Online healthcare services can provide the general public with ubiquitous access to medical knowledge and reduce medical information access cost for both individuals and societies. However, expanding the scale of high-quality yet structured medical knowledge usually comes with tedious efforts in data preparation and human annotation. To promote the benefits while minimizing the data requirement in expanding medical knowledge, we introduce a generative perspective to study the relational medical entity pair discovery problem. A generative model named Conditional Relationship Variational Autoencoder is proposed to discover meaningful and novel medical entity pairs by purely learning from the expression diversity in the existing relational medical entity pairs. Unlike discriminative approaches where high-quality contexts and candidate medical entity pairs are carefully prepared to be examined by the model, the proposed model generates novel entity pairs directly by sampling from a learned latent space without further data requirement. The proposed model explores the generative modeling capacity for medical entity pairs while incorporating deep learning for hands-free feature engineering. It is not only able to generate meaningful medical entity pairs that are not yet observed, but also can generate entity pairs for a specific medical relationship. The proposed model adjusts the initial representations of medical entities by addressing their relational commonalities. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations on real-world relational medical entity pairs demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in generating relational medical entity pairs that are meaningful and novel.


An approach is presented for analyzing the global behavior of a fuzzy dynamical system that applies the concept and method of cell-to-cell mapping to obtain the evolving trend of the states of a fuzzy dynamical system. The behavior of the fuzzy system is characterized by equilibria, periodic motions, and their domain of attractions. Min-max operation accumulates the fuzziness of a fuzzy system in every step of iterations and makes the state evolution obscure. The proposed method transforms a given fuzzy mapping to at Z-to-Z mapping and does not accumulate fuzziness. Both the real and fuzzy initial state response analyses are discussed. An inverted pendulum controlled by a fuzzy controller is analyzed to illustrate the validity of the method. >


A inductor/capacitor/inductor load resonant inverter is investigated for inductive power transfer applications. The inverter uses a variable frequency controller and operates in discontinuous current mode. The steady state operation of this system is determined by a power flow balance between the inverter and the resonant tank. The results are used to design a system to achieve maximum power transfer.


The purpose of this study is to dig deeper into the perceptions regarding diversity - and the ambition to achieve increased such - among those who have participated in the Swedish Public Service diversity coach education. Furthermore, the aim is also to problematize, and increase the awareness of, different outlooks on diversity and its practical usage. All in all, ten so called "Zebra coaches" have been interviewed for this study. The empirical material has been analysed through a theoretical framework that problematizes the constructs of inequality, based on gender, ethnicity, race, class, etc., on different levels. The study shows that the motivation for engaging in work on organizational diversity partially can be connected with normative identity markers, such as ethnicity and functionality.Being included in the normative community, often results in inequality and discrimination becoming invisible, due to not being subjected to it oneself. This is likely one part of the reason why diversity issues, among the coaches, is not primarily seen as something that could promote a positive change also for others, but rather as something that could mainly fulfil personal gains. When discrimination is viewed as existing somewhere else, and, therefore, not entirely relevant in to one owns situation, it can for some employees be hard to find any motivation whatsoever to engage in anti-discriminatory work and diversity issues. For those who do not inhabit the organizational norms, inequality is, on the other hand, clearly visible, which often leads to a personal motivation to work against such. The study also shows that the diversity education has not generated any bigger change in the informants' ways of working, after having returned to their respective places of work. The engagement in, and outlook on, actions to promote diversity, is rather intertwined with whether or not the informants place of work targets minority or majority groups in its journalistic output. In order for diversity to be an integrated part of the diversity coaches' work practices, a specific assignment to do so or a personal experience of inequality is needed.Another interesting finding from the study is the multiple definitions of diversity that have been developed during the coach training. As a result, the informants are interpreting the concept of diversity in two opposing ways: one focusing on the physical differences that exist in certain groups, whereas the other definition focuses on internal differences that exist in all individuals. Diversity being viewed as individual differences among all people has partially been a new way of defining the concept, and this broader definition has had various consequences. Firstly, the diversity concept is now criticized for being too big to manage, and in some cases the uncertainly of what diversity is, and what it involves, has led to the feeling of "giving up on diversity". Secondly, as a result of the training, the coaches tend to view diversity as finding individual differences in their own homogeneous work group, and not to broaden the group to be more versatile on a physical level.The two different definitions of diversity can also help us understand the informants' reflections about how greater diversity should be achieved practically, both within the organization, as well as in its journalistic output. Regarding recruitment, there are two main approaches on how to achieve diversity internally: on the one side, diversity is considered to be achieved by active actions that strive to recruit people who embody diversity, and on the other side, diversity is perceived as a natural consequence of meritocracy. Finally, the study also shows that monitoring mechanisms are used within public service, to ensure diversity is displayed in various programs/shows. The effort to show diversity outwards may result in hiding the internal homogeneity, which, according to the informants themselves, exists in the organization.


The goal of the current work was to implement and verify previously published rat and human PBPK modelling codes for TCDD into Berkeley Madonna. The US‐EPA has used these PBPK models in the reassessment of TCDD. A procurement contract has been set up to explore the possibilities to adequately run the models and reproduce previously published results. The implementation of the available codes in Berkeley Madonna was carried out at RIKILT‐WUR under the framework agreement with RIVM. The results obtained with a newly coded PBPK model for TCDD in the rat in Berkeley Madonna revealed good reproducibility of previously reported graphs. A selection of key figures could be adequately simulated with the recoded models. Altogether it can be concluded that the PBPK codes for TCDD in rat and human can be adequately run in Berkeley Madonna.


The widespread use of magnetite nanoparticles inside the bloodstream for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes has made the influence of the interaction forces between these nanoparticles an important issue for predicting their behavior for improving the effectiveness of the protocols. Magnets with various geometries have been used in different biomedical applications, such as targeted drug delivery, to guide drugs carrying magnetite nanoparticles to specific areas. In this regard, using computational modeling, we have employed a multiphysics modeling approach using the particle tracing module in the COMSOL software environment to investigate the behavior of magnetite nanoparticles considering not only the magnetophoretic force, but also the dipole–dipole interaction forces between the nanoparticles. The effects of different geometries of magnets on the induced magnetic flux density and the laminar flow velocity inside the bloodstream were studied as well. The results of our study show that each geometry of the magnet induces different magnetic flux density profile and laminar velocity inside the blood flow. The behavior of ferrofluid flow is dependent on the geometry of the magnet and its remanent flux density. By increasing the size of magnetic nanoparticles, the magnetophoretic force enhances the particle velocity in the direction perpendicular to the vessel's walls, which could result in pull out. The results also reveal that the magnetic dipole–dipole interactions between nanoparticles could lead to the induction of higher dipole–dipole interaction forces in regions close to the magnet, especially on the upper wall of the blood vessel.


Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) refers to efforts to bi-directionally link the electric power system and the transportation system in ways that can improve the sustainability and security of both. A transition to V2G could enable vehicles to simultaneously improve the efficiency (and profitability) of electricity grids, reduce greenhouse gas emissions for transport, accommodate low-carbon sources of energy, and reap cost savings for owners, drivers, and other users. To understand the recent state of this field of research, here we conduct a systematic review of 197 peer-reviewed articles published on V2G from 2015 to early 2017. We find that the majority of V2G studies in that time period focus on technical aspects of V2G, notably renewable energy storage, batteries, or load balancing to minimize electricity costs, in some cases including environmental goals as constraints. A much lower proportion of studies focus on the importance of assessing environmental and climate attributes of a V2G transition, or on the role of consumer acceptance and knowledge of V2G systems. Further, there is need for exploratory work on natural resource use and externalities, discourses and narratives as well as social justice, gender, and urban resilience considerations. These research gaps need to be addressed if V2G is to achieve the societal transition its advocates seek.


Holographic mutual and tripartite information have been studied in a non-conformal background. We have investigated how these observables behave as the energy scale and number of degrees of freedom vary. We have found out that the effect of degrees of freedom and energy scale is opposite. Moreover, it has been observed that the disentangling transition occurs at large distance between sub-systems in non-conformal field theory independent of l. The mutual information in a non-conformal background remains also monogamous.


A Constant Proportion Debt Obligation (CPDO) is best described as an investment strategy rather than an asset class. It is a debt-issuing special-purpose vehicle that employs the majority of cash received from note holders in a cash reserve account of liquid, high-quality assets and a small amount to pay initial deal expenses and then makes a leveraged synthetic investment in an index of debt securities. The example cited in this article involves selling protection on the iTraxx and CDX credit default swap indices, rolling from an off-the-run index into a new on-the run index every six months. The article describes the workings of CPDOs by explaining their initial flows, their revenue and expense items, and their three operating rules, which cover investment, cash in and cash out, and leverage. The authors explain the three risks CPDOs face: credit events on the portfolio they have sold protection on, a loss in exiting the old off-the-run index, and a low premium on the new on-the-run index. They further break down the cost of exiting the old index into an increase in the mid-market level of the index and an increase in the bid-ask spread of the index. The authors provide a brief discussion of interest rate risk, path dependency, and risk correlation in CPDOs. They conclude the article by showing the resiliency of one particular CPDO structure via scenario analysis. Their analysis demonstrates that, in keeping with its AAA ratings, it takes extreme conditions to cause a loss in this particular CPDO deal.


