The microstructure and thermoelectrical properties of the 4wt% Te doped p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 compounds, fabricated by using spark plasma sintering in the temperature ranging from 250°C to 350°C, were characterized. The density of the sintered compounds was increased to 99.2% of theoretical density by carrying out the consolidation at 350oC for 2 min. The Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity were dependent on hydrogen reduction process and sintering temperature. The Seebeck coefficient increased with reduction process while the electrical resisitivity significantly decreased. Also, the electrical resistivity decreased and thermal conductivity increased with sintering temperature. The results suggest that the carrier density and mobility vary with reduction process and sintering temperature. The highest figure of merit of 3.5×10-3/K was obtained for the compounds spark plasma sintered at 350°C for 2 min by using the hydrogen-reduced powders.


We propose a framework for querying a distributed database of video surveillance data in order to retrieve a set of likely paths of a person moving in the area under surveillance. In our framework, each camera of the surveillance system locally processes the data and stores video sequences in a storage unit and the metadata for each detected person in the distributed database. A pedestrian's path is formulated as a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to model the dependencies between subsequent observations of the person as he makes his way through the camera network. We propose a tool by which the analyst can pose queries about where a certain person appeared while moving in the site during a specified temporal window. The DBN is used in an algorithm that finds potentially relevant metadata records from the distributed databases and then assembles these into probable paths that the person took in the camera network. Finally, the system presents the analyst with the retrieved set of likely paths in ranked order. The computational complexity for our method is quadratic in the number of camera nodes and linear in the number of moving persons. Experiments were carried out on simulated data to test the system with large distributed databases and in a real setting in which six databases store the data from six video cameras. The simulations confirm that our method provides good results with varying numbers of cameras and persons moving in the network. In a real setting, the method reconstructs paths across the camera network with approximatively 75% accuracy at rank 1.


An unprecedented amount of aid was extended by the Treasury, Fed and FDIC to companies, agencies and individuals. This aid was necessary and, in many cases, will return a profit to taxpayers.


Abstract This study examines the nature of the relationship between cane growers and millers and how it affects cane growers' perceptions of the value added in the sugar supply chain. Drawing from relational exchange theory, the study utilised the perceptions of 124 smallholder cane growers in the Swaziland sugar industry. Factors measured in terms of a likert type scale were used to measure each relational construct within the miller-grower contract relationship. The unpacks the trust relationship between large agribusiness companies and smallholder out growers, and shows that relationships characterised by social factors like trust, commitment, and cooperation enhance mutual benefit and quality relationships between parties. This study found that farmers perceive an element of opportunistic behaviour and a lack of cooperation by millers and therefore have limited trust in the millers. Consequently it was also found that satisfaction by cane growers on their relationship with millers has a positive relationship with their level of trust, level of commitment, relative dependence, perception of opportunistic behaviour by millers and perceived cooperation between themselves and the millers. The results point to a number of aspects both growers and millers need to attend to which could contribute to improved relationship and in turn efficiency and returns in the sugar industry in Swaziland.


Probabilistic modeling of activated sludge wastewater treatment systems was performed to compare the uncertainty, with respect to attaining pollutant removal targets, associated with specific reactor configurations (conventional, completely mixed, and step feed activated sludge systems) and operating variables (solids residence time, hydraulic residence time, recycle ratio, and influent distribution). Stochastic simulation results showed that different reactor configurations inherently had different levels of uncertainty associated with them. Whether a specific operating parameter had an effect on uncertainty, and the extent of that effect, was dependent on the process configuration. In all of the configurations considered, process uncertainty could be reduced by increasing the solids residence time. Treatment uncertainty was also reduced when the hydraulic regime of the reactor was closer in character to plug flow rather than to completely mixed. Hence, the treatment uncertainty for the conventional activated sludge system was lower than that for the completely mixed activated sludge system. Furthermore, operational changes that enhanced mixing, such as increasing the recycle ratio in a conventional activated sludge system, or distributing the influent along the length of the reactor basin in a step feed activated sludge system, also tended to increase process uncertainty. In every case, system response could be traced to the effect of the imposed configuration and parameter changes on the hydraulic regime and reaction kinetics within the treatment system.


Three specimens are described which illustrate the formation of true bone in laparotomy wounds of the epigastric region of the abdomen. The literature dealing with their occurrence is surveyed and it is found that the majority of instances (34 out of 36) occur n laparotomy wounds made in or near the supra-umbilical part of the linea alba. Specimens in the R.C.S. Museum are enumerated illustrating heterotopic formation of bone in organs and parts which have no direct connexion with the skeletal system. An attempt is made to explain their occurrence on the traditional conception of bone-growth, namely, that it is the work of a specialized cell normally confined to the skeletal system. It is concluded that the heterotopic formation of bone cannot be explained unless it be accepted, as is now advocated by Professor Leriche, of Strassburg, that under certain states cells of tissues other than the skeletal can become osteoblastic in nature and in action—a view supported by the results of many recent experimental investigations. The view advocated here, not a novel one, is that "new" osteoblasts arise from the capillary system—especially from buds thrown out by that system when a neighbouring substance or body has to be absorbed. Certain necessary conditions are mentioned, but it is admitted that a full and satisfactory explanation of why supra-umbilical scars are more frequently the site of heterotopic bone formation than laparotomy scars in other parts of the abdomen has not been reached.


The effect of the tip-shroud seal on the flutter onset of a shrouded turbine rotor blade, representative of a modern gas turbine, is numerically tested, and the contributions to the work per cycle of the aerofoil and the tip shroud are clearly identified. The numerical simulations are conducted using a linearized frequency-domain solver. The flutter stability of the shrouded rotor blade is evaluated for an edgewise mode and compared with the standard industrial approach of not including the tip-shroud cavity. It turns out that including the tip shroud significantly changes the stability prediction of the rotor blade. This is due to two facts. First, the amplitude of the unsteady pressure created in the inter-fin cavity due to the motion of the airfoil is much greater than that of the airfoil. The impact of this contribution increases with the frequency. Second, the effect of the outer shroud of the rotor blade, which usually is not included either in the simulations, has an opposite trend with the nodal diameter than the airfoil reducing the maximum and minimum damping. It is concluded that the combined effect of the seal and its platform tends to stabilize the edgewise mode of the rotor blade for all the examined nodal diameters and reduced frequencies. Finally, the numerical results are shown to be consistent with those obtained using an analytical simplified model to account for the effect of the labyrinth seals.


This paper considers a multiuser spectrum sharing (SS) system operating in a Rayleigh fading environment and in which every node is equipped with multiple antennas. The system employs orthogonal space-time block coding at the secondary users. Under such a framework, the average capacity and error performance under a peak interference constraint are first analyzed. For a comparison purpose, an analysis of the transmit antenna selection scheme is also presented. Finally, some selected numerical results are presented to corroborate the proposed analysis.


The main objective of this paper is to evaluate and analyze technical efficiency (TE) levels for hillside farmers under different levels of adoption of soil conservation in El Salvador and Honduras. A switching regression model is implemented to examine potential selectivity bias for high and low level adopters, and separate stochastic production frontiers, corrected for selectivity bias, are estimated for each group. The main results indicate that households with above-average adoption show statistically higher average TE than those with lower adoption. Households with higher adoption have smaller farms and display the highest partial output elasticity for land. Constraints in the land and credit markets are likely explanations for these differences. In addition, all estimated models show that TE has a positive and significant association with education and extension.


How can we best understand the adaptive significance of morphological features of fossil primates and, based on this understanding, reconstruct the behavior of these organisms? This edited volume, based on a Leakey Foundation-sponsored conference held at Duke University, reviews different approaches to these problems and makes an important contribution to the literature of primate paleontology. The authors and the editors are to be commended for their rigorous attempts to define important terminology (e.g., homology, adaptation), for their comprehensive coverage of a large and complex literature, and finally, for presenting a coherent viewpoint on how best to approach the difficult task of reconstructing the behavior of extinct primates. The book is organized into an introductory chapter that sets the theoretical foundation for all that follows, nine case studies dealing with different primate taxa and different anatomical/behavioral systems, and a final summary chapter by the editors.


Studies of traditional European and US farming populations have documented major reductions in asthma prevalence in children of mothers exposed during pregnancy to microbial breakdown products present in farm dust and unprocessed foods. The mechanisms driving protection appear associated with enhancement of innate immune competence in the offspring leading to optimisation of immunoregulatory and effector cell function. The potential to therapeutically harness this environmental phenomenon represents a plausible strategy in the primary prevention of asthma. Using preclinical mouse models, we sought to identify if a safe ǀ microbial-derived immunomodulatory therapeutic could recapitulate the "farm effect" phenomenon.

