TTN gene truncating variants are common in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), although data on their clinical significance is still limited. We sought to examine the frequency of truncating variants in TTN in patients with DCM, including familial DCM (FDCM), and to look for genotype-phenotype correlations. Clinical cardiovascular data, family histories and blood samples were collected from 72 DCM probands, mean age of 34 years, 45.8% FDCM. DNA samples were examined by next generation sequencing (NGS) with a focus on the TTN gene. Truncating mutations were followed up by segregation study among family members. We identified 16 TTN truncating variants (TTN trunc) in 17 probands (23.6% of all cases, 30.3% of FDCM, 17.9% of sporadic DCM). During mean 63 months from diagnosis, there was no difference in adverse cardiac events between probands with and without TTN truncating mutations. Among relatives 29 mutation carriers were identified, nine were definitely affected (31%), eight probably affected (27.6%) one possibly affected (3.4%) and eleven were not affected (37.9%). When relatives with all affected statuses were combined, disease penetrance was still incomplete (62.1%) even after exclusion of unaffected relatives under 40 (82%) and was higher in males versus females. In all mutation carriers, during follow-up, 17.4% had major adverse cardiac events, and prognosis was significantly worse in men than in women. In conclusion, TTN truncating variants were observed in nearly one fourth of young DCM patient population, in vast majority without conduction system disease. Incomplete penetrance suggests possible influence of other genetic and/or environmental factors on the course of cardiotitinopathy. Counseling should take into account sex and incomplete penetrance.


Uranium is a toxic and radioactive contaminant in many settings, such as groundwaters and sediments. In oxidizing environments, uranyl (U(VI)) is thermodynamically the most stable oxidation state. Sorption or incorporation of U(VI) into reactive mineral phases are processes of major importance because they retard its transport. Biogenic manganese oxides are an important source of reactive mineral surfaces in the environment and may be potentially enhanced in bioremediation cases to improve natural attenuation. Experiments were performed in which U(VI) at various concentrations was present during manganese oxide biogenesis. At all concentrations there was strong uptake of U onto the oxides. Synchrotron based x-ray studies were carried out to determine the manner in which uranyl is incorporated into the oxide and how this incorporation affects the resulting manganese oxide structure and mineralogy. The EXAFS experiments show that uranyl does not appear to substitute into the lattice of the oxides, and is rather present as a strong surface complex. However, the presence of U(VI) on the Mn-oxide layers modifies the lattice constants and coherence lengths of the oxides. These results suggest a complex mechanism in which U transport is retarded by sorption and the surface area of the sorbent is increased.


This study aimed at analyzing the representations regarding the relationships between Nursing and Education practices, to reveal expectations regarding the course Fundamentals, Methods and Techniques of Teaching and evaluate the use of the Projects Method. Method this is a qualitative evaluation research performed between April and June 2007 with first-year nursing students of a Baccalaureate Degree Program. The data were analyzed based on the Social Representations framework and the constructivist postulates. The students revealed that their learning expectations were related with the contents of didactics, human communication, and the teaching-learning process. The Projects Method was considered capable of providing dynamism, interest towards the content, and the ability to associate theory and practice, in addition to having favored the amplitude and appreciation of the educate/care binomial. In conclusion, health didactics contents are capable of generating students' interest, especially when an innovative methodology is used.


Abstract COVID-19-related lockdown provided an opportunity to scrutinise alcohol consumption patterns in a historically unique context. This exploratory study examined how people's thoughts during the day may be related to their drinking during confinement to their homes. Using ecological momentary assessment, 77 UK participants (61% female, Mage = 27.26) used their smartphones to respond to thrice-daily prompts, recording thoughts (in response to open-ended probes) and alcohol consumption over one-week during a period of strict lockdown in the United Kingdom. Thoughts were classified into nine categories (Work, Food, Leisure, Health, Self, Other, Past, Future, Miscellaneous) and exploratory analysis suggested that thinking about ways to spend leisure time was associated with decreased alcohol consumption, while thinking about alcohol was associated with decreased subsequent consumption. None of the other thought categories were related to alcohol consumption. Overall, findings indicate that thinking about ways to spend free time may be a protective factor against alcohol consumption.


Older people's health is a high priority in public health policy, yet evidence suggests that health visitors skills are often directed to younger client groups. Reports on an exploratory, qualitative, grounded theory study which aims to generate further understanding of health visitors' perceptions of the potential scope of their role with older people. Six in-depth individual interviews were conducted with practicing health visitors who were holding generic case-loads. The results are analysed in terms of health visitor exposure; the nature of health visiting practice; perceived effectiveness and individual role perception. Looks at the implications of the findings for individual practitioners, organisational policy and for the educational preparation of health visitors for work with older people.


We are at war. Human cultures are divided into two basic types, two antagonistic forces, one based on symbolic exchange, which is dual and reciprocal, and one based on money and sign exchange, which is totalising. Non-western societies can create genuinely symbolic, durable cultures. But the western world-system, based on a logic of empire, is designed to create an integrated and sealed reality, to snap tight around the world and its image. If the first is indestructible and the second is irresistible, who can win and what will victory look like? The answer may lie in the capacity for violence in the world-system itself, threatening that system from within with the purest of symbolic forms, the challenge of resistance. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact is the summation of Baudrillard's work over twenty years. It is the essential analysis of the fundamental conflict of our time.
- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-intelligence-of-evil-or-the-lucidity-pact-9781845203276/#sthash.J8mPy1ug.dpuf


Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate mean electrical activity and how the anterior, middle, and posterior portions of the temporalis muscle work during mastication. Methods: The sample consisted of 16 healthy male college freshmen trichotomized, aged between 18 and 25 years, with Angle's Class I and no temporomandibular disorders. Electromyographic (EMG) recordings were made in anterior, middle and posterior portions of the temporalis muscle during mastication for 5 s. Results: It was found a significantly lower RMS value in the posterior portion (RMS: 1243.92) compared with those of the anterior (RMS: 2149.77) and middle (RMS: 2531.38) portions. Conclusions: There is an association between the portions of the temporalis muscle. It was found a significantly lower RMS value in the posterior portion showing that the anterior and middle portions of the muscle have a predominant function of maintaining movement during mastication.


The rapid thermal processing (RTP) system requires critical control of temperature uniformity. For most RTP system, the structure and heating modes of heating component determined the control strategy. Major types of the heating system of nowadays RTP systems were reviewed and compared. Then a heating system for RTP was proposed to improve the uniformity of heaving emission, which includes optimally designed light path and high efficient light reflecting system. The simulating results of that were also given.


Background: Information on the knowledge, management and ways of using food and medicinal plants by traditional populations, family farmers and Brazilian native population in the Amazon is essential to guarantee the sovereignty of these groups. The objective of this study was to evaluate the diversity, knowledge and ways of using non-conventional food and medicinal plants in traditional communities in a conservation unit in the Brazilian Amazon.Methods: This study was conducted using semi-structured interviews applied to local respondents. Fifty-six residents were interviewed in 26 communities. The Indices of Use Value (UVI) and relative frequency of species citation (Fr) were evaluated; also, their diversity and equitability using the Shannon- Wiener (H') Pielou (J') indices, respectively. The species were listed according to their family, scientific name, popular names, categories of use, propagation environment, growth habit, medicinal indications, domestication status, production cycle and herbarium registration.Results: A total of 269 species of both non-conventional food and medicinal plants were identified, distributed in 83 botanical families, 198 genera, in addition to 13 unidentified species. The Arecaceae and Lamiaceae families had the highest species richness (11 and 7, respectively). Eryngium foetidum L. (Apiaceae) and Ipomoea potatoes L. (Convolvulaceae) presented the highest relative citation frequencies (19.7 and 19.3, respectively) and the highest index of use value of the species (0.94 and 0.92, respectively). The Shannon-Wiener (H') and Pielou (J') diversity indices were considered high (5.02 and 0.9, respectively) when compared to other ethnobotanical works carried out in Brazil and in the Amazon.Conclusions: A wide relationship of use was observed between the species under study and the population of this conservation area. In the environment in which these families are found, of geographical isolation and distance from urban centers, these species become, in many circumstances, the only food and medicinal resources, therefore, being fundamental to the sovereignty of these families.


During growth on crystalline cellulose, the thermophilic bacterium Caldicellulosiruptor bescii secretes several cellulose-degrading enzymes. Among these enzymes is CelA (CbCel9A/Cel48A), which is reported as the most highly secreted cellulolytic enzyme in this bacterium. CbCel9A/Cel48A is a large multi-modular polypeptide, composed of an N-terminal catalytic glycoside hydrolase family 9 (GH9) module and a C-terminal GH48 catalytic module that are separated by a family 3c carbohydrate-binding module (CBM3c) and two identical CBM3bs. The wild-type CbCel9A/Cel48A and its truncational mutants were expressed in Bacillus megaterium and Escherichia coli, respectively. The wild-type polypeptide released twice the amount of glucose equivalents from Avicel than its truncational mutant that lacks the GH48 catalytic module. The truncational mutant harboring the GH9 module and the CBM3c was more thermostable than the wild-type protein, likely due to its compact structure. The main hydrolytic activity was present in the GH9 catalytic module, while the truncational mutant containing the GH48 module and the three CBMs was ineffective in degradation of either crystalline or amorphous cellulose. Interestingly, the GH9 and/or GH48 catalytic modules containing the CBM3bs form low-density particles during hydrolysis of crystalline cellulose. Moreover, TM3 (GH9/CBM3c) and TM2 (GH48 with three CBM3 modules) synergistically hydrolyze crystalline cellulose. Deletion of the CBM3bs or mutations that compromised their binding activity suggested that these CBMs are important during hydrolysis of crystalline cellulose. In agreement with this observation, seven of nine genes in a C. bescii gene cluster predicted to encode cellulose-degrading enzymes harbor CBM3bs. Based on our results, we hypothesize that C. bescii uses the GH48 module and the CBM3bs in CbCel9A/Cel48A to destabilize certain regions of crystalline cellulose for attack by the highly active GH9 module and other endoglucanases produced by this hyperthermophilic bacterium.


