Little terns Sterna albifrons sinensis breeding on Rigby Island, Gippsland Lakes in south-east Australia fed their chicks entirely on juvenile fish of the families Clupeidae, Engraulidae, Pomatomidae and Carangidae, including pilchard Sardinops neopilchardus, southern anchovy Engraulis australis and blue sprat Spratelloides robustus. The entrance channel to the Lakes was an important feeding site. Numbers feeding there increased on the flood tide and decreased on the ebb tide. Their dive rates followed the same pattern, suggesting they depended on shoals of juvenile fish entering the estuary during high tide. The number feeding varied from day to day, and dive rates were positively correlated with numbers, suggesting that the abundance of juvenile fish entering the channel also varied from day to day. There was no evidence that breeding success or number of breeding pairs were adversely affected by the 1995 mass mortalities of pilchard in the area. However, breeding success was reduced significantly in 1999 and 2000 following the 1998/1999 pilchard mortality. The 1995 mortality affected mainly larger size classes of pilchard, whereas the 1998/1999 mortality also affected younger age classes. This difference may explain why little terns seemed only to be adversely affected by the second mortality event.


The effect of increased expression or reconstitution of the mitochondrial inhibitor protein (IF1) on the dimer/monomer ratio (D/M) of the rat liver and bovine heart F1F0-ATP synthase was studied. The 2-fold increased expression of IF1 in AS-30D hepatoma mitochondria correlated with a 1.4-fold increase in the D/M ratio of the ATP synthase extracted with digitonin as determined by blue native electrophoresis and averaged densitometry analyses. Removal of IF1 from rat liver or bovine heart submitochondrial particles increased the F1F0-ATPase activity and decreased the D/M ratio of the ATP synthase. Reconstitution of recombinant IF1 into submitochondrial particles devoid of IF1 inhibited the F1F0-ATPase activity by 90% and restored partially the D/M ratio of the whole F1F0 complex as revealed by blue native electrophoresis and subsequent SDS-PAGE or glycerol density gradient centrifugation. Thus, the inhibitor protein promotes or stabilizes the dimeric form of the intact F1F0-ATP synthase. A possible location of the IF1 protein in the dimeric structure of the rat liver F1F0 complex is proposed. According to crystallographic and electron microscopy analyses, dimeric IF1 could bridge the F1-F1 part of the dimeric F1F0-ATP synthase in the inner mitochondrial membrane.


The paper investigates the influences of financial development on patterns of industrial specialization across China's regions. We find that industrial sectors reliant on access to external finance are found to concentrate in regions with developed financial markets. Both foreign direct investment (FDI) and informal financing channels are shown to play significant roles in shaping patterns of industrial specialization in China. In contrast, proxies for formal financial markets, e.g. the banking system and capital markets have few effects on regional industrial agglomeration. The role of financial development remains robust to instrumental variable estimation and controlling for other traditional determinants of regional specialization.


: Methanogenic enrichments from hypersaline lakes at moderate thermophilic conditions resulted in cultivation of an unknown deep lineage of euryarchaeota related to the class Halobacteria. Both soda and salt lake isolates belong to methyl-reducing methanogens that utilize C1 methylated compounds as electron acceptor and H2 or formate as electron donor. They are extreme halophiles


The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the dominating end-to-end protocol on the Internet today, carrying approximately 90% of the total traffic.TCP appear in numerous clones (e.g. Reno, Vegas, Sack etc.) all with different features and advantages but with maximal throughput as main objective (obeying fairness constraints). The performance of a protocol for varying network conditions and settings can effectively be evaluated using simulations. The free discrete network simulator NS-2 provides a dynamic simulation environment including several common TCP implementations. The software NS-2 is the result of an on-going effort of research and development and is hence not a finished product.The task in this masters' thesis is to coordinate the (in NS-2) existing TCP implementations and develop, implement and thoroughly document a generic TCP protocol collecting existing protocols and where crucial algorithms easily can be manipulated for future experimental validation. The new implementation will be used for evaluating performance of existing and new TCP-versions.


On 13 December 2011, Directive 2011/99/EU of the European Parliament and the Council on the European Protection Order came into force. It forms the legal basis for mutual recognition of criminal and administrative protection orders issued in the Member States. A protection order is a prohibition to enter a certain street or area, to contact a person, to enter ones home, or another legal order which tries to influence someone's behavior or limit his or her freedom with the aim of protecting (an)other person(s). When a protection order is issued in an EU Member State, the victim no longer has to initiate legal proceedings when he or she moves to or stays in another Member State. Thanks to the European Protection Order, the victim is automatically protected in the country of destination. In this study, commissioned by the WODC, INTERVICT researches the nature and prevalence of protection orders in the Netherlands, and the manner in which protection orders are enforced upon violation.


In this paper, a 2 × 2 equivalent statistical circuit model is presented to deal with sneak currents and random data distributions for design and analysis of n x m passive memory arrays of memristive devices. This data-dependent 2 × 2 model enables a broad range of analysis, such as the optimum detection voltage margin, with computational efficiency and no limit on the memory array size. We propose self-adaptable sense resistors that can find their statistical optimum values for reading stored data patterns by composing them with either a replica of a part of resistive random access memory (RRAM) array or a part of RRAM array itself. Self-adaptable resistors can increase the average voltage detection margin by 46%, and reduce the average current consumption by 14% for the case of a 128 × 128 passive array with OFF-to-ON resistance ratio of 103.


A novel variable-fidelity multi-objective optimization technique is applied to the design problem of helicopter rotorblades of the Green RotorCraft research programme of CleanSky. The optimization technique utilizes information from aerodynamic low-fidelity tools, here a prescribed wake model in forward flight and inviscid CFD simulations in hover, to speed-up the high-fidelity optimization, which is based on RANS simulations including all five-rotor blades. In reference to a state-of-the-art single-fidelity optimization, this approach finds about 325% more viable data points. A choice of three rotorblades from the final Pareto frontier of the optimization is investigated in detail including the off-design performance as well as acoustic footprint in an overflight condition. The final outcome is that there does not exist one blade that fully satisfies all criteria at once, but feasible trade-offs are found when applying the variable-fidelity multi-optimization technique.


Current mainstream treatments for traumatic stress in military veterans are largely inadequate in meeting the needs of veterans who are reluctant to conform to conventional illness-based approaches, including medication. These approaches have been criticized for using rigid techniques that emphasize strict symptom-reduction without considering social and relational factors in veterans' lives. There is thus a need for innovative treatment models for traumatic stress that acknowledge potential sources of resilience and healing in veterans' existing communities. In particular, there is growing evidence that the arts can play an important role in supporting veterans' recovery from trauma. Accordingly, this paper describes a strengths-based group psychotherapy model that uses theatre and specific techniques from classical actor training in combination with empirically-established trauma treatment techniques from cognitive processing therapy and narrative therapy to address posttraumatic stress in veterans. Three case examples of veterans are presented with a focus on the veterans' experiences of mimetic induction, a process through which the narrative representation of fictional encounters simulates real-world encounters at a safe aesthetic distance and thereby fosters self-awareness and positive psychological transformation. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Estrogens (estron: E1; estradiol: E2; estriol: E3) are major water pollutants. For the removal of estrogens, activated carbon (AC) and ozone treatments were employed, and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and pH of a single solution and multiple solution systems were investigated. The removal of estrogens increased with the amount of AC. The percentage of removed estrogens by AC in the single solution system was greater than that in the ternary solution system. The estrogens were completely removed using ozone, which also reduced COD and pH. The removal of estrogens increased the water quality and decreased the amount of organic carbon.


Methanolic extract of the seed (150 mg/kg body weight), was administered orally to male Swiss albino mice. Streptozotocin was used to induce diabetes mellitus. The anti-diabetic potential was assessed by determining oral glucose tolerance, fasting blood glucose, urine glucose, liver glycogen content, serum lipid profile, change in body weight and histopathology. Methanolic seed extract was administered to normal and experimental diabetic mice for 15 days. Significant (p < 0.001) reduction in fasting blood glucose levels was observed in the treated diabetic animals from day 7 onwards. In oral glucose tolerance test, reduction of fasting blood glucose levels was noted after 60 min of extract administration. After 15 days of treatment with extracts the maximum reduction in fasting blood glucose (53.87%) was observed in diabetic mice treated with methanolic extract 150 mg/kg. Serum lipid levels reversed towards near normal and the loss of body weight was controlled in treated mice as compared to diabetic control. The extract treatment also showed a significant increase in the liver glycogen content and gradual decrease in level of urine sugar level. Microscopically examined pancreas section of mice treated with 150 mg/kg methanolic extract showed normal architecture of pancreas. The results demonstrate that seed of Diplocyclos palmatus possesses significant anti-diabetic activity. The results suggest that Diplocyclos palmatus has anti-diabetic activity, thereby justifying its traditional use. The plant may be used in present day systems of medicine as an anti-diabetic drug.


The main goal of this paper is to investigate the periodic character, invariant intervals, oscillation and global stability and other new results of all positive solutions of the equation$$x_{n+1}=frac{alpha+beta x_{n}}{A + Bx_{n}+ Cx_{n-k}},~~ n=0,1,2,ldots,$$where the parameters $alpha$, $beta$, $A$, $B$ and $C$ are positive, and the initial conditions $x_{-k},x_{-k+1},ldots,x_{-1},x_{0}$ are positive real numbers and $kin{1,2,3,ldots}$. We give a detailed description of the semi-cycles of solutions and determine conditions under which the equilibrium points are globally asymptotically stable. In particular, our paper is a generalization of the rational difference equation that was investigated by Kulenovic et al. [The Dynamics of $x_{n+1}=frac{alpha +beta x_{n}}{A+Bx_{n}+ C x_{n-1}}$, Facts and Conjectures, Comput. Math. Appl. 45 (2003) 1087--1099].


