In the production of bioethanol in Asia, developed countries such as Japan have the problems of highcost and a lack of resources, while Southeast Asian countries have substantial biomass production andexport potential. The purpose of this study is to optimize the international supply of bioethanol in East Asia.A linear model is developed to estimate costs, energy consumption, and carbon emissions in three processes:cultivation, conversion, and international transport. In order to consider the regional characteristics of pro-ducing countries, biomass price, electric power generation, fertilizer usage, agricultural machine usage areincorporated into the model. Optimization based on linear programming is carried out with two objectivefunctions: minimizing cost and minimizing carbon emissions. For each objective function, the amount ofsupply, economic efficiency, and carbon emissions are quantitatively analyzed in three cases. One is domes-tic supply case where each country supplies bioethanol to domestic market. Another is Asia supply casewhere Asian countries supply bioethanol with international supply. The other is Asia-Brazil supply casewhere Brazil is included in bioethanol supply in Asia. The average supply cost of bioethanol in Asia supplycase with the objective function of minimizing cost is a quarter of that in domestic supply case. The carbonemissions reduction increases by international supply. Brazil has more than 50 % share in bioethanol pro-duction in both objective functions and contributes to the reduction of carbon emissions.Key WordsBioethanol, International transport, Linear programming, Regional characteristics, Economic analysis


l-Glutamate and l-aspartate are the natural nitrogen sources preferred by the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus. In the vegetative mycelium NAD-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (NAD-GDH) and glutamine synthetase (GS) were both present, but the highest level of these enzymes was found in the fruiting body. NAD-GDH was derepressed by ammonia and repressed by higher concentrations of l-glutamate. Otherwise, the level of the enzyme in mycelium was independent of the nitrogen source. GS was derepressed by ammonia, l-glutamate, l-aspartate and l-alanine. Repression of GS was observed in the presence of l-glutamine, l-arginine, nitrate, urea and low concentrations of ammonia. An increase in the ratio of glucose to nitrogen resulted in a decrease in the level of GS in the mycelium. The K
m values of NAD-GDH for 2-oxoglutarate, ammonia, NADH, l-glutamate and NAD+ were 2·9 mM, 3·3 mM, 11 μM, 0·18 mM and 62 μM, respectively. The K
m values of GS for l-glutamate and ammonia were 2·5 and 0·27 mM, respectively. The repression of GS and derepression of NAD-GDH in the presence of low concentrations of ammonia together with glutamate or aspartate could be explained by an inhibition or repression of some amino acid permeases by ammonia. The absence of NADP-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase and glutamate synthase together with the apparent mode of regulation of NAD-GDH and GS synthesis suggest that P. ostreatus assimilates ammonia via GS and NAD-GDH. However, a dissimilatory role of NAD-GDH in the deamination of l-glutamate, due to its very low K
m for l-glutamate, is not excluded.


A modelling framework is developed to determine the joint economic and environmental net benefits of alternative land allocation strategies. Estimates of community preferences for preservation of natural land, derived from a choice modelling study, are used as input to a model of agricultural production in an optimisation framework. The trade‐offs between agricultural production and environmental protection are analysed using the sugar industry of the Herbert River district of north Queensland as an example. Spatially‐differentiated resource attributes and the opportunity costs of natural land determine the optimal trade‐offs between production and conservation for a range of sugar prices.


Abstract Sea-level rise due to climate change is clearly an important problem. This paper uses game theory in conjunction with discounting to explore strategies by which governments might encourage pre-disaster relocation by residents living in areas at high risk of flooding due to sea-level rise. We find that offering a subsidy (e.g., a partial buyout) can be effective if government has a significantly lower discount rate than residents. We also present extensions to our model, exploring the use of a fixed annual benefit after relocation (instead of a one-time subsidy), and hyperbolic instead of standard exponential discounting. Numerical sensitivity analysis elucidates many important factors affecting the timing of anticipatory relocation, since for example relocating too soon may be costly to both residents and government if flooding risk is increasing only gradually. This conceptual model also provides a foundation for future studies that quantify the model with more realistic parameter values (e.g., realistic estimates of flooding probabilities), and alternative behavioral models of resident decision making.


Abstract Aims: To examine the comorbidity and economic burden among moderate-to-severe psoriasis (PsO) and/or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients in the US Department of Defense (DoD) population. Materials and methods: This retrospective cohort claims analysis was conducted using DoD data from November 2010 to October 2015. Adult patients with ≥2 diagnoses of PsO and/or PsA (cases) were identified, and the first diagnosis date from November 2011 to October 2014 was defined as the index date. Patients were considered moderate-to-severe if they had ≥1 non-topical systemic therapy or phototherapy during the 12 months pre- or 1 month post-index date. Patients without a PsO/PsA diagnosis during the study period (controls) were matched to cases on a 10:1 ratio based on age, sex, region, and index year; the index date was randomly selected. One-to-one propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to compare study outcomes in the first year post-index date, including healthcare resource utilization (HRU), costs, and comorbidity incidence. Results: A total of 7,249 cases and 72,490 controls were identified. The mean age was 48.1 years. After PSM, comorbidity incidence was higher among cases, namely dyslipidemia (18.3% vs 13.5%, p < .001), hypertension (13.8% vs 8.7%, p < .001), and obesity (8.8% vs 6.1%, p < .001). Case patients had significantly higher HRU and costs, including inpatient ($2,196 vs $1,642; p < .0016), ambulatory ($8,804 vs 4,642; p < .001), emergency room ($432 vs $350; p < .001), pharmacy ($6,878 vs $1,160; p < .001), and total healthcare costs ($18,311 vs $7,795; p < .001). Limitations: Claims data are collected for payment purposes; therefore, such data may have limitations for clinical research. Conclusions: During follow-up, DoD patients with moderate-to-severe PsO and/or PsA experienced significantly higher HRU, cost, and comorbidity burden.


Background: High-grade evidence for recommendations about the appropriate lag-time from implantation to utilization of the catheter regarding urgent PD is lacking. The objective of this study was to compare immediate and delayed utilization of the Tenckhoff catheter in urgent PD. Methods: 160 patients beginning urgent automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) were randomized into two groups of 80 patients each. In the immediate utilization group (I), the catheter was used immediately after the surgical implantation; in the delayed utilization group (D), the catheter began to be used 3-5 days after the surgical implantation. The catheter function and complications in the two groups were compared after a one-year follow-up. Results: Patients in I and D were aged 42.5±18.5 and 49.2±19.6 years and their BMI was 25±2.5 and 25±3 kg/m2, respectively. The lag-time from implantation to utilization of the catheter was shorter in I (4±2 h) than in D (79.5±35.7 h; p < 0.01). Both groups had similar frequency of overall complications: 10 patients (12.5%) in I and 12 patients (15%) in D developed catheter related complications within 12 months. Group I complications were leakage (2), migration (2), and peritonitis (2); group D complications were leakage (3), migration (4), and peritonitis (2). Actuarial survival of the catheter showed no differences between the two groups at one year. Conclusions: Immediate utilization of a surgically implanted Tenckhoff catheter is feasible and safe, since it is not associated with an increased frequency of complications.


: The relative rate constants for the decay of ascorbate free radical in aqueous solutions in the presence of heavy metal ions, hydrogen peroxide and sulphite were measured the ESR-spectroscopy. The oxidation of ascorbic acid showed a strong pH dependence, reaching a maximum rate at pH 9.6. It was shown that the ascorbic acid radical decay generally follows overall second order kinetics, being however first order in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. The protective effect of sulphur dioxide is proposed to have nutritional implications.


Surface Raman spectroscopy in ultrahigh vacuum is used to interrogate interfaces formed between tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3) and vapor-deposited Ag and Al. Vapor deposition of Ag onto Alq3 films results in preservation of the Alq3 structure with evolution of simple surface enhancement of Alq3 spectral intensities. Changes in the relative intensities of ring breathing and ring stretching modes of Alq3 upon deposition of Ag are consistent with weak interaction of Ag with the conjugated ring of the ligand. In contrast, vapor deposition of Al onto Alq3 films results in the appearance of new vibrational modes, but only for Al coverages >10 A mass thickness, consistent with the formation of an Al−Alq3 adduct. At these coverages, slight surface enhancement of spectral intensities is also observed along with growth of several broad modes consistent with partial graphitization of the organic film.


This paper presents different hardware implementations of a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC) for speech recognition. Speech processing is emerged as one of the important application area of digital signal processing. Various fields for research in speech processing are speech recognition, speaker recognition, speech synthesis, speech coding etc. The objective of automatic speaker recognition is to extract, characterize and recognize the information about speaker identity. Feature extraction is the first step for speaker recognition. Many algorithms are suggested/developed by the researchers for feature extraction. In this work, the Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC) feature has been used for designing a text dependent speaker identification system. Some modifications to the existing technique of MFCC for feature extraction are also suggested to improve the speaker recognition efficiency.


A correlation between the 24 μm continuum and the [Nii] 205 μm line emission may arise if both quantities trace the star formation activity on spatially-resolved scales within a galaxy, yet has so far only been observed in the nearby edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. We therefore assess whether the [Nii] 205−24 μm emission correlation has some physical origin or is merely an artefact of line-of-sight projection effects in an edge-on disc. We search for the presence of a correlation in Herschel and Spitzer observations of two nearby face-on galaxies, M 51 and M 83, and the interacting Antennae galaxies NGC 4038 and 4039. We show that not only is this empirical relationship also observed in face-on galaxies, but also that the correlation appears to be governed by the star formation rate (SFR). Both the nuclear starburst in M 83 and the merger-induced star formation in NGC 4038/9 exhibit less [Nii] emission per unit SFR surface density than the normal star-forming discs. These regions of intense star formation exhibit stronger ionization parameters, as traced by the 70/160 μm far-infrared (FIR) colour. These observations suggest the presence of higher ionization lines that may become more important for gas cooling, thereby reducing the observed [Nii] 205 μm line emission in regions with higher star formation rates. Finally, we present a general relation between the [Nii] 205 μm line flux density and SFR density for normal star-forming galaxies, yet note that future studies should extend this analysis by including observations with wider spatial coverage for a larger sample of galaxies.