Background and Objective: Long period risk of gastric carcinoma in people affected with chronic Helicobacter pylori gastritis is 5 times more than normal people. Perhaps histological changes due to helicobacter pylori infection could be used for screening people at risk of gastric carcinoma and peptic ulcer. Materials and Methods: This study has been carried out as a cross-sectional process and we compared histological changes observed in Helicobacter pylori chronic gastritis in 30 patients with peptic ulcer and 30 patients without the ulcer and then classified them according to Sydney scoring system, and after collecting data, we analyzed them by SPSS software. Results: Sixty percent of patients with ulcer were male and forty percent were female. In addition, 56.7% of patients without ulcer were male and 43/3% were female without a statistically significant difference (p = 0.793). Mean age in ulcer group was 56.4 years and in non-ulcer group was 48.9 years that there was no significant statistical difference (p = 0.057). Chronic gastritis frequency increases within people in their sixth decade and after that. There was no significant difference for degree of infection with Helicobacter pylori (p = 0.346), metaplasia (p =0.885), chronicity (p = 0.796) and degree of activity (p = 0.249), atrophy (p = 0.781) in patients with or without ulcer. Conclusion: There was no significant difference in any of the variables of the study including degree of infection with Helicobacter pylori, chronicity, disease activity and intestinal metaplasia between both groups with and without peptic ulcer.


The implementation of cancer genomic testing into the clinical setting has brought major opportunities. However, as our understanding of cancer initiation, maintenance and progression improves through detailed cancer genomic studies, the challenges associated with driver identification and target classification in the clinical setting become clearer. Here, we review recent insights into cancer genomic testing in the clinical setting, and suggest a target classification approach that considers the levels of evidence supporting the prioritization of tumour drivers for therapeutic targeting in light of complex cancer clonal and sub-clonal structures and clinical successes and failures in the field. We argue that such classification approaches, together with transparent reporting of both positive and negative clinical data and continued research to identify the sub-clonal dynamics of driver events during the disease course, will facilitate inter-trial comparisons, optimize patient informed consent and provide a critically balanced evaluation of genomic testing in clinical practice.


Pyrrolidines are privileged substructures of numerous bioactive natural products and drugs. How to synthesize these important synthetic targets in a more efficient manner is a hot research topic. Plenty of novel strategies and methods have been developed in recent years. Among them, cycloaddition and annulation strategies are the most efficient methods for the construction of multisubstituted pyrrolidines in terms of atom economy, stereoselectivity, diversity of products, and especially, their potential for asymmetric synthesis. These advantages have been well demonstrated by their applications in the syntheses of pyrrolidine-containing alkaloids. In this review, we highlight both the reaction and strategy development and synthetic applications from 2008 to June of 2017. This review covers 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions, formal [3 + 2] cycloadditions/annulations, and other interesting cycloaddition or annulation strategies to illustrate a so-called "reaction-based" strategy for the total synthesis of related natural products.


Abstract Due to the ubiquity of spiking neurons in neuronal processes, various simple spiking neuron models have been proposed as an alternative to conductance-based models (a.k.a. Hodgkin-Huxley–type models), known to be computationally expensive and difficult to treat mathematically. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no equivalent in the literature of a simple and lightweight model for describing the voltage behavior of nonspiking neurons, which also are ubiquitous in a large variety of nervous tissues in both vertebrate and invertebrate species and play a central role in information processing. This letter proposes a simple model that reproduces the experimental qualitative behavior of known types of nonspiking neurons. The proposed model, which differs fundamentally from classic simple spiking models unable to characterize nonspiking dynamics due to their intrinsic structure, is derived from the bifurcation study of conductance-based models of nonspiking neurons. Since such neurons display a high sensitivity to noise, the model aims at capturing the experimental distribution of single-neuron responses rather than perfectly replicating a single given experimental voltage trace. We show that such a model can be used as a building block for realistic simulations of large nonspiking neuronal networks and is endowed with generalization capabilities, granted by design.


ABSTRACT Posttranslational modifications of core histones are central to the regulation of gene expression. Histone deacetylases (HDACs) repress transcription by deacetylating histones, and class I HDACs have a crucial role in mouse, Xenopus laevis, zebra fish, and Caenorhabditis elegans development. The role of individual class I HDACs in tumor cell proliferation was investigated using RNA interference-mediated protein knockdown. We show here that in the absence of HDAC1 cells can arrest either at the G1 phase of the cell cycle or at the G2/M transition, resulting in the loss of mitotic cells, cell growth inhibition, and an increase in the percentage of apoptotic cells. On the contrary, HDAC2 knockdown showed no effect on cell proliferation unless we concurrently knocked down HDAC1. Using gene expression profiling analysis, we found that inactivation of HDAC1 affected the transcription of specific target genes involved in proliferation and apoptosis. Furthermore, HDAC2 downregulation did not cause significant changes compared to control cells, while inactivation of HDAC1, HDAC1 plus HDAC2, or HDAC3 resulted in more distinct clusters. Loss of these HDACs might impair cell cycle progression by affecting not only the transcription of specific target genes but also other biological processes. Our data support the idea that a drug targeting specific HDACs could be highly beneficial in the treatment of cancer.


Background At the request of the intensive neonatal care unit, in order to give the babies less fluid, we replaced the usual amino acid mixture TPH 6% with Primene 10%. After this change however, a greater frequency of acidosis has been reported from data sourcing from arterial blood gases (ABG) analysis. Purpose To thoroughly investigate the formulation of the two mixtures in order to understand if the cause of acidosis may lie in their different composition. Materials and methods We analysed all ABG data, the compositions of the two products and determined pH and the buffering capacity: 2 ml of glucose 50% (the acid component of total parenteral nutrition) were progressively added to 50 ml of the two products. Results 179 formulations containing Primene were prepared from August to November 2012 for 23 babies. We can identify three groups: 12 babies with birth weight >1500 g (A), 6 babies with birth weight 1000 – 1500 g (B1) and 5 babies with birth weight < 1000 g (B2). The ABG data collected were: (A) pH 7.36, Base Excess (BE)-1.20, bicarbonate (HCO3) 23.5 (B1) pH 7.36, BE-2.46, HCO3 22.24 (B2) pH 7.29, BE-7.33, HCO3 18 The differences between groups B1/B2 were statistically significant (P < 0.0001). We pointed out that in TPH acetate ions are present which in vivo are bicarbonate precursors, responsible for alkaline reserve. Primene doesn't contain acetate, but a greater amount of chloride ions and acid amino acids (glutamic and aspartic) and a smaller amount of basic amino acids (histidine and arginine). The measurement of the buffering capacity of the products showed the same trend of pH, pointing out a similar buffering capacity in vitro , despite a lower pH at the outset of Primene (5.23 against 5.66). Conclusions We assume that the absence of acetate and the presence of chlorides can lead the formulations containing Primene to have a different buffering capacity in vivo favouring the observed acidosis. The statistical analysis of clinical data highlights a significant difference between newborns (B1) and (B2), which thus have a reduced tolerance to chloride ion loads. From our experience it is not advisable to use Primene in pre-term babies weighing <1000 g and it is also less attractive to use in the other groups, in which the water balance is less critical. No conflict of interest.


The determinants of residential location choice have not been investigated in many developing countries. This paper examines this topic, including the influence of urban travels on house location decision-making in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Based on 8284 face-to-face interviews in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo, the dummy variable of residential location choice, including two categories of mobility reasons and other factors, was modeled by binary probit regression modeling. By means of receiver-operating characteristic analysis, the cutoff value of commuting distance and the time passed from the last relocation was estimated. Finally, the significant difference between the value of these two variables for people with different house location reasons were tested by Mann–Whitney U-test. The results show that the eight variables of shopping-entertainment mode choice in faraway places, frequency of public transit trips, neighborhood attractiveness perception, age, number of driving licenses in household, commuting distance, number of accessed facilities, and the (walkable) accessibility of facilities influence the residential self-selections. People who chose their current home based on mobility commute a daily mean distance of 8596 m and relocated less than 15.5 years ago, while those who chose their home based on other reasons, such as socioeconomics or personal reasons, commute longer and moved to a new house more than 15.5 years ago. This shows how the attitudes of people about residential location have changed in the MENA region, but there are still contextual differences to high-income countries.


