Adhesive-bonded applications are widely used in industry, because of significant advantages such as uniform stress distribution, design flexibility and suitability to bond similar and dissimilar structural materials. This study focuses the adhesive-bonded long overlap of steel/carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite double lap shear (DLS) joints.
The purpose of the work is to predict and assess the structural failure and behaviour of the DLS joint, including delamination of the composite, and to determine the effects of the design parameters of adherend thickness, overlap length and fabric orientation on the joint's failure. There are different ways for such a joint to fail, which makes predicting failure very difficult. Another important difference is the failure mode of composites, where the relatively low interlaminar shear or tensile strength of the resin system causes failure of the composite before failure of the adhesive bondline occurs.
Both experimental and numerical methods were used for the analysis. The experimental programme includes fabrication, mechanical testing and failure examinations of various joints. The numerical methods are based on 2D models, using strength of materials and cohesive zone modelling (CZM) approaches. In order to model adhesive joints accurately and efficiently, fracture tests were implemented to determine the fracture criteria. Mode-I and mode-II fracture energies were obtained by double cantilever beam (DCB) and end notched flexure (ENF) tests. An inverse method was used to define the cohesive parameters of the bilinear relation, fitting the numerical and experimental load-displacement curves.
The DLS model has been created in Abaqus software, and results for each approach have been presented. Critical locations of stress concentrations in the DLS joint were identified, and the CZM successfully predicted the delamination initiation and propagation region observed in the experiment. As a result, it was concluded that the data obtained from the analysis showed good agreement with the experimental results, and in addition to the fibre orientation angles of the CFRP laminate markedly affecting the failure load of joints, the failure mode and stress distributions appeared in adhesive and composite.
Furthermore, the study shows that the cohesive elements enable the numerical results to be obtained in shorter simulation times than the strength of materials approach, which should encourage use of CZM to analyse large structural applications.


Using the isolated forearm technique (IFT), we wished to determine if patients known to be unresponsive to commands during general anaesthesia with nitrous oxide, halothane and neuromuscular blocking agents had any evidence of explicit or implicit recall. Two groups of women, studied in a single-blind sequential block design, heard different tapes, either a command and information tape (n = 34) or radio static (n = 34), throughout surgery. Four women (two radio static, two command) had unequivocal evidence of explicit recall for a period near the beginning or end of the procedure, at a time when the IFT was not being used. With or without hypnosis, category generation, serial position of category exemplars and word association tests did not reveal evidence of priming. We conclude that during light general anaesthesia with nitrous oxide, halothane and atracurium, patients had neither explicit nor implicit memory for information presented during a period when they are known to be unresponsive to commands.


In this paper, we develop a procedure for the detection of the contours of thermal bridges from thermographic images, in order to study the energetic performance of buildings. Two main steps of the above method are: the enhancement of the thermographic images by an optimized version of the mathematical algorithm for digital image processing based on the theory of sampling Kantorovich operators, and the application of a suitable thresholding based on the analysis of the histogram of the enhanced thermographic images. Finally, an accuracy improvement of the parameter that defines the thermal bridge is obtained.


In April 2006, rioting broke out in Honiara, Solomon Islands, following the parliamentary election of Snyder Rini. Occurring almost three years after the commencement of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the riots sparked intense deliberations about the nature of Australia's engagement with Solomon Islands and the success, or otherwise, of RAMSI. Within the context of discussions about state-building in Melanesia, this article seeks to outline challenges to the success of RAMSI. Ultimately, we argue that successful state-building in Melanesia is highly dependent upon awareness of local conditions, rather than simply the application of international best practice. Moreover, we suggest that unless the current approach is modified to accommodate local circumstances—including social and political structures and locally defined needs and desires—the existing growth of anti-RAMSI sentiment will continue to escalate. In conclusion, we offer policy-relevant suggestions aimed at assisting mission stakeholders to improve RAMSI's viability and impact.


This paper focuses on social cloud formation, where agents are involved in a closenessbased conditional resource sharing and build their resource sharing network themselves. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to investigate the impact of agents' decisions of link addition and deletion on their local and global resource availability, (2) to analyze spillover effects in terms of the impact of link addition between a pair of agents on others' utility, (3) to study the role of agents' closeness in determining what type of spillover effects these agents experience in the network, and (4) to model the choices of agents that suggest with whom they want to add links in the social cloud. The findings include the following. Firstly, agents' decision of link addition (deletion) increases (decreases) their local resource availability. However, these observations do not hold in the case of global resource availability. Secondly, in a connected network, agents experience either positive or negative spillover effect and there is no case with no spillover effects. Agents observe no spillover effects if and only if the network is disconnected and consists of more than two components (sub-networks). Furthermore, if there is no change in the closeness of an agent (not involved in link addition) due to a newly added link, then the agent experiences negative spillover effect. Although an increase in the closeness of agents is necessary in order to experience positive spillover effects, the condition is not sufficient. By focusing on parameters such as closeness and shortest distances, we provide conditions under which agents choose to add links so as to maximise their resource availability.


Palladium and platinum are widely used precious metals that play a pivotal role in energy, materials and drugs. Using a common principle of fluorescent sensor design, a highly sensitive fluorescent detection method for these metals has been developed. A key aspect of this method is the amplification of fluorescence signal directly through a catalytic process, which is conceptually new for metal sensors. Using this method, sub-ppb levels of these metals can be detected with potential applications in the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and pharmacies. As an extensive of this palladium- and platinum-specific fluorescent sensor, determination of the oxidation state of palladium and platinum based on the aromatic Claisen rearrangement is also demonstrated. Using this mechanism, the probe can fluorescently distinguish Pd0 from PdII/IV and Pt0 from PtIV in both organic and aqueous solvents. Ozone exposure is a significant global health problem, especially in urban areas. While ozone in the stratosphere protects the earth from damaging ultraviolet light, tropospheric is toxic resulting in damage to the respiratory tract. In addition, tt has recently been shown that ozone may be produced endogenously in inflammation and antibacterial responses of the immune system; however, these results have sparked controversy due to the use of a non-specific colorimetric probe. A fluorescent sensor capable of unambiguously detecting ozone has been developed. This is the first sensor that is specific for ozone and can be used in both biological and atmospheric samples. Solid-phase organic synthesis is an enabling technology and its automation has profoundly impacted the scientific community and society in general. However, to date, the structural diversity of the molecules that can be synthesized by this technology is limited partly because current solid-phase organic synthesis relies on linear approaches. Described here are efforts toward the development of an enabling resin-to-resin olefin cross-metathesis technology that unites two functionalized alkene fragments to form highly complex small molecules in a convergent manner. It is also demonstrated that olefin cross-metathesis is a synthetically viable method particularly when a traceless longer linker is inserted between solid support and reacting olefins.


Background: Dyspepsia is a common gastrointestinal problems affecting all age groups & social classes.
Objectives: The purpose of the study was to determine the endoscopic findings of dyspeptic patients & to observe the demographic characteristics (age, sex, residence, education, socioeconomic condition) of the patients presented with dyspepsia.
Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at Department of Medicine, Rangpur Medical College Hospital, Rangpur over a period of 1 year from 1st June 2010 to 31st May 2011. 150 dyspeptic patients of 18 or > 18 years old irrespective of sexes and suffering from one or more of the five symptoms (flatulence, food intolerance, epigastric pain, heartburn and aerophagia) for at least 6 months duration were recruited for the study from outpatient and inpatient department who were met the inclusion & exclusion criteria. Data were collected by using a structured questionnaire after taking written consent & upper GI Endocopy were done following meticulous history & through physical examination.
Result: Over one-third (36%) of the patients were below 30 years, 17% between 30 – 40 years old, predominantly were rural residents, having primary to secondary level of education with monthly income below Taka 10000. Males to females ratio were 2:1. More than half (50.6%) of the patients was smoker, 32.7% had habit of taking tea, 10% were tobacco chewing and rest 6.7% used to take spicy meal.. Epigastric discomfort, flatulence and heartburn were the common complaints in both male and females but vomiting were proportionately higher in male dyspeptics compared to the female dyspeptics. Common associated symptoms like constipation and weight loss were equally in both sexes. Upper GI endoscopy revealed 17.3% of male and 11.5% of female with abnormal findings.Others abnormal findings included gastric ulcer, gastritis and duodenal ulcers (17.6 vs. 33.3%; 23.6 vs. 50% and 17.6 vs. 16.7% in male and female respectively). Majority (nearly 90% in either sex) of patients does not show any lesions on endoscopic examination and hence can be considered as non-ulcer dyspepsia.
Conclusion: The study concludes that majority of patients with complaints of dyspepsia have no lesion on the gastric or duodenal mucosa and can be considered non-ulcer dyspepsia. The study findings also suggest that dyspepsia is a disease of young and early middle aged people with males being more likely to develop the disease than the females. However, large-scale community survey is recommended for further evaluation of dyspepsia.
J Shaheed Suhrawardy Med Coll, December 2020, Vol.12(1); 9-14


This paper investigates how two important sources of risk – market tail risk and extreme market volatility risk – are priced into the cross-section of asset returns across various investment horizons. To identify such risks, we propose a quantile spectral beta representation of risk based on the decomposition of covariance between indicator functions that capture fluctuations over various frequencies. We study the asymptotic behavior of the proposed estimators of such risk. Empirically, we find that tail risk is a short-term phenomenon, whereas extreme volatility risk is priced by investors in the long term when pricing a cross-section of individual stocks. In addition, we study popular industry, size and value, profit, investment or book-to-market portfolios, as well as portfolios constructed from various asset classes, portfolios sorted on cash flow duration and other strategies. These results reveal that tail-dependent and horizon-specific risks are priced heterogeneously across datasets and are important sources of risk for investors.


