The incidence of diabetic nephropathy (DN) is constantly rising in parallel with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and has been predicted to double within the next 15 years. Albuminuria is considered the earliest putative diagnostic sign of diabetic renal damage but it is poorly associated to the complex histopathological picture of glomerular and tubular damage hence, up to now, the accurate diagnosis of the DN requires renal biopsy. The identification of new biomarkers of DN is an urgent need since the proper management of the DN patients requires early and unbiased diagnosis. The Proteomics approach to the study of the human disease allows a large-scale characterisation of the protein content of a biological sample, and its application to urine may be a challenging but powerful strategy to identify new DN biomarkers. In this review we discuss the main results of a decade of proteomic studies focused on the urinary investigation of diabetic nephropathy.


The study examined prospects of selected forest fruits and vegetables in Enugu North Agricultural zone of Enugu State, Nigeria. Structured interview schedule and focus group discussion were used to collect data from a sample of one hundred and twenty (120) respondents. Data were analyzed using matrix rank ordering, percentage, mean scores and standard deviation. Results of the study identified about twenty forest fruits and vegetables that are of both economic and dietary importance to the respondents. The forest fruits and vegetables identified with their botanical and common names in order of importance include: Prosopis africana (okpeyi) (M = 2.96), Irvingia gabonensiss/wombolus (ogbono) (M = 2.79), Treculia africana (ukwa) (M = 2.76), Parkia spp (ugba) (M = 2.75). Pterocarpus spp (oha) (M = 2.55) and Pergularia spp. (utazi) (M = 2.55). Others include Xylopia aethiopica (uda) (M=2.50), Piper nigrum (uziza) (M = 2.40), Gnetum africanum (ukazi) (M = 2.38), Chrysophylium africanum (udara) (M = 2.34) Garcinia kola (akuilu) (M = 2.32), among others. These forest fruits and vegetables are very important to mankind considering the potentials economically, culturally nutritionally, medically and environmentally. Constraints to access and utilization were poor storage facilities (M=2.38), transportation problems (M=2.38), lack of modern processing technology (M=2.38), insect pests and diseases (M=2.36), deforestation and land degradation (M= 2.35), destruction of forests by fire resulting as a result of bush burning (M= 2.30), poor yield (M=2.19), deterioration/perishability (wastages) (M=2.18), among others. The study recommends that efforts are highly needed by government at the local level to involve local community leaders in enforcing laws to reduce deforestation and bush burning in order to avoid destruction of forest products and exploitation of the valuable forest resources. It highlights the involvement of government in providing adequate rural infrastructure in order to encourage establishment of rural agro-processing industries by investors to prevent losses emanating from spoilage of the products, ensure food security, and create employment opportunities thus reducing poverty and vulnerability among rural folks.


OBJECTIVE: Despite the decline in the incidence of tetanus, this disease is still neglected in the developing world and remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality. With improvements in intensive care, it is important to better understand the complications of this serious condition. We aim to evaluate 1) the lethality and osteomuscular and cardiovascular complications of patients with tetanus who are admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and 2) the risk factors associated with a poor prognosis. METHODS: This was a retrospective study that analyzed the medical records of all of the patients diagnosed with tetanus who were admitted to an infectious diseases ICU between January 2000 and December 2001. A standardized form that included demographic, clinical and laboratory data was completed. The clinical variables that were related to lethality and osteomuscular and cardiovascular complications were described. RESULTS: A total of 22 tetanus patients were admitted (81.8% male, mean age of 47.8 years).The tetanus infection was associated with professional activities in 54.5% of cases. The majority of patients (20 patients) presented with the generalized form of disease. Eighty-one percent of the patients had never received a tetanus vaccine or were unaware of their vaccine status. Following the injury, none had received appropriated passive prophylaxis, only two patients had received surgical debridement of wound and six patients received antibiotic therapy. Eleven patients (52.4%) experienced some cardiovascular complication. A pressure ulcer was the most frequent cardiovascular complication (38.1%), followed by arrhythmias (28.6%). Two of the patients developed bone fractures secondary to tetanus spasms, corresponding to 9.6% of sample. The tetanus lethality rate was 9.1%. Higher APACHE II severity scores and very severe status based on the Veronesi tetanus classification were significantly associated with the risk of death (p=0.04 and 0.03, respectively). The Veronesi classification was also associated with the risk of cardiovascular complications (p=0.013) and the length of the ICU stay (p=0.009). CONCLUSION: The present study demonstrates the failure of primary medical care in vaccination and post-traumatic tetanus prophylaxis. Despite improvements in intensive care support, cardiovascular complications are still frequent in these patients. Individuals exhibiting high APACHE II scores and severe clinical forms of tetanus should be monitored closely due to a risk of death and cardiovascular complications.


The present study was conducted to evaluate the influences of different dietary fatty acid profiles on the tissue content and biosynthesis of LC-PUFA in a euryhaline species Japanese seabass reared in seawater. Six diets were prepared, each with a characteristic fatty acid: Diet PA: Palmitic acid (C16:0); Diet SA: Stearic acid (C18:0); Diet OA: Oleic acid (C18:1n-9); Diet LNA: α-linolenic acid (C18:3n-3); Diet N-3 LC-PUFA: n-3 LC-PUFA (DHA+EPA); Diet FO: the fish oil control. A 10-week feeding trial was conducted using juvenile fish (29.53±0.86 g). The results showed that Japanese seabass had limited capacity to synthesize LC-PUFA and fish fed PA, SA, OA and LNA showed significantly lower tissue n-3 LC-PUFA contents compared to fish fed N-3 LC-PUFA and FO. The putative gene promoter and full-length cDNA of FADS2 was cloned and characterized. The protein sequence was confirmed to be homologous to FADS2s of marine teleosts and possessed all the characteristic features of microsomal fatty acid desaturases. The FADS2 transcript levels in liver of fish fed N-3 LC-PUFA and FO were significantly lower than those in fish fed other diets except LNA while Diet PA significantly up-regulated the FADS2 gene expression compared to Diet LNA, N-3 LC-PUFA and FO. Inversely, fish fed N-3 LC-PUFA and FO showed significantly higher promoter methylation rates of FADS2 gene compared to fish fed the LC-PUFA deficient diets. These results suggested that Japanese seabass had low LC-PUFA synthesis capacity and LC-PUFA deficient diets caused significantly reduced tissue n-3 LC-PUFA contents. The liver gene expression of FADS2 was up-regulated in groups enriched in C16:0, C18:0 and C18:1n-9 respectively but not in the group enriched in C18:3n-3 compared to groups with high n-3 LC-PUFA contents. The FADS2 gene expression regulated by dietary fatty acids was significantly negatively correlated with the methylation rate of putative FADS2 gene promoter.


Although spatial econometrics is being used more frequently in political science, most applications are still based on geographic notions of distance. Here we argue that it is often more fruitful to consider political economy notions of distance, such as relative trade or common dyad membership. We also argue that the spatially autoregressive model usually (but not always) should be preferred to the spatially lagged error model. Finally, we consider the role of spatial econometrics in analyzing time-series–cross-section data, and show that a plausible (and testable) assumption allows for the simple introduction of space (however defined) into such analyses. We present examples of spatial analyses involving trade and democracy.


The plasma concentration of cardioglobulin C has been compared in hypertension, aortic stenosis, aortic insufficiency, and in a group of normal subjects. The concentration in subjects with aortic insufficiency was normal; whereas in the groups with aortic stenosis and with hypertension, the concentration was significantly increased. These findings suggest that there may be some relationship between the increased plasma concentration of cardio-globulin C and the development of increased left ventricular isometric tension in systole, which is characteristic of patients with aortic stenosis or essential hypertension. Cardioglobulin C concentration was measured in a group of patients with congestive heart failure secondary to valvular disease, and in two groups of patients with cardiac failure secondary to myocardial disease, either of known or of unknown cause. The results showed that the cardioglobulin C concentration in congestive failure secondary to valvular disease or to muscle disease of known cause was not significantly different from normal. The 17 patients with congestive failure secondary to muscle disease of unknown cause could be divided into two populations with respect to cardioglobulin C concentration. One group had concentrations which fell in the normal range, whereas the other group had extremely low values. The findings are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that the cardioglobulin system may be essential for maintaining normal myocardial contractility in warm-blooded animals.


We identify critical problems in Plasma Heating and Current Drive plasma-wave interaction physics and antennae concepts/technology for large fusion devices, including tokamaks, stellarators, mirror traps and constructing ITER for major methods like ECRF, ICRF, NBI. Analysis is based on experiments in large machines and modeling with 3D ICRF and ECRF recently developed full wave PSTELION and STELEC codes, including mode conversion, 3D in-port antennae ANPORT and ANTRES3 codes and theoretical evaluations. We outline identified problems resolution by: 1) elaborated 3D RF full wave codes modeling, 2) proposing High Frequency Fast Waves (HFFW) numerically modeled scheme for DIII-D and ITER, 3) considering principally new approach for ICRH/CD method, especially in conditions of transient ELM activity, making use toroidally broad multi loop Traveling Wave Antenna (TWA) concept which naturally incorporates antenna's loops inter coupling through vacuum and plasma with elegant control of antenna-plasma coupling through a small generator frequency change to properly control toroidal wave's spectrum during plasma edge density profile reconstruction.