Introduction: Evaluation is the heart of any educational program and in nursing programs ensure the competence of nursing students. This study aims to explore the experiences of nursing students' clinical evaluation.. methods: The present study is qualitative content analysis. Participants in this study were 12 nursing students enrolled in the 8th semester. Purposive sampling was performed until data saturation. Data collection was performed using semi-structured interviews. The first step was to determine the meaning units. The coding was performed, then, the units were classified based on similarities and sub-classes were formed. After that, and combined classes and the main themes were extracted. Results: Twelve students participated in this study. After aalysing the findings, the main themes were extracted. There are some classes included types of assessment, professional experience of the trainer, and assessment tools to evaluate the physical and psychological environment. Conclusions: Effective evaluation process is a concept that should be considered. Proper planning to reform the evaluation process for achieving the learning outcomes and empower nursing students is essential. on


A 'regime shift' is characterized by an abrupt transition from one quasi-steady climatic state to another, and its transition period is much shorter than the lengths of the individual epochs of each climatic state. In the present study, we investigate when regime shifts occurred and what was the difference in climatic states before and after the shifts, using the wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) field in the Northern Hemisphere. The relationship between changes in the SST field, and those in the atmospheric circulation, is also investigated. In order to detect organized patterns of the SST variations, we apply an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. As the results, the first mode is identical to El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and corresponds to the Pacific/North American (PNA) pattern. The second mode, which relates to the Arctic Oscillation (AO), has a zonally elongated signal in both the North Atlantic, and North Pacific. EOF analyses to each oceanic basin are made separately, and the robustness of these modes is confirmed. In the present study, we define the regime shifts as the 'significant' and 'systematic' changes between the two quasi-steady states, continuing more than 5 years. Then, in order to identify the years when regime shifts occurred in the SST field, we carefully inspect the time series of original gridded SST data and those of the EOF modes. As a result, six regime shifts are detected in the study period from the 1910s to the 1990s: 1925/26, 1945/46, 1957/58, 1970/71, 1976/77 and 1988/89. It is ascertained that the shifts at almost all grids are completed within one year. All regime shifts having similar SST and atmospheric circulation pattern, including the changes in an intensity of the Aleutian Low (AL), and the corresponding SST changes in the central North Pacific. All regime shifts can be well described by the combination of the first and the second EOF modes. The duration between each regime shift is about 10 years, which are identical to the PDO. The simultaneous shifts in the first, and the second EOF modes, imply that the change in the AL activity associated with the PNA pattern, might have some connection with that of the AO.


The subject paper1 concludes that number of faults per line of code is independent of whether Assembly language or a high order language (HOL) is used, contrary to previously published results by the author of this correspondence. However, the subject paper contains some technical errors and uses erroneous data. An explanation of the source of the erroneous data is given. Also, previously published information by the author of this correspondence on average number of operators plus operands per line of Assembly language code is corrected.


We develop new statistics for robustly filtering corrupted keypoint matches in the structure from motion pipeline. The statistics are based on consistency constraints that arise within the clustered structure of the graph of keypoint matches. The statistics are designed to give smaller values to corrupted matches and than uncorrupted matches. These new statistics are combined with an iterative reweighting scheme to filter keypoints, which can then be fed into any standard structure from motion pipeline. This filtering method can be efficiently implemented and scaled to massive datasets as it only requires sparse matrix multiplication. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method on synthetic and real structure from motion datasets and show that it achieves state-of-the-art accuracy and speed in these tasks.


The Catalan Supreme Court has ruled again on the economic compensation between spouses for working reasons, regulated in section 41 of the Catalan Family Code. This time the Court has decided on two very important issues for international marriage crisis. On the one hand, the legal nature of the mentioned compensation and its characterisation in order to determine the proper conflict of laws rule. On the other hand, the scope of the law applicable to the marriage crisis regarding the effects of nullity, separation and divorce. This paper explores both questions to conclude that the possibility to submit to different national laws the several effects of an international marriage crisis requires the introduction of a mechanism aiming to adjust those laws ("adaptation") in order to avoid unfair results.


Summary Study aim: To compare the blood ammonia and lactate concentrations in sprinters and triathletes during an incremental treadmill exercise test and in the 30 minutes of recovery. Material and methods: The study included 10 male sprinters and 14 male triathletes who compete at the national and international level. A treadmill test until exhaustion was administered. Blood samples for ammonia and lactate were obtained when the athletes were at rest, during and immediately after exercise, and between 5 and 30 min after exercise. Results: The ammonia concentration and time course were similar in the sprinters and triathletes (F = 1.81, p ≥ 0.05, η2 = 0.08). An exercise-related increase in blood ammonia was almost linear, regardless of the exercise intensity. In the case of lactate, the interactions between the concentrations measured in the sprinters and triathletes were statistically significant (F = 5.78, p ≤ 0.001, η2 = 0.21). Post-hoc tests revealed that the lactate concentrations differed significantly between the sprinters and triathletes in the 18th min (p ≤ 0.01) and the 21st min (p ≤ 0.001) of the exercise test. The blood lactate increased in a nonlinear manner (slowly at lower intensities and rapidly at higher intensities). During the 30 min recovery period, both the ammonia and lactate levels decreased linearly. However, in the sprinters, the peak values were maintained in the first stage of recovery (5 min post-exercise). Conclusions: The study showed that the blood ammonia concentration may be a useful marker of exercise-related metabolic responses in sprint-trained as well as in endurance-trained competitive athletes. Blood ammonia levels were more intensity-sensitive across the whole intensity range during the incremental exercise when compared to the blood lactate levels.


This thesis set out to discern how women?s representation, as a multi-faceted concept and process, plays out in the context of the House of Lords. The primary motivation of this inquiry concerned the reality that women are persistently under-represented in political chambers worldwide. Beyond this, scholarship has overlooked the site of the House of Lords despite significant advances made in women?s presence that facilitate closer analysis. This is also compounded by the status of the chamber itself: in its ?transitional? phase post the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999 the chamber is suggested to act with greater legitimacy and effectiveness. Finally concentration upon the representation of women in the transitional House of Lords is pertinent as the chamber remains in a state of flux and there is an opportunity to prioritise women?s representation as a key plank of the reform agenda. Normative feminist interpretations of representation are the primary frameworks of analysis. Methodologically, this research inquiry synthesised and triangulated the use of quantitative and qualitative research techniques in order to unpack the processes and influences upon all dimensions of women?s political representation in the House of Lords. This helped to present a sufficiently nuanced analysis. There have been obvious attempts to numerically feminise the chamber, although there are systemic de facto and de jure reserved seats for men in the chamber which guard against radical improvements in women?s descriptive presence. Women peers undertake important roles and the House of Lords maintains a culture and institutional norms that are befitting for women and feminised styles of politics which is positive for the symbolic representation of women. Finally, women peers actively seek to represent women through the agenda-setting features of the Lords, although the way this is manifested is mediated by political affiliation. The opportunities to substantively represent women through the legislative features of the House of Lords are narrower, although both male and female peers have successfully influenced legislative output to act for women.


Introduction: It is reported that regular physical activity (PA) is linked to increased neuro-cognitive function (NCF) in children, with moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) showing the most benefits (Syvaoja et al. 2015). What remains unclear is i) which elements of cognition, are affected by exercise intensities in healthy youth and ii) what model could demonstrate the importance of a holistic approach to the development and education of an individual.
Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine the association between NCF with PA, Cardiovascular Fitness (CVF), and psychological determinants in Irish youth mean
age 12.25 years, at a crucial time point in their development. Specific attention was given to identifying whether a specific level of PA contributes to efficient NCF, while also investigating a potential model to demonstrate the importance of a holistic approach to the development and education of an individual.
Methods: Information was gathered on participants (n = 262) levels of PA (Actigraph Accelerometer GT1M, GT3X, or GT3X+), CV (20m progressive shuttle run test),
NCF (Reaction time (RTI) Attention (AST), Working Memory (SWM), Cognitive Flexibility (RVP) and Executive Functioning), health and wellbeing (KIDSCREEN 27) and academic achievement (AA).
Results: This study reported that Light PA, Moderate PA, MVPA, Vigorous PA and CVF associated with NCF. A model of all variables was developed to demonstrate the importance of a holistic approach to child development. Path analysis (AMOS 21) demonstrated a good fit for this proposed model (NFI = .863, TLI = .998, CFI = .996 and RMSEA = .007).
Conclusion: Preliminary findings suggest that performance in NCF tasks are associated with specific PA intensity levels and CVF. The statistical significance of the proposed model highlights the importance of a holistic approach in the development and education of an individual.
Future Recommendations: A longitudinal study is warranted to monitor and evaluate the development of NCF and the proposed model in preadolescence as they progress through to adolescence years. Adolescence is a time where a lot of change occurs with potential effects on NCF development. Research is needed on the effect of pre-and- post PA on NCF. This thesis along with previous research has demonstrated that there is a relationship between PA intensity levels, CVF and NCF.


Modern mobile platforms utilize power cycling to lower power dissipation and increase battery life. By turning off the circuits that are not in use, power cycling provides a viable means to make power dissipation proportional to workload, hence achieving energy proportional operation. The effectiveness of this approach is governed by the turn on/off times, off-state power dissipation, and energy overhead due to power-cycling. Ideally, the circuits must turn on/off in zero time, consume no off-state power, and incur minimal energy overhead during on-to-off and off-to-on transitions. Conventional clock multipliers implemented using phase-locked loops (PLLs) present the biggest bottleneck in achieving these performance goals due to their long locking times. Even if the PLL is frequency locked, the slow phase acquisition process limits the power-on time [1-2]. Techniques such as dynamic phase-error compensation [3], edge-missing compensation [4], and hybrid PLLs [5] improve the phase acquisition time to at best few hundred reference cycles. However, such improvements are inadequate to make best use of power-cycling. Multiplying injection-locked oscillators (MILO) are shown to lock faster than PLLs, but suffer from conflicting requirements on injection strength to simultaneously achieve low jitter and fast locking. Increasing the injection strength extends lock range and reduces locking time, but severely degrades the deterministic jitter performance [6]. In view of these drawbacks, we propose a highly digital clock multiplier that seeks to achieve low jitter, fast locking, and near-zero off-state power. By using a highly scalable digital architecture with accurate frequency presetting and instantaneous phase acquisition, the prototype 8×/16× clock multiplier achieves 10ns (3 reference cycles) power-on time, 2psrms long-term absolute jitter, less than 25μW off-state power, 12pJ energy overhead for on/off transition, and 2.2mW on-state power at 2.5GHz output frequency.