The nutritional transition in developing countries may lead to imbalances in the growth and nutritional status of adolescents in such countries events that could result in improper maturation and morbidity in adult life. This study seeks to determine the patterns of physical growth and nutritional status of adolescents living in a low income semi-urban town in Nigeria. Anthropometric data from six hundred and twenty five (625) secondary school students aged 10-19 years (adolescents) were collected and their Body Mass Index (BMI) calculated. Their heights and weights were compared to those of a reference population. Outcome measures for nutritional status were proportion of the population that is stunted (height-for-age 85 percentiles of the rd th th reference data respectively). The girls matched the heights of half of the reference population at all ages, but the boys did not. From age fourteen years, the boys weighed less than half of the reference population while the girls matched or weighed more than the reference population. Under-nutrition was found to affect 19.36% of the population (with stunting accounting for 84.47% of this group), while 13.12% of the population were overweight/obese. The prevalence of thinness and stunting were higher in boys than in girls. Boys were also slightly more obese than the girls. Underand over-nutrition co-exist in the population and affect more boys than girls. There is an urgent need to address these problems in preventive and curative health care programmes.


Introduction: In modern clinical practice "Balanced Anaesthesia" technique has special significance in patients undergoing caesarean section under general anaesthesia with concern of awareness, uterine atony & of respiratory depression due to avoidance of opioids and use of low concentration volatile anaesthesia.
In this randomized, double-blind study, the safety & efficacy of magnesium sulphate as an adjunct during general anaesthesia for caesarean section was evaluated.
Methods:
• The patients were randomly divided into three groups:
• The M30 group received Magnesium sulphate (30 mg/kg) at IV bolus & then 10 mg/kg/hr by continuous infusion after induction of anaesthesia.
• The M45 group received Magnesium sulphate (45 mg/kg) as IV bolus & then 15 mg/kg/hr by continuous infusion.
• The control group received similar volumes of saline as IV bolus & continuous infusion.
• After delivery midazolam & fentanyl was administered as required. BIS was targeted between 40-60.
Results:
• Bis values during the pre-induction period were similar in the groups. However the M45 group showed less increase in the BIS values as compared to the other groups. MAP was significantly higher in the control group. The heat rates were similar for all groups.
• The control group showed higher consumption of midazolam, fentanyl & atracurium.
Conclusion :
• This study shows that pre-operative administration of magnesium sulphate only attenuates increase in arterial pressure but also prevents awareness by attenuating BIS increase.
• This study also demonstrate that magnesium reduces midazolam, fentanyl & atracurium requirement.


We probe the dimension-six operators contributing to Higgs production in association with a $Z$ boson at the future high-luminosity electron-positron colliders. Potential constraints on dimension-six operators in the Higgs sector are determined by performing a shape analysis on the differential angular distribution of the Higgs and $Z$ boson decay products. The analysis is performed at the center-of-mass energies of 350 and 500 GeV including a realistic detector simulation and the main sources of background processes. The 68\% and 95\% confidence level upper limits are obtained on the contributing anomalous couplings considering only the decay of the Higgs boson into a pair of $b$-quarks and leptonic $Z$ boson decay. Our results show that angular observables provide a great sensitivity to the anomalous couplings, in particular, at the high-luminosity regime.


This paper describes a new compilation of both direct and geodetic mass-balance measurements, develops a procedure to reduce diverse balance measurements over different time-spans to common time-spans, and presents updated estimates of global average balance of small glaciers based on the enlarged compilation. Although geodetic measurements are fewer than direct measurements, they cover four times as many balance years. Direct and geodetic measurements are unbiased with respect to one another, but differences are often substantial. The statistical procedure can be understood by imagining that an n-year balance measurement is an average of a series of 1 year measurements. The series is hypothetical but we can calculate the uncertainty of each of its elements if, in addition to its measured average, we can also estimate its standard deviation. For this claim to be valid, the annual series must be stationary and normally distributed with independent (roughly, uncorrelated) elements, for which there is reasonable evidence. The need to know the standard deviation means that annual direct measurements from a nearby glacier, or equally reliable information about variability, are indispensable. Given this information, the new methodology results in moderately more negative balances. This is probably because tidewater glaciers are better represented in the geodetic data. In any case, the most recent published estimate of global average balance, 0.8-1.0 mm a -1 of sea-level equivalent for 2001-04, is now increased substantially to 1.1-1.4 mm a -1 for 2001-05.


Joint direction-of-arrival (DOA) and sensor position estimation for randomly deployed sensors is introduced in Iterative HOS-SOS (IHOSS) algorithm [1]. IHOSS algorithm exploits the advantages of both higher-order-statistics (HOS) and second-order-statistics (SOS) with an iterative algorithm using two reference sensors. The iterative algorithm is guaranteed to converge. IHOSS algorithm solves the position ambiguity by using source signals observed at multiple frequencies and hence it is applicable for wideband signals. In this paper, we propose Modified-IHOSS (MIHOSS) algorithm to solve the same problem for narrowband signals. In MIHOSS, it is assumed that the nominal sensor positions are known. It is shown that ambiguity problem is solved effectively without any assumption on the position perturbations. The upper bound of perturbations for unambiguous sensor position estimation is presented. The performance of MIHOSS approaches to the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for both DOA and position estimation.


Ten-stage operation policies for routing of flood hydrographs from very small magnitudes up to the probable maximum flood (PMF) for any dam having a gated spillway are suggested. The gate opening rules are determined based on the recent pool level. Without having to predict the magnitude of the incoming flood hydrograph beforehand, the fixed rules of the ten-stage operation policy will provide quasi-optimum routing for any floods, which are classified into 10 different groups. 0.1 PMF, 0.2 PMF, . . . , and PMF are the upper limits of the ten groups. When the PMF is routed, the rising and falling limbs of the outflow hydrograph make 10 sudden jumps and sudden drops at definite times and smoothly vary between steps. The developed flood routing model is applied sequentially to Catalan and Seyhan dams on the Seyhan River in Turkey.


Objective To evaluate the management of foreign bodies in the external auditory canal (EAC) in pediatric patients by emergency department personnel. Setting Tertiary care pediatric hospital emergency department. Study Design A retrospective chart review of children with foreign bodies of the EAC over a 12-month period. Age, foreign body type, rate of successful removal, and complication rates were recorded. Foreign bodies were categorized into two groups: objects with smooth surfaces and not easily grasped (nongraspable) and objects with irregularly shaped surfaces and easily grasped (graspable). Results Thirty-six patients were brought to the emergency department over a 12-month period with foreign bodies of the EAC. Their mean age was 6.5 years (range, 1–16 yr). Numerous foreign bodies were noted; beads were the most common. Successful removal was achieved in 53% of cases, and one or more complications were recorded in 47%. When the foreign bodies were grouped into nongraspable and graspable objects, the success rate for the nongraspable group was 45%, with a complication rate of 70%, whereas for graspable objects the successful removal rate was 64%, with a complication rate of only 14%. The difference in complication rates was statistically significant (p < 0.001.) Conclusion This study demonstrates that certain foreign bodies (graspable type) of the EAC in pediatric patients can be successfully managed by skilled emergency department personnel with low complication rates, whereas other foreign bodies (nongraspable types) may be better managed by early referral to an otolaryngologist.


Introduction Since 2011 the Institute for Teachers' Health (IfL) is responsible for the occupational health of more than 40.000 German teachers. Analysing teachers' accidents is an important part of everyday work. The aim of the study was to describe accident black spots and type of injuries. We further wanted to identify factors influencing accident severity. Methods We included accident reports of teachers between August 2011 and July 2014 (three school-years) which occurred at schools in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany). In case of an accident, teachers fill out an accident report which is forwarded either to the statutory accident insurance or to the IfL. For the present analysis, anonymised data from the two sources were combined. Accidents leading to hospitalisation or ≥4 days of work inability were classified as severe. Logistic regression analysis was applied to identify influencing factors on severity. Results Altogether, 2,212 accidents were reported in three school-years. Victims were on average 45 years old and mainly female (70.6%). Commuting accidents accounted for 23.5% of all accidents. Most accidents occurred in the gym (18.2%), on the street (17.1%) and in the classroom (14.9%). Accidents were mainly caused by falls (42.6%) and collisions/hits (38.5%). Frequent types of injuries were bruises/concussions (30.4%), strains (26.9%), and ruptures (22.4%). Most affected parts of the body were foot (18.1%), neck/spine (16.0%), and head (15.6%). 34.6% of accidents were classified as severe. Factors influencing severity included age, type of school, commuting accident, place and mechanism of accident, and injury type. Discussion Prevention of accidents is an important task, since they cause suffering to victims and relatives. Furthermore school lessons are cancelled if substitute teachers are unavailable. Analysing accidents is an important first step, as black spots can be identified and targeted preventive measures can be implemented. Note The abstract is part of the dissertation of M. Claus


Frequently, the transition to peace seems impossible for groups affected by collective violence. The search for a peaceful society, where the memory, the victims' suffering, and the perpetrators' responsibilities coexist, requires titanic efforts in multiple dimensions that may seem unattainable. These efforts are the focus of the book "Transitioning to Peace: Promoting Global Social Justice and Non-Violence" edited by two distinguished scholars in the social and political psychology field with contributions from over twenty researchers from all continents