Objectives: To assess extent of recognition of major fetal heart structures by transabdominal high frequency probe in first trimester in routine clinical work. Methods: From January 2011 to June 2011, 242 women had 11–14 week scan by two FMF certified operators. Examination of fetal morphology, including heart, as well as chromosomal abnormalities screening was done in allocated period of 30 min. We checked if it is possible to see 4-chamber view, AV valves, ventricles, left and right outflow tract, three vessel view, aortic arch and VCI in different gestations (CRL 45–54 mm, 55–64 mm, 65–74 mm, 75–80 mm). All scans were done transabdominally, with a high frequency probe, cardiac setting (Accuvix, Medison), and no colour Doppler was applied. Results: When CRL was 45–54 mm, 4cv was seen in 60% of cases, while 3vv in 2%. Starting from CRL 65 mm, 4cv was seen in all cases, whereas 3vv was seen in one third (table 1). All scans were done within allocated 30 min. BMI influenced visibility when structures were not easy to be seen (e.g. in CRL 45–54 mm group mean BMI when ventricles are seen was 22.8, when not 28.6 (P = 0.039). When the structures were difficult to be seen, even in late first trimester, BMI did not make a difference (in 75–84 mm group mean BMI when 3vv was seen was 22.5, when not 22.7 (P = 0.901). Conclusions: Major cardiac structures can be seen in first trimester with different rate of success, depending on gestation and it is possible to do it without extending the usual duration of scan. Four chamber view is the first to be reliably seen, whereas examination of great arteries during this period remains challenging.


This bibliography is an attempt to bring together as many of the studies dealing with the Precambrian geochronology of North America as possible, and to provide a short summary of each study. Journal articles, symposium and conference papers, abstracts, and those Ph.D. theses found in Dissertation Abstracts International covering the period 1951 through 1977 are included. The summaries are designed to give a review of the results of each study. They are not intended to serve as substitutes for the original papers. For this reason changes in decay constants, errors in measurements and ages, analytical techniques, and sections of papers dealing with subjects other than geochronology have been largely ignored. This bibliography was conceived as a source to which a worker could turn to find geochronological studies relevant to a particular area. Studies dealing solely with refinements in decay constants, improvements in analytical or mathematical techniques, and laboratory studies of the behavior of isotope systems under conditions approximating metamorphic environments have not been included. Abstracts reporting preliminary results have been included if the full-length paper was published at least one year later.


The fast-growing global halal market is supported by strong economic fundamentals, new categories of halal certified products, more stringent requirements for ingredients, and more Muslim countries developing halal certification systems. This is resulting in a high demand for halal certification services. The number of halal certification bodies (HCBs) worldwide is estimated to stand at around 500, although the exact number is difficult to obtain because there is no international or Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) registration database. Generally, HCBs do not recognise each other although some HCBs, such as the Indonesian Council Of Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI) and Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia, JAKIM), create lists of recognised HCBs for issues pertaining to (amongst other things) meat slaughtering and the production of flavourings and perfumes.


List of Figures and Tables. Notes on Editors and Contributors. Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. Part I. General Issues in Culture and Mental Health . 1. Introduction to Culture and Psychopathology: Sussie Eshun (East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania) and Regan A. R. Gurung (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay). 2. Culture and Mental Health Assessment: Bonnie A. Green (East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania). 3. Stress and Mental Health: Regan A. R. Gurung (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay) and Angela Roethel-Wendorf (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). 4. Managing Job Stress: Cross-Cultural Variations in Adjustment: Joseph P. Eshun, Jr. (East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania) and Kevin J. Kelley (Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh Valley). 5. Chronic Pain: Cultural Sensitivity to Pain: Jyh-Hann Chang (East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania). 6. Placing the Soul Back into Psychology: Religion in the Psychotherapy Process: Paul E. Priester (North Park University), Shiva Khalili (Tehran University), and Jose E. Luvathingal (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). 7. Psychotherapy in a Culturally Diverse World: Laura R. Johnson (University of Mississippi), Gilberte Bastien (University of Mississippi), and Michael J. Hirschel (University of Mississippi). 8. International Perspectives on Culture and Mental Health: P. S. D. V. Prasadarao (University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ) Part II. Cross-Cultural Issues in Specific Psychological Disorders. 9. Culture and Mood Disorders: Sussie Eshun (East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania) and Toy Caldwell-Colbert (formerly Central State University). 10. Culture and Anxiety Disorders: Simon A. Rego (Albert Einstein College of Medicine). 11. Cultural Factors in Traumatic Stress: Peter D. Yeomans (San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center) and Evan M. Forman (Drexel University). 12. Culture and Psychotic Disorders: Kristin M. Vespia (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay). 13. Culture and Eating Disorders: Megan A. Markey Hood (Saint Louis University), Jillon S. Vander Wal (Saint Louis University), and Judith L. Gibbons (Saint Louis University). 14. Culture and Suicide: David Lester (The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ). Author Index. Subject Index


Objectives The aim of this discussion paper is to (i) identify the differentiated roles of health in the work–retirement transition, and, with respect to these, (ii) highlight topics related to conceptual and methodological problems and challenges in research, and (iii) present avenues for future research. Methods This discussion paper summarizes an OMEGA-NET working group discussion ongoing from November 2018 to September 2021 with face-to-face and online meetings as well as a written online discourse. Results 'Health' and 'retirement' are ambiguous concepts. With respect to both, in retirement research, the choice of concept and indicator influences the findings. In addition, the impact of health on retirement is not necessarily a direct one, but can be influenced by further factors such as the ability, motivation and opportunity to work. The strong overall association of poor health with retiring early (path 1) bears the risk of masking distinct and deviating mechanisms in subgroups. In fact, there is evidence that also good health may lead to early retirement (path 2), while both poor health (path 3) and good health (path 4) may also make people retire later. Conclusions An increased awareness of the differentiated roles that health may have in the work–retirement transition as outlined in this discussion paper may support research to address questions relevant for policy and practice and increase the impact of research. Recommendations for occupational health and social research are given.


Traditionally the translation of a given task into robot actuator commands involves three translation steps: (i) Task level planning; given the task find the manipulated object's required motion. (ii) Robot motion planning; given the manipulated object's required motion find the desired robot arm trajectory. (iii) Robot controller; given the desired robot arm trajectory find the robot actuator commands. Furthermore, the robot controller is fixed and internal and is typically not modified in accordance with the expected interaction between the robot arm and the objects it is manipulating. Thus the fixed robot controller is a major handicap which limits the possible robot interactions and performance during such interactions. In this paper we suggest that the objectives of the robot controller be "elevated" from attaining robot arm level objectives to attaining task level objectives. Consistent with this view, the following new three step Funnel algorithm is suggested for the translation of a given task into robot actuator commands: (i) Partition the task into a sequence of local sub-tasks and local regions. (ii) Synthesize a feedback control law to achieve each sub-task locally. (iii) Apply the local feedback control law to obtain the required actuator commands. It is expected that using this funnel approach both the robot system performance and functionality can be improved.


The results of the study of primary morphological manifestation of neuroleukemia (MMN) by mice with transplanting leukemia strains L 1210, P-388, L 5178Y, and are presented. It is determined that the MMN development degree depends on the leukemia cells dissemination amplitude after their transplantation and, in particular, on the degree of the bone-marrow affection, from which the leukemia cells grow into the dura mater encephali and epidural fat of the vertebral canal from the side of skull bones and vertebral canal. The analogous dependence is assumed to be present in a man and, therefore, there appears the possibility of using it for the neuroleukemia development frequency prognosing.


Aperture antenna theory usually produces integrals for radiation patterns which are difficult to evaluate. One resort is to complement the formal teaching by a computer simulation of the radiation due to a line source with arbitrary excitation. Suggested exercises will lead the student to acquire knowledge of various effects in practical aperture type antennas. The program allows several input modes and is written so that it can be adapted for discrete antenna arrays.


This paper examines the effectiveness of employing precomputation techniques to reduce power consumption of field configurable computing systems. Multiplier is modified with precomputation techniques and are implemented using commercial off-the-shelf FPGAs. Precomputation techniques reduce dynamic power consumption of a module by eliminating unnecessary signal switching activities in inactive portions of the modules. Experiments have shown that up to 52% of logic and signal power consumption can be reduced in multiplier module. Furthermore, when compared to ASIC implementations, FPGA implementations of precomputation modules have the advantage of lower area overhead as most of them can be implemented using originally unoccupied related FPGA resources. Finally, it was found that the effectiveness of precomputation depends heavily on the input data statistics. It is expected that compilers for future reconfigurable computers may take full advantage of such power saving techniques by optimizing the architecture according to data input statistics.


Sulodexide (Vessel 2F, Italy) was given to 20 patients with diabetes mellitus type I with initial nephropathy. Urine excretion of albumin significantly fell in 18 patients and remained so in 15 patients 6 weeks after the drug discontinuation. Plasma total cholesterol tended to lowering. No changes were registered in hemostasis and carbohydrate metabolism. The authors propose combined administration of sulodexide and inhibitors of angiotensin-converting enzyme for treatment and prevention of diabetic nephropathy progression.


In examined groups of healthy people as well as in persons suffering from a periodontitis of a different severity-degree with concomitant affections and without them the PO2 in the blood is defined by the concentration of K+ and Cl- in erythrocytes and in blood as well as by the relation between the Cl(-)-concentrations on both the sides of the erythrocyte membrane. The disorders in the concentrations of these electrolytes in patients suffering from a periodontitis use to lead to a defect of the ability of haemoglobin to bind the oxygen as well as to transport it through the erythrocyte membrane, a fact entailing a decrease of PO2 in the blood in this group of sick persons. A decrease of PO2 in the blood for its part may cause in persons suffering from a periodontitis a hypoxia in the periodontal tissue and in other tachytrophic organs.