This paper presents an analysis on economy-environmental interlinkages for Tanzania by using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model based on a social accounting matrix. The purpose of the analysis is to include general equilibrium effects when evaluating two suggested policy measures meant to stimulate growth and crop production. The model is multisectoral with a particular focus on crop producing sectors and soil mining processes. Maize trade liberalization and a fertilizer subsidy are considered. The model simulations show that both policy reforms have expansive effects and that there are significant sectoral complementarities between agriculture and non-agriculture in Tanzania. Fertilizer subsidies promotes cash crop production and a more land intensive production pattern in agriculture, while a maize trade liberalization stimulates food crops and a more land extensive agriculture. Fertilizer subsidies are found to imply far more expansive effects than a trade liberalization does. Only minor differences are identified between the two policy reforms as concerning their impact on the balance of trade, distribution and the environment.


We aim at describing the concept and method of school tutoring based on experiences of College of Tutors running a program financed by the local authorities. Tutoring has academic roots as a method of individual collaboration between a student and a professor focused on student's development. We also mention the philosophical background of tutoring (Socrates, philosophy of dialogue, personalism). Subsequently, we describe the foundations of the school tutoring program including the variations of its methods. Experiences of Wroclaw secondary education schools prove the changes induced by few-year tutoring practice: in social relations, in the teachers self-image, in the way students feel at school. School tutoring focuses on responding to student's needs, experiences, plans and an occasion to reflect on the very nature and value of pedagogical activity. The text is concluded by a few remarks of the future of school tutoring. keywords: development, school tutoring, student, support method, tutor, tutoring.


The plasma wave acceleration of electron in the bubble regime is investigated in a new configuration containing a planar wiggler. The space-charge field of the laser-created ion channel can focuse and stabilize the electron trajectory to guide it toward the acceleration region. The high-gradient plasma wave field can resonantly accelerate the trapped electron to higher energies in the presence of a planar wiggler compensating the electron dephasing. The results show that in the lower plasma wave amplitudes the planar wiggler plays a more significant role on the electron energy enhancement. The increment of the electron energy in this configuration isvalidated using a three-dimension single-particle code. The energy gain of electrondependency on the planar wiggler, ion channel field, plasma wave angle and amplitude as well as the initial energy of electron has been investigated. The results of paper will be of importance in the optimization of electron energy and improving the quality of the accelerated electrons in the plasma wakefield accelerators.


. Context: concept Maps (CMs) enable the creation of a schematic representation of a domain knowledge. For this reason, CMs have been applied in different research areas, including Computer Science. Objective: the objective of this paper is to present the results of a systematic mapping study conducted to collect and evaluate existing research on CMs initiatives in Computer Science. Method: the mapping study was performed by searching five electronic databases. We also performed backward snowballing and manual search to find publications of researchers and research groups that accomplished these studies. Results: from the mapping study, we identified 108 studies addressing CMs initiatives in different subareas of Computer Science that were reviewed to extract relevant information to answer a set of research questions. The mapping shows an increasing interest in the topic in recent years and it has been extensively investigated due to support in teaching and learning. Conclusions: based on our results we conclude that the use of CMs as an educational tool has been widely accepted in Computer Science.


Laser pulse nonlinear transmission measurements through saturable absorbers of known absorption parameters allow the measurement of their energy density. On the other hand, nonlinear transmission measurements of laser pulses of known energy density through absorbing media allow their absorption parameter determination. The peak energy density w_(0P) of second harmonic pulses of a mode-locked titanium sapphire laser at wavelength λ_P = 400 nm is determined by nonlinear energy transmission measurement TE through the dye ADS084BE (1,4-bis(9-ethyl-3-carbazovinylene)- 2-methoxy-5-(2'-ethyl-hexyloxy)-benzene) in tetrahydrofuran. T_E(w_(0P)) calibration curves are calculated for laser pulse peak energy density reading w0P from measured pulse energy transmissions T_E. The ground-state absorption cross-section σ_P and the excited-state absorption cross-section σ_(ex) at λ_P, and the number density N_0 of the retinal Schiff base isoform RetA in pH 7.4 buffer of the blue-light adapted recombinant rhodopsin fragment of the histidine kinase rhodopsin HKR1 from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were determined by picosecond titanium sapphire second harmonic laser pulse energy transmission measurement T_E through RetA as a function of laser input peak energy density w_(0P). The complete absorption cross-section spectrum σ(λ) of RetA was obtained by absorption coefficient spectrum measurement α(λ) and normalization to the determined absorption cross-section σ_P at λ_P [σ(λ) = α(λ)σ_P/α_P].


The most significant activity in software development is to develop projects within confined time and budget. As accuracy plays a vital role for software system. Prediction of effort estimation is one of the critical tasks required for developing software. In this paper we perform the performance study of fuzzy logic and genetic algorithm to make an intelligent application for the purpose of predicting cost and time. On the basis of following parameters in terms of accuracy, memory used, search time, build time and error rate performance study of these two algorithms is accomplished. The above approach helps in the reduction of effort estimation for the efficient development of software. Keywords—Software Effort Estimation, Project estimation, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic algorithms.


This paper describes the capabilities and applications of inexpensive satellite platforms capable of carrying dedicated sensor packages into low earth orbit on primary or shared launch services. These satellites permit achievement of rapid operational status by employing standard buses with fixed options for orbit and power. The satellites may be configured for experimental or operational missions with lifetimes up to several years. Low cost satellites can satisfy a range of mission requirements in the areas of surveillance, drug interdiction, environmental and geophysical observations, immigration control, fisheries law enforcement, remote sensing, real-time communications, store-and-forward communications, and technology testing. These satellites may be equipped for location determination missions with ID and homing transponders and tagged objects or persons. The satellites' size, power, and weight budgets are appropriately rated for the types of dedicated mission scenarios noted above. For applications requiring continuous visibility or high availability, constellations of satellites may be both appropriate and cost-effective. Orbital parameters are determined by the launch vehicle and the requirements of the primary payload. Geographical service areas are determined by the orbital footprint, the parameters of which are determined by the mission requirements and the selection of launch vehicle. The satellites' small size permits their launch on any of several launch vehicles in domestic or international inventory. Integral to each satellite is a communications and control package which, when coupled with companion low cost earth terminals, provides programmable mission scenarios under operator control. These satellites permit rapid implementation of operational systems within tight fiscal constraints.


ABSTRACT Health professions programmes are increasing the number of interprofessional events in their curricula. Many of these programmes are grounded in case study or simulation events in order to prepare students for eventual practice. We designed an interprofessional education collaborative practice (IPECP) that provides direct interprofessional practice experience while students are still in their health profession programmes. In our programme, teams of senior baccalaureate nursing and third-year medical students provided health coaching to patients in need of chronic disease management. The purpose of the project and study was to determine whether repeated exposure to opportunities for interprofessional communication would lead to improvement in the individual and team communication skills. Teams met with their assigned patients monthly to provide coaching and had follow-up conversations with the patients between meetings. Faculty were present at each meeting to review the healthcare and coaching plans, observe the teams' interactions, and provide a debriefing after each meeting. Results demonstrated that both individual and team communication skills significantly increased over time. The IPECP project was successful in providing a context where students could develop and improve upon key interprofessional communication skills.


OBJECTIVES
Calibrating a disease simulation model's outputs to existing clinical data is vital to generate confidence in the model's predictive ability. Calibration involves two challenges: 1) defining a total goodness-of-fit (GOF) score for multiple targets if simultaneous fitting is required, and 2) searching for the optimal parameter set that minimizes the total GOF score (i.e., yields the best fit). To address these two prominent challenges, we have applied an engineering approach to calibrate a microsimulation model, the Lung Cancer Policy Model (LCPM).

METHODS
First, 11 targets derived from clinical and epidemiologic data were combined into a total GOF score by a weighted-sum approach, accounting for the user-defined relative importance of the calibration targets. Second, two automated parameter search algorithms, simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithm (GA), were independently applied to a simultaneous search of 28 natural history parameters to minimize the total GOF score. Algorithm performance metrics were defined for speed and model fit.

RESULTS
Both search algorithms obtained total GOF scores below 95 within 1000 search iterations. Our results show that SA outperformed GA in locating a lower GOF. After calibrating our LCPM, the predicted natural history of lung cancer was consistent with other mathematical models of lung cancer development.

CONCLUSION
An engineering-based calibration method was able to simultaneously fit LCPM output to multiple calibration targets, with the benefits of fast computational speed and reduced the need for human input and its potential bias.


Abstract The evaluation of printing machines poses the problem of how distortions like streaks caused by the machine can be detected and assessed automatically. Although luminance variations in prints can be measured quite precisely, the measured functions bear little relevance for the lightness of streaks and other distortions of prints as perceived by human observers. First, the measurements sometimes indicate changes of luminance in regions which are perceived as homogeneous by humans. Second, the measured strength of a distortion correlates often weakly with its perceived strength, which is influenced by a variety of factors, like the shape of a streak's luminance profile and the distribution of luminance variations in its spatial surround. We have used a model of human perception, based on fundamental neurophysiological and psychophysical properties of the visual system, in order to predict the perceptual strength of streaks (i.e. the distortion as perceived by a human observer) from the measured physical luminance signal. For the evaluation of the model, tests with naive and expert observers have been conducted. The results show that the model yields a good correlation () to the assessments of human observers and is thus well suited for use in an automatic evaluation system.