We demonstrate that maternal oral treatment during pregnancy with the clinically-approved bacterial-derived immunomodulator OM-85, markedly reduces the susceptibility of offspring to development of allergic airways inflammation initiated at weaning. This was exemplified by attenuation of granulocytic infiltration and airways hyperresponsiveness following airways challenge. Protection was linked to the recruitment of T-regulatory cells to airways mucosa exhibiting enhanced CTLA-4 and Foxp3 expression, with parallel attenuation of local cDC trafficking to airway draining lymph nodes and inflammation associated recruitment and activation. Moreover, these offspring display a striking attenuation of the inflammatory response in the bone marrow myeloid precursor compartments, consistent with the reduced mobilisation of cDC bone marrow reserves and granulocytic accumulation within the airways. The mechanistic actions of OM-85 on bone marrow precursors could be traced back to in utero development, whereby maternal OM-85 treatment boosts myeloid progenitor cells within fetal bone marrow whilst simultaneously accelerating DC functional immune competence as evident by upregulated IA/IE expression. In vitro validation of OM-85-induced immunomodulatory effects on bone marrow DCs further identified an enhanced capacity for homeostatic regulation via attenuation of IA/IE and CD86 hyperresponsiveness to LPS stimulation.

Our results demonstrate for the first time that oral treatment of mothers during pregnancy with a bacterial-derived therapeutic transplacentally accelerates functional immunocompetence of the fetal innate myeloid compartment, which subsequently protects offspring against the development of allergic airways inflammation.


Large content providers, known as hyper-giants, are responsible for sending the majority of the content traffic to consumers. These hyper-giants operate highly distributed infrastructures to cope with the ever-increasing demand for online content. To achieve commercial-grade performance of Web applications, enhanced end-user experience, improved reliability, and scaled network capacity, hyper-giants are increasingly interconnecting with eyeball networks at multiple locations. This poses new challenges for both (1) the eyeball networks having to perform complex inbound traffic engineering, and (2) hyper-giants having to map end-user requests to appropriate servers. We report on our multi-year experience in designing, building, rolling-out, and operating the first-ever large scale system, the Flow Director, which enables automated cooperation between one of the largest eyeball networks and a leading hyper-giant. We use empirical data collected at the eyeball network to evaluate its impact over two years of operation. We find very high compliance of the hyper-giant to the Flow Director's recommendations, resulting in (1) close to optimal user-server mapping, and (2) 15% reduction of the hyper-giant's traffic overhead on the ISP's long-haul links, i.e., benefits for both parties and end-users alike.


Background. Schizophrenia has a high natural mortality of a largely environmental aetiology. There is, however, little research about possible risk factors. This study measured the diet, cigarette and alcohol use, exercise and obesity of a cohort of people with schizophrenia and compared results to general population rates. Methods. Semi-structured interview using validated research instruments on 102 middle-aged subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, living in the community. Results were compared to general population norms using standard statistical tests. Results. The subjects ate a diet higher in fat and lower in fibre than the general population. They took little exercise but were not significantly more obese. They smoked heavily but drank less alcohol. Most differences remained significant after controlling for social class. Conclusions. People with schizophrenia have an unhealthy lifestyle, which probably contributes to the excess mortality of the disease. They are therefore an appropriate target group for health promotion interventions.


Strongyloidiasis is a worldwide parasitic disease. Among the diverse species of Strongyloides, only the following are of importance to man: S. Stercoralis, S. Fulleborni and S. Fullerboni-like. Eventhough S. Stercoralis is an intestinal helminth. Strongyloidiasis is a systemic infection that can affect, beside the gastrointestinal tract, lungs, CNS, liver and biliary tract, pancreas, genitourinary tract and skin. Strongyloides stercoralis has a unique and complex life cycle. Recent evidence has suggested a role for the cytokine, IL-22, during helminths infection and in maintaining mucosal barrier function. IL- 22 may therefore play an important role in the relationship between the mammalian immune response, gut microbiota and helminths infections. Death from strongyloidosis can result from hyperinfection or disseminated disease. Diagnosing strongyloidiasis may be difficult, and eventhough the parasitological stool examination is the most used diagnostic test, sometimes larvae cannot be identified. Management of S. Stercoalis infection includes the aim of eradication of the infection. The drug like albendazole, ivermectin, thibenzimdazole use for the treatment. A high index of suspicion should be maintained by clinicians treating patients in endemic area presenting with new onset wheezing, acute respiratory distress and/or gram negative sepsis to prevent the serious complication of strongyloides hyperinfection and dissemination. Strongyloidiasis hyperinfection syndrome carries a high mortality approaching 100 percent; mortality with therapy exceeds 25 percent.


Globally, veterinarians and professionals in animal-related industries are faced with growing public concern for the welfare of animals, particularly those in production. To prepare professionals, courses in animal welfare should be created to provide consistent education on a global scale in an efficient and cost-effective manner. However, a creative approach to welfare education is needed to reduce the disparity between supply and demand for instruction in animal welfare. Michigan State University (MSU) is piloting a graduate-level, online interactive course in animal welfare assessment to provide students with high-quality science-based education from renowned international animal welfare experts at numerous institutions. Innovative use of technology enables students to interact with material, each other and instructors. Students actively apply their accumulated skills to hypothetical scenarios, enhancing learning effectiveness. Student performance and opinion were examined to determine whether the course meets the stated objectives. Twenty-three students from four institutions enrolled in the pilot course. In the first month, the majority of students found the online course easy to use and material appropriate for a graduate-level course. The students agreed that scenarios helped them integrate lecture material. The MSU course will serve as a model for collaboration in content assembly and course delivery, using technology to leverage global expertise to create educational equity.


Urinary tract infection (UTI) is a common and important clinical problem in infants and young children. UTI is often suspected on the basis of results of microscopic urinalysis; accordingly, it is important that its results be as reproducible, accurate, and easily interpretable as possible. A positive urinalysis allows early detection and treatment of UTI, while a negative urinalysis can potentially eliminate the cost of expensive hospitalization for intravenous administration of antibiotics, the current standard treatment of UTI in young febrile children.
 In pediatric primary care facilities, microscopic urinalysis often is performed using centrifuged urine and reported as the number of white blood cells (WBCs) or bacteria per high-power microscopic field (hpf).


Constraints on Pseudo-Boolean (PB) expressions can be translated into Conjunctive Normal Form (CNF) using several known translations. In Answer-Set Programming (ASP), analogous expressions appear in weight rules and optimization statements. Previously, we have translated weight rules into normal rules, using normalizations designed in accord with existing CNF encodings. In this work, we rededicate such designs to rewrite optimization statements in ASP. In this context, a rewrite of an optimization statement is a replacement accompanied by a set of normal rules that together replicate the original meaning. The goal is partially the same as in translating PB constraints or weight rules: to introduce new meaningful auxiliary atoms that may help a solver in the search for (optimal) solutions. In addition to adapting previous translations, we present selective rewriting techniques in order to meet the above goal while using only a limited amount of new rules and atoms. We experimentally evaluate these methods in preprocessing ASP optimization statements and then searching for optimal answer sets. The results exhibit significant advances in terms of numbers of optimally solved instances, reductions in search conflicts, and shortened computation times. By appropriate choices of rewriting techniques, improvements are made on instances involving both small and large weights. In particular, we show that selective rewriting is paramount on benchmarks involving large weights. 1998 ACM Subject Classification I.2.3 Deduction and Theorem Proving


The primary goal of the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is to advance the state-of-the-art of wind energy forecasting in complex terrain. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive 18-month field measurement campaign was conducted in the region of the Columbia River basin. The observations were used to diagnose and quantify systematic forecast errors in the operational High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model during weather events of particular concern to wind energy forecasting. Examples of such events are cold pools, gap flows, thermal troughs/marine pushes, mountain waves, and topographic wakes. WFIP2 model development has focused on the boundary layer and surface-layer schemes, cloud–radiation interaction, the representation of drag associated with subgrid-scale topography, and the representation of wind farms in the HRRR. Additionally, refinements to numerical methods have helped to improve some of the common forecast error modes, especially the high wind speed biases associated with early erosion of mountain–valley cold pools. This study describes the model development and testing undertaken during WFIP2 and demonstrates forecast improvements. Specifically, WFIP2 found that mean absolute errors in rotor-layer wind speed forecasts could be reduced by 5%–20% in winter by improving the turbulent mixing lengths, horizontal diffusion, and gravity wave drag. The model improvements made in WFIP2 are also shown to be applicable to regions outside of complex terrain. Ongoing and future challenges in model development will also be discussed.