In this study, four species of wood-rot fungi—Piptoporus betulinus, Fomes fomentarius, Irpex lacteus, and Coriolus versicolor—were compared regarding their ability to degrade the wood of white birch and used to assess the degradation mechanisms. Chemical analyses were conducted following the Chinese national standard methods and included Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The wood samples were inoculated with the four wood-rot fungi for a predetermined duration in the wood-decaying test. In the wood weight loss test, both F. fomentarius and P. betulinus showed the greatest reduction, but through different mechanisms: F. fomentarius mainly decomposed lignin, whereas P. betulinus mainly acted on cellulose. F. fomentarius, I. lacteus, and C. versicolor exhibited a shift at 3417 cm−1 related to O-H stretching in hydroxyl groups, along with decreased absorption at 3410, 3406, and 3405 cm−1, most likely due to the degradation of the related functional groups of lignin side chains. The wood decayed by P. betulinus displayed a change in the relative position of cellulose-associated bands at 1161 and 898 cm−1. F. fomentarius can be considered a potential agent for the biopulping of white birch because of its high ability to degrade lignin, high holocellulose content, low content of 1% NaOH, and ethanol-benzene extractives.


Background Improving children's weight status through nutrition education (NE) for mothers about using pulses in complementary feeding has been demonstrated in pilot studies, but no effect on stunting was reported. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 9-month pulse-nutrition education program on mothers' knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) towards pulses, as well as its impact on children's dietary diversity, and nutritional status. The NE was delivered by Health Extension Workers (HEWs). Methods A cluster randomized study was employed for the community-based interventional study. Twelve randomly selected villages in Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia were included in the study. A total of 772 mother-child pairs involved in the study; where 386 mother-child pairs in the intervention group received additional messages about pulse-cereal complementary food, and 386 pairs (the control) received only routine health education for 9 months. A survey on mothers' KAP and anthropometric measurements of the children were taken at baseline, midline, and endline. Results At baseline and endline, maternal KAP and the dietary diversity score of the children (mean age at endline 18.8 ± 2.9 mo) were assessed. Results : Intervention mothers' KAP improved ( p <0.001) at midline and endline compared to that of the control group, as did frequency of pulse consumption and DDS among children. At 9 months, the prevalence of stunting, wasting, and underweight was significantly reduced in the intervention group compared to the control group ( p =0.001). Conclusions NE delivered by HEWs improved KAP of mothers regarding pulse consumption and dietary diversity of children led to improved nutritional status of the children. Training HEWs on the use of pulses for CF may be an effective way to improve the health of children in Ethiopian communities.


Author(s): Kuang, Christine Yai | Advisor(s): Yu, Bin; Sekhon, Jasjeet | Abstract: In this era, massive amounts of data are routinely collected and warehoused to be analyzed for scientific and industrial goals. Text data are a major constituent of these data treasure troves. However, with the steep increase in the amount and variety of accessible text data, it has become very difficult for a human to meaningfully analyze textual data without the help of automated text machine learning models. Topic models are one such method. They reduce the cost of analyzing large-scale corpora by identifying, in an unsupervised manner, the underlying thematic structure of the corpus. This thematic structure provides a coarse summary of the documents and allows researchers to quickly explore how topics connect with each other and change over time. The success of automated topical analysis by topic models has led to another interesting area of text analysis: sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis is the detecting of opinions, feelings, and general sentiments expressed in text. Sentiment analysis gained relevancy through the rise of social media platforms which increased the amount of sentiment-containing text data, such as Yelp reviews, Tweets, and opinion blogs. Efficient and effective sentiment analysis of such corpora will lead to valuable information about political and social discourse. Hence, social scientists have become increasingly interested in identifying and measuring the relationship between topics and associated sentiments to better understand social and political cultures, attitudes, and processes. In Part 1 of this thesis, we propose a statistical model of text which simultaneously detects both topic and sentiment and allows for the inclusion of document metadata. The proposed model improves upon existing topic-sentiment models in two ways: i) the assumption that topics are associated with a range of sentiments and ii) the ability to use document-level covariates for improved estimation and analysis of the relationship between topics and sentiments. By applying the proposed model to two different datasets, i) a collection of political blogposts and ii) Yelp reviews, we demonstrate how detection of both topic and sentiment with the inclusion of document-level covariates can allow for more informative model summaries as compared to current topic and topic-sentiment models. Topic models are easy to use and interpret; therefore, many variants of topic models have been developed to customize them to various research applications. Evaluation of topic models are thus necessary for appropriate model selection. For this reason, in part II of this thesis, we develop three new metrics which improve upon the existing evaluation approaches by identifying the benefits of topic-sentiment models over topic models. Our evaluation metrics are based on three important criteria: sentiment prediction accuracy, feature stability, and computation time. Not only is it important to be able to show that one model achieves higher sentiment prediction accuracy over another, but it is also vital to ensure that the features used to generate a prediction are meaningful and stable, and that the algorithm has reasonable computational speed. We will use these three metrics to compare our proposed topic-sentiment model to topic models using a case study in which we aim to predict the partisanship and tone of political TV ads. Moreover, since these metrics are not specific to topic models, we will also provide a comparison of topic models with word2vec and Concise Comparative Summaries (CCS) which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been done before. We demonstrate that although the proposed topic-sentiment model is able to better predict sentiment than topic models, word2vec had the highest prediction accuracy and CCS identified the most stable features for prediction and both models required less computation time.


Background The prevalence of dystonia varies worldwide. A prior report suggested a high prevalence of focal dystonia in the Faroese population, possibly reflecting a founder effect. During standardized neurological examination as part of an ongoing neuroepidemiologic study in the Faroe Islands, we noted an unusual phenomenon of thumb flexion during repetitive hand movements in a subset of subjects and sought to define its phenomenology. Methods We requested commentary from a panel of dystonia experts regarding the phenomenology of the movements. These experts reviewed the videotaped neurological examination. Results Among the experts, dystonia was the leading diagnosis. Alternate causes were considered, but deemed less likely. Discussion Diagnosis of dystonia requires careful clinical assessment and consideration of associated features. We report a novel form of dystonia, not previously described to our knowledge, in this isolated population. Further studies of dystonia prevalence in the Faroe Islands are merited to characterize its burden in this population and its specific clinical characteristics.


Dynamic spectrum access (DSA), where the permission to use slices of radio spectrum is dynamically shifted (in time an in different geographical areas) across various communications services and applications, has been an area of interest from technical and public policy perspectives over the last decade. The underlying belief is that this will increase spectrum utilization, especially since many spectrum bands are relatively unused, ultimately leading to the creation of new and innovative services that exploit the increase in spectrum availability. Determining whether a slice of spectrum, allocated or licensed to a primary user, is available for use by a secondary user at a certain time and in a certain geographic area is a challenging task. This requires "context information" which is critical to the operation of DSA. Such context information can be obtained in several ways, with different costs, and different quality/usefulness of the information. In this paper, we describe the challenges in obtaining this context information, the potential for the integration of various sources of context information, and the potential for reuse of such information for related and unrelated purposes such as localization and enforcement of spectrum sharing. Since some of the infrastructure for obtaining finegrained context information is likely to be expensive, the reuse of this infrastructure/information and integration of information from less expensive sources are likely to be essential for the economical and technological viability of DSA.


Bioassay-guided separation with an eye toward antifungal activity led to the isolation of the new alkaloid 5-(1̀,1̀-dimethylallyl)-8-hydroxyfuro[2-3-b] quinoline (1) and the known biscoumarin daphnoretin (2) as the active constituents of the chloroform extract obtained from the leaves of Ruta chalepensis. The structures of the metabolites were elucidated on the basis of their spectral characteristics (NMR, UV, and MS) and were compared with the literature. The antifungal activity of the isolated compounds was evaluated against the phytopathogenic fungi Rhizoctonia solani, Sclerotium rolfsii, and Fusarium solani, which cause root-rot and wilt diseases in several economically important food crops such as potato, sugar beet, and tomato.


Being able to navigate to a target with minimal supervision and prior knowledge is critical to creating human-like assistive agents. Prior work on map-based and map-less approaches have limited generalizability. In this paper, we present a novel approach, Hybrid Asynchronous Universal Successor Representations (HAUSR), which overcomes the problem of generalizability to new goals by adapting recent work on Universal Successor Representations with Asynchronous Actor-Critic Agents. We show that the agent was able to successfully reach novel goals and we were able to quickly fine-tune the network for adapting to new scenes. This opens up novel application scenarios where intelligent agents could learn from and adapt to a wide range of environments with minimal human input.


Brooke, Marcus S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge). Immunological paralysis against type VIII and immunity against type III Diplococcus pneumoniae induced by the soluble specific substance of type VIII. J. Bacteriol. 90:1296-1303. 1965.-Mice injected with relatively large quantities of the soluble specific substance of type VIII Diplococcus pneumoniae (SVIII) are, on the basis of challenge experiments, paralyzed against type VIII but immune against type III D. pneumoniae. Their sera contain antibodies which react with sheep cells coated with SIII. Unfortunately, it was not possible to develop an in vitro test with SVIII. When the SVIII was treated with a specific SVIII depolymerase before injection into mice, the sera still contained antibodies against SIII and some protection was afforded these mice against type III but not against type VIII challenge. When the SVIII was treated with a specific SIII depolymerase, antibodies were not detectable and the mice were not protected against type III or type VIII challenge. On the basis of these results it is suggested that either the SVIII strain is a hybrid forming both SVIII and SIII molecules or that part of the SVIII chain is altered to consist of repeating units of cellobiuronic acid rather than alternating units of cellobiuronic acid and the disaccharide galactose-glucose. The quantity of SIII in some preparations of SVIII is calculated to be of the order of 0.01%. It is not clear whether all type VIII strains at all times possess the capacity to elicit antibodies which react specifically against SIII, or if this is the property of only some strains and some preparations of these strains.