The influences of RE and P complex modification on microstructure and impact toughness of hypereutectic Al-24Si alloy are investigated. The result shows that the coarse block primary silicon is refined obviously and its edges and angles are blunted under the influences of the complex modification of RE and P. The large needle eutectic silicon is modified to the short-rod or particle ones also. The alloys have the finest microstructure and highest impact toughness when adding about 0.10% P and 0.9% RE into alloys. Compared with the unmodified alloy, the average size of primary silicon in the modified alloys refined from 93.5μm to 24.1μm and the impact toughness of alloys increases to 11.0062J/cm2 from 7.3572J/cm2. The excellent impact toughness of alloys can be attributed to the increase of initiation energy and expand energy of the cracks caused by the refinement of primary silicon and eutectic silicon after complex modified with P and RE.


Purpose
This paper aims to identify campus greening initiatives on a sample of universities in Romania reflected in the university curricula, the behavioral patterns of students and teachers, the administrative actions that carry out empirical investigation of students/teachers/management staff perception on campus greening (based on self-administered questionnaires); detect the way campus greening initiatives are promoted/made visible; and identify the gaps and needs of the universities under scrutiny in terms of campus greening initiatives.

Design/methodology/approach
The current research relies on two major components reviewing campus greening-related activities and initiatives, as reflected in the scientific literature and university curricula (empirical and quantitative assessment) and inquiring selected universities' about the campus greening programs they unfold through questionnaire surveys (qualitative assessment).

Findings
Generally, sustainability topics (e.g. environmental protection, waste management and sustainable development) are largely addressed and, to some extent, applied in faculties dealing with earth sciences (e.g. geography, ecology) and technical sciences (e.g. environmental engineering). This can be explained by the traditional theoretical background of the first, and the experimental-oriented profile of the latter, which supports the development of innovative technologies (green technologies). However, there is a need to better undertake and promote greening initiatives for most of the higher education institutions in Romania. Some spatial (between institutions throughout Romania) and structural (according to the profile of the institutions) disparities are visible.

Research limitations/implications
The limitations of the study might be the small number of universities providing a positive feedback to the questionnaire survey and the degree of subjectivity of some of the answers, directly linked with the professional background and issue awareness of the persons who answered the questions.

Practical implications
The findings can be useful to the university managers to better orient their actions toward campus greening, increasing their knowledge and awareness toward sustainability-related actions.

Originality/value
This is the first attempt reporting in the literature to analyze the campus greening initiatives to a large number of universities in Romania based on a common approach, identifying the main gaps and challenges in this process.


Leakage of ship pipeline system has become a great hidden danger, which affects safe operation of ship and causes environmental pollution. In order to isolate leaking pipeline safely in emergency conditions, Real-time monitoring of ship pipeline system leakage is very important. In this paper, the real-time models of ship isothermal and thermal pipeline were established with a set of equations which is running synchronized with the actual execution pipeline, and the real-time model method was used to monitor ship pipeline system leakage. If the difference between measured values and calculated values is greater than a certain range, pipeline leakage is identified. The location of leakage is calculated based on pressure gradient. Only pressure, flow and temperature of the first and second end of the pipeline were needed, can this method achieve leakage detecting and locating. According to the analysis and verification from the experimental data, this method has high leakage resolution and positioning accuracy.


The developments in micro and nano technologies brought the need of high precision micropositioning stages to be used in micro/nano applications such as cell manipulation, surgery, aerospace, micro fluidics, optical systems, micromachining and microassembly etc. Micro motion stages with flexible joints called compliant mechanisms are built to provide the needed accuracy and precision. This thesis aims to build compliant planar micro motion stages using flexure hinges to be used as micropositioning devices in x-y directions by applying new control methods. First 3- RRR planar parallel kinematic structure is selected which is also popular in the literature. Then the mechanism is developed to have a new structure which is a 3-PRR mechanism. The necessary geometric parameters are selected by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). The displacement, stress and frequency behaviors of the mechanisms are compared and discussed. Modeling of the flexure based mechanisms is also studied for 3-PRR compliant stage by using Kinetostatic modeling method which combines the compliance calculations of flexure hinges with kinematics of the mechanism. Piezoelectric actuators and optical 2d position sensor which uses a laser source are used for actuation and measurement of the stages. After the experimental studies it's seen that the results are not compatible with FEA because of the unpredictable errors caused by manufacturing and assembly. We have succeeded to eliminate those errors by implementing a control methodology based on Sliding Mode Control with Disturbance Observer which is also based on Sliding Mode Control using linear piezoelectric actuator models. Finally, we have extracted experimental models for each actuation direction of the stage and used those models instead of piezoelectric actuator models which lowered our errors in the accuracy of our measurement and ready to be used as a high precision micro positioning stage for our micro system applications.


We have analyzed the RNA expression of three protein kinase C (PKC) genes (alpha, beta, and gamma) in human and murine central nervous systems during embryonic-fetal, perinatal, and adult life. Analysis of human brain poly(A)+ RNA indicates that expression of PKC alpha and beta genes can be detected as early as 6 weeks postconception, undergoes a gradual increase until 9 weeks postconception, and reaches its highest level in the adult stage, and that the PKC gamma gene, although not expressed during embryonic and early fetal development, is abundantly expressed in the adult period. Similar developmental patterns were observed in human spinal cord and medulla oblongata. A detailed analysis of PKC gene expression during mammalian ontogeny was performed on poly(A)+ RNA from the brain cells of murine embryos at different stages of development and the brain cells of neonatal and adult mice. The ontogenetic patterns were similar to those observed for human brain. Furthermore, we observed that the expression of PKC gamma is induced in the peri- and postnatal phases. These results suggest that expression of PKC alpha, beta, and gamma genes possibly mediates the development of central neuronal functions, and expression of PKC gamma in particular may be involved in the development of peri- and postnatal functions.


Oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is considered one of the most aggressive subtypes of cancer. Anti-CD44 monoclonal antibodies (mAb) are a potential therapy against CD44 expressing OSCC; however, to date the therapeutic effects have been disappointing. Here, a new cancer treatment is described, near-infrared photoimmunotherapy (NIR-PIT), that uses anti-CD44 mAbs conjugated to the photoabsorber IR700DX. This conjugate is injected into mice harboring one of three CD44 expressing syngeneic murine oral cancer cell (MOC) lines, MOC1 (immunogenic), MOC2 mKate2 (moderately immunogenic), and MOC2-luc (poorly immunogenic). Binding of the anti-CD44–IR700 conjugate was shown to be specific and cell-specific cytotoxicity was observed after exposure of the cells to NIR light in vitro. The anti-CD44–IR700 conjugate, when assessed in vivo, demonstrated deposition within the tumor with a high tumor-to-background ratio. Tumor-bearing mice were separated into four cohorts: no treatment; 100 μg of anti-CD44–IR700 i.v. only; NIR light exposure only; and 100 μg of anti-CD44–IR700 i.v. with NIR light exposure. NIR-PIT therapy, compared with the other groups, significantly inhibited tumor growth and prolonged survival in all three cell model systems. In conclusion, these data reveal that anti-CD44 antibodies are suitable as mAb–photoabsorber conjugates for NIR-PIT in MOC cells. Implications: This study using syngeneic mouse models, which better model the disease in humans than conventional xenografts, suggests that NIR-PIT with anti-CD44–IR700 is a potential candidate for the treatment of OSCC. Mol Cancer Res; 15(12); 1667–77. ©2017 AACR.


U12-dependent introns are spliced by the so-called minor spliceosome, requiring the U11, U12, and U4atac/ U6atac snRNPs in addition to the U5 snRNP. We have recently identified U6-p110 (SART3) as a novel human recycling factor that is related to the yeast splicing factor Prp24. U6-p110 transiently associates with the U6 and U4/U6 snRNPs during the spliceosome cycle, regenerating functional U4/U6 snRNPs from singular U4 and U6 snRNPs. Here we investigated the involvement of U6-p110 in recycling of the U4atac/U6atac snRNP. In contrast to the major U6 and U4/U6 snRNPs, p110 is primarily associated with the U6atac snRNP but is almost undetectable in the U4atac/U6atac snRNP. Since p110 does not occur in U5 snRNA-containing complexes, it appears to be transiently associated with U6atac during the cycle of the minor spliceosome. The p110 binding site was mapped to U6 nucleotides 38 to 57 and U6atac nucleotides 10 to 30, which are highly conserved between these two functionally related snRNAs. With a U12-dependent in vitro splicing system, we demonstrate that p110 is required for recycling of the U4atac/U6atac snRNP.


Graphical Processing Units (GPU) architectures are massively used for resource-intensive computation. Initially dedicated to imaging, vision and graphics, these architectures serve nowadays a wide range of multi-purpose applications. The GPU structure, however, does not suit all applications. This can lead to performance shortage. Among several applications, the aim of this work is to analyze GPU structures for image analysis applications in multispectral to ultraspectral imaging. Algorithms used for the experiments are multispectral and hyperspectral imaging dedicated to art authentication. Such algorithms use a high number of spatial and spectral data, along with both a high number of memory accesses and a need for high storage capacity. Timing performances are compared with CPU architecture and a global analysis is made according to the algorithms and GPU architecture. This paper shows that GPU architectures are suitable to complex image analysis algorithm in multispectral.