CLAYUI: A FRAMEWORK FOR DELIVERING OBJECT PROPERTIES TO NATIVE MOBILE APPLICATION COMPONENTS Andrew Lize Marquette University, 2012 As technology advances in the field of mobile computing with smartphones and tablet computers becoming less expensive, people are adopting these devices into their daily lives. Due to this adoption, many developers are finding opportunities to develop apps that target this growing form factor. One of the issues that developers come across when developing for these multiple platforms is that there is a need to redesign common elements of their applications for each of their platforms. They are also challenged with the decision of breaking the prescribed design guidelines for each of the platforms they are developing for so that they are able to provide support for these applications in the future. In this thesis, we propose a solution to this problem by generalizing common user interface elements and configure them outside of the application. Our solution, called ClayUI, uses a client server model to house and publish user interface elements to a mobile application using an API that is written in the target platform's native programming language. Our solution allows a developer to create a mobile application that adheres to the platform's design guidelines with the flexibility of being able to port it to other platforms without having to do a full redesign of the application. Our solution also introduces features that assist the developer with the process of creating local and remote database storage for the configured elements.


AbstractThe following case study was discussed at the South African Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (SASPEN) workshop on critcal care nutrition held at the 25th Congress of the Nutrition Society of South Africa and the 13th Congress of the Association for Dietetics in South Africa in Johannesburg in September 2014. It is a reflection of the general opinion of the audience, followed by a rationale of the latest literature on the topic. Here is a summarised discussion of the case.


Many signal processing applications involve manipulating a large amount of data to generate a relatively narrow numerical result, such as, "does a particular object X exist in a picture?", "which of several possible words was spoken in a sentence?", or, "how strongly do these two patterns correlate?". These applications take in noisy inputs with relatively low quantization, such as 8bits/color for video, or 8-bit audio samples, or 1b-to-2b digitized baseband signals. However, a sufficiently large amount of data allows noise rejection, and an accurate answer can be computed. This large-data-to-narrow-result property makes these applications a good fit for analog calculation, which also has limited resolution and inherent noise, but can offer higher energy efficiency than digital implementations.


Brzuska et. al. (Crypto 2011) proved that unconditional UC-secure computation is possible if parties have access to honestly generated physically unclonable functions (PUFs). Dachman-Soled et. al. (Crypto 2014) then showed how to obtain unconditional UC secure computation based on malicious PUFs, assuming such PUFs are stateless. They also showed that unconditional oblivious transfer is impossible against an adversary that creates malicious stateful PUFs. • In this work, we go beyond this seemingly tight result, by allowing any adversary to create stateful PUFs with a-priori bounded state. This relaxes the restriction on the power of the adversary (limited to stateless PUFs in previous feasibility results), therefore achieving improved security guarantees. This is also motivated by practical scenarios, where the size of a physical object may be used to compute an upper bound on the size of its memory. • As a second contribution, we introduce a new model where any adversary is allowed to generate a malicious PUF that may encapsulate other (honestly generated) PUFs within it, such that the outer PUF has oracle access to all the inner PUFs. This is again a natural scenario, and in fact, similar adversaries have been studied in the tamper-proof hardware-token model (e.g., Chandran et. al. (Eurocrypt 2008)), but no such notion has ever been considered with respect to PUFs. All previous constructions of UC secure protocols suffer from explicit attacks in this stronger model. In a direct improvement over previous results, we construct UC protocols with unconditional security in both these models. ∗UCLA. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com. †UCLA. Email: email@example.com. ‡UCLA. Email: email@example.com. §University of Salerno. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.


SYNOPSISThe Rate of Flow of Hydrogen Through Quartz Glass has been measured over the range of 300°C. to 900°C. Some measurements were also made with Nitrogen and Argon. A perceptible diffusion starts with hydrogen at about 300°C. and with the nitrogen at 600°C., and then in each case increases rapidly with the temperature.A brief discussion is given on the Possible Nature of the Flow of gases through fused silica.


In recent years businesses large and small have jumped on the Social Commerce bandwagon, all in the hope of utilising social media services to facilitate various Social Commerce activities. Given the growing influence of social media on social, economic and political events globally, the rise in business interest in Social Commerce is not unexpected. This paper examines the Social Commerce activities of several Fortune 500 businesses. It analyses and categorises how businesses utilise social media to interact with customers, trading partners, employees and other important stakeholders. Two important themes have emerged, firstly, businesses utilise social media services mostly to facilitate Pre- and Post-transactional type Social Commerce activities such as marketing and customer support. Opportunities exist for businesses to leverage social media for transactional type Social Commerce activities such as purchase, payment, and order-fulfilment. Secondly, the business use of social media seems haphazard. Stakeholders wishing to succeed in Social Commerce will have to reformulate their strategies to take advantage of how users behave on social media services and opportunities to draw synergy from utilising an assortment of social media services. The paper contributes to theory by developing a taxonomy of Social Commerce activities. It contributes to practice by highlighting opportunities to engage in Social Commerce activities, in particular, to leverage opportunities from implementing Transactional Social Commerce.


Our researches aimed mainly at finding the connection between health behaviour and the consumption of functional foods. During the research work, a nationwide representative consumer survey was carried out with 1000 respondents involved and focus group tests were done. According to our basic assumption, there is a significant connection between health behaviour and the consumption (purchase) of functional foods. This hypothesis was proved based on a model the most important elements of which are as follows: the consumers' knowledge and information on healthy nutrition and functional foods, the population's beliefs about nutrition and health, the consumers' health history and consumers' attitudes toward functional foods. They together have an effect on the willingness to pay for functional foods. According to the results, 96% of the respondents know exactly that the two leading causes of death in Hungary are cancer and cardiovascular disease. An outstanding rate of the Hungarian population know that there is a connection between diabetes and heart diseases and we get a similarly positive result analysing the connection between osteoporosis and calcium intake or the nation-wide character of osteoporosis. The biggest problem is the lack of knowledge about obesity: according to 30% of the Hungarian consumers, obesity is not responsible for any deadly chronic diseases. Over 70% of the respondents agreed that functional foods cannot substitute healthy nutrition, but can be part of varied diet. Two-third (68.1%) of the respondents believes that eating is a better way to obtain health-enhancing substances than taking dietary supplements. The majority (63.1%) are aware of the connection between food consumption and the prevention of diseases and a smaller rate (55.3%) also know that the bioactive components of functional foods have beneficial effects. It is a positive result that only one-fourth of the Hungarian consumers says that functional foods are only a temporary fad, they are here today and will be gone tomorrow. Eighty per cent of the respondents think that diet and nutrition play a major role in human health. The situation was not unanimous when we examined their trust in directing their own health (perceived behavioural control). Sixty-eight per cent think they are able to direct their own health, but 25% think they can do so only to a medium degree. The above-mentioned together give a willingness to pay extra for functional foods. According to our own calculations the consumer would pay 57 HUF (0.3 USD) more on average for the new probiotic butter cream if it got on the market, which means 357 HUF (1.88 USD) compared to the 300 HUF (1.58 USD) price of the traditional butter cream. Expressed in per cent it means 19% extra price. In the near future, the strengthening of the behavioural control will become a very important issue in Hungary. If the consumers believe that they are able to direct their own life, then they will be more likely to take concrete steps in order to protect their health (actual behavioural control). In the opposite case, consumers will preserve the traditional eating habits, they will make irrational decisions and the state of health of the population is unlikely to improve in the near future.


Urbanization, globalization, immigration from different cultures, new demands and expectations, technological advances led the tranformations of our current cities. As cities are growing and transforming, stakeholders of the cities are becoming more complex and city planning need some improvements. Consequently, it is clear to note that city planning is facing disruptive changes and becoming more important each day. Local governments, city leaders, and international organizations always work to find strategic solutions for the optimal and sustainable growth of the cities and new ways of organizing and governing plans to achieve better outcomes for their stakeholders. In the 21st century, smart city is seen to be the answer to all these challenges. The motivation of this thesis started with the lack of common definition of smart cities. Because each country has different social, economic and political backgrounds. Therefore, the usage of ICT and other technologies are shaped by cultures and needs of the cities' and by political choices of local authorities. Consequently, different cities have different processes to follow. ICT Center for City Logistics and Enterprises (ICE Lab) of Politecnico di Torino introduce a new taxonomy in the paper of "A new taxonomy of smart city projects" (Perboli et al. 2014). According to the literature review, the taxonomy introduced by Perboli et al. (2014) is the one that covers existing smart city concept with a managerial concept of the SCPs such as social inclusion, business and governance model and human and social relations. The aim of this thesis to collect data about different smart city projects at the global level, identify the trends in objectives and tools, promoting the successful business model, and give information about the outputs of the projects. Asia, Australia, Brazil, Europe, Canada, and the USA selected for this study. Therefore, the social, political and economic background of countries are investigated, characteristics of the projects are analyzed, and business model and value propositions are generated for each project. As a conclusion, it was confirmed that Asia has two counterparts of the population growth where China and India have an unprecedented growth, while Japan is facing an aging population. However, smart services for the citizen is the key value proposition cover for all Asian countries with the use of open data and innovative sensors and solid business models. Australia has one of the highest living standards, yet needs to implement big data and ICT to improve energy management, transportation systems, and buildings. Europe has a leadership position in smart cities. Thanks to European Commission initiatives like Horizon 2020, Europe is transforming its cities to become more sustainable and improve the quality of lives. In the case of Brazil, like other countries in Latin America, they need to do more progress in smart cities because they have major problems in traffic, energy, water, and government. For now, Brazil mostly focuses on energy-related strategies. Lastly, the USA and Canada already have advanced organization in most of their cities. However, both countries aim to transform their cities more innovative, more connected and more sustainable. Furthermore, the foundation of public and private entities for the management, infrastructure and equipment financing and financial resources are the key success factor for SCPs around the world.