In this work, we study how to use sampling to speed up mechanisms for answering adaptive queries into datasets without reducing the accuracy of those mechanisms. This is important to do when both the datasets and the number of queries asked are very large. In particular, we describe a mechanism that provides a polynomial speed-up per query over previous mechanisms, without needing to increase the total amount of data required to maintain the same generalization error as before. We prove that this speed-up holds for arbitrary statistical queries. We also provide an even faster method for achieving statistically-meaningful responses wherein the mechanism is only allowed to see a constant number of samples from the data per query. Finally, we show that our general results yield a simple, fast, and unified approach for adaptively optimizing convex and strongly convex functions over a dataset.


The concept of congruence has been used in many research streams like brand extensions, sponsorship, or advertising. This paper aims to show the interest of considering this concept through the two dimensions proposed by Heckler and Childers (1992): relevancy and expectancy, in the case of celebrity endorsers in advertising. In order to measure this concept, we will then develop and empirically test a scale adapted from the works of Fleck-Dousteyssier, Darpy and Roux (2005) on sponsorship.


Background: Accurate risk stratification is important in the management of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients. Several risk scores have been developed to stratify patients hospitalized with ACS. Aim: To compare the prognostic value of three risk scores used to determine the risk for secondary events in patients diagnosed with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods: A retrospective analysis of patients with an ACS experiencing a STEMI treated with PCI presenting to a Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospital in Northern California from January 2007 to January 2008 (n=186). For each patient, the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI), Controlled Abciximab and Device Investigation to Lower Late Angioplasty complications (CADILLAC), and Global Registry for Acute Coronary events (GRACE) risk scores were calculated and predictive ability was analysed using the area under the curve or C statistic method. Results: The CADILLAC, TIMI, and GRACE risk scores all had high predictive accuracy for a major cardiac event in hospital, with C statistics ranging from 0.63 to 0.718 with the CADILLAC risk score superior. For non-major cardiac events in hospital, the three risk scores were similar in accuracy for predictability, with C statistics ranging from 0.62 to 0.66. Conclusions: Risk stratification of patients with STEMI undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention can be done using all three risk scores. In our analysis, the CADILLAC and GRACE score was more predictive for major cardiac events in hospital and CADILLAC and TIMI for major cardiac events at 1 year.


We prove the stability of equilibrium in a completely decentralized Walrasian general equilibrium economy in which prices are fully controlled by economic agents, with production and trade occurring out of equilibrium. Journal of Economic Literature Classifications: C62—Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium D51—Exchange and Production Economies D58—Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Economies


In this study, the reproductive properties of the chub population ( Leuciscus cephalusL., 1758) in lake Todurge, Zara/Sivas, were investigated. A total of 674 specimens were caught between April and November 1994. The age and sex distributions and the age of sexual maturity were determined. The reproduction period of the population was determined. Fecundity was determined and the relationships between the fecundity and body weight, length and age were investigated. The age composition of specimens of the population consisting of 68.25% female and 31.75% male, was found to be between I and VII. Males reached maturity in their second or third year of life, whereas females matured in their third or fourth year of life. The reproduction period of the chub population in lake Todurge was determined to be between May and July. The mean diameter of eggs and fecundity were found as 0.65 mm and 14.500, respectively.


In this study there is described the functional structure of the human resources of the physical activity and sport in the Valencian Community. First, there decide the functions current and realized in his  labour life; later his accomplishment in temporary epochs, provinces and strata of population, the level of plurifuncionalidad and the preferences; later the consideration of temporality and the functional structure of every entity; and it concludes with the initial formation in every function. The used methodology is quantitative of descriptive cut by means of survey, across an individual interview standardized by means of questionnaire realized to 600 persons who were employed at functions of physical activity and deport.The results determine that all the functions develop being the principal ones to give teaching of physical activity and deport and to be careful and to support the physical form for groups. Also a high plurifuncionalidad exists, the consideration of temporality in some functions and the functional structure of the different entities this one very diversified. In addition, in the immense majority of the functions the persons are majority without qualifications of physical activity and sport and at all the functions there are employed all the types of graduates of physical activity and sport. Key Words: Function, human resources, sport, employment, professionals.


Web services are self-contained software components that support business process automation over the Internet, and mashup is a popular technique that creates value-added service compositions to fulfill complicated business requirements. For mashup developers, looking for desired component services from a sea of service candidates is often challenging. Therefore, web service recommendation has become a highly demanding technique. Traditional approaches, however, mostly rely on static and potentially subjectively described texts offered by service providers. In this paper, we propose a novel way of dynamically reconstructing objective service profiles based on mashup descriptions, which carry historical information of how services are used in mashups. Our key idea is to leverage mashup descriptions and structures to discover important word features of services and bridge the vocabulary gap between mashup developers and service providers. Specifically, we jointly model mashup descriptions and component service using author topic model in order to reconstruct service profiles. Exploiting word features derived from the reconstructed service profiles, a new service recommendation algorithm is developed. Experiments over a real-world data set from ProgrammableWeb.com demonstrate that our proposed service recommendation algorithm is effective and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.Note to Practitioners—Service recommendation accuracy for mashup creation is often limited due to poor quality of service descriptions. Mashup descriptions contain valuable information about functions and features of its component services, which can be leveraged to enhance descriptive quality of original service profiles. Based on the assumption, this paper proposes a novel two-phase service recommendation framework to facilitate mashup creation. Specifically, our approach reconstructs service profiles by extracting appropriate words from historical mashup descriptions. Then, a novel service recommendation algorithm is developed by exploiting popularity and relevance measures hidden in the reconstructed profiles. Moreover, we propose the rules of dominant words discovery and employ it to further refine our algorithm.


Digital media are more and more present in our lives, but we are still waiting for interfaces and devices completely adapted to this content. In this paper, we present the virtual shelf, an application dedicated to interact with our digital music collection. Our concept is to visualize our music collection in a familiar environment, a classic CD shelf, and to interact with it in a natural way, using the well-known drag-and-drop paradigm: you can drop an album in your friend's shelf to automatically add it to his/her personal music collection, or you can drop it on a close sound player in order to play the selected album on this device.


Numerical experiments are used to study the wind- and buoyancy-modulated along-shore circulation over the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf inshore of 50-m water depth. Most attention is given to circulation in the non-summer flow regime. A major focus of this study is on a unique along-shore flow phenomenon ? convergent along- shore flows, which is controlled jointly by wind forcing and buoyancy fluxes from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river plume. The second problem addresses the forcing effect of buoyancy on the general along-shore circulation pattern over the shelf in non-summer.

The convergent along-shore flows are characterized by down-coast flow from the northern shelf encountering up-coast flow from the southern shelf. This phenomenon is explored for both weather band and seasonal timescales. For the weather band, investigations are focused on non-summer convergent events. The formation of convergent flows is primarily caused by along-coast variation in the along-shore component of wind forcing, which in turn is due to the curvature of the Texas-Louisiana coastline. In general, along-shore currents are well correlated with along-shore winds. However, the points of convergence of currents and winds are not co-located; but rather, points of convergence of currents typically occur down-coast of points of convergence of wind. This offset is mainly caused by buoyancy forcing that forces down-coast currents and drives the point of convergence of currents further down-coast. No specific temporal shift pattern is found for the weather-band convergence, whereas monthly monthly mean convergence exhibits a prominent pattern of seasonal along-coast migration. Buoyancy forcing in the non-summer along-shore flow is investigated in detail in the second part of this study. During non-summer, under down-coast wind forcing, the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river plume exhibits a bottom-advected pattern, for which isopycnals strongly interact with the sea floor. The density front is fairly wide and spans nearly across the entire shelf. Within the front, vertical shear of the alongshore flow is in thermal wind balance with the cross-shore density gradient, and the shear causes a slight reversal of alongshore flow near the bottom. An alongshore flow estimated by the thermal wind relation, along with an assumption of zero bottom reference velocity, agrees well with the actual alongshore flow.


BACKGROUND
Statins have anti-inflammatory effects that are independent of their lipid-lowering activity.

OBJECTIVES
To examine whether prior statins therapy affects the clinical course of the first episode of acute idiopathic pericarditis (AIP) as the 1-year recurrence and length of hospitalization (LOH).

METHODS
This retrospective study included 148 subjects with first episode AIP admitted between the years 2015 and 2019. Data were collected from two hospitals in Northern Israel. We divided the patients in into two groups: 117 those without statins use and 31 those with prior statins use. We compared age, sex, co-morbidities, drugs, laboratory data, 1-year recurrence, and LOH.

RESULTS
The mean age of participants was 43.1 ± 19.4 years. Comparisons between subjects without statins and with prior statins use were made according to age (37.5 ± 16.7 years vs. 64.4 ± 12.7 years, P < 0.01), C-reactive protein (50 ± 40 vs. 48 ± 35 mg/dl, P = 0.9), LOH (5.4 ± 2.85 vs. 8.03 ± 4.92 days, P < 0.01), 1-year recurrence of pericarditis (23 vs. 6 cases, P = 0.95), respectively. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that 1-year recurrence (odds ratio [OR] 0.8, 95% confidence interval [95%CI 0 0.6-1.1, P = 0.41), was not associated with prior statin use, while LOH (OR 2.56, 95%CI 2.08-2.75, P = 0.01) was prolonged with prior statins use in patients with first episode of AID.