In current chapter, we have thoroughly described a numerical integration scheme of nonstationary 2D equations of shallow water. The scheme combines the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the total variation diminishing (TVD) methods, which are sequentially used at various steps of the combined SPH-TVD algorithm. The method is conservative and well balanced. It provides stable through calculations in presence of nonstationary "water-dry bottom" boundaries on complex irregular bottom topography including the transition of such a boundary between wet and dry bottom through the computational boundary. Multifarious tests demonstrate the effectiveness of the combined SPH-TVD scheme application for a solution of diverse problems of the engineering hydrology.


We report on the self-assembly of one- and two-dimensional DNA scaffolds, which serve as templates for the targeted deposition of ordered nanoparticles and molecular arrays. The DNA nanostructures are easy to reprogram, and we demonstrate two distinct conformations: sheets and tubes. The DNA tubes and individual DNA molecules are metallized in solution to produce ultra-thin metal wires.


This paper explores the body of professional knowledge for academic librarians by researching library staff in Japanese colleges and universities. The research was undertaken in two ways. Initially 23 focus-group interviews were conducted at eight academic libraries from 2003 to 2005. Secondly a paper survey was carried out in 2004. Both of these targeted the whole body of the library staff, ranging from the chief librarian to junior staff. The authors have identified the knowledge and skills required for today's academic librarians and learning opportunities that they preferred. The body of professional knowledge and skills revealed through the analysis of the outcomes of the research is presented here.


Three hundred twenty-three eyes enucleated because of intraocular tumor were studied. The microscopic features were compared with survival data from 6 to 21 years after surgery, thus permitting the prognostic value of certain findings to be determined. Of the tumors, 299 were malignant melanomas of the choroid (262 eyes) or the ciliary body (37 eyes). Tumor characteristics taken into consideration were regressive changes, lymphocyte infiltration, size, localization, local spread, and degree of pigmentation. All the parameters studied were percentage-wise wise correlated to each other. Where regressive tumor changes were found the survival prognosis was worse than in the undifferentiated collective as a whole. Tumor growth through the sclera or into blood vessels or nerves was correlated to a higher mortality rate due to metastases. It is remarkable that, of these three types of local proliferation, growth into blood vessels was least prone to cause death due to metastases and that in this group mortality due to metastases during the first year after enucleation was latent. Almost all survival curves were polyphasic with periods of about three years between changes in mortality. Curves showing patient age at enucleation peaked at 50-59 years for those patients still alive today, and at 60-69 years for those who died from metastases. On the basis of the results obtained, a number of hypotheses concerning tumor dynamics and the spread of metastases are discussed.


We present a new method for performing dynamic elastography of soft tissue samples. By sensing nanoscale displacements with optical coherence tomography, a chirped, modulated force is applied to acquire the mechanical spectrum of a tissue sample within a few seconds. This modulated force is applied via magnetic nanoparticles, named 'nanotransducers', which are diffused into the tissue, and which contribute negligible inertia to the soft tissue mechanical system. Using this novel system, we observed that excised tissues exhibit mechanical resonance modes which are well described by a linear damped harmonic oscillator. Results are validated by using cylindrical tissue phantoms of agarose in which resonant frequencies (30–400 Hz) are consistent with longitudinal modes and the sample boundary conditions. We furthermore show that the Young's modulus can be computed from their measured resonance frequencies, analogous to resonant ultrasound spectroscopy for stiff material analysis. Using this new technique, named magnetomotive resonant acoustic spectroscopy (MRAS), we monitored the relative stiffening of an excised rat liver during a chemical fixation process.


Mindfulness practice of present moment awareness promises many benefits, but has eluded rigorous behavioral measurement. To date, research has relied on self-reported mindfulness or heterogeneous mindfulness trainings to infer skillful mindfulness practice and its effects. In four independent studies with over 400 total participants, we present the first construct validation of a behavioral measure of mindfulness, breath counting. We found it was reliable, correlated with self-reported mindfulness, differentiated long-term meditators from age-matched controls, and was distinct from sustained attention and working memory measures. In addition, we employed breath counting to test the nomological network of mindfulness. As theorized, we found skill in breath counting associated with more meta-awareness, less mind wandering, better mood, and greater non-attachment (i.e., less attentional capture by distractors formerly paired with reward). We also found in a randomized online training study that 4 weeks of breath counting training improved mindfulness and decreased mind wandering relative to working memory training and no training controls. Together, these findings provide the first evidence for breath counting as a behavioral measure of mindfulness.


We address the NP-hard single-machine problem of scheduling n independent jobs so as to minimize the sum of α times total completion time and β times total earliness with β > α, which can be rewritten as an earliness–tardiness problem. Postponing jobs by leaving the machine idle may then be advantageous. The allowance of machine idle time between the execution of jobs singles out our problem from most concurrent research on problems with earliness penalties. Solving the problem to optimality poses a computational challenge, since the possibility of leaving the machine idle has a major effect on designing a branch-and-bound algorithm in general, and on computing lower bounds in particular. We present a branch-and-bound algorithm which is based upon many dominance rules and various lower bound approaches, including relaxation of the machine capacity, data manipulation, and Lagrangian relaxation. The algorithm is shown to solve small instances with up to 20 jobs.


The knowledge on efficiencies of different in vitro systems containing cytochromes P450 (CYP) of a 3A subfamily is crucial to screen potential substrates of these CYPs. We evaluated and compared efficiencies of several in vitro CYP3A enzymatic systems to oxidize the model substrates, α-NF and testosterone, under the standardized experimental conditions. Five CYP3A systems were tested: (i) human hepatic microsomes rich in CYP3A4, (ii) hepatic microsomes of rabbits treated with a CYP3A6 inducer, rifampicine, (iii) microsomes of Baculovirus transfected insect cells containing recombinant human CYP3A4 and NADPH:CYP reductase with or without cytochrome b 5 (Supersomes TM ), (iv) membranes isolated from Escherichia coli , containing recombinant human CYP3A4, NADPH:CYP reductase and cytochrome b 5 , and (v) human CYP3A4 or rabbit CYP3A6 reconstituted with NADPH:CYP reductase with or without cytochrome b 5 in liposomes. All systems oxidize testosterone to its 6β-hydroxylated metabolite and α-NF to trans-7,8-dihydrodiol and 5,6-epoxide. The most efficient systems oxidizing both compounds were CYP3A4-Supersomes TM containing cytochrome b 5 , followed by human hepatic microsomes. This finding suggests these systems to be suitable for general evaluating a variety of compounds as potential substrates of CYP3A4. The lowest efficiencies to oxidize α-NF and testosterone were found for CYP3A4 expressed in membranes of E. coli , and for reconstituted CYP3A4 or CYP3A6. Utilizing the tested enzymatic systems, we also explain here the discrepancies, which showed previously the controversial effects of α-NF on CYP3A-mediated reactions. We demonstrate that inhibition or stimulation of the CYP3A-mediated testosterone hydroxylation by α-NF is dictated by efficiencies of individual enzymatic systems to oxidize the CYP3A substrates.


Chemical weapons have been used as part of warfare for a long time. Over the centuries developments have taken place in this field. In the 20. century there has been a very important development: From a variety of well-known tear gases up to very different nerve agents. This century is characterised by a multitude of blister agents and agents which contain arsenic-organic compounds e. g. Adamsite, Clark I and II, etc. World War II was the first major conflict where these new warfare agents were utilized. All participants in WW II had chemical ammunition available for usage. And, these countries built plants to produce these agents. Important chemicals for chemical warfare are organic-arsenic compounds. These Ascontaining agents are Adamsite, Clark I and II and others.


To predict the potential severity of outbreaks of infectious diseases such as SARS, HIV, TB and smallpox, a summary parameter, the basic reproduction number R0, is generally calculated from a population-level model. R0 specifies the average number of secondary infections caused by one infected individual during his/her entire infectious period at the start of an outbreak. R0 is used to assess the severity of the outbreak, as well as the strength of the medical and/or behavioral interventions necessary for control. Conventionally, it is assumed that if R0>1 the outbreak generates an epidemic, and if R0<1 the outbreak becomes extinct. Here, we use computational and analytical methods to calculate the average number of secondary infections and to show that it does not necessarily represent an epidemic threshold parameter (as it has been generally assumed). Previously we have constructed a new type of individual-level model (ILM) and linked it with a population-level model. Our ILM generates the same temporal incidence and prevalence patterns as the population-level model; we use our ILM to directly calculate the average number of secondary infections (i.e., R0). Surprisingly, we find that this value of R0 calculated from the ILM is very different from the epidemic threshold calculated from the population-level model. This occurs because many different individual-level processes can generate the same incidence and prevalence patterns. We show that obtaining R0 from empirical contact tracing data collected by epidemiologists and using this R0 as a threshold parameter for a population-level model could produce extremely misleading estimates of the infectiousness of the pathogen, the severity of an outbreak, and the strength of the medical and/or behavioral interventions necessary for control.


Motivated from the graph parameters namely zero forcing number, k-forcing number and the connected k-forcing number, in this article, we introduce a new parameter known as the 2-distance forcing number. Assume that each vertex of a graph G = (V(G),E(G)) is colored as either white or black. Consider the set Z2d of black colored vertices of the graph G. The color change rule changes the color of a white vertex v to black if the white vertex v is the only 2-distance white neighbor of a black vertex u. The set Z2d is called a two distance forcing set of G if all vertices of the graph G will be turned black after limited applications of the color change rule. The 2-distance forcing number of G, denoted by Z2d(G), is the minimum of |Z2d| over all 2- distance forcing sets Z2d ⊆ V(G). This manuscript is intended to study the 2-distance forcing number of some graphs. We find the exact value of the 2-distance forcing number of graphs such as the pineapple graph, gear graph, jelly fish graph, helm graph, sunflower graph, comet graph and the n-pan graph.


Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the serum levels of the A disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS) 5 and 8 in patients diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Our study included 41 patients diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The control group consisted of 41 patients diagnosed with benign endometrial pathology. The serum samples were centrifuged and stored at –80 °C. The serum levels of ADAMTS were significantly higher (p<.001), whereas the levels of ADAMTS 8 were significantly lower in patients diagnosed with cancer (p<.001). In addition to the presence of known factors in the aetiology of endometrial cancer, the effect of inflammatory factors and some new proteins has centred on the causes of tumourigenesis in recent years. In this sense, these proteins, called the ADAMTS, are the source of new studies. Impact Statement What is already known on this subject? When the recent studies about endometrial cancer are evaluated, it is seen that the effects of chronic inflammation and cytokines have gained importance in its aetiology. The A disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS) gene family consist of 19 proteases that play essential role in the formation of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and interact with inflammatory cytokines. These proteases and their substrates provide a wide range of functions in different tissues, including ECM remodelling, angiogenesis, fibrosis and coagulation. What the results of this study add? ADAMTS 5, which causes the degradation of the ECM with Aggrecanase activity, was found to be significantly higher in patients diagnosed with cancer and ADAMTS 8 with anti-angiogenesis activity was significantly lower in patients diagnosed with endometrial cancer. What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? In this study, it is understood that the effect of inflammatory mediators is remarkably important in the aetiology of endometrial cancer, as in many types of organ specific cancer.


We present simulations of the complete evolution of a fireball model for gamma ray bursts using a relativistic hydrodynamic code. Particle acceleration at both the forward and reverse shocks produces energetic electrons which then emit synchrotron radiation in the ambient magnetic field. The observed synchrotron spectra and light curves are calculated.


Background Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and Wilson-Mikity syndrom (WMS) are specific respiratory diseases in premature infants, and utilisation of advanced management techniques will increase the prognosis and life expectancy in children with BPD and WMS. Aim To assess clinical features and impact of BPD and WMS on the appearance of chronic pulmonary diseases in premature children. Methods The study pressents the results of a clinical and evolutive analysis of 10 children with BPD and 4 with WMS that were born premature with a brith weigth of 700–1400 g, gestational age 31.92 ± 2,28 weeks. Results The comparative analysis showed clinical and explorative differences in children with BPD and those with WMS. Though the prematurity degree was similar, the onset of clinical signs in children with WMS was later comparing with those with BPD (9,5 ±2,37 vs 1,4 ± 0.14 days of life, p < 0.01). Respiratory symptoms in the first year of life were less persistent in children with WMS versus those with BPD, who still presented with suggestive imagistic sings (diffuse pulmonary nodular infiltrates accompanied by cystic changes and areas of hiperinflation). Pulmonary pathology progressed inchildren with BPD, causing death in 2 children at 3–5 months of life due to severe complication. In children with WMS, in evolution was favourable with fewer exacerbations, in 1 case with complete involution confirmed radiologically by the age of 1 year. Conclusion BPD in premature children has high risks of progression into cronic pulmonary disease and death. In WMS the clinical signs appear later, are less severe and their evolution is more favourable.


To meet the requirements of enterprises in different developing phases, often using the latest technology under the circumstances that lead to existing many and various hardware, operating systems, middleware, programming languages, data storage, reusable redundant code in the enterprise. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)[1] is naturally chose as an application architecture by many enterprises because of its innate loose coupling and co-operating. In this paper you will see the Web service development tools supplied by WebSphere platform and you will also see that Web service function which is supplied by J2EE can easily build up SOA system [2] and visit the the existing business process.


Campylobacteriosis (vibriosis) is a venereal disease of cattle caused by the organism Campylobacter fetus subspecies fetus previously known as Vibrio fetus subspecies venerealis. Characteristically the disease causes infertility in the female with an increased number of services necessary for conception. Abortions late in gestation are also occasionally seen. Most cases or outbreaks occur after the recent introduction of an infected bull or cow into a susceptible breeding herd. Often the disease remains undetected until late fall when the livestock owner recognizes that he has a number of females exhibiting estrus. A tentative diagnosis can be made by a study of the herd history and can often be confirmed by laboratory means.

In recent years many advances have been made towards establishing an understanding of the immune response that occurs with infection and systemic immunization. In this review, recommendations are made regarding the appropriate time to immunize the breeding herd against campylobacteriosis.


Evaluation studies on conditional cash transfers (CCT) in the Philippines found small if not insignificantly different from zero effects on household consumption. We use propensity score matching to examine how recipients made use of the money they received, taking into account possible changes in recipient behavior. We find evidence of crowding in—CCT households receive higher transfers from other domestic sources as a positive spillover from becoming CCT beneficiaries Poor CCT households tend to lower their dissavings while non-poor beneficiaries become less indebted. We also find evidence of lower income, lower wages, and lower work-related expenses. JEL Codes : D12, I38, H53


Background: PAQLQ and C-ACT are standardized tool for assessment quality of life and asthma control in children.VAS (Visual Analogic Scale) is a scale for evaluation of the general wellness at the time of visit. Aim: To assess the relationships between VAS, PAQLQ and CACT in order to discriminate Controlled by Uncontrolled ones. Method: Cross-sectional study on 169 asthmatic children aged 5-11 yrs consecutively enrolled from Sept 2011 to Dec 2014 were studied. The Italian version of C-ACT and PAQLQ questionnaire were administered at baseline. Well controlled (WC) asthma and Uncontrolled/Partially controlled (UPC) resulted from C-ACT score >19 and ≤19, respectively. Total score of PAQLQ ranged from 0 (worst) to 7 (best) , resulting as mean of each domain of symptoms (S), limitation of physical activity (LPA) and emotional function (EF). Statistical analysis were performed by means of R(3.1.0). Results: 67(40%) Females and 102(60%) Males. In WC vs UPC significant differences of mean of PAQLQ total score (WC=5.54(0.82), UPC=4.56 (1.17) , p Conclusions: PAQLQ and VAS are able to discriminate the differences between subjects with WC and UPC; the lower levels of SE of PAQLQ and VAS might be related to a poor symptom perception in younger children.


Compared to metallic hardware, an effective bone adhesive can revolutionize the treatment of clinically challenging situations such as comminuted, articular, and pediatric fractures. The present study aims to develop such a bio-inspired bone adhesive, based upon a modified mineral-organic adhesive with tetracalcium phosphate (TTCP) and phosphoserine (OPS) by incorporating nanoparticles of polydopamine (nPDA). The optimal formulation, which was screened using in vitro instrumental tensile adhesion tests, was found to be 50%molTTCP/50%molOPS-2%wtnPDA with a liquid-to-powder ratio of 0.21 mL/g. This adhesive has a substantially stronger adhesive strength (1.0–1.6 MPa) to bovine cortical bone than the adhesive without nPDA (0.5–0.6 MPa). To simulate a clinical scenario of autograft fixation under low mechanical load, we presented the first in vivo model: a rat fibula glued to the tibia, on which the TTCP/OPS-nPDA adhesive (n = 7) was shown to be effective in stabilizing the graft without displacement (a clinical success rate of 86% and 71% at 5 and 12 weeks, respectively) compared to a sham control (0%). Significant coverage of newly formed bone was particularly observed on the surface of the adhesive, thanks to the osteoinductive property of nPDA. To conclude, the TTCP/OPS-nPDA adhesive fulfilled many clinical requirements for the bone fixation, and potentially could be functionalized via nPDA to offer more biological activities, e.g., anti-infection after antibiotic loading.


Insertion of isocyanides into the N-H bond gives access to many medicinally important and structurally diverse complex nitrogen-containing heterocycles. Although the transition metal catalyzed isocyanide insertion into the N-H bond is very common, polymerization of isocyanides in the presence of a transition metal and their strong coordination with metals are the common drawbacks. On the other hand, the inertness of most of the isocyanides towards amines in the absence of a metal catalyst has stymied the growth of the metal-free approach for isocyanide insertion into amines. As a result, only a handful of metal catalysed methods with limited substrate scopes have been reported for the synthesis of ureas via isocyanide insertion into amines and no metal-free version has been reported yet. Interestingly, chemoselective isocyanide insertion into amines has not been reported in the literature. We employed the I2-DMSO reagent system for the chemoselective synthesis of ureas, where isocyanides react with aliphatic amines only, while aromatic amines need a nucleophilic activator (DABCO) to facilitate the formation of ureas. This method gave direct and chemoselective access to ureas by evading the commonly used yet toxic isocyanates.


This article reintroduces a long-forgotten argument into the debate about social justice: Durkheim's argument from "organic solidarity," as presented in The Division of Labor in Society. "Organic solidarity" is solidarity based on differentiation. According to Durkheim, it grows out of the division of labor, but only if the latter happens "spontaneously." Social inequality creates obstacles to such spontaneity because it distorts prices, such that they are perceived as unjust, and it undermines equality of opportunity. Hence, Durkheim's argument connects commutative justice and distributive justice. The article argues that Durkheim's argument is plausible, interesting, and relevant for today. After presenting the argument, discussing its structure and methodology, and evaluating its plausibility by drawing on related contemporary debates, it focuses on the problem of the perception of social justice and the possibility of ideological distortions. It concludes by sketching the research program that follows from Durkheim's argument.