Background Individual differences in impulsivity and compulsivity is thought to underlie vulnerability to a broad range of disorders and are closely tied to cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) function. However, whether impulsivity and compulsivity in clinical disorders is continuous with the healthy population and explains CSTC dysfunction across different disorders remains unclear. Methods We characterized the relationship between CSTC effective connectivity, estimated using dynamic causal modelling of functional magnetic resonance imaging data, and dimensional phenotypes of impulsivity and compulsivity in two symptomatically distinct but phenotypically related disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and gambling disorder (GD). 487 online participants provided data for modelling of dimensional phenotypes. These data were combined with 34 OCD patients, 22 GD patients, and 39 healthy controls, who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results Three core dimensions were identified: disinhibition, impulsivity, and compulsivity. Patients' scores on these dimensions were continuously distributed with the healthy participants, supporting a continuum model of psychopathology. Across all participants, higher disinhibition correlated with lower bottom-up connectivity in the dorsal circuit and increased bottom-up connectivity in the ventral circuit, and higher compulsivity correlated with reduced bottom-up connectivity in the dorsal circuit. Similar changes in effective connectivity were observed with increasing clinical severity that were not accounted for by phenotypic variation, demonstrating convergence towards behaviourally and clinically relevant changes in brain dynamics. Effective connectivity did not differ as a function of traditional diagnostic labels. Conclusions CSTC dysfunction across OCD and GD is better characterized by dimensional phenotypes than diagnostic comparisons, supporting investigation of quantitative liability phenotypes.


Biomaterial engineering, specifically in bone implant and osseointegration, is currently facing a critical challenge regarding the response of cells to foreign objects and general biocompatibility of the materials used in the production of these implants. Using the developing technology of the laser surface treatment, this study investigates the effects of the laser repetition rate (frequency) on cell distribution across the surface of the titanium substrates. The main objective of this research is building a fundamental understanding of how cells interact with treated titanium and how different treatments affect cell accumulation. Cells respond differently to surfaces treated with different frequency lasers. The results of this research identify the influence of frequency on surface topography properties and oxidation of titanium, and their subsequent effects on the pattern of cell accumulation on its surface. Despite increased oxidation in laser-treated regions, the authors observe that fibroblast cells prefer untreated titanium to laser-treated regions, except the regions treated with 25 kHz pulses, which become preferentially colonized after 72 h.


This paper reports the experimental results of the first CMOS active pixel image sensors fabricated using a high-performance 1.8 V, 0.25 /spl mu/m CMOS logic technology. No process modifications were made to the CMOS logic technology so that the impact of device scaling on the image sensing performance can be studied. This paper highlights the device and process design considerations required to enable CMOS as an image sensor technology.


Purpose: To review lower-limb technology currently available for people with neurological disorders, such as spinal cord injury, stroke, or other conditions. We focus on 3 emerging technologies: treadmill-based training devices, exoskeletons, and other wearable robots. Summary of Key Points: Efficacy for these devices remains unclear, although preliminary data indicate that specific patient populations may benefit from robotic training used with more traditional physical therapy. Potential benefits include improved lower-limb function and a more typical gait trajectory. Statement of Conclusions: Use of these devices is limited by insufficient data, cost, and in some cases size of the machine. However, robotic technology is likely to become more prevalent as these machines are enhanced and able to produce targeted physical rehabilitation. Recommendations for Clinical Practice: Therapists should be aware of these technologies as they continue to advance but understand the limitations and challenges posed with therapeutic/mobility robots.


ABSTRACT Palm trees are widely used as ornamental plants, besides its sustainability and industry aspects. These plants are commercially propagated via seeds. Due to its importance and the need for seed germination information, this study aimed to verify the effect of temperature, light regimes, and desiccation tolerance on germination of Mauritia flexuosa L.f. For that, two completely randomized experiments were carried out. The first consisted of treatments arranged in a 6 x 2 factorial scheme, testing six temperatures (20, 25, 30, 35, 20-30, and 25-35 ºC) and light presence and absence. The second comprised five seed water contents (51, 48, 45, 30, and 26%) for desiccation tolerance evaluations. Water content measurements were made every three days, from a sample lot maintained at room temperature. In both trials, each treatment was composed of four replicates with 25 seeds per plot. Germination rate (GR) and germination speed index (GSI) were calculated, and the data were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). Temperature and light means were compared by the Tukey's test (p < 0.05), and the desiccation ones by a polynomial regression. The highest GR was observed at 20-30 ºC, regardless of light presence. Moreover, M. flexuosa seeds were sensitive to desiccation.


In this paper we study the existence and uniqueness of the random periodic solution for a stochastic differential equation with an one-sided Lipschitz condition (also known as monotonicity condition) and the convergence of its numerical approximation via the backward Euler-Maruyama method. The existence of the random periodic solution is shown as the limits of the pull-back flows of the SDE and the discretized SDE respectively. We establish a convergence rate of the strong error for the backward Euler-Maruyama method and obtain the weak convergence result for the approximation of the periodic measure.


We study the radiative lepton flavor violating li→ljγγ decays in the case that the lepton flavor violation is induced by the scalar unparticle mediation. We restrict the scaling dimension du and the scalar unparticle–photon–photon coupling by using the experimental upper limit of the branching ratio of the decay μ→eγγ. Furthermore, we predict the BRs of the other radiative decays by using the restrictions we get. We observe that the measurements of upper limits of BRs of these decays ensure considerable information for testing the possible signals coming from unparticle physics.


Lung epithelial cell–specific loss of function of Miz1 causes spontaneous COPD-like phenotype and up-regulates Ace2 in mice. Cigarette smoking, the leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), has been implicated as a risk factor for severe disease in patients infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here we show that mice with lung epithelial cell-specific loss of function of Miz1, which we identified as a negative regulator of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling, spontaneously develop progressive age-related changes resembling COPD. Furthermore, loss of Miz1 up-regulates the expression of Ace2, the receptor for SARS-CoV-2. Concomitant partial loss of NF-κB/RelA prevented the development of COPD-like phenotype in Miz1-deficient mice. Miz1 protein levels are reduced in the lungs from patients with COPD, and in the lungs of mice exposed to chronic cigarette smoke. Our data suggest that Miz1 down-regulation–induced sustained activation of NF-κB–dependent inflammation in the lung epithelium is sufficient to induce progressive lung and airway destruction that recapitulates features of COPD, with implications for COVID-19.


Novel liquid crystalline copolyesters named as P(BH-co-BPn)PS, with azobenzene and biphenyl group mesogenic units, were designed and synthesized conveniently by one pot melt polycondensation. All P(BH-co-BPn)PS copolyesters showed good thermal stability, smectic liquid crystalline behavior with π–π interactions in the polymer chains. As the three different functional building blocks (azobenzene and biphenyl chromophores, liquid crystals, π–π interactions) work together, P(BH-co-BPn)PS were responsive to external stimuli at the molecular level, exhibiting thermal shape memory, photo-induced bending and self-healing behaviors at the macroscopic level. It was noteworthy that the different responsive properties of the photo-active azobenzene and photo-inert biphenyl mesogenic units made a great contribution in the photo responsive behavior of these copolyesters, resulting in reversible bending and unbending behaviors for P(BH-co-BP30)PS. In addition, without the chemical crosslink, these copolyesters could be reshaped and reprocessed. Taking advantage of the features, these copolyesters containing amphi-mesogenic units can help to facilitate numerous applications like soft actuators and smart materials.


In array radar signal processing applications, the processing demands range from tens of GFLOPS to several TFLOPS. To address this, as well as the, size and power dissipation issues, a special purpose "array signal processing" architecture is proposed. We argue that a combined MIMD-SIMD system can give flexibility, scalability, and programmability as well as high computing density. The MIMD system level, where SIMD modules are interconnected by a fiber-optic real-time network, provides the high level flexibility while the SIMD module level provides the compute density. In this paper we evaluate different design alternatives and show how the VEGA architecture was derived. By examining the applications and the algorithms used, the SIMD mesh processor is found be sufficient. However, the smaller the meshes are the better is the flexibility and efficiency. Then, based on prototype VLSI implementations and on instruction statistics, we find that a relatively large pipelined processing element maximises the performance per area. It is thereby concluded that the small SIMD mesh processor array with powerful processing elements is the best choice. These observations are further exploited in the design of the single-chip SIMD processor array to be included in the MIMD-style overall system. The system scales from 6.4 GFLOPS to several TFLOPS peak performance.


Excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) propagating at the interface between a dielectric medium and a silver thin film by a focused Gaussian beam in a classical Kretschmann prism setup is studied theoretically. We find that the center of the transmitted Gaussian evanescent wave has a giant lateral shift relative to the incident Gaussian beam center for a wide range of incident angle and Gaussian beam wavelength to excite SPPs, which can be more than two orders of magnitude larger than the silver film thickness. The phenomenon is closely related with the conventional Goos–Hanchen effect for total internal reflection of light beam, and it is called the transmission Goos–Hanchen shift. We find that this lateral shift depends heavily on the excitation wavelength, incident angle, and the silver layer thickness. Finite-difference time-domain simulations show that this transmission Goos–Hanchen shift is induced by a unique dynamical process of excitation, transport, and leakage of SPPs.


Capital holdings can help banks absorb unexpected losses and protect the financial system from costs associated with bank failures. As a result, a bank's capital ratio?the ratio of equity capital to total assets?can serve as an important benchmark for financial stability. Although banks are required to hold sufficient capital to meet regulatory minimums, they may have mixed incentives to hold capital in excess of these requirements. Rajdeep Sengupta and Eric W. Hogue examine how a bank's riskiness and organizational structure affect its capital holdings. They find that banks with higher risk and banks that are not owned by a bank holding company have higher capital ratios than low-risk and holding-company banks.


Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War by Judith NewmanThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


One the mechanisms of failure in total hip arthroplasty in cemented prosthesis is cement fatigue. The main objective of this work is to use Acoustic Emission (AE) as a non-destructive and non-intrusive monitoring test in a cemented prosthesis. The femoral component was sinusoidally loading in a fatigue machine. Experimental data collected during acoustic emission test was treated and analysed by Wavelet Transform and allowed to locate a crack in cement mantle of femoral component. Other complementary diagnostic tests were used to confirm the existence of a fault (crack). One of them was penetrating liquids in different cut sections of femoral component. The other one was microscopic analysis that allowed observing the existence of a crack which location is pointed out by the results of AE answer. The AE sources locations are situated inside the crack observed in the optical microscope. The Wavelet Transform (WT) AE signals demonstrated the accuracy of damage location in bone cement and thus becoming useful in other orthopedics studies.


TheJurassic Attawapiskat kimberlites allow the study of the association of a world-class primary diamond deposit (Victor Mine) with a post-Archaean rift system, the Midcontinent Rift, which affected the southern Superior Craton at 1·1 Ga. Peridotite xenoliths and xenocrysts from the Attawapiskat kimberlites have been analysed to understand the processes of craton formation and modification in the Superior lithospheric mantle. Chondrite-normalized platinum group element (PGEN) signatures in olivine are complex and highly variable, but correlate with Os isotopic compositions.The existence of a depleted mantle reservoir beneath the Attawapiskat area since the Palaeoarchaean is indicated by 3·6 Ga TRD ages preserved in peridotitic olivine. An Mg# up to 93·6 in these olivines requires that protolith formation involved high degrees of partial melting, leading to harzburgitic and dunitic residues. Cr-rich garnets with positive slopes in depleted chondrite-normalized heavy rare earth elements (HREEN) are consistent with fractional polybaric melt extraction continuing from the garnet into the spinel stability field.TRD ages of 2·7 Ga in olivines with residual PGEN patterns probably reflect residual PGE alloy or refractory PGE sulphide inclusions and indicate that additional melting occurred in the mantle at the time of subduction^accretion, with hydrous melts infiltrating the overlying mantle wedge leading to iridium-group PGE (I-PGE) alloy formation. Metasomatic melts related to the Midcontinent Rift (1·1 Ga) interacted with variably depleted peridotite, leading to platinum-group PGE (P-PGE) enrichment and Mesoproterozoic TRD ages. Older depleted domains are, however, preserved (e.g. sinusoidal REEN patterns in lherzolitic garnet). After the thermal impact of the rift subsided, diamond-stable conditions were extended to shallower depths in the lithosphere via cooling, and diamonds sampled by post-rift kimberlites, such as Victor ( 180 Ma), must have formed after the Midcontinent Rift.These diamonds are likely to be of mixed parageneses: high-pressure compositions indicative of diamond stability are observed in both lherzolitic and high-Mg eclogitic to pyroxenitic garnets at Victor.


We investigate modeling flow in porous media in multiblock domain. Mixed finite element methods are used for subdomain discretizations. Physically meaningful boundary conditions are imposed on the non-matching interfaces via mortar finite element spaces. We investigate the pollution effect of nonmatching grids error on the numerical solution away from interfaces. We prove that most of the error in the velocity occurs along the interfaces, and that high accuracy is preserved in the interior of the subdomains. In case of discontinuous coefficients, the pollution from the singularity affects the accuracy in the whole domain. We investigate the upscaling error resulting when fine resolution data is approximated on a very coarse scale. Extending work of Wheeler and Yotov, we incorporate this upscaling error in an a posteriori error estimator for the pressure, velocity and mortar pressure. We employ a non-overlapping domain decomposition method reducing the global system to one that is solved iteratively via a preconditioned conjugate gradient method. This approach is suitable for parallel implementation. The balancing domain decomposition method for mixed finite elements following Cowsar, Mandel, and Wheeler is extended to the case of mortar mixed finite elements on non-matching multiblock grids. The algorithm involves solution of a mortar interface problem with one local Dirichlet solve and one local Neumann solve on each iteration. A coarse solve is used to guarantee consistency and to provide global exchange of information. Quasi-optimal condition number bounds independent of the jump in coefficients are derived. We finally consider multiscale mortar mixed finite element discretizations for single and two phase flows. We show optimal convergence and some superconvergence in the fine scale for the solution and its flux. We also derive efficient and reliable a posteriori error estimators suitable for adaptive mesh refinement. We have incorporated the above methods into a parallel multiblock simulator on unstructured prismatic meshes employing a non-overlapping domain decomposition algorithm and mortar spaces. Numerical experiments are presented confirming all theoretical results.


: Cholesterol granulomas and cysts located on the petrous apex can course of a silent way during years. We describe one case assisted in our consulting rooms which was discovered after performing CT and MRI (with and without paramagnetic contrast) in a patient with vertigo associated to conscience loss without other symptoms. In the discussion is exposed which must be the differential diagnosis of this pathology.


The need for a larger Internet address space was acknowledged early on, and a solution (IPv6) standardized years ago. Its adoption has, however, been anything but easy and still faces significant challenges. The situation begs the questions of "why has it been so difficult?" and "what could have been (or still be) done to facilitate this migration?" There has been significant recent interest in those questions, and the paper builds on a line of work based on technology adoption models to explore them. The results confirm the impact of several known factors, but also provide new insight. In particular, they highlight the destabilizing effect of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offering competing alternatives (to IPv6), and demonstrate the benefits of even minimum coordination among them in offering IPv6 as an option. The findings afford additional visibility into what affects technology transition in large systems with complex dependencies such as the Internet. Keywords—IPv6, adoption, Modeling, Two-sided Market


Computational fluid dynamics is an important subtopic in the field of fluid mechanics. The associated workflow includes post processing simulation data which can be enhanced using Mixed Reality to provide an intuitive and more realistic three-dimensional visualization. In this paper we present a cloud-based proof of concept Mixed Reality system to accomplish collaborative post processing and analysis of computational fluid dynamics simulation data. This system includes an automated data processing pipeline with a ML-based 3D mesh simplification approach and a collaborative environment using current head mounted Mixed Reality displays. To prove the effectiveness and accordingly support the workflow of engineers in the field of fluid mechanics we will evaluate and extend the system in future work.


My thesis is an object-based study which uses the piano as an investigative tool with which to explore cultural value from the perspective of different audiences in attendance at the Great Exhibition of 1851. In a nutshell, my approach is to use an object to explore how a specific historical event was understood. The piano proves to be a provocative agent; physical complexity (both internal and external), the ability to signify multiple meanings and a varied price tag are all relevant characteristics. The thesis examines the perspective of the Exhibition organisers, juxtaposed with networks of other human and non-human actors, focusing specifically on how the materiality of objects and the Exhibition building contributed to meaning. The thesis also considers how visitors and judges might have evaluated exhibits taking into account what knowledge and 'habitus' would have shaped their understanding. The piano maker's perspective is investigated with a view to establishing why the range of instruments displayed was so diverse and whether or not the items chosen reflected normal everyday output. The consumer's perspective questions how class purchasing power might have impacted how visitors understood the designation 'cheap' which was applied to some products, including the piano. Some of my work tackles issues already identified by Exhibition scholars such as visuality, imperialism, consumerism and the question of working-class inclusion, using alternate theoretical methods. Most of the thesis, however, ventures into new territory, specifically the significance of materiality and the role of sound. My work also questions whether the piano was understood primarily as a sound producer or as a decorative object adopting a constructivist methodology rather than the more usual technological approach. In wider terms, my most significant contribution, both to the fields of New Organology and Material Culture Studies, concerns the application of physical evidence to answer wider cultural questions.


In vivo administration of levamisole in calf enhances the capacities of peripheral blood lymphocytes to undergo blastic transformation in response to both phytohemagglutinin and concanavalin A. This effect is dose-dependent and persists at least five days. These results confirm that levamisole is efficient not only in immunodepressed but also in normal individual, and suggest that target cells susceptible to levamisole are different at systemic and local level.


Medicalisation is the misclassification of non-medical problems as medical problems. A common form of medicalisation is the misclassification of normal distress as a mental disorder (usually a mood disorder). Suicide is medicalised when it is considered a medical diagnosis per se, when it is considered to be secondary to a mental disorder when no mental disorder is present, and when no mental disorder is present but the management of suicidal behaviour associated with distress is believed to be the sole responsibility of mental health professionals. In the West, psychological autopsies have led to the belief that all or almost all suicide is the result of mental disorder. However, there are reservations about the scientific status of such studies. The actions of psychological autopsy researchers, coroners/magistrates, police, policy writers, and grieving relatives all contribute. Medicalisation of suicide has the potential to distort research findings, and caution is recommended.