CONCLUSIONS
Prior statins use in patients with the first episode of AIP did not reduce the 1-year recurrence of pericarditis and prolong the LOH.


This study was conducted to determine the frequency of various health problems in new adoptive and biological mothers six weeks after they adopted or delivered their infants. Participants included 108 married first-time adoptive mothers, 72 married first-time biological mothers, and 133 controls (married women without children), each of whom completed a mailed questionnaire. Compared to controls, adoptive and biological mothers reported more fatigue, less readiness to work at a job, and less activity with household chores and recreational or social functions. In addition, biological mothers complained of more breast and genitourinary problems than did adoptive mothers or controls. Apart from their fatigue and hesitation to work at a job, adoptive mothers reported relatively good health, with the best mental health outcomes and the fewest acute physical problems of the three groups. These findings suggest that, for both adoptive and birth mothers, some aspects of postpartum recovery may continue up to and beyond the sixth postpartum week.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to determine how Parkinson's disease (PD) affects functional cognition as assessed by the Complex Task Performance Assessment (CTPA) and to examine the associations of CTPA performance with other indicators of executive function in people with PD.

METHOD
Volunteers with PD without dementia (n = 20) and community control participants (n = 19) completed neuropsychological testing, patient-reported outcome measures, and the CTPA.

RESULTS
There were no group differences for CTPA performance accuracy; however, the PD group took longer to complete the CTPA than did the control group. In the PD group, inefficient CTPA performance correlated with poorer cognitive flexibility and worse reported everyday shifting and task monitoring.

CONCLUSION
Decreased executive function, namely cognitive flexibility and attentional control, may impair functional cognition in people with PD. Future studies with larger, more diverse samples are warranted to determine the discriminant validity and sensitivity of the CTPA. Use of performance-based assessments such as the CTPA may increase the understanding of functional cognition in people with PD.


A stock split is often regarded as a pure cosmetic accounting treatment and yet prior research shows that the market reacts positively upon the arrival of the split announcement. However, up to now, there has not been any convincing explanation for this favourable response while there is intense debate amongst researchers about whether these positive abnormal returns persist in the future. We revisit the issues related to the performance of splitting companies both around and following the announcement date. This allows us to study the information content of the event and assess whether the market has incorporated the implication of such information in a timely manner. In addition, we hope to draw meaningful inference about the profitability of trading following the announcement date. Our findings suggest that there is information in the split announcements, which is positively valued by the market. However, abnormal returns cannot be earned with certainty following the event. This is evident in both the option market and the stock market. Specifically, if informed investors use the option market to trade on their information, then our results indicate that informed investors do not believe in the success of a strategy that buys splitting companies subsequent to the announcement date. This is because the post-split announcement drift does not exist following every split; it is conditioned on whether the firms will split again in the future. While prior studies argue that the long-run abnormal returns are sensitive to the time period, we find that the aggregate long-run abnormal returns are higher in a time period where there is a large proportion of companies that split multiple times. Nevertheless, knowing whether the companies have split multiple times in the past will not lead to positive abnormal returns ex-ante; these returns can only be guaranteed if investors are able to forecast accurately which sample firms will implement another split in the future. Once the split again condition is controlled for, there is no role for the time period to influence the magnitude and significance of the abnormal returns. We also discover that firms that have not split before consistently outperform firms that have. This implies that instead of buying every company that splits, investors can achieve higher returns by focusing on those that have not split in the recent past. However, the profitability of this strategy depends on the state of the market (bull versus bear market). In summary, the thesis shows that while stock splits are perceived as good news by investors, abnormal returns cannot be guaranteed following the announcement date. The information contained in a stock split is incorporated into stock prices in a timely manner, however, what type of information this event is capturing remains an open question.


Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most frequent form of focal epilepsies and is generally associated with malfunctioning of the hippocampal formation. Recently, a preferential loss of parvalbumin (PV) neurons has been observed in the subiculum of TLE patients and in animal models of TLE. To demonstrate a possible causative role of defunct PV neurons in the generation of TLE, we permanently inhibited GABA release selectively from PV neurons of the ventral subiculum by injecting a viral vector expressing tetanus toxin light chain in male mice. Subsequently, mice were subjected to telemetric EEG recording and video monitoring. Eighty-eight percent of the mice presented clusters of spike-wave discharges (C-SWDs; 40.0 ± 9.07/month), and 64% showed spontaneous recurrent seizures (SRSs; 5.3 ± 0.83/month). Mice injected with a control vector presented with neither C-SWDs nor SRSs. No neurodegeneration was observed due to vector injection or SRS. Interestingly, mice that presented with only C-SWDs but no SRSs, developed SRSs upon injection of a subconvulsive dose of pentylenetetrazole after 6 weeks. The initial frequency of SRSs declined by ∼30% after 5 weeks. In contrast to permanent silencing of PV neurons, transient inhibition of GABA release from PV neurons through the designer receptor hM4Di selectively expressed in PV-containing neurons transiently reduced the seizure threshold of the mice but induced neither acute nor recurrent seizures. Our data demonstrate a critical role for perisomatic inhibition mediated by PV-containing interneurons, suggesting that their sustained silencing could be causally involved in the development of TLE. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Development of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) generally takes years after an initial insult during which maladaptation of hippocampal circuitries takes place. In human TLE and in animal models of TLE, parvalbumin neurons are selectively lost in the subiculum, the major output area of the hippocampus. The present experiments demonstrate that specific and sustained inhibition of GABA release from parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (mostly basket cells) in sector CA1/subiculum is sufficient to induce hyperexcitability and spontaneous recurrent seizures in mice. As in patients with nonlesional TLE, these mice developed epilepsy without signs of neurodegeneration. The experiments highlight the importance of the potent inhibitory action mediated by parvalbumin cells in the hippocampus and identify a potential mechanism in the development of TLE.


Background: The importance of measuring blood pressure before morning micturition and in the afternoon, while working, is yet to be established in relation to the accuracy of home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM). Objective: To compare two HBPM protocols, considering 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (wakefulness ABPM) as gold-standard and measurements taken before morning micturition (BM) and in the afternoon (AM), for the best diagnosis of systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), and their association with prognostic markers. Methods: After undergoing 24-hour wakefulness ABPM, 158 participants (84 women) were randomized for 3- or 5-day HBPM. Two variations of the 3-day protocol were considered: with measurements taken before morning micturition and in the afternoon (BM+AM); and with post-morning-micturition and evening measurements (PM+EM). All patients underwent echocardiography (for left ventricular hypertrophy - LVH) and urinary albumin measurement (for microalbuminuria - MAU). Result: Kappa statistic for the diagnosis of SAH between wakefulness-ABPM and standard 3-day HBPM, 3-day HBPM (BM+AM) and (PM+EM), and 5-day HBPM were 0.660, 0.638, 0.348 and 0.387, respectively. The values of sensitivity of (BM+AM) versus (PM+EM) were 82.6% × 71%, respectively, and of specificity, 84.8% × 74%, respectively. The positive and negative predictive values were 69.1% × 40% and 92.2% × 91.2%, respectively. The comparisons of intraclass correlations for the diagnosis of LVH and MAU between (BM+AM) and (PM+EM) were 0.782 × 0.474 and 0.511 × 0.276, respectively. Conclusions: The 3 day-HBPM protocol including measurements taken before morning micturition and during work in the afternoon showed the best agreement with SAH diagnosis and the best association with prognostic markers.


Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common curable sexually transmitted pathogen globally. However, in the European Union (EU), trichomoniasis appears to be a rare condition. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of T. vaginalis among females attending an STI centre in Bialystok, Poland, using the highly sensitive and specific APTIMA T. vaginalis assay. Consecutive females, referred by gynaecologists mainly because of abnormal vaginal discharge, were diagnosed using wet mount microscopy, culture and APTIMA T. vaginalis assay. Among 272 women studied, 82% were pre‐ and 18% postmenopausal. The average age was 36.0 ± 13.9 (range: 18–86) years. Abnormal discharge (alone or accompanied by itch or vulvovaginal burning) was the most frequent complain in both groups (66.2% and 48.0%). Erythema and discharge were the most frequent abnormal signs (58.6% and 56.0%). Not a single T. vaginalis‐positive sample was detected using wet mount microscopy, culture or APTIMA T. vaginalis assay. Despite using the highly sensitive APTIMA T. vaginalis assay for detection, the pathogen could not be identified in females in the studied setting, similar to results from other EU settings. The need for general screening using NAAT for this pathogen while diagnosing vulvovaginal symptoms in females in Poland appears to be low.


To attain fundamental reform of the post-2013 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a serious debate is needed in 2009/10 that prepares the decisions to be taken in 2011/12. The paper contributes to this debate, first, by arguing that the Single Farm Payment should not become the mainstay of the future CAP but be gradually phased out. Second, it proposes that the existing two-pillar structure of the CAP should be replaced by a public goods pillar (containing all efficient policies to be preserved) and a discretionary pillar (encompassing all inefficient policies to be removed over time). This would give member states flexibility in how they phase out inefficient policies, while the EU reform agenda would not be clogged with the contentious details of their progressive removal. Third, the paper assesses the criteria likely to guide future allocation of CAP payments, such as GDP per capita, agricultural and forest areas, and areas with Natura 2000 status. Fourth, it estimates member states' share in total CAP payments under different post-2013 scenarios. This reveals surprising differences between the negotiating positions that countries traditionally adopt and the payment receipts they can expect from reform.