In Morocco, cereal production is below the expected potential. The adoption of best agricultural practices that reduce vulnerability to climate is a major requirement. No-tillage (NT) agriculture is a system that could improve cereal production by enhancing soil fertility. Some factors, in combination with no-tillage, can further improve cereal yields, especially the choice of variety the adequate fertilization. The objective of our study is to investigate the effect of no-tillage agriculture and nitrogen fertilization on soil fertility and the yield of five durum wheat varieties developed in Morocco in a long-term (18 years) NT trial at the INRA Merchouch experimental station, Morocco. The results show that tillage type had a significant effect on soil organic carbon and CEC (measured before the start of the experiment), as well as on ammonium and nitrates (measured at the end of the experiment), whereas nitrogen dose had a significant effect on total nitrogen and nitrates (measured at the end of the experiment). Regarding wheat yield, as measured at the end of the experiment during the 2020–2021 cropping season, the results show that, under NT, the varieties Nachit, Faraj, and Louiza had grain yields of 4.5, 4.3, and 3.4 t ha−1 and straw yields of 9.8, 7.8, and 6.8 t ha−1, respectively, whereas the I.C and M.G germoplasms had grain yields of 4.05 and 3.72 t ha−1 and straw yields of 8.25 and 8.39 t ha−1, respectively. These values are low for a favorable area and correspond to a semi-arid area. In addition, no effects of nitrogen dose were observed due to water stress, which reduced nitrogen use efficiency. Nachit is the most adapted variety under NT, with the highest yield (5.1 t ha−1) under a low dose of nitrogen (20 kg N ha−1), followed by Faraj (4.7 t ha−1), still under NT but with a higher nitrogen dose (40 kg N ha−1) and Nachit (4.5 t ha−1) with the minimum nitrogen dose but under both NT and CT. In conclusion, Nachit and Faraj wheat varieties performed the best under no-tillage conditions with the minimal nitrogen dose. However, grain yield values were reduced, owing to water stress, which reduced nitrogen use efficiency.


of Open science presents itself as a set of policies and actions to disseminate research results in an accessible, free and reusable and reproducible way through public digital repositories. As a movement, it uses three basic elements: open access to publications; data opening (whether raw, models, specifications, or documentation); computational process opening (software and algorithms)(1). Although it is not a new phenomenon, the term can still cause strangeness even to experienced researchers. Open access to articles, as the first element, encountered (and still finds) great resistance to becoming unanimous, although pressure from the scientific society and funding agencies has accelerated the progress of this stage. On the other hand, data opening seems to have been better received, at least in its interface related to the deposit of scientific manuscripts in the preprint format, however this is only the beginning. Concerning the Brazilian experience, SciELO and the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia) have been leading the opening process and for some time have designed guidelines and strategies to guide their journals towards open science: TOP (Transparency and Openness Promotion) (2). This system interestingly presents levels of openness experimentation that range from pointing out what is a certain item to making it conditional on it being expressly fulfilled for the manuscript to be published. Although it has existed since 2017, it was only in 2020 that the alignment of Brazilian journals to TOP was indeed accelerated, and significant changes will be adopted in the journals in the coming months and years to adapt to such principles. Having this information and basing ourselves on the fact that historically changes have been the target of resistance, especially when they happen in an ancient system, like the scientific publication system, we use our privilege to take on multiple roles (author, reviewer, and editor) among the scientific publication process in Brazilian journals to reflect and point out in this editorial four central issues related to editorial management that should be recurrent among the actors involved in the publication process in the coming years months:


Changes under the Agricultural Act of 2014 have reconnected federally subsidized crop insurance to conservation compliance and eliminated direct payments that were tied to conservation compliance. The net effects of these changes on compliance with conservation standards and on the environment are uncertain, especially in regions such as the southern U.S. where direct payments are higher than crop insurance subsidies. We assess two hypothetical pilot programs that strengthen the link between federally subsidized crop insurance and conservation compliance with cover crop (CC) and no-till (NT) adoption by offering an additional Environmental Quality Incentive Program cost-share payment to producers who also purchase Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) crop insurance. We determined the factors that affect Tennessee and North Central Mississippi cotton producer willingness to participate in the hypothetical pilot programs. Data were collected using a mail survey of cotton producers conducted in early 2015. A bivariate probit model was estimated to determine the factors that affect cotton producer willingness to participate in two pilot programs. Results found that 35% of the cotton producers would be willing to participate in the CC/STAX pilot program, whereas 28% indicated they would participate in the NT/STAX pilot program. Producer age, income, debt-to-asset ratio, and future purchase of STAX influenced their willingness to participate in the pilot programs. Results from this study could aid in the discussion of the upcoming farm bill.


Global information and communication technologies permeate organizational structures, while questions of security pervade strategic plans of corporations worldwide. From the spectacular to the sublime, the effects of geomagnetic disturbances (i.e., electrical current produced by solar storms) can be as devastating to an organizationâ??s telecommunications systems as a hacker breaching a firewall. Using a dataset spanning 31 years (1978-2009) with 580,000 solar activity records, we investigate the effects and relationships of natural anomalies, specifically solar storms, on the security of corporate telecommunications. The ionosphere is a natural barrier around the earth to protect it from the sun and serve as a shield, but some electrical currents break this barrier causing significant telecommunications outages and security breaches within corporations. In this exploratory empirical study, we present the initial evidence that tracking geomagnetic disturbances can provide vital cautions for business continuity planning. The results of the study should help organizations with strategic planning efforts with respect to their overall security, especially as it relates to telecommunications.


Group gender is essential in understanding social interaction and group dynamics. With the increasing privacy concerns of studying face-to-face communication in natural settings, many participants are not open to raw audio recording. Existing voice-based gender identification methods rely on acoustic characteristics caused by physiological differences and phonetic differences. However, these methods might become ineffective with privacy-sensitive audio for two main reasons. First, compared to raw audio, privacy-sensitive audio contains significantly fewer acoustic features. Moreover, natural settings generate various uncertainties in the audio data. In this paper, we make the first attempt to identify group gender using privacy-sensitive audio. Instead of extracting acoustic features from privacy-sensitive audio, we focus on conversational features including turn-taking behaviors and interruption patterns. However, conversational behaviors are unstable in gender identification as human behaviors are affected by many factors like emotion and environment. We utilize ensemble feature selection and a two-stage classification to improve the effectiveness and robustness of our approach. Ensemble feature selection could reduce the risk of choosing an unstable subset of features by aggregating the outputs of multiple feature selectors. In the first stage, we infer the gender composition (mixed-gender or same-gender) of a group which is used as an additional input feature for identifying group gender in the second stage. The estimated gender composition significantly improves the performance as it could partially account for the dynamics in conversational behaviors. According to the experimental evaluation of 100 people in 273 meetings, the proposed method outperforms baseline approaches and achieves an F1-score of 0.77 using linear SVM.


Specular null polarization theory (SNPT) has been recently introduced for the case of coherent scattering where a 2/spl times/2 scattering matrix is sufficient to describe the scattering process. In this paper, SNPT is extended to the case of incoherent scattering. Optimum polarization states are derived and the results are discussed in relation to the classic radar optimum polarizations. In traditional radar polarimetry, modeling of the radar receive/transmit network is included in the radar voltage equation and consequently this affects the optimum polarizations and polarization responses of scatterers. SNPT eliminates this effect and therefore allows for a more direct analysis of scatterers. Modeling of ensembles of precipitation particles is used to illustrate the results of the analysis.


What We Already Know about This Topic Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is used in severe acute respiratory distress syndrome; whereas the long-term complications among survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome treated without extracorporeal membrane oxygenation are well described, the status of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation survivors is poorly understood What This Article Tells Us That Is New In a single-center cohort of acute respiratory distress syndrome survivors, management with (vs. without) extracorporeal membrane oxygenation resulted in similar survival at 1 yr, pulmonary function, and computed tomography lung imaging, but less impairment in quality of life Background: Survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) have long-term impairment of pulmonary function and health-related quality of life, but little is known of outcomes of ARDS survivors treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The aim of this study was to compare long-term outcomes of ARDS patients treated with or without extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Methods: A prospective, observational study of adults with ARDS (January 2013 to December 2015) was conducted at a single center. One year after discharge, survivors underwent pulmonary function tests, computed tomography of the chest, and health-related quality-of-life questionnaires. Results: Eighty-four patients (34 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, 50 non–extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) were studied; both groups had similar characteristics at baseline, but comorbidity was more common in non–extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (23 of 50 vs. 4 of 34, 46% vs. 12%, P < 0.001), and severity of hypoxemia was greater in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (median PaO2/FIO2 72 [interquartile range, 50 to 103] vs. 114 [87 to 133] mm Hg, P < 0.001) and respiratory compliance worse. At 1 yr, survival was similar (22/33 vs. 28/47, 66% vs. 59%; P = 0.52), and pulmonary function and computed tomography were almost normal in both groups. Non–extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients had lower health-related quality-of-life scores and higher rates of posttraumatic stress disorder. Conclusions: Despite more severe respiratory failure at admission, 1-yr survival of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients was not different from that of non–extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients; each group had almost full recovery of lung function, but non–extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients had greater impairment of health-related quality of life.


We explore ownership concentration as a means to seek rents in the context of the U.S. government's planned acquisition of broadcast TV licenses in the upcoming incentive auction. We document the significant purchases of licenses by private equity firms in the run-up to this auction and perform a prospective analysis of the effect of firms controlling multiple licenses on the outcome of the auction. Our results show that multi-license holders are able to earn large rents from a supply reduction strategy where they strategically withhold some of their licenses from the auction to drive up the closing price for the remaining licenses they own. Relative to the case where each license is bid into the auction independently, spectrum acquisition costs increase by one third to one half. Strategic behavior by multi-license holders reduces economic efficiency as the set of licenses surrendered into the auction is not the socially optimal set. A case study illustrates the mechanism in a specific local media market. We propose a partial remedy that mitigates the effect of ownership concentration and reduces the distortion in payouts to broadcast TV license holders by one to two thirds.


In most cultural contexts creativity is viewed as an unalloyed virtue. Law is different: given the inherently conservative and slow-moving pace of legal evolution, innovation in the law is viewed by many observers as problematic. Yet American revolutionaries, constitutionalists, legislators, chief executives, judges, administrators, scholars and activists have creatively changed the law for over two centuries in mostly positive ways with some admittedly questionable innovations. This article makes a bold new proposal designed to energize and clarify our synoptic thinking about the nature of legal creativity. Starting with the opinions of numerous eminent legal historians on the most creative moments in Anglo-American law, we will explore the meaning of creative moments in law, and advance to analytically compare legal creativity with other kinds of creativity (corporate, artistic, military and rhetorical). Then we will heuristically entertain a ranking of the top hundred moments in American law and a justification for the ranking.