Antrodiella thujae is described and illustrated from Qinghai Province, Northwest China. The new species is characterized by a perennial habit, allantoid basidiospores, fusoid cystidioles, and growing on Thuja przewalskii. Antrodia hippophaes is newly recorded from China. Ninety-nine additional species of poroid wood-inhabiting fungi were also identified in 5 forested areas of Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. A checklist of the polypores is provided, and the host of each species is listed.


The human alteration of the nitrogen cycle has evolved from minimal in the mid-19th century to extensive in the present time. The consequences to human and environmental health are significant. While much attention has been given to the extent and impacts of the alteration, little attention has been given to those entities (i.e., consumers, institutions) that use the resources that result in extensive reactive nitrogen (Nr) creation. One strategy for assessment is the use of nitrogen footprint tools. A nitrogen footprint is generally defined as the total amount of Nr released to the environment as a result of an entity's consumption patterns. This paper reviews a number of nitrogen footprint tools (N-Calculator, N-Institution, N-Label, N-Neutrality, N-Indicator) that are designed to provide that attention. It reviews N-footprint tools for consumers as a function of the country that they live in (N-Calculator, N-Indicator) and the products they buy (N-Label), for the institutions that people work in and are educated in (N-Institution), and for events and decision-making regarding offsets (N-Neutrality). N footprint tools provide a framework for people to make decisions about their resource use and show them how offsets can be coupled with behavior change to decrease consumer/institution contributions to N-related problems.


This paper comes at a time when the social work profession in the UK is redefining its professional ideology and working practices in the face of key government initiatives for social work education and the regulation of practice. It seeks to contextualize and, thereby, inform these deliberations by providing a cross-national perspective. Indeed, the search for international perspectives that might advise or validate national perspectives on social work has become increasingly important (Midgley, 2001). The paper uses data from a global study (Weiss et al., forthcoming) that identifies and compares the attitudes of graduating social workers at the point of qualification in ten countries representing a diverse range of social, economic and cultural contexts (n = 781). Through a comparison of commonalities and differences of professional ideologies and practice preferences across samples, the paper distinguishes particular characteristics of the social work profession in the UK. Whilst a claim cannot be made to be representative, the findings present a set of empirically based contentions that provide information about what social workers are being trained for and what they prefer to do. Findings reveal a mix of psycho-social orientation, whereby a welfare agenda was preferred—one that co-existed with the espousal of elements of a statutory social work role in terms of ideology, level of practice, choice of technologies, age and population groupings and practice strategies. Whilst such a mix appeared contradictory in conceptual terms, the students appeared to reconcile the dilemma through the espousal of a particular value position. A key finding for policy makers and educators, however, concerns the fact that while the UK students felt willing to work through social problems in individual situations, they were unhappy about the extent to which they were able to utilize their therapeutic skills in statutory social work settings. Their preference would be to work in the independent sector.


Background: Increasing numbers of literatures have investigated the association between TOP2A and cancer prognosis. But the results of the relationship between the two were inconclusive. The aim of this meta-analysis was to elucidate whether TOP2A could predict prognosis of cancer. Materials and Methods: A systematically searching for potentially valuable literature was conducted through electronic databases containing PubMed and Web of Science. Hazard Ratio (HR) and their 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to assess the strength of association between TOP2A and cancer prognosis. Results: Finally twenty-five studies were included in this meta-analysis. High expression of TOP2A was associated with shorter disease free survival (DFS) of cancer prognosis compared with low expression of TOP2A (HR= 1.36, 95% CI= 1.18-1.57, P<0.001). Amplification of TOP2A gene showed no significant association with overall survival (OS), disease free survival (DFS) or relapse free survival (RFS) compared with non-amplification of TOP2A (OS: HR= 0.96, 95%CI= 0.75-1.22, P= 0.735; DFS: HR= 0.93, 95%CI= 0.70-1.23, P= 0.621; RFS: HR= 0.97, 95%CI= 0.71-1.34, P= 0.867). In the subgroup of regions, TOP2A amplification was associated with longer overall survival (HR= 0.66, 95%CI= 0.46-0.96, P= 0.029) in Australia. Alteration (amplification or deletion) of TOP2A gene demonstrated shorter survival according to OS and RFS compared with those with normal TOP2A status (OS: HR= 1.37, 95%CI= 1.22-1.55, P<0.001; RFS: HR= 1.26, 95%CI= 1.12-1.41, P<0.001). Conclusion: High TOP2A expression suggested significant relationship with worse cancer prognosis. Alteration (amplification or deletion) of TOP2A gene was also significantly related to shorter survival of cancer patients. Therefore, TOP2A might be used as an indicator for poor prognosis of cancer in the future.


Large scale vision and language models can achieve impressive zero-shot recognition performance by mapping class specific text queries to image content. Two distinct challenges that remain however, are high sensitivity to the choice of handcrafted class names that define queries, and the difficulty of adaptation to new, smaller datasets. Towards addressing these problems, we propose to leverage available data to learn, for each class, an optimal word embedding as a function of the visual content. By learning new word embeddings on an otherwise frozen model, we are able to retain zero-shot capabilities for new classes, easily adapt models to new datasets, and adjust potentially erroneous, non-descriptive or ambiguous class names. We show that our solution can easily be integrated in image classification and object detection pipelines, yields significant performance gains in multiple scenarios and provides insights into model biases and labelling errors.


While there is much written about professionalism from a theoretical perspective, it is not known whether these theories inform the decisions and practices of lawyers in the working environment. This paper reports on the findings of an empirical study about lawyers' work. The study interviewed comparatively new practitioners (practising for only two years) and more experienced practitioners (practising for more than fifteen years) about their perceptions of professionalism. It found that these two groups of practitioners have differing perceptions and that this affects how they view what happens in firms. In particular this paper uses the work of social psychologists to discuss the influence of culture. Key words Professionalism Empirical Social psychology Situational pressures Culture Conformity Compliance


A patient with metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma had progressive microangiopathic red blood cell changes, thrombocytopenia with increased marrow megakaryocytes, bleeding, altered mentation, and seizure. Coagulation parameters were inconsistent with disseminated intravascular coagulation; a clinical diagnosis of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) was made. Plasmapheresis resulted in improvement on two separate occasions. The diagnosis of tumor-associated TTP should be considered in cancer patients. Plasmapheresis may be more effective than plasma transfusion alone in this syndrome, perhaps via removal of tumor-induced immune complexes from the circulation. Aggressive management of this complication seems justified in cancer patients for whom effective chemotherapy exists.


Federated learning is a learning paradigm to enable collaborative learning across different parties without revealing raw data. Notably, vertical federated learning (VFL), where parties share the same set of samples but only hold partial features, has a wide range of real-world applications. However, most existing studies in VFL disregard the"record linkage"process. They design algorithms either assuming the data from different parties can be exactly linked or simply linking each record with its most similar neighboring record. These approaches may fail to capture the key features from other less similar records. Moreover, such improper linkage cannot be corrected by training since existing approaches provide no feedback on linkage during training. In this paper, we design a novel coupled training paradigm, FedSim, that integrates one-to-many linkage into the training process. Besides enabling VFL in many real-world applications with fuzzy identifiers, FedSim also achieves better performance in traditional VFL tasks. Moreover, we theoretically analyze the additional privacy risk incurred by sharing similarities. Our experiments on eight datasets with various similarity metrics show that FedSim outperforms other state-of-the-art baselines. The codes of FedSim are available at https://github.com/Xtra-Computing/FedSim.


Geometric camera calibration is often required for applications that understand the perspective of the image. We propose Perspective Fields as a representation that models the local perspective properties of an image. Perspective Fields contain per-pixel information about the camera view, parameterized as an Up-vector and a Latitude value. This representation has a number of advantages; it makes minimal assumptions about the camera model and is invariant or equivariant to common image editing operations like cropping, warping, and rotation. It is also more interpretable and aligned with human perception. We train a neural network to predict Perspective Fields and the predicted Perspective Fields can be converted to calibration parameters easily. We demonstrate the robustness of our approach under various scenarios compared with camera calibration-based methods and show example applications in image compositing. Project page: https://jinlinyi.github.io/PerspectiveFields/.


ABSTRACT Scholars examining the effect of knowledge spillovers on R&D and innovation all agree on one thing – there is a strong relationship between the firm's R&D effort and knowledge spillover. The sign of this relationship depends, however, on many things, such as the type of spillovers (horizontal, vertical, or from other sources), the level of appropriability, the type of firm (e.g. age and sector), and the measurement of the spillover itself. A missing piece of evidence to this literature is the role of gender in the founding team of the firm. Our contribution is to fill this gap by explicitly analysing the role played by gender in the founding team. Given that the relationship between a firm's R&D intensity and external knowledge spillovers is ultimately context-specific, we analyse the differences between male-owned and female-owned young entrepreneurial firms with respect to the influence that knowledge spillovers have on their R&D intensity.


Many different approaches have been applied to constraint satisfaction. These range from complete backtracking algorithms to sophisticated distributed configurations. However, most research effort in the field of constraint satisfaction algorithms has concentrated on the use of a single algorithm for solving all problems. At the same time, a consensus appears to have developed to the effect that it is unlikely that any single algorithm is always the best choice for all classes of problem. In this paper we argue that an adaptive approach should play an important part in constraint satisfaction. This approach relaxes the commitment to using a single algorithm once search commences. As a result, we claim that it is possible to undertake a more focused approach to problem solving, allowing for the correction of bad algorithm choices and for capitalising on opportunities for gain by dynamically changing to more suitable candidates.