Signal transduction pathways potentially involved in destruction of insulin-producing β-cells in type-l diabetes and gene transfer to prevent β-cell death were studied in vitro. Adenovirus-polylysine/DNA complexes (AdpL) or polycationic liposomes mediated high reporter gene expression in dissociated primary human, fetal porcine, rat and mouse islet cells whereas gene transfer to intact islets was less efficient. Gene expression peaked after 5-7 days followed by a gradual decline.Both IL-1β and TNF-α activated transcription factor NF-κB in the rat insulin-producing cell line RINm5F without activating sphingomyelinase (SMase). However, ceramide and TNF-α potentiated IL-1β-induced activation of NF-κB and the inducible form of nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) as assessed by nitric oxide (NO) production. Moreover, the inhibitor of acid SMase, SR33557, suppressed these effects of TNF-α. Nα-p-tosyl-L-lysine chloromethyl ketone prevented IL-1β-induced activation of NF-κB and iNOS. Cytokines induced phosphorylation of p38 mitogen activated kinase (p38) and transcription factors ATF-1, CREB, CREM and ATF-2. The p38 inhibitor SB203580 counteracted CREB, CREM and ATF-1 phosphorylation and iNOS induction.In combination, but not alone, IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ induced DNA laddering and cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) after 24 h, both of which were counteracted by inhibition of iNOS. Cytokines induced morphological signs of both apoptosis and necrosis in rat islets and RINm5F cells whereas ceramide induced necrosis and early signs of apoptosis. The PARP-inhibitors nicotinamide and 3-aminobenzamide induced apoptosis in RINm5F cells and fetal but not adult rat islets. Hyperexpression of Bcl-2, achieved by stable transfection with a multicopy viral vector containing a bcl-2 cDNA insert, counteracted cleavage of PARP and both necrosis and apoptosis in RINm5F cells.In conclusion, AdpL or polycationic liposomes mediate transient expression of genes in islet cells. Full induction of NO production by cytokines may require basal acid SMase- and enhanced NF-κB- and p38 activities and promotes apoptosis or necrosis via the Bcl-2 preventable pathway in rat insulin-producing cells.


Web crippling is a local instability that causes cold-formed sections to become unstable when a concentrated load is applied transversally to the cross-section. The European design rules for stainless steels EN1993-1-4 [1] refers to the standards for carbon steel cold-formed sections EN1993-1-3 [2] to determine the web crippling ultimate capacity in which different expressions are presented according to the cross-sectional number of webs. For the fundamental case of hat sections (cross-sections with two or more webs), a single expression is codified which is in essence an empirical equation based on curve fitting given different coefficients. During the last years, research has been focused on improving this expression but overlooking the philosophy of a ?( ) strength curve in which are based most of the instability verifications of the European design provisions. Some background related to web crippling of stainless steel cross-sections can be found in [3] and [4]. The purpose of this paper is to assess if this slenderness-based approach is suitable to determine the ultimate resistance of stainless steel hat sections subjected to web crippling. The appraisal will be based on numerical simulations performed in Abaqus and experimental results found in the literature [5]. A comparison of the results with current design rules according to European [2] and American standards [6] is also presented. Two new expressions to predict web crippling strength of ferritic stainless steel hat sections are proposed in the present study.


OBJECTIVE: To study the diagnostic correlation between cervical cytology specimens and corresponding surgical biopsies. DESIGN AND SETTING: College of American Pathologists Q-Probes laboratory quality improvement study in 348 laboratories. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value of cervicovaginal cytology diagnosis. RESULTS: Statistical analysis of 22 439 paired cervicovaginal cytology--cervical biopsy specimens reveals a sensitivity of 89.4%, specificity of 64.8%, and predictive value of a positive cytology of 88.9%. The majority of discrepancies were attributed to cytology or biopsy sampling errors. Routinely providing the patient's recent cervical cytology report to the surgical pathologist at the time the biopsy was examined resulted in improved sensitivity. Correlations for cytology specimens obtained at the time of biopsy revealed lower sensitivity and higher specificity than for those obtained at a time prior to the biopsy. CONCLUSIONS: We have defined current statistical expectations for cervical cytology-biopsy correlation, reasons for noncorrelation, and have provided recommendations for quality improvement.


MOSFET performance and gate drive operation play a vital role in efficient power processing. This work studies transistor and gate drive performance in a synchronous rectifier, buck regulator for PC motherboard power management (VRM). The object is to analyze the interaction of the transistors with the drive stage under various operating conditions. Analysis of loss contributions is performed. Emphasis is placed on performance optimization, low cost, and reproducibility.


When two material surfaces are brought into contact, the classical Amonton's law predicts a monotonically increasing relation between the frictional force and the normal pressure. An abnormal friction law refers to the case where the friction force declines as the normal pressure increases. We investigate the possibility of abnormal tribological behavior for two surfaces coated with aligned multiwalled nanotube rafts. Part I of the investigation is devoted to the case when two contacting nanotube rafts are aligned to each other, while part II is aimed at more general case of arbitrarily oriented nanotube rafts. The analysis in part I is based on the JKR theory of adhesion and linear elasticity for aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube raft configuration. It gives rise of several interesting predictions. First, two surfaces covered by aligned nanotubes can adhere when bringing into a pressureless contact. Second, the aligned multiwalled nanotube rafts exhibit a detachment work that declines with the contacting pressure. Third, in contrast to the Amonton's law, the frictional force would decline as the normal pressure increases.


Abstract Many universities in the United States are investing in classrooms and campuses designed to increase collaboration and teamwork among the health professions. To date, we know little about whether these learning spaces are having the intended impact on student performance. Recent advances in the identification of interprofessional teamwork competencies provide a much-needed step toward a defined outcome metric. Rigorous study of the relationship between design and student competence in collaboration also requires clear specification of design concepts and development of testable frameworks. Such theory-based evaluation is crucial for design to become an integral part of interprofessional education strategies and initiatives. Current classroom and campus designs were analyzed for common themes and features in collaborative spaces as a starting place for specification of design concepts and model development. Four major themes were identified: flexibility, visual transparency/proximity, technology and environmental infrastructure. Potential models linking this preliminary set of design concepts to student competencies are proposed and used to generate hypotheses for future study of the impact of collaborative design spaces on student outcomes.


Immunization with irradiated autoreactive T cells (T cell vaccination) induces anti-idiotypic T cell responses that preferentially recognize complementarity-determining region 3 sequences, contributing to clonal depletion of autoreactive T cells. However, it remains unknown whether T cell vaccination elicits anti-idiotypic humoral responses and whether the anti-idiotypic Abs play a similar role in the regulatory mechanism induced by T cell vaccination. In this study we examined the occurrence, the reactivity pattern, and the regulatory role of anti-idiotypic Abs elicited by T cell vaccination in patients with multiple sclerosis. We demonstrated for the first time that B cells producing anti-idiotypic Abs could be isolated from vaccinated patients. These EBV-transformed B cell lines were selected for specific reactivity to a 20-mer TCR peptide incorporating a common complementarity-determining region 3 sequence of the immunizing T cell clones. The resulting anti-idiotypic Abs were found to react with the original immunizing T cell clones and exhibit an inhibitory effect on their proliferation. The findings suggest that anti-idiotypic Ab responses can be induced by T cell vaccination in humans and that their regulatory properties are likely to contribute to the suppression of myelin basic protein-reactive T cells in vaccinated patients. The study has important implications in our understanding of the regulatory role of the anti-idiotypic humoral responses induced by T cell vaccination. The Journal of Immunology, 2000, 165: 6858–6864.


Currently more than 200 types of human papillomaviruses (HPV) have been classified, where the low-risk ones are those that are not capable of developing into cancer while the high-risk ones are.1 Cervical cancer and its preceding lesions have been strongly associated with HPV, mainly through the high-risk 16/18 strains. Due to morphological similarities between the cervical mucosa and the upper aerodigestive tract, it is suggested that HPV be proposed as an aetiological factor in the developing of oral cancer.2

In 1978, WHO defined leukoplakia as a white plaque of oral mucosa, not removable by scraping, which cannot be characterised clinically or pathologically as any other disorder.3 Recent publications have grouped leukoplakia with lesions that precede oral cancer or those that are potentially malignant.4 HPV's role in the aetiology and malignisation of precancerous oral lesions has been studied; however, the results achieved are still not conclusive. The purpose of this study was to identify the prevalence of HPV 16/18 in patients with verrucous leukoplakia of the oral mucosa, along with a profile of their social demographics.

### Obtaining samples

The UNIARARAS community, located in Araras, Sao Paulo, Brazil, was divided in two groups: …


WIDER was established in 1984 and started work in Helsinki in the spring of 1985. The principal purpose of the Institute is to help identify and meet the need for policy-oriented socioeconomic research on pressing global economic problems, particularly those impacting most directly on the developing countries. Its work is carried out by staff researchers and visiting scholars in Helsinki and through networks of collaborating institutions and scholars around the world.


Adaptive and nonadaptive versions of the feedback linearization control technique are used here for the control of a nonlinear electrohydraulic velocity Servomechanism, the nonlinear behavior arising from load friction as well as the valve flow-pressure drop relationship. An adaptive fuzzy controller is used here for the same application as well. The three controllers are compared based on simulation and experimental results of tracking performance as well as their ability to adjust to disturbances caused by variation in the system parameters.


