated waves of regeneration. The neighbourhoods of Beswick and Openshaw were once located at the heart of manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution but have since undergone deep social and economic change in the twentieth century which has resulted in widespread unemployment and perceived ?social deprivation?. In 2000, New Labour introduced a regeneration plan to create ?New East Manchester? with the hope that material transformation would bring about economic growth and social change by creating a cohesive community and a productive and profitable space in the post-industrial city. This research, however, demonstrates that for long-standing residents, the relationship between redevelopment and change is more complex than this simple formula may suggest. Despite millions of pounds of investment and radical physical transformation, long-standing residents argue that East Manchester is dislocated and characterised by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty about the future.The thesis draws on twelve months of residential, ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2010. It focuses on a group of older, female, long-standing residents and explores the issues which are important to them which include neighbourhood risk, memories of the past, gift exchange, housing and political alienation. For these residents, change is understood in terms of unpredictability and inequality. Images of a stable past are drawn upon in order to articulate anger and frustration against mainstream politics and feelings of social exclusion. On the surface, it appears that social life has declined and community has fractured due to the pressures of economic and social change but, on further examination, it is clear that intense social relations and attachments to East Manchester continue to exist. In order to understand the apparent contradiction between narratives of community decline and observations of social relations which are evident in East Manchester, this thesis argues that it is necessary to re-examine concepts of community, belonging and class which are presented in the anthropology of Britain literature.


The article consists in a review of available knowledge of the rare blood disorder, congenital dyserythropoietic anaemia, type III (CDA-III), a disease characterised by autosomal dominant heredity, and mild to moderate haemolytic anaemia. The gene causing CDA-III has been localised on chromosome 15q22. Most patients are adapted to their disease, and have few or no overt manifestations. Bone marrow examination yields a characteristic picture of erythroid hyperplasia and multinucleate erythroblasts. A Swedish family affected with CDA-III has been reported to be characterised by a high prevalence of monoclonal gammopathy and angioid streaks, a triad suggested by the authors to represent a hitherto unreported syndrome.


Abstract Halperin, I, Williams, KJ, Martin, DT, and Chapman, DW. The effects of attentional focusing instructions on force production during the isometric midthigh pull. J Strength Cond Res 30(4): 919–923, 2016—Verbal instructions play a key role in motor learning and performance. Whereas directing one's attention toward bodily movements or muscles (internal focus) tends to hinder performance, instructing persons to focus on the movement outcome, or an external object related to the performed task (external focus) enhances performance. The study's purpose was to examine whether focus of attention affects maximal force production during an isometric midthigh pull (IMTP) among 18 trained athletes (8F & 10M). Athletes performed 3 IMTP trials a day for 3 consecutive days. The first day was a familiarization session in which athlete's received only control instructions. The following 2 days athletes received either control, internal, or external focus of attention instructions in a randomized, within-subject design. Compared to performance with an internal focus of attention, athletes applied 9% greater force when using an external focus of attention (p < 0.001, effect size [ES] = 0.33) and 5% greater force with control instructions (p = 0.001, ES = 0.28). A small positive 3% advantage was observed between performances with an external focus of attention compared with control instructions (p = 0.03, ES = 0.13). Focusing internally on body parts and/or muscle groups during a movement task that requires maximal force hinders performance, whereas focusing on an object external to the self leads to enhanced force production, even when using a simple multijoint static task such as the IMTP.


Bio-logging tags are widely used to study the behavior and movements of marine mammals with the tacit assumption of little impact to the animal. However, tags on fast-swimming animals generate substantial hydrodynamic forces potentially affecting behavior and energetics adversely, or promoting early removal of the tag. In this work, hydrodynamic loading of three novel tag housing designs are compared over a range of swimming speeds using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Results from CFD simulation were verified using tag models in a water flume with close agreement. Drag forces were reduced by minimizing geometric disruptions to the flow around the housing, while lift forces were reduced by minimizing the frontal crosssectional area of the housing and holding the tag close to the attachment surface. Hydrodynamic tag design resulted in an experimentally measured 60% drag force reduction in 5.6 m/s flow. For all housing designs, off-axis flow increased the magnitude of the force on the tag. Experimental work with a common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) cadaver indicates that the suction cups used to attach the types of tags described here provide sufficient attachment force to resist failure to predicted forces at swimming speeds of up to 10 m/s.


In this paper, we consider multihop wireless mesh networks, where each router node is equipped with multiple radio interfaces, and multiple channels are available for communication. We address the problem of assigning channels to communication links in the network with the objective of minimizing the overall network interference. Since the number of radios on any node can be less than the number of available channels, the channel assignment must obey the constraint that the number of different channels assigned to the links incident on any node is at most the number of radio interfaces on that node. The above optimization problem is known to be NP-hard. We design centralized and distributed algorithms for the above channel assignment problem. To evaluate the quality of the solutions obtained by our algorithms, we develop a semidefinite program and a linear program formulation of our optimization problem to obtain lower bounds on overall network interference. Empirical evaluations on randomly generated network graphs show that our algorithms perform close to the above established lower bounds, with the difference diminishing rapidly with increase in number of radios. Also, ns-2 simulations, as well as experimental studies on testbed, demonstrate the performance potential of our channel assignment algorithms in 802.11-based multiradio mesh networks.


Difference sets are mathematical structures which arise in algebra and combinatorics, with applications in coding theory. The fundamental question is when and how one can construct difference sets. This largely expository paper looks at standard construction methods and describes recent findings that resulted in new families of difference sets. This paper provides explicit examples of difference sets that arise from the recent constructions. By gaining a thorough understanding of these new techniques, it may be possible to generalize the results to find additional new families of difference sets. The paper also introduces partial and relative difference sets and discusses how the three types of difference sets relate to other combinatorial structures such as block designs and certain strongly regular graphs.


Radial keratotomy may cause anatomical damage to the rabbit corneal endothelium. To determine if physiological and functional alterations occur, radial keratotomy was performed on rabbit corneas using eight incisions with sparing of a 3.5-mm central pupillary area. Cornea endothelial membrane permeabilities were determined at various times up to ten weeks following the procedure using simultaneous flux determinations of tritiated inulin and dextran labeled with radioactive carbon on isolated corneas. At all times after radial keratotomy, there was no probable physiologically important change in corneal endothelial permeability to either of the labeled compounds. Fluorophotometry performed in a second group of animals at varying intervals following radial keratotomy showed no probable physiologically important change in endothelial fluorescein permeability. Aqueous humor turnover rate was reduced 16% and 29% at one week and nine to ten weeks, respectively, following radial keratotomy.