Abstract: The gap between rich and resource‐poor countries has continued to grow as reproductive care providers integrate interventions to limit mother‐to‐child transmission (MTCT) of HIV in a manner consistent with existing information. There are two major reasons for this difference: access to prophylactic antiretroviral therapy (ARV) for HIV‐infected pregnant mothers and availability of alternative feeding for babies. In resource‐poor settings, these options are beyond reach for the majority of the women. Infant and under‐five mortality rates from other infections are high in these settings and breastfeeding remains the norm. Answering the question, What is an achievable standard of care in resource‐poor settings? still remains a major challenge today. Dialogue has begun in most resource‐poor settings to address the key elements in the package of interventions to reduce MTCT of HIV. These elements include the following: (1) overall prevention of HIV in mothers and fathers; (2) provision of good‐quality voluntary testing and counseling (VCT) in antenatal clinics; (3) a comprehensive package of interventions during pregnancy, during labor, and after delivery, including screening for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), family planning, and‐where possible‐ARVs; (4) provision of infant and maternal nutrition within the socioeconomic realities; (5) advocacy and program communication; and (6) other supportive measures, including community mobilization to address issues such as stigmatization of and violence against HIV‐infected women. This paper discusses the challenges faced by most resource‐poor settings in integrating some of these activities into reproductive care services.


BACKGROUND
In investigations of the effectiveness of surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy for gastric cancers, overall survival (OS) is considered the gold standard endpoint. However, the disadvantage of using OS as the endpoint is that it requires an extended follow-up period. We sought to investigate whether disease-free survival (DFS) is a valid surrogate for OS in trials of adjuvant chemotherapy for gastric cancer.

METHODS
The GASTRIC group initiated a meta-analysis of individual patient data collected in randomized clinical trials comparing adjuvant chemotherapy vs surgery alone for patients with curatively resected gastric cancer. Surrogacy of DFS was assessed through the correlation between the endpoints as well as through the correlation between the treatment effects on the endpoints. External validation of the prediction based on DFS was also evaluated.

RESULTS
Individual patient data from 14 randomized clinical trials that included a total of 3288 patients were analyzed. The rank correlation coefficient between DFS and OS was 0.974 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.971 to 0.976). The coefficient of determination between the treatment effects on DFS and on OS was as high as 0.964 (95% CI = 0.926 to 1.000), and the surrogate threshold effect based on adjusted regression analysis was 0.92. In external validation, the six hazard ratios for OS predicted according to DFS were in very good agreement with those actually observed for OS.

CONCLUSIONS
DFS is an acceptable surrogate for OS in trials of cytotoxic agents for gastric cancer in the adjuvant setting.


This presentation will explore the 21st century skills and capabilities that our students will need as they live and work in a world dominated by ubiquitous technology as well as increasing uncertainty and complexity. Our assessment practices will need to change; we cannot continue to give students static content-based assessment tasks that ignore the contextual consequences of working in a complex environment with many stakeholders. We will need to expand our repertoire of assessment tasks to include a more sophisticated use of virtual spaces that allow students to construct their responses with access to whatever resources are required to make a meaningful response to a meaningful problem. Students should be required to identify their decision making processes when proposing a solution to a real life problem and to identify all the stakeholders impacted by this response. Students will need to be provided with more authentic, meaningful tasks that will engage them in using the full range of capabilities they have developed during their learning. We will examine some of the implications of this new educational environment and reflect on our current assessment practices in relation to the requirements of this brave new world.


ABSTRACT Vick, P.E.; Peterson, M.S.; Slack, W.T., and Grammer, P.O., 2018. Occupancy patterns of Gulf Sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi, associated with Ship Island, Mississippi. In order to reduce wave energy associated with tropical storms and hurricanes in the western Mississippi Sound, the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program will close a 5.6 km breach (i.e. Camille Cut) separating East and West Ship Island, Mississippi, and restore sediments to the southern shoreline of East Ship Island. As part of this program, federally designated critical Gulf Sturgeon habitat associated with Ship Island was monitored to establish baseline patterns of use prior to island restoration using a passive acoustic array during overwintering periods from 2011 to 2014. Gulf Sturgeon of both western and eastern populations occupied the passes, cuts, and ends of Ship Island over the study period, but no difference in occupancy was observed among four initially established zones. However, when comparing the new most eastern zone, Dog Keys Pass, to the four initial zones, occupancy was four times greater in this zone than any other monitored zone, indicative of foraging behavior associated with high abundance of benthic resources. Reconnecting East and West Ship Island through filling Camille Cut proper may increase Gulf Sturgeon occupancy in Dog Keys Pass and other areas near the ends and passes of the barrier islands. The loss of Camille Cut proper as critical habitat may be partially augmented by "new" nearshore habitat north and south of Camille Cut; however, it is uncertain whether filling in Camille Cut will alter the physical components of the habitat, causing a shift in benthic prey availability and, thus, quality of forage habitat.


Purpose
This study aims to identify the barriers to halal logistics implementation; rank the barriers of halal logistics implementation in food, beverage and ingredient companies; and identify the relationship among the identified barriers of halal logistics implementation to derive key managerial insights.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper first describes the concepts of halal logistics and discusses the barriers in implementing halal logistics from previous research studies. Then, on the basis of previous research, this study identifies 13 barriers to halal logistics implementation. The study uses interpretive structural modelling (ISM) methodology to find the rank of the barriers and also the direct or indirect relationship among those barriers. The study also uses a panel of experts consisting of the representative from Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan, Obat-obatan, dan Kosmetika Majelis Ulama Indonesia (The Assessment Institute for Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics – The Indonesian Council of Ulama or LPPOM MUI) and the representatives from 23 food, beverage and ingredient companies to determine the rank of, and the relationship among, the 13 barriers.

Findings
The result of data processing with ISM methodology indicated that lack of support for logistic service providers and lack of customer demand and reluctance to pay for halal logistics occupied the topmost level. These barriers are affected at the lower level and have less influence than the remaining barriers. The result with ISM methodology also indicated that lack of commitment of management is the main barrier to implementing halal logistics. Moreover, according to the result of data processing with ISM methodology, this study suggests some managerial implications to overcome the barriers that hinder halal logistics implementation.

Research limitations/implications
This study has several limitations. First, the scope of the study is limited to the barriers faced by Indonesian food, beverage and ingredient companies and overlooks other barriers to halal logistics encountered by other industries or other services as well as other regions or countries (i.e. other Muslim or non-Muslim countries). Future studies should attempt to uncover other industries or other services or a cross-industry comparison as well as other regions, other countries or a cross-region or cross-country comparison. The second limitation is related to the possibility of biased opinions from the experts, and the third limitation is that the identified barriers do not test in a real environment. To eliminate these limitations, future studies should involve more experts from different areas of the halal industry and should test the identified barriers to implement halal logistics in the real scenario.

Practical implications
This study assists managers and policymakers in understanding the order in which these barriers must be tackled and adopts a strategy to successfully implement halal logistics.

Social implications
The study has indicated that the barriers to implementing halal logistics can be mitigated because these barriers have the most influence on the system identified.

Originality/value
This study considers the application of ISM methodology to an empirical case of barriers so as to implement halal logistics. The study uniquely contributes to the field of halal logistics because it represents initial research that has analysed the barriers of halal logistics using ISM methodology.


Background: Polyp occurrence in the colon or rectum often raises question and distress for patients and their family. Due to the proven effects of geographic variations and nutritional habits on the incidence of these polyps, the difference in Iranian lifestyle habits, and the cost of screening, conducting an accurate study on aforementioned factors looks essential. In the current study, we aimed to assess various characteristics of this important group of disease. Materials and Methods: In this research work, sex, age, location, and macroscopic and pathologic features of 295 specimens from 200 patients, which are sent to the pathology unit of Shohada-e-Tajrish Referral Hospital (2014–2016) as a colonic polyp or reported as a colonic polyp, were investigated. Results: Our results are similar to Western countries revealing the polyp prevalence is greater in men and higher in >50 years old, located more in rectum, commonly with sessile appearance and the most pathologic types are adenomatous and hyperplastic polyps. The prevalence of ascending colon polyps rises after 50 years old (P = 0.007). There is a meaningful relationship between age and macroscopic features (P = 0.02). Polyps which are sent from >50-year-old patients and the right side of the colon carry a higher risk for malignancy (P = 0.00). Pedunculated polyps are more prone to be neoplastic (P = 0.00). The prevalence of pedunculated polyps and right-sided polyps, which were sent from the right side, is more in men. Sessile serrated polyps/adenomas were more common in men and were located in the proximal part of the colon (P = 0.005), although unexpectedly two of them were sent from the sigmoid colon. As expected, villous adenomas just were sent from the distal part of the colon and rectum. Two phytobezoars were sent as a colonic polyp. Polyposis syndromes have low incidence; their prevalence was equal in both age (P = 0.124) and sex (P = 1). Conclusions: Based on our research work, further studies into the characteristics of polyps in Iranian lifestyle habits would be of great interest.