Abstract : A Norton equivalent circuit is developed for a long-wire antenna used with a man-pack FM radio exposed to an incident electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The required short-circuit current and antenna impedance are computed by use of a transmission-line model for the antenna, and the computations are compared with measurements of the short-circuit current and antenna impedance. The comparison shows that the transmission-line model for the antenna is adequate for performing a vulnerability analysis of the radio. A network model is developed for a portion of the radio and is used as the load in the Norton equivalent circuit. Load currents in response to an incident electromagnetic pulse from the Army EMP Simulator Operation (AESOP) are computed when the radio is tuned to specific frequencies in the low and high bands. The computed load currents are compared with experiment and show excellent agreement between theory and experiment. (Author)


PURPOSE
Bacillus cereus causes the most virulent and refractory form of endophthalmitis. The authors analyzed the effectiveness of early treatment with vancomycin or gatifloxacin, with or without dexamethasone, for experimental B. cereus endophthalmitis.

METHODS
Rabbit eyes were injected intravitreally with 100 colony-forming units of B. cereus. At 2, 4, or 6 hours after infection, eyes were injected intravitreally with 0.1 mL gatifloxacin (0.3%), vancomycin (1.0%), either antibiotic plus dexamethasone, dexamethasone alone (1.0%), or PBS. Eyes were analyzed by electroretinography, bacterial quantitation, and antibiotic penetration analysis. Drug toxicity toward Müller cells, retinal pigment epithelium, and cones was also analyzed.

RESULTS
Eyes treated at 2 hours with vancomycin or gatifloxacin, with or without dexamethasone, maintained higher ERG amplitudes than the dexamethasone alone and PBS control groups. Eyes treated with antibiotic plus dexamethasone at 6 hours had reduced retinal function compared to antibiotic treatment alone. With the exception of vancomycin with or without dexamethasone at 6 hours, all antibiotic treatments sterilized eyes. Only gatifloxacin reached aqueous concentrations greater than the minimal inhibitory concentration for B. cereus when measured at 8 hours. Neither gatifloxacin nor vancomycin was toxic to retinal cells in vitro.

CONCLUSIONS
Early intravitreal injection of vancomycin or gatifloxacin improved the therapeutic outcome of B. cereus endophthalmitis. The addition of dexamethasone to antibiotic treatment did not provide a therapeutic benefit over antibiotics alone and appeared to reduce the antibiotic efficacy of vancomycin 6 hours after infection. In this model, delay in treatment past 6 hours significantly reduced the potential for salvaging useful vision.


This thesis sets out to increase our knowledge of mechanisms by which lung cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. The involvement of the tumour suppressor p53 in the development of drug resistance in lung cancer cell lines was investigated. p53 is a tumour suppressor gene, which is mutated in more than half of all tumours. Most chemotherapeutic drugs cause DNA damage that is sensed by p53, which either arrests the cell cycle to allow DNA repair or induces apoptosis. Wildtype p53 was transfected into several cell lines; A549, which expresses wild-type p53, DLKP-SQ, which expresses mutant p53 and HI299 which is p53 null. Clones were isolated from these cell lines and tested for changes in sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic agents adriamycin, taxol and carboplatin. A549 transfected clones showed an increase in p53 protein after transfection, however, these cells did not display substantial changes in sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic agents tested. The cell line H1299, which is p53 null, expressed p53 protein after stable transfection, and was chosen for further analysis. This p53-expressing cell line displayed only small changes in sensitivity to chemotherapeutic agents compared to control-transfected cells. No correlation was observed between the p53 status of the cell lines and the ease of developing resistant variants. To further investigate the molecular basis of drug resistance in lung cancer, a panel of four cell lines were chosen for pulse-selection with chemotherapeutic agents. The cell lines include two adenocarcinoma (AC) and two large cell carcinoma (LCC) cell lines. They were pulse-selected with taxol and carboplatin, both of which are clinically relevant drugs for treatment of this type of cancer. The eight novel cell lines obtained were tested for sensitivity to a cross-section of chemotherapeutic agents and for expression of the multidrug resistance (MDR) efflux pump proteins, Pgp and MRP-1. The taxol-selected variants were chosen for further analysis because the resistance profile was stable and the concentration of drug used for selection was at a clinically achievable level. Microarray analysis was used to identify genes associated with the development of taxol resistance. Ten differentially expressed genes with a possible role in taxol resistance were chosen from this analysis. These genes were further investigated by siRNA transfection, in order to determine the functional relevance of these genes in drug resistance. The taxol-selected variants analysed by microarray analysis provide a unique opportunity to study less well characterised mechanisms of taxol resistance, since these variants do not display classical MDR.


The goal of this research is to get understanding of the organization of exploration in fast growing
organizations operating in the internet technology industry. The research question: "How are fast growing
organizations, operating in the internet technology industry, engaged in exploration and how do they
organize this?" is inspired by the situation at M4N. M4N is a fast growing organization that develops
internet technology. They acknowledged that the fast growth has put some pressure on its explorative
activities. The causes of the problems they described can also be found in the combination of various
theories on the balance between exploration and exploitation, and organizational growth. During the
growth phase, the organization gets more complex. A common response is to introduce more structure,
and formalize and professionalize tasks and functions, often resulting in a loss of flexibility (Kazanjian,
1988). This will benefit the exploitative capacities, but may hamper exploration. Too much engagement in
exploitation can result in a disordered balance between exploration and exploitation, which is called the
success trap (Levinthal & March, 1993). However, for organizations in high velocity markets, exploration is
an important capability for survival. A problematic situation arises where internal forces go against
environmental requirements. Therefore, the question was raised how fast growing organizations in high
technology markets handle that situation. The goal of this research is to understand how these
organizations behave in the field of exploration during the changing circumstances as result of the
growth.
To get an insight into how these organizations are engaged in exploration and into how they organize it,
multiple case studies were conducted. Data collection was done by means of a questionnaire that
collected quantitative data about the presence of exploration. Interviews were arranged to get
understanding on how organizations explore, and how growth has affected this. Seven organizations that
experienced extremely fast growth were selected.
The results showed that continuous development is important for all organizations, but most concentrate
on improvements in existing products instead of on explorative projects. Varying strategies towards
exploration were found, which were indicated by the strategy types of Miles and Snow (1978). Because of
the heterogeneity of the internet technology industry, market conditions in various subcategories vary,
which is an important factor affecting the engagement in exploration. Four organizations were
categorized as "prospector". For these organizations, experimenting with new opportunities was part of
the core business. Although the velocity of the market is an important factor affecting the strategy, the
ambitions of the management and the employees play a major part as well. One organization has chosen
an explorative strategy since it is necessary to be explorative to survive in the market. In the other three
organizations, exploration was important rather because of their ambitions than necessary conditions.
Defenders, analyzers and a reactor were recognized as well. In addition, the structure and presence of
external partnerships varied among the cases, which can be related to the varying strategy types and
organizational size. In highly explorative organizations it was found that their structure is aligned with this
strategy, and a specific team or unit is completely directed towards exploration. Since development
requires dedication and concentration, separation of daily practice benefits exploration. At smaller
organizations, resources are limited and the organization is still manageable without strict separation of
activities. In organizations in which exploration is not part of the core business, it is also less present in the
organizational structure. It is not necessary to create a structure in which both exploration and
exploitation get full attention and are optimized. During periods in which exploration becomes more
important, temporary teams are founded to explore, without affecting the daily business of the standard
operation. However, a complete lack of structure or task for exploration, unclear strategy or limited fit
between strategy and structure, results in the loss of overview when the organization grows, which
affects the explorative intensity negatively. Despite the strategic and structural differences, a common
denominator is found as well. Internet technology is an intangible product, created on computers. This
has the result that no detailed plans or strict processes need to be drawn. Instead of a sequential process,
it is iterative; experimentation by trial and error plays a major part. Based on the feedback and new
knowledge, the product is shaped and changed during the whole process. Growth does not really change
this; and, therefore, a certain flexibility and openness for creativity is always present. It was also found
that the presence of external relationships in order to explore was quite limited. Only two highly
explorative organizations were really active with external partners for explorative purposes.
5
The most important conclusion of this study is that the possible negative effects of organizational growth
can be prevented when the organization has a clear strategy, and introduces more structure into the
organization when complexity increases. In the case of clearly defined strategies, the creation of
structure, task specialization and functional differentiation contributes to exploration, contrary to the
assumption that an increase of structural elements as specialization would hamper engagement in
explorative activities as was suggested in the theory of Levinthal and March (1993). Generally,
organizations prefer a form of separation. Larger organizations with explorative strategies prefer
structural ambidexterity, since it optimizes both exploration and exploitation. When the organization is
small and resources and employees are limited, contextual ambidexterity tends to be present. When the
size of the organization increases, more structural ambidexterity is introduced since there are enough
resources to do so, and also because the complexity requires a mechanism to ensure control when both
exploration and exploitation are performed. Organizations that are less engaged in exploration mostly
perform exploration through temporary projects, for which a separate team is formed.
Another important finding is that the presumed importance and benefits of external collaborations are
mostly undervalued by the organizations. The research also shows that collaborations for explorative
projects are limited. Only organizations which regard experimentation and engaging in new opportunities
as the core value see the benefit of external collaborations and tie up with them. Most partnerships are
established with clients and suppliers for more exploitative objectives, confirming the findings of the
research of Faems et al (2005) in which is stated that explorative and exploitative projects require
different kinds of partnerships depending on the capabilities and the interest of that partner.
One of the recommendations, therefore, is that fast growing high technology originations should focus
more on the possibilities of such collaborations. Now it is more or less ignored, but it should have more
attention. Organizations have to seriously consider the possibilities, instead of only focusing on the
organizational costs and the efforts that need to be made. Fast growing organizations in high technology
markets characterized by iterative processes and organic structures may be advised that
professionalization and separated structure is beneficial, without losing the creative atmosphere and the
explorative vibe in the organization.