A non-invasive alternative to arterial blood sampling for the generation of a blood input function for brain positron emission tomography (PET) studies is presented. The method aims to extract the dimensions of the blood vessel directly from PET images and to simultaneously correct the radioactivity concentration for partial volume and spillover. This involves simulation of the tomographic imaging process to generate images of different blood vessel and background geometries and selecting the one that best fits, in a least-squares sense, the acquired PET image. A phantom experiment was conducted to validate the method which was then applied to eight subjects injected with 6-[18F]fluoro-L-DOPA and one subject injected with [11C]CO-labelled red blood cells. In the phantom study, the diameter of syringes filled with an 11C solution and inserted into a water-filled cylinder were estimated with an accuracy of half a pixel (1 mm). The radioactivity concentration was recovered to 100 +/- 4% in the 8.7 mm diameter syringe, the one that most closely approximated the superior sagittal sinus. In the human studies, the method systematically overestimated the calibre of the superior sagittal sinus by 2-3 mm compared to measurements made in magnetic resonance venograms on the same subjects. Sources of discrepancies related to the anatomy of the blood vessel were found not to be fundamental limitations to the applicability of the method to human subjects. This method has the potential to provide accurate quantification of blood radioactivity concentration from PET images without the need for blood samples, corrections for delay and dispersion, co-registered anatomical images, or manually defined regions of interest.


There are still quite a lot unknown and unexplainable territories in hydrodynamic field. VIV is one of them. In today's industry world, existence of uncertainty in VIV prediction program attracts much attention. In this thesis, two major questions are emphasized on. One is the relationship and correspondence between the trajectories figures and the strain curves. The other is the contribution of 3× component to the whole fatigue damage and the possible determinant reasons behind it. The experiments data comes from the MARINTEK 22 cases with varying current speed in shear flow are main target. During the analysis procedure, some obvious comparison results appear. The trend of 3× strain is highly similar to the motion phase angle, which lead to the idea for future work related to energy flow analysis. More importantly, with the increasing current speed, the 3× fatigue damage becomes more and more important in the total fatigue damage. The 3× component can cause extremely high fatigue in the stationary response time window than in the total time window. The occurrence of this high fatigue is often found in the place where witnesses high fatigue value in the original total time window. This can be interesting in revising corresponding VIV prediction program when dealing with high speed in stationary response time window. No detailed explanations in mathematical and physical level are done due to the limited time when it comes to the reasons behind the 3 × fatigue damage, which leave much space for future work.


DURING THE PAST 10 YEARS THERE HAVE BEEN MAJOR CHANGES in the management of the most common symptoms of terminal cancer. Opioid agonists remain the mainstay in the management of cancer pain. Slow-release preparations are currently available for several of these agents. The increased use of opioids has led to the recognition of opioid-induced neurotoxic effects and to the development of effective adjuvant drugs and other strategies to counteract these side effects. A number of drugs are available for the management of symptoms of cachexia, including corticosteroids and progestational drugs. Prokinetic drugs, either alone or in combination with other agents such as corticosteroids, are highly effective in the treatment of chronic nausea. For patients with asthenia, it should first be determined whether there are any reversible causes; if not, corticosteroids and psychostimulants may diminish the symptoms. Haloperidol, other neuroleptics and benzodiazepines may be required to manage hyperactive delirium. Oxygen and opioids are effective in treating dyspnea, whereas there is limited evidence that benzodiazepines provide any relief of this symptom. More research on the assessment and management of these devastating clinical symptoms of cancer is badly needed.


This paper proposes a simple method to assess the sustainability of public finances in Romania, which uses the twin deficits concept. We conclude that the sustainability of the country has been seriously affected by the recent crisis, but to a larger extent by the inappropriate design of economic policies in past years. Budget deficits have been recorded even in times of high economic growth, while foreign debt has accumulated at an unjustifiable increasing speed.


Purpose - – The purpose of this study is to explore the investment of supply chain technology-to-performance path relationship through the lens of the resource-based view (RBV) as illuminated by the organizational learning literature. Design/methodology/approach - – This study surveyed top-level managers who are registered members of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. Findings - – Using factor analysis and OLS regression on 300+ supply chain professionals, this study confirms that investments in both enterprise- and radio frequency identification (RFID)-specific knowledge management (KM) tools yield substantial benefits to the firm's knowledge management system (KMS) which is the dependent path to higher supply chain performance. Research limitations/implications - – This sample was taken with supply chain professionals who are more likely to value supply chain investments as part of their responsibility. Practical implications - – The authors believe that the empirical study on supply chain investment from a resource-based perspective will contribute to the ongoing RBV theoretical discussions while providing insights for practitioners in the realm of supply chain investment. Originality/value - – Every investment in supply technology should be driven by an understanding of the inextricably inter-connectedness of knowledge management capabilities and the firm's ability to effectively implement its corporate strategies. By emphasizing the inter-connection between knowledge management and supply chain technology investments, firms improve their potential for developing a competitive advantage.


A new high impedance fault (HIF) detection method using time-frequency analysis for feature extraction is proposed. A pattern classifier is trained whose feature set consists of current waveform energy and normalized joint time-frequency moments. The proposed method shows high efficacy in all the detection criteria defined in this paper. The method is verified using the real-world data, acquired from HIF tests on three different materials (concrete, grass, and tree branch) and under two different conditions (wet, and dry). Several non-fault events, which often confuse HIF detection systems, were simulated, such as capacitor switching, transformer inrush current, non-linear loads, and power electronics sources. A new set of criteria for fault detection is proposed. Using these criteria the proposed method is evaluated and its performance is compared with the existing methods. These criteria are accuracy, dependability, security, safety, sensibility, cost, objectivity, completeness, and speed. The proposed method is compared with the existing methods, and it is shown to be more reliable, and efficient than its existing counterparts. The effect of choice of pattern classifier on method efficacy is also investigated.


The privatization literature depicts the choice whether to contract out as a tradeoff between excessive private investment in quality-reducing cost saving and inadequate public investment in cost-increasing quality improvement, under circumstances where neither the amount of investment nor the cost or quality outcomes are contractible. This paper shows that a monitoring regime, which can verify the benefit of the service at a cost, can bring the investment levels of the private contractor closer to the optimum, while it may not be able to improve the performance of the public sector. Monitors can be captured, and the possibility of capture may decrease social welfare. Social welfare losses due to the possibility of capture may be greater in the case of public provision: The agencies that decide whether to privatize and the agencies that monitor service providers are often identical to, or closely related with, the agencies that actually provide the service if it is kept in-house. Therefore, privatization decisionmakers and monitoring agencies may be more prone to capture when the service is public. Therefore, efficiency may counsel in favor of a purchaser-provider split and a monitor-provider split.


The causes of pilot personnel disqualification associated with chronic hepatitis are analysed. Until recent times insufficiently complete examination of the flying personnel suffered from the chronic hepatitis gave no way of proposing the individual programmes of treating such illness as the chronic persisting hepatitis, chronic cholecystic hepatitis, chronic cholecystic hepatitis, alimentary and medicamentous injuries. This may be responsible for the high level of disqualification of the flying personnel. Another important factor was the lack of the preparations allowing one to administer differentiated therapy. These studies permitted, with the use of such preparations as vetoron, heptral, ursosan, to improve significantly both clinical and expert indices in the pilot with chronic hepatic diseases.


Type rules associate types to expressions given a typing context. As the type checker traverses the expression tree top-down, it extends the typing context with additional context information that becomes available. This way, the typing context coordinates type checking in otherwise independent subexpressions, which inhibits parallelization and incrementalization of type checking. We propose a co-contextual formulation of type rules that only take an expression as input and produce a type and a set of context requirements. Co-contextual type checkers traverse an expression tree bottom-up and merge context requirements of independently checked subexpressions. We describe a method for systematically constructing a co-contextual formulation of type rules from a regular context-based formulation and we show how co-contextual type rules give rise to incremental type checking. Using our method, we derive incremental type checkers for PCF and for extensions that introduce records, parametric polymorphism, and subtyping. Our performance evaluation shows that co-contextual type checking has performance comparable to standard context-based type checking, and incrementalization can improve performance significantly.


BACKGROUND
Malnutrition is a common problem in chronic kidney disease contributing to adverse outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality and overall poor quality of life. In our environment and indeed most other developing countries, the prevalence of malnutrition in the general population is high. The high cost and dearth of renal replacement therapy in developing countries underscores the need for identification of factors that if adequately addressed will lead to slowing down of the progression to End Stage Renal Disease.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To determine the prevalence and pattern of malnutrition in pre-dialytic CKD patients at a tertiary care renal unit in a developing country.

METHODOLOGY
One hundred and two consecutive patients attending the nephrology clinic of a tertiary care facility along with apparently healthy age and sex-matched subjects were studied. Demographic data, social classification and aetiology of CKD were obtained from patients. Multiple tools were used for assessment of the nutritional status of patients in stages 2-5 CKD who are not yet on dialysis. Clinical examination, anthro-pometric measurements triceps skin fold (TSF), Body Mass Index (BMI), Mid-upper Arm Circumference (MUAC), biochemical assessment (serum albumin and serum cholesterol) and Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) were used as tools for nutritional assessment for patients and compared with controls. The proportion of patients that met the International Society of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism (ISRNM) criteria for malnutrition was also determined.