The Smith-Waterman (SW) algorithm is universally used for a database search owing to its high sensitively. The widespread impact of the algorithm is reflected in over 8000 citations that the algorithm has received in the past decades. However, the algorithm is prohibitively high in terms of time and space complexity, and so poses significant computational challenges. Apache Spark is an increasingly popular fast big data analytics engine, which has been highly successful in implementing large-scale data-intensive applications on commercial hardware. This paper presents the first ever reported system that implements the SW algorithm on Apache Spark based distributed computing framework, with a couple of off-the-shelf workstations, which is named as SparkSW. The scalability and load-balancing efficiency of the system are investigated by realistic ultra-large database from the state-of-the-art UniRef100. The experimental results indicate that 1) SparkSW is load-balancing for parallel adaptive on workloads and scales extremely well with the increases of computing resource, 2) SparkSW provides a fast and universal option high sensitively biological sequence alignments. The success of SparkSW also reveals that Apache Spark framework provides an efficient solution to facilitate coping with ever increasing sizes of biological sequence databases, especially generated by second-generation sequencing technologies.


The purpose of this survey is to examine the crystal packing of bent metallocenes, namely, group IV, V and VI biscyclopentadienyl dihalides and dihydrides, first synthesized in the late 1950s. This analysis is based on the present knowledge on new types of intermolecular contacts such as halogen and C–H⋯π interactions as well as dihydrogen bonds. Results are also supported by ab initio calculations that provide information on electrostatic charge distributions, in particular the effect of two V-shaped metal–halogen bonds on the molecular electron density distribution. Type I halogen interactions do not appear to be affected by this feature, specifically the geometric parameters and variation of atom polarizability, but the resultant electronic density distribution precludes the presence of Type II halogen bonds. Special attention is given to the competition among hydrogen and halogen interactions, in particular its influence on the nature and geometric orientations of the different supramolecular motifs and, ultimately, on the space groups observed for each crystal.


This paper describes the advances in the multilingual text and speech database GlobalPhone, a multilingual database of high-quality read speech with corresponding transcriptions and pronunciation dictionaries in 20 languages. GlobalPhone was designed to be uniform across languages with respect to the amount of data, speech quality, the collection scenario, the transcription and phone set conventions. With more than 400 hours of transcribed audio data from more than 2000 native speakers GlobalPhone supplies an excellent basis for research in the areas of multilingual speech recognition, rapid deployment of speech processing systems to yet unsupported languages, language identification tasks, speaker recognition in multiple languages, multilingual speech synthesis, as well as monolingual speech recognition in a large variety of languages. Very recently the GlobalPhone pronunciation dictionaries have been made available for research and commercial purposes by the European Language Resources Association (ELRA).


We present techniques for characterizing bandwidth and congestion characteristics of supercomputer High-Speed Networks (HSN). By utilizing a link-level perspective, we gain generality over analyses which are tied to specific topologies. We illustrate these techniques using five months of a Blue Waters production dataset consisting of network utilization and congestion counters. We find that: i) execution time of the communicationheavy applications is highly correlated to network stalls observed in the network topology and increase in application runtime can be as high as 1.7x with nominal increase in stalls, ii) heterogeneity in the available link bandwidth in the network can lead to backpressure and congestion even when the network is not underprovisioned, and (iii) links connected to I/O nodes are no more likely to observe congestion during operational hours than any other link in the system.


Background: More and more adolescents develop type 1 diabetes (T1D) every year in the world, this chronic disease is a global problem that involves major changes in their lives. Nursing care is challenged to meet the increased need for adequate care, it is important that nurses receive additional knowledge about adolescents' experiences of T1D.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe adolescents' experiences of living with type 1 diabetes.Method: A method to contribute to evidence-based nursing based on analysis of qualitative research was performed to deepen understanding. Sixteen articles were analysed.Results: Four categories were identified "Not like any other", "I'm not equipped to handle this", "Want to be free" and "I develop" with subcategories.Conclusion: Adolescents have a strong need to be part of the community and not stand out because of their T1D. The disease requires structure and order which is time-consuming and affects their social existence and hampers their process of emancipation.


This paper uses an experimental field approach to investigate the pro-social preferences and behavior of social services providers and the behavior of potential beneficiaries in Bogota, Colombia. Field experiments were conducted using games including a newly designed Distributive Dictator Game in order to examine traits and mechanisms guiding pro-sociality. Replicating the patterns of previous studies, individuals showed a preference for fair outcomes, positive levels of trust and reciprocity, and willingness to punish unfair outcomes. The results provide evidence that the poor trigger more pro-social behavior from all citizens, including public servants, but the latter display strategic generosity. Additional observations include a bias in favor of women and households with more dependents, but discriminatory behavior against stigmatized groups.


The effects of elementary metallic nanoparticles on living objects as cytotoxicity or antibacterial activity are widely known. Ag nanoparticles are a suitable and well known example. Nanoparticles formed by an alloy of Ag and Cu stabilized by polyvinyl alcohol were examined on two human tumor cells ovarian carcinoma cells A2780 and skin melanoma cells A375. Bimetallic AgCu nanoparticles were synthesized by using a method of chemical co-reduction of silver nitrate and copper (II) nitrate hydrate. The nanoparticles were characterized by electron microscopy and by measurement of zeta potential. Cell viability was tested by using an MTT (tetrazole colorimetric viability assay) test. The effect on cell apoptosis and necrosis was measured by using flow cytometry. The experimental results indicate a differentiated impact of nanoparticles on the cells used. A more significant effect of viability decrease was observed for A2780 cells. The cell death caused by the nanoparticles used was observed particularly in the form of initial and advanced apoptosis for both cells lines, necrosis was observed to a lesser extent. The synthesized bimetallic nanoparticles seem to be a suitable candidate for targeted suppression of cell proliferation.


Over the past decades, soccer has encountered an enormous increase in professionalism. Clubs keep track of their players' mental condition, physical condition, performances on the pitch, and so on. New technology allows for the automation of some of these processes. For instance, position data captured from soccer training and matches can be used to keep track of player fitness. There are opportunities for the use of position data in artificial intelligence as well. In the current research, position data gathered from matches played by a German Bundesliga team has been used to predict goal-scoring opportunities. The problem was approached as one of classification: given a snapshot of position data, is it more likely that a goal-scoring opportunity will be created or that ball possession will be lost? Snapshots of position data were taken and transformed to 256× 256 images, which were used as input for machine learning algorithms. The performance of two deep convolutional neural networks was compared: an instance of GoogLeNet and a less complex 3-layered net. GoogLeNet came out as the best performing network with an average accuracy of 67%. Although the final performance was not spectacular, there are some promising indicators for future research and possible practical uses.


The cost of delivered H2 using the liquid-distribution pathway will approach $4.3–8.0/kg in the USA and 26–52 RMB/kg in China by around 2030, assuming large-scale adoption. Historically, hydrogen as an industrial gas and a chemical feedstock has enjoyed a long and successful history. However, it has been slow to take off as an energy carrier for transportation, despite its benefits in energy diversity, security and environmental stewardship. A key reason for this lack of progress is that the cost is currently too high to displace petroleum-based fuels. This paper reviews the prospects for hydrogen as an energy carrier for transportation, clarifies the current drivers for cost in the USA and China, and shows the potential for a liquid-hydrogen supply chain to reduce the costs of delivered H2. Technical and economic trade-offs between individual steps in the supply chain (viz. production, transportation, refuelling) are examined and used to show that liquid-H2 (LH2) distribution approaches offer a path to reducing the delivery cost of H2 to the point at which it could be competitive with gasoline and diesel fuel.


Elicited student mental models reveal students' understanding of a given system as well as their ability to communicate knowledge of that system to others. Understanding how students form and developmental models of systems is critical to the progress of engineering education. In this work, graduate students' mental models of common household products are measured before and after instruction on functional modeling and functional decomposition. These mental models are measured using previously published, but still developing mental model instruments. The included systems are a hair dryer, clothes dryer, and vacuum cleaner with accompanying scoring rubrics. Results show statistically significant improvements on average mental model rubric scores on all three given systems after the functional modeling intervention. These results suggest that curriculum content on functional modeling and decomposition likely improves students' mental models of engineering systems and their ability to communicate their knowledge about those systems. As we improve our understanding of how students form, change, and communicate their mental models of engineering systems, educators can shape curriculum to facilitate the skills necessary for comprehensive systems understanding.


should be most careful to avoid the word " exercise," with its associations of gymnastics and effort, in connexion with relaxation. Secondly, those who teach relaxation to expectant mothers should be very careful to make it quite clear that the aim is to minimize pain in childbirth, and not to give a completely effortless and carefree labour. Anyone who has tried it will probably agree that giving birth to a child is the hardest work that a woman is ever likely to do, and it is most important that she should realize this. Mrs. Lynn states that she herself was " totally unprepared for the really serious and hard business involved." My own confinements were all normal and straightforward, and during each I was able to practise relaxation with excellent results. For the first I was Dr. Dick Read's patient, and had no anaesthetic or analgesic. The only really unpleasa-:d part was at the end of the first stage, and during the birth of my second child the pain at this point was effectively relieved by pethidine. During my third labour I was led by sheer curiosity to try the gas and air machine brought along by the midwife, but I most certainly would not use it again. In my opinion it leads to lack of co-ordination, with subsequent loss of control and ability to co-operate in the second stage. Most people with no personal experience of childbirth seem to think that some form of anaesthetic is necessary at the moment of crowning, but I have not found this to be painful, although naturally it is extremely uncomfortable. For a woman who is still alert and unfuddled this can be an exciting moment of approaching achievement, and it is so soon followed by the joy of hearing the child's first cry that it is well worth the discomfort. It seems to me that in normal conditions, knowing how to relax and how to use that knowledge, with possibly some relief from pain when full dilatation is near, the average woman should be able to achieve and enjoy natural childbirth. That she does not do so in many cases leads one to suspect either that she has been taught wrongly or that she herself is, for one reason or another, incapable of relaxing properly. I feel that Mrs. Lynn is a little hard on a system which many people have found helpful, her only evidence being that it does not work for her personally.-I am, etc.,


Applying text-mining techniques we have developed a methodology that measures the number of social conflicts related to the exploitation of nonrenewable natural resources. We focused on conflicts in four mining countries (Australia, Canada, Chile, and Peru) from 2003 to 2016 considering more than 20,000 articles from the major newspaper of each country. From our data we detected cross-country and cross-regional differences and changes in time patterns. We found a statically significant correlation between our main index and mineral rents in % in GDP. However, our results should be interpreted with caution since we have not taken into account endogeneity issues and our indexes could be biased by different level of lobby powers among our country sample. Our main contribution is the generation of novel database with different indexes of soft conflicts related to the exploitation of non-renewables natural resources and its media coverage in Australia, Canada, Chile and Peru.