Data collected for the World Heart Federation's Scorecard project regarding the current state of cardiovascular disease prevention, control and management, along with related non-communicable diseases in Ethiopia are presented. Furthermore, the strengths, threats, weaknesses and priorities identified from these data are highlighted in concurrence with related sections in the accompanying infographic. Information was collected using open-source data sets from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the International Diabetes Federation and relevant government publications.


Libraries of science and technology universities worldwide are adapting to a changing environment where cyberinfrastructure, eResearch, and new technology-intensive approaches to teaching and learning are transforming the very nature of universities. While many have adopted new technologies and the resources and expertise to manage them, this is only an initial step. Libraries are experimenting with organizational models that will transform their work capacity and expertise. The goal of these libraries is being an entity that feeds and produces collaborative synergies between faculty, students, information professionals, and technologists. Virginia Tech, among the top research universities in the United States, and its constituent libraries are adopting a unique organizational change strategy that implements eScience and cyberlearning roles. This two-part strategy begins with establishing 'hubs'. The hubs are collaborative, crossdepartmental groups in which library employees of varying backgrounds and skills come together on common themes of strategic importance. The hubs act in one sense as a 'research & development lab' to explore, imagine, and brainstorm new library initiatives as well as engender deeper understandings of the university's core academic enterprise. They also are a 'strike force' that implements, supports, and assesses emerging library roles in relation to the institution's academic mission. In these ways, hubs also create learning and scholarship opportunities for their participants beyond the individual task-oriented projects. The second part of this strategy involves the establishment of research and service centers. At Virginia Tech, these are the Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL) and the Center for Digital Data and Scholarship (CDDS). These centers are designed to incubate and sustain new collaborative synergies between libraries, researchers, instructors, and learners by providing expertise, resources, and new infrastructures to address specific academic research-based needs. The centers become focal points for library action, focused on learning and research activities within other university entities. Benefits to library employees come in the form of scholarship and research with potential for collaboration and new initiatives as relationships grow among project participants. The authors will discuss transformational aspects of the change management model, with lessons from their early experiences. They also will discuss how the model can be adapted by other libraries of science and technology-centered universities.


The large volume of existing literature on the history, growth and development of Christianity in Africa have been addressed to different categories of readers at different periods in the history of the continent. The purposes of each of the writers differ, depending on their fields of specialization and the objectives that they intend to achieve through their works. This paper categorizes some of the works on African Christianity into various fields such as: history, sociology, politics and comparative. It also discusses the content and context of the works in terms of their contributions to the existing body of knowledge. The paper reveals the inadequacies of the works under examination and lists areas in African Christianity which have not sufficiently engaged the researchers' pen.


It is important to be able to accurately predict the behavior of high-explosive (HE) materials because of the sensitivity with which they respond in the environment in which they are designed to perform, and because they are also extremely sensitive to accidental mechanical shock, which might occur during handling. Thus it is imperative that a capability exists to develop a constitutive material model and simulate the response of HE materials subjected to a variety of thermomechanical loading conditions, a response that is characterized as highly complex. It has been demonstrated through uniaxial strain-rate experiments conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that the initial response of HE material is rate-dependent, with the growth of microcracks continuing under load until the yield strength is reached. In a material such as this, the initial stages of deformation involve both elastic and viscous mechanisms. It has been postulated that this observed behavior could be categorized as nonlinear viscoelasticity, coupled with continuing microcracking. A computational material model containing viscoelasticity, internal damage accumulation and rate-dependent plasticity has been formulated for the purpose of simulating the behavior of these types of material systems. The formulation has been incorporated as a user-defined material (UMAT) into the ABAQUS finite element code. It is demonstrated in this paper how the material model can be employed by calibrating it to the experimental response of the material Mock 900-21, a high-explosive material mock utilized at LANL.


It is well established that DNA hypermethylation of tumor suppressor and tumor-related genes can occur in cancer cells and that each cancer subtype has specific gene sets that are commonly susceptible to methylation and silencing. Glutathione S-transferase (GSTP1) is one example of a gene that is hypermethylated and inactivated in the majority of prostate cancers. We previously reported that hypermethylation of the GSTP1 CpG island promoter in prostate cancer cells is initiated by a combination of transcriptional gene silencing (by removal of the Sp1 sites) and seeds of methylation that, instead of being constantly removed because of demethylation associated with transcription, acts as a catalyst for the spread of methylation across the CpG island. In this study, we now demonstrate that the seeds of DNA methylation also play an important role in initiating chromatin modification. Our results address a number of central questions about the temporal relationship between gene expression, DNA hypermethylation, and chromatin modification in cancer cells. We find that for the GSTP1 gene, (a) histone acetylation is independent of gene expression, (b) histone deacetylation is triggered by seeds of DNA methylation, (c) the spread of DNA hypermethylation across the island is linked to MBD2 and not MeCP2 binding, and (d) histone methylation occurs after histone deacetylation and is associated with extensive DNA methylation of the CpG island. These findings have important implications for understanding the biochemical events underlying the mechanisms responsible for abnormal hypermethylation of CpG island-associated genes in cancer cells.


Although widely used in various areas, the Deep Neural Network suffers from the lack of interpretability. Existing works usually focus on one data instance and the found explanations are thus limited. We argue that a good understanding of a model should contain both systematic explanations of model behavior and effective detection of its vulnerability. Particularly we propose to use backward deduction to achieve these two goals. Given a constraint on the model output, the deduction backtracks the architecture to find corresponding data ranges in the input. In each layer, depending on the type, specific rules and/or algorithms are developed. The resulted ranges in the end can be interpreted by sampling exemplary data from them. In experiment we show that with different strategies in selecting the data ranges, the sampled fake data can either explain the model or reflect its vulnerability.


Polydiacetylene (PDA) materials are used as a platform for detection of biological analytes such as microorganisms, viruses and proteins. The environmentally responsive chromic and emissive properties of the polymer, combined with self-assembled material formats, make these materials particularly attractive for biosensing applications. A variety of approaches have been used in developing these materials and demonstrating their potential for biological detection. In this feature article we describe different PDA material formats, discuss the optical properties that are the basis for signal generation, and review the use of PDA for biosensing.


Understanding the biology and conducting effective conservation of migratory species requires an understanding of migratory connectivity – the geographic linkages of populations between stages of the annual cycle. Unfortunately, for most species, we are lacking such information. The North American Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) houses an extensive database of marking, recaptures and recoveries, and such data could provide migratory connectivity information for many species. To date, however, few species have been analyzed for migratory connectivity largely because heterogeneous re-encounter probabilities make interpretation problematic. We accounted for regional variation in re-encounter probabilities by borrowing information across species and by using effort covariates on recapture and recovery probabilities in a multistate capture–recapture and recovery model. The effort covariates were derived from recaptures and recoveries of species within the same regions. We estimated the migratory connectivity for three tern species breeding in North America and over-wintering in the tropics, common (Sterna hirundo), roseate (Sterna dougallii), and Caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia). For western breeding terns, model-derived estimates of migratory connectivity differed considerably from those derived directly from the proportions of re-encounters. Conversely, for eastern breeding terns, estimates were merely refined by the inclusion of re-encounter probabilities. In general, eastern breeding terns were strongly connected to eastern South America, and western breeding terns were strongly linked to the more western parts of the nonbreeding range under both models. Through simulation, we found this approach is likely useful for many species in the BBL database, although precision improved with higher re-encounter probabilities and stronger migratory connectivity. We describe an approach to deal with the inherent biases in BBL banding and re-encounter data to demonstrate that this large dataset is a valuable source of information about the migratory connectivity of the birds of North America.


We propose MJBlocker, a lightweight and run-time malicious JavaScript Extensions (JSEs) blocker for preventing them from hurting user security. MJBlocker can identify and block malicious JSEs whenever they are executed. It is motivated by the observation that most attack goals of malicious JSEs are accomplished via invoking Cross-Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) calls, and the XPCOM call sequences acquired from malicious JSEs have distinct traits that are different from regular ones. We use simple regular expressions to capture these distinct traits. MJBlocker is interposed into Firefox between JSEs and XPCOMs, and intercepts all XPCOM calls made by JSEs. Whenever a JSE invokes an XPCOM call, the call is appended to its call sequence, and the sequence is checked against several regular-expression-based signatures to identify the suspicious call sequence patterns. If some suspicious patterns are found, an alarm is triggered and the XPCOM call which triggers the alarm is blocked from executing. However, some innocent JSEs may have suspicious call sequence patterns. To avoid false positives, a verifier utilizes several heuristics to filter off suspicious patterns generated by innocent JSEs. We have implemented MJBlocker atop Firefox. According to our experiments on 10 different malicious JSEs and 260 legitimate ones, MJBlocker causes negligible overhead (no more than 5%) and has zero false negative and very few false positives.