In Western societies the roles of male provider and female care-giver have formed a traditional base for intimate partnerships. Because gigolos and their partners appear to reverse the formula, their unions are considered deviant and often scandalous. In this book the authors uncover surprising similarities between the liaisons of gigolos with their Madames Bountiful and the more conventional relationships that most people form. This unique study of love, sex, gender, intimacy, and power offers a radical new view of the dynamics that inform all intimate partnerships. Based on over 600 case studies from Canada, the United States, and Europe, the book draws upon letters, personal accounts, and anecdotes. The authors explore the gigolo's means and methods, the motivations of the Madame Bountiful, and the emergence, maintenance, and dissolution of the gigolo-Madame Bountiful relationship. They also look at the changing social conditions which now allow gigolos to flourish. They consider both social and personal power in the context of changing gender roles and show how these changing roles influence intimate relationships in general and the gigolo-Madame Bountiful relationship in particular. Through their analysis of this fascinating material, the authors reveal the illusory aspects of power, intimacy, and gender. This is the first major study of the liaisons between gigolos and the women who wittingly and unwittingly support them. A thoroughly engaging text, it offers intriguing, sometimes hilarious, material drawn from a diversity of sources, along with a radical look at gender and power. Written for a general audience the book will also entice scholars in a range of fields includingpopular culture, media, gender studies and the family.


The development of sub-femtosecond x-ray capabilities at the Linac Coherent Light Source requires the implementation of time-domain diagnostics with attosecond (as) time resolution. Photoelectrons created by attosecond duration x-ray pulses in the presence of a strong-laser field are known to suffer an energy spread which depends on the relative phase of the strong-laser field at the time of ionization. This phenomenon can be exploited to measure the duration of these ultrashort x-ray pulses. We present an implementation which employs a circularly polarized infrared laser pulse and novel velocity map imaging design which maps the phase dependent momentum of the photoelectron onto a 2-D detector. In this paper, we present the novel co-linear VMI design, simulation of the photoelectron momentum distribution, and the reconstruction algorithm.


Damages caused by thrips (Thysanoptera) are a constant concern in greenhouse. In lisianthus, Eustoma grandiflorum (Raf.) Shinners (Gentianaceae), it may cause direct and indirect damage. Thrips can affect flowers aesthetics through feeding on their petals. This study aimed to recording the thrips species associated with lisianthus under protected cultivation, assessing differences in species composition among lisianthus cultivars and among different growing conditions. The experiment was conducted in commercial greenhouses in the "Floricultura Florist" company, municipality of Dois Irmaos, RS state. The experiment was conducted from January to February 2013, comparing four cultivars with different colors (Marina, Orange Flash, Tu 668 and Ace White) and two greenhouses with structural differences. Each flower bed (25mx1m) containing one cultivar (treatment) was divided into 5 plots in which 10 plants were randomly selected and evaluated from the opening of the first floral bud until the cut of the flowers. The most common thrips species were Frankliniella schultzei and F. occidentalis. The different growing conditions influenced the amount and composition of thrips species collected. There was variation in the average number of thrips gathered from cultivated varieties. This paper presents the first record of thrips species on E. grandiflorum in greenhouse of Brazil.


Modeling of cities is certainly a challenge. Most of this complexity is caused by the significant number of variables, as well as the vast manifestation for their ranks. Diverse efforts have been conducted by different researchers, in order to achieve powerful representations. Some of these efforts are aimed at graphical representation, some others are aimed at functionality. Present effort is aimed at the scaffolding support for the representation and, eventually, functionality of virtual cities. Such infrastructure would support current and future efforts devoted to populating virtual cities with agents showing different behaviors and roles. These agents would be active and concrete elements in cities, such as pedestrians, cars or drivers, and some others would be dynamic synthetic-elements, such as traffic lights or drawbridges. These agents will populate the city model and manifest in future efforts from this research; current effort is mainly focused in the production of cities' infrastructure. The generation and representation of a virtual city is, per se, a significant challenge. This paper focuses in such challenge.


Abstract Objective: To assess levels of self-efficacy for health-related behaviour change and its correlates in patients with TIA or ischemic stroke. Methods: In this prospective cohort study, 92 patients with TIA or ischemic stroke completed questionnaires on self-efficacy for health-related behaviour change and fear, social support and depressive symptoms. Relations between fear, social support, depressive symptoms, cognitive impairment, vascular risk factors and history and demographic characteristics and low-self-efficacy were studied with univariable and multivariable logistic regression. Results: Median total self-efficacy score at baseline was 4 (IQR 4–5). Older age (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.09), depressive symptoms (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.03–1.16), presence of vascular history (OR 2.42, 95% CI 0.97–6.03), higher BMI (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.01–1.30), fear (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.01–1.12) and low physical activity (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.01–2.21) were significantly associated with low self-efficacy. Conclusion: Patients with recent TIA or ischemic stroke report high self-efficacy scores for health-related behaviour change. Age, vascular history, more depressive symptoms, higher BMI, less physical activity and fear were correlates of low self-efficacy levels. Practice implications: These correlates should be taken into account in the development of interventions to support patients in health behaviour change after TIA or ischemic stroke.


The identification of Parkinson's Disease (PD) from post-mortem brain slices is time consuming for highly trained neuropathologists, often taking many hours per case. In this study, we demonstrate fully automatic PD detection, from single 1000um regions, from sections spanning from the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus nerve to the frontal cortex. This is achieved via image processing and statistical methods, with improved accuracy demonstrated when using machine learning. Digitised stained brain sections were processed via a deep neural network to produce re-coloured, or 'synthetically stained', images which were then filtered and passed to a secondary network for classification. We demonstrate state-of-the-art PD detection (>90% accuracy on single 1000um regions), with the ability to perform binary classification on high resolution sections within minutes, in addition to demarcating regions of interest to the pathologist for manual visual verification. Executive Summary The identification of Parkinson's Disease (PD) from post-mortem brain slices is time consuming for highly trained neuropathologists, often taking many hours per case. Accurate classification and stratification of PD is critical for the confirmation that the brain donor suffered from PD and to maximise the potential usefulness of the brain in research studies to better understand the causes of PD and foster drug development. Parkinson's UK Brain Bank, at Imperial College London, has produced a dataset containing digitised images of brain sections immunostained for the protein alpha-synuclein (α-syn), the pathological marker of PD; along with control cases from healthy donors. This dataset is much larger (over 400 cases), more consistent, and of higher quality (all have been stained with the same protocol and imaged within the same laboratory) than has been documented elsewhere in the literature; including those found in a meta-analysis study on detection of neurological disorders containing over 200 papers (Lima et al., 2022). The project team, consisting of neuroscientists and subject matter experts from: Imperial, NHS AI Lab Skunkworks, Parkinson's UK, and Polygeist have undertaken a 12 week project to examine the possibility of producing a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) tool to automatically load, enhance and ultimately classify those brain sections containing α-syn. The initial focus of the project was to make a tool that could make a biomarker of PD, α-syn, more visible to the pathologist; saving time in searching for the protein manually. This goal was quickly reached, producing a tool that could 'synthetically stain' the α-syn, marking regions of interest in a high-contrast bright green, making them quickly identifiable for the pathologist. Statistical analysis of the synthetically stained images showed that very few regions in the control group were stained compared to the PD group, raising the possibility that an automatic classifier could be developed, which became a stretch goal for the project. A bespoke neural network model was designed that processed the synthetically stained segments of each immunostained section and produced a binary judgement (whether a segment contains PD pathology or not). The model achieved >90% sensitivity for PD detection, much higher than is reported for neuropathologists (~60% sensitivity when searching for α-syn patches across all stages, Signaevsky et al., 2022). While expert raters are still more precise (~6% better than the model), the model performed ~20% better than expert raters when considering precision and recall. The key output of the project is an open-source PoC tool that can automatically classify PD from digitised images of brain sections with accuracy that is approaching viability for real world applications. An MIT Licensed code repository has been released, containing all of the model development code, along with associated documentation, to allow others to build on the project team's work. This report summarises the scientific and engineering process undertaken through the development of the PoC tool.


An Introduction to Atmospheric Physics presents a broad coverage of atmospheric physics, including atmospheric thermodynamics, radiative transfer, atmospheric fluid dynamics and elementary atmospheric chemistry. Armed with an understanding of these topics, the interested student will be able to grasp the essential physics behind issues of current concern, such as the enhanced greenhouse effect and associated questions of climate change, and the Antarctic ozone hole and global ozone depletion, as well as more familiar processes such as the formation of raindrops and the development of weather systems. This book is intended as an introductory text for intermediate to advanced undergraduates studying atmospheric physics as part of physics, meteorology or environmental science courses. It will also be useful for graduate students studying atmospheric physics for the first time and for students of applied mathematics, physical chemistry and engineering who have an interest in the atmosphere.


In the current study, significant variations were identified for seven fruit traits of the walnut accessions. The highest correlations were detected between nut height and nut width, and between nut weight and kernel weight. Most traits had a continuous normal binominal distribution. A total of 16,774 single-nucleotide polymorphism SNP markers based on diversity arrays technology were generated and after filtering the missing data, the remaining 13,611 SNP data were used for genotyping. STRUCTURE v.2.2 analysis revealed two possible scenarios K = 3 and K = 5 according to the results of ΔK computation. While K = 3 indicated that walnut cultivars were clustered into three different groups, K = 5 revealed five different groups. Results of the dendrogram tree analysis were supported by the results presented in the STRUCTURE analysis. A total of 98 association signals were detected with FDR =< 0.05 from MLM K using BLUP predictors for the seven agronomic traits. Out of these 98 associations, seven SNPs were associated with nut weight, 26 SNPs with nut length, 15 SNPs with nut height, 18 SNPs with nut width, 18 SNPs with shell thickness, 12 SNPs with kernel weight, and 2 SNPs with kernel ratio.


Recent network architectures utilise many types of security appliances to combat blended attacks. However, managing multiple separate security appliances can be overwhelming, inefficient and expensive. Thus, multiple security features are needed to be integrated into unified security architecture resulting in an unified threat management system (UTM). In most current UTM systems, whenever a security feature is needed, the corresponding module is just 'attached or added on'. This approach of adding on may reduce the UTM performance dramatically, especially when security features such as IDS/IPS are enabled. In this study, a hybrid mechanism is proposed to solve UTM redundant packet classification problem. The mechanism is based on the use of splay tree filters and pattern-matching algorithms to enhance packet filtering and deep packet inspection (DPI) performance. The proposed mechanism uses network traffic statistics to dynamically optimise the order of the splay tree filters, allowing early acceptance and rejection of network packets. In addition, DPI signature rules are reordered according to their matching frequencies, allowing early packets acceptance. The authors demonstrate the merit of their mechanism through simulations performed on firewall and snort as independent packet manipulation systems compared with the proposed hybrid mechanism that uses unified communication between them.