RESULTS
The mean age of the CKD patients was 47±11 years with a male to female ratio of 1.2:1. Prevalence of malnutrition in the CKD patients using clinical assessment was 8.8% (control=none), Body Mass Index was 31.4% (control=7.8%), Triceps skin fold thickness 46.6% (control=14.7%), serum albumin 46.1% (control=5.9%), Mid-upper arm circumference was 30.4% (control=11.18%), serum cholesterol 11.8% (control=3.9%), Subjective Global Assessment, 5.9% (control = none) and International Study of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism criteria 31.4% (control=none). The Prevalence of malnutrition increased significantly across CKD stages 2 to 5 with the use of clinical assessment (p=0.001), SGA (p value =0.001), serum albumin (p value =0.001) and BMI (p value =0.012).

CONCLUSION
Malnutrition is common in pre-dialytic CKD patients in Nigeria and possibly other developing countries. There is a need to identify those who may need nutritional intervention early as this will impact positively on the final outcome of the disease as well as reduce the number of patients progressing to ESRD.


Sport consumers are increasingly discontented and disconnected with sport organizations and researchers have advocated a fundamental shift in sport marketing from a traditional exchange paradigm to a relationship paradigm. Relationship quality is critical to understanding sport consumer-organization relationships because it can: (a) render a platform to organize wide-ranging relational constructs; (b) provide insight into evaluating relationship-marketing effectiveness; and (c) diagnose and address problems in relationships. Therefore, we propose a conceptual framework of sport consumerorganization relationship quality that consists of three main components. First, we specify that relationship quality consists of five distinct but related relational constructs (trust, commitment, intimacy, self-connection, and reciprocity). Second, we suggest that relationship quality influences word of mouth, media consumption, licensed-product consumption, and attendance behaviors. Finally, we argue that psychographic factors such as relationship styles, relationship drive, and general interpersonal orientation are moderators, as well as demographic factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, region, and income.


Mutations in the X-linked cyclin-dependent kinase-like 5 (CDKL5) gene cause a complex neurological disorder, characterized by infantile seizures, impairment of cognitive and motor skills and autistic features. Loss of Cdkl5 in mice affects dendritic spine maturation and dynamics but the underlying molecular mechanisms are still far from fully understood. Here we show that Cdkl5 deficiency in primary hippocampal neurons leads to deranged expression of the alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-iso-xazole propionic acid receptors (AMPA-R). In particular, a dramatic reduction of expression of the GluA2 subunit occurs concomitantly with its hyper-phosphorylation on Serine 880 and increased ubiquitination. Consequently, Cdkl5 silencing skews the composition of membrane-inserted AMPA-Rs towards the GluA2-lacking calcium-permeable form. Such derangement is likely to contribute, at least in part, to the altered synaptic functions and cognitive impairment linked to loss of Cdkl5. Importantly, we find that tianeptine, a cognitive enhancer and antidepressant drug, known to recruit and stabilise AMPA-Rs at the synaptic sites, can normalise the expression of membrane inserted AMPA-Rs as well as the number of PSD-95 clusters, suggesting its therapeutic potential for patients with mutations in CDKL5.


Textile tests training requires institutions and schools have comprehensive textile laboratories. However, due to high costs of such machinery, many of such educational foundations lack these properly equipped laboratories. Within the scope of an EU funded project, an internet based solution to these learning difficulties was proposed and applied. In the application, three types of individuals composed the target group which were students, teachers and technical staff from the related sector. Before the design of the target e-learning platform, a need analysis was done via a survey and relevant data was collected. This information provided both the learner needs and the proof of difficulties existed in training textile tests. By help of this analysis, an e-learning environment was designed. The e-learning platform was tested with each group of target groups separately. Also, the impact of the learning tool over teachers/trainers of the target groups was investigated, as well. The main objective of the investigations was to see if the ICT based learning tools could help trainees quickly learn how to practice textile tests without actually using the test machinery. As a result, we observed that the e-learning environment alone could compensate the lack of properly equipped textile test laboratories to a degree. At least, it proves itself as a helping material for institutions and in-service learning facilities with limited number of hours assigned to teaching and learning goals. Furthermore, additional ICT based learning tools such as offline version of the learning environment also supports and speeds up the self-learning process.


Previous works illustrate that one's palm can reliably recognize 10 or more spatiotemporal vibrotactile patterns. However, recognition of the same patterns on other body parts is unknown. In this paper, we investigate how users perceive spatiotemporal vibrotactile patterns on the arm, palm, thigh, and waist. Results of the first two experiments indicate that precise recognition of either position or orientation is difficult across multiple body parts. Nonetheless, users were able to distinguish whether two vibration pulses were from the same location when played in quick succession. Based on this finding, we designed eight spatiotemporal vibrotactile patterns and evaluated them in two additional experiments. The results demonstrate that these patterns can be reliably recognized (>80%) across the four tested body parts, both in the lab and in a more realistic context.


Recent studies have demonstrated that men's body dissatisfaction is rising and that traditional masculine ideology may have a significant impact on the development of male body image concerns. However, the role of age in this relationship is not well understood. Thus, the present research sought to determine how body dissatisfaction might differ across age groups, and to examine the moderating role of age on gender role conflict and body dissatisfaction. Participants were 156 University of Canberra and Southern Cross Health Club men. Age categories included young adult (17 to 29 years), middle adulthood (30 to 49 years), and older adult (50 to 71 years). Participants completed the gender role conflict scale and the male body attitudes scale either online or in a hard-copy survey. Results revealed that younger men had higher levels of muscle and height dissatisfaction but that body-fat dissatisfaction was experienced similarly across the age categories. Additionally, age moderated the relationship between gender role conflict and muscle and body-fat dissatisfaction but did not moderate the relationship between gender role conflict and height dissatisfaction. These findings add to the limited literature on male body image and suggest that age and gender role conflict play an important role in the experience of male body dissatisfaction.


Translation played a constitutive role in the formation and further existence of the Soviet Union. From the very beginning up to the decline in 1991, it pervaded every aspect of life. Due to the language policy a huge amount of books, brochures and other publications were translated not only from "capitalist" languages but also between the many languages of the Soviet Union. To a certain degree, this holds true also for the Socialist camp. Nevertheless, up to now, translation studies only showed a superficial interest in translation history of communist reigned countries. The focus in research laid around the question how and up to which extend censorship influenced translations. By that, the systemic character of translation was neglected. In the course of this article, I would like to highlight some systemic features of communist translation methods in communist Poland (1944–1991). Poland was in comparison to other communist reigned states with respect to cultural affairs more liberal. A closer look on translational activities will go beyond the traditional concentration of translations of fictional work. By that, we gain to seek deeper structural features. Based on detailed figures about translations made from and into Polish in the mentioned period of time, we get to see, how cultural policy did not directly depend from the Soviet Union, but showed several independent features.


In response to increasing demands for the services of research reactors, a 5 MW LEU-fueled research reactor core is developed and optimized to provide high thermal flux within specified limits upon thermal hydraulic performance, cycle length, irradiation utilization, and manufacturability. A novel fuel assembly concept which makes use of integral flux traps is postulated to meet these requirements. Each assembly can be rotated into one of three different configurations to produce flux traps of different size, shape, and neutron energy spectrum within the core. A method for predicting and guiding the search for the optimum geometry was sought. Kriging has been chosen to predict the values of eigenvalue and thermal flux at untested geometric parameters. Because kriging treats all measurements as the sum of a global deterministic function and a stochastic departure from that function, predictions come with a measurement of uncertainty. As a result, the analyst can search the design space for likely improvement, or probe areas of high uncertainty for improvements that might have been missed using other methods. The technique is used in an algorithm for constrained optimization of the design, and a set of best practices for use of this are described. The optimized design produces a peak thermal flux of 1.56 x 101 n/cm2s. Safety is demonstrated by presentation of reactivity feedback coefficients and the results of loss of flow and reactivity insertion transient analysis. A single fission target can be used to produce 96 6-day Ci of 99Mo per week. When the reactor is oriented to take advantage of high fast flux, steels can be subjected to damage rates of 5.76 dpa per year. Silicon carbide can be damaged at a rate of 2.79 dpa/y. The concept is a safe, versatile, proliferation-resistant means of supplying current and future irradiation needs. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lin-wen Hu Associate Director, Research Development and Utilization MIT Reactor Lab Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Ben Forget Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering


We are concerned with the problem of hyperparameter selection of offline policy evaluation (OPE). OPE is a key component of offline reinforcement learning, which is a core technology for data-driven decision optimization without environment simulators. However, the current state-of-the-art OPE methods are not hyperparameter-free, which undermines their utility in real-life applications. We address this issue by introducing a new approximate hyperparameter selection (AHS) framework for OPE, which defines a notion of optimality (called selection criteria) in a quantitative and interpretable manner without hyperparameters. We then derive four AHS methods each of which has different characteristics such as convergence rate and time complexity. Finally, we verify effectiveness and limitation of these methods with a preliminary experiment.


The incretin hormone glucose‐dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) potentiates glucose‐stimulated insulin secretion, and affects β‐cell turnover. This study aimed at evaluating if some of the beneficial effects of GIP on glucose homeostasis can be explained by modulation of islet blood flow. Anesthetized Sprague–Dawley rats were infused intravenously with different doses of GIP (10, 20, or 60 ng/kg*min) for 30 min. Subsequent organ blood flow measurements were performed with microspheres. In separate animals, islets were perfused ex vivo with GIP (10−6–10−12 mol/L) during normo‐ and hyperglycemia and arteriolar responsiveness was recorded. The highest dose of GIP potentiated insulin secretion during hyperglycemia, but had no effect in normoglycemic rats. The highest GIP concentration decreased blood perfusion of whole pancreas, pancreatic islets, duodenum, colon, liver and kidneys. The decrease in blood flow was unaffected by ganglion blockade or adenosine receptor inhibition. In contrast to this, in single perfused islets GIP induced a dose‐dependent arteriolar dilation. Thus, high doses of GIP exert a direct dilatory effect on islet arterioles in isolated islets, but induce a generalized vasoconstriction in splanchnic organs, including the whole pancreas and islets, in vivo. The latter effect is unlikely to be mediated by adenosine, the autonomic nervous system, or endothelial mediators.