A series of sol-gel derived silicon based coatings were developed to improve the osseointegration of commercial titanium dental implants. The osseointegration starts with a positive interaction between the implant surface and surrounding tissues, which is facilitated by the adsorption of plasma proteins onto the biomaterial surface immediately after implantation. It is likely that the enhancement of protein adsorption to titanium implants leads to a better implant/tissue integration. In addition, silica based biomaterials have been shown to promote osteoblast differentiation. To improve the protein adsorption and the osteogenesis, methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMOS), tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), 3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GPTMS), and gelatin were selected to coat titanium surfaces. Compared with non-coated titanium, the functionalized coatings enhanced the adsorption of adhesive proteins such as fibronectin and collagen. The Si release was successfully modulated by the control of the chemical composition of the coating, showing a higher dissolution rate with the gelatin and GPTMS incorporation. While the roughness of commercial implants seemed to promote the adhesion of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), the osteogenic differentiation was greater on surfaces with Si-coatings. In this study, an improved osteogenic surface has been achieved by using the siloxane-gelatin coatings and such coatings can be used in dental implants to promote osseointegration. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 106B: 1138-1147, 2018.


An important disadvantage of current dental resin composites is polymerization shrinkage. This shrinkage has clinical repercussions such as sensitivity, marginal discoloration, and secondary caries. The objective of this study was to compare three filling techniques in terms of the transient stresses induced at the resin composite/tooth interface during polymerization. The techniques were: bulk filling (B), three horizontal increments (HI), and three wedge increments (WI). A simple Class V cavity preparation was modeled in finite element analysis. Polymerization shrinkage was simulated by a thermal stress analogy, thereby causing 1% shrinkage due to an arbitrary coefficient of thermal expansion. Interface normal and shear stresses were calculated at nine steps during polymerization, proceeding from 0% to 100% volume of cured resin. The importance of the interface transient stresses was revealed by the finding that, in most cases, their peak values exceeded the final or residual stress. Also, the WI and B techniques consistently exhibited the highest and lowest maximum transient stresses, respectively. These results from the simple model of a Class V restoration suggest that bulk filling of light-cured resin composites should be used in restorations which are sufficiently shallow to be cured to their full depth.


In this paper, two (3+1)-dimensional equations are investigated. Auto-Backlund transformation is obtained, which is used with some ansatze to seek new types of exact solutions including some arbitrary functions. When these arbitrary functions are taken as some special functions, these solutions possess abundant structures. These solutions contain soliton-like solutions and rational solutions.


This research project investigates the area of Youthreach education, exploring its status as a sector in Irish education. Specifically, it argues that Youthreach is often perceived as a lower status form of education and hence holds stigmatizing effects for the sector and its learners. This research intends to use the concept of recognition to explore the issue, and to begin to turn the tide on it through an active case study approach which will explore the following questions;
1. What type of education is on offer in a Youthreach center?
2. Using the concept of recognition, what status does Youthreach have in the Irish education system? Is it stigmatized as a form of education?
3. How is the status of Youthreach education related to the early school leaving profile of its learners? How does the issue of class relate to this?
4. How can Youthreach respond to these challenges?
5. How do personal stories from Youthreach students transform attitudes of parents within these communities?
This research with Youthreach students, members of Two Parents Association of second level schools and a Youthreach coordinator highlighted the themes of i) interpersonal relationships and learning between teachers and students in Youthreach, ii) the role that social class plays in the misrecognition and stigma of education sectors such as Youthreach, iii) How recognition operates through the fear of the unknown and iv) the potential of individual stories about educational experiences to transform attitudes.
The research gives a platform through narrative research to three Youthreach students so that their voices, opinions and stories can be heard by parents within their communities. The research reveals the power of narratives for learning and attitudinal transformation based on discussion of their educational experiences. Their stories highlight the damaging effects of early school leaving and how they got their education back on track, with the assistance from the Youthreach programme. Such an initiative however also raises question about the scale of transformative learning and whether narratives can hold a longer – term impact.


Non-puerperal mastitis was diagnosed in 79 patients (aged 12-77 years) over the years 1974-1984. Malignant neoplasm was not present. Bacterial infection in the region of the areola was the most frequent finding (40%), followed by abacterial inflammation without involvement of the nipples (29%). The other cases, bacterial or nonbacterial, occurred at different sites. The histological picture or clinical features of an increased secretory activity of the mammary gland (galactorrhoea, mastodynia) in addition to the mastitis was noted in 54 women. Causative organisms were proven in 53% of cases: Staph. aureus (41%) and coagulase-negative staphylococcus (41%), or anaerobic organisms (11%). Physical measures, antibiotics and bromocriptine were used as treatment. At the onset of treatment abscesses were already present or developed in 34 instances. In 28 cases one to six recurrences set in after the end of the treatment period. In 22 patients treated with bromocriptine prophylactically there were only two recurrences. In the majority of patients an increased alveolar secretion was important in the pathogenesis of the bacterial or abacterial inflammation. Prolactin-lowering treatment seems reasonable by itself in cases of abacterial mastitis, or in combination with antibiotics in bacterial mastitis. Recurrences can be prevented by long-term lowering of the peripheral prolactin level.


Three solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, based on anion exchanger and non-polar interactions, have been evaluated as clean-up columns prior to organochlorine and pyrethroid pesticides analysis in fruits and vegetables samples. Without a clean-up method the interferences in the fruits and vegetables affected the quantitation of organochlorine and pyrethroid pesticides in fruits and vegetables samples. The objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness between SAX/PSA, Florisil and C18 SPE clean-up columns to eliminate matrix interferences from grape, orange, tomato, carrot and green mustard in the determination of organochlorine (gamma-HCH, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, captafol) and pyrethroid (permethrin, cypermethrin, fenvalerate) pesticides using gas chromatography with electron capture detection (GC-ECD).
The results showed that SAX/PSA was the most effective clean-up column as compared to Florisil and C18. The mean recoveries were between 70-120% for all samples at fortification levels of 0.01, 0.02 and 0.1 mg/kg, except for captafol that was below 70%. Although Florisil was not effective in removing interferences as significantly as SAX/PSA, the analytical recoveries were between 70 and 120% for all samples at fortification levels of 0.01, 0.02 and 0.1 mg/kg, except for captafol, which was more than 120%. In contrast, the C18 column showed that the mean recovery for captafol was within 70-120% for grape at fortification levels of 0.01, 0.02 and 0.1 mg/kg, and for orange and tomato only at 0.1 mg/kg. In addition, the C18 column resulted in unacceptable range of mean recoveries for heptachlor, aldrin and permethrin from grape at all fortification levels and permethrin from orange at 0.01 and 0.02 mg/kg fortification levels.
The SPE extracts produce cleaner chromatograms allowing quantitation of pesticides by GC-ECD after ethyl acetate extraction with a limit of detection (LOD) between 0.003 and 0.015 mg/kg in grape samples using SAX/PSA clean-up column. The method was confirmed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) which able to detect cypermethrin in tomato, chinese parsley, chinese celery, chilli, brinjal, french beans, green mustard and capsicum from the determination of a total of 508 samples obtained from Malaysian markets. Only the mean value of cypermethrin in brinjal was found to exceed the permissible level according to the Malaysia Food Regulations 1985.


Acoustic waves in fluids undergoing the transition from sub- to supersonic flow satisfy governing equations similar to those for light waves in the immediate vicinity of a black hole event horizon. This acoustic analogy has been used by Unruh and others as a conceptual model for `Hawking radiation.' Here we use variational methods, originally introduced by Brizard for the study of linearized MHD, and ray phase space methods, to analyze linearized acoustics in the presence of background flows. The variational formulation endows the evolution equations with natural Hermitian and symplectic structures that prove useful for later analysis. We derive a $2\times 2$ normal form governing the wave evolution in the vicinity of the `event horizon.' This shows that the acoustic model can be reduced locally (in ray phase space) to a standard (scalar) tunneling process weakly coupled to a unidirectional non-dispersive wave (the `incoming wave'). Given the normal form, the Hawking `thermal spectrum' can be derived by invoking standard tunneling theory, but only by ignoring the coupling to the incoming wave. Deriving the normal form requires a novel extension of the modular ray-based theory used previously to study tunneling and mode conversion in plasmas. We also discuss how ray phase space methods can be used to change representation, which brings the problem into a form where the wave functions are less singular than in the usual formulation, a fact that might prove useful in numerical studies.


Our paper examines the relationship between religiosity and the career options of the students from the Romanian-Hungarian cross-border region, respectively the choice of their study domain. We have assumed that a high level of religiosity would predict options for careers that operate with values similar to the religious ones (in education, justice, art, social work, medicine – careers chosen from the humanities); while a low level of religiosity would turn students toward technical and business/ economic careers. To test the hypotheses we have used the survey data from BA students selected using a quota sampling procedure (quotas were proportional with cycle, year, faculty and type of financing) from 2 large public higher education institutions located in the Romanian-Hungarian cross-border: the University of Oradea (Romania) - 545 cases - and the University of Debrecen (Hungary) - 886 cases. The results of testing the hypotheses using multinomial logistic regressions have partially confirmed this hypothesis, between religiosity and the career options have appeared a series of extra factors such as the students' residential background, the economic context, their family's situation and the potential income of that particular job. We have discussed the theoretical outcomes of the study and we have formulated future research directions.