Well-being is a holistic concept of human health, and it is inextricably linked to environment. Built landscapes that do not service real human needs can be extremely detrimental to the growth of community. In the context of Toronto, this is no more apparent than in suburban neighbourhoods where changing demographics have left a populati on with diverse and urgent needs, but in which homogenous and auto-centric built environments inhibit the informal socializati on that contribute to both individual and urban vitality. This thesis purports that architecture has a parti cularly important role in the future of such neighbourhoods because of its capacity to intensify program and create opportuniti es for people to comingle. Drawing upon the metaphor of therapeutic acupuncture, this thesis will explore the ways in which punctual interventions can activate places. Objectives of connectivity, hybridity and porosity will be explored as the means by which this activation can occur. Ultimately, this thesis aims to assert the importance of architecture in facilitating more holistic understandings of urban health.


Introduction: The incidence and etiology of neonatal bloodstream infections vary globally. Early appropriate antibiotic therapy is crucial. An empiric antibiotic choice should be driven by accurate knowledge of the local spectrum of pathogens and susceptibilities. Methodology: A retrospective observational study was conducted on neonates born at local tertiary center from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2018, with late-onset bloodstream infection (LBSI). Trends of causative organisms and antibiotic susceptibilities were analyzed. Results: A total of 696 LBSI occurred in 469 neonates. Overall incidence over the 6 years was 122/1000 admissions. The median time to LBSI was 13 days of life. Majority of infections occurred in infants <32 weeks. About 75.9% were caused by Gram-positive and the rest by Gram-negative bacteria. The most common organism was coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CoNS) which showed an increase in resistance to amikacin over time, but with stable sensitivity patterns to teicoplanin. Klebsiella and Escherichia coli were the most common Gram-negative organisms. There was improving sensitivity to cephalosporin in Klebsiella species. Sixteen percent of Gram-negative isolates were extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing. Majority of the Gram-negative bacteria including ESBL-producing strains remained sensitive to amikacin. An empiric antibiotic combination of teicoplanin and amikacin was appropriate to cover the majority of LBSIs. Conclusions: The majority of late-onset neonatal bloodstream infections in this study cohort were caused by Gram-positive organisms of which CoNS was the most common. The empiric antibiotic choices for LBSI on our unit seem appropriate based on the data. In units where the organism and susceptibility patterns are similar, the same antibiotic choices may be justified.


BACKGROUND :Two point discrimination test assess the ability to perceive two points applied to the skin simultaneously applied with equal pressures. The finger tips and palm of the hand are considered to be the most sensitive parts which perceive the two-point in a small distance when compared to other parts of the body. OBJECTIVE: To compare the tactile acuity of the thumb finger between dominant and non dominant hand n labourers. STUDY DESIGN :Observational study. PROCEDURE : Subjects were made to sit in a comfortable position and were asked them to close their eyes. With the aesthesiometer stimulus was given and were asked the subjects to perceive the points. Values were noted accordingly. RESULTS : . Mean and standard deviation of dominant hand is 2.627 and 0.5205. And of non dominant hand is 2.013 and 0.4954. CONCLUSION: This study concluded that there was a difference in tactile acuity of thumb in dominant and non dominant hand. It differesaccording to their profession and usage of dominant hand.


The aim of this paper is to assess and analyse the threats related to unlawful interference to the air transport on which must cabin crew members focus on during training. The paper is discussing about the procedures during security threats and how the cabin crew members should act correctly in connection with illegal acts committed on board the aircraft. The paper analyses and compares the training regulations of the American FAA and the European EASA. Both European and American legislations are based on ICAO regulations, what means that the regulations of those two organizations differ only minimally. In the next part of this paper there is the short enquiry created for employees of an airlines. It was created to determine the satisfaction of cabin crew members with security training and also to identify the deficiency in the security training. By analysing the answers, we found out that quite often there are unruly passengers on board the aircraft. Almost every respondent has experienced such a situation. The main deficiency in the security training is about the practical part. Most respondents would place more emphasis on the duration of practical training for cabin crew members. Another shortage is the lack of training materials for cabin crew members to better understand the issue of security threats. Based on analysis of regulations and evaluation of the enquiry, we suggested new recommendations for the security training of cabin crew. The aim of these recommendations is to improve the security training for cabin crew members and thus positively contribute to increase the level of aviation security.


In this paper, we present a new devices brought online thanks to our Collaborative Remote Laboratories framework. Whereas previous devices integrated in our remote laboratory belongs to the domain of electronics, such as Vector Network Analyzers, the devices at the concern in this paper are, on one hand, an antenna workbench, and on the other, an homemade switching device, which embeds several electronic components. Because the middleware and framework for our environment were designed to be reusable, we wanted to put it to the test by integrating new and different devices in our Online Engineering catalog. After presenting the devices to be put online, we will expose the software development efforts required in regards to the reusability of the solution. As a consequence, the expose work and results tend to make the Online Engineering software architects to think reusability first, breaking with the current trends to implement Remote Labs one after the other, without much reusability, apart the capitalized experience. In this, we defend a paradigm switch in our current engineering approaches for Remote Laboratories implementations: Reusability should be thought first.


The End game for a kill vehicle of Hit-to-Kill Missile is very critical, as it depends on its variable divert and attitude correction capabilities. A Solid DACS provides quick reaction propulsion that positions the vehicle to intercept its target. The Pulsed Solid DACS provides propulsion for control error correction and for vehicle maneuvering. The attitude control systems (ACS) have six thrusters to provide roll, pitch and yaw control. These thrusters act synergistically and precisely aim the vehicle seeker to properly view the target. The four divert thrusters provide short/ long pulses to quickly and accurately position the kill vehicle for a collision with target. A high burn rate propellant is used to meet the divert and attitude control thrust requirement. Four divert thrusters have the variable throat areas for the quick divert of the kill vehicle. The nozzle throat areas are throttled such that the mass flow is met for the required thrust for each thruster. Pintle valves are used for the throat area throttling purpose. The attitude control thrusters have the fixed throat area which will be used for the attitude control capability of kill vehicle. A pulsed motor has been designed to operate for divert thrust and attitude control for first few seconds and second motor (second pulse) will operate with a time delay after first motor operation. This is achieved by configuring an annular motor around the first rocket motor (which get emptied during the first pulse) and separated by two pulse separation diaphragms (PSD). The propellant gases flow into the first pulse motor and actuated by the first pulse rocket motor nozzles to produce variable divert and fixed attitude control thrust for second pulse duration.


During growing seasons 2005-2007 samples of grapevine with esca symptoms were collected from different vineyards in Bojnourd (North Khorassan province). Isolation were made from affected wood tissues from branches and trunks on PDA, MEA and OA media. In this study, 64 fungi isolates were recovered and identified as Phaeoacremonium parasiticum, Phaeomoniella chlamydospora, Fomitiporia mediterranea, Fusarium sp. and Phoma sp. Pathogenesity tests were carried out for Pm. Parasiticum, P. chlamydospora and F. mediterranea under field and greenhouse conditions. within 6 months after inoculation of cuttings, symptoms developed as sever defoliatin and wilting under greenhouse conditions. F. mediterranea caused white wood decay while Pm. parasiticum and P. chlamydospora produced wood discoloration in inoculated grapevines. in the field The pathogens were re-isolated and identified from inoculated grapevines after symptoms observed.


A virtually complete follow-up of diabetic patients treated at the Joslin Clinic since 1930 shows a downward trend in the mortality and corresponding improvement in the survivorship record. The mortality rates of diabetics, however, remain higher than those in the general population; the excess is relatively greatest at ages twenty-five to thirty-four and least in older patients. The death rates among diabetic females tend to be lower than among diabetic males, but the difference is less than in the general population. The survivorship rate among cases seen within a year of onset of the disease is better than in the aggregate experience. The pattern of causes of death among diabetics has changed radically. There has been a marked increase in the proportion of deaths caused by vascular disease, with small vessel disease playing a more and more important role. Reductions have been recorded for diabetic coma, diabetic gangrene and infections. Analysis of causes of death by age at onset and duration of diabetes show the effect of these factors on mortality and, in particular, the outstanding importance of diabetic nephropathy in juvenile diabetics with long duration ofdisease. Mortality from all types of vascular disorders is higher in diabetics than in the general population. In this experience the mortality for renal vascular disorders was seventeen times as high as in the general population.


ABSTRACT:This article seeks to fill a gap between legal discussions regarding the normative content of the right to health and public health and development discussions about health system reform and Universal Health Coverage [UHC]. It sets out conceptual implications of defining health as a right, for health and health systems, and in turn for the involvement of courts in decision-making regarding health. Although appending remedies to broken health systems can exacerbate inequities, the article asserts that by taking systemic approaches the judiciary can promote both horizontal and vertical equity on the path to UHC, as well as foster more effective regulation of private actors. The judiciary does not substitute its own judgment for that of political organs of government, but rather can help to ensure that governmental actions are reasonable and justified in light of normative commitments. Taking the right to health seriously creates a narrative of health, and health care, as an asset of social citizenship, rather than one of largesse or markets, and in so doing, reflects an understanding of human beings as active agents in the social construction of their well-being, and not merely passive patients or consumers of care.