Marked asterixis occurred in two patients following metrizamide myelography. One also suffered generalized seizures and the other had severe stuttering speech for seven days. The spectrum of toxic manifestations of metrizamide is reviewed with emphasis on the unusual lethargy and other depressive effects seen with this relatively safe agent. The hypothesis that metrizamide exerts a ouabain‐like effect on the cortical surface was tested. Metrizamide in concentrations as high as 20 mM had no inhibitory effect on rat cerebral K+‐para‐nitrophenylphosphatase, a partial reaction of (Na1 + K1)‐adenosine triphosphatase. Because metrizamide is a 2‐deoxyglucose analogue, a competitive inhibition of hexokinase at the first step in glycolysis was also postulated. Metrizamide was found to competitively inhibit commercial (microbial) hexokinase. The Michaelis constant for glucose rises from 0.13 to 0.25 to 0.33 to 0.91 mM in the presence of 0, 0.4, 1.0, and 2.0 mM metrizamide, respectively. Since the concentration of metrizamide over the cerebral cortex after routine myelography may be approximately 50 mM compared with a glucose concentration of only 3.6 mM (65 mg/dl), it is postulated that impaired brain glucose metabolism may be responsible for some of the toxic effects of metrizamide.


The subpicosecond OTDR has been investigated as a diagnostic tool for the fiber optics components and integrated waveguide devices. The mode-locked dye laser at 1.3 μm was excited by Nd-YAG compressed pulses. 300 fsec pulses have been generated at the rate of 82 MHz. Using correlation detection a spatial resolution of  60 μm in air and  20 μm in GaAs was achieved


Internationalisation process is commonly envisaged as a product of a series of incremental decision, experiential learning and risk aversion. This paper posits the notion that even though the sequential approach in the process model is intuitively appealing, not all firms follow such path. Thus this paper aims to fill this gap by explaining how the international market entry process has changed in relation to the sequential approach. Consequently, an integrative framework depicting the main drivers of non-sequential internationalisation process is presented. Empirical data was gathered through the use of in-depth interviews. Some of the findings are that the sequential model is by no means reflective of, or appropriate for all firms approaches to international business; the usefulness to be gained from using an international relationship approach to study the international activity of a firm; and the interplay between the identified driving forces behind non-sequential internationalisation process. Key words: Sequential, non-sequential, internationalisation process, born globals, Uppsala model, technology, relationships, networks.


Design can be characterized as 'knowledge for future transformation' and is a discipline concerned with developing new products, systems and services that change the future. However, the methods we use for generating foresight are underdeveloped and some gaps and issues remain. This is especially true between more speculative approaches to designing futures and applied industrial approaches. This paper explores these issues in relation to addressing wicked problems in design, specifically the emphasis on qualitative methods and how these lack measurable indicators of problem improvement. The use of mixed methods offers possibilities for combining the power of abductive thinking generating alternative visions of the future alongside quantifiable improvements. We review methods for future forecasting in other fields including economics and business management and explore how these can be transposed into design practice to address some of the issues raised. A proposal is made to achieve this via an interdisciplinary mixed method approach by instigating a process of gap analysis within a new design futures framework.


Polarization losses associated with the cathode oxygen reduction reaction and degradation of cathode materials remain as hurdles for widespread implementation of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). Rates of degradation depend significantly on the operating temperature and gas conditions, such as the presence of unwanted oxygencontaining compounds, namely H2O and CO2. In this study we explore degradation mechanisms for a common composite cathode material, La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3-δ (LSCF) Ce0.90Gd0.10O1.95 (GDC). Three-electrode cells have been tested under various temperatures, PO2s and contaminant conditions in order to observe changes through electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). EIS is a powerful tool, which allows us to identify changes in the reaction steps comprising the overall ORR. Our EIS results indicate a strong correlation between blocking effects, caused by CO2 and H2O, and the operating temperature of the cell. Using EIS to deconvolute the overall cathode polarization helps to identify the mechanisms by which degradation occurs.


ABSTRACT The research is conducted to describe the politeness strategies used by the Black and White people on The Help novel in delivering a command. It is also conducted to identify the reasons and the factors which influence the characters in delivering the command expressions using certain politeness strategies on The Help novel. The research uses Pragmatics as an approach which concerns on the command expressions as the data. This research employs descriptive qualitative research. This research applies purposive sampling technique in order to take all the data of conversations containing the command expressions which are delivered by Black and White people. There are twenty three conversations chosen as the data and classified into four strategies of Brown Levinson's politeness strategy theory (1987). There are two findings in this research. First, three kinds of politeness strategies are used by the characters to deliver the command expressions in the data. They are Bald on Record, Negative Politeness, and Off Record. There are fifteen data employed by White people and five data employed by Black people to deliver the commands using Bald on Record. Two data employ Negative Politeness strategy are delivered by White people. Then, there is one datum using Off Record strategy employed by White people. Finally, the last finding shows that two reasons which influence White and Black people in delivering commands are the situation when the characters deliver the commands and the relationship between Black and White people. Furthermore, there are three factors influence the characters in using certain politeness strategies. Those are the social distance, the relative power, and the rank of imposition. Keywords: command expression, speech act, politeness strategy


We investigate the capacity bounds for relay-aided two-source two-destination wireless networks with backhaul support between source nodes. Each source multicasts its own message to all destinations with the help of an intermediate relay node, which is full-duplex and shared by both sources. We are aiming to characterize the capacity region of this model given discrete memoryless Gaussian channels. We establish three capacity upper bounds by relaxing the cut-set bound, and by extending two capacity bounds originally derived for MIMO relay channels. We also present one lower bound by using decoding-and-forward relaying combined with network beam-forming.


In this paper, we introduce the agent-based simulation of a shopping mall with walking and purchasing behavior model and consider the performance of distributed parallel execution. To utilize the agent-based simulation for decision support, distributed parallel execution of large-scale agent-based social simulations is important for evaluating the complex behavior of a realistic number of people with acceptable performance. For this purpose, today's agent-based simulation frameworks often provide the functionality to transfer agents from one node to another. However, intelligent social agents tend to contain a large amount of data including demographics, preferences, and history. Hence, the transfer of such an agent incurs a heavy communication cost that has an adverse effect on performance. To improve the performance of distributed agent-based simulation, we introduce a shadow agent that is a lightweight entity projected among nodes with only required information such as the position and speed required to calculate interaction between agents.


OBJECT
Use of the sirolimus-eluting stent has led to a reduction of in-stent stenosis following treatment of coronary atherosclerosis, whereas treatment of intracranial atherosclerosis with bare-metal stents results in excessive restenosis rates of approximately 40%. Neurotoxicity effects and vessel injury are unknown in the cerebral vasculature. To assess the safety profile and vascular effects of sirolimus-coated stents, the authors conducted a prospective comparative study in which drug-eluting and bare-metal stents were implanted in the canine basilar artery (BA).

METHODS
Sixteen mongrel dogs were randomized (eight animals per group) to receive either bare-metal 1.5 x 8-mm (six-cell) stents or sirolimus-eluting stents of the same dimensions. Interventionists, histopathologists, and histopathology technicians who participated in the study were blinded to the stent characteristics. Stents were implanted in the canine BA. Serial peripheral blood samples were obtained during the 1st week after implantation to determine the time-dependent serum concentration of sirolimus. Follow-up angiographic studies were performed 30 days after stent implantation to assess the effects of stent placement on the BA and brainstem perforating vessels. Explantation of the stent and BA was performed immediately after angiography by using a pressurized formalin fixation procedure. Histological and computer-assisted morphometric analyses of specimens obtained in each animal were performed. Sirolimus could not be detected in peripheral blood samples obtained later than 24 hours posttreatment. On follow-up angiography, all perforating vessels observed on initial angiograms remained patent, and no evidence of parent vessel damage or pseudoaneurysm formation was observed. Explanted vessels and brainstem sections did not demonstrate evidence of histological neurotoxicity, such as gliosis or infarction. No significant differences were found in the time to endothelialization of bare-metal and sirolimus-coated stents. Smooth-muscle cell (SMC) proliferation, the putative agent for restenosis, was lower in animals receiving sirolimus-coated stents (p = 0.003). Additionally, intimal fibrin density was increased in the dogs treated with sirolimus-coated stents (p < 0.0001). Histological evidence of an inflammatory response demonstrated a trend toward a reduced response in the sirolimus group (mean 0.58) compared with the bare-metal group (mean 0.83, p = 0.33).

CONCLUSIONS
No neurotoxic effects were observed in the intracranial vessel walls or brainstem tissue in which sirolimus-coated stents were implanted. Compared with bare-metal stents, the sirolimus-coated devices did not impair endothelialization and, furthermore, tended to reduce the proliferation of SMCs. These findings indicate that sirolimus-coated devices may inhibit in-stent stenosis. Further studies with longer-term follow up are required to assess the restenosis rates of sirolimus-coated stents implanted in the intracranial vasculature.