BLAST techniques to increase the utilized bandwidth in commercial systems are currently feasible. This paper describes the design of a UMTS prototype, supporting four transmit and four receive antennas, achieving almost four times the capacity of a conventional system. Various parts of the transmitter and receiver are mapped on FPGAs and fast DSPs communicating via a specially designed communication link. The system was entirely designed using C code, embedded in SIMULINK S-functions for simulation, and, after validation, automatically mapped onto the hardware platform.


This study utilizes a mixed method approach to examine the relationship between IS/Business alignment practices and organizational choice of IS/business alignment strategy. To this end, the significance of six maturity factors of IS/Business alignment – governance, partnership, scope and architecture, communication, value, and skills – from the Strategic Alignment Maturity model are examined against three alignment strategies (independent, sequential, and synchronous) adopted by different organizations. Governance and partnership were found to be the most significant factors towards the evolutive process of IS/business alignment regardless of the alignment strategy. Moreover, our data shows that organizations that are most mature in partnership have a higher tendency to implement sequential integration strategy (IS strategy formulation follows and supports business strategy formulation) and not synchronous – where IS strategy formulation and business strategy formulation are done simultaneously. Follow-up group discussions with senior managers were also conducted in an attempt to identify the top management practices that advance the IS/business alignment process. The discussions revealed three management practices that considerably contribute to the process of aligning IS and business strategies: (1) the formalization of a program management process, (2) the improvement of support for hierarchies of authority, and (3) the integration of collaboration values. Those findings are discussed and future avenues of research are offered.


The present paper proposes a new approach to constrained optimal pattern synthesis for a circular ring array with ultra-Iow-sidelobe levels. The approach uses an artificial neural network (ANN) with hidden Bessel activation functions, trained using the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm. The proposed approach is capable of producing minimal sidelobe levels for an arbitrary pattern shape using only a few iterations, and without high memory requirements as compared to existing alternatives.


1. Caesium ions (Cs+), applied extracellularly, caused a decrease in the input resistance of cultured spinal cord (s.c.) neurones and depolarized the neurones when they contained 140 mM‐CsCl. 2. The reversal potential for Cs+‐activated currents shifted 56 mV on average for a 10‐fold reduction in the intracellular chloride ion (Cl‐) activity, indicating that the Cs+‐activated currents were specific to Cl‐. 3. The activation of Cl‐ currents by Cs+ was not due to the depolarization‐evoked release of neurotransmitter from presynaptic terminals. We therefore suggest that Cs+ were acting directly on the extracellular surface of the s.c. neurones to activate Cl‐ currents. 4. Cs+‐activated currents showed desensitization in the presence of 140 mM‐Cs+. 5. The log‐log plot of the dose‐response data could be fitted with a straight line with a slope of 1.7 +/‐ 0.4 (n = 6), indicating that at least 2 Cs+ were needed to activate a single Cl‐ channel. The KD of the Cs+‐induced response was greater than 69 mM. 6. In outside‐out patches Cs+ activated single Cl‐ channels. These channels were not activated by sodium or potassium ions. 7. The Cs+‐activated channels displayed a total of five distinct conductance states which had mean conductances of 20, 30, 43, 66 and 92 pS. The 30 and 43 pS states were the most frequently occurring states. 8. The conductance states of the Cs+‐activated channel have the same conductances as those reported for gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)‐ and glycine‐activated channels in rat s.c. neurones. We therefore conclude that Cs+ activate the same type of Cl‐ channel as GABA and glycine through an unidentified receptor.


As a result of many political, economical and social conditions over the past decades, design of the administrative workplaces have been through many changes and different phases of developments: ups and downs, negatives and positives. The dynamics of technological changes have led to immediate effects on changing the nature of administrative workspaces, which in turn has led to direct changes in designing of the interior of workspaces. Research problem lies, thus, in the lack of clear criteria for designing administrative workplaces, which should support interior designers to keep up with the rapid development in this field. In addition, recognizing the fact that design has a pivotal role to play in the comprehensive economic and sustained growth. In this context, designers will participate positively in pushing the development process and the achievement of the eighth goal of sustainable development Agenda (SDGs): To promote sustained, inclusive and stainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Research aims at exploring the changes occurred in designing the administrative workspaces from 1950 to 2000, then followed by an analytical study of contemporary design trends in order to extract clear criteria that support the design process. This means that the research will follow the inductive approach first. This approach relies on the collection of visual facts in a manner that captures the essence of the subject while considering the timeframe, historical context and the cultural dimension to achieve a logical and a scientific interpretation. Afterwards, the deductive approach will be adopted to choose clear criteria for accommodating the ongoing changes and adopting them in the design process in an effective and a constructive manner.  Research results will be presented to show how to overcome the negative points, as well as, how to create diversity in the design of workplaces, which will facilitate communication and smooth interaction between employees. This in turn will achieve the required sustainability.


The member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have placed industrial development at the core of the region's integrated development agenda. This paper seeks to assess the regional competitiveness and opportunities in the sugar to confectionery value chain in Zambia and South Africa. Agro-processing, specifically in the sugar to confectionery value chain, is an important area in which industrial development can be pursued in both countries. This study aims to develop a shared understanding of the challenges impeding the expansion of downstream industrial activity in the sugar confectionery sector in the two countries, and to identify the potential for firms to upgrade. This research offers concrete proposals that will inform cross country policy initiatives to address these challenges at a regional level.


An iterative four-dimensional objective analysis scheme is described. The method is derived by approximating a variational algorithm which should give an optimal four-dimensional analysis. The complete set of operationally available observations, and operational analysis and forecast codes, are used. In this the scheme differs from most other studies of optimal fourdimensional analysis, which make less approximations in the algorithm, but use simplified models and data. The scheme was developed using the optimal interpolation analysis, nonlinear normal-mode initialization, and nested-grid forecast model from the Regional Analysis and Forecast System of NMC. To these were added an approximate adjoint of the forecast, and a code to implement a simple descent algorithm. Tests used the operational observation database. The scheme was successful in producing a dynamically consistent four-dimensional analysis which fit the observations, without totally impractical computer costs. However for the one test case studied, the forecast from the scheme's analysis was slightly worse than that from the operational analysis. The tests highlighted some deficiencies of the current operational analysis, initialization, and forecast codes. They also indicated areas where further development of the scheme is desirable; in the adjoint forecast model and analysis error estimation.


Wetlands are among the most important ecosystems, that are valuable as sources, sinks, and transformers of a multitude of chemical, biological, and genetic materials. The interaction of man with wetlands is the first humanizing system initiated in the process of evolution and development of many civilizations. Societies have enjoyed an ancient association with wetlands and have learned to obtain multiple benefitsnatural resources, amenities and environmental services. In recent years, the wetland values are overlooked resulting due to population pressures and unplanned development. This has threatened the very existence of these vital ecosystems. In order to stem the tide of destruction, especially for wetlands located in urban setup suitable guidelines to assess the ecological integrity and effective monitoring programs are required. This includes collecting sufficient information on the various functions, components and attributes of wetlands to reduce the ongoing ecological imbalance. In view of this there is a need to periodically monitor these systems. Water quality assessment of seven waterbodies located at various places in Bangalore urban district has been monitored for a period of twelve months, based on the findings of the study suitable restoration measures are suggested. Ecological restoration and ecosystem management is an essential component of any habitat conservation. The management of wetlands has become important because these ecosystems are still being reclaimed or encroached for agricultural activities, aquaculture, for sewage disposal, etc. Hence for developing a site specific management plan for wetlands it is imperative to gather baseline information so as to understand the structure and functions of a wetland. In the recent past the wetlands of Bangalore are drawing considerable attention and concern because of their importance realised. The present paper attempts to identify some of the major threats, wetland face today and make suitable suggestions to draw the attention of to wetland biologists, conservationists, planners and policy makers.


Standard regression techniques are only able to give an incomplete picture of the relationship between subjective well-being and its determinants since the very idea of conventional estimators such as OLS is the averaging out over the whole distribution: studies based on such regression techniques thus are implicitly only interested in Average Joe's happiness. Using cross-sectional data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the year 2006, we apply quantile regressions to analyze effects of a set of explanatory variables on different quantiles of the happiness distribution and compare these results with an ordinary least squares regression. We also analyze some reversed relationships, where happiness enters the regression equation as an explanatory variable (e.g., the effects of happiness on individual's financial success). Among our results we observe a decreasing importance of income, health status and social factors with increasing quantiles of happiness. Another finding is that education has a positive association with happiness at the lower quantiles but a negative association at the upper quantiles.


When a programmer changes a particular code fragment, the other similar code fragments in the code-base may also need to be changed together (i.e., co-changed) consistently to ensure that the software system remains consistent. Existing studies and tools apply clone detectors to identify these similar co-change candidates for a target code fragment. However, clone detectors suffer from a confounding configuration choice problem and it affects their accuracy in retrieving co-change candidates.In our research, we propose and empirically evaluate a lightweight co-change suggestion technique that can automatically suggest fragment level similar co-change candidates for a target code fragment using WA-DiSC (Weighted Average Dice–Sørensen Co-efficient) through a context-sensitive mining of the entire code-base. We apply our technique, FLeCCS (Fragment Level Co-change Candidate Suggester), on six subject systems written in three different programming languages (Java, C, and C#) and compare its performance with the existing state-of-the-art techniques. According to our experiment, our technique outperforms not only the existing code clone based techniques but also the association rule mining based techniques in detecting co-change candidates with a significantly higher accuracy (precision and recall). We also find that File Proximity Ranking performs significantly better than Similarity Extent Ranking when ranking the co-change candidates suggested by our proposed technique.