CONTEXT
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a treatment for suicidal behavior and borderline personality disorder with well-documented efficacy.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the hypothesis that unique aspects of DBT are more efficacious compared with treatment offered by non-behavioral psychotherapy experts.

DESIGN
One-year randomized controlled trial, plus 1 year of posttreatment follow-up.

SETTING
University outpatient clinic and community practice.

PARTICIPANTS
One hundred one clinically referred women with recent suicidal and self-injurious behaviors meeting DSM-IV criteria, matched to condition on age, suicide attempt history, negative prognostic indication, and number of lifetime intentional self-injuries and psychiatric hospitalizations.

INTERVENTION
One year of DBT or 1 year of community treatment by experts (developed to maximize internal validity by controlling for therapist sex, availability, expertise, allegiance, training and experience, consultation availability, and institutional prestige).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Trimester assessments of suicidal behaviors, emergency services use, and general psychological functioning. Measures were selected based on previous outcome studies of DBT. Outcome variables were evaluated by blinded assessors.

RESULTS
Dialectical behavior therapy was associated with better outcomes in the intent-to-treat analysis than community treatment by experts in most target areas during the 2-year treatment and follow-up period. Subjects receiving DBT were half as likely to make a suicide attempt (hazard ratio, 2.66; P = .005), required less hospitalization for suicide ideation (F(1,92) = 7.3; P = .004), and had lower medical risk (F(1,50) = 3.2; P = .04) across all suicide attempts and self-injurious acts combined. Subjects receiving DBT were less likely to drop out of treatment (hazard ratio, 3.2; P < .001) and had fewer psychiatric hospitalizations (F(1,92) = 6.0; P = .007) and psychiatric emergency department visits (F(1,92) = 2.9; P = .04).

CONCLUSIONS
Our findings replicate those of previous studies of DBT and suggest that the effectiveness of DBT cannot reasonably be attributed to general factors associated with expert psychotherapy. Dialectical behavior therapy appears to be uniquely effective in reducing suicide attempts.


Nickel-base superalloys like Alloy 625 are widely used in power generation applications due to their unique properties especially at elevated temperatures. During the related component manufacturing for gas turbines up to 50% of the material has to be removed by metal cutting operations like milling, turning or drilling. As a result of high strength and toughness the machinability of Alloy 625 is generally poor and only low cutting speeds can be used. High-speed cutting of Alloy 625 on the other hand gets more important in industry to reduce manufacturing times and thus production costs. The cutting speed represents one of the most important factors that have influences on the tool life. The aim of this study is the analyses of wear mechanisms occurring during machining of Alloy 625. Orthogonal cutting experiments have been performed and different process parameters have been varied in a wide range. New and worn tools have been investigated by stereo microscopy, optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Energy-dispersive X-ray analyses were used for the investigation of chemical compositions of the tool's surface as well as the nature of reaction products formed during the cutting process. Wear mechanisms observed in the machining experiments included abrasion, fracture and tribochemical effects. Specific wear features appeared depending on the mechanical and thermal conditions generated in the wear zones.


textabstractThe skin, which is the largest organ of the human body, has several important functions
such as protection against infections and chemical and physical influences, regulation of
temperature and water balance, vitamin D synthesis, etc. The skin consists of two layers,
the dermis and the epidermis. The dennis contains fibroblasts, mast cells, macrophages
and lymphocytes, blood and lymph vessels and skin adnexa such as hair follicles with
sebaceous glands and arrector pili muscles, and sweat glands. The epidermis comprises
four cell types: keratinocytes, melanocytes, Langerhans cells (LC) and Merkel cells.
Keratinocytes are the major cell type and they play an important role in the protection
against the external environment. They differentiate from the stratum basale towards the
surface of the epidermis through the stratum spinosum, the stratum granulosum and
finally the stratum corneum. Melanocytes are located in the stratum bas ale and their main
function is the production of melanin. They also play a role in the detoxification of highly
reactive molecules resulting from exposure to sunlight and other sources of UV irradiation
(UVR). Epidermal LC are dendritic cells, which playa role in the skin immunology by
presentation of antigens to T cells. Merkel cells represent neuroendocrine cells in the
epidennis and hair follicles. Tumors from all these different cell types may develop as a
result of mutations, either "spontaneously" or as a consequence of exposure to chemical,
physical or viral carcinogens. Examples of physical carcinogens are X-rays, radioactivity
and UVR. These carcinogens cause direct DNA damage, leading to mutations,
chromosomal breaks and abnormal rearrangements [1].
Skin cancer, i.e. the sum of all malignant tumors of the epidermis and the dermis, can be
regarded as a progressive "silent epidemic" of the present century. In 1990, it comprised
one third of all cancers in the United States [2] and its incidence is still increasing
throughout the world [3-8]. Therefore, considerable effort is being made worldwide to
elucidate the etiology and pathophysiology and to improve clinical management of skin
cancer. The most important and most common tumors of the skin are divided into
malignant melanoma (MM), derived from melanocytes, and non-melanoma skin cancer
(NMSC), of which the keratinocyte-derived tumors are far the most common ones. NMSC
include basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and a smaller
group consisting of premalignant lesions such as Bowen's disease and keratosis actinica.
Of all skin cancers, the majority (±77%) is BCC, ±20% is SCC and the remainders are
MM and a small group of rare tumors, such as fibro-epithelial tumors (Pinkus).


The Shear History Extensional Rheology Experiment (SHERE) is a proposed International Space Station (ISS) glovebox experiment designed to study the effect of preshear on the transient evolution of the microstructure and viscoelastic tensile stresses for monodisperse dilute polymer solutions. Collectively referred to as "Boger fluids," these polymer solutions have become a popular choice for rheological studies of non-Newtonian fluids and are the non-Newtonian fluid used in this experiment. The SHERE hardware consists of the Rheometer, Camera Arm, Interface Box, Cabling, Keyboard, Tool Box, Fluid Modules, and Stowage Tray. Each component will be described in detail in this paper. In the area of space exploration, the development of in-situ fabrication and repair technology represents a critical element in evolution of autonomous exploration capability. SHERE has the capability to provide data for engineering design tools needed for polymer parts manufacturing systems to ensure their rheological properties have not been impacted in the variable gravity environment and this will be briefly addressed.


Background:
 Autologous bone marrow derived mononuclear cells (MNCs) enhance stroke recovery in animals and are being tested in stroke clinical trials. Some patients at the time of stroke are on statins, which reduce blood-brain barrier permeability. Since MNCs may need to enter the brain to enhance brain repair, statins might reduce the efficacy of MNCs. We studied the impact of statin exposure on MNC delivery into the brain.

 Methods:
 In this double blind placebo controlled experiment, 30 Long Evans rats were randomized into 4 groups (fig). Stroke was induced by MCA suture occlusion for 90 min. Atorvastatin (or vehicle) was given PO daily for 5 days before stroke. Animals that received MNCs underwent a bone marrow harvest at 22 hrs after stroke followed by isolation, labeling with Q-tracker, and MNC re-infusion by intra-carotid artery delivery. BBB permeability was assessed by Evans Blue.

 Results:
 Pre-treatment with atorvastatin and post-treatment with MNCs led to a significant reduction in BBB breakdown. (p = 0.003). Neither atorvastatin nor MNCs alone had a significant effect on the BBB. Pre-treatment with atorvastatin significantly reduced the number of MNCs in the brain (p = .02)

 Conclusions:
 Exposure to atorvastatin before stroke reduces the number of MNCs entering the brain when the cells are administered at 24 hrs after stroke. Atorvastatin in combination with MNCs led to substantial reduction in BBB permeability, suggesting that atorvastatin and MNCs may have a synergistic effect on the BBB which could consequently prevent CNS entry of MNCs. These results have important translational implications for the design of clinical trials testing bone marrow cell therapies in patients with acute stroke. Statins might potentially reduce the number of cells entering the brain which could reduce the potential benefits of cell therapies that need to enter the brain to enhance recovery. We are studying if atorvastatin impairs recovery in rats treated with MNCs.


Interest rates are currently at a historical low. Since in the longer run interest rates will return to their historical average, this implies that bond prices are about to fall. Popular investment advice therefore says that investors should shorten the maturity of their bond portfolios to minimize their losses. This argument, however, skips over the fact that longer-dated bonds pay higher coupons as well as the fact that a substantial rise in interest rates may take quite some time to occur. The authors examine the combined impact of both and conclude that the current interest rate environment in no way implies that investors should rebalance towards short-dated bonds. Extensive scenario analysis confirms that in an overall portfolio context a longer-dated bond portfolio is more efficient than a short-dated bond portfolio, especially when long-dated liabilities are present.