Melatonin, a hormone produced primarily by the pineal gland, is also secreted from the gut and eye during darkness. There are three classes of melatonin receptors, MT 1 , MT 2 , and MT 3 , in various regions of the human brain, gut, ovaries, and blood vessels, but most consistently found in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus and the pars tuberalis of the anterior pituitary. Melatonin has endocrine, autocrine, and paracrine actions, which are mostly receptor mediated. Primary clinical uses include the regulation of circadian rhythms and sleep disorders, although it has other endocrine, immunomodulatory, and oncostatic effects. This review summarizes the current state of melatonin research with an emphasis on its receptors, pharmacological effects, and clinical therapeutic uses.


Numerous published case reports and forthcoming clinical trials combine immunotherapy and radiotherapy with the goal of demonstrating an abscopal effect reaction. However, reports and results are varied, and a comprehensive animal study combining radiotherapy modalities and immunotherapy agents has yet to be performed. Further, clinical reports are mixed, with inconsistent generation of the effect as well as abscopal effects seen ranging from widespread disease elimination to growth stagnation of local lymph node metastasis. We propose a grading system for use in differentiating abscopal effects seen in animal and clinical trials. Further, we will conduct a comprehensive study in mice, evaluating three radiotherapeutic modalities (photon, proton, and carbon-ion) combined with five immunotherapeutic agents with differing actions. Comprehensive cell analysis will be conducted with the aim of improving upon draft models of abscopal effect generation, as well as differentiating between locoregional and systemic methods of action. Further, evaluation of radiation fractionation, as well as combination with ex vivo activated dendritic cell (DC) inoculation, will be performed. Though the abscopal effect has been reported for nearly 70 years, only recently has delineation of its mechanism seemed possible. Comprehensive evaluation of available modalities may shed light on the precise requirements for generating the effect, potentially enabling its regular usage in the treatment of disease.


Photo- and physically-realistic techniques are often insufficient for visualization of simulation results, especially for 3D and time-varying datasets. Substantial research efforts have been dedicated to the development of non-photorealistic and illustration-inspired visualization techniques for compact and intuitive presentation of such complex datasets. While these efforts have yielded valuable visualization results, a great deal of work has been reproduced in studies as individual research groups often develop purpose-built platforms. Additionally, interoperability between illustrative visualization software is limited due to specialized processing and rendering architectures employed in different studies. In this investigation, a generalized framework for illustrative visualization is proposed, and implemented in marmotViz, a ParaView plugin, enabling its use on variety of computing platforms with various data file formats and mesh geometries. Detailed descriptions of the region-of-interest identification and feature-tracking algorithms incorporated into this tool are provided. Additionally, implementations of multiple illustrative effect algorithms are presented to demonstrate the use and flexibility of this framework. By providing a framework and useful underlying functionality, the marmotViz tool can act as a springboard for future research in the field of illustrative visualization.


The effects of Si content on the electrochemical performance of Al-5Zn-0.03In-1Mg- 0.05Ti (wt.%) alloy were studied by the electrochemical measurements and metallographic method. The optimal microstructures and electrochemical performance were obtained when the Si content in Al-Zn-In-Mg-Ti alloy was 0.1 wt.%. This anode alloy shows a current efficiency of 94.3% with even corrosion. However, in the case of Si content over 0.1 wt.%, the electrochemical performance of aluminum sacrificial anode shows only a nil improvement, and the corrosion morphology becomes uneven. The results reveal that the appropriate amount of Si is effective on reducing the harmful effect of iron impurities, improving the non-uniform corrosion and the electrochemistry performance of Al-Zn-In-Mg-Ti alloy.


SIMPLEX is the forum aimed at simplifying network science for practitioners, and particularly for computer communication practitioners. This event focuses on applications of network science relevant for the analysis, the design and the simulation of communication networks and protocols. This year's workshop was held in the beautiful city of Venice, and was co-located with NetSci'09, one of the major network science conferences.

Having as a goal to stimulate collaboration between communication networks and network science, the program of SIMPLEX'09 was made not only of technical sessions, but also of several tutorials as well as a panel. The main technical session was made of papers carefully reviewed by at least three members of the Technical Program Committee. Only those papers are published in the ACM Digital Library. The main technical session was followed by tutorials aimed at explaining to the network science community the data available from communication networks and to discuss some methodological issues with the use of such data. Most of the data types available from communication networks were covered by the tutorials: cellular networks, human mobility and wireless networks, as well as fixed networks. After the tutorials, a joint session between SIMPLEX and NetSci was organized in order to let the network science community present their work relevant for SIMPLEX. This joint session was made of short presentations. The papers of the joint session have not been peer-reviewed as the main technical session, hence these papers are not included in the proceedings.


Objectives: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have increased cardiovascular mortality. Tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα)-blocking therapy has been shown to reduce RA disease activity measures and joint damage progression. Some observational studies suggest that TNFα blockade reduces mortality and incidence of first cardiovascular events. The mechanisms contributing to these outcomes are unclear. This study assessed the effects of infliximab treatment on vascular stiffness and structure in patients with RA. Methods: A post hoc analysis of longitudinal data from a randomised placebo controlled study evaluated the effect of infliximab on vascular assessments. 26 patients received intravenous infliximab (3 mg/kg) at weeks 0, 2, 6 and every 8 weeks thereafter to week 54. Patients were followed up to 56 weeks of infliximab therapy with assessments of RA disease activity, cardiovascular risk factors, vascular stiffness (pulse wave velocity (PWV)), carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) and carotid artery plaque (CAP). Univariate analyses of changes over time by repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) were followed by multivariate time-series regression analysis (TSRA) if changes were seen. Results: PWV was significantly lower (better) after 56 weeks of treatment with infliximab (ANOVA p<0.01, TSRA p<0.01). However, CIMT (ANOVA p = 0.50) and CAP (χ2 = 4.13, p = 0.88) did not change over the study period. Multiple cardiovascular risk measures did not change with treatment and did not correlate with changes in measures of vascular structure. Conclusions: Arterial stiffness improves with infliximab treatment in RA. This change may help explain the improved cardiovascular disease survival in patients with RA receiving TNFα-blocking therapy.


By reducing the power supply voltage, a higher speed, lower power consumption, and higher integration density of data processing ICs can be achieved. A variety of ICs operating from 3.3 V are available. Next generations of ICs are expected to work even with lower voltages, i.e., in the 1-3 V range, to further enhance their speed-power performance. At the same time, during transients these new generations of data ICs will present very dynamic loads with high current slew rates. As a result, they will require point-of-load power supplies in order to minimize the effects of the interconnection parasitics. These on-board power supplies will be derived from the existing voltages available in the system (usually 5 V or 12 V), and will be required to have high power densities, high efficiencies, and good transient performance. This paper presents design considerations for these on-board power supplies and discusses their performance limits imposed by various circuit and system parasitics.<<ETX>>


High-quality urban reconstruction requires more than multi-view reconstruction and local optimization. The structure of facades depends on the general layout, which has to be optimized globally. Shape grammars are an established method to express hierarchical spatial relationships, and are therefore suited as representing constraints for semantic facade interpretation. Usually inference uses numerical approximations, or hard-coded grammar schemes. Existing methods inspired by classical grammar parsing are not applicable on real-world images due to their prohibitively high complexity. This work provides feasible generic facade reconstruction by combining low-level classifiers with mid-level object detectors to infer an irregular lattice. The irregular lattice preserves the logical structure of the facade while reducing the search space to a manageable size. We introduce a novel method for handling symmetry and repetition within the generic grammar. We show competitive results on two datasets, namely the Paris 2010 and the Graz 50. The former includes only Hausmannian, while the latter includes Classicism, Biedermeier, Historicism, Art Nouveau and post-modern architectural styles.


The purpose of this article is to study risk and benefit in the application of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to the coating process of granules to monitor the process for determining the coating end point. Cylindrical granules or spherical granules were used as core granules and were coated using a fluidized bed coating apparatus by spraying coating suspension. During the coating run, samples of granules were pulled at regular intervals and amount of talc or lactose, which were the components of the film layer, were estimated by NIR spectroscopy. When the coating layer of granules was thin like the case of the spherical granules, it was possible to monitor and understand the coating process well by an application of NIR spectroscopy, because it was possible to estimate some components in the coating layer simultaneously. However, it was found that as the coating layer became thick like the case of the cylindrical granules, NIR light was scattered by titanium dioxide in the coating layer, and that the increase of the coating layer estimated from NIR spectroscopy showed the misunderstanding saturation. NIR spectroscopy could not be used for the estimation of the granule coating process even if the formulation and amount applied for the coating was same as the spherical granules. When NIR spectroscopy is intended to be used to control granule coating process, it is necessary to check the impacts of the formulation applied for coating, the amount of the coating layer, and the thickness of the coating layer on the estimations.