Rarely, if ever, in studies of the acquisition of more than one phonology has the speech of all the members of a bilingual family been examined within the same experiment. Rather it has been tacitly assumed that the parents' speech complies with the phonetic or phonological characteristics of their respective native languages. For example, the impact of the parents' second language on their native language, and regional and/or idiosyncratic features of the parents' speech have not been taken into account, when evaluating the children's production. However, these possible discrepancies from the standard pronunciation might explain the children's performance, particularly in the non-dominant language. An examination of the speech of parents and children will also provide the opportunity to compare L2 phonology with (developing) bilingual phonology. The experiment reported here compares the speech rhythm of utterances produced by the members of three GermanEnglish bilingual families. The children and adults were recorded during a storytelling task. The recordings were then analysed auditorily and acoustically. Rhythmic variability (Pairwise Variability Index) was calculated for intervocalic and vocalic intervals of the children's utterances in both languages. The results show that bilingual children are in fact aware of fine-grained rhythmic variability in the linguistic input they receive, and are able to produce corresponding patterns which are, however, not necessarily identical with adult targets.


Self-attention has been a huge success for many downstream tasks in NLP, which led to exploration of applying self-attention to speech problems as well. The efficacy of self-attention in speech applications, however, seems not fully blown yet since it is challenging to handle highly correlated speech frames in the context of self-attention. In this paper we propose a new neural network model architecture, namely multi-stream self-attention, to address the issue thus make the self-attention mechanism more effective for speech recognition. The proposed model architecture consists of parallel streams of self-attention encoders, and each stream has layers of 1D convolutions with dilated kernels whose dilation rates are unique given stream, followed by a self-attention layer. The self-attention mechanism in each stream pays attention to only one resolution of input speech frames and the attentive computation can be more efficient. In a later stage, outputs from all the streams are concatenated then linearly projected to the final embedding. By stacking the proposed multi-stream self-attention encoder blocks and rescoring the resultant lattices with neural network language models, we achieve the word error rate of 2.2% on the test-clean dataset of the LibriSpeech corpus, the best number reported thus far on the dataset.


Hybrid PV- thermal system (PV/T) is used to harvest both electrical and thermal energy from solar radiation. Using a hybrid PV/T system improves the electrical efficiency of the PV module while the thermal energy can be used for various heating applications. The aim of this work is to numerically study the performance of the PV/T system in a hot climate condition. The cooling system of PV/T consists of several channels parallel to each other. A novel three-dimensional numerical simulation of the system was performed to study the thermal efficiency. The standard k-epsilon turbulence model was used during the simulation. This novel system was based on applying different thermal boundary conditions on the sides of one channel rather than simulating the whole cooling system. Using one channel simulation allows the creation of a smaller number of meshes, hence, reduces the computational time. The thermal efficiency of the PV/T system was calculated using the superposition method for different mass flow rates. The results showed an increase in the thermal efficiency from 60% up to 68% by increasing the mass flow rates from 0.4 - 5.4 L/min. These results were in good agreement with the results in the literature.


The human monocytic cell line THP-1 expresses two classes of IgG Fc receptor (Fc gamma R), Fc gamma RI, a high affinity 72-kDa Fc gamma R, and Fc gamma RII, a low affinity 40-kDa Fc gamma R. Biochemical as well as indirect immunofluorescence studies demonstrated that the selective cross-linking of Fc gamma RII with either anti-Fc gamma RII mAb Fab followed by F(ab)2 fragments of goat anti-mouse IgG, or aggregated hIgG1, which represents a physiologic ligand for this receptor, resulted in the activation of a protein tyrosine kinase (PTK). Several distinct cellular proteins including the Fc gamma RII itself were specifically phosphorylated on tyrosine upon ligand binding. Cross-linking of Fc gamma RII also triggered a rapid internalization of Fc gamma RII that was dependent upon tyrosine kinase activity. The internalization of the receptor in endocytic vesicles was established by confocal microscopy. The time course of Fc gamma RII-initiated tyrosine phosphorylation paralleled endocytic events and reached a maximum between 5 and 10 min after ligand binding and declined toward basal levels as endocytosis was completed. Identical concentrations of genistein, an inhibitor of PTK, blocked Fc gamma RII-mediated endocytosis as well as the induction of tyrosine phosphorylation of Fc gamma RII and other cellular proteins. Cross-linking of Fc gamma RI also induced a rapid tyrosine phosphorylation of cellular proteins similar to the Fc gamma RII-mediated events. However, Fc gamma RII was not tyrosyl phosphorylated upon Fc gamma RI activation. Thus Fc gamma RII is a unique substrate for the PTK activity associated with Fc gamma RII upon cross-linking of this receptor. These results support the conclusion that Fc gamma RII is capable of independent signaling on monocytic cells and that protein tyrosine phosphorylation is an obligatory proximal signal for Fc gamma RII-mediated endocytosis. Furthermore, the signaling pathways employed by Fc gamma RI and Fc gamma RII are likely to be distinct.


Introduction: Hysterectomy is the most common gynaecological surgery performed in the peri menopausal and post menopausal women all over the world. The commonest pathologies in such hysterectomies are uterine fibroids. Many times hysterectomies are also performed for dysfunctional uterine bleeding, in which leiomyomas are commonly noted. When such hysterectomy specimen are grossed and sections studied, co-existing endometrial lesions like hyperplasias, metaplasias, malignancies are usually missed due to the significant presence of leiomyoma. Aim of the Study: The present study intends to unravel all such endometrial pathologies, which would have been missed when there is a co-existing uterine leiomyoma and to categorize these lesions into different groups. Materials and Methods : The study material was obtained from patients who underwent hysterectomy for leiomyoma from December 2011 to August 2013. 200 hysterectomy specimens were included in the study. Tissue bits from representative areas were taken, microscopic sections obtained and histological features studied. Results: Leiomyomas occurred mostly in women aged between 41-50 years and in multiparous women. Menorrhagia was the commonest presentation. Endometrial pattern commonly seen was proliferative phase and hyperplasia. Other patterns like endometrial adenocarcinoma, endometrial polyps and pill endometrium were also encountered. Conclusion: Leiomyomas are estrogen dependent tumours, wherein the endometrium manifests mostly as proliferative phase or hyperplasia suggesting estrogenic prevalence. Findings such as endometrial hyperplasia, polyposis along with distorted, dilated or elongated glands in endometrial curetting could suggest a possibility of uterine leiomyoma.


Location decision of Service Networks is important for an enterprise to dominate market and to improve service level. Characteristics and the decentralized control strategies of service network were discussed for the enterprise of Denso class. A 0-1 mixed integer programming model was established for location problem of spare parts centers and solved by ILOG along with sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, a dynamic programming model was established for location problem of sales model shop and calculated by a numerical listing method.


Effect of Differently Regioselective Chitosan Sulfates on Serum Lipids in Alloxan induced Diabetic Rats
Objective: Diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disorder, and sometimes accompanied by long-term complications, which mainly was resulted in insufficient metabolic control. In this paper, we investigated and compared the hypolipidemic activity of differently regioselective chitosan sulfates in alloxan-induced diabetic rats.
Methods: Compared with the normal control rats, no noticeable changes were found in serum lipid levels in the diabetes rats. Except 3-O-sulfochitosan (TCTS), other chitosan sulfates exhibit mild lipid regulating activities at different doses and time.
Results: First, TCTS significantly elevated the serum cholesterol level, however, TCTS also notably increased HDL-C level. HDL-C is a kind of the important criteria of antiatherogenic agents. Many studies have showed that the higher level of HDL-C lead to the lower incidence of cardiovascular diseases. Second, treatment with TCTS the plasma insulin levels were obviously increased in the diabetic rats. Insulin deficiency in diabetes mellitus has been demonstrated to bring about various disorders in metabolic and regulatory processes, which in turn causes to accumulation of lipids.
Conclusions: Therefore, in terms of the effect of TCTS for HDL-C and serum insulin level, TCTS might be has a lipid lowering effect on the alloxan-induced diabetic rats.


Signal plasticity is a building block of complex animal communication systems. A particular form of signal plasticity is the Lombard effect, in which a signaler increases its vocal amplitude in response to an increase in the background noise. The Lombard effect is a basic mechanism for communication in noise that is well-studied in human speech and which has also been reported in other mammals and several bird species. Sometimes, but not always, the Lombard effect is accompanied by additional changes in signal parameters. However, the evolution of the Lombard effect and other related vocal adjustments in birds are still unclear because so far only three major avian clades have been studied. We report the first evidence for the Lombard effect in an anseriform bird, the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). In association with the Lombard effect, the fifteen ducklings in our experiment also increased the peak frequency of their calls in noise. However, they did not change the duration of call syllables or their call rates as has been found in other bird species. Our findings support the notion that all extant birds use the Lombard effect to solve the common problem of maintaining communication in noise, i.e. it is an ancestral trait shared among all living avian taxa, which means that it has evolved more than 70 million years ago within that group. At the same time, our data suggest that parameter changes associated with the Lombard effect follow more complex patterns, with marked differences between taxa, some of which might be related to proximate constraints.

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A virus of typical Herpesvirus morphology was found in papillomas and carcinomas of smelt Osmerus mordax. lcosahedral unenveloped viral nucleocapsids 95 nm in diameter were found in the enlarged nuclei of infected cells. The nuclei contained dispersed granular chromatin that appeared to be producing viral nucleoids. Most cytoplasmic viral particles were enveloped in electron-dense material, and surrounded by a smooth-membraned vesicle. Some vesicles containing viruses were associated with the enlarged Golgi apparatus, the outer nuclear membrane, or the lim~ting membrane of the cell.