For efficient use of limited capacity, the visual system summarizes redundant information and prioritizes relevant information, strategies known respectively as ensemble perception and selective attention. Although previous studies showed a close relationship between these strategies, the specific mechanisms underlying the relationship have not been determined. We investigated how attention modulated mean-size computation. Fourteen people participated in this study. We hypothesized that attention biases mean-size computation by increasing the contribution (weighted averaging) and the apparent size (perceptual enlargement) of an attended item. Consistent with this hypothesis, our results showed that estimated mean sizes were biased toward the attended size and overestimated regardless of the attended size, supporting weighted averaging and perceptual enlargement, respectively. Taken together, the observed effects of selective attention on mean-size computation signify a close relationship between the two optimization mechanisms to achieve efficient management of the visual system's limited capacity.


The recent surge of digital labour platforms has led to new forms of work organisation and tasks distribution across the workforce. This has raised several questions about the functioning and the benefits deriving from the reorganisation of work that those platforms entail and the associated risks. The European Commission assessed online platforms in a May 2016 communication, focusing on both their innovation opportunities and regulatory challenges. In June 2016 the Commission also adopted its European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy, which clarified the concept and provided some guidance on the employment status of platform workers and the EU definition of worker. The European Pillar of Social Rights aims to address some of the policy challenges associated to new forms of employment, including platform work. As accompanying initiatives, the Commission presented in December 2017 a proposal for a new Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions, and in March 2018 a proposal for a Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. A crucial issue in designing the policy response to the emergence of digital labour platforms is the lack of reliable evidence. In 2017, the JRC conducted the COLLEEM pilot survey, an initial attempt to provide quantitative evidence on platform work, responding to calls by the European Council and the European Parliament. The survey provides a basis for an initial estimation of platform work in 14 Member States.


This contribution to an interdisciplinary methodology on Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) aims at developing a psycho-social module for health technology assessment on PHM applications. It covers important aspects that should be taken into account for conducting a health technology assessment from a psycho-social perspective. As it could be used in addition to other tools within the PHM-Ethics approach to health technology assessment it is considered as a module of the interdisciplinary methodology. As a prerequisite, we provide a conceptual framework on psycho-social issues of PHM applications. From that framework we delineate an integrated module for psycho-social health technology assessment for PHM applications, consisting of a map highlighting selective psycho-social issues that may appear when applying a PHM system. This psycho-social tool is at least twofold in its intention as a sole HTA tool on the one hand and as an integral part of the interdisciplinary PHM methodology on the other hand. It provides a quick overview on potential benefits and risks from the user's point of view.


Improvement in income in developing countries has led to emergence of middle and high income consumers. In major urban centers there has been rapid expansion of the grocery sections selling variety of leafy vegetables in leading retail stores. This study examines the willing of the urban consumers to pay for quality of leafy vegetables and the drivers of willingness to pay for the quality. It considered a broad range of quality attributes including safety, nutrition, price, sensory, convenience, environmental friendliness, hygiene and ethics. The study found that mean willingness to pay for quality was highest among high income consumers. It also found that confidence and consistency, subjective knowledge, reference point, income and age of children the consumer has were the main explanatory variable for WTP. The study concludes that there is demand for quality of leafy vegetables and discusses policy implications. Key word s: Willingness to pay, food safety, urban consumers, leafy vegetables, Kenya


Control variates can be a powerful tool to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo estimators, but constructing effective control variates can be challenging when the number of samples is small. In this paper, we show that when a large number of related integrals need to be computed, it is possible to leverage the similarity between these integration tasks to improve performance even when the number of samples per task is very small. Our approach, called meta learning CVs (Meta-CVs), can be used for up to hundreds or thousands of tasks. Our empirical assessment indicates that Meta-CVs can lead to significant variance reduction in such settings, and our theoretical analysis establishes general conditions under which Meta-CVs can be successfully trained.


Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-based homopolymers and copolymers are attractive for a broad range of electroactive applications because of their high dielectric constants. Especially, biaxially oriented PVDF (BOPVDF) films exhibit a DC breakdown strength as high as that for biaxially oriented polypropylene films. In this work, we revealed the molecular origin of the high dielectric constant via study of a commercial BOPVDF film. By determination of the dielectric constant for the amorphous phase in BOPVDF, a high value of ca. 21-22 at 25 °C was obtained, and a three-phase (i.e., lamellar crystal/oriented interphase/amorphous region) semicrystalline model was proposed to explain this result. Meanwhile, electronic conduction mechanisms in BOPVDF under high electric fields and elevated temperatures were investigated by thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) spectroscopy and leakage current studies. Space charge injection from metal electrodes was identified as a major factor for electronic conduction when BOPVDF was poled above 75 °C and 20 MV/m. In addition, when silver or aluminum were used as electrodes, new ions were generated from electrochemical reactions under high fields. Due to the electrochemical reactions between PVDF and the metal electrode, a question is raised for practical electrical applications using PVDF and its copolymers under high-field and high-temperature conditions. A potential method to prevent electrochemical degradation of PVDF is proposed in this study.


BACKGROUND
Precocious pubarche (PP), defined as the development of sexual pubic hair before 8 years of age in females and before 9 years in males, is usually a benign condition but it can also be the first sign of an underlying disease.

AIM
To analyze the etiology and perform a short term follow up in a cohort of patients with PP.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A group of 173 patients (158 females) consulted for PP with a mean age of 7.4+/-0.1 years. These patients were followed between 15 to 60 months. Anthropometric measurements, bone age, serum levels of total testosterone, 17 OH progesterone (17 OHP) and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEAS) were evaluated.

RESULTS
Mean birth weight and length was 3024.1+/-50.5 g and 48.5+/-0.3 cm, respectively. Ten percent of children were small for gestational age at birth. Bone age was accelerated by 1.1+/-0.01 years. One hundred and twelve patients were classified as having idiopathic PP (64.7%; 105 females), 29 as central precocious puberty (16.8%; only females), 16 as exaggerated adrenarche (EA 9.2%; 13 females) and 16 as non classical adrenal hyperplasia (9.2%; 11 females).

CONCLUSIONS
PP represents a common and usually benign sign. However, 26% of cases had a pathologic underlying condition. Therefore, all children with PP should be evaluated by a pediatric endocrinologist. Low birth weight was not frequent in this cohort and these patients did not show EA .


Syphilis is a disease, usually sexually transmitted , caused by infection with the spirochete Treponema pallidum ( T.pallidum). Infection is systemic from the outset and the disease is characterized by periods o f latency, often in excess of twenty years. These features, together with the fact tha T. pallidum cannot be isolated in culture mean that serological techniques play a major role in the diagnosis of syphilis and treatment follow-up.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
Multiple hypotheses into the age-based susceptibility of animals to Lawsonia intracellularis exist, including the decline of passively acquired antibodies.

OBJECTIVES
To determine whether the decline in passively acquired antibodies in horses is responsible for the age predilection of equine proliferative enteropathy (EPE). Additional objectives included examination of various risk factors for the development of EPE as well as the determination of naturally occurring attack rates for clinical and subclinical EPE.

STUDY DESIGN
Prospective, multifarm field study.

METHODS
A total of 369 mare and foal pairs from 15 central Kentucky Thoroughbred farms were used in this study, which took place from January 2012 to February 2013. Serum samples were collected from mares and foals within 48 h of parturition, and then monthly from foals to February of their yearling year. Lawsonia intracellularis-specific antibodies were measured using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

RESULTS
No effect of passively acquired antibodies on the occurrence of presumptive clinical or subclinical EPE was noted. In total, 5.3% and 6.3% of seropositive horses developed presumptive clinical or subclinical EPE, respectively. In multiple logistic regression models, colts were at a significantly greater risk than fillies of developing presumptive clinical EPE (odds ratio [OR] 5.468, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.134-26.362, P = 0.034) or a combination of either presumptive clinical or subclinical EPE (OR 3.861, 95% CI 1.461-10.206, P = 0.006) while foals that were weaned in September or beyond were at a lower risk of developing presumptive EPE (OR = 0.281, 95% CI 0.0807-0.981, P = 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
This is the first study to show that passively acquired antibodies to L. intracellularis do not have an effect on the occurrence of clinical or subclinical EPE. A number of novel findings, including identification of the disease rate among naturally exposed horses, warrant additional work as they may help to identify potential risk factors for L. intracellularis exposure and/or the reservoir host(s) of the bacterium.


A well-defined relation between permeabilty and effective porosity is a way for calculating permeability in all cases where direct lab measurements are impossible. In homogeneous rock formations, correlations between discussed reservoir parameters are always high. In the group of lab data from the Rotliegendes formation from the Polish Lowland, correlations between permeablity and porosity showed not very good R coefficients and a great dispersion. The data originated from 78 wells, over a dozen of them was chosen for analysis. The whole research area was divided into smaller ones. We assumed the smaller data groups would be more homogeneous than the whole data set as regards lithology and facies composition. The relations permeability vs. porosity were determined for them and the results were better than those obtained for the whole data set, but still they were not satisfied. The Flow Zone Indexes were calculated for the units of the same hydraulic parameters and relations permeability vs. porosity were separately calculated for each such unit. The correlation coefficients were good and the prediction equations for permeability were constructed. The obtained formulas can be applied to calculating the continuous permeability log in the borehole profile on the basis of the porosity curve.