We propose a few shot learning approach for the problem of hematopoietic cell classification in digital pathology. In hematopoiesis cell classification, the classes correspond to the different stages of the cellular maturation process. Two consecutive stage categories are considered to have a neighborhood relationship, which implies a visual similarity between the two categories. We propose RelationVAE which incorporates these relationships between hematopoietic cell classes to robustly generate more data for the classes with limited training data. Specifically, we first model these relationships using a graphical model, and propose RelationVAE, a deep generative model which implements the graphical model. RelationVAE is trained to optimize the lower bound of the pairwise data likelihood of the graphical model. In this way, it can identify class level features of a specific class from a small number of input images together with the knowledge transferred from visually similar classes, leading to more robust sample synthesis. The experiments on our collected hematopoietic dataset show the improved results of our proposed RelationVAE over a baseline VAE model and other few shot learning methods. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/cvlab-stonybrook/hematopoiesis-relationvae.


Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) may result in cirrhosis, liver failure, and hepatocellular carcinoma. A minority of patients have a sustained response to antiviral therapy, and nonresponders remain at risk of developing progressive liver disease. We conducted a randomized, controlled trial of therapy with the combination of interferon (IFN) and ribavirin in patients with chronic hepatitis C who had not responded to an initial course of therapy with IFN alone. A total of 124 patients were randomized to receive the combination of IFN and ribavirin for either 24 or 48 weeks and followed for an additional 24 weeks after stopping therapy. Thirty‐eight treated patients (30.6%) achieved a sustained virologic response (undetectable HCV RNA at the 24‐week follow‐up point). This was associated with significant improvement in necroinflammatory activity noted on liver biopsy. Interestingly, there was not a statistically significant difference in response rates based on the duration of treatment; HCV genotype was the strongest predictor of a sustained response. Sustained responses were noted even in patients with poor predictive factors, including those with advanced hepatic fibrosis or cirrhosis, high levels of HCV RNA in serum, and those infected with HCV genotype 1. The study included 24 patients with normal serum alanine transaminase (ALT) values before therapy who had similar responses to those with initially elevated transaminase values. This study suggests that the combination of IFN and ribavirin is a useful modality of therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C who did not respond to IFN alone.


Objectives To evaluate and compare the lifetime costs associated with strategies to identify individuals with monogenic diabetes and change their treatment to more appropriate therapy. Design A decision analytical model from the perspective of the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales was developed and analysed. The model was informed by the literature, routinely collected data and a clinical study conducted in parallel with the modelling. Setting Secondary care in the UK. Participants Simulations based on characteristics of patients diagnosed with diabetes <30 years old. Interventions Four test-treatment strategies to identify individuals with monogenic diabetes in a prevalent cohort of diabetics diagnosed under the age of 30 years were modelled: clinician-based genetic test referral, targeted genetic testing based on clinical prediction models, targeted genetic testing based on biomarkers, and blanket genetic testing. The results of the test-treatment strategies were compared with a strategy of no genetic testing. Primary and secondary outcome measures Discounted lifetime costs, proportion of cases of monogenic diabetes identified. Results Based on current evidence, strategies using clinical characteristics or biomarkers were estimated to save approximately £100–£200 per person with diabetes over a lifetime compared with no testing. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the prevalence of monogenic diabetes, the uptake of testing, and the frequency of home blood glucose monitoring had the largest impact on the results (ranging from savings of £400–£50 per person), but did not change the overall findings. The model is limited by many model inputs being based on very few individuals, and some long-term data informed by clinical opinion. Conclusions Costs to the NHS could be saved with targeted genetic testing based on clinical characteristics or biomarkers. More research should focus on the economic case for the use of such strategies closer to the time of diabetes diagnosis. Trial registration number NCT01238380.


BACKGROUND
Alveolar development and lung parenchymal simplification are not well characterized in vivo in neonatal patients with respiratory morbidities, such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Hyperpolarized (HP) gas diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a sensitive, safe, nonionizing, and noninvasive biomarker for measuring airspace size in vivo but has not yet been implemented in young infants.

OBJECTIVE
This work quantified alveolar airspace size via HP gas diffusion MRI in healthy and diseased explanted infant lung specimens, with comparison to histological morphometry.

METHODS
Lung specimens from 8 infants were obtained: 7 healthy left upper lobes (0-16 months, post-autopsy) and 1 left lung with filamin-A mutation, closely representing BPD lung disease (11 months, post-transplantation). Specimens were imaged using HP 3He diffusion MRI to generate apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) as biomarkers of alveolar airspace size, with comparison to mean linear intercept (Lm) via quantitative histology.

RESULTS
Mean ADC and Lm were significantly increased throughout the diseased specimen (ADC = 0.26 ± 0.06 cm2/s, Lm = 587 ± 212 µm) compared with healthy specimens (ADC = 0.14 ± 0.03 cm2/s, Lm = 133 ± 37 µm; p < 1 × 10-7); increased values reflect enlarged airspaces. Mean ADCs in healthy specimens were significantly correlated to Lm (r = 0.69, p = 0.041).

CONCLUSIONS
HP gas diffusion MRI is sensitive to healthy and diseased regional alveolar airspace size in infant lungs, with good comparison to quantitative histology in ex vivo specimens. This work demonstrates the translational potential of gas MRI techniques for in vivo assessment of normal and abnormal alveolar development in neonates with pulmonary disease.


Electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) fibers containing silver nanoparticles were successfully prepared from PCL solutions added silver collide. The silver collide were obtained by N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) reducing silver nitrate (AgNO3). The effects of PCL concentration and the content of silver nanoparticles on composite fibers morphology were characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The existence of Ag nanoparticles on the electrospun fibers was approved by X-Ray diffraction (XRD). Simultaneously, the contact angles of fiber membranes were measured. The results indicated that uniform fibers were obtained when PCL concentration was 9wt%, the average diameter of fiber was significantly decreased as increasing the amount of silver collide, and Ag nanoparticles were successfully incorporated into the PCL fibers.


OBJECTIVE
Gastrointestinal schwannomas are rare benign mesenchymal tumors originating from Schwann cells, the nerve sheath belonging to the Auerbach's plexus or, less frequently, to Meisser's plexus. The esophagus is the least common site accounting for less than 2% of all esophageal tumors, and the upper to mid portion is usually involved. Esophageal schwannomas affect more frequently middle-aged Asian women. The most common symptom is dysphagia. Diagnosis requires histological and immunohistochemical studies and the standard of care is surgical resection.

CASE REPORT
We present the case of a 22-year-old Caucasian male who was admitted to our hospital for progressive dysphagia and acute chest pain. An EGDS showed an elongated bulging of the lower esophagus with signs of a subcentimetric mucosal erosion. A CT-scan showed a lower esophageal ectasia and a huge postero-lateral wall mass measuring 37x28x70 mm. An endoscopic ultrasonography showed a hypoechoic heterogeneous mass with multiple anechoic areas and a fine needle biopsy was performed. Histological examination showed tissue made up of spindle cells with mild eosinophilic cytoplasm and rare nuclear atypia, which were intensively and diffusely positive for the S100 protein on immunohistochemical studies thus allowing pre-operative diagnosis of "ancient" schwannoma. after a multidisciplinary discussion, the patient underwent a surgical resection. Since the tumor had a transmural extension, a subtotal esophagectomy was performed to achieve complete resection with negative margins.

CONCLUSIONS
This is the first case of a young Caucasian male patient with an "ancient" schwannoma of the lower esophagus, a benign but locally advanced lesion treated by subtotal esophagectomy.


Small Manufacturing Entities (SMEs) have not incorporated robotic automation as readily as large companies due to rapidly changing product lines, complex and dexterous tasks, and the high cost of start-up. While recent low-cost robots such as the Universal Robots UR5 and Rethink Robotics Baxter are more economical and feature improved programming interfaces, based on our discussions with manufacturers further incorporation of robots into the manufacturing work flow is limited by the ability of these systems to generalize across tasks and handle environmental variation. Our goal is to create a system designed for small manufacturers that contains a set of capabilities useful for a wide range of tasks, is both powerful and easy to use, allows for perceptually grounded actions, and is able to accumulate, abstract, and reuse plans that have been taught. We present an extension to Behavior Trees that allows for representing the system capabilities of a robot as a set of generalizable operations that are exposed to an end-user for creating task plans. We implement this framework in CoSTAR, the Collaborative System for Task Automation and Recognition, and demonstrate its effectiveness with two case studies. We first perform a complex tool-based object manipulation task in a laboratory setting. We then show the deployment of our system in an SME where we automate a machine tending task that was not possible with current off the shelf robots.


Graded glass and glass-hydroxyapatite coatings on Ti-based and Co-Cr alloys have been prepared using a simple enameling technique. The composition of the glasses has been tailored to match the thermal expansion of the alloys. By controlling the firing time, and temperature, it has been possible to control the reactivity between the glass and the alloy and to fabricate coatings (25 to 150 μm thick) with excellent adhesion to the substrate, resistant to corrosion and able to precipitate hydroxyapatite during in vitro tests in simulated body fluid.


Informal caregivers (ICGs) provide care to their family or friends in case of an illness, disability, or frailty. The caregiving situation of informal caregivers may vary based on the relationship they have with the care recipient (CR), e.g., being a spouse or being an adult child. It might be that these different ICGs also have different needs. This study aims to explore and compare the needs of different groups of ICGs based on the relationship they have with their CR. We conducted a systematic review, performing a search in the databases PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. We included studies with qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method study designs. We analyzed the data using the thematic analysis method. We included 22 articles (18 qualitative; 4 quantitative). The included articles reported the needs of ICGs taking care of a spouse (spousal ICGs), parent (adult child ICG), or sibling aged 18 years or above (adult sibling ICGs). We did not include other relationships due to the limited number of articles on these relationships. The most prominent needs reported by the spousal, adult child, and adult sibling ICGs were the need for information and need for support. The three groups differed in their needs as well. Adult child and adult sibling ICGs indicated a need to be acknowledged by the people around them for their role of carer, while they also needed to be seen as an individual having their own personal needs. Moreover, spousal ICGs indicated a unique need of redefining their role and relationship with their CR. Overall, the findings indicate that along with experiencing common needs, the investigated groups have unique needs as well. Knowing the needs of different groups of ICGs can help develop tailored solutions to improve the quality of life of the ICGs and their CR. Systematic Review Registration: [www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/], identifier [CRD42020188560].