The additive increase multiplicative decrease (AIMD) algorithm, that is commonly used for congestion avoidance in communication networks, has recently been suggested in other fields such as load management in electric power networks. As for congestion avoidance, in such systems a large number of agents are required to share a given resource. In recent work by Shorten, Wirth and Leith on congestion control in networking a stochastic model has been developed to analyse AIMD algorithms. However, the analysis assumes a continuous implementation of the algorithm and a constant available resource. These assumptions are no longer useful if the AIMD algorithm is applied in fields such as load management in electric power networks, where a discrete implementation is often required, and the available resource shared may be inherently variable. In this paper we develop a disturbed AIMD model based on the model introduced by Shorten et al. that includes discrete time implementation and time varying resource availability. Further, we use that model to bound the influence of these disturbances, caused by either a discrete implementation or small variations in the available resource.


Most yeast strains produce glycerol in larger quantities when cultivated at higher temperatures, which likely explains why red wines contain higher amounts of glycerol than white wines. In this work, we used a kinetic and thermodynamic approach to suggest a mechanistic explanation for this phenomenon. We began with a glycolytic model of the kinetics of the individual enzymes. The effects of temperature and ethanol on the apparent kinetics of individual enzymes were then determined and incorporated into the model. The activation energy for each enzyme was determined with the Arrhenius equation. The enzymes in the upper part of the glycolytic pathway were found to be more dependent on the temperature than those in the lower part. The model, as improved by these changes, could qualitatively simulate the ethanol and glycerol production curves and the production of more glycerol at higher temperatures. We propose that the differences in the temperature dependence of the enzymes around the glycerol branch are the reason for glycerol accumulation at higher temperatures.


This thesis investigates vector representations for face recognition, and uses these representations for a number of tasks in image and video datasets. First, we look at different representations for faces in images and videos. The objective is to learn compact yet effective representations for describing faces. We first investigate the use of "Fisher Vector" descriptors for this task. We show that these descriptors are perfectly suited for face representation tasks. We also investigate various approaches to effectively reduce their dimension while improving their performance further. These "Fisher Vector" features are also amenable to extreme compression and work equally well when compressed by over 2000 times as compared to their non compressed counterparts. These features achieved the state-of-the-art results on challenging public benchmarks until the re-introduction of Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) in the community. Second, we investigate the use of "Very Deep" architectures for face representation tasks. For training these networks, we collected one of the largest annotated public datasets of celebrity faces with minimum manual intervention. We bring out specific details of these network architectures and their training objective functions essential to their performance and achieve state-of-art result on challenging datasets. Having developed these representation, we propose a method for labeling faces in the challenging environment of broadcast videos using their associated textual data, such as subtitles and transcripts. We show that our CNN representation is well suited for this task. We also propose a scheme to automatically differentiate the primary cast of a TV serial or movie from that of the background characters. We modify existing methods of collecting supervision from textual data and show that the careful alignment of video and textual data results in significant improvement in the amount of training data collected automatically, which has a direct positive impact on the performance of labeling mechanisms. We provide extensive evaluations on different benchmark datasets achieving, again, state-of-the-art results. Further we show that both the shallow as well the deep methods have excellent capabilities in switching modalities from photos to paintings and vice-a-versa. We propose a system to retrieve paintings for similar looking people given a picture and investigate the use of facial attributes for this task. Finally, we show that an on-the-fly real time search system can be built to search through thousands of hours of video data starting from a text query. We propose product quantization schemes for making face representations memory efficient. We also present the demo system based on this design for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to search through their archive. All of these contributions have been designed with a keen eye on their application in the real world. As a result, most of chapters have an associated code release and a working online demonstration.


Background and Purpose – In the last two decades, enterprise architecture (EA) has become a common approach for the management of information systems in organizations. However, the academic development of the field has not paralleled this turn of events. There is considerable divergence among researchers as to the very definition of EA. The present project seeks to clarify the concepts of EA, drawing relevant examples from the academic literature and addressing different perspectives in EA research community. The study aims to reveal the ontological arguments about the nature of EA and the related notions and to take one step towards developing theoretical foundations of the field.

Design/methodology/approach –The present project first critically reviews the competing, predominant academic definitions of EA and identifies major research circles in the field. Based on an analysis of recent doctoral dissertations and of key academic publications, it then reviews the perspectives of the various research circles regarding different notions related to the concept of EA. Template analysis (thematic coding) of the data (eleven doctoral dissertations, as well as articles and books cited as the principle references in the dissertations) is performed to critically review and analyze the concept of enterprise architecture.

Findings – A critical review of the previous work examining EA research communities in isolation shows that even articles claiming to provide a big picture of the EA research community are ultimately focused on one narrow research circle. In the current project, a novel categorization of the current EA research circles is presented, and their views on the concept of EA and the related notions are discussed.


There is an epidemic of drug overdose–related fatalities. Recent data indicate that the age-adjusted death rate from overdoses nearly quintupled over a 20-year period (2001-2021) to 32.4 per 100,000. More than 70% of these fatalities were caused by opioid overdose, especially the synthetic drug, fentanyl. Despite an increase in substance abuse and dependency treatment, mortality and morbidity associated with opioid, cocaine, psychostimulant, benzodiazepine, alcohol, and tobacco use disorders continue to rise. To better understand the factors contributing to this crisis, the multifaceted phenomenon of drug addiction is explored. The controversial chronic, relapsing "disease of the brain" model, which emphasizes the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine, the ventral tegmental area, and the nucleus accumbens, is critically considered. In addition, more expansive neurobiological models that include a host of other neurotransmitters, brain regions, and cognitive processes, as well as classical and operant conditioning and social learning theory to help better understand compulsive drug taking, tolerance, risk-taking, and relapse, were examined. For this, the roles of genetics and epigenetics vs individual agency in drug addiction were considered. The economic and occupational consequences borne both individually and societally are enormous. Ultimately, whether the presence of drug addiction satisfies the criteria for a disability remains a conundrum, especially from the perspectives of financial support (eg, Social Security, private insurance companies) vs regulation (eg, licensing agencies).


A study to determine the occurrence of Yersinia enterocolitica and Citrobacter freundii, two potential human pathogens in the throats of tropical pigs of Grenada origin and the antimicrobial pattern of the isolates was carried out. During a period of 30 days (15 September 2017 to 15 October 2017), throat swabs from a total of 97 weaned pigs were sampled to isolate and characterize Y. enterocolitica by serotyping and resistance testing, and to isolates C. freundii. Of the pigs tested, four (4.1%) pigs were positive for Y. enterocolitica. The four Yersinia-positive pigs included one (2.4%) of 41 male pigs and three (5.4%) of 56 female pigs. There were no significant differences between the proportions of Yersinia-positive male and female pigs (p = 0.8437). Of these four Yersinia-positive pigs, two were mixed with C. freundii, one had slight contamination, and the other was pure. All belonged to serotype 0:9.  There were 31 pigs positive for C. freundii, and all showed mixed growth. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests against 14 drugs indicated that all isolates of Y. enterocolitica were susceptible to third-generation cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones, two classes of antimicrobials recommended for the treatment of Y. enterocolitica infection in humans.