This chapter focuses on the findings from the initial analysis of the responses to a survey of nearly 1,700 academics from a wide range of higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK which was carried out by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at The Open University. It includes comparisons with findings from the original survey of the academic profession in England in 1992 as part of the First International Survey of the Academic Profession (Fulton, 1996). Therefore, it concentrates on the responses to the 2007 survey from those employed in English HEIs. The 2007 questionnaire repeated 13 items included in the earlier survey. The report of the 1992 survey sought to investigate institutional diversity and differentiation on the eve of the abolition of the binary divide in the UK between universities on the one hand and polytechnics and major colleges of higher education on the other. As such, this initial report of – what amounts to a fraction of – the UK 2007 survey findings, is of an analysis by institutional type utilising three categories: Pre-1992 Universities, Post-1992 Universities (i.e. Polytechnics at the time of the 1992 survey), and Post-2004 Universities and HE Colleges. These analytical categories are also applied to the responses to a selection of other questions in the survey not included in the 1992 instrument.


Macroinvertebrates is one of bioindicator for aquatic ecosystem. By assessing indicator species, diversity, functional groups of macroinvertebrates community, it is possible to determine water quality. Purpose of this research was to inventory and study the macroinvertebrates species diversity in Sepanjang Beach, Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta. This research was conducted on Wednesday, November 25 th 2014 at Sepanjang Beach, Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta. Sampling points was determined by line transect method. At each transect, sampling with 1x1 m 2 plots was done. The data obtained in this study was the result of macro-invertebrates species inventory in each sampling point and the number of individuals of each species. Data analysis was performed by calculating the Shannon-Weiner diversity index (H'). Result of this research showed that there were 63 macroinvertebrates species with 1033 number of individuals found in Sepanjang beach. Result of calculation of Shannon-Weiner diversity index (H') showed the diversity index of macro-invertebrates in Sepanjang beach was 1.24. The diversity index showed that the diversity index of macro-invertebrates in Sepanjang beach categorized by medium diversity.


Sixty patients with clinically unruptured intracranial arteriovenous malformations were studied with high-resolution computed tomography. In 33, local and distant mass effects were evidenced by compression, distortion, and displacement of normal anatomic structures by the malformation, its afferent and efferent vessels, and the surrounding edema.


The present study aimed at evaluation of the influence of origin, milking hour, subsequent lactation and phase after calving on the parameters of Montbeliarde cows milking. The analysis was performed on the basis of data collected from 5284 milkings and derived from computer system of herd management ALPRO provided by DeLaval company. It was determined that parameters of Montbeliarde cows milking were influenced by subsequent lactation and phase after calving and also cow origin. The average milk flow decreased significantly (from 2.2 to 1.4 kg∙min -1 ) along with subsequent lactations and phases after calving. Higher indices of milking speed were observed for cows born in Poland as compared with those imported from France as in-calf heifers.


The paper extends the study of the modified Borwein method for the calculation of the Riemann zeta-function. It presents an alternative perspective on the proof of a local limit theorem for coefficients of the method. The new approach is based on the connection with the limit theorem applied to asymptotic enumeration.


To evaluate the effectiveness of a critical thinking (CT) educational approach for Head Start parents in increasing offerings of dark green leafy, yellow/orange, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes (specific vegetables), in their children's diets. A two-group (experimental, control) randomized, pretest-posttest design was used. The experimental group participated in two 45-minute sessions on vegetables based on the CT approach. A CT definition, model, curriculum and lesson plans were developed. Significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups in mean posttest scores for vegetable knowledge 3.72 (SE 0.26) and 2.99 (SE 0.26), for critical thinking 2.34 (SE 0.63) and 0.73 (SE 0.47), and offerings of specific vegetables 6.11 (SE 0.48) and 4.97 (SE 0.45). There was no change in attitudes towards vegetables during the study. Participants already possessed positive attitudes before the intervention. Future work should continue the development of the critical thinking methodology.


Gambles are random variables that model possible changes in wealth. Classic decision theory transforms money into utility through a utility function and defines the value of a gamble as the expectation value of utility changes. Utility functions aim to capture individual psychological characteristics, but their generality limits predictive power. Expectation value maximizers are defined as rational in economics, but expectation values are only meaningful in the presence of ensembles or in systems with ergodic properties, whereas decision-makers have no access to ensembles, and the variables representing wealth in the usual growth models do not have the relevant ergodic properties. Simultaneously addressing the shortcomings of utility and those of expectations, we propose to evaluate gambles by averaging wealth growth over time. No utility function is needed, but a dynamic must be specified to compute time averages. Linear and logarithmic "utility functions" appear as transformations that generate ergodic observables for purely additive and purely multiplicative dynamics, respectively. We highlight inconsistencies throughout the development of decision theory, whose correction clarifies that our perspective is legitimate. These invalidate a commonly cited argument for bounded utility functions.


In the European Union (EU), the criteria for determining a sign's eligibility for trademark protection are harmonized to a large extent. On the one hand, the trademark legislation and office practices in EU Member States have to keep within the harmonized legal framework set forth in the EU Trade Mark Directive (TMD). On the other hand, the European Union Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR) provides for a set of eligibility criteria that apply to European Union Trade Marks (EUTM) with equal effect throughout the EU territory. As the rules in the Regulation are in line with those in the Directive, the two legislative instruments constitute a robust body of harmonized norms informing the decision on the registration of a sign as a trademark. The harmonizing effect is enhanced by the fact that national courts have to refer questions relating to the application and interpretation of eligibility criteria to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

As in other regions of the world, the criteria applied to determine eligibility for trademark protection are quite flexible in the EU. The open-ended definition of protectable subject matter leaves room for the extension of trademark protection to non-traditional types of marks, such as shape, sound and colour marks. Trademark offices applying EU trademark law have also accepted, for instance, abstract colours and colour combinations, motion and multimedia marks, melodies and sounds, taste marks, hologram marks and position marks.

The analysis of the trend to register non-traditional marks in the EU outlines the legal framework which the CJEU developed to assess the eligibility of non-traditional types of source identifiers for trademark protection. On this basis, it discusses the objective to safeguard freedom of competition and the legal instruments which the CJEU employs for this purpose: the requirement of providing evidence of the acquisition of distinctive character through use in trade and the categorical exclusion of functional signs from trademark protection. Drawing conclusions, it will become apparent that the basic requirement of distinctive character plays an ambiguous role in the regulation of access to trademark protection for non-traditional marks. It is both an obstacle to trademark protection and an incentive for enhanced investment in non-traditional types of marks.


The results of diagnosis and treatment of the thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) in 35 patients have been analysed. Compression of the subclavicular neurovascular bundle at the site of its outlet from the thoracic cavity was most frequent cause of TOS development. A degree of compression was assessed quantitatively by the data of a modified functional dynamic test. The modified operation, including resection of the I rib (and of a cervical one in its presence), scalene muscle, musculus pectoralis minor, periarterial sympathectomy of the subclavicular artery, was performed. In narrow (less than 1.5 cm) costoclavicular space, the II rib was additionally resected. An excellent long-term result is indicative of the effectiveness of the method.


This thesis examines issues of access to art museums and galleries for young children attending early childhood (EC) centres, the ways in which the EC sector uses the institutions to enhance young children's learning, and the relationship art museums and galleries have with New Zealand's youngest citizens. It is the first in-depth study of young children's use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand.  A mixed methods approach to the research involved a range of data gathering tools to observe, document, and analyse the practices and attitudes towards art museum visiting by the EC sector. Key participants were EC teachers, art museum directors, and art museum educators. Rich quantitative and qualitative data were elicited from a national survey of 17 of New Zealand's largest art museums and galleries, an extensive national online questionnaire to EC centres, and an embedded case study of three EC centres who visited art museums as part of the research. Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus, cultural capital and, particularly, field provide the fundamental tools for analysis within this inquiry. These have been used to examine and attempt to explain why some EC teachers visit art museums and galleries with young children while others do not, and understand issues of power within the field of art education in an art museum or gallery.  The study found that there are both facilitators and barriers to art museum and gallery visiting by the EC sector. Barriers included: funding limitations, teachers' fears about using art museums and galleries with young children, lack of professional development for teachers, and poor marketing of exhibitions to the EC sector. Facilitators included EC teachers' positive perceptions of art museums and galleries as places for enriching and extending young children's visual arts education, visual art pedagogical practices that support visiting, and the willingness of some art museums and galleries to work with the EC sector. On the basis of the findings from all three phases of the research and informed by the literature reviews and the conceptual tools used in the analysis of data, a 'third space' for art education in art museums and galleries for young children attending EC centres is proposed.


BACKGROUND
frailty imparts a higher risk for hospitalisation, mortality and morbidity due to COVID-19 infection, but the broader impacts of the pandemic and associated public health measures on community-living people with frailty are less known.

METHODS
we used cross-sectional data from 23,974 Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging participants who completed a COVID-19 interview (Sept-Dec 2020). Participants were included regardless of whether they had COVID-19 or not. They were asked about health, resource, relationship and health care access impacts experienced during the pandemic. Unadjusted and adjusted prevalence of impacts was estimated by frailty index quartile. We further examined if the relationship with frailty was modified by sex, age or household income.

RESULTS
community-living adults (50-90 years) with greater pre-pandemic frailty reported more negative impacts during the first year of the pandemic. The frailty gradient was not explained by socio-demographic or health behaviour factors. The largest absolute difference in adjusted prevalence between the most and least frail quartiles was 15.1% (challenges accessing healthcare), 13.3% (being ill) and 7.4% (increased verbal/physical conflict). The association between frailty and healthcare access differed by age where the youngest age group tended to experience the most challenges, especially for those categorised as most frail.

CONCLUSION
although frailty has been endorsed as a tool to inform estimates of COVID-19 risk, our data suggest it may have a broader role in primary care and public health by identifying people who may benefit from interventions to reduce health and social impacts of COVID-19 and future pandemics.