The emerging power of China-be it "peaceful rise" or "China threat"-has been analyzed repeatedly by experts. But to date little has been concluded about America's precipitous relative decline, both in its hard and so-called "soft" power. The policy failures and disastrous initiatives of the George W. Bush administration have yet to be tallied up strategically. More important for Asia is the need to investigate the critically significant juncture between the two patterns: China's rise and the U.S. decline. That relationship, no matter how difficult it is to measure in material terms, has begun to reshape strategic relations around the world, and especially in East Asia. It is the major strategic transformative event of 2007, the Year of the Pig. The crux of that structural shift in global power in East Asia has emerged in China's relations with Japan, America's most important Asian ally. It is there that the future of the region will very likely be decided. Will it be cooperation or confrontation? The stakes are high. Leaders in Beijing and Tokyo, responding to the changing strategic environment, will decide whether to make a future together as the key major powers in an East Asian Community or else to take sides in a renewed cold war between the United States and China. Crises over North Korea as a nuclearweapons power, Taiwan, territorial disputes in the East China Sea, or a possible Japanese decision to "go nuclear" will test their willingness to work together for the future of a peaceful and increasingly prosperous East Asia. In August 2006 at the Australian National University, we convened an international workshop on "Reconciliation between China and Japan: A Search for Solutions," funded by the Department of International Relations in the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies and the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies.1 Twenty-one scholars from Australia, Japan, China, the United States, and several other countries participated. The ANU workshop was the first part of a continuing, collaborative project on historical reconciliation and cooperative security in East Asia. A second workshop, to be hosted by Amitav Acharya at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, will be convened later this year.2 The purpose of the ANU workshop was to prompt discussion and debate about the best ways to encourage reconciliation between Japan and China. Our objective was to produce concrete and realistic policy proposals for enhancing security cooperation between the two Asian powers, especially with respect to their participation in the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue and in the potential East Asian Community. Among sovereign states, it is always easier for governments to lapse into confrontation or even conflict than to work together to achieve mutual benefit. To cooperate requires conscientious design, constant attention, and committed care by all parties. In the proposed design for an East Asian Community, for example, none of the countries in the region, including Australia, wants to have to choose between China and Japan. They want to build viable security institutions that include both Asian powers. The analogy often mentioned is that, just as a security community in Europe required cooperation between Germany and France, so the East Asian Community will need to be built on security cooperation between China and Japan. When Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro was in office, Japanese-Chinese economic relations continued to improve while their political-strategic relations grew worse-what has often been called "cold politics and hot economics." Analysts of the contemporary Sino-Japanese relationship have discussed with insight the nature of the bilateral problems (e.g., disputes about history and territory; geopolitical rivalry; Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine; competition for scarce energy resources; anti- Japanese demonstrations in China; and China's opposition to Japan's hopes for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council), but there has been little in the literature so far about how these conflicts might be resolved or at least ameliorated. …


The no-insulation, or more precisely, controlled-resistance coil winding method, nowadays being exclusively used for high-temperature superconducting solenoids, has proven its effectiveness for improving quench protection. When considering low-temperature superconductor magnet technology, which is mostly focused on stability and training issues, controlled-resistance insulation windings are directly addressing these aspects as well. Fully soldered coil windings of non-insulated turns can also show superior mechanical properties and feature simplified manufacturing when compared to epoxy impregnated coil windings and are of high practical interest for quasi-stationary magnets provided the related charging time constant can be controlled and kept low enough. For demonstrating the principle feasibility two demonstrator coils were developed using NbTi/Cu wire with CuNi cladding of 1 mm diameter. The wire performance is reported including critical current and n-values at 4.2 K and background magnetic fields from 0 to 9 T, as well as effective transverse resistivity at room temperature and 77 K. Two solenoids with fully soldered windings comprising one layer on a 50 mm bore and three layers on a 100 mm bore, respectively, were manufactured and tested in liquid helium. Their performance is directly compared to data obtained on short wire samples. The drastically enhanced stability of the coils against thermal disturbances allows to avoid any training and enables to operate the coils up, or even slightly beyond, the short-sample critical current, resulting in generated magnetic fields of 2.2 and 3.8 T and time constants of 5 and 55 s, respectively. When initiating a quench deliberately by excessive heating or spontaneously at their limiting currents, the coils entirely switch to the normal state almost instantly, thus requiring no quench protection system. Design, manufacturing and test experiences with the two super stable coils are reported and their use and design constraints for certain applications discussed.


ABSTRACT Overexpression of human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) occurs in 20–30% of invasive breast cancers. Monoclonal antibody therapy is effective in treating HER2-driven mammary carcinomas, but its utility is limited by high costs, side effects and development of resistance. Active vaccination may represent a safer, more effective and cheaper alternative, although the induction of strong and durable autoantibody responses is hampered by immune-tolerogenic mechanisms. Using a novel virus-like particle (VLP) based vaccine platform we show that directional, high-density display of human HER2 on the surface of VLPs, allows induction of therapeutically potent anti-HER2 autoantibody responses. Prophylactic vaccination reduced spontaneous development of mammary carcinomas by 50%-100% in human HER2 transgenic mice and inhibited the growth of HER2-positive tumors implanted in wild-type mice. The HER2-VLP vaccine shows promise as a new cost-effective modality for prevention and treatment of HER2-positive cancer. The VLP platform may represent an effective tool for development of vaccines against other non-communicable diseases.


Since the original UN General Assembly 'special session' for HIV/AIDS, there has been a proliferation of health-related high-level meetings (HLMs), including three for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and a 2019 HLM on universal health coverage that was closely aligned to the NCD framework. This paper attempts to assess the impact of these meetings in terms of funding allocations, domestic NCD policy implementation, as well as the level of international engagement with the HLMs by reviewing attendance data and records of statements ('interventions') made by country delegations. In contrast to HIV/AIDS, whilst NCDs have enjoyed a marked rise in international political exposure and high-level political commitments, these have not always translated into national policy implementation or greater funding allocations. This is true even for countries that have engaged most deeply with HLMs. These findings should give pause to NCD advocacy groups that expend substantial energy in calling for further high-level political commitments and highlight the need to focus support on the translation of commitments into sustainably funded action.


Researched and written in the shadow of the recently completed Three Gorges Dam, this dissertation begins with an Introduction that describes the earliest mythology of this mountainous region, which is said to have been hand-hewn by the deity-civil servant Yu the Great, so that the waters of a cataclysmic flood could drain to the sea. This proto-governmental response to natural disaster stands at the core of all later accounts of the Gorges, helping to form an aesthetic tradition that views the landscape as not only a site of trauma but also a surface created through and primed for physical alteration. Chapter 1, Tears in the Void: Traces of the Past in Du Fu's Three Gorges Poetry, focuses on this tradition as manifested in the interplay of the personal and the national at a moment of grave political crisis, the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763), when the iconic poet Du Fu (712-770) sought refuge in the wilds of the Gorges. In the strikingly fragmented verse that he wrote during this period, Du's fevered visions fail to coalesce into a stable landscape in the monumental mode of Yu the Great. Instead, they flicker across the surface of the Gorges in the form of fleeting, hallucinatory traces (ji) of a fractured personal, cultural and spatial order. Chapter 2, Reinscribing the Trace: The Three Gorges in the Song Dynasty, shows how a new genre of travel diaries and essays (ji) from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) transforms Du Fu's traces, stabilizing and re-inscribing them as touristic landmarks through physical and literary practices of marking, recording and verifying. The authors of these texts, writing barely a generation after the cataclysmic loss of the northern half of the empire to an ethnically non-Chinese dynasty, were acutely aware of the vulnerability of the landscape as cultural topography. For them, Du Fu offered not only a sympathetic model of the loyal minister in southern exile, but also a set of geographical and historical associations that elevated the Gorges to a landscape imbued with powerful moral significance. Chapter 3, Specters of Realism and the Painter's Gaze in Jia Zhangke's Still Life, turns to a new aesthetic of fragmentation that, while reminiscent of Du Fu's, is finely attuned to the contemporary pressures of global capital and national development. Focusing on Jia Zhangke's 2006 film Still Life (Sanxia haoren), this chapter explores how The Three Gorges, now on the brink of inundation, serve as the ideal venue for Jia's disassembly and recombination of earlier artistic forms--portraiture, Socialist Realism and Chinese landscape painting, as well as Tang poetry and contemporary pop music--in a work that reveals precisely how cultural practices work trans-historically to constitute this particular landscape. While pre-modern artistic forms serve as occasional components of Jia's eclectic hybrid style, they are the very warp and weft of the American-based Chinese artist Yun-fei Ji's painting practice, the subject of Chapter 4, Ink in the Wound: Trauma and The Three Gorges in the Painting of Yun-fei Ji. In his Three Gorges paintings Ji self-consciously manipulates spatial and temporal codes borrowed from classical Chinese painting to depict the dam project as a violent act of physical inscription and traumatic displacement. This chapter details how Ji imagines the landscape of The Three Gorges as a site of traumatic experience: both a raw wound that opens onto past traumas, especially the Cultural Revolution, and a frame for the physical and psychic consequences of the dam project.