The stomach contents of an adult Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus) found stranded on the Turkish eastern Mediterranean coast near Antalya in May 2013 were analysed. In total, 69 individual food items were counted and nine taxa were identified to species or family level. Of the identified taxa, Sparidae was the most highly represented family of prey fish, and one cephalopod species, Octopus vulgaris, was found. Ariosoma balearicum and Argyrosomus regius were encountered for the first time in the diet of a Monk Seal in the Mediterranean. Several body parts (three heads, six forelimbs, neck bones and fractured upper forelimb bones) of Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas) were also identified, which is the first record of this species in the Monk Seal's diet.


The paper presents the paleoceanography of the north-western Pacific during the latest Pleistocene, based mainly on marine records. At 15,300 (PT2) years B.P., the Kuroshio current began to flow northward. It passed south of Kyushu around 31° N latitude and ran to the east. At 13,000 (PT1) years B.P., the front of the Kuroshio reached as far as Ise Bay around 33° N latitude and at 6,000-5,000 years B.P. it extended to 43° latitude. In contrast, at around 10,000 (PR1) 15,000 (PR2), and 20,000 (PR3) years B.P. it seems likely that the cold Oyashio penetrated far to the south. In general, times of southward shift of the cold water coincide with those of intensive tectonism in East Asia. Therefore, large-scale changes in ocean circulation in the north-western Pacific are related to intensive tectonism.


Amongst the challenges for a variety of research fields are the visualization of solid-liquid interfaces and understanding how they are affected by the solution conditions such as ion concentrations, pH, ligands, and trace additives, as well as the underlying crystallography and chemistry. In this context, three-dimensional fast force mapping (3D FFM) has emerged as a promising tool for investigating solution structure at interfaces. This capability is based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) and allows the direct visualization of interfacial regions in three spatial dimensions with sub-nanometer resolution. Here we provide a detailed description of the experimental protocol for acquiring 3D FFM data. The main considerations for optimizing the operating parameters depending on the sample and application are discussed. Moreover, the basic methods for data processing and analysis are discussed, including the transformation of the measured instrument observables into tip-sample force maps that can be linked to the local solution structure. Finally, we shed light on some of the outstanding questions related to 3D FFM data interpretation and how this technique can become a central tool in the repertoire of surface science.


Detailed information on larval development of the powder-post beetle, Dinoderus minutus, was investigated using individual rearing method under laboratory conditions at 27±2°C and 75±5% relative humidity. Five classes of head capsules were recorded, indicating five moults from first instar to prepupa. The mean larval duration recorded was 52.8±0.31 days with 8.04±0.12 days for the first instar larva, followed by 9.74±0.20 days, 13.10±0.17 days, 16.20±0.15 days and 5.72±0.13 days, for the second to fifth instar larvae, respectively. The longest instar stage was the fourth instar, with a development time ranging from 14 to 18 days and the shortest was the fifth instar ranging from 4 to 6 days. The highest growth ratio of larva by body weight was 2.70, which was observed between the first and second instars. This indicated that the maximum feeding rate of the larva occurred between these instar stages. The highest growth ratio, with respect to head capsule and larval length, was 1.35 and 1.34 between the fourth and fifth instar.


1. The aim of this paper is to study markovianity for states on von Neumann algebras generated by the union of (not necessarily commutative) von Neumann subagebras which commute with each other. This study has been already begun in [2] using several a priori different notions of noncommutative markovianity. In this paper we assume to deal with the particular case of states which define odd stochastic couplings (as developed in [3]) for all couples of von Neumann algebras involved. In this situation these definitions are equivalent, and in this case it is possible to get the full noncommutative generalization of the basic classical Markov theory results. In particular we get a correspondence theorem, and an explicit structure theorem for Markov states.


The reduction by mu-oxo-bis[oxodihydroxo(L-cysteinato)molybdate(V)] (I) of cytochrome c complexes in which the methionine-80 ligand has been replaced by N3-, CN-, or imidazole has been investigated. The N3- and CN-substituted species are reduced by I in a first-order reaction that appears to proceed via a slow dissociation of N3- or CN-, followed by rapid reduction of native cytochrome c. At low concentrations of I, reduction of the imidazole-cytochrome complex occurs by the same mechanism, while, at higher concentrations of I, direct reduction by I and by a monomeric Mo(V) complex in equilibrium with I appears to occur, although at much lower rates than with native cytochrome c. Potentiometric measurements of E degrees for the cytochrome c complexes with N3- and imidazole indicate the lack of reducibility, or reduction in rate relative to native cytochrome c, is not due to thermodynamic reasons. In the case of the CN- complex, E degrees may be too low for direct reduction by I. The effects on the reduction rates are attributed to a conformational change accompanying the replacement of the methionine-80 ligand, which makes the exposed heme edge less available to attack by outer sphere reductants.


This paper explores possible alternatives for the current Dutch first pillar pension scheme (AOW). It presents the welfare, labour market, saving and unintended bequest effects of a shift from a Beveridge towards a Bismarck system in which the pension rights depend on the labour market history. The paper focuses on the insurance with the AOW against both longevity and productivity risk. The main conclusion is that a shift of the first pillar pensions from a Beveridge towards a Bismarck system is not necessarily welfare improving from an ex-ante insurance perspective, i.e. before the veil of ignorance is lifted. Moreover, a means test of the first pillar against wealth income, which implies a lower AOW when an individual has wealth income and a lower pension premium for everyone, does not improve welfare.


Prayer and religious ceremonies may help patients near the end of life and their relatives find comfort and discover meaning in their lives. In this paper, we analyze how physicians might respond in two situations regarding prayer and religious ceremonies. First, how should physicians respond when such patients or their families ask physicians to pray for them or with them? Physicians' responses to such requests will depend on their own religious and spiritual beliefs, the congruence of their beliefs with those of the patient and family, and their relationship with the patient. Many physicians may be willing to be present and stand silently while the patient prays. Second, how should physicians respond when such patients and families seek to carry out their religious and spiritual practices in the hospital? Religious ceremonies can provide meaning, hope, and solace to patients and families. Institutional guidelines regarding religious ceremonies should allow as much leeway as is compatible with good care both for the patient for whom the ritual is offered and also for other patients within the facility. Physicians should inquire whether there are religious and spiritual practices that patients and families would like to engage in. However, physicians should be cautious about recommending specific ceremonies or pratices. Physicians can respond to requests and respect patients' spiritual needs in ways that may deepen the therapeutic doctor-patient relationship, without compromising their own religious and spiritual beliefs or professional roles.


Gene tagging with fluorescent proteins (FPs) is essential to investigate the dynamic properties of cellular proteins. CRISPR/Cas9 technology is a powerful tool for inserting fluorescent markers into all alleles of the gene of interest and permits functionality and physiological expression of the fusion protein. It is essential to evaluate such genome-edited cell lines carefully in order to preclude off-target effects caused by either (i) incorrect insertion of the FP, (ii) perturbation of the fusion protein by the FP or (iii) non-specific genomic DNA damage by CRISPR/Cas9. In this protocol, we provide a step-by-step description of our systematic pipeline to generate and validate homozygous fluorescent knock-in cell lines. We have used the paired Cas9D10A nickase approach to efficiently insert tags into specific genomic loci via homology-directed repair (HDR) with minimal off-target effects. Since it is neither time nor cost-effective to perform whole genome sequencing of each cell clone, we have developed an efficient validation pipeline consisting of junction PCR, Southern Blot analysis, Sanger sequencing, microscopy, Western blot analysis and live cell imaging for cell cycle dynamics. Using this pipeline, 70% of the targeted genes could be tagged homozygously with FPs and resulted in physiological levels and phenotypically functional expression of the fusion proteins.


Heteroepitaxial LaAlO3 films were grown on a SrTiO3/Si (100) substrate by laser molecular beam epitaxy under different oxygen pressures, and their properties such as crystallinity and electrical characteristics were experimentally investigated using the various measurement methods. The results show that most properties depend mainly on the deposition oxygen pressure. The crystallinity and the C–V and I–V characteristics can be greatly improved with the increasing oxygen deposition pressure. Moreover, after annealed at 1050 degrees C in N2 ambient, the C–V and I–V characteristics of LAO films deposited at the lower oxygen pressure are also improved due to the decrease of oxygen vacancies in LAO films.


The ecosystems in urban lakes are very vulnerable to human pressure because of their specific physical functioning, characterized by intermittent thermal stratification and low flow speeds. Furthermore, the high intake of nutrients in these environments encourages blooms of phytoplankton, including toxic cyanobacteria, disrupting their use and causing health problems (Catherine et al., 2008). This work focuses on the implementation of a predictive model of cyanobacteria blooms in urban lakes. It is part of a project whose objective is to develop a monitoring and warning system, in real-time, of phytoplankton blooms in freshwater ecosystems.


: A 77-year-old man with dyspnoea was suspected to have a decompensatio cordis by the general practitioner. A diuretic was prescribed. Additional radiological and laboratory investigation (e.g. natriuretic peptides and D-dimers) showed pulmonary embolism instead of heart failure. A second patient, a woman aged 79 years, with a history of leukaemic mantle cell lymphoma, was treated with poly-chemotherapy (R-CHOP), after which remission was achieved. Four years later the lymphoma recurred and R-CHOP treatment was started. However this was without success, after which R-CHOP treatment was repeated. Subsequently the patient developed dyspnoea and pneumonia. Following additional radiological and laboratory investigation (e.g. natriuretic peptides) the patient was finally diagnosed with doxorubicin-induced heart failure. Based upon these case studies, the role of brain-natriuretic peptides in the differential diagnostic work-up of dyspnoea is highlighted. Test performance, correlation with disease, monitoring, prognostics, differential diagnostic power, reference values and pitfalls of brain natriuretic peptides are discussed.