As a provider of knowledge, the parochial school has the dual function of presenting two streams of knowledge to the child. One set of knowledge emanates from society at large, while the other set comes from the ethnic religious community which operates the school. How these two system s are combined in the classroom highlights the relationship or lack of it between the ethnic community and its host society. In their studies of Orthodox Jewish schools Rubin (1972) and Bullivant (1978) found that combining Jewish and secular learning is inherently problematic. These two streams of learning are generally at odds which creates dissonance in the learning process. However in presenting their taxonomies of rationales for combining Jewish and secular studies, Levi (1983) and Solomon (1984) disagree. They hold that these two streams of learning can somehow be "harmonized" to produce a broader and more cohesive world view. Which opinion then is more correct? Which one best describes knowledge transmission in Ortho...


Objectives Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including infections with Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC), are highly incident in Greenland. Since January 2011, GC testing has been performed on urine with nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) by strand displacement amplification (Becton Dickinson ProbeTec). Monitoring of GC antibiotic susceptibility by culture was introduced in Nuuk in 2012. Until 2014, no cases of ciprofloxacin-resistant GC strains were reported. In this paper, we report the finding of ciprofloxacin-resistant GC and describe the most recent incidence of GC infections in Greenland. Methods The number of urine NAATs and culture-positive swabs from January to October 2014 were obtained from the Central Laboratory at Queens Ingrid's Hospital in Nuuk and stratified on gender, place and period of testing. Incidence rates were estimated as number of urine NAAT * (12/10) per 100,000 inhabitants. Men in Nuuk with a positive NAAT for GC were encouraged to provide a urethral swab for culture and susceptibility testing. Results From January to October 2014, a total of 5,436 urine GC NAATs were performed on patients from Nuuk and 9,031 from the rest of Greenland. Of these, 422 (8%) and 820 (9%) were positive, respectively. From January to August, 6 (15%) cultures from Nuuk were ciprofloxacin resistant while in September and October, 26 (59%) were ciprofloxacin resistant (p<0.01). In total, 35 (40%) of 88 culture-positive isolates showed ciprofloxacin resistance. GC incidence in Nuuk was 3,017 per 100,000 inhabitants per year, compared to 2,491 per 100,000 inhabitants per year in the rest of Greenland. Conclusion Within a short period, a rapid and dramatic change in ciprofloxacin susceptibility among GC strains isolated in Nuuk was documented and recommendation for first line treatments has changed. Continued monitoring and rethinking of primary and secondary preventive initiatives is highly recommended in this high GC incidence setting.


The Tigray region, where we found around eight per cent of the indigenous cattle population of Ethiopia, is considered as the historic centre of the country, with the ancient pre-Aksumite and Aksumite civilisations in contact with the civilisations of the Fertile Crescent and the Indian subcontinent. Here, we used whole genome sequencing data to characterise the genomic diversity, relatedness, and admixture of five cattle populations (Abergelle, Arado, Begait, Erob, and Raya) indigenous to the Tigray region of Ethiopia. We detected 28 to 29 million SNPs and 2.7 to 2.9 million indels in each population, of which 7% of SNPs and 34% of indels were novel. Functional annotation of the variants showed around 0.01% SNPs and 0.22%–0.27% indels in coding regions. Enrichment analysis of genes overlapping missense private SNPs revealed 20 significant GO terms and KEGG pathways that were shared by or specific to breeds. They included important genes associated with morphology (SCN4A, TAS1R2 and KCNG4), milk yield (GABRG1), meat quality (MMRN2, VWC2), feed efficiency (PCDH8 and SLC26A3), immune response (LAMC1, PCDH18, CELSR1, TLR6 and ITGA5), heat resistance (NPFFR1 and HTR7) and genes belonging to the olfactory gene family, which may be related to adaptation to harsh environments. Tigray indigenous cattle are very diverse. Their genome-wide average nucleotide diversity ranged from 0.0035 to 0.0036. The number of heterozygous SNPs was about 0.6–0.7 times higher than homozygous ones. The within-breed average number of ROHs ranged from 777.82 to 1000.45, with the average sum of the length of ROHs ranging from 122.01 Mbp to 163.88 Mbp. The genomic inbreeding coefficients differed among animals and breeds, reaching up to 10% in some Begait and Raya animals. Tigray indigenous cattle shared a common ancestry with Asian indicine (85.6%–88.7%) and African taurine (11.3%–14.1%) cattle, with very small, if any, European taurine introgression. This study identified high within-breed genetic diversity representing an opportunity for breeding improvement programs and, also, significant novel variants that could increase the number of known cattle variants, an important contribution to the knowledge of domestic cattle genetic diversity.


The concept of 'media representation of the other' proposes that Western-led media tend to be biased against third world countries and communist others—portraying them as a bad other. Traditionally, Western media present China and Vietnam in negative Cold War frames. By identifying the media frames and tones used to communicate about China and Vietnam, our study examined the national images of the two countries as portrayed during the global (SARS) crisis in 2003 in three mainstream Western-led English newspapers. Various factors that might have influenced Western media representation of these two countries were considered. Our findings show that China and Vietnam received different media treatment during the period. China received a bad press whilst Vietnam was shown in a positive light. We contend that the differences in image representation are mainly due to their different approaches to handling SARS, resulting from both internal factors and external forces at work in each country. Any society must have undergone a dynamic process of news production and images creation in mass media as a whole. Current popular conceptual premise of media construction of the other is arguably limited in informing news production. A comprehensive perspective and contextual approach are called for understanding and defusing the complex dilemma of the 'media representation of the other' process.


In this paper we review and assess the cross sections for collisions of low-energy electrons with boron trichloride (BCl3). The only available experimental cross section data are for partial and total ionization and electron attachment, and the electron attachment cross sections are uncertain. Calculated values are available for the total elastic, differential elastic, and momentum transfer cross sections, and derived cross sections have been published for vibrational excitation and dissociation. Other than some rather uncertain data on electron attachment rate constants and some measurements of electron drift velocities in BCl3/Ar and BCl3/He mixtures, there are no measurements of the electron attachment, ionization, or transport coefficients for this gas. Analysis of the experimental data on the electron affinity, electron attachment, and electron scattering, enabled identification of negative ion states of BCl3 at about −0.3, 1.0, 2.8, 5.2, 7.6, and 9.0 eV. Because the existing electron collision data ...


The current system of stellar magnitudes first introduced by Hipparchus was strictly defined by Norman Robert Pogson in 1856. He based his system on Ptolemy's star catalogue 'Almagest', recorded in about 137 A.D., and defined the magnitude-intensity relationship on a logarithmic scale. Stellar magnitudes observed with the naked eye recorded in seven old star catalogues were analyzed in order to examine the visual magnitude systems. Despite that psychophysists have proposed that human's sensitivities are on a power-law scale, it is shown that the degree of agreement is far better for a logarithmic magnitude than a power-law magnitude. It is also found that light ratios in each star catalogue nearly equal to 2.512, excluding the brightest (1st) and the dimmest (6th and dimmer) stars being unsuitable for the examination. It means that the visual magnitudes in old star catalogues fully agree with Pogson's logarithmic scale. Key words. stellar magnitude system – visual magnitude estimates – astronomical photometry – historical star catalogue


The chicken interleukin-17D was cloned from a testis cDNA library prepared from the Korean native chicken. The full-length chicken IL-17D (chIL-17D) cDNA consisted of a 348 nucleotide sequence encoding an open reading frame of 116 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 13.3 kDa. Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence of chIL-17D with homologous proteins from human, mouse and opossum revealed 64%, 53% and 76% identity, respectively, including six conserved cysteine residues present in the mammalian polypeptides. The chIL-17D gene transcript was expressed in a wide range of tissues, and highest levels were in pancreas, thymus and lung. Following Eimeria maxima infection, levels of the chIL-17D mRNA were up-regulated in the intestinal jejunum, bursa, lung, and spleen but decreased in the thymus. Infected chickens also expressed greater levels of chIL-17D mRNA in CD4, CD8 and TCR1 intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes while decreased expression was seen in TCR2 cells. Treatment of CHCC-OU2 fibroblasts with chIL-17D recombinant protein induced the expression of IL-6 and IL-8. Collectively, these results suggest that chL-17D has structural and functional similarities to mammalian IL-17Ds and that it plays an important role in local gut innate immune responses during experimental coccidiosis. Published by Elsevier B.V.


The PCAOB maintains that auditors planning fraud detection tend to choose procedures that readily demonstrate audit work rather than those more effective at detecting fraud. One possible reason for this disparity between auditors' obligation and their performance may be the way they conceive the fraud-detection planning task. Currently, auditors view the task as selecting procedures aware that their choices will subsequently be reviewed, which leads them to call to mind "implementation intentions" from previous fraud-detection planning. We consider an alternative view of the task where subordinate auditors work under agreements that offer potential compensation for forming effective fraud-detection plans, leading them to construe the task as an unresolved problem. This alternative representation of the task can lead auditors to adopt a deliberative mindset where they engage in an open-minded examination of evidence and set engagement-specific detection goals. In an experiment, auditors were assigned to complete a fraud-detection planning task under performance-contingent agreements, the typical review process, or complete anonymity. We find that auditors operating under performance-contingent agreements reported that the task required deeper thought about fraud risks and development of an overall strategy. Under performance-contingent agreements, auditors spent more time planning, were more likely to correctly identify the probable source of fraud and selected programs that were more effective. Auditors focused on accountability described the task as providing the reviewer with detailed explanations and demonstrating that a lot of steps were taken. They budgeted significantly more hours to less effective procedures and fewer hours to effective, new procedures.