Although reinforcement learning has been successfully applied in many domains in recent years, we still lack agents that can systematically generalize. While relational inductive biases that fit a task can improve generalization of RL agents, these biases are commonly hard-coded directly in the agent's neural architecture. In this work, we show that we can incorporate relational inductive biases, encoded in the form of relational graphs, into agents. Based on this insight, we propose Grid-to-Graph (GTG), a mapping from grid structures to relational graphs that carry useful spatial relational inductive biases when processed through a Relational Graph Convolution Network (R-GCN). We show that, with GTG, R-GCNs generalize better both in terms of in-distribution and out-of-distribution compared to baselines based on Convolutional Neural Networks and Neural Logic Machines on challenging procedurally generated environments and MinAtar. Furthermore, we show that GTG produces agents that can jointly reason over observations and environment dynamics encoded in knowledge bases.


The worlds best coffee substitute that is heart healthy and is more like coffee than anything else on the market.


For more than 20 years, the development community has claimed that monitoring and evaluation helps projects achieve their objectives. This study uses data from 1,300 World Bank projects evaluated between 2008 and 2014 to investigate this suggested link between the quality of monitoring and evaluation and project performance. The propensity score matching results indicate that the quality of monitoring and evaluation is significantly and positively associated with project outcome as institutionally measured at the World Bank. This positive relationship holds when controlling for project manager identity, and is robust to various specification choices. Through a systematic text analysis of the narrative produced by the Independent Evaluation Group to justify its monitoring and evaluation quality rating, the study shows that there are common markers of good quality monitoring and evaluation, such as: clear institutional setup and division of labor around monitoring and evaluation activities; simple monitoring and evaluation framework that is well aligned with clients' existing monitoring and evaluation systems; good integration with operational tasks; and a system that can generate regular and timely reporting, and that is used during and after lending.


AIM
To compare the measured surface temperature of variable size ensembles of cells heated by intracellular magnetic fluid hyperthermia with heat diffusion model predictions.

MATERIALS & METHODS
Starch-coated Bionized NanoFerrite (Micromod Partikeltechnologie GmbH, Rostock, Germany) iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles were loaded into cultured DU145 prostate cancer cells. Cell pellets of variable size were treated with alternating magnetic fields. The surface temperature of the pellets was measured in situ and the associated cytotoxicity was determined by clonogenic survival assay.

RESULTS & CONCLUSION
For a given intracellular nanoparticle concentration, a critical minimum number of cells was required for cytotoxic hyperthermia. Above this threshold, cytotoxicity increased with increasing cell number. The measured surface temperatures were consistent with those predicted by a heat diffusion model that ignores intercellular thermal barriers. These results suggest a minimum tumor volume threshold of approximately 1 mm(3), below which nanoparticle-mediated heating is unlikely to be effective as the sole cytotoxic agent.


Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process is a critical new technology to planarize the wafer surface aided by the combined force of the chemical etching and mechanical polishing. In this process, defectivity due to scratch generation has become more and more important as it influences the wafer product quality, throughput and cost significantly with the technology developments into sub 100 nanometer technology nodes. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the effects of particle agglomeration on scratch generation and predict the scratch generation probability in CMP process. A mechanical model considering smooth wafer surface and varying height pad asperities for CMP process will be selected. The indentation depth is taken as a measurement of the scratch depth. The probability of such indentation depth of the scratch is simulated with evolving pad surface topography and changing slurry particle size distribution. Diffusion Limited Agglomeration (DLA) and Reaction Limited Agglomeration (RLA) model will be developed to describe the slurry particle size distribution evolution. Predictions for scratch generation probability are compared with those two different agglomeration models.


Recently high grade pipeline project have been planned in hostile environment like landslide in mountain area, liquefaction in reclaimed land or the frost heave in Polar Regions. Geohazards bring large scale ground deformation and effect on the varied pipeline to cause large deformation. Therefore, strain capacity is important for the pipeline and strain based design is also needed to keep gas transportation project in safe. High grade steel pipe for linepipe tends to have higher yield to tensile (Y/T) ratio and it has been investigated that the lower Y/T ratio of the material improves strain capacity in buckling and tensile limit state. In onshore pipeline project, pipe usually transported in 12 or 18m each and jointed in the field. Girth weld (GW) is indispensable so strength matching of girth weld towards pipe body is important.
 In this study strain capacity of Grade X70 high strain pipe with size of 36" OD and 23mm WT was investigated with two types of experiments. One was a pipe bending test with whole pipe. The length of the specimen was approximately 8m and GW was made in the middle of joint length. A fixed internal pressure was applied during the bending test. Actual pipe situation in work was simulated and both circumferential and longitudinal stress occurred in this test.
 The other test was curved wide plate (CWP) test. In both tests, test pipes were cut and welded using GTAW in the first two layers and GMAW for the subsequent passes. Welding wire of TG-S62 and MG-S58P were used for GTAW and GMAW respectively to achieve over-matching girth weld considering the pipe body strength. Elliptical EDM notch was installed in the GW HAZ as simulated weld defect.
 In pipe bending test, buckling occurred at the intrados at 300 mm apart from the GW. 2D average compressive strain at buckling was 3.59% and this high compressive strain was considered to derive from the high strain capacity of this pipes. After the buckling, deformation concentrated to the buckling wrinkle. Test pipe broke at 35.5 degrees of pipe end rotation and the location was in base metal at the extrados opposite to the buckling wrinkle. The HAZ notch opened and CTOD was 1.44 mm and the global strain in 2D length average strain was 7.8%.
 In CWP test, tensile strain simply got large and pipe finally broke at global strain of 9.6% and CTOD of 15 mm. The break location was the HAZ notch. There was a significant difference in CTOD growth in HAZ between two test types. Conditions and factors that effect to these differences are argued in this paper.


As online shopping becomes to be popular, the recommender system in e-commerce sites is an increasingly popular business tool to increase sales. Researchers and industry practitioners are looking for all possible approaches to improve recommendation performance. Even a minor improvement could lead to a big business return.Traditional approaches of recommender systems include content-based methods and collaborative filtering methods. For example, if a user viewed some cameras in the website, the system learns that the user is interested in cameras and recommends more similar items to the user. Yet it might not match with the user's true purchase intention. In real-world applications, recommender systems could leverage more information from the user, both information within a single session and information across sessions. To solve this problem, we propose to investigate the session-aware recommender system in e-commerce. Such system can understand a user's short-term goal and long-term preference, in order to recommend appropriate items accordingly. We first explore how to integrate the complementary information (e.g. the user's purchase information, search information and so on) within a single session to build a textit{unified recommender system}. We analyze the available information for the unified model, including the user's history-related information, the search-related information and the product's marketing-related information. Three unified models are proposed and compared to integrate different pieces of information.To go beyond making recommendations within a single session, we then study how to make better recommendations across sessions. To make recommendations based on a user's previous behavior in earlier sessions, we need to understand how users make purchase decisions across sessions. Earlier research in economics and marketing indicates that a consumer usually makes purchase decision(s) based on the product's marginal net utility (i.e., the marginal utility minus the product price). Utility is defined as the satisfaction or pleasure a user gets when purchasing the corresponding product. A rational consumer chooses the product to purchase in order to maximize the total net utility. To better match users' purchase decisions in the real world, we explore how to recommend products with the highest marginal net utility in e-commerce sites. Inspired by the Cobb-Douglas utility function in consumer behavior theory, we propose a novel utility-based recommendation framework. The framework can be utilized to revamp a family of existing recommendation algorithms. To further incorporate the time interval between sessions into the system, we propose and study a new problem: how to recommend the right product at the right time? We adapt the proportional hazards model in survival analysis and propose the new opportunity model in e-commerce. The new model estimates the joint probability of a user making a follow-up purchase of a particular product at a particular time. This joint purchase probability can be leveraged by recommender systems in various scenarios, including a zero-query pull-based scenario or a proactive push-based email promotion scenario. We evaluate the soundness of our models with multiple metrics. Experimental results with a real-world e-commerce website (shop.com) show that they have decent predictability of the user's purchase behavior within a session and across sessions. In addition, the models significantly improve the conversion rate in pull-based systems and the user satisfaction/utility in push-based systems.In this dissertation, we first introduce the motivation of the work.Secondly, we report some state-of-art related work of this topic.Thirdly, models are proposed to tackle the problem, followed by the experimental results. Then we summarize our contribution in both the research field of recommender systems and the e-commerce domain.


Author(s): Kaneko, Nana | Advisor(s): Wong, Deborah | Abstract: The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident that struck Northeast Japan on March 11, 2011 (3.11) prompted an array of local, national, and global musical responses. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork primarily in Sendai, Japan, I examine how musical performance serves as a community building mechanism in the wake of a disaster with a focus on music's place in earthquake and tsunami recovery efforts. I treat music as a cultural tool to navigate towards post-disaster recovery, demonstrate post-disaster solidarity (albeit in sometimes problematically self-fulfilling and exploitative ways), and begin to rebuild and restructure post-disaster identifications, normalcy, and livelihood. I outline musical responses to 3.11 from a variety of different angles including songs that have become anthems of the disaster as representations of recovery and solidarity, songs newly composed shortly after 3.11, the revival and development of localized folk performing arts and matsuri festivals, musical activities by outsiders for disaster victims, staged performances that showcase disaster survivors, and musical objects that help prolong memories of 3.11. I highlight the issues and challenges that have arisen with each type of musical response, while also showcasing the ways that these activities are contributing to the region's recovery. By putting these activities in conversation with each other and by demonstrating how they interconnect and address varying facets of post-disaster recovery, I aim to show how musical performance and recovery in all its forms from personal, local, cultural, social, economic, and national, are interconstitutive. I offer a broad yet detailed framework of the types of musical support activities developed in response to 3.11, examine the carefully constructed structures of each type of support, and show how they abide with cultural and national expectations of recovery. I suggest ways that the cultural particularities of post-3.11 musical activities could be reinterpreted and applied by readers to help rebuild and sustain the musical cultures of their own communities in the event of a catastrophe, and consider what "hope" means in the aftermath of tragedy.