We use N-body simulations to explore the origin and a plausible orbit for the Orphan Stream, one of the faintest substructures discovered so far in the outer halo of our Galaxy. We are able to reproduce its position, velocity and distance measurements by appealing to a single wrap of a double-component satellite galaxy. We find that the progenitor of the Orphan Stream could have been an object similar to today's Milky Way dwarfs, such as Carina, Draco, Leo II or Sculptor; and unlikely to be connected to Complex A or Ursa Major II. Our models suggest that such progenitors, if accreted on orbits with apocentres smaller than similar to 35 kpc, are likely to give rise to very low surface brightness streams, which may be hiding in the outer halo and remain largely undetected with current techniques. The systematic discovery of these ghostly substructures may well require wide field spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way's outer stellar halo.


A 84-year-old diabetic man had a complete right-sided hemiplegia with ipsilateral hypoesthesia and vertical diplopia, but no aphasia or hemianopia. The CT scan showed a low-density area in the posterior limb of the left internal capsule, in the territory of the anterior choroidal artery. The mechanism of diplopia is discussed and is attributed to the involvement of the mesencephalic territory of the anterior choroidal artery.


PRINCIPLES
Anterior descending coronary revascularisation can be performed with or without cardiopulmonary bypass. We compared surgical outcomes and postoperative results of two groups of patients operated on for isolated anterior descending coronary revascularisation with the left internal mammary artery, in order to determine the ideal target patient of each technique.

METHODS
From July 1997 to December 2012, 243 consecutive patients underwent off-pump (119) or on-pump (124) surgery for isolated revascularisation of the anterior descending coronary artery. We retrospectively collected, analysed and compared preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative variables.

RESULTS
In the on-pump group, aortic cross-clamp and bypass times were 22 and 35 minutes, respectively. Mean surgical time was 126 minutes for the off-pump group and 160 minutes for the on-pump group. Off-pump patients were more often men (82% vs 66%, p = 0.006), older (median age 67 vs 64 years, p = 0.013), with renal failure (11% vs 2.4%, p = 0.009) and respiratory failure (20% vs 7.3%, p = 0.003), with peripheral vascular disease (17% vs 8%, p = 0.038) and affected by a higher degree of angina (p <0.001). Surgical time was shorter off-pump (p <0.001), but a greater number of urgent procedures were performed on-pump (11% vs 3.4%, p = 0.042). No difference in postoperative characteristics and complications except for the intensive care unit stay, which was shorter off-pump (median 1 vs 2 days, p = 0.046). Hospital mortality was 0.8% off-pump and 1.6% on-pump (p = 0.5).

CONCLUSION
Both on-pump and off-pump surgery for isolated anterior descending coronary revascularization are safe with equal surgical risk. Off-pump procedures seem to be more appropriate in nonurgent patients with higher surgical risk profiles.


BACKGROUND
The detection of pigments and colourless flavonoids in apples can provide a useful indication of fruit quality. Optical methods are preferable because they are fast and non-destructive. In this study, a fluorescence-based portable sensor was used in order to non-invasively determine the content of chlorophylls, anthocyanins and flavonols in Fuji, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apple cultivars. The aim was to define new non-destructive optical indices of apple quality.

RESULTS
The anthocyanin index (ANTH) in Fuji was higher in the sunny (i.e. sun-exposed) side of the fruit compared to the shady side. For all cultivars, the flavonol index (FLAV) was higher in the sunny side compared with the shady side. The chlorophyll index (CHL) for the shady sides of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious was significantly higher than for the sunny sides. Fine linear regressions were found between the ANTH, FLAV and CHL indices and the actual anthocyanin, flavonol and chlorophyll concentrations, respectively, which were determined destructively on the apple peel extracts. A negative correlation was found between the apple sugar content and the chlorophyll fluorescence in the far-red spectral band.

CONCLUSION
Our results indicate that a single multiparametric fluorescence-based sensor can provide valuable non-destructive markers of ripening and quality in apples.


To identify sources of distributed denial-of-service attacks, path traceback mechanisms have been proposed. Traceback mechanisms relying on probabilistic packet marking (PPM) have received most attention, as they are easy to implement and deploy incrementally. We introduce a new concept, namely Groups Of Strongly SImilar Birthdays (GOSSIB), that can be used by to obtain effects similar to a successful birthday attack on PPM schemes. The original and most widely known IP traceback mechanism, compressed edge fragment sampling (CEFS), was developed by Savage et al. (2000). We analyze the effects of an attacker using GOSSIB against CEFS and show that the attacker can seed misinformation much more efficiently than the network is able to contribute real traceback information. Thus, GOSSIB will render PPM effectively useless. It can be expected that GOSSIB has similar effects on other PPM traceback schemes and that standard modifications to the systems will not solve the problem.


Bacterial superantigens bind directly to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II molecules and vigorously activate T cells expressing certain T-cell receptor variable region families. As interaction with HLA class II molecules is the primary step in this process, polymorphic variations in HLA class II can determine the extent of superantigen binding to HLA class II molecules, govern the magnitude of immune activation induced by given superantigens and determine the outcome of superantigen-mediated diseases. As direct assessment of the influence of HLA class II polymorphism in humans is impossible because of expression of more than one HLA class II alleles in a given individual and toxicity of superantigens, transgenic mice expressing HLA-DQ6 (HLA-DQA1*0103 and HLA-DQB1*0601) and HLA-DQ8 (HLA-DQA1*0301 and HLA-DQB1*0302) were used to achieve this goal. HLA-DQ6 and HLA-DQ8 elicited comparable in vitro and in vivo immune response to staphylococcal enterotoxins (SE) A, SEB, SEH and SEK, toxic shock syndrome toxin-1, streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin (SPE) A and SPEC and streptococcal mitogenic exotoxin Z (SMEZ). However, each superantigen had a unique T-cell receptor activation profile. In vivo challenge with Streptococcus pyogenes, H305, capable of elaborating SPEA and SMEZ, yielded a similar clinical outcome in HLA-DQ6 and HLA-DQ8 transgenic mice. In conclusion, HLA-DQ6 and HLA-DQ8 elicited comparable response to certain bacterial superantigens. Our report highlights the advantages of HLA class II transgenic mice in such studies.