We present a simple method for the optical manipulation and spectroscopy of colloidal silver nanoparticles in aqueous solution using optical tweezers combined with dark-field microscopy. Because of their localized plasmon resonances, single trapped metal nanoparticles can be used as efficient near-field optical probes, with potential applicability in surface-enhanced spectroscopy, near-field microscopy, and biochemical sensing schemes. As a proof of principle, we study the near-field optical interaction between a trapped and an immobilized Ag nanoparticle.


Previous research has identified that the information effects of buyer‐initiated trades are greater than seller‐initiated trades. We develop a theoretical model that predicts block purchases are relatively more informed in bear markets and block sales are relatively more informed in bull markets. Using a sample of large trades executed in the E‐mini S&P 500 index futures and SPDR S&P 500 exchange traded fund, we find evidence consistent with our theoretical model. Our results are robust to volatility and macro‐economic news announcements categorized as bullish or bearish. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 37:359–373, 2017


Despite significant advances in understanding the benefits of early integration of palliative care with disease management, many people living with a chronic life-threatening illness either do not receive any palliative care service or receive services only in the last phase of their illness. In this article, I explore some of the reasons for failure to provide palliative care services and recommend some strategies to overcome these barriers, emphasizing the importance of describing palliative care accurately. I provide language which I hope will help health care professionals of all disciplines explain what palliative care has to offer and ensure wider access to palliative care, early in the course of their illness.


Current rates of excessive alcohol use and abuse among young adults are recognized as a major problem by scholars across a wide variety of fields. Here, I take a social psychological approach to understanding why individuals drink to excess, examining the unique role that a specific form of social isolation called existential isolation (feeling alone in one's experiences of the world; Yalom, 1980; Pinel, Long, Murdoch, & Helm, 2017) may play in predicting alcohol use and abuse. The relationship between existential isolation and alcohol use is explored using both correlational and cross-lagged designs. Results indicate that existential isolation predicts alcohol use above and beyond a more traditional measure of social isolation, though not in the hypothesized direction (i.e. social isolation is associated with more alcohol use, whereas existential isolation is associated with less). Further, negative emotional symptoms (depression, anxiety, and stress) and racial identity emerged as significant moderators of this effect. Exploratory analyses considering a reversal of the hypothesized causal direction (i.e. alcohol use now predicting feelings of existential isolation) revealed a significant two-way interaction between current and lifetime alcohol use and a significant three-way interaction between current alcohol use, desire for existential connection, and motivations to use alcohol for social purposes. Implications of these general findings are discussed, including that 1) they identify a seemingly positive outcome of drinking that may play a role in perpetuating problematic alcohol use, and 2) conversely, they may illustrate a "dark side of sobriety." This research serves as a first step into distinguishing between aspects of social isolation in the realm of alcohol use and abuse. Future research is necessary in order to identify the mechanisms underlying this effect and inform the development of more effective alcohol-related interventions.


In this paper, both a cognitive and a sociocultural theoretical perspective are used to bring together findings from two studies that investigated the effects of instruction designed to enhance the potentially positive effect of peer interaction on L2 development. Despite differences between the studies' learning contexts, participants' age, and research design, a comparative examination of their findings promotes our overall understanding of whether and how instruction that teaches students to engage in reciprocal L2 learning can be effective. In Study 1, Japanese university students were taught how to provide corrective feedback to each other during communicative peer interaction activities. Pre- and post-tests were administered and statistical analyses were conducted on the change in frequency of corrective feedback and self-initiated modified output as well as in overall accuracy of spontaneous production. In Study 2, Grade 3 and 4 Canadian French immersion students were given strategy instruction to collaborate on task- and language-related problems. Their audio-recorded interactions were qualitatively analysed for contextual factors affecting peer corrective feedback. Based on the combined findings, it is concluded that language awareness can be enhanced through peer interaction but a reciprocal mindset among learners plays a significant role in deciding its outcome.


The U.S. dollar has maintained its position as the key currency in the global economy even after the euro was introduced to some states of the European Union (EU) in 1999. This is evidence of inertia of the U.S. dollar as the key currency. Our previous study (Ogawa and Muto (2016)) conducted empirical analysis to investigate the effects of several events on the inertia of the U.S. dollar. This paper focuses on the effects of the introduction of the euro and the global financial crisis on the contribution of the Japanese yen to utility. The introduction of the euro significantly decreased the contribution of the Japanese yen to utility as well as that of the Swiss franc. It explains the finding that the introduction of the euro increased the contribution of the euro to utility while the contribution of the U.S. dollar to utility was unchanged. The contribution of the Japanese yen to utility has significantly decreased while the global financial crisis occurred. The Japanese yen has a declining trend in terms of its contribution to utility both before and after the introduction of the euro and the global financial crisis.


Nonporous PLLA film and porous PLLA scaffolds were prepared and then grafted with acrylic acid (AA) using in situ direct plasma treatment to obtain PLLA-g-PAA. Chondrocytes isolated from rabbit knee articular cartilages were cultivated in Dulbecco's modified eagle medium- F12 (DMEM-F12) containing 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 1% antibiotics and passaged twice before cell seeding. Once seeded on either PLLA films or scaffolds, they were placed in a bioreactor system and an intermittent hydrodynamic pressure (IHP) was applied in 3 bars, while turned on for 2 min and off for 28 min during 15-day culture. AA grafting to PLLA surface was confirmed from various surface analyses. From WST-1 assay, chondrocyte proliferation was significantly improved with dynamic IHP for PLLA and PLLA-g-PAA scaffolds as compared to static culture. This study indicates that IHP may have significant influence on chondrocytes behavior in 3D culture environment.


The rheological behavior of semisolid aluminium alloy (A356) slurry is investigated by using a concentric cylinder viscometer under high cooling rate (30 to 50°C/min) and high shear rate (650 to 1500s-1) conditions. Two different series of experiments are carried out. In all of these experiments, the pellets of A356 alloy are poured into the outer cylinder where they melt completely by resistance heating. When the inner cylinder is placed concentrically, the molten metal resides in the annular space between the cylinders. As the inner cylinder rotates, the alloy is sheared continuously during cooling from a temperature of 630°C, and a slurry forms. In the first series of experiments, for different cooling rates, shearing continues under a constant shear rate until rotation of the inner cylinder stops. During experiments, the temperature of the slurry is measured continuously using a K-type thermocouple, from which the solid fraction is calculated. In the second series of experiments, the molten alloy is cooled and sheared continuously at different shear rates for a given cooling rate. The apparent viscosity of the slurry is calculated by measuring the torque applied to the inner cylinder and its rotational speed. The results show that the slurry viscosity increases with increasing fraction of solid and increasing cooling rate, and it decreases with increasing shear rate. At high values of shear and cooling rates, the viscosity varies gradually up to a solid fraction of about 0.5.


Raman spectroscopy has attracted interest as a non-invasive optical technique to study the composition and structure of a wide range of materials at the microscopic level. The intrinsic fluorescence background can be orders of magnitude stronger than the Raman scattering, and so, background removal is one of the foremost challenges for quantitative analysis of Raman spectra in many samples. A range of methods anchored in instrumental and computational programming approaches have been proposed for removing fluorescence background signals. An enhanced adaptive weighting scheme for automated fluorescence removal is reported, applicable to both polynomial fitting and penalized least squares approaches. Analysis of the background fitting results for ensembles of simulated spectra suggests that the method is robust and reliable and can significantly improve the background fit over the range of signal, shot noise and background parameters tested, while reducing the subjective nature of the process. The method was also illustrated by application to experimental data generated from aqueous solutions of bulk protein fibrinogen mixed with dextran. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Demand Driven Care plays a key role in the modernization of the
Dutch health care system. This modernization is needed because
a) clients' needs for care increases quantitatively as well as in diversity,
b) the financial means for collective services are inadequate,
c) the accessibility of health care will depend on clients' own
responsibility, and
d) shortage of professional care givers is foreseen. In the Netherlands,
the need for professional care givers increases with an average of
2% every year.
Demand Driven Care is an instrument for liberalization of public
activities. The Faculty Chair Demand Driven Care focuses on those
activities that will contribute to sufficient care supply. Within the
program of the chair, activities are executed under the theme of
Integrated Care, Substitution, Patient Centred Care, and Home Care
Technology with an emphasis on gerontechnology. The Faculty Chair
wants to contribute to a better integration and coherence in care.
So that clients live and function independently as long as possible
and are able to enhance their self management. In addition, health
care professionals should be aware of demand driven processes and
should have a demand driven attitude towards clients.


Amylase is one of the important industrial enzymes used in different types of industries such as food, detergent, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper. Mango peel could be a potential source of amylase, which has been extracted and purified from mango (Mangifera indica cv. Chokanan) peel using alcohol/salt, aqueous two phase system. In this study, the effect of temperature, pH, metal ions, inhibitors and surfactant agents on amylase activity and stability were investigated. In addition, purity and molecular weight of amylase was determined using sodium dodecyl sulphate gel electrophoresis. Amylase showed the highest activity and stability at 50°C for 20 min after enzyme incubation at different temperatures (20 to 90°C) in interval time. Amylase from mango peel is thermostable because more than 85% of enzyme activity was retained at temperatures of 20-55°C for 20 min. The amylase was incubated at pH 3-10 and the highest enzyme activity was obtained at pH 7.0. The enzyme activity was significantly decreased at pH 3.0 and 10 because of protein denaturation. Molecular weight of amylase from Mangifera indica L. cv. Chokanan was 42 kDa. Activity of amylase was significantly (p < 0.05) increased in presence of Ca 2+ but Zn 2+ and Cu 2+ reduced the enzyme activity due to replacing of calcium cation from the binding site of amylase. In addition, the effect on amylase activity was investigated at a concentration of 5 mM. The enzyme was completely deactivated in presence of carbodimine and p-chloromercuribenzoic acid whereas iodoacetamide did not show any significant (p <0.05) effect on amylase activity. Thus, amylase from mango peel with this unique characteristic has potential application in various kind of industries such as food, detergent, pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications.