Background Clinical studies suggest that short-term insulin treatment in new-onset type 2 diabetes (T2DM) can promote prolonged glycemic control. The purpose of this study was to establish an animal model to examine such a "legacy" effect of early insulin therapy (EIT) in long-term glycemic control in new-onset T2DM. The objective of the study was to investigate the role of diet following onset of diabetes in the favorable outcomes of EIT. Methodology As such, C57BL6/J male mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) for 21 weeks to induce diabetes and then received 4 weeks of daily insulin glargine or sham subcutaneous injections. Subsequently, mice were either kept on the HFD or switched to a low-fat diet (LFD) for 4 additional weeks. Principal Findings Mice fed a HFD gained significant fat mass and displayed increased leptin levels, increasing insulin resistance (poor HOMA-IR) and worse glucose tolerance test (GTT) performance in comparison to mice fed a LFD, as expected. Insulin-treated diabetic mice but maintained on the HFD demonstrated even greater weight gain and insulin resistance compared to sham-treated mice. However, insulin-treated mice switched to the LFD exhibited a better HOMA-IR compared to those mice left on a HFD. Further, between the insulin-treated and sham control mice, in spite of similar HOMA-IR values, the insulin-treated mice switched to a LFD following insulin therapy did demonstrate significantly better HOMA-B% values than sham control and insulin-treated HFD mice. Conclusion/Interpretation Early insulin treatment in HFD-induced T2DM in C57BL6/J mice was only beneficial in animals that were switched to a LFD after insulin treatment which may explain why a similar legacy effect in humans is achieved clinically in only a portion of cases studied, emphasizing a vital role for diet adherence in diabetes control.


As institutional repositories seek to better support the release of unique research outputs (as opposed to open access versions of separately published materials), they increasingly turn to DataCite DOIs as the most appropriate form of persistent identifier. While DataCite DOI registration support is built into many repository platforms, the native configuration options may be limited. For institutions like ours who opt to use commercial repository hosting services, contracting customizations to features such as the DataCite integration within the existing software also complicates future upgrade or migration paths for the platform as a whole. In addition, locating the DOI minting service of an institution within a single platform or database may be inappropriate when the institution has several different systems that would benefit from the use of DOIs. Due to these factors we developed a local DOI Minter service connected to our hosted DSpace repository via REST API. This has allowed us to have greater immediate flexibility and also better positions us for future expansion of our DOI related services. Conference Themes  Repositories evolution or revolution?  Supporting open scholarship and cultural heritage  Open and sustainable  How can metadata and standards help our users?


Objective To investigate the association between discordant β-amyloid (Aβ) PET and CSF biomarkers at baseline and the emergence of tau pathology 5 years later. Methods We included 730 Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) participants without dementia (282 cognitively normal, 448 mild cognitive impairment) with baseline [18F]florbetapir PET and CSF Aβ42 available. Aβ CSF/PET status was determined at baseline using established cutoffs. Longitudinal data were available for [18F]florbetapir (Aβ) PET (baseline to 4.3 ± 1.9 years), CSF (p)tau (baseline to 2.0 ± 0.1 years), cognition (baseline to 4.3 ± 2.0 years), and [18F]flortaucipir (tau) PET (measured 5.2 ± 1.2 years after baseline to 1.6 ± 0.7 years later). We used linear mixed modeling to study the association between Aβ CSF/PET status and tau pathology measured in CSF or using PET. We calculated the proportion of CSF+/PET− participants who during follow-up (1) progressed to Aβ CSF+/PET+ or (2) became tau-positive based on [18F]flortaucipir PET. Results Aβ CSF+/PET+ (n = 318) participants had elevated CSF (p)tau levels and worse cognitive performance at baseline, while CSF+/PET− (n = 80) participants were overall similar to the CSF−/PET− (N = 306) group. Five years after baseline, [18F]flortaucipir PET uptake in the CSF+/PET− group (1.20 ± 0.13) did not differ from CSF−/PET− (1.18 ± 0.08, p = 0.69), but was substantially lower than CSF+/PET+ (1.48 ± 0.44, p < 0.001). Of the CSF+/PET− participants, 21/64 (33%) progressed to Aβ CSF+/PET+, whereas only one (3%, difference p < 0.05) became tau-positive based on [18F]flortaucipir PET. Conclusions Aβ load detectable by both CSF and PET seems to precede substantial tau deposition. Compared to participants with abnormal Aβ levels on both PET and CSF, the CSF+/PET− group has a distinctly better prognosis.


Farmer engagement is an integral component of conservation planning, with increased emphasis on precision placement of conservation practices. Conservation planners are increasingly turning to tools like the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF)—a decision support tool (DST) that provides a menu-driven approach to conservation planning. Scholarship on human dimensions of precision conservation, also known as conservation targeting, has either examined farmers' general attitudes toward targeting, or when farmers are active participants in generating targeted practice options. However, less is known about farmers' perceptions of targeting when they receive targeted conservation options for fields they farm. With the goal of filling this knowledge gap, we present findings from semistructured in-depth interviews conducted with farmers in four watersheds in the US Midwest. Results suggest that farmers are receptive toward conservation options for their farms. Several factors influenced farmers' receptiveness toward site-specific conservation targeting, such as farmers having autonomy in the targeting process, and perceiving that the process had benefits such as field-scale validation of their natural resource concerns and its potential to encourage watershed thinking. Results also highlight the potential of conservation targeting in motivating conservation behavior. Recommendations for future conservation targeting include being mindful of the scale of the map and the amount of information presented, having boots on the ground, and engaging farmers one-on-one to motivate conservation behavior.


This rapid literature review finds that disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) raises a number of humanitarian considerations, centred on the treatment of participants and the unintended consequences of the programmes. In particular, DDR undertaken during conflicts is linked to several protection risks and is difficult to implement in a neutral, equitable and humanitarian manner. By humanitarian concerns, this report means: • Some of the functions undertaken in DDR, • Humanitarian risks to individuals in DDR programmes, • Indirect risks of conflict arising from DDR programmes; DDR is a broad and multi-faceted process involving security, humanitarian and development aspects and actors, with wide-ranging impacts. Humanitarian actors do not undertake DDR, but they may support some DDR processes, and maybe affected by DDR or its effects. According to UN guidance and the academic literature, successful DDR will consider socio-economic conditions in the community, as well as for the ex-combatants. It should be attuned to the range of needs of participants and should abide by relevant international law. The political dynamics of a conflict or post-conflict situation shape the success of DDR. It was first used in post-conflict situations, but the increasing use of DDR in ongoing conflicts creates new difficulties. The failure or partial implementation creates many humanitarian problems. This may arise from a lack of resources; competing authorities (and particularly the co-option of DDR for war aims); ongoing conflict and instability; mistakes in implementation; and socio-economic conditions unconducive to successful reintegration. Unsuccessful DDR may see partially demobilised actors remain dangerous, or may fuel new grievances around the perceived unfairness of granting support to former combatants. There is a large body of evidence on the successes and failures of DDR programmes, how they vary over time and across contexts, and guidance on how to implement DDR. Relatively little refers explicitly to humanitarian concerns, but many of the issues covered can be characterised as humanitarian. DDR has been employed in many situations since the 1980s, meaning that it is not possible to comprehensively survey the guidance or case study evidence. Instead, this review focuses on the main areas where DDR can be said to raise humanitarian concerns, with a particular focus on the problems raised by DDR in ongoing conflicts.


Background and Objectives: Children with sickle cell disease are considered at high risk for complications from influenza infection and are recommended to receive annual influenza vaccination. However, data on the safety of influenza vaccination in children with sickle cell anemia are sparse. Methods: Using a retrospective cohort of children aged 6 months to 17 years in 8 managed care organizations that comprise the Vaccine Safety Datalink and who had a diagnosis of sickle cell anemia from 1999 to 2006, we conducted matched case-control and self-controlled case series studies to examine the association of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccination with hospitalization for sickle cell crisis in the 2 weeks after vaccination. Results: From an original pool of 1085 pediatric subjects with a diagnosis of sickle cell anemia, we identified 179 children with at least 1 sickle cell crisis during any influenza season (October 1–March 31). In the matched case-control study (matching on age category, gender, Vaccine Safety Datalink site, and season), the odds ratio of hospitalization for a crisis in vaccinated compared with unvaccinated children was not significant: 1.3 (95% confidence interval 0.8–2.2). In the self-controlled case series study of hospitalized cases, the incident rate ratio for hospitalization with sickle cell crisis in the 2 weeks after trivalent inactivated influenza vaccination was also not significant: 1.2 (95% confidence interval 0.75–1.95). Conclusions: This large cohort study did not find an association of influenza vaccination and hospitalization for sickle cell crises in children with sickle cell anemia.


The changing global economy, dramatic technological change, and increased expectations for gov-ernment performance demand new attention to the complex set of public skills and capacity. Civil servants are experiencing great pressures emanating from increasing global integration – economic, political, so-cial and cultural. New technology, new ways of organizing work, new means of delivering services and an increasing reliance on temporary employment have redefined the nature of public service. Meeting all these challenges requires a unique combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes and effective human resource development policies and strategies to nurture these competencies.


reported yearly to the Public Health Laboratory Service Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre is about 3000. Among children aged under 5 cryptosporidiosis may be found more commonly than salmonella infection.4 Detailed follow up study of cases diagnosed by the laboratory commonly shows other cases among contacts,' including adults, and the number of cases reported clearly represents only a proportion of the actual incidence.