Slow slip events (SSEs) are recognized as an important component of plate boundary fault slip, and there is a need for laboratory friction data on natural samples to guide comparisons with natural SSEs. Here, we compile a comprehensive catalog of SSEs observed geodetically at the Hikurangi subduction zone offshore northern New Zealand, and compare it with results of laboratory friction experiments that produce laboratory SSEs under plate tectonic driving rates (5 cm/yr). We use samples from Ocean Drilling Program Site 1124 seaward of the Hikurangi subduction zone to represent the plate boundary that hosts shallow SSEs at Hikurangi. We find that laboratory SSEs exhibit a similar displacement record and range of stress drops as the natural SSEs. Results of velocity step tests, which can be used to evaluate frictional instability based on the critical stiffness criterion, indicate that the slow slip activity at Hikurangi is a form of stably‐accelerating slip. Our laboratory SSEs provide an alternative method of quantifying (in)stability by direct measurement of the unloading stiffness during the stress drop. The observed dependence of laboratory SSE parameters on effective normal stress is consistent with critical stiffness theory; however, depth‐increasing projections based on laboratory data do not match observations from natural SSEs. These differences are likely related to changing temperature and fault rock composition downdip but also complications related to scaling and/or limited sampling. Scientific drilling recently undertaken at the Hikurangi subduction zone should serve to improve and guide future studies of the role of frictional properties for the occurrence of SSEs.


The population growth of the rotifer Brachionus patulus was studied under a combination of different concentrations of Chlorella vulgaris and methyl parathion. To obtain sublethal concentrations of the pesticide a 24-h LC(50) bioassay was performed under two food densities (1.5 and 3.0x10(6) cells ml(-1)) using neonate rotifers. For the population growth experiments, seven toxicant concentrations were used ranging from 0.16 to 10.0 mg L(-1) and four food densities (0.75, 1.5, 3.0, and 6.0x10(6) cells ml(-1)), each with four replicates and thus in all, 128 test jars. A medium with Chlorella alone and without toxicant acted as control. The initial density of the rotifers in each replicate were 5 individual ml(-1). Experiments were conducted for 20 days. The LC(50) values of B. patulus were 8.8 and 10.7 mg L(-1) at low and high algal food density, respectively. Data on the population growth studies revealed a significant effect of both food density and toxicant concentration on the maximum abundance, day at which maximum abundance was reached, and rate of population increase per day. At any toxicant concentration, an increase in food density reduced the toxicity of methyl parathion to rotifers. In controls the maximum rotifer density under the highest food level (6x10(6) cells ml(-1)) was 795+/-46 individuals ml(-1). The rate of population increase per day (r) in controls varied from 0.22+/-0.01 to 0.34+/-0.01 depending on food density. Algal food density had a significant influence in reducing the toxicity of methyl parathion to B. patulus under both acute and chronic toxicity test conditions.


We introduce "Pepe", a social robot for encouraging proper handwashing behaviour among children. We discuss the motivation, the robot design and a pilot study conducted at a primary school located in the Western Ghats mountain ranges of Southern India with a significant presence of indigenous tribes. The study included individual & group interviews with a randomly selected sample of 45 children to gauge their perception of the Pepe robot across various dimensions including gender, animacy & technology acceptance. We also discuss some HRI implications for running user studies with rural children.


Abstract Medical librarians and information specialists working in a variety of venues often encounter sensitive health questions from the public. Typically, such questions pertain to sexual and reproductive health issues, such as erectile dysfunction, menopause, contraception, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and are asked by men and women of all ages equally. Based on these experiences, the author became increasingly aware of the stigma often associated with sex and sexuality. Given the likelihood of being asked a reference question that is sexual in nature, he wanted to research what the attitudes of librarians were toward sexuality. Specifically, he examined if these attitudes impacted reference service by exploring the existing literature and conducting his own study. Building upon the success of training used for medical professionals, he proposes a workshop to improve the comfort level of librarians and close gaps in service.


The isotopic composition of evaporites can shed light on their environment of precipitation and their subsequent recycling processes. In this study, we performed Sr, O and S isotopic analyses on evaporitic sulphates in the halokinetic Sivas Basin. The main objectives were to decipher the age and origin of the evaporites responsible for the salt tectonics, and to test whether diapir dissolution acts as the source of younger evaporitic layers in continental mini‐basins. The Sr isotopes demonstrate that the first evaporites precipitated from seawater during the Middle–Late Eocene. The similar isotopic values measured in the halokinetic domain confirm that the Eocene evaporites triggered the salt tectonics and were continuously recycled in Oligo‐Miocene mini‐basins as lacustrine to sabkha evaporites. Modern halite precipitates suggest that the dissolution and recycling of diapiric halite is ongoing. This study demonstrates the efficiency of isotopic analyses in constraining evaporite recycling processes in continental halokinetic domains.


White root disease which cause by Rigidoporus Microporus fungus are the most destructive and serious disease among the three major root disease in rubber plantation. Biological control using stems extract of kemunting cina (Catharanthus roseus) have been used as a healing agent of infected rubber trees. The objectives of the study are to determine the ability of stems extract from kemunting cina to control white root disease of rubber trees and to observe the plants performance towards the fungus. Stems of the plant were soaked in dichloromethane (DCM) solution because the solvent was found as the best extraction for the treatments. Three batches of rubber trees were prepared in the research, which consists of five trees. Group A was a control, while the trees in Group B were planted with fungus and the trees in Group C was applied with the stems extract together with the fungus. Five hundred ml of extracts was used as biofungicides against white root disease. The chlorophyll, diameter, height and number of leaves were recorded. Among the three groups of rubber trees, Group C shows the ability of extract to inhabit against Rigidoporus Microporus growth refers to the improvement of growth performance of the plants. The stem extracts of kemunting cina were antagonistic inhibited against Rigidoporus microporus fungus.


Thirty day-old chicks of Cobb-100 breed with the history of vaccination of parent stock against Newcastle disease (ND) were equally divided into two groups such as group A and B. At 7 days of age of birds, group A was vaccinated with experimentally prepared V HR-ND vaccine via eye drop @ 10 EID /bird 4 50 6.0 to determine the efficacy of this vaccine while group B was kept as unvaccinated control. The birds were used for the study during the period from October 2003 to December 2003. Each bird of group A was boostered with same vaccine @ same dose at 24 days of age. Both the groups (A and B) were challenged after two weeks of post-booster vaccination with 0.25ml inoculum containing 10 EID of virulent field isolates of ND 5.0 50 virus intramuscularly. The results of challenge experiment revealed that six birds (40%) of group A succumbed within 3 to 4 days of post-challenge, whereas 15 (100%) unvaccinated control birds of group B showed clinical illness and ultimately died within 3 to 5 days. Thus, the experimental VHR-ND vaccine 4 conferred 60% protection of vaccinated birds against challenge infection. The mean values of Haemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibody titres of birds in group A were found to have significantly (P<0.01) increased at two weeks of post-booster vaccination. These results indicated that experimental VHR-ND 4


The aim of this study is to identify the reasons of mergers in the Higher Education sector, its motives, benefits and consequences. The main evidence of merger success is a satisfied employee. This article attempts to explain the importance of Job Satisfaction, the measurement tools and experience of amalgamations over the world in post-merger period. The paper also provides a negative and positive impact of a merger on the employee's satisfaction at the workplace. KeywordsMerger, Job Satisfaction, Higher Education Institutions, Lecturer Productivity.


By utilizing the textual products of extraterrestrial-inspired religious thinkers like George Van Tassel, Raeel, and Patricia Cori, as well as related materials by Erich von Daaniken and Zecharia Sitchin, this article explores the concept of revisionism in ET-inspired religions. The authors examined in this article reread ancient religious texts, especially the Bible, as containing evidence of extraterrestrial influence in the course of human history. The anatomy of this "drive to revise" human history is explored, including an examination of how an improvisational millenarianism combines with a cultic milieu suspicious of authority and hegemonic narratives, and the conspiratorial intellectual maverick willing to work with "stigmatized" knowledge to produce narratives that are highly critical and suspicious of established intellectual authorities and procedures.


Purpose : To evaluate the total content of polyphenols and the free radical scavenging activity of three different extracts of three types of tea clone 100 (black, green and white), and their anti-proliferative effects on colorectal cancer. Methods : Five major polyphenols, viz, (+)-catechin, (-)-epicatechin, (-)-epigallocatechin, (-)-epicatechin gallate and (-)-epigallocatechin gallate, were identified using thin layer chromatography (TLC). Catechins were quantified by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Antioxidant activity was measured by DPPH radical scavenging method, while 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5- diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was employed for the determination of cell viability of colon cell line HCT-116 after 24 and 48 h. Results : The aqueous methanol (70 %) extract of white tea yielded the highest amount of polyphenols (36.67 ± 0.54 mg GAE/g dry weight). The DPPH radical scavenging activity of white tea was 71.74 ± 0.42 %, and it produced high anti-proliferation activity against colorectal cancer cell line HCT-116 (86.06 ± 0.54 %). Conclusion : White tea extract possesses high DPPH radical scavenging activity, and exerts good antiproliferative effects against colorectal cancer cell line HCT-116, most likely due to its catechin content. Keywords : Camellia sinensis L., Catechin, DPPH radical scavenging, Anti-cancer