Four Meanings of Medicalization: Childbirth as a Case study - Medicalisation is a commonly used and 'easily' understood concept among health care providers and researchers as well as in popular culture, but it is contested within medical sociology. This paper distinguishes between four meanings bestowed on medicalisation to enhance its conceptual clarity, using the example of childbirth as an illustration. Within the first generation of medicalisation theory, largely covering the ideas of Freidson, Conrad and Illich, we distinguish between three layers of meaning: (a) the origin of the medical model; (b) medical imperialism; and (c) iatrogenesis. The first meaning refers to the origin of the medical knowledge. In the second meaning daily life becomes increasingly defined in terms of health and illness, hence incorporating a growing number of life domains and social problems. The power of the medical discourse and the associated social control are central issues. The third meaning is represented by the critical or conflict sociological approach, in which medicalisation is interpreted as an exaggeration of medical control, hence emphasising its iatrogenic ('sick-making') effects. The second generation medicalisation theory addresses a changed and more complex organisation of health care. New medicalisation tendencies surpass the old ones, adding a new layer of meanings to the concept: the optimalisation of normal characteristics or processes. Hence, normal phenomena become problematic and a new consuming market is created. A key message from our paper is that poor conceptualisation of medicalisation as an analytical tool endangers the quality and comparability of social scientific research and interdisciplinary collaboration. Keywords: medicalization, birth, iatrogenesis, medical imperialism, sociology of health, health care. Parole chiave: medicalizzazione, parto, iatrogenesi, imperialismo medico, sociologia della salute, assistenza sanitaria.


We describe how language models, combined with models of pen placement, can be used to significantly reduce the error rate of soft keyboard usage, by allowing for cases in which a key press is outside of a key boundary. Language models predict the probabilities of words or letters. Soft keyboards are images of keyboards on a touch screen used for input on Personal Digital Assistants. When a soft keyboard user hits a key near the boundary of a key position, we can use the language model and key press model to select the most probable key sequence, rather than the sequence dictated by strict key boundaries. This leads to an overall error rate reduction by a factor of 1.67 to 1.87.


Assessment of the mobilized friction angle in a soil specimen tested in a given shear apparatus requires adequate information to establish the stress state at the instance of interest. In the most commonly used version of the direct simple shear (DSS) apparatus, where a cylindrical soil specimen is confined by wire-reinforced membrane, only the normal and shear stresses on the horizontal plane are measured. The knowledge of these stresses alone does not provide adequate information to construct the Mohr circle defining the state of stress. In this context, drained and constant volume (i.e., equivalent to undrained) discrete element simulations of a cylindrical DSS specimen were performed and the results are presented with emphasis on the DSS mobilized friction angle during shearing. It was found that planes of maximum stress obliquity rotate with the development of shear strain. This finding implies that it is not possible to calculate the friction angle accurately from typical DSS laboratory tests with unknown normal stress on the vertical plane. However, it seems that at large shear strains, the horizontal plane becomes a plane of maximum stress obliquity, and the friction angle calculated using the stress state on the horizontal plane is a good approximation to the mobilized friction angle at such shear strain levels.


A factorial experiment of three light intensities and three fertiliser levels was carried out on the potted seedlings of Neobalanocarpus heimii as stock plants for subsequent rooting of cuttings. Light intensities used were 25%, 50% and 100% of the open sunlight and the fertilizer levels were 0 g, 1 g and 2 g plant-1 month-1. Results of 11 months after potting showed that the stock plants treated with 1 g and 2 g fertilizer had significantly better height and diameter increments than those without fertilizer in all light intensities tried. On the other hand, no significant effect of light intensity was obtained in height and diameter increments of the stock plants. Survival of stock plants of more than 86% was obtained in all light intensities tried with or without fertilizer application. Test on rooting of subsequent cuttings showed that light intensity of 25% and 0 g fertiliser, to stock plants gave the highest rooting percentage (73%) and the number of roots (2.0). The general trend showed that rooting decreased to below 60% when intensity of light was increased. In terms of size, cuttings with diameter between 1.2 mm and 2.3 mm is recommended as it yielded rooting of 65% to 75%. For practical application, a combination of 25% light intensity and 1 g of fertilizer plant-1 month-1 can be applied to the stock plants to maintain their healthy growth for continuous production of cutting materials for rooting


ABSTRACT Background and Aim: Helicobacter pylori is a major human pathogen. Its role in the pathogenesis of portal hypertensive gastropathy (PHG) is debated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of this infection in patients with portal hypertension due to liver cirrhosis and its relation with severity of gastropathy. Patients and Methods: Sixty consecutive patients with liver cirrhosis were enrolled in the study. All patients were subjected to an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (UGIE), and rapid urease testing for H. pylori was performed. The diagnosis and severity of PHG was evaluated on UGIE. ChildαTurcotteαPugh (CTP) and model for endαstage liver disease (MELD) scores were calculated to assess the severity of liver cirrhosis. Results: H. pylori infection was reported in 33 patients with overall prevalence 55%. The presence of H. pylori was observed in 26 (67%) cirrhotic patients with PHG compared to 7 (33%) cirrhotic patients without PHG. The risk estimate showed a significant association between H. pylori and PHG in cirrhotic patients (P = 0.0133, odds ratio [OR]: 4.00, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.298–12.325). Out of the 26 patients with PHG and H. pylori infection, 17 had severe PHG (65.3%) and 9 had mild PHG (34.6%) whereas 4 patients had severe PHG (30.8%) and 9 had mild PHG (69.2%%) in the group of H. pyloriαnegative patients. The difference was statistically significant (P = 0.04, OR: 4.25, 95% CI: 1.0188–17.729). Of the 39 patients with PHG, 21 (53.85%) had severe PHG and 18 (46.15%) had mild PHG. No significant relation was found between H. pylori infection and severity of liver cirrhosis as regards CTP score (P = 0.76) and MELD score (P = 0.56). Conclusion: Our results showed a significant association between H. pylori infection and the occurrence and also the severity of gastropathy in patients with liver cirrhosis. Yet, the severity of liver cirrhosis itself did not correlate with H. pylori or the severity of gastropathy.


Sepsis is a greatly feared complication of total joint arthroplasty. One key question is how to prevent perioperative bacterial adherence, and therefore the potential for infectious complications. The objective of our study was to appraise the emerging capacity of staphylococcal survival on prosthetic materials and to analyze the in vitro effects of gentamicin and vancomycin loaded polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) cement on bacterial adherence and growth. Hospital acquired staphylococcal strains were systematically inoculated on four orthopedic materials (ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene, PMMA without antibiotic, commercially produced PMMA loaded with gentamicin, and manually mixed PMMA loaded with gentamicin and vancomycin). Staphylococci were identified using culture and biochemical tests. The inoculated material was allowed to incubate in a liquid broth growth media and subsequently prepared for scanning electron microscopy and bacterial growth quantification. Materials without antibiotics showed evidence of staphylococcal growth. PMMA loaded with only gentamicin grew methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Gentamicin-vancomycin loaded PMMA completely inhibited any bacterial growth. Low-dose gentamicin-vancomycin loaded PMMA prevents staphylococcal colonization better than commercially manufactured PMMA loaded with gentamicin. We recommend this combination in high-risk procedures and revision surgeries requiring bone cement.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common inflammatory disease, affecting 1–3% of the adult population. Multiple joint involvement, systemic co-morbidity, and polypharmacy including immuno-modulatory drugs, present the surgeon with significant challenges. Surgical management of RA patients requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Pre-operative management includes assessment of all joints involved, identification of the correct surgical sequence, and evaluation of medical fitness for anaesthesia and surgery. Disease modifying agents should be continued peri-operatively together with adequate replacement therapy in patients taking corticosteroids. Peri-operative care also includes prophylaxis for infective and gastrointestinal complications. Gentle handling of delicate soft tissue and bone is required intraoperatively. Thin skin and pressure areas need support and padding. Successful post-operative rehabilitation involves early mobilisation, input from occupational and physiotherapists, and adequate provision of domestic aftercare.