Objective: The objective was to evaluate the validity and interrater reliability of a video-based posture observation method for the major body segment angles during asymmetric lifting tasks. Background: Observational methods have been widely used as an awkward-posture assessment tool for ergonomics studies. Previous research proposed a video-based posture observation method with estimation of major segment angles during lifting tasks. However, it was limited to symmetric lifting tasks. The current study extended this method to asymmetric lifting tasks and investigated the validity and the interrater reliability. Method: Various asymmetric lifting tasks were performed in a laboratory while a side-view video camera recorded the lift, and the body segment angles were measured directly by a motion tracking system. For this study, 10 raters estimated seven major segment angles using a customized program that played back the video recording, thus allowing users to enter segment angles. The validity of estimated segment angles was evaluated in relation to measured segment angles. Interrater reliability was assessed among the raters. Results: For all the segment angles except trunk lateral bending, the estimated segment angles were strongly correlated with the measured segment angles (r > .8), and the intraclass correlation coefficient was greater than 0.75. Conclusion: The proposed observational method was able to provide a robust estimation of major segment angles for asymmetric lifting tasks based on side-view video clips. The estimated segment angles were consistent among raters. Application: This method can be used for assessing posture during asymmetric lifting tasks. It also supports developing a video-based rapid joint loading estimation method.


Optimal perioperative fluid management in pediatric patients entails a knowledge of the effects of preoperative fasting, perioperative third space losses, and hemorrhage on the patient's fluid compartments. We explain which of the various available intravenous fluids should be used to correct various fluid and electrolyte losses that may occur. The authors also review techniques for limiting homologous transfusion requirements and discuss certain complications associated with blood transfusion.


UK energy policy contains ambitious goals for increased deployment of renewable energy technologies (RETs), but concern remains about the potential of local opposition to obstruct proposed developments. Despite emerging academic consensus that characterizing opposition to RET siting as NIMBYism is problematic, the discourse remains strong in popular debate. This article responds to calls for sociological research on both ascriptions of NIMBYism and the use of deficit models. Through an analysis of interviews with key actors in the renewable energy industry, we explore the ways in which a discourse of NIMBYism is evident in their descriptions of local wind farm opponents. We conceptualize this discourse as embodying an array of deficit models of the public and public knowledge. This is significant not only because developers' constructions of publics inform their modes of engagement with them, but also because they may influence public responses themselves.


OBJECTIVE
In previous studies detection of coronary artery calcification (CAC) with low-dose ungated MDCT performed for lung cancer screening has been compared with detection with cardiac CT. We evaluated the interscan agreement of CAC scores from two consecutive low-dose ungated MDCT examinations.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS
The subjects were 584 participants in the screening segment of a lung cancer screening trial who underwent two low-dose ungated MDCT examinations within 4 months (mean, 3.1 +/- 0.6 months) of a baseline CT examination. Agatston score, volume score, and calcium mass score were measured by two observers. Interscan agreement of stratification of participants into four Agatston score risk categories (0, 1-100, 101-400, > 400) was assessed with kappa values. Interscan variability and 95% repeatability limits were calculated for all three calcium measures and compared by repeated measures analysis of variance.

RESULTS
An Agatston score > 0 was detected in 443 baseline CT examinations (75.8%). Interscan agreement of the four risk categories was good (kappa = 0.67). The Agatston scores were in the same risk category in both examinations in 440 cases (75.3%); 578 participants (99.0%) had scores differing a maximum of one category. Furthermore, mean interscan variability ranged from 61% for calcium volume score to 71% for Agatston score (p < 0.01). A limitation of this study was that no comparison of CAC scores between low-dose ungated CT and the reference standard ECG-gated CT was performed.

CONCLUSION
Cardiovascular disease risk stratification with low-dose ungated MDCT is feasible and has good interscan agreement of stratification of participants into Agatston score risk categories. High mean interscan variability precludes the use of this technique for monitoring CAC scores for individual patients.


: 3-0 [4-0 (beta-D-mannopyranosyl)-alpha-L-rhamnopyranosyl]-beta-allyl-D- galactopyranoside with acrylamide, a new synthetic antigen possessing the narrow specificity of Salmonella O-factor 3, was found to protect mice, when introduced into the animals by multiple intraperitoneal injections, from the action of the live culture of Salmonella anatum and the toxic doses of its endotoxin.


Here we present current global epidemiological and microbiological trends for typhoid fever, as well as describe antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance mechanisms of S. Typhi. The data on examining 299 S. Typhi isolates collected in 2005—2018 in the Russian Federation were analyzed from the Russian S. Typhi Reference Center. It was found that S. Typhi population consisted of the isolates with different resistance phenotypes and mechanisms as well as genetic heterogeneity. Moreover, antimicrobial susceptibility was detected in as low as 10.4% S. Typhi strains, whereas 89.6% isolates showed fluoroquinolone resistance (including 7.3% high-level resistance) and 3.0% — multidrug resistance to am-picillin, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones. All strains preserved susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins and azithromycin. Fluoroquinolone low-level resistance in S. Typhi was due to single nucleotide substitutions in the gyrA: Asp87Asn (78.7%) Ser83Tyr (5.0%) and Ser83Phe (3.2%). In addition, a plasmid-mediated low-level fluoroquinolone resistance (qnrS) was found in one isolate. In contrast, a fluoroquinolone high-level resistance in S. Typhi was due to accumulation of three single nucleotide substitutions in the genes gyrA (Asp87Asn+Ser83Phe) andparC (Ser80Ile). In multidrug resistant S. Typhi isolates, pHCMl plasmids of incompatibility group IncHI1B(R27) (consisted of bla TEM.1 , catA1, dfrA7 and tetB) and single nucleotide substitutions Ser83Tyr or Asp87Asn in gene gyrA were detected. The data of phylogenetic reconstruction based on the analysis of core singlenucleotide variations among examined and previously sequenced S. Typhi genomes, demonstrated that more than 80.0% of S. Typhi isolated in Russia were referred to the Asian genotype as they belonged to subclade 4.3.1 (by Wong et al.) or dominant H58 clade (H58 haplotype by Roumagnac et al.). More than 60.0% isolates in this dominant phylogenetic group possessed a fluoroquinolone low-level resistance due to gyrA Asp87Asn. Less than 20.0% of S. Typhi strains isolated in Russia phylogenetically belonged to the subclades other than 4.3.1 (non-H58) and differed from the major S. Typhi population by lacked antibiotic resistance or exerted fluoroquinolone resistance due to gyrA Ser83Phe. The study data allowed to expand our understanding on genetic diversity in S. Typhi strains isolated recently and pinpoint features of phylogenetic structure for S. Typhi population in the Russian Federation.


On June 4, 2015, in Yale-New Haven Hospital v. Nicholls, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA") allows state courts to posthumously amend qualified domestic relations orders ("QDROs") to divide the pension plan benefits of a deceased plan participant. The Second Circuit joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in allowing QDROs to be posthumously amended. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in contrast, has ruled that upon a plan participant's death, benefits cannot be reassigned through the amendment of a QDRO. This Comment argues that the Second Circuit's interpretation of ERISA is correct. To rule otherwise would allow for externalities outside of a party's control to have significantly negative consequences for substantive rights. Furthermore, the allowance of posthumous QDROs is most aligned with the express goals of ERISA.


Abstract. Climate is critically affected by aerosols, which alter cloud lifecycles and precipitation distribution through radiative and microphysical effects. In this study, aerosol and cloud property datasets from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer), onboard the Aqua satellite, and surface observations, including aerosol concentrations, raindrop size distribution, and meteorological parameters, were used to statistically quantify the effects of aerosols on
low-level warm-cloud microphysics and drizzle over northern Taiwan during
multiple fall seasons (from 15 October to 30 November of 2005–2017). Our results
indicated that northwestern Taiwan, which has several densely populated
cities, is dominated by low-level clouds (e.g., warm, thin, and broken
clouds) during the fall season. The observed effects of aerosols on warm
clouds indicated aerosol indirect effects (i.e., increased aerosol loading
caused a decrease in cloud effective radius (CER)), an increase in cloud
optical thickness, an increase in cloud fraction, and a decrease in cloud-top temperature under a fixed cloud water path. Quantitatively,
aerosol–cloud interactions (ACI=-∂lnCER∂lnα|CWP, changes in CER relative to changes in aerosol amounts) were 0.07 for our research domain and varied
between 0.09 and 0.06 in the surrounding remote (i.e., ocean) and polluted
(i.e., land) areas, respectively, indicating aerosol indirect effects were
stronger in the remote area. From the raindrop size distribution analysis,
high aerosol loading resulted in a decreased frequency of drizzle events,
redistribution of cloud water to more numerous and smaller droplets, and
reduced collision–coalescence rates. However, during light rain (≤1 mm h−1), high aerosol concentrations drove raindrops towards smaller droplet sizes and increased the appearance of drizzle drops. This study used long-term surface and satellite data to determine aerosol variations in northern Taiwan, effects on clouds and precipitation, and observational strategies for future research on aerosol–cloud–precipitation interactions.