A new luminescent material, 1-acetyl-2-naphthol-4, 4'-diaminodiphenyl ether Mg (II) has been designed, synthesized and characterized. The infrared spectrum and luminescent properties of Mg (II) material have been investigated. The results indicate that the Mg (II) fluorescent material emits blue luminescence with an emission peak at 455 nm when excited at 327 nm, and the effect of organic solvents on the luminous intensity of Mg (II) fluorescent material was arranged in the order CH3CH2OH > DMSO > solid> CH3OH.


Environmental manipulation removes students from their everyday worlds to unfamiliar worlds, to facil-
itate learning. This article reports that this strategy was effective when applied in a university design unit,
using the tactic of immersion in the Second Life online virtual environment. The objective was for teams of stu-
dents each to design a series of modules for an orbiting space station using supplied data. The changed and
futuristic environment led the students to an important but previously unconsidered design decision which they
were able to address in novel ways because of, rather than in spite of, the Second Life immersion.


In natural resource management, ecological models are increasingly used to investigate the relationship between environmental and ecological processes (e.g. quantifying the response of rare and threatened species to habitat fragmentation). This paper examines the potential effect of data accuracy upon the measurement of landscape pattern using spatial configuration and composition measures commonly used in ecological modelling. This was achieved via an accuracy assessment of two standard environmental metrics calculated from commonly used continental and regional vegetation datasets and compared to a higher spatial resolution dataset treated as if it were the truth. Three study areas were selected from within Victoria, Australia, that represented varying degrees of spatial heterogeneity. The two metrics calculated to describe the environment within each plot were vegetation extent and Nearest Neighbour (NN). The first metric, vegetation extent describes spatial composition, whilst the second metric, NN, describes spatial configuration. Assessments were made at the local scale, represented by 80 one hectare circular plots for each study area. The effect of transforming the data was also tested as in many cases the relationship between ecological phenomenon and land cover measurements may not be linear. Results confirm the expectation that the utilisation of lower accuracy spatial data results in the derivation of less accurate environmental metrics. Further findings showed that vegetation extent was less sensitive to map product than nearest neighbour suggesting that certain metrics may be more susceptible to error. Importantly, the magnitude of error was also influenced by the type of mathematical function used to transform the data. The overall magnitude of error as recorded for vegetation extent, for each of the three landscapes, were qualitatively shown to poorly predict the magnitude of error that would occur using the spatially explicit NN environmental metric. Consequently, it is likely that global error statements (e.g. confusion matrices) that are not spatially explicit, are potentially inadequate for describing error in map products that are to be used for modelling spatially explicit phenomenon.


In this study, the BCG-intolerant group, despite incomplete and inadequate intravesical BCG treatment seems to have the best prognosis in terms of stage progression and mortality ( < 5% each). How should one prognosticate these patients based on this study? The authors did not provide any explanation for this. There is a questionable effect of maintenance BCG on progression (only 3% benefi t) [ 2 ] , or/and fewer high-risk (for progression) tumours, i.e. carcinoma in situ (CIS), T1 and G3, in the intolerant group (9%, 37% and 31% respectively) as compared with the refractory group (24%, 53%, and 57% respectively), which may be responsible for this better prognosis. This is similar in the case of the relapsing group who also had fewer primary T1G3 tumours as well as G3 tumours at recurrence. The prognostic signifi cance of tumour characteristics (T1, G3 and CIS) for progression/mortality is well established [ 3, 4 ] and cannot be neglected here as well.


ABSTRACT Replication of drug-resistant human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in the presence of drug can lead to the failure of antiretroviral drug treatment. Drug failure is associated with the accumulation of drug resistance mutations. Previous studies have shown that 3′-azido-3′-deoxythymidine (AZT), (−)2′,3′-dideoxy-3′-thiacytidine (3TC), and AZT-resistant HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) can increase the virus in vivo mutation rate. In this study, the combined effects of drug-resistant RT and antiretroviral drugs on the HIV-1 mutant frequency were determined. In most cases, a multiplicative effect was observed with AZT-resistant or AZT/3TC dually resistant RT and several drugs (i.e., AZT, 3TC, hydroxyurea, and thymidine) and led to increases in the odds of recovering virus mutants to over 20 times that of the HIV-1 mutant frequency in the absence of drug or drug-resistance mutations. This observation indicates that HIV-1 can mutate at a significantly higher rate when drug-resistant virus replicates in the presence of drug. These increased mutant frequencies could have important implications for HIV-1 population dynamics and drug therapy regimens.


List of Contributors vii Preface xiii Section 1 Factors Controlling Plant Cell Wall Patterning 1 1 The Biosynthesis and Function of Polysaccharide Components of the Plant Cell Wall 3 Ryusuke Yokoyama, Naoki Shinohara, Rin Asaoka, Hideki Narukawa and Kazuhiko Nishitani 2 Regulation of Cell Wall Formation by Membrane Traffic 35 Clara Sanchez-Rodriguez and Staffan Persson 3 A Blueprint for Cellulose Biosynthesis, Deposition, and Regulation in Plants 65 Ian S. Wallace and Chris R. Somerville 4 Cortical Microtubule Array Organization and Plant Cell Morphogenesis 97 Sidney L. Shaw and Laura Vineyard 5 Actin Filament Dynamics and their Role in Plant Cell Expansion 127 Jiejie Li, Ruthie Arieti and Christopher J. Staiger Section 2 Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Various Cell Shapes 163 6 The Regulation of Cell Shape Formation by ROP-dependent Auxin Signaling 165 Shingo Nagawa and Zhenbiao Yang 7 Xylem Cell Wall Pattern Formation Regulated by Microtubule-associated Proteins and ROP GTPases 191 Yoshihisa Oda and Hiroo Fukuda 8 ROP Signaling and the Cytoskeleton in Pollen Tube Growth 215 Lei Zhu and Ying Fu 9 Phosphoinositide Signaling in Root Hair Tip Growth 239 Hiroaki Kusano, Rumi Tominaga, Takuji Wada, Mariko Kato and Takashi Aoyama 10 Arabidopsis Trichome Morphogenesis and the Role of Microtubules in Controlling Trichome Branch Formation 269 M. David Marks 11 Transfer Cells: Novel Cell Types with Unique Wall Ingrowth Architecture Designed for Optimized Nutrient Transport 287 David W. McCurdy Section 3 Developmental Regulations of Cell Shape 319 12 Regulation of Guard Cell Formation by Integration of Transcriptional and Signaling Regulation 321 Chin-Min Kimmy Ho and Dominique C. Bergmann 13 Transcriptional Regulation of Biosynthesis of Cell Wall Components during Xylem Differentiation 351 Ruiqin Zhong and Zheng-Hua Ye 14 Phloem Cell Development 379 Raffael Lichtenberger, Kaori Furuta-Miyashima, Eva Hellmann and Yka Helariutta Index 401


Self-supervised pretraining followed by supervised fine-tuning has seen success in image recognition, especially when labeled examples are scarce, but has received limited attention in medical image analysis. This paper studies the effectiveness of self-supervised learning as a pre-training strategy for medical image classification. We conduct experiments on two distinct tasks: dermatology condition classification from digital camera images and multi-label chest X-ray classification, and demonstrate that self-supervised learning on ImageNet, followed by additional self-supervised learning on unlabeled domain-specific medical images significantly improves the accuracy of medical image classifiers. We introduce a novel Multi-Instance Contrastive Learning (MICLe) method that uses multiple images of the underlying pathology per patient case, when available, to construct more informative positive pairs for self-supervised learning. Combining our contributions, we achieve an improvement of 6.7% in top-1 accuracy and an improvement of 1.1% in mean AUC on dermatology and chest X-ray classification respectively, outperforming strong supervised baselines pretrained on ImageNet. In addition, we show that big self-supervised models are robust to distribution shift and can learn efficiently with a small number of labeled medical images.


There are many books designed to introduce category theory to either a mathematical audience or a computer science audience. In this book, our audience is the broader scientific community. We attempt to show that category theory can be applied throughout the sciences as a framework for modeling phenomena and communicating results. In order to target the scientific audience, this book is example-based rather than proof-based. For example, monoids are framed in terms of agents acting on objects, sheaves are introduced with primary examples coming from geography, and colored operads are discussed in terms of their ability to model self-similarity.
A new version with solutions to exercises will be available through MIT Press.


In food packaging applications where low-density polyethylene (LDPE) film containing α-tocopherol is used, the antioxidant may have a dual function, i.e. to protect the polymer from oxidative degradation during processing, and to delay the onset of oxidation of the packaged foodstuff during storage. Incorporation of high levels of α-tocopherol into LDPE film was found to inhibit oxidation of a linoleic acid emulsion stored in contact with the film at 6°C. However, the presence of 360 ppm caused changes in mechanical properties and an increase in oxygen transmission. Levels as high as 3400 ppm α-tocopherol also caused yellowing and reduction in crystallinity of the material. Thus, the use of high amounts of α-tocopherol in LDPE, which might be needed in active packaging applications, requires careful consideration of the protective requirements for each specific food and the maintenance of the desired properties of the packaging material. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper proposes a robust system to recognize vehicle license plate by multi-frames learning. To fast locate the position of a license plate, we adopt a morphology-based method to extract important contrast features as filters to find all possible license plate candidates after calculating motion energy from video frames. The contrast feature is robust to lighting changes and invariant to different transformations like image scaling, translation, and skewing. Due to noise, many impossible license regions may be extracted. Hence, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm is adopted for verifying license plate regions. After locating license plate, the scheme of shape contexts is used to recognize the characters in license plate. To improve the correct rate of recognition, the verifying technique of multi-frames is further involved in our approach. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust for the recognition of license plate.