During the reign of Salah al-din al-Ayyubi (Saladin), the founder of the Ayyubid state, the activities in the field of medicine and pharmacy have made considerable progress. Saladin gave great importance to the medical science and medical institutions and constructed the hospitals in important regions such as Egypt, Bilâd al-Sham and al-Jazirah, and these hospitals gradually became medical centers where theoretical and applied medical courses were processed. From these hospitals, the Bimâristan al-Nuri in Damascus and the Bimâristân al-Nâsiri in Cairo continued to operate as two important medical centers, and Muslim, Christian and Jewish physicians came to these hospitals from various parts of the world and practiced medicine. Clinical medicine has emerged as the result of medical researches conducted in these hospitals. One of the most important developments in this period is the establishment of a madrasah by Rais al-Atibba Muhazzab al-Din al-Dakhwar, who only teaches medicine in the history of Islam. Famous physicians who have made great contributions to the medical science have lived during Saladin reign. Maimonides, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, Muhazzab al-Din al-Dakhwar and Ibn Baytar are the leading figures of these pyhsicians. In the present article medical education in the reign of Saladin and the famous physicians of the period will be examined and developments in the field of medicine will be evaluated.


In this work, we propose an architecture for optical detection based analyzer to be integrated with Digital Microfluidic Biochips (DMFB). A reference memory has been integrated with the device to define pre-characterized data for the multiple reference levels. The architecture has been developed towards the implementation of the fuzzy based control of the process flow for extending the analysis to multiple levels and determination of the extent of infestation of the targeted parameters for a set of homogeneous samples subjected to specified Bioassay protocol. The design is implemented on FPGA platform using Xilinx Spartan 3E for the detection of the blood glucose on a group of homogeneous samples. The simulation results are found to be satisfactory and the detection results are found to be in conformance with the conventional benchtop laboratory procedures.


In this paper, I show how gradient-based optimization methods can be used to estimate stochastic dynamic models in economics. By extending the state space to include all model parameters, I show that we need to solve the model only once to do structural estimation. Parameters are then estimated by minimizing the distance between key empirical moments and the model-implied ones. Unlike the Simulated Method of Moments, the model-implied moments are estimated without the computation of a single moment. Instead, a neural network learns the corresponding moments using raw simulated observations. Once a network learned the (differentiable) mapping between parameters and moments, a Newton-Raphson routine is coupled with simulated annealing to find the set of parameters that globally minimizes the objective function. I illustrate the algorithm by solving and estimating a benchmark macroeconomic model with stochastic volatility, endogenous labor supply, and irreversible investment.


Various commentators have argued for years that the study of teachers' self-efficacy (TSE) beliefs, largely dominated by quantitative research methodologies, has been confused. Contentious issues include the very conceptualization of these beliefs, how they are defined and accessed through research and how the research is used. One of the biggest anomalies is that, despite claiming that these beliefs are task-specific, many quantitative researchers have both assessed them globally and portrayed them as hard to impact. In contrast, some qualitative researchers have emphasized the task-specific nature of these beliefs and their potential for transformation through self-doubt, reflection and learning. This literature review examines these and other contentious issues, focusing on studies published in international peer-reviewed journals in the last few years, looking, through the use of search terms and the surveying of abstracts followed by detailed reading, for evidence of developing understandings and changing research practices. This review highlights continuing misalignment between theory and method in much of the literature, but also identifies promising research directions. Mixed methods and qualitative research designs seem to have the potential to produce insightful findings that can make the study of TSE beliefs of greater use to teacher educators than has previously been the case.


This deliverable demonstrates how the various partners in FREYA are taking up persistent identifiers for organizations as part of the Work Package 4 work on integrating emerging PID types into disciplinary contexts. A range of organization IDs are discussed with special focus on the ROR ID as a community-led initiative with open infrastructure and data that is well suited for use in an open science environment.


This topic solicits proposals to develop enabling component and sub-system technology for cryogenic telescopes, including but not limited to: large-aperture lightweight cryogenic optic manufacture and test; thermal management, distributed cryogenic cooling and multiple heat lift; structure, deployment, and mechanisms; deployable cryogenic coolant lines; active wavefront control; etc. The goal for this effort is to mature technologies that can be used to fabricate 2-4 m and 10-30 m class lightweight cryogenic flight-qualified telescope primary mirror systems at a cost of less than $300,000 per square meter. Proposals to fabricate demonstration components and subsystems with direct scalability to flight will be given preference.


Coronal loops interconnecting two active regions (ARs), called interconnecting loops (ILs), are prominent large-scale structures in the solar atmosphere. They carry a significant amount of magnetic flux and therefore are considered to be an important element of the solar dynamo process. Earlier observations showed that eruptions of ILs are an important source of CMEs. It is generally believed that ILs are formed through magnetic reconnection in the high corona (>150″–200″), and several scenarios have been proposed to explain their brightening in soft X-rays (SXRs). However, the detailed IL formation process has not been fully explored, and the associated energy release in the corona still remains unresolved. Here, we report the complete formation process of a set of ILs connecting two nearby ARs, with successive observations by STEREO-A on the far side of the Sun and by SDO and Hinode on the Earth side. We conclude that ILs are formed by gradual reconnection high in the corona, in line with earlier postulations. In addition, we show evidence that ILs brighten in SXRs and EUVs through heating at or close to the reconnection site in the corona (i.e., through the direct heating process of reconnection), a process that has been largely overlooked in earlier studies of ILs.


What literacy means has evolved significantly in recent decades, but even in the context of Quebec, where the provincial curriculum embraces a forward-thinking definition of literacy, multiple understandings of literacy and reading coexist within the same community. This article argues that how the concepts of reading and literacy are understood, and how best to teach them, continues to be framed within the boundaries set out by traditionally opposing research paradigms, and that these frameworks have further complicated the challenge of helping students become strong readers of print. With a specific focus on the reading of print, this article examines how these understandings differ and what this has meant for reading and literacy instruction. It is argued that a rethinking of the way that research informs pedagogy may further the benefits that the researcher-practitioner relationship brings to classroom practice.