A fully pedigreed population based on the sixth generation of GIFT (Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia) was established in Malaysia in 2002. Progeny were generated in two spawning seasons, 2002 and 2003. A number of statistical models were fitted to the data collected throughout the study, either to estimate breeding values (EBVs), variance components, or response to selection. Parents used in the spawning season of 2003 were either selected as having high estimated breeding values for live weight (LW) at approx. 7 months of age, or as having EBVs as close as possible to the average. In this way a Selection and a Control line were created, respectively. Two production environments were used to grow-out the progeny. At approx. 7 months of age females' live weight was 84 per cent that of males, whereas live weight in cages was 83 per cent of that in ponds. The heritability estimated from the animal variance component was 0.31 (s.e. 0.069), whereas the maternal and common environment effect estimated from the dam variance component was 0.15 (s.e. 0.031). Response to selection was estimated by three methods. Expressed as a percentage of the overall least squares mean for LW in the population, the response was about 10 per cent. The results are discussed in relation to other work. It was concluded that there was still additive genetic variance in the GIFT population established in Malaysia, and that it was capable of further response to selection. The issue of genotype by environment interaction is briefly discussed, and it was concluded that there was no justification for the conduct of separate genetic improvement programs in cage and in pond environments.


Objective : To compare the immediate effect of pranic healing, a non-touch non pharmacological method of treatment, in chronic musculoskeletal pain with a placebo session of random hand movements. Design: A self control single blind study. Patients were blind folded with an eye band on both days of the healing and placebo session. Setting: Patients admitted for the treatment of chronic pain in the residential health home of Vivekananda Kendra Yoga Research Foundation, Bangalore, South India. Subjects: 50 Patients with chronic non-malignant continuous musculoskeletal pain of more than 6 months duration. Group A (N=25) had placebo on first day and group B (N=25) had pranic healing on first day. Intervention: Pranic healing of 25 minutes compared to placebo session of 25 minutes carried out on 2 consecutive days. Main outcome measures: Pain Analogue scale and physiological measures of sympathetic activity namely heart rate, respiratory rate, galvanic skin conductance, blood pressure and finger plethysmography. Results: Highly significant reduction in pain and sympathetic activity in pranic healing group (student's ttest p <0.001) and non-significant change in placebo group. Multivariate discriminant analysis followed by Wilks' Lambda criteria for significance showed pranic healing is the best in both groups A and B. Conclusion: Pranic healing when performed in the standardized method by a trained healer is effective in reducing continuous chronic pain of musculoskeletal origin, within 25 minutes as compared to placebo random hand movements which appears similar to the standard method of pranic healing. Healing through different procedures of balancing the subtle energy system in the energy body has been practiced as an art in ancient cultures of China and India for thousands of years. According to the Chinese system of acupuncture, acupressure and qigong therapy, blocks occur in the channels of flow of this subtle energy called 'chi' or 'qi' resulting in illness. The aim of therapy is to restore the uniform balanced flow of 'chi' in all the channels. Similarly the Indian system of yoga deals with this imbalance of energy, called 'prana', through breathing practices and meditation While the system of spiritual healing and Therapeutic Touch is said to correct these imbalances through touch and prayer, the School of Pranic Healing in India claims to correct these imbalances in the energy body by a non-touch method. Investigations are underway to detect the presence of this energy which is different from all known physical electromagnetic energy fields. Bio-electrography is an attempt to get photographs of this energy field. Chouhan and Rajaram in 1986 3.4 standardized and measured the corona images of fingers obtained on a background of high frequency high voltage electrical fields. They analyzed the bio-electrography pictures of 246 subjects with cancer of the cervix uterus and defined a malignancy specific pattern for early detection of cancer. Richard Pavak 5 presented the beneficial effect of 'shen' a specific form of qigong therapy in the chronic pain of dysmenorrhoea, migraine and chronic low back pain syndrome. Jia Zin and Jia Jinding 6 demonstrated the amount and density of callus formation to be significantly higher in emitted 'qi' group compared to control group in experimentally induced fractures in rabbits. Loh, L, et al 7 found the benefits of acupuncture comparable to medical treatment in migraine and tension headache. Pranic healing (PH), standardized and taught by Master Chao Kok Sui 8 from the Philippines is a procedure of manipulating this pranic energy body which is felt and or seen as an aura or energy field around the physical body. Present study has been designed to validate the immediate effect of a pranic healing session in chronic pain through a self-controlled design. Materials 50 subjects with chronic pain who had volunteered to undergo a non-pharmacological yoga therapy inpatient program were taken up for the study on first two days of their stay before they started practicing yoga. Patients with chronic continuous pain of non-malignant cause who satisfied the criteria for chronic pain (Melzack) 9 of more than six months duration were included in the study. All 50 patients had pain of musculoskeletal origin. The causes of pain were, pain at rest due to chronic tension headache, low back pain, knee pain (osteoarthritis), frozen shoulder, cervical spondylitis, arthralgia in multiple joints and generalized muscular pain (table 1). Patients who were getting intermittent episodic pain or pain only during activity were not included in the study.


This paper introduces a simple algebraic limiting loop proximity ((L/sup 2/P)) model to describe magnetic hysteresis. With only four parameters, it has low computational cost and reduced mathematical complexity, thus permitting a fast numerical implementation and simple parameter estimation procedure. The paper presents simulation results and discusses the model performance in terms of its capacity to represent common nonlinearities of the magnetic hysteresis phenomenon. The model avoids the heavy computational burden that results when magnetic hysteresis is included in computer-aided tools for electromagnetic devices and circuit analysis - for example, when hysteresis is combined with the finite-element method. The model also avoids the need to use repeated numerical approximation steps to adjust traditional models to experimental data.


Field experiments were conducted in Aydin province in 1998 and 1999 to determine the economic threshold (ET) using florasulam + flumetsulam, 2,4-D amine, thifensulfuron methyl + tribenuron-methyl, and tribenuron-methyl for wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum L.) in wheat. The effect of wild radish density (1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 plants m-2) on wheat yield was investigated using an adjacent plot design with 4 fields. For each weed density, yield was compared with that in the adjacent weed-free control plot. The grain yield in wild radish-free wheat was 4079 kg ha-1 in 1998, 4369 kg ha-1 in 1999 and 4224 kg ha-1 averaged over the 2 years. Results over the 2 years showed that the ET of wild radish in wheat varied from 1.8 to 2.0 plants m-2 depending on the herbicide applied. The lowest ET value was calculated for 2,4-D amine and the highest for florasulam + flumetsulam. It is therefore concluded that wild radish in wheat should be controlled by herbicides if the density is between 1.8 and 2.0 plants m-2. Below this level, a certain amount of damage and the presence of weeds can be tolerated, thus minimizing herbicide use.


Objective— To establish a registry of patients with diabetes and determine the point prevalence of diabetes in the Mississippi Choctaw Indians at the end of September 1989. Research Design and Methods— A survey of diabetes cases was conducted, using the NDDG criteria for diagnosis with comparison to U.S. rates determined from the 1979–1981 NHIS. IHS-supported hospital and outpatient clinics serving the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi were the setting. Medical charts of patients on the computer record of outpatient visits seen for diabetes and laboratory lists of patients who had elevated blood glucose levels in 1988 were reviewed. Results— The age-adjusted prevalence of 163.2/1000 population was 6.5 times (95% CI 4.3–9.8) the U.S. rate. The prevalence of diabetes in the Choctaw Indians was significantly higher than the U.S. rates for all age-groups except for those <15 yr of age. Conclusions— Intervention programs are urgently needed to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes and its complications in this southeastern tribe. The registry system is being used to gather information on the prevalence and incidence of diabetic complications and associated risk factors to guide programs.


This paper attempts to determine whether exchange-listed hedge funds experience longer lifetimes than non-listed funds, even after factors known to affect survival, such as size and performance, are considered. The Kaplan-Meier estimator is used to compare survival times of listed and non-listed funds. The Cox proportional hazards model is used to make the same comparison, but by controlling for additional factors. The accelerated failure time (AFT) regression model is used to estimate the median survival time of hedge funds, based on values of explanatory variables. Listed hedge funds tend to be larger and adopt more conservative investment strategies than non-listed funds. Listed funds tend to survive roughly two years longer on average than non-listed funds, and this difference in longevity is persistent even after controlling for factors known to affect survival. Finally, we find that the failure rate of listed funds is substantially lower than that of non-listed funds, but only during the first five years of life.


The Flora Europaea organisation List of contributors Preface Introduction List of basic and standard floras Synopsis of families Key to families of angiospermae Explanatory notes on the text Text Appendices Index Maps.


Ned Epps (Peace Corps Volunteer; Program Analyst, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) will discuss his experiential learning through his work in the Peace Corps and beyond


In this article, we propose analytic review (AR) as a solution to the problem of misreporting statistical results in psychological science. AR requires authors submitting manuscripts for publication to also submit the data file and syntax used during analyses. Regular reviewers or statistical experts then review reported analyses in order to verify that the analyses reported were actually conducted and that the statistical values are accurately reported. We begin by describing the problem of misreporting in psychology and introduce the basic AR process. We then highlight both primary and secondary benefits of adopting AR and describe different permutations of the AR system, each of which has its own strengths and limitations. We conclude by attempting to dispel three anticipated concerns about AR: that it will increase the workload placed on scholars, that it will infringe on the traditional peer-review process, and that it will hurt the image of the discipline of psychology. Although implementing AR will add one more step to the bureaucratic publication process, we believe it can be implemented in an efficient manner that would greatly assist in decreasing the frequency and impact of misreporting while also providing secondary benefits in other domains of scientific integrity.