The study was carried out to examine the effect of teachers' motivational strategies on students' academic achievement in Kwara State public secondary schools in Nigeria. The design of the study was a descriptive survey. The population consisted of all the 6839 teachers and all students in Kwara State public secondary schools. The sample consisted of 330 respondents including 210 teachers and 120 students. Systematic and purposive random sampling techniques were used. A self-designed questionnaire titled "Teachers' Motivational Strategies and Students' Academic Achievement" (TMSSAA), and interview guide titled "Interview on Level of Teachers' Motivational Strategies in Schools" (ILTMSS) were used to collect information on teachers' motivational strategies. Data were personally collected and analyzed using frequency counts, percentage scores and Chi-square to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that awards, scholarship, encouragement, evaluation of lesson, good teaching skills, guidance and counseling, among others, were motivational strategies used by the teacher. Teachers' motivational strategies in relation to the students' learning domains were found to be high and satisfactory while, level of students' motivation was adjudged high and appreciated by the teachers and students. The results revealed a significant relationship between teachers' motivation and students' academic achievement with (r tab = 47.623, r cal.40.1*, p < .05); equally, no significant relationship existed between teachers' motivational strategies and students' academic achievement with (r tab= 30.412, r cal.40.1*, p < .05). Findings on the teachers interviewed corroborated the quantitative findings. In conclusion, teachers' motivational strategies did not enhance students' academic achievement in Kwara state public secondary schools, Nigeria. It was recommended that more experienced and qualified teachers should be employed in order for them to motivate individual students according to their needs in enhancing their academic achievement.


While most of the anemias in human beings are due to some well known cause, and are for this reason looked upon as secondary, there are instances in which the cause cannot be determined, though the blood changes indicate that even these are of the secondary type. For this reason most of the experimental work done in the past in the attempt to obtain more information as to the cause of anemia in human beings, particularly pernicious anemia, has been based on the supposition that it is due to some form of intoxication. Recently, however, evidence has been furnished indicating that the course of experimental anemias in animals, as well as of pernicious anemia in human beings, may be favorably influenced by special diets. This suggests that some of the obscure anemias may be due to the lack of some substance in the body which is essential to normal blood formation and which may be furnished in the food. The recent work showing that calcium metabolism may be affected by various means suggests that the same may be true of iron. Experiments planned to show the effect diet may have in producing anemia in animals have not been very fruitful. Many such attempts have been made with diets poor in iron, or in some other supposed essential, but the results were usually negative. Malnutrition in animals can be easily produced, but this is never accompanied with the characteristic blood changes seen in pernicious anemia. Usually it is thought that the oxygen requirement of the body is the most important controlling influence in determining the number of red blood cells in the circulating blood, and this belief has received


Cigarette smoking is associated with vascular lesions and chronic renal failure. In this report, we describe clinical and kidney biopsy findings for a 66-year-old woman with a history of long-term heavy cigarette smoking who developed proteinuria and decreasing renal function. This study also describes clinical and kidney biopsy findings for 9 patients with a history of smoking. None of these patients had hypertension, diabetes mellitus, or other risk factors that might result in vascular injury. Renal biopsy specimens showed a range of long-term changes with varying degrees of focal segmental or focal global glomerulosclerosis, nodular glomerulosclerosis, ischemic glomeruli, interstitial fibrosis and tubular atrophy, and mild to moderate arterial sclerosis and arteriolar hyalinosis. Electron microscopy often showed glomerular capillary wall thickening caused by subendothelial expansion by cellular elements and new basement formation resulting in segments of double contours. These changes indicate endothelial injury and glomerular capillary wall remodeling; the lesions mimic those seen in patients with chronic hypertension and chronic or healed thrombotic microangiopathies.


Premium Q and supreme Q are the grades of high quality commercially available cultured quartz from Sawyer Applied Research Products, OH and Toyo Communication Equipment Company, Kawasaki, Japan. These grades of materials are generally used as resonators in high precision frequency control applications. These crystals are essentially identical in terms of their quality factor Q, except for the type of charge compensators at Al3+ sites. While premium Q quartz has Li+ as charge compensators at Al3+sites, in the supreme Q material the aluminium is compensated with Na+. Our thermoluminescence (TL) investigations suggest that both the types of crystals, in addition to Al and its charge compensators also have Ge and Ti as impurities present in these materials. The TL peak of Ti-related center seems larger in intensity than that of Ge associated centers. However, the relative strengths of these peaks are not directly related with their concentrations. Complimentary investigations on radiation effects using cathodoluminescence and ESR spectroscopy have also been done. Results are discussed in terms of fundamental defect structures in quartz.


A horizontal mantle heat exchanger for a thermosyphon-driven SDHW(solar domestic hot water) was numerically simulated and fluid flow and heat transfer in the annulus of the mantle heat exchanger were quantitatively investigated. The Reynolds number, the location of the inlet, and the gap of the annulus were selected as the important design variables. The effects of the design variables on the heat transfer characteristics were ,throughly studied. Based on the numerical results, a correlation for predicting the heat transfer coefficient was suggested as the conclusion of this study.


Apart from a few exceptions, abridged versions of courtly epics have not yet been of great interest to mainstream research. Yet, they represent a historical literary phenomenon that documents an independent type of courtly narrative from the very beginnings of the genre. The simultaneous narrative schemes they feature can be traced to contemporary Latin poetics, in which the expansion (amplificatio) and abridging (abbreviatio) of material are described as two basic techniques used in the process of adapting narrative texts. This article presents some initial observations on the elaboration of brevitas poetics, which could offer a complete overview of the courtly epic of the 13th century


Purpose. To systematically develop and field test an intervention to engage families and healthcare teams in the decision-making process about life support for critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Setting. Adult medical-surgical ICU at a Canadian academic teaching hospital.
Methods. The International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) criteria and the Interprofessional Shared Decision Making (SDM) model guided the study of families facing decisions about life support for their relative in ICU that involved:1) systematic review; 2) qualitative descriptive study; 3) mixed methods field test of a novel patient decision aid (DA).
Systematic review findings. Of 3162 citations, four trials evaluated interventions to improve communication between health professionals and patients/families. One intervention met eight of nine criteria for SDM but did not evaluate its effect on the benefit to communication.
Qualitative study findings. Six family members and nine health professionals identified two options (life support or comfort care) and values associated with these options. Values included maintaining quality of life, surviving critical illness, minimizing pain and suffering, not being attached to machines, giving the family enough time to adapt emotionally to the patient's health situation, and the judicious use of healthcare resources. Families were unlikely to become engaged without healthcare professionals making the decision explicit and minimizing other barriers across the decision-making process.
Field test findings. Family members and health professionals for eight patients indicated that the DA was feasible to use, acceptable to users, had the potential to do what was intended, and did not seem to present adverse consequences to users. An enhanced delivery strategy is needed for future evaluation of its effect on facilitating patient/family involvement in decisions.
Conclusions. Limited involvement of families in the process of decision-making about life support in the ICU reinforced the need for effective interventions to facilitate SDM. These studies validated the operationalization of the IPDAS criteria, as part of a systematic process for developing and field testing DAs. However, IPDAS criteria stop short of elements necessary to consider when implementing the DA in the processes of care.


The English language has established itself as the academic lingua franca of the world. For example, Swedish universities are mainly using English textbooks in their teaching. For students in tertiary education in Sweden, it is thus necessary to have an academic English vocabulary.This study examines the academic word knowledge of 148 students in different disciplines at a Swedish university. The method used was a vocabulary test. The test design was based on the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and the words were chosen from the Academic Word List (AWL) due to their frequency in academic written texts.There was a rapid decline of the participants' word knowledge the less common the words were according to the AWL. The results indicate that Swedish students' academic word knowledge in English is generally unsatisfactory, which could make the reading of academic texts troublesome for them.


The long-term recovery process and the changes in the uniaxial tensile properties and in the structure of isotactic biaxially oriented polypropylene (i-boPP) films after pre-extended at strain levels ranging from 1% up to 130% at room conditions were examined by using tensile testing, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy/attenuated total reflectance, atomic force microscopy, and X-ray diffraction methods. It is significantly observed that the pre-extended i-boPP films at strain levels from 1% to 6% recovered completely back to their initial lengths and tensile properties. However, the i-boPP films showed a very slow recovery process and obtained very high remaining deformations changing with time which indicates irreversible structural processes after they were extended at higher strain levels. In order to predict the remaining deformation or length and the characteristics of the recovery process at any time, the linear equation of strain with respect to log time was proposed. The reasons for the changes in the tensile properties, the morphology, and the structure of the pre-extended i-boPP films were examined in detail. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 42948.


The compressive behaviors of AZ31-Zr foams using Ca particles as thickening agent and CaCO3 powder as foaming agent were investigated in this study. The porosity was about 48.7%~72.9%, pore size was between 0.43~0.97 mm, and homogenous pore structures were obtained. Mechanical properties of AZ31 Mg alloy foams were investigated by means of UTM. The cellular AZ31 Mg foams possess superior comprehensive mechanical properties. The energy absorption characteristics and the effects of compression behavior on the energy absorption properties for the cellular AZ31 Mg foams have been investigated and discussed. The results show that with the addition of Zr, the Mg alloy foam has the highest energy absorption value of 16.26 MJ/m3 and the hardness value of 81.8 HV, which is much higher than that of the foams fabricated without Zr.


This paper presents the Entity-Duet Neural Ranking Model (EDRM), which introduces knowledge graphs to neural search systems. EDRM represents queries and documents by their words and entity annotations. The semantics from knowledge graphs are integrated in the distributed representations of their entities, while the ranking is conducted by interaction-based neural ranking networks. The two components are learned end-to-end, making EDRM a natural combination of entity-oriented search and neural information retrieval. Our experiments on a commercial search log demonstrate the effectiveness of EDRM. Our analyses reveal that knowledge graph semantics significantly improve the generalization ability of neural ranking models.