Abstract Purpose: Hypertension guidelines recommend measuring blood pressure (BP) on both arms, since an abnormal inter-arm difference (IAD) in BP is associated with an increased risk of vascular abnormalities and cardiovascular (CV) disease. We tested whether an automatic oscillometric BP monitor allowing simultaneous both arm BP measurement might be effective for screening of subjects with potential vascular disease. Materials and methods: 220 consecutive subjects from an unselected sample of individuals of a small Italian community were screened using an automated upper-arm electronic BP monitor (Microlife WatchBP Office). Seated BP was measured in triplicate at 1 min interval. Demographic and clinical data were collected prior to any BP measurement. An average IAD difference >20 mmHg for systolic (S) and/or >10 mmHg for diastolic (D) BP was considered abnormal. Results: In 9 subjects (4.1%) an abnormal IAD was found, with lower BPs measured in the non-dominant arm (147 ± 28/78 ± 9 vs. 154 ± 15/92 ± 11 mmHg dominant, p<.01). Subjects with a significant IAD were significantly older (71 ± 8 vs. 57 ± 15 years, p=.005), had a greater body mass index (BMI: 32 ± 7 vs. 25 ± 4 kg/m2, p=.0001), higher BP levels (154 ± 15/92 ± 11 vs. 133 ± 18/80 ± 10 mmHg, p=.001) and were more likely to report obesity (56 vs. 13%, p=.001), a history of hypertension (67 vs. 35%, p=.044) or cardiovascular disease (33 vs. 10%, p=.034) than subjects with normal IAD. In a multivariate analysis, a higher BMI [odds ratio (95% confidence interval): 1.29 (1.11, 1.51)] and SBP [1.06 (1.01, 1.10)] were significantly associated with a larger risk of an abnormal IAD (p=.001 and p=.012, respectively). Conclusions: An abnormal IAD in BP is associated with a larger prevalence of CV risk factors and CV disease. Our study confirms that simultaneous both arm BP measurement must always be accomplished in subjects at risk for or with established CV disease.


We consider initially two parallel routes, each of two queues in tandem, with arriving customers choosing the route giving them the shortest expected time in the system, given the queue lengths at the customer's time of arrival. All interarrival and service times are exponential. We then augment this network to obtain a Wheatstone bridge, in which customers may cross from one route to the other between queues, again choosing the route giving the shortest expected time in the system, given the queue lengths ahead of them. We find that Braess's paradox can occur: namely in equilibrium the expected transit time in the augmented network, for some service rates, can be greater than in the initial network.


The science of nutrition has advanced beyond expectation since Antoine La voisier as early as the 18th century showed that oxygen was necessary to change nutrients in foods to compounds which would become a part of the human body. He was also the first to measure metabolism and to show that oxidation within the body produces heat and energy. In the two hundred years that have elapsed, the essentiality of nitrogen-containing nutrients and of proteins for growth and maintenance of tissue has been established; the ne cessity for carbohydrates and certain types of fat for health has been docu mented; vitamins necessary to prevent deficiency diseases have been identified and isolated; and the requirement of many mineral elements for health has been demonstrated. Further investigations have defined the role of these nutrients in metabolic processes and quantitated their requirements at various stages of development. Additional studies have involved their use in the possible prevention of, and therapy for, disease conditions."


Drawing on social identity theory, this study takes an employee-centered approach to examine employee attitudes toward corporate refugee support and its consequences. It distinguishes four types of corporate refugee support—advocacy, sponsorship, partnership, and hiring refugees—to assess whether and how they are perceived differently by employees. In addition, a comparative analysis was conducted to examine the perceptions of employees based in the United States and the United Kingdom. Employees of for-profit organizations ( N = 601) were recruited through Prolific to participate in an online experiment. The results show that corporate partnership and sponsorship are perceived more positively by employees compared with corporate advocacy and hiring employees, and these effects are mediated by perceived organizational morality. Also, the value of corporate advocacy turns out to be better recognized by the employees based in the United States than those in the United Kingdom. The findings provide important guidance for businesses in aligning employees through committing to specific refugee support strategy.


The global rise in the prevalence of metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and dyslipidemia is a serious public health issue. The search for safe and effective complementary and alternative therapies to treat metabolic disorders is a key field of research. Momordica charantia (MC) is a tropical and subtropical vine of the Cucurbitaceae family used as a medicinal plant since ancient times. Although MC has been widely studied for its hypoglycemic potential, hypolipidemic and antiobesity effects have also been reported in preclinical studies and clinical trials. This study aims to review the metabolic effects of MC reported in clinical trials as well as its mechanisms of action.


their stories as nobody who had lost an infant was going to be happy and the parents were often in a fragile emotional state. The information obtained by recollection of experiences may also be subject to distortions of recalls. Overall, this is a very useful book. Without any reservation, I recommend this book to all neonatologists, paediatricians, family physicians, and intensive care staff who are involved with the care of very sick or dying infants. Alexander K C Leung Clinical Associate Professor of Paediatrics The homeopathic conversation By Brian Kaplan. Published by Natural Medicine Press, Oxford 2001. Paperback 206pp. Price £14.99 ISBN 1-903952-00-X This is a book aimed mainly at believers or practitioners in homeopathy, but would also be useful to some extent to practitioners in most alternative practices as well as conventional medicine. The only problem for the latter would be the lack of time allocated to each patient, which would in the NHS especially, greatly restrict the interviewing techniques. There are many salient points raised in the book regarding the mode of asking questions, which would undoubtedly help the more junior practitioners and those embarking on a new career in alternative medicine. However, the amount of knowledge required to ask pertinent questions seems by far to outweigh that of so many alternative therapists. Much of the book deals with advanced psychology and psychotherapy: these are realms of science which most alternative practitioners, including many homeopaths, are not acquainted with and their ability to understand their patients' problems is often instinctive rather than academic. Perhaps one of the main critiques of the book is the repetition of case studies, which could have been avoided and new ones used to illustrate each point. Further criticisms include the actual content of many chapters, which convey the personal life history of the author, with the history of homeopathy intertwined at the same time, giving a rather jumbled account of both. The last criticism involves the actual conversational mode in which the book is written, but then this can be partly allowed, as this is the title of the book. Maria Lis-Balchin Reader in Applied Biochemistry


In this thesis, several heuristic methods are proposed for the computation of Unique Input Output (UIO) Sequences for the states of a given finite state machine. UIO computation problem is known to be a hard problem. The methods suggested in this work are based on unfolding an exponential tree as the other methods existing in the literature. However, our methods perform a search guided by some heuristic information. We also introduce a parameter for inference based UIO sequence computation for a trade off between the memory used for the computation and the UIO sequence length. Based on a randomly generated set of finite state machines, an extensive experimental study is also provided to compare the performance of our methods between each other and to those already exist in the literature.