Deep learning has experienced significant growth in recent years, resulting in increased energy consumption and carbon emission from the use of GPUs for training deep neural networks (DNNs). Answering the call for sustainability, conventional solutions have attempted to move training jobs to locations or time frames with lower carbon intensity. However, moving jobs to other locations may not always be feasible due to large dataset sizes or data regulations. Moreover, postponing training can negatively impact application service quality because the DNNs backing the service are not updated in a timely fashion. In this work, we present a practical solution that reduces the carbon footprint of DNN training without migrating or postponing jobs. Specifically, our solution observes real-time carbon intensity shifts during training and controls the energy consumption of GPUs, thereby reducing carbon footprint while maintaining training performance. Furthermore, in order to proactively adapt to shifting carbon intensity, we propose a lightweight machine learning algorithm that predicts the carbon intensity of the upcoming time frame. Our solution, Chase, reduces the total carbon footprint of training ResNet-50 on ImageNet by 13.6% while only increasing training time by 2.5%.


A new time-resolved shifted dual transmission grating spectrometer(SDTGS) is designed and fabricated in this work. This SDTGS uses a new shifted dual transmission grating(SDTG) as its dispersive component, which has two sub transmission gratings with different line densities, of 2000 lines/mm and 5000 lines/mm. The axes of the two sub transmission gratings in SDTG are horizontally and vertically shifted a certain distance to measure a broad range of 0.1–5 keV time-resolved X-ray spectra. The SDTG has been calibrated with a soft X-ray beam of the synchrotron radiation facility and its diffraction efficiency is also measured. The designed SDTGS can take full use of the space on a record panel and improve the precision for measuring spatial and temporal spectrum simultaneously. It will be a promising application for accurate diagnosis of the soft X-ray spectrum in inertial confinement fusion.


Tobacco-chewing is one of the oldest ways to consume tobacco leaves. Tobacco is a herbal plant (Solanaceae) containing nicotine that can cause dental caries. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the relation between caries index in tobacco-chewing and non-tobacco-chewing elderly women in Desa Juking Pajang, Kecamatan Murung, Kabupaten Murung Raya, Provinsi Kalimantan Tengah. Methods: This was an analytical study using cross sectional approach. The samples were 60 elderly women, which consisted of 30 tobacco-chewing samples and 30 non-tobacco-chewing samples. Results: Data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney test, and the results showed p as 0,000 (p<0,05), which meant there was a significant relation. The results also revealed that the caries indexes of tobacco-chewing and non-tobacco-chewing elderly women were 16,2 (very high), and 2,43 (low) respectively. Conclusion: There was a significant relation between tobacco-chewing habit and caries index in elderly women in Desa Juking Pajang, Kecamatan Murung, Kabupaten Murung Raya, Provinsi Kalimantan Tengah.
Keywords : dental caries index, tobacco-chewing, elderly women


The diversity found in the various Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), besides being a consequence of the capacities and motives of the different stakeholders involved (public research organisations, industry, consulting firms and public authorities) also reflects the specificities of public incentives or policies and their differing degrees of commitment to technology transfer. Notwithstanding the fact that the literature on technology transfer is voluminous, few studies (up to the present date) have investigated the role of innovation policy on TTOs efficiency and the instruments available for governments to improve technology transfer from publicly funded research. The present paper surveys the literature on the determinants of TTOs efficiency, highlighting in particular the role of innovation policy. Additionally, evidence within the context of the European Union on innovation policies for technology transfer improvement is detailed.


Recent studies showed that the Basil (Ocmuim basilicum) is known to have numerous pharmacological activities. The present study aims to investigate the efficacy of Ocmium basilicum extract, natural herb, against hepatotoxicity induced in rats by diazinon which is one of the most common insecticides. The intoxicated rats showed many pathological changes, including impairment of neutral structural organization of the hepatic lobule, leucocytic infiltration, cytoplasmic vacuolization of the hepatocytes and fatty degeneration. The immunohistochemical result showed increase cell proliferation as reflected by an increase in PCNA expression, whereas the increase in apoptotic rate was associated with an increase in the bax expression. Moreover the biochemical results showed that there was an increase in transaminases(AST, ALT).Concomitant treatment with aqueous extract of Basil led to an improvement in histological and immunohistochemical changes induced by diazinon and this attributed to basil antioxidant activity and free radicals scavenging properties.


Ensuring transactional behavior of business processes and web service compositions is an essential issue in the area of service-oriented computing. Transactions in this context may require long periods of time to complete and must be managed using nonblocking techniques. Data integrity in long-running transactions (LRTs) is preserved using compensations, that is, activities explicitly programmed to eliminate the effects of a process terminated by a user or that failed to complete due to another reason. In this paper, we present a framework for behavioral modeling of business processes, focusing on their transactional properties. Our solution is based on the channel-based coordination language Reo, which is an expressive, compositional, and semantically precise design language admitting formal reasoning. The operational semantics of Reo is given by constraint automata (CA). We illustrate how Reo can be used for modeling termination and compensation handling in a number of commonly used workflow patterns, including sequential and parallel compositions, nested transactions, discriminator choice and concurrent flows with link dependences. Furthermore, we show how essential properties of LRTs can be expressed in LTL and CTL-like logics and verified using model checking technology. Our framework is supported by a number of Eclipse plug-ins that provides facilities for modeling, animation, and verification of LRTs to generate executable code for them.


The search for Upper Carboniferous reservoirs can be aided by the development of a chronostratigraphic framework combining detailed sedimentological information with a template using the diagnostic ammonoid-bearing marine bands from onshore analogues derived from European, American and Canadian basins. Analysing Namurian successions constrains key sand-prone intervals, which include the upper Kinderscoutian, lower Marsdenian and top Yeadonian, from a number of depositional settings. A controversial issue for the Upper Carboniferous is the relative importance of high frequency and high magnitude glacio–eustatic sea-level fluctuations as a driving mechanism in the development of basin fill over the controls exerted through the prevailing tectonic regime, climate and sediment supply. The recognition and characterization of time-equivalent sea-level rises and, with greater significance for hydrocarbon exploration, sea-level falls, from a number of European basins attests to their influence. Candidate reservoirs can be constrained at various temporal resolutions and may also be restricted geographically. Significant candidate reservoirs include multistorey fluvial incised valley fills and deepwater sand-rich successions. The most productive onshore reservoirs are coarse-grained/conglomeratic fluvial intervals located in the base of incised valleys where a significant proportion of the subsequent valley fill is fine-grained estuarine sediments. There is potential for large hydrocarbon reservoirs within sand-rich deep water successions but their occurrence in tectonically complex or deeply buried areas has thus far precluded their exploitation. A chronostratigraphic framework established for the UK and Ireland can be applied to European basins and, in a more limited sense, to North America, where marine horizons can be matched. The application of this framework to the subsurface lies in the recognition of key candidate reservoirs and their likely occurrence, both geographically and temporally.


State estimation which uses redundant real-time telemetry to estimate the system state is considered to be one of the essential parts of the modern energy management system. Owing to modelling restrictions in a multiple injection bus, many of the injection measurements at a bus, in certain circumstances, are not usable, and the estimated net injection cannot be correctly distributed among the individual injections. Two new methods are proposed to model the multiple injection bus. Test results indicate that the proposed methods cannot only utilise all available measurements but also provide a convenient way of estimating individual injections contributing to a bus.


The growth intensity of cattle significantly affects their future production and reproduction performance. Despite this fact, many breeders underestimate the rearing of calves and heifers. Our study aimed to evaluate the growth intensity of Holstein calves and heifers in PD Devio Nové Sady based on non-contact measurement of live weight and body measurements through the analysis of digital images using the app AGRONINJA beefie3d TM . The growth intensity analysis was based on the standard Penn State protocol, which uses the Hoffman method to estimate growth standards. A total of 143 calves and heifers were evaluated in three independent measurements. Obtained data were compared to an optimal growth curve determined based on the weight and wither height of dairy cows on the third lactation and using a system of growth intensity requirements. The results showed several deficiencies in the growth intensity of animals on the selected farm. We observed a growth deficit in the height of the evaluated calves from 3 to approximately 4.5 months of age. In addition, we observed that heifers older than eight months exceeded the set weight optimum. We also found a significant decrease in growth intensity due to the disease which occurred in the herd. The results of this study showed that regular recording of data related to body measurements and weight, as well as their comparison with the required values, makes it possible to reveal and, at the same time, eliminate many deficiencies in the breeding of heifers that will form the future production herd.