By compiling ordinary scientific applications programs with a radical technique called trace scheduling, we are generating code for a parallel machine that will run these programs faster than an equivalent sequential machine - we expect 10 to 30 times faster. Trace scheduling generates code for machines called very long instruction work architectures. In very long instruction word machines, many statically scheduled, tightly coupled, fine-grained operations exwcute in parallel with a single instruction stream. VLIWs are more parallel extensions of several current architectures. These current architectures have never cracked a fundamental barrier. The speedup they get from parallelism is never more than a factor of 2 to 3. Not htat we couldn't build more parallel machines of this type: but until trace scheduling we did't know how to generate code for them. Trace scheduling finds sufficient paralleslism in ordinary code to justify thinking about a highly parallel VLIW. At Yale we are actualy buildingone. Our machine, the ELI-512 has a horizontal instruction word of over 500 bits and will do 10 to 30 RISC-level operations per cyple [Patterson 82]. ELI stands for Enormously Longword Instructions; 512 is the size of the instruction word we hope to achieve. (The current design has a 1200-bit instruction word).


Background: Spinal haemangioblastomas are rare benign but potentially devastating vascular tumours.They may occur sporadically or as a component of Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease. There is a dearth of information about these tumours among Nigerians. This study aims to evaluate the clinical profile and outcome of surgery as well as the challenges of management of these tumours in a resource-limited country.
Methods: We retrospectively analysed data from the records of patients who had surgery for spinal haemangioblastoma at our center between January 2004 and December 2018.
Results: We operated 2 cases of spinal haemangioblastomas during the study period (1 male, 1 female). The patients were aged 25 and 50years. Both patients presented with sensorimotor deficits but only one them had sphincteric dysfunction. The duration of symptoms was 2 weeks in one patient and 18 months in the other. The tumour was located in the thoracic region in both of them. One patient had extramedullary tumour while the had an intramedullary spinal tumour. Both patients were paraplegic at the time of surgery, for 3 days in one patient and more than 4 months in the second patient. Gross total tumour resection was achieved in both individual. The patient with short duration of symptoms and extramedullary tumour made a rapid post-operative neurological improvement while the one with long duration of symptoms and intramedullary tumour remained paraplegic until his demise 9 months after surgery.
Conclusion: Spinal haemangioblastomas are rare tumours. Long duration of symptoms and intramedullary tumour location are predictors of unfavorable surgical outcome.


Nowadays, organizations, companies, and other institutions need leaders who are capable of moving in and through divergent cultural environments. An increasing number of studies in recent years have examined issues related to intercultural communication competence which is important for leaders in global era. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of college students who do not have such competence that will lead to failing to be global leaders. This study aims at answering the questions why university students in Jakarta are still lack of intercultural communication competence and how to improve students' competence in creating global leaders.This study employed a phenomenological approach of a qualitative research design. In this study a semi-structured interview is used to understand how participants experienced the phenomenon. Data were gathered from a total of 17 participants, consists of university students, leaders of student organizations, university graduates who have been working in public and private sector, and an official of the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education was interviewed to get the perspectives on the ideal 21st century leaders and what the universities should do to achieve it.The research proved that intercultural communication plays a significant role in improving leadership competence in the global era. Further analysis indicated that there were differences between students who are competent in intercultural communication and those who are not which can be seen from various aspects. This study provides insights on the importance of intercultural communication competence for university students to be global leaders, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of having and not having inter-cultural communication competencies in the global era and offers recommendations for future research.


The current investigation examines the incidence of clients telling their psychotherapists of committing violent crimes for which they have not been prosecuted. Thirteen percent of the psychologists surveyed indicated that on at least one occasion a client self-disclosed to them during a psychotherapy session that he/she had murdered someone, not including the killing of another person in the line of duty in the military or as a public peace officer. One third of the psychologists had clients self-disclose an unprosecuted incident of a sexual assault, and more than two thirds had clients self-disclose an unprosecuted incident of a physical assault during a psychotherapy session. Data are reported on psychotherapists' views of the impact of such disclosures on the psychotherapy relationship, adequacy of being informed regarding legal obligations after hearing such reports of violence, and adequacy of graduate preparation to deal with these clinical situations.


Uralic languages have been described as "satellite-framed" in general linguistic publications, meaning that the path of a motion event is typically not expressed by the verb of motion, but by an independent element – a particle, an affix, etc. – that accompanies the verb or verbal stem. While this assertion holds true for the critical mass of Uralic languages, it seems to be too broad – especially with respect to languages influenced by "verb-framed" Turkic languages, in which the verb of motion typically denotes the path. This paper aims to give a comprehensive overview of the expression of motion events in Mari, the presumably most heavily verb-framed extant Uralic language, and a brief overview of verb-framed motion events in other Uralic languages.


We introduce a novel liquid simulation approach that combines a spatially adaptive pressure projection solver with the Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method. The solver relies on a generalized version of the Finite Difference (FD) method to approximate the pressure field and its gradients in tree-based grid discretizations, possibly non-graded. In our approach, FD stencils are computed by using meshfree interpolations provided by a variant of Radial Basis Function (RBF), known as RBF-Finite-Difference (RBF-FD). This meshfree version of the FD produces differentiation weights on scattered nodes with high-order accuracy. Our method adapts a quadtree/octree dynamically in a narrow-band around the liquid interface, providing an adaptive particle sampling for the PIC advection step. Furthermore, RBF affords an accurate scheme for velocity transfer between the grid and particles, keeping the system's stability and avoiding numerical dissipation. We also present a data structure that connects the spatial subdivision of a quadtree/octree with the topology of its corresponding dual-graph. Our data structure makes the setup of stencils straightforward, allowing its updating without the need to rebuild it from scratch at each time-step. We show the effectiveness and accuracy of our solver by simulating incompressible inviscid fluids and comparing results with regular PIC-based solvers available in the literature.


Carrier sense multiple access with enhanced collision avoidance (CSMA/ECA) is a distributed MAC protocol that allows collision-free access to the medium in WLANs. The only difference between CSMA/ECA and the well-known CSMA/CA is that the former uses a deterministic backoff after successful transmissions. Collision-free operation is reached after a transient state during which some collisions may occur. This paper shows that the duration of the transient state can be shortened by appropriately setting the contention parameters. Standard absorbing Markov chain theory is used to describe the behaviour of the system in the transient state and to predict the expected number of slots to reach the collision-free operation. The paper also introduces CSMA/E2CA, in which a deterministic backoff is used two consecutive times after a successful transmission. CSMA/E2CA converges quicker to collision-free operation and delivers higher performance than CSMA/ECA, specially in harsh wireless scenarios with high frame-error rates. The last part of the paper addresses scenarios with a large number of contenders. We suggest dynamic parameter adjustment techniques to accommodate a varying (and potentially high) number of contenders. The effectiveness of these adjustments in preventing collisions is validated by means of simulation.


In the fourth industrial revolution (4IR)period, an
inclusion of Chaos Theory (CT) in Engineering education (EE)
and its significant relevance have involved debates from
engineering academia and industrial professional over the years.
Thus, much has been done to recall relevance for EE, yet EE has
not attained Sustainable Development Goal for educational
target, in areas of research relevance, curriculum restructuring,
and learning materials/instructional platforms redesigning are
still lacking in engineering academia and profession in Africa.
With much sensitization on inclusion of CT to instil EE relevance
in Africa, is still far from addressing EE gaps; hence the crux of
this paper. This paper was guided by Chaos theory providing
definite perception which involves equilibrium constructs that are
crucial in EE. This paper focused on the concept of CT as its
relevance in EE in the4IR in Africa. In particular, it explores
how CT can enhance relevance in EE; and how the principles of
CT can improve the EE relevance, as well as its implications in
Africa. Thus, to address these gaps, recommendations such as
developing nonchaotic curriculum for EE, adopting Chaos
theoretical principles in facilitating staff training and students'
skill development were advocated


THE TRADITIONAL surgical bone rasp has small teeth whose action becomes dulled as they accumulate bone particles. The function of a rasp is to shape, trim, and form bone surfaces. This, in the author's experience, has been attained most efficiently by a modern surface-forming tool designed for use on wood and metals up to the hardness of mild steel. As shown in the illustration, the shaping is done by hardened steel teeth which project from the flat surface of a perforated blade. The perforations allow the bone chips to escape away from the cutting area. The blade is mounted on a frame which acts as a container, preventing the bone chips from being distributed in the work area. The instrument is always sharp, since the blade is replaceable. The tool is obtainable in most hardware stores for the price of approximately $2. Its chief use in the author's hands


We are most honored to have been selected as winners of the First JDR Award – an unexpected surprise because we did not realize that we had contributed so much to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). The JDR provided us with a fine opportunity to present our results on a project of the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS), making our work known to the world-wide scientific community. SATREPS is sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
 From 2010 to 2015, Japanese and Peruvian researchers conducted a SATREPS project, Enhancement of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Technology in Peru. To announce our research output, we chose the JDR and had our work published in 36 articles in two special issues, in 2013 and 2014. The JDR's prompt peer reviews and publication processes are really helpful to projects such as SATREPS, which have time limits. Our results would otherwise have been published much later.
 Congratulations on the JDR's first-decade anniversary! We believe the JDR is an important journal in the natural hazard and disaster management field as it has been recognized as a Scopus indexed journal. The JDR's open access and the fact that it enables papers to be downloaded free of charge from the web site is very helpful and convenient to readers and helps authors become known to broader audiences. We hope the JDR will get the Impact Factor of Thomson Reuters, becoming a major source of information in the disaster sciences field.
 Fumio Yamazaki and Carlos Zavala
 October 26, 2015