Many condition monitoring (CM) techniques have been investigated for the purpose of early fault detection and diagnosis in order to avoid unexpected machine breakdowns. However, non-stationary and non-linear characteristics of vibration data can make the signal analysis a challenging task. Multiresolution data analysis approaches have received significant attention in recent years and are widely applied to analyse non-stationary and non-linear data. Double-Density Discrete Wavelet Transform (DD-DWT), which was originally developed for image processing, is proposed and investigated in this paper for effectively extracting diagnostic features from the vibration measurements. DD-DWT has the merits of nearly shift-invariant and less frequency aliasing which and allows the effective extraction of non-stationary periodic peaks, compared with the undecimated DWT. Techniques based on thresholding of wavelet coefficients are gaining popularity for denoising data. The implementation of global, level-dependent, and subband-dependent thresholding based methods are investigated and implemented on the selected wavelet coefficients in order to denoise and enhance the periodic and impulsive fault features. The performance of the proposed method has been evaluated against DWT using both simulated data and experimental datasets from defective tapered roller bearings. Results, using the harmonic to signal ratio (HSR) as a measure, have demonstrated that DD-DWT outperforms conventional DWT in feature extraction and noise suppression. As a result, the proposed method is robust and effective in fault detection and diagnosis.


[1] Global near-surface currents are calculated from satellite-tracked drogued drifter velocities on a 0.5° × 0.5° latitude-longitude grid using a new methodology. Data used at each grid point lie within a centered bin of set area with a shape defined by the variance ellipse of current fluctuations within that bin. The time-mean current, its annual harmonic, semiannual harmonic, correlation with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), spatial gradients, and residuals are estimated along with formal error bars for each component. The time-mean field resolves the major surface current systems of the world. The magnitude of the variance reveals enhanced eddy kinetic energy in the western boundary current systems, in equatorial regions, and along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, as well as three large "eddy deserts," two in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic. The SOI component is largest in the western and central tropical Pacific, but can also be seen in the Indian Ocean. Seasonal variations reveal details such as the gyre-scale shifts in the convergence centers of the subtropical gyres, and the seasonal evolution of tropical currents and eddies in the western tropical Pacific Ocean. The results of this study are available as a monthly climatology.


The efficacy of the standardized four-drug regimen (comprising isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol) for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) is menaced by the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Intensive efforts have been made to develop new antibiotics or to repurpose old drugs, and several of these are currently being evaluated in clinical trials for their antitubercular activity. ABSTRACT The efficacy of the standardized four-drug regimen (comprising isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol) for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) is menaced by the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Intensive efforts have been made to develop new antibiotics or to repurpose old drugs, and several of these are currently being evaluated in clinical trials for their antitubercular activity. Among the new candidate drugs is macozinone (MCZ), the piperazine-containing benzothiazinone PBTZ169, which is currently being evaluated in phase I/II clinical trials. Here, we determined the in vitro and in vivo activity of MCZ in combination with a range of anti-TB drugs in order to design a new regimen against active TB. Two-drug combinations with MCZ were tested against M. tuberculosis using checkerboard and CFU enumeration after drug exposure assays. MCZ was observed to have no interactions with all first- and second-line anti-TB drugs. At the MIC of each drug, MCZ with either bedaquiline (BDQ), clofazimine (CLO), delamanid (DMD), or sutezolid (STZ) reduced the bacterial burden by 2 logs compared to that achieved with the drugs alone, indicating synergism. MCZ also displayed synergism with clomiphene (CLM), a potential inhibitor of the undecaprenyl pyrophosphate synthase (UppS) in mycobacteria. For all the other drugs tested in combination with MCZ, no synergistic activity was observed. Neither antagonism nor increased cytotoxicity was found for most combinations, suggesting that MCZ could be added to different TB treatment regimens without any significant adverse effects.


This paper attempts to assess the status of Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) as a tool of conservation in the Arakalgud administrative unit of Karnataka. The Study is based on the field investigation and interaction with the followers of Traditional systems such as healers and practitioners. Many plants in traditional agricultural systems have medicinal value; these are found in home gardens, as scattered trees in croplands and grazing lands on field bunds. Consequently there has been a reduction in the use of home remedies and preventive diets at the household level.


Our study's objective is to examine the various socio-demographic and mass media factors of sanitary item usage among rural and urban women in India. We have used data from the Indian version of the Demographic and Health Survey, conducted in 2015–16 for this study, with a sample of 247,833 women in the age group of 15 to 24 years. Binary logistics regression was performed separately for urban and rural women to understand the various determinants of sanitary item usage. We found that three-quarters of women in urban areas use sanitary items compared to half of the women in rural areas. Indian women in rural areas appear to be at a considerable disadvantage compared to their urban counterparts with regard to sanitary item usage. Factors determining sanitary item usage did not vary between urban and rural areas. However, education, wealth, mass media, and toilet facility were the major factors in understanding the improvement in sanitary item usage in urban and rural areas. At the policy level, there is need to focus on (a) disseminating knowledge about menstrual hygiene management (MHM) practices and provisioning of sanitary items; and (b) providing exposure to traditional media channels to potentially reduce the social stigma associated with these issues and bring critical conversations to the forefront, especially among the socio-economically disadvantaged groups.


This study was to develop fetal growth curves and percentile growth charts for a Jamaican population. 499 jamaican women of African descent were enrolled in a prospective study from the maternity clinic of the University Hospital of the West Indies., Kingston, Jamaica. The women had serial scans between 14–37 weeks' gestation to measure fetal growth. The measurements performed were BPD, HC, AC and FL. A total of 2574 scans were performed (mean 5.2 per woman). The data was used to plot centile growth charts for the Jamaican fetus. Birthweights vary between ethnic groups so must fetal growth. At present fetal growth in Jamaica is assessed using charts based on Caucasian populations. Fetal growth charts derived from this data would more accurately predict the at-risk fetus and hence improve obstetric care.


In January 2000 passers-by stumbled up on a large hold all dumped in a derelict area of inner city Sheffield. To their horror the bag contained the mummified remains of a human being. The body was adipocerous and could not be identified from the soft tissues. There were no other items of clothing or personal possessions that could be used to identify the remains.

The skeleton yielded a wealth of information relating to the individual during life – generating an "osteobiography", or life history from the skeleton. A forensic facial reconstruction was undertaken from the skull and publicised in the local and national media. Within a week the body was identified and two individuals charged with murder. As the victim's life history was revealed to the investigators, it was possible to compare this with the parameters derived osteologically.

The "Body in the Bag" case emerged as a tour de force of the use of forensic anthropology to assist the police in human identification.