Abstract: Brazil's automobile component parts industry shows that vertical integration and scale economies endure within flexible production systems. Recent neoliberal economic reforms propelled vehicle assemblers to adopt flexible modes of production and subcontract component manufacturing. However, transactional hazards in supply chains escalated as first-tier subsystem assemblers had to rely on small, opportunistic, and inefficient parts makers. Large tier one suppliers purchased existing parts makers and invested in greenfield facilities to service both new flexibly organized vehicle assembly plants in southern Brazil and Argentina and restructured assembly plants in the traditional automobile complex of Sao Paulo. We focus on Dana Corporation, Bradesco Bank, and British Tyre and Rubber Corporation—firms that assemble chasses, engines, and body subsystems, respectively. These companies dominate their segment of the parts industry, delivering subsystems to a growing network of flexible vehicle assembly plants throughout Brazil. Large-batch parts production, subsystem assembly by a few major multinational tier one suppliers, and ownership consolidation underscore the continued role of vertical integration and scale economies in automobile production chains.


Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a late sequel of venous thromboembolism that cannot be completely reproduced in animal models. The prevalence of CTEPH in humans is estimated at roughly 17-20 per million; however, partly because up to 50% of patients with CTEPH never experience symptomatic pulmonary embolism, precise numbers on the incidence and prevalence are not known. Because CTEPH is diagnosed at a median age of 63 years in patients who often have other concomitant cardiovascular disease or lung disease, assessment of pathophysiology in patients can be challenging, We do know that CTEPH is a dual vascular disorder. Stenoses, webs, and occlusions predominate in large and medium-sized pulmonary arteries at the sites of previous pulmonary emboli. A "secondary vasculopathy" resembling the pulmonary arteriopathy encountered in other forms of pulmonary hypertension predominates in low-resistance vessels. Anastomoses between bronchial artery branches and precapillary pulmonary arterioles appear during evolution of the disease. Other acquired vascular connections between bronchial arteries and pulmonary veins may trigger venous remodeling. Current concepts regarding the pathophysiology of CTEPH include contributions of hyperactive coagulation (e.g., high coagulation factor VIII, combined coagulation defects, dysfibrinogenemias), insufficient anticoagulation, non-O blood groups, and misguided thrombus resolution (e.g., infection, inflammation, dysfunctional innate immunity, abnormal circulating phospholipids). Current research focuses on the question as to whether a genetic predisposition leads to misguided vascular healing after pulmonary thromboembolism in susceptible individuals.


Introduction: A diminished number of young doctors opt for specialty neurology training and show reduced confidence in managing neurology patients and interlink difficulties in managing neurology patients with impaired understanding of neuroanatomy and associated clinical correlates. Aim: To evaluate an interactive e-resource for the neuroanatomy of the spinal pathways based on cognitive theories of multimedia learning in aiding medical students learn neuroanatomy. Methods: Using a single-blinded controlled experimental design, knowledge of the spinal pathways was assessed prior and after usage of the novel e-resource compared to control web resource. The perceived usefulness of the tool used was gauged using Likert-scale questionnaires. Results: Performance in the second assessment improved for all users but the learning gain of participants in the experimental groups was higher compared to participants who did not use e-resources. Likert-scale ratings revealed a significantly higher appreciation for the novel tool compared to the control tool when learning clinical correlates. Conclusions: Stronger correlations between the students' perception of the tool used and their second assessment scores suggest that students favored the instructional design of the novel e-tool which shows promising results in bridging the gap between neuroanatomy knowledge and its clinical application.


Workplace-based learning has long been recognised as crucial in preparing higher education students in allied-health related disciplines for clinical practice. Most of these learning opportunities are embedded in traditional programs and referred to as clinical placements. This paper will explore the perceptions of university students studying speech pathology who volunteered their services in an educational workplace setting. It is interested in what students directly learnt from being involved in workplace-based learning and whether this innovative type of placement provided students with experiences they would not have had in more traditional placement models. Six students engaged in a focus group discussion that was analysed using a content analysis approach to find key meanings. As expected, students' main motivation to volunteer their service was to add the experience to their resume and thus make them more competitive upon graduation. However, results indicated that the students' learning outcomes went beyond the students' initial expectations of gaining experience in administering assessment tasks. More importantly, the volunteer placement provided the students with clear mastery experiences, leading to an improved confidence in their clinical skills and a growth in professional identity. These findings are important for understanding and improving learning experiences within higher education for students who engage in relational work with children and schools.


Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to investigate how supply chain management (SCM)can help organizations to stay competitive or improve competitiveness. Especially in volatile timesthis is a key question? What we have seen is volatility through price movements of resources (GSCI-Index changed from 2007 till 2010 by more than 300%), shipments (Baltic dry-Index), currencies (EUR/$), and earthquakes like Japan or political turmoil like Middle East and North Africa.Understanding as well how Supply Chain Management theory has to change, as it was mainly developed during less volatile times and what impact this has on SCM implementation? Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative and qualitative, survey based research was carried out with 16 Austrian industry companies. The questions were done by interviews only with SCM or operations professionals. Using interviews has the advantage that more detailed questions can be asked. The questionnaire is semistructured and covers the areas of customer orientation, supply chain maturity in terms of organization, strategy, practices, processes and performance management, leadership in terms of how SCM-managers get supported by the organization, supply chain, financial performance, customer satisfaction and competitive differentiation. Statistical analysis combined the use of descriptive statistics and factor analysis to see which of the factors has the biggest influence on success. Findings – Empirical results indicate a strong and positive statistical relationship between supply chain maturity and supply chain performance. The results also suggest that the deliver process maturity has a higher impact on overall performance than the other supply chain processes. Best performers schedule a higher percentage of orders to customer request date and are more likely to deliver the goods on the committed date. Although supply chain strategy has a huge impact on financials – 80% of the SCM-professionals don ́t know the ROCE or cash to cash cycle of their company – nor did they know the impact of SCM on these financials. The SCM-function gets only in half of the companies full support from top management. Originality/value –The roots of this difference of SCMare caused by the way how it is implemented, not just as a system theoretical approach but as a multi-faceted approach to holistic management, takingcomponents like leadership, support, SCM-strategy definition into consideration. Seeing SCM as well from a social and psychological perspective and not just from a systems view point is important.


Abstract Objectives: Physical exercise has gained increasing interest as a treatment modality that improves prognosis in psychiatric patients. The disrupted in schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) gene is a candidate gene for major mental illness. In this study, we aimed to determine whether voluntary wheel running can improve cognitive deficits of dominant-negative DISC1 transgenic mice (DN-DISC1). Methods: DN-DISC1 and control mice (10-week-old male and female) were placed for 14 days in a cage with or without access to a running wheel. Two weeks later, mice underwent behavioural tests evaluating cognition and social approach and recognition. Results: Voluntary exercise improved performance in the novel object recognition test, restored the impairment in spatial memory in the Y maze, and reversed the deficit in social recognition memory in DN-DISC1 females. DN-DISC1 males did not exhibit behavioural deficits at baseline. Tissue analysis revealed that exercise induced a significant increase in hippocampal expression of doublecortin (DCX), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1R) only in DN-DISC1 females. Conclusions: Voluntary exercise is beneficial in attenuating cognitive deficits observed in a rodent model relevant for neuropsychiatric disorders. The data add a preclinical aspect to the accumulating clinical data supporting the incorporation of physical exercise to patients' care.


Tea polyphenol loaded alginate-chitosan microspheres were prepared by ionic gelation method for controlling tea polyphenol release by using various combinations of chitosn and Ca2+ as cation and alginate as anion.Scanning electron microscopy were used to investigate the surface characteristics of tea polyphenol loaded microspheres. These microencapsulated beads were evaluated as a pH-sensitive system for delivery of tea polyphenol. The main advantage of this system is that all procedures used were performed in aqueous medium which may preserve the tea polyphenol bioactivity. At pH7.4, the amounts of tea polyphenol released increased significantly as compared to those released at pH1.2. It is evident that the rate of tea polyphenol release could be controlled by changing the chitosan and the calcium chloride concentrations.


This research was conducted to investigate the effect of different levels of metabolisable energy and crude protein on performance, carcass characteristics and blood parameters of Japanese quail during grower phase (14-28 d of age). Nine hundreds 14-d-old male birds were used to examine 3 levels of energy (2900, 3050 and 3200 Kcal of ME/Kg of the diet) and 3 levels of protein (21.6, 24 and 26.4% CP) by a 3*3 factorial arrangement in a completely randomized design with 5 replicates of 20 birds. Feed intake, weight gain and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were measured during whole period. At the end of the experiment, 2 birds from each replicate were selected to measure the blood parameters (TG, total cholesterol, LDL and uric acid) and carcass characteristics. The lowest and highest levels of energy and protein enhanced (P<0.05) daily feed intake respectively. Daily weight gain was not affected by the treatments (P>0.05), however, FCR was improved by the diets of 3050 and 3200 Kcal ME/Kg compared with that of 2900 Kcal ME/Kg. Energy and protein interaction was significant (P<0.05) for the relative weight of liver; the treatment with 3200 Kcal ME/Kg and 24% CP showed the highest value. Among blood parameters, uric acid was decreased (P<0.05) by the diets of 3050 and 3200 Kcal ME/Kg. Based on performance results, 3050 Kcal ME/Kg of the diet can be proposed for Japanese quail nutrition during the grower phase.