The traditional methods of probability and non-probability sample selection are applicable to Internet surveys and respondents can be selected in various ways, some of which are unique to the Internet. Specific to the Internet and important to note from a sampling viewpoint, is the self-completion method of data collection. For this article the method has been sub-divided into six categories, three web-page style questionnaires and three e-mail style questionnaires. Data that show the number of individuals with access to a networked computer are of limited use in sampling. Thirteen types of computer user are identifiable, each of which poses a challenge for sampling. Published examples illustrate how these principles have been applied in practice. Two techniques; saturation surveying and sifting, may be employed usefully in some situations. There are numerous solutions to sampling problems for Internet research and many avenues for further inquiry.


We investigated the relationship between the outer membrane protein OprD2 and carbapenem-resistance in 141 clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa collected between January and December 2013 from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University in China. Agar dilution methods were employed to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration of meropenem (MEM) and imipenem (IMP) for P. aeruginosa. The gene encoding OprD2 was amplified from141 P. aeruginosa isolates and analyzed by PCR and DNA sequencing. Differences between the effects of IMPR and IMPS groups on the resistance of the P. aeruginosa were observed by SDS-poly acrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Three resistance types were classified in the 141 carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa (CRPA) isolates tested, namely IMPRMEMR (66.7%), IMPRMEMS (32.6%), and IMPRMEMS (0.7%). DNA sequencing revealed significant diverse gene mutations in the OprD2-encoding gene in these strains. Thirty-four strains had large fragment deletions in the OprD2gene, in 6 strains the gene contained fragment inserts, and in 96 resistant strains, the gene featured small fragment deletions or multi-site mutations. Only 4 metallo-β-lactamase strains and 1 imipenem-sensitive (meropenem-resistant) strain showed a normal OprD2 gene. Using SDS-PAGE to detect the outer membrane protein in 16 CRPA isolates, it was found that 10 IMPRMEMR strains and 5 IMPRMEMS strains had lost the OprD2 protein, while the IMPSMEMR strain contained a normal 46-kDa protein. In conclusion, mutation or loss of the OprD2-encoding gene caused the loss of OprD2, which further led to carbapenem-resistance of P. aeruginosa. Our findings provide insights into the mechanism of carbapenem resistance in P. aeruginosa.


The shortcomings of traditional combustion techniques are being continually evaluated and alternate combustion modes are being sought. One such combustion mode that is receiving a lot of attention is Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI). HCCI is a combustion process that has the potential to be highly efficient and produces low emissions. It can provide high, diesel-like efficiencies using gasoline, diesel, and most alternative fuels. The major drawback with HCCI is controlling the ignition timing over a wide range of load and speed. The local chemical and thermal conditions of the charge mixture, towards the end of the compression stroke, have significant influences on the set-off auto-ignition. In this paper, numerical study has been carried out to examine the effects of mixture quality on the occurrence of auto-ignition at the end of the compression stroke inside a pentroof combustion chamber. The effect of different Internal Exhaust Gas Re-circulation (IEGR) are investigated. The use of IEGR acts as an indirect control method, the rate of combustion can be slowed down; however the percentage of IEGR retained in the cylinder affects the onset of auto-ignition. The calculated results have been validated against published experimental data, so that the correlation between the two can be discussed. It is found that the inhomogeneity of the air, fuel and the IEGR mixing, presented here in terms of temperature distribution, plays an important role in initiating, and potentially further controlling the HCCI combustion. During the compression process, certain parts of the engine charge are found to reach a higher temperature which auto-ignited depending on the percentages of IEGR used.


The Proterozoic assembly of Australia involved the convergence of three main Archean cratonic entities: the North, West and South Australian Cratons, and is recorded in the Proterozoic orogenic belts surrounding these continental nuclei. The Rudall Province of northern Western Australia is the sole exposure of a Paleoto Mesoproterozoic orogen lying between the North and West Australian Cratons, and may record the effects of their amalgamation. We present new zircon O, U–Pb and Lu–Hf isotope data from magmatic rocks across the Rudall Province, to which we add existing isotope data to yield a crustal evolution overview. Hf evolution trends for the ca. 1804–1762Ma Kalkan Supersuite, the ca. 1589–1549Ma Krackatinny Supersuite and the ca. 1310–1286Ma Camel Suite, indicate a significant input of Archean East Pilbara Basement material, albeit as a mix with more juvenile material, including a possible ca. 1900Ma component. Zircon δO data suggest a contribution from supracrustal material into the magmatic source of the Kalkan Supersuite, which may have been emplaced in an extensional setting. In contrast, the Krackatinny Supersuite and Camel Suite have mantlelike δO which may reflect partial melting of deeper Archean sources. Geochemical data for the Krackatinny Supersuite shows geochemical trends implying that melting of thickened mafic crust progressed from deeper to shallower levels, possibly in a rift setting. Camel Suite K-rich leucogranites may also have been emplaced in an extensional setting towards the end of high-P metamorphism. All terranes of the Rudall Province are paraautochthonous with respect to the Pilbara Craton, with no requirement for arc-related magmatism. We outline two potential scenarios for the Paleoto Mesoproterozoic geodynamic evolution of the Rudall Province: an early cratonic amalgamation between the West and North Australian Cratons ca. 1680Ma followed by Mesoproterozoic intraplate events; or a later assembly ca. 1377–1275Ma. We lean towards this later amalgamation scenario.


YES NO ___ ___ 1. Has your doctor ever said you have a heart condition and that you should only do physical activity recommended by a doctor? ___ ___ 2. Do you feel pain in your chest when you do physical activity? ___ ___ 3. In the past month, have you had chest pain when you were not doing physical activity? ___ ___ 4. Do you lose your balance because of dizziness or do you ever lose consciousness? ___ ___ 5. Do you have a bone or joint problem that could be made worse by a change in your physical activity? ___ ___ 6. Is your doctor currently prescribing drugs (for example, water pills) for your Blood pressure or heart condition? ___ ___ 7. Do you know of any other reason why you should not do physical activity?


System identification techniques have been used to separate intrinsic muscular and reflexive contributions to joint impedance, which is an essential step in the proper choice of patient specific treatment. These techniques are, however, only well developed for linear systems. Assuming linearity prescribes the neuromuscular system to be perturbed only around predefined operating points. In this study, we test the validity of a commonly used linear model by analyzing the effects of flexion-extension displacement amplitude (2°, 4°, and 8°) on damping, stiffness, and reflex gain of the wrist joint, at different background torque levels (0, 1, and 2 N ·m). With displacement amplitude, intrinsic damping increased, while intrinsic stiffness and reflex gains decreased. These changes were dependent on the level of wrist torque. The dependency of the neuromuscular system properties on even small variations in angular displacement is evident and has to be accounted for when comparing different studies and clinical interpretations using linear identification techniques. Knowledge of the behavior of the neuromuscular system around operating points is an essential step toward the development of nonlinear models that allow for discrimination between patients and controls in a larger range of loading conditions.